Jersey Pinoy

Tales of the Toddy Tapper

2011-07-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

I JUST FOUND the title for my book. Please don't steal it.

The Capture of Abundio Espera (Fiction)

2011-06-24T17:20:00.000-07:00

I wrote this short story in the eighties, when Gabriel Garcia Marquez was big. It won First Prize in the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards of 1999, and was short listed in the Fish Publishing Literary Awards in Durrus, Ireland of the same year. It will be included in the anthology Hoard of Thunder: Philippine Short Stories in English, 1990-2008, edited by the great Gemino H. Abad, to be published by the University of the Philippines Press early next year. Woodcuts credits go to Elizabeth Glade, et al.

WHEN NEWS BROKE that the communist rebel army leader Abundio Espera had been killed, the church bells of Pinamalayan tolled, and although pigs wailed inside pens and pots boiled over stoves, the people of the town put down their early morning chores and marched down the dusty streets to the municipal hall, eager to view his corpse. It was a spectacle that nobody wanted to miss, and even the schoolchildren, then on vacation for Holy Week, ran barefoot ahead of their parents like acolytes in a procession, anticipating a circus treat so rare in this seaside village where the monotony of life during the long dry season was broken only by an occasional beached dolphin, or the landing on the park of a helicopter carrying a campaigning senator from Manila.

The news came as a surprise to the villagers, who were in the midst of a week-long meditation on the passion of the Lord, because Abundio had always eluded the soldiers of the Constabulary with the slickness of a wet mudfish, and his name had become so mythical that mothers invoked it on hot, moonless nights to frighten and hush restless children to sleep. Even the rookies who drank lambanog in the barracks yard, bored from the lull in their deployment after Colonel Tirso Marasigan had retreated to his ancestral house, figuring out a new military strategy that would finally bring the rebel to the hands of the law, discussed Abundio as they passed the potent drink around, mystified by his ability to dodge bullets, disappear into the night like a bat, and survive in his mountain camp without the company of a woman.

"He has an anting-anting," Nitoy, the rookie who was the lone survivor in the military ambush on the rebel’s encampment in Socorro the day before, had revealed. The rebels had held him captive for a night after he had been shot and was left for dead by his comrades. A naive boy of eighteen, he had never gone to school, but the colonel had signed him up because of his excellent marksmanship and memory, though at times he was given to seizures of wild and fantastic imagination. When the colonel and his lieutenant Rufo Cabalfin paid him a visit in the municipal clinic after he was found along the highway by banana truckers, he recounted how the rebel leader was resurrected from the ground after he had been given up for dead by the soldiers, and how he dusted the bullets off his chest as if they were amor seco seeds stuck in his shirt. Nitoy also swore that he had seen a huge, gleaming pendant hanging from the rebel’s neck, so luminous that it stunned nocturnal animals in the forest. In his delirium, he surmised that the pendant could contain a wisp of golden hair that Abundio had plucked from the mane while he was astride a bucking tikbalang, a giant stallion that snorted fire and shook the earth as it tried to dismount him off its back. Or it could be an amulet that a blooming banana heart had released one night of a full moon. After nights of waiting for it to drop, he had caught it in the palm of his hands and swallowed it to vanquish a gang of kapres, aswangs and tianaks—monsters who also coveted the talisman. "That must be it," Nitoy mused innocently, "for why did those bullets bounce off him like duhat fruits falling on the ground?"

The colonel, who was on his fourth day of fasting on broiled fish and eggplants, squirmed. He had an upset stomach and was short-tempered and irritable. He was carnivorous and disliked vegetables, and his discomfort was made more unbearable by the mystery of why the rebel had let his rookie go unharmed. "I am quite surprised that he spared you," he said, making no effort to hide the callousness of his remark. He figured the rebels should have at least blinded him or cut his tongue and fingers so that he could not squeal to his comrades the location of the hideout. "But you'll never know with these people," he said, suspicious. "Now is there anything else our friend told you?"

Nitoy said that all his memory allowed him was that of himself being hauled by the rebels atop a huge banyan tree, where a hut glowed from fireflies that swam in and out of the rooms, and where an apparition of his dead father appeared to him in his sleep. He had no recollection of the location of the camp, what the supremo looked like, and even what he said, only the gobs of blood from his wound and how his father had dressed it as he fell asleep, until dawn broke through the leaves with beams of light that were celestial. "Very well," the frustrated colonel sighed, preparing to leave. "It must have been all those holy eggplants that we’ve been eating that's been affecting our brains. Let us go then, my sons, and when all of us have had that lechon on Easter, we shall be back and try again."

Nitoy understood why the colonel wanted Abundio like a starved dog after a piece of rotting meat. There had been a series of murders of wealthy citizens in the town, and the colonel had blamed it on the New People's Army, a communist guerilla group of which Abundio was leader. Don Tiburcio Dimaandal, the rice mill owner and grain buyer, was found stabbed to death in his warehouse after he refused to give the rebels sacks of rice and other provisions. En Chong, the Chinese millionaire who owned the only hardware store in town, was kidnapped and later found hanging from the bamboo rafters of his seaside cabana, his mouth stuffed with his underwear as if it were a wad of money, after his ransom of two hundred thousand pesos was not delivered by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. The colonel said the rebels would use the money to build an arsenal of guns, ammunition and bombs from Moro smugglers in Palawan, who were getting their supply from terrorists in Libya. In a lecture given by the colonel at the rookies' graduation from the academy, he gave what little information was available on Abundio Espera. He was the founder of the local detachment of the NPA, which was gaining membership like kaingin wildfire on the island of Mindoro. He was not from the island himself, as he had no record of a baptismal certificate in the parish logbook, and rumor had it that he was from the northern province of Pangasinan, where he had spent his teenage years mapping, discovering and finally plundering the grave of the great Chinese pirate Lim Ah Hong. No one knew if he had a wife or any relatives, and when his photograph was plastered on lampposts all over town as a dangerous criminal, a pimp who operated a brothel by the beach acknowledged having seen him before patronizing his business.

Early Good Friday morning, when the boys who peddled pandesal and doubled as Pinamalayan’s town criers announced "Tinapay! Abundio patay!" in a voice that competed with the crowing of the fighting cocks, Nitoy got on his crutches in the municipal clinic, dug for money in his pockets and hailed the boys from his window. They were no-nonsense urchins who recognized every money-making opportunity on the streets. They would shout bread and the headline of the day, but would not give any more detail of the news unless one paid for it. For twenty pesos, Nitoy learned that the outlaw had been ambushed the previous night in a brothel, and that his bullet-ridden body lay in a cell in the municipal jail.

Nitoy told the boys, whom he learned were twins, that he would give them more money if they carried him to the municipal hall. Since they had sold most of their pandesal for the day, and were still hardly tired because the news had kept them excited and alive, they agreed to take him for another twenty pesos. "But only to get there," the dark one bargained. "We still have to pick up those bags of flour for Yu Yek. But we can hurry and bring you back for twenty more.”

The sun was almost out of the sea when Nitoy and the twins emerged from the hospital. The boys, brawny and strong from having carried heavy sacks of flour everyday, had propped and slung him on their shoulders in a hammock made from the canvas of the hospital cot. To entertain themselves while they lumbered with their heavy load on the street, they talked freely about the previous night's drama. A whore had distracted Abundio while they made love and robbed him of his talisman, the boy with the lighter complexion began. Unarmed and vulnerable, he was easy target for the soldiers who were armed to the teeth with submachine guns when they responded to the pimp’s tip. They peppered him with bullets and seized his talisman, which would be exhibited as the high point of the day to the public, the dark one added.

When they passed by the ancestral house of the colonel, they heard his wife Dona Milagros announcing to passersby that she would throw a party on Easter Sunday after Abundio was buried. It was only eight o'clock, but the noises of the activities of her servants already spilled on the street—the buzz of the coconut husks under their feet as they polished the mahogany floors, and the gasps of an overworked water pump in the kitchen.

The marketplace was as deserted as a graveyard, except for feral dogs that raided the garbage and mated on the streets. The Chinese community had closed shop, out of fear that the rebels would retaliate and make the intsik their first targets, because the Chinese Chamber of Commerce had raised the prize money put on Abundio's head, according to the twins. It was to avenge the death of their comrade En Chong and to protect themselves from further extortion. They would award the fifty thousand pesos to the person responsible for the capture of the communist rebel leader, the rightful winner to be determined by a committee in the municipal hall later that day, the twins added.

It was almost nine o'clock when they reached the shade of the tamarind tree by the municipal hall. The plaza, which on ordinary days was occupied only by pigs and goats caught straying in the park by the bored clerks, tethering them with ropes to the statue of the national hero Dr. Jose Rizal while their owners bargained with the treasurer on the fine to reclaim their animals, was packed full of people. They were stevedores, peasants and fisher folk who had brought food and their children to the plaza the way they did one night of the fiesta, when Vicks Vaporub executives from Manila sponsored an open air screening of "Rocky II." Nitoy told the twins to find him a spot under the tamarind tree, on whose branches children were already perched for a better view, raiding its fruits while they waited for the program to commence.

The main entrance to the jail was locked and guarded by two policemen. An old man who was among the first to arrive was telling people that mayor, Dominador Madrid, was suffering from a terrible hangover and refreshing himself in his airconditioned office. He had forbidden anybody from entering the cell until the program was over, the old man said, because he did not want the people distracted from the speeches. It was also in deference to the colonel's order that the corpse be autopsied and disinfected first by the sanitation inspector before it was shown to the public, the man in charge of the job being detained in the capitol in Calapan where he was renewing his license for the occasion.

Colonel Marasigan and his wife arrived, the clouds of dust stirred by their Toyota Tamaraw choking the spectators on the roadside. Getting off the passenger seat like a First Lady, Dona Milagros unfolded a dark purple parasol that matched her dress. She was the hermana mayor for the year, and it was understood that one of her duties was to reflect in her attire the color of the robe the Lord had worn before he died, so the people believed. She shaded herself from the hot sun, and the colonel led her through the audience to a seat beside the mayor on the front row, which was beginning to get full as the other dignitaries and guests of honor trickled in: the juez de paz, three representatives of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the chief of police, the high school principal, and Alejandra Dimaandal, Don Tiburcio's anemic widow, fanning herself vigorously. They were to compose the panel of judges who would determine the recipient of the prize money put on Abundio’s head.

The back seats were occupied by low-ranking soldiers, policemen, clerks, schoolteachers and barangay captains, who were given bonuses in their paychecks to attend and lend an air of grandeur to public ceremonies. The colonel made a nod of his head to Rufo Cabalfin, his lieutenant, who tipped his cap off in response, more as a way of relaying some private message than as a gesture of recognition. He was standing next to a young man setting up an old phonograph, hooking it onto a lone speaker that looked like a huge conch, which eventually blared with Madonna’s hit "La Isla Bonita." It was Good Friday, and listening to or playing any kind of music was considered sacrilegious, but since it was such a momentous occasion, and since Padre Holzgartner had not yet arrived, the mayor also had the police band play a quick segment of the "Marcha Nacional" before he took the microphone.

"We are gathered here today to celebrate the capture of Abundio Espera and the restoration of peace in our town," the mayor, acting as master of ceremonies, opened the program after acknowledging the presence of every dignitary in attendance. Nitoy, partially brought back to reality from his delirium, strained his ears trying to listen to him, because even though the crowd had fallen into a hush, the static from the old speaker and the drone of cicadas reverberated in his eardrums. The twins had tied his hammock between branches of the tamarind tree, eager to leave him behind and join the fun, and Nitoy had to remind them that he would only give them their money after he had seen Abundio's corpse.

The mayor lowered the microphone stand for the short, obese colonel. "I am glad that Nitoy can come to physically show us the terror that Abundio has inflicted upon us," he began. Wearing full camouflage uniform, he also wore Ray Bans that blended with his swarthy face, but which allowed him to recognize Nitoy through the glare of the sun. "But our nightmares are over. And we are here today to honor, and give the key to the town, to the hero who had helped the Constabulary capture Abundio." The sun had grown oppressively hot, and the mixture of melted pomade and perspiration dribbled down his cheeks and under his chin. "Yu Yek, our brother who also happens to be the president of the CCC, had narrowed the candidates for the money down to three, but each one of them has to come up on stage and convince the panel that he, or she, is the rightful recipient."

Pepito, the thin, effeminate pimp who wore rings on all his fingers, was first to come up the stage. The crowd hooted, whistled, and made funny noises as he made his entrance. When it all subsided, he began his story. At two o'clock in the morning, he began, when he had rounded his girls up and was about to extinguish the fires in the lanterns outside, two men dressed as Roman soldiers approached him from the dark. Talking and smoking through their carved wooden masks, they introduced themselves as moriones from the island of Marinduque, who had come to Pinamalayan to compete in the local Holy Week costume festival. They whipped the table in front of him with stockings full of cash and demanded for his youngest girl. But Pepito made it clear to them that this very special girl did not go out with two men at the same time. As they smoothened the bills, which totaled five thousand pesos, they explained that she was not going to be for them but for their boss, Longinus who was waiting outside behind the trees. Recognizing the night’s bonanza, Pepito agreed and had Epifania wait in Room #7. He told her that this is going to be her big night, the night when she would make more money than she had made all her life. After he told the moriones that Epifania was ready, one of the Roman soldiers lifted his mask and whistled. Then a man masked as the blind centurion Longinus walked into the light, certain of his direction even though he navigated through only one eye.

But when it had taken almost an hour and Longinus had not yet come out of the room, Pepito became suspicious and studied the two men smoking outside. Then he shivered, realizing under the light of the full moon that those weapons cradled in their arms were not wooden lances but semiautomatic M-16 rifles, and those shiny decorations on their capes were not puka shells but bandoleers of copper bullets. He sneaked to Room #7 and peeped through a hole in the thatch, identifying the man between Epifania’s legs as Abundio, whose fearsome face and tattoos he had seen in so many photographs before. He had taken his mask off and was biting the young girl's nipples. Every bone in Pepito’s body shaking, he slipped through the back door and braved the dog-infested alley to report this discovery to the sentries on duty at an outpost. They were in the middle of a game of chess and would not take him seriously, only believing him when he fainted.

Rufo Cabalfin, the colonel's lieutenant, was next on the stage. He spoke between puffs of his cigarette. He was enjoying his son's birthday party, he said, where the colonel himself was present earlier as the godfather, when the sentry arrived with the tip. He was lucky to have all members of his troop present as guests that night, and although they were a bit drunk from the lambanog and bored with the discussion about whose fault it was that botched the last ambush, the electrifying news hit them all on the head. They all jumped into his jeepney and he sped to the brothel. When the moriones who were keeping watch and waiting for their boss to come out heard their vehicle approach, they did not give a fight but disappeared like bats in the night. His soldiers then stormed Room #7 where they found the rebel in the arms of a girl. Having heard of his supernatural powers, they took no chances and peppered him with bullets after they had taken the girl away. The rest, he said, was history.

Epifania had to be coaxed by the women from the brothel who had come in her support to go onstage. Her story was simple. She said she was unaware that the man she was with that night was the dreaded rebel. He was a good lover, she said, and she prevented his consummation each time she sensed he was on the verge of climax by applying a cold spoon on his stomach, a trick she had learned from the other women who employed it to put drunken customers to sleep. He undid the pendant from his neck because it got in the way of his lovemaking, and the man loved her again and again, and she was about to pass out when the soldiers tore the door down. Dona Milagros and Alejandra Dimaandal could not believe that they were hearing and stood up and left their seats in shock and disgust, while the men snickered.

While the judges consulted among themselves to decide on the winner, the mayor deemed it was the right time to show the talisman to the public. It was the most curious piece of jewel he had ever seen, he admitted, something that even the most experienced eye of his friend, the jeweler Edmundo Lhuillier could not identify. He had said that the gem was something of a cross between an emerald and a nephrite the size of a baby's head, which appeared to have been carved by the most skillful artist of China during the days of the great galleons. It was sculpted into the shape of a squatting Buddha, so exquisitely carved that the tiny faces of the children who frolicked on its fat arms and shoulders showed dimples. He further discovered that all of their slanted eyes had been inlaid by grain-sized diamonds, most of which had been removed recently. He could only make a determination of the quality of their cut, which could take as long as three days, after he had pried one remaining piece off its socket. The rest of the pendant was a chain of braided local nito vines that ran through the Buddha's ears, allowing it to be worn as a necklace. The mayor handed the jewel to the colonel, who said that the Constabulary was going to display it in a glass case in his office after it had been thoroughly appraised of its value.

Padre Holzgartner, the aging parish priest, arrived in his Volkswagen van. He had been on the island long enough to have given the colonel his first communion and make his sermons in Tagalog, but now there was a feud between the two after the colonel had accused him of being a secret supporter of the rebels. The colonel had alleged that while the priest was condemning Abundio's killings from the pulpit, he was using his confessional box as a tool to deliver to the rebels money dropped in the collection box by secret supporters of their cause. He had this discovery after he had sent his lieutenant Rufo Cabalfin as an impostor, pretending to be an emissary sent by the rebel asking the priest for the donations, and the colonel was dumbfounded when his lieutenant arrived in his office the following morning with the money in a parish envelope. After that, the soldiers patrolled the church every time a mass was celebrated, accosting those who lingered after the final blessing, but all they caught were odd characters, like the repentant gambler who laid prostrate on the patio floor to be walked on by churchgoers, and a blind beggar at the font who claimed that drinking holy water would make him see again. All of this, however, did not lessen the colonel's distrust for the priest, and had warned him that if ever his suspicions proved right, he would have the priest repatriated to Bavaria or reassigned to the remote island of Lubang.

When the priest stayed in his van, the mayor realized the tension and decided to wrap up the program. He told the audience that he would consult with the parish priest and the town committee to decide if Abundio could have a Catholic burial, in keeping with the spirit of forgiveness of the Lenten season. He was also relieved when the judges announced that they had arrived at a decision, unanimously choosing the colonel's lieutenant as the winner. The crowd protested with boos and noises, and an old man with a little boy on his shoulders argued that Rufo Cabalfin was a soldier and it was only his duty to do what he had done.

The mayor had somewhat recovered from his hangover and realized the opportunity in the situation. In order to placate the crowd and be diplomatic, he convinced the panel of judges to create a second and a third prize with money from his own pocket. Yu Yek, the Chinese representative, handed the envelopes to the colonel's wife who presented them to their recipients, shaking hands with everyone except Epifania.

Having done her role for the day and anxious to escape the heat of the sun, Dona Milagros whispered to the mayor that she and her husband had to leave right away because his stomach was acting up. The mayor, however, knew that the couple was avoiding a possible confrontation with the priest.

The priest came out of his vehicle after the couple left. Still in his muddy cassock after having baptized Mangyan children on the hills of Sabang, he went straight to the jail cell. Everyone followed him. By this time, the mayor had the two police guards unlock the main gate. Nitoy leaned on the shoulders of the twins to get in; the crowd had become so thick that there was no way he could make it inside in his hammock.

Abundio's corpse was in a padlocked cell in the east wing of the jail, as if the colonel did not trust the rebel even after his death. Nitoy and the boys were swept by the swarm of people who wanted to get inside the building, past the main hall where hung a fading portrait of Don Macario Adriatico, the most illustrious son of the island of Mindoro, who modeled his exquisite mustache before the ragged visitors. As he leaned against the steel bars, Nitoy saw the Abundio that he had come face to face three nights before: a dark, middle-aged man of six feet with the build of a hero and, despite a hole on his forehead, the expression of a sage. His long hair, braided into a queue, touched floor as he lay half-naked, except for his red Longinus cape around his waist, on a bamboo bed soaked with blood. Two women, one on each side of the bed, used bamboo sticks tipped with shredded banana leaves to shoo the flies away from the corpse, staring at a tattoo of a huge bird on his blasted chest. They looked like servants watching over a huge roasted pig on a banquet table, waiting for their guests to arrive.

The colonel had forbidden anyone from covering the corpse up until it was autopsied by the sanitation inspector, a "standard operating procedure," he said, for dead outlaws. But deep inside, Nitoy knew that the colonel was exhibiting the corpse in such a state of disgrace to discourage potential recruits and dishearten supporters in the crowd. "Look what will become of you if you join his army and are get caught," the colonel seemed to make as a statement with the corpse, Nitoy thought.

The priest began to spray holy water on the corpse, and the smell of fresh blood brought vivid memories to Nitoy. "Go home, child," Abundio had told him at the camp. "And tell our people that we mean no harm. That we are not what the colonel portrays us to be..." As the priest said his prayers in Latin, Nitoy also heard Abundio's words of parting: that his was a peaceful group that did not believe in killing, except when it was unavoidable. That their only goal was to fight poverty and bring the hope of abundance to the island. That yes, it was the colonel, through his henchman Rufo Cabalfin, who had killed En Chong and Don Tiburcio, because they had once insulted his manhood at a party, suggesting that his childlessness was a manifestation of his impotence. They were the perfect victims in his smear campaign against the New People's Army while he avenged his slighted ego at the same time.

The smell of blood, worsened by the breath, sweat and noise of the mad crowd, made Nitoy dizzy, and vomit rose up his throat. He fumbled his way outside, fighting his way through the stampede, beaten and sick of everything he had seen and heard that morning, until he was finally outside. As he slunk to the empty courtyard, he realized he had not given the twins their money, and he was bleeding again. He called them, but all he heard as answers were the drone of cicadas and the sobs of women from the jail cell.

The sanitation inspector finally arrived, examining the corpse thoroughly. Nitoy, in total delirium under the spell of cicadas, did not hear the men’s curses when they saw Abundio's body, which had been peppered with so many bullets that it looked like a human sieve. He did not hear Alejandra Dimaandal, the only woman among the panel of judges who had stayed on and had the stomach to view the corpse, gasp and make the sign of the cross when she saw his large member, which reached way past his navel and was still stiff on his belly, despite the amount of blood that had drained from his body and dripped through the slats of the bamboo bed.

Third Grade and Dance Classes

2011-05-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

Sara's Third Grade class picture with Mrs. Casale (Click to enlarge and try to find as many Polish surnames as you can), and her ballet and Hip Hop dance classes.

The Foundling (Fiction)

2011-03-28T12:35:00.000-07:00

MANY WEEKS LATER, as Ludringo Mangubat watched the smoke from he funeral pyre of his young adopted son Simon, he was to remember the hot afternoon when he and his wife Teresa first found him as an infant wrapped in banana leaves behind a thicket. That was he second day of the El Nino phenomenon, a long period of drought that lashed the island of Mindoro on the first part of every year, but despite the oppressive heat that hung over the mungbean fields on their way home that afternoon, Ludringo was relieved hearing the baby cry, because its voice had such a musical quality about it that when Ludringo first heard it from a distance, he thought it was that of rare jungle rooster. The boy had blisters on his arms because ants had probably mistaken them for some freshly fallen bananas, but he lad the most handsome face the couple had ever seen, and as they examined him under a shade they made idle conjectures about the parentage of the abandoned infant. Ludringo concluded that he must be a child of a communist rebel couple from the mountain camps, who thought that they were giving their son better chances for the future, risking him to the wild dogs in such a way until some passerby chanced upon him, instead of having him grow up in the mountains and live the runaway life of outlaws.

"He's got the smoothest face I have ever seen," Teresa observed as he swaddled the infant in the shawl that she had used to cover her face from the harsh sun.

"Then he must be of good parents, because they always say that bastard children are often covered with scales," Ludringo said.

"And the hair on his head is as smooth and fine as a corn's, and curly like young fern shoots!" she added.

"All newborns are that way," Ludringo explained, because although he, too, was overcome by emotion that was a mixture of surprise and delight, he was also trying to be sensible, already wondering how he was going to support the child now that the rice from last year's harvest was almost gone, and the drought was delaying the next planting season.

"Women are going to fight over him," he joked when he saw the disappointment in her eyes as she sensed his doubts: "but he has to be baptized first!"

He carried the infant in his arms and they took him home as if he were the prize for all their labors, the one that they had been praying for all those years. Ever since they had been married three years before, they had never been blessed with a child; Teresa's womb had been as barren and unkind to them as the parched mungbean fields about them that surrounded the barrio of Socorro like a sea.

They bathed him with boiled yerba buena and egg whites to heal the sores on his arms and prepare him for baptism, and Teresa made him clothes from the fabric of flour bags and fed him from a gourd filled with a mixture of rice gruel and carabao milk. They put his age at three months, because he still could not crawl, but after five weeks he already had the power and vitality of a one-year-old, one that surprised the couple one middle of the night when they discovered him missing from his crib, only to find him later playing with the dog out in the batalan.

"He needs toys," Ludringo explained to his wife while he counted the coins beside the cracked coconut shell bank on the table the next morning. Teresa had been saving that money from the rice cakes she sold, hoping to buy a transistor radio that would keep her company at home during the time of the year when Ludringo migrated to the neighboring town to take part in its harvest work, but she gave in to his idea after he had explained the value of playthings to the child's well-being.

"Better listen to nothing, than your own son speaking the language of dogs," he said as he closed the door behind him, leaving for town and coming back late in the evening with a paper box containing plastic guns, firetrucks and soldiers, a cardboard morion mask, wooden swords, and a battery-operated telephone that played chime music when its handset was lifted. He tied the dog under the hut where it ravaged the chickens, but Ludringo did not mind, as long as he was convinced that his son was growing up with the proper company.

The child was christened Simon when he was baptized a week later, and from what remained of the seed rice and the pullets in the coop, Ludringo gave a banquet that lasted for a whole day. By that time the drought had become so severe that the men had to wash their hands and drinking cups in the same pail to conserve water, while the women, most of whom had attended the occasion out of curiosity instead of celebration, examined Simon who was sleeping in his crib. The sores on his arms had spread all over his body, and Ludringo explained this affliction as erysipelas which was to be blamed on the water from the well that had run low and dirty.

In the meantime the river, too, had run so low that the fishes in it committed suicide by jumping onto its banks, and when the harsh climate showed no sign of reprieve, the barriofolk gathered at the plaza to discuss the supernatural aspects of this phenomenon. They concluded that this must be some kind of a divine punishment, because they could not understand what deafened the ears of San Isidro Labrador to their prayers for rain, and the sizzle in the wicks of the countless candles that they had lit as offerings to him at the church and home altars. It was Jose Pedraza, the barrio captain, who had first insinuated that it could be Simon who was to blame for this pestilential climate; the patron saint probably did not approve of his presence in the barrio because he was a bastard son, or perhaps even an emissary of the Devil, a fallen cherub who had stolen the body of an innocent boy (but could not conceal under his disguise the manifestations of his sinister origins) and was using him to wreak misfortune and sin on the barrio of Socorro. He observed that already husbands and wives were fighting in desperation to store up provisions for an imminent year of famine; En Chong the Chinese merchant's store had been looted of rice and canned goods and even inedibles like kerosene and batteries. Guns and rifles had been reported stolen from the armory of the Constabulary.

In support of him, his wife Conchita swore that she heard holy water sizzle on Simon's skin, as if it were on hot oil, when Padre Magboo blessed him at the font during his baptism, and the women shuddered when somebody announced that the child was growing teeth at three months old.

Ludringo Mangubat, who had stayed home and heard all this talk from his frightened wife, dismissed all these speculations about Simon as unkind and ridiculous, because he believed that all of these oddities about his adopted son could be explained by the fact that he was simply prodigious, and he could not believe how people could even imagine Simon evil. As his family survived the drought on sweet potatoes and cassava, he saw Simon grow up into a robust boy, at five months old already able to climb up and down the rungs of the bamboo stairs with the agility of a monkey, and repeat the words that he caught from the conversations of their horrified neighbors who had to come to examine him in his crib as if he were some zoo animal.

Not even when Teresa reported to Ludringo when he came home one afternoon that Simon had been missing all day did the farmer suspect that his adopted son had been murdered. He looked for him all night in the mungbean fields, but the light in the east had broken to replace that from his carbide lamp and still he had not found him. "Surely he will come home when he gets hungry," he assured his sobbing wife who herself had not eaten nor slept for two days, and was so emaciated that her face looked earthen against the kerosene lamplight.

Accompanied only by his dog, Ludringo spent the following days combing the mungbean fields and the banana plantation, even going as far as the edge of the barrio of Socorro where the clearing ended and the jungle began. He called out Simon's name, but all that he could hear as answers were the screams of monkeys and the cries of cockatoos. When their neighbors heard the news about the missing boy, they offered different conjectures on his whereabouts: some said that he could have been eaten by wild dogs; others surmised that he could be dead at the bottom of the dry well; still others guessed that he could be in the clutches of a disguised Hindu child-snatcher who was going to use him as an attraction in some distant carnival. Ludringo had collapsed in bed after weeks of sleepless nights. He woke up breathless and bathed in perspiration at four o'clock the following morning, certain that it was Simon's voice that he heard calling from the kapok trees outside their window, but Teresa assured him that he was only having a nightmare and that what he had heard was only the sound of bats returning home. When dawn broke, he lit a candle on their window sill.

Not even when it had been a month since Simon disappeared and still he had not been found did Ludringo ever think that the child was already dead. Somehow he had resigned to the notion that the child must have been reclaimed by his remorseful parents, who had finally come to realize the gravity of the sin that they had made. But Simon must still be alive somewhere, and Ludringo did not give his toys away, hoping that Simon would one day miss them and come running back home, clambering up the rungs of the bamboo stairs like he had done many times before, and when that time came he would be ready to sell his land and carabao and hire a lawyer to fight in court for the custody of the child.

The first rain of the year came in early May, and as the barriofolk reveled in street processions honoring and offering flowers to St. Helena and her son Constantine, the couple stayed at home. Ludringo worked in the yard, replacing the rusted screws in the plow and cleaning its blade with leaves that had the roughness of sandpaper. Teresa mended torn buri sacks and mats, because they were hoping to sow the seed rice and mungbeans when the earth became soft enough to plow; the sudden change in the weather had filled the couple with a renewed sense of hope and excitement that they expressed in silence working alone. Teresa had just taken a bath with the rainwater that she had collected in a wide plastic basin the night before; she had talcum powder on her face and was softly humming to herself while she worked. Ludringo had a new haircut that made him look as young as the new recruits of the Constabulary.

Ludringo was coming up to the hut when he saw that the galvanized iron roof of the mungbean granary in the backyard was missing. He cursed the children of their neighbors, whom he suspected had stolen and sold the piece of metal as scrap to En Chong for some chewing gum money: it had been pried off its hinges on the granary's wall. He stood on his toes to inspect if any of the exposed seeds had sprouted from the previous night's rain. There he saw the flies.

It was only after Ludringo had torn down the wall of the granary and smelled the stench of death as the mungbean seeds spilled out to the ground like water did he believe that Simon was really dead. It was only when he saw him crouched in fetal position at the bottom of the granary, his flesh falling off his bones, and the seeds engorged with his body fluids, did Ludringo realize that his long vigil was over. He poured gasoline on the pile and set it on fire because Simon was in such an advanced state of decay that it was impossible to give him a wake. As he held his sobbing wife he wondered who could have set that unlikely trap; only other farmers knew that those smooth seeds, when piled too high, acted like a natural quicksand: dogs and cats have been known to be swallowed up by that deadly pile of seeds. Before he could find an answer in the blaze, he had to rescue his fainting wife. As he carried her toward the hut, he saw that the barriofolk had gathered at a distance, because they were repelled by the stench and because they believed that San Isidro Labrador and all the saints in heaven would never be appeased by the smoke from those accursed seeds.

Second Grade and Ballet Class

2010-07-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

Here is Sara's Second Grade class picture with teacher Ms. Santora, and pictures of her ballet class.

Moving On...

2009-06-12T19:34:00.000-07:00

QUEENS PINOY IS NOW Jersey Pinoy.

...To Another Jose: Prison Deform

2009-04-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

With Jose Dalisay, Hwang Sok-yong, Khet Mar, and Susan Rosenberg; moderated by Jackson Taylor. Even for those with a limited sentence, the deforming pressure of incarceration affects the mind, body, and spirit. Here, four writers each with personal experiences of the prison system—some as political detainees—will discuss the influence of that exile on their work.

This event is part of The Fifth Annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, April 27-May 3, 2009.

Wednesday, April 29, 6–7:30 pm, free and open to the public,
co-sponsored by the PEN Prison Writing Committee

The Martin E. Segal Theater, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016, phone (212) 817-1860

From Jose to Jose

2009-04-04T11:04:00.001-07:00

From the AAWW website:

From Jose Rizal to Jose Garcia Villa: An Introduction to Philippine Literary Greats

JOIN US FOR A SPECIAL reception in celebration of two heroes of Philippine literature and of the Philippine-American heritage and experience, and for a lively discussion and refreshment.

Noli Me Tangere is the great Philippine novel by Jose Rizal (1861-1896), a love story set during the Spanish occupation, and the story of a young gentleman who returns to the Philippines from Europe after his father's death. This powerful, moving novel and its sequel, El Filibusterismo were banned by Spanish authorities. Rizal was subsequently executed for sedition and is the best-known Philippine national hero.

Harold Augenbraum discusses Rizal's life and reads from his translation of the Noli, published by Penguin Classics, and then from his translation-in-progress of the Fili. Augenbraum is executive director of the National Book Foundation and a well known translator and critic.

Known as the "Pope of Greenwich Village," Jose Villa (1908-1997) was arguably the most important Asian American writer of the mid-twentieth century, as well as a colleague of modern literary giants such as W.H. Auden and Tennessee Williams. Edith Sitwell called him "a poet with a great, even an astounding, and perfectly original gift. . . The best of his poems are among the most beautifully written in our time."

Luis Francia, a well known writer and poet, discusses Villa and reads from his poetry, and will also read from his own book Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, a semiautobiographical account of life straddling American and Philippine culture which won the Pen Center Beyond the Margin Award and The Asian American Writers' Workshop Literary Award in 2002.

An informal discussion will be encouraged after the presentations. Wine and merienda hors d'oeuvres will be served.

Monday, April 27, 2009, 7 pm

Tickets: $25; students $15; VIP $50. For tickets click here.

Asian-American Writers' Workshop, 16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor (between Broadway and 5th Avenue), New York, New York 10001, phone (212) 494-0061

Phillip Lopate (and Brother) at Queens College

2009-03-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

From the Queens College Evening Readings website:

Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Time: 7 pm
Admission: $15, free with CUNY student ID

Phillip Lopate is the author of many volumes of nonfiction, including Getting Personal: Selected Writings, Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body, Waterfront and most recently, Notes on Sontag. He is also the editor of The Art of the Personal Essay, as well as the author of the novels Confessions of Summer, The Rug Merchant, and most recently, the collection of two novellas Two Marriages. David Shields has said: “In book after book, Phillip Lopate has explained and demonstrated that the basis of the essay is honesty. And yet in [Two Marriages] he shows how corrosive honesty can be, how deluded, how destructive, how rationalizing, even masochistic, particularly in the matter of love. Two Marriages is a surprising, stinging, thrilling performance.” Ann Beattie has said: “Lopate is a fantastic writer—humane, wry, and always astonishingly willing to take on the ineffable, attuned to the complexities of symbolic relationships we only intuited before his dazzling collage was created.” The Dallas Morning News has said: “Phillip Lopate has made himself into one of our best personal essayists…he has…demonstrated his charismatic gift for self-revelation and proven that honesty is the professional essayist’s password.” Sven Birkets has said: “Phillip Lopate is one of our few essential essayists. He registers with accuracy and tact the voice of a man of deep human impulse living in a civilization on the wane. His fearlessness is tonic, his candor is straight gin.”

In addition to reading from his work, Phillip Lopate will be interviewed by his brother, Leonard Lopate.

Queens College, Music Building, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, Queens, New York 11367, phone (718) 997-4647

Sara Takes Over Blog Post

2009-03-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

(My entry begins like this:) SCHOOL ENDS IN JUNE, but Sara brought home today her first grade class picture with Miss Jill Lanzilotta (Ain't she pretty?). (Sara pushes me away from the keyboard and insists that she does the typing. So here is the rest of the post.) Sara's class used to have eighteen kids but her classmate Murtaza went to another class so it was seventeen kids but Lana, Justyna, and Anthony of course then there are twenty kids in the class room! Sara is the best reader in class! Sara is in a second grade level and she is now reading chapter books! Miss Lanzillotta said to Sara's mother that she is the only one that is reading chapter books and she is the best reader then any one!!! (Not bad, ha?)

Freebie Leads: Latin Music

2009-03-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

In this period of recession, Queens Library deserves credit for continuing to give the public a myriad of free events especially on weekends, a real privilege, if one can find the branch location and get there on time. My pick for this month: Latin music that osmoses easily into the Pinoy bloodstream, guaranteed to melt away the frost in the arteries. (If only they'd let me in with my favorite drink, too!) Expect more events as the weather gets warmer.

Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert Series: Harlem Quartet, a Sphinx Ensemble

The Harlem Quartet, an innovative and daring all-Black and Latino string quartet comprised of First-Place Laureates of the Sphinx Competition, will perform classical and jazz music by African- American and Latino composers. This event is part of the Carnegie Hall festival "HONOR!", a celebration of the African-American cultural legacy, curated by Jessye Norman.

Saturday, March 14, 2 pm, Langston Hughes Public Library, 100-01 Northern Boulevard, Corona, Queens, New York 11368, phone (718) 651-1100

Music of Colombia by Folklore Urbano

Folklore Urbano uses traditional instruments to tell the history and culture of Colombia through its music.

Saturday, March 14, 2:30 pm, Jackson Heights Public Library, 35-51 81 Street, Jackson Heights, Queens, New York 11372, phone (718) 899-2500

Saturday, March 21, 1:30 pm, Hollis Public Library, 202-05 Hillside Avenue, Hollis, Queens, New York 11423, phone (718) 465-7355

Mestizo Music of Peru featuring Inkarayku
Traditional music and songs from Peru's northern coast and North Andean highlands, Central and South Andean highlands and valleys of Peru performed with Andean and European instruments. Funded by a Special Legislative Grant.

Saturday, March 21, 2:30 pm, Jackson Heights Public Library, 35-51 81 Street, Jackson Heights, Queens, New York 11372, phone (718) 899-2500

Saturday, March 28, 2:30 pm, Hollis Public Library, 202-05 Hillside Avenue, Hollis, Queens, New York 11423, phone (718) 465-7355

Andean Pipe Music from Peru with Ethereal and Haunting Melodies of Grupo Wayno

Join us for an evening of Andean music from Peru with Grupo Wayno. Formed in 1980 by Luis Vilcherrez, the group's name is taken from a popular style of dance of the native Andean people.

(Note: The Oriental-looking members of the band, I assume, are Japanese-Peruvians. Remember Alberto Fujimori?)

Monday, March 30, 6 pm, 38-23 104 Street, Corona, Queens, New York 11368, phone (718) 426-2844

The Caregiver (Fiction)

2009-03-07T18:07:00.000-08:00

Long before Sharon Cuneta's movie, I wrote this story when I was living in California and attending San Diego State University in the nineties. It previously appeared in The Likhaan Book of Poetry and Fiction 1998 through the invitation of its fiction editor, the prizewinning writer Charlson Ong, who thought there were shades of Carlos Bulosan and Bienvenido Santos in the story. Thank you, Charlson! Credits go to Dennis Lockwood, Fritz Lederer, Zuki and Isaac Friedlander for the woodcut art.

THE DAY MY TOURIST VISA expired, I had the day off from the home care facility, took the bus going downtown and then the trolley train to H Avenue, and jogged from the station all the way to Chula Vista beach. No use feeling bad about it, I told myself. I soaked up the sun after a cold swim, and watched the seagulls dive and land on the slice of deserted beach. San Diego was beautiful even in December; the wind was low, and across the bay, the docked Navy ships reflected the sun, reminding me of Subic, my hometown in the Philippines which I had not seen for six months. It was good to breathe some fresh ocean air for a change; the air at Green Meadows reeked of disinfectant, urine, and cigarette smoke. It was also my first time to relax in two weeks; my joints ached from the heavy vacuum cleaner and from scrubbing the toilets until they were immaculately clean. My eyes also felt gritty due to lack of sleep, because I had to be constantly alert even at night. Lee, the 82-year old resident with Alzheimer’s disease had lately been opening the front door in the middle of the night, looking for his imaginary car, and last night, the alarm system went off because Kawika, the fat and diabetic Hawaiian hapa haole had tried to break into the kitchen looking for a midnight snack.

One never knew what could happen next in that house inhabited by people who had lost their sense of orientation and time, and in my two weeks of being a caregiver, I had taken on the unwritten responsibility of making these people understand the normal situation of life with which they had been out of touch, to bring them back to their original sense of the order of the universe, in order to get them back to their seat or bed. Even if I was vacuuming the heavy carpets or helping Peter out of his wheelchair onto the commode when he peed in his pants, I had to keep an eye on the other patients to see to it that everything was alright. Besides, people from the State of California or a friend or relative of a resident might drop in anytime, investigate, and report any violations to authorities, thus costing my job. My boss, Jimmy Bunao had emphasized that I was the man of the house and my job was to see to it that everything was "okay," whatever amount of work that might require. Of course, there was the lady cook Aling Emma, but she only spoke Ilocano and could hardly communicate in English, and I had resigned to the fact that her area of responsibility was limited to the kitchen and the laundry room.

If there was someone among the four male patients that somehow still exhibited some gray cells, it was Fernando, the gaunt, 85-year-old Mexican who had lost his left leg to gangrene, but he was leaving tomorrow. I wondered how life at Green Meadows would be without him; we had been friends as he was the only one that I could communicate with among the residents; he even reminded me of my deceased grandfather. I wished I could see him off at the airport in Tijuana on Monday, but I knew that if I crossed the border at San Ysidro, I would never be able to come back to America.

I found the job at Green Meadows through an employment agency in National City, where I also met its owner, a middle-aged attorney named Jaime Bunao. He was a dark, diminutive man who wore dark glasses, profuse jewelry and heavy suits even in the hottest weather. He was not really a licensed lawyer in the United States, I had learned from the receptionist, but had kept his Philippine title probably in an attempt to gain stature and respect from the Filipino community in San Diego. He ran six homes for the elderly, or "home care" facilities in the San Diego area, and he badly needed a caregiver and gardener in his all-male Rancho Penasquitos facility because his previous help, also a tourist, had found a woman to marry and moved to New York.

Green Meadows. The name sounded more like a memorial park to me, and when I visited the single-story house that sat at the end of a eucalyptus-lined cul-de-sac off Black Mountain Road, choked on the cigarette smoke inside and saw the ashtrays brimming with cigarette butts, I knew its residents would soon be heading for one.

"This place is like Tombstone, Arizona" one of the men was telling his son, visiting with his family. "It's far from everything. You have to take a fricking cab to get anywhere!"

"We know, Dad," his son whispered, sighing. He looked at his wife. "We're still looking for something better."

I moved in with a knapsack full of clothes and some personal effects in its side pocket: a toothbrush, writing materials, a shaving razor, my passport. I held on to that document like a lifeline; it was my only proof of identity, and I was proud of my roots. I bought a plastic cover for it, relishing the image of the American eagle perched on top the box containing the imprint of my visa. It was due to expire in two weeks, but deep inside I held on to the hope that something better would come my way before that day came. Who knew what lay ahead? I was only twenty-two, and maybe one day I would have an American citizen girlfriend, who would marry me and get me out of this situation. In the meantime, I had to make do with this job which was not bad for people like me who did not have working papers; it paid two hundred a week, under the table and taxless, and food and rent were free. On my first night, as I lay on the living room couch that was supposed to be my bed from then on, I thought about making money and all the possibilities that lay ahead of me in America.

After three days at Green Meadows, I learned many things about the facility, its residents, particularly Fernando, and Bunao. The first time Bunao showed up after I got hired, I witnessed a confrontation between him and Fernando, when everybody else was in front of the TV in the living room mutely watching "Jeopardy!"

"Where's my money?!!!" Fernando screamed at him as he entered the door. It was a day when the old man's thoughts suddenly got cloudy, bursting into fits of anger whenever Bunao's name would be mentioned by either Aling Emma or me. I wondered what was up between the two of them. Before I could figure it out, Bunao had flashed a carton of Doral Lights and was offering it like a box of chocolates to a child.

"Look what I brought you, amigo," he voice had the tone and melody one used when courting a child, and I knew then that he was up to something. "And look what a nice shave you’ve got! How about that?" He had a way of saying that expression that struck me as insincere, a way to mask his true emotions and suspend his opinions while he weighed the thoughts of people around him so that he could manipulate them later.

"How is Ben doing so far?"

I had spoken with Fernando several times before, and we had formed a bond between us that made his face lighten up when asked about me. I was helping Aling Emma put away in the kitchen the food items that Bunao had brought in, but I watched them out of the corner of my eye.

Delighted, Fernando took the carton of cigarettes and sat on his love seat, fumbling with a pack. Bunao took a lighter from his pocket and bent down to light the cigarette in the old man's quivering mouth. Fernando took a deep puff. Seeing the man had relaxed, Bunao began explaining. "You know I have been buying you so much stuff," he said, throwing a glance at us. I looked away. Then he began to talk in whispers. To avoid being accused of being nosy, I tried to get busy and went back to work, dividing the bulk of meat into one-day portions and indicating with a marker the date of the day on each pack before stuffing them into the freezer.

Then Bunao got up and said, "That's my man. How about that? He looked like he had succeeded in pacifying his irate resident. Then he turned to us to give a litany of instructions. Lock up all the knives and the refrigerator at night. Milk should be served only with cereals at breakfast, and had to be diluted with water. Ground coffee should be brewed at least a second time before being thrown away. Rubber gloves should never be used except when cleaning the commodes. Or use those plastic grocery shopping bags instead. Use your ingenuity; be creative; improvise. Everything is expensive these days. "Let them clean their own behinds, if you don't want to," he said, pretending to be compassionate to his staff. "These guys are smarter than you think!"

Then it dawned on me that all those food packed in the freezer, all those weekly schedules of well-balanced menus on the kitchen wall, all those snapshots of smiling patients in a wholesome game of bingo tacked onto a cork bulletin board, were only there for show. The patients at Green Meadows were really nothing but nicotine-fed amnesiacs with nothing to live for, and Bunao was contributing to their decay. Was this the fate that awaited me when I grew old in America? I asked myself. I did not want to know the answer.

Before going, Bunao capped his lecture with a grand pronouncement: "We Filipinos make the best caregivers because we know how to love our elderly," he said, chuckling. "How about that?" I was glad when he was finally gone. Locking the door behind him, I could hear Fernando mumble, "Cabron."

Work at Green Meadows seemed to get lighter on my second week, as I learned to amuse myself by the strange habits of the residents when work seemed overpowering. Lee, the Texan cop for instance, would put on a smelly Stetson hat after his morning bath and only take it off at bedtime. Peter, the 70-year-old former police officer from New Jersey would never step into the shower or do anything you told him to do unless you addressed him as "sir." Kawika would lock himself up in his room and only come out to get his hourly cup of coffee. Fernando seemed to be more concerned with the outside world; he was always up early to be the one to take the rubber band off and open the San Diego Union-Tribune. He would sit on the patio chair after breakfast, smoking and leafing through the pictures and the cartoon section. I admired his presence of mind at his age. Maybe if it was not because of his troubled leg, he would be in a retirement home with real social activities and interaction.

"You Filipinos can sure kill cops," he was kidding, looking at the bold headline of the Union-Tribune one day. I was picking up cigarette butts that the other residents had tossed between the bushes. A hummingbird fluttered among the hibiscus shrubs. "This fellow is the third," he said, lighting a cigarette. "I remember about the first two, back in '86, right in Balboa Park." He puffed on his cigarette."One's a Navy guy, but he was into drugs or somethin'. Did you hear about it?"

I told him I wasn't in America then.

"The other guy's his uncle or somethin'. He was the one who fired the shots. Boy, did he get the poor fellow." He adjusted his thick glasses. "He was really just a rookie, you know. Wife and two kids. Boy, was the Filipino community in a flak then."

"That's a shame," I told him.

"When the Navy one saw the rest of 'em, he freaked out. Shot himself in the head. Then the uncle shot himself, too. At least that's what they said in the papers." He took a last puff of his cigarette then snuffed it out in the ashtray. "Why do you think those guys do that? I mean kill those cops? Why can't they just go to jail, let 'em cops do their jobs?"

I told him that maybe for some people, Filipino or otherwise, killing a cop was the ultimate thrill. Or maybe that those guys just couldn't bear the thought of being in a jail in America, that some Filipinos would rather kill themselves than face shame from their families, especially those left behind in the Philippines. He shook his head in disbelief. I turned the sprinkler system on, and the water burst with a hiss. The hummingbird darted away. Having engaged him in conversation thus, I felt bold enough to broach the subject on the money.

"El cabron. Bastard." His voice began to shake. He lit another cigarette, his hands trembling. "Five thousand dollars. That's about how much he owes me." Then he told me his story.

It seemed that his Railroad Retirement and Social Security checks went directly to Bunao's business account through a legal document that he had made Fernando sign when he was very ill years before, claiming that the old man was incapable of managing his finances because of his physical problems. Since he had no next-of-kin, he needed Bunao as an administrator to cash his checks for him and manage his finances. Green Meadows would do the job and give him the remainder of his money after the monthly rent was paid. Adept at executing legal paperwork, Bunao prepared the documents without a problem.

At least during the first year, Fernando was satisfied with the arrangement. The cash came punctually in an envelope at the second of each month. Then it would be one, two, three weeks late depending on when Bunao wished to give it to him, using the cash in the meantime to supplement his capital. These last six months, he had not received anything at all.

Incredible, I thought, thinking that from the monthly payment of six hundred dollars alone that Fernando was making, Bunao could easily make a profit. The old man had no taste for fancy food and had gotten so skinny eating Top Ramen noodle soup which he preferred over anything else. Sure, Bunao brought him cigarettes, but they were of the generic brand and I was sure that he got them for a pinch at the commissary where his daughter, married to a Navy serviceman, worked. He bought him clothes, all right, but they looked like they had been picked up from Goodwill or Salvation Army. The leech was getting fat on this poor man's blood, I thought, and I wondered who else among the senile, befuddled residents were in the same situation.

Friday morning on my second week, Fernando came in with the mail. He had a letter. It was mailed from a place called Tuxtla Gutierrez in Mexico. Fernando's hands trembled as he opened it. The writer had poor handwriting, in Spanish.

"Read it to me, por favor," he said nervously. I had a few credits of Spanish in college although I never really spoke it fluently, but my reading skill was impeccable. A mi abuelito estimado, the letter began. I read each word clearly, picking up a few words that I understood, like "hija de Clemente, su nieta, papa esta enfermo, antes de la muerte." When I read the complimentary close, he caught me. "Isabelita," he said. There were tears in his eyes. His granddaughter, it seemed, had been trying to track him down for years. Through his Social Security number, which her father had given her, she had found his whereabouts from the State's Social Services information system. Now her father, Fernando's son, had been ill with liver cancer for years. She, the housewife of a miner in the province of Chiapas in Southern Mexico, would like them to be reunited, but she had spent all of the family savings on expensive long distance calls to San Diego. Could he come for Christmas before her father passed away?

It was the first time that I had seen Fernando with so much energy. He walked around the house on his crutches like a child on walking stilts, gliding through the hallway into his room without leaving a wake of toppled objects. He came out clutching a yellowed business card. "Please call this number for me, " he said. It was that of a travel agency, perhaps the same one that he had used many years before. "They can book me a no transfer flight from Tijuana. It'll also be cheaper that way," he said, proud of being very practical. I knew then that it would be cheaper for him to get a domestic Mexican flight from the border town than an international one from San Diego, and that he did not want to transfer planes because of his leg. In ten minutes, I had him on Aeromexico Flight 333 for Tuxtla that would leave Tijuana at eight in the morning on Monday, with a forty-five minute layover in Mexico City. "Muchisimas gracias, Benito," he was brimming with gratitude. When he came out of his room for dinner, he handed me a triangular brass medallion, the same kind with Latin inscriptions that I used to see being sold by old women outside Quiapo church in Manila. "It's a charm made by Indians in Calexico, " he said. "Will protect you from everything, including bullets. But don't be a cop-killer," he joked at the table. We burst into laughter.

When Bunao came in that evening, he had me haul boxes of Christmas decorations from the trunk of his Mercedes. "You will be off tomorrow, and I want you to do this before you go," he said. I was expecting a big confrontation, but Fernando was in good spirits. "Ay, salamat at walang bagyo. Thank goodness the storm has passed,” Bunao said, winking at me. "How about that?" I tried to untangle the old Christmas lights and put the tree together, nervous about how Bunao was going to take the news. When I was done, Fernando handed Bunao the letter. I went into the kitchen.

"My granddaughter," he said. "Please, I need my money." Bunao remained quiet as Fernando told him everything, including all the details about his son's cancer. I was amazed by the sharpness of his memory.

When he was done, Bunao chuckled. "A family reunion! How about that?"

"I want to leave on Monday. Ben has booked my flight," Fernando said. I expected Bunao to get me for doing that, but he did not seem to mind the fact or realize that I had actually abetted a resident of his who was trying to get away.

"Of course, Fernando. Of course. What do you think of us? Bad people? You shall leave on Monday. I'll pick up your ticket tomorrow. What airline did you say it was? Aeromexico? I'll bring you your ticket on Sunday!" He took out a notepad from the breast pocket of his suit and hastily jotted something down, ending his entry with a forceful period. "There!" he said. "Everything is taken care of! But first we'll have a little despedida dinner party on Sunday. My girlfriend Vangie will come, with the money, of course. She's really the boss, you know. Then on Monday, we'll drive you to Tijuana. How about that?" I could not believe what I was hearing; Bunao sounded serious, and even Fernando could not say a word.

Then Bunao made instructions, loud enough for the rest of the patients to hear, for Aling Emma to bake a cake and make pozole and carnitas for Fernando on Sunday, and for me to help him pack. Then he changed his mind. "Let Ray, the reliever do that. It's Ben's day off tomorrow, I almost forgot," he told everyone. "He deserves a rest, too, don't you think?" Then he fished out a wad of twenties from his pocket and gave it to me with a flourish. "Four hundred dollars for a job well done," he said. "How about that?" Everything was so incredible, and I was dumbfounded. When he was gone, I felt sorry for thinking about Bunao the way I did. Maybe the Christmas spirit was getting into him, I thought. Maybe he wasn't an evil man after all.

That night, I took the razor out of my knapsack under the couch bed, took a hot shower, and shaved. I was feeling good, for some reason. Then I wrote a letter to my father. Dear Tatay. My visa is expiring tomorrow, but I have found a good job here. Tomorrow I will have the day off, and I shall send you and Inay something for Christmas. Don't worry about me here. Everything will be fine. I threw a glance at Fernando who was reclining on his love seat in a corner, smoking. The Christmas lights were dancing on his eyeglasses.

THE WIND WAS HIGH WHEN I GOT BACK to Green Meadows at six o'clock that evening. Heavy rain was imminent, and the eucalyptus trees sent a mess of dry leaves to the streets below. Dinner was almost over, and Ray was relieved and ready to go, with all his stuff packed. "Man, what bunch of old farts you got here. Glad you came earlier. Can't stand another hour in this dunghole," he said, grabbing his backpack. "Thank God I didn't have to bathe these droolies. My girl says she can smell the stink over the phone!" A car honked outside, and he ran for the door. "Don't forget their pills!" He winked at me and was gone in a flash.

I asked Aling Emma about Bunao, and she told me that he had called to say he and his girlfriend would be late. "Attending Dagupenos Christmas party," she said.

I made sure that each patient took his nighttime medication which Ray had prepared in little Vicks Nyquil plastic cups labeled with names. Fernando, dressed in his best, gulped his pills down gallantly, then headed on his crutches for the love seat, where he stayed unusually quiet. It was ten o'clock, and Bunao had not yet arrived.

It must have been the heavy rain outside, or the fatigue, or both, that brought me down on the couch as soon as I had put the patients to bed. Fernando was still on the love seat, waiting for Bunao. It was almost eleven o'clock. Aling Emma had finished doing the dishes. She turned the television on to The Filipino Channel and began watching "Marimar." "Pasensiya na, Ading," she said, apologizing for the noise the television set made while I slept. I said that's okay, Ma'am, I don't mind, go ahead, but please wake me up when Bunao comes. The rain on the roof and the show's Tagalog conversation brought me back to Subic and lulled me to sleep.

When I woke up from a scream, I thought the soap opera was still on. It came from Aling Emma.
"Oh, my God! Jesusmariosep! Dios ko! Ayy!" It was the first time I heard her sob, and it was the most horrifying sound in the world.

I turned the lights on, and couldn't believe what I saw. Fernando had killed himself, slashing his scrawny throat where the carotid artery entered his jaw. A pool of blood drenched the love seat and the carpet below. On the floor, beneath his limp hand, lay my shaving razor, red on the edge.
I froze. Panic did not come to me as I was too dazed to respond. I did not know how I dialled 911, giving lifeless answers to questions I did not even remember. I did not know how I got Bunao on the phone, telling him what had happened.

"You stupid son of a bitch!" his voice was raspy, indicating that he had been roused from deep sleep. "Didn't I tell you to lock up all knives? Look what you've done!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing, being blamed for the whole thing. Furious, I told him that I knew everything about the money that he owed Fernando and about his delaying tactics in repaying him. I told him that he drove Fernando to suicide because he denied him his only hope in life that was to be reunited with his family. I told him that I was going to tell the cops everything.

"Oh yeah?" he said sarcastically. "And do you think they're going to listen to you? Without you first telling them who you are? Well, let me tell you this, hijo. The moment you open your mouth, you will be on the next plane to Manila!" I felt the blood rise in my brain, and I if he was only there, I would have bashed his face with the receiver. "Go!" he yelled, the word reverberating in my brain. "Go, before I get questioned about hiring an illegal alien! Go, before I myself deport you! Putang ina mo!" he cursed in Tagalog and banged the phone down. I ran heedless around the house, confused and not knowing what to do.

The other patients had been awakened and gathered around the dead man, staring stupidly. I took one long last look at Fernando. "Go, son," I wanted to hear him say. "No te preocupes por mi." The Christmas lights still danced on his eyeglasses, but this time it was a dance mocking me, my dreams, my life in America. From afar, against the torrent of the rain, the sirens of the coming ambulance and police cars wailed. Aling Emma had passed out, a lump on the carpet.

I grabbed my knapsack and ran through the back door, jumping over the wooden fence and into the canyon beyond. I was trembling, tears mingling with rainwater. I bumped against prickly yuccas in the dark and slid down the muddy chaparral, falling face down in the mud. I did not care, loathing myself for deserting Fernando, for taking his story with me in order to save my skin. I bled from the thorns and bushes that scraped me as I tried to get to the other side of the canyon, but I ran on, clambering arms and legs up the swaying manzanitas until my pants ripped at the crotch. Finally, I reached the street. In a Mexican restaurant down the road, a band was playing mariachis, the trumpets blaring loud and clear. I opened my knapsack to put dry clothes on, but they were all wet. My passport fell out. The stamp of the American visa had been blotted out of its page and the red ink stained my photograph like blood. I looked at it, stupefied for a moment, then flung it to the black canyon beyond. Clutching Fernando's charm, I ran for cover from the cold, wet night.

Cynthia Ozick at Queens College

2009-03-05T08:10:00.000-08:00

From the Queens College Evening Readings website:

Date: Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Time: 7 pm
Admission: $15, free with CUNY student ID

Cynthia Ozick is the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of many works of fiction, including The Messiah of Stockholm, The Shawl, The Puttermesser Papers, Heir to the Glimmering World and most recently, Dictation, as well as several volumes of nonfiction, including Quarrel and Quandary, Art and Ardor and The Din in the Head. The New Republic has said: “[Ozick’s] language alone…long ago earned her a position among the very first rank of American writers.” The New York Times has said: “[Ozick] has magical gifts as a storyteller, [as well as] a distinctive and utterly original voice. She possesses an ability to mix up the surreal and the realistic, juxtapose Kafkaesque abstractions with Waugh-like comedy…The result is a fiction that has the power to delight us—and make us think.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has said: “Ozick has earned a place in modern literature beside her own heroes: Franz Kafka, Bruno Shulz and Bernard Malamud…[she is] one of the finest and most imaginative writers of our time.”

In addition to reading from her work, Ms. Ozick will be interviewed by Leonard Lopate.

Queens College, Music Building, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, Queens, New York 11367, phone (718) 997-4647

Chillin' in the Neighborhood Library

2009-02-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

AN IMPORTANT ITEM ON OUR Friday to-do list after we pick up Sara from school and get our groceries (I don't work Fridays, and so doesn't Mom, most of the time) is to stop by our neighborhood library to borrow our Saturday night movie. A title rented from Blockbuster or bought through the remote from Direct TV would cost at least $5, so we get to save a few bucks as long as we remember to return it by Monday afternoon. We park on CVS Pharmacy's rear lot next to the library staff's, enter the drugstore through its back door and buy a few sundries, then slip out the front door to our intended destination.

The Maspeth branch of Queens Library is well-lighted and roomy; it has a lounge, ten workstations with an automated sign-up terminal (just scan your library card), free Wi-Fi access, and a genuinely friendly staff. It also has automated circulation machines for self-serve check outs and renewals, and a slot where materials to be returned, including CDs and DVDs, can be dropped even if the library is closed. While I check out the DVDs (which usually takes a lot of time), Sara and Mom browse the children's section for weekend homework or project resources, choose her movie, or simply take a break from schoolwork by feasting on materials that feature her favorite stars the Jonas Brothers or Selena Gomez (she outgrew Miley Cyrus).

Indeed, a public library is a great place to go if you want self-enrichment or entertainment without spending money; it is safe, quiet, fully air-conditioned in the summer, and offers many free events and programs like ESL and computer classes, literary readings, job search workshops and even cultural presentations with free food. When we were still living in an apartment in Elmhurst and I was studying and working evenings in the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College, I used to spend most of the day in the Elmhurst branch while babysitting Sara. We never had to hire a nanny all those years before my in-laws arrived. A little after Mom had left for work, I would load her stroller with grapes, diced apples and Ritz crackers packed in Ziploc bags, milk and juice, then head out and hit the local library.

Now threatened to be demolished to make way for a larger library, the Elmhurst branch is one of 1,700 edifices originally built and financed by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie when he founded public libraries all across America from 1900 to 1917. Here, I got to see the everyday routine, probably representative of other branch libraries in the city. Before it opened at 9 am, there would already be a long line of people waiting to use the computers, as the library had only about ten of them. Once a staffer unlocked the doors, the stampede generally headed for the computer sign-up desk or the section with daily newspapers. The patrons were mostly recent Chinese immigrants, who read Sing Tao or World Journal newspapers in Chinese. Around ten o'clock, strollers filled the children's section as parents brought their toddlers to storybook hour, doing coloring books as they waited for the children's librarian to get ready (sometimes she had to put on make-up and a hat or some costume). Here, Sara had a great time as a toddler listening to children's stories being read aloud, and doing Ring Around The Rosie and The Hokey Pokey Song with other kids, a social interaction that was impossible to get if we spent the day cooped up inside our apartment watching PBS TV. Around three o'clock, when school was dismissed, the library was invaded by rowdy teenagers who checked their email and MySpace accounts. Occasionally, a person who had not taken a bath for ages and was chased by flies wandered in, spoiling everybody's pleasant library experience. (Incidentally, the first public libraries, though not lending libraries, were collections of Greek and Latin scrolls which were available to bathers in the dry sections of the huge Roman empire baths. Maybe people who need a bath and libraries go together?) Seriously, library staff cannot turn away people like this, at least during business hours, because a public library should be open to everyone by law. When this happens, it a sign for us to hit the playground instead.

Speaking of laws, in his fifth law of library science, Indian librarian S. R. Ranganathan said that a library is dependent on life and change and must be dynamic, like an organism that evolves according to its environment. Without the human and organizational changes that occur, the library would not be able to function properly or meet its purpose. This is the reason why, in answer to the recent sharp rise of immigrants in the borough of Queens' population, Queens Library has revised its collection development policies to add more print and non-print materials in the native language of the people residing in the communities its branches serve. For example, the Maspeth branch collection now contains materials in Polish, Greek, Italian and Spanish, while the one in Elmhurst (a more diverse community) has materials in Chinese, Bengali, Urdu, Gujarati and even Tagalog (a Carlos Bulosan Heritage Center was launched here by Philippine Forum). Initially, this decision struck me as a disservice to the immigrants in the community, who should instead put effort to learn the language of their adopted country for quicker integration, but I understood the principle behind it eventually.

In the Philippines, public libraries are a rare sight. When I was a school grader in the 60's, our town of Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro was lucky to have a single-room library (called municipal library) in a squat building on Leuterio Drive where I lived, next to the municipal hall. It was open three afternoons a week and was staffed by a clean-cut civil servant named Mr. Baldoza who performed other duties in the municipal office on other days. I would stop by this library after school and be awed by the sheer amount of books shelved from floor to ceiling, while the librarian thumbed through boxes of skewered index cards, the good old card catalog long before OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) was invented. From this library, I borrowed books like Dr. Seuss' The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (books with numbers in titles fascinated me), and a curious Filipiniana book entitled The Aswang Syncrasy in Philippine Folklore by Maximo Ramos, which my cousins and I read with much gusto at bedtime.

According to Prudenciana C. Cruz, director of the National Library of the Philippines, the total number of public libraries in the country was 949 seven years ago (I don't think the number has increased since then), distributed into the following categories: 1 regional library, 1 congressional library, 49 provincial libraries, 79 city libraries, 507 municipal libraries, and 312 barangay libraries. These figures show that the case of municipal libraries is dismal. At present, there are about 1,509 municipalities all over the country, but only 507 have their own libraries, or a little less than 33%. Maybe the internet provides the information gap in these areas, but considering the technological divide between the Filipino haves and have-nots, I think only a very small percentage of rural Filipinos are able to afford to visit an internet cafe in the nearest town to get to the information highway, much less afford his own computer with internet service. Quezon City Public Library, the Philippines' largest public library, serves nearly 22 percent or 2.173 million residents of Metro Manila’s total population of 9.932 million, according to a 2000 census. Although they have 19 branches, that's a lot of people to serve for a city library.

If you want to donate books to libraries in the Philippines, here is one website. For an interesting read, get a hold of Advice on Establishing a Library by Gabriel Naude, a seventeenth century Frenchman who wrote this influential book on library science.

Pictures: Maspeth Public Library (above), Quezon City Public Library, Philippines (middle) and two year-old Sara (the pink-sleeved girl clapping on a chair) during a storybook hour in the Elmhurst Branch, and our public library certificates (bottom)

Maspeth Public Library, 69-70 Grand Avenue, Maspeth, Queens, New York, phone (718) 639-5228

How Fiction Works: A Roundtable at Lefrak Concert Hall

2009-02-19T07:13:00.000-08:00

LISA FLANZRAICH, MEDIA LIBRARIAN at Benjamin Rosenthal Library, shared her work with me over the weekend, and it's great to know that there is another writer among the library staff other than yours truly and my boss, Systems Librarian Arthur Ben Chitty. Other things literary going on at the Queens College campus, from its Evening Readings website:

A Roundtable on How Fiction Works with Peter Carey, E. L. Doctorow and James Wood

Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Time: 7 pm-9 pm
Admission: $20, free with CUNY student ID

Peter Carey is one of only two writers to win the Booker Prize twice. He is the author of many novels, including Oscar and Lucinda, Illywhacker, Jack Maggs, True History of the Kelly Gang, My Life as a Fake, Theft: A Love Story, and His Illegal Self. The Boston Globe has said: “No other Australian writer in our time has succeeded as well as Peter Carey in writing novels that compel the attention of a worldwide audience. His work…occupies a high plane of literary brilliance.” The New Yorker has said of the work of Mr. Carey: “The ingenuity, empathy, and poetic ear that the novelist brings to his feat of imposture cannot be rated too highly.” The Los Angeles Times Book Review has said: “We have a great novelist living on the planet with us, and his name is Peter Carey.”

E. L. Doctorow is the National Book Award-winning author of many novels, including The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Billy Bathgate, World’s Fair, and The March. The New York Times Book Review has said: “E.L. Doctorow is an astonishing novelist—astonishing not only in the virtuosity with which he displays his mimetic and linguistic skills, but also in the fact that it is impossible to predict even roughly the shape, scope and tone of one his novels from its predecessors.” The New York Times has described Mr. Doctorow as being among “the first rank of contemporary novelists.”

James Wood is a book critic at The New Yorker, and the author of The Broken Estate, The Irresponsible Self, and, most recently, How Fiction Works. Cynthia Ozick has said of Mr. Wood: “He is our best critic; he thinks with a sublime ferocity. One can…be swept away by his exactitude, his penetration, the remarkable range of his reading, the unsurpassable (and sometimes unsettling) force of his autonomous prose; above all, by his stringent originality.” Janet Malcolm has described Mr. Wood as a critic “who reads more perspicaciously and writes more incisively than almost anyone producing criticism today.” The New York Review of Books has described Mr. Wood as “perhaps the strongest, and strangest, literary critic we have.”

The Roundtable with Peter Carey, E.L. Doctorow and James Wood will be moderated by Leonard Lopate.

The Queens College Evening Readings Series, begun in 1976, has grown in popularity over the years, a success owed to Joseph Cuomo, founder of the series, who consistently attracts the world’s foremost literary talent to the campus. “I read an awful lot,” Cuomo explained, “and when a writer connects with me, and I see how important his or her books are, I then reach out. We’ve had most of the Nobel Laureates here, many of whom gave readings before they had even won the prize.”

Queens College Evening Readings is made possible by support from the Office of the President of Queens College, the Office of the Provost, and the Office of the Dean of the Arts and Humanities. Other sponsors include the Student Association, the University Student Senate, the Committee for Disabled Students, Poets & Writers, Inc. and The New York Times Foundation.

Queens College, Music Building, Lefrak Concert Hall, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, Queens, New York 11367, phone (718) 997-4647

Forty Niner and His Daughter

2009-02-18T21:19:00.000-08:00

BUT HER SHOES are #7. I just thought I should take advantage of this ditty to mark my forty-ninth year to heaven. Mom took this picture by the River Seine a few years ago.

Viva Villa!

2009-02-17T15:49:00.000-08:00

A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE and work of the late, critically acclaimed Filipino poet Jose Garcia Villa. Poet and editor of Doveglion: Collected Poems (Penguin Classics' reissue of Villa's collected works) John Cowen, poet and author of the introduction Luis Francia, and poets Sarah Gambito and Ron Villanueva will be reading from the book.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 7 pm; $5 suggested donation; open to the public

Asian-American Writers' Workshop, 16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor, New York, New York 10001, phone (212) 494-0061

Blood, Hearts and Flowers

2009-02-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

WALKING BY THE FRONT YARD of a former neighbor in Elmhurst a couple of years ago, I came across a flowering vine that struck me as a near clone of the Philippine coral vine, known back home as the romantic cadena de amor (chain of love), a plant that used to thrive on the drab concrete fence of my childhood home on the island of Mindoro. After making sure that no one was looking, I picked some mature pods from the vine straying on the sidewalk and soaked the seeds in water when I got home, thinking my wife would love a potted plant of this specimen beside her sampaguita on the kitchen counter. However, autumn came and went and the seeds never sprouted. (Maybe I soaked them too long or the seeds were not fertile, but I certainly do have a green thumb.) So, instead of going back to the street and being caught vandalizing a garden, I spent time the following weeks browsing pictures in a spring plant catalog, swearing that no matter what, I was going to find out what that vine was. And last year, I did. Its scientific name is Lathyrus latifolius (common name perennial sweet pea), a favorite specimen in English gardens that is believed to have been introduced to the United States during the colonial period. It also comes in shades of red, white, purple and blue. Impatient with seeds, I ordered a couple of potted seedlings online from Gurney's and they arrived via UPS wonderfully packed, just in time for last year's fall planting. (The best time to plant in temperate zones is late fall or early spring.) I planted them in a spot by our doorsteps to give their tendrils the iron rails to grab on when they grow. Lathyrus can also be quite prolific and invasive if unchecked, and the seeds inside the fruit pods are slightly poisonous, so everybody had to be warned. However, the best thing about it is that it doesn't have to be taken indoors and placed next to the thermostat in the winter, as it is a frost-hardy perennial plant that comes back year after year. I can't wait for spring to see this near twin of cadena de amor (I call it cadena de America) come to life and bloom in the summer.

One way to beat the cold this winter season is to eat a lot of spicy food, and speaking of spicy Filipino food, what else can be hotter than our Mindoreno version of kare kare, which is totally different from the popular oxtail-and-peanut sauce stew known to the rest of the country. Ours is actually a variation of pork blood stew (dinuguan), but the meat and internal organs are finely chopped (like bopiz), and it uses banana hearts and tons of red hot peppers, chopped as fine as the cabbage in coleslaw, and coconut milk. Also, the finished product is dry and oily and not soupy like dinuguan. In my childhood, the sound of a cleaver knife rapping on the butcher's block as my mother chopped away the meat, banana hearts and chili peppers into minute pieces was a happy noise that gave our house a festive atmosphere. But because of all the chopping the kare kare required, we usually bought ours instead from an old lady who came by a coconut wine cantina down our street every dusk, balancing an aluminum pot on a turban around her head to sell her spicy viand to local tipplers as pulutan (hors d'oeuvre or pupu).

In New York City, fresh banana hearts can be quite rare and expensive (canned ones are just too soggy), and we get ours from New York Supermarket in Elmhurst which has a great Oriental produce section, with tropical fruits and vegetables that I believe have been imported from Thailand or Mexico. (This is also where we get green papayas for our tinola, and mangoes.) Banana hearts are like artichokes; you must peel away and discard about 2/3 of the product you paid for as weight before you can get to the edible part. So, for this dish, you may spend around $10 on banana hearts alone because you will need at least three of them, considering the portion that will be thrown away. In the supermarket, you can also buy pork blood in a sealed plastic cup, chitterlings and other internal organs for the dish, but the Chinese butchers will give you a funny look if you ask them to grind the innards for you (they only do the flesh), so be prepared to do the job yourself. Unless you have your own meat grinder or food processor, you certainly don't want to do this manually with a cleaver knife and chopping board, especially if someone in your house is nursing a hangover or if your apartment is not sound-proofed for fussy neighbors.

To make kare kare Mindoro style: In a deep pan or pot, saute garlic until brown and onion until wilted in hot oil. Add the ground meat and internal organs, season with salt and pepper, and cover until it boils. Meanwhile, mash with your hands the finely chopped banana hearts with some salt in a colander, and squeeze the sap out. (Not doing so will give the kare kare a mapakla aftertaste from the juice of the tiny immature fruits.) Add the resulting banana heart pulp and a can of coconut milk to the pot and bring to a boil without the lid on. Then cover and simmer until everything is tender. (You may have to add water before you achieve this, because there is a lot of cellulose in the pulp.) Add the pork blood mixed with vinegar, stirring nonstop to prevent the blood from coagulating until the mixture boils again. Add the chopped hot peppers last (the amount depends on your tastebuds' stamina, but I like to put about one fourth of a cup) and reseason. Simmer until all the water evaporates and the deep brown dish glistens from the oil rendered by the meat and coconut milk, exuding a slightly acidic, coconutty aroma. Serve with freshly steamed rice or as an appetizer or pulutan, but always have a glass of water handy. A spoonful of it is guaranteed to wake up the most drunken toper. Cheers!

I wish to thank Big Berto for the image closest to that of Mindoro kare kare that I found in his blog and borrowed. Happy Valentine to all, especially to my better half and Sara.

New York Supermarket, 82-66 Broadway, Elmhurst, Queens, New York 11373, phone (718) 803-1233

Bayanihan's First Birthday

2009-02-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

TODAY MARKS THE FIRST anniversary of the Bayanihan Filipino Community Center in Woodside, Queens near the 69th Street station of the 7 train. A project of the Philippine Forum (a community service organization founded ten years ago whose office had moved around different locations in New York City before settling down in Manilatown), BFCC is located around the corner of Krystal's Cafe where my wife buys our pan de sal, and its present location certainly helps bring in a lot of traffic. According to executive directors Robert Roy and Julia Camagong, the center is the new home of Filipinos in New York City, offering activities from weekend line-dancing classes to computer classes, as well as a banquet room available to rent for parties and group functions. The center is also the hub of activity for a number of other Filipino organizations and projects, including the domestic workers support group known as Kabalikat, the Filipino-American youth alliance Sandiwa, and another project known as YEHEY (Young Educators for the Health and Empowerment of the Youth) , which is sponsored by the Ford Foundation and meets here every Friday to conduct health education for the Filipino youth.

"Bayanihan Center will bring in a lot more foot traffic than our previous locations, simply because now we are in the heart of the community, when before we were in the periphery," Roy stated in last year's opening. Roy and Camagong have since turned the nonprofit organization to a full fledged protector of the rights and welfare of the Filipino immigrant community, beginning with the case of escaped Filipina domestic worker Elma Manliguez in Queens, who had been locked up and enslaved for two years by her employers, to the successful fight for the repatriation fees of alleged suicide victim Fely Garcia of the Bronx, to the campaign for justice of the Sentosa 27 nurses who were victimized by illegal recruiters based in Manila. Truly, the Philippine Forum offices have seen the stories of pain and suffering of Filipino immigrant workers through the years, among others. Since its opening, the center had been host to speakers like Edith Burgos, the mother of missing agriculturalist Jonas Burgos (believed to be abducted and tortured by the Philippine military because of his activism organizing peasants and farmers to fight for their rights) and leaders of the Pinay feminist group Gabriela. Bayanihan is a Tagalog word that means the spirit of working together for the common good of the community.

Above is the entrance to the community center, below are sights in the 69th Street-Roosevelt Avenue area: standby Hispanic day laborers (exploited and paid way below the minimum wage, they can use a community center of their own) waiting for their luck to be picked up by contractors or movers, and Johnny Air Cargo and Krystal's Cafe (BFCC is a short walk straight ahead on the sidewalk past the traffic cones).

Bayanihan Filipino Community Center, 40-21 69th Street, Woodside, Queens, New York 11373, phone unavailable, email philforum96@yahoo.com for space rentals.

Living High on the Hog

2009-02-05T20:34:00.000-08:00

REPORTED WAY BACK IN 2005 to be renting a 2-bedroom apartment in the Trump World Tower in Manhattan for $10,000 (that's half a million pesos) a month, Cecilia Rebong, consul general of the Philippine Consulate on Fifth Avenue, had defiantly justified her choice of living situation in The Filipino Reporter despite protests by Filipinos both in America and the homeland who cried that it was a wasteful use of taxpayer money which should be used instead to uplift the lives of the 90% of Filipinos at home in poverty. But coming to her defense was another public servant, Foreign Affairs undersecretary Franklin Ebdalin who said that the amount that the Philippine government pays in New York is comparable to rentals spent by other Pinoy diplomats (a shocking discovery) in Los Angeles which is $10,500 a month, Berlin ($11,000), Paris ($11,000), Rome ($10,000), Seoul ($10,000) and Vienna ($10,000). According to him, "New York is an expensive city, and considering the stature of our consul general, also in the light of security problems, we thought we’ll give her a place where she could represent the country well and which is also safe." So there. It seems that diplomats deserve this luxurious lifestyle in order to be able to represent the country well. Para maganda ang dating.

To my disappointment, the uproar had settled down somewhat since that initial discovery, and I wonder if anything had been done to stop this unforgiveable crime committed by our diplomats. For sure, the consulate's services do not seem to benefit from the Philippine government's high budget. Last year, I accompanied my father-in-law to renew his Philippine passport at the consulate and found out that the only copying machine available to the public in the building had been busted for days, according to kabayans (it also charged .25c a copy), and I had to leave the 72-year-old by himself waiting in line on the third floor to make copies of his green card and other papers at Staples about three blocks away, because we did not want to lose our spot. It seems that service to its constituents (like helping to repatriate sick or deceased penniless Filipinos) is not the first priority of the agency; rather, it is to attract foreign investors and tourists to the Philippines for the moolah (as she so emphasized in an interview with Awee Abayari of Radio Manila), the major goal of all Philippine posts abroad.

Above is a picture of the consulate and below are pictures of the Trump World Tower (flanked by the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings) and the consul general in an Imelda terno. Don't they just look the same?

Consulate General of the Philippines, 556 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10036, phone (212) 764-1330

Noodle Soup Row in Flushing Mall

2009-01-26T15:11:00.000-08:00

WE JUMPED INTO THE FREEZING Toyota Highlander after church last Sunday to see what's going on for Chinese New Year in Flushing Mall. (Many people call Flushing in Queens New York's real Chinatown, not the one in the Canal Street area of Manhattan.) The mall is old and dingy; my wife said it reminded her of Divisoria with its cheap garments and trinkets, but its basement has a food court that is occupied by thirteen-or-so noodle soup stalls that offer Sichuan, Korean, Taiwanese and many other variations of this cheap winter fare for $5.50 or less. One chef makes hand-drawn noodles right in front of the customers, who are mostly "just-off-the-boat" Chinese. Indeed, one gets the feeling that he is on a Shanghai or Taipei sidestreet. Some stalls do not even bother to translate their posted menus into English, befuddling even my wife who is half-Chinese and speaks a little Fookien. Thank goodness for the pictures. I settled for the familiar spicy stewed beef with sinewy tendons like Chow King's beef mami, with parboiled bok choy. My wife, the more adventurous one, had fish noodle soup Korean (or was it Japanese?) style, which turned out to be a discovery. (The fish strips are deep-fried in batter like tempura, and the thick spicy broth had the consistency of bird's nest soup with tinapa flavor. Add chopped cilantro leaves to that as garnish and you can imagine the taste.) From our table, we watched the celebration in the adjoining atrium, with amateur Chinese musicians, dancers, magicians and acrobats. The whole thing was a good bang for the buck; we spent about $15 (pickled ox tripe and tongue extra for some uric acid) and went home happy and warm, ready to face the day's challenges.

Here are pictures of the joint and Sara with the ox. Although she is one quarter Chinese, the pose struck us as oddly blasphemous because we just got out of a Catholic church, but we reminded ourselves that this was not Aaron's biblical golden calf. Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Flushing Mall Food Court, 133-31 39th Avenue, Flushing, Queens, New York 11354, (718) 762-9000

Husband-and-Wife Cuisine, Haute and Otherwise

2009-01-02T17:08:00.000-08:00

PINOY FOOD IS A HARD SELL to American palates, so when Cendrillon, a Filipino restaurant opened in trendy SoHo and got rave reviews from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, I had to see, and taste, for myself. It may have been a timely decision; the restaurant is going to close in April and will reopen in Brooklyn as Purple Yam because, according to its owners, the new location will be closer to where they live. So, although I am no food (much less haute cuisine) critic, I boldly took the R train to Prince Street in Manhattan to see what's going on. Owned by husband-and-wife Romy and Amy Dorotan of Manila, the restaurant (Cendrillon is the title of a Massenet opera; their choice of name puzzles me) has been cited as one of the best Pan-Asian restaurants in New York City, and perhaps for a reason. Imagine, who else can sell kare-kare with pungent side dish bagoong alamang to Americans? It is a feat the Dorotans have achieved. The restaurant seems to attract a clientele of curious first-timers, and I wonder how many of them return to become regulars. Maybe a lot, at least in the beginning. Cendrillon has been in existence for thirteen years, but I suspect that the recent economic recession and SoHo's astronomical rent contributed to its owners' decision to move.

So what makes Cendrillon tick? Well, aside from what the reviews say on the website, the trick seems to be the American twists the couple have ingeniously put on Filipino staples, and the Filipino twists on Western ones. For example, they use feta and Gouda cheese instead of quesong puti for rice cakes (bibingka), a combination that is pure heaven, at least according to one critic, Peter Kaminsky of New York Magazine, who called it "an egg McMuffin in the mind of God." The couple also substitute trout for bony milkfish daing. The messy-to-eat dish ginataang alimasag at kalabasa has been refined into crab dumplings with squash puree and coconut milk soup, while still retaining its island flavors. For Pinoy ingredients, they use taro root and purple yam (camote) for mashed potatoes, and pirurutong, a native Philippine rice variety for black paella. (By the way, the dish derives its color from the pirurutong, not from the squid ink as done in Mediterranean cooking.) Another rice cultivar endemic to the islands they so cleverly use is diket, a purple variety of glutinous rice cultivated by upland farmers who inherit the heirloom seeds from their ancestors in the Mountain Province. It is supposed to be organically grown, the perfect ingredient for suman with an intriguing color. For dessert, how about coffee ice cream using Batangas kapeng barako, or lemon meringue pie using calamansi? The list of "fusion" dishes goes on. Being a noodle soup guy, I ordered udon in broth with roasted duck and leeks, a dish neither Filipino nor American, for a price that could buy me two bowls of pho in nearby Chinatown. I did not get disappointed, but did not get wowed either. I spent most of the time perusing the menu, more to satisfy my curiosity than my stomach. Overall rating? Four out of five, mainly for effort.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town in the hospital area of Gramercy, another Pinoy cuisine was stirring a different kind of talk, and controversy, in the neighborhood, according to articles in The New York Daily News and The New York Post forwarded to me by friend Afel Inlong (Click on the newspaper). The Cabrini nuns of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus have filed a lawsuit against Michael and Gloria Lim, a Filipino couple who live in their building, for frying and/or smoking dried herring (tuyo) and infesting the pristine air of their enclave with an unholy aroma that, I imagine, ruined their vestments to an extent that no amount of Downy or Snuggle could restore to their former fragrance. These nuns may have been trained for missions in stinky third world backwaters, but hey, this is Manhattan. The air you breathe is different from mine. (Ironically, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the religious order's founder whose supposedly incorrupt body is enshrined in Washington Heights uptown, is the patron saint of immigrants. I wonder what her nuns would hear from her if she were alive.) The damages the sisters seek? $75,000. Maybe it's time for the Lims to take little trips to Queens and buy their tuyo from Phil-Am Food Mart already fried instead?

Photos: Black rice paella and Cendrillon sign above; tomatoes and tuyo, and making diket suman below.

Cendrillon, 45 Mercer Street (between Broome and Grand Streets), New York, New York 10013, Phone (212) 343-9012

In April: Purple Yam, 1314 Cortelyou Road, Brooklyn, New York 11226, phone pending

A Room with a View

2008-12-31T09:45:00.000-08:00

COOPED UP BY THE ARCTIC WEATHER, and happily on a break from work until the last week of January when the spring semester begins, I have shut the world out in the past few days and retreated into our attic. It is the perfect place to hibernate (nunong in Mindoreno dialect), always warm and toasty thanks to the natural phenomenon of less dense hot air rising to the upper floors of the house. Because it faces the backyard on the west, it is away from street traffic noise and the early morning sun, and I can stay in bed as late as I want. Before we moved into the house, attics have always conjured in me images of cobwebs, trunks of dusty family relics, Ouija boards and sinister denizens like the character Mrs. Allardyce in the horror movie Burnt Offerings. So when we found out that previous owner Martin O'Brien (who had moved his family to sunny Florida) had painted it pink for his little daughter, we were delighted and decided not to redo the color to keep the cheerful atmosphere of the room. Sara liked it too, but because she is allergic to dust, I spent one weekend ripping up the old carpet to expose the underlying hardwood floor, which I sanded and treated with wood stain to restore to its former glory. At present, the attic serves as Sara's TV room, and my escape when I do not feel like socializing with holiday visitors who linger to chat for hours with my in-laws downstairs, or to watch Wowowee or The Buzz on the large living room TV, because building rules in the apartment where they live prohibit them from having a Direct TV satellite dish installed. So I just let them be, grab my food and drink, and hit the stairs.

I like to call the attic my "swallow-thronged loft," a la Dylan Thomas (actually, it's a symbol for death), except that this time of year, the swifts, swallows and other feathered troubadours that are supposed to sit outside the window and keep me company have long migrated south to Mexico or hibernated in the woods of Mt. Olivet Cemetery, and the only birds I see are the swarms of homing pigeons pooping their way to their trainer's backyard down the block. (Welcome to New York!) I claimed one corner of the room by parking a desk for my laptop, the desktop salvaged from the neighbor's trash, and the handheld relic but reliable NEC MobilePro 780 which I use when I am in the Philippines. Here, I do most of my writing and catching up on my reading. (My goals this winter break include writing about the legacy of Germans on the island of Mindoro and reading Nam Le's The Boat.) I have hauled my books in the garage to winter them here and prevent frost damage, including those that I sell on my Ebay store. (For your eyes only: We have a Pinoy friend who works in a publishing company; he gives us boxes of advanced reader's copies and uncorrected proofs of all subjects and titles, unreleased and hot off the press. I made Christmas shopping money selling those books.) I also tried to create a self-contained living space here, complete with a mattress plopped on the floor, an old mini-fridge (you know what's in it), a microwave (I eat my meals here), and a porcelain arinola that my wife brought from a vacation in the Philippines, for those lazy nights when a trip to the bathroom downstairs is a hassle.

Most of all, the room has a view (as I have described in my second blog entry); its west window offers views of Manhattan that can be quite spectacular when the sun sets behind its skyline. I have even bought Sara a toy telescope so she could share the view. On a clear day, we can see the spires of the tallest skyscrapers of the city, including the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building midtown, the Woolworth Building downtown, and the towers of the Williamsburg Bridge. Other sights include planes preparing to land on La Guardia airport, the Fourth of July fireworks on the East River, and the twin columns of light from the World Trade Center every September 11. On clear nights, we see the Empire State change colors depending on the occasion: obviously green on St. Patrick's Day, red on Valentine's Day, and red and green this time of year. When I have the money, maybe I'll buy a real telescope and we'll try astronomy.

Other than a vantage point, the attic gives us a quiet space to sit back, look at the neighbors' rooftops, and, on occasions like this, reflect on things like the year that was, the mistakes made, and those that could be done differently next year. I reflect on the follies (depending on one's point of view) that I have done and still do, and try to reevaluate them if they are justified or simply need to stop. Among them:

1. I quit a higher-paying job with the Department of Homeland Security for a position in a community college. For my wife, I was the ultimate sira ulo decision; a federal job would have ensured Sara's future and the monthly mortgage of the house, but I had to do that I want to do. (More on this in a future post.)

2. I bought a house on a piece of property in the "Adiroondocks" (contracted Adirondack boondocks, used when Port Henry tax collectors piss me off; mark the term as originally from Queens Pinoy) which sits unused and rotting away while I pay its taxes year after year, including nonexistent water service. For some peace of mind, I bought dirt-cheap insurance just in case lightning or one of my disgusted neighbors sets my house on fire (which I secretly hope will happen) while I wait for the economy to get better and so I can afford to build a new house or at least buy a used mobile home for the lot.

3. Despite that scumbag Bernard Madoff's $50B loot and other potential Ponzi schemes, my wife and I continue to invest my late father's insurance benefit with my bank even though we have lost a lot (and I mean a lot) the last month alone. JP Morgan Chase does not seem to be a victim of the swindler, so, instead of panicking and withdrawing what was left of our investment, we try to calm down, give it one more chance and keep the gambling spirit, hoping that we will recover next year when Obama becomes president. Barry, here is one more crazy guy waiting for your miracles.

4. I still smoke.

5. I can be quite antisocial, and I know some people think I'm cuckoo, although I couldn't care less.

Of course, I know better than that. Money is not all, and what matters ultimately is maintaining one's good health and good relationships with other people. Ho-hum! When it gets warmer, I maybe I will take a bath, get a haircut, face the world, and perhaps emerge from this hermitage a wiser man.

Here is a picture of Sara enjoying her show (this time enthralled by Michelle Obama), and a view of the Empire State Building (left of the neighbor's chimney on the foreground) from our rear window. Too bad we cannot see the ball drop in Times Square from here, but in this cold weather, we'll just stay home and watch it on Sara's TV. Cheers for the New Year!

Ghost Stories and Tales of Glories

2008-12-19T09:43:00.001-08:00

PARTLY BECAUSE I WANT to learn about the history of my neighborhood and partly because I am in the mood for a Dickensian Christmas, I am posting what I have unearthed, while on semestral break, about the history of the town of Maspeth and other curiosities about it. I also cannot deny the fact that I live two blocks away from Mt. Olivet Cemetery, and its 71-acre presence is hard to ignore, even in the frenzied city life. I pass by its gates on my way to work each morning; I am even thinking of buying a plot in it just in case a heart attack or a driver high on drugs kills me instantly, and shipping my remains to the Philippines becomes a burden to my family (I shudder at the thought of being cremated). There is another Pinoy who lives closer; the property of drinking buddy Makoy Fernando adjoins the rear of the cemetery with only a grill fence separating his garage from the campo santo, as he calls it. A jolly mechanic from Bay, Laguna who works for the City's water system, he is the least affected by it, much more so on summer nights when the chilled beer starts flowing from his Coleman cooler, and the liempo and tilapia sizzle on his barbecue. He has even set a mini-theater with a wide-screen TV and karaoke speakers in his garage; his teenage son plays his drums there, indifferent to neighbors departed or not. (His next door neighbor is an NYPD officer who doesn't seem to be bothered by the noise, but knowing Makoy, the diplomatic host and cook, I am sure that he has found a way to the cop's stomach.) On beer party nights when distended drinkers want to take a leak behind Makoy's garage, they have to be warned that desecration of hallowed ground brought doom.

Maybe the residents of Mt. Olivet Cemetery are benevolent, because so far, there have been no signs of curses inflicted on anyone. They include James Maurice (photo above), its 1850 founder, whose name survives as a street name. He was a Congressman, landholder and founder of St. Saviour's Church, a cash-strapped heritage church dismantled early this year and transferred, after much protest from civic groups, from its original site in Maspeth to Middle Village when developers purchased the property. He shares his crypt in Mt. Olivet with two brothers and three unmarried sisters. Interesting residents of the cemetery include cosmetics royalty Helena Rubinstein and Prince Matchabelli, gangster Jack Diamond, 25 veterans of the Civil War and their wives, and the 16 unindentified victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

Other interesting characters and facts in Maspeth history:

1. Maspeth was the first European settlement in Queens, having been founded in 1642 by about 28 English settlers of the Quaker religion, sixteen years after Peter Minuit bought Manhattan island. (The Spanish city of Manila had been existing for about 70 years then.) The town was named "Maspat" after the Mespatches Indians, one of the thirteen tribes of Indians that inhabited the region. The term is translated to mean "at the bad waterplace," referring to the many swamps in the area at the time. At present, there is a street called "Fresh Pond Road" which attests to the once boggy nature of the land. The highest point of the cemetery, however, is 165 feet above sea level, and was used by the Mespatches Indians as a lookout point. (If you look at the picture in my blog title, you can see Manhattan in the background.)

2. It was the summer home of De Witt Clinton (not interred in MOC), once governor of New York who conceived the idea and drew plans for the Erie Canal, to connect the Great Lakes with the Hudson River. Upon completion, the canal made New York City the nation's primary port.

3. The building now housing the Grand Florist on Grand Avenue was once the Queens County Hotel, built in 1851 along what was then Grand Street, an old colonial road. Farmers and tradesmen used to rest here when hauling goods between Williamsburg and towns further east in Queens.

4. Following the immigration waves of the 19th century, Maspeth was home to a shanty town of Ludar gypsies between 1925 and 1939, though this was eventually bulldozed.

5. Maspeth Movie Theater on Grand Avenue and 69th Place is a 1,200-seat theater built around 1924 and showed movies until 1965. Judy Garland performed here live before becoming a screen star. The theater’s lobby is now a Rite Aid store and the auditorium a bingo hall.

6. Transfiguration Catholic Church on Perry Avenue was first built in 1909 to serve Maspeth's swelling population of Lithuanian immigrants. The present structure dates from 1962; Lithuanian folk art adorns the inside of the church. The Lithuanian phrase above the doors, Mano Namai Maldos Namai means “My house is a house of prayer.” Masses are still celebrated in the Lithuanian language each weekend.

7. Maspeth is famous for its mafia ties. John Gotti's wake was held at the Papavero Funeral Home on Grand Avenue; the connection has brought the movies and TV to Maspeth. The Sopranos filmed a car chase around Grand Avenue. Clinton Diner on Maurice and Maspeth Avenues, a local truckers' favorite that has been around since 1935, has appeared in more than one motion picture, most famously Goodfellas. The diner is near the site of the former Queens Head Tavern, in use during the Revolutionary War and later a stagecoach stop.

8. Resident Pinoys of Maspeth? Well, aside from Makoy and his family, I know at least five others who go to the same Sunday mass at St. Stanislaus Kostka church, Dr. Asuncion Pacis (my wife's gynecologist), a schoolworker at P.S. 153 and her kids, Sara's classmate Miguel and his family who live on Fresh Pond Road, the deli kid who sells my beer, a bus driver on the Q59 line, and a Visayan girl married to a Polish guy who lives on the same street as Makoy's. Of course, the number swells when Makoy hosts his famous parties, the drunken Pinoy transients from all over Queens sleeping on his living room sofa after the party is over. By the way, 58th Road on which he lives is a dead-end street (yes, there are dead people at the end of the street, too), and its residents have formed a club that closes the street to traffic once every summer to throw a block party that is always fun, complete with alcohol, hired DJs and line dancing. Who cares about the dead?

Now, the ghost stories. On July 27, 1884 (to put the date into perspective, it was eleven days after El Comercio, a Manila newspaper, announced that Juan Luna's Spoliarium won gold medal in the National Exposition of Fine Arts in Madrid), The New York Times and The Brooklyn Eagle published these stories (Click on the newspaper). They are quite compelling; two major New York newspapers reported the same incident front page at the same time, but you be the judge. Also, here is a picture, taken in 1936, of what was supposed to be a ghost emerging from the rear of Mount Olivet Cemetery at Eliot Avenue, courtesy of The Juniper Berry. Last is a picture of my family with Makoy (left) on a trip to the Adirondacks. Happy Holidays!

The New Christmas Tree

2008-12-17T06:17:00.000-08:00

THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING, I rummaged through the garage clutter for the reusable (OK, fake) pine Christmas tree that we bought from Target five years ago when we were still living in an apartment in Elmhurst. Through the years, this tree had served its purpose faithfully, though it had shed some needles from each boxing and unboxing, and with the economic recession and our tight budget this season, I am in no mood to replace it with a new one. I don't mind being called a cheapskate recycler, though I prefer it if you call me an environmentalist, who scavenges through the neighborhood trash every Thursday night for aluminum cans, glass bottles and what-have-you that are still worth something before they ended up in a Staten Island landfill. My best finds so far: a hardly-used futon sofa bed that we shared with our basement tenants, and a computer tower with 20GB hard disk memory.

Anyway, to make up for the lack of a real tree, we thought it would be a good idea to decorate the potted Cestrum nocturnum (aka dama de noche) as well, which we took inside the the house and placed next to the thermostat when the temperature outside went below 40F. (It used to sit on the doorstep and bloomed gloriously in the summer, but it is an annual plant that dies in frost.) Then, after a while, it dawned on me (and I know it sounds so frickingly awkward and silly) that sometimes we, consciously or unconsciously, make use of what we have in our hands to reach the things that we long for, even in the imagination. Like Christmas trees.

As children in Mindoro, my siblings and I were expert Christmas tree makers. Our father used to go to the lalao swamps in Lumambayan to cut a pyramid-shaped mangrove tree, whose twigs we cleaned and coated with La Torre gawgaw glue, covered with shredded cotton and white papel de japon so we could imagine snow, then planted its trunk in a floorwax can full of pebbles. But, at this point in our lives, the tables have turned, it seems. This time it's the other way around; we are decorating a tree to remind us of the tropics. Man is never satisfied. As Don Henley sang in Desperado, "you only want the ones that you can't get." So, trimmed and trained on a bamboo stick, the Cestrum is certainly unimpressive, but with a little imagination, especially when a blizzard is howling outside, one can relive those sultry summer nights in Pinamalayan when, sitting on the porch after dinner, he saw the fireflies, heard a distant guitar, and the Cestrum wafted its fragrance through the tropical air.

Next week, Sara is going to read in class the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore (here in his original handwriting). The poem was supposed to have been written by the author thinking about his grandparents' homestead farm on the corner of Broadway and Woodside Avenues in Newtown Village (Elmhurst, Queens), now occupied by a large apartment building.

One Hundred Years of Universitihood*

2008-12-05T19:29:00.000-08:00

BEFORE THE YEAR IS OVER and it is too late, I want to jump on the bandwagon and join the centennial anniversary celebration of the University of the Philippines, by posting an entry with an old postcard (of the Padre Faura campus where I spent my first semester in the UP system) that I had bought through Ebay from a guy in North Clarendon, Vermont, and by, what seems like a pattern emerging in this blog, reminiscing. This is the least I can do; I am indebted to my alma mater figuratively and literally, but the constraints of distance, time and money prevent me from actively participating in the activities, which are probably winding down now as the year comes to a close. Just two days ago, my friend Susan Lara sent me an invitation to the UP Writers Night (which would have been over by now) and another missed event worsens the guilt and nags me into doing something, anything. My coming to America would not have happened if UP (specifically the English Department) did not take me under its wing and send me on its faculty development program to study in the United States. So, for all its worth, I will write my memory of the Writing Center, the focal point of my stay in the University of the Philippines, and drop a lot of names that I hope will not bore some readers.

The UP was established on June 18, 1908 (the same year the University of Nebraska at Omaha was founded) as the American University of the Philippines by Act No. 1870 of the First Philippine Legislature, also known as the "University Act." I entered the university in 1981 as a returning student after two years of soul-searching, trying to figure out what to make of my three years of study at the Ateneo de Manila earlier. I was trying to decide if I wanted to be in a school where most everyone wore Lacostes and Florsheims and drove cars, while I wore my pair of citizens' military training combat boots to school because I could not afford to buy another one, and took the tricycle from the jeepney stop on Katipunan Avenue to Berchmans Hall only when it rained hard. Don't get me wrong; I made many friends at the Ateneo, mostly in my English class of "needy but deserving" scholars under Lourdes Vidal, but I was glad that I left campus before I became angrier at my family, society and God for what we were not. At UP Manila, I took a poetry class under Ricky de Ungria who told me about a Writers' Worskhop held in Diliman every summer that I should apply to. I did, the following year, and was accepted.

In the workshop, I met writers that I read only in books: the late Franz Arcellana and Alex Hufana, Jimmy Abad, Amel Bonifacio, Edgar Reyes (whose piece Lugmok Na Ang Nayon is still my favorite Tagalog short story), Linda Ty-Casper, you name it. Before that, my knowledge of literature was limited to Ang Lumang Simbahan by Florentino Collantes, a poem my late father used to recite at bedtime when I was a kid, "The Beetle" by Consorcio Borje in high school, and "Clay" by Juan Gatbonton in Lourdes Vidal's class at the Ateneo (in the same class, by the way, was writer James Laquindanum, now a priest at St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Long Island City, Queens). Needless to say, the workshop broadened my literary horizons, so to speak. I discovered writers like Dylan Thomas and Robert Graves and Kerima Polotan, learned about the "tangential approach" and "objective-correlative," and met junior writers like Susan Lara (who used to smoke Philip Morris 100s, believe it or not), Carlos Cortes and Simeon Dumdum. I got lucky; my story "Big Wind" got the Best Fiction Award and a Napoleon Abueva trophy, had Susan Lara's "The Edge of Innocence" not been previously published in Focus.

Heady from the workshop, I dumped biology as a major and transferred to Diliman the following semester to study English. (I kept this from my family until I graduated.) I commuted by bus everyday from our house in a government housing complex in San Pedro, Laguna, and packed home-cooked food to save lunch money on take-out at CASAA, hanging out at the Writing Center in between classes. I had to leave campus early to avoid the EDSA traffic, missing writers' get-togethers, readings and inumans, which happened late in the afternoons into the night. But there was another English major and returning student named Butch Dalisay, a Palanca award-winning writer and former political detainee who read my manuscript one day and apparently saw some potential in my florid prose. Without second thought, he offered me a job as his copy editor and researcher, although he himself struggled at the time financially, with a family to support on a government job at the National Economic Development Authority. To this day, I have not forgotten the spontaneity and magnanimity of his gesture, and the encouragement and confidence it gave me.

Soon, things fell into place somewhat. I was given a local fellowship for fiction at the Writing Center, thanks to the late Alex Hufana, the director who had a library science background and was some kind of a mentor to me. I also found an old boarding house with a restaurant called Jacy's where food and lodging were cheap right behind the Faculty Center. I spent most of the time at the Writing Center (or FC 1003) which was an air-conditioned office created by combining two faculty rooms, with barely enough space for three desks, four steel file cabinets, a book shelf and a long conference table where people held meetings, did homework or graded papers, played Trivial Pursuit, ate lunch, and at the end of the day when no one was looking, gathered for "libations." It was a refuge open to any writer or English major, and even the sleep-deprived or hangover-nurser could use it to catch some Zs when no one except staffer Tony Serrano (the vegetarian and everybody's kuya) or Glo Evangelista was around, only roused when curious faculty like Lily Rose Tope peeked in to find out what was up for the day. There were rotary phones and manual typewriters for duplicating manuscripts using stencils. At dusk, when the acacia trees outside stirred legends, the halls became quiet, and the chicharon, balut and peanut vendors appeared by the building entrance, it was the perfect place to drink Bobot Bitonio's basi or the late Clovis Nazareno's ESQ, to discuss Dylan Thomas, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, gossip, or simply find a victim to roast for the evening (former Labor Usec Bitonio was a ruthless alaskador). Discussions became heated and more lively when writers like Edel Garcellano, Enrico Enerio, Manny Espinola, Rey Luminarias or Ed Farolan joined in. Beer was bought for those who preferred it by the late Ernie Damasco, the messenger, using Mang Rene's tricycle, bypassing the guard at the entrance and delivering the bottles through a side window. Warmed up and ready for wider space, the tipplers dutifully locked up the office by 7 pm and reconvened at a nearby watering hole, usually PCED Hostel on campus or Trellis in PHILCOA. On Friday nights, interested writers gathered for a work-discussion group that met (and, of course, drank) in Isabel Mooney's apartment, the LitCritters of our time. As I lived on campus, I did not have to worry about anything, and freedom seemed infinite.

I spent the following three years in Diliman, only changing residence when Jacy's was demolished to make way for a new academic building, temporarily sleeping in Vice Chancellor Louie Beltran's garage in UP Village for free to help son Ricky complete a paper for Yolanda Tomeldan's class, before ending up in Narra Residence Hall where the late Clovis Nazareno and Donat Alvarez lodged. Before graduating in 1985, I met other English majors and writers who would also pursue further studies abroad, including Gina Apostol (our paths crossed inside Strand Bookstore in Union Square; she is now an English teacher at The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York), Fidelito Cortes (is he in Stony Brook?), the glamorous no-nonsense gang of Judy Ick-Ging Kagawan-Diana Atencia, Neferti Tadiar (professor of Women's Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University), the late Luisa Mallari, Don Dona (connected with Financial Services of NYU) and of course, Butch Dalisay. I ended up in Wichita, Kansas, where the only US university that would give me a graduate assistantship was. Most of them would go back to serve the university, but I would stay on and move around America for reasons that are hard to articulate at the moment. But I know the day will come when I will have to go back, face the music and square accounts with someone for things that I owed in the past.

Here is a picture of the Writing Center in the 80's (photo retouched) with the late Franz Arcellana, book designer Donat Alvarez, Reni Roxas, publisher of Tahanan Books, and Susan Lara. (Notice the Johnnie Walker lapad on the table.)

*"Universitihood" is a word that is apparently used only in the Philippines; I do not know if it is accepted in standard English, but I take risk in using it in my title because it rhymes with "Solitude." You know what I'm going for.

Intro to Philippine Literature

2008-11-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

AFTER DAYS OF WAITING, I finally received today Sara's copy of The Turtle and the Monkey from Amazon, her initiation to Philippine Literature. She just lost two front teeth, but tomorrow, she will bring the book to Ms. Lanzilotta's first grade class at P.S. 153 to tell her classmates about banana trees. That's my girl. Hey, just wait till she gets to Nick Joaquin!

Here Comes Jollibee!

2008-11-23T17:25:00.001-08:00

PARDON THE PICTURES, but I just drove by Roosevelt Avenue early this morning and took these shots with my bad camera. Yes, Jollibee, that popular Filipino fast food chain, is opening its first branch on the East Coast, right in the heart of Manilatown in Woodside by the 7 train. As you can see, the place is still boarded up (the place used to be a Mexican restaurant), but the ads are already there. Though I am not a big fan of fast food, I know a lot of other Queens Pinoys are rejoicing. One thing is sure: it will bring much-needed jobs to kabayans. Mabuhay!

UPDATE (02/14/2009): According to the owner of the Jollibee franchise in New York, the fastfood joint is going to open Saturday, February 14 from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Seating capacity is 70 people, but according their Facebook events page, about 1,200 are already attending. Thanks, Buj, for the information! Although I am working on Valentine's Day, Sara and Mom will go and try to get in. Below are the latest pictures, thanks to New York Magazine and Serious Eats New York.

UPDATE (02/20/2009): Almost a week after the grand opening, people still have to wait in long lines to be served. Still no telephone number. I guess they will give it out when all the novelty and mania subside. Hey, at least for the moment, they already have enough people to worry about!

UPDATE (02/27/2009): Lines not as bad. Winter schedule: Lines open 8 am to 8 pm on weekdays, and 7 am to 8 pm on weekends. And finally, here's their menu and phone number!

Jollibee, 62-29 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside, Queens, New York 11377, phone (718) 426-4445

Hawthornden on My Mind

2008-11-22T19:49:00.000-08:00

ONE EXPERIENCE THAT I will always remember is my fellowship at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Lasswade, Scotland, from 19 November to 16 December of 2000, exactly eight years ago today. The memory is timely; it was also autumn and post-US presidential election period, but then there was a bitter contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore about the election results, particularly in Florida. In fact, it was then when I learned that the meaning of the word "chad" other than a country in Africa was a paper fragment created when a hole is made in a ballot card, from reading The Scotsman newspaper in the castle living room. My candidate Al Gore had apparently lost because "hanging," "dimpled" and "pregnant" chads which had been punched, though not completely, on ballot cards were not counted to his favor. I had become an American citizen in April of that year and was happy to have exercised my right to vote, but was very disappointed. Today, after eight years of Republican dynasty, I am happy to see a Democrat get elected once again, and what a president-elect he is. I know this has been said countless times, but I am going to say it again: Barack Obama will lead this country through the challenges of the times. That said, please allow me to sit back and indulge in a little nostalgia.

On November 18, 2000, I took a Northwest Airlines flight from JFK to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, then transferred to a smaller KLM plane to Edinburgh (pronounced Edin-burrah). I took a cab with a courteous driver who drove me to the castle for about twenty minutes, lamenting how tourists had descended on his town since a ski path had been carved out of a hillside along our way. I arrived in the castle just before dinner, was welcomed by Amy, the administrator, and was immediately led to a room called Jonson on the third level, my home for the next four weeks. The castle had winding stairways that provided a challenge as I dragged one of my two heavy luggage upstairs (sorry, no elevators in ancient castles), but Amy, despite her little frame, did the other without effort; she had obviously done this for other fellows before. Not too long after, it was dinner time and sherry was served, on the house, as Amy welcomed the fellows formally.

What followed was a succession of days of writing privilege; as silence was maintained in the castle at all times, except dinner. From the castle through the trees, one could actually hear the waters of the River North Esk. Lunch, which consisted of simple fare like sandwiches and a thermos bottle of hot soup, was brought to the fellows' rooms, who were left on their own most of the day. Some fellows packed their lunches and caught the early bus that passed by the castle gate to make day trips to Edinburgh, the capital city, or to see Rosslyn Chapel for its Knights Templar history. Some simply stayed and made the river walk behind the castle. I went to the city on days when I craved good old rice, which did not seem to be part of the castle menu. Around downtown, there were Chinese and Indian restaurants where I had beef broccoli or chicken curry with rice to quell my Asian stomach. After lunch, I wandered about Princes (not Princess or Prince's) Street, the main thoroughfare, dominated by the majestic Edinburgh Castle from Castle Rock, before catching the last bus to Midlothian, where my castle was. At dinner, the Garden Room became alive as fellows shared stories about their ventures of the day. Sherry flowed; there was a list to tally how many glasses one had had for the evening, to be charged upon checkout. I became friends with Tom Kennedy, an American living in Copenhagen who used to live in Jackson Heights, New York, and Parm Kaur, a British poet from London with a Punjabi background. Maybe because she was the only other minority writer and smoker in the group, we became chat buddies. One evening, the shy kitchen ladies prepared haggis, that traditional Scottish dish of sheep's stomach stuffed with liver, heart, lungs and a bunch of other goodies only a Filipino could also eat. I was expecting it to taste like dinuguan or higado, but was disappointed as it was mostly bland.

Hawthornden Castle sat on a secluded crag overlooking the River North Esk, providing impressive views of the surrounding glen. It was the home of poet William Drummond, who built a new house around a ruined 15th century tower in 1638. The castle remained home to the Drummonds until 1970 and is now owned by philanthropist Drue Heinz, publisher of The Paris Review and widow of H.J. Heinz of catsup fame. From what I remember, there was a working water well on its courtyard, and a cave further down where Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots from 1306 to 1329, was said to have taken shelter. By the gate, there was a little house that Mary Sharratt used to call "the gamekeeper's cottage." The bathroom of the castle had an ancient toilet bowl that flushed by pulling a chain, but it also had a sunroof that gave one a piece of Scottish sky while taking a dump.

Whatever, the silence and privacy were what mattered. In the retreat, I got to polish my short story The Capture of Abundio Espera, which early that year won Best Fiction in the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards. Later, it was shortlisted in the Fish Short Story Prize sponsored by Fish Publishing in Durrus, Ireland. Before leaving, I wrote a poem for Drue Heinz in the logbook and donated a copy of A Habit of Shores: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English to the castle library. All in all, it had been a great experience, and today, sitting in my cubbyhole at Rosenthal Library, aging and arthritic, I relive the memory and hope that I will have a similar luck someday.

Here is a picture of the fellows in the Dining Room. L-R: Mary Sharratt, Linda Leith, Parmjit Kaur, Patricia Duncker, Amy (the administrator), Thomas Kennedy and yours truly. Also, a shot on Calton Hill with the Dugald Stewart Monument in the background, and a picture of Edinburgh Castle, thanks to Wikipedia.

Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, Lasswade, Midlothian EH18 1EG, Scotland, United Kingdom, phone 44 (0) 131 440 2180, fax 44 (0) 131 440 1989, contact the Administrator

Posing with the Stars

2008-11-22T15:59:00.000-08:00

SARA HAD A RARE chance to pose with Melinda Doolittle of American Idol and Kimee Balmilero (a Filipina-American from Hawaii) and Shaun Taylor-Corbett of Emmy-nominated children's television program Hi-5. Miley Cyrus, where are you?

Baby Food and Other Stinkers

2008-11-22T09:36:00.000-08:00

ALTHOUGH THERE ARE SCORES of Asian grocery stores in Queens, one has entrenched itself more deeply in the hearts, and stomachs, of Filipinos in New York. Phil-Am Food Mart, in the heart of Little Manila in Woodside (on the 69th Street station of the 7 train), is owned by hard-working Batanguenos who may well be millionaires now, with the kind of customer traffic they get especially on holidays and weekends. The contents of the store in themselves are not that rare or special: the usual food products like Pampanga's Best tocinos and Mama Sita's flavor mixes, mass-produced for the homesick tongues of Filipino expatriates. But it has a small fresh produce section that carries ingredients for pinakbet, and a cooked food section that offers fried milkfish, dried squid, goby (biya), herring (tunsoy) and other apartment stinkers packed in little aluminum foil boxes. Fastidious Pinoys buy these salty treats even though they are overpriced to satisfy a craving without stinking up one's living space or offending their next door neighbor in the building when they fry these stinkers. Another important aspect of the store is the makeshift bulletin board by its entrance, where enterprising Filipino subletters advertise cheap rooms for rent (usually carved out of apartment spaces using portable dividers, a la Sampaloc, Manila) to jobless newly arrived kabayans, who know nothing of New York city codes and are unlikely to report building violations to 311. This is one of the reasons why some people come here, then shop later. We got the tenant of our attic room through its posting board.

Other than that, the store is special to our family because it is the only place in Queens where we can find frozen baby mackerel tuna (tulingan), not those huge mercury-laden behemoths that sushi chefs hunt at Top Line or Fulton Fish Market, for our Mindoro soul food tinigang. These babies are tender and sweet-tasting; they probably went to the same school (pardon the pun) as the ones they sell in Pinamalayan wet market. One could imagine the tropical sun coming back to life in their eyes after they have been defrosted. Even the sinking of passenger ferry Princess of the Stars did not dampen our appetite for tinigang like it did to our relatives in the Philippines, because we thought these babies were safely asleep in a freezer somewhere in a New Jersey port when the tragedy happened.

Anyway, tinigang is one of the easiest and earliest dishes I learned to cook; I got the technique (or the lack of it) from my grandfather. I use a sharp knife to cut a lengthwise slit on both sides of each fish, press them with the palm of my hand on a chopping board until they are as flat (and nearly round) as a tortilla with a bony smile, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and stack them in lattice pattern in a wide-bottomed pot. (We bought a cast iron paella pot made in Colombia for this purpose.) I throw in a piece of bacon and a handful of crushed garlic, add water and vinegar (Heinz will do, but Datu Puti is better) and bring it to a boil. Once it simmers, I am instantly transported to the tropics, but my wife cries "Foul!" and scurries all over the house to shut closet doors and protect our wardrobe from the clinging, acidic fish smell. Perfect tinigang takes at least an hour to cook; the water has to evaporate almost completely ("tigang" means "dry" in Tagalog), the bones have to be edibly soft, and the fat of the bacon has to incorporate with the sauce for the best patis, so she has to endure the atmosphere for a while. (I usually cook tinigang, fry tunsoy or saute shrimp paste over a hot plate in the garage, but it has become quite a challenge to stay outside because the temperature has dropped to winter levels even though it is still autumn officially.) Once dinner is served, however, usually with some vegetable cooked in coconut milk and freshly steamed Thai jasmine rice, everybody is happy and all stink is forgiven.

Phil-Am Food Mart, 40-03 70th Street, Woodside, Queens, New York 11377, (718) 899-1797, no parking

An Old Document in the Aparador

2008-11-17T15:30:00.000-08:00

ONE OF THE DISCOVERIES during my last trip to my hometown of Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro in the Philippines was a 78-year-old document, mildewed, insect-eaten and brittle as a dry leaf, inside an old aparador. It was a lease contract between the Singer Sewing Machine Company and my grandmother Marcosa Closa. (Click on the document to enlarge.) It shows that she paid 10 pesos downpayment to rent a sewing machine Model 128-4 valued at 100 pesos, on August 28, 1930. (Coincidentally, that day was the fourth birthday of my father, her would-be son-in-law, still unknown to her family; my mother was then six years old.) According to the agreement, she was to pay three pesos on the 28th of every month in Philippine currency.

Though not exactly a find that will make me rich, the document is interesting in many ways. The form was surprisingly still in Spanish even though the Americans had been around for 32 years. The preparer who filled in the blanks had written the entries in both Spanish and English, with the month entered as "Aug." for August (instead of "Ag." for Agosto) and the word "complete" to describe the accessories included with the machine. On the back of the document, which showed my grandmother's age as 29 and my grandfather Genaro Castillo as co-leaser, the answer to question Cuanto tiempo han residido en la direccion arriba mencionada (How long have you lived in the address mentioned above? was "(illegible) years." Son los arrendetarios maridos y mujer--"yes." Occupacion--"H. Keeping." "Laborer." Two of the references I recognized as other lolas (Augustina Closa and Vicenta Lontoc) and a Jose Morente.

Interesting. I wonder how the document had survived the elements (typhoons, humidity, insects) and unknowing katulongs who disposed of old-looking documents as trash or stove kindling. I also wonder just exactly when English replaced Spanish as the language of business in the Philippines. Before WWII, were business and government forms printed bilingually in English and Spanish, with the educated (like the preparer) using English and the not-so-educated (like my grandparents) using Spanish, or even Tagalog? And how many households today still have a sewing machine? Do people still sew their own clothes, or repair them at least? Finally, what can my grandmother's monthly rent of three pesos buy today?

I believe Grandma eventually bought the machine. My mother inherited it and made lots of pajamas, pillow cases and curtains when she raised her own family. One of the tasks I had to do before she used it was to get a bowl of water and dampen the abaca rope that served as its belt (the original rubber one had snapped) so it would expand and tighten, to turn the hand wheel when she pedaled. Finally, after a strong typhoon blew our roof off, the sewing machine's wooden fold-out cover warped from the deluge and mother gave the thing away. Below is a picture of what it looked like: probably a 1924 or 1930 Singer treadle sewing machine model 128.

Done with Kindergarten

2008-11-16T09:49:00.000-08:00

ALTHOUGH IT IS A BIT LATE, I still wanted to post Sara's kindergarten class picture, with teachers Ms. Curry and Ms. Lee. Twelve more years before college!

Pho on Grand Avenue

2008-11-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A SUCKER for pho, that great Vietnamese hangover buster. So it was a welcome idea when Little Saigon opened on Grand Avenue. The owners used to operate (under the same name) in a hole-in-the-wall with five tables on 9th Avenue and 46th Street in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, but closed down after the rent went up to $14,000 a month. Hey, welcome to Queens!

If you want to make your own pho, the best recipe I have found so far is Andrea Nguyen's of San Jose Mercury News. She has tips only a Vietnamese would know, like charring the onions and ginger and using yellow rock sugar.

Little Saigon, 85-32 Grand Ave, Elmhurst, Queens, New York 11373, (718) 205-4279, cash only, Vietnamese cable TV

The Cheapest Property in the Adirondacks

2008-11-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

IT IS OFFICIAL. I am the proud owner of half an acre of hillside property in Port Henry, NY with a "fixer-upper" (euphemism for decrepit) farmhouse. I had to take the Amtrak to Albany to close the deal and obtain the deed from the lovely wife of a young investor. It was a great trip along the Hudson River, and the transaction went smoothly. But where on earth is Port Henry? As people asked, "Ano bang meron sa Port Henry?" To justify my decision, which people may think is as stupid as Seward's purchase of Alaska, here are my reasons:

1. Location, location, location. Port Henry is in the Adirondack State Park in upstate New York, "an area of unparalleled beauty.” It is the largest park in America, covering 6.1 million acres, a land area about the size of the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks combined.

I have always dreamed of living in a mountain cabin by the lake (preferably with a fireplace), and live an idyllic Thoreau-like life. A kid who grew up among the rice paddies of Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro in the Philippines, I have always had this idea of an American home, slightly different from that of my friend Susan Lara: a white picket fenced suburban home with a dog named “Spotty” running around. Maybe I’m just a rural guy. Anyway, Port Henry is a small village between the shores of Lake Champlain and the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, and reminds me of Scotland and even Sagada. Maybe someday, I can invite my Filipino friends over.

2. Accessibility. Port Henry is on the Amtrak's Adirondack route between New York City and Montreal (Map above), which was proclaimed one of the ten most scenic train trips in the world by National Geographic Traveler Magazine. The train departs Penn Station in Manhattan early in the morning and follows the banks of the Hudson River and the shores of Lake Champlain through historic towns and pristine woodlands in upstate New York to the Canadian border, terminating at Gare Centrale in downtown Montreal before dinner. One way trip to PH costs about $50, and there is a food car where one can buy hot instant Ramen and sandwiches. Although PH's train station is no Grand Central and does not even have a passenger waiting platform (one has to use a stool to step up and down the train), it is a piece of architectural history, being built in the 1880's when PH was an iron mine port. At present, it is staffed by friendly senior citizens who bring the stool in and out, and get to use the depot for their own activities in return. PH is also along the route of a major inland waterway that runs from New York City to Quebec City. One could actually sail inland from the Atlantic through the Verazzano Narrows in NYC--Hudson River--Champlain Canal--Lake Champlain--Richelieu River--Chambly Canal--St. Lawrence River--Quebec City in the Gaspe Peninsula, back to the Atlantic. This is a dream cruise that I would like to take or do before I die. Along this water route, PH has a marina near Bulwagga Bay, where legendary lake monster "Champ" has been sighted many times.

3. Nearby institutions. Middlebury College, Robert Frost's summer home and the famous Bread Loaf Writers' Conference are about forty five minutes away, across Crown Point Bridge on Lake Champlain. Meadowmount Summer School of Music (where artists like Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman trained) is fifteen minutes north in Westport. The University of Vermont at Burlington and SUNY Plattsburgh are about an hour away. If you don't want to leave town, there is a small public library downtown, and a professional theater company in nearby Westport.

4. Cost. I got the property for about seven thousand bucks, thanks to Plattsburgh Craigslist. It is cheaper than a used car.

5. Finally, because I am a crazy dreamer. I think I have found my other retirement home, apart from our ancestral house in Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro.

Watch for updates on my progress rehabilitating the house until it is ready for housewarming, open to all Pinoys who can come. I also have a title for a piece: Port of Entry to Port Henry.

Here are pictures of the house on 109 Stone Street, the bathroom (those are not bird droppings on the tub), and Sara feeding the gulls on Lake Champlain, five minutes away.

Queens College Offers an MFA in Creative Writing and Translation

2008-11-15T16:32:00.000-08:00

MY OTHER alma mater, Queens College (the University of the Philippines Diliman being the other) is now offering an MFA program in Creative Writing and Translation. I have always dreamed of obtaining an MFA, in addition to my MLS, and maybe this is my chance despite my age. I work on the same campus at Rosenthal Library, one of two jobs I hold at the City University of New York system (the other being at the Center for Teaching Excellence of Bronx Community College). QC has a lovely 77 acre campus about ten minutes drive from home, has always been considered as "the jewel of the CUNY system," and was ranked by Kaplan/Newsweek College Guide as one of "America's Hottest Schools" in 2008. Writers-in-Residence include Kimiko Hahn, Nicole Cooley and Roger Sedarat. Last Monday, they had an open house and launched a new literary journal called Ozone Park. I will post the program's activities as they come. QC also sponsors Evening Readings on Tuesdays at 7 pm.

Here are pictures of the QC campus. One looks west, with the Manhattan skyline on the background and the clock tower of Rosenthal Library, known for its Louis Armstrong Archives, on the foreground. The other looks east through the main quadrangle and Jefferson Hall, built in 1907.

Queens College, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, Queens, New York 11367, phone (718) 997-5000

My Maspeth

2008-11-15T11:52:00.000-08:00

WE LIVE IN A SINGLE FAMILY Cape Cod style home on a street just off the convergence of Grand Avenue and Flushing Avenue. Right now there is a DOT Project going on as the greenstreets island between these two roads and pedestrian crossings are improved for students of nearby St. Stanislaus Kostka School. My daughter used to attend Pre-K at this school but this year, we have transferred her to P.S. 153 on 6oth Lane which is a farther walk up Fresh Pond Road but a good education bargain. It is a public school with a Beacon Program for talented children which I hope my kid can one day crash into.

Maspeth is an old little town with a large Polish and Irish population. Far from any subway stations, it has retained much of its residential neighborhood charm. It has a long veteran tradition and American Legion Halls, but it also has numerous Irish pubs that could get rowdy on Friday nights when blue collar folks like construction workers come home to relax. Grand Avenue, the main strip, has many banks, restaurants and mom and pop businesses. It is complimented by the frontage of Mt. Olivet Cemetery, handsomely fenced and gated with ironwork grills. A few feet inside, huge hundred year old oak trees dominate the headstones and the landscape, and gives one a sense of being in a time warp in the middle of the city. I have always enjoyed walking the sidewalk under those trees.

Our house is up the hill on 64th Street, which generally follows the gradient of the Mt. Olivet slope on the west side. On the highest point of our street, one can see the skyscrapers of Manhattan. From our tiny attic window facing the west, we can see the Empire State Building, the traffic on Kosciusko Bridge and the Fouth of July fireworks on the East River on summer nights. During September 11 anniversaries, the twin shafts of light from where the World Trade Center used to be are magical as they penetrate the night sky. These are the extras that we got with the house, which we were not even aware of when we bought it.

We have made numerous changes to the house and property since we moved in November of 2006. I have planted an American sycamore tree on our curb and a northern red oak on the lawn by the rose bushes. I have expanded the garden space in the backyard by digging up the concrete (work done by John Kenny, a contractor with a heavy Irish accent who lived a few houses downhill) along the property line to extend the existing garden all the way to the back fence. I wanted to plant more trees and have a summer vegetable garden. I wanted to maximize my share of Long Island earth.

Here are pictures of the backyard before (taken before we moved in in 2006) and after (taken during Sara's 5th birthday party a year later. She is in red.) Aside from my little girl and her friends, you can see other things growing: a Jonathan apple tree, a littleleaf linden tree on the far back, and lots of beefsteak tomatoes.

Welcome to My Blog

2008-11-15T11:43:00.000-08:00

HELLO, EVERYONE and welcome to my blog. My name is Ramon Bautista, a Filipino-American writer who lives with my wife and daughter in Maspeth, New York in the borough of Queens. In this blog, I hope to share with people how it is to live and raise a child in the great city of New York from the point of view of a Filipino.