Christmas letters from Muslims

Peace, Kapayapaan, Kalinaw, Kalinong, Salam, Shalom, to you this Christmas. I was pleasantly surprised to receive letters from Muslims working in Saudi Arabia reacting positively to last week’s column piece, ``The Christmas Story in the Koran’’ (12/22/05). First, I’d like to say that the Inquirer stylebook spells the name of the Muslims’ Holy Book as ``Koran’’ so the few times in the past that I wrote ``Qur’an’’ I always got a call from the proofreading department informing me that the spelling will changed. I again got a call regarding my title. At...

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The Christmas story in the Qur’an

The Christmas story is not only told in the bible of the Christians, it is also in the Qur’an of the Muslims. I went over the Qur’an which is not familiar terrain for me, I also browsed through an Islamic website where I found interesting stuff. In the Qur’an one will find an account of Mary’s own birth, the Annunciation and later, the Nativity and Jesus’ public life. Mary is mentioned in the Qur’an 34 times. But before Jesus’ birth is the story about the miraculous conception and birth of John the Baptist, the precursor of the Messiah that was...

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The milkman of Talavera

Guyito, the Inquirer’s carabao mascot, would be happy to know that his fellow ruminants have transformed the town of Talavera in Nueva Ecija into a land flowing with milk and milk products. Thanks to the dream and the daring of entrepreneur Danilo V. Fausto, carabao’s milk is now making a healthy comeback and finding a niche in the market. Another thing to moo about is fresh cow’s milk produced by small farmers’ cooperatives also finding its way into café society and boldly competing with imported milk that isn’t fresh at all. Fausto’s ``Dare...

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Oikocredit, small change, big impact

You must have seen a 20-peso bill with a circular doodle with three arrows coming out of it. You must have wondered whether that was someone’s way of venting his ire on the state of the Philippine currency. But when you looked closer, you must have read the words below that whorl--``UN Year of Microcredit 2005, Sustainable Microfinance Services for the Filipino Entrepreneurial Poor’’. With a big bang, the 2005 UN Year of Microcredit ended last week with the so-called ``Filipino entrepreneurial poor’’, composed mostly of mothers, bannering the...

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The missing face of AIDS

Today is World AIDS Awareness Day. Somewhere in today’s Inquirer I’ve written something on the Unicef campaign to help children affected by HIV-AIDS. ``Affected by’’ means these children have parents(persons) living with HIV-AIDS (PLH) or are themselves infected. By the way, you don’t say PWA (persons with AIDS) anymore. You say PLH. So much for being politically correct. Children, Unicef says, are the missing face of AIDS. According to the Lunduyan Foundation’s study on Filipino children affected by AIDS, silence, sad to say, best describes...

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Deadly playgrounds, cold numbers

I had looked into their eyes. I had watched some of them cock their rifles and aim at an imaginary enemy lurking behind the trees. I had aimed my camera at them and captured the resoluteness in their gait as they carried the heavy weight on their frail bodies. I saw these so-called child soldiers for the first time in the 1980s in a rebel training camp in the mountain fastness of Samar. In Bicol I also saw a young girl, maybe all of 16, carrying a rifle. My body ached after that journalistic foray in the jungle but I did come up with a long...

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Rape a violent crime of conquest

Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times. From the prehistoric times to the present, rape has played a critical function. It is a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear. -Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will Stereotypical rape scenes as depicted in movies and komiks do happen in real life. Ginahasa sa cogonan (raped amid tall grass) or ginahasa sa sagingan (raped in a banana grove) aren't imaginary...

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Women’s letter to rape victim

``We believe in you. We do not have to behold your face or know your name in order to say this.’’ Thus began the short but moving letter of 28 women’s groups and their allies to the 22-year-old victim of rape allegedly committed by five US servicemen last Nov. 1 in Subic. The letter, expressed profoundly in Filipino, offered solace and solidarity with the woman from Mindanao who met her tragic fate while visiting Subic. Some members of the women’s groups that sent the letter are rape survivors themselves. ``We are with you while you weep,...

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VCO as bird flu remedy?

News flash. If coconut oil proved effective for HIV-AIDS cases, it might also be good as a H5N1 (bird flu) remedy. Studies must now be made on the oil’s efficacy against this new disease that threatens to become a worldwide epidemic. This urgent proposal came from Dr. Conrado S. Dayrit who helped make virgin coconut oil (VCO) a popular dietary supplement and medicine here and abroad and helped remove it from the ``bad oil’’ list. Dayrit, hale and active at 86, is a known pharmacologist, cardiologist, internist, science researcher author and...

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Enriching the earth with our bodies

``You are nothing but an infinitesimal combination of earth's rocks, water and air; these are two billion years of evolutionary explorations, new trials, new combinations, new forms of life.... beauty comes in knowing what you are and where you came and why you be, earth child.'' – Walt Whitman During the long weekend ahead when we honor our dear departed, it behooves us to ponder on our mortality and immortality. In the film ``The Lion King’’, King Mufasa gives Simba, the future Lion King of Pride Rock, a lecture on life and death. ``When we...

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`Shameful episode’ in Australia

A visiting friend from Melbourne brought with her an October copy of the Australian newspaper The Age that has the Vivian Alvarez Solon case as banner story. The ombudsman’s report on the bungled immigration case has been released and the axe was expected to fall. The banner article, Vivian’s huge photo, blurbs and cartoon occupy three-fourths of page one of the daily (which, in this age of shrinking broadsheets, maintains a size that is two columns wider than the Inquirer). Inside are three more articles, Vivian’s photo as a missing person,...

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Remembering poverty

October is the month when the world is supposed to pause, remember and confront the issue of poverty and hunger. Oct. 16 is World Food Day while Oct. 17 is the Day for Overcoming Extreme Poverty--the latter by virtue of a UN Resolution and a presidential proclamation. October is Indigenous People’s (IP) Month in the Philippines, and the IPs being among the poorest and hungriest in the country, the whole of October should belong to them. In Southern Palawan, IPs and long-time settlers are undertaking a ``Solidarity March for Land and Life’’ that...

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Pamulaan, a sign of life

While our national leaders continue to engage in verbal and political acrobatics and while many of us are suffering from political diarrhea and dementia, there are special Filipinos who continue to dream dreams and do their own part as if there indeed is hope for this benighted nation. Somewhere in bullet-riddled Mindanao, a special tertiary school or college is rising. The school is named Pamulaan Center for Indigenous Peoples Education. Ground breaking will be held next week, Oct. 13. Program partners will sign an agreement after which the construction...

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`The Philippine’s undiscriminating embrace’

`Everyone has the right to a nationality.’’ Article 15, UN Declaration of Human Rights ``They hope to tell the world about the boundless love that returned to the remaining boat people their inalienable human dignity. That boundless love is none other than the Philippines’ undiscriminating embrace.’’ That moving statement is in a document written on behalf of the Vietnamese boat people who had opted for permanent settlement in the Philippines. I shed Filipino tears when that was read at the inauguration of Vietville in Puerto Princesa City in...

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Why isn’t it tipping? (2)

I received varied and interesting feedback via email on my Sept. 15 column piece ``Why isn’t it tipping?’’ The piece was on Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller and page-turner ``The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Difference’’ and why the much-awaited or much-dreaded (depending on which side you are) tipping point that would make the Arroyo administration fall was not happening. Gladwell’s book presents events in history, real-life examples and studies that show how the tipping point phenomenon works. I thought I’d share portions from some...

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Why isn’t it tipping?

``The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire… The tipping point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point…It is the name given to that one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all that once.’’ Those definitions are from the bestseller and page-turner ``The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Different’’ by Malcolm Gladwell. (His latest is ``Blink’’.) I think of the tipping point this way: Imagine holding...

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'Prothom alo', first light

One night last week when some members of the so-called ``Hyatt 10’’ (five to be exact) who wanted the President removed from office were at the Inquirer to talk to editors and to also complain about an editorial that did not put them in a good light, a guest in another room was sharing with some reporters and columnists his experiences as an editor of the biggest daily in Bangladesh. Our esteemed guest was Matiur Rahman, 2005 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts. Rahman is not just a newspaperman,...

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Oil of life

Several times I tried to fall in line to buy a cone of coconut milk ice cream sold from a Mamang Sorbetero push cart but the line was, oh, so long, I gave up. But there were other coconut products that were just as inviting and interesting—lip balm, moisturizers, bath soap, non-dairy creamer, diesel additives, vinegar, all kinds of food. And of course, virgin coconut oil (VCO) which was the centerpiece of the 2005 National coconut Week 4th National Coconut Festival held at SM Megamall last weekend. A booth selling coconut milk extractors using...

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Vinoba Bhave

The year was 1916. A young man was visiting India’s holy city of Benares to contemplate the crossroads before him. Should he go to the Himalayas and live as a religious hermit immersed in silence and prayer? Or should he take the road to West Bengal and join the freedom movement that was fighting the British colonizers? Twenty-year-old Vinoba Bhave was intensely drawn to both ways… Before I continue, let me say that the names of the Ramon Magsaysay Awardees for 2005 have been announced. The RM Awards Foundation (RMAF) will honor these exemplary...

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Save the tree of life campaign

See, not everyone is cursing the darkness or wallowing helplessly in the political quagmire we are in. Not everyone is threatening to leave for parts unknown where the sun shines brightly, there to momentarily forget the hovering darkness that envelops the country, made darker still by more dark deeds, dark schemes, dark motives. But yes, if you think this is darkness before daybreak, think again. This is more like darkness at noon and it’s still a long way to midnight and the breaking of a new day. But there are so many reasons to be hopeful...

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Roco in search of Camelot

``THINK back,’’ the late Raul Roco had mused, seemingly swallowed up in a fog of memories. ``Think back on all the tales that you remember of Camelot.’’ The words from the 1960s Lerner-Loewe musical often cascaded from Roco’s lips, as he thought back on how King Arthur sang about that ``fleeting wisp of glory, called Camelot.’’ Roco, former congressman, senator, education secretary and presidential aspirant, died of cancer Aug. 5. He was 63. He will be buried today in Naga City. Roco and another 2004 presidential contender, Fernando Poe Jr.,...

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A small scary story

While big national issues rage, while the big guys slug it out in the national arena and play to the bloodthirsty gallery, many Filipinos continue to live their lives in the shadows and in quiet desperation. If these skirmishes were projected on the big video wall, we, the spectators and passersby could only cower as the big, dark shadows and images overwhelm us. The cheering and the cajoling come from the bettors lusting for the spoils. Many Filipinos continue on with their day-to-day chores wondering when and how it will all end. In the meantime,...

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`The countryside that feeds it’

The line from Pres. Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address that played over and over in my mind was: ``Perhaps it’s time to take the power from the center to the countryside that feeds it.’’ GMA received a roaring applause from her promdi (proudly promdi, obviously) supporters. That line lingered like a long-lost refrain that was suddenly, if not conveniently, found. In saying that, the President was obviously playing to the gallery of supporters from local government units who, at the tipping point of her government’s crisis early this month, rallied...

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The bigger truth

I was away the first two weeks of July for a yearly break which is compulsory for Inquirer employees but I did catch up on the goings-on as soon as I got back. The wonder of it is that Pres. Arroyo is still in Malacanang. I thought I’d find a new scenario on the streets, no longer the ``GMA resign’’ kind, but political and ideological groups at cross purposes tearing one another down and racing for the nearest entrance to Malacanang. I was disappointed. To the humorless who might think I want anarchy, I say that with tongue in cheek. I was not...

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`To be poor and obscure’

To be poor and obscure. This is the antithesis of being wealthy and famous. Nothing wrong with being wealthy and famous per se because so much good could also be achieved by being so. But something goes wrong when going there and remaining there become an all-consuming desire that defines a person’ s ``VMG’’ (vision-mission goals, FYI). But what value, you ask, does being poor and obscure has? Read Karl Gaspar’s ``To be Poor and Obscure: The Spiritual Sojourn of a Mindanawon.’’ Karl is not exactly poor if the national poverty line is to be used....

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1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005 (2)

In October we will know if the nominated ``1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Price 2005’’ will collectively be named as this year’s winner of the Peace Prize. Last June 29, the names of the nominated 1,000 women (999 actually) from 153 countries were announced simultaneously in different parts of the world. Twenty seven are from the Philippines. Behind this unprecedented global search for 1,000 women was the Association 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005 which was began in 2003 on the conviction that the commitment of women working for...

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1000 Women for 2005 Nobel Peace Prize (1)

Yesterday the names of the 1,000 women collectively nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize were announced simultaneously in different parts of the world. Twenty seven, repeat, 27, of these women nominees are from the Philippines. The nomination was submitted to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo, Norway in Jan. 2005. In October we will know if these 1,000 women will collectively be named as this year’s winner of the Peace Prize which is often considered the plum of the Nobel awards. For sure there are other nominees (individuals, pairs...

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Wire tappers, come forth

``You think something this high just happens?’’ This was Deep Throat speaking to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in a dark parking area. Follow the money, Deep Throat urged. The scene is from the movie ``All the President’s Men’’ which was about the Watergate break-in scandal that led to the resignation of Pres. Nixon after he was, to use Pinoy slang, nabuking (found out) wiretapping his opponents. Deep Throat emerged last month, after 30 years of mystery, as former FBI agent Mark Felt, the deep source of Woodward and Carl Bernstein...

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Ruminations on `Aba’

This might sound petty when compared to the razor-sharp analyses and in-your-face fulmination of the countless political analysts who have sprouted like mushrooms under the political rain clouds of June. But I risk sounding petty. I don’t know if this latest prayer spoof has the tacit ``imprimatur’’ of the Catholic bishops who either have jumped into or have been drawn into the anti- and pro-GMA fracas. One of the text messages that has been going around (I received mine from the head of a known PR agency) is a parody of the ``Aba Ginoong Maria’’...

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Peace lessons in public schools

A fellow journalist and friend gave me a copy of the draft of ``Peace Education Teaching Exemplars for Elementary Schools’’ which, she said, will be published as a teaching guide for teachers. She told me that some peace-conscious parents who had read the draft were wondering whether this draft has passed scrutiny and will soon be used for the peace education of their children. The book project is the joint initiative of the Department of Education (Deped) and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP). So concerned was...

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Mosquito war

The rain clouds of June are hovering over us, every now and then releasing torrents to ease our parchedness. In cities, particularly Metro Manila, a thick brown gray soup will soon inundate low lying areas for days and even weeks and play host to deadly vermin, insects and bacteria that will cause health problems and even death. Classes are about to begin and many young school children will wade into deadly mini-rivers and absorb much of the filth of the city. Meanwhile, drug companies make tongue-in-cheek warnings like ``Bawal magkasakit’’ (Getting...

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The desecration story

If learned about something really grave and shocking, would I write about it in order to call attention so that people could do something to prevent it or address it? Would I write about it even if I thought it might cause a violent conflagration or a bloody confrontation between parties concerned? Or should I sacrifice revealing the unpleasant truth that I know in order to prevent the worst that could happen? These were some of the thoughts that raced through my mind after a May 9 Newsweek story gave rise to violent protests in many places around...

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`Just tell me why’

It was a small news item in the Inquirer’s The World section two days ago, datelined Enniskillen, Northern Ireland and written by Associated Press’ Paul Majendie. The section editor gave it a longish headline that ran across the entire page: ``Just tell me why you did it, grieving father asks IRA bomber.’’ I found myself reading the story again and again. Page A10, if you wish to read it. The article was very short but powerful. Not weepy at all, except the last small paragraph where the dam broke. Something about the story sounded very familiar,...

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Will Malacanang let down Aetas to favor CDC?

First the good news. Praise be to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) for taking the side of the Aetas of Mabalacat, Pampanga and Bamban, Tarlac by honoring their ancestral land claim. The NCIP even increased the original claim of 5,515 hectares granted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 1997 to more than 10,000 hectares in 2004. The bad news is that Clark Development Corporation (CDC) has been contesting this since the beginning. And pressures from Malacanang, through a directive sent around Sept. 2004,...

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The mountains cry out

``Like Moses leading his people out of the plagues, in the time of terror and devotion.’’ –the Inquirer on Reynaldo Punongbayan, its 1991 Filipino of the Year I just finished going over the book ``Eruption and Exodus: Mount Pinatubo and the Aytas of Zambales’’ for which I wrote the foreword in 1991. This book chronicles the life of the Aytas and the Franciscan Sisters who lived and worked among them, before, during and after the volcanic eruption that saw much of Central Luzon covered in ash. In it is written that it was in April 1991 that Mount...

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`Ein papst aus Deutschland’

I kept switching to Deutsche Welle (DW), the German channel on cable TV, right after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope last week. What was it like for the Germans, the predominantly Catholic Bavarians especially, to have one of them become Papst Benedikt XVI? The crawler on the TV screen said ``Ein papst aus Deutschland’’ (the pope from Germany). DW had first crack at the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, so to speak, in Ratzinger’s home town in Bavaria, Germany. Now, cookies and bread are being named after him. DW was...

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Billboards from hell

If someone had already used the above title, please, may I use it again? I couldn’t find a nastier one. Every person and her/his first cousin living in this metropolis and yonder surely have a billboard complaint to air. I have mine, you have yours and chances are, we’re all talking about the same things. The unending row of gigantic billboards lining the highways. The smaller ones, zillions of them, hung on lamp posts in the middle of the road. The defacement, the darkening, the uglification of the sky and the horizon. The offensive, stupid content....

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Allen’s `Conclave’

``The trash heaps of church history are littered with carcasses of journalists who have tried to predict the next pope.’’ This quote comes from journalist John L. Allen Jr., author of the updated ``Conclave: The Politics, Personalities and Process of the Next Papal Election’’ and ``All the Pope’s Men: The Inside Story on How the Vatican Really Thinks.’’. Jesuit theologian Fr. Catalino Arevalo made sure I got a copy of Allen’s book. I rushed to Loyola House of Studies to claim it. Allen was the familiar face and voice on TV during the week of...

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John Paul II, beloved pilgrim

It was springtime in January in the souls of millions when Pope John Paul II came to visit the Philippines for the second time 10 years ago in 1995. Like a homecoming pilgrim, he came. It is seedtime, he said in so many words, referring to the promise the youth held for the turn of the millenium, as he rallied them to plunge into ``the great adventure of living life well.’’ Think of that quote. World Youth Day in 1995 in Manila will be etched in history books as days of wonder and joy ineffable. Four million gathered in one place to pray and...

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If, you, do, not, speak, for, us

Another media practitioner has been gunned down. I don’t easily break into a white rage. What I conjured up in my mind was someone, or maybe myself, mounting a podium in slo-mo then mouthing Sophocles: ``Who is the slayer, who the victim?’’ And the adrenaline having risen, to declare with Kennedyesque pathos: ``If, you, do, not, speak, for, us, you, are, killing, us. And, also, yourselves.’’ That was just my mind trying to tame the anger that was surging. All I wanted to say in street-corner language was an exploding, ``BS to you all who did...

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The desert mothers

March being Women’s month and today being Holy Thursday, it is a good time to reflect on the contribution of little known Christian women of ancient times. During my recent visit to the Benedictine Resource Center at the St. Scholastica’s Center of Spirituality in Tagaytay, Sr. Bellarmine Bernas OSB showed me around the new building and library. If you’ve had a Benedictine education as I had (and so Germanic at that), you’d know you’re home amidst this treasure trove that is both ancient and new. I saw a stack of books titled ``The Forgotten...

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Bulanghoy, balinghoy

Inday, bayle ta/ Di ko kay kapuy/ Amon pamahaw bulanghoy/ Amon panihudto bulanghoy nga puto/ Amon panihapon bulanghoy gihapon. (Inday, let us dance/ No, I am tired/ Our breakfast was cassava/ Our lunch was cassava cake/ Our supper was still cassava.) I learned that folk song many years ago from my Cebuano-speaking friends from whom I also learned street-corner lingo, like `Wa ka kuyapi?’ and how to eat boiled unripe bananas with ginamos (fish paste) which, for me, is a gustatory puzzlement. We kept singing the bulanghoy (cassava) song until the...

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Post-traumatic stress disorder

For those involved in the rescue, relief and rehabilitation operations in the aftermath of the recent series of disasters here and abroad, the realization that the problem is more than material and economic could be daunting. The psychological trauma of survivors could be paralyzing and the effects could be long-lasting if these are not addressed immediately and properly. The recent killer landslides in our own home ground and the post-Christmas tsunami that killed more than 165,000 people in 11 countries and left millions bereaved and bereft...

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Anti-corruption ribbons, badges

A few weeks ago we were high on the list of the world’s happiest people. This week’s news says we are number 2 on Asia’s graft and corruption list. Are we happy because we are corrupt or are we corrupt because we are happy? Okay, just kidding. Gusto mong magkapera? (Do you want to make money?) My friend’s boss called my friend to his office one day to ask her that. My friend was working in a government agency/commission that was tasked to improve the lives of many and make people live in peace and harmony. Easy, the boss told my friend who had...

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TV discombobulation

The Inquirer’s editorial two days ago dwelled on Social Welfare and Development Secretary Corazon ``Dinky’’ Soliman’s warning to parents that excess television viewing by children could stunt their creativity and skills. Nakakabobo. (It dumbs.) It numbs. Too much TV affects reading skills and seriously inhibits left-brain functions needed for oral and verbal activities. The right brain becomes more dominant and thus makes zombies of TV addicts. That may sound like an exaggeration but try parking yourself in front of the TV the whole day for no...

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The martyrdom of Dorothy Stang

``Speaking truth to power is a prophetic act and Sister Dorothy Stang paid for it with her life. (She) spoke for the dispossessed and the voiceless to the wealthy ranchers and lumber companies who ruthlessly savage the rainforest and exploit it for personal gain.’’ This was from the statement of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) of the U.S. on the recent murder of a nun who worked among the poor of the Brazilian Amazon. A citizen of both the U.S. and Brazil, Stang, 73, took four bullets in her face and head from two gunmen on...

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Letter from the edge

Here is a letter I received on Valentine’s Day, from Good Shepherd Sisters who live and work both peacefully and dangerously among the lumad (indigenous people) of Agusan del Sur. Peacefully because they have been accepted by the people, they have grown roots with them and their work of 26 years has borne abundant flower and fruit in the community. Dangerously because the people and the nuns have to contend with the hazards of military presence and suspicion. The Religious of the Good Shepherd-Tribal Filipino Ministry is flourishing in the municipality...

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Spirituality and nation building

``Never mind, we’re topnotchers naman in spirituality, NGOs and deuterium deposits.’’ That was the comment of Butch Perez on Juan Mercado’s column piece titled ``Cellar Status’’ (Inquirer, Jan. 13, 2005) which was posted in the plaridel e-group. Mercado had bewailed Filipino students’ Math proficiency thus: ``So when do we scramble out this cellar?…Jammed between Morocco and Botswana, our kids limped in putting our country at No. 41 among 45 countries in Math.’’ Perez’s one-liner gave me an aray moment but it made me laugh because of its sheer...

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SWS corrects my reporting error

Mea maxima culpa. I missed out on two words--a pronoun and a preposition--and this made a world of a difference. The words were ``it to’’. Because I missed those (my eyes did not coordinate with my brain) I wrote a sentence that turned one of the Social Weather Stations’ 2004 survey findings upside down. This had to happen in the second to the last sentence of a longish news article, that is, when I was about to put a bullet on the article and write ``30’’. I hope not many readers got to that end part on the jump page. How I wish I had written...

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Auschwitz 60 years ago

If you have ``Schindler’s List’’, ``The Pianist’’ or other Holocaust movies in your collection you might like to watch one again today. If you have Holocaust books, behold the photographs or immerse yourself in the survivors’ accounts. Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of prisoners in the German Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz in Poland. Thousands will be flocking to Auschwitz today, among them world leaders and monarchs, to remember the more than three million people, the majority of them Jews, who were mass murdered mostly...

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Karangalan, gathering time

The boulders in our hearts will quake and break open, the shroud of grief will lift and the sound of wailing will drift away. I make myself say that and believe it will happen indeed. A terrible season has just passed, a more terrible one we should not expect otherwise we would be mired in grief and hopelessness. But what is hope? It is not hope but mere passive waiting if there is no action, if there is no effort to restore the mountains that collapsed on us, or to find signs of life amidst the flotsam and the jetsam that were swept away and...

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Post-traumatic stress disorder

For those involved in the rescue, relief and rehabilitation operations in the aftermath of the recent series of disasters here and abroad, the realization that the problem is more than material and economic could be daunting. The psychological trauma of survivors could be paralyzing and the effects could be long-lasting if these are not addressed immediately and properly. The recent killer landslides in our own home ground and the post-Christmas tsunami that killed more than 165,000 people in 11 countries and left millions bereaved and bereft...

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Poor helping poor

When the poor give to their fellow poor they give of their very substance and in so doing, become materially diminished in a way. There is the Filipino saying ``Isusubo na lang, ibinigay pa.’’ Roughly translated, what one is about to put into one’s mouth, one gives up for someone more needy. Giving even if it hurts--literally. That is often said of mothers of impoverished families. I am reminded of birds and other wildlife who hunt prey, masticate their catch and then regurgitate the partly digested stuff into the open mouths of their young....

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