EBM Mail

CARRIACOU REGATTA

I enjoy reading your magazine every month I find it very informative.

My question is not about an article in the magazine per say but it is about your calendar. I am fortunate to have your informative 2007 calendar. I do not know if you are aware of the Carriacou Regatta event that takes place every year on the island on the first weekend of August. I feel that it should be mentioned in the calendar since just about every event that takes place on the different islands is mentioned in the calendar. The website for Carriacou’s Regatta is www. carriacouregatta.com and it gives you all the info you would need about what takes places during the event. It is well attended by Carriacouians from Canada, USA and England also by yachtsmen from all over the world who participate in the competitions.

Please look into it and I hope to see it advertise in your calendar for next year.

L. Baptiste
Brooklyn, NY

EDITOR’S REPLY:
Every year, especially in January and February, readers from their respective islands complain that we did not include a specific event in their country in our calendar.

We do not include an event for various reasons. For example, we are almost in the end of September and certain islands cannot confirm or do not yet have a list of major festivals and events in their country during 2008. The much demanded annual EVERYBODY’S Caribbean- American Calendar has to be 100 percent accurate. We do not publish events that are not officially confirmed and the calendar goes to press in early November.

We only have space to list the top events in a country and sometimes space becomes very limited because various islands and cities have significant and different festivals on the same day.

Carriacou is a part of the nation of Grenada (Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique) and the nation’s major event in August is Grenada’s Carnival. It is listed in our calendar in the month of August.

The popular events during the first weekend of August in the Caribbean and its communities abroad are: Emancipation Day in the Anglophone region; Barbados and Antigua/Barbuda Carnivals and Caribana in Toronto. They are listed in our calendar.

Finally, an advertisement is something that is paid for. The listing of major events and holidays in our calendar is an editorial discretion. We are not paid for listing them. However, each month in our calendar carries a one column advertisement and some islands, such as Barbados and Antigua/Barbuda, purchase the column to advertise their national events.

Every year, we solicit the Grenada Board of Tourism (includes Carriacou) without success. You should inform the Board to advertise its festivals and events including Carriacou’s Regatta in our calendar because our calendar is used everyday by thousands of consumers across the U.S.

CARIBBEAN HOMELAND SECURITY

After the revelation by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and New York City Police Department of the plot by Guyanese and Trinidadians to blow up oil storage centers at John F. Kennedy International Airport, I focused on reading and listening to the coverage by the Caribbean media about the plot. They all gave a news account of the plot as given to them by local and federal authorities in the U.S.

I am very impressed with the investigative feature of the plot your writer conducted as printed in your July issue. I am looking forward to read more in-depth and investigative pieces on the burning topics of the day in future issues.

Marc Robertson,
Dorchester, Ma

PETER MINSHALL

Thank you for this latest issue of EVERYBODY’S Magazine!!!

I just received it and just finished reading the re-print of the 1983 article, Trinidad’s Carnival by Kwame Brathwaite. At the time of this article’s writing, I was living in California and had not yet made my first of what has become an annual pilgrimage to Trinidad & Tobago for carnival. As an American, only bitten by Carnival fever in 1989, my annual pilgrimage to Trinidad’s Carnival began that year. Oh how I hate what I have missed. But true to the story as written by Brathwaite, the excitement of Carnival is like FIRE to the soul! This article is so well written, I feel as though I have experienced Carnival 1983 with a vision of “De River Come Down” so vivid in my imagination - what a breath taking vision that must have been. Thank you so much for sharing it.

This issue as a whole is one of the best I have seen. I am always glad to receive my issue. I had to write you and give you my feedback - I truly appreciate EVERYBODY’S Magazine.

Cheryl Thomas,
Philadelphia, Pa

CARNIVAL EDITION

Your carnival edition is one of the best issues in a longtime. I really enjoyed it and will keep it. Kwame Brathwaite’s article on Trinidad’s Carnival 1983 dramatizes what carnival is all about and what Peter Minshall symbolizes. I wonder if the world knows that it is the same Peter Minshall who later designed the scenes for the opening and closing of two summer Olympic Games – Barcelona and Atlanta – and one winter Olympics and since 1983 won all the world’s most prestigious awards for art and culture.

My carnival issue arrived today as if read by a West Indian working in the post office and the cover destroyed. As a loyal subscriber, can you send me another copy? Send it an envelope and I will send you the postage charges. I always look forward to your carnival issue but this year’s issue is a treasure.

Grace Daley,
Atlanta, Ga.

CALYPSO NOT CALIPSO

Great magazine! Superb edition! One minor thing though, a spelling error, Calypso not Calipso in the September (Carnival) issue!

EWilliams@ ….

I just don’t understand how you can be so careless by spelling calypso wrong even on the cover of the September issue. My daughter tells me it is not a mistake because throughout the issue, you spell calypso “calipso.” My wife agrees with my daughter. Can you settle this family dispute created by EVERYBODY’S?

William Davis,
Silver Spring, Md.

EDITOR’S REPLY:
Sorry to disappoint you but your daughter and wife are correct. EVERYBODY’S (in its articles) now spells the music of Trinidad & Tobago and most English speaking Caribbean islands “calipso.”

Since late August, we have received countless letters and phone calls telling us about our gross mistake. It seems that calipso and soca fans are just waking up or they did not bother to read our features such as the review of the book, West Indian Rhythm, in our February issue. Effective February, 2007, EVERYBODY’S spells the Caribbean music known as calypso “calipso.” This is how early calipsonians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries spelt it. The music has nothing to do with the Greek mythology, calypso.

Letters should be addressed to editor@everybodysmag.com; Fax (718) 941-1886; or mail to: EVERYBODY’S, 1630 Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11226. Please do not phone us to give your views about articles; send letters instead so that other readers can read them and get your views.

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For general information contact us at: everybodys@msn.com -- (718) 941-1879.