Newsletter for
alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas,
28 November 2020 No. 995
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Dear
Friends,
Here is the weekly request for funds that I promised
to write about in these last issues.
Of course, you can change this, as this is only for
the kind-hearted who would like me to continue with the Circular for a new
period, let’s say 2021.
I have received many well wishes, acknowledgments,
congratulations, medals, diplomas, etc. but what is more essential here in
Venezuela, only limited funds to keep the fingers drumming the keyboard from
real friends of the Circular.
With the donations of Group George Mickiewicz running
out, and ASAA closing down, it is going to make it more difficult to keep on
going.
If you are a Santa helper and would like to
contribute, please write me.
Just in case I have no response to this plea and I am
forced by circumstance to stop, I am sure you can keep in contact with the WEB
page by run by Kazim Abasali, https://msbasaa.wordpress.com/
This web page will be the last active written spot for
the school, and students left in the internet.
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Dear members of the Mount. It is deep
regret that I have to post this.
A past student (1979) Dave Bob of
Tobago, has passed away on Tuesday night - 26th April..
He worked the Ministry of Sports.
I knew him as one of the good guys and
fun loving.
I'm going to miss him.
Rest in peace my friend.
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BC Pires <bc@bcpires.com>
To:
kertesz11@yahoo.com
Sat, Dec 5 at 7:14 AM
Thank God it's Friday - Doubles or
Nothing
YOU CAN always tell how crucial a discussion is to Trinidadians by how
resolutely they avoid its essence and how quickly they jump to a vigorous
dissection of its periphery.
Ask Trinidadians why they’re entirely content with a political system
that guarantees fully half the population, by race, feels unrepresented for
five years at a time and the best answer you’ll get in near 60 years of
so-called Independence is, “We like it so”; an answer provided, by the way, not
by several faculties of the University of the West Indies, but by a
calypsonian.
Ask the Trinidadian if he isn’t willing to protest the crippling traffic
jams that make life miserable every day, twice a day, for everyone, and he will
tell you he will make his stand against the insanity by driving with his own
headlights on in the daytime.
Let the Minister of Agriculture make the most fundamental and
incontrovertible food statement imaginable – that the “national dish” is
completely made up of foreign imports – and they will spin away from that rude
truth faster than Michael Jackson from Ola Ray in Thriller video. Trinis
moonwalk away from any harsh reality and back into a far more entertaining
fantasy.
All week, Facebook has exploded over the matter that really doesn’t
matter. Buying doubles means you’re supporting cucumber farmers, pepper
farmers, chadon beni farmers, what other kind of farmers it have?
The real arguments in defence have been made: German chocolate is the
best in the world and you’ll never find a cocoa tree in the Black Forest;
Italian coffee ditto, ditto; and if you take something old everyone in the
world has had forever and turn it into something new – flour into doubles &
the handheld roti, old oil barrels into steel orchestras, a religious festival
into the definitive urban street party – it is yours, and it is national.
But those arguments have been made only in the way that even a stopped
clock is right twice a day. It’s not the argument that matters in a Trinidadian
discussion, nor even the audience, but the gallery.
Doubles is ours and doubles taste great. But, wherever its ingredients
come from, what is a doubles, really?
If you want a dispassionate assessment of the national dish, find the
Trinidad episode of the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. Watch Anthony
hug up Kes, fast-forward past the bumbling revelation of what Comrade Wesley Gibbings
calls the “wonpasent”… and study that short scene of Anthony sitting on the
bench. “Since I got to Trinidad, everyone’s asked, you tried doubles? You tried
doubles? All right, I’m eating firetrucking doubles!”
We don’t talk about what he said about it: that it’s two bits of fried
dough with a savoury pea filling and sweet sauces.
Although, admittedly, the last occasion when the whole was greater than
the sum of the parts on this level was the Beatles.
Taste level-wise, it’s difficult to attack doubles.
Nutrition value-wise, it’s difficult to defend them.
What doubles says about us, I would venture, is much more than what we
say about doubles.
We will fight for days about doubles; we have, this very week.
But what we’re really fighting over is a deep-fried white flour product
and some sugary sauces dressing up an ordinary legume; talk about having your
finger on the firetrucking pulse.
Doubles taste good because it goes to the worst part of our bodies –
those damned, undefeatable fat cells – and it really isn’t very good for us.
But we’ll do it all again next week, when the “discussion” moves on to
KFC, every input into and aspect of which, from deep fryer to cardboard box, is
foreign.
And we’ll never once ask ourselves what we really should be eating.
Or how we should be producing it.
And whether we should be importing, not channa, but everything.
But it could be worse.
Show the Trinidadian a photograph of a baby crying in her mother’s arms
and the Trinidadian leaps, from that image, to what he will see as the big
picture, as expressed by our own prime minister: what they see is not a child
in danger, but the plain illustration of the impossibility of a nation of 1.3m
accommodating 33m Venezuelan gang-leader/members”.
It really is a case of doubles.
Or nothing.
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I got a letter from Fr. Cuthbert,
asking for contacts with coin collectors in Trinidad.
I only knew Fred
Hilderbrand at Fed. Chem., but I believe there is a Numismatic Society in
Trinidad.
He reports that
the school is down to 80 boys and our old 2nd Mt. St. Benedict is
down to 17, almost all Venture Scouts.
The best news is
that Abbot Bernard is moving about quite a lot with admirable patience and is
into Charismatics.
Fr. Idelfons is
still rowing around the island while Bro. Anthony and Bro. Bruno are still
actively involved in the Domestics of the Abbey.
Still have not
tracked down ARTHUR DU BOULAY, but NOEL DE VERTEUIL in Quebec would certainly
like to get hold of him as they worked together at Shell years ago.
Heard MIKE “Donkey
Man” KENNY is with Dowell in London but he fails to write.
He never was very
good at English Composition!!!
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When it is a question of money,
everyone is of the same religion.
I got a letter
from “Shaves” Ferguson, who continues to propagate the faith through his
instruments.
Have been
promising to pay him a visit and see Disney World but keep spending all my
money.
He can be reached
at 205 Lake Gibson Lane, Lakeland, Florida 33805.
He sells TV´s,
stereos, VCR´s, computers, etc. for Montgomery Ward.
His daughter,
Lissette, has graduated from high school and went on a trip to Hawaii and is
now at the University of Florida.
Son, Nicholas, is
into scuba diving and Stanley went on a trip with him to Jamaica.
Peter, his
brother, is studying for Priesthood and Newton, N.J.
I need his
address.
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I have not heard from ALBERT
KNOWLES in ages, is he still in circulation in Trinidad???
I got a Christmas
card from Chris Krogh (with goodies), keeps well and basks in the sunshine
around his pool.
His brother , and
wife Linda, are on their 8th kid.
Fr. Abbot, would
you please have a chat and remind them that we are now operating on Vatican II,
and that they are allowed to come up for air.
Don’t have his
address and don’t want it, if “this thing” is contagious.
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-
LOVE YOUR CHILDREN, it is easier to
build a boy, than mend a man. Do the same with girls.
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Got a real “Palm Sunday Gospel”
from Bernard Lange, c/o The cottage, Mt. St. Benedict, St. Augustine, Trinidad
and he writes for the newspaper, the Sunday morning RAP, with his usual
elasticity and talent.
He still coaches the Aqua-lads
Swimming Team (and Lasses); times sure have changed at the Old Mount.
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He has passed on the names of STAN
MORA and DEOLAL BEHARRY of the Guardian.
He also mentioned
NIGEL GOMES and PETER QUESNEL but not their addresses.
Bernard, I really
would like the address of those others you gave me so that I can forward some
news.
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I learnt that RICHARD LORENZO is a
peace Officer in Toronto.
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Spring, with great difficulty, is
endeavouring to thaw its way into the Atlantic Region.
I, too, am rushing
to clear this backlog of news from my “MUST BE DONE TODAY” file; which has been
lying around for the past three months.
Please note that
due to financial hardship, bulletins will only be going to regular subscribers
and to the news reporters.
All others will
just be out of luck.
Hope to hear from
you soon.
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Bro. Gabriel Mokveld, Architect.
He joined the Monastery in 1913
from Bahia, Brazil.
He was the first NOVICE to be
received at the Abbey.
He was born on 31st
January 1894.
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EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz, kertesz11@yahoo.com, if you would like to be in the circular’s mailing list or any
old boy that you would like to include.
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Photos:
08NC1362GRP, Glen Schaefer and Krishna Toolsie
20UN0100MSBEDI, The abbey
20TM2880TMEFAM, Timothy Mew and family
58UN0012SCOUTS, UNKNOWNS
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