Health

I have never liked mixed peel, those little cubes of candied fruit of red, green and yellow that are ubiquitous ornaments for all manner of sweet treats. As a child, I thought they were spiteful additions to sweet breads, coconut drops, fruit cakes and the like. I reasoned that they …

The fictional Winnie the Pooh greeted her best friend, Eeyore, the donkey: “A lovely day, isn’t it?” He replied: “I wish I could say yes, but I cannot.” The Eternal Pessimist could never countenance a good day. For him, it is all for nought! The heavy rains that wrapped our …

When I turned 18, I did two things that signified for me my coming of age. I opened a bank account, and I took out a life insurance policy. An agent of Colonial Life had come to our home pursuing our business. Convinced by his booming presence, and his knowledgeable, …

We, as a nation, are perched at the point of tipping into anarchy, but all is not yet lost. The choice is ours to make. There is no magic bullet or pill to take away our pain. Only a sense of determination, commitment, and a clear vision will drag us …

“[…] What the video creator is clearly signalling is that a prerequisite for good hair is solely based on texture and length… These disruptive and prejudiced attitudes and mindsets must be confronted because they inform other discriminatory practices.  “[…] There are real life consequences to these dangerous prejudices…” The following …

“[…] Many [health care workers] are working under short term contracts—some as short as three months—[and] have been subjected to continual rollovers of their short term contracts and who have been employed continuously for 15 years and more. “[…] Instead of abolishing the short term-rollover contract system, coming up with …

“[…] If it was unsafe for schools to stay open, why were the non-essential businesses allowed to stay open with the workers exposed to the same risk? “[…] We must consider whether these weather alerts are reaching the population—especially in rural areas—and are they being understood? […]” The following Letter …

With the proposed 2022-2023 budget having been laid in Parliament, a lot of Trinbagonians have been forced to be more circumspect in how they spend their precious dollars, especially as many public sector workers are still earning at pre-2104 rates! Nevertheless, something has happened to us even before this budget …

“[…] I have no difficulty with the working journalists reporting the news as they find it, whether positive or negative… My concern is with the columnists and the  established letter-writers. “I am suggesting that you devote at least one of your contributions per month to a positive message—something that will …

“[…] We had fun doing Zoom meetings in our boxer shorts, out of sight of the camera; but some realised that they’d mostly prefer to do work stuff from an office. In long pants, preferably.  “Some missed the water cooler moments, where they could talk about what Ian Alleyne had …

“Pan? Pan my ass! Sat say once that UNC people have dholak and sitar and tabla and tassa; they don’t want no pan!” “Morning, breds,” I had greeted Prakash cheerily as he stepped into the street just as Bobby and I were passing his house on Friday morning. “Yuh hear bout …

I’ve come to believe that what I had thought to be a vicious bout of both acid reflux and one of my lifelong afflictions, bronchitis, was really some form of Covid. By the time it occurred to me that it might be, it was too late for a conclusive test; …