Julius

This is one of two photos we have of orange Julius -- to remember him by. He quietly passed away in the early morning of 2011 March 30, Wednesday. He did not even get to feel the warmth of another sunrise. He was buried near the mango tree, joining other kittens that also were not given the chance to grow and frolic in our hearts. He was with us for a measly two weeks, yet his death stings like hell. It almost makes me believe in souls and heaven, so he will have a place to go, where no ill star can touch him anymore.

We don't know why he died. One day he is calling for his adoptive mother, Tabby, for milk, for warmth, for licks of affection, playing with Tabby's five kids, his squeaky delight filling the house; then on Wednesday he is gone. Just like that, he's gone. For ever.

At my age I have gone through a lot, but I am still bewildered by the death of the innocents. I understand how powerless we are against the force of nature. No amount of petition or prayers can stay the execution of fate, no tears of pity or shouts of rage are considered. Such is our world.

Let me put on record Julius' existence: On 2011 March 17, before noon, Julius, thin, dirty and hungry, was seen crawling near the street where Leena was waiting for a ride to work. So Leena phones home and Joy went to get Julius home, where he was given a bath in warm water. Two other mother cats were approached to see if they will give Julius their life-saving milk. No. We understand the No of nature. So, it's obviously Tabby again, who we were trying to spare from feeding another kitten with her present brood of five. Any kitten is Tabby's kitten, and acceptance was immediate and unquestioned.

 

For the next few days I would be startled from my reading by a sharp squeals from Julius. Joy said Tabby's kids were wrestling again, including Julius in their play. 

"So why the loud meows?" I asked.

"Jinujudo siya ng mga anak ni Tabby, gustong-gusto naman."

Squeals, thuds, crashes (sometimes resulting in broken glass and vases) and noises caused by pets you love do not distract me (whom slight rustles are irritants) from reading or writing. Even old age accepts new facts of life. I can easily accept death now, after so many colleagues and a few friends have preceded me. What I cannot learn to accept is the death of young kittens.

I quote from Leena's blog -- Tears for a kitten, http://www.catlovertalaga.com/2010/08/sometimes-i-wanna-get-my-hand-on-god.html -- "Sometimes what tears our hearts is not the terrible thing that happens to us, but to the ones we deeply care for."

Our Tabby

Tabby accommodates Julius while one of her kittens looks on.

Ragdolls are invariably white-furred, blue-eyed amiable cats -- like Tabby in the photo above. An orange stray is suckling hungrily, minutes after the kitten was picked up in a street corner. Tabby is the only mother cat of any breed in our home who is willing to succor any kitten in distress. And this is not the first time she has saved a kitten thrown to die, either by hunger, exposure to the elements, or to be squashed under the wheel of a passing car. People can be cruel if they are ignorant. I like animals more than people.

Back to Tabby and the new foundling, which, due to his orange color, has been named Julius. Tabby -- named after Stephen King's wife, Tabitha -- has given birth to five kittens almost two months ago, but that doesn't matter -- any kitten of any breed, color or origin is welcome to join her brood anytime. In the photo, one of her kids is looking on as Julius clings to his adoptive mother.

Julius' hunger is not limited to milk; he also needs the comfort and warmth of a mother's presence. A squeaky meow indicates that Tabby is away from his side. So, sometimes Julius, eyes still unopened, will crawl until he finds a warm body to cling on. Tabby's kids, who turn two-month-old today (2011 March 20), have acquired the amiability and gentleness inherent to Ragdolls; they let Julius cuddle them.

Julius climbs on his new "brother" for warmth.

This is not the first time Tabby has succored and saved other cat's child. I remember April 2009, when Eric, a friend, brought a baby Ragdoll to us because the kit's mother could not produce milk. Eric came to us, hoping to find a way to save the feeble kitten, which was already weak from starvation.

Here is Leena's account of the incident:

"I hoped that our Tabby, who recently gave birth to three healthy kittens, will succor a fourth. If not, it’s just a matter of a few hours before the weak Ragdoll dies. Hoping fervently, I placed the scrawny kitten’s fate before Tabby.

Without hesitation, Tabby nipped the kitty’s nape and added it among her brood. The small one, eyes still closed, instinctively found a teat and sucked weakly as we watched. A few minutes later we relaxed a bit when the baby continued feeding. At least a spark was kindled.

A few days later, our tiny refugee was crawling about the room. We gained something precious – this world, so sordid, could not be so intolerable if from time to time it allows a spluttering life to go on.

Then the allotted weeks passed, and the kitten opened an eye. We waited for the other eye to open, but it remained shut. When Eric visited his kitten, he was elated to see the improvement. When he saw the closed/open eyes, he said the lovely rascal looked like a bandit." (So the survivor's name became Bandit -- a cute bandit who stole our heart.)

[ http://www.catlovertalaga.com/2009/03/bandit.html ]

Then in October 2009, Ondoy devastated Metro Manila, including our neighborhood. Two days after the super-typhoon, Leena found three newborn kittens thrown in front of a pastor's house. Naturally the three became a part of our household. And Tabby, who had just given birth to six kittens a few days earlier, tried to bring one of them to add to her brood. But that is another story.

In the eyes of a child

Cute boy and painting by child prodigy Hamzah Marbella

In the eyes of a child
the world is young, where play
and slumber have no hurried pace.
The child, like the world, is rich beyond measure
because time has no meaning,
truth is not burdened by falsehood,
a marble is gem enough, bugs and dragonflies
fill the days: happiness abounds.
Age, casually tossed into eternity's heap,
cannot exist
in the eyes of the child.
--William the Henry

 

Mau's babies

This is Mau, or Maurin. Because she looked like her father, Mau, she was named Mau rin = Maurin. Credit for the fun name goes to Leena. 

On December 2, Mau gave birth to four cuties; however, the first one to come out was dead. She was not named before she was buried in the shelter of the mango tree inside the wall of our home. The lack of name lessens the heartbreak.

And this is Mau's daughter, Dasher. Leena, who had been wrapping gifts for Christmas when Dasher and her siblings were born, was obviously thinking of Santa's reindeer. I could name only one when asked -- Rudolph. Sneezy and Grumpy are Snow White's dwarfs, Leena said.

Dasher sometimes perches on my tummy, which turns warm on the small spot occupied by her. I have learned that if a small cat can trust and like me, then I'm not so terrible after all.

 Dasher on my slipper

Mau Jr. is a small and cute male version of Mother Mau.

 Mau Jr. on my other slipper. Either my feet smells like catnip 
or they are mouse-flavored.

  This is Sky, the big brother. In cat language, his color is blue -- like, the Sky is blue.

 

Facebook names

In a very limited way, principles of Graphology or Handwriting Analysis can be applied to usernames in Facebook.


The username, somewhat equivalent to a handwritten signature, project one's public image, how someone wants to be known or perceived. This, of course, is very different from the real person behind the name.


Here are some ways in which people present themselves in Facebook:


1. Name plain and simple: Straightforward, has nothing to hide, usually happy with who he is and doesn't really care whether you like it or not. What you see is what you get. Ex. Berto Licungpaco.


2. So far, only Leonardo da Vinci had been known to write using mirror-image of the Italian alphabets, wherein each letter is flipped. The simplified Facebook equivalent is the name spelled in reverse; e.g. Oniuqa Yonyon.


Basically, the user has something to hide and he doesn't want others to know the truth about him. What he presents in public is different from the secret person he dares not show.


Also, the user may prefer events in his life to flow in the opposite direction because the present course is uneventful, unhappy, or problematic.


3. Graphologists agree that including the middle name or initial is a sign of pride, because it's a very formal (and official) way of presenting oneself. Edith Galang Lacanilao, Roland M Chiapoco (the lack of a dot after the middle initial "M" has a significance Roland might know or he is not aware of).


(I add here Roland's explanation: "Thanks for analyzing my facebook name. I was thinking of putting the 'M' in front of my first name just to be different. Naunahan lang ako ni M Night Shyamalan. With regards to the '.' period after M. just like in M Night's movies... I will let you draw your own conclusions.")


Every initial or name appended beyond the required ones is a sign of affection for the one linked to the additional name or initial. On the other hand, middle names or initials that create unhappy or uncomfortable thoughts are omitted. So what looks plain and simple may not be so at all. Nothing is really plain and simple, black or white, about people.


4. Nicknames are not exactly simple; they can be considered as substitutes or preferred forms of address. Anything that goes beyond the plain and simple is an embellishment, usually a ribbon to adorn the ego.


The "Pogi" in William Pogi Chua is obviously a modest attempt to conceal his real middle name, Cute. Yes, William Cute Chua makes him blush. Another reason for adding unusual second name is that people with Chinese surnames, which are very common, are sure to have namesakes all over this planet. When I was taking an exam permit in UST years ago, there are four other students named William Chua, although each of us have different middle initial. I recently heard my name mentioned in TV Patrol. Of course it's my popular namesake, the lawyer. One solution to this is to avoid regular first names if you have a very common family name. I don't think anyone has thought of naming his son Judas Chua, or Hitler Chua. Attila Chua will not have any namesake problem too.


Bong Raya Leuterio is presented in Facebook, instead of the rumbling Guadalupe (lightning flash) Raya Leuterio, because... well, I'm guessing it's short for bongabilya, the vernacular for the flower with the exotic French spelling bougainvillea.


Many years ago, I learned from an old client that the nickname of Ferdinand is Andy. But he did not want me to call him Mang Ferdinand or even Mang Andy; just Andy, he said. I was writing a political spoof then, and I thought of him. Eventually Congressman Ferdinand "Andy" Moño of the House of Representathieves came into existence.


Any alteration -- whether you add, remove or change -- from the plain and simple name indicates image enhancement, concealment of flaws, a wish for options, and thousands of other reasons within the complex human psyche.

20,088 Days

By William the Henry

1.

My earliest memory: I am racing with millions of others to reach the Sacred Ovum, which will give existence to the winner and consign all losers to eternal oblivion.

I win. I burrow into the life-sustaining sphere and I cling to its wall.

2.

18,262 days later: I'm computing -- from the very day I was born to my 50th birthday in October 2005, I  have spent 18,262 days, give or take a few hours. That’s 365 days multiplied by 50, plus the 12 leap-year days within that time frame. Such a short allotment – not even a round 20,000 sum!

Then I think of all the hours that must be expended to support such a brief life. The first year you spend on sleeping and suckling, peeing and pooing, and being such a cute baby. That’s 365 days gone.

For the rest of your days, you still must spend about eight hours sleeping, a few more hours eating your three meals and, if you wish and dare, a few minutes for snacks. You still have to wash up as soon as you get up, brush your teeth, take a bath, pee and poo, etc. That’s about a 10-hour-a-day tax in your life. Considering that we are only given 24 hours a day, strictly with no extension, the cost of living in this planet seems exorbitant. The VAT of life is about 10/24 = 42.6%.

Geez, and most of us think we still have to relax and rest from time to time, even take a vacation. Now we even have the luxury to chat through the cellphone or the worldwide web. We are rich! We have time to splurge.

Maybe it’s all right if we are always in the fun of things. It’s fun to have your five senses keyed up to the universe. Hook your ears to the music of the Earth, strum the guitar, play the piano, sing a song of love, listen to the rustle of leaves in a hot, quiet afternoon, the rush of the waterfall, the roar of the sea.

Or you can touch the tender skin of sprouting leaves, feel the rich texture of marble, caress your sweetheart. Smell the freshly baked loaf of bread and drool, smell the flowers of nature. Heck! Smell the flower of your sweetheart and drool.

Fifty years have led me to the conclusion that life should be fun, never sad or tragic – no matter what. We must not allow the Grinch to win. And yet what do we do with our hours, our days, our lives? We spend it, according to Thoreau, “seeking to curry favor, to get custom… lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility…that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries from him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something for a sick day…”

“I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools, for these are more easily acquired than got rid of… Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?

“But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed under the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed…laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”

Thoreau wrote that more than 150 years ago. He says it best. The gist is: Life is precious, don’t fritter it away. Seize the day!

Note: I wrote this in 2005, when I was shaken by the death of my friend, compadre and mentor, Ody Fabian. He was only 47, and I have survived to reach 50. Three years later, his widow, Beth, followed; she was 47, too. These were good people who succored and saved me in hard times. Nowadays, my outward confidence, after surviving two heart attacks and an aneurysm, is just a bluster. When two people much better than you die before their time, you can only wish you can become just as good. And you do not fear death anymore.

***

3. 

20,088 days today: Now five more years have passed and I'm 55. I did some math, and I realized that some sort of milestone has been marked -- I'm more than 20,088 days old. Finally the round sum is mine.

Last night I was in the middle of Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again, and I paused when I reached this passage:

"This is Man, and one wonders why he wants to live at all. A third of his life is lost and deadened under sleep; another third is given to a sterile labor; a sixth is spent in all his goings and his comings, in the moil and shuffle of the streets, in thrusting, shoving, pawing. How much of him is left, then, for a vision of the tragic stars? How much of him is left to look upon the everlasting earth? How much of him is left for glory and the making of great songs? A few snatched moments only from the barren glut and suck of living."

Thoreau's peroration 150+ years ago on this theme influenced the course of my life. Wolfe, who wrote this in the early 1930s, was succinct, and made me realize that though there is a certain species Homo sapiens, there are also many subspecies of humanity. Not a good thought, but nevertheless painfully true. Now I know why I like Armageddon, Terminator, 2012 and other end-of-the-world movies.

(To be continued, maybe...)

Being Henry

Dreams are where living and dead friends meet.
--William the Henry

 

This is a story involving events before I retired from People's Tonight in 2004. I am no longer connected in any way to the paper, which has now passed on to a small-minded and malignant entity, or to the firm which owns it.

Ody: Friend and mentor
Photo courtesy of Noelle Fabian

I don’t know why, but one night I dreamed of my friend Ody Fabian, who died of a heart attack in 2005. He was 47, and I was about to turn 50.

I noticed that in dreams people you love – my parents, Ody and his wife Beth -- live on: they talk, they interact in scenes scripted by slumber. Those scenes existed in my mind, somatic if not strictly real; that dream is now part of this warped universe.
 
Ody was a journalist in the faithful sense of the term – alert, not corrupt, temperamental but innately kind, intelligent, grammatical, raw and somewhat rough in manner. Highbrows less intelligent might call Ody and people like me lowlifes.

Indeed, we are misfits in polite society: our hair, if not shaved off, is as unkempt as our manners are coarse. We smoke, we drink, we gamble everything away, even our lives. Ody died; I survived two heart attacks and an aneurysm. I am a dead man still making observations on life, now with a better perspective on its priorities. I'm serious, I'm fun. A specter straddling two lives.

***

When Ody brought me to Manila to work as a correspondent for People’s Tonight, he gave me my penname Henry. I used it as a journalist and I use it now in ebay. Insiders and friends at People’s Tonight called me William, the name recommended by the midwife to my parents when I was born.

I had second thought about being “Henry” at first. I considered Henry a wimpy name, but I did not want to contradict one of the three real friends I will have in this life (a fact which I would realize years later). Ody obviously thought the spoofs I had been writing for The Voice, the Pampanga tabloid he was managing then, are as lighthearted-funny as O. Henry pieces. O. Henry, by the way, is the penname used by William Sydney Porter.

At that time, I had improved my reading level and consigned O. Henry to a position just a notch above timewasters like Robbins, Ludlum, Sheldon, Wallace, Christie and others. I would have preferred the “Henry” in H.L. Mencken, one of my lifetime mentors in reading, thinking, and writing.

After two months on the beat for Tonight, I was promoted to copy editor. Personnel asked me for papers to formalize my inclusion in the firm as a regular employee. To make a long story short, I got, with assistance from a veteran and wily Tonight reporter, the required police and NBI permits, medical certificate, and even a new SSS ID, all under Henry. So I had Henry IDs to replace the William entity. A new name to shed an obsolete life. The year was 1994, five years before my first myocardial infarction.

When Boss Fred, our Managing Editor, sent my promotion papers to Personnel I asked him what name he had submitted for promotion. “William, of course,” he said, his eyebrow a question mark. I need not have worried: after two months I knew almost all the employees in the building; I even shared beers with the guards during Yuletide and Lenten holidays. Any document bearing the William name would be automatically converted to Henry in any Journal department. I was Henry legally, William personally.

Ody has gone before me, but I have retained the Henry part of my life. My email address is triggered by Henry; I get and pay my ebay remittances through my Henry registration, but my username in Facebook is William. I answer reflexively to both names, although I will certainly be surprised, and irritated, if a close acquaintance or relative addresses me as Henry. William is connective, Henry a fence, Willy a rare endearment.

Boss Fred, Ody Fabian, Franklin Cabaluna have all closed their earthly accounts. A stroke in 2004 forced my retirement from the tabloid, surviving to see how sordid and petty all things still are, to see ex-friends vainly fight for positions and perks which they think will not end.

***

What brought this on? In the wee hours of this morning, I turned on the TV and chanced upon the tail-end of the 1973 Best Picture The Sting, where in the closing scene a woman embraced Paul Newman and said, “Oh, Henry!” Through the years I still think conman Henry Gondorff is cool. A lowlife, but cool -- like a journalist.

Then my mind meandered to Band of Brothers, which in another channel this morning was keeping company with insomniacs like me. In Henry V, William Shakespeare wrote: 
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother…”

Elegant characters crafted by great artists bearing my name and alias. I can live happily with that. Call me William the Henry.

***

Ahoy! Ahoy! Look what I found: one of the articles in Mencken's Damn! A Book of Calumny. I print it in full.

A Mencken biography

Stable-Names

Why doesn't some patient drudge of a privat dozent compile a dictionary of the stable-names of the great? All show dogs and race horses, as everyone knows, have stable-names. On the list of entries a fast mare may appear as Czarina Ogla Fedorovna, but in the stable she is not that at all, nor even Czarina or Olga, but maybe Lil or Jennie. And a prize bulldog, Champion Zoroaster or Charlemagne XI. on the bench, may be plain Jack or Ponto en famille. So with celebrities of the genus homo. Huxley's official style and appellation was "The Right Hon. Thomas Henry Huxley, P. C., M. D., Ph. D., LL. D., D. C. L., D. Sc., F. R. S.," and his biographer tells us that he delighted in its rolling grandeur—but to his wife he was always Hal. Shakespeare, to his fellows of his Bankside, was Will, and perhaps Willie to Ann Hathaway. The Kaiser is another Willie: the late Czar so addressed him in their famous exchange of telegrams. The Czar himself was Nicky in those days, and no doubt remains Nicky to his intimates today. Edgar Allan Poe was always Eddie to his wife, and Mark Twain was always Youth to his. P. T. Barnum's stable-name was Taylor, his middle name; Charles Lamb's was Guy; Nietzsche's was Fritz; Whistler's was Jimmie; the late King Edward's was Bertie; Grover Cleveland's was Steve; J. Pierpont Morgan's was Jack; Dr. Wilson's is Tom.

Some given names are surrounded by a whole flotilla of stable-names. Henry, for example, is softened variously into Harry, Hen, Hank, Hal, Henny, Enery, On'ry and Heinie. Which did Ann Boleyn use when she cooed into the suspicious ear of Henry VIII.? To which did Henrik Ibsen answer at the domestic hearth? It is difficult to imagine his wife calling him Henrik: the name is harsh, clumsy, razor-edged. But did she make it Hen or Rik, or neither? What was Bismarck to the Fürstin, and to the mother he so vastly feared? Ottchen? Somehow it seems impossible. What was Grant to his wife? Surely not Ulysses! And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? And Rutherford B. Hayes? Was Robert Browning ever Bob? Was John Wesley ever Jack? Was Emmanuel Swendenborg ever Manny? Was Tadeusz Kosciusko ever Teddy?

A fair field of inquiry invites. Let some laborious assistant professor explore and chart it. There will be more of human nature in his report than in all the novels ever written.

Deaths in the countrysides

The bird

One morning, in a small hut in a small farm in the countryside, a boy was dreaming of the glory of war he had seen in a film -- particularly of the scenes, in black and white, where the good guys shot the bad guys. Then a noise outside roused him from his reverie.

The noise was caused by a branch heavy with coconuts cracking and crashing to the ground. As the boy went out to clear the debris, he saw among the coconuts the scattered straws of a nest, three bird eggs, their shells cracked open by the fall, and one baby bird thrown off its shattered shell.

The baby bird had its mouth open in the silent scream of one who had been born too soon, its eyes still closed, to a world to which it arrived unprepared. The soft, tiny flesh, nestled in the boy’s small hand, quivered.

The boy gently touched the wide-open mouth with his little finger, and small feeble beaks softly closed upon it. It didn’t hurt, but somewhere deep inside, the boy felt a spark of pain.

“Are you hungry?” the boy thought. The eyes remained closed, the mouth was still open – trusting, waiting. Then the boy realized the bird was dying.

"Where is your mother!” It was the boy’s silent scream. “She doesn’t know…”

Quickly he wet a little finger in a small tin of water and gently let a drop into the bird’s mouth.

“Live!” he whispered. “Live…”

With a fingernail he cut a sliver from a grain of rice and turned to feed the pulse of life in his palm. Then he realized it was too late.

He plucked a leaf and covered the lifeless body. He left it under a mango tree just starting to grow, its parted seed still clinging on to the stem that served as its trunk.

The boy turned his back, his eyes stinging with tears of indignation. He knew that along with the bird, he had lost something valuable.

***

The man

One afternoon, a burly man crouched behind a boulder in front of a hut in a farm in Tucaan Balaag, Davao del Norte. His companions had already spread out, their camouflaged uniforms blending with the bushes and trees nearby. Their M-16s were pointed at the hut.

Inside the hut nested four rebels -- one pregnant woman and three men -- who had just come in from the rain the night before. They left their wet clothes and shoes outside to dry, a mistake that would cost them dearly.

Unknown to them, a comrade they had sent to get some supplies in the poblacion was caught by the military. He was “persuaded” to lead the soldiers to the hut. The rebels’ clothes and shoes outside the hut betrayed their presence.

The soldiers opened fire.

Inside the house, the rebels took cover and assumed battle positions. Their commanding officer stood by the door and shot it out with his AK-47.

After the shooting stopped, the bodies of the CO and one other rebel lay dead amidst the scattered debris in the hut. Barrio folks carried the corpses to Tagum town.

The pregnant woman and the other guerrilla were wounded but alive. They were taken outside: they huddled under a coconut tree while the soldiers deliberated on what to do with them.

They decided not to bring anyone back alive.

The woman was shot first, her body with her unborn child was left under a coconut tree.

The remaining guerrilla was led to a nearby tree; the burly man shoved a .45 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullet shattered the back of the rebel’s skull and, exiting, scarred the trunk of the mango tree that was just bearing fruit.

“He was a sparrow, you know,” one of the soldiers told the executioner.

The burly man merely turned his back and walked toward the hut.

That night, in another hut in a farm in the countryside, a man thought about the gory war, where the red blood flowed when the good guys shot the bad guys.

“I shot the bad guy,” he told himself, “but I don’t feel much like a good guy.”

But he was not thinking of the dead sparrow at all. In fact, nothing much had moved him since that day a long, long time ago, when he was a boy, when he saw a little bird die.

It was a bitter lesson he had learned that day. He knew that when he gained the wisdom of the world, he lost his innocence.

Eman Lacaba, poet, activist, and rebel,

was killed in Tagum in March 1976

Note on the story: This is a blend of facts and fiction. Part 1 really happened: I was the boy. In Part 2, the burly man who shot Eman was a creation of my mind. The real executioner was a captured comrade of Eman, who was given a gun by their captors and forced to shoot him. The encounter and other details are factual. For what really happened to Eman and other details, go to http://www.bulatlat.com/news/2-44/2-44-brownrimbaud.html, where I got his image.

Image of bird I snitched from a Beatles photo, which I retouched.

UST on stamps

The first University of Santo Tomas stamps were issued in 1956 to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the institution, which was founded on April 28, 1611. So the stamps came out five years early. A veteran dealer explained that a UST rector, an avid philatelist, could not wait till 1961 and wanted to see a set of stamps for the University.

 The 1956 UST set is beautiful. They are engraved.

Then in 1971 another UST set was printed, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.

  1971 set

1971 UST set on First Day Cover

The UST Colleges of Education and Science both celebrated their 50th anniversary in 1976, when another commemorative set was issued. I remember going to the Main Building (I was a Mechanical Engineering student then) and buying some sets which my meager allowance could afford.

1976 set

In 1988, the UST Graduate School celebrated it's 50th anniversary and the Bureau of Post issue this single in sheets of 100 and mini sheet of 6.

1988 UST Graduate School mini sheet

This month, January 2011, a Block-of-4 set and a souvenir sheet were printed to commemorate  UST's 400 anniversary.

2011 B/4 set and Souvenir Sheet

First Day Cover set

 
 

Billion eyes

 

 The dewdrops of nature, like billions of eyes, each looks at the same world, but none in exactly the same way. We appear in nature in the same manner, different to every beholder. 

-- William the Henry

Lost

It is the particular penalty of those who pursue strange butterflies into dark forests, and go fishing in enchanted and forbidden streams. 
-- H.L. Mencken, The Divine Afflatus

Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted. -- John Lennon

Obviously Google Ads can't make heads or tails of what I inflict on this site. Looking at the right margin of this page, I always see ads about Jesus -- the history of his death, how he loves you, ad infinitum (unintended but good pun); also two ads about God, at least mitigated by a topic I can tolerate -- "Is there life after death?" (It's a big yes for Jesus.) But I hate it when they mix religion with astronomy, The Big Bang, and DNA. Having mentioned key words like Jesus and God here, I'm sure those Google Ads will remain. At least the bottom ad, like "Have fun killing flies," provides fun and relief. Still, this reinforces my observation that Google Ads is lost as far as my way of thinking is concerned.  

Hehehe.

Suppose I discuss John  Lennon here? Will Google read this and post some ads about him and the Beatles? We will not know unless I try, huh? Well, here we go:

Recently, taking a break from Ishmael's whale and Pip's great expectations, I pored through The Beatles Anthology, a big, heavy and costly book (it's worth the money, by the way), and read some pages about Lennon. This, naturally, tickled some molecular brain cells, which quickly pulled out from dusty drawers of memory random tidbits about him, his songs, his opinions about music, and his attitude toward life.

For example, Lennon was not sure about the merit of the lyrics he wrote for Across The Universe, although he obviously loved it. In a Playboy interview  in the January 1980 issue, he said he is leaving judgment to posterity.

Words are flying out

like endless rain into a paper cup

They slither while they pass

They slip away across the universe...

Thoughts meander like a

restless wing inside a letter box

They tumble blindly as

they make their way across the universe.

Lennon had in separate instances expressed great fondness for the lyrics of this song, but he was going through a bad time then and had lost the confidence essential to an artist's ability to create good stuff.

And like many inheritors of the Great Craft, he sometimes borrowed from the old masters. Because, which appeared in the Abbey Road album,  was based around the chords of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, which Yoko Ono was playing on the piano one day. So I listened to the sonata, and, as Lennon pointed out, his song sounded like Ludwig's, too.

Close your eyes to the music and we are in 1801, the tormented master playing Piano Sonata in C♯ minor, imagine a woman, dressed in the fashion of the period, seated in the room and listening. Through the darkness outside the window, the moon is full, but the pavements  can only be glimpsed by the feeble lights cast by the streetlamps...

Every streetlamp

seems to beat

a fatalistic warning...

And the past stretches to the present, where we find a Japanese woman playing the old song; her famous husband, lying on the sofa, asks her to play the chords backward. She does, and an improvised sonata makes it to the Beatles' last album.

In Lennon's interview that January 1980, he remarked, "...And come to think of it, it looks like I'm going to be 40 and life begins at 40 -- so they promise. And I believe it, too. I feel fine and I'm very excited. It's like, you know, hitting 21, like, 'Wow, what's going to happen next?...'"

What happened next was that he celebrated his 40th birthday on October 9 that year, and before the year was out, four bullets snuffed out his life in New York on December 8.

Dream is over.

 

Complete Beatles stamps and S/S

John Lennon graphics by Gypsy48 in photobucket.

Ang Thesis ni Anna

Namimilipit na ba kayo sa taas ng bayad sa kuryente, LPG at iba pang may kinalaman sa energy consumption? Kung gano'n basahin itong solusyon ni Anna -- sabay ilag! He he he...

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Fifty years after the end of WWII, the US Postal Service planned to include a picture of the Hiroshima bomb as a historic event in a souvenir sheet commemorating the end of the war. However, due to objections from Japan, followed by pressure from the White House, the design was replaced with a picture of President Truman announcing the end of war.

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“Oy, oy, oy, Anna,” bunghalit ng MassCom titser ni Anna. “Ano’ng ibig sabihin nitong BNBNPP? Kung maglagay ka ng pamagat sa term paper mo parang knock-knock.”

“Ma’am naman. Iyan ang thesis ko sa energy problem: Biyaya Ng Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. Outline pa lang ‘yan, ma’am.”

“Naku, bata ka, kung magsulat ka parang di ka umiinom ng kape; di ka na ninerbiyos. Ayan at pumuputak na naman yang mga cause-oriented group at NGOs sa armageddon na idudulot niyang plantang iyan at sinasalungat mo pa. Sumapi ka na ba sa grupong BNPP na gustong makabalato sa kickback ng mga opisyales na gusto na namang buhayin yang planta?’

“Grupong BNPP? Ma'am, ha, bumabawi kayo. Pero sige, sirit na, ano ang BNPP mo?”

“Eh di Binayaran Na Peryodistang Palamunin. Kung anu-anong kahunghangan ang itinutulak nila para maduling ang taong-bayan sa depekto ng nuclear plant na ‘yan. At ikaw, Anna, ano namang biyaya ang ihihirit mo?’

“Eto, ma’am, namber wan, malulutas ng nuclear plant ang birth control isyu na pinagbabangayan lagi ng DOH at CBCP.”

“Kinakabahan ako sa kambyo ng utak mo, iha, pero sige, paki-ekspleyn lang kung ano ang connection ng DOH at CBCP sa nuclear plant sa Morong.”

“Beri simpol, ma’am. Kung matutunaw yung planta, automatic burado agad ang kalahati ng population natin, from 80 million to 40 million, at magiging warat na ang debate kung rhythm o rock-'n'-roll method ang mabisang birth control.”

“Ay wapen! Ba’t di ko naisip agad ‘yan. (Siguro dahil normal akong tao.) Eh ano naman itong pati poverty eh malulutas din ng BNPP?”

“Isipin mo, ma’am, karamihan sa mga Pinoy ay yagit. Ngayon, kung hahatiin mo ang population, di ba lalabas sa statistics na mas kokonti ang mga mahihirap ngayon kaysa noong hindi pa pinaaandar yung planta?”

“Aba, ang galing pala ng Westinghouse, hane? Ba’t di pa tayo magpagawa ng isa pang nuclear plant, diyan naman sa may Mt. Pinatubo, para wala nang pobre sa Pilipinas?”

“Oo nga, ma’am! Ang dami ko nang natutuhan talaga sa iyo! Mawawala na rin ang unemployment problem natin dahil magiging kaluluwa na lang ang mga walang trabaho rito. Kaya lang pati yung may trabaho matutunaw din. On the other hand, ang tinitingnan lang naman sa statistics eh yung unemployment rate, kaya tiyak gaganda ang figures ng NEDA diyan.”

“Heh! Nagbiro ako sinakyan mo na agad. Pero, according to your nakakahindik na thesis, bababa na rin yung crime rate dahil bababa na rin sa impiyerno ang mga criminal. For the same reason, mawawala na rin ang graft and corruption, prostitution, deforestation, pati na ang ating nation. Akalain mo nga ba namang pakyawan pala ang biyayang dulot ng nuclear meltdown, ano?”

“Yes, ma’am. Parang tutoo rin yung sinasabi ng mga backers niyang planta na makakatipid tayo sa kuryente. Imagine, pagputok niyang planta, yung hindi naging liquid metal sa atin eh hindi na kailangan ang Meralco at Napocor para magkailaw pa – dahil tayo na mismo, umiilaw! Yung mga taga-Bataan, ma’am, eh 100 watts siguro ang liwanag nila.”

“Ay, wa! Yung mga nasa Maynila 50 watts sila; at ikaw, Anna, dahil low-bat ka eh 25 watts ka lang. At ano naman ang karumal-dumal na mungkahi ng thesis mo?”

“Gawin nating industrial estate yung paligid ng nuclear power plant at diyan itayo ang mga pabrika at resthouse ng mga backer nitong BNPP, dahil iyon ay talagang lugar na pang-rest in peace, ‘ika nga. Kung gusto nilang piped-in music, siguro puwede yung Afterglow. Ano sa tingin niyo, ma’am?’

“Sa tingin ko’y radioactive na itong utak ko, iha. Haay, salamat at nag-bell na. Ano ba’ng susunod mong subject?”

“Psychology, ma’am. Si Dr. Hannibal Lecter ang professor ko. Ang galing-galing niya, ma’am! May thesis din ako para sa kanya!”

“Siyanga?! Naku, hindi lang pala ako ang suwerte sa araw na ito. Matutuwa sigurado iyon dahil magkakaintindihan kayo. Dali, puntahan mo at yayain mong mag-field trip sa BNPP.”

Stamp photos and caption from http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/exhibits/stamps/atomicbomb/