“Through the years and more than a few disappointments, trials, and errors, I have come to see gender-based violence as the literal and figurative foot on women’s necks.” – Anita Hill, Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence. “Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.” – Bee Gees By Rey Moreno I… Read More »
“That is a madman: he does not understand life! The curate calls me philosopher for nickname… Perhaps I may really be the fool and they, the sane, who can tell?” – Jose Rizal, Noli Me Tangere (1887) Readers of Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere will remember old pilosopong Tasio. He was described as such in the book but the… Read More »
By Marlene Mogado, former Markham Catholic School Trustee, colleague and mentee of Alex Chiu “2021 BANAAG (Philippine) Presidential Awards for Filipino Individuals and Organizations Overseas… conferred for their significant contributions to advance the cause or promote the interests of Filipino communities in diaspora.” “Banaag: Filipino for daybreak, morning light, aurora, to dawn, to get light.” Markham was a… Read More »
Pre-campaign surveys show ex-senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. leading his rivals for the presidency by the proverbial mile three months into the May 9 national elections. Strategists say that Marcos should not disturb the political tailwind carrying his family back to the Palace that they were forced to abandon in panic at the height of the People Power… Read More »
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The shadow knows!” Walter Gibson I lost my wife to stomach cancer two years ago. We didn’t have any children. I loved my wife and our marriage was rock solid. But that missing piece of having an expanded family, of taking care of children and watching them grow… Read More »
IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK Part II Since the publication of part I, THE CLIMATE CRISIS, in the last month’s BALITA, more intense weather events have been experienced unseen in the recent past. Extreme and historical are the buzzwords—colder, more typhoons/hurricanes in the latter part of the year. On a record-setting scale, typhoon Odette’s toll had reached 407… Read More »
“He could only touch here and there, like lightning glancing on the highest peaks of mountains, but which left the deep clefts of valleys, the oceans and the clamoring rivers, in complete and shadowy darkness.” – Taylor Caldwell, The Final Hour (1944). HERE I feel fine being alone, really, here in my room, where no one bothers me,… Read More »
“How would you live your life differently if you could start over, what would you do, who would you be, where would you go, what would you embrace?” – Susan Wiggs, The Lost and Found Bookshop (2020) We need rituals for without them we are lost. One of these rituals is our list of resolutions for the New… Read More »
IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK PART 1 “Parade of Storms,” “Atmospheric Rivers,” “Swarms of Tornadoes“: These are headlining in all of 2021, terms that have never been used before. Just what is a “PARADE OF STORMS”? There is nothing technical about the phrase, only that a storm does not come in one after another, not a day apart anyway. A typhoon,… Read More »
“I’ve far outlived my usefulness.” Susan Wiggs, The Lost and Found Bookshop (2020). Alone Odd guy I am. Social nature has not spoilt me. I long for quietness, A peaceful music to behold. I’m judged to be different, Bear it with stings and bruises. I grew up not knowing my friends, Family is all I have! The Winding… Read More »