Rizal in July

School's in again, and teachers, not just media folk, get invited to activities related to their profession and vocation, particularly the teaching of the life and works of our national hero (my personal idol) Jose Rizal.

When Maite dela Rosa, my supervisor (the equivalent of a principal) at the Community of Learners, learned that I was up and about after an ailment and going out already, sometimes to attend lectures (one event a day, unlike before when I had a crowded tuhog-tuhog or one appointment after the other schedule), she asked that I go to this one: the Teachers' Conference on Rizal's Life and Works at PETA's home grounds on Eymard Drive, New Manila, Quezon City. Whenever I go there and the weather outside ain't rainy, I start to miss its former home, an open-air theater at Fort Santiago, Intramuros, those years when PETA truly embodied the "aesthetics of poverty." There's something about walls and ceilings.

My daughter and niece like to remind me I should keep my storytelling down to 350 words or less and let the rest of the story be told in photos.

So okay, okay, I know how to listen to these experts in social media communication--the young.

This is the lamp burner that Rizal gave to his sister Trinidad and where he put his poem "Mi Ultimo Adios." This lamp is in the permanent collection of the Ateneo Library and housed in its Art Gallery on the second floor. I took this photo during a class field trip to the university's Library of Women's Writings and gallery on another occasion. Photos by Babeth Lolarga

When you're at a PETA workshop, prepare to get physical before you buckle down to listen to a lecture, watch a play's excerpt or have a Q and A with the playwright or director.

A tour of the theater all ready for another weekend of Rak of Aegis

View from the outside of a dressing and make-up room

To the question on why he chose to specialize in teaching the Rizal course, Vic Torres, a De La Salle University professor and five-time Palanca Literary Award winner, said in the beginning (or just five years ago), he took it for granted. It meant an additional subject, additional pay apart from teaching journalism and history. Then he realized while studying and preparing his lectures that there was so much to learn from the national hero's life and even to discover new things about that life. His novel Noli Me Tangere, for example, is also "a literal recipe book--it was obvious that he was hungry when he was abroad." Before Dr. Torres knew it, Rizal became very much a part of his life.