IUBio

A bit of fun with no aliens in sight

Richard Hall rhall at uvi.edu
Thu Apr 30 15:28:03 EST 1998


It is the end of my semester, the exams are graded, and for your amusement:

>>At 9:12 PM -0500 4/29/98, Laurel wrote:
>>It has been an interesting year around here.  Lots of politics.

>On Thursday 4/30/98 rlh replies:

>Hi Laurel,
>
>We too have politics, multiple levels of competence, and degrees of
>chaos...it balances quite nicely.
>
>But in St. Thomas it is Carnival Month...MONTH!
>
>Today is J'ouvert, an early, early morning bacchanal loosely disquised as
>a six hour stroll en mass for "adults only."  Apparently, from the music,
>these are mostly deaf adults who mysteriously disappear at the end
>staggering, wandering off parched and glazed.  J'ouvert is prelude to a
>wonderful Calypso Fest tonight and to the orgiastic finale of Carnival on
>Saturday.  Presumably the one day of recovery is sufficient and allows
>intervening time for the Childrens Parade-a sort of cultural training
>program-on Friday morning.

>The beginning of the end of the last day starts with a huge, colorful
>Adult's Parade in which at least 25% of the island participates. (Or
>possibly, it is an endless loop with a thousand sweaty survivors swapping
>feathered, tasseled, bedazzalingly extraordinary costumes to keep the
>momentum of a now gasping celibration through midday.)  The last day ends
>with a nightime extravaganza of fireworks, "Thunder over Charlotte
>Amalie", which last year burned much of Hassel Island to cinders.  The
>"good" news, for us downwind, was the leeward slope was a "cultivar" of
>aromatics and grasses.  One major debate was certainly: Put the fire out
>or let nature take her course?   Local reasoning goes...why work to save
>something the authorities or developers will just have to destroy later?
>We are talking tax dollars here.  My pungent recollections of the
>following Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday haze and blur.  Yeh, I
>missed Wednesday too.
>
>This year the authorities are putting fire trucks on a government
>barge...Are we thinking alike on this?    I will be there to experience
>the inevitable Titanic ending.  Film at 11.
>
>Incidently,  "The view is always better living on the edge."
>
>rlh

Richard Hall
Comparative Animal Physiologist
Division of Sciences and Mathematics
University of the Virgin Islands
St. Thomas, USVI  00802

809-693-1386
rhall at uvi.edu





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