Nine years ago, Den­nis Mc­Clung had a run­down swim­ming pool and an am­bi­tious goal, to plant a gar­den that would pro­vide a self-sus­tain­ing food sys­tem for his fam­i­ly.
Mc­Clung and his wife trans­formed the emp­ty ce­ment pit be­hind their home in Mesa, Ari­zona, in­to a closed-loop ecosys­tem teem­ing with life, from veg­eta­bles to chick­ens, even a pond with tilapia. The in­no­v­a­tive ur­ban farm was soon pro­duc­ing enough food to feed the cou­ple and their three young chil­dren, cut­ting their month­ly gro­cery bill by al­most half.
But what Mc­Clung ac­com­plished af­ter that is even more re­mark­able. With no for­mal train­ing, just plen­ty of in­ge­nu­ity, hard work, and re­source­ful­ness, Mc­Clung is now help­ing peo­ple around the world build cli­mate-re­silient and high­ly pro­duc­tive food sys­tems. Since launch­ing his non­prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion Gar­den Pool, in 2012, Mc­Clung’s back­yard ex­per­i­ment has bloomed in­to a mul­ti­fac­eted op­er­a­tion that is col­lab­o­rat­ing with for­eign gov­ern­ments on food sus­tain­abil­i­ty, op­er­at­ing pub­lic seed li­braries, of­fer­ing class­es and work­shops, de­vel­op­ing a so­lar-pow­ered wa­ter ster­il­i­sa­tion sys­tem and most re­cent­ly, work­ing on a HoloLens ap­pli­ca­tion de­signed to help users build cus­tomised food sys­tems.
Though Mc­Clung’s farm­ing meth­ods might be low-tech, the tech­nol­o­gy he us­es to pow­er his or­gan­i­sa­tion is not and dri­ven by Mi­crosoft. He us­es Win­dows 10, Of­fice 365 and a Sur­face de­vice for graph­ic de­sign, re­search, pro­pos­als, and mar­ket­ing; col­lab­o­rates with em­ploy­ees and vol­un­teers re­mote­ly via Mi­crosoft Teams; and us­es Skype to teach a 3D mod­el­ling course to in­terns.
Work­ing with Chaney St Mar­tin who is based in T&T, the Gold­en Grove Prison be­came the site of his lat­est im­i­ta­tive where in­mates had been tend­ing an en­closed gar­den in a field by haul­ing wa­ter­ing cans back and forth in the blaz­ing heat. Mc­Clung set up a self-ir­ri­gat­ing wa­ter col­lec­tion sys­tem and a fish pond and added ver­ti­cal grow­ing, rais­ing plants in stacked lay­ers in­stead of in the ground to boost the gar­den’s pro­duc­tion. Prison ad­min­is­tra­tors were so ex­cit­ed about the changes that they asked for their own train­ing ses­sion.
“They said the project served as a mod­el for them to do the same thing on their own farms,” says Chaney St Mar­tin, an in­ter­na­tion­al spe­cial­ist in wa­ter and soil man­age­ment for the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA), which part­nered with Gar­den Pool on the Trinidad project and sev­er­al oth­ers in the Caribbean.
There was al­most no bud­get for the Trinidad prison project, Mc­Clung said, so in­stead of us­ing a pre­made lin­er for the fish pond, he made one by mix­ing ce­ment and sand. He built the pond’s pump from spare pipes and used some old ce­ment blocks to cre­ate raised gar­den beds. “We re­al­ly had to be Mac­Gyver on this one, be­cause the prison re­al­ly didn’t have any bud­get,” Mc­Clung says, laugh­ing. “We just looked at what they had, and we got re­al­ly cre­ative.”
St Mar­tin, met Mc­Clung at a con­fer­ence a few years ago. The two got talk­ing and re­solved to work to­geth­er in the Caribbean. When Hur­ri­cane Ir­ma raged through the re­gion in Sep­tem­ber 2017, dev­as­tat­ing sev­er­al is­lands, they seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to help. Mc­Clung, un­en­cum­bered by the bu­reau­cra­cy of a large or­gan­i­sa­tion, and his da­ta quick­ly mo­bilised re­sources and ar­rived on the ground to work with the IICA, St Mar­tin said.
“It was a tremen­dous ef­fort. If you un­der­stand the Caribbean con­text, peo­ple tend to be sus­pi­cious when out­side or­gan­i­sa­tions come in,” he says. “But Den­nis was able to come in and blend in very eas­i­ly with the cul­ture. Peo­ple re­al­ly loved the work that he did.”
Mc­Clung is turn­ing to da­ta col­lec­tion to val­i­date and quan­ti­fy his mod­els for sus­tain­able farm­ing. He’s work­ing with gov­ern­ments in coun­tries where Gar­den Pool has con­duct­ed projects to col­lect da­ta on farm yields, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and costs, and is part­ner­ing with Joel Cuel­lo, a pro­fes­sor of agri­cul­tur­al and biosys­tems en­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona and an ex­pert on ver­ti­cal farm­ing, on the HoloLens project.
With his first in­ter­na­tion­al of­fice based in Trinidad, us­ing datasets from their work, Mc­Clung and Cuel­lo plan to de­vel­op a HoloLens app us­ing Mi­crosoft AI and oth­er ser­vices that will al­low users to se­lect a food sys­tem mod­el and scale it to a par­tic­u­lar space. The app will tell them how much the project would cost, what ma­te­ri­als are need­ed and how much it would pro­duce. The goal is to have a pro­to­type by the end of next year, Cuel­lo said.
He sees in­for­ma­tion shar­ing as crit­i­cal to Gar­den Pool’s ul­ti­mate goal of pro­mot­ing glob­al food se­cu­ri­ty. “No one on this plan­et should be hun­gry with the tech­nol­o­gy avail­able to us right now,” he says. “It’s just a mat­ter of us­ing it ef­fi­cient­ly and spread­ing it to those who need it. “The fact that we’re chang­ing the world is more im­por­tant to me than be­ing rich or tak­ing the fame and the glo­ry for it,” Mc­Clung says. “I’d rather share the knowl­edge so that oth­ers can do for them­selves.” 
Source:  Trinidad Guardian, Dec 2018

A few weeks ago, the coun­try lost one of its most valu­able ar­chi­tec­tur­al trea­sures. For gen­er­a­tions, the mag­nif­i­cent Friend­ship Hall Great House stood astride the South­ern Main Road, just north of St Mary's Junc­tion in Freeport and re­mind­ed us of an era long gone.
Not on­ly was the struc­ture im­pos­ing in its sheer size, but al­so for its ec­cen­tric style and the sto­ry it bore. Con­struct­ed in the 19th cen­tu­ry, it was ini­tial­ly a prime ex­am­ple of colo­nial plan­toc­ra­cy ar­chi­tec­ture which far out­shone the less sub­stan­tial planters' res­i­dences which dot­ted the sug­ar cane fields of cen­tral Trinidad.
Its own­er was an ec­cen­tric Scots­man named Nor­man McLeod who had served as an of­fi­cer in the British East In­di­an Reg­i­ment in the ear­ly 1900s. Whilst in In­dia he ap­par­ent­ly un­der­went a con­ver­sion to Hin­duism and up­on his re­turn to Trinidad he em­ployed his con­sid­er­able artis­tic abil­i­ty in trans­form­ing his pala­tial home in­to a mandir.
On the ground floor, the god­dess Dur­ga peered forth, while on the sweep­ing por­ti­co, McLeod placed a self-por­trait, wear­ing a tur­ban. He even con­struct­ed a throne with the words "Friend­ship Hall" above it. The Scots­man filled his home with price­less trea­sures rang­ing from a World War I Ger­man bu­gle to in­valu­able sil­ver from In­dia.
Gripped with a grow­ing delu­sion that the young daugh­ter of one of his In­di­an ser­vants was a rein­car­na­tion of his dead moth­er, McLeod willed his man­sion to them when he died in 1965. We live how­ev­er, in a na­tion where all but a few place no val­ue on the lega­cy of the ages. Friend­ship Hall fell in­to ne­glect and af­ter near­ly five decades of de­cay, was bull­dozed in­to the ground to make way for con­crete blas­phemies which are a sad trav­es­ty of the Scots­man's gift to his heirs.
As ap­palling as this as­sault on our built her­itage is to con­ceive, it is but a sin­gle chap­ter in a long his­to­ry of an­ni­hi­la­tion which can­not be blamed on any one per­son or sec­tor, since it is a rep­re­hen­si­ble bur­den we must all bear as a peo­ple. The ba­sic ar­gu­ment which may be prof­fered for the fate of Friend­ship Hall is that with­out le­git­i­mate state sup­port, this is to be the fu­ture of many of our his­toric struc­tures which ex­ist in pri­vate hands which are ei­ther un­ap­pre­cia­tive of their sig­nif­i­cance or can­not af­ford to sus­tain them.
Part of the prob­lem stems from a scarci­ty of com­pas­sion and pub­lic ed­i­fi­ca­tion re­gard­ing the val­ue of her­itage as­sets. There are now two min­istries ded­i­cat­ed to mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and tol­er­ance, yet noth­ing has been done to in­cul­cate a sense of na­tion­al pride in our past.
Stu­dents are still taught that Colum­bus sight­ed Trinidad from the helm of the San­ta Maria ac­com­pa­nied by the Ni­na and Pin­ta, even though he was bare­ly able to walk from a smart at­tack of gout and all three ships had been sunk years be­fore. I dare say if the own­er of Friend­ship Hall Great House had pos­sessed a cul­tured ap­pre­ci­a­tion for what was gift­ed in­to his care, it would not have been de­stroyed. The whole­sale slaugh­ter of leatherback tur­tles but a cou­ple decades ago has been all but halt­ed, thanks large­ly to the foun­da­tion of a sense of own­er­ship which was in­stilled in the minds and hearts of those who shared a com­mon breath­ing space with the tur­tles.
Most com­mu­ni­ties in pos­ses­sion of her­itage as­sets can­not see the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties which can arise from these trea­sures. This is an­oth­er page we can take from the book of the leatherback tur­tle sto­ry, since tur­tle-watch­ing is now a lu­cra­tive mon­ey-earn­er for sev­er­al sec­tors, spawn­ing down­stream in­dus­try on a mi­cro-eco­nom­ic scale.
Lest it be said that I lam­bast the State too stern­ly, an ex­am­ple must be drawn from the aw­ful con­di­tion of the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en. These turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry mas­ter­pieces ap­pear in vir­tu­al­ly every tourist guide­book which beck­ons the un­sus­pect­ing to view a spec­ta­cle which must sure­ly stand as an in­dict­ment against us.
From the board­ed-up win­dows and un­kempt lawns of Mille Fleurs to the thread­bare grandeur of White­hall, suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions have glee­ful­ly ig­nored their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to his­to­ry. Those few pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions ded­i­cat­ed to con­ser­va­tion have con­sis­tent­ly failed in their man­dates and seem quite hap­py to con­tin­ue on their los­ing streaks while our past is tram­pled and lost.
I re­cent­ly vis­it­ed the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and it pains me ex­ceed­ing­ly to see the vast po­ten­tial for pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion there­in and the de­fi­cien­cy of in­ter­est which is shown in it. The prover­bial ic­ing on the cake in the vis­it was that in one sec­tion, arte­facts were strewn willy-nil­ly with no se­cu­ri­ty, beg­ging the sou­venir hunter to pock­et one of our na­tion­al trea­sures.
There is a Restora­tion Unit with­in the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture. Had I not been aware of its pres­ence, I would be as stunned as most peo­ple would be to learn that such a high-mind­ed de­part­ment could ex­ist with­in the wreck­age of our civ­il ser­vice. One on­ly has to look at our com­mu­nal ar­chi­tec­tur­al trea­sures to see the im­pact of the unit on the land­scape: the still-caved roof of Pres­i­dent's House, the fire-gut­ted shell of what used to be the his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion and the sapling which threat­ened to grow in­to a mighty tree from the roof of the now dis­mal­ly aban­doned Red House.
The lack of zeal or even pe­ri­od­ic en­thu­si­asm from the pub­lic sec­tor to­wards preser­va­tion is re­al­ly an ex­trap­o­la­tion of a na­tion­al men­tal­i­ty which frowns on the past. Our own first prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, was, most iron­i­cal­ly, a his­to­ri­an. Even more than three decades af­ter his death, the ef­fects of "doc­tor pol­i­tics" still shape the gen­er­al psy­che of the na­tion, where­in he trans­ferred his in­ner demons of his own ex­clu­sion from colo­nial elite so­ci­ety to his peo­ple, teach­ing us that all that was con­nect­ed to mas­sa was bad and should be oblit­er­at­ed if we were to find our­selves.
In this way, we in­dem­ni­fy the Plan­ta­tion So­ci­ety mod­el of the late, great Lloyd Best, since our idea of na­tion­al­ism finds ex­pres­sion in rag­ing against the Eu­ro­pean metro­pole and its relics by ex­ten­sion. We are a plur­al so­ci­ety thrown in­to each oth­er's com­pa­ny with no re­al for­ma­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a na­tion.
Yet, amid the morass of de­struc­tion and cal­lous ig­no­rance, there are bea­cons of hope. For many years, a small band of ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple call­ing them­selves Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion has been striv­ing against enor­mous odds (po­lit­i­cal ob­sta­cles be­ing the most fre­quent) to raise the na­tion­al con­scious­ness of our her­itage and to per­suade the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties of each ad­min­is­tra­tion to take a vest­ed in­ter­est in preser­va­tion lest all be lost too soon.
I doubt any of the mem­bers of Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion throw a good javelin or sing melo­di­ous rum-drink­ing dit­ties, but this is an or­gan­i­sa­tion which tru­ly de­serves a medal for the tire­less com­mit­ment to his­to­ry of its mem­bers. Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion stal­wart ar­chi­tect Ge­of­frey MacLean has de­vot­ed a life­time to con­ser­va­tion and sin­gle­hand­ed­ly re­dis­cov­ered our great 19th-cen­tu­ry artist Michel Jean Caz­abon and his works.
On­ly re­cent­ly Ge­of­frey and I were be­wail­ing the fact that dur­ing the 1970s and well in­to the 1990s, most of our ar­chi­tec­tur­al her­itage had been de­stroyed in the name of progress. Called to mind were the de­mo­li­tion of Bagshot and Per­se­ver­ance Hous­es in Mar­aval, the Ice House Ho­tel on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, and the old Cus­toms House on the wa­ter­front. The loss to pos­ter­i­ty has tru­ly been im­mense. Our most cur­rent di­a­logue on the demise of Friend­ship Hall Great House had a tone akin to that of lament­ing the demise of an old friend.
There is on­ly so much that can be done by those of us who have spent our lives in fer­ret­ing out for­got­ten his­to­ry and cop­ing with the ever-ex­pand­ing waste­land which our her­itage land­scape has be­come. Gov­ern­ment malaise, ig­no­rance of the gen­er­al cit­i­zen­ry and cor­po­rate greed have com­bined to form a daunt­ing front against con­ser­va­tion and as long as we see no val­ue to cher­ish­ing the lega­cy of our an­ces­tors, we face a very grim fu­ture, for it is from the glo­ries and teach­ings of the past we must draw on to find in­spi­ra­tion for to­mor­row. If this is in­deed our lot, where then can fu­ture gen­er­a­tions turn to find them­selves?
Source:  Virtual Museum of T&T Archives (Sept. 08 2012)

A Trini Christmas is the best. And in large, contributing to this are our festive Christmas foods. We have perfected the grand art of fusion and created an original cuisine for this season. Some food gurus thumb their noses at the term fusion, however, we would not have this outstanding cuisine if our ancestral cooks had not utilised the art of fusion. Really, what they tried to do is recreate the familiar foods of their past, using ingredients available to them locally, and so through the years, we inherited what we know as our true Trini Christmas cuisine.
These include boiling hams in pitch-oil tins, soaking black cake fruits for up to one year in advance to use in our black cakes; securing fig leaves to wrap pastelles, stocking up on enough rum for use in black cake and ponche de crème and baking bread to sandwich the ham and preparing garlic pork. Making pepper jelly and chow-chow to dress our meals, and preparing sorrel and ginger beer to cool us all down.
Most of these traditions still live on today, thankfully, although some have sadly been substituted for more non-traditional foods at this time.
For me, I am a lover of tradition and our Christmas cuisine. Making black cake is a big part of my Christmas tradition which I begin in October. I soak my fruits in a mixture of rum and cherry brandy for up to one month or more. I omit the browning, which I think imparts a bitter flavour to the cake, and I use a higher ratio of fruit which results in a dense, moist and very dark cake. It’s important to continue nursing the cake after baking for a few days with your choice of rum or brandy to keep it moist until use. Of course, you can opt for a non-alcohol version by replacing the alcohol with pure grape juice. And if you are not a lover of dark fruit cake, you can make a light fruit cake which is equally alluring on a different level!

Light fruit cake
1 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup candied cherries, finely chopped
1/2 cup mixed peel
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or almonds, (optional)
2 cups all-purpose flour
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Finely chop fruits.
Grease, line and flour 1 nine-inch round pan.
With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time beating well between additions.
Fold in flour and fruits. Pour batter into a 9-inch round pan.
Bake for about 11/2 hours. Cool.

Best ever Christmas black cake
1 lb raisins
1 /2 lb currants
1/2 lb sultanas
1/2 lb prunes
1/2 lb chopped walnuts
1/4 lb mixed peel
1/4 lb cherries
1 2/3 cups dark rum
1 2/3 cups cherry brandy
1 lb Butter
1 lb all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 lb brown sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon and allspice, mixed
2 tsp mixed essence
Combine rum and cherry brandy and add fruits to mixture. Let soak overnight or up to one week.
Preheat oven to 300F.
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Sift together flour and baking powder, cinnamon and allspice.
Drain fruits reserve liquid. Chop or mince in food processor.
Add drained fruits to butter and sugar mixture.
Add cut up cherries and nuts.
Fold flour into fruits and butter mixture.
Add mixed essence, mix well.
Grease and line two 9-inch cake pans with waxed paper, grease and flour paper.
Spoon cake batter equally into prepared baking pans.
Bake for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Source: Newsday, Dec 2018

Bazodee is heading to India. 
The Machel Montano love story featuring Bollywood star Kabir Bedi will be screened as part of the Chennai International Film Festival on December 14.
In making the announcement on Instagram, the soca king said this is the first time films from Trinidad and Tobago will be screened at the Festival.
"So I’m glad our movie will be included in this inaugural group. Many thanks to the High Commission of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in New Delhi, India  for showcasing and promoting Bazodee," he wrote. The movie will be screed at the Devi Bala Theatre in Chennai. 
Bazodee premiered globally in 2016 and has since been screened in the US, Barbados, Jamaica, Montreal, Canada and London, UK. The movie won the Audience Award and Best Music Award at the Latin Asian Film Festival, which took place in London.
Bazodee stars Montano, British Asian actress Natalie Perera, Trinidadian/British actor Valmike Rampersad and Indian/Russian star Staz Nair.
Source: The Loop, Dec 2018.

​CHAIRMAN of the Trinidad Tourism Ltd and former Miss Universe 1977 Janelle “Penny” Commissiong said the number of visitors to Trinidad fell 3.6 per cent in 2017 from the previous year.
Making a comparison with the Bahamas, which has a population of about 400,000, Commissiong said 6.3 million people visited those islands in 2017, compared to 375,000 visiting TT, whose population is about 1.4 million.
She said the Bahamas was a well-developed traditional destination in close proximity to its primary market, while TT was a somewhat underdeveloped, non-traditional destination relatively remote from its most important market.
Commissiong, the feature speaker at a Rotary Club of PoS lunch yesterday at Fitzblackman Drive, Woodbrook, said she did not think crime caused the drop in arrivals to the country.
“We are not sure yet why the numbers have dropped 3.6 per cent, so one will have to do studies on that, do surveys to see what that 3.6 per cent is, and what time of the year that happens. But I really wouldn’t say it’s the crime, because we are here, we are in it.”
She said while visitors to the Bahamas could buy a package holiday to any one of its islands, interacting only peripherally with Bahamian staff and service providers, most visitors to Trinidad had personal business or other connection to a Trinidadian.
Commissiong said there was a clear difference and distinction between the core tourism product in the Bahamas and the basis of the initial tourism marketing and development thrust in Trinidad.
She said Trinidadians must make a conscious effort to acquaint visitors with its tourism products of reliable quality and good value for money and all consciously and actively become ambassadors, guides, promoters and providers of tourism services in Trinidad. Commissiong said many Trinidadians did not compute that it was Trinidad that most visitors came to.
“Now that the separation is there in terms of marketing, I think the focus is a lot clearer. I don’t see it as a daunting job because we have the product, a product which Trinidadians take for granted and don’t realise as a tourism product. It is about getting Trinidadians to understand we are in the game and have always been in the game.
Source: Newsday, Dec. 2018

From the book Tales from Icebox Land by Queen Macoomeh
___________________________
Recipe for Trinidad Rum Cake
Ingredients:
2 bottles Old Oak Rum
Half dozen eggs
Vanilla essence
2 lbs white flour
Half cup sugar
1 cup mixed dried fruit (minced)
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder or baking soda
Tools:
2 large spoons
1 large mixing bowl
Method:
Pour a glass of rum and sip it to see if it good. Take another sip to make sure the first sip was right.
Get the bowl and break two eggs in it.
Finish the glass of rum and pour another one.
Go and check to see if ‘All My Chirren’ start yet.
Call Marjorie and remind she to bring back de curlers she borrow last week when she come over for you to do she chevay tac tac.
Come back in de kitchen and finish break all de eggs in de bowl.
Pour a next rum, finish it and pour more.
Turn on de oven to any number you could make out.
Trow way de empty bottle a rum and pour de next open. Pour some in de corner to ward off jumbie.
Pour every blasted ting else inside de bowl and mix it with yuh finger. Wipe yuh finger on de kitchen curtain
Go and bake for de looking pan.
Oh shims Mardree ha’ dat too. Yuh remember yuh did never like she. She was horning she husband since last year wid dat gold teet jailbud name Bobuts
Get a posey and pour in de hole mess
Put it on top de stove and puh de egg shell in de oven
Any laniappe lef’ ova put in de fridge
Puh de head t’yuh head an’ ahmm, wait no puh de bottle to yuh drink to uhmm
*steupse*
Go and leh de tv watch yuh till yuh hear de smoke alarm go awf
Cake should come out like yuh dotish mudda in law own
Allow de cool to cake down an’ gorge yuhself.

​Dominic Kalipersad
Santa Cruz Valley is historically known for its cocoa plantations and production. It is also the home of cricketing superstars Brian Charles Lara and Jeffrey Stollmeyer.
It was home to Jonas Mohammed Bath, Sultan of Yalliallhad, who was partly responsible for the construction of the famed Fort George. But not well known is that Santa Cruz was also the laboratory for a man who would one day invent the television.
John Logie Baird, a Scottish engineer, spent time researching his invention on a cocoa estate in the Santa Cruz Valley, and produced the first-ever television, which earned him the title of 'Father of Television'.
Born in Scotland, Baird was the younger child of Rev John and Jessie Baird. In his early years, he showed signs of ingenuity by setting up a telephone exchange to connect his house to nearby friends.
Baird arrived in Trinidad in 1919 to begin researching the television. He chose the cool valley of Santa Cruz because weather conditions there were helping him to recover from an illness plaguing him for many years.
At Santa Cruz, he worked alone on his secret project.
His neighbours on the estate regarded him as a strange character who was creating ghosts in their quiet neighbourhood. The ghosts they were complaining about were the images transmitted by Baird while working feverishly on the production of television.
When he started his research, no one believed that it was possible to broadcast pictures, but that did not daunt his spirit.
His immediate problem was poverty. He had run out of money to continue his research and was forced to produce jams from fruits available in the valley. Meanwhile, his television project was gaining ground, By the time he was ready to return to England, he had already produced the first television set at Santa Cruz, and was working on colour television.
Baird returned to England in 1920 to continue his experiments. Five years later, he held his first public demonstration of television at Selfridge's, London.
The first public television programme was broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1936, and by the 1950s televisions were beginning to appear in every home in Britain.
Although the invention had its beginning in Trinidad, it was not until August 24, 1962 that commercial television was broadcast in this country.
The first set of films was shot by Wilfred A Lee and Co, (WALCO) who operated a studio on Park Street, Port of Spain. The films produced by Lee were transmitted to the nation by newly formed Trinidad and Tobago Television Company (TTT).
The films were aired in preparation for this country's Independence scheduled for August 31, 1962. Commercial television, however, did not begin in Trinidad until November when TTT was officially inaugurated.
The majority shareholders of TTT were Redifussion and Scottish Television, Columbia Broadcasting Systems and the Government of Trinidad and Tobago.
Chairman of the company was Sir Patrick Hobson. The station's first manager was Ronald Goodman and Ken Gordon was the company's first programme director.
The big telecast for Independence began at 9 p.m. on August 30, and the programme continued until this country's flag was raised at midnight.
On Independence Day, the proceedings in the Red House were telecast to a crowd of some 1,000 viewers who had assembled at Woodford Square to see the colourful ceremony in which Princess Royal brought greetings from Her Majesty the Queen, while Dr Eric Williams and Opposition Leader Dr Rudranath Capildeo made brief addresses. This scene has been proudly re-broadcast every year, with our undying gratitude to the inventor, John Logie Baird.
-- This article was written by Marlene Davis, and was published in the Trinidad Express on April 29th, 2012.

News coming to hand is that Fred Mitchell more popularly known as The Mighty Composer passed away today.May his soul rest in Peace
The singer was born Fred Mitchell but was also known as Agba Olu Sino Amono.
His calypsoes were popular in the 1960s and 70s. He offered hits such as “Workers’ Lament”, “Supposing”, “True or Lie”, “Black Fallacy” and “Child Training”. He was also a master of ceremonies, comedian, impresario and tent manager.
As a pioneer, he was a foundation member of the first Calypsonians’ Association in Trinidad and Tobago. He was also a TUCO founding member and an executive member for many years.
Composer is known for portraying the Red Indian character, parading in the traditional mas category on Carnival Monday and Tuesday in San Fernando. He is fluent in Warao (Warahoo) speech. Apart from Warao, he is proficient in patois and he is also fairly versed in Yoruba which he uses at every opportunity.
On July 30, 2018, the Emancipation Support Committee (ESC) dedicated a concert titled “Shikamoo – Ancestral Rhythm” to Composer for his contribution to the art form.
The Swahili word Shikamoo means “I respect you”. ESC said the concert was in keeping with this tradition of respect and reverence for elders and ancestors.