There was an ar­ray of colours, feath­ers and his­to­ry at the Hy­att Re­gency com­pound on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day evening when ‘Echoes of Iere—Wel­come Back to Beau­ty’ was launched by Car­ni­val band, YU­MA.

“Two months ago, I lost my phone. The phone fell on the floor at the phar­ma­cy and about 15 min­utes lat­er they called on my oth­er phone and said, ‘Ms Madrid, you lost your phone in the phar­ma­cy, can you come and pick it up?’ I was sur­prised be­cause, in oth­er coun­tries, that won’t hap­pen.

Last Sun­day night, amidst roars from the wait­ing au­di­ence, An­na-Lise Nan­ton was crowned Miss World T&T, the se­lect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the in­ter­na­tion­al pageant be­ing held in 2025.

Michelle Lewis, orig­i­nal­ly from Co­corite, has sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the pub­lic health­care sys­tem in New York City.

This week’s Book­shelf il­lu­mi­nates the world of N G Pelti­er, a ris­ing star in the ro­mance genre and the au­thor be­hind the ac­claimed Is­land Bites se­ries.

Barataria na­tive Rober­ta Nicolls is ho­n­our­ing the lives of her broth­er and moth­er through aug­ment­ed art. Now based in George­town, Guyana, af­ter hav­ing moved from Trinidad, Nicolls shared that the ori­gins of her art ex­hi­bi­tion, Blank Can­vas­es, be­gan when a void was dug in­to her life fol­low­ing the loss of fam­i­ly.

Vi­su­al artist and founder of J’Ou­vert band Friends For The Road, Che Lovelace, will now have 21 of his colour­ful and riv­et­ing paint­ings show­cased on the rum bot­tles and pack­ag­ing of the Ital­ian/French vin­tage spir­its com­pa­ny, La Mai­son & Ve­li­er (LM&V), re­cent­ly launched in Eu­rope.

Last Sat­ur­day night, I went to a con­cert. I in­tend­ed to sing, dance, and have a grand time. I paid great at­ten­tion to de­tail while get­ting dressed to en­sure I got the de­sired ef­fect. I ar­rived at ex­act­ly 8 pm but on­ly be­cause I can­not be late for any­thing un­less, of course, it’s a sit­u­a­tion be­yond my con­trol. Be­ing late makes me feel flus­tered, rushed, and ir­ri­ta­ble enough to ei­ther make me stay home or cut short my time at an event. I did not ex­pect, whilst at the con­cert, sur­round­ed by peo­ple, noise, con­ver­sa­tion, and laugh­ter, to be recog­nised as any­one oth­er than an­oth­er pa­tron out to re­lax, un­wind, and have fun.

Holy Name Con­vent Sec­ondary School class of 2024 held their grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny en­ti­tled En­chant­ed at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on June 15.

Sec­ondary school grad­u­a­tion, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as “grad”, is of­ten hailed as one of the biggest events of a young per­son’s life. From ear­ly on, young men and women spend count­less hours dis­cussing the core tenets of an ex­cit­ing, un­for­get­table grad­u­a­tion night—the date, the af­ter-par­ty plans, and most im­por­tant­ly, the out­fit.

Cel­e­brat­ed po­et, artist, and film­mak­er Sarah Beck­ett, “Eng­lish by birth and Trinida­di­an by long res­i­dence,” will launch her lat­est work, “IERE Liv­ing in the Land of the Hum­ming­bird”, in Trinidad on Ju­ly 8.

Re­sel Melville had to put in years of hard work and long hours of stud­ies to es­tab­lish her­self as a pro­fes­sion­al. Hav­ing built her con­fi­dence and ex­per­tise, fac­ing ageism and oth­er forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place nev­er left her paral­ysed. In­stead, Melville ho­n­oured her­self enough to leave cer­tain en­vi­ron­ments that were not fit for her.