Vashti may have thought she was being treated as a concubine, rather than as a wife and queen. She behaved with haughty dignity when she refused the king’s command, but unfortunately her answer was given in front of the officers of the empire, and she paid the price for humiliating the king.

Ahasuerus, still half-drunk, acted hastily. On the advice of cowed and inept councilors, he made the situation worse by issuing a public decree that Vashti was to be banished. This drew even more attention to the fact that Vashti had flouted his command, and made him look a fool to all his subjects.

At this stage in the story, it becomes obvious that this is not a traditional story about a good king. Ahasuerus was a despot who was also a fool. So a theme begins to emerge: unlimited power, exercised without wisdom, is a dangerous thing.

After a while Ahasuerus found that without Vashti, ‘the beloved one’, he was lonely. He could not call her back because his word, once spoken, was law. So his courtiers suggested a solution: to find another queen, a young and beautiful woman who would take Vashti’s place.

Then the King’s servants who attended him said ‘Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the King. Let the King appoint commissioners in all the province of his kingdom to gather all the beautiful young virgins to the harem in the citadel of Susa under custody of Hegai, the King’s eunuch, who is in charge of the women. Let their cosmetic treatments be given them. Let the girl who pleases the King be Queen instead of Vashti.’ This pleased the King, and he did so.

‘The Grooming of Esther’ by Theodore Chasseriau

Read Esther 2:1-23.

A nation-wide search for a new queen began – the first recorded beauty contest in the world.

A young Jewess was among the candidates. Her beauty was so extraordinary that she ‘pleased’ even the chief eunuch Hegai, who had been castrated while still a young boy – there is a note of irony here.

One wonders too at the background story to all this, whether Hegai played some part in deposing Vashti.

Esther with all the other young virgins was taken into the harem, and twelve months of careful preparation began. She was shrewd enough to seek the advice of Hegai, who knew the king’s tastes. Eventually she went to the king, and pleased him so much that he set the royal crown on her head. She became queen in Vashti’s place – with all the wealth and power of an Eastern queen now suddenly at her disposal.

To get an idea of the magnificent surroundings in which she lived, see the ruins of ancient Persepolis at Bible Archaeology: Palaces

See more fabulous ancient jewelry

Esther was a symbol of Jews who lived successfully in an alien culture. As a woman, she was not in a position of power, just as Diaspora Jews were not members of the power elite. As an orphan, she was separated from her parents, as Diaspora Jews are separated from their mother-country. With both these handicaps, she had to use every skill and advantage she had, as Diaspora Jews did. They, like Esther, had to adapt themselves to the situation.

From the start, Esther had been helped by her uncle Mordecai, but nobody knew that they were related, or that Esther was a Jewess. Esther did not keep the dietary laws of Judaism, or retain the practices of an orthodox Jewess. God is never mentioned directly in the story. So the story is not a ‘religious’ story as such, but a secular one, about pragmatism in the face of adversity.

Not long after her installation as queen, Esther’s uncle Mordecai found out about a plot to assassinate the king. He told Esther, who in turn warned the king. The plotters were hanged, and Mordecai’s warning was recorded in the court annals.

Replaying this week in my mind compelled me to say something about where my people are headed. My fellow Jamaicans who seem less stressed than I am about where we are right now as a people.. The land will forever be green and the sun will continue to shine always, but my people are gradually getting yellow  much like foliage that have fallen at the foot of a tree. They have lost their vibrancy and have ceased to glow so much so that they have accepted this dull, almost bereft form of living.

Speaking to a colleague tonight helped to spin my mind’s replay into action, after hearing him speak proudly of a press release that spoke about the state of many a Jamaican mind, at this time. The blatant narcissism, unnecessary fibbing and the haughty boasting about the narcissistically inclined fib, just about made me empty the contents of my empty stomach. It shook my very foundation! Just who do we have as role models these days?

Many will say that society itself does not owe us a model to be modeled after, but where are the people that make us look good? For years they have covered our poverty, lack of intelligence and our steady demise, sheltering us from a world  that only saw us as ‘’One Love, One Heart…Come to Jamaica and feel alright’’. We are all now too sick to cover our ills; the bad apples have finally spoilt the whole bushel. We have no exemplary figure to even give the full respect a decent human being would deserve. The minute someone comes to mind, their ill deeds attack your train of thoughts much faster than it would take to gather their outstanding goodness.

My colleague elaborated on the recent rekindling of a friendship that had gone awry and excitedly commended the new togetherness citing ‘’brains and dollars’’. This made me ask, just which brain he was talking about, and if the brains and dollars over-shadowed the accusation that caused the friendship to go awry? Murder in 2012 is like stepping on someone’s toes without saying sorry in 1980. It left me thinking:-

1. Was there ever an accusation?
2. Were we really to forget?
3. Does money replace fear?
4. Were we the public gullible fools?

Money is said to be the root of all kinds of evils, yet my friend slithered over the facts as if they really didn’t exist. When did we get to thinking of people as less than human and ultimately less than us? Was this because of ‘’brains and dollars’’? One would think the majority would come in defense of ‘’brains and dollars’’ if both of them in some way benefited the mob, but from the angle I have observed the mob from, they are hungry and unfed, so clearly the ‘’brains and dollars’’ aren’t being spread out. Yet the mob has been in acute support. When asked what they were supporting, the answer quickly gets lost in the long, very silent pause.

Who are our role models, and what positively have they stood for?  The recent announcement by BeenieMan got him a speedy, warm welcome in Belgium but has left our island’s religious aura in cold, wrecked shambles. Wrecked because, again it’s about ‘’brains and dollars’’, this time choosing to forfeit our prided values. The strength that has made our island known from every corner of this earth. Our pride that has made many nations immitate our music and language, we held our heads up proud to be Jamaican because being Jamaican meant something. Strength is never determined in how much blood you draw, it’s determined by being able to endure long enough to fight the fight again and again. Hardships they are, but the land is green and the sun shineth, a description of the people missing, could it be that the land has never betrayed us, but we have and were prophesied to betray this land? Betrayed we have, in standing for nothing, trading our rights for dollars, patriotism nonexistent.

If we stand for nothing we will fall victim to ‘’brains and dollars’’ without realizing that the dollar needs a hand to spend it and the brain needs a head, to function. It will be too late when we see that what we have exchanged equates to nothing.

Every human on the face of this earth deserves  basic human rights which includes freedom of religion and speech. If we were to sell our voice boxes, we would become dumb and void of speech, the person buying our voices will have an edge, having their speech and ours too. Small trade, for something priceless. And just where does our religion that we have the freedom to choose come in? Two separate entities, one advertised, but both sold in the deal, all for what? To show the world that we can bow, and we shall bow, to the master: – Brains and dollars

Gradually, we expect less and less of the people that should cover the holes in our draws by showing that they have good draws on, free of holes and vibrant in color.  They can’t cover us because they too are wearing what we are wearing and cannot cover us because their draws too are in shambles.

We expect less when our young women who are appointed as our role models blatantly switches sides telling us openly that what they showed us before, was a great pretense. Only because we expected nothing, they filled us to capacity with the nothing we expected. Hypocritically we cried out shed ‘’tears’’ in numbers but failing to come to the realization that we had no visions or expectations. The phrase ‘’you get out what you put in’’ totally forgotten because as a society, we have embraced single motherhood, randy manhood and wherever you lay your back, call it your home livelihood.  A visionless young generation with little regard for the elders that have visions. This is what we have embraced.

Young men who no longer feel its masculine to work, but to comb the internet in search of unfilled women looking for an equally unfilled man..to fill with nothing. We have denounced masculinity and have embraced ‘’fem-man-ity’’ because we now train our young women to take the place, men should always have. Still without vision but with ‘’dollars and brains’’, headless to nowhere.

It is sufficing to say that we have accepted hell as our homes. JAM-hell-AICA…See you there!

Dear Taiwo,
SIX months ago, I was a single lady seriously searching for Mr Right. I was living a solitary life until something happened to turn my life around. What I am not sure of is whether the turning around would be for better for worse.

I am a 43-year-old lady who had a rather eventful life and over the years, I have come to the conclusion that life may not be fair, if God’s favour is upon one’s life.

I was born and raised by a single mother, and till this date, I cannot say who my father is or what happened to him. My mother told me he died during the civil war after I was concieved, and because they were not married, my father’s family refused to accept my mother with my pregnancy.

As years rolled by, I began to doubt my mother’s story for two reasons. One, she couldn’t point out my father’s family. Two, she has so many men in her life, the number I cannot count. She even encouraged my sister to date a married man.

There was no love lost between my mother and her family. She was the proverbial black sheep of the family. She and my sister were the only family I had until she died mysteriously when I was in secondary school. Of course, none of my maternal family members wanted to have anything to do with us. It was Aunty Caro, a close friend of my mother, who came to our rescue. We had to go and live with her in Calabar.

Aunty Caro had a provision store somewhere in Calabar, and like my mother, she was a single mother, with a son who lived with his father and came home once in a while to see his mother. Aunty Caro was an affable fellow who would go to any length to keep her fellow human being, but she was always falling ill . Whenever she was too weak to go about her business, my sister and I would manage her store. The implication of this was that we grew up too fast and we were exposed to wordly vices earlier than we were supposed to. Aunty Caro’s gentle nature also did not help matters, this really made us grow up with very wild adults. I dated quite a number of boys in my school and one or two Igbo guys who had shops in the same market where our aunt’s shop was, and that was where I met Samien.

He used to sell clothes in the same market. I was so infatuated with him that I believed him when he said he loved me and would marry me. I eloped with him to Onitsha where he decided to re-establish his business after leaving Calabar. You can guess what happened to me when I got to Onitsha, within weeks of staying there, it was obvious that Samien only intended to use and dump me.

One night, he told me it was over between us and he threw me out. One of our neighbours accommodated me for few days before I was able to find my feet in Onitsha.

I was able to get a job as a sales girl in a supermarket and squatted with a colleague, Chinwe. Chinwe was also full of stories about Lagos. She had an elder brother in Lagos whom she had been opportune to visit several times. She told me so much about Lagos that I began to yearn to visit the no man’s land and also the means to get there was not available.

The opportunity came when Chinwe’s brother asked her to come over and she felt it would be nice if we could go together. I didn’t even think twice before I followed her. And before I knew it, I became a Lagosian and this marked, the beginning of another episode of my life. On getting to Lagos, I enrolled at a catering and hotel management school courtesy Chinwe’s brother and after graduating I started a small catering business.

Life in Lagos wasn’t easy especially when it came to relationships. After the kind of life I lived in Calabar and the experience I went through in Onitsha, I became wise in my dealings with men, but it didn’t stop me from being used and dumped. That has been one major battle I have fought in my life, it was as if my life was marked for doom in the area of marriage. It seemed all men wanted from me was quick sex and nothing more.

In an attempt to find a lasting solution to this problem, a friend of mine took me to a pastor for prayers. It was during prayers that it was revealed that I had a water spirit which gave me an aura was repelling men. The pastor advised that I should go through a spiritual deliverance, and I did. After the deliverance, everything seemed okay. I met Clement, a businessman who appeared to be genuinely interested in me. We dated for about a year and we fixed our wedding date. I was glad that things were finally going to be okay and my dreams of settling down in my home with a man I loved were finally coming true. But unfortunately, a week to my wedding, Clement disappeared and I later heard that he had married another woman.

Devastated, I went back to the pastor, and after a long interrogation and mind search, I realised where I went wrong. The pastor said I shouldn’t have had sex with Clement before marriage, but I did. Sex with him was like breaking an edge and the water spirit dealt with me through that. I really did not know what got into me, I had kept to the pastor’s advice, I didn’t have sex with Clement all along, but I succumbed to his pressure two days before the day he left me, which was about a week to our wedding.

Having learnt my lesson, I resolved within myself I would not have sex with the next man who comes my way until we get married. This resolve, however, marked the beginning of another phase in my life.

I met some men, who wanted sex but I refused. I continued that way until eventually, men stopped asking me out. At a level, I became confused, obviously, I didn’t like the idea of being used and dumped by men and at the same time the fact that men stopped asking me out became scary, because I wasn’t getting any younger, and when I thought I was through with men, just six months ago, Biodun came into my life and it was a big break after a long period. He was an answer to my prayers. We were matchmade, Bayo resided in London, and he had also experienced some forms of troubles with the opposite sex. He was careful and that was why he mandated his sister here in Nigeria to help him out. His elder sister was a member of my church, she told me about Bayo and I agreed to give him a trial. I told my pastor about the whole issue, he prayed with me and said God did not reveal anything either negative or positive to him. He, however, advised me to keep an open mind and be prayerful.

The first time I spoke with Bayo on phone, my heart immediately went out to him. We related as if we had both met earlier and we had many things in common. When Bayo came to Nigeria two months after we spoke on phone, I must confess that I was not disappointed with what I saw. He was exactly what I dreamt of. He made me very happy and his family members were nice to me. My problem with him started when he was about to leave for London. He asked to have sex with me and I refused, although he did not force me or pressurise me, but I knew something changed.

He has since returned to London. He has called me several times. We chat, but I am not comfortable whenever he speaks with me on phone. I can feel his anger and disappointment. He has also become jealous. When he calls and he hears a male voice in the background, most of the time when I am in my shop he becomes angry.

I am really not happy about the way things are between me and Bayo. I have grown to like him and I hoped our relationship would lead to a positive end. I am no longer young neither is Bayo. We are agemates.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should have given in to his demand for sex. Well, I would have lost him. My refusal is not making things easier either.

I have prayed about Bayo like my pastor advised, and I also depended on experience to hold on to him, but all the time, I have this feeling that I am losing out, and I don’t know what to do.

Bayo is coming home for Christmas. He has not spoken with me or asked me to marry him. The only thing close to that was when he said he would love to meet my family. Fortunately, through the help of my pastor, I have been able to reconcile with Aunty Caro and my sister and they are also looking forward to seeing him.

The last time we spoke, he told me he would not take no for an answer. He has not proposed marriage. Should I risk it? Should sex come before marriage? I am really confused, please, help me.

Hello all,

Just passing on some information –

I received the following statement from Tanesha “Shorty” Johnson, common-law-wife of my former client Adidja Palmer. In response to published reports that proceeds from the May 22nd concert at Club Riddim will be donated toward aiding Kartel’s legal fees, she insists that Kartel is not in need of charity, stating:

“Dem reporter deh bright. Dem fi lose dem work. Me babyfada get 4 lawyer fi himself, plus 1 for Shawn Storm, 1 for Kahira, 1 for Nigel, 1 for Leng, 1 for Gaza Slim, and 1 for Madsuss make 10. And any time dem get pay, a me go bank go draw money. Plus a me have him debit card. Me three youth dem school fee pay every term. Light and water pay and me house have food. So all who a talk can’t stop him. A di benz truck him a go buy when him come, fi match di car.”

*Mi wudda like know if a shawtie really seh dis or dem publicist mek it up…btw is only here run di story so please tell shawtie seh mi a nuh reporter………… so di man dem pay still under inspection?***

Mavado follow-up: WE THE BEST Recording Artist Mavado has filed
several defamation, libel an loss of earnings suits claiming damages
in the millions against co-defendants Ron Nelson and Natasha Von
Castle in Toronto Civil Court in response to vicious lies disseminated
via Blackberry Broadcast and Blog posts by Nelson and Von Castle this
week. We The Best CEO DJ Khaled is currently drawing up similar
papers, alongside Slim and Baby of YMCMB. The two co-defendants Nelson
and Von Castle are currently being sought out so that papers can be
served on themNelson is from reggaemania.com and Von Castle is from L3
magazine
‎​So l3 release this statement: Statement from Natasha Von Castle –
Editor-in-Chief for L3 Magazine
Much interest has been expressed in the information released to the
public via the social networking site Twitter, on the
@L3Magazine timeline.
To update the public, we first received news regarding Mavado at 4:51pm EST.
At that time, our credible source advised us that1.
Mavado will not be performing at his scheduled May 26
th performance at the Kool Haus in Toronto.
2.
Our source advised that the artist has been dropped by his label,
Young Money Records (Mavado’s correct label name is We The Best Music
Group).
3.
We were told that an international arrest warrant had been issued
due to Mavado assaulting a police officer in Jamaica.
We verified the news which was confirmed as accurate.
We released items 1 and 2 cited above, not item 3.
At 6:19 EST, our source updated us to advise that Mavado will be
releasing a statement regarding his not being able to travel to
Canada.
As of the release of this statement (8:50pm EST – Tuesday May 15
th, 2012), Mavado has not issued his press release.
We have since been asked by interested parties if Mavado will be
performing at Best of the Best in Miami for Memorial Day weekend (a
U.S. Holiday).
We do not know.
We have also been asked if he will appear at the Montreal
International Reggae Festival to make up for his no-show last year.
To that inquiry we don’t know either.  Mavado and his team will
address upcoming performance dates and whether he will be able to
fulfill his contractual obligations.
Further inquiries can be directed to
[email protected]
________________________________________________________________________________
L3 MAGAZINE ISSUE APOLOGY BUT MAVADO YUH A GWAAN LIKE A SOME BIG FARRIN MAGAZINE…WE DI JAMAICAN MEDIA DOE HAVE NUTTIN FI GIVE UNNO WHEN UNNO SUE BOO

Personal Statement from Natasha Von Castle re Mavado

On Tuesday May 15th, 2012, I issued a statement regarding Mavado which was shared on the social networking site Twitter via @L3Magazine as well as www.thefamousface.blogspot.com. In my personal statement I made reference to a ‘source’ who provided me with information regarding Mavado and his inability to perform in Toronto, as well as the artist being dropped from Young Money Records, and a criminal charge which has resulted in an arrest warrant.

I called my source to confirm that the information was indeed correct to which I was told that it was. We had several exchanges via blackberry, and I was assured the accuracy of the information. The source of my information was Ron Nelson and www.reggaemania.com.

I have since been in contact with Mavado through his Canadian Agent Rahim. My information that Mavado will not be performing in Toronto on May 25th is true, however, Mavado has not been dropped by his label Young Money Records, and, there is no arrest warrant for the artists’ arrest. That information from Ron Nelson was incorrect.

In my many years of being a journalist, and running L3 Magazine, my professionalism has always been to and of the highest standard. I am not in the business of spreading false information; I take my job and my voice in the Caribbean-Urban community very seriously.

I personally apologize to Mavado, DJ Khaled, Baby and the Cash Money Records label for the mis-information expressed by me and L3Magazine, and www.L3Magazine.com.

Natasha Von Castle

P.S AND DAT IS WHY MI NUH CARRY NO STORY FROM NO JAMAICAN ENTERTAINMENT WEBSITE…I WILL TRY MI LUCK WID STAR, GLEANER AND OBSERVER…IS TIME UNNO FIND UNNO OWN CONTENT…YUH CYAA JUS GO PAN A WEBSITE WHEY SIMILAR IN MEDIA AND DRAW OFF WHEY DEM HAVE AND POST SUH…