Romancing the sword (2)

Posted on February 19, 2012 by junv
This is Part 2 of another multipart-part essay written for my “Pathless Travels” column. It was originally published in Northern Weekly Dispatch, 7 Aug 2005, and which I then reposted a few months later on my defunct blog hosted at Blogspot. Read Part 1 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.
The year was 2005, and the GMA broadcast network had scored a big hit with the sword-and-sorcery TV series Encantadia. Sword battle movies were on the comeback trail worldwide, from Hollywood to China, and the genre seemed to appeal to Filipino sensitivities. But were they really unlocking insights to our own history as a people fighting against colonial powers?

War, that most horrible practice invented and mastered by humanity, remains nevertheless a fascinating subject in literature and art throughout the ages. It is as though people hope to exorcise the immense guilt of organizing mutual slaughter, the utter terror of violent death, and the frenzy of close-quarters combat, by making them the topic of literature, painting and sculpture, music and theater, games, and in our day, through film.

War, that most horrible practice invented and mastered by humanity, remains nevertheless a fascinating subject in literature and art throughout the ages. It is as though people hope to  exorcise the immense guilt of engaging in mutual slaughter, the utter terror of violent death, and the frenzy of close-quarters combat, by making them the topic of literature, painting and sculpture, music and theater, games, and in our day, through film.

I fell into such a morbid fascination with war at a young age. I guess it was expected of most boys of our generation. After all, we read about war in comic books and trading cards (the teks we were addicted to as kids, before the text of the cellphone era). We watched it on television as regular family weekend fare; remember Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders in the TV series Combat? We played in the street with toy guns and swords, and formed teams that competed in informal neighborhood war games using slingshots and paper pellets, in lieu of basketball tournaments. Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, History, Military, Personal | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Romancing the sword (1)

Posted on February 18, 2012 by junv
This is another favorite multi-part essay written for my “Pathless Travels” column. It was originally published in Northern Weekly Dispatch, 31 Jul 2005, and which I then reposted a few months later on my defunct blog hosted at Blogspot. The year was 2005, and the Philippines was at the height of the anti-Gloria Macapagal Arroyo protests in the wake of the “Hello Garci” scandal. With the likes of Gen. Danny Lim and Navy Capt. Sonny Trillanes giving voice to those who wanted the AFP to side with the people’s demands for regime change, some groups were becoming enamored with military or military-backed solutions. 
On the creative writing side, I was intrigued by the three-part or multi-part essay as a possible subgenre to explore, because it came to me as a nice solution to a literary dilemma. Nordis (the weekly newspaper) discouraged long pieces because it had to save on space, accommodate other columns, and encourage readership through shorter pieces. It was no New Yorker magazine, no Atlantic Monthly, in terms of available space. On my part, I wanted to explore a topic in more depth without being straitjacketed by the pressures of a regional weekly. And so the solution presented itself: a long essay in three or four parts, masquerading as column pieces.
My name is Gladiator

What is it that compels the audience to sit through all of these violent movies? Is it just some cult obsession, or is there perhaps some universal human appeal in watching scenes of bloody carnage, up close where steel blade meets sinewed flesh, if only theatrically through the eyes of the filmmaker?

Last year, I got to writing a three-part piece on a most unlikely topic: fireplaces. The title, “Romancing the Fireplace,” had a nice medieval ring to it, even though my piece actually dwelt on mundane matters like the secrets of cooking fluffy rice and saving on LPG.

With the country in a deepening state of siege, I feel now is the right occasion to follow through with another multi-part column – this time a nasty medieval piece on war, especially on using swords and other bladed weapons designed for efficient human butchery. Sounds gory to you? Read on, dear friend.

Continue reading →

Posted in History, Military | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Romancing the fireplace (3)

Posted on February 14, 2012 by junv
This is the concluding third of a three-part essay (one of my all-time favorites) I wrote for my “Pathless Travels” column, which was published in Northern Weekly Dispatch, 3 Oct 2004, Vol. 16 No. 39. Part 1 and Part 2 were posted here earlier. The essay is already dated in some spots, but mostly it speaks equally well of how I feel now about fireplaces, as how I felt about this inspiring topic in 2004. I hope you enjoy reading it!
cooking rice on wood fire

They say the best-tasting rice is the one cooked over wood fire. But do you know how to?

Starting and sustaining a fire looks easy enough. If you observe peasants, rural housewives, or forest dwellers go about their daily tasks around the hearth, you will discern a quiet grace in the way they tend to the fire and cooking pot with the least fuss and effort.

“No sweat. I could do that too,” you might say to yourself. Continue reading →

Posted in Cooking, Culture | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Romancing the fireplace (2)

Posted on February 12, 2012 by junv
This is Part 2 of a three-part essay (one of my all-time favorites) I wrote for my “Pathless Travels” column, which was published in Northern Weekly Dispatch, 26 Sept 2004, Vol. 16 No. 38. Part 1 was posted here earlier. The essay is already dated in some spots, but mostly it speaks equally well of how I feel now about fireplaces, as how I felt about this inspiring topic in 2004. I hope you enjoy reading it!

In earlier decades. Filipino urban dwellers sought an alternative between the upper-class modern electric range (which was clean and convenient, but rather expensive to acquire and maintain) and the plebeian wood stove (cheap, but hard and risky to operate in a firewood-scarce and fire-prone city). For most, the middle choice was the kusinilya, fueled by kerosene (“ga-as“).

kerosene gas stove

An Optimus-brand (Swedish-made) kerosene gas-fueled, single-burner stove. The pressure fuel tank, on the right, has a hand-operated mechanism for pumping air into the tank, to ensure more efficient combustion. I no longer see this kind of kerosene gas stove sold in public markets, where they were ubiquitous in the 1960s and 1970s.

The kusinilya‘s advantages: First, most neighborhood stores retailed kerosene by the bottle. Thus, getting a steady fuel supply wasn’t too burdensome — physically and financially — for the common urban household, especially the harassed housewife with a  shoestring budget. Second, the kusinilya fire was easier to start and maintain than wood fire. A well-handled stove produced a vigorous blue flame that indicated efficient combustion.

But there were also quite a few problems. Foremost, the kusinilya was a certified fire hazard, especially if you hadn’t mastered the fine art of trouble-shooting its problems. This skill, to my mind, was just a notch lower than the pure black magic needed to start an ancient Coleman lamp.  Kusinilya problems happened regularly, as black crumbly soot tended to accumulate inside and around the nozzles, clogging them. With volatile kerosene in open containers just around the kitchen, a small accident could easily turn into an ugly conflagration. Continue reading →

Posted in Cooking, Culture, Economy | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Romancing the fireplace (1)

Posted on February 11, 2012 by junv
This is Part 1 of a three-part essay (one of my all-time favorites) I wrote for my “Pathless Travels” column, which was published in Northern Weekly Dispatch, 19 Sept 2004, Vol. 16 No. 37. It’s already dated in some spots, but mostly it speaks equally well of how I feel now about fireplaces, as how I felt about this inspiring topic in 2004. I hope you enjoy reading it!
fireplace

For many urbanites, the word evokes a lovely romantic evening or a Christmas family gathering. To me, it conjures a very different scene: that of a farm kitchen hearth, centered around what we in Northern Luzon call dallikan.

“Fireplace.” For many urbanites, the word evokes a lovely romantic evening or a Christmas family gathering. Preferably in a mountain resort or temperate clime, of course. For most Filipinos, any yearning for the idealized Western fireplace, complete with thick logs and cozy rugs, could only come true if they had money to rent a Baguio townhouse or to visit rich relatives in Canada.

Continue reading →

Posted in Cooking, Culture | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Mossy cloud forest, formerly

Posted on February 4, 2012 by junv
I wrote this light essay originally as a column piece for the November 17, 2003 issue of Northern Dispatch Weekly. It seems timely that I re-post it here with some minor edits, now that the issue of Baguio City’s rapid deforestation is heating up anew. A giant mall has been intending to cut 182 trees in Luneta Hill, on top of big real estate developers having already cleared up a bigger number of pure  pine stands in and around the city in past years.
Gecko on house post

The only creature lacking is a fruit bat, gecko, or baby constrictor crawling along the rough-hewn coconut lumber beams of the outhouse to give our jungle alcove that extra oomph.

In a column piece I wrote earlier this year, I confessed to the embarrassing fact that I was a frustrated peasant. A frustrated urban peasant, to be more specific. With emphasis on “frustrated.” At least that’s how I feel, more and more frequently these days.

My wife has more success with her orchids, ferns and peperomias — and to think that she merely used our outhouse-type toilet-bathroom as a rudimentary greenhouse. Without intending it, she turned it into an accidental orchidarium-terrarium, complete with ants, spiders, and lizards that spice up our every visit to the toilet. The only creature lacking is a fruit bat, gecko or baby constrictor crawling along the rough-hewn coconut lumber beams of the outhouse, to give our jungle alcove that extra oomph.

Continue reading →

Posted in Environment | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A fascinating prehistory

Posted on January 28, 2012 by junv
Author’s note: I wrote this column piece in 2002, under the same title. It was published in the Nov. 29 issue ( vol. 14 no. 8 ) of the Baguio-based Northern Dispatch Weekly. My son, mentioned as a third-grade school boy in the essay, is now a second-year college student. I often wonder but forget to ask him whether college history textbooks still contain the story of Indonesian-A and Indonesian-B, or have they been expunged. Anyway, my take on the story still stands, and I hope my dear readers will learn something new once they finish reading this piece, which I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting nearly 10 years later.
Cagayan warrior ca. 16th century from the Boxer Codex

Did our ancient ancestors really arrive in the Philippines in waves? Image of Cagayan warrior drawn circa 16th century as part of the Boxer Codex doesn't seem to provide a good answer to this puzzling question of Philippine prehistory.

My younger son is in Grade 3, and sometimes I’m called upon to help him do his homework or review for his periodic exams.

A month ago, as I was checking his homework, we fell into a heated argument.

He claimed that the people of the Cordillera were descended from the first wave of Malays that came over here, while the rest of Luzon lowland peoples (e.g. Kapampangan, Tagalog) and the Visayans were descended from a second wave of Malays. He proceeded to lecture to me that the Malays were preceded by Indonesians, who also came in two waves–Type A and Type B.

I tried to explain to him, in terms an eight-year-old mind could grasp, that the wave migration theory of how our country was populated — most elaborately developed by Dr. H. Otley Beyer — has been debunked by most scholars of Philippine prehistory for quite some time now. But no, my son insisted, I was utterly wrong, and how dare I question his teacher and his textbook!

Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Education, History | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

When Agham Road led elsewhere

Posted on January 25, 2012 by junv
JV in DeQuiros PDI column 001

To my utmost satisfaction, Conrad reprinted my letter in full a week later in his column. I had misplaced my copy of that issue. This morning, however, it reemerged, yellowed and brittle, from a closet of old files that I was cleaning out. Its contents might be of interest not just to the younger generation of PSHS scholars, but to student activists who, I hear, are still doing the same kind of mass work among the squatter colonies of North Triangle as we did 40 years ago.

I hear The Bourne Legacy is shooting a few sequences along Agham Road in the North Triangle area of Quezon City’s central district. I suppose some film scenes will utilize the communities’ slum-housing conditions, which represent perhaps one of the starkest contrasts between abject poverty and cosmopolitan glitz this side of Metro Manila.

Portions of this sprawling area have now been cleared of so-called squatter communities and replaced by sleek malls, carparks, and office buildings. But there remain urban poor pockets that continue to remind us of how this part of the city looked ten years ago.

Nay, twenty years ago. Nay, forty years ago, when the road now known as Agham (“Science”) Road was just a gravelly dirt track that led to God knows where.

Continue reading →

Posted in Education, History, Personal, Politics, Urban life | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Kiko has no K

Posted on December 12, 2011 by junv
Author’s note: I was in the middle of writing this piece last Monday, December 12, when a bolt from the blue hit Renato Corona, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Within minutes, the news rippled across media. In record-breaking time, members of the Lower House lined up in Andaya Hall and signed articles of impeachment that would bring the chief magistrate to a Senate trial on charges of betrayal of public trust, culpable violation of the Constitution, and graft and corruption. The entire process took only four hours, from issuance of the impeachment complaint to the signing of the 188th member.

My first reaction was, “How many of the 188 signatories who want Corona punished for being pro-Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo were, in 2005-2008, among those who were pro-GMA and had actively blocked impeachment moves against her?” One of the names that came to mind was Neptali Gonzales II.

Most political watchers were of course expecting President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and his Congress allies to impeach Corona. But many, including I, were surprised at the utter swiftness of the attack. I didn’t pity the guy; he truly deserved more than a slap on the wrist for being one of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s key legal warriors from way back. But I wasn’t impressed with the substance of the impeachment move either.
The cynical side of me prevailed. My first reaction was, “How many of the signatories who want Corona punished now for being pro-GMA were among those who, in 2005-2008, were pro-GMA themselves and had actively blocked impeachment moves against her?” One of the names that came to mind was assistant majority floor leader Neptali Gonzales II, who also held a similar post under Gloria and figured prominently in the pro-GMA bloc. 
My next reflex impulse was to compare the list of those members of the HOR (my favorite acronym for the House of Representatives) who voted for Corona’s impeachment in 2011 with the list of HOR members who voted to protect GMA against impeachment in 2008, for example.
I wanted to reangle and rewrite my blog piece along these lines. But having no luxury of time and particularly liking my original angle, I decided to keep it as is, with minor tweaks here and there. I think it remains relevant this late in the week.

Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Wrath threat

Posted on December 7, 2011 by junv
occupy2

This gallery contains 2 photos.

More Galleries | Leave a comment