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

There's something about turquoise

I'm typing as fast as I can so I don't miss a day of blogging on what is my busiest day of the week: Wednesday. Twenty-two notebooks of 22 high school kids await correcting and commenting.

But I'm giving a listen to the Tony Bennett-Amy Winehouse duet of "Body and Soul." Me being me, I being I, I'm singing along, imagining we're some trio.

Wanted to say, hey, take me away from all these, these being deadlines and things I've committed myself to and I can't squirm out of. (Don't be alarmed by my panic attacks. I truly love what I do.)

But then at this stage in my life, getaways are now imaginary. For the moment the Victoria's Secret e-poster will just be a goal thrown to the Universal Mind. In its own time, it will respond. I know it as sure as "I gladly surrender myself to you body and soul."

What makes Cecile Licad glorious

What makes Cecile Licad glorious

The Gilda Ball

The Gilda Ball

O Bradley boy

Bradley Bascon performing live at the DZFE studio with assisting pianist Rudolf Golez. Young Bradley opens the Manila Chamber Orchestra Foundation's Young Artists Series 2014 on July 28, Monday, at 7 p.m. at the Ayala Museum Lobby.

FM radio station DZFE's Bert Robledo, who must have been the late environmental Odette Alcantar's punning partner in her Blue Ridge tertulia years, assured me after I turned up at the Far East Broadcasting Company's Ortigas Center Office that I needn't worry that I had left my camera at home. I brought everything I needed to cover his "Bravo Filipino" program at noon yesterday wherein his featured guest was Bradley Bascon who, at 14, is the most promising Fil-Am violinist.

Mang or Manong Bert, as I prefer to call him out of respect for his age (I don't have to disclose that, do I?), assured me that I had no cause to panic by pointing to his temple: "I have a photographic memory."

As I was giggling, he signaled to Daisy Jane Sande, programming assistant of 98.7 DZFE The Master's Touch, to take care of my photographic needs. And there was more assist coming from Angel Reyes-Nacino, Manila Chamber Orchestra Foundation executive director who was also a guest, Ana Jacinta Trinidad (she'll hate it if I just say she's sports writer-poet Recah Trinidad's niece) and Bradley's lovely mama, Theresa Jallorina Bascon. They all volunteered to also take or share pics.

Ordinary miracles--these gestures are called.

The California-based violinist with his mom Tetch

Ana Jacinta Trinidad (right), who says she's named after her two grandmothers, takes a selfie with a new acquaintance.

From the get go, Mang Bert described Badley as displaying "a masterly artistry," putting him in the same league as Diomedes Saraza Jr., Regina Buenaventura and other young violinists with Philippine roots.

Bradley and Rudolf at the DZFE music studio in Bert Robledo's noontime program "Bravo Filipino"

Like most good musicians, Bradley is more expressive in his playing than in conversing, and he showed the masterly touch that Manong Bert is so proud of when he first heard the boy rehearsing before the show. He played, among others, John Williams' adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, Ben Zubiri's "Matud Nila," a Cebuano melody whose title means "according to them." Earlier, before he went on air, Manong Bert, who used to sing in a choir with soprano Evelyn Mandac as soloist, threatened to sing the main character Tevye's part. But when it's time to be serious, he's as sober as a judge.

Of his musical family, Bradley said the genes come from both sides but especially from his Dad Conrad's. "We sing at parties. It gets really loud."

He doesn't consider himself a prodigy; he'd rather call himself as "more of a talent who needs more honing."

Bradley listens to his mother's reminder. Tetch, a St. Paul College alumna from kindergarten to college and still actively working as a freelance accountant, says she always tells him, "Be humble. No matter how talented you are, if you don't use your talent properly, God will take it away."

For his July 28 concert, his program is made up of compositions for the violin by Mozart, Winiawski, Monti, Kreisler and Saint-Saens.

Instant Bradley Bascon Admirers' Club. From left: kibitzing babushka, Ana Jacinta Trinidad, the teenage violinist who also excels in his academic subjects, Mang Bert Robledo, Rudolf Golez, Angel Reyes Nacino, Bradley's mom Tetch, his dad Conrad and a Jallorina aunt.

For tickets, call TicketWorld at 891-9999, the MCO Foundation at 750-0768 or 0920-954-0053.

Photos courtesy of Ana Jacinta Trinidad, Angel Reyes Nacino, Daisy Jane Sande and Theresa Jallorina Bascon

One couple's pearl jubilee

Happy Pearl Day, Mr. You Know Who You Are from Who Knows What You Are to Me

We must have asked ourselves many a time, not only in our respective thought balloons, what would it have been like if we didn't take the leap? But we did, and oh, how we did. It has been 30 years since we took our vows one evening at our Pasig neighborhood's parish church. He was 34; I had just turned 29.

When he and his guy pals get together, he still wins the contest of who of them married at a late age. Indeed, at 34, he was the oldest, perhaps in his sense of daring and adventure to offer his self's riches (strengths, weaknesses, humor, humorlessness but most of all his integrity as a person and a career journalist) to a shaky girl who was unsure, even today evidently, of her place in the sun. But they took the gamble anyway.

Who would have thought that our kind of unique loving would last with he there, me here? And we are very we in the couple sense despite our continuing tale of two cities. Okay, so it's a long, long-distance love affair, as the pop song in the '80s goes.

And since I'm singing today, let me sing (one of the songs sung at our 25th jubilee at the former location of Cafe Juanita in Kapitolyo, Pasig) "I'm Glad There Is You" by Paul Madeira and Jimmy Dorsey. I'm doing this using my best imitation of Sarah Vaughan as she recorded this with The Earl Rogers Choir (a capella) on April 4, 1948, in New York. As an aside, April 4 is the birthday of our grandchild Kai/Butones and Paula Carolina S. Malay, Armando J. Malay's spouse. Armando was Rolly Fernandez's choice as godfather at our wedding. Mine was Nieves B. Epistola whose birthday it was the other day.

I'm Glad There Is You

Said I many times, for others illusion,
A feeling, result of confusion.
With knowing smile and blase sigh,
A cynical so-and-so was I!
I feel so secure, so positive,
So utterly unchangingly certain,
That I never was aware of love anew,
Till suddenly I realised there was love and you,
And all;

In this world of ordinary people,
Extraordinary people,
I'm glad there is you.
In this world of overrated pleasures,
Of underrated treasures,
I'm glad there is you.

I live to love,
I love to live
With you beside me.
This road so new
I'll muddle through
With you to guide me.

In this world where many many play at love,
And hardly any stay in love,
I'm glad there is you.
More than ever,
I'm glad there is you.
(I'm glad there is you)

At their silver jubilee. Official photographer for the evening was the couple's kumare Anna Leah Sarabia who wrote in her Facebook caption: "if he could sing, it would be the way you look tonight. rolly was more clear-eyed, it seems, as our dear friend by then had had enough to make her smiling tipsy." To which another friend the three of us have in common, Pet Cleto, who's in Canada, responded: "the hazy borders are superlatively right for this image!"

Throwback Thursday: Darling Mrs. E (and her SV)

Iconic: Nieves Benito Epistola and SV Espitola, professors who professed at the University of the Philippines and in the university of good living Photo from the UP Alumni Relations Archives

The following were remarks that I had read at the eulogy for Mrs. E in September 2002 at the Delaney Hall of the UP Chapel of the Holy Sacrifice.

It is Mrs. E's birthday today.

~~~~~~

My Mrs. E

"Your UP education won't be complete unless you sign up in one of of Mrs. Epistola's classes." This was the advice my older first cousin, Henry Romero, gave when I was a college freshman. He had been Mrs. E's student in a GE subject.

There was a special light in his eyes when he talked about her. My curiosity grew when he told me that she loved the poems of e.e. cummings.

I heeded his suggestion and took Stylistics in 1975 as an elective under her. She was 49 years old then. I am 47 now. But at that time hers was a waistline to die for!

She dressed in what's called today as "smart casual," and when the occasion called for it, she could also be elegant in an Oleg Cassini frock. She cut a statuesque figure in front of the class. She walked briskly on and off campus, arms swinging freely. And she spoke in a distinctively resonant alto.

I could write a poem about her dimples along, how they danced and deepened when she was pleased with something, someone or some cat that brushed past her long, marble-white legs.

The following semester I just couldn't have enough of her so I audited her next Stylistics class. That was around the time she became more than a teacher. I found a patient friend with a gift of listening to my incoherent babblings.

Way before I had a boyfriend, before anyone was crazy enough to propose marriage to me, I had already asked her to be my ninang sa kasal. She said yes, even if she knew there was no guy in my life. In that sense, we were both optimists.

I once told Amadis Ma. Guerrero, my colleague and comrade in arts and letters, that Nieves and SV Epistola were the only couple who I considered an argument for the institution of marriage.

Amadis agreed, adding that Mrs. E was the perfect foil for SV, the great alaskador. SV would mask his affection for friends with a string of barbs and put-downs. With Mrs. E, there was no such mask.

Amadis, who she called Le Cheri Guerrier, and I benefited from her overflowing warmth and generosity. She wrote the introductions to our respective books. Speaking for myself, I honestly believe that her introduction outshone my 38 poems!

Mrs. E loved people. This love was returned in full measure, especially by her students, former students and the members of that lucky circle, her proteges.

Of her proteges, including those who aren't here like Lily Chua O'Connor and Gigi Dueñas de Beaupre, Mrs. E said last year, with Frankie and Tessie Jose as witnesses in her room at the Philippine General Hospital: "I made free spirits out of them!"

Unmindful of the intravenous drip attached to her, she declared this with her head proudly tilted back, her chin up.

Yes, she was generous with her time and material resources. She never gave things away piecemeal. I remember she gave me not just a bundle of cherries but a big big bag of moist, succulent cherries.

Last Christmas, she gave me not just a pair of earring but 10 pairs of dangling earrings. I would like to assure her surviving sisters, nieces and grand-nieces that those earrings are fancy and won't get anything at the nearest pawnshop.

More than the earrings, I treasure the note that came with it. She wrote: "Here's a Christmas pamana for you, Babeth. You can't imagine ever how much you've made me feel so blessed and full of grace."

Well, Mrs. E, the feeling is mutual.

She always signed these little notes with a smiley face after her initials. Those notes were poems in themselves. Language, after all, was her favorite tool and toy.

I still keep in an old diary another note from her that she wrote when my hair was longer, and I just had it curled. Her message ran: "Now that your hair is a folded flower, the quiet of peace is in your feet."

She did everything well. She cooked well, taught extremely well, praised well, even criticized well. She dissected one of my early short stories, found it wanting and told me point by point how I could revise it. (Note: The short story was published 10 years after she had written her marginal notes and I had found the time to revise it. It was published in two installments in the Weekly Mirror Magazine when Emmie Velarde was its editor and Nick Joaquin, its literary editor.)

Ang sarap-sarap talaga magmahal ni Mrs. E!

And I truly feel the loss of SV, Odette, Arline, the rest of the sisters, Citas Diaz and other in-laws, nieces and nephews on both the Benito and Epistola sides. Your loss equals ours, if that is consolation enough.

To quote from Shakespeare, "Whence comes another?"

Not in this lifetime!

I have to turn myself around

Missing my hokey pokey partners now that I can't do that dance because for some reason my mind still can, but my body can no longer. But I pray it's a temporary condition, and it too shall pass. Here's to the Hokie Pokies in our lives. Two playful cousins are seated on a bench at the open public space of Capitol Commons, Pasig City. Photo of Kai and Max by their Booboo Babeth