Mass. Superior Court dismisses nuisance claim over airport skydiving concession on Cape Cod

Chatham Municipal Airport approach (CC BY 2.0 woodleywonderworks)

The Superior Court in Barnstable, Massachusetts, ruled in favor of the Town of Chatham against a citizen group earlier this month over the town's award of a skydiving concession at the Chatham Municipal Airport, the Cape Cod Times reported.  Arguing for summary judgment, the town relied on preemption by FAA regulations in asserting that it had no choice but to award the concession for a lawful activity.  The court agreed, according to the newspaper.  The trial court arguments were detailed by Tim Wood in a story for The Cape Cod Chronicle in May.  According to Wood's reporting, the citizens argued "that skydiving is not safe and is a nuisance, with multiple flights and screaming and yelling by tandem jumpers interfering with the 'quiet enjoyment' of their property. They point to a 2012 crash of a skydiving plane into Lovers Lake after it ran out of fuel and the severe injuries suffered by a tandem jumper as evidence of the safety concerns."

Chatham Municipal Airport on Cape Cod

Abraham & White would limit further extension of First Amendment as tort defense

In a new article, Kenneth S. Abraham and G. Edward White, University of Virginia Law, argue against the further extension of the First Amendment ("imperialism") to constitutionalize tort law when torts are accomplished through speech.  Specifically, they study the First Amendment in defamation, privacy, and IIED before contemplating the First Amendment problems that lurk in fraud, product disparagement, product warning defect, and interference.  The interference problem has interested me since The Insider.  En route to their conclusion, the authors critically examine the truth-falsity dichotomy.  Here is the abstract for First Amendment Imperialism and the Constitutionalization of Tort Liability.

To what extent does the First Amendment impose limits on the permissible scope of tort liability? Until recently, the clear answer would have been, “only under very limited circumstances.” During the last few decades, however, the First Amendment has been so greatly expanding its empire that giving this answer is no longer possible. “All bets are off” would be a more accurate answer, because the forms of speech to which the Supreme Court has extended First Amendment protection have become impressively broad. Although existing First Amendment restrictions on the permissible scope of tort liability currently are limited, the very existence of those restrictions confirms that many torts involving speech potentially are subject to First Amendment protection. And many torts do involve speech – the duty to warn about the dangers of prescription drugs, fraud, and even some forms of simple negligence are just a few examples.

If the First Amendment of the future limited all or even many of these different constitutionally unprotected forms of tort liability, then its scope would be pervasive. We contend, however, that neither existing First Amendment doctrine nor sensible constitutional policy supports extending free speech protection to torts that are accomplished through speech, except in extremely narrow circumstances. Extending First Amendment protection to such torts would aggravate what we argue are two of the principal risks posed by First Amendment imperialism: the erosion of the cultural distinction between truth and falsity, and devaluation of the status of speech about matters of public concern. Our contention is that most of the forms of speech involved in torts that are accomplished through speech currently are, and should remain, excluded from First Amendment protection. To support this contention, we examine the First Amendment’s extension to previously unprotected forms of speech over the last three-quarters of a century, compare the new First Amendment protections to the doctrinal elements of a series of torts that always or often are accomplished through speech, and argue that it would make little sense, as a matter of tort or constitutional law, to restrict liability for those torts on First Amendment grounds.

 Hat tip @ TortsProf.

LatAm NGOs propose model of internet platform self‑regulation consistent with human rights

NGOs working on the project, from the report.

Now published online and open for comment are "Contributions for the Democratic Regulation of Big Platforms to Ensure Freedom of Expression Online," a potentially powerful document developed by a coalition of Latin American non-governmental organizations.  Here is the abstract:

This document offers recommendations on specific principles, standards and measures designed to establish forms of public co-regulation and public regulation that limit the power of major Internet platforms (such as social networks and search engines).

The purpose of this effort is to protect users' freedom of expression and guarantee a free and open Internet. Such intermediaries increasingly intervene in online content, through the adoption of terms of service and the application of business moderation policies. Such forms of private regulation affect public spaces which are vital for democratic deliberation and the exercise of fundamental rights.

The proposal seeks to align with international human rights standards and takes into account existing asymmetries related to large internet platforms without limiting innovation, competition or start-up development by small businesses or community, educational or nonprofit initiatives.

The proposal seeks to create a self-regulatory framework that will avert public regulation of the internet.  Needless to say, that will involve the voluntary collaboration of the major players, Facebook, Google, Twitter, et al.  From what I saw of their recent participation in RightsCon in Tunisia, they are game.

I'm all for seeing where the self-regulatory approach takes us, but I worry about two problems.  First, I'm not sure how long the big players will be willing to spend money on social responsibility while unscrupulous competitors bypass self-regulation and continue to reach audience across the technologically egalitarian internet.  Second, as Facebook talks about setting up its own judicial system, I worry about whether we're creating corporate nation-states that will censor anti-majoritarian expression, e.g., perceived "hate speech," with the blessing of NGOs that purport to uphold human rights.  But one step at a time....

Here via Observacom are links to the report in español, português, and English.

My Summer Book Report

I squeezed in some leisure reads this summer:

• Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus.  Yes, I drank the Harari Kool-Aid.  I am a true believer. Frightfully enjoyable stuff.  Sapiens is on my desk now.
• Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me.  Poor Ian McEwan (Atonement) has taken it on the chin from scifi fans for daring to dabble in the genre in this thought-provoking book that I quite adore.  Sure, the basic question of "Data"'s humanity (cf. ST:TNG) is trodden territory, but give a guy some credit for doing his homework and bringing his signature writing flair to the table in this page turner.  It's a far better book than Solar.  We don't talk about that.
  
• David Sedaris, Calypso.  Unfathomable how his books go from best to even better.  You must have David read you his audiobooks. 
• Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.  Essential reading for the legally inclined.  Can’t wait for the movie.  Three words: Michael. B. Jordan!
• Luis Alberto Urrea, The House of Broken Angels.  For my fellow book group member who’s a LatAm aficionado, I am willing to revisit the trippy genre of my undergrad lit major once per year.  It’s always a, um, magic carpet ride, if you will.

And here is the most interesting stuff I read this summer, professional edition.  These are the categories!

·         Torts

·         Free Speech, Freedom of Information, and Privacy

·         Legal Education

·         Popular Culture

·         Self-Improvement

Torts

Kenneth S. Abraham & Leslie Kendrick, There’s No Such Thing as Affirmative Duty, Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2018-59 (on SSRN).  OK, so maybe I didn’t actually read this 65-page paper.  Instead I read about it, and who could do otherwise?, when Anthony Sebok at Cardozo Law wrote such a great review for JOTWELL.  Abraham and Kendrick call for abandoning the Restatements’ wearisome struggle to chart the contours of affirmative duty.  Instead they would take what I would describe as a more European approach, looking at duty, affirmative or otherwise, as a function of risk creation.  I do think this approach has a bead on the doctrinally drifting direction of duty from the Second to Third Restatements, so maybe this is the future.  Sebok aptly observes that this kind of thinking jives with Stephen Sugarman’s proposed merger of intent and negligence.  Fortunately I’m less than 20 years from retirement, because I fear that by that time, torts will just be a squishy blob of relativistic uncertainty not unlike the inside of an atom.  Teaching that will be for younger minds.

Free Speech, Freedom of Information, and Privacy

Enrico Bonadio & Nicola Lucchi, Copyright and Pornography, in Non-Conventional Copyright: Do New and Non-Traditional Works Deserve Protection? 418 (Enrico Bonadio & Nicola Lucchi eds. 2018) (SSRN).  Copyright.  Pornography.  You do the math.  Seriously, worth a read, and informative multinational perspective.

Adam Candeub, Nakedness and Publicity, ___ Iowa L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2019) (SSRN).  Adam Candeub at Michigan State Law explores the right of publicity as a revenge-porn remedy.  And why not?  Tort and IP’s disfigured offspring does so much else….

Megan Deitz, Note, A Crime Remembered: The Possible Impact of the “Right to be Forgotten” in the United States for Crime Victims, Criminal Defendants, and the Convicted, 9 Ala. C.R. & C.L. L. Rev. 197 (2018).  Kudos, Megan Deitz, J.D. U. Ala. ’18.  This is what I was talking about.  Ban the box is great, but it’s not going to get us there.  And to think that I found this article through an AEJMC newsletter…  heresy!

Anthony L. Fargo, Protecting Journalists’ Sources Without a Shield: Four Proposals, 24 Comm. L. & Pol’y 145 (2019) (abstract at T&F).  Tony Fargo at Indiana University-Bloomington has pursued a range of interests in his career—he’s the founding director of the Center for International Media Law and Policy Studies—but all the while remained the national authority on reporter’s privilege.  With a federal shield law a long time not coming, this articles explores alternatives in (1) whistleblower protection, (2) government transparency to disincentivize leaking, (3) legal protection for anonymous sources, and (4) encryption tech.

Giovanni De Gregorio, Secret Filming and the Right to Inform Under an European Constitutional Perspective: The Case of Alpha Doryforiki v. Greece, 2:2 Rivista di Diritto dei Media 410 (2018) (SSRN).  I’m a fan of European privacy law, but even the most committed fan has to admit that it has generated some absurd results.  Count among them the notion that investigative journalists secretly recording corruption run the risk of violating politicians’ privacy rights.  Giovanni De Gregorio reviews the latest case law.  For heaven’s sake, no one tell the bureaucrats in Texas (see Texas v. Doyle, infra).

Thomas Healy, Anxiety and Influence: Learned Hand and the Making of a Free Speech Dissent, 50 Ariz. St. L.J. 803 (2018) (SSRN).  The relationship between Judges Hand and Holmes, and especially Hand’s slow-cooking influence on modern First Amendment jurisprudence as a result, has been the intriguing study of many writings before, Healy’s included.  Nevertheless, in this compelling essay, Thomas Healy at Seton Hall Law here revisits the subject for a close look, laying out the timeline and examining exactly what Holmes’s evolving position took and did not take from Hand’s earnest offerings.

Matteo Monti, Automated Journalism and Freedom of Information: Ethical and Juridical Problems Related to AI in the Press Field, 1:1 Opinio Juris in Comparatione: Studies in Comparative and National Law (2018) (SSRN).  I am not a fan of the trend that puts “and AI” after everything, and voila!, new article, new theory, new field of law, new main dish.  All the same, this article on AI implications for journalism, with an especial eye to the problem of tort liability, is a neat, thoughtful, and very readable roundup from an unexpected source.  Don’t be confused by the title: in American parlance, this is more about free speech, or free flow of information, not FOI in the access sense.  Matteo Monti is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Law, Politics, and Development of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, a public university in Pisa.

Let's burn some books, Dark Ages style! And maybe a philosopher, too.
(Metropolitan Museum of Art, c.1515–27, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1917.)

Ada Palmer, How #Article13 is Like the Inquisition: John Milton Against the EU #CopyrightDirective, BoingBoing, Mar. 24, 2019.  This.  Is.  Brilliant.  This short essay should be required reading for every human being with an internet connection.  Don’t let the title’s narrow references to copyright and the EU throw you off; the implications of this piece are breathtaking.  Ada Palmer, University of Chicago history professor and science fiction writer, analogizes internet content filtering—the kind that everyone now is clamoring for Google, Facebook, and Twitter to double down on—to the very press licensing that earned John Milton’s critical condemnation in the Areopagitica, circa 1644.  It’s a downright terrifying proposition that leaves me wondering whether our best intentions are not already about the industry of turning the internet into the most repressive thought regime in the history of human civilization.  Best not read just before bed.

Texas v. Doyle, No. PD-0254-18 (Tex. Ct. Crim. App. Feb. 27, 2019) (via Texas Tribune).  I’m just going to say it, because we’re all thinking it, and something needs to be done: there’s something wrong with the water in Texas.  This case is the latest in what’s going on a decades-long saga of First Amendment challenges to the Texas Open Meetings Act (OMA).  You read that right: public officials are claiming that the open meetings act violates their First Amendment rights.  It would be funny, except they won.

Admittedly and rightly, the First Amendment calls for heightened scrutiny of criminal laws (and tort law) when violation is accomplished only by First Amendment-protected activity, such as speech.  Texas officials have long and fruitfully argued that the criminal-enforcement provisions of the OMA deprive them of their First Amendment right to communicate with one another.  Specifically, they contest the vagueness of applying the OMA to “meetings”—such as serial, or “daisy chain,” communications—alleged to subvert the OMA.

First Amendment problems in criminal law are often overcome by mere scienter; ask Michelle Carter’s counsel about that.  But it’s famously difficult to prove intent to subvert a freedom of information act, so transparency advocates have fought for enforcement mechanisms that operate shy of criminal intent.  I honestly don’t know whether this problem in Texas resulted from overzealous enforcement or opportunistic politicians in smoke-filled rooms, but the nonsense has got to stop.  I’ve seen OMA violations in other states, and I’ve seen innocent non-compliance, and I’ve never been confused about the difference between the two.

Legal Education

Lawrence J. Trautman, The Value of Legal Writing, Law Review, and Publication, 51 Ind. L. Rev. 693 (2018) (SSRN).  A business law professor at Western Carolina University, Lawrence Trautman capably offers this hefty opus, the latest entry in the legal-scholarship-matters genre.  The addition is welcome, as if more evidence should be needed to refute the snarky, anti-intellectual, and ultimately counter-factual rhetoric about the uselessness of legal scholarship (much less legal writing).  (See my own missive of some years ago for background, hat tip at UMass Law Review and Steve Zoni.)  In his abstract, Trautman “hope[s] this Article may become a required reading as one of the first assignments for all incoming first-year law students, or even before any classes begin.”  I’m down with that, but we might need an abbreviated version.

Popular Culture

Charles Duhigg, The Real Roots of American Rage, The Atlantic, Jan./Feb. 2019.  It goes without saying that everything in The Atlantic, my favorite magazine, is worth reading.  But my wife thought to point out this article to me.  I’m trying not to read too much into that.  Pulitzer-Prize winner Charles Duhigg takes a deep dive into outrage in our present social and political environment—newly salient upon the Dayton and El Paso shootings.  Building out from some groundwork in psychology by UMass Amherst’s James Averill, Duhigg establishes that ignoring our social anger or suppressing it is maybe the worst thing we could do.  He explores research that shows instead a possible way forward.

Self-Improvement

Jon Acuff, Do Over: Make Today the First Day of Your New Career (2015).  Just a couple years ago, I discovered Jon Acuff.  Yeah, I know, I got there late.  Anyway, I read the free preview, chapter 1, of his 2015 book, Do Over.  You can too.  I’m not going to read the rest, because I more or less like my job (underpaid), and I’m not really the self-help-reading sort.  Nevertheless, I liked this, as I seem to like just about everything Jon Acuff writes and says.  He makes me smile.

Student prevails in part in UMass Amherst due process disciplinary case in First Circuit

Last week the First Circuit held in favor of a student accused of a violent assault; however, the court largely upheld as constitutional the due process provided to the student in campus adjudication.

The case adds to federal appellate precedent on the requirements of procedural due process on campus.  The First Circuit's conclusions on these facts are not new water marks.  At the same time, observers predict that the multitude of circuit disagreements in this area will lead inevitably to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

In the instant case, a male student was accused of a violent assault on a female student, his romantic partner, while studying abroad in Spain under the purview of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  The First Circuit ruled that the university failed to provide adequate notice and hearing prior to imposing a five-month suspension on the student, after the allegations but well before the adjudication.  Authored by Rhode-Island-born U.S. Circuit Judge William J. Kayatta Jr., the court's holding came from a unanimous three-judge panel that included retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

The court affirmed judgment for the university as to the adequacy of the campus adjudication and consequent expulsion of the accused.  The student had challenged the adjudication for the exclusion of some evidence and the lack of opportunity to confront his accuser.  Constitutional rights in the context of the campus administrative process were not offended by those omissions, the court held, applying the flexible procedural due process test of Mathews v. Eldridge (U.S. 1976). It's the latter point, confrontation, that especially vexes critics and marks arguable disagreement with other circuit courts. 

The case arises against the backdrop of a heated national debate over higher education reform.  To my consternation, Title IX has become an area in which serious cases of sexual harassment and physical assault are lumped together on the nations' campuses with gross abuses of the rights of students and faculty.  Legitimate disciplinary processes have been perverted, and therefore caused to undermine civil rights law, by overzealous bureaucrats seeking to enforce politically correct group-think on students and to undermine academic freedom and faculty governance.  Purely in my personal capacity, I filed my own observations with the Department of Education in March.

The instant case is Haidak v. University of Massachusetts-Amherst, No. 18-1248 (1st Cir. Aug. 6, 2019).

Profs talk pop culture at law school conference

At the annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools in the last week of July, colleagues and I had the opportunity to share ideas about teaching law with popular culture. I learned a great deal at that session (and others).  I was able to share about my own use of audiovisual content as it's changed over the years.  I'll say more as we near publication of our book project, The Media Method.  Meanwhile, this teaser ....

Carolina Academic Press mocked up a display copy of the forthcoming Media Method.

Contributors to The Media Method include Professor DeLeith Duke Gossett at Texas Tech School of Law. Presenting at center here, DeLeith is a former student of mine. Teachers will understand the giddy pride induced by collaborating with such a colleague.

Save 25% if you order The Media Method in 2019!
Use the Code TEACH19 when ordering online at caplaw.com. 

'Lights, Camera, Execution!': Political scientist Helen Knowles co-authors new book on capital punishment and popular culture

A new book by poli sci prof and legal researcher extraordinaire Dr. Helen Knowles, SUNY Oswego, has hit the shelf.  It explores the dark edge of the border where popular culture and criminal justice meet.  In this sense it is partly reminiscent of John D. Bessler's unsettling Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America (Northeastern 1997) (Amazon).  Supreme Court followers will remember Dr. Knowles for her landmark study of Justice Kennedy in The Tie Goes to Freedom (2009 & updated 2018) (Amazon).

In Lights!, Camera!, Execution!: Cinematic Portrayals of Capital Punishment (Lexington Books 2019) (Amazon), Knowles and co-authors Bruce E. Altschuler and Jaclyn Schildkraut explore the interplay of popular portrayal of the death penalty with the real thing, considering the implications of mass media for policy-making when, literally, lives are on the line.  Here is the publisher's abstract:
 

Lights, Camera, Execution!: Cinematic Portrayals of Capital Punishment fills a prominent void in the existing film studies and death penalty literature. Each chapter focuses on a particular cinematic portrayal of the death penalty in the United States. Some of the analyzed films are well-known Hollywood blockbusters, such as Dead Man Walking (1995); others are more obscure, such as the made-for-television movie Murder in Coweta County (1983). By contrasting different portrayals where appropriate and identifying themes common to many of the studied films – such as the concept of dignity and the role of race (and racial discrimination) – the volume strengthens the reader’s ability to engage in comparative analysis of topics, stories, and cinematic techniques.Written by three professors with extensive experience teaching, and writing about the death penalty, film studies, and criminal justice, Lights, Camera, Execution! is deliberately designed for both classroom use and general readership.

State FOIA critical in practice, not so much in law school, law student observes

Connor Gillen, UMass Law '21 and a thriving alum of my 1L Torts class, was featured in the local Cape Cod Times during his summer internship with the general counsel of the Barnstable County Sheriff's Office.  Connor's a good bloke, "now considering working in the public sector after graduation."  I was intrigued to read, amid his report:

While interning at the Sheriff’s Office I also learned about the Massachusetts Public Record Laws and the Massachusetts Statewide Records Retention Schedule. These are areas that I would not have learned about in my law school classes, and the information I was taught will give me an advantage once I graduate and become a practicing attorney.

He's no doubt right about that.  Somebody ought to write a casebook about multistate access norms, maybe teach a seminar.  Probably wouldn't sell well, though.

Polish court enjoins Facebook 'private censorship': just one sign of new norms in digital rights

Much worry about censorship today focuses on the private sector, specifically and especially the large tech companies--Google, Facebook, Twitter--who have so much power over what we read, hear, and see.  When I was in journalism school, in ethics class in the early 1990s, a student once mentioned the possibility of a news organization withholding a sensitive story and worried that that would be "censorship."  Professor Lou Hodges--a great teacher, great person, since deceased--vigorously corrected the student, saying that censorship by definition must be governmental action. 

Louis Hodges, W&L

Well denotational niceties aside, and with the great respect due to Professor Hodges, I'm not sure the distinction remains salient.  I've been worried about the private sector in the free speech realm for a long while.  I've already posited in print that the greatest looming threat to the freedom of information around the world today is not government, but private corporations, and I've started writing about what can be done (what already is being done in Africa, relative to: the United States, India, and Europe, forthcoming).  Indeed, even the classical distinction between freedom of expression and the freedom of information has lost much salience in the information age.

In the United States, for good historical reasons, our constitutional law draws a sharp line between the freedom of speech and the freedom of information, and also between state action, "censorship," and private action, so-called "private censorship."  Both of those lines have eroded in the real world, while our law stubbornly insists on them.

Foreign constitutional systems, such as the European and African human rights regimes, do not come with the historical baggage that carved these lines in U.S. constitutional law.  These younger systems are proving more adept at navigating the problem of private action that would suppress speech and information.  That flexibility has meant full employment for lawyers in the counsel offices of Big Tech.

It also means that the law of the internet and the law of digital rights is no longer being authored in the United States.

In Poland, a digital rights organization called the Panoptykon Foundation--I assume named for the legendary imaginings of English philosopher Jeremy Bentham--is litigating without shame against Big Tech, Google and Facebook included.  In a suit against Facebook, Panoptykon has taken up for "SIN," an (acronymed appropriately if coincidentally?) anti-drug NGO in Poland.  SIN apparently suffered content-based take-downs and blocks on Facebook.  It's not clear why Facebook (algorithms? censors?) targeted SIN, though TechCrunch speculated that it might have to do with SIN's strategy on drug counseling: more of a "use responsibly" approach than an abstention-only approach.

The action is based on Polish statute, which guarantees freedom of speech and does not get hung up on any American-style state-action limitation.  In June, a Warsaw court ex parte ordered (in Polish, via Panoptykon) Facebook to stop blocking or removing any online SIN content, pending litigation.  Technically the respondent in the case is Facebook Ireland.  But one can imagine that American Facebook execs are on alert, as foreign courts fuss ever less over the public-private distinction.

Professor Hodges might roll over in his grave to hear me say it, but I am confident that "private censorship" will be the free speech story of the 21st century.  America will be dragged into a new world of legal norms in digital rights, willingly or not.  I would rather see us embrace this new world order and confront the problem of a runaway private sector than see our civil rights law relegated to legal anachronism.

Read about SIN v. Facebook at Panoptykon.  Hat tip @ Observacom.

Tragic legacy of conquest renders astonishing diversity on South America's northern coast today

The Guianas (ArnoldPlaton, CC BY-SA 3.0)

I spent time this summer exploring the Guianas--Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, on South America's northern coast--and Trinidad and Tobago, an island nation just off the coast of Venezuela.  This is a lesser visited part of the world, to be sure, though it boasts a rapidly developing touristic infrastructure that might be the envy of Caribbean and Brazilian neighbors in the decades to come.

As guides and new friends patiently explained across a mind-blowing array of geographic and historical sub-contexts, the story of this southern basin of the Caribbean is a tragedy of colonial conquest, yet yields today a triumphant range of blended cultural traditions.  Mixed ethnic backgrounds deriving identities from dramatically different parts of the globe informed the experience of the people I met more often than not, rendering a picture of diversity--and moreover of peaceful co-existence--like none I have seen elsewhere in the world.

Ruela Goedewacht is head of the Johannes Arabi primary school in Nieuw
Aurora, Suriname (CC BY-SA 4.0). The Peace Corps painted this world map,
and the school features many beautiful murals for the kids to enjoy.

European possession of these lands was itself a shifting game of Old World thrones, with the British, Dutch, French, and Spanish variously laying claims.  The Europeans then sought to exploit their possessions on the backs of slaves and indentured servants, who arrived in waves from China, India, and Africa.  All of these newcomers mixed violently and not, as usual in the Americas, with the people who now identify as Amerindians, themselves a diverse array of nations to begin with.  Later, in the twentieth century, America found ways to insert its cultural and political presence with the avowed aim of regional security, jumbling cultural allegiances yet again.

Anthony Luces of Trinidad Food Tours at left (CC BY-SA 4.0). At center
is my security officer and virtual nephew, Casey Bius.

As a result:  Churches, mosques, and temples of various kinds take up residence adjacently to one another.  Public calendars are speckled with holidays and cultural traditions, whether Ramadan, Christmas, Holi, or the solstice, which enjoy a surprising embrace of mutual observance--not to mention the universally beloved Carnival.  Many people are fluent in multiple dissimilar languages, from Marroon and Amerindian tongues traceable to African and indigenous tribes, to the curving script renderings of the Far East, as well as unique Creole blends of native and European tongues.  And to my mouthwatering delight, the food traditions have produced unprecedented and delectable blends, such as South American-cultivated beef (Western) in a cumin-rich sauce (Indian/Hindu), or pork ribs (Eastern) upon flatbread (Indian/Muslim).

Dino Ramlal of Travel the Guianas, center. At left is one of my steadfast
travel companions, Debby Merickel, who blogs at the Aging Adventurer
(CC BY-SA 4.0).

Ordinarily I travel independently.  But that's not easy in the Guianas.  Developing infrastructure makes local knowledge and a network on the ground essential, unless you have ample time to burn with missed connections.  If you wish to explore the Guianas, I cannot say enough about Dinesh "Dino" Ramlal and his team at Travel the Guianas.  Sign up before Dino realizes how much more he should be charging for his hard work.  Also, I am especially indebted to Anthony Luces, owner and guide of Trinidad Food Tours, for his mind- and  mouth-enriching street food tour of Port of Spain, Trinidad.  To tell you more would spoil the surprises.

Charcoal ice cream on the streets of Port of Spain (CC BY-SA 4.0).

OK, three words:  Charcoal ice cream.

I've said too much.