Brookside Baby

When you know the way to Santa Fe

2012-02-02T18:38:00.000+08:00

Ceding this space again to friend PAT because of this spot of good news: the latest acclaim Cecile Licad reaped for her country. That's nothing new, of course, because she is nothing less than great wherever she performs.

But the delight was her new hairdo, or shall another friend Amadis term it a hair don't? It's a departure from what her audience, family and admirers are used to, a radical cut. Told Pablo she looks youngish, he said she looks 16 again.

She will win a new audience, and this audience will crave for nothing less than great playing, when she returns here for her one-night evening with fellow great dames Lisa Macuja-Elizalde and Lea Salonga, and a series of provincial engagements. The latter concerts are actually more exciting to watch--the audience is quite sincere and spontaneous in their appreciation, even from the first movement alone.

And there's another fan like us out there, who now doubles as correspondent. Doc Lara Halili has followed a number of Cecile's performances all over the States.

So apres vous then, Pabs.

______________________
Licad triumphs anew in Santa Fe

By Pablo A. Tariman

Pianist Cecile Licad -- playing as soloist of the Santa Fe Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra under Thomas O’Connor-- practically reprised her Moscow triumph when she played Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15 at the 820-seater Lensic Performing Arts Center in this city to a rousing standing ovation last January 27.

It is the same piano concerto that got the Filipino pianist her first standing ovation in Moscow in April last year with the Russian State Orchestra.

The following day (January 28), she figured in a solo recital and got the same standing ovation from an audience earlier entranced by her Brahms concerto.

One of the few Filipinos in a predominantly American audience was Dr. Lara Halili, a certified Licad fan who filed a 6-day leave of absence from her hospital work to watch Cecile Licad.

“One of the rewards of leaving your work to watch a great Filipino pianist perform in a foreign land is that you are virtual witness to the fact that she is well-loved by audiences not just in her native country,” said Lara who couldn’t believe the awesome audience response.

Cecile Licad performing at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Licad admitted to her Filipino fan the Brahms concerto is one of the toughest in the repertoire. “Playing that is like climbing a mountain but you are instantly rewarded because the music is so profound,” she told Lara who watched the Licad concerts for two successive nights.

Lara noted that she could literally hear a pin drop in the concerto’s second movement with a super attentive audience stifling their coughing for that rare Licad magic.

“It was a great night,” added Lara. “I was particularly moved to tears by the concerto’s second movement.”

Cecile Licad with conductor Thomas O'Connor acknowledging awesome audience response.

Licad is headed for the Philippines next month before her Boston engagement to perform with Philippine Broadway star Lea Salonga and prima ballerina Lisa Macuja Elizalde with conductor Gerard Salonga and the Filharmonika orchestra on March 17, 2012 at the CCP main theater.

Meanwhile, the two latest CDs of Licad with celebrated German cellist Alban Gerhardt – Casals Encores and Faure cello Sonatas -- continue to receive rave notices.
British music Andrew Clements wrote that Alban Gerhardt's account of Fauré's two cello sonatas, both late works, repay careful listening. “Like the works themselves, his playing and that of the pianist Cecile Licad is full of subtleties, the half-tones and inflections that make the chamber music of Fauré's final decade so elusive and fragile. Nothing here is forced or made to conform; whether it's the urgent outpourings of the first movement of the D minor Sonata Op 109 or the utterly different slow movement of the G minor Op 117, the pacing seems perfectly natural, the colouring distinctive.”

Another British music critic, Jeoffrey Norris, wrote : “A gorgeous performance of the well-known Élégie comes as the first of the five ‘encores’ on this magnificent disc devoted for the most part to Fauré’s two cello sonatas, the D minor, composed in 1917, and the G minor from 1921. The passion and sorrowful rapture that Alban Gerhardt and Cecile Licad bring to the Élégie are complemented by the yearning ardour of a Romance, the virtuoso flutter and bustle of Papillon, the lyrical sweep of the Sérénade and the delicate lilt of the Sicilienne, which is also familiar in orchestral guise.

“This disc follows on from various other, highly distinguished recordings that Gerhardt has made for Hyperion of repertoire ranging from Alkan to Schnittke and Shostakovich, from Chopin to Prokofiev and Reger, and, most recently, of encores made famous by Pablo Casals (CDA67831), on which Gerhardt also teamed up with Licad. They make a particularly fine duo here, working emotionally in unison, sensing the music’s contours with like mind, breathing as one.”

Cecile Licad performs with Philippine Broadway star Lea Salonga and Filipino prima ballerina Lisa Macuja Elizalde on Saturday, March 17, at the CCP Main Theater.

Licad will have two solo performances in the provinces on March 22 at the Holy Angel University in Angeles City and Cebu City. Her Pampanga and Cebu program features: Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61; Three Mazurkas op.56;. Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante in E-flat major, Op. 22 and Liszt’s .Miserere du "Trovatore" de Verdi – Paraphrase de Concert and Après une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata Call (02) 7484152 or 09065104270.

All photos by Dr. Lara Halili
Reposted with author's permission from Munting Nayon News Magazine

Morning Gal

2012-02-01T06:55:00.000+08:00

Sometimes you just have to face your mornings with some attitude!

The Pope, the Rabbi and one sleepy worker

2012-01-31T15:49:00.002+08:00

I know you get forwarded emails, too: inspirational images and messages, threatening prayer chain letters (if you don't forward to 10 people in 10 minutes, etc.), special offers for all and sundry, including marked-down penis extenders. These usually go to the spam file for examination on a pleasant day when deadlines have been met and time is long.

Meanwhile, I enjoy answering correspondence, whether instantaneous like email or handwritten postal mail. My replies or inquiries are written in a fashion with all words spelled out as much as possible, even if I don't press the "shift" key to capitalize what has to be set in caps. My second sister shares my sentiments on this matter. She also insists at all times that abbreviations be limited to SMS/texting only. Otherwise, spell out a word like "thanks" in your hurriedly written email note.

This afternoon, while taking a break from a manuscript that's giving me nosebleed, I opened my inbox and found this. Nothing really like a loud guffaw to diminish sleepiness at this time of day. Whoever wrote this apocryphal tale deserves half my boiled banana (sorry, no apples in the fruit basket).
***
The Pope and the Rabbi

Several centuries ago, the Pope decreed that all the Jews had to convert to Catholicism or leave Italy. There was a huge outcry from the Jewish community, so the Pope offered a deal. He'd have a religious debate with the leader of the Jewish community. If the Jews won, they could stay in Italy; if the Pope won, they'd have to convert or leave.

The Jewish people met and picked an aged and wise Rabbi to represent them in the debate. However, as the Rabbi spoke no Italian and the Pope spoke no Yiddish, they agreed that it would be a "silent" debate. On the chosen day, the Pope and Rabbi sat opposite each other.

The Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. The Rabbi looked back and raised one finger.

Next, the Pope waved his finger around his head. The Rabbi pointed to the ground where he sat.

The Pope brought out a communion wafer and a chalice of wine. The Rabbi pulled out an apple.

With that, the Pope stood up and declared himself beaten and said that the Rabbi was too clever. The Jews could stay in Italy.

Later, the cardinals met with the Pope and asked him what had happened.

The Pope said, "First, I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded by holding up a single finger to remind me there is still only one God common to both our beliefs.

"Then, I waved my finger around my head to show him that God was all around us. He responded by pointing to the ground to show that God was also right here with us.

"I pulled out the wine and wafer to show that God absolves us of all our sins. He pulled out an apple to remind me of the original sin. He bested me at every move and I could not continue."

Meanwhile, the Jewish community gathered to ask the Rabbi how he'd won.

"I haven't a clue," the Rabbi said. "First, he told me that we had three days to get out of Italy, so I gave him the finger.

"Then he told me that the whole country would be cleared of Jews, and I told him that we were staying right here."

"And then what?" asked a woman.

"Who knows?" said the Rabbi. "He took out his lunch so I took out mine."

Addition to stash of Audrey Hepburn quotes

2012-01-29T14:59:00.000+08:00

“I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.”

-Audrey Hepburn

Although this second quotation is not attributed to Ms. Hepburn, it's within the subject of contagious happiness. It's simple but hard to do.

Courtesy of Blissful Quotes

Lechonitis & other pleasurable sins

2012-01-25T10:05:00.002+08:00

At noon of Chinese Lunar Year, on my way home from a Tibetan Buddhist temple (a first visit), after partaking of the community's vegetarian lunch, I received an SMS from a writer friend, a gourmand down to his funny bone. He was exasperated that he had put too much vinegar into the lechon leavings that he was trying to turn into a paksiw with a brown sauce.

Still full from a lunch of noodles, gluten served a variety of ways, braised veggies and a dessert of Mandarin orange, I gulped and asked, "Anong lasa?"

He answered that it was a mix of adobo and paksiw. I thought I felt the stirrings of acid reflux from the imagined taste of both adobo and paksiw put together.

I warned him how suicidal his diet has become.

His reply: "Yah, I know, but often I feel I am on the home stretch na. Kaya feeling no-foods-barred na :-D"

Well, I told him not to be in too much hurry to leave his mortal coils. An enterprising cook may yet invent fat-free lechon that will take the guilt out of being an unrepentant carnivore in the age of health food consciousness.

Not letting the subject go, he replied again: "I can look for a pig that's fed only vegetables. Will that do?"

I said the Prado Farm in Pampanga raises pigs that are fed arugula leaves. "Organic lechon," they call it, with a whole duck inserted in the pig's belly, then roasted altogether.

I could almost hear him laughing out loud when he texted: "That's a whole new meaning for 'double dead'!" He couldn't stop himself from following up: "Hmmm. Has anyone thought of stuffing a whole roast calf with a lechon stuffed with a duck? Ick! Parang Russian matryoshka dolls. Eeeww, pardon the analogy!"

I got into the spirit, suggesting that this new dish should end with a camaru as only a Kapampangan cook could invent something like that.

Old friend texted back: "Or longganisa of all kinds--Vigan, Baguio, Lucban, Capiz, Tuguegarao. Or even quite logically, balut!"

That's when I decided to put a stop to the whole crazy exchange. I could feel the healthy food I digested regurgitating.

Friend understood my queasiness, and ended the virtual conversation with: "Ok,kaivegan na lang tayo :-D"

Kai-vegan, got it?

Maxine welcomes year of dragon with attitude

2012-01-23T14:26:00.000+08:00

SM, curb your greed

2012-01-20T11:23:00.000+08:00

400 @ 400

2012-01-20T09:22:00.003+08:00

Tuesday next week, Jan. 24 (my dad Enrique Lolarga Jr.'s 83rd birthday, if he were still around; he was a UST College of Medicine alumnus, batch '53), is "400 @ 400" day or 400 books, published by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, to be presented to the University on its 400th year.

Quite a feat Dr. Cristina "Jing" Pantoja Hidalgo, publishing director, Prof. Jack Wigley, her deputy, and their hard-working staff have accomplished since Prof. Hidalgo took over the university press.What I like about this coming event is the venue, a library, specifically the Miguel Benavides Library at the UST campus.

The library is thus described at its website: "The UST Miguel de Benavides Library is housed in a 6-storey building facing Dapitan Street. Seventeen sections and four branch libraries comprise the UST Library. The collection of each section / branch varies according to courses offered by the University. The Library Staff is headed by the Prefect of Libraries and the Chief Librarian. There are 27 professionally trained librarians, 24 support staff and 80 student assistants."

There'll be space to move around, and if my cold and cough (an allergy, don't worry; nothing viral or catching) isn't licked by the 24th, I'll be there in an inconspicuous corner with a box of Kleenex and a jug of water, waiting for friends and family to come by and have a copy or two signed.

This whole enterprise of putting out a book of selected essays is a story of a challenge met. The challenge came from Jing who asked if I was interested in gathering my little Facebook notes and other essays into a book. Not only was I interested, I hired myself an able research assistant, UP Diliman geography graduate Marye Panganiban, who could accompany me to the Lopez Memorial Museum and Library and the Philippine Daily Inquirer library to look for "old words," as my editor Chato Garcellano would put it. Marye, with my daughter Kimi's help, encoded these essays and reports, a whole section of travel pieces from the time when Chato sent me all over the country on assignment.

The OC (obsessive-compulsive) streak of my niece Marga Susi was harnessed as she arranged the essays in sequence to facilitate the layout artist's job. Several times the flash drive I submitted to Jing was corrupted until one afternoon, Kimi and I sat down cleaning my files one at a time till I was able to send a clean USB to UST.

I heeded Gilda Cordero Fernando's advice not to get a more established writer to do the introduction. She had a funny experience when she had a first book of short fiction introduced by someone else. It seemed the intro was unrelated to the contents and it was generally ignored.

She suggested that I get writer friends familiar with my works to submit blurbs, and that's what Chato, Marj Evasco, Cris Yabes, Gou de Jesus and Anna Leah Sarabia did. They didn't need to be sent samples of my work to go over. They were familiar enough with the stuff I've managed to get published over the decades (that really dates me) and turned in their short blurbs by text or email after a day's notice. Aren't women friends wonderful?

One day in late June, Jing texted, "Your book is out!" Excitedly, I made arrangements to pick up my 10 complimentary copies at her home (henceforth, delivered to the blurb writers). I think this was as close as I could get to UST. Throughout the process, everything was done online. The series of USB I would send through a personal messenger or drop off at Jing's house on my way to or from school where I taught (when the Community of Learners was still at its New Manila location).

The proofs were sent to my mother's house in Pasig, and I went over them during a weekend in Baguio. My husband of 27 years cursorily read them, then declared in an offended tone that he would boycott my launch if his name was not moved from the acknowledgment to the dedicatory page (hmmm, this detail should go into an autobiography because I find it funny; my reaction was "Kailangan pa bang i-spelling 'yan?" but the correction was made for fear of losing a prized patron).

I arranged a book reception in my adopted city of Baguio at that bookshop-turned-literary salon Mt. Cloud. Padma and I worked on my modest working woman's budget so we could feed the visitors and book buyers with Hill Station's delicious turrones and flowing coffee. All 26 or 28 books I brought up were sold out that afternoon in July. The others were sold by Nina Araos at her Kitsch the Cook Boutique, at the Alabama art fair in Cubao and at Libreria at Cubao Expo.

My kumare Winnie Velasquez, fellow Paulinian, made a special trip from Marikina to Baguio to be with us, while my grandchild Butones made her public debut as my guest of honor. She wasn't featured on the dedication page; she wasn't born yet when the making of the book was in progress.

Last December, as the Christmas rush got started, Philippine PEN sponsored an authors' talk that had me sharing a panel with Manong Ed Maranan, Mookie Katigbak and Dean Francis Alfar. I arrived early at National Bestseller at Robinson's Galleria to chat with the salesladies.

The store manager said my book was doing well. My heart skipped two beats as I began to think of royalties and imagine Catholic and Emancipated on the NBS bestsellers list for non-fiction.

I asked, "How many copies has your branch sold?"

She answered, "Sampu po, ma'am. Marami na iyon."

That's why I like writing and getting published. It has a way of keeping you humble. I'm sure Dad would've agreed.

Photo of blogger's book courtesy of Rudi Tabora

One night only, one night only

2012-01-17T19:27:00.000+08:00

Writing center in Ophelia Dimalanta's memory

2012-01-17T19:12:00.001+08:00

SUPPORT OPHELIA ALCANTARA-DIMALANTA; UST MUST FULFILL ITS PROMISE Petition | GoPetition

Garlicky dip, catch-up chitchat & sparkling wine

2012-01-14T12:08:00.007+08:00

Once a year, the Baguio Writers Group, of which I was once a member who was just glad to help in its revival, regroups at a member's house for good old-fashioned holiday wassail. 2011 had us trekking down to a forest house and immediately laying out our communal spread on a buffet table.

There was a bilao of salads from Luchie with a fiery garlic dip to match, bags of pan de sal fresh out of the oven of Danes Bakery on Mabini street bought by Desiree (Danes is where Baguio folk don't mind standing in line for a dozen of the bread of salt), pancit (I suppose from Teahouse which makes the best), chicken galantina from the hostess' kitchen (she asked first if we were all "hammed out" and we answered in a tone weary of rich meat dishes, yes, we are) and other kutkutins. We were all pleased to see that the dishes brought matched one another despite no menu planning.

Some of us rolled lettuce leaves around slices of galantina and lathered the improvised roll with the pungent garlic dip. "Rapsadoodle"!, as my foodie cousins would exclaim. Merci gamely sliced her pan de sal in two and made herself a pancit sandwich!

On another table was a modest dessert spread of sweet tamarinds from Thailand and chocolate truffles from Belgium. We enjoyed those, too.

Our tummies lined, it was soon time to open the bottles of Don Eduardo (named after the San Miguel Corp. CEO), a rich red, and Asti Spumanti.

Late as usual, Frank texted from downtown that he was on his way and asked if we had any requests. Baboo asked for whisky and I, San Mig's all-malt Premium beer.

Martin predicted that Frank being Frank, he'd bring just a bottle of whisky for Baboo's personal consumption and another bottle of Premium for me. He was right on both counts, except that Frank gave me two bottles. Unexpected was his stash of cans of San Mig Lite, his drink of choice shared with wassail partner Grace and the others.

Later, Martin grew antsy as he aired his apprehension and excitement over his script for a proposed film to be shot fully in Baguio as part of the first Sineng Pambansa Festival (the confirmation came a few days later and I suppose direk Martin is finalizing his cast and scheduling shoots). Everyone volunteered for cameo roles in a bar scene which reflects what drunken sots we can be...some of the time. "Anac ti Pating" will premiere on Independence Day this year. It's a much-needed boost for regional film-making and local talents. The latter Baguio has in spades.

Not all the members could make it--some had left for parts elsewhere, some suffered from food overload (this was on Dec. 28) and were resting from impacho.

I remember that evening so well because I unwisely mixed my drinks. On the way home, I grinned and bore the tummy ache. Once home, I had to excuse myself from my partner's room and let loose a volley of gas. With all that bubbly evaporated, I was relieved beyond words and slept peacefully.

I guess that Grace's state of inebriation at the end of that evening explains why some shots of the party look out of focus.

A tradition at these end-of-the-year parties is the exchange of "pre-loved" books. I brought three from my library to make up for the fact that I didn't have time to prepare anything edible for the feast.

To these fellow travelers in the strange journey of life, here's to another year of writing and reading.

Photos by Grace Subido

Butones & White Paper

2012-01-12T20:51:00.001+08:00

how are will o' the wisps made?

i thought i saw one a-forming this evening
as i watched my nine month old
granddaughter tear through
the layers of white tissue
enfolding a glass cake stand
for the family kitchen,
the last of the christmas presents

what was she thinking
or was it all thrill
& newness for her?

i thought of egg whites
being whipped to a light foam

soon the baby storm passed
& we all trooped down for dinner

no eggs, no cake,
just rice, chicken & potatoes
& the recent memory of sound
of paper crumpling & a child's glee

Not rusticating, our Rustie

2012-01-12T17:29:00.000+08:00

he just needs a little help from his friends

Partying on Panay Avenue

2012-01-10T11:34:00.002+08:00

because the month begins
heavy with intent
the host who lives
on a street named
after panay
an island
where classes are crevices

calls forth
from her kitchen
a generous procession
of platters:
tamales
black paella
steamed fish
wrapped in edible leaves
& ribbons of bacon
ensaymada toasted
to biscuit crispness
short al dente pasta
freely cohabiting with
olive oil bell pepper green olives
& finally
flutes of red wine

with this feast
begins the new year's
first long evening

old & young souls gather
bound by filaments
of art's whimsies
struck silent
for some moments by
variations on violin
(with sitar & bass players)
by a gifted boy whose name
cannot be more musical
than joshua bell

Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

Writing Our Way Home blog: The River: Jan 2012

2012-01-10T10:54:00.000+08:00

Writing Our Way Home blog: The River: Jan 2012: Pay more attention and fall in love with the world. Our January '12 'river of stones' has begun! The Everso Quick Version: 1. Notice...

Nueve de Enero

2012-01-09T10:14:00.002+08:00

One of my weaknesses in midlife is how often I underestimate my physical strength. I had a full week last week, meaning, I was always out of the house and shuttling by cab, jeep, train and trike to different parts of the metropolis for appointments and work-related duties. I even committed to attending a lecture on Parkinson's disease and dementia yesterday, a Sunday, until I woke up with a heaviness in my eyes (the whites had turned reddish) and a scratchy throat (another cold that has to be nipped in the bud).

Well, that took care of busyness. I just decided to finish reading some chapters of a literary biography, watch television ("The Tourist" on HBO) and overhear a comment from a family member that when Johnny Depp ages, he will look like Gary Oldman, which isn't a bad thing, and ask how my pet Butones in Baguio is doing. According to my daughter Kimi, Butones finally got her bangs clipped. There was outrage in the Pasig household; the elders believe that a baby's hair isn't shorn till she turns one year old.

But here's why Kimi had to trim the bangs. They were getting in the way--we wouldn't want the babe ending up with eyes as reddish as her lola's.

So here's the "after" look. Kimi says her child now looks like a little Shaolin master. Any which way, she remains a cutie.

Meanwhile, I am reminded to upload these pictures and compose a blog because of this auspicious date and the numbers of this month are about to turn into double digits tomorrow (bad writing discipline if I can't compose at least two blog entries within a fortnight).

The ninth of January is not just the feast of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo, it is also the birthday of old pal Manny Chaves who, in the past, would remind me that he shares a birthday with Joan Baez and Simone de Beauvoir. He has reason to boast because he reads widely, has impeccable taste in music and knows what looks good, making him a topnotch art director.

And because he has such high standards, this makes him masungit, a cranky old man. But it hasn't stopped his friends from gathering to celebrate the day which is what we'll do later this afternoon. By which time I hope my eyes are well-rested and my throat soothed.Even old gals also wanna have more fun in the Philippines.

This photo was taken nearly 10 years ago at the old location of Green Papaya on Maginhawa st., Quezon City. Manny is somewhere in the picture with his heretic Looney Tune friends who dressed up a mannequin and turned it into the Black Nazarene.

Remembrances of Christmas just past

2012-01-02T10:48:00.007+08:00

No doubt about it, the e-card and handy SMS have replaced the traditional Christmas card that is mailed in November to ensure its arrival at its destination during the Christmas holidays.

This year, I received a grand total of two cards mailed from wintry Ontario, Canada, by Rosemarie de los Reyes and from just-as-cold Chicago, Illinois, by Tessie Romero, all first cousins I grew up with before the Great Migration to North America of the Lolarga, Romero and Valdellon families, descendants of Enrique Acosta Lolarga and Telesfora Cariño. Our patriarch and matriarch were migrants, too, meeting as public school teachers detailed in Camiling, Tarlac, before settling in Sampaloc, Manila, and founding their own school, National Radio School and Institute of Technology (now closed down).

The cyber-highway has made possible clan reunions through e-mail and Facebook, making the website www.lolarga.com put up by my brother Junic and cousin Telly Valdellon almost passe as updates are more regular in our FB accounts.

So here's to the passing of traditional printed cards. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to "collect" a good number of cards celebrating Christ's birth, the endurance of family and all good things about Christmas.

Following is my "loot":

Junic and Amy Lolarga of Calgary, Alberta, with children Sara and Christian

Cousin Louie Lolarga and husband Mike Johnston in Joplin, Missouri, with their children and grandchildren, some of whom survived the killer tornado there and rebuilt their lives and homes

Little Lucie Server Mendoza, one of the many additions to the family on my mother's side this year and also a Canadian citizen/resident

Almost like family to me is writer Luisa Aguilar Igloria of Norfolk, Virginia, with her daughters Ina, Trixie and Gabriela. Not in photo is her eldest child Jenny Cariño, my hijada, who still lives and works in Baguio City.

Part of our First Draft sisterhood of writers is Melinda Quintos de Jesus (seated, third from left). She is shown here with her husband DJ and family on a rare reunion in Bohol.

Meran Daza Umali and I go back to St. Paul College Quezon City where she was a batch ahead of me, but that didn't keep us from becoming lifelong friends. She is shown with husband Cesar and their sons Likha (my godson), Likas and Lakan. Their only daughter Sinta (at right) is herself a mother of baby Monique.

Connie Estrada Calimon and I also go back to SPCQ when we used to be officers of the Student Catholic Action along with Meran. The SCA spirit stayed with her as she and husband Gil, a mountaineer like her, have been part of climbs for a cause (last year they brought school supplies to a far-flung school in the Cordilleras). Their eldest of two daughters, Rose, is now Sister Manaoag, while the youngest, Resa, is a freelance photographer-designer.

I made a new friend in Fralynn Manalo of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. She never fails to email me invites to coming shows and reminders when an important show is about to end. Fralynn and her colleague Bill Ray are the people to look for on a visit to the Met because they'll answer all your queries, provide the wheelchair for the disabled and lead a guided tour.

Tireless human rights worker Tinay Palabay sent this.

From another First Draft colleague Rita Ledesma came this image of the giving tree (that's how I prefer to call it because gifts under this tree are given during the season). Rita's Internet-savvy grandchild Regina selected this for her to serve as her e-card.

And Melba Padilla Maggay of the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture (ISACC) emailed this Advent message, a fitting end to this second day of 2012 reminiscence:

"Unlike other Christmas seasons, this one feels like the aftermath of fleeing from a house on fire, or being swallowed up and tossed to and fro by raging waters, and then getting swept and spewed ashore by the roaring tide.

"Great disasters, as well as the pressures that daily besiege us, have reduced many of us to numbness and shock. Something inside wears away, as massive poverty and the thinness of soul that accompanies adversity erodes our capacity to even pay attention to the meaning of Christmas – the great wonder that God has come to earth, These days, I confess, I feel a great need simply for the veil to lift and see through the hiddenness of the Christ that our faith tells us has come.

"Where is he, who has been born king of the Jews?"

"The unrest and crises all around us tell us that great upheavals are taking place. Long-term despots in the Arab world are falling one by one, and others more are fighting for their survival. Wall Street is under siege, and protesters all around the world are putting to question the viability of a system that honors greed and consigns to the shadows those who are failing in life. And as I write this, thousands of our hapless people in Mindanao are shivering from sickness, hunger and homelessness, their obscure lives and meager property swept away by floods, nature ruthlessly striking back at human vandalism and the despoliation of creation.

"The question of the Magi rings in my ears: “Where is he, who has been born king of the Jews?”

"The question, we are told, troubled Herod, and all Jerusalem with him. He hastily assembled the chief priests and scribes – guardians of the Temple and the Torah -- and ascertained from them where the Christ was to be born. The Jewish establishment was not without knowledge. They knew exactly where the prophesied Messiah was to be born. Yet apart from the fear of Herod, -- whose crown lay uneasy on his head because he was an Idumean,-- the news that an heir had been born to the decayed dynasty of King David did not stir them.
The Magi from the East, -- wise men who read the movements of the stars – knew that a great king had appeared, and they had trotted on their camels through the sharp winds of the desert to search for him and worship. They had sensed that this was no ordinary king, but someone who, though born of the Jews, was nevertheless king beyond the Jews, -- and worthy of the finest gifts that they can offer.

"It is worth noting that the first to recognize Jesus for what he was were Gentiles from afar and roughhewn shepherds -- those in the margins of the original chosen people, -- Israel. Undertandably, who would have thought that deliverance for the world would come through a child born in a stable? It had to be revealed – to the wise through their schooled sensing of planetary movements, and to the simple through a straightforward announcement by an angel. It takes either the wisest insight or the simplest of faith to bow the knee to the Christ-Child.

"When we experience devastating hardship, it is a struggle just to pause and remind ourselves that at the center of our existence is a good God who has sent his Son to meet us in our need. His footprint may be hidden from us, but we can be sure that Jesus walks with us, just as he did in the dusty streets of Palestine 2,000 years ago.

"In the same way that his birth was shadowed by the savage slaughter of children his age, his continuing presence among us is obscured by the dark deeds of those who, like Herod, are threatened by his coming. The coming of the true King and of his kingdom is always an imminent threat to those who, by means fair or foul, bulldoze and usurp their way into power.

"But like the Christ-Child, we are not unaided. In the same way that the Magi were warned and Jesus’ parents were directed to flee to Egypt, we are kept safe through the help of the unseen host that surrounds us. Like the Christ-Child, beset and hunted by the fierce ragings of evil, helpless and vulnerable before the powerful, -- we shall be kept hidden, safe in the hand of God, till the murderous shadow of the Herods of this world had passed.

"A blessed Christmas season to all of you who love his appearing, and are looking forward to his coming again."

Jorge

2011-12-28T09:09:00.000+08:00

He made an impression in '76 on this fledgling reporter not quite out of college but with stardust dreams of writing. My first boss, Tere Orendain, and Jorge Arago were chums and they'd go out for the occasional long lunch with another journalist Marita Manuel, then detailed at Mrs. Marcos's office.

It was his slippers that did it for me--this diminutive man who went to work and socials in them slippers and the most casual of clothes at a time when I was getting used to proper office shoes and would get the occasional reprimand from Tere to please stop wearing hand me downs.

In '79, when I was enrolled in a cinema class under Prof. Virgie Moreno, she disappeared mid-semester (probably one of her rejuvenating trips to Paris), and Jorge and Peque Gallaga took over the class that moved from UP Diliman to a room at the Metropolitan Museum. There we sat through screenings of Filipino (Ishmael Bernal's, no less), European and American films. Either Jorge or Peque led the discussion. We never raised questions, shushed into timidity by their knowledge and articulation, but nevertheless, we learned how to put on critical eyes when next we watched a film. Yes, Jorge still wore those slippers and spoke with no notes.

By then I think he held office at the Met's basement along with the hip crowd that put out, if memory serves, Metro magazine.

I'd hear his name now and then uttered by my husband who wondered where he was and thought aloud how the opinion pages could use a mind as erudite as Jorge's. When I learned how to use the lost and found machine in Facebook, there he was. By Jorge! He had aged, time had not been kind to him for mine was an image of a cherubic fellow reminiscent of Billy Crystal (not fair, Jorge, but something about Crystal's humor always brought you to mind).

So I PM'd him and yes, he still remembered Rolly and their work together at the news desk of Daily Express. I warned him that Rolly did not correspond and Jorge wrote back: "I remember that Marita had almost despaired of finding a reporter whose initiative and skill she could trust, then along came Rolly, who has apparently retained his detachment.A sea of water has passed under the bridge, Best wishes to you both."

And so Jorge went, right before the day of the holy innocents. Long live Jorge.

Where the view is fair

2011-12-27T11:26:00.003+08:00

Getting to Mother's Garden on Upper Fairview Road in Quezon Hill is a bit of a challenge for my partner, a longtime resident of Baguio who is still not used to maneuvering the city's slanting roads and steep inclines. Just mention a trip to Mother's Garden, and his terse instruction is: "Mag taxi na lang kayo."

And taxi we did one late morning last week for a scheduled interview with Therese Jison who runs the garden with a light touch. We lingered over what she called fusion tea concocted from the herbs in the garden. This was followed by a very continental lunch of grilled veal bratwurst with a flavorful gravy of caramelized onions and mushroom with French bread and a sunny side up fried egg on the side.

Our little Butones loved the bread. Her mom, our designated photographer Kimi, loved the salad that had an edible flower on top, all freshly harvested from the garden. We enjoyed all this at the panoramic open-air Panorama Cafe that looks out to the neighbor's tree of African tulips and farther on to Aurora Hill and Busol watershed.

While waiting for the ride home, I enjoyed feeding an insatiable pig that lives in harmony in a pen with a family of rabbits.

Therese said while carrying Butones around, "These are my two loves: babies and animals." And gardens, of course.

My horde of Audrey Hepburn quotes

2011-12-27T08:12:00.002+08:00

New Year's resolutions are another one of those things that were called in the '70s "exercises in futility." By the eighth of January, I'd have forgotten what I drew up on my list--it always has to do with diet, exercise, keeping my weight down.

Well, Ms. Hepburn never had to worry about her weight or spend too much time thinking of the word "diet", but she still managed to make a contribution to the world because she applied certain beliefs about humanity in her life, primarily giving people a chance.

A simple feel-good act I do to banish the blues and the reds is just to scroll through an album of Audrey Hepburn pictures, turn on "Two for the Road" or "Moon River," and I'm okay, at least temporarily. No need to stand outside Tiffany's.

Lately, I've collected some choice quotes from the late Unicef ambassador who taught the screen world that slim and smart add up to sexy.

The comfort of women

2011-12-23T21:02:00.002+08:00

These pre-Typhoon Sendong Christmas party photos just arrived in my inbox this evening. Suddenly, that eighth of December, end-of-the-year get-together of women friends who write and call themselves members of First Draft, has an innocent quality.

Here we look not yet harassed and put upon by holiday obligations and yearend work and family commitments that have to be accommodated in a month where one's calendar fills up so quickly.

Here we are before 'Sendong' got us into a cautiously celebratory mode of thinking and doing.

Love the reflection of glassware on Fe's chin. That's Rita, host of our annual Christmas dinner, with beaming Edna beside her.

We can't all fit in so the designated photographer takes shots of the group two or three women at a time around a table with a glorious setting of a dozen white orchids.

BFFs Mariel and Gilda

Remember that pop song from the '60s: "Si Aida, si Lorna at si Fe?" Well, our version is for this foursome (from left): "Si Rita, si Edna, si Lorna at si Melinda."

Capping the evening is this final group shot after an afternoon spent catching up, exchanging gifts, reading works aloud (including a funny essay by a New Yorker writer we all admire, E.B. White) and trying two kinds of dessert, with and without sugar following a meatless, save for chicken, supper.

God bless us, everyone!

Past 80th mark this year

2011-12-22T09:29:00.000+08:00

Your friendly blogger is crossing a personal milestone with this entry. It marks my 81st--quite a feat since I started blogging in '08 and closed that year with 47 blogs.
For me, the number of blogs per month is a good indicator of any of the following: things are going well in my life that I have much to write about; I'm kind of manic; or the urge to write is so strong (very well-motivated).
On months when entries are scarce, it's a sign of any of these things: too lazy or depressed to write (the laziness or the languor is usually brought about by the depression when the only "intelligent" activity I can manage to do is to read a work of fiction and follow the plot to its end) or too busy with official work duties.

But ever since I joined some Facebook communities that stress the positive, I've also built up a collection, nay, an arsenal of inspirational images and quotable quotes. I open that folder on the laptop whenever I need reminding that I have to learn self-acceptance, mainly of my limitations, self-forgiveness, even self-love.

So herewith are some of my choice inspirationals that got me through the year by way of saying a big "thank you" to my followers (mainly family and some friends).

So I'm setting a goal of 100 blogs for 2012. That's reasonable because if I can cross from 80 to the next numeral, anything's possible.

A Baby Changes Everything

2011-12-17T18:47:00.000+08:00

Around this time last year, I first heard the song "A Baby Changes Everything" sung by a choir of children at the annual Christmas bonfire of the Community of Learners. My tears flowed freely because all I could think of was my first-born child, then 25 and five months pregnant, steadfast in her decision to have her baby outside the institution of marriage.

It was a trying time for some members of the family. But if my daughter, suddenly an adult, could be clear-eyed about giving the best for her unborn babe and not minding what others said, surely she deserved all the support this grandmother-to-be could muster.

Today, Baby Kai (Butones) is past her eighth month-sary. Her mother's update, texted a few days ago from Baguio, said she saw Butones flat on her tummy on the rubber play mat. She got on all fours, raised herself to a sitting position with no assistance. Then she held on to the edge of the bed by the mat and raised herself further to a standing position. "Effortless," the mother noted.

My rejoicing this Christmas takes the form of this song popularized by Faith Hill:

Teenage girl, much too young
Unprepared for what's to come
A baby changes everything

Not a ring on her hand
All her dreams and all her plans
A baby changes everything
A baby changes everything

The man she loves she's never touched
How will she keep his trust?
A baby changes everything
A baby changes everything

And she cries!
Ooh, she cries
Ooh, oh

She has to leave, go far away
Heaven knows she can't stay
A baby changes everything

She can feel it's coming soon
There's no place, there's no room
A baby changes everything
A baby changes everything

And she cries!
And she cries!
Oh, she cries

Shepherds all gather 'round
Up above the star shines down
A baby changes everything

Choir of angels sing
Glory to the newborn King
A baby changes everything
A baby changes everything
Everything, everything, everything

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

My whole life has turned around
I was lost but now I'm found
A baby changes everything, yeah
A baby changes everything

The song is no more than "the tale of a pregnant teenage girl faced with the uncertainty of her future and coming to terms with the fact that her life is about to change. In the bridge of the song, it is revealed that the teenaged girl and baby in question are in fact the virgin Mary and Jesus Christ." (wikipedia.org)

It's only the 17th of December, but already I want to exclaim, with all the joy and gratitude I can again muster, "Hallelujah! Merry Christmas, everyone!"

When we were very young

2011-12-16T10:14:00.001+08:00

While I was in between jobs this year, I had time to look over old albums and retake photos of the contents in hopes that I could preserve them through my Facebook albums and this blog. I managed to upload a number in FB, and they got a wide range of comments from page visitors, comments like how happy the children looked or how come we didn't buy the kids nice clothes (from disgruntled fashion-conscious daughter and niece).

Hermie Beltran put it so well when he commented: "As always, old photos, like old songs, touch our deepest chords."

Here I am getting all sentimental and "emo" with the holidays and a new year approaching. So before the photos, the old-fashioned kind, not the ones from the digicam, are feasted on by silverfish and termites, I'm posting them during this lull between deadlines.

I wonder how we will all look like 10 years down the road?

At my cousins' house on McKinley road, Forbes Park.

With my grand-aunt Lucy Yatco Nelle who worked for the longest time at Coca-Cola Corp. (I was already in college and she was still working for Coke. This somehow made me partial to that soda.)

Dad holds me up at the old Server pool in Forbes Park, still in the halcyon '50s. Daddy was a sportsman in his own way: he could swim, ride a horse, bowl, fish, jog, play golf.

That's cousin Shorty Server carrying me on my second birthday in our house in Santa Mesa, Manila.

Fast forward to the '80s. That's my partner of 27 years Rolly Fernandez enjoying his day off with his young wife (that should be me) at Puerto Azul, Cavite, in February 1985, a few months before our first child was born.

Here I am, pregnant with Kimi, at the first home Rolly and I made in Antipolo, Rizal, 1985. Rolly had a bar built to divide the kitchen-dining areas from the receiving area. (I must ask my techie daughter how to turn my photo right side up. Sorry about that.)

And here are my girls, the older one ill with asthma at the time this picture was taken, the younger one, Ida, showing the makings of a fattie. But Ida grew to be tall and slim. Kimi was strong enough to attend this birthday party at my friend Lulu Camello Pasamba's house sometime in the '80s.

The circle of life nearly completes itself.Soundtrack from the movie "Lion King" can be heard in the background. Kimi is now a mother herself. Her daughter Kai (infamously nicknamed Butones by this grandma) has brought so much happiness in our lives that I can't help but close my visual narrative with her as clincher.

Look what the mail brought in

2011-12-14T11:51:00.001+08:00

So far no one's complaining that I've turned my blog into a record of my grandchild's experiences, especially her trips out of the confines of the house.

A few days ago, the mother of Butones Fernandez texted that her royal cuteness has learned to show appreciation for something by clapping her tiny hands (soundless, though) after her favorite video of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" ends. Don't worry, I'll take care of teaching her to holler "Bravo!" and "Encore!" when she starts to speak.

Usually, after such a report from mama Kimi, I'd ask her to email ASAP the latest pictures of Butones. She sent these photos documenting a recent trip to Suello Village where Grumpa Rolly Fernandez bought some pots of our fave Christmas flower, the poinsettia.

The pediatrician of Butones warned that the babe might be allergic to pollen when Kimi brought her to the clinic once to have a swollen eyelid checked. Mother and child had just come from a playground where angel's trumpets and other Baguio flora were in bloom. But this time around, the babe didn't have an adverse reaction to this exposure.

My friend Camille Llamanzares Sevilla inquired recently if there are any new spots that I can recommend to her when she visits Baguio during the holidays. I will have to find out where this greenhouse, this little spot of paradise is so she can add it to her list of must-sees.

And when Butones was carried back to the car and before she was safely buckled to her seat, she gave this smile of delight. Her lola is applauding from a distance.

Reason for the season

2011-12-12T09:43:00.003+08:00

The blog's title is from a concert that I missed; the UP Concert Chorus had its Christmas handog concert yesterday (Dec. 11) at Abelardo Hall. I decided to spend the afternoon and the rest of the evening resting at home, eating mini Ponkan oranges and drinking pitchers of warm to room-temperature water to keep my colds from getting more severe.

Knowing how the common cold I catch has a way of lingering and malingering and dampening my plans, I have to lick this one, not only because I am one of four authors (the others are Manong Ed Maranan, Mookie Katigbak and Dean Alfar)assigned to talk tomorrow at the Philippine PEN's "Meet the Authors" event at the NBS Bestsellers store, Robinson's Galleria, but also because I so look forward to another trip to Baguio before the weekend to be with Miss Adorable, my grandchild Butones. I don't want her to catch this cold virus that has been going around our Pasig household when I get to hold and cuddle her again.

In my desire to get well ASAP, I asked painter Mario de Rivera, who's a superb cook, baker and believer in herbal medicine, by the way, for his anti-cold and cough remedy that is better than any over-the-counter nasal decongestant. Artists are generally generous, and in the spirit of the season, here is Mario sharing his "Fusion":

"Boil two cups of shredded ginger, one cup of tamarind leaves or pounded fruit with three cups water for about 30 minutes. Strain, then boil again with two cups muscovado sugar till syrupy for another 30 minutes. Add a half cup of calamansi juice. Take a shot of this to relieve you as often as needed. If you have brandy, add a dash and enjoy before going to bed. Get well before Tuesday. :)"

This can also be taken as a tea. Just add hot water to a few teaspoons of the syrup, stir, sip and relax.

It's Monday, and I intend to subsist on this liquid diet to starve my cold while trying to meet another deadline.

Another of my Monday surprises is from Angie Valenzuela Velasco, kid sister of my late kumpadre Bobi Valenzuela whose death anniversary falls today.Bobi was a thoughtful guy, capable of surprising his friends and getting a laugh out of them. Angie apparently has that gift, too. In Facebook, she tagged me with these three photos of Butones with her grand folks. In short, she had just custom-made our family's Christmas card FREE! These e-cards remind me how another babe was the reason for a season as beautiful as Christmas.

Thank you, Mario and Angie, for riches beyond measure.

Reminder to self & others

2011-12-12T07:31:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, you just have to keep looking for that funny bone or where you misplaced your sense of irony lately.

Meet the Authors

2011-12-10T13:05:00.000+08:00

Take your child to the bookstore day

2011-12-03T12:04:00.000+08:00

visit http://takeyourchildtoabookstore.org/

Call him Mishael

2011-11-15T12:08:00.003+08:00

In the Repertory Philippines' production of "Seussical" last Saturday, I found myself tearing up at Horton the Elephant's sung lines: "...a person's a person no matter how small."

I thought of all De Liddle Persons in my life: the grandchild topping the list, of course, the willowy preschool teacher seated beside me who I once carried as babe and toddler and now is my most astute critic, and a boy I look forward to meeting next week, a piano prodigy from Dipolog City in Zamboanga. Mishael Romano will show how great things come from Mindanao, not just a scrawny boxer from GenSan who became big time.

At the lobby of the Premiere theater of Shangri-La Plaza Mall two days ago, while waiting to be called in by the ushers before the movie "Ka Oryang" started, there was an impromptu gathering of mothers like me. Now most of us are grandmothers or grandaunts. We once had a first-hand view of, if not an involvement in, the struggle for justice depicted by the fictitious Oryang and her comrades onscreen.

The question inevitably raised in an unplanned reunion such as this is:"Ano na ang pinagkakaabalahan mo?" Does that precisely translate to "How do you spend your time?" One of the women had a quick answer with no prefatory apologia: "I now concern myself with transcendent things like enjoying my grandchild and going to concerts whenever I can."

I had to turn my head to see who said that, also to make sure that the statement didn't really come from me, but it could have. I could've butted in: "I like looking for laughing breaks whenever, wherever possible."

I suppose I have been growing into a liddle person in midlife in the way I find solace these days.

A Baguio Halloween

2011-10-31T07:42:00.000+08:00

This is when a picture says it all. Taken at the bar of The Manor at Camp John Hay, Baguio City, by the subject's mamay, Kimi Fernandez. Enjoy your first Halloween, little pumpkin/squash of our life. Don't let other people's costumes alarm you. It's in the spirit of fun.

Priceless lessons and moments from the Intimate Concert Series

2011-10-22T10:53:00.003+08:00

A perplexed stranger and concert patron came up to me yesterday afternoon before the matinee of Music News' 11th intimate concert series that featured violinist Joseph Esmilla and pianist Rudolf Golez. The two have come to be called the guwapings of the classical music scene.

The white-haired fellow asked me, "How come this concert has little publicity?
When we heard about it, sold out na pala!" So he and his companion settled for matinee tickets.

I explained about the non-traditional media we use to drum up awareness of the series that has survived low-pressure area warnings, grand pianos stuck up in C-5 traffic snarls, drafty halls and, most of all, almost non-existent sponsorship.

Producer Pablo Tariman, a freelance writer who diligently meets deadlines for the culture page of one paper and the entertainment section of another apart from being a self-described guardian and caregiver to apo, Emmanuel Acosta, whose schooling in a Pasig public school, he takes care of apart from housekeeping, laundry and market errands, has had to rely on cultural volunteers in the persons of Mila Aguilar, Sinag de Leon, Efren Ricalde, Anna Leah Sarabia and this writer.

We use our cell phones and personal load (thank goodness for unlimited texts to all networks for the price of P25 or less), email, Facebook and Twitter accounts to promote the concerts. These still unquantifiable efforts seem to be paying off as the Oct. 21 matinee and evening performances of Esmilla and Golez proved.

Tickets for the evening concert sold out fast so Tariman dared to schedule a matinee on the same day to accommodate interested callers.

Then there are Tariman's unsung staff Ford Perez and Bong de Clarin who double as messengers or ticket sellers on concert night. One time, De Clarin's duty of bringing cash-on-delivery tickets to their destination almost compromised his life when he was held up.

There have been occasional patrons who would cover the artists' fees or part of the piano rental, angels like Auring Bautista of Baguio, Joy Buensalido of Buensalido and Associates, Dr. Andrea Dimayuga, Quezon City Councilor Roderick Paulate, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, even flutist Ray Sison of ROS Music Center who would lend his pianos at below commercial costs.

The Balay Kalinaw hall was a third full yesterday afternoon (it was filled in the evening), but what gladdened this volunteer's heart was the easy rapport between performers and the audience. After the encore piece, Kreisler's "Caprice Viennois," was played and the applause died down, Esmilla quaffed his thirst, then joined Golez in chatting with members of the audience who stayed on for another hour.

Sculptor Julie Lluch, a regular at the intimate concert series, was assigned to put the lei around Golez's neck while Sr. Manaoag, a former violinist who studied with Esmilla's father Sergio and now a nun in a cobalt blue and white habit, marched up to place the one around Joseph.

Like a besotted teenager, Lluch earlier whispered to me that she had instantly developed a crush on the young Esmilla (still lean and boyish despite his salt-and-pepper mane of hair) and wanted to be the one assigned to him. When she saw him all sweaty from his music-making, she pulled out a white tissue and stopped herself short of wiping his face.

The next morning, Lluch texted me, "Exquisite pleasure! I wanted to go back for the evening concert."

I suppose it is moments like this that enable Tariman and the volunteers to continue without counting the costs. At the end of last night's concert, he exhaled, "I'm breathing normally again." It means all expenses have been paid, especially the artists' fees.

In the past, he mounted similarly small concerts for lawyers of big firms like ACCRA, for BIR executives or for couples celebrating their observing golden wedding anniversaries. He said, "Each time an opportunity to make music comes, I can't help it. It involves new contacts, new audiences, new trials perhaps, but I am sure it will involve new souls loving classical music (photographer Ricalde is a recent convert and your classmate from St. Paul who was there again)."

I asked him if he learned from the late impresarios Alfredo Lozano and Redentor Romero who were bold and daring enough to bring in musical heavyweights in the '60s and '70s.

Tariman said, "I didn’t meet Mr. Lozano, but I met his son who was teaching at La salle Lipa when I brought Ingrid Santamaria and Reynaldo Reyes in that school. He said his father was with the Board of Censors then and was close to
the Palace occupants so it was easy for him to get patrons and sponsors from high places. The lesson I can probably get from his existence is perhaps cultivate connections from powerful people and institutions. Unfortunately, all the people I need help from in high places are also the ones I hate."

He continued, "From Romero's sad and lonely death, I learned to accept the fact that impresarios (the real ones) can’t earn good money. He passed away unable to cope with hospital bills. I suppose that’s the way I will go if I don’t watch it. The word 'daring' you learn when you get to accept the fact that the impresario's work doesn’t yield golden eggs in the financial sense; only golden opportunities to make people happy."

He cited one instance when the work almost put him on the verge of collapse. "Remember that Licad turned down the Bosendorfer she found at the Metropolitan Theater in 1988 on the day of the concert. On that same day, I asked Cecile, her then husband Antonio Meneses and Dr. Jesus Licad to accompany me to the Cultural Center to borrow their piano. I knew that they wouldn’t allow me. but with Licad, her husband and father in tow, the late Mrs. Bing Roxas (then CCP president) couldn’t say no to me. But when she said yes, I remember her last words: 'That’s the last time a full grand piano will leave this theater.'"

The intimate concert series will continue; it thrives on feedback from the audience like Princess Nemenzo, Mercy Lactao-Fabros and Tita de Quiros who are thankful that there are such concerts in Quezon City, not too far from their residences and workplaces.

Writer Paulynn Sicam brought in a friend from Alabang at the August concert of Esmilla, Golez and cellist Victor Coo. That friend said, "Can't you bring this series to south of Manila? There's nothing going on there." Then she proceeded to list the pieces played in the program that she would like to hear on her deathbed.

Another Quezon City resident, writer Gemma Corotan, who attended baritone Andrew Fernando's recital at Kiss the Cook Gourmet, where the series began, and then brought her husband and recently her son to succeeding concerts, wrote, "Glad to see that your efforts to popularize classical music and our local musicians are bearing fruit. You have my admiration for the work that you do. Kudos to all of you! The venues are becoming bigger, but I hope the intimacy will never be lost."

What I found touching at Friday's concert was the presence of two ladies, lawyer Sarah Sison and her mother Mimi, herself a singer at family and friends' parties. Mimi just lost her husband. And when I saw Sarah park her car, alight from it, and move decisively towards Balay Kalinaw in a long black dress, the spring in her step missing, I recalled the death of my own father and how I couldn't bear being at his wake. What I did was to join a friend in watching a concert at the old PCIBank Santiago Hall in Makati. If I remember right, it was a piano recital, again mounted by Tariman.

The series resumes on Nov. 26 with Mishael Romano, 11-year old piano prodigy from Dipolog City in Mindanao. For a child his age, he has lined up a forbidding program that includes Clementi's Sonatina in C Major, Opus 36 No. 3, Beethoven's Sonatina in F Major, Chopin's Waltz No. 10 in B Minor, Opus 69 No. 2, among others.

What I'm hoping is for the two young girls with 90-percent attendance at the concerts, Alon Fabros and Bianca Susi, to bring their classmates to this event. Then maybe we can rotate the lei or bouquet offering duties at the end of each program.

Speaking of bold moves, the series has gone on a successful outreach with the Oct. 15 concert of Esmilla and Golez at UP Los Banos. My small contribution here is putting Tariman and the partners of Dalcielo Restaurant, Marissa de Jesus and Pinky Halos, together to think up of a new may to mark the business enterprise's first anniversary.

Another Dalcielo partner, Rey Araos, was so pleased with the attendance and reaction that he relayed the feedback how more Laguna residents would like watch and hear the classics played. He couldn't help adding that visiting performers are usually pop singers and dancers.

Tariman will bring baritone Andrew Fernando, tenor Lemuel de la Cruz, flutist Christopher Oracion and pianist Mary Anne Espina on Dec. 9 to the same UP Los Banos venue (Umali Hall). If plans don't miscarry, the same group will kick off pre-Christmas festivities at Baguio City's happening place, Hill Station.

As for Tariman, he unwinds from the stress of concert organizing by catching up on Tagalog movies that he can review, watch a CCP or Philamlife concert, and "believe it or not," he said, "follow the early-evening teleseryes on TV mainly because my friends and drinking buddies are in there like Ronnie Lazaro, Joel Torre and Pen Medina. I turn to Mozart and Beethoven to explore a life that remains strange to me after 62 years of existence."

Photos courtesy of SINAG DE LEON, EFREN RICALDE and ANNA LEAH SARABIA

Her first party

2011-10-17T15:48:00.003+08:00

Someone had a good time over the weekend. It was her first children's party, and the invitation came Sunday morning as the adults wondered aloud where they would venture out that sunny day.

The texted invite said it was going to be a costume party for the celebrator, a year-old girl Lira, at the Powerhouse, a new function room at the Baguio Country Club. The adults said only the baby in the family would turn up in costume. But what will she come as--ballerina or cowgirl?

When the aunt in Manila learned that she went as a plain cowgirl and was outshone by the girls in Snow White or fairy costumes, same aunt asked with a note of sarcasm, "So what prize did Kai bring home? The worst in costume?"

Well, even if Kai just had a ream of toilet paper wrapped around her, she would still have charmed everyone with her good behavior (never cried or whined once) and inborn charm.

But then first-time grandmothers are truly biased.

Kai meets and greets year-old birthday celebrator Lira who is all dolled up in a flouncy pink gown complete with petticoat. Lira wheeled around in her matching walker which was camouflaged by her long dress.

The wee ones pose by the towering birthday cake with a set of grandmas, Auring Bautista and Booboo Babeth. Lira is in another costume--she wore a total of four gowns in one afternoon.

Her grandparents get into the spirit of the afternoon, but Kai in her cow suit isn't comfy with the masks.

She's amenable to rubbing noses with this "stranger" though.

Photos by KIMI L. FERNANDEZ

Mad about books and the babe, too

2011-10-10T11:05:00.003+08:00

We're a family that loves and lives for books. I confess I can be writing more (my vocation and avocation) if not for being tempted away by a good read.

As a young mother in the '80s and '90s, I tried mightily to see to it that my two daughters absorb and assimilate this passion. Last month, when my youngest Ida accompanied my partner and me to the Manila Book Fair at SM Mall of Asia SMX, her wry question before we boarded the cab was, if her tatay would break his all-time high of P10,000-plus worth of purchases last year. Well, about a third of that were my selections so I was restrained this time around--I exercised the strictest self-control. I said I'd just keep to my duty of signing books that UST Publishing House's Jack Wrigley asked me to do.Ida was also restrained, even selecting kiddie titles on emotions (happiness, sadness, anger) not for her but for her niece Kai.

A week ago, after "Pedring" and "Quiel" exited the country, Kimi and I pronounced it a good day to go on a book foray in downtown Baguio. There is just one authentic book shop that respects its visitors, young and old, and turns their customers into frequent shoppers: Mt. Cloud Bookshop.

On this latest visit, I found my book reservations intact. Unlike in other stores that just give you a few days to cough up the money for your reservation, this one is aware how writers and artists struggle for their fees so it allows you some leeway to earn.

The shelves are full to the brim, and the "Death by cuteness" items (notebooks, post-its and other stationery) had to be moved to a table while colorful origami birds hung from the windows and other corners.

Proud to say, Kai is at home here--she was my youngest guest at my book launch in July. She has attended a story-telling session there. This time her mother and I wanted to pose her by the new black and white mural showing a Cordillera girl reading and imagining. Kimi had long waited for this chance.

I came away with these purchases: a collection of garden poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Series), Cathy Birch's The Creative Writer's Workbook (with exercises on building up a story character suitable for my high school students who want to go into fiction writing) and an Icon picture book on The Swan herself, Grace Kelly. For Kai, a cardboard Abakada book published by Adarna.

Our book appetites satisfied, Kai suckled on her mother's breasts and quickly nodded off. I met my girlfriends for two hours worth of catching up at nearby Hill Station which now offers apple pie on its dessert list. Merci Dulawan and I had a wedge each. The slice is thick and generous, but I had no problem polishing that off with the coffee.

When it was time to leave, we made a brief stopover at Kai's grumpa's office, then got cracking on our purchases once settled at home base.

Cake! Cake! Cake!

2011-10-06T13:01:00.000+08:00

Babies these days get to mark their "monthsaries" and always with a chunk of cake. The recently departed Steve Jobs said in a memorable commencement address,"Don't settle."

My grandchild's mother, Kimi, was ready to settle for a cupcake to commemorate the sixth month of life of our tweetheart, her daughter Kai Mykonos (notoriously renamed Butones by her grandmother--that should be me). I was also willing to compromise--when I texted the Grumpa of Butones to remind him about priority to-buy list (our maintenance medication), I added "Optional: cake for Kai's monthsary."

Well, what do you know? Grumpa obliged, necessitating an extra walk up Session Road to purchase a medium-size Black Forest from Vizco's.I was hoping for four kalamansi tarts from O Mai Kan though, but that's reaching for the moon.

What more when Butones learns to speak? Will she say "With thick caramel middle"? Hope she learns how to say "please".

The presentation

Putting to work her grabbing skill

Can't keep away from the icing

Cake snatched by adults; Kai's mouth forms a mournful, inverted U.

Esmilla, Golez return to Balay Kalinaw with new program

2011-10-02T16:55:00.000+08:00

Banaue, Lemuel, Mary Anne in Maningning event

2011-09-24T10:56:00.000+08:00

Founded in 2001, the Maningning Miclat Art Foundation, Inc. (MMAFI) has been organizing activities aimed at encouraging creativity and recognizing, awarding, and nurturing outstanding and talented young poets and artists 28 years old and below, the same age when Maningning died. During odd-numbered years, poetry competition in Filipino, English and Chinese is held and during even-numbered years, painting competition, two fields in the arts where Maningning excelled.

This year, on its 10th anniversary, MMAFI will award the winners of the 2011 Maningning Trilingual Poetry Competition back to back with a concert featuring soprano Banaue Miclat-Janssen, tenor Lemuel dela Cruz and pianist Mary Anne Espina. The event celebrating art, music and poetry will be held Sept. 29 at 7 P.M. at the GT-Toyota UP Asian Center Auditorium, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. The concert which will highlight best loved classical and Broadway songs, classical Filipino songs and Chinese songs will be directed by Jerry Respeto. Stage & design and lighting is by Ohm David.

CONCERT PERFORMERS

Banaue Miclat-Janssen is an all-around opera singer, actress and dancer. She teaches at the Ateneo de Manila University and UP. With a master of fine arts (MFA) degree in acting from the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College and Bachelor of Arts in Theater Arts from the UP Diliman, she also had vocal training under CUNY's Judylee Vivier, Robert A. Carpenter and Evelyn Mandac. She had master classes under F. Murray Abraham, Ruth Maleczech, Agnieszka Holland, Andrew Wade (RSC), Dee Cannon (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts), and Vernon Morris (Shakespeare). Banaue had a stint as supernumerary at the famed Metropolitan Opera, New York, in productions of Salome, Faust, La Boheme, Don Carlo, I Puritani and La Traviata. In 2007, she had a solo concert titled Banaue Sings Opera with tenor Dondi Ong at the UP Church of the Risen Lord, and Mabuhay! Banaue at Abelardo with the Mabuhay Singers in 2009 at the UP Abelardo Hall.

Considered one of the Philipines' acclaimed tenors, Lemuel dela Cruz graduated from the University of Santo Tomas with a Bachelor of Music degree under Maestra Salvacion Oppus Yniguez. He went to the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts and finished his professional diploma in Opera Studies with distinction. He has sung in numerous operas, including Basilio and Don Curzio in The Marriage of Figaro, Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, Gaston in La Traviata, Alfred in Die Fledermaus, Ruiz in Il Trovatore and Remendado in Carmen. He is with the faculty of the UST Conservatory of Music.

Known for her excellence in both chamber and opera music, Mary Anne Espina is one of the most sought-after collaborating artists in the country today. From 1993 to the present, she has maintained an exceptionally hectic musical career. Mary Anne earned her Master of Arts in Music degree, summa cum laude, from the UST Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of renowned Filipino pianists Manuel Maramba, OSB and Raul Sunico, Ph.D, Dean of the UST Conservatory of Music. She finished her undergraduate studies at the St. Scholastica's College of Music. Her previous mentors include Ms. Myrna Damaso and Ms. Erlinda Fule, former Dean of the UST Conservatory of Music. She is with the faculty of the UST Conservatory of Music.

MANINGNING POETRY PAST WINNERS

Grand winners in the 3 divisions of the Poetry Competition will each receive P28,000.00 together with a Julie Lluch sculpture trophy. The grand winners and the 2nd and 3rd Prize will each receive special hardbound edition of the books Voice from the Underworld : A Book of Verses (Maningning C. Miclat, Anvil, 2000, 2002), Beauty for Ashes: Remembering Maningning (edited by Mario Ignacio Miclat & Romulo Baquiran, Jr., Anvil, 2001) Beyond the Great Wall (Mario, Alma, Maningning & Banaue Miclat, 2006 National Book Award winner, Anvil, 2006, 2007)) and Secrets of the Eighteen Mansions ( Mario I Miclat, Anvil, September 2010, January 2011 ). The latter was long-listed at the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize.
Past grand winners of the Maningning Miclat Poetry Awards are Naya Valdellon (English) and Joselito delos Reyes (Filipino) in 2003 (no winner in Chinese) , Allan Pastrana (English), Joseph de Luna Saguid (Filipino) and Ye Cai-sheng (Chinese) in 2005, Raymond John de Borja (English), Erica Clariz delos Reyes (Filipino) and Chen Si-yuan (Chinese) in 2007, and Mikael de Lara Co (English), Kristian Cordero (Filipino) and Chen Liang (Chinese) in 2009.

2011 POETRY AWARDS
For this year’s event, a poem from the winning Filipino collection will be read by the multi-talented singer, actor and dancer, Roeder Camanag. Teacher and Tanghalang Ateneo actress Diana Laserna will read a poem from the winning English collection while DLSU professor and English & Chinese writer Shirley Lua will read the Chinese poem.
Tickets are at PhP500.00, free seating. For ticket reservation, call Maningning Foundation 812-4885/6, 0918-9057311, Pambie Herrera, 0906-4333147, Mila Dumlao,981-8500 loc. 3577, 0917-3524939.

ALIWW Boutique Sale

2011-09-24T09:51:00.000+08:00

Hangad's songs for your secret, sacred time

2011-08-20T19:51:00.000+08:00

From the inbox today came this announcement. The soon-to-be launched CD is worth listening to. Or worth the look-see when the album is launched on two days in September at different venues. I've seen these earnest kids perform five or so years ago when the mom of one of the members, Lorna Kalaw Tirol, brought in Hangad to serenade Karina Bolasco who had turned golden girl. Members of First Draft were there to celebrate the occasion with her with the usual dining, reading and sharing. That meeting remains fresh in my memory because there was live choral music for a change.

____________________

They don’t call themselves a choir or even a singing group. They are a group of young people, most of them professionals and a few college students, who sing to glorify God and to draw people closer to Him. They call themselves Hangad.

Next month, Hangad will mark its 20th anniversary with the release of a new album that explores and celebrates prayer as a deeply personal, one-on-one communication with God.

The CD, the group’s eighth, is titled This Time with You. It contains 16 songs, 15 of them original compositions by the members, that span a broad range of themes, emotions and musical styles, including a mix of a capella vocals and various instruments (piano, guitar, flute, saxophone and strings).

Renato Lucas, the celebrated principal cellist of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, performs a solo.

The album will be launched at two free concerts on Sept. 3 at 2 p.m. at the Chapel of the Eucharistic Lord, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City, and on Sept. 10 at 7 p.m. at the Santo Nino de Paz Chapel in Greenbelt, Ayala Center, Makati City.

Accompanying the album is a words and music book containing reflections and prayers written by Hangad members, and the complete vocal scores of the songs on the CD.

This new album recalls Hangad’s origins as a choir for Days with the Lord retreats at the Ateneo High School in 1991. Since then, the group has produced five music videos besides its eight CDs and has performed in numerous inspirational and fund-raising concerts around the country and in the United States.

In 2006, Hangad won the Awit Award for best inspirational/religious song for “Pieta: Oyayi sa Paanan ni Hesus” in the album titled Easter Journey.

This Time with You is a joint production of Hangad and the Jesuit Communications Foundation.

For more information, readers may check out Hangad on Facebook or visit its website, www.hangad.com, or write to mail@hangad.com.

Message from the original Mrs. B

2011-08-20T14:39:00.001+08:00

Warm greetings from my family and Desaparecidos!

It has been more than four years since my son Jonas has been missing. While the Supreme Court resolved that the military produce my one based on the investigation of the Commission on Human Rights which identified one of the abductors, until now we have no clue of his whereabouts or his condition along with the other victims of enforced disappearance.

We have brought our battle to all legal remedies available. We have also taken alternative means to increase the community’s awareness on the phenomenon of enforced disappearance, which to me, is one of the gravest crimes against humanity.

One such effort is the play “Mrs. B” which depicts my life with focus on our family’s search for Jonas. The play is a one-act monologue and runs for approximately 40 minutes. It was written by award-winning playwright Joi Barrios together with Rowena Festin and Grundy Constantino of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP) and directed by Soc Jose, also of CAP.

The play was first shown in 2009 with Pinky Amador playing the role of Mrs. B. With the support of The Asia Foundation, it was restaged in February 2010 which alternately starred Bibeth Orteza and Gina Alajar.

We now hope to bring the play to some universities all over the country this August, again, with the support of The Asia Foundation, with Ms. Bibeth Orteza and Ms. Malou de Guzman playing the role of Mrs. B alternately. We believe that the play will help in informing the public, especially our students, of the phenomenon of enforced disappearance in the country. We also hope to raise sufficient funds for the continued search and campaign for the freedom of our missing kin.

Confident that you are one with the victims in the search for justice, we look forward to your positive response and to the generosity of your heart.

Thank you very much.

Respectfully yours,

EDITA T. BURGOS
Mother of missing Jonas Burgos
Chairperson, Desaparecidos

Morning Poem by Mary Oliver

2011-08-15T06:36:00.001+08:00

Maybe if you look hard enough through your sputtering laptop's files, you'll find the manuscript that wasn't in your priority search list. This is what happened early this morning. Mary Oliver came calling again before I could throw water on my face and brew coffee. What's an old girl to do but post this poem? It's a worthy companion, much loved and read over and over for comfort, and it'll be just here for ready reference when things get rocky or off kilter in the new week.

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Photo from the Facebook community "Blissful Quotes

Non-rainy Mondays never fail to perk me up

2011-08-10T12:54:00.001+08:00

The last time we had a lengthy ladies' lunch like this at the same medium-size mall in Ortigas Center was when the host Yayay's mom was about to turn another leaf in her book of life in March this year.

This time, the same mom, who like a true writer, has the gift for listening and attention, sent out an SMS summoning the usual suspects to a lunch for no reason at all, except that her daughter, a geologist who loves clouds, wants to treat her mom's friends to lunch. Ain't that sweet?

So here the waiter of Banana Leaf caught us midway through a lunch of squid, chicken, fish, veggies and rice. Someone's clutching my slumbook (I earlier asked everyone to write into that book, but catching up left no one time to identify who her favorite Eraserhead is; besides, this is not a group that would be into Eraserheads or Rivermaya, except for the young geologist who'd rather potter with Harry any old day).
We always agree to have dessert and/or coffee afterwards. We walked towards Cinnabon but a member of the group hissed below normal volume, "Somebody got our couch!" We do feel proprietary about a certain couch there where we liked to sip our after-meal hot beverages and partake of sweets to add more sweetness to our lives and do all these within the time it took us to finish our lunch (an hour and a half).

We ended up at Terry where they have a marvelous Russian tart (not the waitress) that is sans rival in another language.
Inevitably, when the bill came, senior citizen ID cards were whipped out. Only the young geologist, her mom and I are not yet entitled to discounts, but this is not to say that her mom and I are not having senior moments already.

Often, we'd catch ourselves pausing in the midst of a narration because we couldn't recall the name, the year or where something happened, and we'd turn to the seatmate to see if her memory is sharper. We'd get the name, year or place right, but days later when we can only send an SMS stating, "Eto na nga yung cast of characters dun sa kuwento ko nung makalawa."
Nothing in our plans for the rest of the afternoon prepared us for this scene that met us at another mall which is known for DVDs and music CDs. I meant to look for a recording of Sibelius, but Fred the driver (I'm beginning to believe Fred is a generic name for chauffeurs the way Rolly is for money changers or men who know how to put away money for a proverbial rainy day)couldn't find a parking slot because Scene of the Crime Officers (SOCOs)
were crawling all over the place.

No one dared get off the vehicle to find out what was going on. This was unusual considering there were at least two full-time journalists behind me, including one who was a former police reporter. I begged off from usisera duty. I reasoned, "I have a cute grand-daughter. I still have something to live for."

Somebody espied, despite the distance, an orphaned shoe at the scene unfolding before us. That someone said it might be a fashion crime: Wrong shoe, right outfit?

Mang Fred maneuvered the car out of SOCO range, we got out, found our bearings and proceeded to scour the DVD outlets. I came away empty-handed: no Sibelius. Even the polka-dotted skirt marked down to P300 (Zara brand) was too short for me. I told Yayay, "Not the length I require. My varicose veins show in that skirt. Those are the factors your mother's friends need to consider." She giggled.

Eventually, it was time to return to our respective homes. The youngest woman in the group still had a dinner date with friends in Makati later in that already long day. Her mom's friends were dying to lay their heads gently on pillows for an afternoon nap.

There was an unofficial plan to have a DVD movie marathon-watching session at the home of the lady who brought the car. She said yes immediately, but voiced an afterthought: "Give me two months to fix my house." Audible collective groan from the rest of us.

When it was my turn to be dropped and the youngest among us saw where my mom's neighborhood was, she pointed at a spot where we could have a pool to ourselves, including water massage, the works.

I shan't say "Abangan." Because these outings are rare, I'd rather ask "Matutuloy ba?"

Baby's day out

2011-08-09T07:12:00.002+08:00

Here is Butones on her second visit to a bookstore up in Baguio. Notice that look of anticipation on her face? It's the same expression her lola in the lowlands wears whenever she's about to enter a bookshop (or an art supply outlet).
Here she must be thinking of that quote from Borges: "What are words if not shared memories?" The blogger, her lola, is projecting, of course.
Here she tries to pay attention to the story-telling with her Mamay Kimi and older friends Iggy and Mira.
Here she gets re-acquainted with old friend Alab during the post-storytelling reception for babies and children.
Here she is, a baby carried by a grandmama who answers to the name "Baby."
And that ends baby's day out for the former babies need grownup food.

On Cloud 9

2011-08-08T09:46:00.001+08:00
In business terms, Mt. Cloud, the bookshop inside the century-old Casa Vallejo in Baguio City, is meeting its monthly overhead.

"And then some," adds one of the partners, Padmapani L. Perez (the other half of the partnership is her kid sister Feliz). While the profit is not yet spectacular, the older Perez happily reports that "the Cloud is keeping afloat. We sometimes have concerned customers (new ones as well as regulars) asking, 'How is the business?', or, more bluntly, 'Are you making enough to survive?' When we say yes, we're okay, we're not drowning and we're not in the red, they look relieved and happy, and some exclaim, 'Good!' If anything, this tells us that people want us to stick around."
She is aware that in an era of e-books and big bookstore chains, "the general expectation seems to be that a small independent bookshop in Baguio is doomed to failure. Every day we are open is evidence to the contrary. We aim to satisfy discerning clients who grasp and appreciate what Mt. Cloud is all about: a love of books, above all. This may not be quantifiable in business terms. It may be naïve, but we believe this sets us apart from others in the book-selling business in the country. This is not to say that other booksellers don't love their books. We let our respect for the written word suffuse the way we do things in Mt. Cloud--from the selections we make and the events we hold to the look and feel of the shop."

The eight-month-old Mt. Cloud, and by extension, the year-old Hill Station and its space, including the walls and corridors, have become a hip, happening place in the laidback city where it is common for residents to feel some seasonal affective disorder set in when the monsoon rains pour. That's when they'd rather stay indoors and read and read under layers of clothing.
Perez says, "We've only been open eight months. We feel everything we do is new. We often make decisions on the fly, so it's hard to speak of innovation. We keep the Cloud bustling with warm bodies by lifting the written word off the page and bringing it to life in the shop. We invite authors to talk about and sign their books in our intimate space. Authors we've had the pleasure of hosting have remarked at the depth and quality of the dialogues they hold with the Baguio community members that meet them."

The Cloud (fond name for the shop) organizes art exhibits that complement the books it carries. Perez says, "Ah, this is an innovation! It wasn't part of our original plans, but local artist Chris Yñiguez approached to ask if he could use our hallway as an exhibit space. That got us started. Since then, we've been approached by other Baguio artists, and we've actively invited people to hold exhibits in our hallway or on our walls, among the bookshelves."

The authors whom the Cloud invites to speak were part of the plan from the very start. Perez, who is an anthropologist, poet and essayist, says, "We knew that it wouldn't work to sit and wait for books to be picked off our shelves so we have made Mt. Cloud dynamic, a place that aspires to the life of the mind and approaches it in a respectful, sometimes playful, way. In the poetry slams, aspiring and established poets come together in thrilling battles of spoken word. We've had two so far and intend to make the slam a regular event."
Mt. Cloud has reached out to the local writers, making it known to them that their works have a special place in the shop's heart. Perez says, "We carry books published independently by writers from around the Cordilleras, and we promote their work every chance we get."

Feliz, who teaches at the Laren Alternative School in Makati City while her Manang Padma is based in Baguio, takes charge of acquisitions. She is in touch with publishing houses in Metro Manila and ensures the Cloud has a steady stream of new titles.

The older Perez handles the shop's daily operations. She used to teach graduate classes at the University of the Philippines Baguio, organize field school for Laren, do anthropological research, and freelance writing.

She confesses, "I've resigned from the post of Delusional Superwoman Aspirant. I've narrowed down my occupations to motherhood and the shop. It's like having a baby. I still do the occasional, small writing assignment. To keep sane, I bike. Someday, I'd like to teach again."

Mt. Cloud has a Facebook page and Twitter account to keep people abreast on events there and the arrival of new stock (books or stationery items). In the not-too-distant future, it will launch an online store.

First published in the summer 2011 issue of Prime magazine. Photos by Laarni Ilagan

High on a hill, there's a resto with a diff

2011-08-08T09:15:00.002+08:00
In the city that is home to many a Filipino's heart, there stands a building wearing Baguio's old colonial colors of olive green with a touch of white. Casa Vallejo, the chartered city's oldest building at more than 100 years, houses ghosts of eras past on its upper Session Road location.

Apart from these harmless other-worldly presences that go bump in the night, there is also inside Casa Vallejo 24 rooms, the year-old Hill Station restaurant-bar of Mitos Benitez Yñiguez, Mt. Cloud Bookshop of the Perez sisters (Padmapani and Feliz) and North Haven, a spa that offers, among others, scrubs and massage using indigenous techniques and materials (e.g., coffee beans and strawberries).

Coming soon: a cinematheque with limited seating for Baguio-based or visiting cineastes who wish to watch and appreciate Filipino and international film classics.

Yñiguez says, "Both the restaurant and Casa Vallejo have been doing well since we opened. In the beginning, it took some time for us to get known but at least in our graphs, we have been going steadily up since the day our doors opened."

For Hill Station's first anniversary in March this year, it invited jazz singer Jacqui Magno, whose last visit to the city was in 2007 for the Baguio Writers Group's fund-raising concert "Jazz for Tonight" at the Baguio Country Club (one of the beneficiaries then was the group's founding member Napoleon Javier, a broadcast media journalist who was then confined at a local hospital's intensive care unit after a major stroke; the rest of the proceeds from the fund-raiser underwrote the group's community outreach writing workshops for the youth, for mid-lifers and for senior citizens).

Ms. Magno was backed up by local musicians Jason Sta. Maria on the acoustic guitar and Ira Publico on the keyboard. The response to Ms. Magno's hour and a half performance was so electric that Yñiguez, overjoyed by the sellout crowd and the ovations for the performer, was overheard as saying to her hard-working crew and marketing staff, "What the fuck do we do in year two?"

She told this writer, "About six to a dozen friends from Manila came up for this anniversary. The rest are all honest-to-goodness Baguio residents."

Before the concert, she and her staff prepared a buffet of Cajun-Creole food inspired by the hot cuisine of Louisiana in the US. Yñiguez explains, "Hot and jazz, bagay!"

So there was a spread of Mediterranean roasted vegetables with evoo and balsamico, Creole friend catfish with hush puppies, squid in saffron-champagne sauce, croquetas de bacalao with aioli, smoked sausages with potatoes, Cajun spare riblets, double dark chocolates, chocolate chunk cookies and lemon meringue bars.

Yñiguez, whose paternal side of the family is responsible for Mario's, another eating landmark in the city, ventured on her own with her immediate family's blessings.

She says, "In Hill Station, we have made it a point to hold an interesting event with music, entertainment and all new tapas buffets at least every quarter at reasonable prices. It's our way of saying 'Thank you' to loyal patrons and followers of our restaurant."

In September last year, the restaurant had a Chilean wine and tapas festival with acoustic guitar music by Aya Yuson and Gou de Jesus doing the vocals. The one-night event cost the patron under P1,000. What was surprising was the house was packed yet it happened in the middle of the rainy season.

In November 2010, Hill Station had a Sangria and tapas night, this time with music from local artists Sta. Maria on the guitar, Publico on the piano and Mabel Tolentino, vocals. For New Year’s Eve, the place featured a Baguio rock and roll band, The Edralins, and tapas again. Yñiguez feared then that the wooden floor would not be able to withstand the all-night dancing. But it did.

She rues, "With events like these, I hope to make this a place to go to and remember. Every month, we put out new specials; the best-sellers go into our menu and out with the old. Constant renovation in our menu has become a standard, and many guests come back because of this. This summer I am trying to make the specials as fresh and refreshing as possible. We have lots of salads, fresh organic greens as sidings of our main courses, new desserts and savories for our chiller as we have a good coffee crowd that lingers in the afternoons, reading books from Mt. Cloud or just browsing on their laptops as free WiFi is available to all."

Yñiguez has her own favorite among the restaurant's summer specials: Cha Ca, a Vietnamese salad made of turmeric-flavored catfish fillets on a bed of greens and boiled sotanghon noodles flavored with patis, lemon juice, honey, fresh mint, dill, Thai basil and chilies. She guarantees that "it is soooooo refreshing!"

During the Lenten season, she made seafood specials like Bacalao ala Vizcaina, based on an old family favorite since her grandmother's time, bangus flakes and malunggay on top of spaghetti with olive oil and garlic and a Thai red curry with shrimp and halibut (locally known as dapa), fresh basil and tamarind.

Like that other Baguio classic, Café by the Ruins on Chuntug street, across from the Baguio City Hall, Hill Station follows the wisdom of slow cooking and buying what's in season at the public market.

Hill Station's new, seasonal desserts are crème brulee with fresh strawberries, and lemon meringue bars. Also available are Malva Pudding, a South African recipe, and Kahlua panna cotta.

Asked what personal and professional fulfillment she derives from running a space like Hill Station, Yñiguez whoops it up, declaring, "I love love love Hill Station and what I’m doing today! I have always liked entertaining at home, and Hill Station has just provided me with a space I can call home. I love the oldness of it, the feel of the wood, the French windows with trees outside jumping right at you. Not just a few have said the place reminds them of my house which looks similar as it’s all pinewood, wood floors and French windows, too. One day I have to add on a verandah like mine, and it’ll be perfect."

She continues, "Professionally, I have grown so much, having my own place to run, then cooking and creating dishes that I feel like making. My staff is highly motivated as many of the things we do are a first for them. I am so happy and so are they. I think it shows."

Visit www.casavallejobaguio.com, tel. no. (074)442-3397 or book through www.agoda.com. Also visit www.hillstationbaguio.com or call tel. nos. (074)424-2737 or (074)423-9100. Email at info@hillstationbaguio.com for reservations and events.

Published in the summer 2011 issue of Prime magazine. Photos, except for the dish cha ca (from Hill Station's Facebook page), by LAARNI ILAGAN

FIDU ON A ROOF: La Fides gets well-earned tribute

2011-08-04T21:00:00.001+08:00
This blogger is ceding this space to friend Pablo Tariman who gives a comprehensive tribute to a real grand dame.

My own encounters with Mr. Tariman's subject began in the mid to the late'60s when I was glued to black and white TV on Sunday mornings. That was a happy hour for me, better than going to church, for I'd hear opera, kundiman and other vocal forms emoted by this classy-looking lady. In college, I finally saw her in person at Abelardo Hall where she was one of the featured singers in a farewell program for the outgoing American ambassador. She sang an aria from The Telephone, but I can no longer recall the other highlights of the program because I was mesmerized by her long slender legs.

Finally, I got to see her up close and personal when my boss and her gang undertook this mad adventure of producing a dinner theater musical, Pippin, where she played, yes, Pippin's mother. My instructions were to interview her while she was resting. She was lying on her back on a hard bench during a rehearsal break.

I've lost that souvenir program where that profile of hers was published. But I've not forgotten the sing-song quality of her voice. When the interview ended, she said, "Now that was nice and relaxing. It's as though I was talking to a psychiatrist." Hmmmm. I must've missed my real calling.
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By PABLO A. TARIMAN

FIDES Cuyugan Asensio, the first Filipino voice scholar accepted at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, turned a year older on the first day of August and a celebration is in order.

That Philadelphia school has connections with leading Filipino artists who made good: Nena Villanueva del Rosario. the first Filipino piano prodigy; Cecile Licad, without a doubt the star pupil of Curtis and the country’s most celebrated pianist, tenors Noel Velasco and Otoniel Gonzaga.

Asensio recalls the music school she knew in the ’50s: “Curtis Institute of Music was, during my time, the most exclusive music school in the world. The finest teachers of every instrument and voice taught at Curtis. There were only 120 students housed in a huge mansion of the high-end main line Philadelphia. No taped auditions were acceptable. Aspiring scholars of voice and instruments had to audition in person. If you come from as far away a country as Nena del Rosario and I did, too bad if you failed the audition. One had to spend for one’s fare to get to Philadelphia.”

A celebrated friend and classmate of Asensio in Curtis was Anna Moffo, Italian-American diva. She died away in 2006.

The surviving friend says, “Anna was a dear friend. We shared a lot of good memories. Because of financial constraints, she would bring home-cooked lunch to school where we would eat together in the basement at Curtis. She hardly ate out which my more affluent schoolmates did. In those intimate lunches (read: over baon box), there were confidences exchanged. She was madaldal, speaking with a distinct Philadelphia accent. We talked about family and boyfriends. When the boyfriend at Curtis dumped Anna, she was sadly quiet. She talked about it in low tones interspersed with tears. We had quite an operatic session. After she made it in the professional world of opera, movies and television, her personal life was not one envisioned with her school boyfriend who was a tall, good-looking piano major. Anna married a succession of older wealthy men who left her the way an opera heroine is abandoned. They died and left her with substantial finances, but she had little of the starry-eyed passion I had seen during those years at Curtis.”

In that school, Asensio performed Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Telephone and the composer told her after the performance that the Filipina sang the part so well many thought the opera was composed for her.

That Menotti piece was the first opera I saw in Albay when Asensio sang it at the Bicol College Gym in an outreach tour in the mid-’70s. She was as engrossing as the coquette telebabad gossip that I wrote my first rave review for opera in The Bicol Chronicle.

A few years later, I would bump into her at the Cultural Center watching Placido Domingo and Eva Marton in the San Francisco Opera production of Tosca.

Fidu, as friends fondly call her, was born in Lucena, Quzon, but her physician father, Dr. Gervasio Santos Cuyugan (personal physician-surgeon of President Quezon) was from San Fernando, Pampanga. She got her Bicol connections from her mother, Jacinta Belza, a beauty from Buhi, Camarines Sur. Buhi town is a paradise where her family spent wonder-filled vacations next to mountain and the lake.

She was born into a music-loving family.

“My mother was always playing the piano – simplified excerpts or piano from grand opera. I guess that is where I first had an aural glimpse into the exciting world of opera. My sister, Ceres was the star pupil of Maestra Marcela Agoncillo. My brother, Ruben, was the star pupil of Maestro Ernesto Vallejo (the country’s first violin prodigy).”

She herself is a mother of two and a grandmother of five. Nicole, daughter of her son Noli and Iwi Laurel, sings. The remaining four grandkids are children of her son Dennis, a physician, and his American wife Rebekah Colby: Michael, bio-engineering student; Ryan, an environmental engineering student; Kirsten, also a singer, and Marielle, still in middle school.

The lola says, “I have a small family, but what it lacks in quantity is evenly balanced with quality.”

Noli, her son Manuel III’s nickname, was taken from Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere.

Recalls the grandma: “I was singing Sisa when Noli was five months inside me.”

Tomorrow at seven, Asensio will be honored with a birthday musical tribute at the UP Abelardo Hall which will resound with the music of the contemporary operas she has written as librettist over the years.

In this presentation aptly called “Applause,” excerpts from various operas she is associated with will be mounted, among them, Amy (work in progress), Larawan at Kababaihan: Mukha at Maskara (music by Lucrecia Kasilag), “Mayo-Bisperas ng Liwanag” (inspired by Nick Joaquin “May Day Eve”) with music by Rey Paguio; Spoliarium, an opera on the life of Juan Luna with music by Ryan Cayabyab; “Why Flowers Bloom in May”( Kasilag); Song of Joseph, a musical on the life, love and death of St. Joseph (music by Raymond Roldan) and La Loba Negra composed by Francisco Feliciano and mounted at the CCP in the mid-’80s with her singing one of the lead roles in the distinguished company of Noel Velasco and Eleanor Calbes.

At this late stage of her life, Asensio is given credit as opera singer, librettist, impresario and music teacher. As performing artist, she was the coloratura to reckon with the ’50s and the ’60s.

She made her professional debut as Adele in Die Fledermaus at the Far Eastern University Auditorium. Two years later, she sang the role of Sisa in the world premiere of De Leon’s Noli Me Tangere with the Manila Symphony Orchestra.

Until the late ’60s, she appeared in Filipino operas, including Santos’s Mapulang Bituin, Pajaro’s Binhi ng Kalayaan and Kasilag’s Dularawan. Her repertoire included roles from conventional opera, including Gretel in Hansel und Gretel, Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, Susanna in Il Segreto di Susanna and Konstanze in Die Entfrung aus dem Serail.

On this day that she will be given tribute as singer and music teacher, several arias from various works come to mind like “Huirizilippochtli” and “Napakahaba na ng Gabi” sung by Dona Luisa from La Loba Negra. Another favorite aria is “Mayo, Mayo…” and “Madilim” sung by Anastacia from her work Mayo…Bisperas ng Liwanag with music by the late Rey Paguio.

Why are these her favorite arias? She answers, “They are special to me because they are all challenging and dark. As a singer, I wish I had a larger dramatic voice to deliver those arias but with my histrionic ability and vocal technique, I manage to color my light voice to convey the lives of acid red bitter yellow, black, brown and grey into the palette of the arias I mentioned.”

Another favorite is Verdi’s La Triaviata, especially the second act’s extended duet with Germont, father of the love of Violettas’s life. Asensio recalls, “I sang ‘Addio del Passato’ live in the latest foray into the cinema, in Niño, which although accompanied only by piano, I did no more than ten takes because Loy Arcenas, director par exemplar, was meticulous to the point of exhaustion. Those takes were physically and vocally equivalent for a singer at my age to singing with full orchestra in the full-length opera version.”

She continued, “Violetta’s character is so woven into Verdi’s music. There is no way a singer who is vocally equipped can lose her way. The moment I researched on Dumas’s play and learned the music, I was hooked. Every woman who has truly loved a man can relate to Violetta’s farewell scene from Alfredo, rejected by the man himself or his family. Every scene in Traviata resonates very well to women in love. Even the death scene is how I think I would like to go. Ha ha ha! With a burst of joy in the opera it is Alfredo who brings forth from Violetta the last line ‘O Gioia!’ Oh joy! I think for me it would be God welcoming me to his kingdom.”

She also remembers Die Fledermaus because it’s a fun opera. “It didn’t pose a vocal difficulty for me at my age. I had great co- singers, director, conductor and choreographer. They were Austrian Herbert Zipper and Trudl Dubsky Zipper who mounted an authentically correct staging.”

She would not exchange her roles as singer and librettist for any other role in the arts “I still have three completed un-staged works waiting in the wing for sponsors. One is a work in progress. All three are on Philippine themes as I’ve always tried to write on topics about my country.”

Asked to describe this latest phase of her personal and musical life, she says, “I am still sailing on smooth waters with wavelets of problems every now and then which are rare. My late husband, Manuel Asensio, kept me ‘well protected’ and financially funded to pursue my music-theater life. That life is hysterically, excitingly and deliciously chaotic as anybody in the producing, creative and performing magical world of theater knows. I have two sons, now middle aged, five grandchildren and myriads of cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces who are all into the arts, creative and performing in one way or another.”

Asensio’s other children, her graduates and students, who choose to be identified with her, keep the line of her passion for music and theater unbroken into the future.

This business of mounting and marketing opera has been overblown by misconceptions one of which is that it is for the elite. She says, “I want to dispute that and have a real debate on what opera is about. I want to demystify it. Operas are mostly stories which even barrio children can relate to. The killings, murders, love affairs, incest and so forth can actually be headlines of tabloids read by the masses. It’s a matter of how to present it in the language Filipinos understand and market it the way they do foreign shows.”

Fable of the porcupine

2011-08-02T14:12:00.000+08:00
This came in the mail on this rainy Tuesday. Given the gloomy news, the gloomier weather, not to forget the gloom-and-doom dispositions of people we live with, this is a good reminder on peaceful, fruitful co-existence. Thank you, E, for this.
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It was the coldest winter ever. Many animals died because of the cold.

The porcupines, realizing the situation, decided to group together to keep warm.

This way they covered and protected themselves, but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions.

After awhile, they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen.

So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth.

Wisely, they decided to go back to being together. They learned to live with the little wounds caused by the close relationship with their companions in order to receive the warmth that came from the others.

This way they were able to survive.

Moral of the story: The best relationship is not the one that brings together perfect people. It's when each individual learns to live with the imperfections of others and can admire the other person's good qualities.

The real moral of the story: LEARN TO LIVE WITH THE PRICKS IN YOUR LIFE!

A Monday surprise from Roland Rabang of Baguio

2011-08-01T10:38:00.000+08:00
Fortnight
By Roland P. Rabang
Visually written

Skimming through the pages of Babeth Lolarga’s brand new book, “Catholic and Emancipated”- a collection of “personal chronicles” it says in the cover - I was drawn to a particular essay with the title, “The Marriage of Text and Images.”
It warranted a second glance because I have read the material before. Of course some of us who follow Babeth in her blog www.brooksidebaby.blogspot.com or in publications, might have read not only this essay, but also other essays that comprise the entire compilation which are either blog entries or published articles.

But my encounter with this particular essay was neither. Babeth emailed this to me in 2008 when I was working with a paper, and struggling on the topic of photography and photographers. She good-naturedly provided me with this gem of a material which talks about the relationship between the visual and language, and concludes that images are formed within our consciousness whenever we appropriate language.

So we call an object “table” not because it exists as a table but because we all agree that it is a table. This is what Babeth meant when she quoted Braque as saying, “Meaning arises through agreed-upon convention, not through likeness.”

It was when I got here - which is not even halfway through the essay - that my nose started to bleed. It brought me back to that period when I had to look at photography beyond the creative pleasure that the medium gives to an enthusiast.

If Babeth talked about photography in her piece, it was only a fleeting reference to a multi-media exhibit that also involved the written word. No doubt, Babeth is not only a writer, she is also a painter which explains her enduring romance with the visual as well as the written form.

As I structured her piece into my work, I thought about painting and photography and how both exist as media that represents the world around us. With photography as reference, I tried to look at the work of the painter and realized that in a way, the process is like photography except that the painter has all the time to bring the image from his consciousness on to the canvass, and that is when the vision of the painter becomes apparent. On the other hand, the photographer works with exposures of one second up to the fastest shutter speed of less than a second without suffering reciprocity failure.

This is not a discussion of who does a better job, the painter or the photographer, but a look into that “time” in which images are created. Painting and photography are both interpretative media and there is no denying the vision of the artist once a painting is completed. But Chuck Close says this about photography: “Here’s the dilemma and the strength of photography. It is the easiest medium in which to be competent, but it is the hardest medium in which to have a personal vision.”

With painting, there is a purposeful physicality: the movement of the artist’s hand from brush to canvass. A photographer works only with fleeting time, perhaps 1/125th of a second on the street, and a latent image in the case of film. Thus, everything must unravel in the photographer’s head because the physical act of tripping the shutter is merely fleeting; but at that instant before the shutter is pressed, the vision must already exist in the photographer’s head.

But this process is not well-defined prompting arguments, among them Walter Benjamin’s, that photography is merely “mechanical reproduction.” Not by accident though, this concept gave birth to one of photography’s enduring mission: documentary. It found its place in journalism, and was called photojournalism.

That said, however, here’s another nosebleed thought. There is “built-in” interpretation even in “objective” written reports. Photojournalism inevitably follows this principle. Worse, it is mute, which is why it is, as Babeth would say, “married” into the written word. Simply put, in journalism, the photograph has a caption.

Interpretation is subjective, thus encounters with photography since the exciting century of its invention will always carry with it the question: does documentary trump art, or does art trump documentary?

There is no shortage of words used to respond to this question which makes this marriage between text and images exciting, confounding, infuriating and yes, sensual. This is, I heard it once said, “textual erotica” at its best.

Reprinted from Baguio Chronicle where the author writes a column

Photo of book cover "grabbed" from RUDI TABORA's Facebook photo collection

The book Catholic and Emancipated is published by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House as part of its Personal Chronicles series.

Pandin one summer day with the ladies who lunch

2011-07-31T13:42:00.001+08:00
The best account of this first field trip of an informal group of women journalists, a.k.a., ladies who lunch most of the time at the Ortigas Center when one of the members is having a birthday, is still by the great dame herself who'll spank me and crack my fingers if I disclose her identity. Just go to this old link to relish her prose: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/20755/women-who-lunch-take-the-oars-on-lake-placid.
All these photos are courtesy of the angel in the group who's a wizard with her cell phone camera. The occasion was the birthday of the Gemini in the group who's quite notorious among us for dividing the Philippines into two socioeconomic classes, the rich and the poor. She seems to have given up on the middle class ever growing and shrinking that gap.
As for their kaladkarin friend, ever-ready with a swimsuit in her bag at the first SMS about a trip out of town, she would rather go jump into Lake Pandin in Laguna after a good lunch at the first opportunity.
Goodbye, longest summer of 2011! Till we meet once more in 2012.

All photos by ANGELINA G. GOLOY

Juan Jose Cuadra puts up a good fight

2011-07-19T20:22:00.002+08:00
“What's wrong with Jolico? Di kaya na-karma ’yan? Daming walking wounded dyan.”

This SMS received from a fellow writer nearly made the receiver choke after she had sent a text blast inviting those who’ve known Juan Jose (formerly Jolico) Cuadra as colleague, friend or acquaintance to a fund-raising concert in his honor and for his benefit.

Cuadra, retired poet-art critic, who is living the life of a recluse in the hills of Laguna as he struggles with the initial effects of Parkinson’s disease, was known in the past not only for his poems, especially the much-anthologized “Dogstar” and “Dogging Years,” but also his reviews of art exhibitions. There were times when his acerbic pen cut some artists and pseudo-artists down to size. This endeared him to some, but others were not too pleased.

Painter Sonny Yñiquez once had this conversation with novelist Erwin Castillo who said, “Of all the poets whom God loves, it’s Jolico he loves best.” Whereupon Recah Trinidad, veteran sports writer and poet, who overheard them, said, “Tama ’yan. Marami kami ganyan ang alam.”

About his poems having traces of Jose Garcia Villa’s influence, he said, “I’ve written much poetry, and my language is my own. Villa’s and my poetic sensibilities are worlds apart. One has to read everything a poet has written to make a good judgment. One swallow can’t make a summer. One poem can’t make a poet. I stand on my own as a poet because of the totality of my work.”

When he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, defined by answers.com as “a progressive nervous disease occurring most often after the age of 50, associated with the destruction of brain cells that produce dopamine and characterized by muscular tremor, slowing of movement, partial facial paralysis, peculiarity of gait and posture, and weakness,” his reaction was near denial.

He said, “Naturally, it was a terrible blow to me. I never felt so useless in all of my life. There’s nothing I can do about it, except pray. Only God in his complete love and mercy can heal me. Every day I hope for a miracle. I found out in my situation that only love of God can help. Man, no matter how great he is, is nothing without God’s love. I’ve come to realize that one cannot escape his own karma. Karma is exact when it’s meted out to one. Punishment is exact. One is his own judge and executioner because of karmic debts you accrue for yourself.”

He continued, “If I have to live my life again, I’ll dedicate it to God. I will write the greatest praises to God’s creations, showing him his glory. I’ll write love poems to praise God.”

Of his longtime partner, and now care giver with flair, Auggusta de Almeidda (Chikki Gomez to her friends and family), Cuadra, 72, said, “The woman I love I will love without bounds. We exist because God exists. I will live an exemplary life of the good. I will live by example without forgetting I’m still human.”

De Almeidda helps him do soothing ablutions like warm water therapy with a pinch of salt and molasses or honey. He drinks plenty of water, and they have an early dinner. He’s in bed by 8 p.m. after his evening prayers.

The couple likes to go up on their roof deck to greet Mother Nature and her four elements whom they address by their Filipino names: Amang Haring Araw, Inang Reynang Lupa, Amang Haring Hangin and Inang Reynang Tubig.

On sunny days, Cuadra soaks up the sun and does deep-breathing therapy. For breakfast he has a mix of fertilized duck's eggs, fruits, raw vegetables, whey milk with raw honey, raw buffalo milk (when available), natural supplements like brewer’s yeast, lecithin, wheat germ, sea cucumber and virgin coconut oil.

The couple learned this regimen from Dr. Robin Navarro, a proponent of rapid cellular balancing therapy. For lunch Cuadra is allowed organic chicken or chicken liver. He eats bananas for its serotonin, which alleviates his condition, too.

On July 22, if he is not bothered by the chronic fatigue that is part of the disease, he’ll journey with de Almeidda for a long-postponed reunion with friends at UP Diliman’s Balay Kalinaw where baritone Andrew Fernando, mezzo soprano Clarissa Ocampo, flutist Christopher Oracion and pianist Mary Anne Espina will gift him with an evening of song and music.

When Cuadra asked a member of Church Café, one of the concert producers apart from Music News, why they were doing all these for him, the answer he got was, “The love of Christ compels us!”

Top photo shows Cuadra in purple shirt surrounded by friends Jerry Araos, Auggusta de Almeidda and Sonny Yñiquez at a party in 1997.
Lower photo, de Almeidda and Cuadra
Photos courtesy of Araos family

Coming out in tomorrow's edition of Good Morning Philippines, an MWF paper put out by Times Chronicle Publishing.

Summer at the Prado

2011-07-17T08:38:00.000+08:00
"Seeing how beauty and functionality have been coaxed out of chaos, perhaps accounts for the sense of magic that one feels for Prado Farm." —Mariel Francisco

That quote about Prado Farm can come no less than from an Angelena and a Pampaguena like Mariel, one of the members of First Draft, a loose group of women writers (not a group of loose women writers, we're way past expiry date on that one).
For the first time in the lusty month of May, we managed to get ourselves out of our respective comfort zones in Metro Manila and go on our first out-of-town trip to the new Prado Farm of the Gutierrez family in Lubao, Pampanga. We went in a two-vehicle convoy. Except for the skinny Maginnys in the group like Lorna and Edna, the rest of us needed good space for our behinds.

Weeks before as plans were set in motion, I emailed the group how excited I was to be able to announce I was off to the Prado (even if it's not the famous museum in Spain).

And Prado it was, on a summer day, to try its organic lechon (yes, there is such a thing since the pig, when alive, is fed arugula leaves) with a duck inside its belly. Chit, who has the Roces funny bone, couldn't be stopped from imagining aloud from what orifice the duck found its way into to reach the pig's belly.
Reading our manuscripts aloud after that rich repast meant cracking watermelon seeds, nibbling on arrowroot biscuits or, in my case, getting my mouth all juiced up from passion fruits.
Thank you, Lorna, for lending your digicam to record another moment in time when writing, reading and eating never felt gooder than good.

For that unique Prado experience, email pradofarms@gmail.com or text/call mobile 9209-831-329.

Birthday Poem

2011-06-24T14:05:00.003+08:00

A Grandmother's 56th Birthday Poem

For Kai Mykonos L. Fernandez

she is kai mykonos.
she is, is she?
my "gleam of sunshine"
on a day awash with falcon tears

henry wadsworth longfellow rued
while astride a horse on some
hill in the past too distant
to be searched, except through
sites like poemhunter.com,
there i searched & paused & halted & cried
bingo, kai, i found the words
that can fly to your side,
right by bibi elephant's side,
& dave the monkey's side before he can
sing "alley hoop hoop hoop
look at that caveman go!"

here's a lullaby from your booboo B
who works for thee, mamay kimi & country P
though they're not mine but the world's
these lines should sweep across
your laughter-full eyes.

god bless longfellow
god bless kai
god bless baptist john

now take your nap kai kai kai
mamay's gotta wash nappies
i gotta write a mile

think long, think fellow
think wads of paper full of worth
think henry & friendly
best yet, don't think at all

get lulled to sleep by longfellow
as it is nearly naptime
see you in a few kai kai kai

"Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart,
Like pine-trees dark and high,
Subdue the light of noon, and breathe
A low and ceaseless sigh;

This memory brightens o'er the past,
As when the sun, concealed
Behind some cloud that near us hangs
Shines on a distant field."

--Babeth Lolarga

June 24, 2011
2:05 p.m.

Pangalay Dancers Do Poetry, Music & Salinawit at FEU

2011-06-14T07:26:00.000+08:00

In the email inbox today is this announcement from Nanette Matilac of AlunAlun Dance Circle. Truly a must see!
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Multi-awarded Artists Collaborate in a
Concert of Pangalay, Poetry, Music and Salinawit
FEU Auditorium, Manila
3 p.m. on June 23, 2011
Free Admission!

The AlunAlun Dance Circle, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and Far Eastern University present "Konsiyerto ng Pangalay, Tula, Salinawit at Musika," an exciting concert that aims to fuse different art forms with the participation of various artists. The concert will be on June 23 at 3 p.m. at the FEU Auditorium, Morayta St., Manila.

The concert will feature pangalay choreographies of Ligaya F. Amilbangsa with the AlunAlun Dance Circle. These pieces will showcase the versatility of the pangalay dance style in interpreting various types of music ranging from traditional, folk, Western classical and pop.

For the first time, Filipino adaptation of songs by Jose F. Lacaba, with rendition by pop vocalist Cookie Chua, will be choreographed using the pangalay movement vocabulary. The concert will demonstrate the versatility of the pangalay dance style in presenting poetry by Marra Pl. Lanot and Benilda Santos. The dramatic interpretation of poetry through dance also includes the poems of Dr. Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio.

"Konsiyerto ng Pangalay, Tula, Salinawit at Musika" marks the opening of FEU's Cultural Calendar for school year 2011-12 which aims to acknowledge many FEU graduates who are in the arts and have been enriching Filipino culture and heritage.

Amilbangsa is one of FEU’s outstanding alumnae. She has devoted her life to studying and teaching the pangalay, the traditional dance style of the Sulu Archipelago which has the richest movement vocabulary among all Philippine dance forms. The performance is free and open to the public. For inquiries and reservations, log on to www.pangalaydance.com.

PROGRAM
PART 1
Scene 1: What is Pangalay?
A brief annotative introduction to an endangered generic dance style
indigenous to the Sulu Archipelago, Southern Philippines

Scene 2: Traditional Pangalay Variations
A medley of kulintangan music and variations of pangalay dances:
Igal Kabkab: Pangalay choreographed with a kabkab or fan
Tawti: An exciting occupational dance that vividly portrays
a fisherman catching tawti or catfish
Linggisan: Janggay or metal claws amplify gestures portraying images of
a bird in flight, searching for food, or simply enjoying the gift of life and freedom

PART 2

Scene 3: Pangalay at Musika
Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel
Piano Sonata in C by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Basta’t Mahal Kita rendition by Sylvia la Torre
Pamaypay ng Maynila rendition by Sylvia la Torre

Interlude:
Ligaya Amilbangsa presents Ukkil book to FEU.

PART 3
Pangalay, Tula at Salinawit

Scene 4: Pangalay at Tula
“Pang-alay” by Benilda Santos
Selection from “Witch’s Dance” by Marra Pl. Lanot
"Sa Kabataang Pilipino" by Jose Rizal
"Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa" by Andres Bonifacio

Scene 5: Pangalay at Salinawit
“Ilog at Buwan” (“Moon River”) composed by Henry Mancini
“Mahinang Samba” (“One Note Samba”) composed by Antonio Carlos Jobim
“Kay Ganda ng Mundo” (“What a Wonderful World”) composed by George Weiss and Bob Thiele
(Salinawit by Jose F. Lacaba)

PART 4: Open Forum and Jamming

Photos by KIMI FERNANDEZ show AlunAlun Dance Circle in performance at UP Diliman campus in December 2010

Reminder for the Week/s Ahead

2011-06-05T08:24:00.002+08:00
This old blogger likes to visit the sites of young bloggers. And here's what I stumbled upon this morning. Being the eternally cock-eyed optimist that I am, I am sharing this with my loyal blog followers of 16. In another phrase, this optimism is nothing more than "Faith, Hope and Love." :-) Thanks, guys!

Dear Dear Dear Music Lovers of Metro Manila & Nearby Provinces

2011-06-01T13:29:00.004+08:00
Following is a letter from Pablo A. Tariman of Music News & Features on the next couple of intimate concerts for the season at Balay Kalinaw, University of the Philippines Diliman campus, Quezon City. The July 22 concert is a fund-raising event of Church Cafe, a Quezon City-based community of cultural workers, in behalf of poet-essayist-painter Jolicco de Cuadra who is under treatment for the early stages of Parkinson's disease.The July 22 event includes an exhibition and art raffle-auction apart from a dinner-concert.

_______________________________

Dear Music Lovers,

After the successful opening night of the UP Balay Kalinaw Intimate Concert Series on May 28 with violinist Gina Medina and pianist Mary Anne Espina, we would like to invite you to the remaining three concerts of the season: pianist Oliver Salonga on June 18, cellist Wilfredo Pasamba with pianist Mary Anne Espina on July 8 and baritone Andrew Fernando with mezzo soprano Clarissa Ocampo, flutist Christopher Oracion and pianist Espina on July 22.

Please fill up the ticket order form below, and Music News can deliver the tickets free. Or remit ticket payments through BPI Savings Account No. 2449-0956-88 under Account Name: Pablo A. Tariman and your tickets will be reserved on the night of the concert. Call us at (02) 7484152 or 09065104270.

Here is the background of the artists and their program.

Hoping you can join us in the forthcoming concerts, we remain

Very truly yours,

PABLO A. TARIMAN

Ticket Order Form
Music News
116 Edinburgh St.
Pasig Green Park Subd.
Manggahan, Pasig City

Gentlemen:
We would like to order the following tickets indicated below:

1. June 18, 2011 Concert of Pianist Oliver Salonga
( ) ____ tickets at P1000 (with dinner)
( ) ____ tickets at P500 (concert only)
( ) ____ tickets at P300 (student price)

2. July 8, 2011 Concert of Cellist Wilfredo Pasamba and pianist Mary Anne Espina
( ) ____ tickets at P1000 (with dinner)
( ) ____ tickets at P500 (concert only)
( ) ____ tickets at P300 (student price)
3. July 22, 2011 Concert of Baritone Andrew Fernando, mezzo-soprano Clarissa Ocampo and flutist Christopher Oracion.
( ) ____ tickets at P1, 500 (with dinner)
( ) ____ tickets at P500 (concert only)
( ) ____ tickets at P300 (student price)

Please deliver above tickets to the following:

Name:
Address:
Contact Nos. & Email Address:
* * *
Concert 2
Saturday, June 18, 2011, 6 p.m.
Oliver Salonga, pianist
Tickets at P1000 (with buffet dinner); P500 (concert only)
“What a dazzling pianist Oliver Salonga turned out to be! At his CCP concert, Bach’s Prelude and Fugue No.3 in C Sharp Minor and crisp-sparkling tones produced by remarkably nimble fingers. The distinctive phrasing, the brio, the sense of drama made the piece sound fresh and yes, even contemporary. Yet the style ummistakably hewed to Bach… the talent, the sensitivity, the impetuosity, the sense of drama are all his own.”--The Philippine Star

“He plays with power, technique, clarity, precision and coloring… A most satisfying evening!”--Business World

“…Remarkable musical sophistication… A clear standout!”--Malaya

Program
Piano Sonata No.58 in C Major, Hob.48 Haydn

Andante con espressione
Presto

Fantasiestucke, op.12 Schumann

Das Abends
Aufschwung Warum?
Grillen
In der Nacht
Fable
Traumes Wirren
Ende vom Lied

Intermission

Piano Sonata No.31 in A-flat Major, Op.110 Beethoven
Moderato cantabile
Allegro molto
Adagio espressivo
Fuga: Allegro ma non troppo
Apres une lecture du dante
"Sonata quasi fantasia" Liszt

Praised for his pianistic power and poetry, Oliver Salonga has gained a good following in his first recitals in the US, Asia and the Pacific. At a very young age, he has demonstrated an outstanding ability to communicate with audiences on a deeply personal level that made him one of the most promising pianists of his generation.

He was the winner of 2004 Lynn Concerto Competition and was a two-time Grand Prize winner in piano of 2003 and 2004 Madelyn Savarick Annual Scholarship Competition of the Centre for the Arts in Boca Raton, Florida. He had master classes with Sarah Davis Bueckner, Yoshikazu Nagai, Rebecca Penneys, Cecile Licad, Jon Nakamatsu, Jerome Lowenthal, Robert McDonald, John O’Connor and Philip Evans where he received positive comments and great appreciation. At Lynn University, Oliver graduated summa cum laude under the tutelage of Dr. Roberta Rust.

Born in Manila on June 26, 1986, Salonga started playing the piano at age 7 under Prof. Carmencita Arambulo. He gave his first solo public recital at age 11 playing Mozart's Piano Concerto in d minor K. 466. He recently obtained his Master of Music in Piano Performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music under the guidance of 2001 Van Cliburn Silver Medalist, Antonio Pompa-Baldi and was awarded the Sadie Zellen Piano Prize for his superior musical talent. Under his guidance, Salonga won Gold Medal in 2008 Joenju International Piano Competition in South Korea He is continuing his studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music as an Artist Diploma candidate.

Concert 3 Wilfredo C. Pasamba, cellist
Mary Anne Espina, pianist

Friday, July 8, 2011, 6 p.m.
Tickets at P1000 (with buffet dinner); P500 (concert only)

Program: Barber’s Sonata in C Minor, Debussy Sonata and Brahms’ Sonata No. 2 in F Major

Pasamba has performed worldwide as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. His recent performances include guest solo appearances at the Heidelberg New Music Festival performing the music of George Crumb, and at the Olivier Messiaen Centennial in Missouri; collaboration in the Arnold Schoenberg Retrospective at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; a chamber music appearance with the Omaha Chamber Music Society, and guest solo recitals in San Francisco, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

He has appeared with the Juilliard Symphony, Reno Chamber Orchestra, Wichita Symphony, Syracuse Chamber Orchestra, Ithaca College Chamber Orchestra, Manila Symphony Orchestra, Cebu Philharmonic and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. He has attended music festivals in Tanglewood, Norfolk, Bowdoin and at the Ithaca Violoncello Institute and a conducting fellowship in South Carolina.

He has performed in cello master classes of Janos Starker, Natalia Gutman, Colin Carr, Bonnie Hampton Aldo Parisot, Bion Tsang, Einar Holm, Lawrence Lesser, Michael Grebanier and Carter Brey and has collaborated with conductors such as
Pierro Gamba, Pamela Gerhardt, Basilio Manalo, Arturo Molina, Robert Olson, Michael Palmer, Ruggero Barbierri, Vahe Kochayan, among others.

Pasamba has garnered top honors at the Jennings Butterfield Young Artist
Competition, Juilliard Cello Concerto Competition the National Music
Competition for Young Artists, Reno Chamber Orchestra Competition and was
a semi-finalist in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

No less than The New York Times hailed Pasamba for his “audacity and
brilliance” at his New York debut at the Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie
Hall. He has since appeared in concerts at the Merkin Concert Hall,
Metropolitan Museum, Rachmaninoff Hall, Sviatoslav Richter Museum and the
Omaha Chamber Music Society. He has extensively performed throughout the
US, France, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Russia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

As a chamber musician, he has performed with Peter Wiley, Ani Kavafian, Benny Kim, Karl Paulnack, Reynaldo Reyes, Albert Tiu, Raul Sunico, Brendan Kinsella and with artist members of the Beaux Arts, Argenta Trios, Alexander, Orion and Ying String Quarters. As cellist and co-founder of the Battig Piano Trio, he embarked on its first European concert tour in 2001.

Pasamba is a product of an exceptional music education. He began his music
lessons on his mother's lap, the accomplished pianist, conductor, composer and now music ministry director, Angelita Cariaso Pasamba. At 14, he started cello lessons under the late Martiniano Esguerra. Two years later, he won first prize in the National Music Competition for Young Artists (NAMCYA). Soon he received a full scholarship at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory in the former
Soviet Union. Later, he took postgraduate studies at the Juilliard School
of Music in New York and the University of Missouri-Kansas City
Conservatory. He studied under master cellists Natalia Shakhovskaya, Fred
Sherry, Carter Enyeart and later with Maria Tchaikovskaya and Alexander
Rudin.

After his studies abroad, Pasamba came back to his homeland and taught as
assistant professor at St. Scholastica’s College Manila and at the
UP College of Music. He has lately served as faculty member at Pittsburgh State University, and at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory. Previous orchestral positions include membership with the Kansas City, Omaha and the Des Moines Symphony Orchestras.

Concert 4 Andrew Fernando, baritone, Clarissa Ocampo, mezzo soprano, Christopher Oracion, flute, and Mary Anne Espina, piano

Friday, July 22,6 p.m.
Tickets at P1,500 (with buffet dinner); P500 (concert only)

“A major presence!”--Musical America

International Filipino Baritone Andrew Fernando is the First Prize winner of the prestigious 2003 Loren L. Zachary National Vocal Competition in the United States and an alumnus of the world renowned San Francisco Opera Merola Program. Also a prize winner in the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions in the Los Angeles district and in the Pacific region, The Palm Springs Opera Vocal Competition, a recipient of the Opera Buffs Inc. scholarship grant and the Grand Prize winner in the Pasedena Opera Guild Vocal competition in 2004 and a grand finalist in the Licia Albanese Puccini International Vocal Competition held in New York in 2003. He was Opera Pacific’s resident baritone from 1999-2002 where he worked constantly with internationally acclaimed conductor John De Main.

Andrew has performed as principal artist with San Francisco Opera Merola, Opera Pacific, Eugene Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Singapore Lyric Opera, The Orange County Performing Arts Center, The Cultural Center of the Philippines, Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Macau Sinfonietta, The Hong Kong Arts Festival/Los Angeles Opera, The Hong Kong Urban Council, First Act Opera of England, Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, Pasadena Pops Orchestra, Palm Dessert Orchestra, Herbert Zipper Hall, The Los Angeles Metropolitan Symphony, The Walt Disney Hall, the International Bamboo Organ Festival, Syrinx Concerts Orchestra of France, the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra among many others. The Los Angeles Times has hailed him as “The young singer to watch.”

In 2005, Andrew made his debut with the Syrinx Concerts Orchestra in Cote D ’ azur France singing the baritone solo in Handel’s The Messiah and appearing as Sagestrano in the Opera Pacific’s production of Tosca under the baton of acclaimed conductor Christian Badea. Andrew recorded the tone poem Sa Dalampasigan with the Global Symphony Orchestra in the Philippines. Also in 2005, Andrew made his debut at the Walt Disney Hall as Baritone Soloist of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

In the 2005-2006 seasons, Andrew gave an acclaimed performance as Count Almaviva in the Singapore Lyric Opera production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. In the same season Andrew gave full concerts in the city of New York, Boston, Panorama, Los Angeles, Manila, San Francisco and New Jersey. Seen in the title role of Eugene Onegin at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Andrew was praised by critics for his beautiful singing and powerful presence.

Andrew, as a young artist, had the opportunity of being presented in public master classes given by Carlo Bergonzi, Tom Krause, Jane Eaglen, Deborah Voight and Dolora Zadjick and has performed on the opera main stage with Helen Donath, Vinson Cole, Maria Ewing and Federica Von Stade, Lauren Flannigan to name a few.

Andrew sang Rigoletto in Modesto in February 2007 to critical acclaim. He created the role of Powhatan in World Premiere of Linda Tutas Haugen’s and Joan Vail Thorne’s Pocahontas presented by the Virginia Arts Festival in cooperation with Virginia Opera in May of 2007 as a contribution to the 400th Anniversary of the settlement in Jamestown and the story of Pocahontas.

He recently sang the role of Bluebeard in Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle presented by Let’s Shout Out Inc of Boston. Musical America called him “A major presence!”

Andrew’s 2007-2008 season include his debut season with New York City Opera and his participation in their productions of Cendrillon and Tosca; singing the title role of Rigoletto in his Opera San Jose debut and the baritone soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra and singing the title role in Bluebeard’s Castle presented by the MCO Foundation in Manila.

This past season Andrew participated in the world premiere of Stephen Schwartz’s first opera Séance on a wet afternoon where he covered the role of Mr. Cole and sang as Reporter #1 with Opera Santa Barbara. Also in this past season Andrew was heard at the San Agustin International Music Festival singing the baritone solo of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. He was guest baritone soloist of the Jakarta Simfonnia and Oratorio Society in their production of Faure’s Requiem.

Andrew started the current season by doing a US tour giving recitals and concerts. He sang Vison Infernales at a recital in Fullerton with esteemed colleague Benjamin Makino. He is appearing as Alfio in the University of Santo Tomas production of Cavalleria Rusticana and will be performing the baritone solo in The Messiah with Simfonia Jakarta. Andrew will be the featured bass-baritone soloist in Verdi’s Requiem with by the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. He returned to Long Beach Opera for Moscow, Cherry Town by Shostakovich in the role of Sasha.

Photos of concert organizer Tariman with Salonga, Salonga, Espina, Oracion and Fernando (left with cultural volunteer and music patron Wilson Go) by Sinag de Leon and Anna Leah Sarabia. The ground-breaking intimate concert series was first done at the Kiss the Cook Gourmet restaurant on Maginhawa st., UP Village, QC.

Pinay Artists in Diaspora

2011-05-31T10:38:00.001+08:00
To be launched on June 4, Saturday, at the University of the Philippines Theater lobby, Diliman campus. Features, among other women, iconic Imelda Cajipe Endaya.

Missouri Breaks

2011-05-29T08:42:00.000+08:00
The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad." --Psalm 126:3

This quotation came from an email received early today from a family member in a US territory closely monitoring developments in tornado-hit Joplin, Missouri. It said it all for The Clan Lolarga. We are with the Johnston family as they rebuild their lives that were spared anew.

Good Sunday, all.

links:

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/video/global-filipino/05/27/11/pinoys-joplin-missouri-deal-tornado-aftermath#ooid=h3ZTZoMjrpSCRAtcD9BUFHpviFfWQPmB

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/video/global-filipino/05/27/11/filipinos-share-stories-survival-joplin-tornado#ooid=V2czZoMjodXxF0IuFM24utBPALQoNgdJ

Photo shows grandmother Telesfora Carino Lolarga (far left) at the former Lolarga ancestral home in Lower Brookside, Baguio City, when it served as original Sunday worship place of members of the United Methodist Church there. Beside her is daughter Pacita Lolarga Romero. (undated photo from the early 1960s)

Waters of March Flowing to May

2011-05-28T07:27:00.001+08:00
Here are a few photos, except for that of violinist Gina Medina, taken by Anna Leah Sarabia, suki and unofficial photographer (a.k.a. cultural volunteer) of Intimate Concert Series at the fourth such event featuring baritone Andrew Fernando, flutist Christopher Oracion and pianist Mary Anne Espina.
Andrew adjusted his repertoire on March 13 to include popular songs like "Moon River" "What Kind of Fool Am I?" and "Some Enchanted Evening.". Friday after that Sunday, he was one of four vocal stars in Verdi's "Requiem" at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Main Theater, almost stealing the show from the Caucasian soprano and mezzo. Drew,ang galing mo!
From Kiss the Cook Gourmet (thank you, Waya Araos Wijangco, for being brave enough to embark on this adventure with us), where the concert series had its beginnings, the series moves to a bigger venue, Balay Kalinaw, at UP Diliman campus beginning today, May 28.

The hall can comfortably seat 150 people. Performing artists are Gina Medina on the violin and Mary Anne again on the piano for an evening of Western and Filipino classics.
The repertoire for this evening's concert includes Antonin Dvorak’s Praeludium and Allegro, Fritz Kreisler’s Rondino on a Theme of Beethoven, Libeslied Schon Rosmarin,Spanish Dance in E Minor by Enrique Granados and Danse Espagnole from La Vida Breve by Manuel de Falla. Filipino favorites will end the program, among them Constancio de Guzman’s Bayan Ko.

Dinner buffet starts at 6 p.m., concert at 7. There are still a handful of P500 concert-only and P300 student tickets left.

Balay Kalinaw is on Guerrero and Dagohoy Streets near the Ilang-Ilang Residence and the University Hotel.

Top photo shows this evening's main act Gina Medina.

Second photo shows accompanying artist Mary Anne Espina at work.

Third photo shows freelance writer-concert organizer Pablo Tariman.

Bottom photo shows baritone Andrew Fernando. Anna Leah labels this shot "Passion is where you take it."

Violinist Gina Medina & Pianist Mary Anne Espina at Balay Kalinaw May 28

2011-05-23T05:06:00.000+08:00

Master of Kutyapi Dies Today, the Music Lives On

2011-05-21T19:36:00.001+08:00
Samaon Sulaiman, master of kutyapi and Manlilikha ng Bayan (or National Living Teasure, a rank equal to a National Artist), died today. Cause of death: aplastic anemia.
This text message came from Felipe "Jun" de Leon Jr., chair of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, just as the artist's talk of Gilda Cordero Fernando was starting at Silverlens Galleries' SLAB with panelist Patrick Flores, UP Diliman art studies professor and curator of Vargas Museum, discoursing on what is quality in art.

Jun calls the recently deceased "one of the shining lights in the non-Western musical heritage of old Philippines. It will be hard to develop another one like him."

Sulaiman's passing is a great loss to Filipinos. I had to stand up from where I was seated to absorb the message. Friend Anna Leah was taking a water break at about the same time. She inhaled deeply when I broke the news and said how her son Diwa owes so much of his music-making to this Maguindanaoan.

As I texted back and forth with sympathizers in media who could possibly share the news of this latest loss to the nation, Jun gave more details: that the deceased's body is in Magonoy, Maguindanao, and "his family took him home when doctors in Cotabato City hospital gave up all hope on him as his body could no longer accept any blood transfusion. In a few hours after he was brought home, he died. According to Islamic practice, he will be buried within 24 hours."

It has been a season of departures.

But as I watched Gilda in widow's weeds and an off-white vest with shoulder accents that looked like wings about to sprout, her gesture of spreading her arms as though to embrace this new phase in her life assured me at least that painting, writing, music and the things that make living worthwhile will go on.

Photo of Samaon Sulaiman from http://www.ncca.gov.ph/about-ncca/org-awards/gamaba/samaon_sulaiman.php

One Baptism and Two Wakes

2011-05-16T14:20:00.000+08:00
Sunday, May 15, -- yesterday once more -- was fully dedicated to family in this Auntie Social's life (thanks pal Gou for the term). My assignment: bring the Green Daisy tablea chocolate cake, flour-less and with no preservatives, to Kai Mykonos L. Fernandez's baptism into the Roman Catholic religion.
I skipped the rites, the way I'm wont to do in the noontime of my life, but I stayed for lunch to be around family mostly. When things got too hot (38 degrees even in the shade), I slid a disc of a black and white Audrey Hepburn movie, "Love in the Afternoon," just to watch the star and my heart-throb Gary Cooper, in the family DVD player.

I never got to finish the movie because by then the sun was setting, it was starting to cool, and the white-haired grump in my life, who's growing his hair (I have visions of a pony-tailed Wowo pushing a pram down Session Road in the months to come), demanded that I shower and dress up to accompany him to two wakes. How can I say no when the spirits of Chit Estella and Atty. Marcelo Fernando hovered on both shoulders of Wowo?
Earlier, there was a chance to play with the first grandchild Butones who can recognize colors, hold her head up, listen well when her babushka sings "What a Wonderful World," "Time After Time," Fallen", even the school hymn of St. Paul College.
And because the breastfeeding mother of Butones declared weeks earlier that we would have that four generations photo, finally, once her daughter was baptized, we posed before the camera of another auntie, Ruth, on the steps of our 36-year-old split-level bungalow for a personally historical shot.

Meanwhile, Chit and Atty. Elo, you can leave in peace, all is bright, all is calm, at least in this blogger's part of ze world. Adieu!

Source of photo of journalist Chit Estella: Vera Files

Source of photo of Marcelo N. Fernando bust by Julie Lluch: www.manilaartblogger.wordpress.com

Source of photo of Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in "Love in the Afternoon": www.flixster.com

Valley of Tears

2011-05-09T06:46:00.001+08:00
Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga
Contributor

FLYING into and out of Davao City has always been meaningful to this contributor. From 1984 when I first took off from its tiny airport with memories of Barrio Obrero to the 1990s when I joined the first durian festival and later covered the opening of The Royal Mandaya Hotel, the city has grown, to use a cliché, in leaps and bounds.

Once, it was THE largest, but now ranks third after Shanghai, China, and Puerto Princesa, Palawan. Don't know much about geography, but Asian cities, especially those in the Philippines, have a fascinating way of enlarging territories.

Gus Miclat, who I met in the '80s and who, when I last saw him in '98, was busy advocating peace and solidarity tourism, is flying out on the day I land so we exchange a quick hello on SMS. He tells me to enjoy his city's rapid urbanization, texting, "Enjoy the iba-ness (difference). Have coffee at Coffee for Peace in Matina. Run by Menonite Fil-Canadian couple. Good friends Dann and Joji Pantoja. Come back when am there. Ayo ayo."

Ayo ayo is the city's and the Davao provinces' parlance for "keep well, take care," according to Gus.

I store his message, hoping that before the media group of three (one young man from a business paper, another young man from a major daily and this middle-aged working stiff old enough to wipe their noses should they weep) leave for Manila again, I can have some free time to look for the coffee shop. "Fat chance in hell," to use another friend's expression.

The tour's itinerary is supposedly hectic with no time wasted, but after breakfast, the agony of anticipation begins. Tourism officers, including from the private sector, come and go to introduce, then excuse, themselves, saying they can't join us on the Compostela Valley (ComVal) tour. Easily an hour and a half's wait goes by, time enough to buy extra meds in case of getting stranded.

When we push off for ComVal's provincial capitol, it was just me (Mama Bear), her two cubs, the driver of a hired van and a quiet guide. The cubs catch up on sleep as we had taken an early-morn flight. They had decided to stay up the night before so as not to miss the plane.

The guide says a total of one sentence as we take a fork on the road: "That other road leads to Tagum City, site of the First International Rondalla Festival." Then silence reigned once more as drive continues.

Once off the van at the capitol in Cabidianan, Nabunturan, we are welcomed with a necklace each of dried coconut shells. The cubs, newly wakened from sleep, have that where-in-heavens-have-we-been-brought-to look.

A provincial tourism officer briefs us about how young a province ComVal is (it has turned 13 in March) with coastal and highland destinations, the latter places offering climes as cool as Tagaytay and Baguio.

ComVal is celebrating its Bulawan Festival the day of our arrival. There's no explanation about what the feast is all about, except from lay person's knowledge that the word means "gold" and is also the name of a refereed Philippine journal.

ComVal is mineral country. Rebels, private companies and individuals, and the government all earn from this geological resource. So fecund is the valley that it can be said to be over-mined.

ComVal boasts of clay in red, green, blue and white. Perky officer says white is the most expensive because it has to be heated at three times higher than the temperature for red clay.

ComVal has won the Civil Service Commission's (CSC) seal of excellence in governance and is, according to Ms. Perky, the only local government unit complying with the Anti-Red Tape Act. For example, if one applies for a license, government services are so calibrated that the license is produced quickly. Ms. Perky is so thrilled about this CSC award that "we have to maintain it so we can't go anywhere but down."

We are ushered into Gov. Arturo "Chiongkee" T. Uy's office on the fourth floor. He tells us about how, in the province's early years, it was Wild Wild West: "Magulo (chaotic). Di magkasundo ang mga congressmen at mayor (the congressmen and mayors couldn't get their act together)."

Upon his election in 2007, he says he reached out to all provincial board members. By his 100th day, the province was united.

Its symbol of unity: a huge gold and silver ring put together through donations of from one to 50 grams of the precious materials.
"It's the unity we've been dreaming of," he says as he lets us behold the ring.

This ring, worth more than a million pesos, is displayed within a glass case at the capitol lobby during working hours. It is stored in a vault, we suppose, once the five o'clock siren blares out.

Uy is ensuring that provincial and national roads leading to the municipalities will be done within three years.

As for security problems, he says, "There are six guerilla fronts here, but they don't bother tourists. The rebels' issue against us is not eliminating poverty fast enough, not providing the basic needs of our constituents, especially those in far-flung barangays."

What he does is to tell the Armed Forces assigned there not to crush the insurgency through guns but "through good governance. The military is shifting its direction. In the past, it was all-out war. Now it's community building."

He doesn't discount the strength of the New People's Army: "Buhay na buhay ang NPA (The NPA is very much alive) because ours is a rich province. We have small- and large-scale miners. All give to the NPA so they won't be touched. This is the NPA's bread and butter when it comes to funds. Their propaganda says public education is not entirely free. I say, it is free, just pay the miscellaneous."

For the second quarter this year, his province will open 32 new classrooms and obey President Aquino's order that whatever the national government puts in ComVal (e.g., P10 million), ComVal will match.

Uy is turning hospitals into an "economic enterprise" because "it is hard to hire doctors and other medical personnel if we don't have a corporate structure."

After the short interview, we are dismissed but not before we sign an attendance sheet. At the dining hall, another attendance sheet is presented to our group.

I protest, "I signed one there in the gov's office."

The clerk replies, "It's for our HRD. It's SOP."

Ms. Perky introduces us to the person assigned to us, a man named "Manay." Manay leads us to the tourism office below, then tours the cubs around the capitol grounds where there is a fair and some dancing going on.

Another guide, this time from Davao City, brings me to a display of local products. I find a booth selling place mats, coasters and similar local crafts. I buy coasters at five pesos each and ask how much the set of matching place mats cost. The stall minder says the place mats had just arrived. She doesn't know the price. I ask gently, "Maybe you can text or call your employer to ask." She starts texting. I am willing to wait.

My guide from the city whispers, "Huwag ka na diyan (Don't buy there). When you return to Davao City, everything you need is at Aldevinco." Aldevinco is a strip mall near the Marco Polo Hotel where one can find products from the Davao provinces, including ComVal, with nearly 200 percent markup.
Sigh, so much for One Town, One Product and patronizing the locals to be rid of middlemen. That guide is loyal to her city at ComVal's expense.

After an afternoon wasted in the tourism officer's office checking mail, answering urgent letters and finally, Facebooking, while a cub plays his video game, the other cub looks pissed off--it dawns on us that we've been had.

We tell Manay and the silent guy in the van that our time is being wasted. Can we please move on to the next destination if there's no one else to interview? Both answer that we have to wait for dinner hour to begin.

Cub No. 1 says, we can buy our own food on the road. By this time all three of us are ganging up on Manay and Mr. Quiet Nice Guy who are flustered by our reaction to time wasted and lost.

I ask candidly, "May I know what's after dinner? Is there a program that we have to see to explain the delay?" No program.

Manay's feathers are ruffled. He addresses Cub No. 1 pointblank, "Are you a tour operator?" Cub's face darkens in fury as apparently, Manay has not been briefed that we are information seekers. Manay adds, "We are not prepared to receive media."

Hurriedly swallowing dinner before our combined irritation forces us to turn Manay and quiet guy upside down, we head for a beach resort in Pantukan after signing another attendance sheet That is where the trip takes on the atmosphere of a theater of the absurd.

We stagger to our rooms, tired, lacking in sleep and information. The local tourism officer daintily knocks on my door. I am in a state of modest undress, ready for bed. He issues a piece of paper that states we still have to do one last thing at the resort at 11 p.m.: "Relax…relax…relax…" He adds that drinks and a videoke await us at that time of the night. "Thanks but no thanks," I say. "Let's do the work we came here for in the morning."

I prepare to take a shower. There is a standby pail. Twist shower knob, out comes trickle of water with the quantity and force of ants' urine. Sigh.

After having breakfast alone, early riser that I am, the resort owner tells me how her place is "pang magbubukid (for the farmers)" which is why they have no website, just some cell phone numbers on her business card.

This will be the pattern of answers in the two more resorts we visit--they have not much to show as their beach enterprises are mainly for the locals. By then, our party is being trailed by a convoy of six Philippine National Police carrying long arms and an ambulance. At almost every stop, resort owners lay out snacks. The policemen and ambulance driver help themselves to food and drinks.
At one point, dainty tourism officer says, "Ma'am, tignan mo naman, may pagkain every stop (Look, there's food at every stop)." I inhale deeply, exhale through my mouth and through the corner of lips, say, "We had breakfast already. We came here for information. Is there someone who can tell us about this place?"
He stands back, asks the cook if she can answer our queries. She declines and frantically looks for someone else.

Tourism officer leads the convoy as Mama Bear and her cubs text their respective editors, please prepare to ransom or airlift us in case we get caught in the crossfire between the NPA and the PNP.
Tourism officer assures us that we're getting the VIP treatment. Mama Bear and cubs turn to each other and our unspoken thought bubble is: "If this is VIP treatment, what more if our skin is white as driven snow? You mean it isn't safe to travel along the highway?"

Towards our second to the last stop in ComVal, tourism officer overdoes his duties, "To your right is our Shell gas station. To your left is our talipapa."

What keeps me from bursting out laughing is when he points to his town's newest travel agency. Its name? There is no typo here: YOU MUST TRAVEL AND TOURS!
Originally published in Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 8, 2011, page B-3, but with a different set of photos not of Compostela Valley but of Davao Oriental. Topmost photo shows Compostela Valley Gov. Uy with unity ring; bottom photo shows terrain of Compostela Valley taken from the vehicle's window as we head towards Davao Oriental. Photos in between are self-explanatory.

A Tiger Mama of a Governor

2011-05-08T17:54:00.000+08:00
THE province of Davao Oriental is the oldest in the Davao region, even older than the city of Davao. It is fortunate to have for its governor Cora Nuñez Malanyaon, a good poster girl for she knows her province's historical and natural riches well.
Like a fierce mother, she protects these riches, especially the mineral-rich forests, keeping them from abusers and marauders. At the same time, she is willing to share them given these conditions that follow the environmentalist's credo: take only pictures, leave only footprints and kill only time.

The national highway is "very defined and beautiful with mountain and sea on opposite sides," she says. View decks and signs are going up, but development is being kept at a minimum to preserve the beauty she is so proud about.

"We want to keep it as natural as possible so we're getting professional experts in developing the province as a destination for soft and extreme adventure. We complement this with the work of the local government units so everything is in sync. We're promoting the province piece by piece, putting everything in place," she says.
Coves, inlets, caves, falls, trails, diving spots, Katil River (the cleanest in Mindanao), the rare pitcher plant, the Philippine eagle in its natural habitat, dolphins, dugongs, whale sharks--name the flora or fauna, Davao Oriental has it. Slowly, the ecotourism potential of the province is being unraveled.

She feels abashed that "more foreigners have written about our butterflies, even our rodents here. They compare our abundant biodiversity to that of Costa Rica."

She and the LGUs are ensuring that from their level down to the habal-habal (tricycle) driver, they can all talk knowledgeably and confidently about where to go, where to stay, what to eat, what to do.

Gov. Malanyaon, whose handshake has the strength and sincerity of a proletarian leader but whose aesthetic taste is that of an aristocrat, dares to declare to the rest of her country and the world: "Come see what we have to offer."

Originally published in Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 8, 2011, page B-2, except for the photos.
Top photo: Gov. Manlayaon presiding at a Sandigang Panlalawigan meeting
Middle: Dinosaur Hill, view along the highway while entering or exiting Davao Oriental
Bottom: The restored Menzi Mansion, now serving as the governor's official residence

Waking Up to a Fab Davao Oriental Morning

2011-05-08T17:38:00.000+08:00
Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

It IS ONE of life's ironies to put you through hellish purification rites, then to reward you with something to sing and dance about, and, within 48 hours at that.

You discover the stark contrast between Compostela Valley, which is waking up to the possibilities of community tourism, and Davao Oriental, which has long been ready for low-impact, environmentally conscious tourism.

When you think of the latter province while stewing in Manila, the sea breeze is softly kissing your age-worn cheeks again. So soft you chase after several other memories of gladness:
* Slipper-shod feet sinking in the sand by Eva Botana's beach resort in Dahican as your shaded eyes squint at the bluest blue skies meeting the vast horizon;
* Sightings from afar of dugongs at play while fisher folk, Christians and Muslims alike, gather in a community hall to decide how best they can protect these creatures from their fishing nets and how to source other forms of livelihood for their families;
* Meeting Peter Plaza, only a year and a half old, already surfing the waves, able to stand on a skim or a surf board, a model for surfer wear and with a promising future in a sport where Filipinos have a fighting chance to excel;
* Witnessing for yourself how on the boardwalk of Mati there is no plastic floating on the nearby bay the color of turquoise despite settlers living on lean-tos on stilts;
* Tasting durian again in situ under an evening sky;

* And, before departing, being thrilled to find you still have a romantic bone left in your sagging body when your colleagues in media, two bachelors, announce their intention to return to the province within the year.

Their determined purpose: to propose, on bended knees, to their respective sweethearts. The governor, Cora Nunez Malanyaon, and her tourism consultant, Cynthia Rodriguez, join in the planning and agree, yes, it must happen on a night by the beach, on a pier or by a light tower on a full-moon night!
That is Davao Oriental's enchantment, the true meaning behind its expression of balik balik baya ha! Come back!

Originally published in Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 8, 2011, page B-2, except for the first photo which came out in black and white in said paper

On a Saturday Night, Thinking of Dodo, Rico, But Especially Rico

2011-05-07T22:26:00.005+08:00
What to make of these past weeks, even of only yesterday when the force of the news first hit you?

Over a glass of red wine in a garden hospitable to confessions, a friend who had just come in from the south tells you, "By the way, tenor Dodo Crisol is dead. Immediate cause of death is complications from diabetes."

Same friend tells you that his life is complicated and sad enough for him to end his Friday by composing an obituary and sending it to a daily.

You switch the subject as is your wont when the suddenness of the news is just too much to handle, especially on an afternoon earlier marked with joyful joyful noises of children.

You each order another glass, and your night's conclusion is how blessed you both are to have grandchildren to keep you going. Otherwise, you'd each entertain thoughts "na hindi maganda," was his own wry assessment of your respective situations. That was yesterday.

Tonight, a Saturday, back from the hours of light and laughter spent celebrating with a couple married thrice (first in underground rites during their activist years, next in civil rites when they returned from exile and this morning, church rites, finally), you remember another guy with whom you spent some time during a dark period in your life--almost a month at a hospital basement when you were being treated for ye old depression. (Not Dodo whom you associate with his sister Gigi Dueñas but somebody else.)

It was the first confinement for you (other times you were being treated for same-old same-old ailment in your youth on an out-patient basis; the depression would hit you hard again in your early 40s, an episode that no amount of medication could relieve).

For that fellow Rico, the basement he had already long considered home. There he was sure of where his next meal would come from, where his next dose of medicine would also come from so he could have a full night's rest or some lucidity. When the government official who was paying for his confinement lost the resources to keep him there and the bills started to pile up, Rico was released to a family reluctant to receive him back.

By then, you were long released to the world, a year or so ahead of Rico, and you had rejoined the work force and re-integrated with family in the lowlands and in the highlands. You'd drop by now and then to visit him, claiming you were his sister or cousin in order to be granted a few minutes with him at the visitors' lounge. He appreciated reams of bond paper, reams of old smokies (Marlboro reds); he'd slip a pack into his back pocket and surrender the rest to the head nurse.

You'd share anecdotes like this with old comrade in arts and letters, Amadis de Guerre, a.k.a Sluggo, about how boring it was until your psychiatrist pointed out Rico's presence to you and suddenly, confinement didn't seem like such a raw deal anymore. Rico remembered you from the days when you both contributed to the same magazines in the '70s and '80s.

At the basement, you'd throw lines of poetry at each other and when you ran out, recited song lyrics, particularly "Windmills of Your Mind." Rico knew every line of that song by heart and sang in perfect pitch, not too loudly though or else you or he would be made to spend another time in the room with padded walls that locked from the outside.

Old Sluggo's shoulders would rise and fall as he giggled and said, "So, was it like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?"

Better than two hours in a movie house, you should have said.

Rico remained to his last moment a very considerate fellow. Federico Licsi Espino Jr., poet-playwright-fictionist, quietly passed away on Holy Wednesday this year with no one noticing somewhere in the city of Pasig. A relative remembered to call up Solidaridad Bookshop on the morning of April 28 to inform Rico's friends, Frankie and Tessie Jose, that Rico was gone. All the information they received was that his mortal remains were immediately cremated; there was no wake nor a funeral either as even the cemetery gatekeeper took a leave on Holy Thursday and Good Friday.

Rico had enjoyed renown for being able to write and publish literary works in several languages. Some of those languages he had taught himself to speak with and write in like Spanish and Iluko.

You remember him most especially for his infrequent angel visits to 39 M. Viola street, UP Diliman campus, when the Epistola couple were still alive and played vibrant hosts there. One time, Nieves served him slices of pear. Rico politely ate them, paused and said, in that same gently chiding tone, "But they're tender."

When he left, an abashed Nieves said, "That's the last time I'm gonna serve canned pears!"

What's the point in this delayed obit (at least for Rico)? Well, Dodo and Rico are connoisseurs of life. Dodo deserves a longer piece. You can almost hear his sister Gigi screaming across the ocean: "Manash, kuno syur!"

Too weary from this Saturday's and last month's unrelenting grieving in private moments, you search for something to sort of salute the guys you once knew. May this other connoisseur bite more greedily of life's dew.

The Connoisseur

When it came to happiness she was a gourmet,
a connoisseur of small moments and extravagance.
Like a hummingbird, free as jazz, she floated away.

She wasn’t immune to love. But her need to stay
on top of things meant she didn’t rate romance
when it came to happiness. She was a gourmet

of the ungraspable now, savouring on the spot, without delay,
what the rest of us reheat at a bitter distance.
Like a hummingbird, free as jazz, she floated away.

I envied her of course, which isn’t to say
her dance, her casual way, didn’t leave me in a trance.
When it came to happiness she was a gourmet.

To recognise contentment was her gift, her forte,
sipping the nectar from selected instants
like a hummingbird. Free as jazz, she floated away

from me with the old line: Is there anything I can say
to make this easier for you? Not a chance.
When it came to happiness she was a gourmet.
Like a hummingbird, free as jazz, she floated away.

by Billy Ramsell
from Complicated Pleasures
publisher: Dedalus, Dublin, © 2007

Nelson Mandela (or Whoever the Real Author Is & It Truly Is a She) & the Boys of Maginhawa Street

2011-05-01T09:52:00.002+08:00
One of the last exercises done by the first batch of workshop participants of "Writing and Loving It," a summer workshop on creative living, was to translate from English to Filipino this oft-quoted inspirational and inspiring quotation that is attributed to Nelson Mandela.
The boys of that first batch who worked on their individual poems and essays throughout the six-day long workshop at the function room of Kiss the Cook Gourmet at 65 Maginhawa street, UP Village, Quezon City, had their closing program yesterday.
Today, this workshop facilitator and her able assistant, Nina Victoria Araos,a comparative lit major when she enters UP Diliman in June, take a break on Labor Day. The second batch of workshop participants meets from May 2 to 6 at Daisy Langenegger's Green Daisy at 20 Maginhawa st., same village in QC, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

_____________________________

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as
children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." --quotation often attributed to Nelson Mandela of South Africa
"Ang atin kakulangan ay hindi natin dapat katakutan bagkus ang katotohanang tayo ay may angking kapangyarihang maaring hindi lang natin nalalaman. Madalas nating kinakatakutan ang mga bagay na alam natin, hindi ang mga bagay na hindi natin alam. Tinatanong natin sa ating sarili, Sino ako para maging matalino, maganda o guwapo, magaling, pambihira? Pero bakit hindi? Ikaw ay anak ng Diyos. Ang iyong pagpapakumbaba o pagpapakamaliit ay hindi kailanman makakatulong. Ang iyong pagkukunwaring hindi ka magaling para lamang ang iyong kapwa ay hindi makaramdam ng kawalan ng katiyakan ay hindi rin mainam. Katulad ng mga bata, tayo ay ipinanganak upang magningning at lumiwanag. Tayo ang isinilang upang ipahayag ang kagalingan at kaluwalhatian ng Panginoon. At kapag pinahintulutan natin lumiwanag ang ating ilaw, lumiliwanag din ang ibang katulad natin. At kapag ating napalaya ang ating sarili mula sa ating mga takot, tayo rin ang nakakapagpalaya ng ating kapwa."--Translated by Milo Lofranco, Rudolf Songcayawon and Rex Tan

Photo of workshop participants at Kiss the Cook Gourmet's function room taken by NINA VICTORIA ARAOS
________________________
That quotation attributed to the great Mandela has this interesting history. The source is: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marianne_Williamson

* "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles", Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3])

o The famous passage from her book is often erroneously attributed to the inaugural address of Nelson Mandela. About the misattribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people."

o The poem was also included in the movie, "Invictus," about Nelson Mandela and the South African Rugby team.

o The film Akeelah and the Bee includes this quotation without citing its source. Some viewers have inferred that the source is W.E.B. Du Bois. There is a later scene in the movie in which Akeela reads a passage from The Souls of Black Folk written by Du Bois ("He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another”).

o The film Coach Carter includes a variation of this quote: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

o The Israeli bestseller "Badulina" by the author Gabi Nitzan opens with this quote, also attributing it to Nelson Mandela.

Photo of Mandela by BENNY GOOD

It's the First of May. Remember: All Wives & Mothers are Working Wives & Mothers, Even & Especially on Labor Day

2011-05-01T07:55:00.001+08:00
This came in the email box again. It got me laughing to the point that I needed to go to the bathroom. Thank you to the manashes out there who sense when you need to laugh a little more.
___________________________________

The Cremated Husband

Martha recently lost her husband. She had him cremated and brought his ashes home.

Picking up the urn that he was in, she poured him out on the patio table.

Then, while tracing her fingers in the ashes, she started talking to him,

"You know that dishwasher you promised me? I bought it with the insurance money!"

She paused for a minute tracing her fingers in the ashes then said,

"Remember that car you promised me? Well, I also bought it with the insurance money!"

Again, she paused for a few minutes and while tracing her fingers in the ashes she said,

"Remember that diamond ring you promised me? Bought it , with the insurance money!"

Finally, still tracing her fingers in the ashes, she said, "Remember that blow job I promised you? Here it comes."

Photo shows new royal wife getting initiated into one of the rites of "wifehood." Source: From all over the Internet

Brothers & Sisters of the Travelling Pants (a.k.a. Summer Workshop on Writing & Creative Living)

2011-04-27T18:54:00.003+08:00
The third day of the six-day "Writing and Loving It: Summer Workshop on Creative Living" ended at 2 p.m. today with the boys (Rudolf, Rex and Milo) and gurlz (Nina and Babeth) inspired by a story-telling session with Mila D. Aguilar, poet, essayist, filmmaker, Web designer and professing servant of God and country.

To me, she remains the Mila who wrote such deeply moving poems as "A Comrade is as Precious as a Rice Seedling" and "Why Cage Pigeons?"
Mila, who lives not too far from the current workshop venue of Kiss the Cook Gourmet at 65 Maginhawa street, UP Village, Quezon City, informed the 12-year-old participant Milo that their names (Mila and Milo) mean "grace" in the Slavic languages of Eastern Europe.

Milo, who has been ribbed since Day One that his nickname may have been derived from an energy drink that is the color of his skin and which might explain his high energy level, grinned widely on learning another new thing today.

The workshop participants put into practice some interviewing techniques they had just learned this morning. By tomorrow, they will be able to write on the spot a full-length personality profile of Mila based on the sharing she did while she dug into a dessert of truffette and sipped a cup of cappuccino.

From my own notes, I found Mila's advice to young writers:

"If you're a writer or an artist, you have to have roots. Your roots are where you were born. There is no such thing as an international writer or artist. Every writer has a nation.... The thing he/she writes about, the thing he/she paints about is the culture of the nation. So you have to love your nation and express the soul of the nation. If you can do that, you can become a great writer; if you cannot, you'll be nowhere. Dostoyevsky was like that--he thoroughly knew his Russian culture, he expressed that culture in his works. So did Goethe. Shakespeare was like that, too. You must grasp your culture to become a great writer, a great artist.

"Your culture was not formed in and of itself. Somebody created it. It's a creation of Whom? Who created the nations? God creates not only individuals but nations. A nation exists for a purpose, God's purpose. You have to grasp God's purpose for the nation. There is a 'trialectical' relationship between the individual, the nation and God, and once you grasp that relationship, you'll become not only a great writer, a great artist, but an immortal one."

Like any true cultural worker, Mila espouses many causes, among them, organic farming, particularly shifting from miracle rice and the like which are
"hurting us and making us sick"; adoption of solar, hydroelectric and geothermal energy; Bangon Pilipinas, a political party put up for God and country, and so on.

Tomorrow, Thursday, our fourth day, the kids report back to the venue to write about their afternoon with Mila.

May there be more moments of grace in the next leg of "Writing and Loving It: Summer Workshop on Creative Living" scheduled May 2-7 at Daisy Langenegger's Green Daisy at 20 Maginhawa st., UP Village, Quezon City. Workshop fee of P4,000 covers snacks and lunch, writing and art materials, certificate of participation and encounters with other moments divine. Text or call the facilitator Babeth at 0916-242-1637 to reserve or confirm a slot.
Top photo shows Rex quizzing resource person Mila Aguilar. Lower photo shows the first workshop participants with Ms. Aguilar (seated center). From left are Nina Victoria Araos and Babeth Lolarga while standing (same order) are: Rudolf, Rex and Milo.

Slumming with Rene & Salvador on a Monday Afternoon

2011-04-26T11:05:00.004+08:00
Does a poem have to make sense at all? Well, the Anon. who wrote about that cat and the fiddle and the cow jumping over the moon sure wasn't making sense in the logical, analytical sense. Yesterday, a group of "youngies," including this blogger, played with the stuff from the pockets, backpacks and bags of the three males in the group. From that point on, it was, shall I say, downhill and laughing all the way. Long live the surrealist movement!
____________

inside a red clearbook
that comes wrapped in a two-color scarf,
a folded iPhone
an apple-green cell phone
rings & says on loudspeaker mode,
"hand me my blue Kiss the Cook Gourmet receipt.
i left it on a thin vinyl cloth
spread over a square table."

an orange handkerchief
weeps & moans,
"where are my white 100-peso bills,
my 50-peso bill made of cloth cut from the Shroud of Turin?"

the single USB in Rene's pocket
dwells there with a leathery coin
& a dull coin purse
his clean wallet
lies in one of many manila envelopes
along with his new journal

as for salvador's brown Nokia cell phone
hanging from his necklace with a metallic dog tag
& pressed against his shiny t-shirt
it thinks it would rather be a thin sheet of intermediate pad paper
held by crisp human hands
attached to Gala's floral elbows

have you ever seen a man with a colorful wallet, ever?
but Rene & Salvador want nothing more than
a blue keychain with mini mer chairs
singing each to each

--Babeth Lolarga
April 26, 2011
Third version, 10:20 a.m.
Kiss the Cook Gourmet
Summer Workshop on Creative Writing & Living

Photo above shows Rene Magritte's "Son of Man"; below is Salvador Dali and a cub from the feline family

Three Found Poems on a Friday that Feels Good

2011-04-22T17:32:00.001+08:00
I can almost hear the musician Chuck Mangione play "Feels So Good" as I serendipitously stumble on a link that brings me to a website that carries three poems written over the last few years.

And the word "serendipity" does have a nice ring to it apart from it being the name of a coffee chain that began in New York City and where Andy Warhol used to settle his food bills with sketches.

Gee. Thanks for the force guiding these old hands to serendipitous locations like http://wompherence.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=fip&action=display&thread=652

_________________
Open Letter of Resignation from Housewifery

i can't come down in a low-cut peignoir
on a sunday, wallace stevens notwithstanding.
instead, i flounce around in this loose
violet housedress printed with
yellow orange, emerald & tangerine triangles
you bought from me in far zamboanga.

with effort i whip up a spanish omelette
for your breakfast but before i serve
the dish, how i wish for a magician
to replace me, one who with a theatrical wave
of her hand can transform the greasy stove & kitchen
counters into a showcase worth of ethan allen

i burn unintentionally the sausages from lucban, quezon,
the ones you have been looking forward to eating at dinner
you rage rage rage at my undying clumsiness
& the absent-minded air i wear all day
i blame my clogged nose & having mistaken
the smoke for monsoon mist slipping through the windows

in college my one big ambition
was not to turn into a stay-at-home wife.
the law of bad karma has caught up
with me apparently that i must learn, relearn
lessons on servitude & humility.

all i now know is
at the merest wisp of a chance
i shall stand surefooted once more
on the workforce's flat terrain
far from the mountain gorges
that i thought i loved.

_______________

Miranda Far and Near
For my youngest daughter

my skinny satin doll,
my faint moonbeam,
the struggling thing impatient to be born
i could have named you Anastasia
after the Russian imperial princess
whose docu-drama i was watching
the night the quick contractions came

you arrived squealing like a piglet,
angered by the bright, unforgiving
lights of the delivery room
since then by my chest you slept
suckled when hungry
threw up when full
cried loud enough to rouse the neighbors
until wearily i handed you over to my mother
& she crooned "que sera sera" to your ears

never one to leave you, dear one, to chance
on your sixteenth year i entrust
you to your grandmother & aunts
they tell me of your swinging moods
your pouting mouth
your finicky appetite
how upset you can get over a zit

but nothing prepares us for that day
on your twentieth year when pain blooms
like a poisoned flower in your right breast
a tumor is the doctor's prognosis
what has befallen my grown Barbie
whose simple joy it is to shop at the Top Shop?
before i can point an accusing finger
at an unheeding universe
i decide soberly, yes, doctor
let's have it out two days from now

having lost faith in rote prayers
i turn to my mother while her fingers
run through decades of a rosary
my impious eyes gaze at a friend who looks heavenward
my youngest born comes out
of the fog of anesthesia dizzy, wobbly,
nauseated, begging to be returned
to the operating table so she can
curl up to sleep some more
the surgeon describes the tumor's size
the unexpected pus pouring out of the breast
i wonder what toxin has touched her
has slipped through our cordon of protection

for close to a week i rise at midnight
& daybreak to bring you a glass of water
& an antibiotic
you tell me you have no memory
of getting up at those hours
can it be that the angel i taught you
to pray to as a child puts you back
to sleep & draws up the light blanket
of forgetfulness?

what can i tell you now, my grown doll,
my full moon with the wounded breast?
non-malignant means free of cancer
you can now traipse in Boracay in your two-piece
you can find and fall for the love of your life
& together have an adventure in Tawi-Tawi,
Uzbekistan or outer Mongolia
you can bear, breastfeed a child, baptize it Anastasia
pain will not entirely disappear
but until then i want to whisper
like a prayer
"what will be will be."
_____________

Performing Chopin

let me run my weathered fingers
down & up your spine
the way the hands of Cecile Licad
spiral down the keyboard
to Etude No. 12 in C Minor

let me do it the way she does
con brio & with so much vim
one gasps at the sheer force
of poetry coursing through her veins

how can you lie silently on your belly?
do you not hear me thundering
allegro con fuoco on the bones
fanning out of your back?

you turn your face from the depths of the pillow
nudge me to turn off the CD player
i wring my hands worriedly, say sotto voce,
"sorry, my sweet, but the Russians have overrun Poland."

Statement of Church Café on the Janjan-Willie Revillame Controversy and the Role of Media and Advertising

2011-04-21T11:10:00.003+08:00
Church Café, a group of cultural workers that enjoys studying the Christian faith and finds ways to get engaged in the world, is one with the Filipino and the international communities in expressing extreme disgust over the worship of the culture of money.

This kultura ng pera is best exemplified by the recent exploitation of a minor named Janjan by television host Willie Revillame in his noontime show "Willing Willie."

We are also appalled at perpetrator Revillame's reaction of filing libel charges against credible people like our fellow cultural worker John Silva, who wrote an open letter addressed to Mr. Manny V. Pangilinan, head of television network TV-5, where "Willing Willie" is shown, and National Social Scientist Lourdes "Honey" Carandang whose expertise as a clinical psychologist was brought to bear on the case in assessing the damage done to the child.

Dr. Carandang is a rightful protector of children. She has spent much of her life teaching generations of students how to protect the Filipino family. Upon her retirement from the academe, she put up an institute that promotes the cause of women and children living under stressful conditions. Janjan and his parents are no exemptions from Dr. Carandang's upholding of the rights of children as people.

In his blog, Mr. Silva mentions what Revillame represents: "74 women and children trampled to death on his dangling-money TV show. Or him sneering at President Corazon Aquino’s funeral. Or now, making a little boy cry while coaxing him to macho dance. "

Recently, Mr. Silva has written another open letter, this time addressed to businessman Ben Chan of Bench, for hiring Revillame to endorse a new cologne and putting up a billboard along EDSA with Revillame's face: "…(Y)ou’ve decided to cast your sales fate with a guy riddled in scandal and whose show has been slammed by the country’s social welfare department and Human Rights Commission as having committed serious child abuse."

In his blog, and the Church Café members agree with him on this point, Mr. Silva notes that "no matter how much you’ll spray his cologne on that set, we have the abused crying Janjan on YouTube and on rerun and the smell of sleaze isn’t going away soon. Why don’t you just realize the serious pickle your company is in and withdraw your support for the slimiest show in the world? You must have some smarts to make money elsewhere without having to use bullies that abuse boys."

Mr. Silva challenges the clothing and perfumery magnate: "Ben, listen: MACHO DANCING IS PROSTITUTION WITH A DANCE BEAT. And in our country with pedophilia around, it’s bad enough that a boy, somewhere at this very moment, is actually doing the dance FOR REAL. What’s the point simulating it on national TV? To make more call boys? Is that your company strategy of what the youth market should be? See how low your empire has stooped to for the bucks?"

Church Café is profoundly saddened by a country apparently suffering from a low self-esteem. This national self-esteem has fallen into an abysmal low that many of our people have forgotten the dignity inherent in hard work. At the hint of a few thousand pesos being dangled in front of their faces, they tumble, roll, split on the studio floor, crush balloons with their asses, dance provocatively on national TV, bare their souls and personal tragedies in order to be made fun of.

Luis V. Teodoro, a respected columnist of Business World, thinks that Revillame can never be a legitimate member of the press whose freedom of expression is being curtailed by the public censure and advertising boycott his show is suffering from.

Teodoro points out, and Church Café again agrees, that "not by any stretch of the imagination is Revillame part of the press. He belongs instead to the nether world of TV entertainment and noon-time shows, where professional standards and ethics are unheard of and/or habitually ignored…While press freedom is therefore not at issue, we can grant that free expression -- specifically Revillame’s--is. Is Revillame’s right to free expression then under threat from the public demand that his advertisers withdraw from his program?

"It isn’t: what’s under threat is his abuse of that freedom, to the extent of doing harm not only to such individuals as the six-year-old whose exploitation he encouraged and abetted, but also to Philippine society, to whose debasement programs such as his contribute via the long reach of television. Society can--in fact, it should--hold Revillame to account for both offenses. All forms of free expression are subject to public accountability. As precious as it is, the exercise of press freedom… is, by common agreement and the consent of practitioners themselves, subject to scrutiny and censure. Any editorial writer, columnist or reporter can be held to account for bias and inaccuracy, doing harm to the subjects of a report, subjecting them to ridicule, stereotyping them or encouraging discrimination against vulnerable groups..."

Teodoro concludes, "The decision of Revillame’s sponsors to withdraw their ads is a right they’re exercising in behalf of the public’s call for accountability…But will the withdrawal of Revillame’s sponsors in behalf of the public clamor against Revillame’s abuse of his right to free expression set a precedent? One hopes that it will--and it should, toward the making of a discerning public able to distinguish between authentic public service and mere self-indulgence, trickery, and deceit."

Church Café believes that radio-television networks and producers like TV-5, ABS-CBN, where Revillame originally came from, and GMA-7 and traditional print media like tabloids are just as, or even more, guilty than Revillame for allowing this kultura ng pera to prosper at the expense of a country's moral backbone.

Here we are, supposedly the only country in Southeast Asia with a Christian majority, and yet, our leaders are helpless in turning a powerful medium like TV around so it can educate and ennoble our citizens.

The advertising revenues that fuel inane programs that capitalize on the scandals in the lives of celebrities or the absurd lows the poor are made to stoop to for a few thousand pesos can already get the country's development program going.

Our movie and TV celebrities can use their fame to endorse worthy causes like education on our national heritage or the universal vaccination of children, the raising and eating of organically grown fruits, vegetables and livestock rather than promoting the consumption of processed food.

We call on the advertising industry to pour more funds on efforts to improve the environment like recycling at the home and barangay levels, waste management contests, planting and nurturing of trees.

The Philippines is primarily an agricultural country. We reiterate the call for more advertising funds and media support to go to meaningful community development projects like Sloping Agricultural Land Technology for provinces blessed with hills and mountains but deforested by heartless loggers and clueless kaingeros.

Church Café is made up of cultural workers with their individual advocacies, among them, the promotion of our national heritage, art and music education for all, early childhood development through overall health and sound nutrition of mother and child, safeguarding the well-being of honest-to-goodness writers and artists who have contributed much to the growth of national pride.

We stand firmly behind the Philippine law that states, "Every child has the right to a wholesome family life that will provide him/her with love, care and understanding, guidance and counseling and moral and material security." Our laws are also emphatic about what is physical and psychological violence, the abuse, exploitation and maltreatment of children.

Let us continue to be watchful of mass media. By its easy availability and capability in molding minds and shaping opinions, media is accountable to these children and to the future of our nation. What we all do with these innocents speaks volumes about us as a people.

Please keep up the pressure on our government by writing on their websites or on their Facebook accounts, by sending them e-mail messages to let them know we are watching and that we support the full application of Republic Act 7610.

Signed:

Bernie Aquino
Simoun Balboa
Aba Lluch Dalena
Imelda Cajipe Endaya
Simplicio Endaya
Linda Hallili
Pambie Herrera
Fred Liongoren
Norma Liongoren
Jenny Romero Llaguno
Julie Lluch
Elizabeth Lolarga
Fe Mangahas
Rogelio Mangahas
Alma Cruz Miclat
Chester Ocampo
Letty Paler
Pablo Baens Santos

Summering by Writing, Drawing & Generally Laughing All the Way

2011-04-17T08:14:00.001+08:00
"Writing and Loving It," a summer workshop on creative living, opens April 25 and runs till April 30, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Kiss the Cook Gourmet, 65 Maginhawa street, UP Village, Quezon City.
Kiss the Cook Gourmet is across from Holy Family School. It has a function room where the workshop will be held.
The workshop is open to children who can read, write and understand instructions, tweens, teens, young adults and the young at heart. There is a maximum of 20 slots, first come, first served.
Exercises will show writing is not an angst-filled thing nor is it the exclusive terrain of the gifted among us. The workshop aims to show that writing can be fun, funny and part of one's life, as easy as inhaling and exhaling if done with persistence and diligence.
Workshop facilitator is Babeth Lolarga, published poet, fictionist, painting hobbyist and high school creative writing teacher, who will be assisted by Nina Victoria Araos. Babeth has been conducting summer writing workshops since 1988 in various parts of the country.
She has twin degrees, a BA in journalism from UP Diliman and a bachelor of fine arts from UP Baguio. She helped revive the Baguio Writers Group and is a founding member of the Baguio Aquarelle Society.
Nina is a recent graduate of Diliman Preparatory School and incoming comparative literature major at UP Diliman. She is also a member of the Philippine team to this year's Southeast Asian Games.
Workshop fee covers venue rent, healthy snacks, lunch and materials.
The venue accepts credit cards (Visa and Mastercard). Call or text these numbers to reserve a slot: 0916-242-1637 or 0920-989-0227.
From May 2 to 7, the workshop moves to Green Daisy, owned by Daisy Langenegger, at 20 Maginhawa st., UP Village. The same facilitator and assistant will conduct the same workshop with another batch of 20 participants. The price will be the same, inclusive of morning snack, lunch and materials.
Each workshop will be capped with a closing program on the last day that includes giving of certificates of attendance and a short talk on eating healthy by the respective owners of Kiss the Cook Gourmet and Green Daisy. To reserve a slot for the Green Daisy workshop, text or call 0917-814-8262. Ms. Langenegger accepts checks in her name.
Bringing of own baon in the workshop is disallowed at both venues as the workshop organizers also aim to promote good nutrition among the young and young at heart.
Photos show (from the top): Kiss the Cook Gourmet logo, blogger's self-portrait, workshop assistant Nina Victoria Araos and Daisy Langenegger of Green Daisy.

'Despicable Amnesia'

2011-04-16T15:57:00.001+08:00
Oh, the treasures you unearth in forwarded email. This came in today. It contains the chronology of the plunder committed by Ferdinand E. Marcos and family.
___________________________________________

TO THOSE WHOSE MEMORIES ARE FAILING, LET THESE BE A REFRESHER.

TO PARENTS WHOSE CHILDREN WERE NOT AROUND DURING THE REIGN OF THE MARCOS DICTATORSHIP, IT IS OUR COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY TO EDUCATE OUR KIDS ON THAT DARK CHAPTER OF OUR NATION'S HISTORY, AND TEACH THEM TO REJECT ANY ATTEMPT TO REVISE IT AND DEODORIZE IT BY CALLING THE DICTATOR A "HERO".

In these critical times when efforts are being made to re-write history and sanitizing the record of martial law and the Marcoses, let us cure ourselves of this "despicable amnesia" and get back our sense of righteous indignation!

Charlie Avila, who has not forgotten what the Marcoses did, reminds us, in his CHRONOLOGY OF THE MARCOS PLUNDER, that in…

September 1976: The Marcoses bought their first property in the US--a condo in the exclusive Olympic Towers on Fifth Avenue in New York. Five months later, they would also buy the three adjoining apartments, paying a total of $4,000,000.00 for the four and using Antonio Floirendo's company, The Aventures Limited in Hong Kong, as front for these purchases.

Oct. 13, 1977: Today, after addressing the UN General Assembly, Imelda celebrated by going shopping and spending $384,000, including $50,000 for a platinum bracelet with rubies; $50,000 for a diamond bracelet; and $58,000 for a pin set with diamonds.

The day before, Vilma Bautista, one of her private secretaries, paid $18,500 for a gold pendant with diamonds and emeralds; $9,450 for a gold ring with diamonds and emeralds; and $4,800 for a gold and diamond necklace.

Oct. 27, 1977: The Marcoses donated $1.5 million to Tufts University in Boston, endowing a professorial chair in East Asian and Pacific Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The students and professors discovered this and forced the school to reject the donation. To save face, the Marcoses were allowed to finance several seminars and lectures.

Nov. 2, 1977: Still at her shopping spree, Imelda paid $450,000 for a gold necklace and bracelet with emeralds, rubies and diamonds; $300,000 for a gold ring with emeralds and diamonds; and $300,000 for a gold pendant with diamonds, rubies and 39 emeralds.

July 1978: After a trip to Russia , Imelda arrived in New York and immediately warmed up for a shopping spree. She started with paying $193,320 for antiques, including $12,000 for a Ming Period side table; $24,000 for a pair of Georgian mahogany Gainsborough armchairs; $6,240 for a Sheraton double-sided writing desk; $11,600 for a George II wood side table with marble top, all in the name of the Philippine consulate to dodge New York sales tax.

That was merely for starters.

A week later, she spent $2,181,000.00 in one day! This included $1,150,000 for a platinum and emerald bracelet with diamonds from Bulgari; $330,000 for a necklace with a ruby, diamonds, and emeralds; $300,000 for a ring with heart-shaped emeralds; $78,000 for 18-carat gold ear clips with diamonds; $300,000 for a pendant with canary diamonds, rubies and emeralds on a gold chain.

After New York, she dropped by Hong Kong where a Cartier representative admitted it was this Filipina, Imelda, who had put together the world's largest collection of gems-in 1978.

May 1979: The Marcos couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary in a party that cost $5,000,000.00 There was a silver carriage drawn by eight white horses.

Nov. 23, 1978: A house was purchased at 4 Capshire Drive in Cherry Hill, New Jersey (actually near Philadelphia where Bongbong was taking courses at that time) for use by servants and Bongbong's security detachment. The Marcoses did not neglect their annual real estate purchase. During this year and next year, 1979, they purchased two properties, one at 3850 Princeton Pike, Princeton,a 13-acre estate for use by daughter Imee as she attended Princeton .

The other was a house at 19 Pendleton Drive in Cherry Hill for use of Bongbong and under the name of Tristan Beplat, erstwhile head of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines.

April 1979: In two days in New York this month, Imelda spent $280,000 for a necklace wet with emeralds and diamonds; $18,500 for a yellow gold evening bag with one round cut diamond; $8,975.20 for 20-carat gold ear clips with 24 baguette diamonds; $8,438.10 for 18-carat gold ear clips with 52 tapered baguette diamonds; and $12,056.50 for 20-carat gold ear clips with diamonds.

June 1980: For $1,577,000.00 in New York Imelda buys Webster Hotel on West 45th Street. She rewards Gen. Romeo Gatan as a limited partner. Gatan arrested Ninoy at the beginning of martial law.

The insurgents' ranks grew by 20 percent a year. Meritorious officers in the armed forces experienced low moral due to Marcos' penchant for promoting friends over more deserving officers.

Feb. 16, 1986: In Fe's records of monies paid out during Marcos' last campaign, one unusually large item was authorized by "FL" (First Lady) and paid to Assemblyman Arturo Pacificador on this day. A few days later, two carloads
of men drove into San Jose, the provincial capital of Antique. Evelio Javier, head of Aquino's campaign, was watching the votes being counted when the men opened fire and killed Evelio after he was still able to run through town but finally got cornered in a public toilet where he was gunned down in front of shocked townspeople. Pacificador was later convicted of the murder.

Feb. 25, 1986: Marcos fled the Philippines, leaving behind a foreign debt of $27 billion and a bureaucracy gone mad. "Cash advances" for the elections from the national treasury amounted to Php3.12 billion ($150 million). The Central
Bank printed millions of peso bills, many with the same serial number. Sixty million pesos in newly printed bills were found in a vehicle owned by Imelda's brother Bejo in the Port Area of Manila, and another Php 100 million aboard the mv Legaspi also owned by Bejo Romualdez.

How massive and humongous a loot Marcos took can be deduced from the known losses he left behind. The known losses he left at the Central Bank included $1.2 billion in missing reserves and $6 billion in the Special Accounts.

Imelda charged off most of her spending sprees to the Philippine National Bank (PNB) which creatively wrote off her debts as "unresponded transfers".

Ver also used PNB funds to finance his "intelligence" operations.

The known losses at the PNB amounted to Php72.1 billion.

At the DBP, the losses Marcos left behind totaled Php85 billion; at the Philguarantee, it was Php 6.2 billion ; and at the NIDC or National Investment and Development Corporation (NDC). The losses amounted to Php 2.8 billion.

These losses were primarily due to cronyism or giving loans to cronies who had little or no collateral, whose corporations were under-capitalized, whose loan proceeds were not used for the avowed purpose, and where the practice of corporate layering was common, i.e. using two or more companies with the same incorporators and officers, whereby one company which gives the loan owns the company which obtains the loan, or similar arrangements.

The cronies enjoyed their closeness to Marcos. With him they formed a Grand Coalition. They participated in the exercise of dictatorship. But Marcos owned them. The wealth of the cronies belonged to him. Because of the free rides taken by Imelda, Marcos and their cronies, the Philippine Airlines was in debt by $13.8 billion.

The conservative Grand Total for losses Marcos left behind (and therefore the kind of loot he grabbed and hid) amounted to $17.1 billion. The Central Bank, the PNB and other financial institutions badly need an audit. The special review (not regular audit because there seems not to have been any-there are no records anyway) did not uncover Imelda's spending-her name never appeared-and Ver's intelligence fund. The review gave no hint of theft or missing money, only "downward adjustments" and "proposed adjustments" to "deficiencies" and "shortages of money".

Feb. 26, 1986: A few hours after the Marcos party landed in Honolulu, their luggage arrived:300 crates on board a C-141 cargo jet. It took 25 customs officers five hours to tag the bags and identify the contents. The
process was videotaped because of all the money and jewelry found inside. There were 278 crates of jewelry and art worth an estimated US$5 million. Twenty-two crates contained more than Php27.7 million in newly minted currency, mostly P100- denominations worth approximately US $1,270,000.(It was illegal at that time for anyone to depart the Philippines carrying more than US$500 in cash.)

There were other certificates of deposit from Philippine banks worth about US$1 million, five handguns, 154 videotapes, seventeen cassette tapes, and 2,068 pages of documents, all of which were impounded by Customs.

The Marcos party was allowed to keep only US$300,000.00 in gold and $150,000.00 in bearer bonds that they brought in with their personal luggage because they declared them and broke no US customs laws.

There were 24 one-kilo gold bars fitted into 2 0$17,000 hand-tooled Gucci briefcase with a solid gold buckle and a plaque on it that read, "To Ferdinand Marcos, from Imelda, on the Occasion of our 24th Wedding Anniversary. "

February 1986: When Marcos departed the Philippines, the losses in the three Central Bank accounts surpassed Php 122 billion (more than $6 billion). The big bulk of losses was attributed to the RIR account mainly due to two items: forward cover and swap contracts. Forward cover referred to foreign exchange provided by the CB at a fixed exchange rate to importers of essential commodities. Swap contracts referred to CB's receiving foreign exchange from banks in exchange for pesos at the prevailing rate with a promise to deliver the foreign exchange back to them at an agreed future date. There was no mention of losses due to CB transactions in gold or foreign exchange.

Feb. 28, 1986: On this day, Jim Burke, security expert from the US Embassy, was tapping on the wooden paneling in Imelda's abandoned Malacanang bedroom when he heard a hollow sound. It was the walk-in vault. Inside were 35 suitcases secured with locks and tape. They contained a treasure trove of documents about Swiss bank accounts, New York real estate, foundations in Vaduz, and some notepaper on which Marcos had practiced his William Saunders signature. They also contained jewelry valued at some US$10.5 million.

March 16, 1986: Did Marcos steal any gold from the CB? The CB always refused to comment. Why?

Today the LA Times reported that 6.325 metric tons of gold was unaccounted for in the Central Bank. Between 1978, the year Marcos ordered all gold producers to sell only to the CB, and end 1984, the Bureau of Mines reported that 124,234 pounds of gold were refined. But the CB reported receiving only 110,319 pounds during this same period.

That left a difference of 13,915 pounds (6.325 metric tons).

March 1986: Jokingly referring to themselves as the Office of National Revenge, a vigilante team led by Charlie Avila and Linggoy Alcuaz received a tip in the morning that Marcos' daughter Imee had kept a private office in the suburb of Mandaluyong at 82 Edsa. They obtained a search warrant, then rushed to Camp Crame to pick up some soldiers. After devising a plan, they boarded four cars and drove to the premises, arriving around midnight. The soldiers scaled a fence and sealed off the area. Avila, Alcuaz, and their men moved in and found documents in cardboard boxes, desks and filing cabinets. Gunfire could be heard outside,but it didn't deter the search.

The documents revealed the names of offshore companies and overseas investments of Marcos and his cronies, a late link in the paper trail that had been started abroad by the teams of Avila, Steve Psinakis, Sonny Alvarez, Raul Daza, Boni Gillego, and Raul Manglapus.

March 09, 1986: A Greek-American, Demetrios Roumeliotes, was stopped at the Manila International Airport before he could leave with eight large envelopes stuffed with jewelry that he admitted belonged to Imelda and valued at US$4.7
million.

March 15, 1986: Ernie Maceda, Minister of Natural Resources, revealed today that some 7 to 14 tons of Philippine gold are sold to the Binondo Central Bank annually and then smuggled to Sabah , Malaysia, this gold being part of some 20
tons produced by 200,000 panners all over the country. Maceda's query was whether part of the gold they produced was siphoned to the "invisible gold hoard of Ms. Imelda R. Marcos."

"We deliver to the Central Bank," the miners said. "If it happened (the siphoning), it happened in the Central Bank."

Is it true that Marcos propagated the Yamashita myth to hide the fact that he looted the Central Bank, that its gold bars were melted down and recast in odd-size bars to make them look old (how does gold look old, anyway?). Marcos claimed that he "received the surrender of Gen. Yamashita" after a battle with his guerrilla outfit. History has recorded that Yamashita surrendered to Lt. Co. Aubrey Smith Kenworthy and that there was no battle.

Yamashita's peaceful surrender had been arranged at least two weeks before the event.

In one entry in Marcos' diary he noted, "I often wonder what I will be remembered for in history. Scholar? Military hero…?" In a supreme irony, he did achieve what he so vainly sought--lasting fame--but not in the way he envisioned:

* The largest human rights case in history - 10,000 victims.
* Guinness Book of Records - the world's greatest thief.
* The largest monetary award in history - $22 billion.

Sept. 30, 1986: Questioned by Philippine and US lawyers about his hidden wealth, Marcos took the Fifth Amendment, 197 times. Imelda followed suit, 200 times.

December 1989: An American jury found the Marcos estate liable for $15 million in the killing of anti-Marcos activists Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo. Manglapus, Psinakis, Gillego and other erstwhile exile oppositionists testified at the
trial.

Nov. 4, 1991: Today, a Sunday, the circus came to town. The Swiss Federal Tribunal had ruled the year before that the Philippine government must comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, especially due process. There had to be a lawsuit filed within one year. Thus, the solicitor general's office filed all sorts of cases against Imelda and the government had to allow her to return to answer the charges.

"I come home penniless," she tearfully said on arrival. She then repaired to her suite at the Philippine Plaza Hotel which cost $2,000 a day and rented 60 rooms for her entourage: American lawyers, American security guards and American PR firms.

December 1991: The Central Bank had accumulated losses of Php324 billion in the Special Accounts.

Nov. 30, 1992: The Central Bank losses were Php561 billion and climbing. CB Gov. Cuisia asked that the CB be restructured. Sen. Romulo asked to see the 1983 audit of the international reserves. He couldn't get a copy. It was "restricted" .

Jan. 5, 1993: Imelda didn't show up for the scheduled signing of a new PCGG agreement. She kept vacillating on the terms and conditions, demanding she be allowed to travel abroad for 33 days to confer with bank officials in Switzerland, Austria, Hong Kong and Morocco to work out the transfer of the frozen funds.

Actually, she was hoping a guy she had authorized, J.T.Calderon, would be able to move the funds just as the order was lifted, before the government had a chance to transfer them to Manila. When the government discovered the authority, all negotiations with Imelda were halted and her requests for travel suspended.

Aug. 10, 1993: Georges Philippe, a Swiss lawyer of Imelda, wrote today a confidential letter to the Marcoses' old Swiss lawyer, Bruno de Preux, who handled almost all of the Marcos family's hidden accounts in Switzerland . Philippe requested de Preux for the status of:

A $750 million account with United Mizrahi Bank in Zurich; various currency and gold deposits at the Union Bank of Switzerland, at Kloten airport and at Credit Suisse; a $356 million account (now in escrow and worth almost $600 million) which was being claimed by the PCGG.

1994: The human rights jury awarded the victims $1.2 billion in exemplary damages, then $766.4 million in compensatory damages a year after that, for a total of $1.964 billion. Two days after, another $7.3 million was awarded to 21 Filipinos in a separate lawsuit.

1995: The US Supreme Court upheld the $1.2 billion judgment.

March 29, 1995: The Swiss Parliament passed a law (an amendment to a previous act) that removed the need for a final judgment of criminal conviction of the accused (such as the Marcoses) in the case of criminally acquired assets which
could now therefore be returned to claimants (such as the Philippine government) by Swiss court order.

July 1996: In part because of the torture of Roger Roxas, $22 billion was awarded to his Golden Budha Corporation.

Dec. 10, 1997: The Swiss Supreme Court promulgated a landmark decision that took into account the March 1995 Swiss Parliament act and the fact that new criminal cases had been filed against Imelda Marcos.

The court held that there was no need for any criminal proceeding; that a civil or administrative proceeding would suffice, and the Marcos Swiss deposits which had been "criminally acquired" can be returned to the Philippines in deference to the final judgment of the Philippine court as to the ownership of these deposits.

The Swiss court also announced that the interest and reputation of Switzerland was at stake if it would become a haven for money launderers laundering money obtained by crime. Therefore, in the case of the Marcos deposits, because "the illegal source of the assets in this case cannot be doubted" the Swiss court ordered that the money be returned to the Philippines to be held in escrow account in the PNB to await the judgment of the Sandiganbayan in the forfeiture case.

By the way, on Jan. 17, 1975 a secret decree not made public until after the Edsa insurrection was signed by Marcos stating that in the event he became incapacitated or died, power would be turned over to Imelda.

On June 7, 1975, in his own handwriting, Marcos amended the January 17th decree and clarified Imelda's role as chairperson of committee with presidential powers.

In February 1979, Imelda was named chairman of the cabinet committee, composed of all ministries, to launch the BLISS (Bagong Lipunan Sites and Services) program, an ambitious attempt to centralize control of all economic and social development. She assumed responsibility for the "11 needs of Man" codified in her ministry's mufti-year Human Settlements Plan, 1978-2000.

By 1986, the number of Filipinos living below the poverty line doubled from 18 million in 1965 to 35 million. And the ecological balance of the country had degraded from 75 to 27 percent forest cover remaining with 39 million acres of forest falling victim to rampant logging. This was BLISS.

She was also the head of the Metro Manila Commission, which by year-end 1985 had managed to accumulate debts of Php 1.99 billion (which included $100 million in foreign loans) in its 10 years of existence. Imelda had accomplished nothing and left the people embittered and even more disillusioned.

In September 1992, Marcos was found guilty of violating the human rights of 10,000 victims. The ruling occurred just after a judge found Imee Marcos-Manotoc guilty of the torture and murder of Archimedes Trajano, a 21 year old engineering student at Mapua who had the temerity to ask Imee after a speech she gave whether the Kabataang Barangay (a national youth group) "must be headed by the President's daughter?"
Imee and brother Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marco, Jr. have been active in the political scene.. Bongbong, who finished three terms as Ilocos Norte governor, is now running for Senator under Presidential bet, Manny Villar's senatorial slate. He has been quoted as saying that if given a chance, he'd like to run for President one day...(gads).

Bongbong is now a Senator, Imelda is governor of Ilocos Norte and Imee is in Congress. The MARCOSES are back in full force thanks to our "despicable amnesia" as aptly described by the eminent writer, F. Sionil Jose.

Japanese Lessons

2011-04-14T19:13:00.001+08:00
These timeless reminders came in the mail today. The sender requested that they be shared.Here they are:
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What can the world learn from the Japanese who are patiently and ably bearing the brunt of nature's fury due to their location in the ring of fire (volcano, fault lines, tectonic plate ddge)?

1. THE CALM
Not a single visual of chest beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has been elevated.
2. THE DIGNITY
Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude gesture.
3. THE ABILITY
The incredible architecture. Buildings swayed but didn't fall.
4. THE GRACE
People bought only what they needed for the present so everybody could get something.
5. THE ORDER
No looting in shops, no honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just understanding.
6. THE SACRIFICE
Fifty workers stayed behind to pump sea water in the nuclear reactors. How will they ever be repaid?
7. THE TENDERNESS
Restaurants cut prices. An unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong cared for the weak.
8. THE TRAINING
The old and the children knew exactly what to do. And they did just that.
9. THE MEDIA
They showed magnificent restraint in the bulletins. No silly reporters. Only calm reportage.
10. THE CONSCIENCE
When the power went off in a store, people put things back on the shelves and left quietly.

Can we share these virtues with our children, family and friends? This courtesy of sharing valuable information might go a long way in reminding people about the path of propriety.

The whole Universe is my family.
Everything in the Universe has a purpose.
Indeed, the invisible intelligence
that flows through everything
in a purposeful fashion
is also flowing through you.

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan reacts after he feels the earthquake during a committee meeting in parliament in Tokyo.
Source of photo: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-most-incredible-pictures-of-the-japan-earthquake