Pe­ter Ray Blood

The year is 2014, the earth has been de­stroyed by the hands of its in­hab­i­tants...mankind. One tiny is­land on the earth where car­ni­val was the one ac­tiv­i­ty that took them away from the trou­bled and de­press­ing strains of their re­al­i­ty is al­so de­stroyed. How­ev­er, the sto­ry does not end there; thanks to the bril­liance of one gift­ed sci­en­tist, who in his wis­dom saw the de­struc­tion com­ing, as­sem­bled a team to cre­ate cos­tume de­signs to with­stand the test of time and launched them in­to space in spe­cial pods in­to...the uni­verse.

His hope was that one day the cos­tumes would be dis­cov­ered by oth­er life forms and if by chance any one man or thing sur­vived the de­struc­tion, they would one day re­live and re­store what we knew as Car­ni­val. To see what these cos­tumes are, pa­trons will have to go to the Is­land­peo­ple Mas Car­ni­val 2011 pre­sen­ta­tion–Shades of the Uni­verse– tonight, at Pier 1, Ch­aguara­mas, at 10 pm. Tick­ets are avail­able at the IF House, on Tra­garete Road, and from the IP Mas Band Mas Camp, 50 O'Con­nor Street, Wood­brook.

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and cul­ture?

Just un­der three months old, there has been no hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od for the new young Peo­ple's Pat­ner­ship gov­ern­ment. With the su­per­sti­tious among us claim­ing that the PP is blight­ed, giv­en the amount of chal­lenges from Moth­er Na­ture and crime al­ready faced, it's left to be seen how this new ad­min­is­tra­tion copes with the count­less press­ing is­sues it faces from myr­i­ad quar­ters. Flood­ing, an over ac­tive rainy sea­son and per­sis­tent crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty aside, there's al­so the com­plex is­sue of cul­ture to ad­dress, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the mul­ti­cul­tur­al di­men­sions unique to T&T. For starters, there's just about half year left be­fore Car­ni­val Mon­day 2011 and there's nary a whis­per about plans for the "na­tion­al fes­ti­val."

Pe­ter Min­shall's Madame Hi­roshi­ma ma­jes­ti­cal­ly pa­rades in front of thou­sands on Car­ni­val Tues­day at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

With more than half-dozen mas bands al­ready launched, a new Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) and chair­man are yet to be con­sti­tut­ed. Be­cause of this the mas-lov­ing pub­lic, and the Spe­cial In­ter­est Groups (Pan Trin­ba­go, NC­BA, NCDF, Tu­co) are in the dark about next year's Car­ni­val, and quite anx­ious. On the front burn­er of these Car­ni­val is­sues is the ques­tion, would the Pa­rade of Bands be re­turned in­side the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah? De­mol­ish­ing the Grand Stand and hav­ing the pa­rade on the road­way were two of the most dotish, lame brain de­ci­sions made by the past gov­ern­ment.

An­oth­er point is, would the back­ward idea of ca­lyp­so­ni­ans singing one song in the na­tion­al ca­lyp­so monarch fi­nal be re­versed to the for­mer glo­ry days of ren­der­ing two dit­ties?' Would the win­ner of the Na­tion­al Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion be giv­en a first prize of one mil­lion dol­lars is an­oth­er hing­ing ques­tion; Would the ex­er­cise for me­dia ac­cred­i­ta­tion be ini­ti­at­ed much ear­li­er than in past years, af­ford­ing all play­ers am­ple time to pre­pare and plan, there­by al­le­vi­at­ing the dis­re­spect and abuse peren­ni­al­ly met­ed out to work­ing jour­nal­ists by rude, fly-by-night of­fi­cials and se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel? These are just a few of the crit­i­cal C2K11 is­sues fac­ing this new gov­ern­ment. No­tice that I haven't men­tioned any­thing about chut­ney, parang, chut­ney so­ca, parang so­ca, chut-kai-pan, Ris­ing Stars, Syn­er­gy tal­ent con­tests, clas­si­cal mu­sic, the­atre, fine arts and artists, culi­nary arts, fash­ion, or any of our re­li­gious fes­ti­vals.