'Kai ligaya ng buhay'

For that witty pun on my grandchild's name I have Manong Ed Maranan to thank, he being the master of the art of punning.

I failed to make my November trip to the post office, the time of year when I mail handwritten Christmas cards. There was just a lot of reading, writing, correcting of papers, proofreading of book galleys to attend to.

So I succumbed to the 21st-century convenience of a Christmas family letter with a picture of "Kai ligaya" attached in my email to over 200 contacts. You can imagine how much I spend on stamps for individual cards in a year! Well, I'm often reminded by environmentalists to reduce my paper trail by going electronic in my mail. So there.

Since the adjectival response to the photo of "Kai ligaya" has ranged from "adorable" to "cutie" to "she looks like one of my apos," I thought I'd post one more pic in this space for a Christmas-y and merry feel.

Posing by the Christmas tree of Gardenville Hotel in Green Valley, Baguio City Photo by Booboo Babeth

How green it was

I've often wondered who took this early in the 20th-century photo of La Trinidad in the province of Benguet. It must have been early in the last century because the Philippines is referred to here as PI (Philippine Islands). It looks colorized, but most of all it makes you want to exclaim: "How green was my valley!" Once upon a time, not very long ago, this was how it was. Whoever took this picture, thank you so much. I don't want to ruin the moment by posting an After (what La Trinidad looks like today) picture. Screensaver, anyone? Photo shared by Manong Ed Maranan

Abanse, BWG!

Among the board resolutions passed by the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL) was this:

"WHEREAS, Baguio Writers Group, as nominated, deserves the 2013 Gawad Pedro Bucaneg for Oustanding Institution for literary advancement..."

It was signed by Dr. Michael Coroza, UMPIL secretary general, and Karina Bolasco, chair.

The souvenir program for the 39th UMPIL Congress and 28th Gawad Pambansang Alagad Balagtas carried a group photo of BWG members and this description of the awardee:

"Literature in the city thrived even more with the passionate encourage and advocacy of the Baguio Writers Group (BWG) from the decade of the '80s and the group has since then pursued its artistic vision without letup. Based on the successes over the years, the organization promises the further advancement of literature  and the recognition of creative writing together with related arts in order to reach a broader audience. Through forums, presentations, and publications, the organization is able to spark more enthusiasm in both writers and readers to enliven Filipino literature in Baguio."

Representing the group at the awards rites was BWG president Frank Cimatu. Some others  were also there at the right place (Leong Hall, Ateneo de Manila University), right time (Aug. 31 at the end of Buwan ng Wika).

Pedro Bucaneg, by the way, "was a foremost Ilocano poet and Christian missionary born in Bantay, Abra" Go to http://www.poemhunter.com/pedro-bucaneg/biography/ for more on his life. May he infuse BWG with more vigor!

Mabuhay, Baguio Writers Group!

Grace Subido and Frank Cimatu hold up with pride and joy the Gawad Pedro Bucaneg and program.

Frank receives the award in behalf of BWG. With him onstage are National Artist Virgilio Almario, BWG's Ed Maranan, Grace Subido, Babeth Lolarga and UMPIL's Karina Bolasco

Frank with the other winners of the Gawad Balagtas (from left): Francisco T. Ponce represented by his sister (Iluko stories), Roland Tolentino (essays), Floy Quintos (plays) and Alice Tan Gonzales (Hiligaynon literature) represented by John Iremil Teodoro

To not live in vain

Yesterday's and today's inbox was filled with petitions that requested signatures for the save-the-Philamlife-Theater movement and for the revocation of the University of the Philippines' unjust "no late payment" and "forced leave of absence" policies. These issues all call for one's time and contribution as citizen (simply add your name to the petition).

Likewise, an appeal came in behalf of an Ibaloi child who is seriously ill.

Youngest dialysis patient in Baguio

Manong Ed Maranan, Palanca hall of famer who is originally from Baguio, wrote to his email  contacts for the second day in a row to seek help so a new lease on life could be given to Chelsea Benito, 10. 

He shared Baguio journalist Ramon Dacawi's  account of how the Benito family is struggling to keep Chelsea alive. The report came out in the community paper Baguio Midland Courier: 

"Chelsea Abance Benito and her family are no different from most, if not all, of the other kidney patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.


"Like most families with a member afflicted with total kidney failure that requires life-time dialysis, hers is suddenly on its toes scrounging for funds to support her next treatment session, supposedly scheduled two or three times a week.

"Most, if not all, are financially strapped, drained dry by the costs: between P2,200 to P2,800 per session, excluding occasional blood transfusions, maintenance medicines, hospitalization for complications and a host of other needs.

"The difference is that, as per her doctors advice, Chelsea must be on dialysis every other day, or four sessions a week, until her blood pressure has stabilized.
"The difference is that she is almost blind. Her vision has blurred since her blood pressure shot up last September and she was confined for the second time at the BGHMC.
"The difference is that Chelsea is now the youngest of 169 dialysis patients being treated at the BGHMC.


"Chelsea, the third of four kids of Billy and Cecilia (nee Abance) Benito, an Ibaloy farmer-couple from Bengao, Bakakeng Central here, is 10 years old.


"Before Chelsea appeared at the BGHMC renal center for her first dialysis session last Jan. 16, the youngest patient was Ana Fontanilla, a 14-year old farmer's daughter from Rosario, La Union.


"The number of kidney patients seeking treatment at the BGHMC renal center is steadily increasing. That they're getting younger is alarming for nurse Carmen Bumatnog and the rest of the staff working the four treatment shifts of four hours each.


"Before Ana and Chelsea, the youngest was Ashley Dyrine Sabling, then a 14-year old girl from Tadian, Mt. Province. She died on a Sunday in early November 2010 just after she arrived in Baguio for her scheduled treatment the following morning.


"School children and teachers of Westmont School Montessori at Camp 7 here fought back tears when they learned of Ashley's passing. She had visited their school, to thank them for making kimchi they sold to parents to support her treatment.


"Recently, Ana's mother appealed for support to her daughter's will to survive. Several gentle souls out there who requested anonymity immediately pooled P38,500 for Ana, so her family' won't have to worry how to sustain her dialysis until this February.


"Now, it's Chelsea's turn.


"The kid's father said her woes began in July last year, while she was in the fourth grade. She was suddenly feverish, was feeling weak and started throwing up. During her hospital confinement, doctors advised her parents to bring Chelsea to the national Kidney and Transplant Institute in Quezon City.


"'We were trying to raise the amount needed to bring her (to the NKTI) when her blood pressure shot up and had to be confined again,' her father, Billy, said last week. 'That's when her vision became impaired to the point that she could no longer recognize faces she knew.'"

Manong Ed has provided the bank details of Chelsea's mother so Good Samaritans (there are many out there) can help by way of prayers, intentions and donations.

Philippine National Bank

Abanao St., Baguio City branch

Account Name: Cecilia Benito

Savings Account Number: 592108-011-5451360

Letters like Manong Ed's are stark reminders of the importance of frequent practice of helping, something Emily Dickinson captured:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

This is for Pablo Tariman and Chief Persi Rueda-Acosta...

...and all the others in a cast of nearly a hundred who survived a movie within a movie that happened in 24 hours in Calbayog City, Samar, Jan. 17-18, 2013. To quote Chief Public Attorney Persida Rueda-Acosta, "I believe in fairy tales. They do happen in real life." Atty. Acosta, may your tribe increase. Meanwhile, let us sleep the sleep of the just.

Cartoon from one of Manong Ed Maranan's emails

The company I kept, briefly, in December

A rare smile coaxed out of Luis Teodoro

"But we all know who, or what, the writer is. He or she is a poet, an essayist and/or a novelist, as the initials and acronym of this organization suggest. But he or she is also the writer of the editorials and columns, the investigative and explanatory reports that are among the many forms journalism has developed in discharging its public task of describing and interpreting the human environments. In the digital age, the writer is also the blogger who makes it his concern to gather and provide information on issues of citizen concern and to comment on them online."
--Excerpt from Luis V. Teodoro's "Interpreting the World: The Writer as Public Intellectual," keynote address as the PEN Philippines Conference at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Silangan Hall, Dec. 6, 2012 

This being a belated account of what transpired at the last Philippine PEN conference, the blogger finds it fitting to begin with what Prof. Teodoro had said less than a month ago.

He pointed out that "the intellectual, like the writer, is necessarily public."  Apart from this, he enlarged the definition of what a writer is to include not just poets, playwrights, essayists and novelists (the traditional membership of PEN which has chapters all over the world) but especially journalists. 

He spoke in the latter's defense, saying, "Those writers who are neither poets nor novelists and 'only journalists,' are too often denied the distinction of being included in the august company called writers, the products of their craft being thought to be too ephemeral, too bound by time, and in some if not most cases, constricted as well by the interests, whether political or corporate, of the media organizations they write for.

"Journalism is truly writing by the numbers, that virtue, if virtue it indeed be, being driven primarily by the need for information gathering skills. But journalism can be more than information gathering, as many journalists, among them Nick Joaquin, have demonstrated. The journalist who guards and fights for his independence and who is more than a gatherer of information can also be a great writer, if, as Joaquin warned, he approached every article as if it involved the parting of the Red Sea or the splitting of the atom."

Manong Ed

Teodoro, himself a fiction writer, newspaper columnist, journalism teacher, former political detainee during the Marcos dictatorship and introduced by Manong Ed Maranan as "70-ish, a natty dresser and a national democrat," acknowledged journalism for its long tradition of lending "itself to the need of the intellectual for public engagement. But the Philippine experience has demonstrated again and again that public engagement can be extremely perilous for both writer and intellectual. The perils are not limited to dying in poverty under alien skies like Graciano Lopez Jaena, or execution through musketry like Rizal. During the martial law period, hundreds of writers were arrested and detained, and others killed in demonstration of how driven by violence is the authoritarian fear that information and insight are values too dangerous to tolerate in those who hold them.

"Emman Lacaba was slain without the benefit of charge or trial for joining the army of the poor, departing thus from the conventional path of  middle class ease and the Bohemian excess usually—and mistakenly—associated with writers. The poet Lorena Barros was similarly executed—the exquisitely ironic term devised by the military is 'salvaged'—while hundreds of intellectuals in academia and outside were arrested, others were made to disappear never to be seen or heard of again, or thrown into prison, as some of those present today were.

Teodoro: "..[T]he intellectual speaks the truth and exposes lies—to the end... of interpreting the world towards changing it."

"The country is no longer under martial rule. But today the journalist and poet Ericson Acosta is still in prison, sharing the fate of others in other countries where dictators rule."

Teodoro pointed out that not all journalists are blemish-free, saying,"Among journalists some have been more successful than others, and many have succumbed to the blandishments of wealth and power, serving as the spokespersons of local tyrants, business interests, criminal syndicates, the military and/or the police. But public intellectuals have nevertheless emerged among journalists despite the chaos in the communities, where warlordism and corruption, environmental degradation and human rights violations are most pronounced and occurring in the larger context of  the poverty and injustice that for centuries have afflicted that portion of humanity we know as Filipinos. These public intellectuals and writers have armed themselves, out of  sheer necessity, with a coherent theoretical framework with which they examine and report events in behalf of the fundamental need to understand the roots of human misery.


"Many are in military Orders of Battle and almost regularly receive death threats as the reward for their work. They write with the constant possibility of being ambushed and slain, in courageous affirmation of that commitment to 'speaking the truth and exposing lies' Noam Chomsky declares is the intellectual’s responsibility, interpreting the Philippine world to their readers as  part of their contribution to the historic necessity to change it. In what is known as the alternative press, the same focus is as evident in the work of those who labor unrecognized but who have found among those Filipinos fighting for the change that for at least a century has eluded this land, the growing and appreciative audience that can do something about it."

After Teodoro, what could one say or dare add? 

Nery called Rizal "a man of projects...a scholar of history."

John Nery, a newspaper columnist, author of Revolutionary Spirit: Rizal in Southeast Asia and one of the panelists, quoted the fervid letter-writer that was Rizal in his paper "Condensados en un libro: Fr. Vicente Garcia, the Noli, and Rizal's Theory of 'Intellectual Tradition'". These words from the 1800s still have currency among young and mid-career writers:

"I who belong to the young generation, anxious to do something for their country and uneasy about the mysterious future, I need to come to men who have seen much and studied more so that with their experience they may supplement our youth and limited knowledge. We need besides the applause and the blessing of the old to encourage us in the colossal struggle and the gigantic campaign that we have thrown over our dwarfish shoulders. However great is our enthusiasm, however confident is our youth, however promising our illusions, we hesitate nevertheless in certain moments, especially when we find ourselves alone and abandoned."

The rest of Dec. 6 went by like a blur, forgive the cliche. For this blogger, it was enough that the most solitary, almost anti-social beings that writers and journalists could be sometimes, weren't clawing the eyes out of each other's faces. 

Angela Stuart Santiago

It was also delightful to put a face on certain writers one admired from a distance, the mother-daughter Angela Stuart Santiago and Katrina Stuart Santiago, both master essayists and critics. The former called Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile a liar out to revise history to protect his political and business interests. This is exemplified by his pushing son Jackie to run for, and succeed him as, senator.

She accused Enrile, who came out smelling like roses after the Corona trial, of rewriting history in his so-called autobiography, an exercise that she called a throwback to the Dark Ages when politicians reinvented themselves as icons.

On Enrile's attempt to rewrite history, moderator Rony V. Diaz said, "If that is not sad, I don't know what sad is."

Quite moving was Jaime An Lim's reading of his poem "I Am Finally All I Have" about a "short-time" encounter between two men. 

He spoke of how hard it was for homosexual men of his generation to blend in, to "banish the limp wrist, cultivate a manly baritone" so they could not give themselves away. He considered himself one of those "not visible" gays even if he and the others had been around for the longest time.

Lim: "Liberation starts with self-affirmation."

 That was why he considered the anthology Ladlad, edited by Danton Remoto and Neil Garcia, as "the first Cry of Balintawak of the gay community." In a bigoted world, Lim said, Ladlad helped unite the gay writing community in the belief in the power of numbers "to be heard" and "to change the world...Listen, because we are many."

Jun Cruz Reyes spoke in Filipino about the need for writers to shake the power structures of society given the speed with which today's generation moves: "May nakakarating, may naiiwan." 

He noted how topics discussed among writers have veered towards safe ones instead of their seeking out a national discourse that could capture the public's imagination. Such a discourse would be characterized by "pukpukan ng bayag."

He lamented how Rizal has been reduced to "a myth," apart from his figure appearing on the cover of matchboxes and in cement monuments. Cruz Reyes cited the not so recent history of Filipino writers during the dictatorship wherein they were jailed, tortured or executed while confronting issues of oppression. He said this situation goes on in countries like China, Burma and Turkey.

Jun Cruz Reyes

He closed by saying writing should go beyond celebrating the self or setting up one's own literary clique.

In most conferences of this kind, sometimes the most exciting discussions, in whispered tones, happen at the back of the room. 

It was great to hang out by the secretariat table staffed by Shirley Lua who looked as young as her college literature students. Sometimes, she'd scold us, with a smile, for doubling over in laughter as we found ourselves engaging in pleasurable gossip. 

I felt the temperature in that air-conditioned hall go up a bit when Ed Cabagnot marched in partly to listen to the discussions, partly to play. 

When I asked why he doesn't co-emcee Writers' Night at UP Diliman with Gou de Jesus anymore, he explained why he was banned from the event. I don't know if this physical reaction of mine is possible. But my non-virgin ears blushed!

Backroom crowd: Lito Zulueta, Shirley Lua, nice decent lady, Nic Tiongson, someone whose jaw must be locked sometimes and Ed Cabagnot

When the Miclat couple, Mario and Alma, arrived late, it was another occasion for a group hug and shot. Front row from left: Dr. Luis Gatmaitan, children's book author, Domingo and Edna May Landicho, Mario, Alma and Shirley. Rubbernecking are Wendell Capili and a woman whose jaw came unlocked.

The adjective "patrician" becomes the old guard: National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera, Rony Diaz and Elmer Ordoñez

At the Philippine PEN, Writers' Solidarity Night has been a long tradition. I remember one  author in the '80s who slumped in a drunken stupor in the men's room of the then US territory on Roxas Blvd., Seabreeze, and woke to find some US military police glaring at him.

Gemma aging young-ly

Guerrero cousins Amadis and Gemma

On the last month of 2012, the old guard, the avant garde, even the guarded and shy convened at Dencio's by Manila Bay for prose and poetry readings in English, Filipino, Chavacano and other languages, drinking, more gossiping and photo ops with the country's first Miss International, Gemma Cruz Araneta, herself an essayist and fictionist.

That's anthologist Erlinda Panlilio caught in the middle.

The boys couldn't contain their thrill at the visual feast in their presence. Soon, Domeng Landicho was declaiming extemporaneously his admiration for Ms. Araneta and ended his on-the-spot poem with a courtly kiss of her hand. 

I should've butted in by crooning, "Ikaw ang Miss Universe ng buhay ko."

Boys at heart at the back: Francis Macansantos and Arnold Molina Azurin. Seated are a Chinay writer who prefers to use a pen name, Gemma and Mrs. Panlilio.

 Photos taken by Babeth, except the ones with her in them

Birth, life, love and Robin Lim

BAGUIO CITY—Midwife Robin Lim, 2011 CCN Hero of the Year, once ran into an obstetrician. They compared how many babies they had delivered that day. Both helped birth three each. Lim asked the doctor, "Do you know the mothers' names?"

Taken aback, the doctor couldn't recall his patients' names and admitted to never bothering to know, part of the detachment that his practice requires. Lim recited the names of women she had helped deliver their babies. She had known them well since they went to her for prenatal checkups.

The doctor cried all night. His wife rang Lim, founder of Yayasan Ibu Bumi Sehat (or Healthy Mother Earth Foundation) that encourages natural birth, including those that take place in water in Bali, Indonesia, to ask, "What have you done to him?" That moment with Lim served as the doctor's epiphany when he questioned his profession.

At a time when 918 women die yearly worldwide from childbirth or complications resulting from it, Lim finds the situation scandalous with the US investing heavily on childbirth technology and landing a man on the moon at the cost of billions of dollars.

Life-saver, story-teller

The CNN honor made hers a popular voice. She said it was a human rights issue that "these women are being struck down at the prime of their lives."

A protocol she wants hospitals to allow is to wait for a few minutes so the infant's umbilical cord and the placenta can fall off naturally. This also keeps the mother from bleeding too much.

She said science has shown that it takes years for a child to reach optimum health if the cord rich in nutrients is cut too soon. A proponent of prolonged breastfeeding of up to four to five years, she said giving mother's milk is "a gift to them that you can never get back."

She cited Albert Einstein, also born at home and still taking a snack at his mother's breast till age 10.

She asked individuals and organizations to "communicate, cooperate to find real solutions that the government can back up so we don't need to lose people needlessly." Her work empowers women to own their bodies so "they can have the lives they were meant to live."

She has met prostituted women who get pregnant and whose "bosses" compel them to give up and sell their babies. "It's the most tragic thing," this advocate against human trafficking said.

Lim met a poor young girl who became a prostitute to raise money for her mother's cancer treatment. The mother died, but the girl couldn't get out of the cycle of prostitution.

Lim said. "If you know how love can save lives, ask a midwife. I teach midwifes to practice with love, to look into another's eyes to say, 'I love you.'"

She called her sister midwives "the first line of defense like our lolas, a combination of hilot and medical practitioner."  She described herself as being "pro-women, pro-baby, pro-child, pro-family."

Lim embraces Lolit Dicang who runs Baguio's only birthing clinic.

In a high-risk situation, she has seen how a newborn given up for dead is resuscitated when the room fills up with midwives and relatives prodding the child with declarations of love.

A mother of eight, she manages to "chase the genie"  (her term) to put words on paper and produce books of poetry, fiction (Butterfly People) and non-fiction. Coming soon is a workbook on natural family planning to promote a lifestyle of non-violence to be published by Anvil.

She said when mothers give birth at her clinic, she sees butterflies flitting in and out. Her grandmother Vicenta Munar Lim taught her that these creatures may be fragile but they can fly. She said since then she has become "jealous of them" and saved their wings when she found dead ones.

They became her personal emblem. She explained that a butterfly begins as a crawling worm that later goes into a coffin, surviving sun and rain. One day it opens and out flies a thing of beauty. She said the human soul is similar.

Her friend, writer Edgardo Maranan, introduced her to a crowd at Mt. Cloud Bookshop in Casa Vallejo in this city, saying when CNN announced Lim as a hero, many countries rushed to claim her as theirs, including the US and Indonesia, but, he added, "To us she is a Baguio girl."

Lim took nine months of non-stop writing to finish Butterfly People, likening the process to a baby's gestation in a mother's womb. It took nine more years to find a publisher.

Maranan was the first to read the manuscript that covers six generations with action moving in the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Hawaii. He recommended this thinly disguised biography of Lim's family in northern Philippines  to Anvil Publishing.

She said her being Filipino by blood makes her a magical realist storyteller, adding, "It's so Pinay to exaggerate."--Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

Originally published by Vera Files/Yahoo Philippines, May 7, 2012

Reason for the season

The blog's title is from a concert that I missed; the UP Concert Chorus had its Christmas handog concert yesterday (Dec. 11) at Abelardo Hall. I decided to spend the afternoon and the rest of the evening resting at home, eating mini Ponkan oranges and drinking pitchers of warm to room-temperature water to keep my colds from getting more severe.

Knowing how the common cold I catch has a way of lingering and malingering and dampening my plans, I have to lick this one, not only because I am one of four authors (the others are Manong Ed Maranan, Mookie Katigbak and Dean Alfar)assigned to talk tomorrow at the Philippine PEN's "Meet the Authors" event at the NBS Bestsellers store, Robinson's Galleria, but also because I so look forward to another trip to Baguio before the weekend to be with Miss Adorable, my grandchild Butones. I don't want her to catch this cold virus that has been going around our Pasig household when I get to hold and cuddle her again.

In my desire to get well ASAP, I asked painter Mario de Rivera, who's a superb cook, baker and believer in herbal medicine, by the way, for his anti-cold and cough remedy that is better than any over-the-counter nasal decongestant. Artists are generally generous, and in the spirit of the season, here is Mario sharing his "Fusion":

"Boil two cups of shredded ginger, one cup of tamarind leaves or pounded fruit with three cups water for about 30 minutes. Strain, then boil again with two cups muscovado sugar till syrupy for another 30 minutes. Add a half cup of calamansi juice. Take a shot of this to relieve you as often as needed. If you have brandy, add a dash and enjoy before going to bed. Get well before Tuesday. :)"

This can also be taken as a tea. Just add hot water to a few teaspoons of the syrup, stir, sip and relax.

It's Monday, and I intend to subsist on this liquid diet to starve my cold while trying to meet another deadline.

Another of my Monday surprises is from Angie Valenzuela Velasco, kid sister of my late kumpadre Bobi Valenzuela whose death anniversary falls today.Bobi was a thoughtful guy, capable of surprising his friends and getting a laugh out of them. Angie apparently has that gift, too. In Facebook, she tagged me with these three photos of Butones with her grand folks. In short, she had just custom-made our family's Christmas card FREE! These e-cards remind me how another babe was the reason for a season as beautiful as Christmas.

Thank you, Mario and Angie, for riches beyond measure.

For the Love of Words

The SMS from Ed Maranan read: “Hey, BUTCH! CONGRATULATIONS! Wow! Painom!” In a flash I thought it was a missent message. I returned to the work we were doing in our web design class. On my way out of the UP Baguio campus, who should I see coming up the covered walk but Butch Macansantos himself with that cat-ate-the-canary look on his face?

“Did you just win something? What is it?” I cried without so much as a salutary “Hi!” He nodded and said telegraphically, “Yes. First prize. Palanca.”

“Poetry?” I asked, a question that on hindsight stated the obvious. He nodded, and it was as if the clouds parted and the long-missed sun shone on his face. (We’ve been having six days of rain.) We shook hands, I managed to pat his back, and I rode to town with two packs of peanuts to chew on while thinking how fortunate these two chaps, Ed and Butch, have been in the last few weeks.

After the second Baguio Writers Group (BWG) workshop for the youth in July, Butch, the main panelist, could have been borne out of the Pine Room on the shoulders of the participants, mainly college students from all over Baguio and Benguet. I’m not exaggerating because I keep the feedback forms. (He is shown wearing his trademark pullover in a photo above taken by EV ESPITIRU and awarding a book on contemporary poetry to workshopper Sacha Weygan after a raffle.) In last Tuesday's “Tanghal Panitikan 1” at UP, he gave impassioned readings of “Balsa” in his native Chavacano and “Raft” in English. There’s no other way to read one’s work, except the way he did, which was feelingly.

Ed has been tucking one prize/recognition in his belt after another (the Writer’s Prize followed by the Balagtas award). And he has been generous in sending us links to interesting websites he visits, including where to find in YouTube a video of the Puppini Sisters who popularized “Mr. Sandman.” If he can trawl all those sites, one BWG member surmises he must be online all day and most of the night so where in heaven’s name does he find the time, and how in heck does he get into that reflective mood, to compose so much poetry and prose with all the distractions the Internet offers?

I know the answer before Butch and Ed can say the “D” words: discipline, dedication. The former is hardly computer savvy and writes all his drafts in a spiral notebook (the Golden Gate brand when I last peeked in early 2007). There’s a lesson here somewhere, but strike me with lightning first before I proceed to my next paragraph.

The title of today’s blog is from Butch’s dedication written on the flyleaf of my copy of his book The Words & Other Poems (University of the Philippines Press 1997). I attended the mass launching of books by UP Press at the National Book Fair on Sept. 9 that year. I was seated beside poet Luisa Igloria. Butch came in, limping slightly, sat on our row and said he had just gotten off the bus from Baguio, crossed the EDSA overpass and walked to get to SM Megamall. I presented my book for signing. Without missing a beat, he wrote: “Dear Babeth, Yours for the love of words—and of mountains. The gusty gout, Francis ‘Butch’ Macansantos”.

When we next ran into each other months later, he half-laughingly told me I was the very first person to present his first book for autographing. He waited a long, long while before another buyer of his book followed suit. Ah, poets, where art thy readers?