What’s happening?
Does your business or organisation have an event coming up? Is so, you can now add it to the calendar on the Beacon’s new website. Just go to bvibeacon.com, select “Submit an Event” in the dropdown menu, and follow the directions. The event won’t appear immediately, but it will only take a day or two for the staff to edit it for style and post it for the world to see.
Showing up is half the battle
Beaconites have noticed a tendency for legislators to be absent at crucial moments in House of Assembly proceedings. The latest example was Fifth District Representative Delores Christopher, who missed the vote on the Recovery and Development Agency Act, 2018 on Tuesday night. Granted, the Beaconite doesn’t know the reason for Ms. Christopher’s absence. If it was a severe personal emergency, he understands. But if it was anything less than that, missing such an important vote is a gutless move. Tuesday’s vote could be considered one of the most important — and most contentious — in the modern history of the Virgin Islands. Ms. Christopher herself offered a scathing admonishment of the bill during the debate. However, she didn’t legitimise her opinions with a vote against it or show support for the United Kingdom’s offer of a roughly $400 million loan guarantee with a vote for it. Constituents elect politicians to have not just a voice, but a vote, on important legislation. It’s their responsibility to honour that duty. While legislators are entitled to form their own opinions, they let down their constituents by not casting a vote in a meaningful way one direction or another.
Blocked sidewalk
Pedestrians are people, too. Whoever parked the semi-trailer in front of the shops across from the Festival Village Grounds, blocking the entire sidewalk, seems to have forgotten this. The trailer seems to contain a large generator of some kind, which seems unnecessary considering power has now been restored to almost all of the territory. But more importantly, whoever put it there seems not to realise that pedestrians walking this frequently travelled route (who include at least one Beaconite, as well as many students) essentially have two dangerous choices: dart out blindly into the middle of oncoming high-speed traffic, or tiptoe over the pile of large, jagged rocks that is inexplicably dumped in the narrow space between the trailer and the wall. The Beaconite suspects there has to be a third choice as well — like maybe moving the trailer?
Rite Way and journalism
The American journalist Henry Grunwald once said, “Journalism can never be silent: That is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.” And if there ever was a cause to fight behind, a moment of victory to remember, a topic worthy of journalism, it is this: Rite Way is expanding its salad bar offerings. At running the risk of sounding very, very facetious, a Beaconite is very, very exited that the supermarket is now providing a range of salad toppings that go beyond tuna and croutons, and that packaged turkey sandwiches no longer have to make up breakfast, lunch and dinner. A reporter’s co-worker once harangued Rite Way in this very column for its useless practice of receipt checking (which is, of course, useless). But this Beaconite believes the store is now moving in the right direction. In the never-ending journalistic quest of holding a mirror up to society in the hopes of improving current systems, here’s a suggestion: Add feta cheese to the salad bar. You know, or chicken. Just a thought.