Special thanks to all

June 7, 2006

Dear Sir,

I would like to express a belated thank you to everyone who participated in the Fifth Annual Peter Grayston Memorial Walk held on January 22, 2006.

To those of you who gave donations to PALS, thank you so much. PALS will have benefited by more than $6,000 which will help with the invaluable work this organisation does in our community.

We even had an international team as friends and their families participated in different areas of Canada.

Thanks to our marshals who kept everyone moving and to our refreshment team who baked the delicious cookies and to Giorgio Zanol of Lindo's Market who kindly donated oranges.

Yves Paul from the Fitness Firm made sure we were stretched out and limbered up before we started out on our walk.

Special thanks to Dave Morrison and his family for their invaluable help.

We look forward to another successful walk again next year.

JANET GRAYSTON

Pembroke

A lot to be learned

June 12, 2006

Dear Sir,

The British Government has been shedding its colonies in my lifetime with disastrous results, and I wonder why no one has ever set standards for the nincompoops who pretend to be parliamentarians. The pathetic visit to the US Congress got me to thinking that these guys could use some help.

I see ads every day, for housekeepers, who are required to have such skills as driving, dog handling and swimming, yet there has never been any attempt to provide further education for those who make decisions that affect our lives long term.

Every ad in the paper requires degrees, experience and skills, but these highly paid ladies and gentlemen have been given their jobs based on no qualifications at all.

We could send P to learn to make unpopular decisions if they are the right ones and how to fire those who should be fired, we could send Burch to learn not to put his foot in his mouth or else we could send him to rap school as his vocabulary and bling (earrings) might give him a future in that musical genre.

I have heard the gang have difficulty getting the agenda right, so why don't we apprentice them to various august bodies to learn such basic things as five year planning, budgeting, racial reconciliation, town planning and perhaps a geography class or two so they will then be able to understand just how unimportant their place in the world really is.

The Minister of the Environment might learn that her agricultural thrust is a complete waste of a time in a country capable only of window box agriculture and stop wasting our money sending people to see other Island agricultural shows. We have put our arable land to good use for years. I have left out the other ministries, not because they don't need the education, but for brevity.

We might be able to get the ladies to learn that big hats and high high heels are out, and gay rights are in, and that the fundamentalist Christians are just as dangerous as the mullahs in Iran. There is such a lot to be learned that we could keep them in school for years and now with their pay rises, they should be able to afford further education they obviously lack.

I do hope the classes will soon be started.

CURIOUS

City of Hamilton

Here's a classic idea!

May 10, 2006

Dear Sir,

I'm a visitor to your beautiful Island. I happened to be shopping in Hamilton a few days ago and I walked into a DVD store next to the Little Theatre. My friends and I were thrilled to see the wonderful selection classic DVD's and we wanted to purchase as many as possible, but to our disappointment, a very polite salesperson told me I would have to be member to rent the classics. I would appreciate it very much if the owner would consider setting aside large selections of classics for sale to non-members. Some of my Bermudian friends thought it would be a good idea. Please consider my plea! I would love to see this happen before I return to the US next month. Thanks for taking time consider!

JOAN ACOCK

Philadelphia

Terrific fundraiser

Dear Sir,

We want to tell everyone in Bermuda about the most amazing trash-a-thon that has ever been done. The children at Clearwater Middle School decided they would clean the entire East End in preparation for the tourist season. We called it the Great Heritage Month Clean-Up.

We set the date for May 23 and the whole school, including students, teachers and parents cleaned and picked up trash in the areas where our tourists go sightseeing, including Kindley Field, St. David's Road, the St. David's Battery, the area round the Lighthouse, all along Clearwater Beach and the Nature Reserve, and every nook and cranny in between!

Mr. Editor, we collected thousands of bottles, cans, plastic containers, paper cups, wrappers, old fishing lines, floats - and even a car door and an abandoned bike!

Our reading teacher Ms Heather DeSilva organised the whole day for us with gloves and bags, and the Works and Engineering truck followed us around St. David's picking up the bags after we filled them. Now St. David's is really clean and tidy and ready for the tourist season! We used the day as a fundraiser, gathering pledges so that we can have a Performing Arts Lighting System in our auditorium next year.

If any of your readers would still like to make pledges, they can drop off donations at our school - and notice how clean St. David's is. Perhaps we can do the same at the end of the tourist season in November. We will let you know!

EVELYN DIAS AND SHARON BEAN

Class M2

Stop this nonsense

June 13, 2006

Dear Sir,

Upon reflection when reading the newspaper what has this Government and Island come to? The concept of a black government in power is an enlightening and liberating move to equality, but has now turned into a mutiny on the bounty. When hearing the racial, sexual and gender slurs on a daily basis it becomes embarrassing. The concept of ‘black and white' perception is usually mentioned when one talks about how a child sees the world and we as adults have to live within the grey matter i.e. to not judge and to not always have such stern right and wrongs.

The right thing to do would be to focus on the ‘black' areas i.e. to spend time on educating the down-trodden and unfortunate at no excessive cost, to house the low-wage earners, to invest money into the local health service and predominantly and most importantly, focus on the business arena and promote the black business community, albeit small and far between as Bermuda like the Yellow Pages suggests when looking for information visit the ‘white Island pages'! Stop looking at the ‘white' areas and copying the nasty mistakes of the white man and stop promoting white businesses behind closed doors and kicking out the black man by being typical ‘crabs in the bucket'.

ANGRY LIBERATED THINKER

Warwick

Less than thrilled

June 13, 2006

Dear Sir,

I write in reference to the DNA Thrill Show held on Saturday June 11, 2006 for which I purchased two adult and three child tickets (total: $225).Our party arrived at the show an hour before it was due to start only to find no seating available.

Did the ticket not include seating?! Additionally the precautions for safety were completely inadequate.

We stood (for two hours) at the far eastern end of the ring and all that protected us was orange plastic on a metal fence which was pulled down in the space of about half an hour. Children were sitting inside the ring area during the show (shouldn't DNA have been following health and safety regulations?) It was amazing that no one was seriously injured, at least as far as I am aware.

I am furious that I wasted $225 on tickets for a completely disorganised, badly run event. I will never purchase tickets for another DNA show.

JODI CORBETT

A matter of time

May 31, 2006

Dear Sir,

I believe Andrew is correct in his definition of noon, midnight, a.m. and p.m. but slightly confused in his application. The first thing to be considered is that time is continuous. Not only in the sense that “time waits for no man”, but also in the fact that there are infinitely many time periods within any time period. For example, in the case of a time period of a second; there are 100 time periods when measuring in 100ths of a second, 1,000 time periods when measuring in 1,000ths of a second, and so on. The tiniest time period that can be imagined can easily be divided into smaller time periods.

So, how does this affect noon, midnight? Noon and midnight are constants of time that are exactly (using his notation) 12.00 m. and 12.00 m. respectively. This is why the convention is noon and not noon p.m.; similarly, midnight and not midnight a.m.

Now, how does this affect a.m. and p.m.? A.m. and p.m. are used to measure the passage of time and due to continuousness of time it is exactly any particular time (e.g.12.00 m.) for an infinitesimally small period of time. Consider this, even if a person were to sit staring at a clock at 11.59 a.m., waiting to declare when noon had arrived, their declaration would constantly be late. Why? Well, it takes time for the light to travel from the clock face to the eye, time for the eye to translate the light into electrical signals, time for the signals to be sent to the brain, and so on. Thus, by the time they declared it was exactly noon, noon would have already passed. Therefore, clocks and people (knowingly or not) use 12.00 p.m. to represent the passage of time between noon and 12.01 p.m. Likewise, 12.00 a.m. for midnight and 12.01 a.m.

Therefore, I urge Andrew not to scold his friends and family for arranging to meet for lunch sometime between noon and 12.01 p.m. (12.00 p.m.).

EDMUND B. ROBINSON

Sandys

I can't figure it out ...

May 17, 2006

Dear Sir,

Believe it or not, I have heard a person say that prejudice is not a factor in Bermuda politics. Right! And frogs don't like rainy days. For the record I am a white Bermudian.

I am reading with interest The Royal Gazette's recent series about whites in the PLP. My list of names by now fills about half a match cover. Makes you wonder where they got them all.

Let's see - no white MPs or PLP members in key party positions.

Hmmm. Same must be true for the UBP. Whoops - no. Three of the last UBP party leaders, including the present one are black, as well as numerous present and previous key party personnel.

All of this is confusing. I don't know where I stand. Are all PLP members prejudiced? Of course not. Are too many? Yes. Is the same true for UBP members? I would answer both questions the same way.

Am I a black person in a white body or a white person who should be in a black body? Am I Blite or Whack? Somebody tell me please. I can't figure it out.

Some of my best friends are white. All the rest are black. I guess I consider a person who says prejudice does not exist in Bermuda politics is someone who is prejudiced.

Maybe frogs really don't like rainy days. And maybe they wonder if they are green frogs or brown frogs. At least they are not Blite and Whack frogs. Another nice thing about frogs is they don't seem to have incompetent leaders and that seems to work fine for them.

But Mr. Froggie beware. One day the lizards will use their numbers and take over and run the frogs by sheer virtue of their majority.

So readers - I'll leave it to you. Am I a Blite or a Whack?

GREG FALZONE

Warwick

Chicken run

May 22, 2006

Dear Sir,

I was attacked by a chicken on my run this morning. I got between her and her chick and she flew at me.

In order to ascertain the risk of bird flu, I asked her where she was from (as recommended by a vet in these very pages some three months ago) but she refused to answer without her lawyer present.

Another chicken came round later to apologise, but I think they were just trying to pull the “good coop, bad coop” routine.

Yours pecking at the keyboard.

ANDREW R. DOBLE

Hamilton Parish

‘Memorable experience'

May 16, 2006

This was sent to Lizz Pimentel of In Motion Dance School and copied to The Royal Gazette:

Dear Ms Pimentel,

I attended your company's performance at the City Hall on Sunday night to see my four-year-old granddaughter perform as an icicle! I walked away from the theatre with nothing but praise for the awesome job that you and your dedicated group of instructors do in putting together such a wonderful production.

I was obviously paying close attention to the segment which included my granddaughter but I was totally engrossed with every aspect of a marvellous evening. I have been involved with amateur theatre as an actor/singer for over 50 years and still cannot comprehend what I was seeing on stage. The “senior” students were brilliant and their accomplishments were way above what I expected to see in Bermuda.

I had the privilege of being on stage with some of your senior students several years ago when I sang with The Ensemble Singers in a Bermuda Festival production about slavery. Everything about your 2006 production was outstanding. The staging (especially the simplicity of the section where you had white material stretching across the stage), the lighting, the choreography, the costumes, the set and the obvious professionalism of the entire production.

My mind boggles with what had to be done backstage to get little bodies off in preparation for larger bodies to come on!

I was so impressed with the entire event and just cannot wait to see one of your productions again. Thank you for making this a memorable experience for my wife and me. My wife is my biggest critic when I am on stage so when she agreed with everything I have said in this brief note, I know she has been impressed.

JOHN BARNETT

City of Hamilton

Letting go of anger

May 23, 2006

Dear Sir,

I understand quite clearly how having a negative attitude will perpetuate negative outcomes. That is why I am writing a letter to everyone, asking that love and compassion be sent to, specifically, all of the people who are a part of Works and Engineering and the Parks Department, so that they who have not already become aware, may in turn come to understand the beauty of nature and also learn to respect its presence.

If care could be taken in place of the ruthless destruction of trees and plants it may well do some good, perhaps instilling some sense of consciousness for conservation and appreciation for plants and animal habitats, into all of the people of Bermuda.

There is no time like the present to turn the negative thoughts of your heart into patient love for those who are ignorant, unfortunate and wasteful.

Let us all come together and be thankful for the natural beauty surrounding us now. How can we expect anyone to come here with love and respect if we cannot find it within ourselves as we live here day in and day out. When we see something that may make us angry let us instead send hope to the root for a cure.

HOPEFUL

Paget