Stabroek Weekend

Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo
Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo

South American bloc increasingly anti-Israel

While both the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc had condemned the latest round of violence in Gaza before Wednesday’s cease-fire, there was a big difference in their respective statements: One was reasonably balanced; the other was shamefully biased against Israel.

Edgar Mittelholzer
Edgar Mittelholzer

Honouring Edgar Mittelholzer

Edgar Mittelholzer (1909-1965) is a major Guyanese writer.  Not only is he one of the most recognized Guyanese writers, but the nation accords him a most distinguished place in its literature and heritage. 

Now we know this area as the Stabroek Market Square, but for a time in the colonial period it was known as Russell Memorial Square. The bust in memory of William Russell can be made out in the small garden in the centre of the photo; today Russell’s bust is accommodated in the compound of City Hall. A well-known planter, Russell is remembered for his work in the nineteenth century solving the problem of how to bring water into Georgetown. There had been failed efforts before his, one of which saw the water in a canal designed to flow into the city, flow in the opposite direction because of the gradient of the land. Russell went out into the bush to study the water levels, and eventually came up with a viable solution. This photo is said to date from 1924.

Memory lane

If you have any photographs dating from before 1966, which you would like to see published in this column, please contact Ms Allison Bowlin on 225-7473 or 227-4080 to make arrangements for you to bring them in.

Ethel Lewis takes pride in her flower garden

Wisroc

 Story and photos by Cathy Richards Back in the 1970s, the Wisroc Housing Scheme was the showpiece of Linden with its hundreds of three-bedroom claybrick houses, most of them built by self-help.

We’re kidding ourselves

It is a part of human nature here and elsewhere that we sometimes deal with contentious issues by adopting a position of delusion, so as not to deal with the unpleasantly real factors involved. 

What is poetry for?

Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet, whose marvellous collection of essays The Redress of Poetry I like to re-read, writes that WH Auden’s elegy for Yeats was “a rallying cry that celebrates poetry for being on the side of life, and continuity of effort, and enlargement of the spirit.”

Melanie McCalman

Bagotville

Story by Mandy Thompson with photos by Arian Browne Situated along the busy West Bank Demerara road is the quiet community of Bagotville, which is cooled by a steady breeze blowing from across the canal separating the village from its neighbour, La Grange. 

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