Fever 2
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 13/May/2011 19:27, 34 days ago
Normal0falsefalsefalseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;}Thank you very much Blogger team - I see that my original blog got restored.[Photos to come for this one].This blog evolved within the context of needing to go on a secret mission to Jamaica’s north shore, but the main road was probably unusable because an immense water system pipe was being excavated.This is not your average garden pipe, but one that could supply a city of half a million people.The pipe being excavated runs right down the middle of the main road.Because the main road passed through a long canyon with cliffs on one side and a big river on the other, it was likely that it would be impossible to go along it.So I did some verbal research around the Dispute Resolution Foundation, and it seemed that a country road through a place named Sligoville would work instead.So that is what was in the back of my mind. The story now returns to the tangible world.A couple of months ago Bunty and I brought back to Kingston two plants, a clump of fever grass a few inches long and an Aloe Vera, from Treasure Beach.Hubert, the grounds man, replanted them in the grounds at Valencia Apartments in Kingston. Replanting is not without risk, so I was absolutely surprised the other day when I saw him watering the fever grass that was now almost waist high.This called for a photo, by me, the non-camera person in the family. So Hubert kindly posed by the plant to show its size in as favorable an angle as possible, but unfortunately while my photo got 100% of the fever grass, it cut off the top 5% to 10% of Hubert’s head. What a disaster.It was all avoidable, because I had walked away wondering if I got all of Hubert.I shouldn’t have wondered and just taken a second photo.Every day I learn more about photography.Luckily the next day I heard a terrible squeaking and clanking out in the garden.I recognized immediately this as being Hubert moving the old lawnmower out to start work.I grabbed the camera and asked him to re-pose by the fever grass, which he kindly did.Naturally I had to think about the blog angle for this.Could it be“Here’s a fine Jamaican gentleman standing by a clump of grass, that looks much like any another clump of grass”, and leave it at that?Of course not.It needed thought.Was fever grass something that cured or caused fevers?Original medical research was needed for this next possibility, so I opted out for a pre-existing synapse link in my brain.For example, the fever in fever grass and the fever in Johnny Cash’s “We got married in a fever” song seemed to be a promising.Then I tried taking Johnny Cash’s fever out of context and to hypothetically place him in Jamaica, I wondered to myself if he had ever come to Jackson in Jamaica for the fever grass.At first I didn’t think ther was a Jackson in Jamaica (it's a small place compared to the USA), and adapted some of the words from his and June’s song into:“I'm goin' to Sligoville, I'm gonna mess around”.Sligoville, the one in the back of my mind, had a nice ring to it, and it would not be confused with any Jackson in the USA.This could be followed up with the immortal lines“Honey, I'm gonna snowball Sligoville” which would have filled the Sligovillians with the dread at the thought of bad Canadian weather being thrown at them.But maybe they would have liked it? What if Sligoville was where the Jamaican Olympic bob sled team came from?But overcoming my natural lazy streak, I checked the index on my Jamaican road map.Surprise, there were not only two Jacksons in Jamaica, but there was also a Jacksons Town and a Jackson Bay.Johnny would indeed have felt quite at home here.There would have been no need for him to go to Sligoville.Only I have to go.