Elmer Ordoñez: From the First Quarter Storm to Facebook

Elmer Ordoñez: From the First Quarter Storm to Facebook

Not a wallflower at a party

Or so I think. I just couldn't forgive myself if I missed a milestone like F. Sionil Jose's 90th birthday party. Occasions like that are about the only time I see, press palms with or buss my writing mentors, idols and confreres. A friend said that in her excitement, she hyperventilated that night and forgot to have her picture taken with friends she hadn't seen in a long time.

While I was recuperating in Baguio from an ailment I would rather not discuss at length and my husband was forced to stay home and stay still because of a knee fracture, we went on a reading marathon of Manong Frankie's short stories and novels. It reached a point where we'd try to discuss what we had read and ended up mixing the characters and plots. Rolly counted how many times Frankie used the word "sybarite" in a novel. That sounds like my husband all right. You can keep the editor at home but not the editor from NOT working.

Thank you to the people who pressed the button of my camera so I can have a few mementos of the evening of Dec. 3 at the Cultural Center's main lobby.

Alfredo Roces, who I've been reading since high school, the birthday boy and fictionist Rony Diaz

It was Manong Frankie who told my class of high school kids: "You must not forgive a writer his sins just because he's a good writer." He's shown with a reader who's glad to have a few seconds with him before he was deluged with more well-wishers.

With Tessie Jose, who continues to make Frankie's life of letters possible, and sculptor Julie Lluch. Manang Tessie has kept her figure. This was the same outfit she wore when Frankie turned 80.

The heavyweights' table, only because two other National Artists for Literature are sharing space: Bienvenido Lumbera and Cirilo Bautista. The writers' wives are by their side, too: Shayne Lumbera and Rose Bautista.

Ka Satur Ocampo and Ka Universe Gilda Cordero Fernando

Three muses of literature Susan Lara, Marj Evasco and Gilda

Two publishing greats: Eugenia "Eggie" Apostol and Gilda yet again

Celeste Legaspi sings "Gaano Kita Kamahal" for the birthday celebrator (he with the black beret)

Blurry though it may seem this precious photo of laughing writing couple Roger and Fe Mangahas is full of meaning to me: love conquers all, especially dictatorships, aging and personal tragedies.

The untouched birthday cake that features likenesses of the covers of Frankie's novels. The cake people flocked to was the one baked by Estrel's, specializing in caramel cakes. It was given by the University of Santo Tomas's The Varsitarian which Frankie edited in his youth.

The writer who savored the word and swallowed the world

The much-loved and esteemed Doreen Gamboa Fernandez would have been more than pleased at the culinary storm she helped generate: blogs devoted to restaurant reviews; culinary academies rising in nearly all parts of the country; regional and national cooking contests; newspaper sections and columns devoted to food and dining. In a large way, this is her doing. Add to that, the well-traveled widely exposed Pinoy has developed a discriminating palate that has learned to savor a multitude of tastes representing cuisines of the world.

Fernandez and her typewriter

 The life and works of this modern Renaissance woman is the subject of an exhibit at the Ateneo Library of Women's Writings (ALIWW) Reading Room on the Loyola Heights campus, Quezon City, until Nov. 9.

Apart from photographs of Fernandez and copies of her books, the glass cases display the meticulous syllabus, exams and class records she kept when she taught generations of Ateneo students English, literature, journalism and creative writing, her own notebooks and notes from graduate school where she did ground-breaking research on the history of Philippine theater under scholars Bienvenido Lumbera and Nicanor Tiongson who later became her colleagues, thank-you notes from medical residents, students and people who heard her lecture or to whom she gave her time and attention.

An "A" student even in graduate school

No wonder the Ateneo community insists, with this exhibit, on remembering what to its members is “a great woman.”

Teacher, scholar, writer, taste-maker, even “pleasant patient, strong even during the most trying of times,” in the words of the resident staff of the Makati Medical Center who she taught how to improve their command of the English language. It was her way of giving back for their helping her recover from illness. Fernandez wore these inter-related hats with elan, unselfishness and humility.

Doreen the professor

 Unselfish and humble because she did not hog credit to herself. In her book Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (Anvil Publishing), she acknowledged as her teachers “those who give me information about food: market vendors, street sellers, cooks, chefs, waiters, restaurant and carinderia owners, farmers, tricycle drivers, gardeners, fishermen …” and on and on her list goes. In short, “everyone who eats and cares.”

Even at her most scholarly, her writing remained vibrant and readable. At the end of her narratives, she always had a glossary of food and food-related terms and list of publication sources. In one of her last books Palayok: Philippine Food Through Time, On Site, In the Pot (The Bookmark Inc.), a table of illustrations is included where the sources of each image is acknowledged.

Some books that Fernandez wrote

With frequent collaborator Edilberto Alegre

 Only she can come up with the just-right definition for that condition of a fruit, manibalang, i.e., “almost ripe, fruit soft yet firm and crunchy.” Or that piquant term for a young coconut’s meat, mala-uhog, i.e.., “literally, like snot.”

In Tikim, she also lay down some guidelines for credible food writing that read so elegantly like the writer’s character: “The writing done about food must be worthy of its subject. It should be not just utilitarian reportage, but writing that depends heavily on the unsaid, on the assumed, on the subtext of culture. It should require full participation from the reader, responses drawn from home and growing, from memory and pleasure. Because of this, it must be done with words that resound, and with the silence vibrating between and behind the words. Words that bear the culture within them need no adornments; they speak from intimacy of the experience. And yet, one reaches for words oft dedicated only to poetry, for words beyond the cooking stove, kitchen and plate, for words that convey sense, sensibility and sensuousness.”

Unknown to many readers, this “doyenne of food history in the Philippines,” a title given by renowned folklore scholar and museum professional Barbara-Krishenblatt-Gimblett, was a diabetic during all the time she was trying out restaurants, writing her food columns, researching Philippine town and sitios for almost-lost life and food ways. This never hampered her work. Her prose bristles with joie de vivre that is evident in her personal photos on exhibit.

Wedding portrait of Doreen and Wili Fernandez

 Little known, too, is that the homemaker Doreen served her husband Wili, a top honcho in the interior design profession and himself a gourmet, take-out food. This wirter once spotted her loading warm, freshly cooked laing in her car for her husband’s supper but not just from any run-of-the-mill source. She bought it from someone who cooked it with love.

Laughing with sister Della Besa the pianist

 The young bloggers have plenty to thank Fernandez for. This plenitude she made possible through her writings–cum-teachings. She foresaw the “new kind of interaction” where local and foreign chefs use Philippine ingredients in creative ways (mango-filled crepes, salmon belly sinigang) or how street food would continue to flourish in hard times and good.--Text and photo reproductions by Elizabeth Lolarga

First published by Vera Files and Yahoo Philippines, Oct. 30, 2012

Frankie and Tessie in the Clair de Lune

Tuesday was one of those crazy-daisy days. But its staccato beat went andante when I ran into Frankie and Tessie Jose on the ground level of the Shangri-La Plaza. He had his cane. I had mine. He wore a transparent plastic eye patch over his right eye. The ever solicitous Tessie said, “Let have coffee,” our code over the years for “Let’s catch up.”

The Joses have always been Frankie and Tessie to me. They never made me feel that I had to address them with honorifics like “Sir” or “Ma’am,” “Mister” or “Missus.” We met when I was a college sophomore who’d occasionally pop in at the top floor of their Solidaridad Book Shop in Ermita, Manila, after I'd read a newspaper announcement about a visiting writer. The first time I climbed the stairs to that floor was when a Russian poet blew into town. On the way to the book store’s literary soiree, Rolando Tinio, who accompanied the visitor in a car, rapidly did an on-the-spot translation from English to Filipino of the poet’s work. With no rehearsal, Tinio read aloud the poem feelingly as only a poem ought to be read before an audience of about a dozen people.

Back to the Joses. Because Frankie and I were hobbling with our canes and a cataract had just been removed from his right eye, Tessie offered to join the Starbucks queue to get our orders—he for an espresso, me for a regular. His first question was: “What have you been writing?” I rolled my eyes and said, “Potboilers here and there.” He smiled, saying, “No matter, you’re still writing, and that’s good.”

“Any new poetry?” Frankie asked as a waiter brought our orders. I poured milk into my cup, averting my eyes when I answered, “A few, all fits and false starts.”

He told me to get a copy of the latest Free Press magazine. He read a poem, he wasn’t sure of the poet, by a certain Sunico. “You must be referring to Rayvi,” I said. “Raul is the pianist, the dean of the UST College of Music.”

Frankie got the little jug of remaining warm milk and poured the contents of his espresso paper cup into the jug, then re-poured the new mixture back into the cup. He was sure it was Raul the pianist, not Ramon the poet-book designer, who wrote the poem. Frankie praised the poem's innate musicality. It was like reading something by W.H. Auden, he added.

He has always watched out for rhyme, including interior rhyme, meter, alliteration, assonance, etc., in the poems that he reads. He is frustrated with a retired Ateneo professor’s books of poetry. I played Devil’s Advocate, saying that the prof is a musicologist. I told Frankie of once dropping by the prof’s modest Quezon City apartment in the 1980s, and hearing a Beethoven concerto playing full blast in his stereo.

“Nevertheless, he is tone deaf when it comes to his poems!” Frankie insisted.

He admires certain Filipino poets in English, prefacing his remarks with “But this is only as far as the boys are concerned.” Topping his list is Cirilo Bautista followed by Krip Yuson, Gemino Abad and “that fellow from Davao,” Frankie shook his head, trying to recall Ricky de Ungria’s name which I uttered.

“Don’t you read any of the guys who write in Filipino?” I asked.

Frankie’s answer was whenever he listened to Bienvenido Lumbera speak in Filipino, he would tell this other National Artist that he (Frankie) couldn’t understand what Dr. Lumbera was saying. “I tell him, how come when it’s Jun Cruz Reyes who’s talking, I get him? And Bien would only laugh.”

Frankie struggled with reading Lope K. Santos’ Banaag at Sikat but thoroughly enjoyed Lualhati Bautista’s Dekada ’70. He once asked a Liwayway editor in the ’60s or ’70s to compile the best short stories published in the magazine for a number of years , and he'd publish them.

Frankie was disappointed with the compilation submitted to him. “They all had O. Henry type of endings! Was that what Filipino writing all about?” he asked.
He continued, “You must remember, Babeth, that I arrived in Manila from the province in 1938 with no knowledge of Tagalog.” He learned his Tagalog along with way.

He hectored on other topics still close to literary shop talk until we drained our coffee. Tessie stepped out to buy load for her cell phone so she could call the driver. Before long, we said our goodbyes, and in my mind, as Frankie walked slowly with his cane toward the waiting car, was a memory of him taking young reporter Babeth in a midnight spin in his sedan with him at the wheel singing along to the soundtrack of The King and I.

Photo of F. Sionil Jose by JULIO SAMBAJON from Howie Severino’s blog