BWG recharged by chap chae, bread, carrot cupcakes, veggie sticks, etc.

In 2015, I was sick and spent my 60th birthday in the hospital. It was a lugubrious time in my life, but I think I'm over that so whenever I can, I try to celebrate my birthday with family and friends now that I've made it to my 60s.

To-die-for cupcakes from the kitchen of Toottee Pacis. After the fourth cupcake, I'm ready for a diabetic coma!

The Korean chap chae has increasingly replaced the pancit guisado as birthday noodles.

Healthy feast

Yesterday, though not my birthday yet, I decided to treat the members of the Baguio Writers Group to the traditional noodles (chap chae made by longtime painting companion and baker Toottee Chanco Pacis and her Girl Friday Joy), home-baked bread with cheese pimiento (also from Mamita Toottee's bustling kitchen) and carrot cupcakes with thick butter icing--the last were Toottee's birthday gift to the June borns in the group. The other girl marking another milestone in her life is Padma Perez although she wasn't present. It was actually her birthday yesterday.

Our host, Luchie Maranan, also prepared assorted teas and coffee, vegetable sticks with pesto and garlic dip, slices of orange and an Ad'laine roll brought by Junley Lazaga.

A portion of BWG having their snacks (food comes first but always) before the meeting

Allan Carino and EV Espiritu seated near the altar where candles are lit in memory of Edgardo B. Maranan and his parents

It just took the green tea or coffee to get us going with our supposed general assembly. Junley, our current president, declared a "failure of elections" because we didn't have enough members present for a general election. BWG officers serve a term of three years. Nevertheless, we soldiered on with the agenda put before us. Diego S. Maranan, son of the late writer Ed, whose 40th day of demise we were also observing yesterday, met with us to tell us about how Ed's heirs and BWG can work together to perpetuate his Tatay's memory.

The meeting closed with a poetry reading by treasurer Merci Javier Dulawan and Luchie. The latter's poem struck a chord because it was about the vicissitudes of ageing from forgetting where one placed one's eyeglasses to the chest constriction one feels after climbing a flight of stairs. When one hits 63, it is indeed time to ask, "Where did my youth go? Did I waste enough of it?"

So this early we can announce that the members will hold a how to make a poem workshop facilitated by Allan on July 20 at one of the rooms of the University of the Philippines Baguio that is accessible to weak-kneed senior citizens (I ought to be one of them). Basic requirement before the whole-day workshop proper is to write a poem for critique-ing, followed by shaping a poem based on the prompt/s Allan will give.
To the absent BWG members who are interested in joining the workshop, please indicate your participation to Junley for the head count.

Photos by Luchie Maranan and Junley Lazaga

Food glorious food

Once a week, my friend Toottee Chanco Pacis and I get together with our painting tutor Norman Chow to spend a whole day mucking around with our brushes and paints. Toottee and I paint different genres--another reason we get along famously. We can never consider each other rivals. I'm sorry I wasn't able to take photos of her works. But here are mine, done over the past three weeks. I've focused on the theme of food because it is always at the back and front of my mind--what to eat next after the current meal is consumed.

Or maybe because Toottee, a baker also by avocation, serves wonderful refreshments. Yesterday we had slices of moist banana bread brought by Norman's other occasional student, Angie del Rosario of Veniz Hotel, Toottee's oatmeal cookies and famed brownies with Sagada tea. Conversation is always warm and robust even if Toottee and I are beginning to feel our bodies betraying us. But for as long as we can hold a brush, we promise to soldier on.

"Cupcake Fiesta," acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"

"Brekkie," acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"

"Halo-halo Ka Rin," acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"

New works

I've always called my paintings "paintings" or just plain "works," never "art." When I was a fine arts freshman at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in Diliman, our teacher Bob Feleo emphasized the use of the generic word "works" for the reason that it would be the public or another objective body that would baptize you with the title "artist."

Since 2004, I've followed Sir Bob's "command." I'm not doing art. I'm just painting my afternoons away every other week with my friend Toottee Chanco Pacis. Toottee is concentrating on making hand-painted, one-of-a-kind Christmas cards and postcards. I cannot paint on small paper. I need elbow space.

Here are my latest works done under the supervision of our tutor, Norman Chow. Forgive me if I fail to give the paintings' dimensions. Haven't gotten around to doing that. Just excited to share what came out of Toottee's greenhouse/studio. All used acrylic on canvas paper.

"Blue and White," mistakenly dated 2014 when it was actually done this year

"Broken China"

"Dream Catcher"

"Lily of the Field"

Returning to ourselves

"Almost Christmas," acrylic on canvas by the blogger. It measures 11" x 14".

"I love painting. It's where I return to myself." The quote is from the group Artwell Art Therapy. It captures what I feel when I'm in the midst of playing with colors and images.

The other day, friend Toottee Chanco Pacis and I shared a table in her Happy Homes home. There was just a pot of poinsettias given to her by another friend, Becky Luyk, between us. She worked on her handmade, one-of-a-kind Christmas cards in watercolor on Optima white paper while I did the painting called "Almost Christmas," a poinsettia set against a lemon yellow background (too plain, my husband's verdict on the background's color, but that is his opinion, and he's entitled to it).

We both knew that if we didn't get together, we wouldn't get anything done. The way Toottee put it in her SMS: "I need someone to paint with or I get waylaid by so many little things, I end up not even bringing out my brushes."

We worked quietly, we conversed, too, paused for coffee and some of her squash cake (Happy Thanksgiving to those who observe it). By the end of the afternoon when the light was dimming, Toottee had finished making four cards, I was done with two small paintings (meaning, no retouches or touch-ups needed, no matter someone's opinion).

I got home early evening but even with November's darkness outside and with the lights from the Christmas inside to light my two works, I felt good inside. I couldn't wait for the next occasion when my painting pal and I would get together again. She also shared with me a Mexican custom of saying goodbye to a hostess, something passed on to her by our late friend, Carol Brady.

"I shall come again for I like myself when I am with you."

My deaconess friend and her pressed flowers

Toottee's art of pressing flowers

Although I maintain 34 Pinterest boards, I am not a do it yourself person. I'm actually clumsy. Ask my family.

So I've always admired people like Toottee Chanco Pacis who makes her own greeting cards, her breakfast bread, her taco shells, etc.

And she also writes sermons and articles here and there. Recently I invited her to stand as guest of honor along with Perla Macapinlac, ICM, two deeply spiritual persons I associate with my visits to Baguio.

Toottee read an invocation before Perla opened (by flinging a door open wide) my solo show ("Sampayan Blues" ends on Saturday, Nov. 14, at the Sanctuary Gallery of the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary in Campo Sioco, Baguio). Like me when asked to say something in public, Toottee prefers to write down her thoughts so she doesn't meander from the subject.

These words of hers are my prayer for all for today. the 10th of November.

Oh Lord God,

We thank you for the gift of life.

We thank you for providing for all our needs, including the gifts you have given each of us.

We thank you for occasions like this afternoon's show where we can once again enjoy your creations on canvas and paper.

We thank you for the mag-lola, Babeth and Kai, for a unique collaboration and their family: Kimi, Lolo Rolly, and Auntie Ida for letting it happen.

We thank you for the people present--friends and relations who came to grace this exhibit with their encouragement and support.

Lord, teach us to appreciate and be grateful for the beauty of your creations may they be ordinary and simple.

As the Good Book says, "Establish, Lord, the work of your hands that we may indeed glorify your name."

Lord, I thank you for Babeth.

Amen.

What do you say to a depressed person?

Get-well card painted by Toottee Chanco Pacis of Baguio

Codes names of Toottee and this blogger for one another

What do you say to a depressed person?

Read more: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/203815/what-do-you-say-to-a-depressed-person#ixzz3jKOfYjJ0
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

A slice of Baguio life

Was it only yesterday when The Wee One and her Mamay decided suddenly to join me in my visit to the Hansel-and-Gretel-like cottage of friend Toottee Chanco Pacis? I had some baked items to pick up and pay for: her fabulous brownies, a pound cake (Kimi's order) and a medium-size round rum cake (Rolly's). Then I needed to take pictures of her heart-shaped rum cakes that would accompany the "Love (Letters) for Sale" (or commissioned handwritten love letters) project of the Baguio Writers Group.

I warned Toottee in advance that I was being escorted by my daughter and grandchild, and she shouldn't prepare anything for us because we had just eaten lunch. But Toottee being Toottee, she just had to make us sample slices of her rum cake before Kimi started shooting away after we did our own amateur food styling.

Chubby knows how to look at the camera. Half-seated beside him is his young admirer.

Meanwhile, The Wee One made friends with the hairy house Maltese, Chubby, recent father to several puppies. Kai was able to hold one or two puppies and pose for her mother's camera. but those puppies had to be extricated from her hands because she couldn't handle them gently. She must've thought they were as squeeze-able as the stuffed toys on Toottee's sofa (all going to the Baguio General Hospital children's ward--I told you Toottee is one of the kindest soul to walk this earth).

Happy just to be among so many huggables that'll make ill kids at the local hospital happy. Photos by Booboo Babeth

The unsaid quality

"You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used. An artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it is alive."- Toshiko Takaezu, American ceramic artist and painter

In her everyday life, friend Toottee Chanco Pacis is a poet. The eye for beauty and wonder is unfailing; her self-deprecating humor feels like a breath of Baguio air, air that is unmixed with diesel fumes.

On the afternoon two days after the Epiphany and before I returned to Manila, we had a chance to reconnect. She greeted me at her door with a rueful but warm, "Hello, stranger!" It had been that long since the two of us sat down for girl talk.

When it was parting time, I took pictures of her home and garden to remind me how to furnish not just a physical space but the mind, heart and spirit. Thank you, Toottee Fruitti. Until the next cuppa tea and talk.

Prickly but easy on the eyes

Terracotta guardian by the fireplace

Music box with glass removed and featuring the nativity scene

Copper pan

Mini Christmas tree lighted front and back

Blue and whites Photos by Babeth Lolarga