My son Christopher Catalano brought me back some of those World Famous Cat Island Flour Cakes from his visit to Cat Island. Never had them before. So delicious. The perfect blend of flour, cinnamon and nutmeg. 😊
Derek
Research on the wider Caribbean (including The Bahamas) suggests a mix of social, cultural, pedagogical and systemic factors that help explain why boys often lag behind girls in reading and writing. Here’s a breakdown of the main explanations researchers identify.
In the Bahamas specifically, reports show that girls consistently outperform boys in English-language (reading/writing) subjects in the BGCSE exams. Bahamas Local
More generally across the Caribbean, studies find that though access to education is roughly equal for boys and girls, girls tend to do better academically — especially in language, reading and writing — while boys underperform, repeat grades more, drop out more often, or enrol less in secondary and tertiary levels. Inter-American Development Bank
International evidence shows this is not unique to the Caribbean: globally, in many education systems, boys tend to lag behind girls in reading and literacy. UNESCO
So the phenomenon is well-documented. The big question is why.
No motion starts without a force,
No river runs a straight-line course,
For every step that you intend,
The universe will make you bend.
It is the law, ancient and deep,
That promises no easy sleep;
From atoms spinning in the void
To empires built and then destroyed,
In every breath and every plan,
In every heart of every man,
The truth remains, distinct and clear:
The Opposition is always here.
I. The Physical Weight
Observe the stone upon the hill,
It sits in silence, cold and still.
To move it requires strain and sweat,
A physical and heavy debt.
For Gravity, that jealous king,
Lays claim to every living thing.
It pulls us down, it holds us tight,
It creates the heavy, weary night.
To stand upright is to defy
The very earth, the very sky.
The friction on the moving wheel,
The rust that eats the strongest steel,
The wind that beats against the face—
Resistance fills all time and space.
There is no vacuum perfect, pure,
Where unstopped motion can endure.
The air itself is like a wall,
Waiting for the weak to fall.
But mark this truth within the gale:
Without the wind, no ship can sail.
The very force that stops the way
Is what allows the bird of prey
To catch the draft and soar on high,
To pin its wings against the sky.
The plane requires the drag to lift,
The opposition is the gift.
Dr. Reisha Albury had spent half her life studying the ocean around Andros, and the water still surprised her. Some days it felt like a patient teacher. Other days it acted like a trickster that waited until she felt confident, then swept the board clean. Then the earthquake hit—a soft, almost polite tremor felt from the Berry Islands to the Exumas. She never experienced a quake in The Bahamas before and knew of none on record.
But a week later, when fishermen radioed in saying a new island had appeared twenty miles off Andros, Reisha closed her notebook and took the report seriously.
Boaters could be dramatic. A patch of sandbar could feel like an island if you wanted a story to tell at the bar. Still, the way two separate crews described it caught her attention: “A real island. Big enough to stand on. Smells like wet stone.”
That last part stuck with her. Sand doesn’t smell like wet stone.
By noon she’d arranged transport, packed her diving gear, and loaded the small research skiff with enough equipment to satisfy the most skeptical funding board. She didn’t invite anyone to join her. She wanted first sight for herself.
In the complex landscape of transnational crime, few offenses are as frequently conflated yet fundamentally distinct as human trafficking and human smuggling. While both involve the movement of people and the illicit crossing of borders, they differ sharply in their means, their ends, and their victims. For the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, an archipelagic nation strategically positioned between the Caribbean, South America, and the United States, these distinctions are not merely academic—they are matters of urgent national security and human rights.
The Bahamas serves as a critical transit point in the Western Hemisphere’s migration corridors. Its porous borders and proximity to the United States make it a prime target for smuggling networks moving economic migrants. Simultaneously, its tourism-driven economy and reliance on migrant labor create vulnerabilities ripe for human trafficking. Understanding the nuance between these two crimes—trafficking as a crime against the individual involving exploitation, and smuggling as a crime against the state involving illegal entry—is essential to evaluating the nation’s legal responses, including the landmark Trafficking in Persons (Prevention and Suppression) Act of 2008 and the recently introduced Smuggling of Migrants Bill 2025.
Hate is often framed as power. People use it to stand firm, to guard themselves, or to strike back when they feel wronged. It feels active instead of passive, sharp instead of soft. Yet hate is one of the most counterproductive forces in human behavior. It weakens judgment, drains energy, narrows perception, and harms both personal relationships and large communities. When examined closely, hate does far more damage to the person who holds it than to the target it aims for.
To understand why hate works against us, it helps to see what it does to our thinking. Hate simplifies. It reduces complex realities into rigid categories. A person becomes the worst thing they ever said. A group becomes a single stereotype. A situation loses all nuance and turns into a personal threat. This kind of thinking feels satisfying in the moment because it removes uncertainty, but it also shuts down learning. Once hate takes hold, it is nearly impossible to listen fairly, question assumptions, or notice changing facts. Progress depends on the flexibility to adjust when new information arrives. Hate removes that flexibility and replaces it with stubbornness.
Hate also distorts priorities. It makes people focus more on hurting an opponent than improving their own lives. This is easy to see in personal arguments. Someone who is angry often tries to make the other person feel worse rather than trying to solve the problem. On a larger scale, groups caught in hateful conflicts pour time, money, and attention into fighting the other side instead of improving their own communities. Resources that could strengthen education, health care, safety, or innovation get lost in cycles of retaliation.
In the land where whispers roam and tales unfold,
Where the winds of nonsense scatter, wild and bold,
There came a cry, a call to arms, a plea so loud,
To shake the chains, and lift the foggy shroud.
No more mumbo jumbo, the people said,
No more the twisted lies, the truth misled.
For ages now, we’ve danced in circles tight,
Chasing shadows, turning day to night.
The mystics spoke in riddles, wrapped in smoke,
Their words were clouds, their promises a joke.
They promised answers, but their tongues were veiled,
Leaving us to wander, lost and frail.
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The Bahamian archipelago, comprising over 700 islands and cays scattered across the western Atlantic, is inherently a maritime nation. From its earliest Lucayan inhabitants to the modern global shipping hub of today, the sea has dictated life, commerce, and communication. Central to this enduring relationship is the craft of boat building, a tradition that evolved from dugout canoes into sophisticated sailing vessels, serving as the economic engine and cultural backbone of the Out Islands for centuries. The history of Bahamian boat building is a chronicle of adaptation, resilience, and masterful use of indigenous materials, leading to a modern industry that balances tradition with global demand.
