Barbados Today

I refer first to your story headline Garcia a free man.

As a fellow human being, I wish Raul Garcia God’s blessings, for his future health and happiness. I have a sneaking suspicion that he shall enjoy opportunities here that might elude his countrymen at home for another 25 years yet!

While attorney-at-law David Comissiong and I have differing views on many issues, I also offer him my congratulations, for his tectonic perseverance, and a well-deserved victory in a David-and-Goliath scenario, where the Law came perilously close to asinine status.

Now on your story headline Major reform, which reported on the press conference of Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler.

Okay, I’m trying to “adumbrate”. Never met this fellow before, so I hive off to my Oxford Senior Dictionary. Nope, no entry! Then resort to my dad’s Magnum Opus, Chambers 20th Century, and yes! Adumbrate “… does not as I thought, mean “A dumb brat” … or even “A dumb Bajan”. It means “to cast a faint shadow”.

I’m still in the dark (along with two or three other Bajans I hope) who have no idea how adumbrating in our (suddenly) much worse circumstances (now that February is safely past us) is going to help us. Heck, maybe, its a typo — and he meant “percolate”? I do read, and understand, that the honourable minister said: “We strong (sic) believe that our current strategy is the correct one … in our current conditions.” While this sounds suspiciously like warmed-over soup, that I can understand — but adumbrate to believe it: figures, please. Facts, please.

And please Sir, speak Bajan just so we can “undumbrate” it all: smell it, stir it; swallow, and enjoy the bowl of medicine which we all knew, awaited us. All in the light, not of shadow, but of searing reality.

— Tony Webster