With all the Sa­ha­ran dust in the at­mos­phere, snor­ing is prob­a­bly, to­geth­er with cough­ing and/or a run­ny nose, the most com­mon com­plaint I see nowa­days. Is there a re­la­tion­ship? There sure is. It is one of the few rea­sons I ac­cept for chil­dren wear­ing that mon­stros­i­ty, the mask, that was forced up­on us dur­ing COVID. It does pro­tect the nose against ir­ri­ta­tion and block­age.

May is Men­tal Health Aware­ness Month. The phrase ap­pears on posters, in cam­paigns and across so­cial me­dia. It is well-in­ten­tioned and nec­es­sary. But if we are hon­est, aware­ness alone has not tak­en us very far.

Dur­ing dif­fi­cult times, we of­ten cling to hope and search for an­chors who re­mind us that bet­ter days are ahead. As this year’s Glob­al Hero of Hope, Mar­sha Daniel Joseph is do­ing ex­act­ly that, one in­spir­ing step at a time.

Glob­al cli­mate sci­ence met Caribbean re­al­i­ty in a gath­er­ing that car­ried both sym­bol­ic and sci­en­tif­ic weight, in Nas­sau last week.

There is an un­de­ni­able in­ter­sec­tion where cul­ture, arts and fash­ion col­lide, and on May 8, that meet­ing point was no more ev­i­dent than in Amer­i­ca’s Na­tion­al Pub­lic Ra­dio (NPR) Tiny Desk Con­cert.

Fleet Chief Pet­ty Of­fi­cer (Re­tired) Syd­ney Alexan­der joined the Coast Guard at 21 with a plan to stay for six years. Some­where along the way, that plan changed. His 29-year ca­reer came down to the strong bond he found with his crew: “Ca­ma­raderie, a fam­i­ly unit, love and look­ing out for each oth­er.” It was a com­mit­ment that ul­ti­mate­ly stretched from No­vem­ber 18, 1968, un­til his re­tire­ment on March 9, 1997.

The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) has paid trib­ute to one of its longest-serv­ing and most in­flu­en­tial lead­ers, Dr De­ok­i­nanan Shar­ma, by of­fi­cial­ly ded­i­cat­ing its Her­itage Cen­tre in his ho­n­our.

From suc­cu­lent meats to airy and but­tery bakes, crisp chunky veg­eta­bles to deca­dent desserts, the 31-year-old shy Ba­lan­dra res­i­dent’s dish­es speak on her be­half, telling sto­ries of a well-honed craft de­vel­oped through pas­sion, care, and the con­sis­ten­cy of serv­ing up de­light­ful meals to her fam­i­ly, friends, and guests at her work­place at the Queen’s Beach Saly­bia Na­ture Re­sort.

Long be­fore her sketch­es were stored neat­ly in a fold­er, Jalysa John’s art­work lived on the walls of her fam­i­ly home—pen­cil draw­ings stretch­ing across every avail­able sur­face. What some par­ents might have dis­cour­aged, see­ing it as mis­chief, John’s par­ents saw as some­thing else en­tire­ly: the ear­ly signs of a gift worth pro­tect­ing.

Have you ever looked in the mir­ror and wished your arms looked more toned? Maybe you avoid sleeve­less cloth­ing be­cause you feel self-con­scious about your up­per arms. The good news is that you do not need com­pli­cat­ed work­outs or hours in the gym to start see­ing re­sults. Sim­ple iso­la­tion ex­er­cis­es, which tar­get spe­cif­ic mus­cle groups, can help strength­en and tone your arms over time.

“It is Tou­s­saint’s supreme mer­it that while he saw Eu­ro­pean civil­i­sa­tion as a valu­able and nec­es­sary thing, and strove to lay its foun­da­tions among his peo­ple, he nev­er had the il­lu­sion that it con­ferred any moral su­pe­ri­or­i­ty. He knew French, British, and Span­ish im­pe­ri­al­ists for the in­sa­tiable gang­sters that they were, that there is no oath too sa­cred for them to break, no crime, de­cep­tion, treach­ery, cru­el­ty, de­struc­tion of hu­man life and prop­er­ty which they would not com­mit against those who could not de­fend them­selves… Yet when the mass­es turn (as turn they will one day) and try to end the tyran­ny of cen­turies, not on­ly the tyrants but all ‘civil­i­sa­tion’ holds up its hands in hor­ror and clam­ours for ‘or­der’ to be re­stored. If a rev­o­lu­tion car­ries high over­head ex­pens­es, most of them it in­her­its from the greed of re­ac­tionar­ies and the cow­ardice of the so-called mod­er­ates. Long be­fore abo­li­tion, the mis­chief had been done in the French colonies and it was not abo­li­tion but the re­fusal to abol­ish which had done it.”

There are still places in Trinidad and To­ba­go where some­one can feel like they’re be­ing watched. One of those places is in the for­est.