The regular session of the Board of Commissioners of V.I. Housing Authority has been scheduled to meet at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 28, in the central offices of the Authority in Estate Anna's Retreat.

DPNR advises the public that the closed season for conch begins July 1 and ends September 30 of each year. Whelk closed season has commenced since April 1 and will end September 30.
During these periods, persons are not permitted to engage in fishing for conch, whelk, or possess any conch, whelk or parts of them with the exception of empty shells.
All commercial fisherman, local businesses, restaurants, and wholesale companies are allowed ten days after the commencement of the closed season to liquidate their stock.
For additional information call 774-3320 ext. 5106 on St. Thomas.

The regular session of the V.I. Housing Authority Board of Commissioners will meet at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 28, in the central offices of the Authority in Estate Anna's Retreat.

Organizers of St. John's Children's Festival Village bustled about setting up games and prizes as the sun set Monday, even though the official opening ceremony was put off until Tuesday evening. It was an opportunity for the first team of volunteers to fine tune this year's offerings of fun and games in an alcohol-free environment.
A group of children appeared on the scene, unconcerned with formalities and eager to swing the kids' version of a sledgehammer toward the lever on the soaring muscle-measure scale.
Skyla Fahie and Shari Penn, both 10 years old, said tossing darts at the balloon board is one of their favorite things to do at the village. "I like to pop the balloons and throw the balls after the pins to make them fall down," Skyla said.
Over to the side, volunteer Jacqueline Sprauve tied three large trash bags full of inflated balloons to the rope barrier around the peg board already filled with balloons. "When we need to replenish them, we're all ready to go," she said.
This year's Children's Village, set up near the entrance to the new National Park Visitor Center, bears little resemblance to the first ones in the mid 1990s, when there were two giant tiki totem poles with a bean-bag toss board in between them, and little else.
The activity center for youngsters is presented each year by the St. John Community Foundation, nowadays in cooperation with school groups. Lonnie Willis, a long-time foundation member, said volunteers are essential to running a successful village. "It's very strenuous," she said, but "very rewarding."
This year, teams of volunteers have offered to work in rotating shifts, Willis said. One night, for example, a group from the Rotary Club of St. John plans to sell the tickets, supervise the games, redeem winning tickets and hand out prizes. Willis said she plans to recruit a team from her staff at the Stone Terrace restaurant.
As the volunteers worked and the visitors played Monday evening, foundation executive director Mary Blazine zipped up and down the street in front of the village with her pick-up truck, dropping off supplies and going off for more. As she unloaded tables for a new attraction this year – adult bingo games – buddy Cheryl Miller and her son, Hamlin, put the finishing touches on a hand-painted banner inviting grown-ups to take their chances.
Volunteer Terry Bertolino, hanging up stuffed frogs and monkeys along a string of game prizes, predicted the first few evenings of Children's Village would be slow because the main St. John Festival Village doesn't open until Thursday evening. But before twilight crept in, there was a small group of faces smiling up at her holding their prize-winning tickets high over their heads.
The start-up of Children's Village is the only break in the lull between last Sunday's St. John Festival Food Fair and this Thursday's scheduled opening of the main village, named Daniel's Court in honor of Community Foundation president Harry Daniel. The festivities of the first three weekends in June have been dominated by family-oriented activities – Pan-O-Rama and the prince and princess and queen competitions and coronation.
This year's food fair honored "Miss Enid" Francis, a Coral Bay grandmother who welcomes visitors to the V.I. National Park's Annaberg cultural restoration center, where she serves up johnnycakes she makes the traditional way, on a coal pot.

On Sunday June 25, I lost a sister, a friend, a colleague and a confidante – Dr. Barbara Christian.
My Mother and my Father lost a daughter. My brothers Alphonso and Delano lost a sister. My sisters, Reubina Gomez and Alicia Wells, lost a sister and my niece Najuma lost a mother.
The academic community lost a friend, scholar and someone who was known as a premier scholar in the area of Black Feminist Criticism and Black Women Novelists.
My parents told me that my aunt Josie, now 93 and mother to Dr. Alfred Heath, when Barbara was a few days old, exulted with words: "What a beautiful child!"
Barbara was born on Dec. 12, 1943. Her beauty was not limited to her physical appearance. Her beauty was the gift of her mind. She was always at the top of her class, graduating from Sts. Peter and Paul at age 15 as Valedictorian. The year before at age 14, she won the Virgin Islands-wide High School Oratorical Contest and was invited to skip 12th grade and enter Howard University at age 14. She declined, preferring to graduate with her high school classmates.
My sister was a giant to me. I remember her from our days growing up in St. Thomas when we were first at Nye Gade or Garden Street, as it was known by all, and later when we moved up to Solberg. I remembered when she went off to Marquette. She graduated with honors and was selected as the keynote speaker for the student body of the entire University, which included all doctors of philosophy. Note she was only in undergraduate school at the time.
Subsequently, she continued her studies at Columbia University, earning her masters and doctorate, with distinction, where she was the first woman in the contemporary British and American literature program.
Following brief stints as a teacher at the College of the Virgin Islands in its first year of operation and at Hunter College in Manhattan, in the fall of 1965, she joined the faculty of the City College of the City University of New York as a member of the English Department. She was also appointed as an instructor in the pioneering SEEK program (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge), which offered opportunities to promising but underprivileged students to attend college.
In September 1971, after six years at City College, Barbara headed west to join the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley.
We have always been in contact over the years. Time never was a distance between us. For me, whenever I got an opportunity to travel to the west coast of the U.S. I made it a point of fraternal duty to visit with Barbara, Babsie, as I affectionately called her. My sister, Reubina, used every opportunity to travel to visit her and to take my children along to better know their famous aunt.
At Berkeley, faculty and friends will remember my sister Barbara as the first African American woman to receive tenure at the university in 1978. She was the first Black to be promoted to full professor in 1986. Between 1978 and 1983, she served as chairperson for the Department of African American Studies at Berkeley. Throughout her years as a professor she was probably its most important leader, as well as its most accomplished member.
In addition, between 1986 and 1989, she was chair of the recently formed Ethnic Studies doctoral program at the university. From 1971 to 1976, she also served as a founding member and teacher with the University Without Walls, a community based alternative college committed to providing education to people of color.
Respected as an administrator, Barbara was nevertheless much better known throughout the university, among undergraduates and graduate students alike, as a teacher of extraordinary knowledge, warmth, generosity, and effectiveness. Her courses, especially those in women's writing and African American literature in general, attracted a large number of students of virtually all-ethnic backgrounds, who typically responded with superlatives in their formal evaluations of their professor.
Accordingly, in 1991, Barbara won the university's Distinguished Teaching Award, becoming the first African American to do so. In 1995, she was honored with the Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Northern California chapter of the society. And earlier this year the university chancellor awarded her the Berkeley Citation, "for distinguished achievement and for notable service to the university," the highest honor one can receive from the school.
In a letter supporting her nomination for the citation, Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University wrote that Professor Christian "has emerged as the senior figure among African-American feminists." Professor Arnold Rampersad of Stanford University states unequivocally that Professor Christian was "a major shaper and guide in the general area where the subjects of literature, race, and feminism meet."
The author or editor of several books and almost a hundred published articles and reviews, Barbara was perhaps best known for her landmark study "Black Women Novelists, The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976" (Greenwood Press). Appearing in 1980, following the general rediscovery of the work of important women writers from the past, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larson, and with the rise to prominence of several younger authors, notably Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, "Black Women Writers" stimulated as never before the embryonic field of African American feminist literary criticism.
The book offered virtually the first comprehensive analysis of its subject, as well as a source of inspiration to younger scholars in approaching what eventually became a major area of American literary study.
Her other works include "Teaching Guide to Black Foremothers" in 1980, "Black Feminist Criticism," "Perspectives on Black Women Writers, 1985"; editor of "Everyday Use" a case book on the story by Alice Walker, as well as numerous essays, articles and literary criticism.
In 1997, in her role as professor of African-American Studies and scholar at Berkeley, Barbara was one of the significant editors of the massive "Norton Anthology of African-American Literature" under the general editorship of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. Mckay.
Several of her essays, because of their astuteness as well as their timely intervention in the growing debates over the relationship between race, class, and gender, continue to be widely cited by other scholars and critics. Among the most noteworthy of these is Barbara's "The Race for Theory," which challenged the increasing domination of African American literary study by critics mainly interested in theory, especially poststructuralism.
Reprinted several times in the United States, this article was also published in an anthology in England and, in translation, in Italy.
A generous host — and having never learned to drive a car — Barbara kept what often seemed like open house at her residence on Benvenue Avenue in Berkeley. A wide array of visiting colleagues, admirers, and friends – many of whom shared a commitment to progressive politics – found her a patient and sympathetic listener. She received them in a comfortable home casually decorated with paintings, lithographs, sculptures, and woodcarvings, usually of African or African-American origin.
Music of all kinds was also an important part of her life. And on display in every room was a variety of healthy houseplants, many of them exotic, that reflected Barbara’s love of gardening.
Barbara received her accolades because of her depth of scholarship, her drive, her hard work and her dedication to the upliftment of the Black woman novelists.
But Barbara was more than that. She was a devoted mother to her only child, Najuma, who chose the profession of her grandfather and uncle – law.
She was a mother to many a persons in her extended family. Barbara was extensively involved in programs that sought to level the pl
aying field for disadvantaged and so-called uneducable Black and Puerto Rican students. Her goal at Columbia and subsequently at Berkeley was to put a human face on those persons who society wanted to discard because they were not of the so-called dominant race.
But it must be remembered that Barbara was not a person who was concerned with only race. My sister was a scholar, as has been acclaimed to me so many times by the numerous persons who meet and greet me in the academic and social world.
I think of my Caribbean Studies Association colleagues and Barbara's friends, Percy Hintzen, Opal Palmer, Gilbert Sprauve, and my husband, Simon, who first encountered Barbara when she taught in the summer of 1965 at the then College of the Virgin Islands, and when they all acted in Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," alongside another Virgin Islander, John deJongh.
My sister was an engaging person. When you talked with her she would wax in depth on some of the most profound issues that you could imagine. She was brilliant to a fault. When she read, as she notes in her own words, she was visceral. She got excited. She made notes and she engaged the readers.
She understood world politics equally as she understood all of the nuances of literature and literary criticism. But above all Barbara, my sister, was a person's person, a people person, a friend.
Barbara Christian is survived by her daughter Najuma, a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz and Georgetown University Law Center; by her parents, Judge Alphonso A. Christian and Ruth Christian of St. Thomas; her sisters, Reubina Gomez of St. Thomas, and Alicia Wells of Philadelphia and me; her brothers Alphonso Christian II of Washington D.C. and Delano Christian of San Francisco; a stepchild, Imetai Malik Henderson of New York; many graduate students; and a family of dear friends.
I have lost a sister. The academia world has lost a scholar. My parents have lost a daughter. My brothers and sisters have lost a sister. Najuma has lost a mother.
We grieve, for death is finite, remembering that passing does not have the power to remove or eliminate what we shared because our bodies are just coverings that we wear. But, by the same token, we celebrate her life for the contribution she made while she was here. We celebrate her life for touching our lives in ways too numerous to mention.
On behalf of my parents, my brothers and sisters, we want to say thank you to those of you who have expressed your well wishes in this our time of grief. Thank you all.

On Sunday June 25, I lost a sister, a friend, a colleague and a confidante – Dr. Barbara Christian.
My Mother and my Father lost a daughter. My brothers Alphonso and Delano lost a sister. My sisters, Reubina Gomez and Alicia Wells, lost a sister and my niece Najuma lost a mother.
The academic community lost a friend, scholar and someone who was known as a premier scholar in the area of Black Feminist Criticism and Black Women Novelists.
My parents told me that my aunt Josie, now 93 and mother to Dr. Alfred Heath, when Barbara was a few days old, exulted with words: "What a beautiful child!"
Barbara was born on Dec. 12, 1943. Her beauty was not limited to her physical appearance. Her beauty was the gift of her mind. She was always at the top of her class, graduating from Sts. Peter and Paul at age 15 as Valedictorian. The year before at age 14, she won the Virgin Islands-wide High School Oratorical Contest and was invited to skip 12th grade and enter Howard University at age 14. She declined, preferring to graduate with her high school classmates.
My sister was a giant to me. I remember her from our days growing up in St. Thomas when we were first at Nye Gade or Garden Street, as it was known by all, and later when we moved up to Solberg. I remembered when she went off to Marquette. She graduated with honors and was selected as the keynote speaker for the student body of the entire University, which included all doctors of philosophy. Note she was only in undergraduate school at the time.
Subsequently, she continued her studies at Columbia University, earning her masters and doctorate, with distinction, where she was the first woman in the contemporary British and American literature program.
Following brief stints as a teacher at the College of the Virgin Islands in its first year of operation and at Hunter College in Manhattan, in the fall of 1965, she joined the faculty of the City College of the City University of New York as a member of the English Department. She was also appointed as an instructor in the pioneering SEEK program (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge), which offered opportunities to promising but underprivileged students to attend college.
In September 1971, after six years at City College, Barbara headed west to join the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley.
We have always been in contact over the years. Time never was a distance between us. For me, whenever I got an opportunity to travel to the west coast of the U.S. I made it a point of fraternal duty to visit with Barbara, Babsie, as I affectionately called her. My sister, Reubina, used every opportunity to travel to visit her and to take my children along to better know their famous aunt.
At Berkeley, faculty and friends will remember my sister Barbara as the first African American woman to receive tenure at the university in 1978. She was the first Black to be promoted to full professor in 1986. Between 1978 and 1983, she served as chairperson for the Department of African American Studies at Berkeley. Throughout her years as a professor she was probably its most important leader, as well as its most accomplished member.
In addition, between 1986 and 1989, she was chair of the recently formed Ethnic Studies doctoral program at the university. From 1971 to 1976, she also served as a founding member and teacher with the University Without Walls, a community based alternative college committed to providing education to people of color.
Respected as an administrator, Barbara was nevertheless much better known throughout the university, among undergraduates and graduate students alike, as a teacher of extraordinary knowledge, warmth, generosity, and effectiveness. Her courses, especially those in women's writing and African American literature in general, attracted a large number of students of virtually all-ethnic backgrounds, who typically responded with superlatives in their formal evaluations of their professor.
Accordingly, in 1991, Barbara won the university's Distinguished Teaching Award, becoming the first African American to do so. In 1995, she was honored with the Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Northern California chapter of the society. And earlier this year the university chancellor awarded her the Berkeley Citation, "for distinguished achievement and for notable service to the university," the highest honor one can receive from the school.
In a letter supporting her nomination for the citation, Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University wrote that Professor Christian "has emerged as the senior figure among African-American feminists." Professor Arnold Rampersad of Stanford University states unequivocally that Professor Christian was "a major shaper and guide in the general area where the subjects of literature, race, and feminism meet."
The author or editor of several books and almost a hundred published articles and reviews, Barbara was perhaps best known for her landmark study "Black Women Novelists, The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976" (Greenwood Press). Appearing in 1980, following the general rediscovery of the work of important women writers from the past, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larson, and with the rise to prominence of several younger authors, notably Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, "Black Women Writers" stimulated as never before the embryonic field of African American feminist literary criticism.
The book offered virtually the first comprehensive analysis of its subject, as well as a source of inspiration to younger scholars in approaching what eventually became a major area of American literary study.
Her other works include "Teaching Guide to Black Foremothers" in 1980, "Black Feminist Criticism," "Perspectives on Black Women Writers, 1985"; editor of "Everyday Use" a case book on the story by Alice Walker, as well as numerous essays, articles and literary criticism.
In 1997, in her role as professor of African-American Studies and scholar at Berkeley, Barbara was one of the significant editors of the massive "Norton Anthology of African-American Literature" under the general editorship of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. Mckay.
Several of her essays, because of their astuteness as well as their timely intervention in the growing debates over the relationship between race, class, and gender, continue to be widely cited by other scholars and critics. Among the most noteworthy of these is Barbara's "The Race for Theory," which challenged the increasing domination of African American literary study by critics mainly interested in theory, especially poststructuralism.
Reprinted several times in the United States, this article was also published in an anthology in England and, in translation, in Italy.
A generous host — and having never learned to drive a car — Barbara kept what often seemed like open house at her residence on Benvenue Avenue in Berkeley. A wide array of visiting colleagues, admirers, and friends – many of whom shared a commitment to progressive politics – found her a patient and sympathetic listener. She received them in a comfortable home casually decorated with paintings, lithographs, sculptures, and woodcarvings, usually of African or African-American origin.
Music of all kinds was also an important part of her life. And on display in every room was a variety of healthy houseplants, many of them exotic, that reflected Barbara’s love of gardening.
Barbara received her accolades because of her depth of scholarship, her drive, her hard work and her dedication to the upliftment of the Black woman novelists.
But Barbara was more than that. She was a devoted mother to her only child, Najuma, who chose the profession of her grandfather and uncle – law.
She was a mother to many a persons in her extended family. Barbara was extensively involved in programs that sought to level the pl
aying field for disadvantaged and so-called uneducable Black and Puerto Rican students. Her goal at Columbia and subsequently at Berkeley was to put a human face on those persons who society wanted to discard because they were not of the so-called dominant race.
But it must be remembered that Barbara was not a person who was concerned with only race. My sister was a scholar, as has been acclaimed to me so many times by the numerous persons who meet and greet me in the academic and social world.
I think of my Caribbean Studies Association colleagues and Barbara's friends, Percy Hintzen, Opal Palmer, Gilbert Sprauve, and my husband, Simon, who first encountered Barbara when she taught in the summer of 1965 at the then College of the Virgin Islands, and when they all acted in Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," alongside another Virgin Islander, John deJongh.
My sister was an engaging person. When you talked with her she would wax in depth on some of the most profound issues that you could imagine. She was brilliant to a fault. When she read, as she notes in her own words, she was visceral. She got excited. She made notes and she engaged the readers.
She understood world politics equally as she understood all of the nuances of literature and literary criticism. But above all Barbara, my sister, was a person's person, a people person, a friend.
Barbara Christian is survived by her daughter Najuma, a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz and Georgetown University Law Center; by her parents, Judge Alphonso A. Christian and Ruth Christian of St. Thomas; her sisters, Reubina Gomez of St. Thomas, and Alicia Wells of Philadelphia and me; her brothers Alphonso Christian II of Washington D.C. and Delano Christian of San Francisco; a stepchild, Imetai Malik Henderson of New York; many graduate students; and a family of dear friends.
I have lost a sister. The academia world has lost a scholar. My parents have lost a daughter. My brothers and sisters have lost a sister. Najuma has lost a mother.
We grieve, for death is finite, remembering that passing does not have the power to remove or eliminate what we shared because our bodies are just coverings that we wear. But, by the same token, we celebrate her life for the contribution she made while she was here. We celebrate her life for touching our lives in ways too numerous to mention.
On behalf of my parents, my brothers and sisters, we want to say thank you to those of you who have expressed your well wishes in this our time of grief. Thank you all.

A St. Thomas man who was shot in the head Friday night has been airlifted to a Puerto Rico hospital for further treatment. Police On St. Thomas are investigating the incidents that led to the shooting.
Alfred Matthias Jr. was shot near the Nadir intersection at about 10 p.m., police officials said Monday afternoon.
"He was at the bus stop with some friends when he was approached by two males wearing dark coats with hoods," police spokeswoman Sgt. Annette Raimer said.
The two men chased Matthias up the hill while firing at him. One bullet struck him on the left side of the head, penetrating his ear.
He was admitted to the Roy L. Schneider Hospital that night but airlifted to Puerto Rico on Saturday.
Police are appealing to the community for information on the latest shooting to be recorded on St. Thomas. Anyone with information should call investigators at 774-4050 or the emergency number, 911.
Police reportedly are following a lead that the shooting could have resulted from an altercation Matthias had with unknown persons a few hours before he was shot in Nadir.

Dear Source:
In your series of articles covering the Tourism Department and the Internet, we noticed that you have made no mention of the extremely popular and successful web site www.VisitStCroix.com.
With more than 60 St. Croix advertisers, including the three major hotels (Carambola, Buccaneer, Divi), the site is currently averaging more than 175,000 hits per month and is the most successful tourism portal in the territory. In May, VisitStCroix.com surpassed one million cumulative hits after just 10 months of operation.
In regard to the view that $1.5 million is an excessive amount to pay for the development of a full territorial site, we strongly agree. Moreover, we believe that the key to success is a private sector/public sector partnership.
By this, we mean the most effective site for the territory will be one where the site infrastructure is funded from government sources, and business-specific advertising – available through advertisements and links – is paid for by private businesses. Our firm has had such a proposal before the Tourism Department for more than six months, with no response.
More important, in this day and age, it is ridiculous not to have a web address appearing in the television advertisements that are airing in various sections of the mainland United States. For the St. Croix-specific ads, we have offered, at no charge, to let the Tourism Department use the VisitStCroix.com address. This would allow the government to measure the Internet response when the ads are running.
We truly believe that once the government sees the response, this will speed its decision-making process to launch a comprehensive Tourism Department site. Again, we have had no response to this offer.
Please check out www.VisitStCroix.com and call or e-mail us with your thoughts.
Tom Yaegel
St. Croix

The Padres rebounded from their Friday defeat to top the Sluggers, 11-3 Monday afternoon in the St. Thomas PeeWee League action at the Emile Griffith Ballpark.
The Padres bats came out hot. In the top of the first inning, the first four batters, Arsenio Watlington, Michael Roberts, Jakoi Forbes and Jarrell Mason got base hits and scored.
The Sluggers scored single runs in the second, third and fourth innings. With the runs, they mounded a comeback to keep the game close as they got within two runs, 5-3 after four complete innings.
In the top of the fifth inning, the Sluggers got the first two Padre batters out on strikes. However, the next two hitters singled. This set the scene for Watlington, who ripped a three-run homerun over the left fielder’s head that gave his team an 8-3 lead. The rally did not end there as Roberts, Forbes and Mason followed with back to back to back singles and all scored to put the game out of reach.
The Padres went down one, two, three in the bottom of the fifth to end the game.

Dear Source:
In your series of articles covering the Tourism Department and the Internet, we noticed that you have made no mention of the extremely popular and successful web site www.VisitStCroix.com.
With more than 60 St. Croix advertisers, including the three major hotels (Carambola, Buccaneer, Divi), the site is currently averaging more than 175,000 hits per month and is the most successful tourism portal in the territory. In May, VisitStCroix.com surpassed 1,000,000 cumulative hits after just 10 months of operation.
In regard to the view that $1.5 million is an excessive amount to pay for the development of a full territorial site, we strongly agree. Moreover, we believe that the key to success is a private sector/public sector partnership.
By this, we mean the most effective site for the territory will be one where the site infrastructure is funded from government sources, and business-specific advertising – available through advertisements and links – is paid for by private businesses. Our firm has had such a proposal before the Tourism Department for more than six months, with no response.
More important, in this day and age, it is ridiculous not to have a web address appearing in the television advertisements that are airing in various sections of the mainland United States. For the St. Croix-specific ads, we have offered, at no charge, to let the Tourism Department use the VisitStCroix.com address. This would allow the government to measure the Internet response when the ads are running.
We truly believe that once the government sees the response, this will speed its decision-making process to launch a comprehensive Tourism Department site. Again, we have had no response to this offer.
Please check out www.VisitStCroix.com and call or e-mail us with your thoughts.
Tom Yaegel
St. Croix