Memorial Day: Reading “War, Literature and the Arts”

May 29, 2012 at 5:03 am (Movies, Philippine History, Places, Recommended)
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This past weekend, the History Channel showed a number of war documentaries.   Yesterday, self finally got to watch Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima.  She had refused to see it when it was showing in theaters, out of some vague, unfocused sense of loyalty to the husband, whose grandfather, a brigadier general in the Philippine Army, was taken from his family by the Japanese and never returned.

But, darn if she didn’t find herself so absolutely moved by the film.  In fact, she told the husband, she was more affected by that movie than she was by Saving Private Ryan.

Self is on the War, Literature & the Arts e-mail list, and this evening there was a message in her “in” box about a new post.  So she eagerly went to read it, and it was absolutely fascinating.  James Moad II, who edits the blog, used to teach in the Air Force Academy.  Self thinks he is very brave.  He writes, “Of course, war is not moral, and maybe that’s the tragedy of it all for those who have to fight.”

He recounts a time when he was still teaching in the Air Force Academy, and he got a call from a concerned parent whose daughter was experiencing nightmares after reading one of the books Moad had assigned in his War Literature course.  The book was called Tiger Force and dealt with American atrocities in Vietnam.  Self has read quite extensively about American atrocities in Vietnam, and can certainly see why a young person might suffer nightmares after readings like that, but Moad reminds his readers that the student was enrolled in a Military Academy, after all.

Moad (in passsing) mentions “the anger of Odysseus upon his return home in The Odyssey” (which reminds self very much of the anger of returning Vietnam War veterans, whose sacrifices went largely un-recognized), and about Plato’s The Cave (“about how focusing on moral certainty can keep us from seeing reality”) and it’s just a really great essay, which reminds self that she took son and Niece G to Corregidor when they were about seven or eight years old.  That was a great tour.  The guide seemed to speak with such passion about the events of a long-ago time.  The tour ends at a memorial, on a bluff overlooking the sea.  And what self remembers most clearly were that there were a few very old American veterans on the tour.  At that memorial, they all broke off to stand singly, and stared out at the sea, and some were visibly weeping.

And self thinks that every returning Filipino must be required to take this tour.  But why leave out the rest?  Let’s just say, every Filipino who is in high school or college in the Philippines, must be required by their schools to take the Corregidor tour.  If Israel can require its citizens to spend time on a kibbutz (or the Israeli army), certainly the Philippine government can require its people to honor the sacrifices made on Corregidor.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Bataan Day/ Discovering a Book List

April 9, 2012 at 2:19 am (Authors, Books, Filipino poetry, Filipino Writers, Links, Lists, Philippine History, Recommended, Women Writers, Zack)
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Bataan Day is tomorrow, April 9.  It is the 70th anniversary of the surrender of combined U.S. and Filipino forces to the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.

How sad is this day?  The husband’s grandfather, a brigadier general, was one of those who surrendered on the Bataan Peninsula.  He made it as far as Fort Santiago, but disappeared shortly thereafter.  No one knows what befell him.  He was simply gone.  His eldest child, the husband’s father, was 16 years old.

Self was reminded of this very important anniversary by Hyphen Magazine.

Self also discovered this list of novelist Abha Dawesar’s Favorite All-Time Books.  It is a very eclectic list. Self decides to print it out so that she can start reading the books on it.

Towards the bottom of the list, self finds her second collection, Mayor of the Roses.  It follows right after Zack’s second book (after Rolling the R’s), Primetime Apparitions.

Mayor of the Roses, the title story of self’s collection, was published in Hyphen Issue # 6.

The list appeared in Hyphen Issue # 7.  Which must have been some time ago, for now Hyphen‘s current issue is # 24.

Self is tickled pink to be included on a list that begins with:

  • The Symposium, by Plato
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
  • Notes From the Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Finally: A New NYTBR Post!

April 3, 2012 at 12:08 am (Books, Lists, Philippine History, Women Writers)
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These are the books self is interested in reading, after perusing the 19 February 2012 issue of The New York Times Book Review:

1.    After reading Candice Millard’s review of Gregg Jones’ Honor in the Dust:  Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream (published by New American Library):

  • Gregg Jones’ Honor in the Dust:  Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream — No explanation needed: self is Filipina, after all!

2.    After reading David Leavitt’s (negative, self thinks) review of Olaf Olafsson’s novel, Restoration (published by Ecco/ HarperCollins), about a young Icelandic artist who served as “both apprentice and lover” to a famous (and married) restorer of “Italian Renaissance masterworks,” and how she exacts revenge when it becomes clear that the master has no intention of leaving his pregnant wife for her, two books by a member of “the early-20th-century English colony in Florence”:

  • Iris Origo’s The Merchant of Prato, “a vivid portrait of daily life in medieval Tuscany”
  • Iris Origo’s War in Val d’Orcia, based on Origo’s experiences during World War II, which she spent in Italy on property she and her husband owned, La Foce: “a self-sufficient community incorporating 57 farms, a school and a hospital.”

3.   After reading Allison McCulloch’s short reviews in the Fiction Chronicle, the following novels:

  • Chan Koonchung’s The Fat Years, translated by Michael S. Duke (published by Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday), which sounds vaguely magical realist:  The protagonist’s “old friend Little Xi is dissatisfied, distrustful and increasingly disturbed by a strange amnesia that seems to have gripped the population, while another acquaintance insists an entire month has gone missing from the country’s collective memory.”
  • Liz Moore’s Heft (published by Norton), which “tells the stories of Kel and Arthur, two tender, thoughtful souls, adrift in life for want of the anchor of family, slowly being drawn toward each other”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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Still Happy

March 30, 2012 at 7:44 pm (Holidays, Lists, Philippine History, Places, Sayings, Weather)
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Self is happy to be home.  Yes, in spite of the fact that the San Francisco Bay Area is still chilly, and a pesky cough seems to have returned.

Looking through more mail, self finds a rejection from The Alaska Quarterly Review that she chooses to read as cryptically encouraging (if that is not too much of an oxymoron):  “Many thanks” handwritten in the bottom of the rejection note, but no signature.  Still, would an editor have bothered to write “Many thanks” if self’s story had not had some redeeming qualities?  Wouldn’t the rejection note have been left alone if the work was simply un-interesting and un-involving?  You see how the addition of a hand-written “Many Thanks” throws self off completely, dear blog readers?

(Self, there you go again, continually parsing codes.  Not to mention, embarking on the xxxth digression of the year. Focus, self, focus!)

Other stuff in the backlog of mail:  the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal

It is already the end of March.  How quickly the time has flown!  Upcoming on the calendar are :

  • April Fool’s Day:  Sunday, April 1
  • Good Friday:  Friday, April 6
  • Easter Sunday:  April 8
  • Bataan Day (Philippines):  April 9 (commemorates the Fall of Bataan, April 1942, which culminated in the infamous Death March)
  • Tax Day:  April 17
  • Earth Day:  April 22
  • ANZAC Day (Australia and New Zealand):  April 25
  • Arbor Day; South African Freedom Day:  Friday, April 27

Self’s Zen Mind calendar has the following reflection for March:

To open your innate nature and to feel something from
the bottom of your heart, it is necessary to remain silent.

The accompanying illustration is a pen and ink painting of Mount Fuji by the artist Shogetsu, who was active in the latter part of the Meiji Era, from roughly 1880 to 1890.  There is a museum dedicated to his work in Wakakusa, Japan

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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History of Bacolod by Sa-Onoy

January 12, 2012 at 5:36 am (Philippine History, Places)
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Self found the book at the Bacolod Public Library and Jerry at L’Fisher photocopied the entire book for her. That was months and months ago — self is sorry she’s only gotten around to reading the book now. But, better late than never!

From her reading of the first two pages, self learns that Bacolod began as “a settlement known as Magsungay,” which was situated between two rivers, called (What else?) Magsungay Daku (or “Big Magsungay”) and Magsungay Pequeño (or “Small Magsungay”).

BTW, self just loves the Bacolod way with names: when she first got a look at the piece of land she owns, the map pointed out a river that bordered her property. And the name of this river? Ngalan, which means Name. Similarly, her cousin’s dog is called Ido. Translation: DOG.

Back to the subject at hand, the history of Bacolod: A “priest would visit once or twice a year to say Mass, administer the sacraments and conduct religious instruction.”

An early report, dated July 14, 1755 (Holy moly! Self’s birthday is July 14!) describes a Moro assault during which “Magsungay suffered heavy losses … since it was a holy day and the priest was not in town” (How very convenient, self thinks. For the priest!) — “and the natives were in church praying the rosary when the Moros arrived and killed and enslaved most of the townspeople.”

Paradoxically, the number of recorded baptisms showed “substantial increase” that year. This “rise in population” prompted the Bishop of Cebu, “who had jurisdiction over the island of Negros, to elevate … Magsungay into a pueblo (town) in 1756, which means that it had more than a thousand inhabitants. The new pueblo was placed under the patronage of San Sebastian, a favorite saint of the Spaniards.”

And, further, “on September 15, 1767, Rome declared that the small relic of St. Sebastian donated to esta Iglesia de Bacolod was authentic and could be displayed and honored publicly by the faithful.”

Fascinating stuff.

Self really can’t explain what it is about that place (other than being the place where Dear Departed Dad spent his earliest youth), but after going there in December 2010, she feels there are two halves of her: the one lives in Redwood City and putters about the neighborhood like an old woman. The other belongs to Bacolod and is fascinated by every burp and utterance of the denizens of that small island. One relishes the isolation and quiet of American suburbia, the other could stay up all night, watching the parties held in L’Fisher’s ballroom. (One day, self hopes, she will encounter the owner of L’Fisher, who she hears is a woman named Lourdes. Then self can tell her in person how very fabulous she thinks the hotel, and every single person who works there, is. The husband keeps asking her to describe the place but it’s no use: she knows that if he ever shows up there, he will find it tacky. Tacky, however, is precisely the kind of thing self adores)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

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Lizares House (Balay Ni Tana Dicang), Talisay, Negros Occidental

October 6, 2011 at 9:01 am (Philippine History, Places)
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The Lizares house in Talisay, referred to as Balay ni Tana Dicang (The House of Tana Dicang) is on –  naturally –  Lizares Street.

Tana Dicang sits in the center (Self digs her native dress!). Dapper man to her right (wearing two-toned shoes -- I inadvertently left his feet out of the photograph -- AARGH) was the first president of the Philippine Republic, Manuel L. Quezon. The other guy might be Osmeña

A bust of Tana Dicang -- Self only wishes she knew the name of the sculptor! The woman lived to be 102. She bore 17 children.

Self loves the basket beneath the bed!

The occupants of the house ate their meals at this simple wooden table, adjoining the kitchen. The formal table and chairs in the house's main seating area were reserved for special occasions.

Self had the best tour guide: Fr. Bernard, a member of the Lizares family. Fr. Bernard is a Carmelite monk.

Prototype of an "icebox", the original refrigerator

Self doesn't know what to call this fruit tree, standing just beside the house.

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Worship in the Philippines

September 17, 2011 at 4:38 pm (Filipino Writers, Philippine History, Sayings, Surprises)
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Self bumped into Charles Tan at the Manila International Book Festival today.  Also, Ambeth Ocampo, very busily engaged in signing copies of his books while being deluged by worshipful citizens.  Also saw:  Nadine Sarreal, Gwen Galvez, and Karina Bolasco.  These women give credence to one of Dearest Mum’s sayings:  “In the Philippines, women don’t grow old.  Only the karabaw do.”

If self really cared about her appearance, she would move to the Philippines (which is terribly impractical; if not impossible)

In the meantime, self is engaged in reading a book called:  Horacio de la Costa, S. J.:  Selected Essays on the Filipino and His Problems Today , edited by Roberto M. Paterno and published in 2002.  Fr. de la Costa, who taught at the Ateneo, was a great Filipino historian and writer.  In one of the essays, called “The Role of Religious Women in Asia Today,”  self gleans this fascinating nugget of information:

“When the Spaniards first came to Maynila, they found the women worshipping a wooden image in a pandan grove in what is now the district of Ermita.  It was the image of a woman, and the Spaniards very naturally presumed that it was an image of the Virgin Mary, brought by some wandering Franciscan missionary around the time of Marco Polo.  They dressed it up in velvet and cloth of gold and put a crown on its head and called it Nuestro Señora de Guia.  But some time ago an architect got permission to cut a small piece from the base of the image and test it; and he found that it was molave, which suggests that it was carved in the Philippines and was not brought here from Europe.”

Fascinating, isn’t it, dear blog readers?

Stay tuned.

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Rogue Magazine’s Bacolod Issue, April 2009

April 26, 2011 at 4:58 pm (Philippine History, Places)
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Thanks much, Charles Tan, for FED-EXING the issue to self, two years ago. It must have cost you — what, $70? A huge amount, especially for someone who’s not that far out of college.

Self has seen this particular issue of Rogue in the home of a few Bacolod relatives.  Here’s what Jose Marie Ugarte wrote in The Editor’s Letter, titled “Negros Made Them” :

Ah, it’s summer again, the season of non-stop sweating in this sweltering tropic rot that drives everybody insane and out of the city — to the mountains or the beaches or some cooler continent on the other side of the world. Last summer we spent an unnatural amount of time on the island of Boracay, effortlessly adapting to the lifestyle and uncovering some inconvenient truths about the place that will one day rise to the surface. This year, we continued our summer coverage of the Visayas by setting up the Rogue desk at room 428 of the Planta hotel in Bacolod City — an ice-plant-turned-three-or-four-star hotel in the heart of Bacolod.

The chance to infiltrate Negros Occidental began as nothing more than a curious whim, but snowballed into a personal obssession in no time. Although my mother grew up in Victorias, I had never lived there but had visited several times, and I was always enamored with the rural haciendero lifestyle — the horses, the sugarcane fields, the plantation houses — it was Scarlett O’Hara’s Georgia or J. R. Ewing’s Dallas in the tropics, but more importantly it was who we were as Filipinos: Farmers.

All our ancestors were farmers and our culture and civilization grew out of the soil, just like every stalk of sugarcane that gets harvested out of Negros every year.

And that is why self feels it is so important to understand her family’s place in this scheme of things. Because the land is still there, it will always be there, long long after self isn’t.

Stay tuned.

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A List of Miscellaneous Discoveries

February 3, 2011 at 4:18 pm (Family, Lists, Philippine History, Places, Relatives, Surprises, Traveling)
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  • The placement fee for an employment agency that sends people to the Middle East is a whopping 35,000 pesos ($794) –  at least, that’s the fee that Joel the driver had to pay when his wife put in an application.  She will make about 17,000 pesos ($386) a month in Dubai.
  • Joel gets paid 180 – 250 pesos a day for driving people around.  That’s roughly equivalent to $4 – $6.
  • Self holds title to property in Barangay Granada, just outside Bacolod City.
  • The average monthly rent for an apartment in Bacolod City, according to one of self’s cousins (who works for a big bank) is 10,000 pesos, or approximately $226.
  • It takes two jeepney rides to get from L’Fisher Chalet to the Balay Daku:  the first jeepney ride is to Alisbo Funeral Homes on the Bata or Mandalagan route.  Then one has to switch to a jeepney on the Homesite route.
  • “Banwa” is the Ilonggo word for “town proper.”
  • “Uma” is the Ilonggo word for “farm.”
  • “Punot” is the Ilonggo word for “fishpond.”
  • The people who work at Santa Fe Resort have names like “Inchik” (Chinese), “Niwang” (Thin), “Tambuk” (Fat), “Daku” (Big) and “Gamay” (Small).
  • The word for “collision” in Ilonggo is also used in giving directions.  As in:  “Bungguan mo ang chapel,” which means “You will happen upon the chapel.”
  • Cockfighting is big in Bacolod.
  • The patriarch of the family, referred to by the cousins as “Lolo Gener,” was paralyzed by a stroke in 1943.  He died in November 1965.
  • Hacienda Patricia, which self used to pass all the time on her way from Bacolod City to Santa Fe Resort, has been turned into a subdivision.
  • The mayor of Bacolod at the outbreak of World War II was Alfredo Montelibano, Senior.  He left his post in 1943 after he was slapped by a Japanese officer for not bowing low enough.
  • The Japanese High Command occupied the Balay Daku.
  • Construction of the Balay Daku began in 1936; it was finished in 1938.
  • The 82-year-old brother of self’s grandfather still comes to work in the Balay Daku every day.  Self only learned of his existence a few weeks ago.  She then plied him with questions, which he gracefully and patiently answered, for over two hours.

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Towns of Negros

January 20, 2011 at 11:35 pm (Philippine History, Places, Traveling)
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This morning, self wants to honor the trek she made last month, all around Negros.  She pulls out the much-creased map that she used on that trip.  Recalling her energy and single-mindedness, she can’t help being amazed.  She knows it is unlikely that she’ll ever repeat such an undertaking.  Not only is her energy flagging, but this is her second visit to Bacolod in a month.  She’s beginning to lose a little of her “outsider” status.  Before, one could think of self as an eccentric woman from California whose whims could be comfortably indulged because she was only staying a week.  But, back again?  That’s more than enough cause for closer scrutiny, for asking:  What’s her story?

Truthfully, self doesn’t know what her story is.  In Redwood City, California, where she has lived more than 20 years, she is a wife, mother, and teacher.  In New York, she is a writer and an aunt to her Dear Departed Sister’s three children.  In Manila, she is an ex-Ateneo and ex-Assumption Convent student.  She is also a daughter and a sister.

In Bacolod, however, she is a woman traveling alone and exposing herself to all kinds of risks (Though there couldn’t be a more sedate hotel in the entire world than L’Fisher, self feels).  She hasn’t bumped into many foreign men (It’s mostly male tourists one sees in the hotels here.  Rarely does she encounter a foreign woman.  Oh, not so fast, self!  Don’t you remember once seeing, in the hotel in Dumaguete, a middle-aged American woman who apparently, like self, was traveling alone?  Wasn’t this the moment when you began to settle down and relax?)

From her reading, self knows that the towns of Negros are very old.  In 1571, the Spanish came and established an encomienda that became the town of Binalbagan.  Ilog was founded by the Augustinians in 1584.  Hinigaran was founded in 1765.  The city of Escalante has been continuously inhabited “since 11th A.D.” (Info is from the official website of the province of Negros Occidental)  Escalante was a scene of horror in 1985 :  21 people were killed by the town’s security forces as they demonstrated in front of the municipal hall, in the lead-up to the Marcos-Aquino presidential race.

A long time ago, self visited a chapel made out of cartwheels.  She asked Joel, the driver she used last month, if he knew of it:  he didn’t.  Now, browsing the official website of Negros Occidental, self stumbles across an entry for the town of Manapla.  Under a section called “Famous Landmarks,” she finds this:

The Chapel of Cartwheels is made of farm implements such as cartwheels, plows, mortar and pestle, margaha sand and broken pieces of glass of different colors.  It was patterned like a “salakot” and it can be found inside the farm owned by the Gaston family.

Now self knows she wasn’t dreaming.

In addition, she learns that the town is famous “all over the Philippines” for its puto.  There’s even a festival held every August to commemorate this iconic Visayan delicacy. During this Festival, which is called Pinta Puto, people paint their bodies white and green and dance through the streets.

August?  Darn, self will miss it.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

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