Time Longa' Dan Twine: Notes on the Culture, History, and People of the U.S. Virgin Islands

Time Longa' Dan Twine (Time's Longer than Twine) is an expression that reflects the wisdom of the people and culture of the Virgin Islands, meaning, in one sense, that the things of the world always dwarf the things of man. Virgin Islands scholar Arnold R. Highfield has taken this admonition as his starting point and his guide in his quest to reveal the foundations of local history. In these pages you will follow in the wake of Columbus on his second Caribbean voyage, visit the indigenous folk who lived here hundreds of years before his coming, feel the force of powerful hurricanes, take part in the early settlement of these islands by small bands of settlers, travel from Africa across the Atlantic on board abominable slave ships, and learn ultimately to appreciate the culture that was created over several centuries in the encounter between Europeans and Africans in the context of a plantation society dedicated to the production of sugar and rum. You will meet fascinating individuals whose lives have emerged from this vast story, people who dared look beyond the limitations that life and circumstances imposed upon them in order to travel the earth and to experience life to the fullest—ambassadors, athletes, adventurers, intellectuals, planters, and common folk. You will walk under the mighty spirit trees, among plantation ruins, through deserted sugar-mills, and along the streets of time-worn colonial towns. In a word, you will experience in these pages a Virgin Islands that has never before been so fully revealed.Arnold R. Highfield is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Social Sciences at the University of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix Campus. Among his numerous publications are St. Croix 1493, The Kamina Folk, The French Dialect of St. Thomas, Hans West's Accounts of St. Croix in the West Indies, J. L. Carstens' St. Thomas in Early Danish Times, Theoretical Orientations in Creole Studies, Under a Taino Moon, Sea Grapes and Kennips, Crucian Recollections, and St. Croix 1650–1733.

Arnold R. Highfield is a professor, historian, writer, and poet, best known for his historical works on the Danish West Indies and the United States Virgin Islands. The eldest of two children, he was born in New Boston, Ohio. He earned a BA in Social Sciences and History from The Ohio State University in 1964 and an MA in Medieval History in 1966. In 1966-67, he attended the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, where he studied French. In 1968, he studied Spanish at the University of Madrid in Spain. In 1976, he earned a doctorate in Romance Linguistics, also from The Ohio State University. He and his wife, Shirley DeChabert-Highfield, have lived in the US Virgin Islands since the 1960s. The couple presently divide their time between homes in Le Grande Princesse, St. Croix, and Middlebury, Vermont. He has written a number of works on the Danish West Indies and U.S. Virgin Islands. In 1995, he published St. Croix 1493: An Encounter of Two Worlds, (St. Thomas: Virgin Islands Humanities Council, 1995), which analyzes the stop that Columbus made at St. Croix and the encounter with the native population during his second voyage in 1493. That book was followed by Negotiating Enslavement in 2009, a collection of essays and papers on slavery in the Danish islands, including a paper on Mingo Gesoe by Highfield. In 2010, he brought out Time Longa' dan Twine: Notes on the Culture, History, and People of the U.S. Virgin Islands a collection of essays and articles written over the previous ten years. In 2012, there appeared Sea Grapes and Kennips: The Story of Christiansted Town and Its People, a successor volume to the previous one. In 2013, he published St. Croix 1650-1733: A Plantation Society in the French Antilles, which takes a detailed look at St. Croix under French Dominion and the sale of the island by France to Denmark. Most recently, in 2014, he published Crucian Recollections: From the Compelling Past of a Storied Island. In addition to his own writing, he has published an impressive number of translation editions. Foremost among them are: C.G.A. Oldendorp's History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brethren on the Caribbean Islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John; translations of J. L. Carstens' writing; and Hans West's Accounts of St. Croix in America in the West Indies. Dr. Highfield also has other books, academic papers and articles to his credit, along with two books of poetry: An Archaeology of Names (1993) and Under a Taino Moon (2008).