EYES WIDE OPEN/ PETER LA. JULIAN/WELCOME 2014

 
     The church bell tolls several minutes after six in the afternoon. There is a night mass at the Oscariz Roman Catholic Church. But I forego the ritual and let the time pass.
     The blogger and 8-year old grandson Henry are in the front sala, he playing a game on my I-Pad. 
     Customers make a beeline at Raul's Lechon Manok stand that sells roast chicken, roast pork liempo and sisig

and grilled bangus wrapped in tin foil. The stand, in front of the house, opened early this morning anticipating customers buying food for their last evening meal in 2013. Mama is the cashier this time. She is inside an enclosure, actually the front of the gym for women which is closed for the holiday.
     The blogger is sleepy, his eyes painful. Could be the ill-fitting eyeglasses and I must have it fixed in January 2014.
     The night is getting cold--it's 8:30 PM on my Fossil watch bought three years ago in California-- and I put on a bonnet. Suddenly, I want to drink hard liquor, perhaps to warm my old body and not entertaining the idea of going to bed. My eldest son Jonathan and brother-in-law Chito are taking shots of Emperador brandy near the lechon manok stand. I go to the place and pour wine in the tea cup, sip, the liquid going down my throat and I feel a little hot.
     Customers arrive in trickles now, on motorcycles or motor bikes until past 10:30PM. The store closes shop at past 10:30PM. The kid and I go inside the house to watch TV with the  networks having their own programs focusing on celebrations on the great wait for 2014. There are concerts at Eastwood city and at Resorts World, all in the Metro Manila area. A special coverage is made on Tondo people waiting for 2014. It seems there will be fireworks in these places when the countdown stops and 2014 comes in like a conquering hero.
     The year comes with a little fanfare in the neighborhood--firecrackers are banned in the entire country-- but a few escape the ban and explode the crackers  a few minutes before the onset of the year and some luces went up the sky in our neighborhood. A few souls riding in tandem on their motorcycles roar past us--Henry, Jonathan and I-- on the roadside while watching the night sky lights up with fireworks.
      And so ends 2013. Let the 2013 pains and heartaches inflicted by supposed writer-friends be buried forever and the sweetness and joy of life in the same period remembered with fondness.
      I thank the Almighty God for giving me a bonus, another life to live fully and useful to others in need of comfort and material things,  this the blogger swears. I say, thank you, Lord, for all the blessings you have bestowed on the blogger for many years and for many years yet to come.

NO. 1 COMMANDMENT FOR WRITERS

 

  Stephen Vizinczey, author of "Truth and Lies on Literature," has come out with his version of his Ten Commandments for writers. On top of the list is the following: 1. Thou shall not drink, smoke or take drugs. To be a writer, you need all the brains you've got.  
     One of the best writers in literature (short story and poems) is American Edgar Allan, who was said to have written his best writings under the influence of liquor. In the Philippines, the great Nick Joaquin, author of the memorable "May Day Eve" was a beer drinker, and chain-smoking Blas Ople, a Labor secretary during the reign of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was considered one of the country's best writers.
     But these writers are exceptional because of what probably were God-given talents. Vizinczey's advice, of course, is practical guide that should not taken for granted. For one, it's good for the health. 

ARISE, A POET-KNIGHT

ARISE, A POET-KNIGHT


A surfeit of vermin,
half-truths, half lies.
A heavy mental baggage 
Before the ancient
vineyard miles
and miles away.

But arise, a poet-knight,
And slay snakes walking
Upright
In your pen.

Arise, a poet-knight,
Redeem them
From the impostor king.

All have been forgiven, comrade. 
Arise, a poet-knight.

     In the year of the snake, the blogger watched in disbelief as four supposedly well-mannered writers in the language created a pit for themselves and expelled their "enemy" without due process.
     To this day, the subject of their ire is still waiting for explanation for their collective act on a Sunday in Tribu Paraiso in Diadi, Nueva Vizcaya.
     But long before they made the decision,  the blogger has already informed the esteemed ML that he was walking away from them.   

USING THE MAGIC OF GRATITUDE

     
     The blogger purchased the run-away best-seller, "The Secret", in one of the stores in New York when we were visiting the family of our nephew in New Jersey. Authored by Australian writer Rhonda Byrne, the book is about the law of attraction, a sort of a guide that that would get you anything you want. Meaning, you have to be positive, think and feel that what you wished for is there and on the way. That book was circa 2007 and the writer has produced two other inspirational books since then--"The Power" and "The Magic". The last one was given as a gift by my son and his wife, who at present are working in different countries-- he in Singapore, and she in Toronto.
     The book advises that if you want things done, you have to express gratitude before embarking on an undertaking. The writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton used gratitude before he goes to work for the realization of his dream and desire. As cited by Byrne, here is what he says before he does things: "You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and give grace before the play and the pantomime, and grace before I open a book and grace before before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, before I dip the pen in the ink."

     The Oscariz Roman Catholic Church in Oscariz, Ramon, Isabela bounces back after being closed for almost one year by the town's parish priest, a certain Fr. Michael, with the consent of his Isabela priestly superior, a puzzling act. (The first time that a church is closed in Philippine history?) 
     With no church to attend on Sundays and other holy days, some of the members bolted their Catholic faith and joined other congregations in the village which was considered a town during the Spanish times. An intact Catholic community broken up by a Catholic priest because of greed and other indiscretions? 
     What says the eminent Cardinal Tagle? Anyway, it's all water under the bridge but the Philippine Catholic Church should learn from this sad experience and adopt more strict measures to ensure that those assigned to the priestly post must meet the requirements in the altar of sacrifice.

THE HEART OF OUR MORAL CONSTRUCT

     The illegal numbers game is at the heart of our moral construct. The beneficiaries are mostly Philippine government officials led allegedly by the top honcho in the Palace  and high-ranking police officers. 
     In the same moral vein run the scandalous fat salaries and obscene allowances of Government Service and Insurance System and Social Security System officials amid the widespread poverty and misery of our people.
     Not to mention the "legal" robbery committed by our lawmakers in the name of Development Assistance Program and Presidential Development Assistance Fund. Imagine P10-billion lining their pockets and their cohorts in the local government units and other influential individuals.
     Think again, Sergio, of your "peanuts" in millions of pesos when you see the squatters in the esteros of Metro Manila, who eat only once or twice a day, while you splurge in parties and other bacchanalian feasts.            Will your heart break if you see dirty children and frail adults begging for alms in Quiapo and on the pavements of Cubao? 
     Of course, you will not see the downtrodden, the scums of the land, because you live in towering condominiums and mansions and gated subdivisions in expensive real estate in the suburbs, away from the filth and squalor of the cities.
     

HERO'S FAMILY WAITS FOR JUSTICE*

*Originally published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer with the blogger's by-line

     There is a nondescript tomb in the cemetery along the national highway in Barangay Lingsat in San Fernando City, La Union, Philippines. It pales in comparison with the other tombs with their garish paint and expensive marble lapida (tombstone).
     Few in the city know that the nondescript tomb contains the remains of Jose Nisperos, a soldier.
     In fact, Nisperos is a hero, the first Filipino to win the United States congressional medal of honor, the highest military award given by the American people. 
     Nisperos was a member of the 34th Company of the Philippine Scouts in the US Army that saw action in several skirmishes with Moro rebels in Mindanao.
     In one of those fights, he showed extraordinary courage and bravery that earned him the respect of the Americans and eventually won for him the most coveted medal.
    
Basilan Battle

     It was on Sept. 24, 1911, in Basilan, where Nisperos and the Americans had just landed and were closing in on the rebels who were actually Yakan tribesmen.
     The bandit leader and his group were inside a cluster of huts and other armed rebels were hiding in the surrounding cogon grasses. Then they attacked the small band of lawmen.
     Many of the Scouts, including Nisperos, were badly wounded. The Ilocano soldier's left arm was broken by a Yakan sword and was shot above the elbow. He was weakened by continuous bleeding.
     But planting his wounded arm in the ground and using his other arm, he continued to fire back at the rebels until reinforcement arrived and the Yakans fled into the forested area in the interior.
     Nisperos' gallant stand prevented what could have been a humiliating defeat for the Americans. Many of them would have died and their bodies would have been mutilated by the Yakans as was their practice in their time.
    Twenty-one fully armed men participated in the battle. The dangerous mission was led by Navy Ensign Charles Hovey who was the lone casualty.
     It took sometime for the Americans to recognize the extraordinary bravery of Nisperos.
     On Feb. 3, 1913, a military parade in review was held in his honor at the Luneta Park. For his gallantry in action, Maj. Gen. Franklin Bell, then chief of the US Army in the Philippines, presented Nisperos the award.
     It was a moment of glory for the Ilocano soldier. No other Filipino has been lionized by the Americans.
     Nisperos' left arm was eventually amputated at the shoulder joint and with his other wounds, he was rendered unfit for military service and given a pension of $55 a month by the American government.
     Nisperos enlisted in the Philippine Scouts as corporal and left it as a sergeant.
     The wounds that Nisperos suffered in the Basilan battle and the amputated arm told on his health.  In 1922, he died in his hometown of San Fernando. No records show he was given a hero's burial. He left behind his wife Potenciana and three young daughters.

Sad Postscript

     With his death, everything would have been forgotten about him, including his heroic act. But there is a sad postscript concerning his heirs that cannot be written off.
     Until now his three daughters, now in their late 70s, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are still wondering whether they (including his widow who failed in her lifetime to get any compensation despite the special US Congress Act to the effect) are still entitled to benefits and claims as surviving relatives of the hero. 
     The story started in 1952 when Dr. Gilbert Perez, then chief of the vocational educational division of the Bureau of Public Schools, came to La Union on an inspection tour of public schools.
     Perez met Nisperos' widow and was informed of her plight. She told that since 1922, she and her daughters have been depending on relatives for support beside doing laundry and other odd jobs.
     It would have been a different life had she succeeded in getting the money due her as a result of her husband's death.
     A special act of the US Congress entitled her to receive a lifetime pension of $55, the same amount her husband was receiving when he was alive.
     But the widow could not prove that her husband's death was a result of military service. Her claim was not approved. And when she lost the metal which she believed was necessary to support her claim, she lost heart to pursue the case.
     "Actually, the medal was taken sometime in 1922 by a certain Dr. Jose Bantug, a former professor from Manila and former director of what was then Philippine Museum," said Virginia Viduya, a granddaughter of Nisperos.
     Virginia is the daughter of Nisperos' eldest daughter, Esperanza, who died in 1990.
     Vuduya, a retired government employee, said Bantug took the medal to support the pension claim of Potenciana, but nothing came out of the promise and the medal was never returned.
     At any rate, Perez took the matter with the United States Veterans Administration in Manila  
and the agency promised to take action.
     In 1957, Dr. Perez deplored the fact that Washington never responded to him. He died soon after.
     Potenciana died in 1969. Concepcion and Leonila are still alive and living with the family of Viduya in a rundown house on Padre Burgos Street in San Fernando City.
     Since 1960, they have tried several times to get compensation benfits as surviving heirs of Nisperos. All failed. Last year, they sought assistance from influential people but to no avail.

US Appeal       

     A Chicago-based Filipino journalist wrote Viduya, informing her that he had contacted a lawyer who would handle the case with the Board of Veterans Appeal in Washington, D.C.
     This was in response to Viduya's letter to the journalist that she was planning to file an appeal for compensation claims to the board.
     "But I don't have the kind of money that the journalist said would be needed to handle the case," Viduya said. The amount included a $5,000 acceptance fee, if there is a case.
     The journalist listed several options to generate the needed money, including a possible movie project about Nisperos' exploits and his role in the Basilan battle.
     Viduya has yet to respond to the journalist. But perhaps she never will.
     Last April, she received a letter from the Manila office of the Department of Veterans Affairs, telling her the heirs of Nisperos were no longer eligible for compensation claims having reached the majority age.
     But we can never go back in time and file the claims in the 1920s. Fact is no one helped my grandmother and her children then and no one told them the right thing to do," Viduya said.
     She admitted the letter crushed all their hopes but she believed that they should be entitled to certain benefits.
     "My grandfather served the Americans, served some of them and eventually died for them," she said.     Nisperos' daughters, Concepcion and Leonila, are still hoping that the American dollars which their late mother never received would arrive before they die.
     Leonila, who never married, recalled the hard life with their mother. "Perhaps it would have been different had our mother  received the pension claim," she said in Ilocano.
     Nisperos' daughters, now in their 70s, would die without knowing whether the United States did justice to the penniless widow of the man who received what was the first and highest award America could give to its citizens.  And Nisperos was not even an American.
        
  

FOR THE RECORD

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, 

to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."--Henry David Thoreau

The blogger could have blundered into a writers' organization whose leaders' moral-intellectual orientation/values did not measure, it appears to us now, to those of the truly practitioners of the art. It was at least a five-year affair that the blogger and the writer from Caba did their best to make the Ilokano-English journal the most outstanding of its kind in the North. 

It was an encounter that left us with a bad taste in the mouth with respect to honesty and integrity.

     We are tracing the roots of conflict. This is our version--of course they have their own-- as journalist-correspondent of the country's most prestigious newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

"PH SUFFERING FROM SPIRITUAL POVERTY"

Laoag City street

Laoag City Roman Catholic Sinking Tower
 with the Central School in the foreground

      Poverty which concerns the stomach stalks the land where food crops could grow abundantly. On the other hand, graft and corruption in which millions, nay billions, of pesos go into greedy pockets is draining the economy. 
The country is bleeding.

     What exactly is ailing the country?

     It was a Saturday during the reign of the convicted plunderer Joseph Estrada that a P.E.N (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) International Conference was held at the Oasis Country Resort in San Fernando City. We were one of the panelists that included F. Sionil Jose, Charlson Ong, Star columnist Isagani Cruz,  Alejandro Roces, Juan S.P Hidalgo, Jr. In attendance, too, were University of the Philippines English professor Nieves Espitola; Elmer Odonez, more than 300 Ilocano writers and English and literature teachers in Ilocos.

     Hidalgo gave the keynote address of the conference while Jose, the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and the Communication Arts, delivered acidic comments on the country’s political and economic state during the open forum. 

     What he said then is still true today.
     The country is not only suffering from poverty where people get hungry, Jose, the Ilocano literary icon, said. It is suffering from spiritual poverty which is worst than poverty of the stomach.
     He said that in the village (Tomana, Rosales, Pangasinan) where he grew up, “the parents are very proud that their daughters are going to Japan when they know fully- well that many of these young women would become prostitutes in that country.”
     He claimed that in Pagsanjan, Laguna, parents pimp for their young boys who sell their young bodies to pedophiles.
     “The degeneracy of our people illustrates too well the failure of the established churches,” he said. “If it is true that we are the only Christian country in Asia, then such Christian values of honesty and integrity and belief in God should be imprinted in us.”
     Nothing of the sort happened, he said. He deplored that the country’s priests live like princes. And poor men’s churches like the Iglesia ni Cristo and El Shaddai do not have lower class ideology, according to Jose.

     “What do they really believe in?” Jose said. At that time, the Iglesia ni Cristo and El Shaddai were supporting Estrada whose ouster from the presidency was being demanded by the Roman Catholic Church, business groups, the academe and various sectors across the nation in the aftermath of the juetengate which triggered the impeachment trial against Erap.

     Jose said he envied the Iranians who ousted the Shah of Iran in the 1970’s. “They, the Iranians, are not Catholics but Muslims. Their God is a fighting God.”

     “If we are interested in building the country, it is very important to look at ethics as solution to our problems, “Jose said in Ilocano.

     “We got the worst from our former colonial masters—the Spaniards, Americans and the Japanese.”

      Jose said that what we inherited was racism, the attitude of superiority and the attitude of people in the Iberian peninsula: that it is not honorable to work with one’s hands.

    From the Japanese, we did not get their high point that enabled them to become the great nation that they are. What we got from them was the sense of brutality and hierarchy, Jose said.

     It was a verdict that should assail as all—the failure to imbibe the work ethics and democratic ethos of the Americans that made their country also great.

     Jose, the most translated Filipino author, then hit the great disparity between the wealthy Filipinos and the poor.

    "It is obscene for one family to own a whole district of Manila wherein are built mansions and skyscrapers, '' he said.

 

 

 

 

RUMINATION

     The blogger admires Philippine senators Miriam Santiago and Juan Ponce Enrile for their knowledge in law and skills in debate and other discourses. They deserve to be elected again and again to an august body like the Philippine Senate.
     Senators Serge Osmena, Pia and Peter Cayetano; Francis Escudero  and Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. are also in the blogger's list of admirable lawmakers. Sen. Franklin Drilon is in the waiting list but the blogger now strikes his name off for his behavior in connection with the P10-B scam committed by the alleged mastermind Janet Napoles. 
     Except for Sen. Trillanes, the rest should not be in the Senate, specifically, Jinggoy Estrada, son of the convicted plunderer Joseph Estrada; Ramon "Bong: Revilla, Gregorio Honasan who led seven unsuccessful coup attempts against former President Aquino;  Lito Lapid, Grace Poe and Nancy Binay.
     Recent events in the Senate, however, have made me revise the list of deserving lawmakers in the august body. This refers to the privilege speeches delivered respectively by Senators Santiago and Enrile, where they lambasted each other, using street and gutter language. The blogger is hereby delisting the name of Sen.Enrile and put Sen. Santiago in the probation list.
     

MAN AND WOMAN: HOW THEY SHOULD RELATE TO EACH OTHER

     We have just read "The Horse-breaker", a short story written by Javier de Viena. It is a narration about a man who breaks horses so they can be managed and do their owners' bidding. A young girl named Blasa provides the anti-thesis to the hero. A simple story with a simple plot, it is effectively presented with a minimum of details.
     Here is the plot summary: Sabiniano arrives at a ranch in the wild country somewhere in South America. He has been hired to break some wild horses, one of which is owned by the ranch owner's daughter. After a short exposition, other characters are introduced including the situation, action begins. Sabiniano starts his job as a horse-breaker. A conflict develops between him and the haughty Blasa but is not resolved. 
    When his job is finished, Sabiniano bids goodbye to the ranch owner. But before he leaves, a dance is held but he does not join the merrymaking. Blasa seeks him out and invites him to dance. He refuses for which reason, Blasa flares up but controls herself. She tells the man he could not leave because, as she says it," Don't you know I love you, you wretch?"
     The humbled Blasa ends up kissing the horse-breaker who stays for good. 
     By portraying Sabiniano as a tough guy in a tough environment, who has a code of honor and who "always do what he sets out to do," Javier de Viena has drawn the image of the ideal man who always wins despite the odds. But the author cautions that to be able to master men (that includes women) and circumstances,"one must know how to master himself."
     In the case of Blasa, Viena also has created the image of what a wife should be: Obedient, submissive, so that as the "mastered" in the union, she would make her husband happy, too.
     Set in the macho country of either Argentina or Brazil, the story makes a statement about how men in another culture treat women.
     In another culture, a woman is abandoned when she loses her value because she can't beget children. The man leaves her for a more fertile woman. This is painfully captured in the fiction written by the Philippine author Amado Daguio in "Wedding Dance" set in the country's highlands and tribal culture.
      

NOTES TO JOSEFINO ZABALA, EX-FUTURE NATIONALIST WRITER*

All rights reserved

Aristocratic fingers
neither walk the yellow pages
     of history.
Nor do they feel the pulse
of the now-barren country
whose impatient offsprings
have gone away, lost
in the wombs of other lands.
Only those who know songs
of rice birds come back,
retracing spoors of wild pigs
that, too, have disappeared 
with the great forests.
They have sought refuge
in the arms of strange towns,
their souls an arid desert.
The temple in the sun
shall haunt them surely.
And the longing knows no end:
Who will miss the cool hills
of Sagada and Samoki?

2.

Speak not of virgin springs
For remembering is painful
adventure to where once stood
green mansions of rock:
The tomb is only an aberration of fools
   and we are scions
   of a deathless tree.
Let us not go back
and die slowly, a gumamela
Pinned against our cheek.

3.

More brown gods now stalk
the brown earth but who will heed
the multitude whose combined voices
are as weak as the flow
of Padsan and the dying rivers?
And who are the heroes?
Rizal, Mabini, Bonifacio
And even the Lunas--they, too, had
their own tales that are as authentic
as the white sands of Saud in Pagudpud.
They who mouth slogans
and make comparisons
desecrate their memories
and tinge with black
their shining dignity.
My friend, the race 
must go on, untouched
by the tongues of fire throwers
and the politicians.

*Included in the anthology of Ilokano-English poems, "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger"