Eleuthera Diaries

NO NEWS -- The world’s troubles are playing themselves out in several notable ways here on Eleuthera. The sun may be shining, but there are dark clouds here as well.

The Nassau Guardian daily newspaper has cut off delivery of the daily paper to Eleuthera, and presumably other of the Out Islands. In announcing the change, the paper acknowledged that the cost of ferrying small batches of papers to these not-so-remote outposts had become prohibitive. The news is available online, they said, repeating an all-to-common alternative.

This raises a number of troubling issues. For any of the Out Islands, they are now yet one more step removed from the parliamentary processes that govern them. With limited television and radio news as well, the daily paper was a way for locals to stay on top of the news of their nation that could impact their lives and livelihoods.

On a much more local scale, the demise of the newspaper amounts to a further isolation for one elderly Eleutheran woman who’s “job” it was to deliver the papers to her friends and neighbors. At age 80+, you’d think perhaps she would have easier things to do than drive around with the paper. But it connected her and, by extension, others in the community who relied upon her arrival each day. Certainly the word-of-mouth news system will remain intact, as it has been for generations. But that’s no substitute for the real thing.

What alternative do the locals have for information. Well, radio and TV will provide some of that – though most people get their TV by satellite, which means they don’t necessarily get Nassau TV. As for a local newspaper, there is the Eleutheran, the local monthly newspaper… though it is spotty. Word at The Market grocery story is the February edition has yet to be published and the month is half gone.

As for the Internet – well, yes, the Guardian and the Eleutheran are available online. But online is off limits to many people on this island. And so they rely on word of mouth – or they remain not-necessarily blissfully ignorant.


LOCAL OPPORTUNITY – One bit of silver lining in the dark clouds of the world’s economic meltdown that is touching this island is there is suddenly an opportunity to strike a new balance between natives and foreigners.

While Eleuthera has been here for centuries, it didn’t arrive on the modern map until the 1950s and ‘60s, when American capitalists like Juan Tripp of TWA, Arthur Vining Davis (Alcoa Aluminum), several Boston financiers, and others “discovered” it and planted the flag of development in the pursuit of luxury living. These men built a resort, golf course, and airstrip on the southern end of the island, and then invited their rich friend to come on down. That spurred a bit of a boom that, despite ups and down, has proceeded fairly smoothly for years. Club Med came (and was later washed out by a hurricane). British royals including Lord Mountbatten and Princess Diana parked their beach umbrellas on Windemere Island, the same beach I am overlooking as I write this. Then came Lucy Baines Johnson… and more recently, Mariah Carey. The story is the same in other parts of this island, notably Harbour Island at the far northern tip of Eleuthera, which is like the Hamptons of the Bahamas. Basically, wealth brought the wealthy, and that paved the way for more average types who could afford the million-dollar price of home ownership or the more reasonable rates at various small resorts.

This set up the familiar push/pull of prime real estate that once was the native environment of locals who, on their own, hadn’t the means to do more than eke out a living from the sea or the land, but who were graced with easy access to the natural resources and considered them available for all to share. But as developers bought up oceanside parcels, sliced them into houselots, and put up fences and gates, slowly the locals have been losing their access to the water. Pristine stretches of beach that once were gathering spots for family Sunday picnics or Friday-night fish fries have been taken off the local map. And where once a small cinderblock house at waters edge meant an easy place to put in your skiff to catch some fresh fish or dive for lobster, today that location is impossible to find, and the locals are being forced inland and out of sight.

But as the world credit markets have ground to a halt, so has nearly all development on this island. Talk with a local and the list of developments that are stalled slips easily off their tongue – Cotton Bay, Sky Beach, a Kerry-Heinz condotel here on Windemere (yes, apparently THAT Kerry-Heinz).

That means two things for the locals. Most critical is the obvious loss of income. No new houses means no construction jobs. And what work there is now pays a lot less. Carpenters and masons who, a year ago, earned $150 a day, now have to settle for $90, if they can get work at all.

But the upside here is that land values are falling too and so, for anyone with some money to invest, it is a good time to buy.

How does that help the locals? Beyond the obvious wishful thinking of “when this crisis turns around” there is another opportunity at hand. A local consortium is pulling together investors to purchase land and build affordable, good-quality homes for locals in an entrepreneurial-cum-economic-development model. Because the price of construction will be lower (by 30 or 40 percent), people who have solid jobs and good credit will have a chance to get out of the rental market and make an investment in a more stable future for themselves. The construction jobs will put food on local tables and money into local stores. And, along the way, some of the land being targeted for this project could end up reestablishing locals’ connection and access to the beach.

ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT – Shaun Ingraham is a man of many hats and abilities. Member of a long-upstanding Eleutheran family, Shaun is like so many others who live in rural or isolated locales – in a word, he’s industrious. Success for him is measured in a variety of ways. In more or less equal parts, Shaun is a carpenter, construction foreman, property manager, social entrepreneur, civic activist, fundraiser… A natural networker and an actual minister, he is the sort of fellow that inspires others to help out in whatever way they can because they believe in him as much as they believe in his cause(s).

Shaun has his hands on many projects. He is overseeing the comings and goings of tourists at a few rental villas. He is managing the construction of a new vacation home. He is nearing completion on a year-plus community project to fund, build, equip, and man a new fire and rescue station for South Eleuthera, complete with modern fire truck, ambulance, and all the latest disaster equipment, for which he has done fund raising both on and off island. (Through a typical networking connection, he was paired up with New York City firefighters, who have helped provide equipment and training.) He is the linchpin in a program to bring nursing students and faculty from his alma mater, Emery University, to the island to run medical clinics and to provide on-site certification training for local nurses so they don’t have to leave the island to advance their careers. He is spearheading the aforementioned low-cost home building project. And when duty calls, he does disaster relief work in several third-world countries through the World Council of Churches and Habitat for Humanity and continues to work on fund raising activities for these efforts.

He’s a pretty well-rounded guy, who in conversation can switch from his appreciation for smart TV shows like Boston Legal and Big Love, his appreciation for Facebook, to his insights on his current reading matter – Team of Rivals, the book about Lincoln’s cabinet choices that Barack Obama credits with part of his political strategy. He can go from amusing exchanges about the weather (usually the benefits of his versus yours) to savvy views on the global business and cultural impact of Diageo, the international beverage conglomerate, or Chinese labor policies. He is a unique combination of local and worldly – his love for his home island is genuine, he views of it far beyond parochial, his horizon somewhat infinite.

BEACH READING – Having left John Adams at home (too heavy to lug on the plane) and having ripped through a Stone Barrington detective novel, I’ve picked up Herman Wouk’s classic Don’t Stop the Carnival for a second read. It’s an entertaining story, and in these uncertain times, gives one a good reason to think about career and life trajectories. There could be worse things than packing up, moving to a tropical island, and running a beach hotel and bar…

New year... new beginnings

I realize it has been a long time since I checked in here. Not that I haven’t wanted to… just have been mighty distracted. But so much for excuses… here are a few random thoughts rattling around in my mind:

Obama’s debut – Like the rest of the liberal-media-elite world, I was captivated by the quiet drama of Inauguration Day—the pomp, the speeches, the benedictions, the hats… President Obama hit the right tone in his address and demeanor. Mrs. O stood by her man, looked great (until about midnight, when she started to wilt), and set a new standard of class and cool for Washington and the nation. The children were cute. The crowds we awe inspiring. And yes, it was good to see George W ride off into the sunset.

Caroline, uh-oh – I’m glad Caroline Kennedy withdrew from the N.Y. Senate contest. She was getting chewed up in the media. It became clear she isn’t fit—or doesn’t have the right team behind her—to get into the rough-and-tumble of politics. Besides, I stick with my earlier thoughts on her: she’s much better suited to play the part of a guardian angel, swooping in to shine a spotlight on and perhaps disperse some money to worthy causes. The world remains her stage—as long as she doesn’t retreat from the edge of public exposure she has just gained.

The economy, stupid – All I can say is, god help us. Every day it’s another gut-grabbing bit of grim news. I know in my heart that it will subside and turn around someday. But man, it’s tough sledding on the way down the hill.

Spygate 2009 – The news that the NSA was listening in on all of us Americans all the time is no surprise… and that’s an absolutely horrible thing to think on many many levels. Meanwhile, I wonder if I said or wrote anything that got me on a list somewhere…

Cold shoulder – I am officially sick and tired of the weather here in Boston. Sure, it’s worse further north. But I have the good sense not to live in the arctic (which apparently now starts around Minneapolis). I am looking forward to February break in the Bahamas. And I’m having a harder and harder time convincing myself that telecommuting from the tropics—or opening a beach-bum business somewhere south of here—is not an idea whose time has come.

Divided we fall?

I had an early-morning daydream yesterday while showering (my best place for free-form thinking) in which the McCain-Palin ticket did in fact win the election. But within days of taking office, John McCain died suddenly and suspiciously (in one version of this reverie, he was shot; in another, someone slipped a mickey into his daily meds). In either case, Sarah Palin was immediately elevated to the presidency amid all of the angst of recent weeks and compounded by the aftermath of an assassination.

These thoughts drifted through my mind after reading Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert’s article “Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals” on Salon.com. This fairly sobering piece of investigative journalism sketches a portrait of an ambitious young local politician who allowed—and seemingly still allows—members of the Alaska Independence Party to fill her head with gun-totin’, secessionist, Christian ultra-right ideas as she’s marched her way from local to statewide to national office. While her husband was a card-carrying member of the AIP until just recently switching to Independent (after all, an obvious AIP affiliation could hinder her political ascension), Palin allegedly has repeatedly used her role as mayor and governor to front for any number of the group’s questionable goals. No surprise, Extremist Number One “Bo” Gritz surfaces in the piece, claiming her as a devotee of his us-versus-U.S. movement. And the neo-Nazis and skinheads aren’t far behind.

The lengthy piece is worth a read, so I’ll say no more about it. But it raised another concern for me. And that has to do with where we Americans get our information and what it means when we pick one media source over another.

For me, at least, unlike any political campaign in the past, the media has squared itself off into distinct pockets of perspective. Certainly, in our nation and many others, there have always been the “liberal media,” the “right wing press,” and every shade in between. It’s been a part of the fabric of mainstream media in much of Europe and in most Latin countries for decades, but it seems to have blossomed most obviously in this country in the last decade. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to identify a truly independent, right-down-the-middle media outlet.

Given my own leanings toward liberal causes, and thus toward Obama, I find myself tuning in mostly to the media Sarah Palin loves to hate. Couple that with a growing desire for a slightly escapist take on all the grim economic headlines of late, we’ve gravitated toward MSNBC for the nightly newsertainment of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

(For anyone who hasn’t seen it or read the text, you ought to watch Olbermann's Special Comment from Oct. 12, in which he goes full-bore against McCain and Palin’s unabashed inciting of supporters to threaten the safety of Barack Obama. It’s a remarkable piece of anger and honest outrage.)

So it struck me the other night, after watching the final McCain-Obama debate and sliding first into one mainstream network’s straight-laced post-event analysis that I wanted—no, needed—to hear Olbermann and company’s more pithy (and mostly anti-McCain) take on the proceedings. I’d watched the debate, and had my own opinion of how the two men fared. There wasn’t much I missed of their good points and bad calls. So an hour’s worth of “yeah, right on!” railing before bed seemed appropriate.

Somewhere along the way, however, I found myself wondering what the right-leaning media was saying about who won or lost or lobbed the best zingers. Fox News and their ilk too have their punchy pundits and their outraged commentators. And they were no doubt preaching to their own choirs and fanning the flames of diehard Republicanism. So what were they saying—and to whom?

In all the sniping and yelling, I am left wondering what wounds this election will leave in its wake. We are a country more divided than at any other time in my life—divided between left, right, and middle; between haves and a growing number of have-nots; between hope and anger and despair—with a media that, for better or worse, encourages the divide. You hear Obama and McCain talking about “reaching across the aisle” to achieve consensus, but it rings as overly idealistic, or pandering, or plain old politics-as-usual, to think that they, or the public, can or will so easily “get along” once the votes are counted. When you have guys with guns in their closets who are ready to use them against fellow citizens (and candidates who will watch their backs)… when you have politicians who will blatantly lie to get ahead, who cynically know their supporters are listening to the cues and winks but not the words coming out of their mouths… when “fear itself” is what we have to fear these days and loathing is waiting in the wings… it’s hard to be very optimistic. I do look forward to a brighter day as promised by the Obama campaign. But today, it feels like behind every silver lining there’s a dark cloud.

[End note: Despite the gloomy prospects, you still gotta laugh. So for today’s bit of levity, click on this Palin-as-prez spoof. Remember… it’s a joke!]

God, family, and Sarah Palin

What to make of Sarah Palin…? Last night’s performance at the RNC was pretty incredible for the amount of “change” she represents for the Grand Old Party. Yes (she can!), she proved that women can make it (almost) to the top while juggling family and moose-hunting season – something other women (Democrats and Republicans) have already done, certainly, but now it’s no longer a “sacrifice” or a “trade-off” (or worse, just plain wrong). Now it’s a badge of honor. Bring it on!

It’s also now apparently OK to have a messed-up family, with a DUI husband who burns precious fossil fuels in pursuit of long-distance snowmobile championships, and a daughter who managed to miss mom’s messages about abstinence, underage drinking, and lord knows what else, and get herself pregnant with self-professed “redneck” who’s known around town as “sex on skates” and who professed on his now blocked MySpace page to not want kids. I suppose when Levi hits Bristol in a drunken rage or leaves her after changing one too many diapers, Palin can add “mother of an underage single mom” to her resume too. It’s all good, eh?

Then there’s Palin’s outspoken affirmation that we’re on a mission from God in our fight in Iraq – just as we are, apparently, in our pursuit of more oil in Alaska. Makes you wonder about the God who’s inspiring the Muslims warriors. Whose guy is right? And then what?

And then there’s Palin’s savvy media manipulation, in one breath (another example of superwomanly multitasking?) scolding and warning the evil media to leave her family matters private, then proceeding (next breath) to introduce dad and the kids one by one to the TV camera so they could smile sheepishly and wave, then pass baby Tigger, or Trigger, from one to the next. (Did you catch the littlest girl licking his hair like a cat…cute, but icky!) Not to project too far into the future, or to ill effect, but what happens if Palin’s oldest son, Trick, or is it Truck?, goes off to war, gets wounded or (God forbid, since he is OUR God) killed… will that elevate Palin to American Hero status for her “ultimate sacrifice”? Plays like a Lifetime movie, doesn’t it?

You have to hand it to John McCain. While some news reports (in the evil media, of course) are saying he picked an obscure governor from a remote state to thumb his nose at the Republican Guard, I mean party leadership, for trying to force some inside-the-beltway VP choices on him, let’s give him a credit for selecting a running mate who hits nearly every hot-button issue (well, let’s not talk about that “experience” thing, OK?) – working class, mothers, babies, disabled people, oil, religion, military, government spending, corruption, foreign relations (remember, Alaska IS right next to Russia, so who really knows them better?), women, children, sex, abortion, gun control, small-town values, the evil media … gosh, the list is endless. What a brilliant choice! OK, fine, so he didn’t learn about the pregnant-daughter thing until after he’d picked Palin because she exercised her right to choose not mention it during the three-hour, 40-page job application process. Hey, some things work out for the best, right? Just proves what a terrific decision-maker, political strategist, and free-thinker he is… and with God on his side too. How can he lose?