Below is my interpretation of Jose Rizal’s poem ‘To the Philippine Youth’ .  I do not read and understand Spanish so I relied only on several authors’ English translations of his poem in writing mine.

I titled it with a concocted Boie’nen-English title as follows:

AYKO! (OUCH!) HAIKU

Oh children heed thy native land’s place in the sun

Hold your head high, go maximize your potentials

Your motherland’s future rests in your very hands!

Raise your standards, your impressionable mind

Fight your lot with sheer intellect and inventiveness

With talented passion banish oppressions of all kind

With focused industry, your mind rises above the petty

Your natural ingenuity ensures good posterity you’ll see

At the end of the day your future brightened it would be!

Rizal it seems expected the Philippine youth to completely take our Motherland’s future in their very own hands. I cannot find in ‘To the Philippine Youth’ poem any reference to parental care and guidance – wetnursing their potentials’ bloom?

It is not easy for me to write about things that are troubling especially to me.

The recent day’s deluge of media images and sounds had just been overpoweringly disturbing.  Still greatly confusing even for someone of my age who I can say have already seen much from deeper and wider perspectives from all over.

It may not be so with most of us who may only perceive events constricted by the proverbial frog’s mouth-of-the-well habitation concept of the sky.

Could many of us be now so emotionally calloused as a result of the constant bombardment especially by daily news media of killings, deaths and violence especially lately from our streets and waters including floodwater?

The television image of that little girl unusually sitting calmly it seems on top of house debris swiftly being carried by the raging-flooded river under a concrete bridge with disastrous consequences obviously. May the Almighty bless her cherubic soul and all other victims.

The images of youngsters clearly having fun and even horsing around safe in the safety of shelter while taping people outside trying to frantically survive in the rampaging flood.  Such dirty laundry hung on You Tube for the world to see!

The overall inappropriate demeanor of Chris Aquino in the Television telethon with Tina Monson Palma, Fr. Tito and Pokwang and her inappropriate side comments.

I have more respect now for Pokwang and highly empathize with Tina if she was indeed sarcastic when she said in effect: ‘We have received many donations thanks to Chris.’ These are confusing scenes.

The more I believe we may indeed now are wanting in decorum and sensibility as a people.

But perhaps no. Thanks to Jessie James Nealega’s Matobato Prayer Warrior children video and written post especially on the Buroc’busok Flagstone Flak – the sad exploitation of children there.

LISTEN! Little voices.  Little children. Not to be belittled.

If only I could hit a single musical note, I would sing in sincere prayer the song below popularized by The Carpenters.

BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN

Bless the beasts and the children

For in this world they have no voice

They have no choice

Bless the beasts and the children

For the world can never be

The world they see Light their way

When the darkness surrounds them

Give them love

Let it shine all around them

Bless the beasts and the children

Give them shelter from a storm

Keep them safe

Keep them warm

Light their way

When the darkness surrounds them

Give them love

Let it shine all around them

Bless the beasts and the children

Give them shelter from a storm

Keep them safe

Keep them warm

The children

The children

***

Tsynos\’s Birthday Song (at 4 yrs old)

Tagasi’rip posted a comment on Buhi-Golden Pond.  This comment has brought to our attention another possible wanton exploitation of one of Buhi’s natural resource – the quarrying of flagstones in Burocbusoc.

I look at written comments such as this as little voices of our collective social/civic conscience.  ’Little voices’ is not meant to trivialize such comments.  Rather it is a statement of a realization that perhaps no one especially the ones in a position to do something about it really cares.

There is nothing wrong perhaps with such quarrying activity.  If only people are informed and are confident that their public officials have concrete plans that are clear and understood by its constituents.  For after all the reasonable and sustainable exploitation of our resources would be beneficial to the community in the long run.

Perhaps  such knee-jerk suspiciousness is spawned by general feelings that concerned Buhi-government functionaries don’t really care.  Especially about written comments like these that are not personally-brought straight to them.  Simply they have to be able to gauge what they would get from doing something about it.  What is their guarantee of a payback from their efforts otherwise?

Don’t you see Tagasi’rip why, no matter how exasperatingly, government services  in  Buhi and in the Philippines for that matter are most effectively acquired through persistent personal follow-ups it seems?

Payback come in different forms.  Your and your family’s guaranteed votes comes election time; or worse yet and most blatantly a direct demand for grease money, padulas or tong.

While you call attention to Burocbusoc flagstone’s-quarrying scandal allegedly involving one of its Barangay officials, who would listen to your ‘little voice’?

Who indeed would listen in the Buhi Munisipyo to your ‘little voice’ if right in front of their very eyes are glaring violations left and right.  Violations such as private-property owners encroaching on public roads and sidewalks to the detriment of public safety.  In the expansion or perhaps more appropriately reclamation of the main road in the Sentro the road kerb suddenly deflected 90% to dodge the dismantling of a road-encroaching private structure.

Or has anyone ever notice the San Buena-Welcome/Boundary Marker that is planted almost in the middle of the main road? Why? What about public safety and common good?

No one seems to be listening to our little voices much less to the little voices of each of our very own conscience – this is true with many Boie’nen public functionaries and ordinary citizens.

So?

Quo Vadis Boie’?

Quick responses came from concerned Boie’nen on the publication of the first essay On Buhi-Golden Pond.

Stella Dasmarinas-Roig opines ‘Nature has its own way of dying and healing itself…but if the cause is man-made – like what is happening to Lake Buhi – then it is our moral obligation to stop it.’

Chris Edward San Luis floats in Boie’nen vernacular a question to this effect: ‘When will we act?  Hopefully now…the change can begin from each of us.’  This reminds me of Kari San Antonio Kenny’s story in Buhi Online Magazine in the year 2000 on the demise of Tarn Paeron.

Jessie Nealega in similar vernacular response sympathetic to Chris’ daring question wonders if a Bayani Fernando leadership-style that is decisively straightforward in putting public good ahead of select-individual gain irrespective of who gets the brunt of it could be the solution.

Jessie observes that it is the upcoming election of public officials that people are too busy with nowadays so no one cares about cleanliness in Boie for now’.

On the suggestion to upload pictures in BOL Facebook of offending-physical features and acts that pollute especially Boie waters; Mira Yaguel Averia entreats in the vernacular: ‘Please don’t’ because it would be embarrassing. The whole town will see’.

These concerned Boie’nen obviously agree that individual responsibility and positive action are critical if we were to reverse the wanton denigration and preserve Boie’s natural heritage among others.

What is obvious though is that Stella, Chris, Jessie and Mira are all non-resident Boie’nen.  So am I.  Would we then be fired-up with the same resolve to clamor for the change we seek if we were all back in Boie?

Making ends meet for our loved ones with the meager income we will be earning from our daily toils in Boie perhaps could change our fervor on issues like these.

But then I might be wrong.  These newfound cyber-acquaintances, relative and friends of mine obviously are my junior town-mates – they belong to the X-generation.  And obviously they are different in their environmental fervor and community concern.

Unlike me, they are not ready to come back to enjoy their retirement years in Boie.  Unlike me none of them perhaps had the chance to frolic in the pristine water of the Sowong and the mouth of Porong Kasabangan in their growing-up years. So what is in it for them?  What could they be missing in Boie’?

While it is laudable that they know about the pivotal role of individual responsibility for upholding our community good; does anyone of our Boie’nen public functionaries know about this.  Not only about individual or civic responsibility but more so about Public Service and Public Trust!

Could we put to book the Bureau of Fisheries station in Boie’ for our Lake’s woes?  One of the original Boie’nen official of this station was responsible for unleashing the Golden Kohol in the lake -these voraciously decimated its beneficial-underwater greeneries of to start with in the 70’s.  I personally know about that.

How many of the present public-elected officials of Boie’ have vested interest in the fish-cage business there?  And who were the original Fisheries station functionaries who made the first killing in the then fish-pen business at the very start? Do we know?

Who dare would ask in Boie?

Who dare would act on these issues there then?

Only perhaps now is the right time for again it is election-campaigning time

On the question to ask – (Bae man ta malase’pe’g.) Please don’t for it is very __?__…. well on second thought, what’s the exact English equivalent of malase’pe’g in Boie’nen?

It could be anything from ‘shyness’, ‘embarrassment’ or ‘shame’ I would say.

If we don’t know the difference between these English words, no wonder there seems to be no guilt feelings on Lake Boie’ manmade problems.

Da’ Se’pe’g!

Let’s all stop bawling about Lake Buhi and other similar environmental issues back home!

It is not our fault that Buhi is endowed with natural geologic prettiness. Lake Buhi is smack-snug practically in the bottom half of a pretty-mountain-lipped bowl – the other half is plane arable land and gently rolling hills where the town-proper sits.

Just like the mythical Narcissus in Greek mythology,  Buhi’s God-given or godforsaken environmental endowments and beauty will only bring it its very own demise.

Not as single-good-hearted Boie’nen can stop it.

One Boie’nen folklore suggests that the bottom of the lake is the graveyard of an ancient thriving community of people. These were the whole community and its people who supposedly were rapidly submerged there - frozen in time in the cataclysmic formation of the lake.

We were told of ghastly silhouettes of human and human-habitation forms glimpsed in the then clear-water lake bottom by local fishermen in the light of a full moon.  When we were young this story and the like of it would unendingly spin our imagination, awe, admiration and titillation.

Perhaps that’s how stories, folklore and mythology made us one as a people – Boie’nen all.  The stories our elders told us that we in turn retold to our children connected us all – we had a holistic soul.

We love telling stories of what we commonly share as a people.

That’s why perhaps those of my generation who are past the golden age of fifty want to hear and re-tell those stories again, and again.

My generation cannot perhaps more effectively relate to our younger progenies – what is called the X-generation. They in turn may not see the value of the stories we tell and still seek to hear – our history as a people.

With all available modern-day gadgetries and tools of immediate gratification, they are the victims of the latest western-mercantilism and constant commercial bombardments. While my generation’s and earlier ones’ victimization came first on historical records in galleons, the X-generation’s come in light-speed and terabyte billions.

They make their own stories or perhaps what they believe as their own stories – perhaps justly so. The spool they wind their stories on are made by wily-modern cyber merchants and manipulators.

Many of the X generation exchange virtual gifts, fight virtual wars and boast of virtual achievements.

So who among them would care for something so mundane and physically tangible as Lake Buhi’s people-accelerated eutrophication? This is supposed to happen naturally anyway in thousands of years as the natural cycle that lakes have to undergo.

At the last stages of Lake Buhi’s euthrophication, we will again see all those shoreline green vegetation that are all gone now. The thick almost impenetrable anginglit patches  of Purong Kasabangan and the trailing long leaves of the linamon water plant gracefully undulating in the water surface and others that I don’t anymore know the names of will again thrive – let’s hope.

These beneficial-water plants will come back when the whole lake will inevitably shrink and turn into a shallow wetland – filtering all the rubbish and impurities that Lake Buhi and even some Boie’nen now are unfortunately full of.

That wetland will naturally shrink and turn into a nice shallow pond.

The rest of our elderly generation and I then will be able to truly enjoy our final-fading days On Buhi-Golden Pond.

DEVOTEES OF OUR LADY VIRGIN OF PEÑAFRANCIA

A California registered religious non-profit organization 13862 Tortuga Road, San Leandro, CA 94577

PEÑAFRANCIA FIESTA 2009

HOST: NAGA METROPOLITAN SOCIETY

PROGRAM OF ACTIVITIES

September 18, 2009: 1st day of Novena, sponsored by the Parafina Family

September 19, 2009: TRASLACION

3:30 PM  Procession of Our Lady Virgin of Peñafrancia from 13862 Tortuga Ave, San Leandro to Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, 1200 Bermuda Dr. San Leandro.  Rosary and Novena prayers before the scheduled Mass.
5:00 PMHoly Mass: Rev. Fr. Thuong Hoai Nguyen, Parish Priest, Our Lady of Good Counsel Church

6:00 PM  Reception at the Parafina Residence. Sponsors: ALL ORGANIZATIONS.  Youth Group meeting.

Sunday, September 20, 2009 to Friday September 25, 2009

7:00 PM  NIGHTLY ROSARY AND NOVENA PRAYERS. Devotees and members of all organizations are
encouraged to attend the nightly devotion. Sponsoring organizations serve refreshments
after the novena.

Sunday 9/20 NABUA CIRCLE USA – BABA

Monday 9/21 UNITED SORSOGON – TIWINIONS – ATENEO

Tuesday 9/22 GOA ASSOCIATION – LIBMANENIONS – LEGASPI – DARAGA

Wednesday 9/23 NABUA BAY AREA CLUB – OASNON USA

Thursday 9/24 BACNA – CALABANGA ASSOCIATION
Friday 9/25  IRIGA – TABACO ASSOCIATION-LIBON

Saturday, September 26, 2009 FEAST OF OUR LADY OF PENAFRANCIA in San Leandro Marina, San Leandro, Northern California

9:00 AM9th day-Rosary and Novena Prayers (Nagamet)
10:00 AM  EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION;  Main Celebrant: Fr. Jet Garcia;  Concelebrants: Fr. Thuong Hoai Nguyen, Fr. Ed Dura, Fr. Mark Reburiano, other visiting priests. Choir: Our Lady of Peñafrancia Choir: Leader, Ed Fausto
11:30 AM  FOOT PROCESSION “INA” from OLGC to the north end of the Marina escorted by the contingent of Honor Guards of the Knights of Columbus.  Statue of Our Lady will be transferred to a Pagoda for a brief fluvial procession around the lagoon, after which the statue will be brought back to the Marina Park. (courtesy of Johnny Codillo)
12:00 PM FAMILY PICNIC -POTLUCK Note: (PLEASE WAIT FOR THE BLESSING OF THE FOOD BEFORE STARTING TO EAT)
1:00 PM  Entertainment from member organizations
3:30 PM Drawing of winning raffle tickets
4:00 PM Vigil Mass for Sunday, Main Celebrant: Fr. Jet Garcia; Choir: Our Lady of Peñafrancia Choir- Ed Fausto, Leader; Clean-up after the mass

Saturday, October 10, 2009:  DINNER / BALL – Crown Plaza Hotel 32083 Alvarado-Niles Road, Union City, CA 94587 (510) 489-2200

6:00 PM  No Host Bar
7:15 PM  DINNER WILL PROMPTLY START AT 7:30 pm (NO DINNER WILL BE SERVED AFTER 9:00PM)

Donation: $55.00/person. PRE-PAID.
Attire: FORMAL.
Music: Vintage Band Plus

- Oranan nin bomba atomika; kam beinteotsong raek’raek’-

Thus Oyon’s public tirades would echo along the streets of Ligban when I was a small toddler.

When I was a little bit older, he’d scare me cowering behind the second-floor wooden balusters supporting the main-front-window sill of my Lola Talin’s  house where my family lived then.  Curiously I would listen without understanding his loud almost-poetic vulgarisms.

- Kinae’n sa Manila’; ibinosi’ sa Boie’ –

“Piabotabot na naman si Oyong (Oyong is having another crazed episode)” I would hear some elders say near the Sa’ran in my earlier elementary-school years.  My parents had then moved to our brand new-family residence in San Buena.  There I ran late-afternoon errands for my late Mama to buy sinarapan packets that were the size of a man’s wallet.  Each packet wrapped daintily in either banana or malobago leaf.  Each one costs 10-centavo or dies sentimos then.  With salapi’ or fifty centavos I would run back home with five-fresh-dripping packets.

- ? ! ? ! ? –

Oyong was very quiet the last time I saw him and a lot older.  I was the designated watch-boy for our sacks of exang a pare’y being un-husked in the late Tomas Favoreal’s mechanized neighborhood-rice mill or molinoan just diagonally across and behind the old Monisipio building. Dutifully, Oyong would watch for me the rectangular-kerosene can quickly filling with warm-white and crisply-smelling sweet rice issuing in stream from the final spout of the rice mill contraption.  Making sure too to carefully overfill each tin can by meticulously sculpting with his open palm the rice to a mound way above the brim without a single grain spilling. Quickly he’d switch an empty can under the rice-issuing spout.  Then he’d motion to me with his puckered mouth and a quick upward-head jerk to hold-open the empty sack so he could pour with quick dexterity and in one deft motion the rice-overfilled can’s content into my waiting and gaping burlap sack.

Oyong seemingly did not beg.  He tried to earn his keeps that way.  In exchange even just for a token labor so faithfully performed.  He had to overfill each can because the molinoan took two ochabas for every can of milled rice – that was thoughtfulness and shrewdness. For his efforts Oyong took only whatever amount was given to him – but would one dare be tight with him?

A lot about Boie’ life are just but vivid and not so vivid memories to me now.  A lot of young Boie’nen I now meet only vicariously by way mainly of Buhi Online and Buhi Online @ Facebook.  I have been for so long away and a non-resident Boie’nen.  The stream of my Boie’ consciousness spurts just from my inner mind and Internet.

But the vivid memories of Oyong remain restlessly pestering in my mind and longingly I hanker to understand his words’ deeper messages or what he actually was saying then.  Most of his ranting seems out-of-wedlock pregnant with social relevance that no one dared probe more.

If a tiny part of Oyong could live in each and every Boie’nen crusader would he or she be listened to or out rightly dismissed for being lasme’g?

Would Oyong be listened to were he here today to rant about our Sinarapan, Lake Buhi and other community-environmental woes?

Or could he put our local Boie politicians to shame or even just a little embarrassment to goad even just a modicum of promising action from them?

Oyong was one of my generation’s popular town character and certainly my personal favorite.

But who among us today have the character to will the gift and glib of the late Oyong?

(Mits Sanjose has been a consistent supporter of BOL from the very start.  He is an octogenarian who lives now in the West Coast of the U.S.  BOL looks at his insights and reminiscings as invaluable legacies that will remain hopefully forever in the pages of BOL.  Hoping too that many more especially Boie’nens themselves will see and appreciate the value of what he is doing. THANK YOU MITS!, we have not personally met and if we will never, I know that you are more than what MEETS the eyes.  MABALOS MITS…)

CLICK HERE for the late Stephen Fabul Sergio’s Ancestry Chart

I felt a hollowness in my heart when I read in the latest issue of Bicol Mail that Atty. Stephen Fabul Sergio died last June 27 at age 71. His passing marks a loss to his friends and to his hometown of Buhi, Camarines Sur.

Last time I saw him was in February 1998 while he was strolling on the UNC campus with Atty. Hiram Mendoza, both of them awardees during the 50th UNC foundation anniversary.  All three of us were former editors-in-chief of the UNC college organ, “The Nueva Caceres.”

Together with Fred Cledera, who was then the dean of the UNC college of law, we reminisced our student days.

As UNC PRO I had a lot of dealings with Steve while he was Bicol Mail editor. BM was owned and published by Tio Iyon Aureus, a Liberal party stalwart, and I thought Steve was Liberal too, Imagine my surprise when a few years later as a Malacanang employee he came to my office as an advance party of the then exeucutive secretary Rafael Salas who had a speaking engagement at the university. Steve laughingly told me that actually he was the Nacionalista undercover “eyes-and-ears” in the whole Bicol region.

While a Malacanang executive Steve, as mentioned in the BM obituary, was indeed a go-to guy for Bicolanos who needed some help. Me, for example. Steve facilitated my obtaining a Malacanang permission to get a US visa in 1973. That was in the early days of martial law when you had to have clearances from all sorts of offices in order to leave the country for abroad.

Then I read in Steve’s recent column that it was he who suggested the name of Ramoning Felipe to be appointed as Comelec chairman.  As everybody knows Ramoning held his Comelec tenure with flying colors.

(Yes, I will miss Steve’s BM column “On the House” which I looked forward to every issue.)

Condolences to his friends, relatives, and especally to his immediate family.

MITS SAN JOSE
Los Angeles

I am from Bicol (Buhi, Camarines Sur) and now living in California.  Lately, I have been hearing from my family about the ecological problem of Buhi Lake. The lake is becoming polluted because of the fish cages built on the lake and wastes dumped on the lake coming from swine farms, sewer and other domestic wastes.

As a long time defender of the environment and the Philippines’ DENR Secretary, I believe that you, Sir, have the capacity and power to help SAVE BUHI LAKE.

Please, Secretary Atienza, help my fellow Buhinons SAVE BUHI LAKE before it is too late.

Thank you, Sir, for your immediate action to this very urgent issue.

Respectfully,
Stella Dasmarinas- Roig

***