Bren­da­lyn Bois­son is a 51-year-old nail tech­ni­cian raised in the small vil­lage of Va­len­cia. She lived there for the first 21-years of her life, af­ter which she got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to An­tigua where she lived for 17 years and worked as a sales­per­son in dif­fer­ent cloth­ing stores.

Born in San­gre Grande and ma­tured in St James, Eliz­a­beth Lu­cas con­sid­ers her­self to be a coun­try/town girl. As a grad­u­ate of North East­ern Col­lege (al­though her ed­u­ca­tion and up­bring­ing didn’t help much with her pas­sion) her past class­mates al­ways re­flect on times when she would be seen il­lus­trat­ing de­signs at the back of her books.

They call her “Trans­port Boss-la­dy”, moth­er of three beau­ti­ful, tal­ent­ed chil­dren, Khaty Ann Mar­tin-Jones was born and bred in San­gre Grande, as the 10th of 12 chil­dren. With a back­ground in Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment, she is cur­rent­ly the op­er­a­tions su­per­vi­sor at PTSC and act­ing as­sis­tant man­ag­er for the San­gre Grande De­pot.

Car­ifes­ta is the biggest cel­e­bra­tion of the Arts of the Caribbean and it’s here again af­ter 13 years. Wow, what a birth­day cel­e­bra­tion smack in the mid­dle of my birth month. Every­one knows how much of a Caribbeanist, I am, so I am elat­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence the pro­lif­ic tal­ents and in­ter­act with the wealth of cre­atives over the next cou­ple of weeks here in our fes­ti­val cen­tre of the West In­dies.

Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans were ho­n­oured last week Wednes­day night when the South Cen­tral Re­gion of Tu­co host­ed Free­dom Road 3, at the City Hall Au­di­to­ri­um, Har­ris Prom­e­nade, San Fer­nan­do. The show was up to the high stan­dards set by this arm of Tu­co for its every pro­duc­tion and the an­nu­al suc­cess of its Kaiso Showkase ca­lyp­so show.

Un­like its first in­stal­ment last year, last week’s Eman­ci­pate Your­self Through Steel was held un­der clear skies at Des­per­a­does’ pa­n­yard in Port-of-Spain. Host­ed by pop­u­lar ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty Vin­yard, the pro­gramme was a var­ied one, treat­ing pa­trons to pan, brass, fash­ion, and African drum­ming and dance.

My name is Kristy O’Con­nor. Grow­ing up, my fam­i­ly was al­ways con­scious of what we put in­to our bod­ies. My dad al­ways said, “Not every­thing you can eat is food”. There are so many ill­ness­es around us to­day and it seems like every­day a new ill­ness shows up. It’s get­ting worse. Imag­ine dis­eases like liv­er can­cer and di­a­betes are af­fect­ing our chil­dren. Not so long ago, it was on­ly old­er folks who got strokes and heart at­tacks, but nowa­days, it is so preva­lent among young peo­ple. It is tru­ly scary. I be­lieve that most of the dis­eases are re­lat­ed to our lifestyles and par­tic­u­lar­ly the “foods” we choose to put in our bod­ies. At the Health Cot­tage Whole Foods store, we pro­vide every­thing one would need to lead a healthy lifestyle. From sup­ple­ments to or­gan­ic pro­duce and a wide range of whole foods, we have every­thing to nour­ish the body at every stage of life.

From Au­gust 1 to Au­gust 7, World Breast­feed­ing Week is recog­nised. It is cel­e­brat­ed in over 170 coun­tries around the world and high­lights the im­por­tance of breast­feed­ing for chil­dren world­wide. This an­nu­al cam­paign has been cel­e­brat­ed for the last 27 years and con­tin­ues to grow every year. The week is launched in­ter­na­tion­al­ly by the World Al­liance for Breast­feed­ing Ac­tion (WA­BA) and is en­dorsed by the Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund (UNICEF) and The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO).

Type II Di­a­betes is one of the most com­mon, non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases af­fect­ing adults and in­creas­ing­ly more and more chil­dren with­in the west­ern hemi­sphere. Sim­ply put, di­a­betes is a dis­ease where blood glu­cose, al­so called blood sug­ar, is too high for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods of time.

If you’re look­ing for a healthy snack that can give you a lit­tle boost of en­er­gy at the same time, most peo­ple will tell you to run to a hand­ful of nuts. For the month of Au­gust, Health Plus Su­per­food of The Week will be fo­cused sole­ly on nuts, let­ting you know the ben­e­fits that this pow­er­ful snack can have for your body.

I was re­cent­ly asked, “Do you re­mem­ber those cars from long ago that car­ried mikes on their tops and made an­nounce­ments through­out vil­lages? Do those still ex­ist? Have you seen any of those re­cent­ly?” Well, it is said that when you speak of some­thing, the uni­verse has a way of bring­ing it to you.

A high­ly sought af­ter mu­si­cian lives in the hum­ble vicin­i­ty of Rochard Road, Bar­rack­pore. Why is he in such high de­mand? Well, he is mul­ti-tal­ent­ed and still man­ages to por­tray hu­mil­i­ty and sim­plic­i­ty. Twen­ty-four-year-old Yovin­dra Bridglal plays the har­mo­ni­um, gui­tar, man­dolin, ac­cor­dion and bul­bul tarang.