When it comes to the strug­gles and so­lu­tions of East Port-of-Spain, few can speak with au­thor­i­ty quite like Sis­ter Ruth Mon­trichard. The re­li­gious sis­ter at­tached to the Sis­ters of St Joseph of Cluny has spent 50 years work­ing with the Ser­vice Vol­un­teered for All (SER­VOL) Beetham Life Cen­tre.

Black Col­lar Cre­ative Foun­da­tion will hold its in­au­gur­al event, The Black Col­lar Gala: Clas­sics and Ca­lyp­sos, on Oc­to­ber 4 at 7 pm at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s.

It was the 19th-cen­tu­ry French painter Paul Gau­guin who once said of art, “It is a ques­tion of how to be rich in spir­it rather than rich in ma­te­r­i­al.” Those are words al­most every artist lives by.

For a woman who has won many ac­co­lades in her ca­reer, for­mer West In­dies women’s cap­tain Meris­sa Aguilleira’s na­tion­al award is set apart. Her in­ter­na­tion­al ca­reer in the sport of crick­et spanned over a decade, and she touched every con­ti­nent in the world, but Aguilleira ad­mits that be­ing recog­nised by her own coun­try is sig­nif­i­cant and spe­cial.

Camille Par­ris-Hinds views her three-year-old daugh­ter Cyd­ni's phys­i­cal chal­lenges as a gift from God. Each time she looks in­to Cyd­ni's face, joy fills her heart.

Last week, Book­shelf ex­plored An­drea’s Jour­ney: From Free­dom Fight­er to True Lib­er­a­tion, the mem­oir of An­drea Ja­cob, a woman whose life was shaped by the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion of the 1970s in T&T.

Sagaboi’s Spring/Sum­mer 2025 col­lec­tion en­ti­tled Out and Bad has cap­ti­vat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences in Lon­don and Mi­lan with its vi­brant fu­sion of fash­ion, crafts­man­ship, and Caribbean cul­ture.

While many peo­ple still as­so­ciate hos­pices with death, dy­ing and the smell of an­ti­sep­tics, dis­in­fec­tants, and pun­gent chem­i­cals, all these neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions and pre­con­cep­tions are quick­ly dis­pelled up­on en­ter­ing Vi­tas House.

An in­vi­ta­tion to per­form in Africa evolved in­to an ex­pe­ri­ence of a life­time for mul­ti-tal­ent­ed T&T artiste Em­press Ajé.

The gap in the en­er­gy sec­tor be­tween men and women em­ploy­ees has al­ways been a Gulf apart, even with the gains made in re­cent years.

This week, Book­shelf shines its light on a pow­er­ful new mem­oir that pro­vides an eye­wit­ness ac­count of one of T&T’s most sig­nif­i­cant his­tor­i­cal mo­ments—the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion.

Pro­gramme di­rec­tor of the Civ­ilian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC), Ma­jor David Ben­jamin, says the par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gramme are show­ing the T&T pub­lic the true val­ue of our young peo­ple.