Since ancient times, new beginnings – that’s carnival. It’s our craving to shuck memories of the slings and arrows that paralyze us. New Year’s resolutions disappear in the first head wind, but carnival has been serious about new beginnings since the Greeks partied to praise Dionysus and the Romans thanked Bacchus for wine and flora, fertility heavy on their minds.

Are you mourning this year’s lack of Carnival’s spiritual cleanse, its satirical sorting of society’s woes to give us perspective? I am. And so I retreat now to past frolics. It’s hard to overstate how rotten the past year has been, in so many ways, or the dim prospects it left us, as we await whatever next escapes Pandora’s Box.

Heads of state sometimes gather in Port of Spain to jockey for position, with some reaching out and some more antagonistic. Often overlooked is a lesson in personal diplomacy that the entire world might take from the host country, Trinidad and Tobago. The two islands, quite different from each other, form a single country, and have the Caribbean’s most intriguing culture. People who are often at loggerheads elsewhere in the world get along just fine here, thank you very much.

Hoo-boy! It’s that time again. Carnivals around the world are gearing up to pay tribute to Fearless Leader. He’s back, and it’s as if he never went away. These are not the parades Trump had in mind. I’ve experienced plenty of Carnivals throughout a good chunk of the world. Sense of duty. Their varied traditions, some back to the ancients, …