I don't think many people understand the difference between loneliness and solitude.

I want to press pause on this moment, insert a black DVD and then resume play while recording, I have been a part of, and witness to, perhaps the single, most important moment in the history of Trinidad and Tobago.

School, government and family planning officials thought they had enough on their hands either keeping teens from having sex or encouraging them to have safe sex.

Today, while perusing my Facebook news feed, I saw a comment, made by a young person of African descent, that made me cringe.

On the morning of February 12, 2008, Lawrence King, an openly gay high school student in Oxnard, California, was shot to death by a schoolmate in a classroom.

The chaos witnessed in Haiti after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked its capital on Jan. 12 made us acutely aware of how vulnerable we are to natural disaster.

Scenes in Port-au-Prince days after the earthquake could happen anywhere in T&T, without a proper crisis-management system in place. It is good to see that Minister of Education Esther Le Gendre has taken note of that fact.

The altercation between the principal and a teacher at the El Dorado East Secondary School on Oct. 19 is one of the more recent stories of indiscipline that will sadly be dismissed as an isolated case.

The sobering reality of crime in Trinidad and Tobago may not saturate our pages like it does in the local dailies, but this absence is in no way a reflection of its place in our consciousness.

Each new school year seems to bring the magic of newness. Yet old problems continue to plague us. At a post-Cabinet press conference, Minister of Education Esther Le Gendre pointed out that poor performances by CSEC students in mathematics and English were better than their regional counterparts.

Maybe you weren't yet born in 1990. Still, July 1990, in the history of Trinidad and Tobago, will be remembered as the month and year darkness hovered over our capital city from billowing clouds of smoke above Police Headquarters.