I first noticed the candlestick tree at the back of Garden with Wings in the Royal Botanic Gardens. It was one of those trees that seem to be quietly at work without asking to be explained. Its flowers and fruit hang directly from the trunk and branches: long waxy “candles”, …
Read More »Serina: Beyond Frankenstein—how empire-assembled Trinidad and Tobago can finally come home
In 1818, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Trinidad were established under British colonial administration. That same year, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein: the story of a scientist who assembles a living being and then abandons it. Nearly eighty years later, HG Wells wrote The Island of Doctor Moreau, where natural life …
Read More »Serina: We’re all arrivals—what invasive, rogue vine, ‘kunduri’, can teach us
On most maps, Trinidad and Tobago is a small smudge near the mouth of the Orinoco River. In real life, it is a place of astonishing biodiversity, and a place that bigger powers have long treated as useful. Empires, oil routes and warships have passed along this coast, rearranging both …
Read More »Wired868 turns 10 years old! And here’s how we got there…
On 12 January 2012, Wired868 went live for the first time with a report from a groundbreaking case at the Port-of -Spain High Court. Thirteen members of Trinidad and Tobago’s World Cup 2006 football team—more than half of the history-making 23-man squad—were suing their former employers, the Trinidad and Tobago …
Read More »T&T’s silent holocaust: From Ceiba to Chaconia—how CEPEP follows ‘Sir’ Woodford’s racist footsteps
In honour of our fifty-eighth Independence anniversary, I visited Woodford Square, aka The People’s University, where seeds of Trinidad and Tobago’s Independence grew. But instead of feeling pride, I felt shame. Twenty tree stumps, envoys of once stately trees, left to rot without love or dignity illuminated Marcus Garvey’s words: …
Read More »Where’ve the butterflies gone? Our eco-system’s in danger, fixing it can also heal T&T’s anger issues
Opposite West Mall, on the Western Main Road, a mysterious derelict colonial building—rumoured to have been a church—stood like a prehistoric dinosaur skeleton peeking out from hectares of bush. As a child, when adults said bush they always conveyed the idea of something unwanted and to be cut down so …
Read More »Chain Reaction; Inside/Out—an environmental poem
The following poem was submitted to Wired868 by Serina A Hearn: Mahogany hardwood floors, so polished you could see your face, white silk-damask adorned hand-carved settees and winged- backed chairs stage the conference on the fate of soil sustainability, while Chopin entertains the closed windows, with a view over the …
Read More »Hearn: Cocorite and environs—and God knows where else—at risk due to dangerous pesticide!
“[…] Through a friend I was able to find out that Paraquat is in fact on the radar of three ministries: Health, Agriculture, and Local Government, because of its danger to the environment and also as a method for suicide. “[…] The residential Cocorite coastal area where the spraying is …
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