iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 19/10/2026

Remembering the legendary Peter Tosh on his Earthstrong and appreciating his wise words. #Reggae #Music

nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 19/10/2026

Johnny cakes were originally called “journey cakes”. They were packed as lunches or snacks to sustain enslaved Africans on long journeys. In Jamaica, they’re a traditional side dish.

Twelve fried dumplings on a white napkin in a glass container.

(My photo)

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 03/10/2026

Have to recommend one of my favourite reads: SKIN FOLK, a short story collection by @nalohop.bsky.social. #Books

A flat lay of Skin Folk on a white, embroidered cloth. A pair of brown glasses is above the book and a wooden bookmark with a pineapple illustration and the word Jamaica in cursive text lies across it. On the book cover, NALO HOPKINSON and SKIN FOLK are in yellow. The cover art features a Black woman holding a lit candle and staring at the viewer from between green stalks of sugar cane in a field at night.

(My photo)

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 16/09/2026

Dos Ojos, “two eyes” in Spanish, is a flooded cave system, north of Tulum, on the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. It’s reportedly one of the top 5 longest underwater cave systems in the world. Its name refers to two neighbouring cenotes that look like two large eyes. #WyrdWednesday

Dos Ojos, an underwater cave system. The shimmering, bluish-green light filtering through the water has an otherworldly effect.

(Mexico, September 2005. Dos Ojos, Yucatán.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zbirog/2321714602)

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 15/09/2026

Claude McKay, a renowned Jamaican-born author and a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was born on September 15, 1889. The Spanish Needle is one of his famous poems. #Poetry

The Spanish Needle

Lovely dainty Spanish needle

With your yellow flower and white,

Dew bedecked and softly sleeping,

Do you think of me to-night?

Shadowed by the spreading mango,

Nodding o’er the rippling stream,

Tell me, dear plant of my childhood,

Do you of the exile dream?

Do you see me by the brook’s side

Catching crayfish ’neath the stone,

As you did the day you whispered:

Leave the harmless dears alone?

Do you see me in the meadow

Coming from the woodland spring

With a bamboo on my shoulder

And a pail slung from a string?

Do you see me all expectant

Lying in an orange grove,

While the swee-swees sing above me,

Waiting for my elf-eyed love?

Lovely dainty Spanish needle,

Source to me of sweet delight,

In your far-off sunny southland

Do you dream of me to-night?

From Harlem Shadows (New York, Harcourt, Brace and company, 1922) by Claude McKay.

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 06/09/2026

On September 6, 1781, the Zong left the Gold Coast for Jamaica with more than 400 kidnapped Africans. We remember those who died due to the inhumane conditions on the ship and the ones who were chained together by their ankles and thrown alive overboard. #Jamaica #History

Beneath a cloudy, blue sky in Black River, St. Elizabeth, the Zong Massacre monument stands intact after the passage of Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica. The square monument has a horizontal, oval shape in the centre of brown-and-beige mosaic tiles, and is surrounded by rubble and mangled buildings.

Photo credit: Professor Emerita Verene A. Shepherd

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 19/08/2026

In 1969, Edwin Link discovered a pocket watch in the submerged city of Port Royal. X-ray photos showed it had stopped at 11:43 AM when the earthquake struck on June 7, 1692. On July 12, 2025, UNESCO inscribed Port Royal on its World Heritage List, a cultural milestone for #Jamaica. #WyrdWednesday

Members of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT) team conducting an underwater survey of a building at the Port Royal Heritage Site.

(Photo credit: Jamaica Information Service)

The Long Journey to Get Port Royal on UNESCO World Heritage List: https://jis.gov.jm/features/the-long-journey-to-get-port-royal-on-unesco-world-heritage-list/

Artefacts, including a pewter tankard, smoking pipes, and onion wine bottles uncovered underwater during the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT) divers’ exploration of the Port Royal Heritage Site.

(Photo credit: Jamaica Information Service)

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 01/08/2026

Duckunoo (Blue Draws, tie-a-leaf) is a dessert in #Jamaica and other Caribbean countries. In Jamaica, it’s served at cultural events, such as Emancipendence, which is being celebrated now. The string around it refers to the era when enslaved Africans used a cord to keep their underwear secure.

My hand holding a traditional Jamaican dessert in front of a green background. The sweet treat is wrapped with a banana leaf and tied with a long, slender fibre from the banana plant. A few pieces of sweetened dried coconut were added as a topping.

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 29/07/2026

“What the Periwinkle Remember”, an excerpt from Marcia Douglas’ novel, features a Rolling Calf. It’s a duppy bull with chains that appears on the night of a full moon and chases travellers. A way to evade the creature: stick a knife in the ground at a crossroads. #WyrdWednesday #Jamaica #Folklore

On a brown, wooden surface, a flat lay of Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root, a Caribbean fabulist fiction anthology, is open to the book title page. A green, leafy vine is on the blank page next to the title page.

Contents

Introduction

’MEMBAH

“What the Periwinkle Remember”
Marcia Douglas

“Yurokon”
Wilson Harris

“Spurn Babylon”
Tobias S. Buckell

SCIENCE

“Just a Lark (or the Crypt of Matthew Ashdown)”
Roger McTair

“Tears for Érsulie Frèda: Men without Shadow”
Claude-Michel Prévost

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 20/05/2026

Another exquisitely odoriferous harvest is that of the logwood estates, which in blossoming season smell sweeter than isles of spice and attract swarms of bees to a harvest which yields to the bee farm in February its choicest honey — Black Roadways by Martha Beckwith #WorldBeeDay #Jamaica #Plants

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 08/05/2026

Happy Mother’s Day Weekend to all moms! Back in the day, the nana would dress the baby’s navel with nutmeg, blow smoke into the baby’s eyes from an old clay pipe, then wash her face with rum and drink it to give her “eyesight”. Seeing births was said to affect her sight. #Jamaica #Folklore #Art

“Young Mothers” by Karl Parboosingh, 1965, oil on hardboard.

Source: https://www.caribjournal.com/2014/03/21/in-cayman-the-art-of-jamaica/

A painting of four faceless, dark-skinned mothers sitting on a reddish bench with their faceless, young children either on their lap or on the bench beside them. The background is a mix of browns, greens, and orange. The women are wearing yellow, light green, and white dresses with matching headwraps. The children are wearing yellow, pink, and pale green clothes.

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 21/03/2026

Jamaican folklore comes alive in “She Who Sleeps With Bones”, the titular poem in Tanya Shirley’s debut collection. #WorldPoetryDay #Folklore #Jamaica #Poetry #Caribbean

Only my thumb is visible as I hold She Who Sleeps With Bones, a poetry collection by Jamaican author Tanya Shirley. The book is open, showing the titular poem on page 11.

You can learn more about her and her body of work on her website: https://tanyashirley.com/.

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 21/02/2026

In Jamaican #folklore, it’s said that if you peel an orange without breaking the skin, you’ll get a new suit of clothes. Mervyn Morris, Jamaica’s first post-Independence Poet Laureate, wrote about this in “Peelin Orange”, which is apt for #InternationalMotherLanguageDay. #Jamaica #Poetry

Peelin Orange

Dem use to seh
yu peel a orange
perfec
an yu get new clothes

But when mi father try
fi teach mi
slide de knife
up to de safeguard thumb

I move de weapon like
a saw inna mi han
and de dyamn rind
break

An if yu have de time
yu can come see mi
in mi ole clothes
peelin

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 14/02/2026

In the Jamaican legend of Lovers’ Leap, Mizzy and Tunkey, an enslaved couple, leapt to their death over the 1,700-foot cliff facing the sea rather than be separated by a jealous plantation owner. In another version, the moon caught them in a net as it set below the sea. #Jamaica #Folklore

A wooden sculpture representing Mizzy and Tunkey, two young enslaved lovers holding hands by their chests in a side-by-side embrace, in a lush garden setting on the grounds of Lovers’ Leap, a National Heritage Site in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica.

Photo credit: Janeen Johnson

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nadinet @tallawahstories.blacksky.app · 05/12/2025

For tonight’s full moon, the last supermoon of 2025, I thought it would be on point to feature “Moonshine Dolly” by Jamaica’s 2021 Poet Laureate Olive Senior. It’s a haunting poem about a Jamaican children’s game that youngsters played on moonlit nights in times past. #Jamaica #Folklore #Poetry

MOONSHINE DOLLY

Each full moon

I lay flat on the ground
with outstretched limbs
while you outlined my body
with bits of glass, mirrors
stones.

I would rise
leaving Moonshine Dolly
my ghostly self
behind.

One night
flat on my back
gazing at the full moon’s face
I was too scared to rise
for she was pulling and pulling —

“Get up,” you said,
“You’re spoiling the game.”

To Moonshine Dolly I whispered: “Hold me tight.”

For she was pulling so
and if I rose
you’d run to grab hold
and you’d rise too
and all the children
would come running after
and there we’d be
holding on to each other
leaving far below

Moonshine Dolly

gazing
at this chain of children
rising and rising

to the moon.

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