Self’s ex-Assumption classmate, Lourdes Valeriano, is a writer for Business Week.

Check out her great column on “Mother’s Day 2008,” here.

It was a hot day — in fact, sweltering — and you dragged 20 buckets of water around the front and back yards.

You flipped through two issues of Vanity Fair: the one with the three (white) female comedians on the cover, and the one with the 50-year-old Madonna on the cover.

You watched the latest episdoe of “Battlestar Galactica”, that space opera to end all space operas, and you watched Sharon/Boomer shoot someone yet again, this time the blonde Valkyrie “good” Cylon, Six, and you marveled again at the exquisite inflections which Mary McDonnell (who plays Madame President Laura Roslin) imparts to even her most pedestrian lines. And you noticed, too, that the character previously known as “Chief” and now called “Galen” (though perhaps that was his name all along, though self wishes they had kept calling him “Chief”) has put on some weight. And you found yourself relishing the smarminess of the one-eyed captain, Saul. And adoring the round little tummy of Sharon’s daughter, Hera. And your favorite character is the blonde Valkyrie — no, not Kara Thrace (a k a “Starbuck”) but the one who plays Six. And why has Lieutenant Adama been put out to farm, appearing totally emasculated as blow-dried and pin-striped member of the Council of Twelve? And could Kara actually be a Cylon???

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Intrepid Amy Hoffman, editor of the Women’s Review of Books, has a book just out from University of Massachusetts Press:

An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News

From the press release:

Boston’s weekly Gay Community News was “the center of the universe” during the late 1970s, writes Amy Hoffman in this memoir of gay liberation before AIDS, before gay weddings, and before “The L Word.” Provocative, informative, inspiring, and absurd, with a small circulation but a huge influence, Gay Community News produced a generation of leaders, writers, and friends. In addition to capturing the heady atmosphere of the times — the victories, controversies, and tragedies — Hoffman’s memoir is also her personal story, written with wit and insight, of growing up in a political movement; of her deepening relationships with charismatic, talented, and sometimes utterly weird coworkers; and of trying to explain it all to her large Jewish family.

Available at your local independent bookseller, or directly from the publisher (www.umass.edu/umpress) at 1-800-537-5487

Let’s just say, dear blog reader, that you weren’t aware there was a world food crisis. Let’s just say you weren’t aware that there was widespread panic over the soaring price of rice. Self gets hers from Marina Mart in Foster City, where a 30-lb. bag of Jasmine rice from Thailand costs about $10. See, we here in the good ol’ United States are protected from such shocks by the fact that we live in a cushion of prosperity, the world’s richest country, etc etc

This may come as a bit of a shock, but the Philippines is the world’s largest — no, not exporter — importer of rice.

The reason for that is simple: overpopulation, which a succession of Philippine governments has been bemoaning ever since self can remember. When, oh when, will our Catholic leaders realize that preaching abstinence is not going to solve this problem?

Here’s an article from the April 26 issue of The Economist (Self knows: her reading’s backed up again!). The italics are self’s:

The figures put the population at almost 89 million, when the census was taken last August (2007), up from 77 million in 2000. That means it has been growing at just over 2% annually since then. That rate is below the 2.3% annual growth of the 1990s and the 3% of the 1960s. But it is still faster than expected. Some analysts think the census undercounted, especially among poorer Filipinos. The population may now be up to 93 million.

Every hour, then, the country has an extra 200 little mouths to feed. And increasing numbers of them are being born into grinding poverty. Other new government figures show that the number of people scraping by on less than $1 a day has risen by 16% since 2003, to 28 million. More people mean more houses, which means less land to grow crops. The government this month imposed a temporary ban on building on farmland, as it revives its attempt to achieve self-sufficiency in rice.

Some senior officials are pressing President President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to agree to a big expansion of state-provided contraception and other family planning help. But Ms. Arroyo is a devout Catholic and wary of upsetting the influential bishops. She relies on their grudging support to resist pressure for her resignation or ouster, following a plethora of corruption scandals.

And there we go, dear blog readers: providing the domestic servants and musical entertainment of the entire world.

On one of self’s last visits to Bacolod, self was taken by kind uncle to one of her Dear Departed Dad’s haciendas. And she insisted on meeting the workers, who, in that particular hacienda, were all members of the same family: the Anliqueras. Self remembers entering their little nipa huts, and counting on her fingers the number of children each family had, and the average was something like 10. And then she gathered the mothers around and started talking to them about birth control. Meanwhile, her uncle watched, grinning sardonically, somewhere in the background.

When self and uncle returned to his jeep he told self: “Think you’re going to change their minds? After one hour?”

Indeed.

Ode #1:
Oh, weather that is hitting 100 degrees (all over the San Francisco Bay Area) and adding to the misery of the $4/a gallon gasoline: How self wishes you had come just a week later, for yesterday self spent hours digging planting holes for the following: passiflora and two five-gallon loropetalum. And now the plants’ leaves have shriveled as if they’d just been passed through an oven.

Ode #2:
Oh, Tony Shalhoub: How self loves to watch you as Adrian Monk, especially on a hot day like today when self is supine on couch because it is too hot to be anywhere else (though self did make an attempt to locate a book called Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs at the Redwood City Main Library, a few hours ago)

Ode #3:
Oh, T. C. Boyle (and self learned just yesterday that the “T” stood for “Tom”, which was a name self thinks is altogether too pedestrian for you), you and your black suit and your large stone pendant and your pouff-y hair and your piercing (but also somewhat vacant) gaze: How self’s heart beat in her chest when she accosted you after your reading at xxxx community college, while her two English 1B students could do nothing but stammer out their admiration, and you revealed that you wrote the story about Pakistan although you know very little about Pakistan and in fact have never been there, which only tripled self’s admiration

Ode # 4:
Oh Kokomo Colada yogurt smoothie from Yumi Yogurt on El Camino Real: How self adores your lambent blend of banana, pineapple, and coconut — the perfect antidote to this scorching weather. How self dreamed about you for hours and finally relented and stood at the end of a line that was 10-deep (the first eight like escapees from some techno-geek convention, Asian-Am males with short short hair and polo shirts and khaki pants. The only thing missing were the pens in the shirt pockets, dear blog readers)

Ode # 5:
Oh son who bothered self exceedingly yesterday with your last-minute decision to enroll in a college-level course in Spain that is delivered in Spanish (knowing very well your last Spanish was in eighth grade, with Mrs. Teresa C, who wasn’t a teacher, just a member of the Mother’s Club, and not even, herself, Spanish), and who had to get thrown out of the program by irate Mr. Martinez, who argued with self and then with hubby before finally stamping “Denied” on your application: How self wishes you would go somewhere else, Tel Aviv or Hong Kong, where one of self’s Dear Bros has that fab three-bedroom apartment and you wouldn’t have to pay a thing, no not a thing, only for your airfare, and wouldn’t that be preferable to spending four hours M-F sweltering in a classroom in the University of Valladolid?

Ode # 6:
Oh, Orhan Pamuk, who writes altogether too much of snow in the book of the same name (and not enough about the virgin suicides, pace Jeffrey Eugenides): How self wishes the blizzard would be over already, so self could discover who killed Ka.

Ode # 7:
Oh, man who loves Thom McGuane who excoriated self for her “feminist” reading of the great man’s work on xxxxxxx.com: How humbled self is by the knowledge that no one will ever defend self’s work the way you have McGuane’s.

Ode # 8:
Oh, students, you who chat about all and sundry after class, who offer to walk self to her car so that she will not be harassed by J & J: How self adores you, how self truly adores all of you.

Self is in her kitchen, doing the equivalent of the Howard Dean YEEAAAH! that sunk his campaign. But, in self’s case, there is no one to witness such depravity.

The reason self is so exercised? She just ripped off the wrapping of her last remaining can of “spicy sardines.” In the Philippines, self thinks her Mum used to get Mabuti. Or was that Ligo? Anyhoo, it was sardines doused in olive oil and a spicy red chili pepper.

Here, self finds that Asian supermarket Marina Mart, in Foster City, carries a spicy sardines brand called “Mascato”, which is from Portugal, and tastes exactly like the spicy sardines self used to eat back home in Manila. Not only that, the wrapper is almost exactly the same: yellow, red, and white.

Suddenly, self finds the wrapper infinitely fascinating. She can’t recall whether American sardines have this same kind of wrapper. It took self some time to rip off the yellow/white/red wrapper because it was also firmly secured with scotchtape, which absolutely boggles her mind: thousands and thousands of yellow,white, and red sardine tins leaving a factory every day, and someone there has the added duty of applying scotchtape to both ends — unless there is a special scotchtape-applying machine, though, which self very much doubts.

And, speaking of scotch tape, why make it so hard for a person to unwrap this sardine? Americans are genius at packaging: the whole purpose of an American package is to allow consumers/suckers to get at coveted product in two seconds flat. This morning, it took self three minutes to undo scotchtape and undo wrapper, etc etc

Well, heaven. Self feels things can’t be too bad today, even though today is the class where she meets J & J.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

This morning, dear blog readers, self is in such a strange mood that she finds everything hilarious.

She’s looking at an old issue of The New Yorker, and every time she flips a page she finds a new cartoon that sets her off. Self intuits that dear blog readers will find the captions pretty funny, even without the accompanying illustrations. So here they are, the list of captions self finds self-splittingly hilarious, while perusing The New Yorker of 26 June 2006 (Did self ever mention that she was the mother of all pack rats? If you didn’t know this before, dear blog readers, you know it now):

“If you’re happy and you know it, stick with your dosage.”

“I’ll take care of it impersonally.”

“You’re the one who wanted a boyfriend — you play with him.”

“I’m sorry, have you been grimacing long?”

* * * *

In other news, good friend Alka Raghuram has just returned from the Tribeca Film Festival, where her screenplay “The Conqueror,” about a blood feud between two villages which brings tragedy to a young boy’s family, received the L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth award, which is given annually to a female writer/ director participating in the Emerging Narrative section of the Tribeca All Access Film Festival. Go, Alka, go!

The spring issue of the The Chattahoochee Review is a special issue devoted to five Emerging Writers. These are the five:

Alethea Black
Anne Stameshkin
Yvonne A. Jackson
Murzban Shroff
Yours truly

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Margarita Donnelly told self she would be retiring next year.

Self can hardly believe it.

For, dear blog readers, this is the woman who made self a writer.

Doreen Fernandez started self on the path. Then, John L’Heureux stoked the fire. Margarita Donnelly found self when the fire was flickering. (Marilyn Chin helped, too, as dear blog readers well know — how fortuitous that Marilyn paid a visit to self just when the first Asian American women’s anthology was being put together by Calyx!) It was Margarita that made sure that the fire would stick. Self will never forget when Margarita came up to her and asked (Self had just finished reading her short story, “Ginseng” in a bookstore in the City), “Do you have other stories like that?” And just like that, a book came to be.

Calyx has published M. Evelina Galang (Her fab story, “Her Wild American Self”)

They published self’s Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila (which was simultaneously published in Manila by the Ateneo’s Office of Research & Publications and went on to be a finalist for the Philippines’ National Book Award)

They published Going Home to a Landscape: Writings by Filipinas.

They published The Forbidden Stitch, the first Asian American women’s anthology.

They published A Line of Cutting Women and A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women’s Poetry (which are great texts, especially for self’s “Women Writers” courses).

Here are some amazing facts about Calyx:

In the 32 years of its existence, the editors have read the work of over 100,000 women and selected more than 3,600 authors and artists for its books and journals.

Their publications have reached over half-a-million readers.

It has survived because of a tireless band of volunteer editors, supporters, and students whose sacrifices have ensured that the world knows of such women as Kathleen Alcala, Chitra Divakaruni, Jean Heglund, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Charlotte Watson Sherman.

As with gasoline and food prices, publishing and distribution costs have risen: Printing each issue now costs $6,000. Even a small increase in postage rates (today saw yet another increase) impacts a small press greatly. The costs of shipping non-profit mail went up over 100% last year. And the cost of paper continues to rise, as have all the other costs involved in running a small independent press, such as health insurance for Calyx’s small staff.

Imagine a world without Calyx or its brave women. What a terrible world that would be.

Calyx is a 501 C (3) — all contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

www.calyxpress.org

This just in: Late last night, scheming Parvati (a k a “The Flirt”) won “Survivor: Favorites vs. Fans”, besting a wan and gorgeous (but very still) babe by the name of Amanda: Eeeeek!

Perhaps because yesterday was Mother’s Day, hubby was very amenable to seeing “What Happens in Vegas.” We saw it at the Redwood City downtown cinema. Self doesn’t know if it’s the recession or what, but these days, the restaurants surrounding the cinema — Citrine, Portobello Grill, Beard Papa — seem mighty empty, and even on a weekend, Theatre Row feels like a ghost town. (By way of contrast, at 1:30 p.m. the line at The Lobster Shack on Veterans Boulevard was out the door; hubby and self had to wait 30 minutes for a table) Self considered getting some ice cream, but she didn’t like any of the flavors available in the cinema lobby. For the first time in months, self and hubby seated themselves without any comestibles, not even a junior popcorn.

And there were seven previews, of such unmentionables as “The House Bunny” (27-year-old Playboy bunny seeks new career and finds her niche as “house mother” to a clue-less sorority of brainiacs) and “The Rocker.” There was also a preview of something by M. Night Shyamalan starring Mark Wahlberg, an actor self usually likes. Unfortunately, self thinks she has already seen this exact same movie, but with Mel Gibson, and in rural as opposed to urban areas: “Signs.”

But, once the feature movie got underway, self found herself actually laughing. Hey, Ashton and Cameron Diaz have good chemistry! And seeing these two play off each other was almost as pleasurable as watching the repartee between Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey, Jr. in “Ironman”! And Cameron’s acerbic sidekick was very funny, as was Rob Corddry as Ashton’s sidekick. And Dennis Miller played a hoary not-so-old judge.

Summer is self’s favorite time of year (Bring on the heat!), and so much of it is bound up in anticipation of summer movies. This summer, self wants to see: Ed Norton as “Hulk,” Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart, and Mike Myers as “The Love Guru.” Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

(Gone: “Saturday Afternoon: Only the Seventh Most Gorgeous Day So Far This Year”)

Last year, self wrote a post called “Belated Mother’s Day Wishes for Dearest Mum” (still very much viewed, even a year later!)

This year, having just put down the phone to Dearest Mum (and having just learned that self’s share from the family corporation, uncollected all these years, is more than double what she earned the past five years at Foothill Community College — ha ha ha ha!), self will draw up a list of Mother’s Day wishes, for herself.

But, first, self wants to talk about yesterday’s reading at the Redwood City Main Library. And then maybe she’ll talk a little about Dearest Mum’s visit to one of self’s favorite hang-outs in Tel Aviv (second favorite next to Bialik Street, that is), The Brunch on Gordon Street.

Yesterday’s reading was so fab. In the audience: smattering of Vangie Buell’s husband’s relatives. Also, a Redwood City mystery writer. Also, a co-teacher of Edwin Lozada’s at Woodside High School. Also, Roz Kutler, who works for the library and is the best-est, sweetest, most tireless event organizer self knows, who provided cookies and coffee and a display table for all of the assembled writers’ books.

And let’s not forget the presence of hubby, who was listening to self read for the first time in — well, maybe almost a decade. And who took lots of pictures of self while she was reading, which was one of the reasons self refused to look up.

And so, here’s who read, and in what order:

Oscar Peñaranda read his hilarious short story, “Prelude to a Gig.” Every time self hears this short story, she just wants to double over laughing, she can’t help it.

Penelope Flores, fab teacher at San Francisco State, read a hilarious story about her mother, called “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters.” There is a prelude to this story, and it has to do with one of Penelope’s sons being in Cornell, and singing that school’s “theme song” on one of his visits home, only to find that his Lola knew it as well, but with different words — words inserted by her American teacher, who was one of the first wave of American teachers to arrive on Philippine shores, shortly after the end of the Filipino-American War.

Next, Vangie Buell, who read “The Parol: A Bamboo Star of Hope,” which was just heartbreaking. Every time self listens to Vangie read, she wants to tear up, she can’t help it. Vangie had a horrendous childhood, but is alive and flourishing today, and self credits her remarkable fortitude and generosity of spirit for this feat.

Next, Jennifer Almiron, self’s amazing student at UCLA Extension, who read her (funny and acerbic) story about her Catholic school education, “I Am She.” Self had not known that Jen studied at Amherst. And, after listening to Jen read a poem called “Hartford,” self learned that those Amherst students with significant others usually went to Hartford on dates. Which is where Jen set the poem which was, ironically, about her break-up with her first boyfriend — ha ha ha!

Then, self read. A very short piece. Only five pages. Over in 10 minutes.

Then, last, Edwin Lozada, editor of Field of Mirrors, who has such a mellifluous reading voice, and whose poetry is so lush and lyrical.

Anyhoo, it was a very good afternoon. And now this post is getting too long, so perhaps self will reserve the Tel Aviv story for another time.

Early this morning, self called Dearest Mum and woke her up (Self, after all these years, why are you unable to remember that Manila is 15 hours ahead of California ???). When self inquired how Dearest Mum had spent her Mother’s Day, Dearest Mum was quite happy to tell self that one of her closest friends had thrown her a dinner, complete with huge, fat lobsters “flown in from Maine.”

Whereupon self shared with Dearest Mum the news that hubby was taking her to Redwood City’s Lobster Shack for dinner.

And then self confided to Dearest Mum that she was thinking of starting a novel. Which led to Dearest Mum’s finally telling self how much her share of her father’s inheritance is. Which led to self’s jaw dropping open. Which led to, to —

Well, never mind what it led to, dear blog readers, but here are a few places self would love to visit, if she were as rich as Croesus and had nothing to do:

Dubai, rapidly transforming into the Las Vegas of the Middle East (Self once read a craigslist posting for English teachers to go to Dubai. Starting salary was something on the order of $50,000. If self were not so averse to desert, she would have applied in a heartbeat)

Paris, because ever since self’s Dear Departed Sister started sending her those postcards (”I am shopping right now on the Faubourg de Saint-Honoré!” or “I am strolling down the Champs-Elysées!”) self has been consumed with jealousy at those members of her family who seem to be able to visit that city at will. And also because self’s birthday is July 14, which she thinks is some kind of special day in Paris where everyone goes around kissing one another.

Mali, because she loves the novels of Maryse Condé.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.