#st james

06/26/2026

It is what it is.

The Card Room at the Reform Club

then something interesting happened. i was scrolling thru instagram to just, try and take my mind off how i was feeling and got recommended this post about St James. it's supposed to be about envy and not comparing yourself to others (which are very important don't get me wrong) but reading these particular lines made me burst into tears

it helped me realize something: regardless of what the church says, no matter how much i may be despised and hated by my christian siblings, it doesn't matter because The Lord will always be with me. even if i am forced out He will follow. God knit me in my mother's womb, saw all that i was, is, and will be, and loves me with all His being.

certainly doesn't mean i plan to stop being catholic anytime soon though. they can't get rid of me that easy.

Screenshots of a post I put on fb three years ago while on the Camino

It’s not his fault Spain titled him Matamoros.

José María Casado del Alisal (Spanish, 1832-1886) Santiago en la batalla de Clavijo (Saint James Moorslayer), 1885 Royal Basilica of Saint Francis the Great

International reggae icon Jimmy Cliff has died, his family announced Monday. In a post to his official social media pages, his wife Latifa Chambers said Cliff passed away after a battle with pneumonia which followed a seizure. He was 81. “I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career. He really appreciated each and every fan for their love,” she said.

Writing on social media, Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, called Cliff “a true cultural giant whose music carried the heart of our nation to the world.” He added that Cliff’s songs “lifted people through hard times, inspired generations and helped to shape the global respect that Jamaican culture enjoys today.” In addition to his wife, Cliff’s survivors include the couple’s two children, Lilty and Aken. “The Harder They Come,” in which Cliff played a Robin Hood-like folk hero, connected with audiences at home and in the United States, where it became a mainstay of the midnight-movie scene. The film’s soundtrack, with songs by Cliff and other Jamaican acts such as the Maytals and Desmond Dekker, was an international hit; in 2020 the album was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.

Born James Chambers in Jamaica’s St. James Parish in 1944, Cliff moved to Kingston as a young man to pursue music and found success with a series of local hits, including “Hurricane Hattie.” He ventured to London in the mid-’60s and struck a deal with Island Records, which would later sign Marley; Cliff’s 1969 single “Wonderful World Beautiful People” entered the top 10 of the British pop chart. “All I really wanted to do was to get out this creative yearning that was inside of me,” Cliff told The Times in 1999. Yet he also channeled the era’s antiwar sentiment with “Vietnam,” which, according to rock legend, Bob Dylan once described as the best protest song ever written. Cliff toured the world in the wake of “The Harder They Come,” which the Clash would go on to name-check on 1979’s “London Calling.” In 1976, Cliff performed on the first season of “Saturday Night Live”; he also spent time in Africa and converted to Islam.

In the early ’80s, Bruce Springsteen made Cliff’s song “Trapped” a part of the E Street Band’s concert repertoire; a live recording of the song appeared on the “We Are the World” album in 1985. Cliff sang on the Rolling Stones’ “Dirty Work” album in 1986, the same year he won his first Grammy Award, for his album “Cliff Hanger.” In 1994, he made the top 20 of Billboard’s Hot 100 with a cover of Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now,” which he recorded for the movie “Cool Runnings.” Cliff was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010; he won a second Grammy in 2013 for his album “Rebirth,” which he made with Tim Armstrong of the punk band Rancid and which he said was inspired in part by the Occupy Wall Street movement. “I did a song called ‘Vietnam’ about that era, about that war, about people are marching,” Cliff told The Times in 2012. “People are still marching now but for a different cause. I feel I need to be singing about those things.”

— Mikael Wood (and Janine Schaults), 24 November 2025

The novelty of a lift at 18, Carlton House Terrace, St James, SW1,

Photographed in 1890,

The MS monogram in the central panel refers to Spanish financier José de Murrieta y del Campo, Marqués de Santurce, who made his fortune in South America.