Like the Span­ish Flu a hun­dred years ago, se­vere acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome coro­n­avirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), or as it’s more wide­ly known as the nov­el coro­n­avirus or COVID-19, re­mind­ed mankind of its in­signif­i­cance in the uni­ver­sal or­der of things. In the health pol­i­cy world, we of­ten use the phrase “dis­eases know no bor­ders” and COVID-19 can at­test to this.

As we con­tin­ue to adapt to the mul­ti­ple changes in our lives, we rec­og­nize that the im­pact on chil­dren and ado­les­cents has been sig­nif­i­cant. Re­cent ar­ti­cles have iden­ti­fied teens as a group of “un­sung he­roes” of these times, as they have had to rapid­ly ac­cept an abrupt end to their school year, missed mile­stones in­clud­ing grad­u­a­tions for which they are griev­ing and changes to their re­la­tion­ships with friends.

When a teenag­er is di­ag­nosed with can­cer it is a hard­er pill to swal­low. They are ex­posed to more of life and there­fore their knowl­edge of what can­cer is makes it hard­er for the en­tire fam­i­ly to cope. JBF talks to Ane­sha who beat the odds, and is now a part of the health­care sys­tem in a very pos­i­tive way.

The names Quin­cy Tay­lor, age 29 years, and Justin Eligon, 27, may have been known in their liv­ing com­mu­ni­ty as good, bad or in­dif­fer­ent youths, but at some point in our grow­ing, we all were a bit of each, and ei­ther mere­ly grew and ma­tured or grew and ma­tured “well.” While grow­ing/ma­tur­ing, the fa­mous ques­tion posed to many chil­dren is: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and most times, we are clue­less or state a ca­reer that we on­ly know of su­per­fi­cial­ly. Tru­ly fun­ny, though, very few of us evolve in­to what we re­al­ly want­ed to be.

The Derek Wal­cott Fes­ti­val, to­geth­er with Ar­row­smith Press and the Boston Play­wrights’ The­atre, has an­nounced the short list of the first an­nu­al Derek Wal­cott Prize for a full-length book of po­ems pub­lished in 2019 by a liv­ing po­et who is not a US cit­i­zen. The win­ner, to be se­lect­ed by Glyn Maxwell, will be an­nounced in Ju­ly.

The el­dest of 17 sib­lings; from age sev­en years, the per­form­ing arts was the light bulb il­lu­mi­nat­ing the mind; start­ed bal­let and folk dance at age nine. This was lo­cal so­ca artiste Denise “Saucy Wow” Bel­fon. Dancer, foot­ball, gym­nas­tics, Howard Uni­ver­si­ty Foot­ball Schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ent, chef, moth­er, grand­moth­er, men­tor, pro-song­bird char­ac­terise, but as a teenag­er, try­ing to ra­tio­nalise how school ed­u­ca­tion was go­ing to ful­fil the mu­sic and per­form­ing dream, haunt­ed. Boys were on the mind a bit too; but who, be­sides the Cre­ator, tru­ly knows what’s in store for you.

Akhen­aton "Ken" Sim­mons has been a pop­u­lar voice on the ra­dio air­waves for years. Now, in the time of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, he is not on­ly pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty en­ter­tain­ment but al­so lead­ing the charge for healthy lifestyles.

When Mae­gan Pol­lon­ais left T&T 12 years ago to pur­sue ter­tiary stud­ies, she planned to study so­ci­ol­o­gy to be­come a crim­i­nol­o­gist. In pur­suit of that dream, she en­rolled in a de­gree pro­gramme at SUNY Platts­burgh in New York.

The icon­ic Bar­ba­di­an po­et Ka­mau Brath­waite, who died in Feb­ru­ary this year, would have been 90 on May 11.

Naaz Khan, own­er of Mai­son Culi­naire, is a pro at cre­at­ing recipes free from processed in­gre­di­ents, dairy, re­fined sug­ars and gluten. In her episode of Com­mu­ni­ty Kitchen, she showed Lur­bz how to make a ve­g­an, dairy-free, sug­ar-free choco­late mousse us­ing Nat­u­ral­ly Al­mond‘s al­mond milk.

As we be­gin to “open up” T&T af­ter al­most 50 days of lock­down, there is a sense of re­lief from most quar­ters. Sig­nif­i­cant in this en­tire time of so­cial dis­tanc­ing and shel­ter in place were the con­ver­sa­tions on so­cial me­dia about food—dou­bles and roti run­ning way ahead of KFC in my es­ti­ma­tion of the con­ver­sa­tions.

Corned beef and cab­bage is a tra­di­tion­al Irish dish that fea­tures corned beef slow­ly sim­mered with onions, pota­toes, car­rots, cab­bage, beef broth and beer. But Caribbean peo­ple know it as some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, main­ly be­cause we use canned corned beef, like this one from Tar­get.