At a time when the world is cry­ing out for peace, love and uni­ty — and as T&T finds it­self un­com­fort­ably close to what in­ter­na­tion­al news has de­scribed as the threat of war — Hum­ming­bird Medal re­cip­i­ent and car­ni­val band­leader Vanes­sa Forde has turned to her own “peace troop”, Clas­six Pro­duc­tions (CP), to cre­ate joy, calm and har­mo­ny.

To res­i­dents of tenth Street, Techi­er Vil­lage, Point Fortin, Myr­tle Mau­rice-Bai­ley, known wide­ly as Ma Bai­ley, will al­ways be one of the pil­lars of their com­mu­ni­ty.

One of Ch­agua­nas’ most pop­u­lar J’Ou­vert bands, Jou­vert Junkiez, is promis­ing a pow­er­ful re­turn to the roots of Car­ni­val with its 2026 por­tray­al, Ra­ma­jay… Time to Break Away.

“I found it very full of death and cold.” Wendy Doniger’s re­ac­tion to the Taj Ma­hal ap­pears in An Amer­i­can Girl in In­dia: Let­ters and Rec­ol­lec­tions, 1963–64. The ex­tract pub­lished here is tak­en from that book.

Prose fic­tion writer and hand­i­craft artiste, Vashti Bowlah, cred­its her rur­al up­bring­ing and her par­ents for her be­com­ing a pub­lished au­thor and en­tre­pre­neur.

Sav­ina Ram­nanan, known pro­fes­sion­al­ly as Sav­ina or Sav­ina Leo, is a life coach, as­trologer, and spir­i­tu­al guide whose work is root­ed in both tra­di­tion and lived ex­pe­ri­ence. Raised in a Hin­du house­hold, she cred­its her up­bring­ing with lay­ing a strong spir­i­tu­al foun­da­tion that would lat­er shape her world­view and ca­reer. As an adult, she came to recog­nise that much of what is mar­ket­ed as “New Age” spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in the West draws heav­i­ly (of­ten with­out ac­knowl­edge­ment) on Hin­du and In­dige­nous philoso­phies. Still a prac­tis­ing Hin­du, Ram­nanan ap­proach­es spir­i­tu­al­i­ty with rev­er­ence and depth and in­ter­twines it in­to her pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice.

The year 2013 saw a dras­tic change for me. It was around Au­gust or Sep­tem­ber that I was giv­en the dev­as­tat­ing news that I had cer­vi­cal can­cer. Need­less to say, I felt numb for some mo­ments un­til the enor­mi­ty of my sit­u­a­tion be­gan to sink in, and a roller­coast­er of emo­tions kicked in, the fore­most be­ing fear and anx­i­ety and, of course, hav­ing to break this heartwrench­ing news to my fam­i­ly. But it had to be done, nonethe­less.

As the Na­tion­al Dance As­so­ci­a­tion (NDA) en­ters its 45th year, the or­gan­i­sa­tion finds it­self at a crit­i­cal junc­ture. While the as­so­ci­a­tion is re­spect­ed for its lega­cy, the mem­bers are aware that lega­cy alone can­not car­ry dance in­to the fu­ture.

New York, NY—Caribbean mu­sic reached a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone at Jazz at Lin­coln Cen­ter as Kesthe­Band de­liv­ered a land­mark, sold-out, two-night run at the Uni­ty Jazz Fes­ti­val—set­ting a first for so­ca mu­sic with­in the fes­ti­val’s his­to­ry.

Staff of The Re­tail Ware­house (Christ­mas Vil­lage) (TRW) and Cook­ies N Cream Kids Stores (CNCK) turned up the glam­our on Jan­u­ary 4, step­ping out fash­ion-for­ward at Pas­sage to Asia restau­rant, Ch­agua­nas, for the com­pa­nies’ first Staff Awards and Din­ner Cer­e­mo­ny.

The evo­lu­tion of cer­vi­cal can­cer man­age­ment is wide­ly re­gard­ed as one of the great­est suc­cess sto­ries in mod­ern med­i­cine, il­lus­trat­ing how pre­ven­tion, ear­ly de­tec­tion, and pub­lic health pol­i­cy can dra­mat­i­cal­ly re­duce can­cer bur­den. Yet, this suc­cess has been un­even, with pro­found dis­par­i­ties be­tween high-in­come coun­tries and many low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries (LMICs).

At The Guild, lo­cat­ed at the Shoppes of Mar­aval, Richard Young is cul­ti­vat­ing more than a cre­ative space—he is nur­tur­ing an ecosys­tem where Caribbean iden­ti­ty and women’s em­pow­er­ment in­ter­sect.