In a Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005), Rebecca Solnit wrote of the places in which one’s life is lived: “They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and, in the end, …
Read More »Vaneisa: Operation of municipal corporations as important as crime plan
Little things add up. Irritants that are not, of themselves, enough to make you feel besieged. Combined and constant, they are damaging to the psyche—the way water dripping away for years can erode rocks. Feral cats and stray dogs prowling the neighbourhood, stripping garbage bags and shredding the contents. Garbage …
Read More »Vaneisa: A city of clay—how would you reimagine Trinidad and Tobago?
Imagine that you could have every single thing your heart desires. No restrictions. Do you think you could envisage it all at once? I mean, do you believe that on any given day you know precisely what it would take to make you absolutely content? Unlikely, I’d say at first, …
Read More »Vaneisa: Loads of rubbish—what do you do with your trash?
On Republic Day, some friends—mainly from the journalism world—reconnected at my home for lunch. It was a delightfully memorable afternoon, recalling stories of the craziness of the newsrooms and their eccentric characters. We drank a toast to our departed colleagues as we reminisced. But that’s not where I am heading …
Read More »Vaneisa: Leading horses to water—do public education campaigns work?
“She have the flu,” he said, when I asked about his daughter, who sounded weak and listless on the phone. Her symptoms? Fever, body aches and headache. I told him it sounded like dengue, and he should probably get her tested. It baffled me that no one in the household …
Read More »Vaneisa: Green till you blue; T&T must choose sustainable development
It has been about 30 years since Vicki-Ann Assevero put down her bucket in the land of her father’s birth. She didn’t come back because of some ancestral pull to Victor’s homeland—it was because she had met and fallen in love with another Trinidadian, the then-minister of finance, Wendell Mottley, …
Read More »Daly Bread: Accuracy of fact regarding NICU deaths
In the gloom of last Sunday, generated by the deaths of seven babies in less than a week at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in the Port of Spain General Hospital this month, I took heart from the offerings of fellow columnists Raffique Shah and Noble Phillip. During the …
Read More »Noble: The beauty of living with a grateful heart
When we witness injustice and the brutal acts that plague our nation, it is not easy to be grateful. We groan under the weight of many human failings, and our first reaction is not gratitude. Indeed, difficult times and circumstances are handy excuses to be disgruntled and ungrateful. We become …
Read More »Salaah: Piarco solar panel system must not be ‘one-off’ in T&T’s move towards renewable energy
“[…] According to an article in Renewable Energy World, ‘there are about 217 days of sunshine a year in the Caribbean’—making countries in our region ideal for using and investing in renewable energy. “[…] For instance, when there is disruption or interruption in electricity, traffic lights on our nation’s highways and …
Read More »Daly Bread: Going out with a bang! AG’s fireworks ‘solution’ exacerbates the problem
Cabinet members Stuart Young, Clarence Rambharat and Marvin Gonzalez are to be commended for taking a public stand on legislation regarding the sale and use of fireworks—in disagreement with the proposed legislation with which the Attorney General is taking centre-stage. The AG has again gone out on a limb, unaccompanied …
Read More »Demming: What I learned from PMs Rowley and Mottley on our environmental challenges
Joy is often stolen by comparison. Trinbagonians continue to rob ourselves of potential joy because of the continued comparison of our prime minister, Dr Keith Rowley, with the prime minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley. I am also guilty because I want so much more for my country and I worry …
Read More »Dr Rowley: ‘T&T recognise our responsibility in transitioning, over reasonable and manageable time, to net zero…’
“[…] Even as a small country with limited resources, we will make every effort to report to the required standard, with some assistance, of course. We expect others to do the same. “[…] Mr President, as an economy largely based on oil and gas and petrochemicals, we in Trinidad and …
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