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August 2019 Luncheon: Living the Brand
Location: Happy Hollow Country Club | 1701 S 105th Street, Omaha, NE 68124
These days, customers are making strong statements about themselves with the brands that they choose. What does your brand say about you? And what does your brand mean to your customer? Perception is everything. Hear how Hy-Vee and other companies are positioning their brands to better align with their customers’ beliefs and creating events and partnerships to further strengthen the connection
Presenter: Donna Tweeten, Chief Marketing Officer, Hy-Vee
Donna Tweeten has been counseling companies on how to improve and evolve their brand for most of her 30-plus-year career. She has spent the bulk of her professional life in the ad agency business, working for such firms as Davis Harrison Dion–Chicago and Anderson Communications. She also served as president and chief creative officer of The Meyocks Group, a brand marketing firm.
In 2006, Donna was hired by Hy-Vee, Inc. as assistant vice president of communications and was promoted to assistant vice president of marketing in 2009. In 2011, she was selected as vice president of brand image. Donna was promoted to vice president of marketing/
communications in 2013, and in 2014 she was named senior vice president, chief marketing officer. In early 2016, she was promoted to executive vice president and elected to Hy-Vee’s board of directors, and later that year she became executive vice president, chief marketing officer/chief customer officer. In 2017, Donna began overseeing brand experience for Hy-Vee and completed the Kellogg School of Management’s Executive Leadership program at Northwestern University.
She was named one of Progressive Grocer’s Top Women in Grocery in 2011, 2013 and 2019. In 2015 she was named one of the Women of Influence in the Food Industry by the Griffin Report for her highly visible contributions to the grocery industry, professionalism and awareness she has generated for the potential of other women in the grocery business. In 2016 she received several awards, including Shopper Marketing magazine’s Women of Excellence, Marketer of the Year by Supermarket News for her innovation and success throughout the grocery industry, and People Who Made a Difference by Mass Market Retailers for combining Hy-Vee’s fundamentals and guiding principles with modern marketing efforts and creativity to enhance the customer experience. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, Donna was named one of Mass Market Retailers’ Most Influential Women for her leadership in enhancing the customers’ experience both in the store and online. In 2018, she was named a Grocery Game Changer by Winsight Grocery Business for leading adaptive branding, marketing and communications strategies that resonate with shoppers’ changing needs and wants.
Donna and her husband Alan have five children: Carlie, Nicholas, Benjamin, Maxwell and Ella. Donna is a graduate of Proviso East High School in Maywood, Illinois, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
48 tickets remaining.
Student $20.00
AMA Member $25.00
AMA Non-Member $45.00
Please include the names of all attendees and their companies, as well as any dietary restrictions.
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Bristol Photographic Society moves to new home, boasting a studio and exhibition space
Bristol Photographic Society has opened a studio and exhibition space and invites other photography groups to take advantage of ‘probably one of the best-equipped camera clubrooms in the country’
The Society has moved to premises in the Montpelier area of Bristol after outgrowing its former home in Clifton where it was based for more than 40 years.
The new venue houses a purpose-built studio featuring a Hi-Glide studio lighting system, conference facilities and exhibition space for around 150 prints.
A spokesman said: ‘Membership of the Society is open to all, but it is hoped other photographic organisations will also be able to take advantage of these wonderful facilities.’
The Society – one of the oldest clubs in the country – says it caters for all levels of photographer.
It meets on Wednesdays at 7.30pm and runs separate print groups covering topics such as digital techniques and studio photography.
The Society organises the Bristol Salon of Photography, an international competition that receives more then 12,000 entries per year.
It also hosts a photography course from September to November, for both member and non-members.
The Society says: ‘The course covers most aspects of photography and is suitable for a wide range of photographers, from those who have bought their first digital camera and are looking for guidance… to those who have a reasonable amount of experience and are looking to broaden their photographic horizons.’
The course takes the form of tutorials, practical sessions and discussion groups.
For further details, email the course organiser bps.ptc@gmail.com or visit the Society’s website at www.bristolphoto.org.uk
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Clean Energy from America’s Oceans
Permitting and Financing Challenges to the U.S. Offshore Wind Industry
By Michael Conathan and Richard W. Caperton Posted on June 1, 2011, 9:00 am
Download this brief (pdf)
Read the brief in your web browser
For 87 days in the spring and summer of 2010, an undersea gusher of oil continuously reminded Americans of the toll energy development can take on our oceans.
Approximately 3,500 oil rigs and platforms were operating in U.S. waters at the time of the BP disaster. There were also over 1,000 wind turbines generating clean, renewable electricity off the coastlines of northwestern Europe. But not a single windmill yet turns in the strong, abundant winds that abound off our shores.
Clearly wind power cannot immediately replace the energy we still must generate from the oil and gas produced on the outer continental shelf. But America’s unwillingness to clear the way for permitting a proven, commercially scalable, clean source of energy is a major black eye for a nation that purports to be a leader in technological development.
Denmark constructed the first offshore wind facility in in 1991. In the intervening two decades 10 other countries installed offshore wind farms—eight nations in northern Europe, plus Japan and China (see chart).
Unfortunately, in the United States, lack of a clear regulatory structure, inconsistent messages from other ocean stakeholders, congressional budget battles, opposition to specific project siting, and instability in financial markets have all played a role in preventing domestic offshore wind from becoming a reality.
No permitting process existed when America’s first offshore wind developer, Cape Wind, began efforts to build a wind farm off the New England coast. It was 2005 before Congress acted to define a clear permitting process for offshore wind facilities and to extend key financial incentives to help the industry develop. Then it was nearly six more years—over a decade in total—until Cape Wind at last received the final green light from the Department of Interior to begin construction.
That decision was announced on April 19, perhaps not so coincidentally just one day before the first anniversary of the BP oil disaster. Yet, in a move achingly typical of the three-steps-forward-two-steps-back cycle that has plagued U.S. offshore wind development, the Department of Energy stepped in less than a month after getting the Interior Department’s green light to say that the project’s application for a key piece of financial assistance would be put on hold, potentially stalling the project yet again.
This brief will provide an overview of offshore wind permitting and financing in the United States, update the status of a few key projects, and ultimately make recommendations on how to clear a few of the remaining hurdles to promoting offshore wind development:
Increase government investment in offshore wind to make it more financially palatable
Shape transmission rules to allow for a robust offshore grid
Ensure the federal “Smart from the Start” program, which is designed to expedite offshore wind, is smart through the finish
Engage stakeholders early in the process of identifying wind energy areas in “Smart from the Start”
These recommendations will allow America to catch up to other nations currently at the vanguard of technological development. These countries are reaping the economic and employment rewards of creating a new industry while simultaneously reducing their carbon footprint and making great strides toward a clean, renewable energy future.
Current notable U.S. offshore wind projects
Here is a rundown of the offshore wind energy projects currently underway in the United States. Some are further along in the process than others. But none has even begun construction, much less produced even a single kilowatt of electricity.
Cape Wind, Massachusetts
Cape Wind made the first attempt to jumpstart the U.S. offshore wind industry. It initially applied for a permit to build an offshore wind farm in 2001, before a process for such applications even existed. Fully a decade later the project at last received the final permit required to begin construction on April 19.
Since its inception, Cape Wind has battled challenges from opponents led in large part by one of the infamous billionaire Koch brothers, Bill Koch, a coal and petroleum coke baron. Koch, owner of a multimillion-dollar home and private yacht club on the south side of Cape Cod within sight of the proposed project, drummed up any excuse to block it—contributing millions of dollars to a group called the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. The group played upon cape residents’ fears that the wind farm could adversely impact migratory bird and marine mammal populations, cause radar interference, make ferry traffic unsafe, spoil Native American religious ceremonies, close off fishing and yachting grounds, or reduce the value of their seaside property.
Cape Wind has alleviated many of these concerns over the years, to the point that The Daily Show lampooned these efforts in 2007 and pointed out that the opposition has largely boiled down to a desire to protect the views from multimillion-dollar oceanfront homes. A poll conducted in September 2010 revealed that 69 percent of Massachusetts residents now support the project, while just 20 percent oppose it.
Still, before the glow had faded from Cape Wind’s major victory in receiving its permits to begin construction, the developer’s most recent setback came in the form of an announcement by the Department of Energy that its loan guarantee application had been put on hold.
Fisherman’s Energy, New Jersey
Generally speaking, fishermen are among those most concerned about offshore wind farm development. But Fishermen’s Energyis a company formed by commercial fishermen who, according to their website, have “chosen to view offshore wind as an opportunity for us and for our fellow citizens, rather than as a threat to our traditional fishing businesses.”
Daniel Cohen, a New Jersey commercial fisherman, launched the project. Phase I would install six turbines in New Jersey state waters less than three miles off the coast of Atlantic City—if it’s permitted. Cohen has avoided much of the federal permitting process that hampered Cape Wind by targeting an area within state jurisdiction.
Fishermen’s Energy received its final state permits on May 6, 2011, and it announced the completion of its one-year avian and marine mammal monitoring surveys to determine whether its installation would have any effect on such populations, a regular part of the permitting process. The results of their surveys remain pending, and if all goes well, the project will stay on track to being construction in 2012. It will vie with Cape Wind for the mantle of America’s first offshore wind farm.
NRG Bluewater, Delaware and others
NRG Bluewater Wind is one of the most aggressive offshore wind companies in the United States. It is currently trying to develop farms in Delaware, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey. The company has responded to additional requests for proposals to construct facilities in wind energy areas identified by the Interior Department (see below) in Rhode Island and North Carolina, and it is exploring additional options in the Great Lakes and Canada.
Its Delaware proposal is perhaps farthest along in the process. Bluewater began its planning in summer 2006, and it was awarded exclusive rights to negotiate a lease agreement with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, or BOEMRE, for the Delaware wind energy area that BOEMRE has identified in federal waters.
Bluewater’s case prompted BOEMRE to develop and issue a final rule eliminating redundant reviews for projects with no competing bids, which is expected to shave 6 to 12 months off its federal permitting process. Bluewater also has a power purchase agreement in place with Delaware-based Delmarva Power requiring electricity generation to begin no later than 2016.
Bluewater’s efforts were fueled by Delaware’s legislatively mandated renewable portfolio standard requiring 10 percent of the state’s energy to be generated from renewables by 2018 as well as a mandate for Delmarva to use energy generated from a Delaware-based project.
Despite these motivating factors, Bluewater announced last week that it was slowing its development schedule because of concerns about future federal funding.
Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, Ohio
Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation, or LEEDCo, is a nonprofit enterprise seeking to build a pilot-scale wind farm near Cleveland in Lake Erie. The company shows that the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states don’t have a monopoly on offshore wind development.
LEEDCo ramped up efforts to make offshore wind a Midwestern reality after a 2007 report found that offshore wind was viable in southern Lake Erie. They were buoyed by an Ohio state law mandating that the state get 12.5 percent of its energy from renewable sources.
The last official act of outgoing Gov. Ted Strickland was to grant the company exclusive development rights to a portion of the lakebed, which is controlled entirely by state interests. This is noteworthy because this exempts LEEDCo’s project from the cumbersome federal permitting process. Construction is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2012.
DeepC Wind Consortium, Maine
All existing offshore wind facilities are in water less than 100 feet deep. Yet some European companies are developing floating offshore wind turbines designed to operate in deeper water, typically further from shore. Such siting means the turbines would not be visible from land, and the projects would also be able to take advantage of stronger, more consistent winds.
Maine is unique among Atlantic coast states because it has areas of deep water (greater than 300 feet) within its three-mile state jurisdictional boundaries. Researchers at the University of Maine in Orono, where there is a robust advanced composites laboratory, recognize that this geographic anomaly combined with their technical expertise makes Maine an ideal location to develop and test deepwater offshore wind technology.
The DeepC Wind Consortium seeks to develop, build, and deploy a 30 megawatt pilot-scale deepwater offshore wind farm within state waters. It is comprised of universities, nonprofit groups, and industry organizations. It is funded by grants from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and other groups.
The state has pitched in on this effort, identifying three offshore wind test areas that could serve as test sites for this new technology.
While this project is not as far along as some of those discussed above, it merits mention as America’s first serious effort to expand into deepwater offshore wind generation, an area where the United States could still become a world leader.
Atlantic Wind Connection, Mid-Atlantic coast
The Atlantic Wind Connection, a conglomerate funded primarily by renewable energy financier Good Energies, internet powerhouse Google, and international investment firm the Marubeni Corporation,is a project designed to construct undersea transmission lines to connect up to 7,000 MW of offshore wind energy capacity to the mid-Atlantic’s power grid.
Think of this project as a power strip on the ocean floor 15 to 25 miles offshore, running approximately 300 miles from New Jersey to Virginia, with connections to the mainland at several locations. Individual farms would then simply “plug in” to the strip rather than building their own cable to shore.
This project would eliminate some regulatory hurdles, bypassing some review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and state and local permits required to run the transmission cables from the beach to an onshore connection point. This would dramatically reduce the time needed to get a project to the construction phase and cut down on the initial overhead costs developers have to bear. What’s more, locating this project 15 to 25 miles off the coast will avoid disturbing oceanfront views since the turbines will be beyond the horizon from the beach.
On May 20 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved an above-market return on equity of 12.59 percent that will attract investors and help the project move forward. Still, the project has a ways to go before construction can begin, including securing a lease, conducting an environmental assessment, and attracting investors—though the participation of Google makes the latter hurdle a bit easier to clear.
Administration efforts to streamline permitting
One of Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar’s primary goals when he took over the department in the early days of the Obama administration was to speed up permitting of offshore wind energy facilities in the United States. In April 2009, he suggested offshore wind farms could replace 3,000 coal plants, stipulating at the time that the energy potential off the Atlantic seaboard alone is greater than America’s entire generation capacity.
“It is not technology that is pie-in-the-sky,” said Secretary Salazar at the time, “it is here, and it is now.” Of course, by “here” he clearly meant Europe.
The largest-scale effort to follow through on Secretary Salazar’s goal was “Smart from the Start.” The program, launched in November 2010, is designed to expedite development of wind farms off the Atlantic coast and largely mimics a program that proved successful in the United Kingdom.
It looks at data relevant to offshore wind farms, including average wind speed, water depth, wave height, seabed geology, and other factors to determine appropriate wind energy areas, or WEAs. In effect, these are delineated areas of the ocean where conditions are favorable to development that have been pre-approved for leasing. Such areas have been identified off the coasts of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Now, a second round of planning is in the works.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, or BOEMRE, began conducting environmental assessments after the program’s launch. Barring any setbacks the Department of Interior is expected to offer leases in WEAs by the end of this year.
In so doing, however, the administration must walk a fine line between expediting, permitting, and ensuring all stakeholders’ opinions are considered. The area first identified off the coast of Massachusetts, for example, was contested by fishermen who argued construction of wind farms in the proposed area would result in a de facto closure of some of the region’s prime scallop grounds.
Turbines are generally spaced one-half to one-third of a mile apart, and the farm would not necessarily be closed to navigation. But fishermen would be unable to operate while dragging trawls or dredges within the farm’s boundaries due to safety concerns. This is no small debate. Scallops comprise the nation’s second-highest value fishery. The catch in 2009, for instance, was worth more than $375 million.
A few months after the initial announcement, BOEMRE agreed to reduce the size of the Massachusetts WEA by more than half, from 2,900 square miles to approximately 1,300, after hearing comments from fishermen, members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, and the Commonwealth’s Gov. Deval Patrick.
While some are quick to criticize BOEMRE for failing to engage stakeholders early on, the Massachusetts situation shows the agency has at least proven adaptable. In many ways this is precisely how such a system should work. Make a proposal, listen to feedback, and change the proposal as necessary.
But ultimately, this is an inefficient, even backwards way to act that has raised hackles among offshore wind proponents and detractors alike. The latter group complained that they had insufficient input before the boxes were drawn, while the former has cried foul because they feel there was inadequate review of the opponents’ claims of hardship.
In fact, both sides have a legitimate argument, and the solution must be a careful review process that includes all stakeholders from the outset, and hopefully this first round of WEA identification will inform later rounds and defuse some of the inherent conflict among stakeholders.
In another signal of support for offshore wind development, BOEMRE also finalized a rule two weeks ago that will shave six months to a year off the permitting process when only one company submits a bid for a lease in a given wind energy area. Of course, it’s common sense to exempt a bid from a competitive review process when it’s not competing with anything. And such situations are unlikely to arise as offshore wind energy establishes a foothold in the United States. Still, the agency should be credited for recognizing and eliminating this redundancy.
Meanwhile, coordination among federal agencies has in some cases started to grow organically as BOEMRE has accelerated efforts to facilitate offshore wind development. The secretaries of energy and interior appeared together and issued joint statements on the identification of the WEAs in February 2011. And just last week the Department of Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding establishing a formal role for NOAA in the review process for offshore oil and gas facilities. It also includes provisions calling for more NOAA involvement in offshore renewables permitting.
Unfortunately the agencies have not always been so collaborative. Less than a month after Secretary Salazar convened his press conference in Boston last month to announce the issuance of the final permits that signaled a green light for construction of the Cape Wind project, the Department of Energy dealt the group a blow by announcing that it was placing on hold Cape Wind’s application for a loan guarantee.
These two departments stood together just months earlier on high-profile announcements supporting offshore wind development. Yet their subsequent announcement of fundamentally contradictory decisions within weeks of one another speaks to the communication and coordination gap that still exists between the two agencies.
The fragmented piecemeal policies have led Cape Wind down a decade-long path. And the company is still unable to begin construction on America’s first offshore wind farm while other countries in Europe and Asia install upward of 3,000 MW of offshore wind energy generation capacity.
The Obama administration, with policies like “Smart from the Start,” has made significant strides toward clearing the hurdles that delay development of the abundant offshore wind energy potential lying just beyond our shores. But Congress, which effectively forced the Energy Department’s hand by slashing funding for the loan guarantee program, must give the U.S. wind industry the opportunity to tap into this resource.
Cost and financing concerns
All of the previously mentioned projects are extremely expensive. But first-of-a-kind technologies built in challenging conditions will be costly. And their scale—roughly the same as a midsized power plant—will necessarily require large investments. Because of these factors, the price tag on Cape Wind, for example, will be in the range of $2 billion to $3 billion.
In the infrastructure realm, though, $2 billion to $3 billion is not an outlandish investment. After all, this is about one-third of the cost of expanding Washington, D.C.’s metro system to Dulles Airport. But electricity projects are different because they’re paid for entirely out of electric rates, which affect every household.
Consumers used to paying 16 cents per kilowatt hour (the current average rate for residential consumers in New England) will naturally balk when their local utility starts buying power that costs more than 20 cents per kilowatt hour and passing all of these new costs along to them. This creates enormous challenges for offshore wind development, and it is a tremendous barrier to widespread public embrace of these projects.
This dynamic has been at play with other renewable energy technologies. Onshore wind farms, for example, were initially very expensive, but their costs have declined so much that they’re now cost competitive with other generation resources.
The challenges offshore wind faces are not insurmountable. There are at least three points cheap power advocates overlook when they assume that offshore wind will increase electricity rates: government can share in investments to lower the costs of power;
costs will improve as more projects get built; and wind power plays a unique role in electric systems that causes overall power prices to decline.
The government can play a role in offshore wind investments. Today offshore wind projects are eligible for the same federal tax incentives available to onshore wind, such as the production tax credit, which gives a tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour to wind energy generators. These incentives substantially lower the cost of wind power to the consumer. On top of these direct investments, government can play a role in financing wind power projects by providing loans or loan guarantees that lower the cost of debt for developers. Offshore wind is a new technology, which makes traditional lenders hesitant to lend to project developers. By guaranteeing a project’s debt the government lowers the costs of financing these projects, which can make a big difference in the affordability of the power. Government financing support may be critical for some offshore wind projects. NRG Bluewater Wind has announced that it may not move forward without a loan guarantee.
Costs will come down. Future offshore wind projects will cost less than current ones. But we can’t skip ahead in time. We have to invest in learning how to lower the cost of power. For onshore wind the costs decline by between 9 and 17 percent every time the cumulative installed capacity doubles. To see how this lowers costs, let’s assume that the same relationship for offshore wind is 10 percent and work through a simplified example. Say the first installed project is 400 megawatts and costs $2 billion. Just by incorporating lessons learned from that project—which would be substantial, since developers will learn so much from seeing something done for the first time—the next 400 megawatt project would cost $1.8 billion. Then, when the installed capacity doubled again (from 800 megawatts to 1,600 megawatts) the cost would decline to $1.62 billion. The costs will quickly come down as we build the first round of offshore projects.
Offshore wind power can put downward pressure on power prices. In competitive markets, generators always offer to sell electricity at the marginal cost of generating power, which is roughly fuel costs plus operating costs. Wind turbines have zero fuel costs and minimal operating costs, so they bid all of their power at essentially zero. Nuclear power tends to have the next lowest bids, followed by coal power, and natural gas (though today’s low gas prices have put gas ahead of coal in some places). The key insight here is that when more wind is bid into the market it reduces the need for the most expensive power. In effect, a kilowatt hour of wind—which costs zero cents—replaces a kilowatt hour from natural gas—which may cost as much as 30 cents—depending on the type of plant. This is variously known as “price suppression” or the “merit-order effect,” which can already be observed in power markets in Texas. This ultimately means that consumers will pay less for power.
Charles River Associates, an energy consulting firm, studied this effect for Cape Wind. They found that, “With Cape Wind in service, over the 2013-2037 time period, the price of power in the New England wholesale market would be $1.22/MWh lower on average.” Sure, this translates to just one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour—the unit most consumers are familiar with paying—which sounds like a pretty small amount. But the scale is tremendous. Charles River found that these tenths of a cent added up to $4.6 billion over the life of the project and over the entire New England region.
Transmission and grid connection issues
Of course, all the money in the world can’t make offshore wind a reality if the power system isn’t ready for it. This means we need to upgrade existing grid connections and build new transmission to handle new wind power.
The simplest way for a single offshore wind farm to connect to the electric grid is to build a line from the project directly to the shore. But this will quickly prove inefficient as more and more projects come online. Each of those connections costs many millions of dollars, and they don’t necessarily connect to the most robust parts of the onshore grid.
That’s why the most innovative project in this space is the Atlantic Wind Connection mentioned earlier. A better way to approach the interconnection challenge is to build one offshore transmission line that’s properly planned in the context of the existing grid. Then, each project would easily tie in to the line, saving all of the money from building a line to the shore.
This approach will cost billions of dollars, but the benefits will outweigh the costs. Building the Atlantic Wind Connection transmission line will cost about $5 billion, roughly equivalent to the cost of building single connection lines for each individual offshore wind turbine. But significant associated benefits make the single transmission line far more desirable.
For instance, having the transmission already in place makes it much easier for offshore wind developers to build projects because they won’t have to independently plan for grid connections. And having a simplified transmission connection will encourage the development of local wind manufacturing, which will also reduce project costs and increase local economic development.
These benefits are real, and they add up quickly. A Brattle Group study notes that “streamlined permitting and increased scale that allows local manufacturing and sourcing will reduce total offshore costs by approximately 20 percent.”
Finally, all new transmission, onshore or offshore, contributes to the robustness of the existing transmission grid, which lowers power prices for all consumers. The Atlantic Wind Connection project will reduce transmission congestion and increase power flows, which Brattle estimates will save consumers hundreds of millions of dollars over its lifetime.
There are significant planning and permitting challenges facing the Atlantic Wind Connection, however. FERC recently approved an “incentive rate” for the project, which provides a slightly higher rate of return for investors. This recognizes the risky nature of this first-of-its-kind project.
The next step for the developers is to get the project approved by PJM Interconnection, which manages the transmission grid in the mid-Atlantic region. PJM is independently managed under rules set by its members, who include power generators, utilities, and other market participants. PJM’s existing rules work against an independently owned large-scale project like the Atlantic Wind Connection. But there are opportunities for stakeholders to encourage PJM to adopt the plan, such as indicating that they will build new wind projects offshore if the line is built. A commitment to use the project would make approval much more likely.
Harmonizing offshore wind with other ocean uses
Concerns about wind turbines’ impacts on tourism, real estate values, and bird, fish, or marine mammal populations dominated the debate and fueled opposition in the early days of offshore wind. These apprehensions still exist, but the bulk of scientific data gathered from existing facilities suggests they may be less detrimental than initially feared.
The greatest lingering impact is how offshore wind will be integrated with other existing uses of ocean space, particularly fisheries. Fishermen are accustomed to relatively free rein over offshore areas with the ability to move from one area to the next as they follow the fish. Offshore wind farms in other countries have not banned boats from transiting through areas where farms are located. But fisherman are concerned that due to safety considerations offshore wind farms will become de facto “no-go” areas for fishing boats, particularly those pulling large trawl nets.
Fishermen’s concerns have already affected attempts to issue permits for offshore wind farms. As discussed above, BOEMRE took more than half of its Massachusetts WEA off the table after fishermen, members of the state’s congressional delegation, and the governor all petitioned the agency to keep turbines out of an area of prime scalloping grounds worth millions of dollars in annual harvest. A portion of the initial WEA also included heavily trafficked shipping lanes traversing the ocean south of the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
That BOEMRE failed to acknowledge these clear conflicts in drawing the initial boundaries suggests that a more comprehensive planning process is needed.
Minimizing these inherent conflicts—not just between offshore wind developers and fishermen, but among all users of ocean space—is the fundamental principle behind a new initiative being treated as a central provision of the National Ocean Policy announced by the Obama administration by executive order in July 2009.
A major part of this initiative was the release of an interim framework for coastal and marine spatial planning, also known as CMSP. CMSP’s ultimate goal is to create a management environment that takes into account the needs of all industries and users of ocean space, and cuts through the bureaucratic red tape and miscommunications that currently exist among the more than 20 federal agencies and 35 coastal states that all have a role in managing ocean space or activities.
Some states, chiefly Massachusetts and Rhode Island, already implemented principles of CMSP to assist in managing the three-mile strip of ocean that falls within their states’ jurisdictions. Massachusetts finalized a legislatively mandated Ocean Plan in 2009 that created a comprehensive blueprint for using the state’s ocean and coastal resources.
Meanwhile, Rhode Island began working on the concept of CMSP as far back as 1983. The Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Commission has developed a Special Area Management Plan encompassing its state waters as well as some contiguous federal ocean space. The commission’s subsequent report and interactive mapping tool show the potential benefits of using a tool like CMSP to bring diverse data into a single, centrally accessible source to inform collaborative management decisions.
These two states have even taken the process a step further and used the data from their independent efforts to identify a potential wind energy development area in federal waters south of both states’ southern coastlines.
Not all reactions to implementing CMSP have been positive. Opponents equate the process to “ocean zoning” that will inevitably result in the partitioning of the ocean into single-use boxes. While the process must not devolve into the ocean equivalent of a land-grab, new uses of ocean space, including offshore renewable energy projects, are emerging.
The ocean is a public trust resource. We are all ocean stakeholders, and as a nation, we must figure out how to effectively and efficiently slot them into what will rapidly become a crowded marine environment.
As mentioned above, fishermen are used to having the ocean to themselves. Any move to compromise their access will be met with resistance—particularly when they feel their interests are not adequately represented. BOEMRE’s swift action to revise its initial Massachusetts WEA speaks well of CMSP’s long-term potential, but for the concept to gain political traction such considerations must be taken into account before the lines are drawn on the map, not after.
Recommendations for accelerating offshore wind development
Increase government investment in offshore wind
The federal government can help make offshore wind projects financially successful through investment.
All offshore wind projects are eligible for the production tax credit. This credit is set to expire in 2012, and it needs a long-term extension to provide the stability that this market needs.
Congress should also extend the Section 1603 Treasury cash grant program, which allows developers to take a cash grant instead of a tax credit. This option is very similar to the tax credit, but it increases economic efficiency and allows for greater accountability and oversight. The advantages of a cash grant over a tax credit are discussed in depth in the CAP report, “America’s Hidden Power Bill.”
In addition to these direct incentives, the government can create a long-term financing tool to address the many financing challenges these innovative projects face. Congress should pass a bill creating a Clean Energy Deployment Administration that would provide loans and loan guarantees for breakthrough clean energy technologies.
In the short term, Congress should also make sure that there is enough money in the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program to provide financing for projects that are ready to move soon, such as Cape Wind and NRG Bluewater.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, recognizes the value of offshore wind, and it has allowed special “incentive rates” for transmission lines that encourage offshore development. These rates allow the project developers to charge more for the use of their transmission line. FERC should continue this practice.
FERC is also expected to issue new rules on planning, siting, and cost allocation that would allow for the costs of new transmission lines to be widely shared among all who benefit. These rules have been opposed by existing transmission owners who do not want new competition. Congress should protect these rules by passing legislation that would codify the proposed FERC methodologies.
Congress should also pass language about transmission siting and planning that was included in the original version of the American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009. The language gives FERC a role in siting controversial transmission projects, serving as a “backstop” when the traditional siting authorities are unable to reach decisions.
Ensure “Smart from the Start” is smart through the finish
Joint announcements like the roll-out of the “Smart from the Start” program made by Secretaries Salazar and Chu back in February are a good first step. But the program needs to be smart from start to finish.
No one wins when the Interior Department trumpets the finalization of permits for America’s first wind farm only to have the Energy Department place a hold on the project’s loan guarantee. Such a process merely evokes visions of Lucy yanking away Charlie Brown’s football. Losers include the offshore wind industry, the thousands of American jobs it could potentially create, and the carbon-reducing potential of a move toward cleaner, more renewable energy sources.
The on-again, off-again nature of offshore wind permitting and development decisions leads to a lack of confidence among potential investors and dramatically affects developers’ willingness to pursue a logical, proven source of domestic energy.
Federal agencies must to a better job of coordinating their efforts to ensure a robust environment for technological and economic development in the offshore renewable energy sector that can allow America to take advantage of commercially scalable clean energy development opportunities that lie just off our shores. BOEMRE, NOAA, the Department of Energy, and all other agencies with a role in ocean management must work together at every turn to get this nascent industry up and running here in the United States.
Engage stakeholders early in the process of identifying WEAs
Any initiative to introduce a new industry into our increasingly crowded ocean space will require tolerance and acceptance from stakeholders who may feel their current activities will be impinged upon by the interloper. In the case of offshore wind these groups include fishermen, coastal landowners, recreational boaters, shipping companies, pilots concerned about radar interference, and conservationists fearing impacts on birds, fish, and marine mammals and amphibians.
Failing to acknowledge the concerns of these groups—including the political and legal realities that elected officials and the courts can and will impose potentially significant delays in the process—will only lead to a longer, drawn-out, contentious battle.
These fights can be minimized, if not eliminated altogether, by a comprehensive effort to inform stakeholders and actively solicit their opinions, and by demonstrating a willingness to adapt accordingly.
Securing cheap, clean, domestic, energy sources is a universal goal. And yet, as a country, we continue to drop one roadblock after another in front of one of the world’s most proven renewable energy technologies.
More than 40,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy capacity have been permitted around the globe, yet the United States accounts for barely 1 percent of that, and we have yet to generate our first watt of electricity from this abundant, carbon-free source of power.
The longer we wait to begin developing this technology and creating the infrastructure and knowledge base that go along with it, the further we will fall behind the rest of the world, and the harder it will be to bring the economic development and environmental benefits to our own shores.
As Secretary Salazar said, the technology is now. It’s past time for America to go beyond wishing it was already here.
Michael Conathan is Director of Oceans Policy and Richard Caperton is a Senior Policy Analyst at American Progress.
Get the Latest on Energy and the Environment
Brent Woolfork
gro.ssergorpnacirema@krofloowb
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AMETEK Fine Tubes Names Dr. Mathew Davies as New Health, Safety and Environmental Manager
PLYMOUTH, UNITED KINGDOM– AMETEK Fine Tubes, a leading manufacturer and global supplier of precision-engineered metal tubes is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Mathew Davies as its new Health, Safety and Environmental Manager.
Davies’s appointment strengthens Fine Tubes’ long-standing commitment to health and safety. He brings with him seven years of experience in health, safety and environmental management roles across several businesses, as well as a PhD in chemistry and a General Certificate from the National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health.
Davies will provide leadership for the whole of Fine Tubes’ health, safety and environmental activities, working on a site-wide safety strategy to develop a zero-incident culture. His lean manufacturing skills will help him integrate the Fine Tubes’ HSE processes with lean thinking and methodology.
Dave Cawse, Operations Director at Fine Tubes said: “We are very excited to welcome Mathew to the team. We firmly believe in putting the safety of our workforce first in everything that we do. We are looking forward to Mathew helping us to develop our safety culture further as part of our overall journey to zero incidents.”
“I am thrilled to be joining the Fine Tubes team in this important role,” said Davies. “I strongly believe that safety is the cornerstone of everything that a company does and stands for. Not just in the factories, where the manufacturing takes place, but also in the offices and when staff travel, both to and from our site, as well as further afield around the UK and abroad.”
About Fine Tubes
Fine Tubes is part of AMETEK Specialty Metal Products (SMP) and is based in Plymouth, UK. The company manufactures high-precision, high-performance stainless steel, nickel alloy and titanium metal tubing products for critical applications across a wide range of sectors. These sectors include aerospace, medical, oil and gas and energy.
www.finetubes.com
About AMETEK SMP
AMETEK Specialty Metal Products (SMP) comprises six manufacturing facilities in the UK and USA: Reading Alloys, AMETEK SMP Eighty Four, Fine Tubes, Superior Tube, Hamilton Precision Metals and AMETEK SMP Wallingford. Collectively, the businesses represent a world-leading force in the manufacture of advanced metallurgical products for critical applications across a range of industries.
www.ametekmetals.com
AMETEK, Inc. is a leading global manufacturer of electronic instruments and electromechanical devices with annual sales of approximately $5 billion. AMETEK has more than 17,000 employees at more than 150 operating locations worldwide. Supporting those operations are more than 100 sales and service facilities across the United States and in 30 other countries around the world.
AMETEK Specialty Metal Products (SMP) is a division of AMETEK, Inc. and comprises of six manufacturing facilities in the UK and USA: Reading Alloys, AMETEK SMP Eighty Four, Fine Tubes, Superior Tube, Hamilton Precision Metals and AMETEK SMP Wallingford. Collectively, the businesses represent a world-leading force in the manufacture of advanced metallurgical products for critical applications across a range of industries.
Bettina Schadow, Marketing Communications Manager SMP
Plymbridge Road, Plymouth, Devon PL6 7LG, United Kingdom.
Telephone: +44 (0) 1752 876418
Fax: +44 (0) 1752 73301
Email: press.finetubes@ametek.com
Website: www.ametekmetals.com
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Britain should encourage Europe to further engage Arab issues
Daniel Kawczynski
At the time of writing, we await the vote that decides who will be chairman of the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee. One of the reasons I decided to stand to be the next chairman of the committee is the urgent need to scrutinise government over our relations with the 22 members of the Arab League.
Parliament needs to spend greater effort in questioning how our country’s relations with key Arab allies are focusing on attempts to take on the terrible threat emanating from the Islamic State (ISIS) both in Iraq and Libya.
We see in the region many other serious trouble spots, including the escalating war in Yemen and the terrible ongoing suffering engulfing Syria. Years on from the start of the civil war in Syria the death toll is believed to be at least 210,060, nearly half of them civilians, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said the real figure is probably much higher.
This shows the real and vital importance of good foreign policy, as well as the need for nations to use all the levers open to them in an attempt to prevent other countries descending into violence.
The Arab nations are our immediate neighbours, and we need to engage much more effectively with our allies to ensure that we are working together and are seen to be working together by the people of the countries we represent.
The position of chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee is voted on by all members of Parliament — all 650 of them. I have spent the weeks after the general election highlighting to colleagues from all political parties my strong interest in the Arab world, sharing with them reports I have written during official parliamentary delegations to Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Oman as well as the United Arab Emirates and other leading Arab states.
Certainly if I am elected chairman, I will discuss with the committee at the earliest opportunity which reports we will want to undertake as a country and for the members to present to the government for its response.
The role of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee is extremely important as the government has a formal obligation to respond to Select Committee reports and enquiries. As chairman, I would be seeking to encourage my colleagues on the committee to focus to a large degree on seeking to help our government resolve some of the ongoing tension and conflicts while at the same time ensuring we seek to maximise British mutual goodwill and trust between our country and the Arab world.
While Britain will not be able to act alone, it can lead and influence others to take a real interest in a vital region of the world. It is to the advantage of no one that the Middle East is in turmoil, and sadly things may get worse before they get better. But we must prevent the spread of ISIS and the cruel deaths it generates wherever its members or its ideas travel.
Written By Daniel Kawczynski
Daniel Kawczynski is a member of the British Parliament from the Conservative Party. He represents Shrewsbury and Atcham in Shropshire, England.
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Don Quixote Tickets
Garrick Theatre, London
We’re sorry, it looks like we no longer have tickets for this event
About Don Quixote
After a lifetime of reading books on chivalry, one eccentric old man heads off on a rumbustious quest to become a wandering knight accompanied by his faithful and equally ill-suited servant, ‘riotously performed by David Threlfall as Don Quixote and Rufus Hound as Sancho Panza’ (The Times). Taking up a lance and sword, Don Quixote sets out on a hilarious journey across medieval Spain, defending the helpless and vanquishing the wicked. Hopelessly unprepared and increasingly losing his grip on reality, with each calamitous adventure the two hapless heroes experience, the romantic ideal of Quixote’s books seems further away than ever.
Following its sell-out run at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2016 to mark the 400th anniversary of Cervantes’ death, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘joyous’ (Guardian) production of this legendary comic novel is told by a company of 20 actors accompanied by a band of live musicians.
Photography of the original Swan Theatre Company by Helen Maybanks © RSC and Manuel Harlan.
Don Quixote is not available to book, please sign up to our newsletter for updates and offers on forthcoming and available shows.
Garrick Theatre
2 Charing Cross Road London WC2H 0HH
Nearest Bus stop: (Charing Cross Road) 24, 29, 176; (Strand) 6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 23, 87, 91, 139
Parking: Leicester Square, Whitcomb Street (3mins)
Nearest Night Bus: (Charing Cross Road) 24, 176, N5, N20, N29, N41, N279; (Strand) 6, 23, 139, N9, N11, N13, N15, N21, N26, N44, N47, N87, N89, N91, N155, N343, N551
(2mins) Follow Charing Cross Road parallel to Leicester Square until you reach the theatre on your left.
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← Jenna Elizabeth Johnson Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Author
Jeff Siegel Author- THE CHEAP WINE BIBLE. THE WINE CURMUDGEON’S GUIDE TO CHEAP WINE →
December 10, 2014 · 12:31 am
Randy Ford Author- I’m Not Dead Yet or Hindi Aco Patay.
I’M NOT DEAD YET
One Saturday, before the matinee performance, they went to their favorite Cantonese restaurant on Mabini Street. It was Alfred’s idea after he presented them with a puppy, a surprise he had been thinking about for months. This led them to having a conversation at the restaurant about dogs, how dogs were generally treated differently in the Philippines than in America, and then to have Alfred caution them about speaking in generalities and stereotyping people. Alfred said he grew up with dogs; his family always had them. Ted looked at him in disbelief. Susan reacted with, “Ted don’t stare.” A young Chinese woman in a long sleek dress with a short slit up one leg came out with their meals on a tray. Alfred said to them, “She’s come straight from China. She’s neither proficient in English or Tagalong.” She was friendly and polite, over doing it to compensate for her language deficiency, overcompensating for it. She made doubly sure everyone was happy with her. Ted and Susan asked for spoons. Alfred was perfectly happy to eat with chopsticks. The spoons were readily available. And they followed Alfred’s lead, as he shoveled in his rice. The fried rice was quite nice.
Ted found an opportunity to tell Alfred what his plans were for the dungeons. It came after a long conversation about dogs, during which they managed to avoid a major faux pas. In other words, half way through what was to have been a leisurely lunch Ted metaphorically jumped off a cliff.
Susan felt like screaming. There was nothing else she felt like doing; her relaxing afternoon ruined. Ted ruined it for her. She was sick, just sick. She could choke him. And it was as if Susan hadn’t known, the one person who should’ve, that her husband was deeply involved with Communists. Out of her frustration, she attacked him and, as though Alfred wasn’t there, or they weren’t in a public place, used language that she normally wouldn’t have. She said, “You’re fucking resigning tomorrow. I’ll go with you, and you’ll tell them anything to get out of teaching there.” Tomorrow was Sunday. Both men stared at her. Alfred said nothing, as Ted tried to calm her down.
When Ted next saw Alfred, after he had taken Susan home, he managed a twisted smile. His lips quivered a little. Ted said, “She’s okay now.”
Alfred, standing outside the theater, said in a calm voice, “Maybe you should listen to her.” Ted said, “We made up, and she understands that I teach at a university and not a grammar school.” Then he hit Alfred up again for his ideas. Alfred said, “Maybe you should be listening to your wife.” And then, with hardly a pause, he said, “What’s the problem with the main stage? Why use the dungeons?” Ted became irritated. He said, “You don’t get it. You’re not going to help me.”
Alfred responded with a narrative and a tour of the dungeons. “Hindi Aco Patay. Pack the audience in here and let them feel like prisoners. Now he has high hopes for his country. It hasn’t been long since Dewey sailed into the bay. And it isn’t long before he knows we aren’t going get our Independence. After we’re misled, something you have to admit. We have our own Declaration of Independence, a good document, not unlike the one America has. Some of the natives begin to resist. Insurrection, killing. Americans against Filipinos. They shoot some and catch some and bring some of them here. They don’t know where they’re being taken. They don’t know if they’re going to get out alive. In here they have lost all hope. There are so many down here that they can’t breathe and they can’t sleep. Have very little to eat, and it’s damp, very damp, and when the water is let in, many of them drown. There’s no latrine. He’s brought here, and he won’t get out. They drag him without mercy through various streets in chains, and here they expect him to die. He refuses to die, not in this hole. They ask, “What is it like?” He tells them, “It’s wet and dark.” They say, “No, no, tell us what it’s really like.” He gives them a full description. Tells them there’s no latrine. But then someone says, ‘It has to be worse than that. The puss and the shit! Men dying all around you, and….’ And having told the truth, which is horrible enough, someone has a different idea, a conflicting one. About how to frame the truth. About how to treat a dark, dank dungeon and sugarcoat it. Hey, how about letting some sunlight in? Those guys could use some sunshine. Yeah, as much as possible, let the sun in, and let it rise; let it shine. Flood a whole friggin wall with white light and the surrounding walls with…how about red? From the light of day into the semi-darkness of the cell comes a drunken American soldier, with something bulging out of his back pocket. He reaches for it. Everyone thinks it’s gun, but low and behold, it’s an empty beer bottle, which he throws at the light or the sun on the wall. Then everyone, from the audience to the prisoners, watch as the sun immediately sets to the sound of gunfire and the explosions of bombs.” Alfred had even come up with a title for the damn thing, something borrowed: he called it Hindi Aco Patay, which means “I’m not dead yet.”
Having been asked, Alfred pitched his ideas to Ted and said he had a playwright who could flesh it out. Ted told him that he’d have to think about it and would get back to him later.
I’m not dead yet, and to reassure people I occasionally write. I’m one who has never settled down, but I also like to think I’m rooted in America, where I was born and raised. But you can’t tell where I’m from by my accent. I like to keep people guessing, and I’m often successful at it. I began this game early on, before we left the States, and it seemed to work for me.
One whole year I worked beside my future wife before I saw her. It worked for me too. You see I became her mystery man, and she said I was weird and still says it about me sometimes. Her ol’ man. I guess she likes weirdness. I mumbled and was unintelligible, and she was warned to keep away from unintelligible men because life was too short to spend time with dullards. Now we both know I’m not a dullard. I just mumbled, and I was unintelligible, and we’re both glad that she took a long view. But her parents were right when they told her that life was too short to spend time with dullards.
What I think of myself shouldn’t be based on what someone else thinks about me. I’m not surprised Susan’s parents opposed our marriage, not the least surprised considering how different Susan and I were, and I can understand why they were horrified because I still mumbled. I was different. I didn’t plan and still don’t, and I guess it scared them more than anything else did. It didn’t make sense to them: my not having a plan or a direction in life. And if for over a year they endorsed their daughter’s rejection of me, then it was understandable why it took them so long to turn a page and accept me as a son-in-law.
I didn’t have a philosophy of life. I didn’t know the meaning of existentialism and how it related to anything. I didn’t give a rats-ass about it, and my use of “rat’s ass” should give a clue about where I’m from. But college, if I got nothing else from it, opened doors for me, which was exactly what mom was afraid of. Now I recall covering all religions of the world … all of them. There were more of them than I can recall. We covered them in two or three sessions, and the major four are Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam (I’ve listed them in alphabetical order to keep from being called biased). And I’ve since encountered all four. Buddhism in Thailand, Christianity in the Philippines, Hinduism in Bali, and Islam in Pakistan. Here’s where I have to be careful. I don’t want to give too much away. The notion that Christ possibly or even probably traveled to India fascinated me, so much so that I’ve challenged my Baptist friends with the idea. Since then I haven’t heard much from them.
Oh, well, you can’t win. But potshots never stopped. When I think of existentialism I think of THE FLIES. I also think of “The Waste Land.” Sartre! Sartre, and despair. Despair. Wrong! Wrong! My favorite has always been Nietzsche, ECCE HOMO. Homo. Excuse me. No wonder my folks never understood me.
So potshots never stopped. Out of step with my classmates, I can look back with satisfaction because few of them have seen the world. The first time Susan and I flew over the Pacific we lost a day forever. Naysayers would say that we’d live to regret it and had we used the day we might’ve accomplished something great, might’ve scored a point or two during all the time we spent on a plane, but I doubt it. There was a sob letter from my parents, in which they took the better-than-thou road. “In this time of war,” my mom wrote, “to abandon, to flee, even to renounce your country is …is …”she couldn’t put her disappointment into words. She was a patriotic soul. But I’m confident that my mom didn’t write it. I was delighted that my dad didn’t either. They couldn’t have written it. My dad’s involvement was limited to his signature at the bottom of the page; naturally my mother insisted that a good letter should never be longer than a page.
Their letter was waiting for us the day we landed in Manila. We didn’t deserve it, and it didn’t deserve a reply; still I replied, “Don’t accuse me of being unpatriotic.” What to write didn’t occur to me just once, but a hundred times, even maybe a thousand. See my mom attacked my integrity and my decision-making and not just mine, but also my wife’s … as if Susan had anything to do with it … poor Susan … and after I dragged her half way around the world. Forgive me, we were still alive, and what right did my mom have to write what she did? Maybe we were making a mistake, but it was our mistake. There! “Don’t accuse me of being unpatriotic.” Now that I got it out of my system, but it still baffled me. She wasn’t thinking. That was it. She wasn’t thinking. But to attack my integrity, my decision-making and not just mine. She wasn’t thinking. I felt sorry for mom and superior and sorry to see her resort to lambasting her son and his poor wife. Baffling. Baffled and pissed. I still wonder who got to her. Susan shared my disappointment, privately and openly, and whenever she had a forum.
Susan always defended me. Defended me against ridicule. Ridiculed by mom and anyone else but I found mom less guilty than other people because I knew she loved me. Straight from her heart she no doubt remembered how World War II took my father away and how he never was the same after he came back … maybe she was thinking of his bravery in Europe, Omaha Beach, and then to have a son runaway from Vietnam. However, I think my dad agreed with me … after what he went through … and maybe that was why he stayed out of it.
After Hong Kong and Singapore, the Philippines was our third choice. During the first week there Susan and I went back and forth over whether we made the right decision. To be fair, it had nothing to do with the Philippines. We had to land somewhere. We jumped maybe when we shouldn’t have and lost a day, and to be fair to the Philippines we didn’t know what we were doing and weren’t sure of anything. We landed … that much we knew. And we knew who we were. We carried American passports and what we could carry in our luggage. And we had a little money. We weren’t broke, married, and had each other and knew as Americans we could work in the Philippines. That wasn’t an option in Hong Kong or Singapore. So out of all places in the world we chose the Philippines. It may have been a long way from home, but there was something American about the place. It was foreign, yet halo- halo (a Philippine desert), or mix-mix … and it suited us. Or for the time being it did, or so we thought.
Despite having lived in and around huge cities all my life, this time it felt different. Manila. It was foreign, yet familiar, a throw back to when America wasn’t so tame. We weren’t sure. I stepped in an open sewer first thing, and man, was I pissed. I was wearing shoes, and the shoes were ruined as far as I was concerned. And traffic … man, the traffic! I wasn’t looking, stepped in an open sewer, ruined a pair of shoes, and almost got run over all at the same time, and I wasn’t dead yet. Shock! I wasn’t dead. So surely it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Sure, our impressions weren’t fair … were distortions. Instead of open prairies with sagebrush and mesquite, there were open sewers and everywhere we looked we saw forts with broken glass on top of walls and buildings guarded by men with rifles. And there were guns everywhere. It was like the Wild West, and we felt sure we’d get caught in the crossfire. My!
The day after we arrived I stepped into an open sewer and Susan fell silent for most of a day. The peace wasn’t broken until we got back to our hotel and she started bawling. What had I done? Why had she agreed to give up safety and security of home? Why had she chosen to hookup with someone who’d never settle down? Why? “Why,” she asked herself. I tried to comfort her. I reassured her as much as I could. We weren’t dead yet. I may have ruined a decent pair of shoes, but it wasn’t the end of the world, and we had each other. I had her, and she had me. At that point, Susan had little else, when she sat on the edge of a bed in a strange country half way around the world from everything she ever knew. And I tried to reassure her by pointing out all things we saw in Manila that were the same as home, like signs in English and brands like Colgate and billboards advertising this or that. I wasn’t sure she was listening. I didn’t know if she heard me when I told her I thought she’d grow from the experience while mom’s letter more than suggested that we were idiots to give up what we had at home. Home wherever it was, and I felt the suggestion was biased. To receive such a letter hardly helped, but the next day … a workday … I got mom out of my system by tackling Manila.
I spent days walking up and down sidewalks packed with people … jamed with people. I walked with them, against them, and in places it was impossible to get through them. I was lost, but I knew where I was. And traffic! It was every man for himself, and a showdown at a traffic circle: imagine a traffic jam caused by everyone grabbing the right away at the same time. You had to learn assertiveness and patience or crash.
Then I got a hankering for stuff I missed: “stuff?” “enough?” “more than enough?” “plenty?” “starving?” plenty of starving people. There weren’t many starving people in America, really. Like starving people in the Philippines. We had panhandlers back home, but were they really starving? Now I saw women with children begging especially around churches. “God Bless America,” banana split, milkshake, and booze! Butt off! I wasn’t going to let it bother me.
Weeks later, after thinking about a letter I tried to write about hankering for stuff and starving women with children I saw around churches. About “God bless America,” and how lucky Americans were. And how we substituted halo-halo for milkshakes, and we didn’t know which we liked better. By then, Manila had grabbed hold of us, and I filled the letter I sent with as many impressions of the city as I could.
Under a heading of survival, for example, I wrote, “Susan plans to earn a little bread by teaching English.” After thirty-nine years this seems silly because a majority of people we met in Manila spoke pretty good English. Three years later Susan and I both taught English as a second language in Bangkok. To put my parents at ease, I lied about Susan seeking employment in Manila (how we planned to survive was a question I knew they’d ask), as a rule I didn’t lie. Yet we had a plan. I planned to become a newspaperman, so I went to English newspapers, the Manila Times and the Free Press, thinking it was a good place to start. I knew I had to start before we ran out of money. Thanks to the relationship of the peso with the dollar we still had a small fortune, but we knew it wouldn’t last forever, so I knocked on a few doors. While I wasn’t worried. I knew … I knew we’d survive. For me survival wasn’t a battle…and victory was easy. I figured we could live on almost nothing. But as with anything else, there were a few rules; and rule number one was, don’t run out of money, so I knocked on a few doors.
After a few months, an eternity to us, I established a routine, which I rarely varied. Susan knew what I did each day. No one else, however, could’ve kept up with me. By then no one would’ve guessed that I was relatively new to Manila, having established a beat, thinking a good free-lance newspaperman had to have one. I had to have one even though the Manila Times or the Free Press didn’t hire me. So I kept busy, and rather than be idle and bored Susan looked for a niche of her own. Without connections, there for a while we didn’t know if Manila would work out for us. Connections? I first looked for connections at the University of the Philippines and the American Embassy where I could asked hard questions without being afraid of getting shot. I was looking for a scoop, any scoop. Something that would find its way into print. And I wasn’t afraid to invade someone’s privacy, gain someone’s confidence, and bamboozle my way into places. I knew I could be cagey, and even subversive, if I had to be.
I looked through the papers to see who was in them the most and saw that President Ferdinand E. Marcos was in them all the time. I knew something about him and pegged him as an ambitious character. I didn’t fault him for his ambition because I felt it was what the Philippines needed. And I was prepared to give him credit for public works projects before I knew much about him. Let’s concede that he was probably a crook. I heard he murdered someone, a political rival of his father. But having conceded this, remember the beautiful woman he married. Ah, Imelda! So I decided to pick on Imelda.
The best way for a politician to survive is to crouch behind a woman and let her charm the world for him. It didn’t take me long. It didn’t take long for me to zero in on the former beauty queen and follow her as close as I could from afar. My piece was about what Imelda said to the Pope. “God is love. I have love. Therefore, I will go to heaven.” The important issue here wasn’t Imelda’s sincerity or whether what she said was true or not, but that she was being political. Say what you will about Imelda, but you can’t say she wasn’t political. Now I knew that there would be people for one reason or another who would dismiss me … dismiss me for being a foreigner, or someone who had only been in the country for a short while, but I wouldn’t let it bother me unless I was totally dismissed. I expected attacks. My reply was direct. I wrote, “The last I knew the Philippines was a free country, but Marcos may have undermined this.” It was not simply because I poked fun at the First Lady that attacks came my way. (I welcomed attacks then. I wasn’t dead yet and needed to be noticed.) People were most upset about what I wrote about Imelda because, according to critics, I “demeaned her.”
It was quite possible that I got carried away and that the piece didn’t deserve attention it got. But to argue with me took focus away from Imelda and obscured the point of the piece. It wasn’t so much that she was hypocritical, but that she was funny even when she was trying to be serious. To her, to use her own words, “Life was so beautiful” and “life was so prosperous and life was so full of potential that really one shouldn’t have to sleep.” The piece earned me a few dollars, which I quickly turned into pesos, and I added a clipping of the article to my portfolio. The piece was short and as informative as I could make it. If my critics want to crucify me, let them! If it’s not in print, it won’t hurt me, and a little controversy never hurts either. I was ahead of the game, regardless what they said.
Susan and I often didn’t agree. She often took positions opposite of mine, but I had to agree with her when she said the First Lady wasn’t a bimbo. I was sticking to my opinions about Imelda, though I didn’t think she was a bimbo. After my article I wanted to find a good Imelda, a nice Imelda, and a smiling Imelda and took a look at projects she launched. And I was determined to get back into print.
“I have a million energy, no longer 1,000.” I wondered, looking for clues. First, what was wrong with what Imelda said about God? Second, should what she said be held against her; nah, why should it be? I’m talking about her saying, “God is love.” How could I criticize her for it? Hadn’t I heard mom say the same thing? And Imelda also said that she believed in heaven; so there you have it. She believed in heaven.
And the Pope’s response: “how childlike.” Wonderful. But this was as far as I would go. As far as I could go and I hadn’t come close to depicting the Imelda everyone loved. Yes, she was idolized. Yet I didn’t give her any slack and presented an opposing view. So I pulled out my Nietzsche and used his declaration “God is dead.” Oh, my! And the “feminine” virtues of Christianity; and at the same time we have Imelda saying, “God is love.” God is love while God is dead. And to have Marcos claim he saved the Pope’s life. Will the Pope then make him a saint? And to have Imelda say, “God is love” while sharing the same stage with the Pope and then have her husband save his life. This was no coincidence. I wonder. Then I had to wonder if there was a story there. Was it worth reporting? Who gave a rat’s ass, really? As a journalist, I believed in giving the public what it wanted. And any editor who believed that they would get balanced reporting and fairness from me was an idiot. To be honest I knew there weren’t many people who read and understood Nietzsche, or gave a rat’s ass. We have to be honest: not very many people read Nietzsche or understand him. And his saying “God is dead” hasn’t helped his reputation either. What about my reputation?
Getting into print gave me confidence enough to go back to the Times and talk to the Drew Pearson of the Philippines. Roberto Concepcion wrote a daily column and I read as many of them about the First Lady as I could, but it didn’t mean that he’d be helpful. Often Roberto Concepcion acted as Imelda’s mouthpiece, when I thought he should be more critical. But who was I to question him? Wasn’t he one of the most powerful men in the Philippines? Didn’t he push through many of her pet projects (literally with a walkie-talkie in hand)? He could get things done when other people couldn’t. With a phone call, over his walkie-talkie, in person or from afar, he was a force to be reckoned with, and I intended to take him on.
I didn’t trust the man. I didn’t trust Concepcion. He used his position and the First Lady’s name everyday to push through his agenda and then wrote columns about her: now wasn’t that a conflict of interest? For that reason I didn’t trust him. Then why would I go to him, if I didn’t … didn’t trust him?
I gave it a lot of thought. What could I get from him? More to the point … what could he get from me? What could I give him? Who could scoop whom? He had access, and I didn’t. He worked for the Times, and I didn’t. He paid his dues … paid his dues, and I hadn’t. Then what would impress him? By my not being intimidated. He was used to intimidating people, so the last thing I wanted was to appear intimidated. When other people bowed down to him, I was determined to get in the door, hold my ground, and stay on my feet. But if he couldn’t help me, he couldn’t help me, while the tone of our conversation was friendly enough.
He was less than helpful. He was polite, soft-spoken, and non-committal, and very much on the side of the First Lady. What did I expect? I was an American. He didn’t know me. I was new in the country … had no credentials. Yet he was polite. Here sat the Drew Pearson of the Philippines, and my portfolio consisted of one short article … and a less than favorable one … about the First Lady, and yet he was polite to me. He gave me thirty minutes, and was polite. He could’ve been rude … or cold. We didn’t talk about his columns, or Imelda. We didn’t get that far in thirty minutes. Of course, I didn’t tell him what I thought about his columns … about how they left me cold because I thought they were full of fluff, especially when it came to Imelda. Now I wasn’t Imelda’s harshest critic, but I wasn’t compromised like I thought Mr. Concepcion was. Here I was an American with balls enough to be sitting in the office of the Drew Pearson of the Philippines and dumb enough to tell him about the article I had just written about his First Lady. I’m not sure where the thirty minutes he allotted me went.
A few days later, I found myself on the campus of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman. That’s in Quezon City, the official capital of the country. I had a lead and a name or two and made inquiries before I knew my way around. But I didn’t have many leads and didn’t know where I’d end up. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain and didn’t have a deadline. That was dangerous. I had no idea then how dangerous.
I had never been there before. I found my way by taking a bus from Quiapo, approximately an hour’s ride through part of the city I hadn’t seen before … a jerky ride because of how the driver shifted gears. I was lucky to get a seat. I got preferential treatment because of who I was. Traffic was heavy as always, but luckily it moved along, but it wouldn’t have mattered to me if there were delays. Manila! I tried to take it all in.
I approached the first students I came upon. They pointed me to the administration building. I was actually looking for the student union. I assumed all colleges had a student union and didn’t ask for a specific building by name because I didn’t know the names of buildings. I walked around because I wanted to get the lay of the campus before I talked to anyone. It was important for me to act like I knew what I was doing and where I was going. But I had no idea what I was about to get myself into.
I decided to pretend to be a student … a new student … a foreign exchange student from the U.S. of A, so I carried a satchel full of books. I knew I could talk a good game … always could. Thought I could talk my way in and out of anything. I brought along books I was interest in … Nietzsche’s ECCE HOMO, of course, but some that weren’t so highbrow such as hot off the press COFFE, TEA, AND ME. I thought my reading it would attract interest, and I had already underlined the sexiest parts.
I asked directions to the library. I wasn’t interested in studying, but in an attempt to blend in, I spent a good deal of time in the library. I wanted to be recognized as a student. It was important for me to come across as a student so that I could get a feel for the place. I’m not sure why I felt it was important to get a feel for the place, but I did. And to kill time … because I didn’t have classes … I pulled books randomly off the shelves and read parts of them, and now on a mission, I chose books that would give me information about the Philippines.
I was sure at some point I’d get caught and planned for the eventuality. I knew I’d get caught so I played it cool and never told anyone I was a student … but let them make assumptions. I acted like a student but didn’t really know what I’d say if I were asked about it. I didn’t have student ID, so yes I was taking a chance. And I was cocky enough to think I would get away with it. There was fine line I was walking, and unwilling to cross, and didn’t want to get caught in a labyrinth of lies. So I was determined not to lie. And above all I didn’t want to be mistaken for the CIA. The last thing I wanted was to be associated in any way with the CIA.
But, ah, I couldn’t disguise that I was an American. Like most Americans I was literate in only one language, English, which greatly limited me. My light completion, blue eyes, blond hair also gave me away. I could’ve been European except for my American accent. Otherwise I was indistinguishable from almost any student. Then since I didn’t speak one of the native languages, I could never be sure what people were saying about me, and it bothered me. And I knew that it would be long time before I could joke in one of the languages and knew until I could I would be handicapped. I knew what I was looking for and that was someone who was anxious to meet me. I’m not sure which of us spotted the other first.
As an undergraduate, Nick Santos studied economics and political science, and he said he never considered himself a political animal. Instead he spent most of his time studying and preparing for exams. “My political orientation came straight from parents” (like mine did) “and since I grew up around HUKs in Central Luzon” (my parents were Democrats because of what Roosevelt did for them). “I worked in rice fields with my parents,” Nick went on to explain. ”For a peasant like me to attend a university then …”
I never bought the idea that Nick came from peasant stock. It never jived somehow, and the more I knew him the more I was convinced of it. He was too sophisticated, sly, smart. Sly, smart, idealistic, and naïve. He could be sly, but naïve, and perhaps if he hadn’t been so naïve he might be alive today. But a peasant! I didn’t buy it.
He talked a good game like I did. From day one he accepted me. And here I was an American, and he was anti-America, and we became best friends. He didn’t need me, and I didn’t need him, yet we became best friends. He was a Maoist, and I was brought up in a world that feared, fought, and hated communism, and somehow we became best friends. From day one he talked about Mao. He carried with him Mao’s LITTLE RED BOOK like some people carried around the Bible. On day one he told me about going to China, Red China, during the Cultural Revolution. It didn’t make sense to me that he had been to China, but that was what he told me. And why would he tell me on day one? I still don’t know. And he carried with him the LITTLE RED BOOK and was so open about going to China, but how in the world did he get in and out of China? China was Red. Who lost China? It didn’t make sense to me, yet we became best friends. He was anti-America, and yet we became best friends. I suspect he even suspected that I was CIA, and yet we became best friends. But he never once asked me what I was doing on campus because, I assumed, he assumed I was a foreign exchange student working for the CIA.
On day one Nick told me that he read mostly books on political systems, because, as he said, “without systems nothing worked.” I thought he was pulling my leg. I said to myself, “Who was this guy trying to impress?” I could’ve pulled ECCE HOMO out of my satchel, or better yet COFFE, TEA, AND ME with the sexy parts underlined, but I thought better of it. . For me Nietzsche, and for him Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and Mao. Weren’t they pretty much in the same league, Nietzshe, Marx, and Engels? (I didn’t know about Mao). I had read ECCE HOMO but not THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. He said he worked through THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO several times, taking notes. I still didn’t pull out my copy of ECCE HOMO. “I’ve never been very interested in individual players or politicians,” he explained.
Then while sitting on the edge of his bed, with a Chinese communist flag hanging on the wall behind him, he tried to impress me with his knowledge of THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, and THE CONSTITUTION and THE BILL OF RIGHTS. He admitted that he read only 50 or so of the 85 essays that make up the FEDERALIST PAPERS and skimmed the rest. No! Come on! Read 50 essays from the FEDERALIST PAPERS? And on day one too, and the way it was going with Nick I wasn’t sure if there would be a day two because I was already tired of him. And yet we became best friends.
All consuming; yet where was the scoop I was looking for? Before going to the campus, I read about the anti-American demonstrations that occurred there almost every day and I assumed that they were all communist inspired.
Nick tried to convince me that he wasn’t a political animal. He told me more than once that he was more interested in his studies than politics. He said he left demonstrating to other students, but after what I heard next I wasn’t quite sure what to think. “More concerned about securing his future,” was what he said with a smirk on his face, but … but from day one he made sure I knew he was a Maoist. On day one he showed me a copy of THE LITTLE RED BOOK he carried with him and we sat under a Chinese … a red Chinese flag and talked. And he said he wasn’t a political animal?
He said he didn’t have time. Time for what? Politics and demonstrating. Yet he had definite opinions about politics, about Marcos, and from day one claimed he was a Maoist. He said he was thinking about his future. His future? What future did a Maoist have in the Philippines? I wondered. He said he wanted to be a professor … a political science professor … a Maoist political science professor. What future did a Maoist professor have in the Philippines? And he wasn’t a political animal and yet he wanted to teach and gain tenure in the political science department.
I wondered about his trip to China. I don’t know how he swung it … a trip to China … how he got in and out … what lengths he had to go to. Remember China, Red China was considered an eastern piranha then and that the Philippines was aligned with the United States. Rather than be non-aligned or unaligned the Philippines was aligned with the United States and that was one of the main reasons for the demonstrations on UP campus. And somehow smuggled THE LITTLE RED BOOK and a Red Chinese flag back into the country. A Maoist professor on UP campus. A Maoist UP professor who wasn’t a political animal and who went to China as a student. What was with this guy? When professors tended to be conservative he thought he could be a Maoist professor! It didn’t make sense to me.
“Yeah,” he began, recalling his China trip, “they rolled out the red carpet.” I asked him if he had his picture taken with Mao. “No, it would’ve been too risky.”
“Did you meet him?”
“Mao.”
“No. I didn’t even get close.”
“That’s too bad, a shame.”
“It all seems risky to me.”
“It was certainly risky considering how Marcos was consorting with the United States … suckering up to them all the time he was lining his pockets.”
And that was how I found out what Nick thought about Marcos. And he claimed he wasn’t a political animal. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense to me. I had my contact, and I made friends with him. From day one were friends.
And what I eventually realized was that it didn’t matter to me that he was a communist. It mattered to a lot of people, but it didn’t matter to me. It would’ve mattered to my folks, and I hadn’t forgotten that we were fighting to stop communism, and it was the second war we fought to stop communism. As an American it should’ve mattered … given all the blood that was lost … all the American blood that was lost it should’ve mattered. But here was a self-proclaimed Maoist, and we became friends.
Now if anyone were to ask me about it I would’ve told him or her the truth. I would’ve told them that I was following leads for a story. And what kind of story? An unbiased one because I hate propaganda. Nick may have been a communist, but he was my friend. And I needed Nick. And I used him. And we remained friends … remained friends … remained friends to the end. And if indeed Nick were a communist … a Maoist like he said … would it make what he told me any less reliable? I was a grown man. I could take it … accuse me of being a sympathizer and un-American, I can take it. I hated propaganda then, and I hate it now. I think I was grownup enough then to recognize propaganda and not let it get to me. And I’m not dead yet, which says I wasn’t on the wrong side. Yet I missed a hell of lot, but in reality I wouldn’t have gotten a complete picture anyway. As an American, I couldn’t have gotten anymore.
But to pursue this: let’s say I found out that Nick was indeed a communist, a Maoist, and we became best friends, then didn’t it make me a communist sympathizer? I was an American, and I loved my country. I had to get away from my country for a while, but I loved my country. I didn’t approve of everything my country did, but I loved my country. And I know that Nick didn’t approved of everything his country did, but he loved his country. I’ve heard people say “love or leave it,” but don’t assume because I left I didn’t love my country. Nick was a Maoist, a communist, but he loved the Philippines. And this was something I often thought about …now I wonder. Um! Well, yes, a close friend of mine was a communist, a Maoist. And he told me on day one.
I don’t know if I believed him. Okay. There was no reason for me not to believe him. This wasn’t America. Where I knew how the majority of people felt about communism. About the Iron Curtain. About freedom. How we were fighting communism. Fighting our second war against communism. How I could’ve been in Vietnam. How I could’ve been in Vietnam fighting communism. How I should’ve been in Vietnam. How I should’ve been in Vietnam fighting communism, and I became best friends with a communist, a Maoist. And I’m not dead yet.
But Nick told me on day one that he wasn’t a political animal, and I wanted to believe him. I had to believe him. And it baffled me when they came after me with “you should’ve known.” I should’ve known. But it wasn’t simple. Suppose you’re accused of being a communist because of your association with someone and you end up on a black list … just suppose. It could be worse. Yes, no and as much as you denied it people didn’t believe you. At least you’re not dead yet. Then you came under scrutiny after you wrote your piece, and they said, “Well, since you’re a communist, we can’t accept it.” You put your heart and soul into it and they wouldn’t accept it. You were blackballed when you were not a communist or a communist sympathizer, but you were a friend … best friend of a communist, a Maoist, and you’re not dead yet “Well, since you’re a communist or a communist sympathizer (when you were not), we can’t accept this.” You’re still lucky. You could’ve been dead. “But please don’t burn the piece because you don’t like the source.” And then in turn you could say, “I’m not a communist” as often as you like and leave it at that, or “don’t burn the piece because you don’t like the source.”
We each ate noodle soup, and afterward he insisted that we go to his room. He agreed to talk to me even after he found out that I wasn’t a student. He hesitated but agreed to talk. Right off he told me that he didn’t particularly care for Americans. I appreciated his honesty. I told him I appreciated his honesty and said I could see how he might feel that way. He didn’t particularly care for Americans and said I made him nervous. He invited me to his room, yet I made him nervous and he didn’t like Americans. He didn’t trust Americans … at least he said he didn’t, and still we became best friends. He told me that I made him nervous … on day one … in his room … he told me I made him nervous because I could darn well be … no damn well be working for the CIA. He said I could be working for the CIA and he shouldn’t trust me. Why should he trust me? I was an American and could’ve been working for the CIA. And from his hesitation I got the impression that he didn’t like Americans.
After he invited me to sit down on the edge of his bed … under a communist Chinese flag and he put on some Chinese martial music on his record player … “Freedom on campus is something I cherish,” he said. Funny how I didn’t feel trapped. I have a nose for a story, and I felt like I was getting somewhere. “Academic freedom translates into personal freedom and yet in another sense freedom calls for restraint.” I was trying to take all this in when he said this. And he said I made him nervous. He didn’t like Americans. We were talking. He was talking to an American. He invited me into his room, and we were talking. And he talked about the university being a microcosm of society, and I kept wishing I could take notes but was afraid to because I didn’t want to spook him.
Then as I sat there I got the feeling that he could see through me … that he knew that I was something other than what I was pretending to be. He could see through me, and I became nervous. And although he didn’t come out and say it, he from day one knew that I wasn’t a student. That was when he told me I should stay away from the university. And that was when I felt I had to tell him I was journalist and when he agreed to introduce me to a few of his friends. … like the Student Government president and the editor of the student newspaper; the Kabataanng Makabayan and various other activists. I was in heaven then because I achieved one of my objectives.
Nick appeared to be downplaying his role in a drama on campus. I didn’t believe him. I was sure he was involved. How could he not have been involved? No, it didn’t make sense to me, just as his claiming he wasn’t a political animal didn’t. But how was I to know?
I refused to let him get away with it. I asked him about growing up. Where he was born … that sort of thing. He looked at me suspiciously. We were still sitting on the edge of his bed, and he volunteered information about going to China, Red China, and there was martial music and a flag and a copy of Mao’s book he carried with him, and he was suspicious when I asked him a simple question like where was he born. Huklandia. I had read about the HUKs and knew that Huklandia was Central Luzon. Tarlac in Central Luzon was Huklandia. And for some reason Nick wanted me to know that he was a Maoist and that he’d been to China, Red China, but didn’t want me to know that he was from Huklandia.
“HUKs were branded communist,” he explained.
“Were they? And were they?”
“No. Not the ones I knew.” And to my direct question, “Were you ever involved with the HUKs?” he said “no” again, and then said, “In tangible ways we saw quality of our lives deteriorate as violence increased. The government had to have someone to blame, so the HUKs got the blame. Blame, blame, blame … shame, shame.”
I saw how uncomfortable he was, so I asked, “What’s the possibility of solidarity in a pluralistic society?”
“What? You’re joking. You have to be joking.”
“Do you believe in democracy?”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Of course, I am. And you’re English is surprisingly good.”
“Solidarity in a pluralistic society, hell!” To which we burst out laughing. “Hell, then, let’s get out of this room.”
“Away from music.”
“You don’t like music. You don’t like my music.”
“It’s not music.”
“Do you believe in democracy? You’re pulling my leg. You see I know my idioms … speak good English, no? Let’s get out of here and exercise our freedom. Do I believe in democracy?”
“Well, I don’t see you out there demonstrating.”
“I’ve demonstrated.”
“And you don’t care for Americans.”
Then we burst out laughing again as we left his room. Exercising our freedom meant something to him and something different to me. But to get my story I was willing to play along. And I could tell that to a certain degree he wanted to keep me guessing … divulge a little here and divulge a little there … this tidbit for that tidbit … just enough to string me along. I could tell that he wanted something … things … things from me just as I wanted something … things from him. And keep me guessing. But why? Why would he tell me on day one that he was a Maoist? Unless … unless he wasn’t one.
Mao Zedong. When I think of Mao Zedong, I always think of the question, who lost China? Who lost Red China? Now that China was Red people were asking, who lost China? The big question was then was who lost China? Mao Zedong. Nick said political scientists dealt with ideas and theories and could say whatever they wanted under the guise of academic freedom. “Scholars are considered valuable because of their ideas and theories and can be revolutionary without firing a shot.” Mao Zedong. What if Nick had his picture taken with Mao?
Nick told me that they learned quite a bit from Mao. Mao Zedong. He obviously liked Mao Zedong and liked saying Mao Zedong’s name … liked the way the Z and the D exploded when he said Zedong-Zedong. Like I liked asking, “Ba ba ba, ca ba?.” while I never knew whether I was asking “going up or going doing down?” And as a political science major Nick also liked to spout off theories while he emphasized that theories were simply theories until they were put to use. And as far as anticipated battles, Mao’s theories would prove useful. Nick kept going back to Mao and his ideas … ideas about revolution … about how a small revolutionary group could take on a large, well-equipped army and win. About how Marcos had a surprise coming. “Marcos has a surprise coming.” I wondered what he meant when he said, “Marcos has a surprise coming.”
And he talked about our military bases … an easy target … and Vietnam … and I knew we wouldn’t do anything about our military bases until we got out of Vietnam, and all this seemed to me like a repeat of what I would’ve heard had I gone on any college campus back in the States.
“When we think of America, instead of conjuring up images of peace, we see war and wonder what it’s all about …about big guys imposing their will on the small fries. The first thing big guys might say is. ‘This is right.’ While the small friespoints to the ground and says, ‘This is home.”
“I hear you.”
“Do we know who would win? A large, well-equipped army pitted against a straw army, who would win? Actually, right now, it’s a tossup. We’ll have to wait and see; but I predict… The fact is that none of it squares with logic.”
Mao again! I’d heard enough. Time for a cool one … a cool San Miquel. It was on me. I didn’t trust the water.
Both of us more or less enjoyed each other’ company. I was curious about him, and he was curious about me. Nick wanted to know all about me and why I came to the Philippines. And when I admitted that I was married, he wanted to know how many children I had. When I told him that we didn’t have any children he wanted to know why. These were questions I expected. I should’ve had ready-made answers. Most of my answers didn’t satisfy him. I don’t know what he expected.
I listened to his discourse about Mao, war, politics, and history, and he listened to mine about my family. I bought him a beer. It pleased him, just as I was pleased with one of the best beers in world. It was one thing we shared that was safe, and it relaxed him. He asked again what brought me to the Philippines. And why I was married and didn’t have children.
“Ever want to see what’s out there … what’s beyond the horizon?” I asked. “I want t to be frank. I didn’t want to get caught like so many of my friends did. I wanted to see the world before it was too late … before we had children and were tired down.”
“How are your parents? What do they think?”
“They’re alive and kicking. My father doesn’t think I’ll amount to much. My mother tends to believe in everyone. My father is a skeptic. I’m more like my father than my mother. I also tend to be naïve. So you tell me. What brought me to the Philippines?”
“You right! And smart.”
He then said he’d like to hear more about America.
”Discovery of America was a mistake,” I began. “Yes, a big mistake. And do you know why discovery of America was mistake? Christopher Columbus. Yes, Christopher made the mistake of thinking that he’d reached the Philippines. But he hadn’t. He was mistaken. So the discovery of America was a big mistake.”
“He thought he discovered the Philippines?”
“Yes. Yes, sort of. Yes, Columbus was mistaken about a number of things. You and I know he discovered America and how he knew the world was round because Columbus was no fool.”
“Yet he made a few mistakes.”
“Yep, a few mistakes. He couldn’t distinguish one palm tree from another and underestimated the circumference of the world. And he didn’t have a television. If he had a television he would’ve known these things.”
“And Columbus thought he’d discovered the Philippines. What about the other Spaniard?”
“Nick … never mind.”
“And then America discovered the Philippines, and we haven’t been the same since.”
“Don’t blame me.”
“Who’s blaming you for America’s sins? I’m certainly not.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“A lot of people here still look up to Americans.”
“But you’re not one of them. You don’t particularly care for us. But I hope we can be friends.”
“Okay. We can be friends.”
“We’ll remain friends as long as it’s in our best interest. Friends, as long as we give you preferential treatment! Do you know what our word for toothpaste is? Colgate. Smile.”
Nick was now late for class. We lost track of time, enjoyed our beers, and exhausted each other. We said goodbye without saying we’d meet again.
The next week I kept hoping I’d run into Nick. I spent most of the time in the library questioning myself over why we were in the Philippines and trying to work through my feelings about my country. Was I negative or positive? Was I pro-American or anti-American? I went back and forth and couldn’t decide. While I knew Nick’s perspective had been more or less negative. Was I mistaken about America? Was my discovery of the Philippines a mistake?
In 1970, after leaving the United States where I lived all of my life, I said … I have to be honest; I … had been out of the country for several months and said I have to be honest and ask, “Can I be objective?” I have trouble being objective. I am egocentric and have trouble being objective. I tended to be egocentric when my ideas were no better than the next guy’s and most people didn’t give a rat’s ass what I thought. The most notable difference between the next guy and me was our experiences. It all boiled down to experiences and choices and the biggest choice so far was Susan’s and my choice of the Philippines. Did we choose the Philippines or did the Philippines choose us? Or did we choose to Philippines because it was an English speaking country. And was the discovery of the Philippines by America a mistake? It wasn’t a mistake as for as I was concern because most people in the Philippines speak English … thanks to America. So the discovery of the Philippines couldn’t have been a mistake.
I had come a long way from thinking the discovery of America was a mistake to thinking of America’s discovery of the Philippines. I should say we came a long way. Sitting in the library I started thinking about how we came a long way. And I started thinking about home.
I thought back to a house and a street, to 2112 on top of a hill and found myself in a middle-class neighborhood where lots were large enough to require a power mower. To kids and neighborhood friends playing in the backyard under a horse-apple tree; to boys pitching knives, and girls doing something more civilized. A man was standing on the front porch, ringing the doorbell. It was Mr. Spam. ”Come in, Mr. Spam. Have you come to collect?” mother asked. Mr. Spam (a man in his early fifties and a chain smoker) was always correct with his change and proper in his manner. His hands were cutup and toughened from rolling papers with wires, and he had a business proposition to discuss. Mom invited him in, and he waved off an attempt to pay him. He was reluctant to talk to her during the day while dad was at work. He came in the evening and we learned that he wanted me to roll papers for him, a first job for me and I had just entered Jr. high school. It would work out because it was an afternoon paper.
When he went to work, dad drove twenty-five miles in an old second-hand pickup. “This Ford clunker gets 35 miles to the gallon,” he bragged, “and that’s pretty damn good considering and thanks to Ford I don’t have to worry about getting to work.” He spoke with the authority of someone who had only driven Fords.
He said to mom, “I was going through the Sears & Roebuck catalogue … Well, I just got a raise and thought since we have money to spend why don’t we spend it on a mixer.” And as far as mom was concerned, all modern-day appliances from Sears & Roebuck were reliable, since Kenmore and Maytag made them. “American quality,” dad said, “was a misnomer, since everything was made to breakdown and wear out, rather than last,” but he didn’t care. Instead of buying out a catalogue, as a rule, they bought from a store and bought it from a store so that they could have it immediately. They had to have it immediately. There were many things they wanted and had to have immediately and could afford because of credit that they started building on the day they were married. And credit, everyone knew, was ultimately good for everyone, and the philosophy behind our greatness, America’s greatness. It was important then not to get too weird over money; and it had to be said, and said often, credit was a good thing, and the country wouldn’t run without it. So any job after school was good for me because it taught me how to work. And my dad said, “You can’t be choosy.” And to make the point, he said when he started working he worked for seventy-five cents a day, and Mr. Spam was going to pay me a dollar an hour. I couldn’t be choosy even though I was only making a dollar an hour rolling papers after school. And the reason why our country was so great was because we weren’t afraid of work. We found meaning in work, work was an expression of who we were. It was why we got up in the morning. We were nothing without it and losing a job was like dying. And having a job at the same place for thirty years usually meant benefits, insurance and a pension.
“Out of all the people I knew,” I confessed, “I disliked myself most, which wasn’t surprising because I knew myself best. I easily got down on myself, endlessly pick at things about myself. I would browbeat myself; it was a kind of masochism. Besides what I did to myself, kids made fun of me and bullied me. They intimidated me with superior athletic ability; like a klutz, I couldn’t dance, catch a ball, or get a date. So during my junior and senior years in high school I picked myself up and dusted myself off, and said to hell with them. That’s when I became editor of the school newspaper. By then I had the experience of rolling papers by me. I started from the bottom and worked my way up to becoming a newspaperman. I had smell ink my veins, and though it me sick I loved it. After I became editor of the newspaper my confidence grew to match the star quarterback’s, or rather, the mascot’s, a guy running around in a rooster outfit.
Susan found a job teaching English lit at the American School, just as it became known as the International School of Manila, a more accurate name since the American expatriate population was shrinking. A job wasn’t hard to find because of parity and because the American expatriate population was shrinking. It was a good time for an American woman to be looking for a job, but a bad time for taking a job at the American School. Susan’s timing was bad because almost immediately there was a teacher’s strike, a strike for higher rages, which was a good thing. The teachers argued, “How can we live on a salary of 450 pesos a month?” 450 pesos a month wasn’t a lot of money. 560 pesos a month wasn’t much better. And just how nasty did it get? 560 pesos a month certainly wouldn’t have broken the bank.
While the administration said, “Women we hire don’t have to rely on their salary because their husbands make good money.” But what if their husbands were like me and didn’t get a regular paycheck? What if they were widowed? Single? Had a bunch of kids? For after all this was a Catholic country. But the American school hired mostly women … mostly married women … mostly wives of expatriates even after it became the International School. They made it a practice to hire married women … mostly expatriates … with husbands who were either in the military or the diplomatic corps, and whose husbands made good money. But we didn’t fit the profile.
It looked as if it were going to be a bitter struggle. Teachers formed a union. Susan wasn’t sure if that was a mistake or not. The teachers formed a union and voted to go on strike. Susan didn’t know if a strike was such a good idea. She hadn’t been there long enough to know, and besides we needed money, and Susan thought students would suffer. The administration struck back, initiated a lockout and wouldn’t budge. Eventually the teachers finally caved. They settled for 600 pesos a month. They loved teaching or else they wouldn’t have done it.
Some days I went with Susan to Makati. We would take a bus to Ayala Boulevard and get off in front of the old, grand Rizal Theater. She would walk from there to the school at Bel-Air Village. I rode noisy buses to Makati to get in touch with what I left at home. I had to have my fix more or less once or twice a week and often spent the afternoon watching a movie or a polo match. I hadn’t been fan of polo before we came to the Philippines. That was when I got my Big 20 Hamburgers and stocked up on Tootsie Rolls.
More than once I went to the American Cemetery (out of respect for the fallen) and observed American tourists with cameras, taking pictures of each other among rows of crosses and tried to guess where they came from. I kept hoping to run into someone I knew. Maybe someone from Texas, even north Texas, so that we could swap stories about Big Tex. I thought I could spot Texans by their swagger.
By then I considered myself an expatriate and would never carry a camera or admit that I was from Texas. Now I don’t have anything against Texas or Texans. How could I have anything against Texans since I’m from Texas? Texas born and bred, but I worked hard to get rid of my Texas accent, and wouldn’t be caught dead with a camera. I didn’t want to be considered a tourist, wouldn’t be caught dead with a camera, and had definite views about war, war in Vietnam, wars, wars in general, good ones and bad ones. My dad fought in a good one, a good war, but I wasn’t sure about Vietnam … at least not yet.
I wasn’t a deep thinker … at least not yet. I wasn’t affected by war, or so I thought. Fuzzyheaded … I hadn’t given it much thought. At one point I was definitely for the war, and then I changed, changed my mind about it. Does that make me fuzzyheaded? Nick and I became friends. What does that make me? To the left? Left of where I’d been? I definitely felt I didn’t fit in Texas any more. Some people would call me a fuzzyheaded liberal. I can accept it. Especially after I met Nick and an education I got from him … considerably more radical and left leaning than any schooled liberal thanks to the Philippines. And yet I went to Makaki at least once week to eat a hamburger, watch a movie or a polo match and to get away from the Philippines … as far away as possible … at least for a little while.
Susan would let me have a few pesos. That seemed generous since she made only 600 pesos a month and after rent and food took so much. I regretted that she didn’t get to go to the movies with me during the week and had to wait until the weekend when we went to the movies downtown, which were cheaper and where we could hear Tagalog with English subtitles.
Some days I liked to just walk around Makaki and take in the Wall Street of the Philippines. There I could operate elevators by myself and instantly recognized businesses like Bank of America, IBM, and Hotel Inter-Continental. I liked to walk through the lobby of Hotel Inter-Continental and go into boutique shops … not to buy anything but to look around. When I wanted to cash a traveler’s check I went into Chase Manhattan Bank, where I knew I always had a friend. “Howdy,” a teller looked very smart. Goodness, she was from Texas! I could tell she was from Texas from her accent. With her mouth full of teeth, perfectly straight and white, she could’ve been a paid spokesperson for the bank and Texas.
I remember handing her a cashier’s check sent to us by my dad back in Texas. It was a small check, as good as any but was issued by a different bank. Now remember that the slogan for Chase Manhattan was “You always have a friend at Chase Manhattan.” Well, she wasn’t very friendly, not very friendly at first. And she wasn’t going to cash my check. She wasn’t going to cash my check at first. With her mouth full of teeth, and perfectly straight and white, she wasn’t very friendly. ”Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, handing it back to me, “But we can’t cash this. You’ll have to take it down the street.” I started to put it back into the billfold I kept in my front pocket. It was unsafe to carry it in my back pocket. It contained my ID, more than my ID and was fat and bulky. A friend, huh! She was basically ignoring me, as she waited for me to leave, and put my billfold in my front pocket, which was what I was about to do when I decided to give it another shot. Now we needed money because of the strike, so I saddled up to her and reminded her … “what happened to ‘You Always Have a Friend at Chase Manhattan.’” And by George, it worked. And from then on she was my friend, my Texas friend.
During this time I hadn’t forgotten my mission in life. And I knew that I had to be at the right place at the right time, but I had no intentions of becoming part of the story. Instead I wanted to remain on the sideline and like a good reporter be objective. And only as a bystander could I be objective yet I was looking for an angle … something, looking for something, I didn’t know what. Like all reporters, I was looking for a scoop … something. I didn’t know where to start, so I started by hanging out at the university with my ear to ground. I always thought I had a nose for news … with ink in my veins and a nose for news I wanted to get an inside scoop without becoming part of the story. So I was drawn to the University of the Philippines where students were demonstrating almost every day.
I could’ve focused instead on the International School, where I had an in. Susan certainly came home with an ear full. First with teacher’s complaints, a strike and then defiant students, it seemed as if dissent and unrest was catching in Manila … in other universities and schools in Manila … just as dissent and unrest was catching in the United States and around the world. But were students at the International School just as revolutionary as students at universities? I didn’t know, but the International School didn’t erupt like the University of the Philippines did. And I couldn’t have hung around a high school like I did the university. .
I kept running into Nick. It wouldn’t have happened had we not been looking for each other. At first it just sort of happened; then we made it happen.
I pumped Nick for details about his life, about why in the world he became a communist, a Maoist … why he would want to become a Maoist when everyone knew Mao was an evil man and after what he did to his country. Of course, Nick didn’t think Mao was evil or that he messed up China. While he accepted as a fact that Mao had taken drastic steps, Nick said drastic steps were necessary during drastic times. Drastic didn’t seem like the right word to me to describe what he meant, but I let it slide. He said, “It shouldn’t matter that I am a Maoist. What matters more is my nationalism.” I understood why he would be a nationalist, but I still didn’t understand why he openly admitted he was a Maoist … a Maoist during the Cultural Revolutions and when China was its reddest. I couldn’t have gotten into China then. Let me just say the reporter in me was curious. But I wasn’t about to make him the story because he became my source, and I protected sources.
Nick told me that he had always been for a Philippines free of foreign interference. “And it’s always been a struggle. More than Mao it has been what has motivated me. I grew up in Central Luzon among HUKs. My father was one of the first HUKs. I simply followed his lead, so it was logical for me to go to China, and it’s just as logical for me to be here now. I’m where I’m suppose to be.”
I asked him if he ever thought of going somewhere else.
“Take what’s happening here now … no. No, I wouldn’t want to be anyplace else. Take what’s happening here now … it’s a good sign that in the future our country will be in good hands … our future leaders go to school here. Take what’s happening here now and pare it down to its essence, ideology is no longer necessary. Take what’s happening here … the thing to remember is that we’re all nationalists. So I never thought of going anywhere else. They welcome all stripes here. It is called academic freedom. So I can be a communist. It isn’t news. I can be a communist. I am a communist. I can be anything I like. After China, I came home all fired up and can say now it isn’t news. And it shouldn’t be surprising given that my father was a HUK. I have respect for HUKs. I have respect for academic freedom. I have respect for the president of the university for giving us academic freedom and standing up to Marcos.”
Then you can imagine my surprise when I found out that Nick had an American girlfriend. Elaine was very passionate, he said, and he wanted to tell me about her before I saw them together. It made sense to me that he wanted to tell me about her and made more sense than a Maoist having an American girlfriend did. Having an American girlfriend caused him problems, but he said she was worth it. It didn’t surprise me that Nick had girlfriend, but that she was an American … that was something else. He said they were real close. He, however, wouldn’t be seen on campus with her.. “When I first met Elaine,” he said, sipping jasmine tea, “I didn’t know how to handle my lust for her, but she helped me with it. She still excites me, imagine it.” (I could.) “Her father runs the American Navel Base on Cavite …” (Imagine a Maoist dating the daughter of the commander of an American Navel Base!) “… and they live in Forbes Park as in Makati.” Imagine. “When I found this out, I became conflicted and thoroughly pissed. I had to overlook certain things. She saw that I was having a problem with it, and being Elaine she said, ‘Nick, it could be just as embarrassing for me.’ And it has been, believe me.”
After our conversation, Nick arranged for me to meet Elaine. I told them then that I’d like for them to meet my wife. If they couldn’t handle it, it was okay. “I’m glad you two met. Maybe I shouldn’t care. It’s what makes life interesting, don’t you think?”
Now it was time for the four of us to take in a movie. The movie was my idea, and we went to the old Rizal Theater in Makati. Susan met us there after school. Nick was overly polite, Elaine was equally so, and Susan got along with them both. Susan was generally agreeable, and we all agreed that we were hungry for hamburgers. And Nick suggested eating at the Tropical Hut. We saw BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID in English. Elaine and Susan loved Newman and Redford while Nick and I loved action. When we went in, we stocked up on Choc-nuts and R.C. Colas and headed for the balcony. Nick led the way from the beginning, from when we met Susan on a street corner, and said, “We prefer the balcony so that we can neck. It’s a better view … what do you think? If we sat on the front row we’d have to crane our necks.” Nick looked pleased with himself, and though we could’ve been in America, almost anywhere in America, it seemed to suit him, Nick in his loose-fitting polo shirt. After ushering us up a grand stairway to the balcony, Nick led us down to the front row, where we could slouch and prop our feet up on the railing. He seemed extremely relaxed. We whispered and were extremely courteous, as we found our seats. Before the show started, we all stood and sung the Philippine National Anthem in Tagalog. Susan and I had to follow words as they ran across the bottom of the screen, and in that way we soon learned The Philippine National Anthem..
At the Tropical Hut, Elaine had her first chance to really talk. “I live near here…it’s the principle reason we do…because of convenience … conveniences,” Elaine said at one point. “I listen to my mother when she talks about conveniences. I personally don’t care, because I think it’s sad… sad and a shame to live in a foreign country with all these American conveniences and never get out and really see the country … the Philippines. You can live here without ever feeling like you’ve left the United States. I may be exaggerating, but not much. Susan, since you teach at the International School, you know what I mean. I take in quite a bit more than my mother does, or else I wouldn’t have met Nick. I keep hoping I can get Nick and my parents together. Get him to come to my house. And to go out to dinner together … it would be nice sometime. My parents never go out, but when they do, they never leave Makati. There’s not much I can do about it though. There are security concerns, I suppose. But by the time dad flies in from Cavite every evening, and drives home from the Embassy…as anyone would be…he’s pretty pooped, and so far he hasn’t convinced mom to live in Cavite. And, of course, I’m thankful, but it’s pretty clear to me why my mother doesn’t want to live in Cavite. Comparing the two places, Cavite and Makati, it’s easy to understand, especially for someone who has been a Navy widow for most her life, all of this is not as superficial as it may seem. So I can’t blame her. Just to let you know, I wasn’t around when dad convinced mom to come with him to the Philippines.”
After we finished our hamburgers, Susan and I weren’t sure where Elaine and Nick went. We didn’t follow them; that was for sure. I assumed they went to Nick’s place.
Yes, by then, Susan and I had our own apartment, and it wasn’t anywhere near Makati, or as upscale as houses in Forbes Park were. We didn’t have a swimming pool. We didn’t have a backyard. It was small, a small apartment, but in Manila small was relative. But it was all we could afford on Susan’s teacher’s salary. None of the teachers who relied on their salary lived in Makati, and most expatriates like us couldn’t afford it either. Instead they lived on Taft or in Ermita or someplace else where they could live relatively cheaply. They’d eventually move when they made more money and send their children to the International School when they could also afford it.
I thought that we had best live within our means and that the best way was to live and eat like Filipinos did. Except … there were always exceptions to everything … except for an occasional hamburger … except for an occasional American movie and hamburger … except for a weekly hamburger and a trip to the supermarket, and the only supermarket in the country was located in Makati. So it was hard for us to avoid Makati, more so for Susan than me since her school was located there.
I didn’t mind putting up with a few inconveniences. Inconveniences were expected. If we weren’t willing to put up with a few inconveniences we would’ve stayed home. Inconveniences such as having no water pressure. We had no water pressure in our apartment, so we invested in a pump. All over Manila there was no water pressure, and it was a major problem. It was easy for us to be critical when it came down to something as personal as not having water pressure. It was easy to point fingers, especially when not having water pressure led to major fires that left thousands homeless.
Nick and I never talked about the lack of water pressure. We talked about many things but not about the lack of water pressure. We talked about fires, but not the lack of water pressure. About displaced people, loss of property, and oss of life, but not lack of water pressure. We talked about many things.
One of his favorite topics was imperialism. I hadn’t thought much about imperialism until he started talking about it. I don’t remember studying imperialism. Of course, I knew what it was, or I thought I knew what it was until Nick started talking about it. Imperialism … I didn’t have to look it up in a dictionary. Yet I was to learn that the American idea of imperialism was different from the Philippine one.
I learned what Mark Twain thought about the Philippines … from him … from Nick. I really didn’t care what Mark Twain thought about the Philippines, but Nick seemed to think that I should care. About McKinley and Taft … we lived on Taft Avenue. And Nick said that many attitudes remained the same as when President McKinley searched for the Philippines on a map and said, “they need America’s help in order to be free.” But Filipinos said back then, “We told you, we don’t want your help. But did you listen? The offer of help, whether direct or implied, which came with you when you came over here, wasn’t given without a cost to us.”
Then Nick went on to explain, “This means that if you do something for me, then I’m obligated to you and it makes me feel little; and I’ve committed myself to you and deserve to be called your little brown brother.”
“Little brown brother?”
“Yes, little brown brother. And I’m bound and feel obligated.”
“Bound and feel obligated”
“Yes, just as you’re blond, white, and tall, I have black hair, am brown, and short. It shouldn’t make a difference, but it does.”
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but it made me feel uneasy and unsure of our relationship..
We also talked about Elaine and the relationship he had with her. He said he sometimes thought it was wrong and that he should go back home and take a forest bride. In an attempt to explain, he said, “Sex, love, and revolution. A forest bride is the revolutionary solution to the sex problem. You see … I know that Elaine’s and my relationship will end. It won’t work out in the end. And I should tell her now. But maybe she knows it. I know it’s inconsistent. It’s what makes us humans. Our inconsistencies make us human. But I wouldn’t hurt her for anything in the world. And that’s part of a problem. I wouldn’t hurt her. Then too why should I give up a good thing? She has no sympathy for me and doesn’t attempt to help me out of my dilemma, which excites me.”
Was it possible to be a Filipino revolutionary and love a white American woman?
Nick pointed out that the relationship between a male guerrilla and his forest bride was never meant to last forever. And it was acceptable for married men to take forest brides, as long as legal wives and forest brides were aware of the arrangement, and if they all knew it was temporary. “If you want to know the rationale behind it, you’ve got to look at what it does to men to be away from their wives for a very long time. Taking a forest bride is a sensible way of solving the problem. Elaine is very mature, and between us we’ll be able to work it out. I know that some of my revolutionary friends frown on our relationship, and that’s hard to accept. They take a hard line and call it betrayal. She and I try to downplay the emotional part … to soften the blow when it comes perhaps. I know we love each other. That’s all that counts. It’s a struggle for me. Sometimes I think too much about loving someone. To be a revolutionary, you almost have to forget about having a life. That’s why I’m not a very good one … not very good revolutionary.”
We talked too long, and he said he was late for a class. We’d have to continue some other time, so we said goodbye, as he gave me a copy of LITTLE BROWN BROTHER. LITTLE BROWN BROTHER … I knew nothing about the book. I thank him and felt as if I sat through a lecture. Was it what he intended? Imperialism: imperial, royal, regal, monarchical. I had to return to a dictionary. Imperialism or manifest destiny … imperialism, manifest destiny or white supremacy. I didn’t like the implications. Nick bared his soul. I wondered why, and why we were suspicious of each other.
Not long afterwards I ran into Sonja Hernandez. She, Roberto Concepcion, and Alfred Bruno made up the core of a fledgling television industry; and they were somehow connected with Nick. Ms. Hernandez was by reputation a dynamo and had few enemies. Sonja was one of those people who could do two or three things at the same time, which gave an impression that she also could be in two places at once, and this impression came from her ability to live and work in two worlds … television and politics…both of which she tackled running. Sonja never stopped running. She easily outran most everyone else because she didn’t stop running and didn’t run on Filipino time. She set her watch ahead to be on time, and for that reason she stayed ahead.
Everyone knew or suspected that she was getting ready to challenge Marcos. That was when people could challenge him (if it were ever possible). She was an independent person, independent and not affiliated with any party. Sonja wouldn’t have gotten where she was if she hadn’t been independent. I read about her before I met her; and I was surprised how easily I got into her studio (which was in Makat), and how quickly she accepted me. She let me in and captivated me. It wasn’t long before I became a regular. She was clearly in charge, very much in charge and in control of everything…a position she earned in spite of her gender, which was quite an accomplishment.
I wrangled an interview through Nick and asked her about her work. She said, ”I grew up in the television business, since my father was a pioneer here. He would’ve been proud of me … how far I’ve come … what I’ve been able to achieve. But I’m here because of my edginess … and because I have balls.” With this she started laughing. “I know … I know … you’d never expect a woman to say what I just said, would you? A Filipina, no less! That’s why I’m here. Why I’m respected. Feared. And I haven’t been shot at recently. They wouldn’t dare. Yes, I find time for politics. No, I won’t run for president, though I think it’s time we had a woman president. The one thing I’m not is I’m not for sale. Realize that there can’t be a direct link between a television producer and a specific candidate. Still I’m involved. I’m told I’m too involved. Perhaps I’ll find a way to bring the two together … my work as a producer and politics.”
She ran into Nick at the university like I did. Give one to the university for attracting the best minds. She met Nick at the University of the Philippines and liked him, but unlike him, she wasn’t left-leaning. Her business sense steered her in the opposite direction, but still they were friends … just like Nick and Elaine were lovers.
Sonja showed me around the studio. She still had time before the start of a run-through. As she made time for me, she took care of small details, as we walked around a set. She didn’t seem rushed as the two of us entered the control room, where there were people who seemed very, very rushed. They were faced with the realities of live television. She told me that she never got tired of pressure. ”It’s in my blood. See, as a little girl, my father used to bring me here.” To her, though, she had a ways to go.
And what about her politics? She explained, “I’ve always believed in capitalism. I still believe in capitalism … and democracy … capitalism and democracy go together in spite of … in spite of flaws in the system. Maybe we need to reinvent the system. Your capitalistic and democratic system is different from our system … though you gave it to us. They being different proves that they can be reinvented.”
In response, I said, “You do have balls lady.”
She laughed and said, “Here we’re passionate about our politics.”
“Perhaps too much. Besides friendship, Nick and I have something else we share. We oppose Marcos.”
I then asked if she knew Marcos personally.
“Yes. He’s handsome,” she replied with a smile. ”Rather wiry and very, very intelligent, though you’d think it was his wife who had the brains…shrewd, ruthless, intense and with an unpredictable mean streak. You need to understand that I never said any of this. As long as you’re in the Philippines I can make or break you. That much I have common with Marcos.”
Her directness impressed me. Yes, she had balls … while it unnerved me. Had balls and broke the stereotypical image I had of Philippine women. I only hoped she didn’t have horns. I could see her standing up to Marcos. But there wasn’t any harshness about her though, so I wondered if she was ruthless enough to stand up to Marcos. Tough, tough-minded, but was she tough enough? I would get to know her well, but I wasn’t sure why she allowed it. In a country where smooth interpersonal relationships were so important, I quickly learned she broke the mold.
I also met Vincente at the studio. Vincente became a legendary director of Philippine movies. His movies were distributed internationally and were presumed to have lasting value, though his career was cut short. Alfred became a close friend of Susan and mine, and he took care of us more than Nick and Sonja did. He was very kind, and we often wondered where his kindness came from. It was small things. It was just the way he was, though I knew he wasn’t a saint. It was small things that attracted him to us.
Vincente often appeared at our door with some small thing. Out of the blue he’d appear with something to cook … a bag of bean sprouts or a chicken. He liked to cook so much that to this day I associate him with a ladle and a pot. Once he brought us a puppy and another time two chicks. He always brought with him a smile. Yes, he was very generous, but he didn’t have much money in those days. He didn’t have much money, but he shared what he had. It didn’t make any different to him (or to us) that he didn’t have money.
He was short and stocky, a miniature of his favorite director Alfred Hitchcock. Notice that they shared the same first name, and their faces were similar too, except our friend was a Filipino with Malay features. We went to see every Hitchcock film that came to town, and I know that he saw them over and over again.
Vincente’s voice was high-pitched but not effeminate. No one would question his masculinity, and like most Filipinos he used Tagalog and English interchangeably. It seemed strange that he did so since we didn’t speak Tagalog well. He came from Cebu.
The day I met him I tagged along as he searched for a right face or the right face for a television show. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t hold auditions. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand what he was doing. An actor wouldn’t do. He drove, and I held onto my seat. He drove around town without regard for traffic … that he had great confidence was easy to see. He seemed to know what he was doing. He seemed to know what he was looking for … a right face. He said he was looking for the one person who fit the part, as if there weren’t many people who could play the part well, and as if someone off the street could play it better than a professional actor could. He seemed to think that he’d find the face, though I couldn’t get inside his brain.
We combed Quiapo … the church in the plaza and the market under the bridge. He found an old man under the bridge, out of all people at the church and in the market an old man with the right face. “Why that particular man?” I asked, when I got the chance. ”His face. There was a story there. Out of millions of faces millions of stories, but it came down to one thing. I liked his face.” And Vincente added with a smile, “He won’t cost me much.” He lectured me then about the need for authenticity, authenticity at any cost, cost in terms of time because time was money. This was Vincente’s way. It was what made him great. Other directors wouldn’t have taken time he did to look for a right face. I saw him do this time and time again, driving around, looking, thinking, observing … never overlooking anything while other directors would’ve said it wasn’t worth it. This became part of lore…legend…lore and legend surrounding Vincente, and for me it was his obsession with detail that made him great. In the long run, it paid off for Vincente, and among those he discovered was Susan … yes, Susan, my wife.
Susan played Lady Liberty for him. To him Lady Liberty had to be an American lady, and Vincente thought Susan was perfect for the part. Again it was her face. Her pure, white face. A brown face wouldn’t do.
When I arrived at the studio, I found Susan already in costume and looking not only very nervous but also very beautiful. She looked much younger than her age and wore no makeup on her long, slender face. No makeup, Vincente insisted. In spite of blemishes, no makeup. And a torch … there was nothing wrong with the torch. (It had a light bulb in it, and it burned brightly.) But the crown was tarnished and tilted. Everything looked perfect except for the crown, which was tarnished and sat crooked on Susan’s head. Vincente insisted on it. I saw his point. It wasn’t hard to miss. His point wasn’t hard to miss. Holding still was the hardest part for Susan. It would’ve been hard for anyone. After the hour was over, the cast gathered around Susan and gave her an ovation…and I thought no one could’ve played Lady Liberty better than Susan did. I felt proud of her because I didn’t think she would do it.
Dinner gave us all a chance to unwind. We all managed to sit around one huge table, the cast, Vincente, Susan, and me. It didn’t matter that I had just gone along for the ride. .
“Vincente,” Sonja said, “you’re a genius, but we couldn’t have had a better Lady Liberty. Don’t you agree? Everyone agrees. Susan stole the show. Nevertheless, I want to congratulate and thank all of you, and to my director Vincente, a special thanks. Once again we pulled it off. With all that could’ve gone wrong, which makes us wonder why the hell we’re in this business, and makes me wonder why I insist on doing it live … every week the same pressure. And we couldn’t do it without geniuses like Vincente. It would intimidate mere mortals. An ordinary person would wilt under pressure.”
I wanted to see Vincente’s face as Sonja heaped praise on him, but he was turned away from me, talking to someone else. By then people were busy eating and talking and weren’t listening to Sonja. I just happened to have been sitting next to her.
Vincente took us home, and as he walked up to our door with us, I asked him if he wanted to come in. Contrary to what I expected, he accepted the invitation. He relaxed at the restaurant … a combination of slowing down, San Miguel Beer, and good food helped … so he didn’t seem tired. We were fortunate to find an apartment with an upstairs bedroom, and Susan took advantage of it immediately. She was exhausted. Vincente and I managed to scare up a couple of beers (for consumption on the premises), and we decided to stay up half night talking about ourselves. He was going to make a movie about Moros and set it in the Sulus. He challenged me to go see the region for myself. “When you come back, I’ll pick your brain,” he said. It was like Vincente was giving me an assignment.
I don’t know how the topic came up. Maybe Vincente sensed my thirst for adventure. It should’ve been obvious to anyone who knew me. Hadn’t I come … hadn’t we come to the Philippines without knowing much about the country?
I had read about colorful sea gypsies in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and how they lived their entire lives on houseboats. I was easily persuaded (persuaded might not be the right word) to go to the Sulus, though it wasn’t the safest part of the world. Vincente suggested it. And I was going with or without Susan. Vincente suggested that I go on a scouting trip for him, a scouting trip to the Sulus for a movie he intended to make. With or without Susan … I’d preferred to go with Susan and make a holiday of it. .
I had read about the Sulus and Moros. I met some young Moros at the university and had contacts down there. Having contacts wouldn’t hurt. I read about Moros being the only group in the Philippines who never surrendered and about how good fighters they were. Vincente said that I needed to be careful. I didn’t need to be reminded, but he assured me that there hadn’t been any killings or kidnappings recently. I was thankful that Susan had gone to bed. The Moro insurgent struggle dated back to the Spanish.
Late the following afternoon I waited for Nick to return from class. I considered Nick an expert on insurgencies. When I saw him coming, he looked in a hurry, and if he were on a mission, I didn’t think anyone could stop him. After he sat down, I asked him about Moros. He said he had friends who were Moros and alluded to a massacre on Corregidor. It was the first I’d heard of a massacre on Corregidor, and of course was curious, but I didn’t want to seem overly curious … or ignorant so I let him control the conversation. I could always return to the massacre. I wanted to see Corregidor and would go, take Susan, and go first chance we got. Nick talked about the Oblates … French Canadian Catholic brothers … who ran schools in Mindanao and Sulu. He said, “The struggle down there has been going on forever. It’s just heating up again. I’d like to go with you.” He also wanted to take me to where he grew up in Central Luzon. It sounded good to me. It would give me a chance to see both struggles first hand. It was a journalist’s dream.
As I rode a bus back to Guiapo, I felt like I’d been given a gift. How it fell into place amazed me. I couldn’t wait to tell Susan. With or without her, I was going.
I sat next to an open window. Fumes burned my eyes, making me more aware of congested Manila than ever. I was already looking forward to getting away. I already had my bag packed. I hadn’t told Susan that we were going, and I already had my bag packed. Manila depressed me. There was too much for me to grasp. I had gone back and forth on the same route for months, the same route from our apartment to the university and hadn’t grasp it all yet. Manila was just too big to grasp, and I now had to admit that I’d stopped paying attention to it. I remembered then my first impressions.
An American couple, recovering from jet leg in an upscale hotel on lower Roxas Boulevard after a long flight across the Pacific, slept for God knows how long. They regretted that they slept so long. There were feelings of uncertainty. Thinking of the enormity of the decision they made … the enormity of their decision to leave their country hadn’t hit them, much less sunk in. Honking they heard from their room (before they left it) … though strange … put them in touch with reality. (Honking was my very first impression of Manila.) They were waking up in a strange, foreign land.
When I reached Guiapo, I went into the church. I didn’t know why I went into the church. I hadn’t been in the church before. I didn’t know why any more than I knew why we left the States. I sat alone in a pew and felt alone. I sat alone in a pew and felt alone and missed my home. I sat alone in a pew and felt alone, missed home and tried to think it through. What was I running away from?
All through college, I didn’t pay attention to the war. I was in college so I didn’t have to pay attention. I didn’t have to worry because I was in college and right after college I got married. That was when I began to worry about the draft and when I came close to getting drafted. And it became most real to me when a close friend of mine died over there … died in Vietnam. I came close to being drafted and began to pay attention to the war then. After I lost a close friend over there. It was before the riots, so the campus was very tranquil. We knew about the war, but it didn’t bother us much because we were in college and not until a close friend died over there. After I got married, I still thought I was out of reach and didn’t worry until a friend died over there. It was before Kent State. I went about my business after I got married, but it worried me. I knew it was highly unlikely that they’d take a married man, but it still worried me. It didn’t make sense, but it worried me. And it worried Susan too.
David took my place in Vietnam, and, if I could I’d ask him why he did it. “Ten years ago,” I said in a debate with myself, “we were just a couple of snot-nose kids and dismissed troubles of the world with a flick of a wrist. There were only advisors in Vietnam then, and we were more interested in girls.” Some of us worried about graduating, I continued, but within a year most of us had wandered off. David was gung-ho about the war. I remembered that. I remembered thinking he had a problem. As for the war, I hated it. I hated it that peace talks were going nowhere.
A niece of a former president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dihn Diem, went to my college, and we often argued in a polite way. I often listened to her talk about her uncle. She talked about how her uncle fought communist. Logic over there was simple, if you were against Diem you were Communist; you either were or you weren’t. But it was more difficult than that in 1964 and 1965 when Monks and nuns were against Diem. When he cracked down, he arrested thousands. “Thousands,” I said, “instead of focusing on the real enemy, real communists, communists from the north.” It just made her angry, polite but angry.
Unlike David, who knew firsthand, I came to conclusions without really knowing what I was talking about, and I knew just enough to make someone like Diem’s niece angry. This made me appear interested … interested and educated … you’d expect an educated person to know about Vietnam … to know enough about Vietnam not to mix Diem up with someone else. Though I never cared enough to take a stand, I still felt sorry for Dien’s niece when the former president was assassinated. I considered myself sensitive and gave her my sympathy when Dien was assassinated. I remembered how dejected she seemed, and how she mourned and wore black. I felt then that we needed to stop communist and support anyone who fought them. It was hard though because they weren’t always good people, and sometimes it didn’t make us many friends. This was true of Diem, but I didn’t dare say that to his niece. Besides it didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t well informed enough … or cared enough … for it to matter.
But everyone was entitled to his or her opinion. Of course Diem’s niece was biased. If we weren’t biased, we wouldn’t be human. It was true for everyone, and it made it all right for me to disagree with David’s decision to go to Vietnam. I respected him for it, but I disagreed with him. For him it was a personal decision, but it also meant that someone else wouldn’t have to go, and why couldn’t that someone be me? Except, since he was killed, I felt lousy about it. Still I liked to think he took my place.
I thought of David every time I saw GIs wandering along Mabini Street. I liked to wander along Mabini Street and people watch, and window shop when I wasn’t looking at people. I thought of David every time I saw GIs on Mabini Street, with or without the companionship of pretty Filipinas. I thought of David and felt lucky. I was alive and felt lucky and never envied GIs I saw wandering along Mabini Street. I never envied GIs I saw on R&R … ones I saw with or without pretty Filipinas. I considered myself to be extremely lucky. And it was also quite clear to me that it was no longer possible to divide South East Asia into two neat camps or spheres of interest … communist or free (American or Soviet) … which I believed you could until I met Nick. Thanks to Nick. Yes, thanks to Nick. Thanks to Nick my opposition to the war intensified. Thanks to Nick it represented everything I hated … everything I hated about war. But it didn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate what David did for me.
I found Nick in his room; and the only thing that had changed since I last saw him was that he had become more involved in demonstrations. And as he served me tea, we began planning our trips.
“Easter break is around the corner,” Nick said, “but we could wait until summer when I’ll have more time.”
“I’d rather not wait,” I said. “We could take two trips, but I have more time than you do. What do you think?”
“Since I’ve never been to the Sulus,” he began, slowly, as if he were thinking out loud, “I think I’d like to go there first.”
“So then let’s plan to go to the Sulus during Easter break,” I said.
“The idea of traveling through a Muslim area during Easter intrigues me,” Nick said. ”With Christians as administrators, educators, police, soldiers, etc., you know that there’s likely to be trouble.”
“Good? Oh, I see. You’re right. It will be a perfect time for Moro bandits to be on the move. In Jolo, the cathedral will be ready, the police and the military will be on alert, but it won’t assure a peaceful week.”
“Perfect. Yes, perfect.”
“But let’s not overly alarm Susan.”
“No, we shouldn’t alarm Susan. “
Nick offered me more tea and poured himself more. As we sipped from our cups, he asked, “Would you like hear about my life as a HUK? I think I can trust you.”
I said I would, especially since we were planning to also go to Central Luzon. “Well, this is off the record. The HUKs,” he went on, “maintained camps away from towns and villages and it meant fighters were separated from their families for long periods of time. You can imagine difficulties this posed. And since my father loved my mother, he became convinced that the only solution was to take all of us … mother, my older brothers, and me … with him, which meant bringing us into the movement. When I feel passionate about the communist revolution, it comes from this source; or when I’m so revolted by American imperialism, how can I forget what was drilled into my head. In camps, I … like my young comrades (other children) … we shared responsibilities with our elders, my parents and other fighters. Our family was inseparable from each other and from the movement. Private interests became public. Personal issues became everybody’s business, and we had to follow orders and were subjected to discipline of the movement. Nothing was more important than the movement. As children, we were called upon to join the struggle for the Philippines and were taught to shoot and tough it out. I’m referring to mental toughness as well as physical; much like pounding your head into a wall, depravation was sometimes used. Mother tried to balance home life and revolutionary life as best she could,” Nick continued. “She resisted communal life, communal pressures, and remained faithful to my father. She never compromised, even when the movement demanded it. When they pushed for equality between men and women, it didn’t change how my mother related to my father, her role remained the same, she still bore and suckled his babies, and so forth. But it meant that she suffered abuse. There were a whole series of conflicts, problems, some I was aware of and some I didn’t know about. My father finally reached the conclusion that his family meant more to him than the revolution, but it wasn’t easy for him…well, I’m not sure what transpired, what led to our leaving. This wasn’t supposed to happen, which didn’t mean I respected my father any less…but I was at an impressionable age. And as you would expect, those early years in a HUK camp stayed with me, and I’ve gone back. I’ve often wondered what would’ve happened to me if we’d stayed in camp.”
Because I didn’t see a problem with this story being told, I said, “As a journalist, I think that you’ve just given me a gem.”
“No, no, no, that wouldn’t be good,” Nick said. ”I don’t need the attention that such an article would bring me. The government has already started cracking down on the HUKs again. It has all dimensions of civil war; rebirth of the HUKs and upsurge of violence means Marcos will ratchet up his response even more. He’ll find some excuse, some provocation, and I’d like to survive it. You can write a general story without mentioning me: about the rebirth of the HUKs, the upsurge of violence, and Marcos’ reaction. You’ll get information you need from our trips. You’ll get your scoop. There are many people out there who have more dramatic stories than mine.”
Nick then told me a few things about what he expected to find when we went to his home during the summer. His parents now ran a small coffee shop, and this was what they returned to when they left the camp. His parents grew up in the same town and inherited the shop. In the shop they carried a few necessities such as Carnation canned milk, white rice, Blenda Margarine, and soda pop. The family…four all together…lived on two floors above the shop. His father still considered himself a HUK. He maintained ties with the HUKs and provided intelligence whenever he could, but he did it on the sly because he didn’t want to jeopardize his business or his family. He loved to socialize. He also loved his standing in the community, where he was respected as a leader. Townspeople came to him for advice and he never hesitated to give it. He was mayor once; he would’ve still been in politics had he not been blackmailed and linked to a raid or two. “Once dad was charged with murder,” Nick said, “but he was “forgiven” through the general amnesty program of President Quirino.”
Nick unplugged his hotplate and stood up. “Now I have to go. I have a class,” he said. “Why don’t you go to the library and read about Quirino and his relationship with the Hukbalahap. I don’t want to be your only source. Actually my father is an honest man, and very even-tempered. I’m afraid he didn’t pass on that trait to me. My dad wouldn’t trade the coffee shop for anything and has said that he never regretted leaving the camp. Well, I don’t know if it’s true. His stories don’t support his assertions, the way he tells them and how his face lights up.” Nick indicated that I could stay in his room, and he closed the door when he left.
Our next decision was how to get to Mindanao. I was thinking that I’d like taking a train south to Legazpi. “It would give me a chance to see part of the country I hadn’t seen,” I said, rather naively, given that we only had a short period of time. “Would you mind flying?” Nick asked. We found that the airport in Zamboanga was shutdown due to the poor condition of the runway; that left taking a ferry. I sat down with Susan and asked if she wanted to go. She said she didn’t want to be left alone, and I thought that settled it, but her demeanor told a different story. She was fidgety and had a fake smile on her face. She then sat curled up on the couch for sometime; she looked like she’d just gotten off the Tilt-A-Whirl, and had a sort of lost look that I had only seen once before. That was after she thought that she had just become “a widow woman.”
She was about to get up, but I made her stay seated. And now instead of giving her breathing space, I leaned over her and asked her what was wrong. She looked rather annoyed. Then she stood up and stormed into the kitchen.
I sat there for a few moments. “Okay!” I exclaimed, “You don’t want me to go.”
Stepping back into the room, she explained that she had read in the paper about a ferry sinking and she took it for a bad omen. If one thought about the time that it would take to ride a train to Legazpi, the closing of the airport in Zamboanga, and now the sinking of a ferry, one would be hard put to disagree. It was clear then that Nick and I lacked a viable plan, though we were still determined to go. It was a tough decision. Between the ferry and the train … Susan was definitely afraid of the ferry. We left it up to Susan. We left it up to Susan because we hoped it would ease her mind a bit. “But then,” Nick surmised, “if she doesn’t go, she doesn’t have a say. It’s absurd, really absurd. She has to come,” he said. And I was glad that she didn’t hear him say it.
She said she would have to think about it.
We soon found ourselves on a train bound for Legazbi. Our only consolation was the price of the ticket…less than 100 pesos (about three dollars). Like our mothers Susan looked after us. She had our maid pack lunches … and like our fathers, Nick mapped out a route … by train, buses, and short ferry hops. Though the train ride was very slow, the bus rides weren’t, and I must add that I don’t know how many roosters we almost ran over.
The train almost hit a squatter squatting on the tracks. He literally stepped out of his shack onto the tracks and squatted. His shack was built so close to the tracks that there was barely room enough for the train to pass. And what was he doing squatting on the tracks? He was squatting there and made the train stop. Indeed many squatters built illegal shacks right next to tracks. It was as depressing as Vincente’s mother’s neighborhood, which from our perspective was pretty bad.
Nick explained, “Most of this we can blame on Marcos.” I wasn’t surprised that he said this because he blamed everything on Marcos. “Many of my classmates, the poorest, grew up in areas like this, and because of it they’re easy to recruit. We can do better. No one deserves to live this way. That’s why I’m so … so against Marcos. And incidentally it’s the reason why we’re winning the battle.”
As for Susan, I loved to watch her reaction. And I could tell then that she was only half listening to Nick. That she was off somewhere else was evident to me. She only half listened to things that she didn’t agree with. I could tell that she didn’t like what she heard because she was only half listening. I loved her though, and I loved to watch her reaction. I loved her though she disagreed and dismissed almost everything Nick and I said or thought. I knew that she disagreed when she opened ATLAS SHRUGGED, a novel she recently bought. I never enjoyed Ayn Rand very much. I thought what she wrote was a piece of crap. Objectivism! Maybe that was why Susan picked up the novel … because I considered it crap … though I admired it for its length. I admired anyone who completed something that long.
I thought reality was seen in a shanty; to embrace objectivism was a sham; and to overlook how most people of the world lived was a travesty. Though I grew up in a clean, neat house, in a neighborhood where people mowed their lawns, in a rich country, order was never a priority of mine. This made me temperamentally closer to Nick than to Susan, though I thought her positives outweighed her negatives by a long shot.
With Susan and I facing Nick, we rode in a first class coach. Unlike second and third class, we had two seats to ourselves, so we could stretch out. I let Susan sit next to the window across from Nick and I put my feet up on the seat opposite of me. We almost had a coach to ourselves.
I felt I was traveling back in time, but perhaps Susan and Nick weren’t interested in going back there with me. Nick was more interested in scenery, and Susan pulled out her Ayn Rand. Yet Susan, in spite of Ayn Rand, wasn’t interested in reading. I didn’t know what she was interested in. There was too much to see and far too much rocking to read. She only occasionally looked at the scenery.
I agreed that there was a time for discussion and a time for silence, but I could tell from Nick that this trip was intensely personal to him. Maybe too intense, I wondered. There was a lot I wondered about. By then I’d read about the massacre on Corregidor.
“Susan, have you read LITTLE BROWN BROTHER?” Nick asked. “Mark Train said that he was ‘opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.’ He was referring to the Philippines.”
“So” was all she said. To me, she didn’t seem very intelligent. I thought she could’ve shown a little interest and sounded intelligent.
What followed was a long, long silence, a twiddling of thumbs. Hopefully Nick hadn’t been offended. I wasn’t sure he hadn’t been offended. I didn’t know what he was thinking or if he’d realized that he was rebuffed. There was a lot to think about, a lot. And we were supposedly on a vacation.
Did Nick realize the implications of Susan’s rebuff? Did he realize that the whole world didn’t revolve around him, around his world, or the Philippines? That Susan was like most of the world and like most Americans and didn’t know the history of the Philippines, or cared one way or another. Or cared about insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, or what happened just outside her window. She was simply on vacation and would spend much of the time reading and working crossword puzzles.
I wanted to see Leyte and the beach where MacAuthur landed. Until recently there was more emphasis placed on benevolence of America in the Philippines than on the cost of the Philippine/American war. For obvious reasons many older Filipinos loved MacAuthur and Americans, but many of their children accepted American imperialism as gospel. Many of them were as enthusiastic about it as Nick was and sometimes even more so. Nick’s anti-Americanism was contagious, and few people came in contact with him without being affected, but Susan wasn’t one of them. She liked him, but she simply wasn’t impressed. I was more sympathetic, but I wouldn’t have taken to the streets. As a journalist, I had to keep my objectivity. As a student of history, I studied America’s annexation of the Philippines.
I had watched with increased interest demonstrations on campus. I watched for Nick. I watched while I stood on a sidewalk as students with placards passed by me. And I looked for Nick in the crowd. I watched as demonstrations grew more frequent and more savage and more anti-American and was surprised that they weren’t directed at me. I didn’t see Nick among them. I never felt threatened. Maybe I should’ve felt threatened, but I didn’t. Maybe it was because I had my reporter’s hat on.
Maybe I didn’t see Nick out there because he knew he had to be careful. Because of his political views he had to be more careful than most other students. Because of his anti-Americanism, his Maoism, and his opposition to Marcos he had to be careful. Maybe it was because Elaine was the daughter of the commander of the American Navel Base on Cavite. Although Nick knew that he had to be careful, he wasn’t afraid to express his views to me. “I can’t be silenced,” Nick said. But Susan had done just that: silenced him.
She picked up her book and started reading it. ”No, I haven’t read LITTLE BROWN BROTHER,” she said. “But I’ve seen a copy lying around our apartment.” The train was wobblier the further away we got from Manila. The train used a narrow, meter gage track, which made the trip even more hazardous than it would otherwise be; and there was always the possibility of sabotage. Jerking, jogging motion made me sleepy. To wake up, I decided to walk to the platform at the end of the train.
I stood at the end of the train for a long while, thinking about thick tropical growth and problems it caused American soldiers. They were fighting in a foreign land, without resources and weren’t used to the tropics. It was an extremely bloody campaign, bloody and lopsided. Logically, except for the idea of carrying a big stick, to take the Philippines didn’t make much sense to me, and so the notion of benevolence seemed even more farfetched. To push back on what Nick said, there was little doubt that we’d made mistakes and yet, when it came to our imperialism, I’d say we’d been very generous. And yes, benevolent. Take for example, how we rebuilt past enemies: Germany and Japan. Look what was going on in South Korea. But, perhaps, Nick, as a Filipino, had the right to be disenchanted … even angry. And he could be convincing, but of course not to Susan
“You ought to go back there for a while,” I said, when I got back. “It’s good to see where we’ve come from.”
“Well, I’ve just realized something,” Nick said. “We won’t be able to travel on Easter Sunday; so I suggest that we plan ahead and not get stranded.”
Our itinerary was very flexible. We had no destination except the Sulus, but wanted to get a feel for all the Sulus. Planning the trip took place informally one afternoon in Nick’s room and hadn’t included Susan. Elaine was left out completely. “Elaine may not want to go,” Nick said, “Elaine would consider it too risky.”
“What risk?” Susan asked. ”Is it a major risk, or a minor one?”
“There are always risks … just as there are always risks at home. I should think that we have minimized risks by bringing Nick along, and if we use common sense and listen to our guts, we should be okay,” I said. “Sure there have been kidnappings, but who would want to kidnap us. The real danger isn’t kidnapping. It’s water. To be a target, you need to be valuable to kidnappers. Kidnappers like businessmen, mainly executives. They’re after ransom. And who would pay anything to rescue us? I don’t know anyone who would. So what do we have to worry about? We don’t fit a profile and don’t need to worry. And not all insurgents are ruthless. I’ve learned that from Nick. We have Nick. He’s our insurance policy.”
We slept on the train and arrived in Legazbi without enough sleep. We then spent the morning sitting on a bus. There was no schedule for the bus, and the driver wouldn’t leave the station until the bus was full. So we didn’t get out of Legazbi until the middle of the afternoon, by which time the bus was not only full but there were people standing in the aisle and sitting on the roof.
“Where do we go from here,” Susan asked.
“Onward!” I said.
“Let’s hope we don’t have to spend night on the bus,” Nick said. “But we should be able to go straight through and catch a ferry at Bulan for Masbate. Masbate … there we should be able to find a decent hotel.”
“A Hilton?” Susan asked with a smile.
“No darling, but a nice enough one.”
“Or we could sleep on the beach. Masbate has several nice beaches. Masbate, a good stop before a long ferry ride to Cebu.” After her objections Susan couldn’t believe that Nick was taking them on a long ferry ride. “Or to save time, we might want to hop from one ferry to another and sleep on the ferry to Cebu, which is an overnighter. I know there’s an Intercontinental Hotel in Cebu.”
Susan’s objection at that point seemed a little silly to me. I asked Nick what he preferred.
“I suggest we wait and see how we feel. But remember we’re not on a sightseeing tour, and we don’t have a lot of time.”
“We don’t? We’re not! I thought we were on a vacation!” Susan exclaimed.
“Well … “
“Well what?”
“Well, relax. I think we’re flexible enough to meet each other’s needs,” I said this in an attempt to pacify Susan. “And we’ll have plenty of time to relax once we get to the Sulus.” We hadn’t told her that in the Sulus we planned to spend a week on a ship.
“And I’m sure Cebu has an Intercontinental Hotel, if not a Hilton.”
“I wasn’t expecting us to stay in a Hilton. I know we can’t afford it.”
While Masbate sounded cool to me … so did sleeping on a beach, though I knew we hadn’t come prepared for it, but Nick had a different agenda. “”Let’s go,” he said. “We’re in time,” and without hesitating, he steered us from our ferry, over two boats, to a fourth vessel. So without stopping in Masbate, we took the overnight ferry to Cebu.
Susan slept next to me on a mat deep within the belly of the ferry. What Nick didn’t tell us was that we bypassed Leyte and I missed a chance to see where McAuthur landed. “Like Magellan!” he called (the next morning), “We’ve just landed in Cebu.” Surprisingly Susan and I slept soundly and hadn’t been bothered by the clanging of the ship.
Nick stood over us and was smiling smugly, knowing he’d pulled something off. Taking Susan’s bag, he led the way up and then down and off the ferry … our second ferry so far. “You’ll like Cebu,” he said, “It has Magellan’s bones. Cebu, it was our first city.” Susan didn’t care. The first thing she wanted was a warm bath. And she said as much. Sitting down on a bus stop bench, she surveyed a bus route map, and said, “You’ve got to be kidding: an organized city. I’m going to like this place.” And unlike Manila, the buses seemed to run on schedule.
We spotted a Marriott. Pulling me that way, Susan said, “Give me a long, warm bath, and you’ll see a human being again.”
After we settled in and slept a few hours, I knocked on Nick’s door. We agreed to meet in the bar down stairs, where he ordered two cokes.
“I’m not very good at accommodating, I’m afraid,” he said. “But my reasons for going on this trip couldn’t be more different than Susan’s. I think it was a mistake to bring her.”
“It’s this hotel, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And ….”
“I wouldn’t have stop Cebu.”
“I know. I know. But I couldn’t have left her behind. It’s Easter.”
“Yes, it’s Easter. We better be somewhere on Easter Sunday. I can’t get over it. I’m acting like an American, staying at the Marriott, drinking a coke. It’s embarrassing. We should be cognizant of where our money is going. It’s uncomfortable and embarrassing. I didn’t want to say anything to Susan.”
“Susan will lighten it. I know Susan.”
“I hope you do. I hope they’ll be no hard feelings.”
I reassured him then, “I want to learn as much as possible about Moros, just like you do. She’ll do fine. She needed a bath and hadn’t one and a bed in a couple of days. This hotel does illustrate one aspect of imperialism…the product and the attractiveness of it. And as you know, I’m a product of this. And I’m not saying I’m handsome. All of these hotels look the same, have the same amenities and they’re in every city in America and are being built around the world. The first time I went to Makati, I was shocked by the supermarket, but why shouldn’t there be supermarkets in the Philippines?”
I now regretted that we brought Susan along. I’d have to talk to her…the idea of staying in the Marriott bugged me too. There were few things worse, and Susan and I talked about it, so she knew how I felt about staying in American hotels in a foreign country. Since our aim for living and traveling abroad was to experience another country to the fullest, staying in American hotels seemed contradictory to it. The reason I hadn’t stood up to Susan was that she seemed so frustrated and unhappy. We’d have to work it out, but Nick and I decided that now wasn’t the time. Just as she enjoyed her warm bath, we enjoyed our ice-cold cokes.
There was an American couple in the bar…laughing and enjoying themselves, from the south, I believed I could tell. I got up to order two more cokes and was accosted by them. “We were wondering where you were from?” the gentleman asked and obviously wanted to talk to another American. ”I heard your accent,” he said. “We’re all recognized by our accents, aren’t we? You can tell we’re from Georgia, I’m sure. Mind if we join you? We’re feeling homesick.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “If my friend doesn’t mind, and I’m sure he doesn’t.” I wasn’t at all sure, but that was what I said. They brought their beers to our table, as I returned with two cokes.
The couple was friendly enough, while Nick smiled and hid his nervousness. “I can tell that you’re from Texas,” he said. “I hope you’ll forgive us for eavesdropping, and can you believe Cebu…how modern it is.”
Nick asked him what he expected, and he said that he didn’t know but said he was very glad that there was a Marriott. ”I’m torn every time I visit a foreign country,” he remarked. ”You have to watch yourself, you know.” His wife seemed to agree.
Nick advised them to stay away from water. “That way you can avoid dysentery.”
After consuming their beers, the couple excused themselves, but the impression they left reinforced what Nick and I was thinking. But I thought Nick’s comment about water was totally unnecessary and said as much.
“Well,” Nick said, “I though I’d tell them what they expected to hear. It may be the truth, but on the other hand it may be bullshit. I imagine water is safe here and that they’ll only stay in places like the Marriott. That’s right, bullshit and nonsense…and that’s what they’ll go home with, bullshit, and that’s all they’ll talk about … squat holes, instead of toilets. And they won’t go out and see for themselves…and they’ll be considered experts at home…among traveled and learned experts. Among other things, they look down their noses at us…their little brown brothers. They came here with their dollars and spent them on the same amenities they’d find at home…a Marriott here, basically, is like a Marriott there…you’ll find the same towels. And flush toilets”
Nick and I both liked to spout off. He easily went from there to a discussion of Georg Lukac (who?) and HISTORY AND CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS, in other words an expansion of Marx’s theories. Here we were on vacation, and he was delivering a lecture on Marx. At least I knew who Marx was. If George Lukac, how about Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci, Herber Marcuse, and even the philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sarte? Nick quickly lost me. Korsch rejected the orthodox. Sarte was impressed by Che Guevara. Now Sarte and Che Guevara were names I knew. Nick got very excited. “Che Guevara was not only an intellectual…(time out)…like Mao, Che showed us how a small group of irregulars could defeat an organize army of a powerful government. Che, like Mao, a cultural symbol and icon, brilliant tactician, who among all of his achievements, changed…”
I couldn’t argue with him. I didn’t have a strong enough grasp of history. I didn’t really know, but sometimes Nick seemed to linked facts and ideas recklessly. It impressed me though; however I was very impressionable.
After we had our fill of coke, we returned to our rooms and I found Susan, my love, sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her and with nothing else to do, I took out my notebook and started jotting down impressions. The more time I spent with Nick the more I realize how little I knew about him.
Nick was born somewhere in Central Luzon. His parents were HUKs, but it was unclear whether or not he was born in a jungle camp. His father fought for national liberation during WWII and remained a stanched nationalist. He, however, was also a loyal family man. And chose love over revolution and “retired” to run a small store. Nick was one of six children. Both of his parents were political, and their store became a center of politic activity.
Nick grew up in jungle camps and became aware of revolutionary turmoil that then gripped central Luzon. After his parents moved back into town, he was sent to a public school, where he excelled. His mother read to him and his siblings every day, while his father filled their heads with countless stories about Philippine warriors. Nick’s favorite was about Lady Sinn, a 6th century woman warrior. After six years in a local school, he was sent to a private Catholic school in Tarlac. After four years there he was ready to enter the University of the Philippines, where he became a leader. His political experience paid off then.
The next morning we hopped over to Tagbilaran City by fast ferry and with almost the speed of a jet made it there in no time. To my surprise, Susan seemed to enjoy speed. I particularly liked sitting on an open-deck with spray, wind, and views of the coastline.
“A modern conveyance, jet boats,” Nick wrote Elaine, “super speeds cut the trip from Cebu to Tagbilaran City to an hour and a half, but now we’re waiting for a bus, and I don’t know how long we’ll have to wait. Like all things, it comes down to choices: first whether to spend time on Bohol, an island filled with wonders, or push on to our objective: Mindanoa and the Sulus. There’s too much to see and do for one trip. Whatever else you might say about Ted and Susan they are not boring. I think you can see why it sometimes takes the patience of Job to travel with someone. Susan is fond of nature; Ted is more interested in history, and I’m interested in politics. If I were totally honest, my idea of a perfect day is getting something done, and, when you’re talking about travel, getting somewhere but in relation to absorbing something, I can do it very quickly. So my point is this: that there isn’t anything that says that I should like a particular Boholano dish such as torta Loayan just because Susan does, or vice versa. By the way, we both love putomaya, or hot chocolate. Then it must be true that most of us love hot chocolate; on the contrary there must be many people who hate it. As a group we must agree on priorities, or go our separate ways.”
“It might help if we talked to each other…and listened to ourselves. Unfortunately the risks are high (even if we claim to be friends). There are legitimate differences; Ted and I are men; Susan is a woman, who definitely has a mind of her own…especially concerning ferries, as oppose to flying, and then you ought to see how she took to a fast ferry ride. Still, traveling together has been mostly good. Companionship for one thing has helped when there are long waits. Like now! Considering how far we’ve come without killing each other, I’d say we’ve done quite well. If we can get through the next day or so (for after all we’re almost to Mindanao), the trip will turn out okay, for we’re heading for Marawi, on the shore of Lake Lanao and we’ll learn there what we can about Moros. You can count on me bringing you back beautiful pieces of material, beautiful pieces of material that will adorn the most beautiful woman I know.”
Here we were in Marawi. Most of the Philippines lay north of us, and all signs now were that we could travel safely from place to place. Nick was happy, and at the moment Susan wasn’t complaining. I was going hiking in beautiful rolling hills and mountains; and there was every indication that Susan would spend most of her time in town soaking up Maranao culture. (That seemed crazy because she loves nature.) Nick went directly to Mindanao State University, where he intended to talk with students. He said something about getting inside Muslim minds, and I didn’t want to interfere with the process. But he said it was like a blind man groping in the dark. He was a stranger, wasn’t a Muslim, hadn’t read the Book of Allah (swt) or the Sunnah of His Messenger (saw); and the value of those things became clearer the deeper he probed. Common ground he found came from recent insight (not from a book), that while the HUK revolution seemed distant from Maranaos and their struggles, the two groups shared the same enemies. It helped that he was a student … a student of the University of the Philippines … and a radical … and they had common enemies. Yet they were suspicious of Nick, which disappointed him. For Nick the highlight was when he went with some of them to a mosque where he changed into a sarong and bathed by a tank of cool water. Pouring water over his head, he tried to forget his baptism and tried to overcome feeling like a stranger.
After spending three days in Marawi, we agreed that it was time to leave. We considered ourselves lucky because we achieved our goals, Nick more so, but Susan got a bonus. She succeeded where Nick and I failed, and this without asking questions or trying to make an impression. She was invited into a Maranao home, where they exchanged personal items. And she was given an intricate silk malong.
They made her feel at home. “For me, their hospitality and unpretentiousness was astonishing,” she said. Susan’s fascination with their lifestyle was evident, for it was written all over her face; like them she was curious about people who were foreign to her. She was taken in by a large close-knit family and said they made her feel at home. Children dragged her to a house, and a woman invited her in. “With me, she wasn’t shy or veiled,” Susan said. “She asked me for my T-shirt and, in exchange, gave me this pretty malong. I was a bit taken aback. Hum! Little taken aback.”
Within a few minutes, Susan found herself comfortably sitting inside a rather large house, with one central room. A devote Muslim, a mother, and businesswoman, her host took charge of her. Other women appeared for more than one family lived there, a sister-in-law, a grandmother, all gathered around her and welcomed her. They all sat on mats, with smiles that revealed how they felt. “We’re happy you’re here,” one of them said. Susan felt moved.
A daughter, who had just finished her studies at Mindanao State University, magna cum laude in Accountancy, and ranked well in licensure exams, served Susan tea. She said, “Nangandoy ko (I aspired for it), and Susan could see that her mother was very proud of her. Their movements were graceful, fluid, and were accentuated by the way they walked. They wore silk, which didn’t seem to fit Susan’s idea of everyday clothing.
They asked her if she’d like more tea. It would’ve been rude for her to refuse, so she said, “Yes, sure. I don’t know your customs, and if I make a mistake, ignorance is my excuse. It seems silly that I didn’t know what to wear when I see how women are covered up here. I understand why people stare at me. I don’t mind people asking me if I’m married, and I am; or how many children I have. I have none. I don’t really mind stares or questions. I’m just as curious as you are. I really don’t mind. I like it here. You’ve been nice to me.”
It was cold then in Marawi. Susan complained when she got back to the resort at the university. It was green and wet, and she said she should’ve brought more to wear than T-shirts. Susan then explained how in Marawi women in T-shirts were frowned upon. Some one should’ve told her. More than frown up it was against the law, and someone should’ve warned her. With elevation, she felt not just cool but cold. It was damn cold at night, and someone should’ve warned her about it too. The lake, the second largest in the Philippines, dominated the town and provided pleasant views, but it was cold. She froze.
Susan looked for postcards. There were none. I don’t know why she expected to find post cards. Marawi hadn’t been a chartered town long. Emergence of the town as a commercial, educational, and political center only occurred in the twentieth century. Many of the Togogan houses, with antique royal high roofs, however, were much older than the town. Susan told us about being invited into one and showed off her malong, though she would’ve preferred a sweatshirt or a sweater. So she retreated to our bed and her novel and curled up and read the rest of the afternoon.
Having hiked all morning and climbed Mt. Mupo, I decided to catch what sun that was left in a lounge chair on our patio, which overlooked a 9-hole golf course. A man on a mission, Nick continued his quest. Comparatively, Susan and I were living a life of luxury and felt that we deserved it. Nick said, “Giving up so soon? I’ll see you for dinner.”
I asked Nick to bring Susan back a postcard of Lake Lanao, if he found one.
“Will do,” he said.
He started to leave; then changed his mind, or ran into someone, and they, within earshot of me, started a conversation. “You know, I’m trying to make sense of Marawi, but so far I haven’t gotten very far,” Nick said. “And without help, I don’t think I will.” Nick then asked him if he were a tourist.
“No, no, I’m a Muslim, from around here,” he said. “We are Maranaos and proud of it. And my family has enjoyed blessings of this beautiful place for many generations. We enjoy a sense of history and have always resisted foreign intervention.” Neither he nor his students were afraid of the government, he said; rather they were brazen. So he was a professor.
Yes, Nick had found a cohort. But where had this guy come from? But it didn’t feel right to Nick. It didn’t feel right to be approached at a resort like he was, but there was no way of checking the guy out and knowing for sure who he was. By the time he walked around town and bathed in a mosque Nick had no doubt attracted attention. The three of them had, but Nick more so but the other two were obviously tourist, American tourist. American tourists meant dollars, and dollars meant prosperity, but a Filipino … a Filipino Christian who bathed in a mosque attracted attention. Now Nick was viewed as an intruder, and Nick wanted to avoid arguments and avoid misunderstandings, but still relished this contact. It was what he was looking for, but he wasn’t on his own turf and knew he had to be careful. This gentleman was sent to check him out, and Nick sensed it too. They were eventually able to talk, yet Nick was never able to ease the man’s suspicion.
“Four centuries of jihad, first against Spain, then America, now Marcos, and never defeated. Even when we were no match for machine-guns and artillery, our struggle for freedom has continued.” Until he heard this, Nick wasn’t sure he wanted to talk with this gentleman, but now he listened intently. But as a Christian he knew that he had to watch himself. “The Bangsamoro masses have always resisted while our leaders have often fallen for tricks and collaborated with our enemies. Now our homes, our mosques, and our madaris are being burned. Armed Christians, instead of living side by side with us, are gorging themselves on our land and, without mercy, are killing our young, our old, and our women. ‘Rats,’ is what we call them, and they attack us, while the government supports them and not us.”
Nick was familiar with this story but not the whole story. He shared with the gentleman his own experiences in Central Luzon and his parents’ struggle against the government, which to Nick’s surprise caused the gentleman to frown. Nick didn’t know the connection between his father’s revolt and the mass migration of Christians, or “rats,” from Central Luzon to Mindanao. This caused a mass displacement of Muslims. Nick would join Muslims, if he could, he said, and the gentleman still shook his head. Nick would have to do what he could in Manila, where he’d support his Muslim brothers and sisters by speaking out.
The gentleman acknowledged Nick’s statements with a grin, took his hand, and then shook his head again. “We’ve heard it before,” he said. Whereupon Nick asked, “What would it take?”
“I don’t know. “I’ve often asked myself why is it so hard,” the gentleman said. “Christians are in the minority here. Um! In any case, no one is stopping them from worshiping.”
My parents, who were Seventh Day Adventists, often sent money to missionaries in the Philippines. Some of that money might’ve gone to Marawi and the Lakeside clinic there. I didn’t make a connection until the gentleman mentioned Seventh Day Adventist. He talked about their good work and the clinic, and how they saved the life of one of his children. He praised Dr. Santos several times and finally saying it was an example of how Christians and Muslim can live together in harmony. I missed the clinic when I walked around the town and asked Susan if she saw it. I also wrote home and told my parents about the good work they were doing in the Islamic City of Marawi.
Later I asked Nick if he found a post card.
“I didn’t get that far,” he said.
The next morning we left Marawi by bus.
Chapter Twenty
Nick seemed disappointed that he didn’t receive a warm reception in cool Marawi. “You know,” he said, sitting across from Susan and me on the bus, “I thought I’d have more in common with them, because of our common enemy. Except the Moros have been resisting longer than we have …they’re always going to be defiant.”
Nick made friends with a Muslim sitting next to him and asked him what he thought. Looking out the window, he said, “We used to have all of this.” All this? He was trying to say that we were still in Moro-land, but we clearly were not.
We had gone less than twenty kilometers and could see that people along the way no longer wore colorful Maranao garb. When I pointed it out, Nick said, “We must be almost to Iligan.” It was a quick-change … a cultural change. It was like we crossed a border, but we hadn’t. There were no signs, no line. It defied explanation, when in fact it was quite simple. Within a few kilometers we came down from the highlands. Within a few kilometers, the beauty of a lake, mountains, and trees was replaced by industry: an integrated steel mill, alloy plants, a hydroelectric plant, a tinplate mill, and fertilizer and cement factories. Almost to town we saw rather large metal buildings lining the highway, and that was how the bucolic setting of Marawi gave way to signs of progress, and it was only possible because of capital coming in for the outside. “To develop the region, they harnessed a waterfall, destroyed its beauty, and with power came factories, plants, and mills. Of course, it meant jobs,” Nick explained. “I like to think everyone won, but I know it wasn’t the case. Somebody got filthy rich.”
We changed buses in Iligan, and for once we didn’t have to wait. When it happened so smoothly, Susan said, “Good Lord, what’s the world coming to? A bus, and on schedule.”
We followed the coast the rest of the day. We ate snacks we bought from venders who came on the bus each time we stopped. They were mostly children and women and their trade was as much part of the scene as anything else. The conductor and driver tolerated it by allowing them on the bus. Nick negotiated for us, mostly in Tagalog, though they didn’t speak Tagalog but some other dialect. By now we were used to all this.
I bought mango and pineapple in a cup, and for some time I enjoyed the treat.
It seemed like Nick’s mood changed. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“I’m lucky. My parents own a sari-sari story, which placed me above these kids … which allowed me to go to school. Here I am … on a vacation.”
“So why aren’t you enjoying yourself.”
“You look depressed to me.”
“Marawi was what was depressing,”
“What was depressing about Marawi?”
“I’m lucky.”
“Why were you depressed in Marawi?” I asked.
He thought for a moment, while he took a bite of jackfruit and said, “I thought we had more in common. How would you feel if you were told you were part of a problem, a big problem? I see that we just as well could be Muslim as Catholic. We were all Muslims once and before that practiced something else. We were all subjugated and converted; before that we were subjugated and converted by Muslims. We have a common origin, yet we speak a different language. I kept looking for something, or expected something, and there was something, but I didn’t recognize it. It had something to do with my expectations. I said, ‘I want to fight with you.’ But they were leery … suspicious. And I understand why they would be.”
Susan and I had gotten into a rhythm, and her attention was now directed toward absorbing as much of the sights as she could, or absorbing as much as she could without knowing the people or the history. She was enjoying smells and tastes of the tropics. She was now the first to explore a new fruit. She also never rejected children and always had one or two of them hanging onto her, but dirt bothered her. In the Sulus, where they were less likely to have seen a white woman, she was frequently touched on an arm, her face or her hair.
I spent most of the time staring out the window, staring out the window and allowing the wind hit my face, and whenever the bus stopped, children and women came up to the window and stared at me. I could’ve reached out and touched them. Now and again, they reached out to me or held a hand out for money, but I never gave into the urge to give them something.
“My father was no fluke,” Nick said, “He could write well, and no one could phrase things better. And he had a grasp of ideas that shaped our country and read people as divergent as Joaquin and Rizal. “Guardia de Honor” was my father’s favorite story. I guarded the first book he gave me with my life. Reading has been a big part of my life.”
Susan wasn’t listening. She wasn’t listening because she was so absorbed in scenery.
“My mother gave me something more important. Through her work in rural health she set an example. For her it was all about Mother Teresa of Calcutta, or “to give until it hurts.” The concluding chapters of Nick’s education were more secular. “Of course,” Nick said, “my trip to China greatly influenced me. But what’s the good of any of it?” he sighed. “Without justice.”
We raced through Manukan, Sindangan, and Liloy, with the bus honking at chickens and chickens fluttering and flying to get away (roosters were more prized, groomed, and hand-fed). Susan said, “God help them. God protected chickens. But no! They’re just chickens. God, what I’m saying. I thought we’d slow down for chickens and towns. What if they were people. Chickens!” She said she couldn’t look.
And she never expected to find God again after the ride between Iligan and Zamboanga. We flew all the way as if we were trying to outrun bandits. “Isn’t it lucky I can close my eyes,” she said, as she gritted her teeth. “Otherwise, I’d jump ship.” At the edge of Zamboanga, the bus finally slowed down. I looked for cops, which might’ve been the reason the bus slowed down and strained to see what I could see. I didn’t stop looking out the window until we entered a bus station. “Good Lord, what a ride!” Susan declared, glaring at me.
Chapter Twenty-one
Before we did anything else, and even ate, we found a hotel. I asked, as we walked along, “Nick, why are you godless?”
“Gutless! Godless! Who said I was godless?”
“But you claim to be a communist.”
“Do I?”
Now I was confused. He said he was a Maoist. Nick told me he was a Maoist, and had Mother Teresa for a mother, and his girlfriend was an American and he applauded Mao, not the West, but the East. And if he wasn’t a communist, what was he? It didn’t make sense to me. But I learned that it wasn’t always clear, so I decided not to pursue it.
Then while walking across plaza and heading for the hotel, he tried to explain, “I’m not a communist.”
“But you went to China, Red China.”
“And does it make me a communist?
“And you said you were a Maoist.”
“I may have learned a lot from Mao and went to China on a vacation, but … ”
“Red China … “
“Red China. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t love my country. I love my country more than anything else. I’m more of a nationalist than anything.”
“But doesn’t one have to be consistent,” I asked.
“Consistent? I think I have been … consistent. I think I’ve been consistently inconsistent, except when … “
“Except?”
“Except when it comes to Marcos. And you don’t have to be religious to do good things. Too many people have died in the name of religion. Here in Mindanoa too many people have died in the name of religion. Here in Mindanoa we’re seeing good Christians kill Muslims and you can understand why Muslims are fighting back. I wasn’t a radical until an American GI raped a Filipina in Angeles City, city of angels and prostitutes, and he wasn’t tried in a Filipino court. He was tried in an American court. And you call it justice. Now wait a minute. It’s not true. I grew up a radical. I was never Americanized, and when I got a chance, I went to China, Red China, on a vacation. Thanks to my parents I was never Americanized and got a chance to go to China. I jumped at the chance. Who wouldn’t want to go?” Nick concluded, “If given a chance, wouldn’t you go?”
We stopped at the curb across the street from a hotel. We had a choice of more than one hotel. The plaza was full of venders, color, flowers, smells, and people. “Here we have a choice,” Nick said. “We can take a little time to enjoy what’s here, or we can rush into a hotel and see if they have room for us? One of my favorite things is right here: halo-halo, with ice, fruit, beans, and cream. I’m thirsty and hot. Then why do you suppose we’re in such a hurry?”
“I don’t know. But ask Susan. I bet she’s focused on one thing … the WC. So you can have your halo-halo.” I said, taking Susan’s arm. “I know my wife. She’s been awfully quiet.”
Nick smiled. “I can see why you’d want to pacify her. If Elaine were along … “
“You’d be different. I know … “
We walked across the street and approached a hotel door
“I’ve learned to compromise, or she’ll outfoxed me. I can have halo-halo anytime. I hope you develop a taste for halo-halo, because it’s Filipino, and it’d be a shame if you don’t take tastes from the Philippines with you when you leave.”
“Why wouldn’t we love halo-halo?”
I knew that Nick liked many American things … an American woman and hamburgers in particular. I understood. But if he claimed to be Maoist, he was certainly a communist. And I didn’t believe he went to China on a vacation. But he loved his country. I was sure of it. When we reached the front door of the hotel Nick held it open for Susan and me. It was kind, or was he simply playing a role?
“Now I’m going to let you take care of my bag: you two check in, go pee or whatever, while I become your halo-halo man.” Smiling, he added, “I think we all could use a lift.”
He ran back across the street. By the time he got back with three halo-halos we were already up in our room; and we had a room for him next to ours. The three of us enjoyed our halo-halo.
Chapter Twenty-two
Mao, a kind of Jesus in China, I didn’t know much about him. Maoism, except for generalities, I didn’t know much about it. I knew it was a breed of communism, and we were fighting communism. It was what Vietnam was about … stopping communism. And there was the Domino Theory. And there was an Iron Curtain and people behind the Iron Curtain weren’t free, and we weren’t free to go to China, Red China. And there was always a question of who lost China. There was no redemption, no remission, communism was a sin, and there was no redemption or remission in China, and the world was divided into two camps and China, Red China was in the wrong camp. It was black and white. Nick was on the wrong side, but since I was Nick’s friend what did it make me?
The next day we got an early start. First we drank fresh pomegranate juice and ate breakfast: Susan and I ordered scrambled eggs; I added onions and tomatoes and tried fried fish. Nick relished lumpia, loganessa, fried eggs and fried fish and from time to time said something about food. He seemed nervous. After we finished our meal, Susan and I ordered coffee, and our friend excused himself and went back to his room.
“What’s wrong with Nick?” Susan asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes I feel like we’re intruding. I know that it is true sometimes with …”
“With us?.”
I smiled. “Now be honest. We all sometimes wish we weren’t tied to someone else’s schedule.”
“Are you saying you wish I’d stayed home?” she asked.
“No, no,” I said. “I like being with you.” I smiled again, a fake smile, and she recognized it. There was a form of communication that Susan and I had that didn’t involve words (most married people have it), but with us there was no malice, since we really cared for each other. And enjoyed each other’s company. This meant that I was glad she hadn’t stayed home … in spite of our needing a break from each other, and so possibly my faked smile came from habit. Susan later told me that the reason she traipsed halfway around the world with me…if it hadn’t been for the draft…was because it had been my dream, which strangely disappointed me. It was never her dream.
“My dear Ted,” she said, “I have gone along with your adventurousness to my astonishment because I didn’t want to lose you and thus far it’s been worth it. We’ve made friends here. We’ve made a life. Friends have made a difference. But let’s take it a day at a time. You’re undoubtedly more adventurous than I am, and undoubtedly at some point I’ll say I’ve had enough. But for now let’s take it a day at a time. Some day I’m sure I’ll want to set down roots.”
And then I said, “People are not trees.” I shouldn’t have said people are not trees.
When Nick returned I told him that that didn’t take him long, and he said “daily cleansing” was a beautiful thing, and then asked if we were ready to go. Susan had to excuse herself first.
After a day in Zamboanga, we planned to go for a day over to Basilan, unless there was a kidnapping, a bombing, or some other form of violence over there. Nick said his father always stressed the importance of paying attention and to use common sense, but he’d also been a risk taker. Nick wasn’t afraid of getting kidnapped, getting killed, and wasn’t particularly afraid of anything, while we could see he was nervous. Then what did he know that we didn’t know?
I think Nick also thought he could talk himself out of any dangerous situation. He had the right credentials … though his experience in Marawi didn’t reassure him. As far as he was concerned, he never made right connections and was surprised that he wasn’t welcomed as a brother. Now Nick was determined to sell himself as a brother and not emphasize his religion and simply learn as much as he could. Didn’t they have a common enemy or enemies?
And timing seemed right. With demonstrations on campus, timing seemed right. With demonstrations on campus and unrest in the south, timing seemed right, but he said, “I have to remember that they have been struggling longer than we have. We’ll have to see. We’ll have to see.”
Nick had Moro friends back in Manila, and they treated each other with respect, and he could fall back on it. But Mao (as a model) hadn’t impressed Moros like he had Nick and hadn’t caused them to change tactics that they used for more than three centuries. “I have no allusions,” Nick said, ‘but I think we’ll be okay.” Nick hadn’t come all this way to be deterred. So when Susan came back, we were all set.
That evening, the three of us had dinner on a hotel patio over looking the Basilian Strait, and it had tables right next to the water. When we arrived there was a group of gypsy boys diving for coins. They were standing on the water’s edge and on the edge of a small praus. A waiter steered us to a table near the water but not too far away from a bar. There was a Caucasian (later identified as David, an American), with an attractive Filipina, sitting at a table next to ours. “Why don’t you join us!” the stranger said, standing up and indicating to the waiter to make room for us. “It isn’t often that I get to dine with fellow Americans. I know Americans when I see them. I also notice that you’re not typical tourists. My companion and I here have just ordered. Let me recommend prawns. They’re fresh, huge, and, as a fisherman, I know prawns.” He pulled out a chair for Susan. Nick and I brought over a couple of chairs.
After introducing himself, David asked us what brought us to Zamboaga. He then explained that he ran a fishing operation off of Basilian and how it was getting more expensive and tougher for him. But for an American in Sulu he was apparently very successful. From the way he dressed you could tell he had money … something he never mentioned. He didn’t have to mention it. You could also tell his companion had expensive taste. Her clothes were expensive. You could tell she loved clothes. She hung onto his arm whenever they weren’t eating. Whenever they were relaxing, she clung to him. In Nick’s opinion, he was an interloper and she was his jungle bride. He told us that afterwards.
According to Nick, David’s time had passed. No matter how much he helped the economy or how many people he hired, David’s time had passed. David was a thief, a robber, and it didn’t matter if what David did was legal, he was robbing what rightfully belonged to the Philippine people … according to Nick. He was an interloper. Gypsies lived and depended on these waters. They depended on fish and fishing and should benefit from fishing. Instead they weren’t treated fairly by anyone.
Speaking of gypsies, boys diving for coins were hard to ignore but were one of the reasons tourists came to this restaurant. They had become an attraction and earned enough money from diving for coins to make it worth their while. So Susan for a few minutes tossed coins in the water and watch them dive and retrieve the money. The crystal clear water made it possible. If they had been anywhere else, begging or selling trinkets or gum, Susan would’ve ignored them. But here she rewarded them generously.
Then I told David that we were planning to go to Basilian.
David invited us to stay with him. When I saw Nick’s face, I realized that it might not be a good idea to accept David’s invitation. I saw Nick’s face and saw him squirm, while I thought David missed it. Why not? You may ask why not. I knew why. Nick traveled all the way from Manila to specifically spend time on Basilian and then to stay with an American … I could see why he wouldn’t want to stay with an American. He traveled all the way from Manila to spend time on Basilian with Moros and not an American. He couldn’t have been too happy. It could mean he could lose his chance with Moros, and what if Moros were plotting to throw Americans off the island and hadn’t gotten around to it yet? What if? Then I had one of my conciliatory moments and said that we already booked our passages on a ship that would take us to Sitankai and back, which, with our schedule, left us with only one day for Basilian.
This pleased Nick. Now he could look for his rebels.
David offered an invitation again, and added that he wasn’t home that much; his fishing required it. “Requires an army, imagine it?”
Nick was happy now. I would’ve enjoyed staying with David.
“My darling here,” Tom said, looking at his companion. “Cecelia will be disappointed. You know Filipinos. But aren’t we all beneficiaries? With a woman like Cecelia I ought to know. I couldn’t be luckier. She knows my every need and is surprisingly free. I thought I knew everything about women until I met her … here in Zamboanga, Miss Cecelia. She comes along, seduces me, and begins my education. Now she runs my house. But someday she’ll run my business. Legitimacy is always an issue. The idea is for me to continue to expand. Sabah is close by; Malaysia; and here I am now; and if things go south…well, I have a speed boat.”
David carried on about Cecelia, about his fairy-tale life and not a word came from her. “Even if you can’t spend the night, you three can certainly come to dinner … that would be after the ferry has left the island for the day so it’ll be a bonus. I can bring you back to Zamboanga in my speed boat.”
Nick refused to comment.
“How about prawns?” he asked. “They also have the best wines. I’ve ordered the best of the best.”
“This is all quite nice,” Nick finally said.
Our waiter brought us all wine. He took our menus and our orders. “I’m surprise they serve wine. In deference to Muslims, I thought they wouldn’t,” Nick said.
“One of the reasons I come here is because they cater to Western tourists. When I’m home I observe all of the dietary restrictions of my neighbors and stay away from pork. I observe all of their holidays and give my employees time off for their holidays. They’re also able to be with their families for Christmas and Easter. I don’t discriminate. That’s why I’m tolerated. Now let me hear about you.”
Nick bit his lip and said, “I’m all about change … in the way we view each other, in the way we think … and I’m always focused on tomorrow, and optimistic that the world will change for the better.”
David didn’t respond, and then Nick said to David, “I suppose you’re satisfied with the way things are.”
We enjoyed our prawn meal. Afterward David excused himself, walked a ways away from us, and lit a cigarette. David said it was a nasty habit that he enjoyed very much…enjoyed all his vices from smoking to drinking. “But I can modify my behavior,” he added with a smile. “I grew up here, so I’m not really a foriegner. I’m considered an Amereican, but I’m not really a foriegner. Happily I can afford a private life.” When we said goodnight to Cecelia and David, they were heading to a room in the hotel, but they weren’t in a hurry.
Chapter Twenty-three
In front of the hotel, pedicabs vied for our business. Instead of taking one we walked along the waterfront and in front of warehouses filled with copra. When we came to the main wharf, we decided to stroll to the end of it.
“This is where we’ll board a ship to Jolo and ports beyond, but it’s not here yet.” Nick said, and then pointed out a ferry to Basilan, which was docked for the night. “Actually there was something I wanted to say to our American friend,” he continued. “I regret that I didn’t tell him about Elaine; in any case, it’s not the same as his relationship with Cecilia, and when he talked about her being boss, I couldn’t see it happening to me.”
Nick looked forlorn and torn and slightly angry with himself, but whenever he mentioned Elaine it perked him up. He said until he met Elaine he couldn’t see himself dating an American and dating a daughter of an American Navy commander “amused” him. (It didn’t make sense to me.) Dating a daughter of an American Navy commander … had it hurt his standing as a radical? I wondered if it had. No, according to him, it increased it.
I asked Nick how he felt about dropping by David’s house for dinner.
“It disturbs me, but a speed boat ending sounds exciting,” he said. “I’m inconsistent. I’ve been inconsistent for a very long time. So why not! As long as I make contact with the rebels.”
After Mawari, he had no preconceived ideas about how he’d be received. He wasn’t sure … wasn’t sure how much they had in common. “To catch a ferry, we’ll have to get an early start,” he said, as we stood in front of a ticket stand. “Actually I think I can hold my own. I have credentials. We have the same enemy, enemies. I know we have our differences, but we have the same enemies.” From there, he launched into a history lesson. It started with the brutal Christianizing of Manila by Spaniards. With the defeat of Rajah Sulayman, Legazpi moved all Muslims outside of the European-styled walled city. With natives then out of gun range, Chinese became Spaniards’ major worry. Educate Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them adjacent to Manila, where there was considerable density of population… Demographically, since then, Christianity has been moving steadily southward. Spanish colonization has been painted as an attempt to spread Christianity while downplaying the angle that Christianization was only a tool. By Christianizing Filipinos, Spanish Catholics ran the government in Manila, the main city, and to continue Christianization …” Nick obviously knew Philippine history and often used his knowledge to drive home a point. Nick finally said, “So you see, we’re brothers.”
When we got back to our hotel across from the plaza, we said good night to Nick.
Nick’s credentials? As far as Nick’s credentials … both communist leader Jose Marie Sison and Moro revolutionary leader Nur Misuari were professors at universities in Manila. Nur taught political science at the University of the Philippines, and Nick took his course. He hadn’t met Sison, but he’d been to China, Red China, one of a few Filipinos who had been to Red China, and he didn’t know if Sison had been to China or not. Remarkably, members of different departments of a university rarely interacted with one another, and it was even less likely for faculty of different universities to do so, so I don’t know if Nur and Sison had contact. Later I know they went their separate ways, organized their movements, so Nick’s having taken Nur’s course was something, and he could drop Nur’s name, if he had to.
David’s armed compound was across the island from Isabela. A trip there was arduous by any standard, through a jungle that became a staging ground for rebels. This was what Nick wanted to penetrate in one day.
“Impossible!” Susan said. “I wish you’d left me in Zamboanga. I brought a good book with me.” She decided to come at the last moment; then regretted it once we were on a bus outside of Isabela, on a bus escorted by soldiers (inside and on top) with machine guns. She said, “I don’t like the looks of this.”
Nick and I reassured her. As long as we were with native people, we felt safe. Nick had credentials, knew Nur, and I felt that I could rely on him. He spoke to other people on the bus. They seemed friendly. We followed three or four of them when they got off at a very small settlement. Susan told me that she wouldn’t forgive me if something went wrong. By her own account, she felt better when she saw women and children in the settlement. Children gathered around her; they were nosy and loud; women took charge and directed her to one of their houses, where they offered her a chair and something to eat and drink. We were also invited, which, if Nick hadn’t been so preoccupied, I would’ve accepted.
At a mosque, having gone there immediately … knowing there would be men there … Nick began asking questions in Tagalog. He relied on his credentials and got directions to someone who could help us. Before leaving her, we told Susan we had a lead (which turned out to be true). She seemed content.
A boy led Nick and me down a jungle path, which was dark. Along the way, we ran into various junctions leading, I assumed, to other settlements. We finally took one to a jungle camp. Once there, armed men greeted us with suspicious and hostile looks. They wore baseball caps, camouflage fatigues and green shades and were smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. We were taken to their leader, essentially a kid.
When he greeted us, we could tell he hadn’t put aside his suspicion. Still he led us into a nipa hut, his quarters. To one side was a table, which served as a desk; around it were chairs, leaving enough room for a bed. Across the front of the table hung a battle flag with five stars, a dagger, a spear, and a white disc with two parallel stripes. One shelf, behind the table, held a few books. This surprised Nick. It shouldn’t have. From where he stood, he couldn’t make out the titles. Nick and I sat down after our host sat behind the desk.
“I assume you’re not crazy,” he said in English. “You wouldn’t have been brought here, if you hadn’t been cleared. I wouldn’t want to shoot you, and it’d cause us more problems than we want right now.”
Nick said he was grateful. He explained that we came from Manila, came as friends, as brothers, and had a common enemy, enemies, namely Marcos and the United States. Then their attention turned to me.
They discussed the situation in Tagalog, and Nick persuaded them to accept me. Without hesitating, he said, “Yes, we’re united by the Corregidor Massacre.” That was when I received a history lesson about the Corregidor Massacre of 1968.
Most people were appalled by the massacre, because of butchery, but the massacre meant more to Moros. It became a rallying cry, a rallying cry much in the same sense as “Remember the Alamo.” Murders were one thing, but culpability of the government made it worse. I told them the massacre at the Alamo galvanized Texans and that the comparison was apt.
The Moro took it from there, “’Our brothers were executed. It calls for revenge. Jabidah! Jabidah!”
Nick explained how he attended a weeklong vigil with Moro students. They held a vigil over an empty coffin marked ‘Jabidah.’ It was held in front of the presidential palace.
“We must set an example for the whole world. The presupposition is that Allah is great. Then with Allah’s help we’ll be revenged. We place it in the hands of Allah. With Allah’s help, we will prevail. Allah is great.”
“Texans won their war,” I remarked smugly.
“Moro recruits were betrayed. With this betrayal we were all betrayed,” the Moro continued. “Betrayal is a great sin. Among all sins it’s one of the greatest, but ramifications are greater. They must never be forgotten. Let Allah be our witness.”
Nick looked exhilarated while I felt excluded.
As I grew impatient, Nick smiled and took my hand. “Ted, here, is an American,” he said. “Yet we should consider him a brother. Perhaps you’d like to hear more about him.”
Supporting us with her teaching, some people saw Susan as head of our household. Because she often buried her desires people also thought that we shared the same dreams, which was untrue. Indeed, if it had been up to her, we wouldn’t have taken off to the Philippines. About this she has said:
“You ask why we go to places where people don’t particularly care for Americans. You have to ask my husband … ask him if he’s sympathetic to communist or Maoist. You have to understand the times and how many young people today are leaning left.
“What are we doing here? How did my husband get mixed up with someone like Nick? This idea that we’re communist or sympathetic doesn’t compute. My husband tells me he’s a journalist. We’ll see. Only God knows what trouble he’s into now. It’s hard to know what my husband is thinking. Let’s say he’s fishing for something.”
Chapter Twenty-four
We met Fr. Dion in Bongao on the island of Tawi Tawi. By then (1970) the late Joseph Dion, OMI, had more influence with Muslims in the area than any other Christian. He was also instrumental in creating the Christian-Muslim Peace Movement, an effort that failed after his death. A simple man with a big heart he earned respect through simple acts of courage and kindness. He was a teacher and a priest. He taught at the Norte Dame School of Tawi-Tawi in Bongao and served as perish priest on Siasi, a perish that extended way beyond the two islands.
Without minimizing his accomplishments as an Oblate, his greatest impact came from his interpersonal relationships. He showed respect for everyone regardless of his or her beliefs, and he was respected for his sense of fairness. Moreover, he withstood many pressures from inside and outside the church and carried on in spite of threats. In spite of threats, he never seemed concerned. Nothing stopped Fr. Dion, and he never seemed to be in a hurry and approached life with a great deal of serenity. It was nothing less than extraordinary. To understand the importance of Fr. Joseph Dion and the peace movement, you have to realize that after his assassination we wouldn’t have been able to travel throughout the Sulus like we did.
We met Fr. Dion after we heard about him, and we sat with him on his porch in Bongoa. His house was a western-style house, one of the few on the island. Fr. Dion, a rather lean-faced gentleman (in blue jeans, a black shirt, and a white reversed collar), who spoke English with a French-Philippine accent, invited us to dinner before another Oblate arrived, wearing the same garb and acting just as friendly. This was Fr. Stacy, and he greeted us when he came in. He gave Fr. Dion a small package, sat down across from us, and said, “The boat you were on brings our mail,” and indicated the package.
“It’s nice to be remembered,” Fr. Dion said. “It was my birthday a month ago, and I still have a sister in Quebec, who cares for me.”
Nick and I heard of Fr. Dion on Basilan, and now Nick asked him if he, as a priest, felt uncomfortable over the unrest there.
“When I was on Basilan several months ago, I learned that some of my old high school students were creating considerable noise in the jungle,” Fr. Dion said. ”Several of their fathers admitted to me that they were disappointed in their sons. Maybe they said that for my benefit … I don’t know, but the ones I knew best worked with me on the Peace Movement project. They’ve all been students of mine, and I don’t think they’re hostile towards me. In a way I can understand. There aren’t many saints in the Philippine government.”
I asked him if he ever felt afraid and unsafe.
“Well, I’m human. But I rely on local people and the shield of God,” Fr. Dion said. “I’ve been in the Sulus for a long time. I know many people. I have connections. I’m rarely around strangers. I’m always running into former students or children of former students. Muslims … Christians … I’m always invited into their homes. I don’t proselyte. I only serve. I’m just as comfortable in a mosque as in a church. I’ve lived here for more than thirty years, surrounded mostly by Muslims, and we are friends.”
“What was it like when you first came here?” I asked.
“I don’t remember it being terribly difficult,” Fr. Dion said. “You see, I was on a great adventure, and Bongao seemed as far as away from a dairy farm in southern Quebec as you could get. I felt a bit confined, a bit isolated, a bit bored and alone, a bit out of sorts. I never lived on an island before, and I didn’t know how to swim.”
I asked the Friar then whether he was afraid of water, and instead of replying he said, “You see, I had to learn how to walk on water. I had just received my divinity degree, when God called me to the Philippines. And I learned to walk on water. . Kidding aside, I have an affinity for boats, and there isn’t an island in the archipelago that I haven’t explored. So, when someone says something has happened somewhere…no matter how remote … I can generally find out what really happened.”
I asked whether he missed Quebec.
“As God willed, this is my home,” Fra Dion said. ”It is where I will be buried.”
Nick said he had to stretch his legs and excused himself. Later he said he’d reached a set of assumptions and was surprised by Fr. Dion’s popular support.
Fr. Dion concluded, “I don’t have time to sit still. There’s always more to do. When I’m praised, I say I don’t have time for it. God calls us to do more rather than less. There’s too much to lose, real losses, loss of what we’ve won and what God calls us to do, loss of ground, loss of hope. I don’t want to lose sight of why I came here in the first place.”
Elpidio had been a student of Fr. Dion. He left Bongao to attend Mindanao State University in Marawi, and there for the first time became convinced of the virtue of Jihad, yet because of Fr. Dion’s influence he lacked focus. Kindness shown by his teacher had an affect, such as gifts that helped pay for his education. Fr. Dion saw Elpidio’s potential right off the bat. Whereas other students struggled with reading, writing, and arithmetic, this boy had a foundation in all three before he entered school. He had gotten help from someone. Fr. Dion suspected it was from the boy’s mother. Even as a small boy Elpidio, according to the friar, had an inquisitive nature and asked questions “about everything under the sun.” This when other boys his age were more interested in swimming. It took everyone who knew Elpidio by surprise, especially Fr. Dion, when they found out that the boy they knew had taken “a rightful position” that led him to waging Jihad in the jungles of Basilan. Actually, Fr. Dion could never see the astute, gentle boy he knew ever posing a threat to anyone. In any event, when Nick and I told him about the contact we had with the rebels on Basilan, our host smiled and said the secessionists were in “enlightened” hands. This, Fr. Dion said, gave him hope. In fact, he thought he could walk into the jungles of Basilan and find a friendly Elpidio.
I began to wonder, without being aware of it, if Nick and I had run into Fr. Dion’s student (a tip off may have been books in the nipa hut of the leader we met on Basilan). He had been friendly enough. And he seemed to know a great deal about the Meranaos of Marawi.
Now when Fr. Dion learned that Nick and I may have had contact with Elpido, he questioned us thoroughly about the encounter. Elpidio, during his four years at Mindanoa State University, when he was figuring out what he was going do, stayed in close contact with Fr. Dion, and, as he struggled, he thought about converting to Catholicism. Surprisingly, the friar discouraged him. Much later, after Elpidio dove into the jungles of Basilan and his separatist activities, Fr. Dion wondered what would’ve happened had his prize student converted to Christianity. What would it have meant for the peace movement? He tried to make sense of contradictions and explain how such a gentle boy could become ultimately a threat. But remember all of his sources, though reliable, were secondhand.
Chapter Twenty-five
Elpido’s father worked for the prominent noble Halun family, the family that ruled the village and owned ¾ of the island. Datu Halun emerged from the era with having the main thoroughfare of Bongao named after him. Elpidio’s father was raised in Bongao Poblacion itself, a community that grew from a collection of stilted houses, and in one of those the family still lived. As a child, he was in the water all the time. He learned to swim as he learned to walk. He was not only an excellent swimmer but also a diver and earned a living diving for pearls. It was said that he could hold his breath longer than anyone else. Then he went to work for Datu Halun, overseeing private oyster beds. Elpidio took after his father and loved water.
Sometimes Elpido went with his father and knew how to handle a boat and navigate by the stars. Imperfect pearls were brought home, sorted, and sold. Elpidio would’ve followed in his father’s footsteps had it not been for his mother and her insistence that he get an education. There was also a pact between the parents that Elpidio should be more successful than they were. They were also aware of dangers inherent in the pearl business and didn’t want their son exposed to them. Too often pearl divers had to fight off pirates.
If Elpidio personally knew the Datu, he never let on that he did. Later, he talked about his father’s employment with his classmates. Elpido was held in high esteem because of it.
As a young child, Elpidio’s mother came in contact with the original Oblates of Bongao. The town was a small, peaceful, isolated place then; and children were more or less free to roam because everyone looked after each other. She had a lot of energy and curiosity; while her mother stayed at home. Yes, she was different from her mother, and different from other women there, different in almost every way. Elpidio’s inquisitiveness, his quest for knowledge, and his boundless energy came from her. She was lively … had a winning personality. Her unbridled spirit gave her confidence. It allowed her to approach people, something that was frowned upon.
Elpido’s mother was the one child of the family people remembered, and when, after Fr. Francis returned following the Second World War (during which he was interned at Santa Tomas in Manila) it was not surprising that she was one of children who frequently joined the priest on his porch for story time. Because of Fr. Francis (notably his retelling of classical Islamic stories), she taught herself to read. She wasn’t encouraged to read at home. Still she loved to read and passed it on to Elpidio. Storytelling also became a family custom and continued because Elpidio’s father wasn’t home much, but he didn’t object to his son being sent to the Norte Dame school. He perhaps knew better than to object. .
During Elpidio’s years at the Norte Dame school, his mother paid attention and continued the boy’s education at home. It was a way she could continue her own quest. She was into literature. Perhaps she was the only Moro woman who read both the Bible and the Koran completely through. She particularly enjoyed stories based on Moro-Moro comedies: except she often changed the endings. She had Muslims defeat Christians instead of the other way around. Regardless, Elpidio didn’t have a choice but to enjoy literature. So Elpidio grew up around the Norte Dame school. At an early age his mother took him there to hear some of the same stories she enjoyed as a child.
Fr. Deon taught his classes in English, all of his classes, so that his students would have a command of English. His classroom was also filled with pictures and maps of other places, among them landscapes of Canada and New England that reminded the Oblate of home. There were two Oblates, who live together. The house, like the school, was western. It could’ve been Manila or Quebec, and Fr. Deon tried to make it as conducive to learning as possible.
Most of the students were Chinese, children of Chinese merchants. Most of them were connected with China and had relatives in Sabah (Borneo). And they took sides (in the Sabah dispute) but couldn’t afford to express their opinions. The Chinese controlled the economy and enjoyed the benefits. They were also predominantly Christian, and that was the reason they sent their children to the Norte Dame school.
Elpidio aspired to be a teacher, maybe a college professor. He looked up to Fr. Deon and started out modeling his life after him, but that changed when he went to college.
Elpidio was the wanderer of the family. He was fond of sailing. He once sailed all the way to Borneo. There he found relatives, heard stories about a common ancestry (and thought they should join together to create a new nation), and made friends. He made a practice of making friends wherever he went. Fr. Deon was responsible, along with his mother, for Elpidio’s love of geography. And thanks to Fr. Deon he learned about Canada and the United States, and he always regretted that he never got to travel abroad. He never considered Borneo part of foreign countries, though it was divided between Indonesia and Malaysia.
He learned also about the unrest in Northern Luzon. He saw the great migration from Northern Luzon to Northern Mindanao …. refugees from the HUK revolution (as a student at Mindanao State University in Marawi)…and when he ran into radicals at the university, he was naturally drawn to them. He soon became a leader.
To his mother, Elpido was her most heroic child. Since he was her first child and a son it was hardly surprising. And she never made it a secret, which other members of the family resented. She said she didn’t play favorites, but she did. Even when his siblings became prominent in their own right, they never received the recognition their older brother did. They were all educated and intelligent and contributed to the development of Bongao, and they all attended the Norte Dame school thanks to their mother.
As a student of history and literature, Elpido excelled at Mindanao State University. He studied there for four years, earned a BA degree, and each summer, he returned to Bongao, only to disappear and wander around the Sulus. He had already turned radical. He attended meetings and organized them. The Bangsamoro mujahideen inspired him before he joined them.
Chapter Twenty-six
After graduation, Elpido took a trip to Manila. Manila shocked him … too many people for his taste. Fr. Deon referred him to Fr. King, a priest at Santa Cruz Church, and the Oblate gave him a place to stay, while Elpido decided what he wanted to do. There he was away from home, alone, in a city, a huge city, and he would’ve been easily disoriented had it not been for Fr. King. Here was a Muslim living with a priest in a Catholic city, a future Bangsamoro mujahideen living with a priest in a Catholic city. He knew a great deal about Christianity, thanks to Fr. Deon and Fr. King, and could’ve then converted and become an Oblate. The urge was one he had to work through. Fr. Deon tried to discourage him by telling him that life of an Oblate in a Muslim world was not an easy one.
Corregidor Massacre changed everything. Like for many Moros, the Corregidor Massacre changed everything for Elpido. It hardened him. It gave him direction when he wasn’t sure where he was heading. After the Corregidor Massacre of the Jabidah group, Elpido returned to Mindanao, where he joined former radical classmates then reunited to avenge the murder of 250 Moro brothers.
Corregidor Massacre truly a massacre. On the night of March 18, 1968, disgruntled and mutinous Muslim recruits … trainees for a planned invasion of Sabah … were murdered at an airstrip on Corregidor. This massacre ignited a protest in front of the presidential palace and a firestorm in the Philippine press. For Elpido, it changed everything. He later said, “People look for explanations why someone does an about-face, except my reaction wasn’t a 180 degree turn. But this terrible incident was what drove me away from my Catholic leanings. I was born a Moro, a Muslim,” Elpido emphasized, “and any other affiliation I may have had was superimposed. Now that brothers of mine … some even from Tawi-Tawi and Bongao …. were murdered, I no longer have a choice.” The Corregidor Massacre made his transformation inevitable and filled him with rage. By 1970, Elpido was totally committed to the separatist movement and was already operating out of the jungles of Basilan.
He had not yet launched an attack though. Elpido instead spent his time recruiting and training. Because of it he was accused of waffling. Yet he still defended the need for violence, in order, as he said, to end oppression and win freedom for Moro people. But he remembered nearly all of Fr. Deon’s homilies, obviously because of his long association with the Oblate, and his respect for the priest. Oblates had been good to him. He also had good friends who were Christian. He was generally liked. And he impressed people. In the jungles of Basilan, as in the Norte Dame school, he impressed people around him.
As unrest on Basilan increased, people were evacuated to safer places. The first to go were the Yakan who lived in the central and southwestern mountainous interior. The migration began with the Christian population; and as a result more and more plots of land reverted back to jungle and led to the deterioration of bridges and roads. (Later “terrorists” destroyed bridges and prevented work on roads.) As a result, villages became more isolated, and residents kept to themselves.
These farmers were afraid to use roads and were afraid to go anywhere. Most of them had little incentive to grow more crops than they could use. Elpido saw these changes and was so disturbed that he questioned his role and methods of his colleagues. They weren’t above robbery, which disappointed him. How could they win hearts and minds of people that way, he asked. He yearned to disappear, sail away, as he had in the past. But there was already a price on his head, and how could he go anywhere with a price on his head?
Elpido operated out of a number of camps. They were scattered throughout the island, and on occasion he also went into Isabela. There he said he ran into the American fisherman we met in Zamboanga.
The meeting between the two men led Elpido to wonder why David was allowed to run such a large fishing operation off Basilan, since most profits from the sale of tuna were not coming back to the island. Meanwhile, members of his group were talking about running all “foreigners” off the island. This would’ve meant raiding the David’s compound. They had even sent a reconnaissance team to scout out the American.
We were escorted to Elpido’s jungle camp and his office in a nipa hut, a hut that separated him from his men. Life there might’ve been Spartan, but his life wasn’t totally so. He had his books and never slept on the ground. Yet Elpido tried to set an example. While members of his band never insisted on having luxuries he had (a bed and a roof over his head), they built simple shelters and within reason were free to come and go. (It reminded Nick of his life as a boy.) Elpido was obviously respected. He demanded discipline and was respected for it. He was lenient and granted a certain amount of freedom and was respected for it too. And because he was respected and his men respected each other, morale was high.
Dogma was Elpido’s forte, and he spoke philosophically better than anyone else. As part of his daily routine, he read, and in this he followed Fr. Deon’s example. He thought they needed to know why they were rebelling and thought that a rebellion was sometimes worse than status quo. And he wasn’t always sure that the means justified the end. He was often conflicted, if not downright confused. He resisted violence and a non-violent insurrectionist was indeed disabled. In Fr. Deon’s opinion, he was a “light” in a “dark” jungle. None of us had a crystal ball and foresaw then the lawless fiefdom Basilan later became.
Chapter Twenty-seven
After the siege of Manila, Americans opened the gates of Santa Tomas. They freed many Americans, many who before the war own businesses in the Philippines, and among them was David Miller Sr.. Captivity was hard on everyone and particularly hard on David Miller Sr. and his family, who were used to freedom, but those years allowed the Miller family to make connections with people who would rebuild the Philippines. And they were from all walks of life, politicians, teachers, missionaries, mining executives, plantation owners, stockbrokers, etc.. And most of those who became David’s friends were Americans and affluent. Yes, captivity was hard on everyone, but in the case of Santa Tomas, treatment of prisoners was better there than in most other prisoner camps in South East Asia, or any of the concentration camps of Europe.
Right before MacAuthur’s return, David Miller Sr. met Herald Fitzgerald, the former general manager of Del Monte’s pineapple plantation on Mindanao. Mr. Fitzgerald needed help and offered Miller Sr. a job, running a processing plant in Cagayan de Oro. The young man accepted the job, though he considered northern Mindanao less than ideal for raising children. That was where David Miller Jr. grew up and where he was drawn to the neighboring sea, learned to fish and, with his father’s help, bought a small fishing boat.
In September 1953, David Jr. went to the States to go college (supposedly UCLA), but he instead looked for someone with a yacht that could use his experience. But it didn’t take long for him to settle for a job on a freighter with a crew mainly of Filipinos. His familiarity with the Philippines helped. As an American who grew up in the Philippines he had an advantage the captain used. He could speak the language, knew the customs, and soon became a go-between. He could converse with the crew (mainly Filipinos) in their dialect and the captain in English. He could interpret the captain’s orders and could understand the crew’s problems. He didn’t push himself onto anyone, but if there was something he could do for someone he did it without hesitation. That was when he learned to navigate the high seas and how to negotiate with Filipinos. He learned both skills well.
His father couldn’t have been more upset and cut off money he was sending to him. That forced him to be independent.
David was drawn to the sea, of course, and his parents knew it, but they were disappointed that he didn’t go to UCLA and get an education. But David was determined to make it up to them. He was sorry for all the gray hairs he gave them but was determined to make it up to them. He didn’t mean to worry them. And asked for their forgiveness. And asked them not to disinherit him. And he wasn’t talking about peses or centavos. He didn’t want them to think he was unappreciative. He sent his love before he told them that he wasn’t going to UCLA. But how could he explain that there wasn’t a particular turning point for him.
David Jr’s parents were clearly disappointed. They worried about him. They didn’t like it when he dropped out of UCLA, but for their own good decided to let go. They encouraged him to go to a school in America, but when he decided to drop out they decided to let go. They had reservations about him moving to a big city like LA, since he grew up in a small place, a foreign country, but they thought he’d benefit from the experience. They worried about him living in a big city and a foreign country but thought he’d benefit from the experience. And they were right: America was foreign to David.
As expected, he went through a period of shock. He flew directly to LAX from Manila. And he immediately felt lost. LA wasn’t Manila, and he felt lost in Manila, so he felt more lost in LA. He managed to get on the right bus, though there was no one there to help him. He let his instincts kick in. He was too proud to ask for directions. He knew that if he hesitated he’d get pounced upon. Later he dismissed his fears as being silly. But in a letter home he wrote: “I wasn’t prepared for harshness and rudeness I’ve encountered over here. I was shocked by how people yelled at each other over nothing. It exhausted me and took wind out of my sails.” He wrote this after witnessing a shouting match between a bus driver and a so-called bum. It ended with the bus driver slamming doors of the bus in the face of the so-called bum and the so-called bum pounding the side of the bus with his fist. It left an indelible impression on David.
David persistence then paid off. He wouldn’t have been hired on a freighter if he hadn’t been persistent. As a result, David was headed back to the orient, though he didn’t inform his parents right away.
For the next few years David worked on the same ship, going back and forth across the Pacific from California to Hong Kong and Singapore by way of Alaska and the Aleutian chain. He quickly moved from apprenticeship to seaman; and this experience got him to thinking about possibilities back home in the Philippines … possibilities that always involved the sea and were suggested by trawlers, netters, and seiners he saw along the Alaskan coast and time he spent around fish markets. He also envisioned a future in the fishing industry because of fun he had on his own boat. And it explained his passion for the sea.
David Jr. came up with a plan and looked for investors to implement it. He touted fishing in the Sulu Seas. He proposed catching tuna and selling it in Singapore. You have to understand that he knew the Philippines and knew that there were great profits to be made there. He already owned a fishing boat. He was ambitious and owned a fishing boat. He was reliable and owned a fishing boat and knew he could make a great deal of money fishing in the Sulus. He owned a fishing boat but knew that someday he’d own a fishing fleet. He was raised on Mindanao, knew his way around, sailed the Sulus, knew his way around the Sulus, and knew where the fish were. “I can corner the market,” and said it with confidence because he knew where the fish were. He also had an advantage over Chinese and Japanese fishermen because he was an American. And he knew as an American, he could take advantage of parity … a trade agreement America had with the Philippines. There was an untapped source of fish and with a favorable trade agreement and the right investors he couldn’t fail.
Ferdinand Marcos had just succeeded and became president, and he seemed to be just what the country needed. My friend Nick hadn’t yet decided where he was going to college, though his father thought he should go to the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Manila. And a change of climate would do the young man good, or so his father thought … and a change of leadership seemed to boast the nation’s morale. Marcos came into office with a great deal of fanfare. Marcos adopted an ambitious agenda and did his best to meet public expectations. Roads, bridges, schools, health centers, and irrigation facilities … all needed attention and all received it when Marcos first came into office. He also lined pockets of friends. Massive spending on public works made Marcos even more popular than when he was elected but didn’t alleviate tension in Central Luzon, where Nick came from (nor for that matter problems in the extreme south).
Optimism generally continued throughout Marcos’ first years in office, and based on it he sought a second term in 1969. Nick, meanwhile, became a leader at the university. He was very articulate and outspoken and was known as a radical. His trip to China, Red China, set him apart from other students and was a defining moment for him. And he never kept being a Maoist a secret, even when it would’ve been prudent to do so. I told Susan, “Nick is all fired up; he always seems ready to charge, to lead, to cheer. While some of his ideas make me squirm, there is something admirable about his determination. Nick is one of few people I’ve met who has the skills to change almost anyone’s mind.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Both men impressed us. We were favorably impressed with both David Jr. and Elpido. Both men treated us well. We saw both men on the same day, and they treated us well. We only spent one day on Basilan and saw both men that day. Both were living on Basilan (Elpido in the jungle and David Jr. on the coast). Both were transplants, and both didn’t have a base to work from in the beginning. They started from scratch and didn’t have a base at first. And they knew that they wouldn’t have made it without help from outside. They were both guarded (David in a heavily fortified compound and Elpido surrounded by a small force). They were isolated (we wouldn’t have found either one of them without help). ”When you’re living and working in a hostile place, it pays to take precautions and have enough distances between you and your neighbors to maneuver.” Both of them would’ve agreed with this. Passionate … they were both passionate and believed in what they were doing. Both of them had struggled and gone against odds. They wouldn’t have been where they were without struggling and feeling passionate and believing what they were doing. They were both successful with their own little empires. Influential … for David Jr., it was based on the success of his fishing business … for Elpido, it was based on the size of his following. And both men had a price on their heads: the government was after Elpido and the separatists wanted to drive David off the island. So both men were living dangerously. Both knew the stakes. Both were good men and treated us well.
“After there were attempts to drive me off Basilan, and not just by the local government, I decided to help native fishermen improve their livelihood by increasing their catch and expanding their markets. And since the Sulu Sea is bountiful, it hasn’t been difficult. Our biggest challenges, of course, come from the outside …from pirates to big guys from China, Malaysia, and Japan. Too often there are violent confrontations, literal shootouts. Encounters with machine guns. They rely on speed and surprise. They sometimes take boats and ask for ransom. Ransom is just part of the cost of doing business. I think the Philippine government could do more. Just as it has always been I rely on alliances with Moros, and without alliances I wouldn’t be here. I get a great deal of satisfaction knowing that I’ve bucked odds and not merely survived but thrived. I know that it helps that I grew up in this part of the world, but because I’m an American I’m not trusted. I still have to deal with mistrust. Everything I do is suspect. Incidentally, I love Moros. They rank as high as anyone. In my book, they rank as high as anyone. Still I couldn’t have an intimate relationship with one of them. I have to be really careful. It’s why I spend a lot time in Zamboaga. People in Zamboaga look the other way.” That was when we first realized that we hadn’t seen the beautiful Filipina we saw David Jr. with when we saw him the night before.
As we wrapped up our vacation, and after our visit with Fr. Deon on Bongao, we saw the approaching storm again and again. The first inkling came on the bus to Illegan from Marawi, when we learned how Christian’s “rats’ seized Moro land and learned of the bitterness that still existed over it. The long history of Moros was filled with stories of resistance, while the enemy, regardless whether it was Spanish, American or Filipino, was placed at a disadvantage and (we realized) would never gain an upper hand. The history of violence could be summed up simply and was repeated every generation. The struggle had been long, and Moros never gave up. Only there was a new set of characters, some of them we just met … our American fisherman, our Canadian priest, and our Moro separatist.
We reached Sitangkia after Bongao, but tide was too low for us to fully appreciate the Venice of the Philippines. Then the three of us went ashore with the captain in a small boat, and we walked around the small town, as he conducted business that we assumed was legal. We spent our nights sleeping on the deck of the boat, not on cots, but directly on hard wood and on mats we purchased in Marawi. We spent our days exploring islands along the way. On the tiny island of Sibutu, after a very short stroll across it, we could see what we assumed was Borneo. A whole week was spent getting on and off the boat, without ever docking anywhere. On the way out and on the way in from Zamboaga, we stopped at Jolo, and each time we encountered the military.
The first time was in a coffee shop. We sat at a small table, and a soldier came up to us in a way that told us that he had a problem with us sitting there. It scared Susan, and Nick stood up. We had hardly started eating, and this guy came up and started pushing his weight around. He spoke Tagalog, which told Nick that he wasn’t from Jolo. ”Come with me to our office,” was what Nick told us he said. Then words flew fast and furious, and we could see that it was a heated exchange. The exchange went on and on. Nick pulled him aside. “This is it,” Susan said. “I should’ve stayed on the ship.” Then when Nick finally came back to the table, everything seemed okay.
Our boat stopped at Jolo once more. This time soldiers came aboard to search for something and concentrated on the captain’s quarters. They found a carton of Luck Strikes, and the next thing we knew they hauled the captain and the first mate off the boat. Only later, when the captain and the first mate returned, did we learn that they were accused of smuggling. And there they were smiling and congratulating each other, having quickly and easily won their release. It seemed like it was planned, but we never knew the exact circumstances.
Soon after our vacation we read about the kidnapping of an American fisherman … on Basilan of all places. We assumed it was David Jr. and assumed it was connected with Elpido.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Elpido’s jihad journey started with the Jabidah Massacre on Corregido. His journey took him to the jungles of Basilan and led to open rebellion, but because he was a product of the Norte Dame school in Bongao and the Oblates, one would’ve thought that he might’ve been more moderate than many of his associates. Elpido had a Christian education, was a Muslim with a Christian education, yet he was a devout Muslim, a devout Muslim, with a connection with Christianity. Then maybe he was one to approach when time came for peace.
After the kidnapping of the American, the possibility for peace decreased. Not only were Elpido and his band hunted but his friends and former supporters, including his teachers, among them Fr. Deon, began to have serious doubts about him. And it wasn’t long before he was labeled a terrorist. Yet Fr. Deon held out hope. Fr/ Deon expressed continued belief in Elpido, with and without being asked, and in letters that he wrote to him. He also hoped that stories about Elpido were untrue. In his first letter to Elpido, he wrote:
I hope that you view your experience at Note Dame in a positive light and that you consider our presence here in Bongao beneficial. Note that we’ve never tried to convert anyone (which I admit is not typical of missionaries). You can rightly say though that you can’t separate us from God, any more than we can say the same thing about you, but you have to admit that regardless of a person’s religion that we are all bound together by a wealth of common knowledge. What do I mean by common knowledge? I mean possessing basic skills in language, reading, math, and science, which allow us to understand each other and make our world better. Perhaps this doesn’t seem relevant in light of the current struggle, and after the Jabidah Massacre. It isn’t hard for me to understand your feelings because some of the victims were students of mine … no doubt friends of yours, which means we’re both angry over it. I still think that a second wrong will never make it right, which I know is hard for you to swallow after such an injustice as the Jabidah Massacre. My ideas are also, I think, in accord with the Koran. There are degrees of resistance and not enough debate. We all agree that the Jabidah Massacre was a horrific crime, but is more violence an answer? A decision to hurt someone has to be made with great reluctance…
We don’t know if Elpido received Fra. Dion’s letter. We don’t know if he received the friar’s second plea for peace, this time set in the context of history. We don’t know if Elpido received any of the priest’s letters.
Fr. Deon’s perspective of the Moro rebellion came from his Christian background and seemed so biased that Elpido would reject it. Their three-hundred-year struggle came down to this moment, and to strike back seemed like the best action. After the Jabidah Massacre it came down to action … to doing something or being left behind. And if they didn’t do something, what would happen to them and the Bangsamoros movement? How could they be obedient to Allah if they weren’t willing to die for Him?
There was no reason for me to take risks that I did when I returned to the Sulus. Nor was there a good reason for me to go alone to the Sulus. For a story I wanted to retrace our steps as closely as possible and hopefully run into the same people that we ran into before … on my first trip. I wanted to see how things changed after David’s kidnapping.
Rational people started asking me about my trip and the kidnapping of an American. They didn’t know that I was pretty sure I met both parties …the victim and the perpetrators when they started asking me about it. And they were surprised that the kidnapping wasn’t keeping me from going back to the Sulus. I made several contingency plans, while they thought I’d get cold feet … get cold feet and bow out before I got back to the Sulus. I could back out. And it wouldn’t cost me anything but my pride. Rational people would understand. Questions first arose immediately after I read about the kidnapping in the Manila Times.
Contacting Fr. Deon in advance wouldn’t have been difficult. If only I could do it without alarming Susan. But there wasn’t a way; there wasn’t a way I could think of. I thought I’d just show up on Fr. Leon’s doorstep in Bongao, though I could’ve used poste restante, and though it would’ve attracted unwanted attention. And the only way I could go without worrying Susan was to lie to her. And this was what I did. I lied to her.
Time restraints forced us to end our vacation before I was satisfied. Our trip taught me that I shouldn’t try to cram so much into so little time. Our trip with Nick wasn’t the trip either Susan or I wanted. The trip which Nick and I wanted wasn’t a trip Susan fully appreciated even though she didn’t let on. Before our trip Susan made it clear that she didn’t want to travel on leaky ferries, but she allowed herself to be talked into it when there weren’t other alternatives. (The only boat ride that she really enjoyed was on David Jr’s speedboat, a short trip at top speed from Basilan back to Zamboaga.) Our vacation was too long for her. She felt powerless on it, and that experience, and only that, was what I used to convince her to stay home.
There was a great difference between traveling alone and with someone else or a group of people. Reactions I received were different. People were strictly reacting to me and not to Susan and me or to Nick and me, or to the three of us. Mistakes, therefore, were mine. And they didn’t put anyone else at risk. I was the only one to blame. Then let me make it clear that I never went looking for trouble, and I expected to get home from the Sulus safely.
There was no need for me to immediately go back to David Jr’s compound. His kidnapping made it pointless. I already had a feel for the place. Then it made perfect sense to bypass Basilan and go directly to see Fr. Deon, and get his perspective before proceeding further. I felt comfortable around the priest. I had to start somewhere.
Chapter Thirty
A month later I found myself sitting at a table, listening to Fr. Deon. He told me that Elpido was caught in a struggle between radical Moros and moderates, and he refused to believe that his former student was a terrorist. “I knew him as a kid,” he said. “I saw him grow up. He grew up in a house built over water like so many houses here. He had saltwater in his veins and loved water. His father was a pearl diver and wanted Elpido to follow in his footsteps. It was his mother who brought the boy to Norte Dame. She was also a student of mine.”
“He was just a kid filled with dreams like any other kid … a kid, like kids throughout the region, now caught up in ethnocentric and religious fervor. They are proud people who have struggled for a long time. Every once and a while something sets them off.”
“Elpido must find his own way. He may seem to have found a direction, especially in light of the kidnapping, but I’m not sure that that is the case. To be a separatist doesn’t mean he or she has to be a bomb maker or a gun-totter (as a resident here I’m at least a sympathizer), but you have to be an activist. It is not some violent act that makes a rebel a rebel but it’s by supporting an effort in whatever way he or she can.”
Then over a generous spread of imported goodies, I told Fr. Deon about our day on Basilan. Both David Jr. and Elpido were cordial. But the American treated us without any to-do, whereas the Filipino went out of his way to make us feel comfortable. It wasn’t guns that made us feel secure. So many guns! Guns everywhere. Both of them had so many guns. So many guns made me wondered how they avoided a bloodbath … how the kidnapping took place and without a bloodbath. How was it possible? How was it possible without a bloodbath? How was it possible without someone’s intervention? I wanted to know and intended to find out. It’s why I came back to the Sulus. I thought both men were good men. That was my premise. As far as I was concerned, both men were good men.
When we left Elpido’s camp, it was to catch a bus to the coast, where we found David JR’s compound and where we ate dinner with him. Our impressions of both men were based on very short visits because of time restraints we set for ourselves. I’m not sure Elpido would’ve invited us to stay over night, and Susan was off somewhere else. (We’d set a time and place to meet Susan.) I know how I felt when I read about the kidnapping. I remember the shock and dismay I felt. All of this came to mind, as I talked to Fr. Deon.
There was always a danger of being misled by a brief encounter. Elpido didn’t seem like a terrorist. He was extremely polite and seemed sincere. I suppose a terrorist can be polite and sincere, but … Elpido a terrorist … it didn’t seem possible. And it didn’t seem possible to Fr. Deon either. Elpido was polite to us the whole time, and he seemed sincere. No one could’ve been nicer than Elpido. Would we have found such hospitality in the United States? He showed no ill will toward Americans.
It confused me. His friendliness and generosity confused me. Reading about the kidnapping, and having met the victim and perpetrator on the same day seemed incredible and dumbfounded me. My emotional reaction to the news was what brought me back to the Sulus. I knew the risks. I knew them and accepted them. I also knew that I wasn’t dealing with saints.
Unlike the jungle camp we had just visited the American’s compound wasn’t modest. The American had everything any reasonable person would’ve wanted and more. But wasn’t this a mistake on David Jr’s part? Didn’t it set him apart? Didn’t it place him in competition with the Datu? But what else would you expect from someone like him? Why not, you say? It didn’t really matter. What he gave back to the community …mattered … in jobs and services … mattered more.
What did it matter? The answer was revealed, perhaps, with the kidnapping, a kidnapping without a request for ransom. Why not ask for ransom? Ransom … the money could’ve been used for furthering the cause. The kidnapping itself flew in the face of precedent. Rage and running amok would’ve been more typical. Running amok was traditional. Running amok was a deliberate act, much in the same way as the proxy clash of two warriors of opposing armies was. A person running amok was a proxy. So why not run amok? Why change rules?
Unlike the Filipino, the American didn’t try to impress us. But unlike us (“My God, what a spread!” Susan exclaimed), David obviously didn’t have to count his pennies. Everyone deserves a taste of this lifestyle, if only once in a lifetime. About this all three of us agreed. Because of everything it was hard to focus on the man in the center of it. Whenever I think of disparity I think of how David Jr. lived and the lives of his neighbors and come to conclusions that are indeed volatile and maybe that was how you could make sense of his kidnapping.
Chapter Thirty-one
Following instructions I stepped off a bus at a roadside dwelling in the central, mountainous interior of Basilan. I was told where to go and where to get off the bus and where to wait for a guide. With a bandana around my head, I arrived with a name of a contact. It was supposed to be someone I could trust … a reliable contract and someone I could trust. But I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone.
In his early twenties, Aga was a lean, short Muslim man. I usually think of Filipinos as shorter than Americans, and compared to me, Agra was short. He insisted on blindfolding me. I’m not sure why it was necessary, but necessary or not he insisted on blindfolding me. It made it difficult, and I wasn’t sure I trusted him. Why did he have to blindfold me? After the recent kidnapping of David Jr., an American, how could I have been sure or confident about anything? But Aga didn’t carry a firearm, which made me feel better.
Even though I stumbled, we moved pretty quickly along a network of trails. It was hard to keep track of all the turns, as we crisscrossed the countryside. Before walking through each settlement, Aga took off my blindfold and put it on when we were on a trail again. It wasn’t long though before he left it off.
“We’ll have to put it back on when we get closer to camp,” Aga explained. His English surprised me. Aga’s English surprised me. I don’t know why it would … would surprise me. As if he needed to explain everything, he went on, “Elpido wanted to come himself, but you can understand why he couldn’t. Elpido is a good man, but these are difficult times.”
We were now walking between rice fields and under coconut trees. Sometimes people walked along with us; other times we met someone coming in the opposite direction. I hadn’t expected this. It felt like Elpido wasn’t hiding.
“I hope this isn’t too far for you,” Aga said.
“It’s fine. I didn’t expect it to be easy,” I said. We hadn’t stopped, and I was beginning to feel it, but I didn’t have a right to complain. “I’m a bit surprised that everyone around here seems to know everyone.” I asked how it worked.
“Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t, does and doesn’t work” Aga said. “Sometimes we can avoid the army and the Constabulary, and sometimes we can’t. They know where we are, of course? We keep tabs of them too … we keep tabs of each other.”
“Elpido must have connections all over Mindanao and Sulu,” I said “He has a friend in Bongao. He was admitted to the university with the help of this friend.” I was proud of what I knew about Elpido.
Aga didn’t respond.
I than said something about how open everything seemed.
“People here work their own land. The government wants them to give up their land, but they don’t want to do it because they don’t know if they’ll get it back.”
“Basilan doesn’t seem to have a huge population,” I said.
“There used to be more people here.” Aga pointed to a mountain, to the jungle on the side of it, and said, “That’s our security, but we’re not going up there now.” Indeed, we skirted the mountain; while at the same time he gave me a landmark, and it gave me a sense of security.
After the blindfold went back on, we arrived at a rectangular-shape house built on stilts, and, with the blindfold off, we climbed up the steps. The house had only one large room. A kitchen adjoined the house.
Elpido immediately greeted me. Sitting on mats in a circle of men, David Jr. talked as if he were a member of the circle rather than a captive. “You can see I’m treated very well,” he said, “and am very much alive.”
“Our friend, however, is not free to go just yet,” Elpido said. “We haven’t agreed on terms. He sent word to his people and reassured them that he wasn’t hurt. And it took some of the heat off us. Our crime has unfortunately been highly publicized. I say unfortunately, though publicity has been good and bad. How is Fr. Deon? He wrote that you were anxious to see me. You’re either a brave man or a fool.”
As we were served scoops rice and dried fish with cassava, David Jr. interjected, “There are no spoons in the house. The family that lives here temporarily moved in with relatives. It may surprise you that they haven’t objected and consider it an honor.”
Several men and women, women dressed within limits of sharia, came and went from the kitchen, back and forth with food. Men actually served us.
“How is the food?” Elpido asked.
“Good. Cassava and rice were locally grown, but people here can’t grow enough to meet their needs.”
“It’s something we can correct,” David Jr. said, confidently. “With the green revolution, it can be corrected.”
“Our friend is an optimist,” Elpido said. “Yakans are hard working, and each family has a garden. They are happy people.”
“They’d be happier if they were left alone and grew enough food,” David Jr. added.
“They’re not starving, ” Elpido said.. “Besides they haven’t gotten help they need.”
At the end of the meal, servers removed the plates and brought pots of hot tea and cans of Carnation condensed milk. We all severed ourselves tea and, with milk, made ourselves chai. There was some discussion about the status of David Jr. It wasn’t clear to me … whether or not he was a prisoner. Elpido claimed that David Jr. could easily escape.
“I keep telling him he can escape. I don’t like how we’re portrayed in newspapers,” Elpido said. “They make it up as they go along and get away with it.”
“The kidnapping part was accurate,” David Jr. said.
“But you’ve liked it here,” Elpido said.
“But if I were to try to escape … “
“He doesn’t trust me. You can see that he doesn’t trust me. If he trusted me, he would escape.”
“When I was first kidnapped, I was very angry about the disruption. Disruptions are very costly,” David Jr. said. “I didn’t know what would happen and was angry and blamed myself for putting my guard down. I shouldn’t have been kidnapped. I shouldn’t have allowed it. I shouldn’t have let my guard down and given so many of my employees time off. I thought pirates were the biggest threat. Elpido would say, ‘the government is.’ In the Philippines, threats abound, especially here in the Sulus.”
“The government is far more invasive,” Elpido added. ”And now the government wants to evacuate the Yakan because us. Here you see the Yakan have welcomed us.”
Chapter Thirty-two
“I agreed to not put up a struggle,” David Jr. said. “Then when I told him that my father ran Del Monte’s processing plant in Cagayan de Oro, Elpido started talking about Southern Mindanao University. We soon learned that we knew some of the same people.”
“Some of my best memories come from when I was a student at Southern Mindanao University,” Elpido said. “Whenever he brings it up, I get sad, really sad.”
“Elpido says he wants to keep me around,” David Jr. continued. “I don’t think he knows what he wants.”
“See! When I came to Basilan, I brought capital and pumped it into the island. I maintained a large payroll and bought most of my supplies in Isabela. I supported a host of families … Muslims and Christians. Now … now … Now I’m sitting here. Does it make sense to you? It doesn’t to me. I grew up about 30 miles from where he went to college. I wasn’t born in America. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Then escape!”
“You keep saying escape! You kidnapped me! See he doesn’t know what he wants. Escape! I was born over here, but I’m still an American,” David Jr. explained. “And Elpido can’t see how an American could be for an independent Moro-land”
“He says one thing and acts differently.”
“I was born on Mindanao, and my parents plan to die there. He doesn’t believe it. So …”
“Given our history ….”
“So given our history, what? Given our history he doesn’t see how I could be for an independent Moro-land.”
“I don’t have anything personally against David. But I’m not sure …”
“He’s not sure what to do with me. He says I can escape, but I’m not sure …”
“That I mean it. He doesn’t trust me. Do you plan to die on Basilan?”
David said, “It depends. I may die here, but I’m not dead yet.”
“So it depends. See!”
“See what? How can any of us know when and where we’re going to die? When, where, and when I die may depend on you. I may die here, but I’m not dead yet.”
“Isn’t your beef with Marcos? Not each other,” I asked.
“ …given our history,” David Jr. repeated and continued. “My father and the plantation hired mainly Christian workers and my father would counter by saying that the plant and the plantation were located in areas of Mindanao that were mainly Christian.”
“Christian rats! Del Monte imperialist! Now don’t say they’re not imperialist!” Elpido yelled.
“He’s forgetting all the good Del Monte’s done.”
David Jr. and I moved out of the way, as Moros found prayer rugs, kneeled, and prayed. We were now in a position to escape, but escaping didn’t seem imperative to David Jr.. I would’ve helped him escape, but he didn’t try. Instead he told me that members of “this Moro gang” were more imprisoned than he was and that he never feared for his life. Hearing this made me think that maybe I was dealing with a hoax. David Jr. and Elpido acted more like frat brothers than enemies, or at least it seemed like it to me.
With prayers over the room became a hub of activity again. Elpido gave an order. One of the men jump-to and left the house. “Now we’ll get some news … we have our sources here and elsewhere. Maybe there’s a letter from Fr. Deon.” He accepted a pot of tea on a tray with enough cups to go around. “How did you find Fr. Deon? I think Fr. Deon has changed. I know I have.” Elpido signaled t the man next to him to take the pot. This seemed to be a ritual. “We allow ourselves one luxury. Tea … a smuggled commodity. We consider it trade, while the government considers it smuggling. I don’t think we need to ask Manila’s permission before we trade with Sabah.”
“As a fisherman I got tired of paying through the nose to the army,” David Jr. said, as he made himself a cup of chai.
After tea and a meal, David Jr., Elpido and I talked some more. From under the house came sounds of animals being fed. In a corner, on a make-shift shelve, were some of the books that I saw the other time I visited Elpido … publications of Filipino authors, a copy of the Koran, and surprisingly a Bible. I wondered if Elpido’s men recognized the Bible.
When I took the Bible from bookshelf, Elpido said, “Fr. Deon gave it to me.” I remembered the friar telling me that he didn’t convert Muslims. “To us, Jesus was human, a prophet, and a good man.” From inside the Bible I took out a letter from Fr. Deon. I read only enough to know it was from Fr. Deon.
“That’s how I knew you were coming. You know I was a student of his at the Norte Dame school in Bongao. My mother’s idea. A Muslim boy might be sent to Norte Dame, but not the eldest son, unless they had a mother as strong as my mother. My father was very devout. My family was different in many ways. My mother kept a shelf of books, which I know she read. I know I’ve upset my mother. She hasn’t written, but Fr. Deon has contact with her and keeps me informed. When I’m unsure of myself, besides Allah I have no one else to turn to but Fr. Deon. Recently, police or military intercepted one of his letters, and I know it because when I received it, it was open. Everyone knows the history of Corregidor. Now there’s a massacre. Murder.”
I then asked Elpido what he knew about the massacre.
“I know enough. I’m now trying to figure out what to do next.”
Elpido showed me more of Fr. Deon’s letters. There were two or three that were written while I was in Bongao … written in a big, bold hand, as if the friar wanted to draw attention to himself …written in ink so that none of it could be erased. One was torn up. All were slightly worn. Some of them were wadded up, and then saved after someone tried to press the wrinkles out. Moreover it seemed clear from their condition that Elpido hadn’t intended to keep them. It seemed odd that he would. Then too, the books also seemed out of place.
“I’m not cut out for this war,” Elpido said. ‘When I was first handed a gun, I didn’t know how to aim it. And it didn’t help my standing with men: now we lack training we need. Coming directly from school, I had no experience or training to justify trust placed in me. But I haven’t hesitated, but actually for some unknown reason it was handed to me. There are other groups on Basilan. That’s why I’ve decided to move to some place else. Our success surprised me. I never expected to kidnap an American without a fight.”
I asked Elpido what they wanted to achieve with the kidnapping.
“It keeps changing,” he said. “He could prove useful, but what do I know?”
Chapter Thirty-three
And we talked and talked and talked. I never understood why he talked so much.
By the time I met Nick and Elpido, the Corregidor Massacre was history. The massacre and the demonstration in front of the presidential palace that followed it were history, and many Moro students didn’t return to the University of the Philippines after that. Many of them feared retaliation or felt that they had to go home. They were afraid of retaliation or felt they had to go home. Many of them hadn’t felt at home in Manila, and the massacre only made it worse. Nick hadn’t had much to do with these students. They formed a clique that he wasn’t a part of. But after he learned of the Corregidor Massacre Nick felt sympathetic. .
I wondered if Elpido was preparing himself for martyrdom. We were many years away from the violent martyrdom of the first suicide bomber, yet I could see that Elpido understood the meaning of martyrdom. And he certainly advocated change for the Bangsamoro people … change and even a separate country for Bangsmoro people … an Islamic republic. After the massacre it became apparent that the time had come. It had been a long struggle, but now was the time. It was a struggle Bangsmoro people had been involved in for more than three hundred years; so it was certainly part of Elpido’s DNA.
Placing the Koran back on the shelve, Elpido said, “Very few of my Muslim brothers understand why my father let my mother send me to a Catholic school.” That prompted me to ask him how his studying at a Catholic school jived with being a Muslim radical. “The truth is,” he answered, “if I hadn’t gone to the Norte Dame school, I wouldn’t have been prepared for Mindanao State University and wouldn’t have been admitted. Thanks to Fr. Deon I had a solid grasp of English, which came from his using the Laubach method. And if I hadn’t gone to Mindanao State University I wouldn’t be a seperatist. If I hadn’t gone to Mindanao State University, I would’ve been a pearl diver like my father.”
I asked him then how he could give up an academic career when it had been his dream.
“I’ve asked myself that question,” Elpido said. “But after the massacre, I couldn’t just sit there in a chair. I couldn’t study poetry when my brothers were being murdered. My responsibility as a Moro called for more. If I hadn’t responded it would’ve been like I condoned the crime of murder.”
“But couldn’t you have more influence on a university campus?” I asked.
“The kidnapping, I hear, made the Manila Times, and was picked up by newspapers around the world,” Elpido said. ”There aren’t many ways to become a martyr on a university campus, unless someone runs amok. But with this kidnapping, I’m not dead yet, and I think we’ll win in the end.”
I spent the night sleeping on the floor next the David Jr., and remarkably he could’ve escaped, but he didn’t. We talked some during the night. Elpido was up and down during the night, while his men stayed out of sight. Once when Elpido went outside, David Jr. told me, “He’s not sleeping very well. All of them are new at this. They’re all amateurs. They don’t guard me all of the time.” With a laugh, he added, “They’ve given me every opportunity to escape. If I weren’t losing money, it would be like a vacation.”
In the morning, there was a great deal of activity outside. With some of his men, Elpido came in, carrying wild game, freshly killed birds and venison. The owner of the house came in after them. ”Ah,” David Jr. said, sitting up, “Whenever we have guest, food improves around here. All this is for your benefit.”
“It shows the support we have,” Elpido said, as he handed the game to a couple of men who came in from the kitchen.
Elpido introduced the owner of the house, who as it turned out provided the game. He explained, “He feels it’s a great honor to have two Americans staying in his home. Hospitality has always been very important to us. The Koran teaches us to give hospitality to strangers and kindness to travelers. He went hunting for you, something he wouldn’t have done for himself or his family. It’s good, because I assume, as Americans, you need variety.” Elpido ordered the meat to be prepared for our breakfast.
I gladly accepted the hospitality. The owner of the house (our host) stayed until after morning prayers and tea was served.
“Ahmad told us that the Constabulary came through here last night,” Elpido said, pouring four cups of tea. “According to him, they got close this time. Of course, I knew this. My contacts are better than his.”
“Perhaps you have sources on the inside,” David Jr. said.
There were greetings on the porch, and men I hadn’t seen before came in, soon filling the room. They were all very curious. Each in turn greeted Elpido and our host before sitting on the floor in a circle.
“They’ve all come to see the American stranger,” David Jr. explained, smiling. “I got the same treatment when I first arrived.”
“This may not make sense,” Elpido said. ”But they won’t allow anything to happen to you.”
The Constabulary, I learned later, would wait for them to leave, which gave Elpido a chance to get away. It also bought time, time to ponder a number of things such as “Where would help come from?” “Who could he trust?” “Could he make a deal with anyone?” During the course of a long history, Bangsmoro people learned answers to most of these questions, but Elpido had to work it out for himself.
Who could deny that Elpido committed himself in a dramatic way and placed himself in a very difficult situation? But through a relationship he forged with his captive … hadn’t he given himself a little wiggle room? He still had choices, options. Inevitably, he’d spend time in prison: he could use that time reading, praying, and thinking. But knowing what to do … could only come from learning what Allah planned for him. It would finally come down to whether or not he could meet demands of Allah and by so doing influence people. Only then would he be able to become a Muslim leader.
Chapter Thirty-four
I left David Jr., Elpido, and Elpido’s band of separatists the same way that I arrived: led out blindfolded and on foot. I had my stories, one I’d write and one I’d tell the Constabulary if I ran into them. They were different stories. Although I had enough material to write a long piece, there was still a lot that I didn’t understand.
“There are a few more questions I have for David Jr.,” I said to Nick the next time I saw him. “I don’t know why he didn’t escape. I have a few hunches why … why he didn’t escape, but they’re merely hunches. He clearly has a stake in Sulu. He grew up on Mindanao … born and bred there. We didn’t talk about Marcos, except in connection with the Corregidor Massacre. Then there’s his fishing business out of Basilan.”
I continued to communicate with Fr. Deon and continued to follow the conflict on Mindanao and in Sulu, as the conflict festered. I worried about Elpido whenever I heard about trouble on Basilan. And as tension between Christians and Muslims grew, Fr. Deon however felt safe. He felt safe because of his relationship with the Muslim community … with former students and parents of students, students who attended Christian Notre Dame. And long ago he placed his life in the hands of God and was determined (with all his being and God’s help) to keep the school open and to maintain peace on Tawi Tawi.
Fr. Deon wrote me to tell me that our friend Elpido was sitting in a military stockade in Zamboanga and for that he was thankful. Elpido could’ve easily been killed. Too many had been killed since the start of the government’s offensive. I kept track and knew that too many were killed. And I was happy to learn that Fr. Deon and Elpido were still alive and that the American had gone to bat for his former kidnapper. And Fr. Deon wrote that he was praying for Elpido’s release and a return of civility and stability. Fr. Deon was caught in the middle. He was aware of the aspirations of the separatists and how most people around him were hitching on for a ride. He also realized that he was considered an outsider and assumed the American on Basilan was going through the same thing.
Fr. Deon also shared contents of a letter Elpido wrote from prison. It was written for his mother. He reassured everyone that he was in good health and that he wasn’t being mistreated. He also reassured everyone that he was taking care of himself. He was exercising and eating. There was stimulation, and he had time to think. And he was hopeful … hadn’t given up. Why should he have? But as he waited his fate, he received little news. And as he was kept in the dark, he hadn’t been to court yet. The judicial system! He was learning about it.
There seemed to be two judicial systems. He had no visitors except his interrogators. And except for Fr. Deon, who brought him a few things. Other people tried to see him but were turned away, or so he was told by Fr. Deon, which didn’t make any more sense than being held without trial. Yes, held without trial. The hardest thing was that … especially waiting and without a hearing and no progress. He didn’t have a book until Fr. Deon brought him a copy of the Koran.
Fr. Deon said he’d get him a lawyer. But he wasn’t sure what good a lawyer would do. He urged people not to come see him, while he assured them he wasn’t dead yet. Fr. Deon reassured everyone that he wasn’t dead yet. He wasn’t sure but that he might be sent somewhere else … somewhere far away from Mindanao and the Sulus. Who knew where he would be sent? Who knew if they would then see him? It had been more than a month since they were captured, that fateful day in the rain. He thought he’d be shot. It surprised him that they weren’t tortured more than they were. He wanted his father and mother to know what he was trying to do … that he was trying to stand up for what was right. He wondered whether they were prepared for what could happen to him. He wanted them to remain strong … not to worry too much. He wasn’t dead yet … was treated well … was treated better than he expected. They shouldn’t worry because Allah was in control.
The American talked to someone on Elpido’s behalf…it was in a beginning, a positive beginning, and he vouched for his kidnapper. After that Elpido was treated better. After thaat torture ended and it hadn’t been too bad. He was told the American said he’d come see him. If he had it to do over again … the kidnapping, given the circumstances and after the Jabidah Massacre (the Corregidor Massacre of 1968), whether he’d join the separatist and take to the jungles of Basilan again or not, he wasn’t totally sure he would. There wasn’t much to do in prison, without his books. Of course, he had the Koran Fr. Deon brought him, and his prayers. As regard to the Koran, and while he had time, he set out to memorize the whole thing and complete his education.
As time wore on … and out of frustration, Fr. Deon continued to communicate to me about Elpido. When I realized that he was being held indefinitely and was denied his legal rights, I began to feel guilty that I hadn’t intervened. It seemed inappropriate for me to get further involved. I also knew that if I did I’d incriminate myself more than I had with my article and have to answer questions about what I was doing on Basilan and why I hadn’t alerted authorities. So that was where my involvement ended: with me resisting an urge to jump in. Yes, I felt an urge to stick my neck out, but I never understood why Fr. Deon and Elpido’s family thought I could do something. I was an American, an outsider. How could I as an outsider and an American influence anyone? Yet pressure was exerted on me to do something.
But I think Elpido’s time in prison benefited him. It gave him time think. During Elpido’s time in prison, I thought about how much easier it must be to take a certain course, endure setbacks, or survive deprivation when a person has the guidance of Allah or God. But even with guidance of Allah, Elpido had doubts, sown by his relationship with a Catholic friar. Elpido clearly looked up to Fr. Deon and looked to him for advice. Conflict caused by this dynamic must’ve been exceptional, though it proved to be inconsequential.
A footnote from BBC News: The Abu Sayyaf emerged in 1991 as the latest in a number of militant groups which have waged a 30-year campaign for a Muslim homeland in the south of Roman Catholic Philippines. The seeds of conflict were sown in the 14th Century, when Arab traders crossed the Indian Ocean and established Islam in the southern Philippine islands.
Chapter Thirty-five
Manila! Manila, the capital and pride of the nation! First light on our first day in Manila. We were suffering from jetlag and didn’t know what time it was. Heard from hotel bed: constant honking. Roxas Boulevard. Sweeping view of Manila Bay. Manila’s bay provided the city and the Philippines with a welcoming gateway, much in the same way as The Gateway to India did for Bombay and India. But there was a cloud hanging over the bay and Corregador, an island in the center of the bay, but we didn’t know it. Very few people talked about it then.
Palm trees lined the esplanade like a necklace. American Embassy overlooked the bay north of our hotel. Yacht Club was south of embassy and also north of hotel. We sat on the seawall. Morning walk through the Luneta. Cool breeze from bay. Stretching from Taft Avenue to the bay, the Luneta. One of the largest parks in Southeast Asia. Monument to national hero, Jose Rizal. Rizal Memorial Park. 58 hectors. A flag pole from where all distances in the Philippines were measured. Grass. Free benches, open spaces but very little shade. Free concerts. Families and lovers, bicyclist and chest players. In the morning joggers and tai-chi practitioners. At night a romantic rendezvous for lovers. Flowers, fountains, and less smog. Apart from a grassy expanse, an amphitheater, a playground, and a garden or two. A place to people watch, sit in the grass, relax in the sun, or just hangout. Tourist and Filipinos loved to hangout. The Pope was planning to come to town in the next few weeks. Maybe he’ll want to hangout.
Mabuhay. The Manila Hotel, best hotel in Manila, on grand Roxas Boulevard north of embassy. Showing off the authenticity of Philippine culture. Diplomatic meetings, power lunches, unforgettable weddings, and Happy Hour. Ask for MacArthur’s suite.
Nearby Fort Santiago next to the river, the Pasig. Manila was cut in two by the Pasig River. The Pasig when we knew it was very polluted. The Pasig separated the executive branch of government from Congress. Malacanang or the Presidential Palace sat on the north side of the river, and Congress on the south side. The embassy and the hotel, with Congress and the presidential palace as opposing square corners, formed a rectangular bastion of power. And for students this bastion was possibly as impenetrable as the walls of Intramuros or old Manila, but none of them seemed to believe it.
The Rajah Sulayman ruled the walled Moslem settlement that later became Intramuros. When the Spanish conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legaspi arrived in 1571, Rajah Sulayman fled north across the Pasig, to the area known today as Tondo. He lost his life at the Battle of Bangkusay Channel…a defeat that led to three hundred years of Spanish rule. Today, Manila sprawls on both banks of the Pasig and covers the entire area where this drama took place. Over eight million people lived within this area when we lived there.
Fort Santiago. The Spanish and Japanese used it as a prison. And around the Luneta were grand buildings of government and grand boulevards linking them. Manila, with its grand boulevards and grand buildings was designed to impress. They were indeed impressive. And the cathedral was impressive too, impressive and stark. It survived earthquakes and war. And the park in front of the old fort, grassy and with a flower clock. So come, take a stroll, have a picnic, sit on grass and eat barbecue. Here’s to peace and quiet. Small Moon. And be ready to answer “the site of whose execution?” “No, that was over there.”
The dungeons of Fort Santiago. Built by the Spaniards. The tourists kept coming. “Yes, prisoners were held here. And Americans too. MacArthur? Yes, the fort was his headquarters.” The same questions were answered a thousand times a day. “Yes. Where? Over there. No, not in the dungeons. The man was thirty-five years old. Shot at Bagumbayan Field, today known as the Luneta.” Then to everyone. “This is the cell where on the eve of his execution, Decemeber 29, 1896, Jose Rizal wrote an untitled poem, now known as ‘Ultimo Adios.’ A masterpiece but read it and decide for yourself.”
Quiapo Bridge. Transportation funnel of the city. Morning traffic intense. Constant traffic. The old church on the north side gave passengers a chance to pause and gesture the sign of the cross. Have you ridden a MRM Taxi, the UBL Bus Line, or JD Transit? Jeepnies?
East of the city, and north of the river, was Quezon City. Before Susan and I arrived, it was designated the capital of the Philippines, but they never moved the capital there. Instead, it was home of The University of the Philippines/Diliman. And the university was pretty far out. How long it took to get to the University of the Philippines from the Qiapo Bridge by bus depended on the season and the traffic. During rainy season streets flooded, and buses were much slower. With traffic, on a normal day, it took up to an hour. And most students depended on buses and jeepnies. Most people depended on them.
Manila Streets. We walked Manila’s streets looking for a place to live. Taft, of course. But what about Harrison or Forbes? Too expensive! Or Nebraska or Ohio? Sounded like home. In 1961 Azcarraga Street became Claro M. Recto Avenue. Some streets like Raon, Camba, Urbiztondo, Lardizabal and Gandara were named after Spanish governor-generals. Other names refered to Rizal and his novels, Basilio, Simoun, Sisa and Crisostomo. Two streets were named after his pen names, Laong Laan and Dimasalang. There was Tayuman named after the tayum plant, Antipolo Street, after the tipolo tree, and Isaac Peral Street, after the inventor of a submersible. There was Anloague for carpenters; Fundidor for foundry workers; Jaboneros for soap makers; Panaderos for bakers; and Labanderos for laundry men. City Districts north of the river were Binondo, Quiapo, Sampaloc, San Miguel, San Nicolas, Santa Cruz, Santa Mesa, and Tondo. We mustn’t forget Tondo. The other eight were Ermita, Intramuros, Malate, Paco, Pandacan, Port Area, San Andres, and Santa Andres. But whenever we got homesick we headed for Makati and the supermarket and Jack ‘n Jill Barbecue, Honey Pretzels, Plaza Pizza, and Big 20 Hamburgers. That was after we became truly situated.
In the center of the bay sat strategically the island of Corregidor … because of it and the bastions of Bataan and Cavite, the harbors of Manila were defensible. (Recognizing it America maintained a Naval Station on Cavite.) Still, when Dewey steamed into Manila Bay, he defeated the Spaniards almost without a fight, but the fight wasn’t over then by any means.
We saw disparity everywhere we looked, and I thought it was a threat to Manila and the country. The wealthy appeared well entrenched. Except for a few here and there, from Ermita and Malate to Malolos and Quezon City, most wealthy people lived within walled compounds (topped with broken glass and/or barbed-wire and protected by armed guards) or in large gated sub-divisions in and around Makati. These sub-divisions were built to provide homes for diplomats, airline pilots, and stockbrokers, or for people with similar resources. At the same time, slums mushroomed north of the Pasig in a district called Tondo. Nothing described squalor there. There was a massive invasion of squatters. Already densely populated with poor Chinese, the district became one of the worse slums and one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Added to the squalor (and misery) was a huge city dump, with garbage, smoke and stink, and where thousands more live, scavenging to survive. But this struggle and squatters weren’t limited to Tondo.
Chapter Thirty-six
Imelda was giving attention to an area just south of the Pasig and west of Taft Avenue over to the bay, which included Fort Santiago, Intramuros, the Luneta, Congress, and other government buildings (as well as a miniature golf course). Much of this area was constructed over centuries and then destroyed during liberation from the Japanese. But most of Intramuros hadn’t been rebuilt, and Fort Santiago … a national shrine where the national hero Jose Rizal was immortalized … remained a ruin, and as such a testament to the struggles of the Philippine people.
Although this area had always been a source of Philippine pride, it had been neglected over the years. Before Imelda, even with its venerated churches of St. Augustine and the Manila Cathedral (both survived the war), squatters, not to mention criminals, took over Intramuros and the Luneta, and do I dare say prostitution in the same breath as poverty? It got so bad that people avoided Intramuros, the Luneta, and the area around Fort Santiago, and it remained true until Imelda and De Roy Valencia, a columnist for the Manila Times, joined forces. (Mr. Valencia topped my list of people I had to meet.) Thanks to Imelda and Mr. Valencia this area became safe, almost free of crime, and had some of the cleanest restrooms in the world. Mr. Valencia stationed attendants in each restroom to clean each stall every time it was used and to bang on stalls each time they saw feet disappear. Moreover, there was a sense of urgency that was unprecedented. Projects that before then took months, even years, to complete were with Mr. Valencia’s clout and walky-talky finished in weeks. Whether it was for the creation of a flower clock or an outdoor theater, his orders were followed without question.
But despite this success and construction of huge public projects elsewhere, the government was unable to meet many public needs. And the population of Manila skyrocketed. A good deal of this increase came from migration from all over the country. Migration was a non-stop phenomenon. Migrants were drawn to the city for many reasons but the most obvious reason was to search for jobs. And jobs weren’t plentiful. So squatters not only invaded Tondo but also in places such as Malate where they lived without running water, sewer, and in primitive conditions. And ever-increasing numbers of people strained public services. Manila couldn’t keep up, and more people kept coming in search of a better life.
With this as a backdrop, students were demonstrating on campuses throughout Manila. And whenever I ran into one … demonstrations … I looked for Nick. The city had been a battleground before, but this time it became a battleground with militants wanting to overthrow Marcos and his puppets. It was a diverse group, led by students, so many different people that the movement couldn’t be dismissed. This was during Marcos’ second term, when disenchantment and frustration with him extended beyond an intellectual fringe. This created tension that could’ve erupted over almost anything.
During this period of unrest, it was hard to say who was leading whom: whether students at Ateneo were … or were activists from the University of the Philippines/Diliman? As activism grew at Ateneo, students faced expulsion and, as the government cracked down, they could expect violence. But the university administration tried its best to maintain a semblance of normalcy. Unlike what happened at the University of Philippines, Ateneo didn’t see any great battles. But students from all universities were involved to some extent. There were often three or four demonstrations going on at the same time, and no one could predict where the next one would be.
Though there were more and more demonstrations, most students weren’t activists. The majority went about the business of getting the best education they could, and whether at a private or public school, most of them thought it was still possible to transform Philippine society by peaceful means. But it all changed on January 26th (1970) of this year, when Marcos used brutal force against student demonstrators in front of the Congress building. To the students it seemed outrages, but it was even more outrages when riot police were unleashed on them.
To fully describe the events that took place would take a book, and from the 50,000 people who were there, you would get 50,000 different impressions.
To achieve their aims, students joined an assembly that had gathered to hear the President’s State of the Nation message and again I looked for Nick there. Some of them carried placards and burned Marcos in effigy (I looked for Nick to be one of them), but it was a violent reaction of the cops and the soldiers that awakened the public.
There was no rhyme or reason to how events unfolded. Some colegialas wandered off in boredom before it really got started, while priests and seminarians stood back from the crowd. But right below mikes and a podium set up for the President, there were restless, clamorous, chanting militants. (I thought I saw Nick among them.) They carried streamers bearing names of their organizations and waved placards in the air … none of them carried guns. I thought they were an amiable bunch and mingled with them as much as I could, while I looked for Nick. Since a permit gave them a right to demonstrate only up to 6:00 p.m., that was when they declared their demonstration officially over.
But passions were high, and just at that moment the President came out of the Congress building. The first scuffle was brief, and by the time it was over the President and the First Lady made their escape.
Then after the first attack by cops, demonstrators regrouped on the Luneta side of Congress. For the next two hours, a battle between cops and demonstrators continued, with one group charging and the other retreating, back and forth like that over and over again. There were three directions of retreat- north toward Maharnilad, south toward the Luneta, and west toward the golf course and Intramuros.
When a people’s will is suppressed and they protest and their protest is met by armed aggression, this is a recipe for even more acts of violence. There was more violence. And although the demonstration in front of the Congress building ended…and fallout from it was significant…Marcos’ reign on power didn’t ease. That first battle only led to more battles, and cries of ON TO MALACANANG!
They took to streets and battled over a sharp rise in bus and jeepny fares. A sharp rise in gas prices preceded this, and as tension across the city increased Manila became a battleground. They weren’t planning to take boulevards or seize buildings. It was more spontaneous than that. Then ON TO MALACANANG!
Some of them gathered on the Luneta, near Roxas Boulevard and Manila Bay. ON TO MALACANANG!
So when oil prices suddenly jumped causing fares across the city to also jump, they rioted and cried ON TO MALACANANG! A bus was overturned and burned! ON TO MALACANANG! Given the steep rise in the cost of oil, a jump in fares might’ve seemed justified. ON TO MALACANANG! Hardly a day went by without some sort of demonstration, or riot over something. ON TO MALACANANG! They marched across Quiapo Bridge and then on to Malacanang (the presidential palace).
Communists were often accused of being the instigators of trouble, but I’m not so sure. Yes, there were those like Nick who gave Mao’s success as an example of what could be done. But most activists, however, pointed out that they were inspired by the demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the United States. Even communist like Nick said they were fighting for one thing: genuine democracy. Some activist will look back on what they did on January 26th and tell their children that’s where the road to revolution began: that it all started on the steps of Congress.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Filipinos portrayed as friendly, polite, hospitable and musical. Amok Filipinos run amok. Everywhere leftovers from colonialism. Now called imperialism. Everyone studied Rizal, national hero, national novelist and poet, national martyr, invoking other heroes. Who killed Magellan? Datu Lapulapu. Conducted the longest revolt? Dagohoy. Conspired with the British? Diego? Murdered? Gabriela Silang. Self-taught Father of the Philippine revolution? Andres Bonifacio. Propagandist? Marcelo H. Del Pilar. Brains of the revolution? Emilio Jacinto. Wife of Andres Bonifacio, who fought beside her husband? Gregoria de Jesus. Greatest general of the revolution? Antonio Luna.
Chinese dinner at a Cantonese restaurant on Mabini Street with Nick. Mabini Street: shopping emporium with stores, restaurants, and sidewalk venders. Where you would buy shoes, eat sweet and sour pork, and haggle over a box of Post Corn Flakes.
Littered with broken glass, parts of the city were flooded by snapped water mains. Walls and roofs of many Old Spanish stone houses and churches outside town crumbled. Most of Manila’s buildings, designed to withstand quakes, were built of bolted timbers. They withstood the shock better. President Marcos proclaimed a state of emergency.
4:21 a.m. Friday. Rolled through an 800-kilometer stretch from Aparri in Cagayan to Samar in 33 seconds. Shook bed. Ceiling went one way; floor the other way. 33 seconds seemed like forever. Pitch darkness. Then Fire! Terrified, rushed out of apartment building. Come to find out, neighbors lit candles after quake. Across town, on Doroteo Jose and Teordora Alonzo streets, in Santa Cruz, six-story Ruby Towers apartment building collapsed. Building collapsed “like a house of cards.” 342 people died. 6,000 volunteers dug with their hands for over a week to extricate bodies and survivors. Hard, dangerous work. Red Cross …served coffee and sweets. A yell went out each time a body was found. More hands and more volunteers, working night and day as fast as they could through rubble. Masked because of dust and death. 125 hours after the quake miracle: two girls pulled out alive. Now, two years later: accusations.
No soil exploration. No slump tests. Poor design. Deficient construction. Inadequate inspection and supervision. On the 1,293-square-meter property stood a two-story building, room for shops, an eatery, and a club. On building’s top floor was Ruby Tower temple. Most people who lived in Ruby Towers were Chinese-Filipinos.
Visited Ruby Towers site with Nick, who had an apartment nearby. Town packed solid, inside, outside. Streets packed with buses, trucks, and colorful ubiquitous jeepnies. Concrete surrounding but for parks. Crowded inner-city alleys leading away from main streets. Broken sidewalks and open sewers underfoot. Overhead, excessive power lines. Major arteries jammed with traffic…colonial-era bridges. Under Quiapo bridge, a market for tourist. Topside, an old church. More pollution. Smog. Flooded during rainy season. Miserable water pressure. Kids draining water hydrides for their families. Nick said, “They have to fetch water at night and often miss school because of it.” Ducked down narrow lane to his front door. Reminded me of my doorway. People living on top of each other. More crowded than London. No courtyard. No room for it. Went into apartment. It all looked familiar. Cement floor. Small kitchen. Toilet without a seat. A few shelves of books: a desk, a sofa, love seat. No fan. “It gets very hot in here during the day,” Nick said. “I have a window upstairs next to my bed. But I keep the window closed. My neighbors yell at each other all the time. I hear everything.” I wondered how much they knew about Nick. Always fighting. Nick explained how he was lucky, how his rent was cheap, and how his building survived the earthquake. Lucky to have a pump. Paid extra for pump. Pump a necessity because of lack of water pressure. Nick’s anti-imperialism, anti-war attitude had my sympathy. Millions of things happened to Nick … bad things I wouldn’t go into details about because he was still emotional about it.
Looked at old guidebooks of Manila. Saw that the city was once called The Pearl of the Orient … much of it was destroyed during the Liberation of Manila. Some people still described the city as beautiful; a great many more wouldn’t go that far. Many more were nervous rather than optimistic.
But here we had more people living in less space than almost any other place on earth. Here we had rich people living next door to poor people and the only thing that often separated them was a wall and a guard. Here we had a city that had an infrastructure that was inadequate because the city grew out of control. Broad boulevards connected the city but were often clogged beyond belief. Perhaps you’d want to avoid squatter areas, particularly those that sprung up recently.
You may choose a stroll through the Luneta or down the esplanade along the bay. You may want to stay in safe areas, though determining what was safe seemed problematic. Yet Manila was considered one of the safest big cities in the world.
You may want to take a cruise for a day and relive a little history. Everyday, except when there was a typhoon, you could take a cruise to Corregidor.
Do you feel homesick? No need for it. Manila offered a little bit of everything. So name your poison. As an American, you’d feel at home. Still want more? Ask a cab driver. You could pay for a ride for an hour or a day. Be sure you negotiate before you get in a cab. But if you want a slower pace, you could hail a pedicab… still willing to peddle you and your belongings to a hotel of your choice. Ermita and Malate were where a large number of tourist hotels were located. For reasonable dinning consider Mabini Street.
Please, please, pardon our mess, as we’re experiencing growing pains. Most hazards were temporary. You may have to cross street but it only showed how earnestly we were trying to solve our problems. But let us assure you that these problems were truly temporary. We had to absorb a vast number of refugees who came to Manila looking for a brighter future. Well, you say, “so have many other cities.” You ask, “What makes Manila different?” We like to think it’s the temperament and the resilience of our people.
Our hopes and dreams of a bright future lie in the hands of people who have come here from all over the Philippines. They may begin with nothing. They prefer to live here because of opportunities here. So Mabuhay or welcome! You are always welcome in Manila, The Pearl of Orient. Let us live in peace for everyone’s benefit.
On her way home from school, Susan stopped at the supermarket in Makati, a weekly routine, and picked up a few goodies we had to have. This supermarket, so different from any other market in the Philippines, was like most supermarkets in the United States Aisles were wide, wide enough to accommodate huge shopping carts. Shelves and freezers were full, full of products from around the world. There were checkout lines, with cash registers and checkers, which was different from other stores or shops in Manila, which rarely specialized in more than one or two items and relied on clerks who served customers directly. (Most busy Filipinos had maids, who shopped each day in open-air markets.) In back of the supermarket was a parking lot, with a security guard, where customers from nearby Forbes Park and other subdivisions parked their cars. The supermarket reflected modernity and western influence and tastes of rich people who lived and worked in the area. As was her custom, Susan bought something special for me, a treat from home, but also something for our maid Linda, something that would expand her horizons. Susan couldn’t wait to spring her surprises on Linda. Linda had learned to adapt Philippine dishes to our American tastes.
Linda claimed she found us. Before she moved in with us, she lived in a shanty in a squatter’s area. Before she moved in with us, she lived with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their eight children. They all lived as one big happy family, all eleven of them in two rooms, with adjoining bathing and cooking areas. We never knew what Linda’s family did to survive, but we were told repeatedly that we paid Linda too much.
I asked her if she was happy living with us.
She said, “yes.” But on principle, we shouldn’t have paid her so much. By paying her too much we were creating inflation. While we could afford it most people couldn’t or wouldn’t. With what we paid her, Linda was able to save money, and we never knew how much she gave her sister. We considered it none of our business.
Linda usually had our evening meal ready soon after Susan got home, and over a meal we talked about our day … Susan about her day at the International School, me about my adventures good or bad, while Linda rarely said anything.
As a reporter, I was able to ingratiate myself with a Moro rebel and a Communist radical, but my articles hadn’t made us much money. So we relied on Susan’s salary, which by Philippine standards was fairly decent.
I asked Linda where she lived before she moved to Manila and started living with her big sister.
“We lived near San Fernando, not far from Manila, and we grew rice. Most of it went to our landlord,” she said.
I asked her how it worked.
She seemed hesitant. ”It depended,” she said. “Supposing it was a bad crop… a bad year … then most of it went to our landlord because our lease remained the same. The most he could take from us was all of it. In San Fernando, I had to find work, or go to Angeles, where as a girl there was always work; yet I heard from my sister that there were more opportunities in Manila…so I moved here. Then, too, I could make more money in Angelas.” She didn’t elaborate, but we knew what she was talking about. “But I want to get married someday. And as girls, we went to church. Landlords who don’t need money shouldn’t be so hard on tenants when crops are not good, because who wants to have their daughters go to Angelas. I know I am very lucky. See how it worked out for me, but it doesn’t work out for everybody.”
As we sat down for dinner, she said, “I paid my sister rent when I lived with her. She got used to the rent that I was paying to her, so now with what you pay me I’m able to keep it up and since you don’t charge me anything to live here. We all must help each other when we can.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
From our apartment on Taft Avenue, I went to an appointment with Vincente de la Cruz, who was now facing censorship. Vincente was very open and frowned constantly. His frown seemed to come from his intense nature. What seemed to come from his intense nature? His constant frowning.
“At least I have a film in the can, waiting distribution,” he said. “We’re going through a tumultuous period, and it could go in a number of directions. There are students, God bless them. There are students I think who are playing into the hands of Marcos. They don’t realize it. They don’t realize that they’re setting fires that they won’t be able to contain. Meanwhile Marcos cracks down. And then someone asks, ‘aren’t we a democracy?’ and Marcos loosens up. Then maybe all we have to do is call his bluff. Only he’s not bluffing. Then there are those of us who know that all the president has to do is turn loose his goons. The official reports never jive with facts. If they did, Marcos might lose. Wonderful, to shift suspicion elsewhere, he needs someone like me to stage an attempted coups. Obviously, instead, someone whispered in his ear and said, “’Sir, Mr. de la Cruz is a dangerous man. Therefore, we must keep his latest movie off the screen.’ My movie, however, isn’t radical enough. But my next movie will be. It will be like tossing a hand grenade into a crowd.”
I asked him what he thought Marcos would do next.
“Marcos doesn’t know what he’s doing now,” he said. “We are a people who have been led by our noses for too much of our history. Most of our heroes were either executed or were failures. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Meanwhile, students fall behind in their studies.”
After I found an editorial friend of mine in his office, we enjoyed a drink together. He was rushed and had a deadline to meet. He was always rushed but always found time for a drink. His English was perfect, and his comments were balanced. I don’t know if he was fair.
“ … If I had a crystal ball I’d say Marcos would win this spat. He won easily round one. But I’m nervous and know the Philippine people. I see them stuffing their rage until they eventually explode. I told Imelda this, and she, bless her soul, didn’t disagree with me. Since she shares a pillow with the president, I hope my warnings are repeated. At some point I may have to go into exile because of where I sit. ‘On the fence’ some say. Meanwhile, I have to sweat it out. You never know.”
As I wandered around Manila, I kept asking myself, “What am I doing here?” I sought out people on both sides, people on the fence, and people who weren’t paying attention. There were those who were struggling to stay alive. They literally had nothing more to lose. For them, slogans had no meaning, politicians were a threat, and students were from a different planet. Abandoned, they were aliens in their own country, whereas I was an alien far away from mine.
The sprawling University of the Philippines campus in Diliman (Quezon City) was by and large open. It was built around an oval formed where Manuel Roxas Avenue and Sergio Osmena Avenue met. It was lined with benches and trees and important buildings such as Palma Hall. Quezon Hall housed the administration, and was situated behind and, with its elevated and colonnaded façade, dwarfed the Oblation- a sculpture of a young naked man by Guillermo Tolentino. The sculpture greeted everyone. At the campus entrance, the Oblation signified the act of offering oneself in the service of the nation.
The plaza in front of the sculpture was where students confronted cops and the military. And many of the demonstrations took place in front Palma Hall. Nick met me on the steps and was dressed in a white embroidered polo and a loose pair of slacks. He had a book under his arm. A number of students, also in polo shirts, were using the steps to go to and from class, chatting and laughing along the way. Nick introduced me to a group of them. I didn’t catch their names.
I asked Nick what was being done about squatters on campus.
“So far it’s not a problem. They’re members of our alumni who we all know. I’m not kidding. And we’re known as the University of the Poor, and to have the administration evict them would send a wrong signal. Students would scream, and I ‘d hope the faculty would join them. Why didn’t you give me a heads-up about you sneaking back into Mindanao? I might’ve wanted to go too. We could’ve planned another trip around Christmas and the New Year. I’d think you’d have the courtesy to at least tell me your plans.”
I asked for his forgiveness and quickly change the subject. I wanted to go without stirring up things. There was enough hostility down there without creating more.
Next I met a student leader by the name of Ben. He helped organize most demonstrations on campus. We also met on the steps of Palma Hall. We exchanged small talk.
“I’m studying law,” Ben told me. ”Originally I thought I’d go into politics. Now politics make me sick, but I wouldn’t say I’ve gotten politics out of my system. Ninoy Aquino should be president.
A friend of his walked up. Ben introduced him as his point man.
“The country’s greatest problem is complacency,” Ben’s friend observed. ”People generally do nothing. They generally do nothing because they think our problems are unsolvable.”
Another student wearing glasses then joined us. She was Ben’s girlfriend, and her duties included keeping track of him. “Ben has to be encouraged,” she says. “Since our freshman year, we’ve come very far. Ben often doesn’t see it. But things are about to break. I see trouble ahead.”
“Ttrouble? Trouble? What specifically is being done about squatters on campus,” I asked for the second time that day. “As I’ve gone around Manila, I’ve seen squatters in many places, and I’m told that there’s not much that can be done about them. Well, I know what I’d do. I’d give them all lollipops.”
The “Trialogue,” a small room at the far left end of “student owned” Vinzons Hall (the student activities building) became a hangout for young activist. It served as headquarters for demonstrators. That was where Ben and his girlfriend took me. Surprisingly I was accepted, after Ben introduced me as a “neutral” journalist. Brown leather couches with matching coffee tables helped make the room a cozy place.
“With persistence, we’re making headway with President Lopez,” one of the students told me. “He arranged for Marcos to come to the campus and discuss vital matters and from that our eighteen demands were met. Mayor Amoranto assures us that the Quezon City police won’t enter our campus without a written request from the university.”
He stood up, went to the door, and looked down the hall, giving someone else an opportunity to say something to me. “Because of our general strike and because we shut down the university, Lopez was forced to issue Executive Order Number One. It gave greater autonomy to all student organizations. Now maybe we can get the university to release some money. We’ve asked for a lot of things. But it’s only a beginning.”
Dean Felixberto Sta. Maria (President Lopez wouldn’t see me), dean of the College of Education, was then feeling heat. “Students are after my hide because I won’t give them everything they want,” he informed me, after warmly welcoming me into his office. “There’s still a process in place that allows them to air complaints.”
I said something about how unrest seemed to be growing.
“You have to realize that we have repeatedly given in and that a line has to be drawn.. Of course, I’m not opposed to organized opposition and believe in academic freedom. Now about the question you raise about unrest, perhaps it should be organized in ways that classes are not disrupted. But in a democracy you can’t control everything. That’s why governments such as ours get into trouble. But I’ve so far been able to keep doors open, as demonstrated by Marcos coming himself to the university, not once but twice.”
After my visit with the dean, I went to see Nick at his apartment. He still had a Chinese flag, a Red Chinese flag hanging on his wall. He talked to me as he finished a bowl of noodles. To me he enjoyed making slurping sounds. He asked me how I got into see Dean Felixberto Sta. Maria.
“I’m surprised that you know about it,” I said. “Between appointments, he squeezed me in. He spent most of the time defending himself.”
Nick heated water for tea on a hotplate and went on talking about the dean isolating himself. “Even when we do get in to see him, he claims he can’t make changes any quicker because we live in a democracy,” he said. “It’s a joke. Marcos certainly hasn’t paid attention to the Constitution. It has taken a general strike to get as far as we have. We were only asserting our rights.”
I asked him what he thought would happen next.
And he gave me a vague reply, and said, “Marcos has friends on campus, and by friends I’m talking about informers, even within various student groups. Marcos thinks by giving us a few cookies he can pacify us and save his own skin. There have already been students arrested for nothing but exercising their rights.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
At a Christmas carnival in Makati, I met Susan and a fellow teacher and her husband. They’d talked me into going with them to a movie at the opulent Rizal Theater. The three of them had been shopping. It was Susan’s idea that we hook up with another American couple. It was my first chance to talk to someone who worked for a large American corporation in Manila.
Jeff turned out to be a tall, smart New Englander. He had an equally bright wife. She was teaching her second year at the Manila International School and didn’t have to work if she didn’t want to. He loved his job.
I asked him about his world.
“I am not an executive at OMB,” he said, emphasizing OMB. “I’m not essential. I can easily be replaced. Why then am I here when I can’t hold a managerial position over a Filipino? At least official, I can’t. Per an agreement OMB has with God-knows-who, there can be only so many of us here in Manila, but they tell me I’m essential when I’m not. I guess I’m essential because … because the company has a bias. They will not admit that they have a bias, but they do. The company doesn’t like to admit that there are as many of us here … as many Americans as there are and would deny that they had any Americas working for them here if they could. I detest the charade. I do my job. I like to think they can’t do without me. I came over here two years ago expecting within a year’s time to train myself out of a position, but the way it’s going I expect to be here another two years. We’re contributing to this country, and I’m training people who should be able to someday run the whole show.”
I asked him about how he felt about the recent unrest in Manila.
“It’s unfortunate. But it’s the same back home. I however think it’s safer over here. Over here we live in a gated community. Back home I don’t think we could afford it.”
They happened to live in Forbes Park and in a nice house on a lot with a swimming pool. Should the need arise, they not only had around-the-clock protection of security guards but also protection of an army.
Marcos had just detained Vincente de la Cruz, the award winning Philippine filmmaker, actor, director, who was known for his hard punches. They questioned him harshly before they let him go. It wasn’t generally known that he was picked up but few people would’ve been surprised. He had a reputation for being tough on the aristocracy and critical of the president.
In his most recent film, shot almost exclusively in Quiapo (he wrote it), society was depicted as degenerate and corrupt. Expensive cars were seen crawling down narrow streets. It was always about money, an obsession of the rich and the poor … about obscenities of the rich as they snubbed the poor, with the Pasig as a metaphor … the polluted Pasig. But the most damning part was Vincente’s focus on hypocrisy of politicians, particular those in power. But to point a finger at Marcos was dangerous. That was why he was detained.
To catch up with Vincente, I went to a tenement building in Tondo, a neglected, half-completed structure, where he was shooting a documentary with a small crew and a hand-held camera. Children were playing nearby. In front of the building, more children were playing soccer with a ball that had seen better days. (Vincente never missed small details and would certainly capture this one.) Inside was a dark, hollow lobby. It was once a palatial place but now felt like a tomb with dirt and graffiti all over the floor and walls. There were also piles of trash on the floor and here and there junk. In one corner, a couple of men sat on the floor, asleep or drunk, which I half expected to see. Down two halls were stairs to other floors and doors to small apartments. They had a few windows and kitchens and bathrooms, and bedrooms, but no running water. This was home to thousands of people.
I asked Vincente how he was received. I assumed that people living there were not thrilled with their plight.
“People generally want to be in movies. From the number of movie theaters in Manila, over 400, you can see how popular movies are. Since I’m well known, and because of the kind of stories I tell, I’m kind of a hero. Almost all of my films have been successful, and that was why I think I wasn’t detained any longer than I was. Marcos wants to gag me, but he knows that he has to be careful. He’d like for me to be on his side … have me betray myself and betray Philippine people. I think people here realize that I’m on their side.”
I asked him what he intended to do.
“It’s obvious that Marcos intends to hold onto power and that he’ll do anything to hold onto it,” he said. “People here are symbolic of our nation … poor, struggling, and oppressed, and by and large forgotten. But they see how students are standing up to Marcos and may even have children involved. They know about the general strike at UP. I want to see what impact this has made. Are they thinking of joining a much bigger struggle? Or are they too embroiled in their day to day struggles to care? I think Marcos is a fool, and I don’t have to say why I think it.”
As he continued to shoot his documentary and we continued to talk, it became clear that Vincente had joined the ranks of radicals and that he was far from complacent. Yet one thing set him apart, and this was that he had a huge following.
“I had my own awakening when I was very young,” he told me. “My father was a bigamist. He was charged with bigamy and afterwards chose his first wife over my mother. She then had to raise me on her own. I saw how she struggled. Now aren’t the contradictions apparent?”
The Congress building on Burgos Drive, opposite a parking lot and a grassy sidewalk that formed an embankment above a mini golf course housed both Houses since it opened in 1950. Built in a neoclassical style, the edifice was remarkable for Corinthian pillars that line a vast colonnade and pilasters that supported every wall. The design of the nearby Manila Post Office was considered superior with its channeled Greek-Ionic columns.
Vincente, a chunky Filipino in his late twenties with a constant frown wore a loose fitting Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. Because of the bright sun he wore sunglasses. “The post office was almost totally destroyed during the war. This building didn’t open until 1950.” Vincente said, as he shot footage of the area around the Congress building. “Manuel Roxas became our first president when independence was granted, as scheduled, on July 4, 1946, and yes, it was on the 4th of July. But in my estimation, true independence never occurred. It was then that we signed a military assistance pact with your country, giving your country a 99-year lease on existing military bases. Since then your country has helped itself to a huge slice of our economy. And as presidents came and went, not much changed.”
I wanted to argue with Vincente but I couldn’t. I am of medium height, lean, clean-cut and normally not very hard to get along with. “Although to a certain degree I agree with you, I don’t think you can honestly blame all of your problems on the US.”
I then asked him how he became an activist.
“My mother sent me to a private Catholic school, run by American nuns, and it gave me a taste of honey-sweet brutality,” Vincente said. “The nuns ruled with rulers, and after that experience … well, after that experience … I was radicalized. I’ve since portrayed fascists and heroes, crybabies and big shots. Our problems aren’t going away anytime soon. Say we want to buy toothpaste, why don’t we have more choices. Colgate, that’s our word for toothpaste. Thus I make the films I do, of themes about petty and gross injustices, with popular movie stars, and perhaps popular melodrama, but I stay away from pure propaganda. The minimum requirement for me is realism.”
”May I ask,” I asked. “What are you doing now, and why, to the extent you have, have you concentrated on this building? The thing I’ve noticed is that you’ve avoided photographing people. I don’t see where you’re going.”
“No, no. I don’t talk about my films until they’re in the can.”
Chapter Forty
Revolt had been a time-honored tradition in the Philippines … beginning with Lapu-Lapu’s assault on Magellan to the Katipunan revolt and the martyrdom Bonifacio and Rizal. I dug into this history and thought I knew as much about it as any American. “Rizal walked to the place of execution. Kept looking around as if seeking or expecting to see someone. He said in a loud voice his last words, ‘It is finished.’”
After shooting all he could that day, Vincente took me to the site where the Spanish executed Jose Rizal on December 30, 1896. (Some people think that the Rizal Monument, which contains the hero’s remains, is located on the exact spot, but it isn’t … though like the monument it lies within the Luneta.) Vincente seemed nervous, so we didn’t stay long. He still gave me a description of what happened there that day in 1896.
Vincente wanted to get details right and told me that Rizal wasn’t the only patriot executed there. He reminded me that many Philippine heroes were executed: some garroted, some hanged, and some shot.
“As the shots rang out, Rizal turned and fell face up. The execution wouldn’t put an end to Jose Rizal, and numerous visitors attracted to his monument each day proved it.
Executed for crimes that were unfounded … the American colonial government had every reason to turn Rizal into a national hero.” I knew we were standing on sacred ground but didn’t understand why Vincente felt so nervous. Did it have anything to do with me?
I daresay that politicians that came and went that afternoon from the Congress building felt suspicious when they saw Vincente with his camera. And possibly also people who came and went from the post office. And possibly they were suspicious enough to notify authorities. Or maybe authorities were already onto Vincente. You’d think that Rizal’s Monument would’ve been a less conspicuous place to shoot a movie.
When I came to the Philippines, I knew almost nothing about the history of the Philippines. Most of the little that I did know came from American history books. I hadn’t read a full account of the war we fought to secure the Philippines for ourselves … how we defeated the First Philippine Republic “to save the new country from itself.” To save the new country from itself, or as McKinley put it, “there was nothing left for us to do but to take it (the Philippines) in order to educate and uplift and Christianize them.”
It was Nick who first called my attention to the insignificance of Rizal … the insignificance of a national hero … or comparatively insignificant. It seemed strange that he would say it and that standing on the spot where Rizal was executed made Vincente nervous. Comparatively insignificant? How could he say it? People can say anything, I guess.
Vincente then took me to the people’s theater in Fort Santiago, already in full swing then. I was fortunate enough to meet there some of the country’s most popular, and perhaps greatest, movie stars. All of these stars worked for Vincente at one time or another. I was dazzled by the production, which included explosions of a real cannon and the appearance of a live horse. There were at least half a dozen movie stars in it, each trying to upstage the other.
I spent time thinking about the significance of the play in relationship to its setting, to the theater and its location (nearby were dungeons used by the Spanish and the Japanese) and historical connections that seemed so obvious. None of it tallied with what I was taught in school. But since coming to the Philippines, my perspective changed. And it gave me a better understanding why there was an uproar over America’s continued presence in the Philippines, as epitomized by our military bases. The name of the play was “Hindi Aco Patay,” or “I’m Not Dead Yet.”
They tried to be true to the period and as realistic as possible. They presented Andres Bonifacio as the hero and the martyr that he was (as well as brave young men and women who defended the black-lettered flag of the Katipunan). Though the actors were often too melodramatic for me, I applauded them for their enthusiasm.
While watching the play, I saw present-day parallels. A “ladrone-insurrecto” band was formed and armed just as students I saw were demonstrating and arming themselves … this band successfully drove a force of constabulary off the streets just as students I knew took to the streets and marched on to Malacnang. The students I met shared the same destiny as the insurectos of the play, many of whom faced imprisonment and death in the dungeons of Fort Santiago.
There were many scenes that showed brutality of Americans and goodness of Filipinos, and with what I learned, it was hard to dismiss it as pure propaganda. The audience received the play with great enthusiasm, the actors were genuinely appreciative, and in gratitude the audience gave them a standing ovation. So I leaped forward and gave the audience credit for clearly making a connection between the Katipunan of old and the Kabataang Makabayan of my day,
Okay, perhaps I went overboard, namely by embracing almost everything I learned from my Filipino friends. To me the past was not dead. I could easily accept blame for mistakes and crimes of my countrymen, while overlooking goodness and valor that went along with the bad and the ugly. Anyhow I was there and, like it or not, had become part of the history of this country. It was with these thoughts that I sat through the play “Hindi Aco Patay” or “I’m Not Dead Yet” at Fort Santiago and tried to imagine what it would’ve like to have been locked up in the dungeons next to the theater with water up to my neck.
It was with these thoughts that I visited the dungeons after seeing the play. I spent a great deal of time down there trying to imagine what it was like … what it was like for American and Filipinos prisoners. But they had sanitized the dungeons, with brick walkways for tourist and had turned a horrible place into a place that belied its history as a torture chamber and a deathtrap.
At the same time I walked through the dungeons, I was trying to sort out my life. I had high school buddies who were fighting and perhaps dying in Vietnam, and where was I? Some said, incredibly that they were fighting to defeat communism, maintaining that if Vietnam fell the rest of Southeast Asia would also fall. And where was I? Would I admit that I knew Nick, a Philippine communist, a Maoist, and we became friends?
Andres Bonifacio, who Filipinos honored as the true Father of the Philippine Revolution, vowed to fight Spaniards regardless of the cost. Andres, along with Ladislao Diva, Teodoro Plata and Deodato Arellano, created the Katipunan, planned a revolt, and issued a cry that would be remembered as the First Cry of Balintawak. It was then that they tore up their cedulas (papers) and shouted long live the Philippines.
Katapunan then, Kabataang Makabayan now, Kabataang Makabayan forever! I listened to them yell “Katapunan then, Kabataang Makabayan now, Kabataang Makabayan forever!”
“Katapunan then, Kabataang Makabayan now, Kabataang Makabayan forever!” Long Live the Philippines!
We recalled the memory of Bonifacio on his 101st birthday,
When a struggle, like ours, was a struggle against tyranny,
When like now a legal struggle had reached the white wall of futility,
When like now Bonifacio’s beacon of courage was most needed,
Once, 101 years go, a great hero came out of the proletariat,
And inspired a nation so long dominated by a foreign power,
LONG LIVE THE PHILIPPINES!
Thus issued a cry, the Second Cry of Balintawak! Long Live the Philippines!
I stood there and shouted LONG LIVE THE PHILIPPINES!
But we must have friends…
That a developing nation can’t survive without help of friends
We’re expect to be friends after everything they’ve done for us
Can expect that friendship will cost us something, as we’re expected to ask for help.
One of the students carried the black-lettered flag of the Katupunan as they marched ON TO MALACANANG! Long Live the Philippines!
Chapter Forty-one
Nick knew all about Kabataang Makabayan, which was founded on November 30, 1964, the 101st birthday of Andres Bonifacio. He knew more about Kabataang Makabayan than Vincente did and became personally involved. It caught Nick’s imagination, just as it caught the imagination of many other students. They relied on the organization. They needed the organization. They needed to organize. Why, this was what Bonifacio would’ve wanted! This is what Bonifacio would’ve done. This was unfinished business. This was the unfinished Philippine revolution, while it was a new democratic revolution.
Vestiges of colonialism. Everywhere he looked Nick saw vestiges of colonialism. In the grand Manila Hotel, where comprados and imperialist still met and brokered deals … on splendid Ayala Avenue … on splendid Ayala Avenue in Makati, whose tall buildings dwarfed everything except some new hotels … and in the Palasyo ng Malakanyang, the Philippine White House built by a Spanish merchant, which like the U.S. Embassy itself, were some of the places where Nick saw vestiges of colonialism. Again Nick said it all stunk. There was no way to escape it, no relaxation of America’s parity, or American bullshit … according to him. ”Just think,” he said, “where we would be if we hadn’t been bled, soaked, screwed, and as coffers of our leaders swelled. And they call it fair.”
Pointing a finger at Washington, Nick accused Marcos of selling out. Thinking pointing a finger at Washington helped, Nick accused Marcos. “Even after granting us our independence, they controlled our economy and politicians!” he said. “The same old families are beholding in the same old ways, the same as they have been for three hundred years. You can name them, name them by name… a breed born into money and privilege.”
I listened to Nick’s debate in the “student own Trailogue.” The Kabataang Makabayan, wasn’t mentioned by him; whereas Mao was given credence: “maybe you’re afraid of sinking, and if you think about it, you will” (Mao said). But on whose side was Marcos? The battle lines were drawn.
A student sitting on a comfortable, leather sofa went on and on about the First Lady’s pet projects (there was now grass in the Luneta and a flower clock in front of Fort Santiago), and how money could be better spent on garbage collection. So much for logic! But let us not forget how much of an eyesore those places were.
“The ruling system is rotten. It was first brought here from Spain and then America. We allowed it to get out of control; we nurtured it, and it strangled us. Now roots planted in our fertile soil choke us. Our tropical climate was perfect for it. As we organize and arouse masses, we enjoy our televisions and go to Makati whenever we get a chance.”
Vincente continued to film the city from the bridges across the Pasig. He shot the Mexican Baroque façade of the Church of the Black Nazarene, where thousands of devotees came every day to light candles. And Miranda Plaza nearby, where politicians frequently held rallies. Inside Paco Cemetery (where Rizal was first buried) with its empty crypts (rumored to have been robbed by Emelda). In the course of a day, Vincente shot the Lapidas in Paco, the Ocampo Pagoda and the Mosque del Globo del Oro in Quiapo, the Plaridel Corner in Miranda Plaza, and the iron gates of the Palasyo ng Malakanyang. Everywhere people were rushing and going about their business, and yet he wasn’t focused on people. Vincente still didn’t know what his next film would be about. .
They raised their bolos, tore up their cedulas, and yelled “Mabuhay ang bayang Pilipinas!” What remained of Balintawak? An old tree. Now Bonifacio lay in state in an urn in the Congress Building on Burgos Boulevard.
As weeks went by, Vincente still felt stuck, mainly because of the status of his latest film (still censored) and because footage he just shot looked as if an amateur shot it. He didn’t like feeling stuck, and he certainly wasn’t an amateur.
I wandered around Tondo, looking for a story. I remembered when Nick brought me to a tenement building in Tondo. I remembered the building and the people in it, but only vaguely remembered where it was. I couldn’t get there on my own. I asked an old man where Bonifacio was born. He said something about Tutuban and when I asked directions to Tutuban I was directed to an old train station built in the 1800’s. The area was a commercial center with a myriad of merchants all trying to get my attention. I looked for a marker, but there wasn’t anything … no monument, nothing to show where Bonifacio was born. Nothing, except … except a street name. There was a street named after the hero of Balintawak Bonifacio. From the station, I walked south on Bonifacio Dr., trying to get my bearings. Along the way a boy, not more than ten, attached himself to me. I asked him if he knew Bonifacio. He told me to follow him and led me on a roundabout trip down a number of passageways and roads into the neat newly swept courtyard of his elementary school. It was in session.
From each classroom I heard recitations of various lessons in English. Over one of the doors was a sign indicating the Office, where there was a reception area with a counter behind which several people were working. Behind me stood the boy who brought me there and standing behind the counter was a friendly woman who greeted us both.
The principal, who came out of his office when we entered, was tall for Filipinos and appeared to be in his late fifties. He had his hair trimmed neetly and looked like a Filipino dignitary, in neatly pressed trousers and a fancy polo shirt.
Mr. Hernandez had been the principal of the Pilar Elementary School for many years. He had reached an age when he enjoyed prestige he earned and had started thinking about leaving it behind. After the boy ran off to class, Mr. Hernandez ushered me into his office. I told him about my interest in Bonifacio and how disappointed I was not to find anything that indicated that he ever lived in Tondo. “You’re right,” he said. “All of us who love our country should honor Bonifacio more than we do. It’s hard when there’s so much more that concerns us, but people who live here in Tondo should have a greater appreciation for our native son than others do. It’s not surprising though when there are so many people living on the edge or working seven days a week, but people who live and work here are essential for our country. They’re not lazy, and most of them have strong feelings about the Philippines … about Filipino traditions, Filipino music and Filipino food. When a festival comes along or say a wedding … honoring a saint perhaps…they all show up. Each year we have festivals here at school…the tradition perhaps goes back to Bonifacio. Everyone wants to get involved, but I always say there won’t be a festival unless our dance troupe, our Glee Club and teachers choral group, and our rondalla, all practice year around, and they do, and I’m quite proud of them. But I don’t expect my parents to know as much as my students do. I don’t expect them to know much about new math or our history. My students are generally eager to learn; their parents generally encourage them. We often win competitions, and display trophies so that our parents can see them. I’m very proud. But I’m always a little disappointed with our parents. A general criticism is that as a rule they don’t get involved enough. But then, even as a group, what can they do? They’ve been left out. They live from day to day. They live simple lives revolving around work and family. They’re completely wrapped up in surviving. Like I said, they’re forgotten. When they’re not working, they’re eating and sleeping.”
I asked Mr. Hernandez how he avoided the same fate.
“I’m not from Tondo. Don’t get me wrong … Tondo has produced some our greatest, most prestigious leaders,” he said. “I chose to come to Tondo, when I was teaching in Pasay and I came then to this school. I decided to stay and hoped someday that they’d give me the school. They did. At the time Magsaysay was president, and I got invited to hear in person his State of the Nation Address. Talk about history. In a sense, I’m a historical figure. All of my students know I love history, which is why I know so much about Bonifacio.”
Chapter Forty-two
To catch Vincente de la Cruz, a friend, I rode a motorized tricycle to his home, which he shared with his partner and his dog, a Great Dane. Passing through an ornate gateway, down a narrow walkway, and into an inner courtyard with a huge mango tree that provided a canopy for most of the day, I stood at Vincente’s front door. I used a heavy knocker to gain entrance. A vestibule led into a spacious living room. On the walls hung a collection of modern art, a mixture of western and Filipino art. The pieces were mostly abstract. All were signed and reflected taste of an eclectic and sophisticated man. Among them there were a couple of nudes.
A grand piano sat in a prominent place. Around a sofa and a couple of easy chairs were an assortment of conversational pieces from various places: among other things all the instruments for a gamelan from Indonesia, a safari hat from South Africa, and a phone booth from London. The room would’ve looked like a museum had it not been for Vincente’s and his partner’s eye for composition. The only thing that didn’t fit was a Santos of St. Christopher, sitting on a pedestal, since I knew Vincente was a Mormon. Absent from the room was any reference to his movies or any awards he received.
He ushered me into the room and told me his dog was friendly. (It was curious that he had dog, a Great Dane no less, since this was the first dog I had seen in a home in the Philippines.) Vincente’s partner greeted me and left the room. I didn’t take it personally. ”Jose paints and has a studio in a back room,” Vincente explained, while he invited me to sit down. “We’ve agreed to give each other space. We don’t delve into each other’s business. But from time to time, I’ll use his artistic eye when I need one in a film. That’s how we met.”
We both sat down. Vincente was very much at ease with himself. He didn’t have an affixation but in many ways his belongings reflected who he was. His showmanship couldn’t be overlooked. When he moved, there was a grace about him that showed he was a trained dancer. Yet he was very masculine. And when he sat, he was totally relaxed, and he knew how to put people at ease. His expression, unlike many directors, was gentle, and I never saw him angry.
I told Vincente how I was on the trail of Bonifacio, and how I lost the trail in Tondo.
“His trail is easy enough to follow,” Vincente said. ”You only have to look as far as the Kabataang Makabayan. Any afternoon go to the “grassland” east of Palma Hall and you’ll see a testament to Bonifacio, or simply take note of the memorial in front of the building. Most students who congregate there are strongly left wing. But I don’t expect much to come of it. So my expectations are low. As for myself, I try not to be pegged with a label, though I’m certainly not a friend of Marcos. I denounce his power tactics, his crony system, and his plain arrogance … I hate everything Marcos stands for. And during the last election, I didn’t support him, and that was before he censored my film, and I was one of those who thought the Philippines needed a benevolent dictator. Well, we have a dictator, but he’s not benevolent. I guess I didn’t voice my opposition loud enough, but then for business reasons I wanted to maintain neutrality. I wanted my movies to appeal to the broadest possible audience, but it became clear that I couldn’t stick to it.”
I asked him where he stood now.
“I’m not as careful as I once was,” he said. “There are all kinds of things happening now. For a filmmaker, there is no shortage of ideas. I haven’t always been honest with myself. I’ve never made a film that I’ve been totally pleased with. There isn’t anyone out there for me to follow. If there were others I wouldn’t need to make movies.”
I asked him about his work.
“I’m lucky because I’ve always been able to work within the star system,” he said. “But most of my movies are considered art films, though I’ve never had that luxury except maybe in recent years. I’m now thinking about doing a documentary. I started the other day at the Congress Building, and you were there. I’ve had advance warning of a demonstration planned during the president’s State of the Nation Address, an advance warning and a premonition. I want to be there with my camera. I don’t want to take a crew because it would be too conspicuous. It will be a labor of love, and I plan to blend right in. In recent days I’ve been hanging out on the campus of UP Diliman … where you said you’ve been too. I’ve caught some of the demonstrations on film but have spent more of my time shooting background footage. At present I’m looking for spontaneity, but I’m having a great deal of difficulty because I’m too well known.
I asked him whose viewpoint his film would take.
“I’m not sure,” Vincente said. ”We’ll have to see. I take responsibility, sole responsibility. This time I’m trying something new. I’m doing my own cinematography, without a crew, so I’m running a risk … both artistically and personally. A documentary film, one shot with a hand-held camera, requires a lot of risk taking. I want the camera to be eyes of students, bystanders, cops, and soldiers. I want that kind of intimacy. I want the viewer to feel like they are participating. I want them to be part of the carnage. I want them to be pushed around, knocked to the ground, and hit on the head, but I’m not sure my camera will survive a direct attack. And I want to edit it in such a way that it rises above photojournalism. Why not have Bonifacio confront Marcos on the steps of the Congress Building? It makes sense to me, but is the connection readily apparent? I know members of Kabataang Makabayan will see it.”
I asked him how far he expected to take his film.
“I plan to see what I capture first before I make any decisions. Then I’ll worry about a script and fill in the holes as needed. I first have to see what comes from the demonstration in front of the Congress Building.”
Changing the subject, I asked him about what film he’d like to make most.
“I’ve given a lot of thought about making a film I’d call EL CONQUISTIDOR, but it would be very expensive to make,” he said. “But getting the needed financial backing, I’m afraid, would be very difficult, almost as difficult as deciding where to start the film. I’d have to deal with a great number of characters, and how to tie all of them into a cohesive plot presents another challenge. It would take a tremendous amount of research. But I’d still like to give it a shot. The section I most want to tackle is the one that I know the least about. I’ve always been amazed by how Islam gained a foothold throughout the Philippines before the Spanish came. When I think about where we are today, I see all the waves that have washed over us. Even gentle waves erode; and the invasion of Muslims must’ve been more like a tidal wave … destructive and irreversible tidal wave. In contrast, the American invasion wasn’t a gentle swish, but a tsunami. Tsunamis are hard to detect in the middle of them, only when they reach a shore do we have the equivalent of what happened on Semar.”
He closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and began, ”From the deck of the U.S.S. Olympia, Commodore George Dewey said calmly, ‘You may fire when ready Gridley.’ Spaniards weren’t looking for a fight and quickly surrendered. Before he knew it Dewey captured Manila. This made him a hero in New York. Concerning the Philippine Insurrection, George said, ‘I thought they would be friendly, and would help us; and they were very unthankful, I think, in turning against us after what we had done for them.’” Vincente smiled and said, “That would call for the staging a war, and I’m not sure I’m up to it.”
“But surely Filipinos wanted to learn how to speak English,” I said.
“Yes, and that falls in line with what we know about William McKinley and why he said the islands couldn’t be turned over to us. According to him we ‘were unfit for democracy and Western Civilization.’”
I asked Vincente to give me a portrait of a Filipino as a radical.
“Al Perez is an illegitimate son of a Filipino mother and an American father and consequently people question his citizenship,” he said. ”He was two years old when his father abandoned his mother. He doesn’t remember his father and knows nothing about his American relatives. After his father left, he and his mother lived with his Filipino grandparents here in Manila. He adopted the last name of his grandfather (Perez) when he was old enough to do so because he didn’t want to live in the Philippines with an American name. He was forced to quit school and work since his father abandoned him and his mother. He entered acting after he became interested in movies. It was a way that he could see to advance himself. Al Perez quickly became a star. Because of his light skin and good looks he became a star. He learned his trade on the job … didn’t take acting classes. He became a star because of his light skin and good looks. But during the Japanese occupation, he served his acting apprenticeship by appearing night after night in Manila during a short revival of zarzuelas, many of which were nationalistic and political in nature. His mother died during the war. Shortly after liberation, he found work again in movies. His popularity helped rebuild the industry. There were only a few big names then; almost all of them were Eurasian, or American bastards. He was known as a womanizer. Never married. He claimed to have been a member of the Resistance.”
I questioned Vincente’s depiction of a Philippine radical. “Aren’t most radicals students now?” I asked.
“When I think of radicals, I think of historical figures: Rizal, Bonafacio, Pilar, and Al Perez, the movie star, to name a few,” he said. “In 1967, Al urged me to make ANG MAHARIKI, a movie about a guerrilla fighter and a Japanese Major in Northern Luzon. It initially had approval of the president and was to star my radical friend Al. While I was handed the story idea, I had too small a budget for what turned out to be an epic. ANG MAHARIKI didn’t turn out the way Marcos wanted. It didn’t make a hero out of a Marcos character or anyone else for that matter. It was an unlikely love story during an ugly war. When Al Perez read the script, he loved it, and of course wanted to play the Japanese Major. I somehow knew Marcos wouldn’t approve of the film. I wasn’t interested in making the propaganda film Marcos wanted. I talked to Al about this, Al who like Marcos was in the Resistance and hated the Japanese. Al knew Marcos and the First Lady personally, but had already become disenchanted with them. Al told me that he wanted to concentrate on the human side of his character. I agreed. There was the famous sex scene that censors cut out. I was very impressed with my star and pleased that he had confidence in me. When critics learned about the film they followed Marcos’ lead and expressed outrage without viewing it. Al’s attitude about the project and his faith in me never wavered. He said he felt we were making something quite remarkable. He tried to create a sympathetic character and avoid the stereotype of a sadistic Jap. But during all this, I didn’t know that my star had a political agenda and thought that Marcos exaggerated his war experience as a guerrilla fighter. But I don’t think Al influenced me when I wrote the scenario for ANG MAHARIKI. No one can say that it is an ant-Marcos film, anymore than they can say it’s pro-Japanese. My whole crew … my cameraman, my art director, and my film director, me …we were all green. We were all novices, and I didn’t know whether I’d lose my house or not.”
Vincente told about shooting the film.
“We used the small coastal town of Vigan in Northern Luzon for our setting. I chose Vigan because it was one of the few towns that still looked the same as it did during the Spanish colonial period. And I started shooting ANG MAHARIKI much in the same way as I’ve started my current documentary. With its priceless Old Spanish architecture, the town became more than a backdrop, because of the focus I gave to the great, big houses and the impressive Baroque cathedral. In the film, the town comes alive to such an extent that I’m told that viewers share the same love for it as the Filipinos and Japanese in the movie do. However, it had to have been more complicated than that. Could the sister really love a Japanese major? It is hard to believe that she could have. When there was destruction all around Vigan, why was the town spared? We know the brother was in ang mahariki, or the resistance. At the same time, members of his family were corroborating. To this day over a hundred of the old houses, made with brick thick walls and red clay plastering, line Calle Crisologo. Since the film was made, many tourists have gone to the town simply to see where it was made.”
I said that now because of the film I’d like to see Vigan.
“We used the interior of the cathedral and inside and outside of actual houses, which today might not seem innovative at all. I had a friend who lived in Vigan, and my friend opened many doors for us. I filled reel after reel and didn’t concentrate on a plot. And I ran out of money before we finished, even though Al Perez didn’t take a salary. I thought of approaching Emelda. I knew Emelda and knew she was approachable. She entertained the idea long enough for me to drop her name when I approached other people. Many of them liked the idea of having Al Perez as my leading man but didn’t like him in the role of a Japanese major. They wanted him to play a Marcos-like hero. It was Al Perez who finally sold the film. But before the film opened, Emelda withdrew her support. And many critics boycotted it. Finally, one of them went to see ANG MAHARIKI, and let’s say the rest was history. I was very appreciative of all of the praise, but I had no idea that that year it would win the FAMAS Best Film Award.”
I asked him what happened then?
“The film took off, and it ran for a year. It made money. It was shown all over the Philippines, but I’m sure to the chagrin of Marcos. Finally, it made it to Cannes, where it did surprising well. I didn’t think there was an international market for it, but it impressed most critics who saw it. I hadn’t expected it. Because of the success of ANG MAHARIKI, I was able to make my next film, TAN MASH’IKA, about the Arab trader who first brought Islam to the Philippines. While I was shooting this film in the Sulus, someone accused me of being stuck. Stuck? I didn’t know what he meant by ‘stuck.’ And then I realized I had indeed repeated the love theme of ANG MAHARIKI. But I left it in the new film…only shifted focus and subtitled the film A ROYAL MARRAGE. Then I made THE GOOD WIFE, which was indeed an indication that I was ‘stuck.’ But the public loved it. The plot came from a short television drama, which I expanded. Television has spawn many promising young writers. Incidentally, I worked in television for a while. I think you know Sonja and her crew. Of course you know I worked in television. Because of your wife, you know I worked in television. I shoot in color and in black and white. It all depends on the film and the mood I’m trying to create. More than anything I try to make sure that the production design and the story match. Time, place, action, characters all has to fit. Everything has to come together in such way that whatever happens couldn’t possibly happen in any other way.”
I couldn’t say if Vincente achieved what he set out to do. I hadn’t seen all his films; and my Tagalog was minimal and without subtitles I couldn’t understand a lot of what was going on. I grasped the big picture, but often missed nuances. I asked Vincente about how he viewed his success.
“You first have realize that I’m very critical and am never satisfied. I rarely feel at home with myself, but I don’t feel that’s a bad thing. Also, I’m always restrained by a very tight budget. But if a story resonates with me, I’m 99% sure that it will resonate with viewers.”
I asked him which directors inspired him the most.
“It’s hard to say. I admire most classical filmmakers, specifically Bergman, Antonioni, and Renoir. Tauffaut impresses me. Actually, I am very critical, so that’s ruined most movies for me. Nowadays, I don’t watch many films.”
Chapter Forty-three
On a good day a bus ride from Quiapo to Diliman and the campus of the University of the Philippines was at least forty-five minutes long and could be pleasant. I was riding a bus with Vincente, when we could’ve been using his car. “UP is frankly elitist. Only honor students get in,” Vincente told me as we entered the campus. We stood in front the Oblation … a sculpture of a young naked man created in the likeness of the actor Fernando Poe. “You know that’s the actor Fernando Poe, don’t you? Fernando worked for me more than once.”
Vincente pointed to a group of students standing on the lawn, while I looked to see if Nick was among them. “These students marched against compulsory Spanish classes and led a fight against America and its war in Vietnam. But you can’t forget that Marcos graduated from here. I think my film will have to deal with this, especially since there is so much animosity here toward Marcos.” There was excitement in his voice … perhaps excitement over being in the middle of so much turmoil.
We looked for Nick on the third floor of Palma Hall. Doors were shut, perhaps locked. I heard rumors that students were planning to shut down the school. Before we left the building, we looked at a bulletin board and saw a flier encouraging students to attend a rally the next day in front of the Congress building. It was scheduled in conjunction with the President’s State of the Nation Address. The bulletin board was also filled with announcements of other demonstrations, and I watched Vincente write a note about each one. As he scribbled, he told me again about his plans to film the rally in front of the Congress building. ”I’m going to look for a hero,” Vincente said. ”I don’t have one yet. I’ll wait for one to emerge, which is hard for me. I hate waiting. But I have to have faith and trust my eye. Of course, there’s a chance that it will rain … rain on Marcos’ parade … rain seems fitting somehow. Let’s pray for rain.”
By the time we got there Marcos had already begun his speech. The sun was shinning. Our prayers hadn’t worked. We didn’t pray hard enough for rain. Vincente and I made our way through a crowd that was massed from one end of Burgos Drive to the other. I felt privileged to be with Vincente, someone as recognizable he was. I didn’t want to get separated from him, but I didn’t want to get in his way either.
Now there must’ve been … let’s give an estimate from newspapers … there were over 50,000 people there that day, spilling over into the parking lot and the grassy sidewalk forming the edge of the golf course. “Very few of them came to listen to the president,” Vincente observed as he started filming. ”They’ve brought their own entertainment. Cops out in force. Close-ups of heads. People listening to radicals speak from steps of building. Radicals have their own microphones and loudspeakers. Flag flown at half-mast. Members of riot squad, wearing helmets and carrying shields. Security tight for president. Here is Marcos … played by Marcos, once a popular president. His annual speech after his speech before Congress. Men in uniform, with carbines, guard doors of building. We don’t see Marcos yet. Too many people in front of us. Is he still speaking inside the House chamber? Marccos will eventually have to come out.”
With his camera, Vincente seemed to be in his element. Other photographers on the scene, but they were only interested in filming Marcos. They weren’t making a documentary but were capturing news. My friend tried to tell a complete story.
Vincente suddenly decided to climb the steps to shoot close-up footage of radicals. He said, “I needed to show their faces.” This seemed like spontaneity to me and like a different departure for him. “I’ll try to get as many of them as I can.” It was too late to stop him, and he was too quick for me to follow him. That was when I saw Nick. The woman he had with him was his American girlfriend Elaine and she didn’t seem concerned about being seen with him. They had their arms linked.
Until then I felt okay … at ease because I was with Vincente. I wasn’t pumped up with adrenaline so I felt okay. I wasn’t pumped up with adrenaline like I would be later.
Was it possible for me to feel at ease? Why were we there? Tell me, please. Why? To the extent possible Vincente must be left alone. There were the curious who joined just to see what it felt like to be part of a rally. “Maybe that was why Elaine went,” I said to Vincente afterwards. “If she had any sense, she would’ve stayed home, because as an American woman she stood out.” When I caught up with them … Nick and Elaine … Nick seemed glad to see me. I pointed Vincente out to him when there was no need for me to do it.
Vincente appeared on the steps just as the crowd started chanting. We then all sung the national anthem. And loudspeakers were turned up full volume. And manifestos were thrown up in the air and were eventually trampled on. Protestors had every right to be there. They had every right to express their views when they spoke of a need for change. But did they have a right to break rules? They had a permit. They were given time to demonstrate and express their views, but did they have a right to break rules?
Nick joined radicals who took control. Nick was someone Vincente would want to catch on camera. (Unfortunately he also caught Elaine.) There were also dissenters who wanted to dissociate themselves from anything criminal. There was a young labor union leader who was a tremendous speaker. Such an event called for many speakers, but the rally erupted before it got very far.
To catch it all, Vincente would’ve had to be everywhere at once. He also had to think about sound. Not only did he have to catch speeches, but he also had to zero in on constant chanting: “Rebelusyon! Rebelusyon! Rebelusyon! Around him, there were also conversations. They were never completely drowned out. Here maybe was the story he was looking for.
There were also conversations and sounds that went with emblems of an enemy: a cardboard crocodile, painted green, a coffin, and a paper effigy of President Ferdinand Marcos. When the president came out of the Congress building, an effigy of him was set on fire. And a coffin was pushed toward him. And a crocodile was hurled at him. There were so many people there that many of them couldn’t see the president when he came out on the steps. They only saw a burning effigy of him. There was commotion at the door and flashbulbs that went off when he came out. Things then got very confusing. Elaine pointed out Marcos to Nick. She didn’t need to point out Marcos to Nick. The crowd got very excited when they got their first glimpse of Marcos. I hoped Vincente caught it on film.
The first scuffles were brief. By the time they were over, the president and the First Lady had made their escape. Vicente later said, “I let the camera roll and captured a close-up of the couple retreating. A very poignant scene. The viewer will be able to see a very human Marcos.”
Vincente followed cops with his camera, as they retreated into the Congress building with hostages. We watched them too. Militants then returned to their mikes and had possession of the moment. I had never been in the middle of a demonstration before. Many of the spectators headed home then. Those who remained refused to be cowed. Some sang the “Internationale” in Tagalog. Vincente, on the steps, looked pleased.
“Fight and fear not! Link arms. March together. Face cops without flinching. Bait them! Taunt them! Pulis, pulis, titi matulis! Pulis, mukhang kuwarta!”
Mocked cops. Shouting in the middle of mocking. Shielded figures with billyclubs. Elaine seized Nick’s arm, as she participated in the mocking. Mocking reflected rage of the crowd. Outrage showed how much respect for cops had slipped. Cops were generally considered corrupt. I didn’t have exactly the same feelings, but I had felt wrath of cops before.
I saw Vincente descend the steps of the Congress building, holding his camera on his shoulder. I waved to get his attention. Nick told Elaine about two other demonstrations … one at the U.S embassy when Agnew came and the other at Malacanang to protest police brutality … during both police ruffed up student protestors. It seemed like it could happen again.
Spoiling for a fight. Angry crowd. Nick demonstrated how to protect our faces with our arms. Gathering around flagpole. Out shouting speakers. Around flagpole, debate turned ugly. At this point, Nick asked Elaine a crucial question.
Nick asked, “Do you want to get out of here?”
Elaine said, “Not on your life. This is my destiny.”
Nick said, “No, it’s not. This isn’t your country and isn’t your fight.”
Police chief appeared. Boos and catcalls, sticks and stones started to fly. And police chief retreated.
And it so happened that I got separated from Nick and Elaine just as I heard, “Here comes the cops!”
What followed was a bloody war. Marching feet, running feet in the other direction as one group broke into a run. Everywhere confusion. Each man for him or herself. But cops only went after those who ran. Students charged. Vincente jumped right into it.
Again they charged, this time from the Luneta side of the building, hollering and whooping as they charged. Vincente crouched, smiled, obviously happy, while aiming his camera. The cops slowly backed away before an angry crowd, then ran, ran for their lives. Nick and Elaine observed this, as students gave chase.
But momentum took them into the very ranks of the police. Once again battle lines formed, with students in the middle and cops facing them from Burgos Drive. Vincente smiled while they charged each other. For the next two hours the lines of battle shifted over and over again as a battle raged on. It was the big one everyone anticipated. However it was only a prelude to what was to come.
Afterwards, I found Vincente and asked him how his filming went. And did he find a hero?
“Better than expected,” he said. “And no, I didn’t find a hero. But I won’t know what I have until I start editing. Of course I worry about a finished product and each time try not to repeat myself. So far it hasn’t been a problem. In Manila, I’m known for my experimentation and my nerve. After all, most directors don’t start a film without a plan and don’t lose their way as I have. Usually by now I know what a film is about; but this time seems different. So far all I have is a newsreel.”
Chapter Forty-four
There was a knock at the door. Vincente opened it. He was handed a note. He opened it. It was a tip from a friend. It said students were calling for a boycott of buses and jeepneys. In Manila, there were always calls for boycotts or strikes over something.
Price of fares was raised. We’d have to wait and see how much more they would be raised. And we’d have to wait and see what would happen next. So you see life was disrupted, but life went on and where there was life there was hope. Meanwhile some producers were so excited about Vincente’s concept for his film that they advanced him enough money to keep going. Hopefully it would amount to something. Although chasing demonstrations and strikes like an ambulance chaser was more exiting than reporting on problems such as poverty, still overall the plight of the poor had ramifications that were just as important as a war in front of the Congress building. I spent more time in the poorest sections of Tondo and found amazing people there and amazing work being done. But by and large this work went unnoticed.
Rich people tended to congregate together, merchants with merchants, and intellectuals with intellectuals. There were, it was true, exceptions, but because the problem of poverty was so overwhelming it was easier to look the other way than get involved.
Who really wanted to spend time in a smelly, smoky dump and work with families who lived there? How many people really wanted to devote their lives to helping people who lived and worked in a dump and then face risks that would be involved? It was like poverty was a disease and catching. People were more likely to attach importance to working with children, while people were often blamed for being poor. Rich people sometimes gave to charities that helped poor people, but they rarely did more.
Jose was thirteen years old and lived in a squatter’s hut in Tondo. He came from the dump. He dropped out of school to work in the dump … to scavenge in the dump with other children and to help his family scavenge and survive. Then one morning I saw him coming from the dump. I don’t know why I was attracted to him more than to other children in his situation. There were over100, 000 children like him in Manila, and it was easy not to see them because there were so many.
Walking around, I was often confronted by them. I usually kept walking, ignoring their pleading and shielding myself as best I could. It was easier to keep walking. I usually didn’t want to know anything about them, so I kept walking.
Jose came up to me. He was skin and bones … dirty, skin and bones, but appealing. His skin was sun-damaged because he lived mostly outside. His face was cast in sadness, but he smiled when he saw me. His eyes were wide but distant, nose was runny, lips were chapped, and though his smile seemed genuine, his expression was hard and serious. He was wearing plain blue shorts. I suspected that they were once part of a school uniform. For a top, he wore a raggedy, torn T-shirt. There was nothing, however, about his dress that distinguished him from other beggars, but in spite of it he seemed different. For one thing, he wasn’t begging or trying to sell me anything.
He walked beside me, trying to match my stride, stride for stride.
“Life is good,” he said in English. “I live in paradise. My father owns a pushcart, and I have two brothers and one sister. A car hit my father, so I help out now. I had to quit school, so that I could help out. But I feel I’ve had all the schooling I need. I speak English good, right? I write too. But I don’t use writing very much. When I have to I use it, and maybe someday I’ll need it more than I do now. You like sweets? Would you like to buy something sweet? I can show you where you can buy pitsi pitsi, sapin sapin ube and suman.” Of course I bought us both something sweet.
“Life is good. We know where to get food when we don’t have any. St. Nino Church the nuns give out rice there. My mother is about to have another baby. She does her best. The nuns tell us that God will take care of us. If God didn’t want us here, he wouldn’t take care us.” He told me that someday he’d like to go back to school. He began scavenging before he quit school, mostly on Saturdays and Sundays, and learned to bargain and barter before he had to. Soon he was good at it. Soon he had a thriving business recycling things other people threw away. Soon his family wasn’t starving.
Jose directed me to St. Nino Church, where I met nuns. The head nun said, “We see Christ in the poor; we serve Him by helping them. Here we do what Jesus did and minister the poor. We heed the call of the Beatitudes and open our doors to all people. They can’t lie on our doorstep and expect us not help them. God wants all people to live and die in dignity. Don’t ask why we help. People we help probably never know what they give us in return … as we make their lives just a little bit easier as they seek the blessings of the Lord.”
Besides food distribution, nuns and volunteers wash and confront hundreds of children like Jose. The nun told me that they find some on the streets and some wander into the church. “We have a dormitory and a medical ward and some them arrive after suffering physical abuse. Too often mothers bring them here and leave them. They don’t want to give them up, but they have to.”
A line formed inside a courtyard, as a crew of nuns prepared a simple meal inside the church. “They come for food, and without thinking about it participate in the Eucharist, as our Sisters serve them,” the nun said. “They can also shower or wash their hands and faces, which we feel is more critical than having their feet washed, though we’re prepared to wash their feet too. We wash feet, because our Lord Jesus did.” A bell then began to ring, and from inside a chapel there was singing. “You and your friend here (Jose) are welcome to stay and share a meal with us. It won’t be fancy, but filling. We don’t turn anyone away.”
I then felt more inclined to help Jose than I did before talking to the nun. I asked him if he would like to go to a restaurant with me. He jumped at the change, but before we could go anywhere I needed to buy him a pair of shoes and a pair of socks. I wasn’t up to washing his feet.
So I turned down an opportunity to eat at the church and took off with the boy without explaining what I was going to do. Jose ran ahead of me. As we left the church, the line grew and was already extended outside the courtyard and around the corner.
Jose told me he liked New York Pizza … liked it with pink ham. At Divisoria market place, we looked for New York Pizza with pink ham, but before we got very far, he stuffed himself with Jack and Jill Barbecue Curls. At least, he didn’t fill up on sweets.
We stopped at a shoe store, and immediately a short, thin salesclerk grabbed Jose by the scruff of his neck. “Stop bothering the gentleman,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I plan to buy him socks and shoes.”
“But mister…”
I had him let Jose go.
“I’ve seen him work this street before,” the clerk said. “He picks out English speaking tourists and plays on their sympathy. We can’t do much about it, though it hurts our business.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “He didn’t play on my sympathy.” I had Jose sit down, remove his old worn-out sandals, took a pair of socks from a rack, and put them on his feet. “He needs shoes,” I told the clerk, “and I’m willing to buy them for him.”
The shoes he chose, unlike mine, were tennis shoes and not very expensive. But I could tell that the clerk still objected and continued to object to the end of the purchase. I could tell because he grudgingly took my money.
Once again we were out on the sidewalk, and I wanted Jose to show me where he lived. At first he wouldn’t budge. Then I persuaded him to come with me.
Before too long, I found myself in an area where people lived practically on top of each other. There was no order, no streets, no running water and no open space for children to play. As I moved through the area, Jose followed me. He followed me, and people greeted me in a friendly way and paid no attention to him. Other children crowded around me, unsmiling but not hostile. Jose, after seeing this, jumped in the middle of them, next to me, and began showing off his new shoes, when an elderly Filipino, with a severe stoop and an assured manner, intervened. He could’ve been the children’s great grandfather.
“Oh, give him space,” the old man said. “You know better. Oh, are you lost?” He directed his question at me and made the children to back off.
Jose laughed, clapped and yelled, “Stand back, stand back! Back!”
“Oh, here is a little general!” said the old man, grabbing Jose, who tried to break away. “Naughty boy!” Then turning to me, he said, “No one has time for these children, so I step in.”
“It’s okay, okay,” I said.
“And who are you,” he asked. “I’ve never seen you around here before.”
Jose lifted up a foot, showed off his new shoes again, and said, “This nice man bought them for me.” Then, “I must run. My mother will be worried.” Jose then ran off.
Chapter Forty-five
Back on a major street, I walked west toward Manila Bay and the major port. The Pasig was south of me. More people approached me. It was the good season. During monsoon this area would’ve been flooded.
A group of children ran to me. “Hey, mister! Hey, mister!” they yelled. I knew about the squatter area here from reading in the Times about the government’s effort to demolish it.
A pleasant officer of the National Police stood at a checkpoint. “The area is restricted to residents, sir,” he said with authority. “We need your cooperation.”
“I’m a journalist,” I said, as I showed him a press pass I created myself. “May I speak to your superior and ask him for an interview and permission to enter? I hear there’s a plan to remove squatters from here.”
The cop let me through.
With children following me, I went down a narrow path, through an area packed with shacks (made out of pieces of wood and sheet metal), stepped across trenches of sewer, and looked for someone to interview. Harbor cranes towered over me and served as a backdrop. I soon came across a young man, who was sitting on his hands. “I can’t go to work,” he said.
“Why?” I asked, after being surprise that he spoke to me.
“I can’t leave. If I do, I’m afraid police will tear down my home.”
“Then I don’t blame you.”
In a doorway stood a woman with three children, which I assumed were hers. “When we moved to Manila, we rented this house from a landlord who told us that we wouldn’t have problems with police,” the young man said. “He gave us a lease (notarized) that he said gave us a right to live here as long as we paid rent. We moved here five years ago. The house is ours now. We’ve made necessary improvements, as mandated by law. Now the roof won’t blow off unless we’re hit by a typhoon. But the government betrayed us and says we have to relocate outside of the city to make way for a new international port. If we move we’ll still have to come back into the city to work. It would take us then a couple of hours both ways. It’s time and money we can’t afford.”
“What do you plan to do?” I asked.
“Keep what we have here,” he said. “This is all that we have. If we didn’t have this place, we’d have to live on the streets, and there’d be no way to keep clean. We’d surely become beggars then. So we refuse to leave and have begun to organize.”
The organization was called ZOTO, or Zone One Tondo Organization. It was the first urban organization of poor people in the country. The defiant squatter said he wasn’t sure he wanted to join and was sitting on his hands. He was afraid, afraid to join. “With a family, I have too much to lose,” he said. “I’m not sure I want to be associated with communists.”
ZOTO was a federation of many different organizations fighting for the poor. Most of them weren’t of the communist persuasion. Communist or not, regardless, something had to be done.
Throughout the area, there were other men afraid to go to work. In doorways, and sitting on their hands, were other men guarding their homes, huts or shacks built so close together that there was very little space between them. They had very few chairs and by and large slept on mattresses on dirt floors. And when it rained it was impossible to keep out mud and water, and with it garbage and sewage.
Linda, our maid, took us to the squatter area where her family lived, which was ritzy in comparison to the squatter area in Tondo near the harbor. Homes where Linda came from were built to last and could withstand typhoons. Homes there were permanent, though they were constructed illegally in alleys and over streets. All of them by then however, received blessings from the city and local politicians because each adult occupant represented one more vote. They seem to be set. They seemed to be sitting pretty. They had approval from the city, while people in shanties in Tondo near the port, faced a constant threat of losing everything.
“ZOTO is trying to organize all of us … all residents of the area,” a young man guarding his door told me. “We’ve gone to court to stop destruction and so far that has stalled the process. The police still harass us. They’re making arrests; the situation seems to be getting worse. So far no one has been killed, but you don’t really know … some people have simply disappeared. Those that have disappeared have been mostly organizers. Police know who they are, so it’s hard for them to hide.” That made me think of Nick.
I reached the end of the pathway, where there was a high chain-link fence with razor wire across the top. Just beyond the fence were piers with tall cranes and big ships. Port facilities there were basic: cargo boats and ferries, some food and drink stalls, and seating. Little shade. Tourists were advised to secure their luggage and wallets. This was where Nick, Susan, and I would’ve caught a ferry to Mindanao and the Sulus had we gone by sea.
Back in the squatter area, as I was walking out I ran into one of the ZOTO organizers (as I found out, a full-time worker). He talked about challenges they faced. It was said that Tondo was too big to organize, though not all of Tondo was filled with squatters. Organizers also knew that residents needed to be trained, though in the past training was limited to leaders; and if training was to be effective, it had to be done systematically. So far, the biggest problem, the organizer said, was how to sustain the effort when Marcos bought off a majority of their leaders. He threw pesos around as if it were play money. Who could blame anyone for taking it? It was often their only chance to pull themselves out of poverty.
“It’s the Germans who are dipping into their pockets,” he said. “And it’s the Germans who are treating the poor of Tondo as Hitler treated the Jews. We’re looking for real solutions. We’ll march by the thousands, and when we march to the German Embassy, we’ll embarrass Marcos, and hopefully the Germans will cut off the faucet. We believe these people belong here. They’re human; and when you see that, you’ll see that they’ll like you. We plan to have more than 4,000 marchers. And there are more people who’ll join us once they see we can’t be bought off. Our work has just begun. With each passing day we’re gaining strength. Strength in numbers will stop bulldozers. It’s happening. It’s wonderful to see. But we have to be on our toes. Just yesterday National Police arrested a co-worker. Two weeks ago a checkpoint suddenly appeared. Now we’re treated like criminals. Next will come bulldozers.”
I reached Smokey Mountain, where Jose said he lived and worked. Confronted with unbelievable pollution, smoke, and unbearable smell. All day long, non-stop, container trucks came and went, to and from the huge mountain of garbage. A rather steep road led to the top, which was several stories high. I climbed to the top using the road and entered an unexpected hell where literally thousands of people lived off other people’s garbage.
“People survive however they can,” I said to myself, as I thought of Jose. “They sift, search and scrounge, and whatever they find they recycle, sale or eat. So far, no one has figured out what to do about these people. Eighty-percent of the children don’t go to school. Most of them can’t envision a better life for themselves. It should embarrass Marcos. It isn’t exactly what the president promised, how people adapt to filth, heat, smoke, and smells; why human beings are allowed to live this way … in a very toxic place … in filth and squalor and with diseases. It breaks your heart.
I asked Nick later about it.
“I wouldn’t go there,” he said. “As it is we’ve got our hands full.”
On top of the mountain were camps. They consisted of shacks built on garbage and shared with millions of flies and armies of rats, all surviving in spite of dangerous, stifling heat and air. Up there was a whole community. Some people ran sari-sari stores; others capitalize on a videoke machine or a ‘bar’ with a billiard table. Scores of men, women, and children were sifting through refuse…wading through it, scrambling to get behind each truck, and fighting to get the best part of it. Most of the people were filthy; some were ill. But I realized that none of it fit Jose. It made me wonder about Jose.
“Everything has value here,” one of the drivers told me. “Or else it’s set on fire, and there’s always another load.”
I asked for a ride in his truck, which made my escape easier. Nearby children were playing soccer. Their ball was old and half-inflated but at least it was a ball, when there really wasn’t room to run more than a few yards or so. I kept thinking of Jose and looking for him.
Chapter Forty-six
Since then, whenever I went to Divisoria Market to eat or shop, I looked for Jose. I looked hoping eventually to run into him, and sure enough I did.
When Jose saw me and I saw him, he didn’t try to avoid me but smiled and spoke to me in perfect English. I asked him how his new shoes fit, and he hemmed and hawed because he wasn’t wearing them. As we walked along, I asked, “How’s life on Smokey Mountain?” The first chance he got he ran away.
Perhaps the most direct confrontation Elaine ever had with her father came after he learned of Nick’s participation in the Battle of Mendiola.
A horrible confrontation followed. Here is her account of what happened.
“It was after midnight. Dad waited up for me. Nick wouldn’t come into Forbes Park. I was glad he wouldn’t come in and walked from the front gate to our house alone. My mother, poor thing, had already gone to bed. But how could my father sleep after he read a briefing of the battle? I hadn’t anticipated that he would be awake. I unlocked the door and was surprised to find him sitting in the living room. I started to go upstairs. “Come here,” he said.
“What’s the matter?
“Your friend is in serious trouble.”
I felt afraid and miserable. I ran up to my room. I saw then that I couldn’t do anything and go anywhere in Manila without my father finding out about it. I should’ve known that he would find out about it, and he would object.
The dishonor …as daughter of the Commander of the American Navel Base on Cavite … I should’ve known better than to get involved in a demonstration. Although I hadn’t participated in the Battle of Mendiola and the battle had principally been waged against Marcos … as far as my father was concerned, it was unconscionable and unpardonable that my boyfriend was identified as one of the instigators. It took me a long time to forgive my father.
This battle occurred on January 30, 1970, when students marched to the presidential palace and military troops, in riot gear, attacked them. The students fought back with stones and bombs. The demonstrators even crashed a fire truck into Gate 4 of the palace. To Elaine’s surprise her father was able to give a detail account of the fighting and the arrests that followed.
Her father also saw a photograph of Elaine with Nick, taken not in front of Malacanan but in front of the Congress building during the demonstration there. It gave him all the proof he needed … proof and ammunition … proof that upset him greatly. Unfortunately his superiors and the Philippine government had poof too.
Yet he couldn’t be overly harsh with his daughter, his only child, and his “puddin’.” But because of his position as a representative of his country, he had to be careful. He had standards to maintain, and those standards also applied to his family. But he knew he couldn’t control Elaine and had to trust her. The only other choice he had was to disown her, and he couldn’t do that.
According to a common held belief within the American military establishment, including Elaine’s father, the main source of grief in Southeast Asia were communists, and the loss of Vietnam meant the loss of all of Southeast Asia. And they could see the loss of the Philippines … the loss of the Philippines like the loss of China … and they weren’t about to let it happen.
Strict protocol had been established to assure maximum cooperation between America and her allies (in this case the Philippines). It not only applied to military personal but also included family members; and certainly dating a communist would’ve been covered.
Elaine initially accepted restrictions or rules imposed by protocol, but hadn’t counted on falling in love with Nick. It just happened. A lot just happened. It just happened that Nick was a Maoist. It just happened that she met him. And it just happened that they fell in love.
She always maintained that Nick’s allegiance to Mao was merely an intellectual exercise. In her mind he couldn’t be a true communist. And that his “radicalization” (as well as that of other students) was a response to undeniable abuses by Marcos. She also thought that Nick and other students had a right to object to a foreign war waged from their shores and had a right to demand closure of American bases on their soil. “Students back home are up in arms over the same things,” she argued.
Once in the military however, a person (and it seemed to apply also to his or her family) gave up many of their rights and that included independent thinking, though a family member was given a little more slack. And it applied to everyone. There were no exceptions, and Elaine knew it. She knew that she shouldn’t have been dating a communist. She also knew her actions had consequences, and one of those consequences was that it could hurt her father’s career. But to expect her to give up Nick, once she had fallen in love with him, was expecting a lot.
Still Elaine’s father said that he believed in his daughter and said who she dated was her business. But when it came down to it, what did he really believe? And as a commander he was used to giving orders. And having his orders obey.
He actually liked Nick. They only met once and hit it off. It was hard not to like Nick. The one time he met Nick was when he hosted a birthday bash for his daughter and they talked history all evening. Elaine’s father was impressed. They had more in common than one would have thought … a love of history. They both read works of revolutionaries, from Thomas Paine to Karl Marx, but as a United States naval commander, Elaine’s father also knew that he was under constant scrutiny.
Then he found out that Nick was a Maoist. How did he find out? Elaine didn’t tell him. Neither did Nick. Nick might’ve thought about it. Nick might’ve let it slip out, but he didn’t.
As Commander, Elaine’s father was in frequent contact with CIA agents within the U.S Embassy. Then came massive anti-American demonstrations and demonstrations against Marcos and particularly one in front the Congress Building (sensitive stuff). And there were pictures of Elaine and Nick at the demonstration that were placed on his desk in Cavite. He knew the implications without being told. Back in the embassy, where he parked his car everyday before he was ferried by helicopter to the station, he now had a mark against him. He would always remember a call he received from a CIA friend:
“But surely they realize my daughter is a grown woman,” Elaine’s father said to his friend.
His friend commiserated and said, “Just try to get her to be more discreet.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
The way it was handled with photographs and a phone call rankled. It got him to worrying and wondering where the heat was coming from. Who took the pictures, and so forth?
Although it hadn’t been made public yet, the Naval Station Sangley Point (Cavite) was to be turned over to the Philippines by the end of year. This meant that Elaine’s father’s position would soon end, and his next assignment was up in the air. And he didn’t need any additional complications because of his daughter. He loved Elaine … however …
He finally came to believe that the CIA was interested in Nick. CIA interest also meant that the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency of the Philippines was also interested, and it meant that as a devoted father he had to take steps to protect Elaine. Nick was definitely on a government list, but her father couldn’t tell Elaine. He couldn’t get specific. He couldn’t even tell her about the photographs.
It was important that he remain vague … leave Nick out of it as much as possible … not divulge all he knew and how close the young man was to being arrested. He didn’t want to think about it. With the closing of the base, there was too much to think about, and it often kept him awake at night. Now he had a new worry. Nick was a communist and was dating his daughter. He was a communist. He was a communist … a communist … and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
He had to talk to Elaine. She should’ve known better. He knew she was hotheaded, just as he was hotheaded, and knew talking to her would be almost impossible. He didn’t want to lose her. He assumed she knew Nick was a Maoist. But what could he say? She was a grown woman. She still lived under his roof, but was a grown woman. There was too much at stake, so he had to talk to her. The stakes were too high. He couldn’t tell her everything he knew, but the stakes were too high. Elaine had to be persuaded. She had to be reined in or else.
Marcos used the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) or the Secret Police to track down and eliminate his opponents. By this time it had infiltrated the radical movement. By this time Nick had become a target. And Nick knew it. And Elaine’s father knew it too.
And Nick knew that no one was safe from the eyes and ears of the agency, especially people like him who openly opposed Marcos. The agency’s motto Ang Karunungan ay Kaligtasan or “knowledge is security” was to Nick used as an excuse for its abuses. And he knew that the NICA and the CIA were closely connected … in much the same way, as everything else in the Philippines seems connected in someway to America.
To Nick Yankee imperialism was real. He saw it everywhere. He was often ambivalent and often fluctuated, but not about Yankee imperialism. You couldn’t find anyone more opposed to Yankee imperialism than Nick, yet he dated an American. It was hard to imagine that Nick didn’t see the danger and how his relationship with Elaine didn’t help matters. And it didn’t help that as a Caucasian American she stood out in a Philippine crowd.
Although discipline and loyalty were expected in the military, Elaine’s father’s belief in independent thinking was never squashed. So until confronted with a photograph of his daughter and Nick at the demonstration, he wasn’t concerned about his daughter’s relationship with a Filipino radical. He somehow knew Nick went to Red China, talked about Maoism, and participated in student demonstrations, but it didn’t seem to matter to him until he saw those photographs. He believed in free speech and liberty, so he wasn’t worried about Nick until certain photos landed on his desk and a CIA friend cornered him. He also took pride in the close relationship he had with Elaine … even though he spent half of her life deployed on ships often thousands of miles away from her. Then came the Battle of Mendiola.
Elaine’s father graduated from Annapolis and as a navel commander made a career of making decisions for other people. Now he felt very old. For almost a quarter of a century, he was head of a household and, when he was around, boss. Now he felt powerless. He made rules, which he felt were always fair, but they were still his rules. But his daughter was now grown, and the situation had changed. In a perfect world he wouldn’t have had to face the dilemma he faced. The world would be harmonious. Now he faced a dilemma, a losing battle, and he hadn’t lost many battles before, so the world was far from harmonious. Now feeling powerless, Elaine’s father sat uneasily in his favorite easy chair, dreading a confrontation that he knew would come.
“Sweetheart, I’d be very careful, if I were you,” he told Elaine, after he disclosed that he knew she participated in the demonstration. “For Nick’s sake, as much as for yours. I’m not telling you to cut off the relationship, but I’d be very careful, if I were you.”
The commander helped his daughter move on a sunny afternoon. Instead of moving in with Nick, she moved into a small apartment in Ermita similar to ours in Malate. Her building was built on a concrete slab, made from cinder blocks, and survived several earthquakes and typhoons. She had a queen-size bed with a water-mattress and mosquito netting, a hope chest and trunk filled with valuables, two wicker rockers, a mirror with a cabinet and drawers, and a very heavy wardrobe. Her clothes remained on hangers. She had boxes and boxes of books. Her parents loaned her a fan. We all scrounged furniture for her living room and dinning area; and she bought everything for her kitchen. She now had freedom and privacy she always wanted.
It took three men … Nick, Elaine’s father, and me …to lift and move heavy stuff. The women cleaned. We procured a small van and started loading. We could’ve easily hired help, put a person or two to work, which we considered before deciding to do it ourselves. Everything that belonged in the bedroom had to be lugged upstairs. The furniture for the living room …a bookcase, a sofa, tables, and chairs … came in stages. Elaine’s new neighbors soon gathered around us; and we soon had more help than we needed. But we made sure they were helping rather than hindering and had a grand time, giving orders on where things should go. Food arrived. There weren’t any boundaries and very little restraint. Everyone had a good time.
“See, you’re already part of a neighborhood,” Nick said. “See how easy it was.” Once in the neighborhood Elaine got invited to celebrations of Saint Days and birthdays. And they asked her about getting married and having a bunch of healthy kids. They weren’t shy about asking things. Then one night after having only lived there for a month, Elaine was jarred awake by the wild squeal of a pig as it was slaughtered illegally. The next day she went to a festival and enjoyed eating pig after it had been roasted whole on a stick. What was she going to do … stay home and be rude? And what else did she have to do?
They all thought Nick and Elaine were engaged…they were not. But they didn’t attempt to explain … why he came and went when he did. And as often as he did. Sometimes he spent the night. Rumor had it that he was about to become a father. But Elaine disappointed them, and they felt sorry for her.
Nick refused to talk about the Battle of Mendiola. He refused to talk about what led up to it, how he participated, or the outcome.
After the demonstration in front of the Congress building, the student council at UP called for a boycott of classes for the rest of a week and President Lopez gave everyone a holiday. Some students gathered in front of Quezon Hall to hear the president say that he suspended classes. They wanted more from him, more than an expression of indignation over arrests and brutality in front of the Congress building. Some students standing there had been there. Some faculty members had been there too, and some of them had bruises to prove it. It called for more than talk.
So professors organized a march. Nick went along. They marched toward Malacanang, led by President Lopez, eager to present Marcos with a declaration protesting bloodshed. But students still weren’t satisfied. They were angry; and who could blame them?
While faculty members were at Malacanang, the student council led a march to Quezon Hall, where they then turned the Philippine flag upside down. They also removed a plaque from under a picture of General Romulo and covered the Oblation with a sack. Nick missed this … hundreds of students, protesting. The following day many of the same students joined a peaceful rally in front of the Congress building, many for a second time, and many of these then start marching to Malacanang. Nick led them over Quiapo Bridge and over to Mendiola Street. There they faced police shields and a water cannon. Nick watched a fellow student pour gasoline on the street and light it with a match. He watched as a student commandeered a fire truck and rammed it through a gate of the palace. He saw someone else set a car on fire inside the compound. And he did more than watched.
Nick saw blood in the compound and on the street. He saw a killing and took part in violence. They had taken a bold step and didn’t want to lose momentum. At the same time Nick tried to avoid getting hit and even worse getting arrested. But was he one of those who planned violence? He wouldn’t say. But he wouldn’t have stood there and taken it. He was willing to sacrifice himself and, if it came down to it, offer his body as a sacrifice. He knew what he had to do.
It was his time- just as Rizal and Bonifacio had their time. Excess and abuse, widespread poverty, rampant corruption, and unrestrained criminality, had to be curbed. It was why students stood up to soldiers. Why they fought and knew they could die. And there was no doubt that Nick was one of them, and he tested himself as the battle continued all night long. He was lucky that he wasn’t hurt … wasn’t hurt and would live to fight another day. Some died; a great deal more were injured; even more were arrested; and most were accused of sedition.
Vincente caught it on film, and I asked him about it. Authorities used his film, and I asked him about that too.
“Of course, Nick wasn’t alone,” he said. “Others opted out and ran from there. But Nick didn’t. Since it lasted all night, it was remarkable that he wasn’t hurt.”
Nick aged. Like others who lived through it, he aged.
“Does anyone know what students plan to do next,” I asked
“No,” Nick said, breaking his silence. “There are no rewards yet, except more and more people are getting involved. We don’t yet even know the names of students who died. We’re waiting for the government to release names. We don’t know who was arrested or when they’ll be released. I’m lucky that I wasn’t arrested. Let’s hope they’re treated well and are not tortured. Thank God, there weren’t more students killed.”
The old Nick never returned. One of those killed was someone Nick recruited. He was a freshman, bright, with a passion for music and was very impressionable. He had a wonderful smile and an inquisitive mind. He wore American army shirts, and around his neck hung a pair of dog tags: Alvero Martinez: DOB: 1-24-50: Blood type: Filipino.
“He was a friend of mine, and I let him down,” Nick said. “We went to the demonstration together. He came from Taclobang and was a direct descendent of Jose Rizal. Honestly.”
I learned from Nick that Ben … another friend … had been arrested, and no one knew where he was being held. He carried a red Katipunan flag with the KKK and the bright yellow sun during the Battle of Mendiola.
“Was this seditious?” Nick asked. “Ben led troops and our enemies will now try to silence him.” But I heard Nick led troops.
With Nick leading the way, we headed to a bus station in Quezon City to catch Rabbit north to Pampanga. We’d been planning a trip to Central Luzon for a long time. After surviving the Battle of Mendiola, he seemed more set than ever to go home. He was going with or without me.
At the same time, we suspected the NICA had him under surveillance. He told me as much. He said he couldn’t sleep. Had Elaine said something to him? Had Elaine’s father said too much, and Elaine said something to him. He never said. Nick thought he was on top of the NICA’s list after he was photographed at the demonstration in front of Congress building with Elaine. By then they had a code name for him and knew he was a Maoist. They’d have a thick file on him by then. I suspected they also knew about me.
They would’ve picked him out of the crowd during the Battle of Mendiola. But they wouldn’t have moved in quite yet because they wanted to nail Elaine’s father. Elaine’s father was a greater prize than Nick.
We waited for what seemed like hours for the right bus. We had a schedule, but buses didn’t run on schedule. (It seemed longer than it was because we wanted to get out of town.) Before we finally saw our bus pull into the station, Nick hired a boy to climb through a window (even before the bus rolled to a stop) to save us seats. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have gotten seats. We bought tickets in advance, but still we wouldn’t have gotten seats.
The bus stopped in Angeles City, a bustling, dusty town, adjacent to Clark Airbase. Clark was then the largest American base outside of the United States. Before the bus stopped, Nick told me that he wanted me to get a feel for the bar scene. So he dragged me off. Believe me he dragged me off because I wasn’t interested in being around a bunch of drunk Americans. But Nick wanted me to get a feel for it.
“This is our battle zone,” Nick said, while acting like a tour guide. “Here’s the Dew Drop Inn, (I had already seen the sign in front of the bar) and inside they only take U.S. dollars: for bets on pool and darts and picking up and scoring with easy dates.”
That was when Nick launched into another diatribe about Yankee imperialism. He had a loud voice that carried to the next block, but luckily I was there to shut him up. He wanted to make a scene, but I wasn’t in the mood.
The Dew Drop Inn was only one of many nightclubs and girly bars that catered to GIs just outside the base. It was open around the clock, in the middle of a section of town that was always open. And this suited men who had one thing in mind and knew they were headed into harms way. They came in all sizes, and some looked more like boys than men. They also represented every race and had a bravado about them that came only from being away from home. Because of heat many of them were stripped down to their undershirts and wore their shirttails out over civilian pants. Inside the bar were several drunks and several dozen Filipino women in bikinis dancing and twisting to early rock. Through double doors, in the back and opposite the bar, one could enter the dark and cozy VIP Room and expect to receive what R&R war weary airmen deserved.
“This is one of the causes of our anger,” Nick said. “How our women are treated. And how the rape of a Filipina on Filipino soil never leads to a conviction in a Filipino court. But I’m of a different school. I say make them pay, make them pay more than they could ever afford. Some women here came from where I came from.”
Nick’s voice was loud again and quite forceful. I tried to shut him up as he acted drunk and talked jabbing his fingers in my chest. (I learned later than he’d been in there before.) “There’s no compromising,” he said. “This base has to go.”
“What was I doing standing next to him?” I asked myself.
He then confronted a drunken airman and told him that he (the airman) represented everything that he hated. He told him he had no use for America or for Americans, but he fucked an American woman. Had he forgotten that I was standing next to him? It made me wonder if he really loved Elaine, or just said he did. Only a suicidal man would’ve said what Nick said to a drunken American in the Dew Drop Inn; only the American was too drunk to fight. But sooner or later I knew shit would fly. “Notice the suggestion box,” Nick yelled. “Suggest … suggest that they find a way to cut this chicken shit out.”
Inside the Dew Drop Inn I moved from applauding Nick and feeling smug to resenting him and feeling angry. I later lashed out at him. I thought I put him in his place. “Our allegiances to our respective countries shouldn’t affect our relationship. To test this or, better to test us, we … must take a stand and defend our countries and not hold it against each other. There is a difference between policies of a country and its people, and it’s possible to hate a country without hating its people.” Listen to me. I was running, running away from war and dodging my responsibility, placing in jeopardy my ability to ever go home again and going into the Dew Drop Inn brought it all home. The drunk could’ve easily been me. And then I heard Nick say, “I hate Americans.” Then he hated me! But I was sympathetic … sympathetic to how Nick felt. I understood how he felt, and I had similar feelings. I loved my country, but the airman represented everything I hated. But it wasn’t the airman because I could’ve easily been in his shoes. It was his uniform, except he wasn’t in uniform.
The worse place in the world that I could’ve gone was Angeles City and the worse thing I could’ve seen were those Phantom fighters taking off from the base. And it was orchestrated by my Filipino friend Nick, who brought me to Angeles City and into the Dew Drop Inn. What was he trying to do? He hated me. It was clear he hated me.
Nick was not just any old friend of mine in that he wasn’t a good old boy from Texas but a Communist intellectual who had taken a sabbatical in Red China … a Commie; and my country, the country I loved was fighting to stop Communism in Southeast Asia! Was I traitor? We just walked into the Dew Drop Inn, and in a sense (when I thought about) into the jaws of a huge Air Force Blue crocodile. In the Dew Drop Inn, when my friend said he hated Americans, after a moment of confusion, I felt like killing him. Weren’t we killing communist? I felt like telling the owner of the bar to call the MPs. Call them and tell them and tell them he collared a draft dodger and a militant Communist. Instead he got his bouncer between Nick and the American drunk and threw Nick and me out of his bar, and then I’m glad to report that Nick had only me to contend with.
Nick felt he’d scored a victory, an essential part of a change in him after the Battle of Mendiola, but I thought he made an ass of himself and an ass of me. I was with him when he railed at a country I loved. I’m not sure he knew I was with him and didn’t consider me an enemy. We were friends, but did he consider us to be on opposite sides. He knew the NICA had infiltrated the radical student movement. The question then for him was could I be trusted.
I had never been confronted in such a way before and was so angry with myself, so fearful of losing it, that the slightest peep from Nick then would’ve caused an explosion. I said, “Whatever my feelings about Vietnam may be, the war will leave a permanent mark on me.” I lost a friend in Nam just as Nick lost a friend at Mendiola. It felt like Nick was attacking me when he attacked an American in the Drew Drop Inn. Telling the American he hated him was like he was telling me he hated me. It was so clear he hated me. When in fact we could remain friends, just as I could walk around Angeles City and look through the fence of Clark Air Force Base without yelling obscenities. It was a test for me. My antiwar stance didn’t mean I hated my country.
I felt so troubled that I wanted to immediately leave Angeles City and get it behind me as quickly as possible, but there was no urgency on Nick’s part, and not another bus for another hour or so.
I hadn’t lost anything on Clark Air Force Base. I didn’t have to walk the three miles to the front gate. What we did didn’t make sense. I’m amazed that I walked up to the gate with a bandana tied around my head. I walked there hand in hand with a former HUK, in Huklandia. I’m amazed that we weren’t shot. I’m amazed we weren’t stopped. I’m amazed. (In the Philippines, men frequently held hands in public.) Security shouldn’t have been so lacking. This was before the age of suicide bombers and heightened security, still security shouldn’t have been so lacking. Shouldn’t we have been apprehended? Even for the disturbance Nick caused in the Dew Drop Inn shouldn’t he have been arrested?
We were anything but innocent. Maybe I wanted to get caught, but there were so many other Americas around, even with Filipino friends, that we blended in. It was possible, or maybe security was simply lacking. I was what I was before…a draft dodger, if they only knew.
I could’ve been accused of spying. For all I knew I was being used to gather intelligence for his communist friends, (just as I was sure now he was using Elaine). I could’ve said that I didn’t know much about Nick but it would’ve been a lie. Nick said he wanted to see what was going on, and, as an American and knowing what I knew, I should’ve been alarmed.
At the time of our visit, Clark Air Force Base was in full operation and was the main base supporting the Vietnam war, and though there were recent raids by insurgents on the outskirts of Angeles City, we could still walk up to the main gate. The walk did us good. It got all the smoke from the bar out of our lungs. We could’ve taken a jeepney. And it seemed to clear the air between Nick and me.
Taxis, buses, and jeeps passed us, coming to and from the base, and there was a line of taxis parked with hawkers just outside the gate. An American flag flew at half-mast. I wondered who important died, as if death wasn’t a central ingredient of war. There was the gate leading into the base with military police checking identifications and standing guard. We certainly didn’t want to get too close. We stuck to the side of the road and didn’t want to get too close. We also walked with groups of people so as not to stick out.
A two seat, twin-engine, all-weather, supersonic F-4 Phantom III took off and showed us what it could do. It was impressive. Roar of engines diminished as the plane climbed. And as soon as one took off, it was followed by three or four more. There were also cargo and passenger planes waiting their turn. I assumed they were heading either to the States or Vietnam.
I never imagined that I would get this close to war, close enough to feel vibrations and hear the roar of war. A terrible feeling came over me. I started to cry, like I later cried during the opening scene of the movie BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. I was a guy, who never cried, yet I cried. .
We ate at a roadside food stand with an American GI and his Filipino girlfriend. I waited for Nick to say something. The GI had a large, oval, sun burned face and muscular hairy arms. He was thin and short, with blond hair cut in a flattop. Wide-eyed, he also had a winning smile. He wore a loose Hawaiian shirt and equally loud Bermuda shorts. The young woman had long straight black hair down to her waist and wore a modest cotton dress.
“This is my wife,” he said, adding happily. “She looks after me when I’m not fighting a war.”
“I’m assuming you’re talking about Vietnam,” I said.
He looked like I had to be kidding. As an airman, he was restricted as to what he could say but he said all he needed to say by his attitude. Then too he didn’t know Nick and me, who we were. My comment must’ve seemed odd to him. He said that as far he knew there was only one war going on. I really knew very little about Vietnam and consequently the war he was talking about.
I introduced Nick and myself and explained that I was a vacationing journalist. I wanted to reassure him that I wasn’t looking for a story. I told him I wouldn’t use anything he said in a story. He told me, if I did, he’d track me down and kill me.
In no time he loosened up. Sitting next to me, Nick kept very quiet. While we waited for our food, he seemed preoccupied, and I was very thankful. Whatever Nick was thinking, he wisely kept it to himself.
He kept looking at the young woman and slightly nodding his head. I couldn’t help thinking about his relationship with Elaine and how other Filipinos perceived it. I remembered how Nick once said after seeing an American with a Filipino woman that many Filipinos would view the woman as a whore. I said to Nick then, “That must make it hard on Elaine. If Filipino women with Americans are considered whores, then how are you viewed when you’re with Elaine?” So Nick had to acknowledge a double standard.
In his situation it was considered a conquest. He was looked up to as a stud and Elaine was considered his filly, and so forth. It was expected that at some point he and Elaine would get married, which I’m not sure he ever intended to do. As an American, I’d never confront him and ask him about this, but I bet his Filipino friends did. As it turned out, the question whether Elaine and Nick would get married was overridden or mollified by events, which was to say that in an old-fashioned sense he never made an honest woman of her. But I think it worked out for the best.
“What do you think about Nixon withdrawing troops from Vietnam?” I asked.
“I haven’t had time to think about it,” he said. That was all the GI said. Loose lips sink ships! “Anyway I’m on my way to becoming a family man.” Great! So it was all hush-hush. Yes, there was only one war. Cambodia and Laos didn’t exist, so I’d never get to see Angkor Wat. I supposed the border between Cambodia and Nam was just too dangerous to cross.”
“What do you think about what happen at My Lia?” I asked.
“Do you think we can win? Do you think we’re succeeding?”
I thought that that said it all: “no comment.” I thought that he’d also say something like if they left it up the Air Force we would’ve won a long time ago.
Then he motioned to his wife that it was time for them to go since they ordered Chicken Adobo to go. It was Nick who stopped them. Nick asked, “Inside your head is there a question about what ‘search and destroy’ means? “
I stopped Nick then before he could say anymore because I wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. What did we know about Vietnam? What did we know? We didn’t know very much. We didn’t know whom to blame for it.
I told Nick about how I got a deferment to go to graduate school. I told him that I thought my deferment was unfair to those who hadn’t been able to avoid the draft. I made sure he knew that I would be in Vietnam if my draft board hadn’t made a mistake. And I married to stay out of the draft. And I came to the Philippines to stay out too. I didn’t feel particularly proud that I outsmarted Uncle Sam by leaving the States. And maybe that was why I cried watching BORN ON THE FORTH OF JULY.
I hadn’t wanted get off a bus in Angeles City, and I hadn’t particularly wanted to walk the three miles to the gates of Clark Air Force Base. But when it came down to it, I hadn’t been brave enough to tell Nick and felt defeated because of it.
The route of the Death March passed by Clark before Clark was Clark and followed railroad tracks north. I wanted to see where agony and death of so many people occurred, but it was Nick who suggested that we walk up the railroad tracks. As we made our way he told me how his father told him the story of the merciless killing and about “dead men walking on their feet.” It seems that sometime in 1943, as Japs drove their prisoners north and drove civilians away, Nick was born. His father joined the resistance then. There was nothing twenty-seven years later to commemorate the march save little white crosses that marked places where Filipinos died.
I took our pilgrimage seriously. I wouldn’t have known that the route followed the railroad tracks had Nick not pointed it out to me. He told me how his father talked about it every time they crossed the tracks north or south of there. Nick seemed to know every square mile of Pampanga and seemed to have a keen interest in reliving its history.
He, however, took me farther up the railroad tracks than I wanted to go. He kept looking into the base, and kept looking, and seemed to be noting everything. The way he was looking made me afraid that someone would question us. I told Nick this, and he frowned. But he walked on, and I followed him.
Luckily we weren’t alone and followed a well-worn path besides the tracks. At first Nick walked slowly, but when I became agitated, he sped up and almost left me behind. When we got to the northeast corner of Clark, we turned around and went back. Nick finally seemed satisfied. But to me something about my Filipino’s friend’s behavior didn’t seem right. It was a gut reaction, and I’m not sure I trusted him.
Once we were back into town, I felt better, but Nick seemed distant. It bothered me. I couldn’t be … wasn’t sure … didn’t know what was going on with him. Then I learned about a bombing in Angeles City the year before. The attack left six airmen and two Filipinos injured and “hoodlums” or HUKs were blamed. And I knew of Nick’s close association with HUKs. He grew up a HUK, and I met and liked his family, who lived not far from Angeles City.
We made it back to the bus station in time to catch a local Rabbit. It was crowded and hot, with all seats taken but had a conductor who would’ve made a Filipino yield a seat to me had I not stopped him. He was wearing a tan uniform with his shirt half buttoned, and he sold tickets, as people crowded onto the bus. He had a fist full of pesos in one hand and a roll of tickets in the other. He was clearly in charge.
When we reached his hometown, Nick took me to his parents’ store, which was larger than your typical sari-sari store. It took up the ground floor of a building, while his parents lived on the top two floors. Unlike many sari-sari stores, customers could walk around inside this one. And there were the usual commodities for sale: candies, can goods and cigarettes; and cooking oil, salt, and sugar stored in sacks and cans; and customers bought products in bulk rather than packaged. On the walls were reproductions of paintings of various Philippine heroes (Rizal, Bonifacio, and don’t forget Melcharo Aquino), and an old photograph of Huk Luis Taruc).
“My husband and I manage as well as we can without Nick,” Nick’s mother told me as she tried to make me feel comfortable. “We opened the store in 1958, when we decided it was best for Nick. It seemed important that he get a proper education. A jungle camp is no place to raise a child. It wasn’t good for him after he reached a certain age. It’s a good memory though.”
Nick’s father showed me an old scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings and photographs of HUKs.
HUK, a Tagalog acronym for Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, stood for People’s Anti-Japanese Army. They came close to victory in 1950. Knocked on the door of Manila. But were defeated by a combination of advanced U.S. weaponry and reforms by President Roman Magsaysay. One quiet American helped the president win.
“After the Japanese invaded us, we were angry and scared. We wanted to fight back. Some of us had guns and talked about forming an army”, Nick’s father said. “I had come back from Manila, where I had gone as Nick did for my education. The Japanese invasion interrupted it. By the time I got back here, there were small-armed groups already forming, mostly tenants and farmers and peasants. So I joined a small one in the mountains nearby. I didn’t know then that it would become a lifelong commitment.”
“How did the resistance movement come about?” I asked.
“At first people acted on their own,” he said. “But we soon realized that we needed to organize and did. We only had homemade guns and a few rifles we stole. I had to learn to shoot…and elsewhere in Pampanga other groups emerged. We joined them. That was in March of 1942.”
“It was a very difficult time for us. There were thirteen units, and this was the first squadron, the beginning of an army; and as we increased in numbers, they gave our squadron a number, Squadron 6 of the Hukbalahap. Before the Japanese entered our barrio we didn’t have any plans. It happened spontaneously. I was sixteen at the time. I grew up in a hurry. I soon got married. It helped me mature, but I wasn’t ready to get married. That March, in a barrio at the foot of Mount Arayat near the Pampanga border, several squadrons joined together, men from Candaba, San Luis, Minalin, Magalang, Cabiao, and as far away as Bulacan. All together there were over two hundred of us.”
I asked him how that worked.
“It helped that we had a common enemy,” he said. “Also, we had the leadership of Luis Taruc. Taruc was baptized a leader before he came to us. He was good speaker and inspired us. I never wanted to be a leader, but it turned out that I was destined to become one. I looked up to Taruc. It gave me confidence to see how much confidence he had. Like me, he was a son of a tenant farmer. Like me, and unlike most peasants, he completed high school and went to college for a year in Manila. He was a farmer, a tenant; he had been a ditch digger, who became a tailor. He left that trade and his wife and children to become our leader. He listened to us. He was like a brother.”
“Once he asked me if I’d give up my wife and son too. Like I said, he set an example. I told him I would, but thank God I didn’t have to.” Whereupon, he looked at Nick’s mother and smiled, and said, “She followed me and wouldn’t stay home like she should’ve. What did it matter that she was a woman?” He laughed. “She became my jungle bride. I liked her spunk. Only a woman like her would carry a rifle at the same time she carried a baby. They called her Lady Sinn, after a 6th century woman warrior. Lady Sinn’s military exploits were legendary.“ Nick’s father still referred to Nick’s mother as “his Lady Sinn.”
“My Lady Sinn … she did everything a man did and did things men couldn’t do. I felt responsible for her delicate condition. I soon found out that it wasn’t necessary. All I knew was that I wanted to be with her. I wanted her to have my baby. She did. How fortunate we were. And here we are. We were with each other all the time and she went on raids, and then Nick came along, and we had to think of him.” He then turned to his wife and said, “You were so foolish. You could’ve been killed.”
I asked her about the experience.
“Sex, love and revolution: what more could I have asked for? I often slept next to my husband on the ground. We got married when I was fifteen and he was sixteen. We held each other to keep warm. When we slept outside, we always slept with our clothes on and our rifles ready. So I don’t know how I got pregnant.”
“You only had one child?”
She hesitated, and finally said, “I had trouble getting pregnant.”
“What did you family think?”
“I think they were proud of me.”
“How did you feel?”
“About not getting pregnant? Disappointed. Then Nick came along. Remember we’re Catholic.”
“What do you think about Nick’s politics?”
“What can I say? We’ve always supported revolution. God gave us Nick when I thought I could never have a child. God’s gift one Christmas one year.”
“I believe, as Nick does, that if America can put a man on the moon, America can do anything she sets her mind to,” Nick’s mother then said. “If you want peace, you should be able to achieve it. That’s the truth and a sad thing. A cry for peace, a war moratorium has now been called for not only here in the Philippines but all across America. That’s what I hear. If they don’t listen, however, and if protests fail, then you have to change tactics. Ask Nick: students are not about to give up. I’m proud of him.” She was a short woman with gray short hair and a wrinkled post-menopausal face. She was wearing a plain work dress, which seemed appropriate for the store.
I then said, “I now see where Nick gets his radicalism”
“I don’t see much of a connection. For many years there was a-disconnect,” Nick told me. “They wanted more but settled for less. Then came along the Vietnam War and the protests in the United States. That gave us permission to hold our own demonstrations.”
Nick’s father got out a Japanese sword he kept in a display case.
“I kept this as I a souvenir,” Nick’s father went on. “I was just as active in the Resistance as Marcos says he was. So was Ninoy, who was from near here, and like me became the mayor of his hometown. To me, Ninoy is a lesser evil. I’ve heard Ninoy speak, and he has a brilliant mind. Now he’s a senator, who’s not afraid of Marcos. I’m proud of Nick. He’s not afraid of Marcos. And if I were younger, I’d march with him.” Suddenly he raised the sword above his head, but then he slowly lowered it, as if surrendering it. “There’s little difference between today and yesterday. The poor are still poor. We’re talking about the same things: land reform and American imperialism. When Nick quotes Mao and describes the Philippines as a ‘semifeudal, semicolonial society ruthlessly exploited by United States imperialists’, I know what he’s talking about.”
Elaine and Susan, both of whom stayed home, began to worry about their men’s safety. And they sought comfort from each other. Since Elaine’s parents still lived in Forbes Park (in Makarti) and Susan’s school was in Makarti, they sometimes met each other there … took in a show or went shopping. Susan was a doomsayer, and Elaine was normally the opposite. Susan felt lonely and out of place and didn’t really want to come to the Philippines and only relented because of my draft situation. Elaine loved adventure and in that way took after her father. She also loved the Philippines and had no intentions of ever going home.
The whole time Nick and I were in Pampanga Susan couldn’t sleep. She talked to Elaine about it, and Elaine reassured her. As it turned out, we were in good hands, and there was no reason for Susan to worry. Susan spent one night with Elaine, again when she couldn’t sleep. They spent some of the time reminiscing about the States. Susan had become homesick for a country she loved and even more forlorn than she had been before. Elaine sympathized with her. It said a lot about her. Elaine wasn’t normally a worrier, but after her father showed her the photograph of her with Nick at the demonstration she began to worry. She suspected the CIA. She knew the CIA lurked in the shadows and knew the CIA and her father could steal her happiness. She wasn’t concerned for herself like she was for Nick. She knew enough to be concerned for Nick. Nick, her friend, her soul mate, and her lover. Nick, who meant everything to her.
Traveling gave me a lot time to think about my life. I grew up on the dusty plains and felt at home with tumbleweed and sagebrush. My sense of place was undisturbed then. Then an inner voice told me that there had to be more to life.
Before I met Susan I decided to major in journalism. Take pity Lord … journalism … or shall I die before I’m eighteen? I was that determined.
Low and behold, I saw her… Susan … but didn’t just see her but asked her out for a date…that proved that she never really needed to fear that I wouldn’t notice her. It wasn’t easy for her to love me because I wanted to be a journalist and had already caught the travel bug.
It was hard to know why Susan was so negative. She rarely talked about her childhood, which hadn’t given her confidence. People who knew her couldn’t believe that she let me drag her half way around the world. She did, however, have some adventurous blood in her. Running was her idea, and if you asked her, she admitted it.
“I prize my husband’s life,” she said. “I didn’t want to see him end up in Vietnam.”
My mother sent me a clipping about Bill Butler’s death. Bill Butler was my best friend. Although he was clumsy and had more automobile accidents than anyone I knew, he died in a fixed-winged aircraft over Long Khanh, South Vietnam. He almost failed his physical because he was polydactyl. He had twelve toes, which was never taken care of.
It turned out that Bill had other physical deficiencies that should’ve disqualified him from flight school, except he was always an exception. He wasn’t smart, though he received high grades and scored high on tests. Our paths could’ve crossed because, as I understood it, he flew in and out of Clark several times. There was a memorial service for him back home, which my parents attended and sent me a clipping about.
“What I prize most, however, is being close to him,” Susan said. “It gives me strength. It’s like a strong tonic that you gulp down all at once. You close your eyes and gulp it down. It doesn’t need improvement, though it can upset your stomach, and it burns for a while though you’ve grown a tolerance for it.” But how much longer did she have to be away from home before she realized it could become addictive?
Although Susan knew Nick was a Maoist, she was reluctant to talk about it. She and Elaine avoided the subject, even though it concerned both of them greatly. Elaine listened for hours to Nick talk about the movement, though he knew she could’ve been a CIA asset. Both of them should’ve been more cautious.
Nick a HUK.
Compartmentalize it
Loose lips sink ships
The CIA often recruited assets who were lovers of people they wanted to spy on.
We saw Elaine coming around the corner, from the back of the Rizal Theater, where she parked her car. As soon as she saw Susan and me, she waved. She immediately said that she didn’t want to see a movie but wanted to go somewhere and talk.
I was used to Susan’s neurotic mood swings, but I hadn’t been around Elaine when she changed her mind. Still it didn’t alarm me. Something must’ve come up with Nick to keep him from coming. She suggested that we go to the polo grounds, where her father took her when she first landed in Manila, and took us there in her car. On the way, she asked us if we’d seen or heard from Nick.
She was obviously distraught. Her driving told us that she was upset. We zoomed by a swimming pool, tennis courts, driving range, equestrian grounds, gym, squash courts, bowling lanes, and badminton courts. She screeched to stop and back into a parking spot.
“I’m worried,” she said, and told us about a confrontation she had with her father. It was the first time she told us about the photograph of Nick and her. “Now I can’t find Nick. I’ve checked everywhere. As you know we were planning to see a movie, the four of us, together.” By then it was clear that she was very upset. And it made me curious and wonder what she knew that I didn’t know.
Susan lay next to me on our bed. She was crying, obvious shaken, and rather distant. Her eyes were closed, shut tight, her hair was tangled, and her face was blotched …the result of her crying with her makeup on. She still wore the cotton dress she wore to the theater.
“You don’t care about me,” she said. “If you did, you wouldn’t be so reckless.”
“Susan,” I murmured as I touched her and she pushed my hand away. “Aye yaw yaw, I can’t win.”
“My devotion to you was not predicated on my waiting as you serve a long prison sentence…and I assume Filipino prisons are worse than those in the States,” Susan continued, “but I’m a dutiful wife, and I suppose I’ll wait. Does your conscious bother you? Does it bother you that you associate with communists and people who hate your country? Tonight when Elaine told us about Nick’s disappearance, I became ill. It was then that I thought, ‘Susan, you might as well get used to the idea of becoming a widow, and we have no life insurance.’ Now, my stomach aches and I feel trapped. And I’m supposed to carry on as if there isn’t a problem. You think I’m blind. I’ll have to say all I know is what I’ve been told. I know that you associate with people who hate Americans, know that you’ve attended anti-American demonstrations, know you had a great time in the home of a HUK, and know you spent time with a Moro rebel in the Sulus. I’m afraid that because of it people will assume that you hate America. It must be so, or so it seems.”
This gave me an opportunity to level with her.
“I’m looking for stories … that’s all. I’m a journalist looking for stories … that’s all. Since when is it against the law for journalist … “
“Stop! With you it’s more than that.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Nick’s my friend.”
“So he’s your friend.”
“You’ve crossed the line.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“How do people know? It’s dangerous.”
“So is crossing the street.”
“Stop it!”
“I’m not a Filipino.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it.
“I said stop it!”
When I traveled with Nick, I couldn’t call her every day, but I did my best to stay in touch. I knew Susan worried. When Nick and I were on a bus, timing would make it impossible, and I knew she worried. Sometimes during stops, I paid the conductor to hold the bus while I searched for a phone because I knew she worried. It amused Nick, and in spite of money I gave the conductor, I always worried that the bus would take off and leave me.
Nick wanted to take me to one of the HUK camps. He insisted that I’d come away with a favorable impression. The HUKs I met were mostly peasant farmers and more or less homogeneous. They were more for agrarian reform than anything else. I told Nick that I was amazed how friendly they were. But he told me that I shouldn’t be fooled.
I knew, of course, that I had to be careful and not totally trust them. Nick wouldn’t disagree. I also knew that, as long as I was with him, I wouldn’t have any problems. He scolded me for acting nervous. We traveled freely throughout Pampanga without a single incident. Nick was always there with me, so I don’t know what my reception would’ve been had I been by myself. We traveled for over a week … had a wonderful time, and I came away with a favorable impression. Later, my opinions changed, just as the situation in the area intensified.
Susan said, “I love you,” as she tried to reassure herself.
Around the same time Nick disappeared, two other events further disrupted Elaine’s life: His Holiness Pope Paul VI’s visit to Manila and transfer of her father to the Pentagon. Coming at the worse possible time, with the air station’s scheduled closure, Elaine’s father’s transfer came out of the blue. He wasn’t eager to move. At such a critical time, he wasn’t eager to move. Even when moving meant that he’d avoid more controversy involving his daughter, he hated the thought of moving. He considered this transfer a demotion but felt grateful that it occurred without fanfare.
The Pope’s visit to Manila, on the other hand, attracted the attention of millions of people and disrupted traffic. But shortly after his plane touched down, Pope Paul survived an attempted assassination by a Bolivian painter. Afterwards he smiled and seemed unfazed. Yes, the Pope seemed unfazed. It was a hectic day for the Pope, as he continued as if nothing happened. And he took time out of a hectic day to forgive the assailant and rebuked a monsignori who saved his life. Imelda gave her husband credit for saving the Pope’s life.
Millions lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the Pope as he toured Manila. Following the tour, he was brought to Manila Cathedral where he presided over a liturgical reception. Then he blessed an image of Our Lady, the Nuestra Senora de Guia near Elaine’s apartment in Ermita. Elaine and I were caught in traffic but didn’t see the Pope.
News about her father came to Elaine by letter from her mother.
I met Elaine when she wanted someone to go with her to her parents’ home. Her frazzled mother’s silvery hair was hanging loosely around her head when she opened the door, and she seemed surprised that Elaine brought me with her. She also didn’t know what to say. I could tell that she didn’t know what to say because she limited her part of the conversation to answering questions. She said she didn’t know when Elaine’s father would be home. She did invite us in. And Elaine and I noticed a For Sale sign in the front yard. The visit was significant by what wasn’t said.
We met Elaine’s father at the naval air station. He was too busy to go home at night then, though he was used to traveling back and forth. Elaine and I both felt tension in the air, and from it was hard to imagine that Elaine and her father were ever close. He was obviously angry, and she was obviously hurt.
After a few minutes of small talk, he looked his daughter in the eye and said, “You must be proud of yourself.”
Elaine was about answer back when I stopped her. I didn’t know until then why I was there. This was towards the end of October, and it was simply a coincidence that this happened at the time of the Pope’s visit. I asked the commander if he were aware of the assassination attempt. I talked about the traffic snarl and the difficulty we had getting to Cavite. “By land it’s always slow, by sea it’s less of a gamble, and by air it’s a snap. Luckily, I have a helicopter. That’s how I’ve been able to live in Forbes Park and work over here.”
Elaine listened with a scowl on her face and then said, “Dad, I suppose what’s happened between us is not unusual. I’m sure difficulties between fathers and daughters are quite common but rarely do they result in an international incident like it has in our case. I regret it. And I’m truly sorry. It’s my fault. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it hurt your career when it shouldn’t have. I know how much success in the navy means to you. It’s not fair. I continue to love and respect you though. It’s not fair. I’m not sure or know how it happened or why I fell for Nick, but I did. You and mother like him. But now!”
“It’s out of our hands now,” he said.
“I don’t agree,” she said.
“You don’t know how much trouble your boyfriend’s in. It’s out of our hands. And you’re connected with him, and it means … “
“It means what? You have connections.”
“And my connections are telling me … “
“Elaine, you’re a grown woman.”
“And I’m your daughter. Maybe I should’ve been more discreet since I’m your daughter. Maybe I should’ve been more careful since I’m … I’ve made mistakes. I know I’ve made mistakes. I may be inexperienced and made mistakes. You must believe me. I never intended to hurt you or hurt your career. As you’re preparing to leave and are wrapping things up around here, I know you don’t have much time. Mother told me that you weren’t going home at night.”
“I didn’t have much time left here anyway.”
“Nick has disappeared. You don’t seem surprised that Nick has disappeared. I think he’s been arrested. Where is he dad? I think you know where he is. I think he’s been arrested and you know where he is. Why don’t say something?”
“Elaine, you don’t belong here.”
“I don’t belong here. What do you mean I don’t belong here? You’re right, I’m not a Filipina. But you’re not a Philippine citizen either. So don’t tell me I don’t belong here. Where’s Nick? Why is it such a big deal? There are demonstrations everyday. I attend one over here and the whole world gets involved. I’m surprised that it has caused so much trouble.”
Shortly after massive floods in 1970 and the Pope’s visit, I opened our front door to find a young American standing there. An informally dressed American, who introduced himself as Joe Wilson, ostensibly a businessman, he handed me a business card. On the card after his name was printed the word “Consultant.” I didn’t know what to think.
Mr. Wilson asked me if he could come in.
“Of course. Normally you wouldn’t have caught me at home.”
I immediately felt alarmed when I saw a white man on my doorstep and felt suspicious because of what happened to Nick. But I kept my thoughts to myself, as I brought him into my living room and tried to make him feel at home.
“I caught you off guard. I can see it in your face,” he said.
“You did,” I responded.
“I didn’t mean to alarm you.”
“You see why I would be.”
“I’m here alone. My wife’s at work, and the maid’s out shopping.”
“If it’s a bad time.”
“What is this about?”
“You’re a reporter?”
“Then I’m a fan.”
“A fan?”
“Yes, I’ve read your articles.”
“Nothing. Or should I say they’re informative.”
“Who are you, really?
He embarked on a complicated answer that I suspected was fictitious. He said he left the States almost two years before then to work his way around the world, and the reasons … well, it was complicated, which told me, like me, that maybe he was running away from something.
“So for the past two years you’ve been supporting yourself in various parts of the world as a business consultant,” I surmised.
“That’s my cover.”
“Then who do you work for?”
“As my card suggests, I’m for hire.”
Personal questions about himself, about his American connections and those in the Philippines, about his travels and traveling companions, and whether or not he worked for the CIA, as I suspected, were skillfully dodged. Then suddenly my visitor said, “I suspect you’re wondering why I’m here. I assure you that I’m not here in any official capacity. No one sent me. I’m just curious. Are you a communist?”
“As far I know it’s not against the law in the Philippines to be a communist.”
“You needn’t be afraid.”
Then he got down to business … the business of my friends and my association with known communist and subversive individuals. He stressed subversive individuals. He asked me specifically about people I knew and had written about.
What was amazing was that I didn’t kick him out. I got angry but didn’t kick him out. I sat there, responded to his questions, got angry, and didn’t kick him out.
“Are you … “
“Did you …. ”
“Will you …. ”
“Of course not. But now Joe, I have a few questions for you. Just who do you work for … if not for Uncle Sam, then who? Am I or have I ever been a communist? Have I knowingly aided or supported a communist movement, directly or indirectly, through another organization, group, or person? No. Well, yes. I’ve bought a communist lunch. I have a communist friend. I’ve bought his lunch. We’ve gone on trips together. Now I have a question for you. Have I broken any law? Another question. Perhaps a more important one. What are you going to do with what I’ve told you?”
“Nothing. As I said, I’m just curious.”
“And I’m suspicious.”
Then it occurred to me that Mr. Wilson could be a vigilante, or totally insane, so I asked him about both things.
“To both questions: no,” he said. “Maybe I’m just pulling your chain.”
Now came his attempt to set me at ease. “I could use something to drink. You shouldn’t have written those articles if you didn’t want to be on someone’s radar. I admire your bravery, or was it stupidity? Can we start over?”
“Okay. I guess I better be off.”
Such questioning seemed so absurd that it didn’t deserve a response. I always wondered what kind of people the CIA recruited, and I now I knew. Did they think their approach would work? Would I say something that would incriminate me? But then of course, I was a novice.
“Oh, before I go. I’m curious. Again curious. I’m sure you’re planning to go back to the States.”
“What about dope? Do you smoke it?”
“And you love America?”
“And you’re married? Congratulations. I assume you don’t have children, but I don’t know why I assume it.”
And as he went out the door, I said to myself, “So much for Mr. Wilson.” I decided I wouldn’t tell Susan about Mr. Wilson’s visit. I didn’t want to cause her anymore grief.
Since my first visit to the U.S Embassy and a bombing across the boulevard from it, security was beefed up and augmented with Marine guards from Saigon. Before I had no trouble getting in. I assumed since I was a Caucasian and spoke fluent English that I fit a profile of a good guy and that was why the first time I didn’t even have to show ID. I sported a safari hat, carried a backpack, was with Susan, and we’d been in Manila less than a week. We weren’t on any particular mission. Then almost immediately after Joe Wilson’s visit, I went back to the embassy thinking that I’d confront the devil.
I knew CIA operatives work out of the embassy or at least like everyone else suspected it. It was an assumption and a belief I hold to this day. I never suspected I’d have trouble getting into the embassy, but in case I took my passport and a second form of ID. I expected fair treatment. I thought I’d be shown respect. As an American, I expected fair treatment. I had certain expectations and planned to use a smile and a friendly hello and didn’t think I’d be stopped at the gate.
I read stories about recent violence. I got news about America from the Manila Times and letters from home and knew about shootings at Kent State. There were sometimes copies of the New York Times for sale at The Manila Hotel and the National Bookstore in Makati (I could also find it in the UP Library). The Times of New York and Manila, both newspapers gave me all the news that I wanted … news that generally wasn’t good. We didn’t have television. I missed Walter Cronkrite and the CBS Evening News, but just because we didn’t have a television didn’t mean Filipinos didn’t have them and weren’t very much aware of the psychedelic era we lived in.
There was Woodstock and Hair, and Manila wasn’t immune. There was no stopping it … the influences and happenings … the sit-ins and love-ins. It would’ve been hard for the Philippines to ignore it. I remember watching protests and demonstrations on the campus of UP and thinking the same thing is going on at home … then reading about demonstrations and riots and Kent State at home and saying there’s no difference. I had strong feelings about the Vietnam War. It went beyond my not wanting to go. But all along I dreaded that somehow someone in the government would not only find out how I felt but would also turn me in as a draft dodger, which after Mr. Miller’s visit began to haunt me. I should’ve talked about it. I should’ve worked through it with Susan. It was just one more thing that I kept to myself. Maybe then I wouldn’t have panicked.
It was not unusual for me to spend a whole afternoon in the library at UP devouring a Sunday issue of the New York Times. I first had to see what was opening or playing on Broadway, to get the scoop and read the reviews. It gave a complete picture of the art scene. I read about Avalanche and SoHo, Earthworks and Conceptual Art, Johnny Cash: The Man, His World and His Music, Jimi Hendix Rock Star Dead in London at 27, and, of course, Kent State. I would then take it all back to Nick and Susan.
As he sat working at his desk under a Chinese flag, I went into Nick’s room with a rationale about why it wasn’t wrong for me to associate with him. Or why it wasn’t wrong for me to associate with students who hated America. I knew I didn’t share their feelings … at least some of their feelings. But I couldn’t get over the idea that students around the world were united in their opposition to the war. I hadn’t said the Pledge of Allegiance in some time; but I hadn’t sworn allegiance to any other country either. When asked, I told people that I loved my country. But I found myself less inclined to defend Her, to say anything good about Her, or feel patriotic, or cut my hair. My sympathies were with radicals; and because of it I felt sure the CIA was watching me. And Mr. Wilson’s visit proved it.
But I thought the CIA wasn’t supposed to target Americans. I guess I was lucky to be an American and lucky that I wasn’t dead yet. Mr. Wilson asked me pointed questions about my loyalty to the United States, asked me if I were a Communist, and he implied that as a loyal American I should fall in step. There was more insinuated than that. I took it as a threat. He went too far. The CIA wasn’t supposed to target Americans.
I shouldn’t have let him in, shouldn’t have listened or taken a grilling, and most of all shouldn’t have answered his questions. I was nervous. I couldn’t think straight, but he probably already had enough to hang me. Probably the interview was simply a formality.
It wasn’t true that leaving America was an easy decision for me … that I felt no qualms about avoiding the draft. Bill Butler’s death haunted me. I felt guilty, cried through Vietnam War Movies, and dodged questions about my experiences during that period. We lived as expatriates. I felt that I was just as involved in the anti-war movement in the Philippines as I would’ve been had I stayed home.
I spent almost a whole year there as an observer and wrote a few articles to justify my being there. Susan had documentation from her employer that she was essential. The school didn’t need her, but they said she was essential. They could get all the teachers they needed from a huge English speaking community, people who didn’t have to worry about Philippine immigration. The school didn’t have to pay teachers very much because they hired mainly wives of businessmen and military personal, women who actually didn’t need to work. None of them, except Susan, supported their husbands.
Susan was as close to a free spirit as they allowed. They viewed me with suspicion. It didn’t surprise me that they viewed me with suspicion. I was anything but subversive … even though I associated with many people who were … subversive.
Initially the Philippine Bureau of Immigration didn’t show any interest in us. As Americans, we could enter the Philippines without visas for twenty-one days, which we extended for sixty days before we had to leave the country. We then flew to Taiwan to get our passports stamped so that we could reenter the Philippines for another sixty days. We did that four or five times before the International School gave Susan documentation we needed to get the right visas. Still we never knew when we’d receive a letter from immigration giving us a few hours to pack and leave. For a while we lived in constant fear and hoped they’d forget us.
I took solace in the belief that immigration was inefficient … or less efficient than US authorities would’ve been had they realized I was a draft dodger … also less than the National Police was … and since immigration was overwhelmed I thought they wouldn’t look hard for us. I also felt having a few articles published explained why we were in the Philippines. But I didn’t know how close I came to getting into serious trouble.
Then came Nick’s disappearance and Joe Wilson’s visit, and it came at a time when I was less sure of myself.
Back home, our parents weren’t getting any younger. I had a grandmother to die on me. I also lost a boyhood friend, which shook me up more than a divorce of another friend. I missed many other things besides birthdays and holidays, and in spite of trying to keep up by reading the New York Times. I didn’t know anything about changes that were taking place in my hometown. I never realized how fast and how much it would grow and become unrecognizable in such a short period of time. But why did I care? One would think that I didn’t hold my hometown in very high esteem, because I hesitated to tell people where I was from. I preferred to say that I was from someplace else … someplace more cosmopolitan and more sophisticated such as New York City.
I began to feel like I didn’t belong anywhere. After I began to realize that I didn’t belong in the Philippines, that it wasn’t my country, as I began to feel like I didn’t belong anywhere. As an expatriate, I could still be an American. It would’ve been easier for me to be from Canada. As a draft dodger, I could’ve gone to Canada, as many others did. I could’ve found safe haven in Canada like many others did. This wasn’t the case in the Philippines. The Philippines didn’t offer me safe haven.
Even with Susan’s endorsement from her school, I felt sure I wasn’t safe in the Philippines. And we couldn’t live and work there as long as we wanted. Perhaps I blew our chances. But I could fight it (whatever “it” was). I had rights, the right of due process, although in the Philippines I wasn’t sure. Moreover, since I became involved in political activism and wrote about it, I ran a real risk of getting kicked out of the country.
I don’t think I seriously weighed risks, or thought about it much. I allied myself with Nick, a known communist and traveled with him to Basilan and Central Luzon without thinking about consequences. I simply didn’t think about it much. If I had … I didn’t have a lot of confidence in the Philippine judicial system … particularly under Marcos … and I never thought the U.S. Embassy would help me. And based on my friends, it would be hard for me to prove to them that I wasn’t a communist. There were no guarantees. I never expected there would be guarantees. But after Nick disappeared and Mr. Wilson showed up at my door, I was less confident. Up until then I hadn’t given it much thought.
And what about Susan? Susan? What were my obligations to her? After Nick’s disappearance and Joe Wilson’s visit, I thought about her more often. What would happen to her if something were to happen to me? It was like carrying around a hundred pound weight and at the same time suffering from extreme farsightedness. For the next two weeks, I couldn’t sleep, eat, and my stomach didn’t like me. Then after I couldn’t stand it any longer, I headed for the embassy. I was going to get answers.
Meanwhile, I received greetings from Nixon. It was my fourth draft notice. “You are hereby inducted, hereby ordered … failure to comply is a federal offense.” A federal offense! It sounded ominous. I was suppose to report to Clark Air Force Base for my physical. I thought about it. And we talked about it before I decided I wouldn’t go. I’d stick with a decision that I made when we decided to go to the Philippines, and Kent State reinforced it.
Elaine’s father didn’t tell us where Nick was being held. We felt he knew, but wouldn’t tell us. We came away feeling frustrated because we knew he knew more than he was telling us. By then we narrowed it down to two detention centers: Fort Bonifacio or Camp Crane. We knew that students were being held in both places. Fort Bonifacio, or old Fort McKinley, would’ve been my choice, if I had a choice, because of its location in Makati and its close proximity to Forbes Park. Fort Bonifacio … the Cadillac of detention centers … I was probably wrong about it. Nick wouldn’t have been sent there because it was too close to Forbes Park. The location of a facility bore no relation to what went on inside it, so it didn’t matter whether he was being held in Fort Bonifacio or Camp Crane. We just prayed Nick received humane treatment. But humane or not there wasn’t much I could do about it.
Given my tenuous situation, there wasn’t much I could do. I couldn’t afford to draw any more attention to myself. I was an American expatriate, whose influence was nil and views were considered suspect. Now that I was on the lam and seemed to have attracted attention, I knew that I had to be careful … that or else I could end up in the slammer like Nick. Only it would be worse for me. Given my nationality it would be worse.
I heard horror stories about Americans held in foreign prisons. Judicial systems varied from country to country; in many countries people were presumed guilty instead of innocent. I didn’t know much about the Philippine system, but I knew enough about Marcos violating human rights to scare me. I heard about prisoners being held forever without a trial. And I had the draft hanging over my head. And wasn’t I being accused of being a communist? I also knew my articles had given me a certain amount of notoriety.
No one was making us stay in Manila. We had no real ties there. We were foreign nationalist, expatriates and free to go. We still had our passports, and there were many places we could go. But no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t forget the Vietnam War. At the beginning I hadn’t been against it. I hadn’t paid much attention to it. I attended undergraduate and graduate school and received deferments so that I could attend. What if I hadn’t received those deferments?
Since I suspected that the CIA was on to me, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the agency’s activities in Manila. But the CIA was hard to crack. I read Graham Greene’s THE QUIET AMERICAN. How much of it was fiction? I heard about Col. Edward Lansdale. Nick referred to Lansdale several times during our trip to Central Luzon, and I knew how the CIA, through Lansdale, ran Magsaysay’s successful campaign against the HUKs. Basically because of this alliance, in 1954, American policy in Southeast Asia was best represented in the Philippines, as the policies of the two nations became inseparable. More than in any other place in the region, the CIA found a home in the Philippines. All of this was common knowledge.
True or not, the idea of an omnipresent CIA became fixed in the Philippine psyche, and I couldn’t help but pick up on it. The Manila station, I assumed, was quite large. How else do you explain the appearance of the infamous photograph of Elaine and Nick, Joe Wilson’s visit, and Nick’s detention, how all three events coincided? It seemed highly unlikely to me that it was coincidental. Remember there was also the sudden transfer of Elaine’s father to the Pentagon.
Clearly I was placed in an impossible situation, and I clearly had to take the blame for it. The question then came down to if Joe Wilson was CIA, then what did the CIA want from me?
There seemed to me to have always been a difference between what Americans thought they were doing in the Philippines and what natives perceived, or this was another example of my naivete. Our trying to help other nations, rightly or wrongly, had often been misinterpreted, as we unintentionally placed ourselves up on a pedestal. I’m not sure where I came up with this … whether I came up with it on my own or read or heard it somewhere. Personally I was trying to justify why Susan and I remained in the Philippines.
Elaine became an activist. If she became an activist in her own country it would’ve been one thing, but in the Philippines? What did she think she was doing? What could she accomplish standing in the rain with a sign on Lawton Avenue in front of Fort Bonifacio? Could she see the irony … the irony and contradiction, from a Filipino perspective, between what Bonifacio stood for and what she did? Maybe she should’ve gone about it another way. For starters, she could’ve gone with me to the American Embassy.
What she didn’t realize was that the military could’ve gotten rid of her and she could’ve ended up in a cell next to Nick. Arrests of militants continued throughout 1970 and 1971, even before Marcos declared Martial Law after the bombing in Plaza Miranda, when the president used the event to seize more power. On the Filipino stage what influence did Elaine have? Did she think she could get the government to release Nick?
Coming from America, I took for granted political freedom; that was until Nick’s arrest. Before then I was very casual about it. I felt that America’s influence should’ve been great enough to assure Filipinos the same freedoms we enjoyed. Since America was an influential country, and powerful, I thought its traditions of freedom would naturally extend to its former colony. And why hadn’t the good, along with the bad, stuck? “It’s a different place,” Susan said in response to my question. “Of course, in Makati, you may think with a supermarket that you’re still in the States (and because of the presence of IBM, Chase Manhattan, American Express, and the like), but you’re not.”
A few agonizing days after Joe Wilson’s visit, I found myself walking through the Luneta toward the American Embassy on Roxas …slowly ambling along, thinking. I wasn’t in a hurry, but I didn’t have as much time as I thought. I never dreamed that I would have trouble getting into the embassy. I hadn’t before. As Americans, we didn’t have trouble then because we wore shoes. Although I still owned a pair of shoes, I now generally wore sandals. (I had even found sandals made from automobile tires that I thought were pretty cool.) I didn’t expect a long line either because it was in the middle of the afternoon.
So I ambled along, enjoying the huge national plaza. It was 2 p.m., and the walk gave me a chance to unwind … too much had happened in too short a time. And I had a lot on my mind. Elaine had asked me to picket with her in front of Fort Bonifacio.
When I finally got to the embassy, I took my place in a line outside the gates. There were mainly Filipinos there seeking visas and a legal way to enter the States … and on this particular day I didn’t see any protestors. I waited patiently and would’ve resented anyone trying to break in line, but there were a couple of Marine guards standing at the gates to make sure it didn’t happen. They were also asking for identification. Some people resisted giving them anything. This generally held everyone up while they discussed the matter.
I felt annoyed as the line crawled and as I realized that maybe I hadn’t allowed enough time. There were, I don’t know, maybe two or three hundred in line. And we were all standing in the hot sun. I kept thinking that there had to have been a better way. It seemed as if those of us who were Americans shouldn’t have to stand in line, but that wasn’t to say that everyone shouldn’t have had their turn. There were times when the guards opened the gates for cars, and I wondered what kept people in line then.
Back in front of the main gate of Fort Bonifacio, Elaine took up residency on a cot. She also proclaimed a hunger strike. The military guards, whose responsibilities included maintaining a Filipino flag in front of a sentry post, checking identification stickers on cars as they came and went, and raising and lower an arm that served as a gate, didn’t know what to make of Elaine. But it was only a matter of time before they picked up a phone and asked what they should do about her.
A young diplomat from the US Embassy stepped up to Elaine and said, “Good Day, Miss. My name is David Wolfe. I represent the American Diplomatic Mission here in the Philippines. I want to advise you as a…” apparently, he knew who Elaine was…”your father … how can I put this … is … let me say … very concerned. You’re making quite a spectacle of yourself. I suppose that is what you aim to do … make a spectacle of yourself. I’ve come to see if we can help … help resolve your … let’s say … situation.”
“All right. This is quite simple. For the record, I’ve stopped eating and won’t eat until I learn about a friend, whom I believe is being held here in Fort Bonifacio.”
“Your mother …”
“This has nothing to do with my mother!” Elaine exploded.
Mr. Wolfe nodded and then explained that if she broke any Philippine law, the US couldn’t be expected to intervene, and that she could be arrested for vagrancy … arrested and detained. He therefore asked her to think about what she was doing. He then reminded her it could cause a very unpleasant international incident. Before he left he made several attempts to get her to change her mind. He obviously didn’t know Elaine.
“Mr. Wolfe, I wish to inform you, and the government you represent, that I intend to make, as you put it, a public spectacle of myself and cause an international incident, unless…” Elaine went on. “I went to my father. I assume you know my father, or at least know who he is. I’m sure you’ve been briefed, or else you wouldn’t be here. Therefore, my initial request, as I might’ve said, seems quite simple to me. His name is … and I’m sure he is being held inside there. And I plan to stay here and not eat until he’s released. Am I making myself clear? And therefore you can give a message to my father.” Whereupon she swore at him … swore at her father.
The diplomat, who sounded as though he were from New York, said he’d make sure her message got to her father. He was more than a little flustered but managed to overcome it. While offering her sympathy, he then admitted that there wasn’t anything he could do for her. “I’m worried about you … about you and your boyfriend. Well, it’s unfair, and clearly unfair, or it seems likely, as I understand it, that it is a human rights violation. But as you may know, we can’t directly get involved in an internal affair of another country. We couldn’t do it. Therefore, it’s out of our hands…”
“It’s out of our hands,” she repeated in a monotone.
“It’s too bad, really.”
“It’s too bad.”
And so Elaine set up residence in front of Fort Bonifacio. “And I have no doubt that she was fully prepared to starve herself to death. I’m also sure that she embarrassed her father, and that the Marcos regime didn’t know what to do about her. Did the CIA monitor the situation, well, who knew? We assumed certain things that might not have been true. It was also unclear whether Mr. Wolfe helped or not, or was he simply a messenger? So Elaine lay on her cot, with a sign, and without realizing how much she abused Philippine hospitality. Meanwhile the Military Police looked on from their sentry post and for a while did nothing but watch.
It seemed like Elaine and I were faced with the same dilemma. Both of us were in conflict over where we owed our allegiance. Why was there any doubt? Why was there any doubt in our minds and in the minds of others? Why was there a question about our loyalty to our country? We weren’t Filipino. We definitely weren’t Filipino. We spoke only English. We shared an American background. We grew up enjoying American riches and privileges. We took advantage of an American education and by and large thought like Americans. With American values and an American vision, we could never stop being Americans.
Yet I refused to go to the head of the line, and Elaine was starving herself in front of Fort Bonifacio. I can’t speak for Elaine, but I didn’t feel out of place. It felt good to still be free. It felt good to come from a free country. I felt lucky … lucky to be from a free country and lucky to still be on my feet and alive. I felt confident enough to approach the embassy.
I felt sorry that Nick had been arrested. I was scared for him. It scared me. He was arrested not for what was in my mind a crime, but for speaking out for what he believed. I admit that there may be a fine line between freedom of speech and sedition, and that freedom of speech meant one thing in the States and something different in the Philippines. So Elaine and I, as Americans, may have been pushing our luck. And maybe we were counting on something that didn’t exist. We were identified and seen at demonstrations. We were on a list. We were in a foreign country, on a list, and to some extent we were radicalized. We were seen associating with people who were actively opposed to Marcos and his regime and were equally angry at the United States, and wasn’t that enough to get us in trouble? And more trouble than we realized? We liked to think that that shouldn’t have mattered; and that as Americans we enjoyed immunity (because of who we were … immunity), but that wasn’t necessarily so. I also imagined that my draft board had by then issued an arrest warrant for me, making it impossible for me to return to the States.
I was uncertain. While I stood in line, I didn’t know where I stood. Yet I knew I was better off than Nick, whose fate I wondered about as I stood there. I could only imagine what he was going through. As I approached the gates and Marine guards, I pressed my hand against my passport in my shirt pocket and said to myself, “Fool. This is great. What makes you think you won’t get arrested? Forget it!” And as I got closer, I began to shake inside.
We assume people are reasonable. At least I assumed people were reasonable. I expected a certain amount of courtesy and respect. I may have been naïve but I expected it. Why wouldn’t we be shown courtesy and respect and denied that right? But why expect liberty and freedom in a land where oppression was on the rise? As Americans, we still didn’t expected to be shackled, interrogated, or worse tortured. The spirit of liberty was alive within us. And it was something we were anxious to share with the rest of the world.
But I wasn’t quite sure of myself, though I seemed confident. Maybe I was overconfident. I knew we didn’t live in a perfect world, but I didn’t think it applied to me. We lived in a world where a large majority of people didn’t enjoy the same freedoms that we enjoyed … with those thoughts I finally reached the gates, having waited my turned and had a Marine then stop me.
After his arrest, Nick was first taken to a safe house so that relatives or friends couldn’t trace him. He went unaudited or wasn’t officially acknowledged while he was interrogated or worse tortured. I’m pretty sure Elaine’s and my name came up. All this before he was transferred to Fort Bonifacio and we began worrying about him. That’s where we were when we attracted the attention of the US Embassy.
At the gates, a Marine guard took one look at my sandals and told me I couldn’t go in. It looked like I’d have to wear shoes and socks to get into the embassy.
ISAF No. 42796
Inmate Registration No. B1 516 741
Be it known that the United States and the Philippines are long-time democratic allies, and the US Embassy wishes to reiterate our government’s support for the rule of law, constitutional order, and the government of the Philippines.
On Bonifacio Day, Quezon Bishop Emeritus Rolando Lim led a prayer vigil at Plaza Miranda in Ouiapo. The police supported it by their presence. Angry over being turned away from the embassy, I joined Elaine in her protest.
Early in January of 1972, we received two letters from immigration telling us that we had 72 hours to leave the country. This was something that happened before, but this time it seemed more ominous. We were devastated. There was no hint in the letters why there had suddenly been a review of our visa status. It was especially troubling when Susan and I had recently been granted extensions because of her employment.
Christmas and New Years came and went without Nick’s release; and Elaine hadn’t been rescued. She was still starving herself in front of Fort Bonifacio. She wasn’t really starving herself. She had made it so far on sugared water; and her father, without her mother, had flown back from Washington DC (where they were in the middle of a move) to see what he could do.
Elanine’s father had rank and still had connections in the Philippines, having just been transferred to the Pentagon from Sangley. Without notice, he got his orders, a summons. The air station was scheduled for closure anyway, so some would argue what did it matter. And it wouldn’t have mattered much … except he felt like he was being punished … and except for Elaine. The surprise hurt … hurt both he and his wife. When he received his orders he was told that he was needed back in Washington because of Nixon’s covert incursion into Cambodia, essentially a compliment rather than a demotion. But it didn’t feel like it was … was a compliment.
Now because of Elaine he rushed back to Manila, which didn’t make him happy. So in January, when he flew in, he went to the US Embassy instead of to his daughter.
After receiving our letters from immigration another letter came from my parents, this one informing us that the FBI paid them a visit. They said that the FBI questioned them about us and that they cooperated fully. (My parents would cooperate.) They said it scared them to death. They were scared for me … for us. (As far as they knew, I had never been in trouble before.) And it was the FBI. And my father couldn’t believe I would shuck my responsibility. He didn’t raise me to be a draft dodger. He assumed that was why the FBI knocked on their door. They didn’t understand, and they pleaded with me to come home and take care of it. They also said they would send us money, if we needed it. The letter was written in my father’s very neat handwriting and signed by both of them.
We felt unsupported. I didn’t want to go to Vietnam. Susan didn’t want me to go to Vietnam. My best friend Bill Butler was killed in Vietnam. And the idea of turning myself in and going to prison didn’t appeal to me either. That was what January was like for us: filled with fretting and uncertainty. I imagined Nick had it worse.
We didn’t really have time to think … time to think or respond to my parents except by telephone. We didn’t want to unnecessarily worry them, or keep them hanging. We didn’t want to unnecessarily worry them until we knew for sure what we were doing.
We thought of flying to Singapore and turning around and flying back. Susan had her job to think about. Then we worried about whether they would allow us back into the country or not. Normally we wouldn’t need a visa to return to the Philippines for a short while, but there was the list I felt sure I was on. It seemed impossible, but Susan felt an obligation to her students.
I tore up the letters from immigration and couldn’t believe that I did it. It seemed to me as if we could avoid immigration for a little while. Yes, we could delay things, maybe. Yes, delay, delay, delay! How to delay? Delay the inevitable. Or was it inevitable? It seemed like it depended on how well we avoided drawing attention to ourselves.
Susan agreed that she needed a little more time, more than 72 hours, to say good-bye. Thankfully we still had “valid” visas stamped in our passports, but we realized we could still have problems at the airport if we didn’t leave as requested. Requested? Or were we ordered out of the country?
We would give all our furniture to our maid Linda.
Susan wrote the following note to her parents, while I checked on Elaine.
Dear Mom and Dad,
By now you’re getting fairly used to not hearing from us. I don’t mean to keep you in the dark; but since I usually don’t have anything to report, I use that as an excuse. I want to assure you that if something significant happened to us, you would be the first to know. That’s the reason for this letter. I didn’t want to surprise you with a letter from Singapore, Malaysia, or some other place. I didn’t want to spring it on your. We’re thinking about moving on, but we don’t know yet if we will. There’s nothing that you should be worried about. We’re just thinking about moving on.
We got a letter from Ted’s parents today. They report that everybody is doing well. They did express concern about how their son was letting his hair grow out.
For the second time this school year, I’m out of classes for a week due to a track meet (in which my school is not even participating), so I talked Ted into taking a group of my students on an excursion. We went to The Free Press (a local newspaper), to a TV station, and then to a park for a picnic. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. It was an excellent opportunity for me to get to know them better.
I’m sure you’re both very busy now, but write when you have the time.
Love from us both, Susan
Like I said I went to check on Elaine, but she was gone. I went up the sentry post, but they wouldn’t tell me anything, so I asked around. I hadn’t planned on this development, anymore than several other recent ones. I then decided to go by Elaine’s apartment in Ermita, hoping that I’d find her there with Nick.
I later found out that she was picked up the night before and flown to a hospital at Sangley. I learned that she was taken against her will … that plain-clothes men took her … kicking and screaming … and turned her over to the US Navy. It was a joint operation that took considerable co-ordination so that her father could avoid further embarrassment. She planned to starve herself to death, but she found herself in an American hospital, where they wouldn’t let her die.
On the twenty-ninth of January … I remembered the date because it was when Susan and I were supposed to leave the Philippines…Nick got released from Fort Bonifacio. He got word that morning. He got released and immediately started looking for Elaine. She disappeared, but he didn’t realize that there was a connection between his release and her disappearance. What he didn’t realize was that she finally agreed to go back to the States with her father if he arranged Nick’s freedom.
Elaine’s father did it easily enough. He pulled a few strings after Elaine agreed. But it wasn’t easy for Elaine. She kicked and screamed before she agreed. But she was desperate … afraid … afraid and desperate and after starving herself … weak. She wanted to see Nick, but more importantly she wanted him free. She was afraid they would kill him. Her father easily did it … made a few phone calls, after she agreed to go with him back to states.
We didn’t know any of this. We only found out later.
Nick received a Dear John letter from Elaine that broke his heart. I watched him fall apart. He didn’t understand … couldn’t understand. I told him about her hunger strike and he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe the Dear John letter as he fell apart. He couldn’t believe that after a hunger strike that she came to the decision she did. He couldn’t believe it. He thought she was forced into it. I remember going with him to her apartment in Ermita and finding it vacant. I remember going with him to Sangley where he shouldn’t have … where he couldn’t get anyone to admit that they knew anything about it.
The neighbor who helped Linda (our maid) with our furniture found us a room in Pasay City. Nick wasn’t in shape to help. He couldn’t go back to school and wasn’t in shape for anything. None of it made sense to him. Why? Even before he was released there was a deal made … a betrayal of sorts…he couldn’t help but view it that way.
When he walked out of Fort Bonfacio, down Lawton Avenue, little did he know that he walked past where Elaine set up her cot. When he walked past the place, free at last, there was no sign of a cot or his love, someone who was willing to sacrifice everything for him. Where the cot was there was a vender selling fruit in a cup: atis (sugar apple), bayabas (guava), mangga (mango), pineapple, and papaya. When Elaine was forcibly taken, the cot was quickly snapped up.
But it wasn’t the cot, but the American woman who slept on it and refused to eat that they talked about. The talked about how plain-clothes men came and took her away. She seemed frail then … weak … and like she might die. Nick didn’t believe … couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe Elaine wrote the Dear John letter. He wouldn’t admit that it was in her handwriting.
America … America seemed so far away. America … America was far away. Far, far away. Nick kept talking about Elaine … kept saying he was going to win her back. And he would’ve chased after him if I hadn’t stopped him. He would’ve chased after her and would’ve gone after her all the way to the States.
I kept emphasizing that he needed to move on. “Move on?” What did it mean to move on? Susan and I decided to look in on him. We decided to look in on him to make sure he was alive … to make sure he was eating. We went to his apartment, and he wouldn’t come to the door. We knock and knock, but luckily the door was unlocked. We took care of him while we tried to figure out what we were going to do. We needed to decide if it was worth it to stay in the Philippines and face God knew what.
Nick moped around in his pajamas. America …. America … we were all trying to decide what we were going to do. Elaine’s note came and said she was returning to the States. America … America … so far away. Elaine’s note didn’t give any details. It didn’t say when she was leaving or where she would live. It just said that she was returning to the States and for Nick not to contact her.
Nick slowly opened the envelope, tearing it, and knew whom it was from before he opened it. There was no name or return address on the outside, but still he knew.
He dreaded the contents, because just as he was about to unfold it he handed it to me to read. His hand was shaking when he handed it to me. His hand was shaking, and his head was down, though he wouldn’t cry.
“Let it out,” I thought.
It hurt him. I know it hardened him. I don’t know whether or not it was possible for him to become more radical than he was, but I know that the loss of Elaine changed him. This surprised me.
He finally got out of his pajamas. And I think he did his best to put thoughts of Elaine out of his mind. He began eating again, and I felt that I didn’t have to watch him as much. America … America …. Now what were we going to do?
We couldn’t see the future. We didn’t know if we had a future. We assumed the FBI was looking for me. We also thought immigration was looking for us, and I was on some sort of list. Here we were in a city with millions of people, but we didn’t blend in. Between Nick’s apartment in Tondo and our room in Pasay City, we had two places to hide, but we didn’t feel secure. As weeks went by, when by then we were in the Philippines illegally, we grew more and more worried.
At some point, I began thinking we were being followed.
We took a jeepney to TayTay and met our maid’s sister, who now had our furniture. She welcomed us, welcomed us like we were family. In a sense we were family. Susan had agreed to become godmother of her youngest boy. What a fiasco! What a fiasco, and what a celebration. Poor woman and poor godchild. It was heartbreaking to know that we’d never see them again.
We changed our routine and avoided certain places and people. And as we went around Manila we tried to act and look normal. I saw Vincente for the last time, and it felt awkward. It turned out that the National Bureau of Investigation confiscated his film of the battle. He was forced to co-operate. At least, that was what he said.
Outside of Paco Cemetery, he picked me up in his car. I remember that it was an old Mercedes treasured by him. Vincente told me he bought it for one of his movies. We drove around for a while, while we talked.
“Students are at it again. Hundreds of them have formed a barricade at UP,” Vincente said. “I wish I were there with a camera.”
We drove toward Pasay City, Vincente negotiating traffic with ease, while he did most of the talking. Sitting next to him, I barely opened my mouth. He talked about how much he suffered (at least artistically) under Marcos’ thumb (first censorship and then having his film confiscated). Friends of his were arrested, and he said he felt responsible. People were killed. A number of times, he asked, “What can we do?” He mentioned Sonja, our mutual friend who ran the theater at Fort Santiago. She relied on her connection with Imelda. “It makes it difficult for Sonja,” he said. It was the same for all arts organizations Imelda supported. “What can we do?” he repeated. “If only we didn’t need her support.”
I didn’t respond. Instead, after a moment or two, he asked, “You watched Elaine, as she pulled her little stunt, didn’t you?”
“What stunt?” I asked him, remembering how Elaine’s father somehow got a hold of a photograph of his daughter with Nick at the demonstration in front of the Congress building.
“You know what I’m talking about. But what happened to her? That’s what’s important. What happened to her? People keep asking me. What happened Ted?”
“Poor Nick.”
“Yes, poor Nick. But what can we do? What happened?”
I didn’t respond. I then asked, “Do we all have to suffer because of this madness?”
I wanted to accuse him of betrayal, but I wasn’t sure of myself. I couldn’t prove anything. I didn’t know whether Vincente betrayed us or not. So I held my tongue.
“I think the best thing for us to do is make a pact and pledge silence,” Vincente said.
I couldn’t restrain myself any longer and like a fool jumped in. “You’ve never been detained. Why is it Vincente? Why do you remain free? You’re not deported. You say you’ve been censored and had your film confiscated but how do we know what really happened? You still driving around in a Mercedes.” And so on. I didn’t like confronting him, a friend … particularly since I didn’t have facts to go on.
“You’re assuming an awful lot,” Vincente said, with a grimace. He had a distinctive way of responding to criticism. He let it go. He heard me, and he let it go. Then he seemed not to hear me. I realized then that it didn’t matter what I said to him. “Don’t judge me too harshly. I value you friendship,” he added. I knew he was trying to console me.
“We’re all being scrutinized. As public figures, we being scrutinized, but now for too many of us it has gone too far …as we’re denied our freedom,” Vincente said, “Can you tell me why it is?”
“You can’t be serious.” I laughed. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
He said he couldn’t either.
“You know I looked up to you, don’t you,” I said.
“I don’t believe any of us set out to destroy people,” he said.
“I think we do the best we can,” I said. “Can we do anymore?”
He was silent.
“You started this conversation by telling me about hundreds of students forming a barricade at UP,” I said. “We should both be there, you with your camera and me with my notepad.”
“Yes, we should be. Different professions, but we share the same goals.”
“Well, we’ve got our marching orders. Did you know Susan and I are being deported”
He said no; he didn’t know it.
“I thought you might’ve heard it. It seems to have gotten around,” I said. “The old swinging door.”
“It’s too bad,” he said.
I went on to say, “It forces us to make a decision. We don’t know what we’ll do, or where we’ll go. We were given a pass. Since we were given a pass, it can be taken back at any time.”
“I was lucky. I was given a pass all of these years so that I could finish my education. What gives me the right to expect to keep getting passes?”
“Forget it.”
He laughed. “Now I’m the one who doesn’t have facts. Here we are … without facts. Working in the dark when we constantly have to look out for ourselves. When we have to be constantly on guard, how can we look out for each other? That’s why I think we should be less critical. Let me buy your lunch.”
“But I thought that was where we were going? You arranged our meeting and…
“And I invited you to lunch. But we’re going in the wrong direction.”
“You’re driving.” I shuddered at the thought of eating in Makati.
“How about Cantonese on Mabini Street?”
Nick later showed me an old clipping from the New York Times entitled:
SEDITION IN MANILA.
Appears in Plays in Native Theaters-
How an American Smashed the Sun of Filipino Independence
Foreign Correspondence THE NEW YORK TIMES
Feb. 5. – For some time there has been a recrudescence of the insurrecto spirit in the neighborhood of Manila, the symptoms being an alarming increase of ladrone-insurrecto bands: in one case a few miles from Manila, a band of 400 strong was formed, armed with good fireworks. This band succeeded in driving a force of constabulary to cover, and terrorized the district for some time.
The Filipino theatres in Manila took up the agitation, giving many seditious plays. The climax came in a play called Hindi Aco Patay, which, translated from Tagala means “I’m not dead yet.” This was produced in the Theatre Rizal. There were many scenes showing the supposed brutality of the American and the goodness of the Filipino; but at first the play was not amenable to police interference.
The actors went too far, however, and showed scenes where the Katipunan flag, a red field with a black letter “K” thereon, was waved amid the great enthusiasm of the disaffected Filipinos.
I was struck by how the piece still resonated. To me it seemed contemporary. In many ways, things hadn’t changed. With students bringing back the drama, yes a revival of sorts, it seemed very contemporary. Over time, characters change, mature perhaps, but the cause is the same. And although the two sides were more in cahoots, the resentment was still there. The difference now was that I found myself in the thick of it.
“Feel free to disagree,” Nick said. “If I were in your country, I would speak my mind. Go ahead- tell me where we’re wrong. Tell me what you think.”
I was put on the defensive and asked, “Why are you suspicious of me?”
“As an American, you can’t always agree with us. And you don’t really know how we feel. You can’t walk in our shoes,” Nick said. “I know who you are, and you can’t pretend you’re someone else. You’ve taken our side, but it’s hard to understand why. I guess you can argue with your government, just as we argue with Marcos, but it doesn’t make sense to me why you would betray your country. But you can’t help being who you are, but it might surprise you to learn that I love America … yes … just as I love Elaine, I love America. God, how I miss her.”
I never knew Nick to be hypocritical. He made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say.
“Then you move on,” he said. “You told me to move on.”
“Tell me Nick … what am I doing here?”
“Don’t ask me.”
That night we ate fish Sinigang soup in a restaurant somewhere on a street that separated Ermita and Malate. It was a compromise … not in either area. After dinner, before our bowls were removed, and while Susan and I were sharing with Nick things about us, I asked, “What are you going to do now?” It was the same question that kept popping up in our minds. “How do you move on? Elaine is already in Fairfax Virginia, and you’re here, but you’re constantly reminded of her.”
“How do you know she’s in Fairfax Virginia?”
“Well, it stands to reason. Her father is stationed in the Pentagon.” I then told him life sometimes stunk … how it wasn’t fair that she had to leave, when she was willing to sacrifice her life for him.
“Sacrifice her life for me?”
“Afterwards how do you move on? I’ve never experienced such a loss, loss of a parent or a love. I don’t know if I would be sitting here. But here you are thinking about how to move on. And we have to get use to thinking of you without Elaine, as if she were dead and I suppose in many ways it would be easier for you if she were … dead. It stinks.”
“Time … it’ll take time,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense, but perhaps in time it will.”
There was a cool breeze coming in from the bay, and outside, sound of traffic. We walked for a while, the three of us, hand in hand.
The road back to Mindanao and Sulu began that evening. I have to admit it. It began that evening.
Chapter Fifty-seven
Over a year ago we would never have guessed that we would become connected with a revolution and take off with Nick. We didn’t know anything about the Philippines. We knew very little about the Spanish American War … except we knew the Philippines had some connection with it, and we hadn’t bothered to vote. I worked my way through college and attended graduate school to avoid the war. I met Susan in college. And we hadn’t bothered to vote.
After Susan met me she didn’t have a chance to go with someone else, but her parents would’ve preferred a different choice. They met me only once before we got married. Her father gave me an earful. He told me that he thought I wasn’t worth a tinker’s damn. He also told me that they hadn’t raised Susan to be killed by someone like me. I’d never been treated like that before. It was the welcome I got.
“We came here, because I didn’t want to be drafted and to be as far away from war as possible,” I added.
“You came to the Philippines to get further away from war?” Nick asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“None of it does.” (None of it did.)
“I hate war,” Susan said. “An uncle of mine was a C.O. during World War II. He and his brother served as medics in Europe … ”
“ … which helps me make my case.” I couldn’t keep quiet. “But … but I’m not sure if it’s worth fighting. Unlike you we no longer have a home base. But fight now I’m not sure we have the wherewithal to continue.”
That week Susan gave her resignation to the International School. They complimented her and said they regretted losing her because she was one of their better teachers. The truth was they didn’t have any trouble filling her shoes.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with Philippine Immigration,” the principal said. “I’m so sorry. I thought we pulled it off.
The truth was he didn’t fight very hard. But it was silly to assume that he would. It was why they liked hiring dependents of diplomats.
“I may need a recommendation. I don’t know, but I might,” Susan said. “We’re planning to go home.” She didn’t know why she lied.
“Home is Texas, isn’t it? Who knows? Maybe you’ll come back, and if you do, you’ll have a job. We always need teachers.”
It was nice to hear.
Back in Texas, my parents were worried. The visit from the FBI worried them even more, and they wrote details about my family. Mother had been in the hospital. A sister got married. Another sister had a baby. They never told us that mother couldn’t sleep and almost had a nervous breakdown. They didn’t want to worry us.
When I arrived at Nick’s apartment, he was in the middle of packing and had a long way to go. He invited me in. He insisted that he wasn’t too busy to see me. I was willing to help. It seemed natural having gone through this myself, but he had way too many books. I had no idea what he would do with them and said something about it as I stood around.
He shuffled from box to box. The apartment appeared as if it had been recently rummaged through, for instead of possessions being in their proper place they were thrown around. Lot of it was broken. Furniture was smashed, and irreplaceable objects were picked through. “Is anything missing?” I asked. He frowned and nodded his head.
“There were photographs of my friends,” Nick said. “From my trip to China … I brought back a few souvenirs. I never made the trip secret. Now they’re all gone.”
“Your Chinese flag?”
I always thought he was too open.
He laughed and said, “I talk too much.” I didn’t see what was so funny. I hadn’t seen him with so much vitality. “I feel bad about the photographs. The other things, well … I was just going to have to box them up.”
“Going somewhere?” I asked, and he told me that he couldn’t stay in Manila, but hadn’t decided yet where to go. “I don’t know where to start,” he said. “Where Marcos’ goons won’t be looking for me.” Then his eye wandered around the room. “And what am I going to do with all of this stuff? I’ll donate the books to the UP Library.”
He treasured most Pinoy Lit, particularly work of his namesake Nick Joaquin, his PROSE AND POEMS, THE WOMAN WHO HAD TWO NAVELS, and, of course, his play, The Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. These books were in a pile, and he planned to take them with him.
“I need to feed myself. Reading is one way I do it,” he said. “Remember, before he was martyred, Jose Rizal traveled around the world and took his books with him.” Nick seemed quick to shrug and seemed to shrug off everything. He had me sit down and watch him pack his books. “What can I do now? For one thing, I have to warn my friends.”
I remembered Joe Wilson’s visit. I hadn’t tried to get back to the embassy. I didn’t feel confident that they would protect me. .
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“Nothing. This is not your country. I have to sort things out. Prison taught me one thing: I’ll never go back. I’ll never go back to prison.”
I understood. “I thought you were on holiday,” I said, as I tried to make light of it. .
He thought that I sounded too, too flippant, so I told him about Elaine’s effort to win his freedom … though I knew it would upset him.
He listened, sitting on the floor and watching me to see how my expression changed. “How do you know this?” he asked at one point.
I told him about spending time with Elaine in front of Fort Bonifacio and how Susan and I shared an interest in him. “I was her partner in crime. I felt as helpless as she did, but I couldn’t let her stave herself to death. My crime was that I didn’t wear shoes when I went to the embassy. If I’d gotten in, I would’ve brought up your situation.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” Nick said. “We thought Marcos would be a good president. We should’ve known better.”
“He was reelected,” I reminded him. “Anyway, we can’t turn back the clock. And if we could, I don’t believe we’d want to. I believe over time things will get better.”
“Better for whom?” Then he proclaimed, “I’ve earned my pessimism!”
Nick was fired up. Except, perhaps except for the loss of Elaine, he didn’t seem sad. I was seeing a new side of him … a new Nick. Since his incarceration he had become more of a firebrand.
“How do you stop someone like Marcos?” he asked.
“You ‘re right. There needs to be a change. There doesn’t seem any way to stop him.”
“There’s no such thing as a benevolent dictator. I’ve always wanted what was best for my country. By now we must have some idea about how to create a democratic society. For as long as we’ve been trying, we should have some idea. Or do we want to continue to be dominated by foreign interests?”
‘Are you calling for revolution?”
Nick then raised the possibility of going back to Mindanao and the Sulus and joining Moros. “I’ve been thinking about it, and detention gave me a lot of time to think,” he said. “I think it might be a good way to go.”
“As you know, I went back to Basilan and Bongao, and they were receptive to me,” I said. “There was no violence to speak of, but it was several months ago.” I saw that Nick was listening and reaffirming something so I added a word of caution. “Still, if I were going, I’d keep my eyes open and my nose to the ground.”
“I’m not particularly concerned for myself. Remember I grew up a revolutionary. It’s in my blood. I’ve never hid my HUK background nor was I afraid to say I’m a Maoist. I think I set a good example.
I laughed. “Yes, you set a good example,” I said. “I wish I were as brave, and if I were, I’d go back to the States and face whatever.”
We had a good laugh about which one of us was a bigger coward because we both seemed to be running away from something. Then he realized that he hadn’t been back on the campus of UP where over five hundred students had thrown up a barricade. As I was saying goodbye, he asked me what I knew about the standoff, and I told him that I didn’t know very much.
“Thank you for coming by,” he said. “I really enjoyed our travels.”
I told him I also enjoyed them.
Chapter Fifty-eight
Almost gone were the days of Sandra Dee and Bobbie Darin. Almost gone were hayrides, lantern parades, and rivalries between fraternities and sororities at UP. They were replaced by radical causes, Kabataang Makabayan and no-nonsense types. If the First Quarter Storm hadn’t happened UP might be the same as it was. It might be the same as it was, and I might’ve felt safe then watching anti-American demonstrations, as safe as I had before battles in front of the Congress building and Malacanang. I might’ve felt safe roaming the campus as a freelance American reporter and reading my treasured New York Times in the school library. Now this same campus was taken over by students, militant students, students who meant business.
A student was shot and subsequently died, and I knew enough to stay away from there. Now what were we … Susan and me … what were we going to do? Where were we going to go? We were stuck. We couldn’t leave the country, and we couldn’t stay. We didn’t leave when we were suppose to, so we couldn’t fly out of there. They would catch us at the airport. What were we going to do? Who could have imagined that we would’ve been hounded out of the Philippines, like refugees, far away from home and with parents who didn’t understand what we were doing? As I often did, I punted.
Hindi aco patay. At least I’m not dead yet, I thought as I left Nick’s apartment.
No sooner had I reached our room in Pasay City than Susan came home. She wasn’t very happy. She was never very flexible. Now she wasn’t very happy. And I knew why. She always hated to move.
“By tomorrow we need to make a decision. Right or wrong, by tomorrow we need to decide what we’re going to do,” she said. “If we can’t fly, what are our options? Money we have won’t get us very far.”
I had been weighing our options, good and bad, and decided that we were lucky that I hadn’t been arrested. I always looked on the bright side of things. I was the opposite of Susan. I always looked for something to smile about. I always tried to make light of our situation, so I told her a joke. My joke didn’t go over very well. She didn’t think it was funny. I always dreamed of seeing the world. It was my dream, not Susan’s. Now here we were in the Philippines, in Manila, having survived there for over a year. I could hear Susan say, “I haven’t lost anything in Manila.” Now she didn’t want to leave. And she wanted to cry and wanted to be held.
I began looking forward to moving. My heart rate increased when I thought about it. I looked forward to seeing other places and learning about other people and felt we were foolish to stay in the Philippines after we were ordered out. But Susan hated to move and felt obligated to her students.
Who knew what would happen now? We were stuck. Who knew what would happen to us if we stayed? Who knew what would happen if we left? Who could predict the future? We had no plans. No plans … and it bugged Susan and scared me. I didn’t let on that I was scared. With no plans, I liked to say I was easy. The only thing we were sure about was that we had to stay away from authorities, authorities of both nations, of the United States and the Philippines…something so far we managed to do. I told her about helping Nick pack.
“He said he was going back to Mindanao and the Sulus,” I said. “To join Moros in their fight.” Fight! I shouldn’t have used the word “fight.” I could see in Susan’s face that it set off an alarm. “If it is not too late, we have to do something for him before he leaves. We’ll probably never see him again.”
“I’m not worried about Nick,” Susan said. “I’m more concerned about where we’ll be tomorrow.”
“We’ll make it, Susan. We’ll make it.”
About a week later, we decided that we couldn’t stay where we were. On a bus, Susan and I reopened a discussion about becoming world travelers. I threw myself into it. Susan resisted. I suggested that we walk across Borneo. Borneo! Walk across Borneo. However daunting it seemed Susan knew I was serious. Borneo! She shook her head, while I knew inside she was about to scream. “Look, we can island hop. That’s how we can get out of the Philippines. It should be easy.”
“But what if I’m pregnant?”
“You’re not pregnant, are you?” I could see her getting pregnant and knew she was watching me for a reaction. If she were pregnant, it was okay with me. It would give us seven or eight months to get somewhere.
The thought of her getting pregnant hadn’t occurred to me, but it was something we could easily find out, so I went on talking about walking across Borneo. We couldn’t afford a baby, but we’d make it somehow. I didn’t want to feel constrained. She would welcome it, while I wouldn’t. She could use it as an excuse to go home. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but … but … I had plans. I had plans but when it came down to it I didn’t have a specific plan. We didn’t have to walk across Borneo. We’d have other choices. I understood Malaysia and Singapore had socialized medicine. I didn’t know about Indonesia
“How can you be so sure how you would feel?” Susan asked. “Wouldn’t you want your son or daughter to be born in America? I don’t like where we are.”
“Do you think I like it?”
“You don’t seem as worried as I am,” she said.
“Now come on, you can’t say you haven’t enjoyed it.”
Susan repeated that she thought that she might be pregnant. She challenged me to say that she couldn’t be, and we debated what we would do, and what would be best for the child and for us. Neither one of us won. She didn’t want me to end up in Vietnam. It came back to that. Vietnam.
I conceded that having a child would change everything. I suggested that we find a doctor, at this point almost any doctor would do.
She said it didn’t really matter to her.
I was very much relieved. She said it didn’t really matter to her. Now we had a closer bond than we had before.
While on our bumpy, sticky journey south, I enjoyed looking at scenery, looking at a tropical world with nipa huts. Somehow we missed Nick. We wanted a chance to say goodbye, but it didn’t happen.
After we settled into a new routine … riding buses all day … I said to Susan, “I know that you’ve not always felt like you could communicate with me, but … “
“But what?”
“No buts. I’ll try to do better.” The bus was fairly full. I continued to stare out the window. I wanted to do better.
We reached Tacloban around noon and were directed to Sisters of Mercy. Sister Agnes invited us in and offered us lunch. She was in the process of establishing an institute for midwifes in conjunction with Mother of Mercy Hospital. “I’m afraid I might be pregnant,” Susan said to Sister Agnes.
“May God bless the child,” Sister Agnes said. “Let me see.”
Sister Agnes had a nice smile and gentle bearing. She was Irish, but had lost most of her accent. I had trouble imagining her devoting her life to Christ. She was just too pretty.
While we ate, Sister Agnes quizzed us about where we were from and what we were doing in the Philippines. I thought she was trying to find out too much. It made me wonder if she had a connection with the police.
“I was one of the first Sisters to come here in 1954,” Sister Agnes said as we entered the hospital an hour later.
“This could be in the States,” I said, pleasantly surprised. “This looks like a first rate hospital.”
“We work at it,” Sister Agnes said. “About fifty hours a week.”
I told Sister Agnes that I’d like to see the beach where MacArthur landed. She talked about the general’s sentimental return to Tacloban after the war and what a big to-do that was. A nurse named Sally-Rose, a Filipina, who seemed in charge, took Susan into a small examination room, while Sister Agnes showed me a chapel.
We stood around and talked some more. We went out into a small courtyard and sat in front of a statue of Christ, adorned with thorns. We enjoyed birds. We sauntered back into the building, and Sister Agnes shared a series of photographs of the hospital under construction. She was used to giving this tour. What amazed me was that Sister Agnes stayed with me. It seemed like she didn’t have anything to do.
She asked me about my family.
“My mother was recently hospitalized,” I said. “She worries too much about us. But my father is different, because he was stationed overseas during the war.”
“We also left our families to come over here,” she said. “We were invited to take up the Cross and follow Him, and our families stayed home in Ireland. I can only imagine what it was like for them.” That was how we were able to commiserate with each other. “They wouldn’t know that it was safe. They have never been here.” We were able to commiserate with each other. Soon she was telling me how she missed Irish stew, and bacon and cabbage (boiled together in water), and boxty, a potato pancake, and how her mother used to make those dishes.
Susan came into the waiting room with the nurse named Sally-Rose. Susan was smiling, and I could tell the verdict from her smiles. Both women seemed outrageously happy, and it got to me.
“Let’s get out of here,” Susan said, dropping a few coins in a donation bucket. “I want to explore the town before it gets too late.” Now she was beginning to sound like me.
There was enough time to find Imelda Marcos’ lavish home, but what we appreciated more was Sto. Nino Shrine, which was built in honor of Tacloban’s patron saint. (Oh, by the way, Susan wasn’t pregnant.)
The next morning, as we were sitting eating breakfast at the Hotel Alejandro, a Filipino named Enrique joined us and asked, “Taxi? All day, half day, really reasonable. Relive the Battle of Leyte. See where MacArthur landed, MacArthur’s headquarters, and the best views of the Gulf of Leyte, and the narrowest strait in the world.” He wore a Red Sox baseball cap and a pair of fairly new tennis shoes.
“We want to see where MacArthur landed,” I replied. “But we can get around on our own.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Enrique said. “You would miss my invaluable commentary. I think it would be worth your while. I have inside information. My family lived through all of it, you know.”
“We’re not rich Americans, as rich as I imagine you assume,” I said. Then realizing wealth was relative and that we spent the night and were eating in an upscale hotel, I asked, “How much do you charge?” The amount he quoted wasn’t very much, though we weren’t for sure what it included.
“I’ll wait outside,” Enrique announced. “Take your time.”
I didn’t let him leave, and decided to buy his breakfast.
“It isn’t easy for Americans because we we’re charged double for everything,” Susan said. This upset Enrique because he assumed that she meant he was cheating us. Then he said he was willing to give up the day and show us around for free.
Afterwards, after Enrique spent the day with us, it occurred to me that we treated Enrique pretty poorly. The idea of being cheated always infuriated me. After Enrique left us, I asked Susan if she thought we took advantage of him.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You made it clear to him that we couldn’t afford him. But I have to confess that it felt awkward. When he wouldn’t take “no,” or a tip, I was thrown off. To give him a few pesos wouldn’t have hurt us very much, but it would insult him. He only asked for a few pesos to begin with.”
Chapter Fifty-nine
The next morning Susan and I went down to the lobby to check out. We had a summons from local police, something we hadn’t expected. We asked the clerk about it, since he handed it to us, and he dismissed it. He told us not worry. He said, “The police get a copy of all of our registration slips. It’s law. We follow the letter of the law. Since you’re traveling outside of Manila, I assume your passports are in order.”
We knew we could be into serious trouble, though our passports were in order or appeared to be in order.
“Why would police bother with tourist like us,” I asked, without hesitation.
The clerk said he didn’t know.
“We’ll check out anyway,” I said. “We can ill afford to change our plans, since we want to see as much of the Philippines as possible.”
I felt nervous. I felt I looked nervous. I was certainly glib … perhaps too glib … looked guilty … and gave ourselves away. I always looked guilty. Then to minimize the situation, I said, “I suppose this isn’t unusual.”
“You’re right, sir. I can reassure you that it’s quite routine.”
Routine to him was far from routine to us, while I hoped he was right. So we felt we didn’t have a choice but go to the police station, and said we would.
When Susan and I left the hotel, she suggested that we walk. As we made our way along, it felt like she was trying to delay the inevitable. She wore comfortable, open sandals and was carrying a backpack, and she wasn’t in a hurry. It was how I also felt, as I held her arm to emphasize how I supported her. We were tempted to run. I knew she felt the way I felt. We could easily run, since the police hadn’t detained us at the hotel. The summons seemed more like an invitation than an ultimatum, though it came with an official seal and all of the importance that such a seal implied.
And there was me feeling guilty. I couldn’t hide it. I felt guilty, and it showed on my face … in my complexion and bearing it seemed so obvious. And there was a distinct possibility that I’d confess right off the bat. Susan looked worried, and I knew I looked just as bad.
Without warning, she stopped and seemed so bewildered that she didn’t know which way to turn.
I held onto her. “What’s the matter?”
“We didn’t ask directions. Men never do.”
“I know where we are. It’s hard to get lost on the main street.”
Right there on the main drag, she started crying. Right there on the main drag, she told me that all she wanted was to go home. She told me she didn’t want to be there. She told me that whatever I wanted she always went along with it. And she never said anything and always accepted whatever I said. But she was tired of it … tired of being a caboose.
Caboose? Where did that come from? .
“I don’t like this,” she said. “We should’ve left the country when we were told to, and tell me why we didn’t! It was your decision. Just like this is your decision.”
“My decision! Now whose decision was it?”
“I simply went along with it.”
“No, you seem to forget that you didn’t want to leave.”
“I simply went along with it. You’ve always been the engine, and I’ve always been the caboose.”
It would’ve been one thing for us to have been tourist, (or travelers, as I preferred to be called), with a set itinerary, I thought, but it was quite another thing to get involved in the internal affairs of a foreign country. Now we were fugitives, fugitives in a foreign country, and we really couldn’t go back home. That’s when I found myself saying, “It could be worse. We’re not dead yet.”
I hailed a motorized tricycle. We hadn’t yet grown used to people staring at us. Perhaps we would never get use to it and would never escape from a glass bowl we were in. That morning we wanted to breakout more than ever. Wanted to get away from stares that saw right through us. Wanted to disappear and get out of Tacloban more than anything. Before getting in the tricycle, I looked up and down the street. The coast seemed clear.
While we intended to go to the police station, there were many reasons that kept us from it. Most importantly was loss of time and maybe loss of freedom. Our saving grace was that we hadn’t been detained. We could see ourselves detained and turned over to the US Embassy.
There were times when I didn’t think clearly, and this was one of them, and there was no way of knowing whether we would pay for it. This wasn’t easy. Nothing at this point in our lives was easy, and it was why we hesitated. I took responsibility for what we finally did.
We clung to the hope that it meant something that we weren’t arrested. Maybe it was because, as Susan said, we weren’t in our room when the police came by. It wasn’t like we were International criminals or big time crooks. We were small fry in a huge pan. I needed to remember that we were small fry in a huge pan. I told the tricycle driver to take us to the edge of town and then from there to Red Beach. To the driver we hopefully looked like typical American tourists anxious to see where MacArthur landed.
Most days people went back and forth, to and from the beach in jeepneys and tricycles. There were so many people that there was always someone waiting to be brought back to town. This worked to our advantage because by then we didn’t intend to return to Tacloban..
We bought our meals as we went along. Everywhere there were coffee shops and sari-sari stores from which we could purchase food. It was one less thing we had to worry about as we took one last look at where MacArthur waded ashore. I couldn’t resist the temptation of reenacting the event.
From then on we had to be on guard, blending in as much as possible. Whenever I think of close calls, I think of Tacloban and one phrase comes to mind: Hindi aco patay or I’m not dead yet.
While on the road in Leyte, we traveled with a Christian family migrating to Mindanao. We left Red Beach without knowing where we would spend the night. We thought we would hitchhike, do anything to avoid public transportation. We followed the coast from Tacloban to MacAuthur and on to Panlot in southern Leyte, on foot with our host family.
I had never spent a week walking in my life, and I couldn’t get over how this family from Tondo had packed all their belongings in and on a homemade rig and were pushing and pulling it down a highway. It was amazing. It was amazing they weren’t run over. It was amazing to me that they chose this simple but ostentatious way to move from Manila to the promise land in Mindanao. It was amazing to me that they went as far as they had without a major accident. And no one tried to stop them. Yet with a third of the effort and much less grief, they could’ve all gone to Mindanao by ferry.
It was as if they valued their belongings more than their lives. They were forever holding up traffic. More times than I could count I saw buses, cars, and trucks almost run over them, and I knew what it would’ve cost them. I can only imagine what it cost them. It seemed strange that the police hadn’t stopped them, regardless whether they were breaking laws or not. I was to learn that as Christian migrants they had support and encouragement from the government, just as a backlash from Moros was developing. We could never imagine living and moving like they did.
The whole time we were with them, we walked by the side of the road, a safe distance away from traffic, hoping that people were paying attention to them and not to us.
“Imagine,” Susan said.
“We’re saving money and getting in shape to walk across Borneo.”
“You’ll thank me later.” And we both laughed. “I wish we had a camera.”
We finally got into a groove and that alone helped us along.
Benito and Clara left Tondo with their family for Mindanao with a vision of a land of promise. They started making plans way before they left. They dreamed of cultivating their own land and leaving the slums of Manila behind them forever. They found the idea of a typhoon free island very agreeable. This idea had great significance because after every typhoon they virtually had to start over. They were assured they would be given land in Mindanao where mangoes, pineapples, and other tropical fruit grew in abundance. So Benito constructed a rig that rolled quite easily and held all of their belongings. He never hesitated. He always thought with a little endurance and patience and a little luck they could reach their destination. But now, as they approached the end of their journey, they seemed to get cold feet. As they got closer and closer, they heard rumors that disturbed them.
When we joined them, the youngest girl was riding a tricycle on the highway in front of the rig, and in that way, I suppose, her parents thought she was safe and they could keep track of her. When Susan saw this, she lost it. When she saw how close the child came to getting hit, she lost it but somehow kept from screaming.
“No!” she said. She was obviously very upset with these parents. “What the hell are they doing? What are they thinking?” The rest of the family, including the little girl’s siblings, was needed to push and pull the rig
But seeing this motivated us to help this family as much as we could. Susan “steered” the little girl and “shielded” her as much as possible. It wasn’t long before she became a big sister.
“What kind of world is this, where a kid leads the charge on a tricycle?” Susan asked. “Still I can’t get over it. Luckily we’re on a coastal road and not the main highway.”
Yes, lucky for them and lucky for us. Ordinarily, we would’ve been mobbed, but here we’re just a sideshow.”
“It feels good to sort of fit in. Can you believe we’ve joined a band of gypsies?” Susan laughed. Even when she felt irritated with these parents, she laughed.
With villages close together, distances seemed short.
“What a wonderful life! Why do people live in cities? Here they grow rice for starch. Here they fish for protein. They have all they need right here.”
“There are a lot of people living close together like they do in cities. But there’s no grime or pollution.”
At the end of each day, we always came to a place were we could pull off the road, and for the first time we got away with camping. Asians didn’t understand camping. We usually slept near the family, usually on a beach, and felt very brave. Fresh air and plenty of exercise! No wonder we felt exhilarated!
Chapter Sixty
You have to remember we were in the tropics, but Filipinos didn’t seem to sweat much. Not as much as we did anyway. I don’t know how they stayed clean. I remember it cooling off in the evening. Whenever I could, I took a dip in the ocean, though it wasn’t something people around us often did. At least no one could say we smelled.
I’m told meat eaters have a particular odor about them. This wasn’t a problem yet. Needless to say Filipinos bathe and bathed frequently. Leyte was hot and humid, and we needed to bathe. But as I said, Filipinos rarely sweated, and they bathed without using much water. They were used to having limited water. At least people we were with were used to it. They were from slums in Manila and were used to having limited water.
Women kept their clothes on while they bathe. Maybe we would be better off if we bathe with less water and with our clothes on. Filipinos had to work to work up a sweat. We Americans thought sweating was a virtue. And we weren’t afraid to get our hands dirty. We didn’t allow our fingernails to grow until they curled. But not all Filipinos were the same. Not all Filipinos allowed their fingernails to grow until they curled. It was our perceptions that didn’t change.
Susan looked skeptical.
I tried to make it make sense to her. “Filipino men tend to be macho. To them long fingernails are symbols of power and virility.”
“Now I know what your problem is. You cut your fingernails,” she declared, laughing. “Why, you’d be destroyed. I love you anyway.”
I laughed, too.
Breakfasts in coffee shops, and we ate ravenously, but it didn’t satisfy our hunger…or keep us from snacking along the way. I had never seen so many varieties of bananas. We learned that poor people often made a meal out of a banana. We talked about such things. As we walked along, we talked about such things, knowing fair well that there were people around us who spoke and understood English. And we always knew the first question they would ask us.
Why then didn’t we start out with an answer? We sometimes did. Many Filipinos didn’t understand why we didn’t have children. They often became sympathetic when we told them we didn’t have any. “Why not?” they then often asked. “Do you have children” and “why not” were the first questions most often asked. They were direct, and would ask it, and we knew we would be asked. Susan and I often discussed these things, and I’m not sure why it was such a big deal, when we knew there were going to be misunderstandings.
We didn’t ask for “pride” chicken that was fried for us, however, we made a big to-do about it. They brought with them chickens, in pens, and a couple of prized roosters they groomed as much as they could. To kill a chicken for us was unnecessary when we intended and had money to eat in restaurants. They called the chicken we ate a pullet, I’m sure, because it was tender and good. And why did they do that for us? We couldn’t believe it, and considering how poor they were. They were generous people who enjoyed sharing … enjoyed food, enjoyed conversation, and enjoyed singing. It was one of our fondest memories: sitting around a campfire on a beach eating “pride” chicken.
Here we were experiencing Philippine hospitality, or was it something else? Regardless, it made a lasting impression. And it brought to mind hospitality of every Filipino we knew, of Nick and Vincente in particular, and how they would never allow us to go Dutch. They always paid for things, and we always thought we would insult them if we didn’t let them. Maybe it wasn’t true. Who knew? I’m sure it was something in them that made them so generous, something that made their world work. It was who they were, and there was no way we could change it. As Americans we were always treated as guest and never as equals, and we never wanted to offend them. So we didn’t see how we could ever fit in.
Susan was placed in charge of the little girl on the tricycle. Anything we did for the family was met with swift reciprocity. When we did something for them, they had to do something for us. They were always giving us something, and we couldn’t afford to turn it down. We couldn’t run a risk of offending them. We ran the risk of offending them if we turned down whatever was offered us. And the more we tried to end it, the more complicated it became, and the more generous they were.
Susan felt that too much of their energy was diverted to us. I agreed and told her that I thought that they’d give us their last cup of rice. Back in Texas, that would never have been the case. I couldn’t’ think of a circumstance when it would’ve been. Now we found ourselves in an awkward position … one that was foreign to us … so much so that we didn’t know how to respond. We were caught. Our resentment took us by surprise.
We wished they weren’t so generous. And that was mainly why out of the blue one morning we walked off and left them. They never allowed us to go Dutch or accept us as equals. They always treated us like honored guests. We were always guests and they acted like we were in their home, even though we were on the road, living outside. We could never be ourselves. We felt we always had to weigh what we said before we said it. We never got beyond it.
“We have this land waiting for us,” they would say. They were moving to Mindanao without ever having seen it. They pushed and pulled their rig with all of their belongings all the way from Manila. They were promised land but what they didn’t know was that the land they were promised belonged to someone else. It was part of Morolandia.
They planned to spend only a few months on the road, but they had no idea how big the Philippines was, since they spent their entire lives in Manila. It was their big chance, they said. But the closer they got to Mindanao the more doubts they had. They wondered what kind of reception they would receive. They wondered about their new neighbors who they knew didn’t worship God in the same way as they did. So they were going to a foreign land … just as foreign as the Philippines was to us … and didn’t know what to expect.
They told us they wanted to live in peace with their neighbors, if possible without any conflict, so when they heard rumors of trouble they questioned the wisdom of their decision. They prayed to the Virgin for guidance and safety. With Her help, they thought they would get there without a hitch and so far remarkably it worked out as planned. They told us, “We know from the way things are going we have Her blessing.”
They knew by then that they had no choice but to continue. And they tried to remain optimistic, as they became more aware of difficulties they faced in Mindanao. Don’t forget we’d been to Mindanao and the Sulus and knew how Moros resented Christian “rats.” In due course, there was fighting over land both sides claimed, so migrating to Mindanao didn’t turn out to be such a good idea. But they didn’t know it then. They just heard rumors.
Arm conflict started that year in Mindanao. Unfortunately these people got caught up in it. “It was too good to be true,” I imagine they said. But it had less to do with conflict between Christians and Muslims than a massacre of Muslim young men two years before then on the island of Corregador. Jabidah became a rallying cry much in the same way as the Alamo had in Texas.
Meanwhile on Mindanao, Christians formed paramilitary groups. Then these groups attacked Muslim neighbors. Apparently they wanted more land for more Christians and to rid themselves of people they considered a menace. They tried to evict all Muslims, so Christians like this family could move in.
“The weather was perfect,” Susan said, and we couldn’t ask for more.
We left them one morning before any of them got up. We were still on Leyte, heading for Mindanao, with an eye on crossing by ferry and with enough money to get us to Malaysia and maybe Bangkok where we thought we could work.
Susan and I walked off a ferry almost ahead of everyone else and almost immediately caught the eye of a National Police officer. But on the way over to us, where we stood perfectly still, he asked the head of a Filipino family for identification. They were obviously migrants, obviously because they had their belongings bundled up in burlap sacks.
While we stood perfectly still and the police officer was asking the head of a Filipino family for identification, Susan told me to keep moving. But I wouldn’t move and told her if we did we’d look guilty. As guilty as we were. I always looked guilty. And when he finally reached us, Susan seemed so nervous that I was afraid that she would give us away, so I said, “I hope those poor people have a place to go. You can see they’re poor. They should be given a chance.”
The officer alternately looked at me and then at Susan. He was sizing us up. “There are many of them here,” he said. “Most of them are model citizens. Our job is to make sure they have proper paperwork. Speaking of such, your passports please.”
“That’s easy,” I said … said trying to seem confident. I fished our passports out of a leather pouch that I kept around my neck and under my shirt. “We want to see as much of Mindanao as possible,” I said as confidently as I could. “What hotel here would you recommend?”
He took our passports from me. Only he didn’t inspect them, but looked at Susan, as he tried to size us up.
“Before you think of a hotel, you have to come with me, but it’s only a formality,” he said. “We have rules now that we didn’t have before. Since all the trouble, we’ve had to tighten up our procedures.”
Susan wiped her brow. “I hope this is quick because I’m hungry,” she said.
We were thankful that the officer was friendly. He was indeed simply following procedure and hadn’t been on the lookout for us. He directed us to a small office not that far away.
Susan again said that she was getting hungry. He reassured her that it wouldn’t take long. He was only a private. His commander, he said, liked to meet Americans.
We knew then that there was nothing we could do but play along, so our moods improved. We didn’t enjoy going anywhere with this officer, but our moods improved. What choice did we have? And not given a choice had a calming affect.
Susan simply made a face. I wished she hadn’t made it and hoped he hadn’t seen her make it. The private apparently didn’t notice as much about our demeanor as we feared. He apparently hadn’t been trained very well or else he would’ve noticed. Perhaps officers in Mindanao had more important things to do than train. Perhaps that was why he never looked at our passports. Still, he had procedures to follow. And didn’t his superior express regret over having detained us? To hear this encouraged us.
“How long do you plan to stay in Mindanao?” the commander asked. “He shouldn’t have stopped you,” he added before I could say anything.
“With so many migrants, it must be hard to keep up with everyone. You have your work cut out for you. Anyway, we live in Manila, and I teach at the International School.” Here was Susan giving him more information that she needed to.
I made a face this time, but thank goodness the commander was looking at Susan and not me.
Susan was so honest that it took me aback when she lied with a straight face. She talked about taking students on a picnic and described what it was like spending most of her time in Makati. It was almost impossible to understand her logic. I also knew I couldn’t shut her up, though I felt embarrassed for her. I knew I didn’t have power over her and instinctively knew that if I contradicted her I would jeopardize everything. All I could do was nod my head. “The school vouched for us,” she said. “That was how we got our visas extended. Now we’re on a little vacation.” She pointed at our passports, which he now held in his hands. “Go ahead, look! I’m who I say I am, and my husband, well, he’s my husband. And I trust that you can figure it out.”
“But this is the Philippines,” he said and laughed. “As a Filipino I appreciate your frustration.”
I was silent.
He wanted to stress a point. “We’re very indebted to your country, and we’re grateful.”
“But this remains your country, and as long as we’re here, we have to abide by your laws,” I said confidently.
Since we made a point of having him look at our passports, I guess that was why he handed them back without looking at them.
I took our passports, and spoke of being impressed with Philippine hospitality.
Susan agreed. We were indeed impressed with Philippine hospitality. I couldn’t believe it. How much she lightened up.
We asked where he’d recommend we eat. He said, if he weren’t on duty he’d go with us, and we could eat lunch together. Then he said with a big grin, “What the hell!” And he went to eat with us. He said it was his duty to show us hospitality and give us more information for our trip and so forth. We then got more information for our trip than we could ever use.
During the conversation Susan said that there seemed to be a greater police presence in Mindanao than elsewhere in the Philippines. “Should we be concerned?” she asked.
“No, no, not as long as you stay out of certain places and obey the law. People have to control their inclinations,” the commander added. “It’s our job to make sure that they do.”
“At home, we don’t have to worry about crossing state lines. It seemed like you were randomly stopping people.”
“America has established institutions. The Philippines has a ways to go. Here we have keep a tight lid on things.”
“Well, then, what exactly do you do?” she asked.
“There are those who take advantage of migrants,” he said. “We have to always be on our toes.” Susan stared at him, as if she were going to jump all over him. I couldn’t believe it. “Also, we need to know who is coming to and going from Mindanao,” he said, perhaps trying to explain why we were stopped. “Migrants have waited for years, and now we see them organizing.”
We felt better after our lunch with him. He paid for it; of course, he paid for it.
Chapter Sixty-one
We were in the home of an American chemist in Mindanao’s Davao del Norte Province. “My wife … Mrs. Hines … and I first came here in 1964 … brought here by Goodyear,” he said slowly. With an indistinct accent, he came from the Midwest or the West.
I listened with great interest. I let him talk. I knew our time with him was limited, so I let him talk. I wanted to know what he knew about what was going on in Mindanao, what Goodyear was up to, whether Mr. Hines felt safe in Mindanao, and whether he and his wife planned to stay.
“But you haven’t told us if you like durian.”
“Heavenly as a flavor of ice cream, but don’t try to take it on an airplane.” He was right about its foul odor.
He never told me about his work. After several attempts to get him to talk about it, he never did. Perhaps he couldn’t say anything. Perhaps he didn’t want to say anything. Perhaps saying something would place him and his wife in jeopardy. Maybe he learned to be cautions around strangers and especially around inquisitive ones. It was another thing for him to talk about his life as an American living in the Philippines. He and his wife loved it, and they planned to live on Mindanao until he retired.
He took us on a tour, and we saw how rubber was harvested. We saw that Goodyear had a vast network of small farmers producing rubber for them. But I didn’t get a picture of a conflict, a complete picture of the conflict between these farmers (Christian “rats”) and their Muslim neighbors (Moros) until we ran into Nick again.
Susan’s letters home never mentioned this conflict either. But I kept a journal, even though keeping a journal given the political climate was dangerous. But it was worth it because the journal helped me reconstruct our experiences.
Marco Polo Hotel, Davao City
We heard a little boy sing “Hey, Jude” and couldn’t stop singing it ourselves. It seemed like everyone was singing. For the first time in days, we felt optimistic. Maybe we’ll get out of this after all.
They’re truly trying to live the American dream here: tasted Pried Chicken again. They homesteaded land that they were told they were entitled to. Looking for treasures in Mindanao: copper, rubber, bananas, and pineapple. Susan and I rode all day looking out an open window. It was a narrow, rough road, which seemed familiar to us. I wished I had a camera. We waited for the bus to fill up before it took off. Went to Cotabato. Stayed in best hotel there. Visited caves in center of city. We crossed the Rio Grande, but it wasn’t anything like the Rio Grande in Texas. It was uncanny indeed to cross the Rio Grande in the Philippines. Susan’s family, when she was a girl, always went to Big Bend and camped next to the Rio Grande. I don’t know how many times they crossed over into Mexico. We ate great crabs and prawns before we turned in.
Hotel Filipino, Cotabato, Mindanao
We planned to hike the lower slopes of Mt. Apo. We wanted to hire a taxi to take us to a rain forest on the slopes, but we couldn’t get anyone to take us.
Unfortunately, four days ago, the ILAGA (a Christian militia), with help from the Philippine Constabulary, massacred Muslims in a small town named Alamada. I understand that Alamada is on the way to Mt. Apo. Wow! That was a close call … too close for confront. We were warned to stay away from the rain forest and the volcano. Supposedly killing had just started. Killing had just started, but there was little evidence of it and who was involved. It looked very much like the work of ILAGA. And Marcos was blamed. Because of the constabulary’s involvement, Marcos was blamed. Naturally people were thinking about leaving their homes, but where could they go? The town wasn’t prepared for refugees, and people there were naturally nervous. Most of the day we spent in our room reading our novels. We wanted to at least see Mt. Apo, and I bought a cheap camera to take photographs of it.
Enjoying simply pleasures of married life.
Susan fought an attack of Montezuma’s revenge today, fair enough because she drank water.
Today we planned to stay out of sight again, while intending to leave Cotabato tomorrow. A harry experience considering the WC was down the hall. I kept my fingers crossed, but it didn’t help Susan
Left early. The coast was clear. Could’ve skipped out, if we’d wanted to. If Susan hadn’t gotten better, we would’ve looked for a doctor. It’s not worth taking a chance.
During breakfast, we learned more about ILAGA and how Christians were given land while many Muslims remained out of luck. Their beef, along with the massacre, seemed real enough. “Oh, my!” Add a massacre on Corregidor. (Remember the Alamo!) Worse still, we heard of Muslims losing their land and homes through manipulation. Government agencies were in cahoots with Christian settlers, while we hoped government agencies were too overwhelmed to bother us. Up until then we hadn’t seen any violence, but obviously we heard about it. And obviously it became very complicated for us, because people on both sides befriended us.
Had also heard about Marcos’ scheme of turning Rio Grande Valley into an agricultural and corporate haven.
Went to Lourdes Grotto at Tamontaka looking for information about Fr. Deon. The Oblates constructed a simple shrine there to foster devotion to the Virgin. Since we were not Catholic, the shrine interested us more for its connection with the Oblates than as a place of worship. We plan to return to Bongao and see Fr. Deon.
In the afternoon, Susan and I left Cotabato by bus. Said goodbye to grotto and Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross). Father Sin said that they had big plans for the 14.4 wooded hectors surrounding the shrine, which someday he said he hoped would include a creation park. Believe or not, he envisioned building dinosaurs and other creatures that roamed the earth millions of years ago. We lunched with Father Sin. Susan and I had a camera by then and took a variety pictures of grotto and a very proud priest.
Along the route from Cotabato to Zamboanga, we saw evidence of violence, but we didn’t see any of it. Much propaganda was devoted to winning converts and strengthening positions by each side; matching violence with violence, outdoing each other’s atrocities, for which they received ample press: stories such as the one about illiterate Christian vigilantes eating mutilated innards of captured Moros. We heard so much that we became numb. We didn’t know the truth or who to believe, and we were numb. Some stories clearly seem exaggerated. Then we saw houses burned to the ground, rows of houses smoldering and knew what happened. This we decided was hard evidence. By then we had not only heard about the massacre of Alamanda but also of more looting, more destruction, and more killing. But all of it needed to be confirmed before we accepted it.
More massacres took place in other locations such as Carmen and Manili, both near Cotabato and happen around when we were there. And whichever side you may have been on, there were always calls for justice, and if not justice, revenge. Throughout Cotabato Province del Norte, we observed and heard talked about atrocities.
From what I can recall, our bus stopped at several checkpoints or was stopped several times by soldiers along this stretch. Each time, a couple of soldiers went through the bus, looking for something or someone. They asked for everyone’s papers, in our case, our passports. A few times they dragged someone off, but we tried not to pay attention. And it seemed to work. We obviously weren’t Filipinos. They singled out Moros, when I would think they’d be looking for Christians. They enjoyed looking big and strong. We never looked them in the eye…looking out a window helped us stay calm. It was hard for us to know what was going on because they spoke only a local dialect … rarely did they say anything in English. Papers and passports were exchange with few words, dictated by who the person was and where he or she was going. We were told they were looking for troublemakers, people they knew or knew about. Each time we were scared. Like I said, I always looked guilty even when I was not. We were always careful not to say too much.
At one stop, they told everyone to get off the bus. It was an order everyone obeyed without debate. We were afraid we were being kidnapped.
“How can we afford to leave our belongings on the bus?” Susan asked. I admitted that it wasn’t wise, but when I started to grab our backpacks, I was told to leave them behind. We knew that on a trip that we shouldn’t become separated from our belongings even for a minute.
They were all masked and heavily armed with machine guns.
“Oh, my!” Susan exclaimed. “This ain’t good.”
“No, shit!” Here we were in Mindanao in what looked like a war zone, and people who cared about us didn’t know where we were …and we couldn’t do a damn thing about it. (A situation had to be dire for me to swear.) “But they’re not after us,” I said.
I couldn’t get Susan to see that they weren’t after us. No matter how hard I tried to reassure her, she thought we were being kidnapped or something worse was about to happen.
“Oh God!” she said. “They’re going to kill us.”
Because of their masks identifying them was impossible, which I think helped us stay out of the legal game. Having to be part of a long drawn out investigation and trial was the last thing we wanted … to be mired down in something like it. Afterwards I felt discouraged and knew we needed to get off the bus, before it reached Zamboanga.
Later, I realized that they never touch us, while they were rough with Filipinos they singled out. We didn’t fully understood what was going on. And through it all we tried to remain aloof. We were in a survival mode and tried to remain aloof. And more in a survival mode than a sympathetic one. We survived, weren’t dead yet, but couldn’t breathe easily until we were out of the country. Until then, we were scared much of the time and feared the worse.
Throughout the ordeal, I was careful to speak very slowly (who knew how much English anyone spoke?) slowly, in simple sentences, and tried to be as respectful as possible. At one point, a member of the gang admired my shirt and wanted me to give it to him. My first instinct was to resist, but then Susan took my hand as if she meant to keep me in line. Thinking about it now it’s hard to explain why we weren’t killed.
Every time we saw them march some poor fellow off, we felt sure we would be next. Except for that … except for their machine guns and hoods that hid their faces, they were almost hospitable. Other than scaring us to death, they didn’t harm us.
As Americans, we weren’t supposed to be there … weren’t supposed to be in the area …. weren’t supposed be on that bus, but we were, but since we were I believe they altered their plans. I believe a bunch of people weren’t massacred because we were on that bus.
All this took a while. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry. They hadn’t planned for us to be on the bus. Not knowing what to do next, and because we were on the bus, it took a while. Then while some men relieved themselves on the tires of the bus, women were given privacy, as they squatted and peed beside the road. They talked to Susan and me as they allowed most of the people to get back on the bus. It should be noted that our backpacks weren’t touched.
Chapter Sixty-two
Between towns, between Cotabato and Pagadian, riding near the back of a bus, Susan and I looked at each other and questioned why we were spared. We were sure all of us were going to be killed. And we wondered if the nightmare was over. We also wonder why the bus driver and the conductor acted like nothing happened. They were with us throughout the ordeal, stood around, and did nothing to stop the ILAGA gang, and afterwards acted like nothing happened. Maybe there wasn’t anything they could’ve done, but we weren’t sure. We weren’t sure of anything.
“What do you suppose their role in this was?” I asked Susan, as if she had a better sense of it than I did. The conductor eventually checked on us with genuine concern. Formal, as always, he addressed us as Mister and Mrs..
When we got off the bus at Pagadian, police immediately took the driver and the conductor into custody. They told us that they were looking for people who held up the bus but said nothing about kidnapping or killing. Police were waiting for the bus. It seemed odd that police were waiting for the bus.
“What do we have to do now?” I asked a police officer. “We just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“We need a statement from you. As witnesses, your statements may be useful. You never know. You can bet we’ll catch them. We were awarded the best police force of the year.”
“My wife and I didn’t know the situation here when we planned our vacation. She teaches at the International School in Manila.” I was afraid to tell him I was journalist. “We’ve been so busy that we haven’t had a chance to get out of Manila much.”
“My oldest daughter, Qiu, and my third child, Bia, are now living in Manila. It’s not unusual for children to move away from here to go to school. And surely you’re well aware of trouble we’re having at universities up there, and with what is going on around here, it shows that none of us are immune.”
“You said this wouldn’t take long. Let’s get on with it.”
“It’s true that I said this wouldn’t take long, but I don’t know how long it will take … no telling given the seriousness of this incident. Still we won’t be able to complete our investigation without your cooperation. This is not America, where I’m sure things move along quicker. It may surprise you that our system is the same as yours. But you don’t need to worry because you’re both considered victims.”
“Well then I’m relieved; we both are. Why I’m sure most of the other passengers can give you more information than we can because we don’t speak the dialect. It made it hard for us to know what was going on.”
“It’s a pity.”
“I am too.
“As foreigners, it was so confusing.”
“I’m sure it was.”
He was trying to be polite, and we were too. He seemed to repeat himself. I don’t know if he believed everything we told him, and there wasn’t much we could add to what he already knew. We knew very little then about Christian vigilante groups such as the Magnificent Seven or the ILAGA gang (otherwise known as Christian rats). And I certainly didn’t want him to know that I was a journalist and had anything to do with unrest in Manila. Susan later said to Nick, “Imagine the trouble we would’ve been in had he found out.”
It took them some time to get back to us. Meanwhile, as they interviewed other surviving passengers, we worried and worried. What if they somehow they found out about our immigration problems! Luckily, they didn’t ask for our passports. “It’s the last thing we should be worried about,” I said. “They’d only deport us then.”
“Do you even know how many there were?” Susan asked.
“No, there were more than ten and less than fifteen, but I can’t be sure. We can’t be sure of anything. They didn’t act like Christians.”
“Do you think they killed all those people they dragged off? I like to think that they weren’t killed. Christians are more civilized than that. Christians and Muslims should be able to live together.” Then she started to cry.
A police captain invited us to his house for the evening, where his wife fixed us wonderful Chinese food: Hunan we were told.
At dinner, it became quite clear that he wanted us to spend the night, something we couldn’t turn down. It meant getting involve, more involved than we wanted to be. It was an awkward situation, but if we turned him down it would’ve been more awkward than it was. It seemed strange. It seemed awkward. What did he want? What was he after? As an investigator of the case and our host the whole time we were in Pagadian, he kept us in the dark.
Suspicious me. I’m sure there was more to it than a show of hospitality. For them to share their home for a night, not to mention a week, was more than we had a right to expect. We wondered if we needed a lawyer, but you don’t jump into a fire before you have to. The problem was that we just didn’t know.
We tried to keep from talking about the case, but our host couldn’t avoid it. He said something about not wanting to risk his career by allowing us to go before they finished the investigation. Susan called it “house arrest.”
We eventually discussed the conflict, and our host (of Chinese decent) said that he would prefer not to be in the middle of it, and that from what he’d seen no one could win.
Every morning, after breakfast, he escorted us to the police station. “Are you and the Mrs. Christians?” he asked one day.
“I don’t know about her,” I said, “but I’m an Adventist, if I’m pressed.”
By Saturday, we were still discussing the conflict.
“All hell has broken loose all over Mindanao and up to now you can blame it mostly on Christians,” our host said. “But I refuse to take sides. I can’t afford to.”
Susan tried to stay out of it as much as possible. So measuring her response, she said, “With its climate, its history, and its attractions … a bay, islands, a beach, hot and cold springs, waterfalls and caves … Pagadian has a lot to offer tourist.” It seemed like that the more we concentrated on the conflict the more she talked about the good time she was having.
She also quietly helped around the home, helped in every suitable way with shopping and cleaning. She jumped right in there with all of her energy and enjoyed herself when we were shown the sights.
“There’s no use waiting for something that isn’t going to happen,” she said. “They’ll never finish their investigation.”
And I found an Adventist church, mostly for show. Susan wouldn’t go. She said my conversion was crap. Given the circumstances, I should’ve been worried about being a Christian and felt it would be easier if I were not when our Chinese host made it clear that he was Buddhist. He wasn’t, however, consoled by his faith, as he saw more and more death and destruction. It was part of his job, death and destruction. Death and destruction didn’t suit him.
Pagadian, we are the Best Police Force of the Year
Most of the time in Pagadian, Susan and I acted like typical American tourist. I had my cheap camera. But sometimes we felt like we were an attraction, just as we had been in many other places.
Pagadian was considered the Hong Kong of the Philippines, and our hosts made sure we didn’t forget it. They took us out to eat almost every night. They entertained us at the very best Chinese restaurants, which reminded us of experiences with Nick and Vincente, particularly on Mabini Street. (Cantonese was better in Manila while Hunan was better in Pagadian.) But everything we did in Pagadian seemed clouded or tainted … clouded or tainted by an on-going investigation, by hooded men with machine guns, the ILAGA gang or the Magnificent Seven, conflict between Christians and Muslims, and Marcos’ heavy-handedness … we couldn’t get it out of our heads. There were so many questions and very few answers. What happened to those people who were taken away? Were they tortured and murdered? Tortured and murdered? We never learned. All we were left with were rumors and more rumors … rumors that spread like wildfire. And it seemed like the whole point of rumors was to create a maelstrom that would inflame Muslims as much as possible. Rumors, rumors, rumors. We often couldn’t sleep because of rumors.
Like cutting off ears. Like slashing nipples, plucking out eyes, and carving crosses into chests. We were never free. Our thoughts were never free the whole time we were in Pagadian. Fear of torture, fear of murder and rape, fear of these three things took our freedom away. Still we tried to act normal, while we felt like we were under house arrest.
Could we rely on the police? Or the military? That was when a man has to do what he has to do, must must do to protect himself and his family.
Then this was confirmed by a series of massacres that we got wind of .. information from Muslims we met. The first massacre we heard about was a massacre of some 71 Muslims in Alamanda. It was said to have been the work of Philippine soldiers and shouldn’t have been blamed on Christian rats. After hearing this, Susan said we had to get out of there. She also needed a sedative. And I went and got it for her. I didn’t need a prescription for it. I needed a drink but never imagined that parts of Pagadin were dry. Our host took me to a back-alley establishment that also served as a black market for pesos where I could also get a drinking permit that as a foreigner I was entitled to anyway.
Finally, we were let go. We answered all their questions. We were interrogated over and over again, and we answered all their questions, but they never found out about our immigration problems. It was evident that we were under house arrest … that we weren’t free to go, and that we were surely tailed. Yet we were treated royally. So it had to have been a ruse. Still it was better than being locked up in jail.
At one point, the wife of our host happened to mention the investigation.
“Bia (her husband) told me that he thought the military would be taking over,” she said. “But I wouldn’t worry.” She added, “There’s no need to worry. You’re safe with us. Bia likes you.
This didn’t make Susan feel any better, nor did it me when she told me about it.
We stayed in our room that morning, trying to figure out what we should do, then emerged trying to look as relaxed as possible. “It’s a beautiful day. We thought we’d sleep in.” “Sleep in!” I wondered afterwards if this excuse worked because up until then we had been early risers. We were prepared for the worst. I went on, “A little too much partying last night.”
“It’s okay, okay, okay,” Bia said. “There’s nothing big happening with the case today.
And it’s not nine o’clock yet.”
“There has to be a way,” Susan said to me privately. “We don’t have to take our clothes with us.”
Once she started obsessing, I couldn’t stop her. The only idea we came up with was to pretend that we were going to the beach for the day and then hire a boat to take us somewhere. We didn’t have a map. We didn’t have a map, so we didn’t know if it would work. Susan was eager to give it a try, but her eagerness needed to be restrained. We needed to make sure we knew where we were going.
After breakfast, Bia told us that there had been a change of plans, but he wouldn’t say what the change was. He had just come back from his office in a hurry and had their maid help us pack. It wasn’t much of a job.
Back in our room, with the maid, Susan was about to jump out the window…and would’ve if I hadn’t restrained her…she said she had a bad feeling about this.
“What’s a little jail time,” I said. “Since we’re Americans, they won’t do anything else to us.”
I remembered how Nick was held at Fort Bonifacio and sacrifices Elaine made…the cost of it all, the anguish and heartache. My father would have an expression for it, such as “shit happens” and it strengthened me. I felt sorry for Susan. She hadn’t asked for any of this, while island hopping was my idea. I decided that in the future that I needed to listen to her.
We later learned that the military took over the investigation the next morning. By then Susan and I were well on way to Zamboanga. Well on our way … we were unexpectedly given our freedom, and our host Bia arranged it.
Chapter Sixty-three
Susan and I didn’t feel safer after leaving Pagadian. It was on a bus, after all, where we encountered the ILAGA gang. And we were back on a bus.
It didn’t seem like there had been enough effort put into finding and stopping the bad guys, whoever the bad guys were. There didn’t seem to have been any progress made the whole time we were under house arrest in Pagadian, or any progress that we could see. And I think that we were a target … definitely a target, and we would’ve been charged with drummed up charges, if we stayed. It wouldn’t have been hard for them to come up with something given our status in the country … since we were fugitives.
Here we rode along less sure of ourselves than ever before. And we were traveling through a dangerous area … traveling through a dangerous area during a conflict Muslims consider their holocaust. This was before ethnic cleansing was talked about. We saw it through a bus window before it was talked about and weren’t sure what to make of it.
Neither were we sure we would make it to Zamboanga, but from there I felt sure with our contacts we could still sneak out the backdoor of the Philippines. It still seemed our best option, the best one we had. And Bia reassured us that we wouldn’t face any problems in Zamboanga. According to him Zamboanga was safe. I wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about. I don’t know how he knew. Still he reassured us. I don’t know how he knew police or military wouldn’t be waiting for us at the bus station. Before placing us on a bus, he gave each of us travel documents, which he said would keep us out of trouble. How did he know?
A fellow passenger introduced himself to us. He said he lived in Zamboanga and went back to Davao to check on his family. He offered us a place to stay, but we told him that we didn’t plan to stay long in the city and already had reservations at our favorite hotel on the plaza…the truth was we needed time to unwind away from people. We wanted to get away … to spend time alone and thought a room in our favorite hotel in Zamboanga was our best chance for it. We had been in constant contact with people for too long and knew it. After more than a week of living with a family, Susan and I had begun to bark at each other.
In Zamboanga, like I said, we wanted to spend time in familiar surroundings. We knew the hotel. We stayed there before. We had a room picked out before we got there. It looked out over Plaza Pershing.
Susan wanted to go shopping. There were personal items she had run out of. And we hadn’t done any of our Christmas shopping. Christmas slipped by us. We hadn’t thought about it. Christmas slipped by us without our buying obligatory presents for our families back home. We forgot our families. It was good to be reminded of them.
Want, want, wants! Susan wanted to revise our plans. Though she wanted time with me alone, she wanted her family more. She suddenly wanted to turn Zamboanga into a holiday destination, unwind, and then turn herself in. She said she didn’t care what I did. She wanted to turn herself in. I didn’t believe her. I knew strain had gotten to her. It got to me too. I also knew that more than anything we wanted to feel safe.
It felt like since we left Manila we’d lived a lifetime. Susan said she missed our apartment, our maid Linda, and admitted that she hadn’t wanted to leave. She said it before. I heard her say that she didn’t want to leave before we left, but this time when she said it she said it differently. Or maybe I listened. I don’t know.
But we didn’t have a choice. No, that wasn’t true. We had a choice. We always had had a choice. We chose to stay and then were forced to flee. Run. Run, run, run. We’d been running for a long time. We needed to unwind. We saw too much and didn’t want to see any more. We wanted to disappear and stayed in our room as much as possible. Christmas would have to wait a little longer. Our families would have wait. We blamed it on the mail.
How did we spend the week? Nick asked us how we spent the week … a glorious week in a hotel across from Plaza Pershing. Nothing. Or we did as little as possible. Nick asked us in the course of our reunion at the Lantaka Hotel. When he knocked on our door at the Lantaka, Susan wasn’t happy to see him. (I caved in to Susan’s request, and we took a room at the Lantaka Hotel for one last fling.) Eager as I was to see him again, both of us resented his intrusion. However, it was a fair question. How did we spend the week? The week we spent in the Plaza Hotel (Zamboanga) was less than romantic.
We started out spending most of the day in bed, and there we paid dues to each other, but we didn’t need to.
“And then what does he do?” Susan indicated that she was talking about me.
“I didn’t do anything, I swear. When we were coming and going, mainly to and from a washroom, we noticed a group of young men staying in the room next to ours. Moros, I believe. They prayed five times a day, so I’d say they were devout. There were seven of them … seven in one room and you can imagine how often we heard them traipse back and forth, to and from the washroom … heard them splashing water and bathing.”
“And don’t think he wasn’t curious?”
“No, not at all. No, not me,” I said. “I never saw them fully dressed. They checked out in the middle of the night. Only in their sarongs. They were meeting; and their discussions lasted well into the night. They weren’t exceptionally loud, but our common wall (or partition) unfortunately didn’t reach the ceiling, so we heard everything.”
“And would my husband complain?”
“No, why complain? It wouldn’t have done any good to complain. Susan could’ve complained, but she left it up to me. After complaining to me, she admitted to me that she was afraid to.”
The students: in a room next to ours recently returned home from UP, of all places, but why were they spending so much time together, I had to know. It was the journalist in me, so I had to know what they were up to. Because I’m a journalist, I had more than a voyeur’s interest in everything that was going on. What brought them there … what brought them home?”
“I don’t think I was ever so glad to get a break from Ted, as when I decided to go Christmas shopping. Before then I looked for excuses to leave our room, while Ted wanted to stay there and listen to them. They didn’t drink. They weren’t partying. So it was clear to me that they weren’t there to have a good time. Seven young men in a room, and they weren’t there to have a good time. In no way did I approve of Ted listening, but they didn’t try to tone it down. The atmosphere in there was far from amiable.”
I couldn’t believe that they were openly committing an act of sedition. Sedition was an old fashion word but seemed to apply. I thought they were stupid and didn’t understand why they weren’t more hush-hush about it. In America, sedition hardly exists. There are laws on the books, sure, but people like us, who enjoy freedom, rarely get charged with it. I’m no authority, but I don’t remember when someone was charged with sedition in the States. “Nick, you should’ve been around,” I said. “You may know them or have seen them on campus. You and they certainly share many ideas. You’re that close. But I don’t think they would accept you. Back on campus, it seems like you were given a chance. I heard them talk about their experiences at UP”
It wasn’t hard to guess who the students were. I didn’t need to see them in black T-shirts. But I couldn’t have been more wrong about Nick and his ability to infiltrate the Moro movement. I ended up with egg on my face and had to admit that I was wrong. It would be over in less than a month.
For weeks Nick dodged the Secret Police Service, a heterogeneous band that had been around since Spanish times. It didn’t make sense to me. Why were they still after him? What had he done to draw attention to himself? There were many questions left unanswered that bothered me. We were both on a list, I assumed. And it didn’t make any difference that he was detained before. But now who would get him out? Who would take Elaine’s place? And what was he doing in Mindanao? What was I doing in Mindanao? What would’ve happened had he returned to the university?
“What if you get killed,” I once asked him.
“I’m not going to get killed.”
“Would it be worth it? Would it make a difference?”
“I’m not going to get killed. And if I did, well … everyone … ”
When he returned to his apartment after his release, he found that his place was searched and ransacked. He knew for sometime that he was under surveillance but never understood why he was such a high priority. (Just as I didn’t understand why I was a target.) He wasn’t Professor Nur Misuari, founder of the Moro National Liberation Front or Professor Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Philippine Communist Party. He was small fry in a huge frying pan.
But Nick took his situation in stride. “One can’t hold onto things. If I had been that way, I would never have left Central Luzon.”
“Why leave UP? There’s still a lot of action there. Where students and faculty are standing up to Marcos everyday, there’s still a lot to be done.”
“I had a choice. Just like you I had a choice. We have choices. Things will work out. They always do. Well, sometimes they do. I had a choice. This is where I choose to be. A while ago, who would’ve thought I would be on the side of Moros, and in Mindanao, or that I would run into you two again, at no less than the Lantaka Hotel, after we said goodbye and said we probably would never see each other again.”
So that was how things were.
Chapter Sixty-four
Back in America, President Nixon answered questions as to why the space shuttle program was the right step for the country. He told the nation that we should proceed at once and develop a new space transportation system. “Practical space utilization” and “valuable spin-offs” were phrases he used. About then, in Zamboanga, a fifteen-year-old Muslim girl came out of Mass with her Christian grandmother.
As they sat on a bench in Plaza Pershing, Susan stood nearby, buying a cup of fruit for herself. As soon as she paid for it and starting eating mango and pineapple with a toothpick, she noticed the girl with her head covered and the older woman with a crucifix around her neck, and said, “Excuse me, but I’m confused. I’d like to believe what I’m seeing. Do you know each other, or are you strangers sharing a bench?”
Susan was thrilled, and, as she said, puzzled. That Christians and Muslims could be related seemed impossible to her, but it wasn’t uncommon in Mindanao. Intermarriage between Christians and Muslims was common. It turned out that the girl’s mother married a Muslim, which again surprised Susan.
As soon as she got back to our room, Susan had to tell me about it. And she said it offered a ray of hope. This led to a long conversation about Muslims revering Jesus, without accepting His divinity. “I’m sure there are people who are trying to bring the two groups together,” she said, and one person that came to my mind was Fr. Deon, the Oblate serving Bongao. This led to something else. “We may be running out of time.” I know the phrase “running out of time” sounded ominous. Susan said that she thought it was too bad we had to leave the Philippines. And said she wished that I hadn’t become involved with Nick. She told me she was frightened.
I brought up the India-Pakistan crisis. I don’t know why I brought up the India-Pakistan crisis because we weren’t thinking about going to either country.
“You know, Ted,” she said. “I don’t enjoy your company very much anymore. You’re never satisfied with one crisis. It’s like you’re looking for trouble.” Also she said, if she had it to do over again, she wouldn’t have taken off with me to parts unknown …she wouldn’t let me lead her around, and she wouldn’t be so dependent.
She didn’t seem convincing to me, but I had no way of figuring it out. I had no way of knowing how she really felt. But I thought I knew her.
“I should’ve insisted you get a real job. I should’ve put my foot down.”
It was clear then that she wouldn’t tolerate much more, so I very diplomatically told her that I understood. Telling her I understood seemed like the right thing to do. I also realized she wanted me to protect her. She was scared and wanted me to protect her. I could see she was scared and was starting to act defeated. But then she found something…such as a Muslim girl going to Mass with her Christian grandmother…to hang onto.
“Why don’t you go back to the States and be without me for a while?” I said. “Maybe a sabbatical would do you good.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” she said. And perhaps she recalled how much she missed me the few times we were separated. But we couldn’t stay in Zamboanga, where stress was taking its toll … where we constantly bickered and when just getting through January seemed monumental.
“Ted, I wanted to get pregnant. You knew I wanted to get pregnant, didn’t you? We always said we wanted children. We’ve talked about. You’ve agreed. Maybe being in a different setting would help. Having a baby would add … would add a dimension that we don’t have now.”
“If you say so,” I found myself saying. “But what about the child? Are we mature enough for one?”
“Sure. Look how we’ve survived … survived so far. I’ve heard you say we’re not dead yet.”
“I thought you said that you were glad you weren’t pregnant. I thought we agreed to wait until we were more stable.”
“A baby could be a stabilizer.”
It was true. Having a baby would change everything. But I sensed that this conversation had nothing to do with Susan getting pregnant. “But we better cure the traveling bug before we have children.”
“That’s what I mean. It’s sensible. I thought we were a team. Ted, I don’t know how I could get along without you.”
I almost said “having a baby is not the answer,” but then I realized that it was dumb. If Susan were pregnant we would be delighted. If we had a child we would adapt. But it didn’t necessary mean we would have to give up our dreams. We would have to plan, though I hated planning. We would have to factor a child into the equation.
Susan had her own ideas … ideas about what it would mean (not surprisingly). I had my own ideas too, so there was nothing to be gain from discussing it. It wouldn’t change anything, or make us feel better. So it was better not talk about it. It was better not to bring certain topics. We better not bring up certain topics and maybe argue about it. I didn’t like disagreement, so it was better to avoid certain topics. Why bring up certain topics when we knew we would disagree. We were both changing, and can’t a person change his or her mind? What I didn’t realize was that she wouldn’t confront me until we reached a safe harbor somewhere.
“If we can agree on a place, I would be willing to settle almost anywhere,” she was saying. “As long as we stay put.”
“Whatever,” I said, without really agreeing.
But first things first. First we had to get out Zamboanga and the Philippines without getting killed. Too much was at stake to worry about anything else. And we knew we couldn’t dally. Now this was something we thoroughly discussed; something we hadn’t done before. We decided that we would spend a minimum amount of time with Nick and then make our way through the Sulus, as if we were typical tourists. Then I came up with the idea that Nick might want to leave the Philippines with us. Then he could go to the States, locate Elaine, and … It was an idea I had. I even thought of bringing it up when …
We bought our boat tickets in advance, two tickets, both ways, to and from Sitangkai, so that it would look like we planned to stay on the same boat and return on it to Zamboanga. We would make our escape from Sitangkai, the furthermost port. But where was Nick? It meant we’d have to cross the hazardous Sibutu Passage. But it seemed like it would work. Where was Nick?
“We could get kill,” she said.
“We could get kill walking across a street. Let’s not panic,” I said. “We haven’t left Zamboanga yet, and you’re panicking.” Where was Nick?
“I don’t want to meet death yet. I want to have children.”
“Susan …” Where was Nick?
We picked up our tickets at the port, which left us with enough pesos to get us to Sitangkai. We had enough pesos so that we wouldn’t have to sponge off Nick or anyone else. It was settled. We were leaving the Philippines. We would leave through the backdoor. In Sitangkai, we would hire a small boat. We made sure we had enough pesos to hire small boat in Sitankai to take us across the dangerous Sibutu passage. We wouldn’t worry about crossing the border legally. Now we had a few days left before our boat was scheduled to leave Zamboanga. So we had enough time to say our good-byes. But where was Nick?
On the day we bought our tickets, mail finally caught us via post restante c/o the post office in Zamboanga. Along with mail we hoped for, there was an old cable from my mother. Even before I opened it, I became very nervous.
“Son,” it said. “Since there was a telegraph strike and we couldn’t pinpoint where you were, we went ahead and buried you father. He died very quickly. In less than a week, he was dead, died of pancreatic cancer. He hadn’t been sick before.” I read it several times before I handed it to Susan. There was also a letter. The letter arrived at the same time the telegram did.
Marfa, Texas
My dearest son,
I have bad news. To have to write to you about your father’s death is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. I hope you understand that we tried to contact you before your dad died, but he didn’t linger long enough and the telegraph people conspired against us.
In terms of the estate, I would be happy to send you a copy of the will. You are a beneficiary, next in line to me. I don’t understand why I’m writing about this now.
I am holding onto some of your father’s personal belongings for you. He wanted you to have them. On the other hand, it would be perfectly understandable if you didn’t want them, considering your situation and how storage for you is a problem.
We can find comfort in that your father didn’t suffer for long and is now buried in a plot with other veterans and within the shadow of Old Glory. I will be buried next to him.
With all my love and now sadness,
I no longer remember the rest of that day as I stumbled through it. I’m thankful that I had Susan with me. We almost forgot our differences. It was like we reached a crossroads.
Chapter Sixty-five
When we saw Nick walking toward us waving, we were sitting on the patio at Zantaka Hotel. We were sitting at a table facing the Sulu Sea watching boys dive for dimes. We were sitting with our backs to Nick when we heard him yell. We were glad to see Nick because we never expected to see him again.
It was not only unexpected but also exciting, at least to me, to see him. I still wanted to suggest to him that he come with us … that he leave the Philippines and search for Elaine in the States. The odds of our running into Nick, it seemed, were next to impossible. It wasn’t planned. The odds of him leaving with us were even slimmer. And I wasn’t sure it was worth bringing up.
The timing seemed implausible. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. We usually didn’t eat at Zantaka because it was so expensive, but ambiance seduced us. Sharing a moonlit table overlooking the Sulu Sea sounded so romantic. Then Nick showed up. You may remember we met the American fisherman (David) from Basilan and his Philippine girlfriend there. Remembered Nick was with us that evening.
To be perfectly honest, Nick was on my mind when Susan and I decided to stay at the Zantaka (though we couldn’t afford it). I knew Nick would be in Zamboaga, so fate didn’t have much to do with it. For Susan to be skeptical was a given. It would be hard for her to believe that Nick and I hadn’t planned it. One could hardly blame her for being skeptical, or blame her for being suspicious and angry.
As the evening progressed, we discovered that Nick hadn’t lost his revolutionary zeal; to use the word zeal was an understatement. So he dismissed the idea of leaving the Philippines and going with us. Instead, he talked about taking up residency on nearby Basilan. There was no mention of Elaine.
Nick had definitely changed. I could sense it. Susan and I saw it. We saw it as Nick drank. We all drank too much, and along with it there was a whole lot of gloom. This was around the time opponents to Marcos, members of the liberal party, planned a campaign rally at Plaza Miranda back in Manila. The bombing at the rally in August caused nine deaths and injured ninety-five others. Almost everyone on the stage was injured, including Sergio Osmena Jr., a son of a former president, Sergio Osmena, Sr. Marcos took the opportunity to seize emergency powers, suspend writ of habeas corpus, a prelude to declaring Martial Law.
Susan later said that she felt like we were ganging up on her. She hadn’t wanted me to get involved with Nick again. My doing so she feared could delay our departure, or worse it could place us more in jeopardy than we already were. I didn’t see it that way. Instead the reporter in me saw a good story, but I was beginning to question my objectivity.
I felt I crossed the line of objectivity before then … that I got too involved, and instead of being an observer, I became a participant in the bloody demonstration in front of the Congress building. It was a defining moment for me, just as it had been a defining moment for everyone involved. Afterwards, I sounded more like a propagandist than a reporter. Nor could I reassure myself that I wouldn’t join Nick in Mindanao and Sulu.
I couldn’t help but be curious. My instincts came into play. If I ended up dead, I felt it would be for a worthy cause. At the same time, I knew that it wasn’t my fight. And I had Susan to think about.
Could I run? I had been running all my life. I’m thinking here of my Filipino friends: especially Nick. They all seemed willing to sacrifice so much. But it wasn’t my country. Take Nick. Goodness! There were then over two hundred students who were ready to launch the Moro National Liberation Front and openly declare secession … and waiting for a spark, which Marcos soon provided.
I’ve often wondered where we would be had we not met Elpidio. We had been on Basilan with him. I went back to see him. And I’ve always thought it was remarkable that he and Nick joined forces when they did. A star pupil of Mao hooked up with a star pupil of an oblate friar. They also became friends.
“Elpidio and Nick were both patriots,” Fr. Deon later told me. He explained how his star pupil always defended the Moro cause. He always defended the Moro cause, even though he hadn’t always been a radical. Fr. Deon always knew the boy would become a leader, and indeed he became one. He had to be a star…not only in a classroom but also on a soccer field. Encouragement played a part … Fr. Deon’s encouragement. If it hadn’t been for Fr Deon’s encouragement, Elpidio probably wouldn’t have gone to MSU, regardless of how bright he was.
“Are you patriotic?” Nick asked me. “Could you be, if it weren’t for Vietnam?” Remember my closest friend died in Vietnam.
“No. I’m not sure that I am.”
I asked how he found Elpidio.
“It was easy, and the risk wasn’t very great. Basilan isn’t that big and Elpidio wasn’t hard to find. He has a base near Isabela, and he’s quite famous on Basilan. Everyone knows him or knows of him. And police and military don’t seem interest in him. I don’t know if it will change, but they’re not interested now. Elpidio is planning accordingly. Anyway, I’ve decided to stay with him, partly because I believe in his mission.”
The ILAGA gang was at it again, killing and mutilating Muslims. You couldn’t blame the Moros for their reaction. It had the look and feel of an all-out war, so the reporter in me kicked in. Whoa! Take a moment. Think! You’re not dead yet. Think! It’s not your country. It’s not your country. We had bought our tickets, and the backdoor of the Philippines wasn’t very far away. So leave! As planned. Leave!
Elpidio and Nick seemed destined to become legends. And the way they were going they seemed destined to live short lives. I should’ve seen it. I think I saw it. I saw it. They were destined to live short lives and come to a tragic end. It wasn’t my destiny. I wasn’t dead yet, and I had Susan to think about. And we wanted to have children.
Had it been a waste of time? Was it a terrible waste? And it seemed sad to me, and I could’ve easily gotten caught up in it. Even sensible people got caught up in things that were out of their control and out of their reach … none of their business. It wasn’t my country. Even careful people find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn’t go to the demonstration in front of the Congress building with any intention of getting involved. I went as a reporter.
There had been other times too like being on a bus that was almost hijacked, surviving it and feeling afterwards guilty. We ran into Nick just as we were leaving the Philippines. How did he know where we were? Susan was certainly suspicious. Nevertheless, Basilan, up until then, was relatively quiet. Even with the ILAGA menace, it was relative quiet, and this allowed Nick and me to reassure Susan. “It’s safe,” I said.
Nick was the most militant and strident of the two. The story of his trip to China preceded him to Basilan. When he arrived he was immediately given respect because of the trip. He soon however acknowledged that the Moro struggle was different from the one he had been involved in Central Luzon and Manila and had nothing to do with communism. Nick was strong, ruthless, and honest and seemed to be always on the go. Elpidio, on the other hand, suffered from inner turmoil. Because of his connection with the Norte Dame school on Bongao and Fr. Deon, he took attacks of Christians very personally, and while he defended the Oblates whenever he could. His problem was evident, and I wondered how it would play out.
I wouldn’t have long to wait. 1971 is generally recognized as the start of the Moro War on Mindanao and the Sulus.
By then Nick was a very close friend of mine. One of the last memories of him I have was seeing him wrapped in an American towel. We enjoyed beautiful Alano Beach, as peaceful then as I assume it is now. We took the opportunity to soak up a tropical sun and float in crystal blue water. Elpidio invited us to go. As appropriate, Susan kept her head and body covered. I was gratified that she had enough sense to do it and that she appeared relaxed. Susan had a very well defined figure, large heavy boobs, and was very beautiful. Remember she played Lady Liberty on national television, but there was nothing virginal about her looks.
Nick entertained us all day long, running in and out of surf and showing us how to enjoy ourselves in spite of uncertainty. At one point, he launched into Bayang magiliw perlas ng puso sab diddib mo’y buhay, or the national anthem. He sang it as loud as he could. We stood at attention with our hands over our hearts, as he sang as loud as he could. He continued to sing, loved to sing, and also sang Philippine folk songs, such as “Maria Went to Town” and “Where is My Ring.” Sometimes he was flat, but it didn’t matter to him. It didn’t matter to us. He was proud of his voice.
At the port, we saw more boys diving for coins. We first ran into them beside the sea-front patio at Lantaka Hotel. The port was where we bargained for a boat that we needed to get to the beach. We had the beach to ourselves. There we spent one of our most memorable days in the Philippines. It included Nick’s singing. I always remember how he sang … sang loud and off key. He didn’t care. He loved to sing. We went scuba diving, and Susan had a good time in spite of herself. It was one of the best times we ever had.
Back on campus, Nick often stayed in the background. He enjoyed the world of ideas and was considered a thinker, as he tried to figure out where he fit in. (Nick couldn’t mention Rizal without mentioning Mao, as if there were a connection between the two.) Maybe seeing violence as a boy affected him. Growing up in a HUK family gave him the right credentials but not a taste for action. And it certainly gave him a distaste for violence. But that apparently changed when he joined the Moro movement.
Like Elpidio, Nick was a patriot. When I first met him, I was impressed by his intellect. Likewise, Elpido impressed me. Both of them were leaders, but differences between the two were striking. Elpidio had a dark, moody side, while Nick always seemed impulsive and unpredictable. Elpidio seemed deliberate, while Nick nearly always improvised.
As we played in the sand, the idea of beachcombing came to me. I wanted to explore the shoreline and a nearby Muslim cemetery. A picnic had been prepared. We preferred it to eating at a nearby resort. There was still time before the beach would become crowded, and we sat in a nipa cabana around a table as if we were family, Elpidio, Nick, and me, with Susan sitting across from us. Susan insisted on taking a picture, the only photograph I have of the three of us. We soon demolished a table full of food: Muslim dishes of tyula itum, pianggang manok, and baulo, and a mountain of rice.
Over such a spread, eating with our hands, with fresh limeade … and no flies … every one of us had a good time and regretted when it was over. We all agreed that it was great. I rated this day, as I’ve said, as one of the best we had in Philippines; and we also knew it would be one of last relaxing days we’d have. This allowed us to enjoy the day more than we otherwise would’ve, but knowing that it had to end made it bittersweet. We tried to draw it out, a technique for which all of us lacked. If we realized the significance of this day, no one mentioned it.
As we combed the beach, Elpidio was the most somber. Susan wasn’t far behind him. She often came up with a worse case scenario. And I chided her for it, and she pouted. Unfortunately, she was often right. I chided her on many occasions and nicknamed her “mother of doom.” I don’t how she managed to be right so often when I deserved to be right as much as she did.
“What a disastrous way for a day to end,” she said. “If we hadn’t had such a wonderful time…”
“Here you go again!” I screamed. “You see a tornado in every black cloud. I guess it comes from growing up in West Texas.”
“Well, it’s gunna to rain.”
And sure enough, it did. We had two choices then: to run for more substantial cover or stick it out in a leaky nipa cabana.
Since Elpidio and Nick represented different sides of a conflict, you wouldn’t have thought that they would’ve joined forces. They arranged to meet by writing to each other. While Nick was still in Manila; several letters went back and forth. It took a while for Nick to make up his mind.
He flew to Zamboanga. He went after he became a wanted man. He needed to get out Manila then because police and military wanted him. He met Elpidio at Lantaka Hotel because they liked the atmosphere and food, and it was where he also ran into us. Nick was a thinker, and that made him valuable to Elpidio. Almost from the beginning, they played off of each other. Most people said they were equally intelligent. When they verbally dueled they dueled to a draw.
Social conditions rather than dogma motivated Elpidio, but he never objected whenever Nick interjected Mao into their conversations. As a college graduate, he enjoyed intellectual banter as much as Nick, so sitting out a storm under a nipa cabana, to Susan’s dismay, he engaged in it. I thought Elpidio held his own. Not only was Elpidio coming up with his own ideas about the Moro case, but in my opinion he also vulgarized dogma of Marx and Lenin. His Christian education betrayed him. Though he was Muslim, his Christian education betrayed him. But in the end all they did was bicker.
With only a peephole-view of Maoism, Nick tried to convince us that history was on the side of communism. But Elpido got further with his argument because he talked about Muslims losing land. He had our sympathy because we didn’t like to see anyone lose land. I didn’t agree with Nick when he said, “Land belongs to everyone.”
Elpido was on his own turf, even though we weren’t on Tawi-Tawi or in his hometown of Bongao. It was clear where his heart was. Unlike Nick he hadn’t gone to Red China, which was a defining moment for our mutual friend. To hear Elpidio talk about why he now was willing to give up confronts of home for danger … dangers of an insurrectionist … was rather like listening to a Sunday school teacher talk about shame and guilt.
Chapter Sixty-six
After we left the Philippines, I tried to find out what happened to Elpidio and Nick. My main source was Fr. Deon. Like when we first met him, the Oblate gave us a warm welcome when we passed through Bongao. I want to also express our thanks for his help. He helped us catch a boat to Borneo, bypassing Sitangkia altogether, but I don’t want to make it more difficult for him by saying too much about it.
There was already a flood of refugees also risking it. I didn’t expect Fr. Deon’s help, but he never hesitated. He took our plight personally and helped us catch a boat. He helped us avoid immigration people. He helped us avoid military and police officers. He knew everyone and could help. Without our asking, he responded like we were refugees.
Unselfishly, Fr. Deon helped Christians and Muslims without thinking of himself. Sustained effort would seem too risky without support of somebody … without support of somebody in the government, which confused me. But maybe the government had a secret program, a secret refugee program. Maybe since they decided they couldn’t invade Sabah (Borneo) one way, they decided to do it with refugees.
Fr. Deon had too much to lose, so why would he risk it? It must’ve been difficult to maintain a relationship with both sides, yet he apparently did. It beats me how he did it, remained credible and worked for peace. I’ve also tried to analyze his influence on Elpidio. It was very complicated. He perhaps knew Elpidio better than anyone else did. So that was why I turned to him to find out what happened.
I remember feeling shocked … shocked, upset, angry … shocked, upset, angry that Nick died at the hands of Elpidio … shocked, upset, angry … that was how I felt after it was explained to me. Yet there couldn’t have been anything more heroic. Considering that Nick never wanted to go to prison again … considering Elpidio and Nick had become close friends … and that they were comrades and loyal … considering all this … it turned out for the best. I don’t think it was an act of betrayal, like some people alleged.
The way Nick died makes me shudder when I think about it. When I think about it, I’m apt to shake. I also see how Susan and I could’ve been there, and that makes me shake even more. While I shake, a part of me wishes I had been there. A part me regretted that I wasn’t there … wasn’t there as a reporter and a friend. Then the world would know … would know more about why Elpidio pulled the trigger.
Perhaps I should mention that I’ve never shared my feelings about Nick’s death with Susan, or anyone else, when doing so might ease my burden. I don’t accept it … not completely. I can’t think about Elpidio pulling the trigger, and wouldn’t believe it or know about it had Fr. Deon not written me back.
I still refuse to accept it completely. I ask myself how could Elpidio have pulled the trigger? Elpidio probably died at that moment too. They were surrounded, down to one last bullet. Sadly Nick lost his life before he reached his fortieth birthday.
Nick was born on March 26, 1942. He was conceived before Japanese came ashore in December of 1941. Obviously his father wasn’t around for his birth. The family was very proud of his father’s war experience as a member of the resistance movement. This led to him becoming a HUK. He was a brave warrior, had medals to prove it, and he gave his children (Nick was his middle son) a strong sense of Filipinohood.
In jungle camps, Nick was a favorite of former guerrilla fighters, and, in response, he learned to shimmy up trees and became very strong. Because of the experience, when his family moved into town and his parents opened a sari-sari store, he had a leg up on other boys and quickly became a leader. This carried over in school. It set a pattern that continued the rest of his life. Even people who didn’t agree with him listened to him.
There was an aura about Nick that he often downplayed, but he never succeeded in downplaying it. He came across as intellectually serious and politically astute and was very much indoctrinated as a Maoist. He enjoyed controversy, while he stood on higher ground. One moment he attacked American imperialism and then turn around and embraced an American girlfriend. And instead of simply adding his voice to demands for the closure of American military bases, he slept with the enemy and in the process converted a daughter of an American naval commander. As a consequence, he was singled out, spent time in prison, and was radicalized even more. Then, if you connect dots, it led to his death. And there was no indication that he ever looked back.
Nick was also a good friend of mine, and I’m sad that the conflict he died in has escalated and continues to this very day. When I contacted Fr. Deon, I was pleasantly surprised that he remembered me.
By 1972, Elpidio and Nick were leaders of the Moro uprising. They took part in the occupation of the J. S. Alano coconut plantation and were there when the military declared it a no-man’s land. A Maoist, Nick became a follower of another leftist, and former UP professor, Nur Misuari. This seemed ironic since they hadn’t joined forces in Manila.
At the plantation, they ensconced themselves in J. S. Alano’s fortified compound. It was a setting that was in many ways like the gated community of Forbes Park in Makati, where an expatriate owner and managers (mostly Americans) once lived. The plantation, which Mr. Alano established during the Commonwealth Era (1936-1942), was the first Filipino-owned one on the island.
The plantation owner originally came from historical Malolos and served as the first Congressman of Zamboanga Province. It was on the plantation that Elpidio and Nick had their first taste of war. The military bombarded the plantation and left it destroyed.
In a diary Nick bemoaned the destruction and loss of life. He wrote, “War certainly changes the complexion of classroom idealism.” Nick was provided with a Chinese machine gun and Chinese grenades and more ammunition than he could ever use.
During this time China sent arms and automatic weapons to many different places, places such as Botswana and Tanzania, and Laos and Vietnam, so it wasn’t surprising that Chinese weapons ended up in the Sulus. Nick used to hang a Chinese flag on his wall and played Chinese revolutionary songs all day long. And his connection with China paved the way for him. Indeed, he and Nur Misuari had many things in common. They were both intellectuals, both leftist, both patriots, and both were revolutionaries. And for both of them time they spent at UP shaped their politics.
And they both studied Mao. Mao influenced some of the most important, if misguided, decisions they made, tactically and practically. But that was not to say that they were primarily motivated by someone outside of the Philippines. Both of them … and Elpidio … let me repeat … were patriots. And Moros who over the centuries never gave up inspired them more than by anything else.
Yes, we were good friends. During the whole year that I saw Nick at UP I never understood why he put up with me. I was always bugging him. I kept after him for stories and questions he was reluctant to answer. He’d take me to lunch in a lower level of Palma Hall, where we always ate the same thing. A passionate, outspoken Moist eating frequently with an American didn’t ring true. And perhaps it said more about me that it did him. Neither did his relationship with Elaine make sense. He denounced America every chance he had … participated in anti-American demonstrations … yet he dated an American. It didn’t make sense. And he said he loved her, and I believed him.
Their effort bore fruit. American bases were eventually closed, with the naval airbase on Sangley Point, Cavite, being maybe the first one. And Nick was sleeping with the daughter of the commander of the base.
Nick was often so indignant around Elaine that I felt embarrassed for her. He bashed America around her. He had no respect for America, and she knew it. What was she thinking sleeping with someone who hated American? What was I thinking having lunch on a regular basis with a communist?
Maybe Elaine and I had our gripes. We didn’t hate our country, but we had our gripes. And we blamed the US for more sins than you can imagine. For the record, we didn’t hate our country. We weren’t patriots like Nick was, but we didn’t hate our country. My father often quipped that our generation (Elaine’s and mine) had it too easy, and that was why guys like me weren’t willing to fight for our country. He himself, a GI, fought and could’ve died for our country.
There was no record of how Elpidio felt, but I know he was radicalized by the Corregidor Massacre … the Corregidor Massacre during which young men from his hometown were murdered. It called for revenge, and Elpidio was very troubled by it. And as a student of a Christian friar, Elpidio could never reconcile the dreaded ILAGA’s mayhem, or his unchristian reaction to it. It was that instead of ideology that drove him. And while Nick seemed cocksure of himself, he constantly questioned everything, picked things apart, argued with himself, and looked for ways to make sense out of something incomprehensible, and in essence felt he had to shoulder it all. One sign of this maybe was that he increasingly wanted to be by himself.
Chapter Sixty-seven
Taking cues from each other, Elpidio and Nick continued their academic pursuits while they were guerrillas. Nick looked further into the trial and execution of Andres Bonifacio and began working on a book about the Philippine revolution. He wanted to write it from the perspective of a Moro. He also tried his hand at fiction, completing a few shortstories. Finally, he kept a detailed record of daily events. Fr. Deon sent me a copy of this record. From it I was able to piece together events that led up to Nick’s death. He was never published.
Nick produced quite a volume under the harshest conditions. Often, as he wrote, “working all night with a blackout and minimal light.” I wondered how he did it. He had access to J. S. Alano’s library, which in spite of a bombing remained in tact. In it, he found a copy of Bonifacio’s Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa (Love of Fatherland), a poem filled with patriotism. Within a short time, he could recite it verbatim and used it in daily speech.
Inspired by Bonifacio, Nick argued that his group of guerrillas should acquire a small press and publish their own Kalayaan or newspaper, but didn’t find any enthusiasm for it. He didn’t think that it was impractical, like others did. (Even a small press was bulky and heavy.) Of course he believed in the power of the printed word and believed in the teachings of the Katipunan as spelled out by Bonifacio and his followers. He was especially fond of Bonifacio’s Tagalog translation of Rizal’s farewell poem Mi Ultimo adios.
Revolutionary guerrillas were required to fight. Nick signed on, so he had to fight. But after a few raids he discovered that he preferred sentry duty, so he assigned himself to sentry duty instead of leading men into battle. Sentry duty, however, proved difficult for him because he rarely slept. He couldn’t sleep on sentry duty. Given that he rarely slept; imagine what he was doing to his health.
For a while, Elpidio collected folk songs. And he sung songs, performed them for the group. There were battle songs that could’ve well been composed by them. They were also portrayals of love, and critics of Elpidio’s singing mainly complained about his timidity. Perhaps his singing was his way of getting over that. Nick described his friend’s singing as a “hoot”, as in Hootenanny, even though he sang songs in Spanish, songs such as “Ave Maria No Morro.” Understandably, Elpidio’s songs were often fatalistic, and had about them strains of Woody Guthrie. Imagine Bob Dylan under the coconut palms of Basilan, “A Hard Rain’A Gonna Fall” in Bahasa Sama. He also sung songs in Persian, though I can’t imagine he got the sounds right. I remember the first time I heard Dylan. I didn’t think he could sing, so I don’t think Elpidio had to stay on pitch. Everyone needed amusement, and it was enough to launch Elpidio’s short singing career. I remember Nick sang the national anthem as loud as he could.
As a fighter, like Nick, Elpido was handicapped. “When he was a student of mine, I saw Elpidio stand his ground without using his kris,” Fr. Deon recalled (For a Moro maratabat was about honor, “face”, dignity, sense of shame, sense of pride, ethics, etc.) “As I approached, I saw Elpidio stand up to a bully and saw him get pummeled. I can still see blood running down his face. This wasn’t the first time a bully beat him up.
Most Moros would’ve considered Elpidio’s reaction reprehensible. It was damning, dishonorable the way he stood there and took it.” “From when his mother first brought him to Norte Dame and he was introduced to Christanity (he never converted), Elpidio took his studies seriously. Of all my students he was the most impressionable. I remember having many conversations with him about Jesus … about Jesus and what He would’ve done in various circumstances. (Remember Muslims accept Jesus as a prophet.) Elpido listened; more than listened he took it all to heart. I taught him to turn the other cheek, and it shattered him because of maratabat … shattered him because maratabat was so engrained in his psychic … so engrained in Moro psychic. You see, because of me, he didn’t know what to do when bullying started. Because of me he never learned to fight. So I waited for him to run amok. I waited for it to build up inside him until he ran amok.” Elpidio’s mother shared Fr. Deon’s concern, but Elpidio contained himself. I believe he was strong enough to contain himself, which handicapped him as a guerrilla fighter.
By 1972, Elpidio was drawn into the Moro War, thinking that perhaps war exempted him from the teachings of Jesus. After all he was a Muslim, a Moro from Bongao, where maratabat was normal. But so far he hadn’t been able to kill anyone, a problem for sure. So far he represented an anomaly.
By then the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Philippine government were slugging it out on Basilan and elsewhere. The government, in response to Moro raids, reactivated the 14th Infantry (Avenger) Battalion and integrated it into the 1st Infantry Division and sent it to Mindanao to engage in a pacification campaign. By 1974, when Elpidio and Nick were still on Basilan, nearby Jolo fell to the 1st Infantry Division and then was retaken by the MNLF. The escalation of conflict by then attracted international attention…”because,” Nick explained, “of our determination we have become an inspiration for Muslims everywhere.” One sign of it was that the MNLF gained Observers Status in the Organization of Islamic Conference. (That year the conference met in Kuala Lumpur.) Another sign was President’s Marcos’ violent reaction.
By then it was an all out war, and it wasn’t clear which side would give in first. But not withstanding bombing and an increased deployment of infantrymen, very little of this directly affected Elpidio and Nick because the government concentrated on Jolo.
Bangsmoro freedom and liberation! Freedom and liberation! Bangsmoro freedom and liberation was what they were fighting for. Elpido and Nick carried out their raids under the banner of Bangsamoro freedom and liberation when freedom and liberation still seemed possible.
Nick wrote a proposal to the Organization of Islamic Conference, asking for recognition and support for their cause. On the basis of his proposal MNLF was granted Observers Status. Nick could’ve then left the front and traveled with Nur Misuari, but instead chose to stay and fight with his friends on Basilan. This decision, Fr. Deon wrote, cost Nick his life.
As far as Elpidio, Nick’s decision turned out to be ironic and painful … an ironic, painful twists of fate. Fr. Deon wrote me extensively about it. “Here was Elpidio, who would never kill, much less hurt anyone. He was handed a .45 and was ordered to kill his friend. Nick encouraged him to shoot. Can you imagine the extent of Elpidio’s agony?”
A PC-CHDF team captured them. They poked guns in their ribs and shouted ‘get going.’ They were dragged from their beds, after Nick had fallen asleep on his sentry duty. It soon became clear that a sergeant decided not to bring them back alive.”
Up until then, Epidio’s belief system remained in tact. He had assumed a role of a medic and learned lifesaving skills, which he continued to practice and refine. Elpidio practiced how to control hemorrhaging, maintain airways, assist breathing, and how to use a tourniquet. He dealt with his conscience and his objection to killing in this way. How he avoided combat before he became proficient as a medic we can only guess. We can only imagine the extent of his anxiety each time his comrades staged a raid. He was willing to expose himself to their criticism, which continued until he saved a life or two. That was why giving him a .45 was so cruel.
Memorial services for Elpidio and Nick were never held. It fell on a sergeant to report their deaths, while neither he nor any of his men initially did it. Their task was clear: if possible, capture the enemy but not murder them. It was very much a crime to kill unarmed POWs … in Sulu and Mindanao, or anywhere else.
A soldier who eventual ended the silence was never identified. He broke rank and spoke up but wasn’t identified. He found himself in the same boat as the sole survivor of the Corregidor Massacre, except he was never identified by name. He triggered an investigation because somehow The Free Press got a hold of the story. He told on his sergeant and other men in his unit. He told of Elpidio and Nick’s gruesome fates. He made the military sound like a hit squad … not an unusual view.
Elpidio was one of the few Moro fighters who in combat looked to Christ. Yet he did as much as could to support the Bangsamoro cause. He may have been only a minor player in a war that lasted so long. He may have been a player in war that’s still going on. He faced Allah before he died, but had courage enough to kill a friend, even though it went against his beliefs. “Against his conscious, he took a life; this made his own death merciful.”
Chapter Sixty-eight
The International Film Festival of India, an eleven-day film festival, drew huge crowds to Panaji Goa in December of each year. In 1979, when we were surviving in Bombay, Susan and I took a steamer to Goa and ran into Vincente de la Cruz, my filmmaker friend from Manila. After checking out the Film Bazaar with him, he insisted that we go with him to a screening of his latest film, Enfant Terrible. Naturally, we talked about Elpidio and Nick. He became so interested in the two and their heroism that he made a film about them. An investigation of their deaths had already been exploited by the Manila press and caused quite a stir.
After the screening Vincente took us to a party and after it to his room. The way Elpidio and Nick died was very much on my mind. Vincente said they were national heroes. But I didn’t have enough perspective to see then in that light. To me they were friends, and it was hard for me to see them as heroes. It was hard for me to see the film. Their deaths made me angry. And I didn’t think enough time had elapsed for Vincente to judge. He still insisted that they were heroes, heroes on the scale of Rizal and Bonifacio. On a scale of Rizal and Bonifacio? This seemed absurd. Then I realized Vincente needed to make them into national heroes for his film. I was cynical. I’m still cynical. And I began to wonder if I could trust Vincente. It was my cynicism showing.
“Has Nick been honored by UP?” I asked.
“Yes, along with all students and faculty who died during The First Quarter Storm,” he said. “Nick wasn’t singled out like he should’ve been. It was why I made the film.”
“And are you happy with the film?”
“It was my best effort. By then Basilan was unsafe, and the navy’s blockade was enforced. Though I ran the blockade once, and spent time in Zamboanga to get a taste of the war, we shot most of the film in Sabah. With the problems I’ve had with Marcos, to attempt it in the Philippines would’ve been sheer folly. But I was deeply committed to making this film, wanted to make it as soon as the story broke.”
“I liked the idea because of it’s potential … sure we have Ninoy Aquino, but I thought there was room for another national hero,” Vincente contined. “Nick went to Mindanao, died on Basilan, and was murdered like Aquino, and you have to hold Marcos responsible. And you have to admit that there was an amazing twist to Nick’s story, to tell a friend ‘go ahead and finish me off,’ and then have the friend shoot him in the mouth.”
“I heard you knew Elpidio. I never met him,” Vincente said. “In the Philippines, we’re always on the lookout for heroes. Having heroes makes us proud. You Americans know it, and it’s why Rizal was populized. We feel inferior, and it’s why we need heroes. Nick’s story provides a needed antidote. But he shouldn’t only be remembered for how he died … remember he was a real patriot.”
“And a friend of mine,” I said.
“When I first knew him, Nick stayed in the backgroud. He seemed shy. It must’ve been difficult for him. He didn’t emerge as a leader in Manila, and it meant that people like Nur Misuari got a jump on him. He never wanted to be a hero.”
“Then why did you make him one?” I asked.
Vincente didn’t answer.
“I don’t think he ever got jungle camps out of his system. He talked a lot about growing up in them and what it meant to be a son of a HUK. I met his mother. We traveled together to Central Luzon and down south. He had a restless side that not many people saw,” I said, “but I never thought he would join the Moro Movement.”
“Yes he joined, and it’s what makes his story so compelling…especially since he was a Christian. He joined when he didn’t have to. We all have choices. He knew that he’d been placed on Marcos’ enemies’ list. Perhaps he thought he didn’t have choices.”
“Like you said, we all have choices.”
“Yes, we do. And choices Nick made make him a hero.”
“A dramatic hero?”
“Yes, a dramatic hero.”
“But a national one?”
Again Vincente didn’t respond to a question of mine, but instead said, “He wrote long essays for the Moro movement and wanted to put out a revolutionary newspaper. He pitched the idea but wasn’t successful. He seemed more suited for academa than …”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“… where publishing is expected.”
“ … where publishing was expected.” Here we were thinking the same.
“If he hadn’t joined the Moros, I feel he would’ve let himself down. I think he knew his destiny. When he first went to Basilan, the war hadn’t started yet there, so we can say he was one of the architects of it.”
“Around then Susan and I ran into him in Zamboanga, and he showed us the jungle camp he shared with Elpidio.”
“No! I didn’t know that. You two simply disappeared. It was a busy time for me, with all the raw footage I had, and fighting with Marcos over censorship. Nick pretty much dropped out sight too. One day I saw him and next day he was gone. It was just before the bombing at Plaza Miranda and then Martial Law, and you have to know it unnerved me. My world ended then. I was shunted. Many of my friends disappeared or turned against me. I was isolated, shunted, and many of my friends disappeared. In that regard, I’m thankful for Nick. As I made the movie, I tried to keep emotionally distant.”
“It was very difficult for me. It was a difficult time. Nick lost his life when there was martial law, and it was clearly a civil rights violation. He went to the Sulus with a purpose. It was incredibly sad. The way he died was incredibly sad. But then I never knew Elpidio. The more I learned of their relationship, the more heroic they both seemed. I ran the blockade of Basilan to get where it happened, where they were murdered, a ruined coconut plantation and a library where Nick’s work was found. I couldn’t stop kicking dirt off. I couldn’t walk without stepping over coconuts … bombing had been so extensive … before they were captured.”
“So your movie is accurate?”
“As accurate as I could make it. I decided to make Nick the hero, but I now think Elpidio deserved the honor. I was eager to find out what it was like for him, but my feelings kept distracting me. ‘Could this have been me?’ I kept asking. Could I have said ‘go ahead, finish me off’? Or could I have stuck a .45 in a friend’s mouth and pulled the trigger? Nick preferred it to execution. I think he staged his own death once he saw that they weren’t going to be brought back alive. It was like when Rizal faced a firing squad and at the last moment turned so that he ended up lying on his back, with his face facing the sun.”
“I tried to work on something else … not make the movie, but as I said, I felt left out and now I had a way of reconnecting. I kept thinking, did having his American girlfriend leave him have something to do with him becoming a martyr? ‘But would anyone come to see it?’ I kept asking myself. “I never know how a film will turn out, whether it will be good or bad and began dreading finishing it. I became paranoid. And there were good reasons for it. I stood a chance of offending everyone. The only thing that kept me going was my ego. There was no way I’d give up.”
“One day, I put a loaded .45 in my mouth, and I let my imagination go on and on, and I came close to pulling the trigger. I wanted to see how it felt. I had just shot their capture, and I wanted to see how it felt. We were between takes. I was exhausted. I was frustrated from having to deal with authorities in Sabah. At the same time I was making a movie, and I wanted to see how it felt.”
“I shot the killing over and over again. I couldn’t get it right. Actors revolted. It upset them very much. Then I said ‘to hell with it!’ You can see the sloppy results in the film. They say they caught me napping. I knew it would be banned back home. Now critics say it’s my best work.”
“I often feel guilty, and I often think about Nick. I think I’ve recreated him fairly accurately. It’s really extraordinary that he’s more alive now than when he lived. And I feel gratified that I’ve turned him into a household name. Yes, I made him into a national hero. And when I think of him now, I think of Rizal and Bonifacio. But I’m glad success of the film doesn’t depend on ticket sales.”
“But doesn’t the memory of Nick mean more to you than the success of your movie?”
Vincente de la Cruz, a Manila friend, and the only one I’ve seen since leaving the Philippines, won that year the Golden Peacock Award for the best foreign film at the International Film Festival of India for Enfant Terrible. In contrast with Nick, Vincente was a practical person and adapted to almost anything. Because of his pragmatism, I knew he would survive. And I wasn’t dead yet. Even when censored by Marcos, Vincente filmed battles of the FirstQuarter Storm but somehow maintained his neutrality. I missed the First Quarter Storm, but maybe I didn’t because I’m not sure when it started. All I know is I’m not dead yet.
Vincente was a reporter rather than a participant. This allowed him to straddle a fence. They never knew if he were friend or foe. They never knew if he were friend or foe, and with this accusations and suspicion and eventually shunting. Vincente remained an outsider … he was more Eurasian than Filipino. People couldn’t quite put a finger on his lineage because he was Eurasian. Still he was very personable. He could sell himself, sell anything, and he usually succeeded at selling. But he tried too hard. I think he would’ve won had he ran for president.
The only reason I got to know Vincente was because we both got involved in student demonstrations that led up to the First Quarter Storm, and we’re both still alive. Those were days when a generation of Filipino students lived dangerously and fought courageously. It was when brave young people manned barricades and died, were wounded and died … when they resisted and were defiant. They formed commando strike forces, formed the AS Rooftop Junta, and Free Radio of the Democratic Commune of Diliman. All of this took place at UP. At other colleges in Manila, students were just as committed, but for some reason ingredients for such a massive revolt didn’t exist.
But the University of the Philippines, Marcos’ alma mater, had a tradition of dissent and debate. This allowed militant resistance to flourish. With revolutionary songs of Mao Zedong and Che Guevarra in the air, and student Power on the march from Berkley to Paris, a few students meeting in a small side room in the student union building came up with the idea of seizing the university. They were spoiled brats, but these spoiled brats lived through three lifetimes in a matter of months.
Freshmen crusaded against compulsory classes of Spanish, fought against American intervention in Vietnam, and capped their first quarter off by storming the gates of Malacanang, all of this before they decided to take over the campus. Most of them lived. They were young, having fun, and wanted it all. They were spoiled brats. And most of them lived.
Vincente maintained that he saw it all, while his film only told the story up until the battle in front of Malacanang. The film was called THE REPUBLIC OF DILIMAN. (It was made before the one he made about Nick.) I asked him about it: why THE REPUBLIC OF DILIMAN had huge gaps in it. He said it was because of censors and that he gave up by the time “The Republic of Diliman” was declared.
Vincente became internationally famous after Goa. His film took the top prize. He gave a little speech when he accepted the award. It shocked everyone when he said Enfant Terrible wasn’t his best effort. (They thought he was talking about THE REPUBLIC OF DILIMAN, when I knew it was his film about Nick and Elpidio that he thought was his best.) He told the crowd that next year he’d show them what he could really do. He didn’t mention the “better” work. Someone else did. Vincente accepted applause by smiling and nodding his head. Enfant Terrible then went on to win the FAMAS awards for best picture and best director. (I didn’t learn about this until many years later when I stumbled upon his name on the Web, but I didn’t find the film mentioned that interested me the most: Enfant Terrible, the one about Elpidio and Nick.) From there, he went on to rake in awards from Cannes to Berlin. During the closing ceremonies in Goa, he was singled out and stood up when his name was called. Vincente basked in fame after Goa.
During opening ceremonies of the 2nd Metro Manila Film Festival (1976), Imelda paid tribute to Vincente. She paid tribute while he feigned modesty. He didn’t rush onto to the stage or take a bow. He simply waved from his seat. (I wasn’t there and only read about it later, again on the Web.) I can only imagine what he was thinking. ”Little Mrs. Sunshine exploiting my preeminence.” I would like to know what he was thinking.
And who is this? Imelda, the Steel Butterfly, in her winged dress.
Well, well, well, if the beauty queen didn’t mention our friend Vincente.
In case you haven’t heard he’s our greatest filmmaker.
But does it mean that he’s been forgiven?
Chapter Sixty-nine
On Basilan, the last time we were there with Elpidio and Nick (circa 1971), an American expatriate community working on plantations and living within their compounds there probably never saw the war coming. They probably didn’t want to see it coming. They probably lived in a bubble. With security guards (for bigger plantations, private armies), they probably felt safe. Yet 1971 proved pivotal. Within a short time, most of them would pack and leave their homes and lives on Basilan.
I’ve often wondered what happened to David, the American fisherman we met in Zamboanga and who offered us his hospitality. You might remember later he became Elpidio’s first kidnap victim. During our last visit to Basilan, we didn’t look him up. We were rushed and didn’t look him up. We felt insecure and wouldn’t have gone to Basilan if Nick hadn’t insisted. We were clearly on the run. And perhaps more than other Americans we grasped the magnitude of the struggle because of Nick and Elpidio, and because we saw the savagery of ILAGA or Christian rats.
Nick and Elpido’s jungle camp wasn’t blessed with amenities like surrounding compounds of expatriates. They and their men lived in huts without running water or modern toilets, or a swimming pool or an airstrip, but their spirits remained high. They revelled in roughing it like Spatans. They didn’t feel deprived and wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. They wouldn’t have wanted to change places with their neighbors, many of whom lost their homes within a short period of time.
But though these neighbors were Americans and rich, most of them were native, and most of them hadn’t lived anywhere else. Take David … a American fisherman … though he went to San Diego State, he identified more closely with Basilan and returned when he got a chance. On occasion, I’ve wondered if he survived. There were many casualties on all sides, once people chose sides.
For our benefit Nick and Elpidio dressed in western business suits. They wore colorful ties, colors that were loud. They dressed up for us and took us to dinner in Isabella. They went all out. It was to be our big send off. I took a picture of them for posterity. I took a picture of the two of them and then one of them with Susan. They let us choose a restaurant.
“What do Muslims eat,” I asked Nick. It was a stupid question, and he gave a stupid answer.
“Rice like we do.”
“Certain foods are forbidden. Never pork or booze.”
“Never booze?”
Whereupon, both Filipinos smiled. Then Nick said, “When around Muslims, do as Muslims do. Enjoy.”
Saying goodbye to good friends was hard. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it would be hard. I hadn’t factored in that we were also leaving the Philippines and perhaps leaving for good. Too much had gone on … too much. The right words never came. I hate goodbyes anyway. Elpidio and Nick … though I sought them out, they always made me feel welcomed. They never acted superior, though in many ways they were. I was never willing to die for a cause. I was a draft dodger, a draft dodger, who loved pork … especially lechon, whole hog on a spit, and sisig! Thanks Nick, I really miss Filipino food.
The four of us…a Muslim, a Christian, and two Americans … good friends, cohorts looked for the right place to eat in Isabela … a good place for a sendoff. One of our options, believe or not, was pizza. Pizza at a one-counter stand, a place lacking pretensions and without a jukebox, and located down near the harbor. We had our pizza and belted out the only Beetle song we all knew, “Hey Jude,” and it stuck in Susan’s and my head for days.
Hey Jude, don’t make it bad
Take a sad song make it better
Remember let her into your heart,
Then you can start to make it better.
One could hear us walking through the Basilan jungle singing, “Hey Jude, don’t make it bad. Make it better.” Don’t make it bad, please! Don’t make it bad. Make it better. The people of the Philippines don’t need.it! Don’t make it bad. Make it better. Each of us tried to out sing the other. Don’t make it bad. Make it better. We sang it in Tagalog, English, and Bahasa Sama, and we didn’t care who heard us. “Don’t make it bad!”
Nick saw us off the next morning. We hadn’t expected him to accompany us back to Zamboanga. We didn’t say much on our short ferry ride or while he waited with us until we boarded our ship for our “tour” of the Sulus.
Within two days, we were back in Bongao, with ports of call in Jolo and Suisi. We had been on this ship before. The captian remembered us, and Jolo and Suisi looked about the same. But that was all about to change.
Remember the trouble our captain had in Jolo with the constabulary over a carton of American cigarettes and how our captain handled it by giving away the carton. This time he offered us his cabin. It was generous and typical, but we preferred sleeping on deck. We preferred sea breezes to his cabin and didn’t mind sleeping with other passengers. We didn’t want to offend him, but this time we didn’t care so much because we were leaving the Philippines. We didn’t go to shore at Jolo, fearing an incident. Suisi didn’t interest us either. But we left ship in Bongao, and looked up Fr. Deon.
We bought roundtrip tickets, giving an impression that we planned to go to Sitankia and then come back to Zamboanga. So we made up a story for the captian that he would buy. We told him that Fr. Deon was an old friend, which wasn’t a lie. We told him that we wanted to spend time with an old friend and see Tawi Tawi and would catch him (the captain) on his return trip. That gave us three or four days on Tawi Tawi. We were on vacation and said it was like a second honymoon. This satisfied him. More than satisfied him. It pleased him. Or our vacationing in the Sulus at that time was crazy enough for him to accept anything.
Fr. Deon had always been kind to me. And remembered Susan. Both times I was in Bongao he went out his way for me. He served us meals again and gave us a place to stay, as he arranged for us to leave the Philippines. I imagine it was ticky for him. A risk, it was tricky.
Since he came to Bongao, he hadn’t left the Philippines, and by 1971 admitted he missed Canada. He was then a well known educator and peacemaker and had to have felt frustated. He didn’t say much about it, but he had to have felt frustrated. He consided it his mission, peacemaking part his mission. This was before the place exploded. He seemed sad. Perhaps he knew the place would explode. Perhaps he’d around long enough to know the place would explode. He was respected for his work … as an educator and peacemaker. He was a quiet person though, when you’d think he’d be the opposite.
On March 4, 1970, Fr. Deon, then sixty-six, seemed frustrated and withdrawn. He was worried, had been worried for some time and even more so after learning the latest news. The constabulary just seized some villages on Tawi Tawi and elsewhere in the Sulus. He knew people in all those places and in recent years mediated many disputes in the area. He didn’t know if his hard work would every bear fruit. One step forward, then two backwards. He saw progress and then saw it evaporate. He had been around long enough to sense trouble. Christians and Muslims were already killing each other. And already that year, he had worked with countless refugees fleeing to Sabah, and he had seen young men he knew return from Sabah … now armed and trained for jihad.
We spent the weekend with him. He tried to put up a brave front. He tried to smile, but he couldn’t keep his lips from quivering.
We told him about our evening with his star student, Elpidio, in a business suit, eating pizza and singing “Hey Jude”. His face lit up. He chuckled, and seemed very pleased. Hey Jude, don’t be hard on the Philippines. Make it better. He asked many questions about Elpidio and said he would give his mother an update.
Then he took us to his school and told us he had housekeeping to do. “I can’t sit idly by. I have to keep busy. Of course, I pay janitors. The local economy needs Catholic money.”
We pitched in. It didn’t hurt us.
“It’s Biblical,” Fr. Deon said, mopping. “Most things are. It helps when you’re down.”
Fr. Deon told us how to avoid the constabulary and police. He arranged everything, the small boat for crossing the border, and said, “They’re reliable. They were students of mine.” And he gave us instructions: what to say and how to act. We weren’t to say much.
When police arrived at his house, Fr. Deon handled it. He talked to them on the steps of the porch, while I sat in a barber’s chair on the porch near the front door. I knew what Susan was thinking. I knew she was sweating because I was sweating too. But the police didn’t talk to us, nor ask for our passports. We had had close calls before. I was afraid because I always look guilty when I’m not.
Fr. Deon operated with impunity in Bongao and on Tawi Tawi. He was a pal of Congressman Datu Ombra Amilbangsa and knew how to use his influence.
A group of Moro leaders had just published a manifesto asking the government to take action against Christian death squads, but the government instead threatened them. Fr Deon said that he was afraid that the cycle of reprisals would become uncontrollable. He also was afraid that his school would be closed or even worse, attacked. The situation was bad.
As atrocities continued, Datu Ombra Amilbangsa was running for reelection to the National Assemble and thought ILAGA gangs were soldiers of Marcos. He asked Fr. Deon for his support. He hoped the friar could stem some of the violence. And it looked like the election was going to be more violent than normal. During a meeting, the Datu noticed that the friar lacked as much enthusiasm as he normally had, but thought it was because he was trying to do too much. He still thought he could count on Fr. Deon. The friar told us that it was going to be a long, hard-fought struggle. He said it would be a long, hard-fought struggle and there would be few winners. And children would suffer the most.
Fr. Deon arranged to go with us to a small island near the border. He went as far as he could go without crossing the borders. It seemed as if he often did this. He said that he needed to make a “courtesy call” anyway. He said he wanted to count refugees “hung up there, waiting to cross.” His constabulary friends told him that there were people there.
It sounded good to us. To have his company sounded good to us because it made it safer. We trusted Fr. Deon, and it made it safer. It wouldn’t eliminate risks entirely, but it made it safer.
We didn’t know how much influence the friar had over pirates, those who roamed those seas and often preyed on refugees. From newspaper accounts we knew how they preyed on refugees. And we were were refugees and were well aware of heinous acts committed by pirates. I didn’t know which was worse: Sulu pirates or ILAGA gangs. Somehow sea gypsies and pirates co-existed, more or less peacefully.
We boarded a red sailboat before dawn and sailed from Bongao just as the sun rose. We huddled together, except for two young boys who stood on the bow. We didn’t want to be conspiculous. I remember that Fr. Deon kept himself distracted by talking to refugees, something he did naturally.
“Ted, look!” Susan said. “They’re playing chicken, those boys are playing chicken. They’re seeing which one will jump first … which one will wait the longest … which one will have to swim the farthest. See how they feint jumping, hoping to trick the other one into jumping first.”
Susan looked worried.
With the shore no longer in sight, I said, “They know what they’re doing. They won’t drown. They’ve been around water all their life. It’a game to them.”
As he declared martial law, President Marcos addressed the nation:
“No matter how strong and dedicated a leader may be, he must find root and strength amongst the people. He alone cannot save a nation. He may guide, he may set the tone, he may dedicate himself and risk his life, but only the people may save themselves.”
I was one of those people who naïvely thought that Marcos would evenually save himself and by so doing save his nation. Or Christians and Moros (people as in people power), would one day push him out. But casualties continued to mount and for all sides continue to this day. Hey Jude, don’t be hard on the Philippines. Make it better. And as for Susan and me, we’re not dead yet.
Filed under Randy’s Novel I’m Not Dead Yet
Tagged as Christians verses Muslims in the Philippines, Maost in the Philippines, Marcos hurting the Philippines,Please don’t hurt the Philippines, Randy Ford, Revolution in the Philippines
Randy Ford Author- I’M NOT DEAD YET
“It was certainly risky considering how Marcos was consorting with the United States … suckering them all the time he was lining his pockets.”
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Home Adventure Costa Rica: A Paradise of the Animal Kingdom
Costa Rica: A Paradise of the Animal Kingdom
Know Some of Its Most Spectacular Species
TCRN STAFF
Costa Rica is one of the most environmentally-friendly countries in the world. Its biodiversity of animal species makes this country be naturally attractive in the Caribbean region.
This time we will highlight the most spectacular species of this beautiful Caribbean paradise, among which we can appreciate from tender and delicate species to ferocious and dangerous specimens. Below we show you a list of the immense variety of beautiful animals that you can find in this natural paradise.
Let’s start by describing the GREEN LAPA (Ara ambigua). It is nothing more than a beautiful species of characteristic plumage, ranging from yellowish green, red on the forehead and central feathers, to blue-green on the wings and tail. Its beak is black. Its feeding is based on fruits of several trees, mainly of the Almendrón de Montaña, where it also nests. In the Caribbean, it is found in the Northern Zone, in the canopy of the forests. As a curious fact, there is a reintroduction program in the Southern Caribbean.
LEATHERBACK TURTLE (Dermochelys coriacea). It is the largest sea turtle -also known as baula turtle- with almost 2.5 meters in length and 750 kilos in weight. It has a dark bluish-gray color and pink or white spots, and it is covered with a leather skin with 7 longitudinal keels. It spawns throughout the Caribbean coast, especially in Tortuguero and Gandoca, between the months of March and May, specifically.
Leatherback turtle
GREEN IGUANA (Iguana). It is one of the most representative and emblematic reptiles of the Caribbean and can reach up to 60 centimeters without its tail. It inhabits humid tropical forests up to a height of 500 meters above sea level. It is oviparous and very territorial. In the South Caribbean, there are breeding projects for this species.
SLOTHS. 3-finger Sloth (Bradypus variegatus); short snout, grayish hair, 3 fingers on their front legs, and diurnal habits. 2-finger Sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni); browner, elongated snout, 2 fingers on their front legs, and nocturnal customs.
CALZONUDA FROG (Agalichnys callidryas). It is better known as the red-eyed frog. It stands out because of its large and bright eyes, with the red iris, the vertical pupil, and the reticulated inner eyelid. In its body, it shows many colors; lemon green, blue, purple, yellow, orange, and red.
Red-eyed frog
CAPUCHIN MONKEY. It is also called the White-headed Monkey. It is small and can weigh up to 3.5 kilos. Its body is black, with a white face, chest, and shoulders. It lives in herds of up to 40 individuals. It feeds on fruits, flowers, seeds, insects, worms, reptiles, and amphibians.
PICO IRIS TOUCAN (Ramphatstos sulfuratus). It is the most striking and colorful of the 4 species of toucan, due to the colors of its beak which measures about 50 centimeters. The plumage is black with white and yellow touches and emits a characteristic sound. The other toucans are Swainson, Collarejo or Aracarí, and Tucancillo Verde.
TAPIR (Tapirus bairdii). The Northern Tapir is the largest of the country’s wild mammals, which reaches up to 2.2 meters long, 1 meter high, and more than 300 kilos in weight. They are relatively abundant, especially in the Braulio Carrillo National Park.
SPIDER MONKEY (Ateles geoffroyi). It is also known as Mono Colorado. It can measure more than 1.3 meters, including the tail. Its weight is between 6 and 9 kilos. It has very long arms, legs, and tails. There are 2 varieties; one is black and the other, brown. It feeds on leaves and fruits.
OROPEL (Bothriechis schlegelii). It is related to the poisonous Tobobas family. There are 13 species among them, such as the Matabuey (Lachesis stenophrys), the Velvet (Bothrops asper), the Lora (Bothriechis lateralis), and the Oropel, whose poison produces tissue destruction and problems with the coagulation of the blood.
RED-FROG (Dendrobates plumilio). It belongs to the Dendrobates family. It measures about 2 centimeters and is characterized by its red color on the back, belly, and part of the extremities, which can also be bluish, such as the Blue-Red or Blue Jean’s frog. Additionally, they have glands in the skin that release poisonous substances.
RACCOON (Procyon lotor). There are several species in Costa Rica. It is very common the Northern Raccoon; silvery gray, darker in the center of the back, with long and ringed tail, pointed nose, and a black spot of the cheeks to the eyes as a mask. It is nocturnal, and crabs and fruits are included in their diet.
CAUCEL (Leopardus wiedii). It is also known as Margay or Tigrillo. It has a body with colors of brown and gray, with open black spots. Its snout is short, large eyes, and the tail is very long. It is nocturnal and feeds on birds, monkeys, lizards, and rodents.
BATS. They are the most abundant mammals in Costa Rica. With 116 species, most of them are nocturnal, arboreal, and frugivorous, such as the Fruit Bat or Salvin’s Bat. However, there are 3 species of vampire bats; the Common Vampire, the Patas Velludas Vampire, and the White-winged Vampire. One of the most unique and easy to see bat species is the Fisher Bat, which only feeds on fish. It is also one of the largest bats in that region.
White bat
PIZOTE (Nasua narica). The Pizote or Coatí inhabits all over the country. It has a brown to a reddish body, measures 110 to 120 centimeters long, and weighs approximately 6 kilos. It is of diurnal habits, and it feeds on fruits or meat. It is also an important seed spreader, especially through its excrement.
With this last species, we have concluded our list. Now, we invite you to know and enjoy all of the wonders offered by this extraordinary natural paradise of the animal kingdom. When doing it? Well, it is up to you!
VIATCRN
SOURCERosibel Silva
natural paradise
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An Introduction To Gil Scott-Heron In 10 Songs
Anna Paul
Updated: 20 October 2016
Gil Scott-Heron is as influential today as he was when he first burst onto the scene in the 1970s. Despite being hailed as the father of hip hop, he is still largely overlooked, and never gained the widespread status of many of his contemporaries. It could be that his political commentary, expressed as rhythmic and soulful poems layered over a combination of funk, jazz, soul, and electronica are not easy for everybody to digest. It could also be that the outspoken performer was surprisingly modest about his own work, telling the New Yorker “I just think they made a mistake” when asked how he felt when people attributed the formation of rap music to him.
In any case, Gil Scott-Heron was a vanguard of black American music in the 1970s and beyond. He also displayed talent as a social commentator, poet, artist, writer, and musician, as well as a spokesman for generations of disenchanted. For those new to Scott-Heron’s work, get to know the prolific artist a little better through the 10 songs listed below.
Taken from his 1987 album Secrets, “Angel Dust” is the most persuasive and melodic anti-drug song you’ll hear. Scott-Heron delivers this anti-drugs rhetoric to the tune of his very particular brand of funk. One of Scott-Heron’s strongest attributes is that his songs and poems are unflinching in their messages, but he never preaches nor judges. This sentiment is echoed in his lines: “Children I know its hard to listen but/ I ain’t tryin’ to run your life girl believe me…” At the time, Angel Dust, a street-shorthand for PCP, was endemic in New York. Despite the hard-hitting subject, the song is catchy, and you’ll be singing along to the disco-style refrain of “Angel Dust” for the rest of the day.
“The Revolution Will Not be Televised” is an aural delight, but the declamatory and politically charged lyrics crafted with Gil Scott-Heron’s passionate poetry really constitute the glue of the song. He spits his passionate lyrics over the catchy metronomic bassline with such ease and eloquence that is hard not be drawn in. Often featured on lists of great protest songs, it’s fitting that during the attempt to overthrow Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, this very song was heard playing in Tahrir Square. Satirical and deadpan, this song has a far-stretching appeal and will appeal to everyone.
Who’ll pay Reparations on My Soul?
“Who’ll Pay Reparations on My Soul?” was released on Scott-Heron’s 1970 Small Talk at 125th and Lenox album. The title of this song indicates that we’re not in for an easy ride, but the twinkling and catchy piano chords lull us into a sense of comfort. The subject of “Who’ll Pay Reparations…” is existential and, in parts, fatalistic, as he questions the futility of trying to pay monetary due to a race of people whose life has been affected on a deeper and irreparable level. Written in 1970 when segregation was illegal but still rife in the consciousness of America, Scott-Heron’s song is just as powerful today as it was when it was written. He summarizes the situation concisely in his line “Cause I don’t dig segregation, but I/can’t get integration.”
H2o Gate Blues
Gil Scott-Heron introduces his “H2o Gate Blues” with a short and witty introduction of the history of the blues, claiming “For years it was thought that black people was the only ones who could get the blues so the blues hadn’t come into no kind of international fame…” Seamlessly, he moves from subtly discussing the appropriation of blues music to a damning indictment of the presidency at the time. Scott-Heron speaks over a minimalistic piano and drums duo, which never compete with his vocals. Consequently, this song is as comparable to Allen Ginsberg’s “America” as it is to Scott-Heron’s musical contemporaries. While some of his songs will have you tapping your feet or even dancing, this one keeps your feet strictly on the ground. For clarity, this song is based on the Watergate scandal. The poem is thought-provoking and articulate, but his dark humor is never far from the fore, describing America as the “international Jekyll and Hyde” before concluding the song with “Four more years of THAT?!”
Glass of wine in hand, you might start dancing along to this infectious flute-fueled number supported by poppy guitar riffs, before stopping to listen to the lyrics and realize that it’s a sobering tribute to the devastating effects of alcoholism. Scott-Heron recorded “The Bottle” with Brian Jackson in 1974 as part of his Winter in America album, and like many of his other songs, it covers the topic of substance abuse (something he struggled with himself). As with all his music, he never preaches nor judges and is as quick to turn his critical eye to his own shortcomings and vices.
Home Is Where the Hatred Is
Taken from Pieces of a Man, released in 1971, “Home Is Where the Hatred Is” is another impassioned song with potent lyrics which plays on the now cliched idiom of “Home Is Where the Heart Is.” Presumably referring to the ghetto, this song is more melodic than some of his other pieces, with symphonic vocals and catchy guitar bends layered over some simple but infectious drumbeats. If you like what you hear, check out Esther Phillip’s cover version.
Me and the Devil
Released in 2010 on his I’m New Here album after a long and famously drug-induced hiatus, “Me and the Devil” is an electronic adaptation of Robert Johnson’s 1937 “Me and the Devil Blues.” The song is representative of his musical innovation and his receptiveness to new musical forms. Despite his experimental nature, Scott-Heron never misses the mark — the performer’s wailing and gravelly blues-inspired vocals are supported by a unflinchingly modern electronic backbone. The ominous video which accompanies it cements its status as a dark and brooding urban ditty. This is one which will appeal to electronica and blues enthusiasts alike: this wide-ranging appeal is no mean feat.
New York is Killing Me
Clapping sounds reminiscent of a playground skit run through this song, paired with echoing drums. Gil Scott-Heron manages to encapsulate the feelings of loneliness one can feel in New York while still remaining desperately attached to the city. The song is a defensive ode to the city he loves, as he sings “New York City, I don’t know why I love you” over and over again, with different iterations of the final line. This piece is more minimal and musical than his others; the lyrics are not politically charged, nor is he making any bold proclamations. Despite that, it’s a foot-tapping, head-shaking infectious number. Moreover, it’s been reworked over and over again, so if you like the stripped down version, be sure to check out the Jamie XX remix, as well as his collaboration with Nas.
We Almost Lost Detroit
Released in 1977 on Scot-Heron’s Bridges album, this song refers to the partial nuclear meltdown in 1966 in Detroit and takes its name from investigative journalist John Fuller’s book with the same name. Here, the artist touches upon another contentious issue in American politics at the time (and still today) — nuclear power. It takes a master to make such a hard hitting issue sound sexy without demeaning it, but somehow Gil Scott-Heron manages it, with slinky guitar hooks and his lyrical gymnastics.
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Neisseria by The Vainglories
Posted: 01 July 08
Gillian Alder has been writing scores for imaginary films as The Vainglories since 2003. Whilst living in Melbourne she played in melodic pop band Tempted and electronica duo Sweet Violentine, and contributed music to theatre, live improvised comedy and (actual) short film. In 2007 she moved to Brighton and has been working on creating a live performance set from The Vainglories' back catalogue of extraterrestrial lullabies. The Vainglories' music has featured on Australian radio stations SBS, PBS and Triple J, and was selected for a Melbourne Fringe Festival compilation album in 2004. In January 2008 The Vainglories played her debut live gig at Brighton's Spirit of Gravity.
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Vickie’s Golden Moments
Posted: May 14, 2011 in Cabaret, Culture, Entertainment, New York City, Nightlife, Performance, Theater, Theatre, Uncategorized
For the better part of four decades, acclaimed cabaret chanteuse Vickie Phillips has dazzled audiences, most often with theme shows dedicated to such artist-composers as Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, Charles Aznavour and Eric Blau, as well as the songs of both her longtime director Bob Ost and musical director Gerry Dieffenbach, and makes the most of her theatrically-sopranic tones while effortlessly communicating the meaning of lyric. It was for this reason that her four-person revue, American Cabaret, European Roots, received a MAC Award nomination in the early ’90s. Which it why it was equally a complete surprise when, in mid-March, she brought a brand-new show to Don’t Tell Mama, which possessed a theme but didn’t concentrate solely on the opus of one sole songwriter. Entitled Songs of Life, Love, and Other Moments, the show hopes for a triumphant new performance at the Duplex on the evening of Saturday, June 18th, and while those already members of her cult-like fan base are certain to be nothing less than delighted to the hilt, new devotees of cabaret will want to attend strictly for the purpose of education in how to really pull out all the stops on an intimate stage.
Brel’s music and Blau’s lyrics are, as always, a familiar and vibrant part of the proceedings, with “Madeleine,” “Marieke” and “Carousel.” The team of Mike Stoller and Jerry Lieber are also represented herein with both “Humphrey Bogart” and “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots,” originally a ’50s pop hit in Europe for Edith Piaf as “L’Homme a la Moto.” Ost’s work is here with “A Special Place,” and there’s Dieffenbach’s beautiful ballad, “He Taught Me to Dance,” plus “A Song is Like a Friend,” which is a gorgeous composition between both gentlemen. But equally impressive are “Sho’ Biz” by Dennis Tracy, Craig Carnelia’s “Old Movies,” and a coupling of Neil Diamond’s “Songs of Life” with “Celebrate” by Steve Lawrence. Phillips also shows her wares as a songwriter herself, with “Love and Illusion,” and the lovely “Time” as an encore, after literally slaughtering the audience with Sheldon Harnick’s “In My Own Lifetime” from The Rothschilds.
Vickie Phillips once again proves with this show that some artists have got the stuff but good, and never fail in their ability to bring it with abundance. A few pundits might argue that after so many years, such an artist would be considered old hat, but she’s an eternally-glittering diamond in cabaret’s most gilded chapeau. One couldn’t be better served than by going to the Duplex to catch the show’s return.
What My World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love…Named Shea
Novikoff? NORMAL? Let’s Hope Not!!
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Answerman
How Did American Manga Releases Become Right-To-Left?
by Justin Sevakis, Oct 21st 2015
Carlo asks:
When I first started reading manga in the late nineties, a lot of the books were printed in left to right format instead of right to left. What was it that made US companies decide to change to the Japanese style?
Prior to 2002, the vast majority of manga released in English was "flopped": the artwork was mirrored so that each page read naturally left-to-right, like any other English comic book. While this was done for obvious reasons back before most people knew what manga was, it definitely took away from the authenticity of the work. Manga artists hated it, because it completely threw off their artwork. Direction-heavy things like baseball and sword play got completely messed up in the process. And fans definitely noticed the problem. A few art-centric manga had been released right-to-left, but these were mostly art-centric books like Masashi Tanaka's Gon series -- and these were mostly outliers.
Manga also didn't sell in huge numbers in that era, since they were entering the American market as graphic novels, alongside Western publications. These were often on premium paper, and were seen as upscale collector's items. Most English manga was priced at around $16 to $20, and sold well but didn't set the world on fire. A lot of manga was still sold as single issue comic books for $3-5 per monthly installment.
The changeover from English manga being published as flopped, expensive trade paperbacks to cheaper, unflopped manga volumes we know today happened pretty suddenly back in 2002. Tokyopop, who was still a relatively new entry to the manga market (having published two anthology magazines, MixxZine and Smile), announced that they would be drastically changing their release strategy. They would be relaunching their graphic novel line as "100% Authentic Manga".
The new books would be modeled after Japanese tankoubons, and would be $10 each -- far cheaper than the $16 that American fans were used to paying. The size would be slightly smaller, the paper would be pulpier, and the artwork would be unflopped and mostly untouched. And they would be tripling or quadrupling their output, releasing 15 to 20 new books per month.
Everyone else in the business thought they were absolutely nuts. "How are they going to pump out that many books that fast?!" I remember people marveling. "Quality is really going to suffer," people predicted (correctly). But the fact was, they were really onto something. Rather than going through Diamond Comics and all the mom & pop comic book retailers for distribution (who were in major decline by this time), Tokyopop made a big push into book store chains, especially Borders and Barnes & Noble. This new way of doing business quickly bore fruit, and sales were through the roof.
The rest of the industry was suddenly stuck playing catch-up. It took Viz a few months to transition, but seeing the huge potential of manga, they quickly rebranded their graphic novel line. They had already been planning to launch an American edition of anthology magazine Shonen Jump, and low-priced mass market paperbacks were something that fit the mainstream audience they were building quite well. Viz set their prices even lower -- $7.99 for Shonen Jump books, $9.99 for everything else.
And thus, began the manga bubble. For the next 6 or so years, Tokyopop, Viz, Del Rey, CMX and others would release thousands of books, some of which sold and some of which didn't. Bookstores would become filled with "manga cows", fans who would clog up the manga isles reading the latest books without buying them. Naruto and other hit manga could be found for sale at drug stores.
Eventually, of course, the bubble burst. Tokyopop, CMX (owned by DC Comics) and Del Rey left the business. Borders went out of business. But manga had seen its glory days, when they were mainstream, and they were in a form closer to the way the Japanese artists intended. The format worked, and it was here to stay. The bad old days of companies trying to force manga into Western comic book formats was gone for good.
Got questions for me? Send them in! The e-mail address, as always, is answerman (at!) animenewsnetwork.com.
Justin Sevakis is the founder of Anime News Network , and owner of the video production company MediaOCD. You can follow him on Twitter at @worldofcrap.
Answerman homepage / archives
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Below is the Veterans' Day "Mitchell Report". Didn't know Harry was on all these veterans' affairs committees.
He's another person we should be talking to about incarcerated veterans, since they make up about 9% of the US prison population. How long have we been sending the same people off to war? Entering nine years, now. Drugs a problem among soldiers and vets? Surprise, surprise.
C'mon, Harry. This is all fine and dandy - and maybe I missed something - but at least give our brothers and sisters inside a salute for their service, too. We shouldn't have to dig that deep to find a place in our hearts for them, nor should you.
(That's a cue to AZ voters to call his office this week - if you're reading this blog, live in AZ and don't meet the Governor's car with me tomorrow, then you owe our imprisoned veterans a call to Harry, at least. The Democrats do have Congress, and he's got something to do with all this.)
The Mitchell Report.
Veterans Day Update
U.S Congressman Harry Mitchell is Chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and represents more than 65,000 veterans. Mitchell understands the importance of providing our veterans with the benefits they deserve.
"The men and women of the armed forces have been made a promise that if they defend our country in military service, we will provide them with the benefits they have earned."
-Congressman Harry Mitchell
Below is an update on the work Congressman Mitchell is doing on the behalf of veterans in Arizona and across the nation:
President Obama Thanks Congressman Mitchell for Leadership on Veterans Issues
"We will fulfill our responsibility to our veterans as they return to civilian life. I was proud to co-sponsor the Post-9/11 GI Bill as a senator. Thanks to VFW members across the country-and leaders like Arizona's Harry Mitchell in Congress-it's now the law of the land. And as President, I'm committed to seeing that it is successfully implemented." -President Barack Obama, Remarks to National VFW Convention, Phoenix, Arizona,
President Barack Obama today gave a shoutout to Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., for his work on the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill, which went into effect Saturday. Obama was speaking at a G.I. Bill event at George Mason University in the Washington, DC, suburb of Fairfax, Va. Obama mentioned Mitchell as one of the original bill sponsors who couldn't attend the event.
"All of them worked hard along with the delegation that is present, so we are very grateful to all of them," Obama said.
-Arizona Republic
Mitchell Earns American Legion ‘Distinguished Legislator' Award
The American Legion Department of Arizona presented Mitchell with its Distinguished Legislator Award for his work on behalf of our nation's veterans. Mitchell accepted the award in Glendale on Saturday, June 18 2009 and addressed the organization at its annual convention.
"I am honored to be recognized by the American Legion and proud of the work we have done on behalf of veterans in Arizona and across the nation. Our veterans have stood for us and it is our duty to stand for them." Mitchell said.
Veterans Funding Update
This year's veteran's budget has increased the investment in veterans' health care and services by 60 percent since January 2007, including the largest single increase in the 78-year history of the VA.
This funding has strengthened health care for more than 5 million veterans, resulting in the addition of 17,000 new doctors and nurses, and more Community-Based Outpatient Clinics and new Vet Centers. It has been critical to meeting the needs of the 363,000 veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan in need of care over the last three years. This funding also is expanding mental health screening and treatment -- vital to the many veterans suffering from PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.
Congress has recently enacted a law that paves the way for ensuring sufficient, timely and predictable funding for veterans' health care, a key priority of many veterans' groups. This law authorizes Congress to approve VA medical care appropriations one year in advance of the start of each fiscal year.
In 2007, Congress enacted the Wounded Warriors Assistance Act, which addressed the problems and gaps in care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military health care facilities. VA and the Defense Department are implementing electronic health records to give service members a single, accurate, paperless health record to smooth the transition from the Armed Forces to the VA system.
Rep. Mitchell Helps Secure Passage of Major Veterans Legislation
Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act of 2009 -H.R. 1016
On Thursday, October 22, 2009, President Obama signed into law H.R. 1016, which Congressman proudly cosponsored. The new law authorizes Congress to approve Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical care appropriations one year in advance of the start of each fiscal year. An advance appropriation provides VA with up to one year in which to plan how to deliver the most efficient and effective care to an increasing number of veterans with increasingly complex medical conditions.
Service Members Homeownership Tax Act - H.R. 3590
Congressman Mitchell supported this bill which, along with stabilizing out nations housing industry, ensures our honorable service men and women can take full advantage of the first-time homebuyer tax credit. Current law requires first-time homebuyers who use the $8,000 tax credit to repay the credit if they move from their principal residence within three years of closing. The Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009, if enacted, would exclude service members from the repayment of the tax credit if their orders require travel. The bill passed by a vote of 416-0, and is now pending before Senate.
Military Spouses Residency Relief Act - H.R. 1182/S.475.
The Service Members Spouses Residency Relief Act allows service members to maintain their residency for certain purposes - such as voting, income taxes, and personal property taxes - in a state from which they are absent in compliance with military orders. The House approved this measure on November 2. 2009 and it is now pending before the Senate.
Veterans Retraining Act of 2009- H.R. 1168
This bill authorizes the Labor Department to pay a monthly training assistance allowance of upwards of $1,400 for each month, up to 6 months every 10 years, which a veteran is enrolled in an employment-training program that teaches a skill in demand. It also provides a moving stipend of up to $5,000 for moving expenses directly related to training. The bill passed by a vote of 356-0 and it is now pending before the Senate.
FY 2010 Military Construction/VA Appropriations - H.R. 3082
The FY 2010 VA Appropriations bill contained the largest veterans funding increase ever requested by a President. The House approved a bill that provides a path to restoring and revitalizing the services provided to veterans by adding $14.5 billion above fiscal year 2009. In addition to appropriations for fiscal year 2010, it includes advance appropriations for 2011. Congress has provided $17.7 billion over the last two years, and once enacted, H.R. 3082 will amount to a 58% increase since 2007. The bill passed by a vote of 415-3, and is now pending before Senate.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - H.R. 1
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was honored our veterans by provided a $1.4 billion increase for the Department of Veterans Affairs for maintenance at VA medical facilities, construction of veterans' extended care facilities, and veteran cemetery repairs. It provided an economic stimulus payment of $250 to disabled veterans receiving VA compensation or pension. The bill passed the House and was signed into law by the President in February.
Keeping the Promises Made to Veterans
Electronic Medical Records: The House Veterans Affairs Committee is continuing to monitor the progress being made to ensure an interoperable electronic health record system between the DOD and the VA. President Obama ordered the agencies to work together to define and build a Joint Virtual Lifetime Electronic record that will ultimately contain administrative and medical information from the day an individual enters military service throughout their military career, and into the veteran phase of life.
New Diseases Associated with Agent Orange: An independent study by the Institute of Medicine indicates an association with several diseases linked to exposure to Agent Orange. VA Secretary Shinseki has announced that Vietnam Veterans with B cell leukemia's, such as hairy cell leukemia; Parkinson's disease; and ischemic heart disease with these diseases may be eligible for disability compensation and health care benefits.
Ensuring Veterans receive their GI Bill Benefits:
The G.I Bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. Harry Mitchell in the House of Representatives and Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) in the Senate to provide veterans with enhanced new education benefits beginning this fall.
On August 1, 2009, veterans started receiving college education benefits under the new Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. When news broke about delays of GI Bill benefits for veterans, Mitchell demanded accountability from the Department of Veterans Affairs at a Congressional hearing, as well as a plan to ensure veterans receive their benefits in a timely manner. No veteran should have their education delayed. Not by one semester.
Advance payments on late claims are being issued by U. S. Treasury within 3 workdays following submission of this request.
For further information call 1-888-GI-BILL-1 (1-888-442-4551) to speak with a Veterans Benefits Counselor. You can also visit the VA's GI Bill website.
DOD Announces Retroactive Stop Loss Special Pay
The Defense Department announced plans to provide Retroactive Stop Loss Special Pay to service members who had their enlistment extended or retirement suspended due to Stop Loss between Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 30, 2009.
Eligible personnel will receive a payment of $500 per month for each month that the member was retained on active duty due to Stop Loss.
Army: https://www.stoplosspay.army.mil
Navy: send email to - NXAG_N132C@navy.milNXAG_N132C@navy.mil This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Marine Corps: https://www.manpower.usmc.mil/stoploss
Air Force: http://www.afpc.randolph.af.mil/stoploss
VA Oversight: Solutions and Accountability for Veterans
Mitchell's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations provides oversight on programs and operations of the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as those of other federal agencies that pertain to veterans. In carrying out its responsibilities, the Subcommittee conducts hearings, site visits, and investigations nationwide. Chairman Mitchell has held a series of oversight hearings to measure program results, end waste, and provide accountability for the American taxpayer.
Recent Oversight and Investigations Hearings:
Oversight Hearing - "Senior Executive Service Bonuses and Other Administrative Issues at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs"
Chairman Mitchell's opening statement
Webcast of hearing
Oversight Hearing - "The Implications of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' Limited Scope of Gulf War Illness Research"
Webcast of the hearing
Posted by Prison Abolitionist at 4:39 PM
Labels: harry mitchell, imprisoned soldiers, imprisoned veterans, incarcerated veterans, veteran prisoners
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Avalon Park Group to Break Ground on Avalon Business Centre
Avalon Park, Fla. (March 4, 2019) – Avalon Park Group announced today the groundbreaking of the Avalon Business Centre. The 38,000 square feet, 4-story mixed use office and retail building will break ground on Friday, March 29th at Noon at the building location on the corner of Avalon Park East Blvd. and Avalon Lake Drive.
The 4-story mixed-use building will have approximately 9,500 square feet of retail on the first floor with three additional floors of approximately 28,500 square feet of office space.
Pre-leasing for the building will kick-off at the groundbreaking ceremony. “We are looking for a stylish restaurant to nestle right on the corner of Avalon Park East Blvd and Avalon Lake Drive, in the heart of Downtown Avalon Park!” says Tracy Durham, Director of Operations, Avalon Park Group. “With views of the lake, an indoor/outdoor concept would be a perfect fit!”
The community is invited to attend the celebration on March 29, 2019 at 12:00 p.m. and should RSVP to Info@AvalonParkGroup.com.
About Avalon Park Group
Avalon Park Group is a uniquely diversified family of companies engaged in businesses ranging from master-planned community development, to home building, mining and property management, in Florida, Texas and Switzerland. Avalon Park Group combines its exceptional reputation, sound business experience and significant financial resources to invest in extraordinary opportunities. As such, the group replaces corporate bureaucracy with efficient and unrestricted decision making. Avalon Park Group combines vision, skill and experience to create healthy sustainable communities. For more information on Avalon Park Group, visit www.AvalonParkGroup.com or call 407-658-6565.
Contact: Stephanie Lerret, SVP Marketing & Community Relations, Avalon Park Group, 407-427-6073 and Leasing Information, Tracy Durham, Director of Operations, Avalon Park Group, 407-312-0767.
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Latin America selected
Modern slavery: 'I had to eat the dog's food to survive'
By Hugo Bachega BBC News, Sao Paulo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-41857444
It was already late when Maria, alone in her room, thought about taking her own life by jumping from the seventh floor window. Her day at work, just on the other side of the door, had again started around dawn and only ended 15 hours later. She felt weak, having not eaten for two days.
Maria (not her real name) had arrived in Brazil from the Philippines two months earlier, hired as a domestic worker by a family who lived in a wealthy neighbourhood of Sao Paulo.
The tasks they set her seemed never ending.
She had to help the mother with the three school-aged boys and a baby. Then clean the large apartment, which had a large dining room, a living room and four bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. Also walk the family's dog, put all the children to bed.
The family's mother usually stayed at home, closely watching everything Maria did. Once, complaining that Maria had not cleaned a glass table properly, she made her polish it for almost an hour. Some days she would count the clothes Maria had ironed and, not satisfied, would make her spend hours ironing some more.
Weeks would pass without Maria's employers giving her a day off. With so much to do, she often had no time left to eat. Sometimes, even the food she was given was not enough.
On that night, she thought about her own family in the Philippine countryside: her mother and three young daughters, two of whom needed special medicine for their cardiac disease. With all of them depending on her wages, Maria had no choice but to carry on. So she made her bed and went to sleep.
"My world was spinning. I was crying," recalled the 40-year-old about the day she almost ended her own life. She had dreamt of coming here - "I had heard that Brazil was nice" - and struggled to understand why she was being treated so badly.
When Maria woke up the next day, her stomach hurt from the lack of food, but her tasks were already waiting for her. Only hours later did she find something to eat: she was cooking meat for the family's dog and took half of it for herself.
"I didn't have [any other] choice to survive."
Maria's case is not unique.
Brazil has the world's highest number of domestic workers, and some six million Brazilians are employed by middle-class and rich families. Many suffer abuse and prejudice, and officials say some are kept in conditions that amount to modern slavery - it is hard to estimate how many as government data related to these cases is almost non-existent.
In 2013, Brazil finally started introducing legislation to give housemaids the same rights as every other worker, such as an eight-hour working day, a maximum of 44 hours of work per week and the right to overtime pay. Most, however, still work informally.
Those rights, Maria said, were part of the attraction of coming to Brazil. She was also promised what she thought was a decent monthly wage ($600; £460) and longed for the chance to explore a new country.
A kind, smiley woman, she had already worked as a live-in maid in Dubai and Hong Kong without having problems, and never imagined she would have any trouble in Brazil.
When Maria lost hope that her working conditions would improve, she challenged her employer. "I asked 'Why are you always like this to me?'" Her employer, she recalled, said disdainfully that she had never liked Maria.
Maria was rarely alone in the apartment. But one night the family went out and when Maria checked the doors, she found them locked. As the apartment was in a highly secure building, it was unusual for the front doors to be locked. The fact that they were when she was left alone made Maria wary.
That was a turning point. She decided she had to escape.
The next morning, she got up before anyone else, and finding the door unlocked, she left. Concerned that the building's security guard may become suspicious seeing her leaving with her luggage and alert her employers, she purposefully and jauntily waved goodbye at the security camera.
The trick worked and Maria got away unchallenged. She was still jubilant: "I was lucky".
Millions of people from the Philippines work abroad, mainly in neighbouring Asian and oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, to support their families. But frequent cases of abuse have put the spotlight on how they are treated.
In Brazil, three other Philippine maids who were recruited by the same agency as Maria also left their employment in the last year under similar circumstances.
They were helped by Father Paolo Parisi, who runs the non-governmental organisation Missao Paz. "They were crying, their dignities had been destroyed," he said. "I told them this was exploitation."
Maria and the other three Philippine maids paid $2,000 (£1,500) in fees to the agency. Their employers paid the agency $6,000 and the cost of the flights to Brazil.
What they were not told when they applied for their jobs was that their visas would be tied to their employment. So even when they found conditions to be bad, they felt they could not just walk out and look for a new job. And to get a new work permit, they would have to leave Brazil.
About 250 Filipinas have been hired to work as maids in Brazil since the end of 2012, when legislation paved the way for families here to hire foreigners. Many Brazilians say they prefer Philippine maids because they are well-trained and speak English, and so their children can grow up in a bilingual environment.
But there might be more to it, said Livia Ferreira, an inspector at Brazil's Labour Ministry in Sao Paulo.
"I think these families started hiring these workers to exploit them," she said. "They couldn't find [Brazilians] that would be at their disposal... The changes in legislation empowered housemaids and they weren't accepting certain working conditions anymore."
Ms Ferreira's team concluded that Maria and the other three Philippine maids had been kept in slave-like conditions - Brazilian law defines it as forced labour, work in degrading or risky conditions, without pay or to pay off debts owed to an employer.
"Their working conditions were very different from what they had been promised. They were kept in forced labour and had exhausting routines," Ms Ferreira said.
The employers, who have not been identified, have not commented. Brazil's public defender's office has launched labour lawsuits against the families and the recruitment agency. The agency denies any wrongdoing and has suspended its recruitment service.
The authorities are now looking into the situation of 180 other foreign domestic workers, and some labour law violations have already been found in the first cases.
Maria has found a new job after the government gave her and the other Philippine maids new visas. But her life is not without fear. Two months ago, the flat she moved into was ransacked. Nothing was taken but Maria saw it as a warning.
Most of what Maria earns goes towards paying off debt she got into to pay the agency which first placed her in Brazil. She hopes to save money to send her daughters to university - "so they don't follow in my footsteps" - and to open her own business when she returns home to the Philippines.
But for now, she is finally enjoying her life in Brazil. "I feel free. I'm happy now."
Video by Ana Terra Athayde; Illustrations by Katie Horwich
Women's servitude blights Philippine society
What does modern slavery look like?
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news, local-news, bendigo, epsom, the gateway, 7ha, Killen Thomas, David Marks, midland highway, Industrial Land Development Strategy
SEVEN hectares of land is up for grabs in Epsom, as the City of Greater Bendigo plans to address the need for industrial land. Killen Thomas managing director David Marks said Melbourne and Sydney-based parties had already expressed interest in the site, which is pitched at ‘a range of industrial and retail uses’. Bendigo strategy and growth director Bernie O’Sullivan said the parcel of land on the Midland Highway would be too small to develop a large-scale business park. “However, any industrial development on this site would be welcome,” he said. The council is in the process of creating an Industrial Land Development Strategy. “This site, along with all other currently zoned industrial land, will be investigated through the process of developing the strategy,” Mr O’Sullivan said. “During the development of this strategy, there will be a number of opportunities for residents and businesses to provide input. “It is expected draft strategy will be available for consultation in the coming months.” RELATED: West still best in Bendigo council’s search for industrial land, but all options on the table as work starts on new strategy Work on The Gateway Bendigo started about August and went on the market about a week ago. Mr Marks expected bids for the land, next to the McCullochs Hydraulic Engineers head office, to be up around $5 million. It was his understanding, from liaising with the council, that there was about 90 hectares of industrial land remaining in Bendigo. That land would be exhausted by about 2035. Mr O’Sullivan did not confirm those figures. “As part of the Industrial Land Development Strategy, given the changes which have occurred in recent years in terms of technology, skills, energy, waste management, freight and logistics and the broader economy, the city is undertaking a detailed investigation of the current supply and future need for industrial land,” he said. “This includes looking at the attributes of existing land, including any constraints and the likely need for different sized land parcels. “We will have a more up-to-date understanding of this shortly.” RELATED: Forum raises potential for multiple industrial hubs in Bendigo The city’s existing Industrial Land Development Strategy dates back to 2002. A new plan was made all the more necessary after the council was last year unsuccessful in its long-running attempt to forcibly buy a section of the Carter family farm in Marong for use as a business park. Mr Marks believed the establishment of a Qantas service between Bendigo and Sydney had made investing in Bendigo more attractive to prospective buyers in New South Wales. Have you signed up to the Bendigo Advertiser's daily newsletter and breaking news emails? You can register below and make sure you are up to date with everything that's happening in central Victoria.
https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/CCCaSEL78QLqvgEaPeVcbz/9a046240-a54b-43a1-80c0-c3d351b736f1.jpg/r0_25_1191_698_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg
Opportunity for new businesses, industry in Epsom as The Gateway Bendigo goes on the market
Emma D'Agostino
The Gateway Bendigo is on the Midland Highway in Epsom. Picture: SUPPLIED
SEVEN hectares of land is up for grabs in Epsom, as the City of Greater Bendigo plans to address the need for industrial land.
Killen Thomas managing director David Marks said Melbourne and Sydney-based parties had already expressed interest in the site, which is pitched at ‘a range of industrial and retail uses’.
Bendigo strategy and growth director Bernie O’Sullivan said the parcel of land on the Midland Highway would be too small to develop a large-scale business park.
“However, any industrial development on this site would be welcome,” he said.
The council is in the process of creating an Industrial Land Development Strategy.
“This site, along with all other currently zoned industrial land, will be investigated through the process of developing the strategy,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
“During the development of this strategy, there will be a number of opportunities for residents and businesses to provide input.
“It is expected draft strategy will be available for consultation in the coming months.”
RELATED: West still best in Bendigo council’s search for industrial land, but all options on the table as work starts on new strategy
Work on The Gateway Bendigo started about August and went on the market about a week ago.
Mr Marks expected bids for the land, next to the McCullochs Hydraulic Engineers head office, to be up around $5 million.
It was his understanding, from liaising with the council, that there was about 90 hectares of industrial land remaining in Bendigo.
That land would be exhausted by about 2035.
Mr O’Sullivan did not confirm those figures.
“As part of the Industrial Land Development Strategy, given the changes which have occurred in recent years in terms of technology, skills, energy, waste management, freight and logistics and the broader economy, the city is undertaking a detailed investigation of the current supply and future need for industrial land,” he said.
“This includes looking at the attributes of existing land, including any constraints and the likely need for different sized land parcels.
“We will have a more up-to-date understanding of this shortly.”
RELATED: Forum raises potential for multiple industrial hubs in Bendigo
The city’s existing Industrial Land Development Strategy dates back to 2002.
A new plan was made all the more necessary after the council was last year unsuccessful in its long-running attempt to forcibly buy a section of the Carter family farm in Marong for use as a business park.
Mr Marks believed the establishment of a Qantas service between Bendigo and Sydney had made investing in Bendigo more attractive to prospective buyers in New South Wales.
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new report: as northern california megaregion takes shape, megaproblems intensify
Posted In: Economy, Education, Government Relations, Housing, Membership, News, Press Releases, Transportation, Workforce of the Future,
The Northern California megaregion is one of the largest and fastest-growing in the United States, but the rapid speed and scale at which it is taking shape is creating megaproblems that highlight the urgent need for greater collaboration, investment and planning in the areas of housing, transportation, education and economic development, and goods movement, according to a new report the Bay Area Council Economic Institute released today.
Encompassing the Bay Area, Sacramento and northern San Joaquin valleys and Monterey Bay Area, the NorCal megaregion is home to a complex network of job centers, neighborhoods and transportation corridors in 21 counties and 164 cities. The many rail, road, labor, goods movement, and innovation connections that currently exist between these once-independent regions provide evidence of a growing integration among them.
Read The Northern California Megaregion: Innovative, Connected, Growing>>
The 12.2 million residents that call the megaregion home represent nearly one-third of California’s population, with 1.5 million being added since 2000 and another 1.9 million expected by 2030. And, the megaregion’s 2014 gross regional product of $875 billion was 5 percent of the nation’s GDP and the highest per capita in the country.
“The blurring lines among these four regions means we need to sharpen our focus on megaregional collaboration,” said Dr. Micah Weinberg, President of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. “The Northern California megaregion is like an engine powered by multiple cylinders. You get the most power and the most efficiency when all the cylinders are finely tuned and firing together. Increasing the connections and coordination among the different parts of the megaregion will create an unstoppable economic powerhouse and ensure a high quality of life.”
Home to three of California’s fastest-growing counties, the NorCal megaregion has also been one of the nation’s leading job creators across multiple industries, particularly in technology. Much of the job growth has been concentrated in the Bay Area, where rising demand and an historic housing shortage has resulted in a perfect storm of skyrocketing rents and home prices. Priced out of the Bay Area, growing legions of workers are increasingly seeking less expensive options in distant communities to the east.
As a result, although the megaregion’s workforce increased by 17 percent between 1990 and 2013, the number of commuters crossing “traditional” regional boundaries grew by 78 percent. More than two-thirds of them or nearly 175,000 employees, including from areas immediately outside the megaregion, commute into the Bay Area for work, resulting in clogged freeways and commutes that take hours, contribute to regional air pollution and stymie the state’s efforts to meet aggressive targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Increasing investment in megaregion commuter rail systems like Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor and San Joaquins services and the Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) can create stronger and more efficient transportation connections, expand ridership capacity and reduce pressure on already congested roads and highways, according to the report. Today, the three megaregional rail services serve a combined 3 million passenger trips a year, with Amtrak recently announcing the expansion of its San Joaquin service to address growing ridership.
Improving coordination among passenger and commercial freight rail carriers that share the same tracks can also help expand the capacity for both and support the megaregion’s important trade and goods movement industry. That will be important as projections show that by 2020 the major rail segments in the megaregion will be operating very near capacity.
Better distributing job growth within the megaregion across a range of industries could also hold the answer to nagging housing and transportation problems, the report suggests, while also helping spread greater prosperity.
The Bay Area technology industry has been a chief driver of new jobs in Northern California, fueled largely by the heavy concentration of highly educated workers and a strong network of public and private universities, state and community colleges and research laboratories. Raising education levels throughout the megaregion by increasing investment in state and community colleges and building better connections with employers can make regions outside the Bay Area more attractive for companies looking to start a business or grow. That can also help attract more venture capital investment to inland regions as entrepreneurs, start-ups and growing companies look for less expensive alternatives to the Bay Area, including outside the state.
There’s evidence this is already happening. Since 1990, the Sacramento area has seen the greatest increase of workers on a percentage basis in the high-tech sector of any California region. A thriving innovation and tech sector in the Tri-Valley area is leading to strong connections with bordering San Joaquin County.
“There’s no reason to cede our thriving tech economy to places like Boston, Austin and Seattle when the NorCal megaregion offers plenty of room, connections and opportunity,” said Jim Wunderman, President and CEO of the Bay Area Council. “We can have our cake and eat it, too, but we need mega-planning to stay ahead and address our housing, transportation and workforce challenges. It means breaking down traditional geographic and other barriers and working together.”
Among the specific recommendations for the megaregion that are included in the report:
Make a substantial investment in education outside the Bay Area to spread businesses and workforce talent across a broader geography. Investments in California State University system, the community college network, and apprenticeship programs in inland areas can prepare residents for jobs in growing industries, including technology, health care, business services and logistics.
Create economic development structures that cross county lines. Currently, economic development efforts are locally-oriented. Enhanced information sharing across the megaregion can help companies expand operations in places such as Davis and Sacramento instead of in competitive regions such as Portland or Austin with similar workforce profiles and affordability.
Prioritize improved and expanded service of megaregional rails lines. Intra-regional transit systems, particularly passenger rail, need to be expanded to move millions of commuters more efficiently throughout the region. That means supporting expanded service on ACE, San Joaquins and Capitol Corridor routes and prioritizing investment in megaregional rail hubs in Livermore, San Jose, and Oakland in the 2018 California State Rail Plan.
Streamline housing approval processes across the megaregion, especially those that are served by transit. Governor Jerry Brown proposes that cities and counties require only “by-right” approval for certain types of housing projects. By-right approval can help to spur housing development across the Northern California megaregion and facilitate higher density building near existing or planned rail stations, giving residents greater choice in where they live and work.
Institute a statewide tax credits to incentivize new business development and job creation in inland areas. The package of tax credits issued at the state level, including a venture capital investment tax credits, a geographically targeted R&D tax credit, and a New Markets Tax Credit, would promote the movement of more capital to other parts of the megaregion.
“This report describes a scale of connectedness that reflects the service Capitol Corridor provides today and we need to be ready for tomorrow.”
—Jim Allison, Manager of Planning, Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority
“This research helps prepare our neighboring regions and local communities to be competitive and maximize economic opportunities with vibrant places, jobs and housing options closer together, and travel options that help us get out of traffic. Collectively, we have a better chance of bringing new jobs and a higher quality of life to our communities.”
—Mike McKeever, CEO, Sacramento Area Council of Governments
“The report confirms and expands upon our research about the increasingly integrated Megaregion labor market. The Bay Area Council’s recommendations for Megaregion policy and planning efforts are important and timely.”
—Dr. Jeff Michael, Executive Director, Center for Business and Policy Research, University of the Pacific
“As the communities within the Northern California Megaregion continue to grow, we must meet their needs by striving to offer additional train service throughout the megaregion. Riders need frequent, convenient scheduling options to choose from in order to incorporate train travel into their business or leisure trips. Increasing the frequency of Amtrak San Joaquins will greatly improve the connectivity between the San Joaquin Valley, the Bay Area, and Sacramento”
—John Pedrozo, Chair of the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority; Merced County Supervisor
“There are over 65,000 commuters traveling daily from the Northern San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area – most of which are coming over the Altamont Pass. We are very pleased this study of the Northern California Megaregion highlights the importance of improving and expanding the Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) service to help meet the growing transportation demands between the Northern San Joaquin Valley, the Tri-Valley, and the Silicon Valley.”
—Bob Johnson, Chair of the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission; Lodi City Councilmember
“California’s state capital is a big part of the solution. Sacramento is already the #2 choice for people leaving the Bay Area. Sacramento’s costs are 67 percent those of San Francisco. Businesses that relocate to Sacramento have access to a young and educated workforce, enjoy a significant cost savings, and remain within the Megaregion.”
—Barry Broome, President and CEO of the Greater Sacramento Area Economic Council
“We are in a good place as one of the fastest growing areas in the world, but that good place can collapse under the weight of its own success unless we choose to do something about the inadequate production of housing and the resulting rising unaffordability of housing. This creates transportation systems that are clogged with commuters and employees who have to make long commutes to their jobs diminishing their quality of life. And because of Nimbyism, communities now have no place for the young or middle class. Only through collaboration and embracing the big idea can we solve these problems. The Bay Area Council has always been a catalyst for collaboration and this report and its findings can bring us closer to a solution. But we have to act.”
— Dale Eldridge Kaye, CEO, Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group
“This important study sets the stage for increasing dialogue, planning and defining opportunities to collectively work together to our mega-regional needs.”
— Arthur L. Dao, Alameda CTC Executive Director
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Born 7 May 1833. Died 3 April 1897
Encore! The Orchestra That Sings Brahms
10 astonishing acts of kindness by famous musicians
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https://musicbrainz.org/artist/c70d12a2-24fe-4f83-a6e6-57d84f8efb51
Johannes Brahms Biography (Wikipedia)
Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.
Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. An uncompromising perfectionist, Brahms destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished.
Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Embedded within his meticulous structures, however, are deeply romantic motifs.
Johannes Brahms Performances & Interviews
Brahms: Symphony No.1 in C minor
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Building a Library surveys recordings of Brahms's Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op.68.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p065rbf5
Brahms: String Quartet No.3 in B flat, Op.67
Building a Library explores Brahms's Third String Quartet in B flat major, Op 67.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p05p5yv3
Brahms: Variations on the St Anthony Chorale, Op 56a – excerpt (Prom 74)
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Brahms's Variations transform Haydn's chorale tune into a graceful sicilienne and a swaying, syncopated dance.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p05fl3xp
Catriona Morison - Die Mainacht (Johannes Brahms)
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The BBC Cardiff Singer of the World finalist Catriona Morison performs live for Classics Unwrapped, accompanied by Erik Garcia on piano
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p053345x
Catriona Morison - Auf dem Kirchhofe (Johannes Brahms)
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p053344q
Beautiful Brahms: Mark Simpson and Richard Uttley perform his Clarinet Sonata live on In Tune
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Clarinettist Mark Simpson and pianist Richard Uttley play the first movement of the Clarinet Sonata in E flat major by Johannes Brahms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p04d3dy6
Proms interval talk: Brahms's Second Symphony
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A discussion of Brahms's Second Symphony.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p046t50b
Donald Macleod explores the life and work of Johannes Brahms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p0437s77
Proms interval talk: Simon Callow reads from the German Romantics
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Actor and writer Simon Callow reads from some of the German Romantic authors, playwrights and poets who inspired Johannes Brahms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p043q122
Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major (extract)
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Preview of music performed at the BBC Proms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p03ns3gc
Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor (extract)
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p03nnzp6
Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 (extract)
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p03nv219
Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor (extract)
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p03pgs12
Brahms: Cello Sonata No 2 in F, Op 99.
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Building a Library compares recordings of the second cello sonata by Johannes Brahms.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p02wtqr9
Brahms Experience: Johannes Brahms
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Donald Macleod explores the friendship between Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p028d7fh
Stephen Grosz on Brahms
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Psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz on humming Brahms’ third symphony.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/audiovideo/popular/p023y1r2
Four Serious Songs, Op 121
6 Songs, Op 86 Feldeinsamkeit
Academic Festival Overture
Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor
Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat major
A German Requiem
Violin Concerto in D major
Piano Quartet No 1 in G minor
Clarinet Quintet in B minor
String Sextet No 1 in B flat major
Symphony No 1 in C minor
Symphony No 4 in E minor
Piano Sonata No 1 in C major
Violin Sonata in G, Op 78
String Quartet No 1 in C minor
String Quartet No 3 in B flat major
Symphony No 3 in F major
Tragic Overture
Trio for Piano, Clarinet, and Cello in A minor, op. 114
Piano Trio No 1 in B major
Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn
Johannes Brahms Tracks
Piano quartet in G minor, Op.25: IV. Rondo
Gävle symfoniorkester
Jaime Martín
Symphony No 1 in C minor, Op 68 (4th mvt)
Hungarian Dance No 1 in G minor
Bamberg Symphony Orchestra
Robin Ticciati
Waltzes Op.39 Nos.1-6
Jonathan Plowright
Symphony No 3 in F major, Op 90 (3rd mvt)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Paavo Berglund
Dame Sarah Connolly
2 Songs Op.91 for alto, viola and piano
Academic Festival Overture, Op.80
Rhapsody for piano in B minor, Op 79 No 1
Steven Osborne
Horn Trio in E flat major, Op 40 (1st mvt)
Francis Orval
György Sebök
Arthur Grumiaux
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
BBC National Chorus of Wales
Nathalie Stutzmann
Jacques Ibrailo
Gesang der Parzen (Song of the Fates), Op 89
Oslo Filharmoniske Kor
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra
Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos
Romanze in F major, Op 118 No 5
Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a "St. Anthony Variations"
Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Thomas Dausgaard
Cello Sonata No 1 in E minor, Op 38 (2nd mvt)
Truls Mørk
Hélène Grimaud
Ave Maria Op.12
Alexander Mason
Nigel Short
Choir and Organ
3 Hungarian Dances
Francesco Squarcia
I Cameristi Italiani
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, op. 25
Inon Barnatan
Livia Sohn
Meena Bhasin
Lerchengesang
Hartmut Höll
Renée Fleming
Intermezzo in A major, Op 118 No 2
Rhapsodie in E flat major, Op 119 No 4
Lars Vogt
Variations on a theme by Haydn, Op 56a
Clarinet Sonata in F minor, Op.120 no.1 (4th mvt)
Joseph Shiner
Somi Kim
Four Serious Songs
Sholto Kynoch
Ashley Riches
Fest- und Gendenkspruche (Wo ist ein so herrlich Volk)
Intermezzo in A major Op.118 No.2
Martin Roscoe
Julian Bliss
Clarinet Sonata in F Minor (4th mvt)
Fest- und Gedenkspruche for 8 voices, Op 109
Danish National Radio Choir
Stefan Parkman
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major Op.83
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Jonathan Nott
Alto Rhapsody, Op. 53
Gerhild Romberger
Zurich Sing-Akademie
7 Fantasien, Op.116
Imogen Cooper
Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert
Intermezzo in B flat minor, Op.117 No.2
Intermezzo in E flat, Op.117 No.1
Sonata in F minor, Op. 120 No. 1
Ulf Wallin
Violin sonata in D minor, Op. 108: IV. Presto agittato
Pierre Fouchenneret
Horn Trio in E flat, Op.40 (2nd mvt)
Teunis van der Zwart
Isabelle Faust
Alexander Melnikov
'Geistliches Wiegenlied' from 2 songs, Op.91
'Gestillte Sehnsucht' from 2 Songs, Op.91
11 Zigeunerlieder for 4 voices and piano (Op.103)
Three Intermezzi Op 117: No 1
Arcadi Volodos
Miskától Borzó
Philharmonix
String Quintet No 2 in G minor, Op 111 (3rd mvt)
Thomas Kakuska
Belcea Quartet
Variations on a theme by Paganini, Op 35 (excerpts from Book 1, Nos 1-14)
Anna Vinnitskaya
Hungarian Dance No 1 for piano duet
Alfons Kontarsky
Aloys Kontarsky
Academic Festival Overture (Op.80)
Budapest Symphony Orchestra
Tamás Vásáry
Violin Sonata No.1, Op.78 (1st mvt)
Intermezzo: Op. 118, No. 2, in A major
Arthur Rubinstein
Double concerto - finale
Bernard Haitink
Intermezzo in B flat minor, Op 117 No 2
Radu Lupu
Trio No 3 in C minor (1st mvt)
Mithras Trio
Latest Johannes Brahms News
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Johannes Brahms Links
Felix Mendelssohn
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No 5 in C minor - Excerpt
Paul Lewis: how can life shape the way we hear music?
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No.30 in E, Op.109
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Cilla Black: Obituary
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33752507
The career of Cilla Black - who has died aged 72 - spanned more than 50 years and saw her develop from 1960s pop starlet to TV royalty.
Born in Liverpool as Priscilla Maria Veronica White, Black was brought up in a two-up, two-down by a docker father and a mother who ran a market stall.
Her stage name came about as a result of a misprint in a music paper. But she preferred the alternative, using it to launch a singing career which spawned hits including Anyone Who Had a Heart, You're My World and Alfie.
Black shot to fame at the height of the Merseybeat era, immersing herself in music while working as a cloakroom attendant at Liverpool's famous Cavern Club and serving coffee at another nightspot, the Zodiac.
She eventually followed the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes on to the stage.
Her first public appearance had come about by chance. Aged 16, she was watching a gig when the band's singer passed her a microphone for a joke.
"I said 'all right mate, I'll show you' and just continued where he left off," she told the BBC's Desert Island Discs in 1964.
She later joined Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes but had to quit when the band travelled to Hamburg and her parents forbade her to go.
'Our Cilla' in quotes
On her first showbiz love: "I prefer to be known as a singer... that's all I've ever, ever wanted to do"
On failing to break America: "I was a wuss. I bottled out and I was homesick and I came home"
On drugs: "I never did acid, I am just so high anyway. I did smoke a joint once but I did not enjoy it"
On her husband's career: "I knew that Bobby wouldn't be any good on stage... His job was to tell me what to do, not to do it for himself"
On death: "Seventy-five is a good age to go... I don't want to linger. I don't want to be a burden on anybody"
Black's big break came when John Lennon introduced her to Beatles' producer Brian Epstein. Overcome with nerves, she initially failed to impress.
But she secured a contract when Epstein saw her again, and went on to have 19 consecutive UK top 40 hits. This included two consecutive number ones - Anyone Who Had a Heart and You're My World - in 1964, and 11 top 10 entries.
This rise to stardom was the subject of a three-part ITV drama last year, starring Sheridan Smith.
The Bafta-nominated series also charted her relationship with Bobby Willis, the man she went on to marry despite difficult relations between Protestants and Catholics in their home city at the time.
Image caption Black, a Roman Catholic, married Protestant Willis at London's Marylebone Register Office in 1969
However, it's Black's time as a TV presenter - and catchphrases such as "lorra, lorra laughs" - that many will best remember her for.
As the 1960s drew to a close, she fronted an eponymous BBC variety show that ran for eight years and could regularly command audiences of 22 million.
She ventured into sitcom acting during the late 1970s, in ITV series such as Cilla's World of Comedy. However, she admitted she "wasn't really" a good actress.
Despite that, she revealed to Radio Times last year that her agent had turned down the part of Michael Caine's girlfriend in The Italian Job because the fee wasn't big enough. "An iconic movie. I'd have done it for nothing," she said.
Cilla Black 'knew she was dying'
'Our Cilla': A life in pictures
Friends and fellow stars 'in shock'
Blind Date couple remember Cilla
The Music of Cilla Black
Tragedy struck in 1975 when Black's baby girl, Ellen, was born prematurely and died two hours later.
"I often think what Ellen would have been like," she said in 2009. "Especially as I think she would have been married now."
Five years later, Black went on to have her third son, Jack, and spent much of the 1970s raising her family.
It coincided with a dip in her TV career, and she focused increasingly on live performances and pantomime.
However, her reinvention was to be completed the following decade, after an appearance on the BBC's Wogan to promote a Best of Cilla Black album reminded producers how her effervescent personality could connect with viewers.
She went on to dominate Saturday prime time, hosting both Surprise, Surprise - the ITV programme that aimed to make people's dreams come true - and matchmaking show Blind Date.
Image copyright Rex Features
Image caption From 1985 to 2003, Cilla played Cupid on 380 editions of Saturday night favourite Blind Date
At one stage the latter, which she presented for 18 years, was drawing in 17 million viewers.
Black's wit, pithy put-downs and motherly advice made her perfect for the role. She developed a repertoire of catchphrases, including "What's your name and where d'ya come from?" and "Do I need to buy a new hat?"
She said she got the job because producers wanted "the most sexless person on television" to help get the show past TV regulators, who had expressed concern about innuendo in foreign versions.
The Scouse entertainer went on to become the highest-paid woman on TV, be appointed OBE and was last year honoured with a Bafta special award for her contribution to television.
Cilla Black in numbers
number ones
3 weeks at No. 1 for Anyone Who Had A Heart, 1964
380 episodes of Blind Date
3 Blind Date weddings - for which she had to "buy a hat"
Such was the personality's power that, in 2001, she was said to have forced ITV bosses to shift the top-flight football highlights back to 22:30 to make way for Blind Date's return.
On one show she famously exposed one contestant, Nicola Gill, as an undercover reporter writing for Cosmopolitan magazine. She told the journalist: "You've robbed somebody of coming on a proper Blind Date."
She also left the show on entirely her own terms, announcing on live television in 2003 that that year's series would be the programme's last.
Black's life was not without heartbreak. In a 2009 TV interview with Piers Morgan, she revealed she had lost a baby girl born prematurely 34 years earlier.
Image caption Cilla Black was appointed OBE in 1997, picking up the honour with her husband by her side
She described her one career regret as failing to crack America, despite appearing alongside the Beatles on the influential Ed Sullivan show.
And the death from lung cancer of Willis in 1999 hit Black hard.
Before their marriage, she had demanded he turn down his own record deal to focus on her career and threatened to walk away if he refused.
However, the pair were practically inseparable, having reportedly spend just three nights apart during the marriage.
Black's TV appearances after 2003 became sporadic. In recent years she spoke about how she "didn't want to see a 70-year-old on television" and would rather "die at 75" than suffer ill health into old age.
But she remained close friends with fellow celebrities such as Sir Cliff Richard and Sir Bruce Forsyth, while her friendships with Sir Elton John, Dale Winton and Paul O'Grady led to her being described as a "gay icon".
Just over a month ago, O'Grady presented an ITV show celebrating her life in showbiz.
Black is survived by three sons, one of whom, Robert, succeeded his father as her manager.
Cilla Black, singer and TV star, dies in Spain aged 72
Video Cilla Black: Archive film of Anyone Who Had a Heart
BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Cilla Black
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Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Guidelines
The ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (the “Award”) honors the late Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and The ASCAP Foundation’s former president Morton Gould’s lifelong commitment to encouraging young creators. Open to composers of original, classical concert music, the Award encourages developing music creators during the earliest stages of their careers.
The specific details and requirements of The ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Awards (the “Award”) are set forth below. The Award is subject to The ASCAP Foundation Official Awards General Rules and Regulations (the “Rules”). To the extent not specifically defined below, all capitalized terms have the meaning set forth in the Rules.
Previous Recipients of Foundation Awards: Previous recipients of any Foundation award other than this Award are eligible for consideration for the Award, but may only include in their Submission a work that was written after the work that was the subject of such previous award; however, previous recipients who have been awarded this Award a total of three or more times shall not be eligible for consideration for this Award.
The “Application Period” begins on November 12, 2018, and ends at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on February 1, 2019. Hard copy materials must be postmarked no later than February 1, 2019.
To be considered for the Award, Entrants (or, if applicable, their parent or guardian) must complete and submit either (1) an Online Application (available at https://www.ascap.com/music-career/competitions/mortongould) or (2) for Entrants under the age of 13, a paper application available at (https://www.ascap.com/-/media/files/pdf/about/legal/awards-scholarships-rules/morton-gould-paper-application.pdf) (as applicable, the “Application”).
In addition, Entrants (or, if applicable, their parent or guardian) must submit the following materials in hard copy to the Foundation (a) a bound score (copy, not original manuscripts) of one published or unpublished original concert work (no arrangements) (the “Score”) and (b) a print‐out of the Online Application together with a composer biography and list of works (the hard copy materials may optionally include a CD containing an electronic realization or recording of the work if the Online Application did not provide a URL from which such realization or recording may be streamed) (collectively sub-sections (1) and (2)(a)/(b) referred to as the “Submission”).
All Submission materials must separately bear the Entrant’s name. If applicable, the CD must separately be marked with the name of Entrant, the title of the work and the names of the performers. When submitting recordings of multi‐movements works, each movement must be on a separate track and marked clearly in the score and CD.
The ASCAP Foundation/Morton Gould Young Composer Awards
Tel. 212.621.6329 • Email: concertmusic@ascap.com
Return of hard copy materials: If you wish to have Submission materials returned to you, the Submission must be accompanied by a self‐addressed envelope with an official postage meter stamp from the U.S. Post Office with sufficient postage. Regular postage stamps will not be accepted.
Judging Procedures & Criteria
In accordance with the Procedures and Criteria above, eligible Entrants will be selected as the Award Recipients and will receive a monetary prize (each, a “Prize”). The number of Award Recipients and the monetary distribution of the Prize resides within the sole discretion of the judges, and may include: the Leo Kaplan Award, in memory of the distinguished attorney who served as ASCAP Special Distribution Advisor awarded to the top award winner; the Charlotte V. Bergen Scholarship for a composer 18 years of age or younger; and a grant from The ASCAP Foundation Jack and Amy Norworth Fund. The total value of the Prize(s) to be shared among the Award Recipients shall be determined in the Foundation’s sole discretion. At the sole discretion of the Foundation, an award ceremony may be held to recognize the Award Recipient, the place and time of such celebration determined in the Foundation’s sole discretion (the “Award Ceremony”).
Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Online Application
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https://www.blackenterprise.com/celebrates-50-best-companies-diversity/
BE Celebrates the 50 Best Companies for Diversity
by Selena Hill
Black Enterprise President/CEO Earl “Butch†Graves, Jr.; Susan K. Reid, Managing Director and Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion, Morgan Stanley; and ELC President Ron Parker
The 50 Best Companies for Diversity Group Shoot
On Jan. 24, Black Enterprise and the Executive Leadership Council (ELC) held a reception ceremony at the Morgan Stanley headquarters in New York City to celebrate 50 companies making a concerted effort to push for diversity and inclusion. These companies were also featured in our October 2016 issue and listed online.
Black Enterprise President and CEO Earl “Butch†Graves Jr. opened the ceremony with a strong welcoming address that applauded the companies for making the list.
“Diversity does not happen unless it is intentional,” he said.
Black Enterprise President/CEO Earl “Butch†Graves Jr. giving welcome remarks
He then introduced motivational speaker Carla Harris, the vice chairman of Wealth Management and senior client advisor at Morgan Stanley. Harris congratulated all of the companies for making BE’s list but pushed them to do more when it comes to diversity.
(Welcome remarks given by Carla Harris, Vice Chairman, Wealth Management Senior Client Advisor, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley)
Following the reception, Harris explained to BE why it’s essential for companies to focus on diversity and inclusion in order to compete and lead in today’s market.
“In order to get the best idea, you need diverse people in the room so that you have diverse perspectives [and] diverse experiences, which leads to diverse ideas and therefore, innovation,” she said.
Harris also pointed out that diversity is a key component for companies looking to recruit the best talent.
“The emerging professionals that I like to call the Millennials and the Xers, they will demand to see diversity in the corporations that they choose to commit their lives and their talents to,” she said. “They have seen multi-cultural people lead. They have seen women lead their entire lives, and so that is what excellence looks like for them. So if you want to be the company of choice for the best and brightest that are there and that are coming to the workforce, then you will have to be able to demonstrate that if you want to be able to attract and retain them.”
Likewise, ELC President and CEO Ronald C. Parker also talked about the importance of championing diversity while addressing the crowd.
Ronald C. Parker, president and CEO of The Executive Leadership Council (ELC), giving remarks
After each company rep received a certificate, Susan K. Reid, the managing director and global head of diversity and inclusion at Morgan Stanley, addressed the room and thanked BE for the opportunity to host the reception at Morgan Stanley.
Susan K. Reid, Managing Director and Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion, Morgan Stanley, giving remarks
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Depending on the success of its fundraising activities, the BSA may award grants to public charities for their qualified board review of proposals and direct funding of research aimed at developing therapies for or improving the medical management of Bloom’s syndrome. A committee designated by the Board of Directors will review all grant proposals and abide by the Association's conflict of interest policy when awarding grants for research. Over time, the Association may establish its own faculty-based, scientific advisory board to directly fund meritorious proposals for Bloom’s syndrome research, whether basic, clinical, translational, psychosocial, behavioral, epidemiological or otherwise defined.
Note: All research funded by the BSA, directly or indirectly, in full or in part, will be made available to the medical and scientific research community and the general public.
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Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack, down to second place. The "We Dem Boyz" rapper's third release is his first LP to debut atop the Billboard 200.
In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette last month, Khalifa annotated the differences and commonalities of Blacc Hollywood compared to past work. "I wouldn't say it's anything anyone hasn't heard before, as far as content. I do talk about different things in a different way because I'm older and more mature. But I would say it's the consistency that will make people gravitate toward it," explained the Taylor Gang front man. "All the songs are very strong and it's to the point, and that was my mind-state and what I wanted to do going into the album. I wanted to make it short and sweet and to the point and really accomplish big records that stand out and that stick around forever. And I feel like Blacc Hollywood is full of that, and it conveys the attitude and the message of freedom and creativity that I'm trying to get across, so just thinking about classics like a Michael Jackson album or a Prince album or something like that, that's what I modeled Blacc Hollywood after."
Aside from dominating the charts, Khalifa, 27, recently wrapped up his Under the Influence of Music tour.
(Photo: John Ricard / BET)
Written by Latifah Muhammad
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Cowgirls and Indians- Artist Sarah Sense
March 15 @ 12:00 pm-5:00 pm
An event every day that begins at 12:00 pm, repeating until March 16, 2019
Cowgirls and Indians
Sarah Sense
Running Dates: Friday, February 1, 2019 to Saturday March 16, 2019
First Friday March 1 opened till 7pm
Weaving photographs is my visual art practice; with photographic processes and cut paper, I have taught myself a weaving tradition of Chitimacha basket techniques, creating both flat mats and baskets to make social and political statements. Cowgirls and Indians is a fresh interpretation of a fourteen-year-old project, layering images from my collection, including: family photographs, Hollywood posters, antique posters, wild west show imagery, my Choctaw grandmother’s memoirs, Chitimacha landscapes, and my two personas: Cowgirl and Indian Princess. This body of work was originally explored in 2004, but with the recent American political landscape, I have found a new relevance with the imagery, questioning uses and misuses of cowboys, Indians, guns, women being taken and stereotyping.
The landscape photography featured in each piece is of Bayou Teche, the main water fixture on the Chitimacha reservation. The bayou and surrounding waters are home to cypress trees. The roots to these mysterious swamp trees grow into the earth under the water and then back up to breathe oxygen through the root, delicately balancing life with water, air and earth. This past December, I was taken on a fishing boat into a cypress swamp to capture the landscape images featured in this series. The Chitimacha basket weaving of the photographs gently reveal patterns from both Chitimacha and Choctaw baskets in my personal collection. Patterning morphs and changes into abstraction to push imagery forward and backward, creating a dialogue between the bayou landscapes and figurative photographs. Handwritten text on some landscapes are my grandmother’s memoirs re-written in ink by me. Her memoirs tell stories of what it was like to grow up in southeast United States in the early 20th century. The serene landscapes against these words reveal the timelessness of the landscape as it remains a part of the reservation and history. Mixing images with stories of struggle give a glimpse into a realistic history, symbolizing connections to land and the relevance of cultural preservation through protection and respect of land. Weaving these landscapes together with brightly contrasting Hollywood and pop culture imagery representing stereotypes of Native North America, questions the misconceptions of differing realities.
Like photographs, stories are a recorded history, merging time and memory repeatedly both orally and visually. I use posters and personas to explore American popular culture’s stereotypes of Native North America in Hollywood cinema, fashion trends and pop icons. Cowboy and Indian iconography are deeply rooted in America without recognition of the real history or the consequences of stereotypes. These generalizations are detrimental to the collective community and to the individual. Cowgirls and Indians explores these questions of identity, and the influence of imagery on global consciousness.
www.sarahsense.com
We’d like to thank for the support of the University of Manitoba- Faculty of Arts Women’s and Gender Studies, the Margaret Laurence Endowment Fund, U of M School of Fine Arts, MAWA and C2.
Oral History Tour @ The Forks
An event every week that begins at 10:00 am on Wednesday and Saturday, repeating until July 26, 2019
Bohémier & Turenne Houses Guided Tours / Maisons Visites guidées
An event every week that begins at 11:00 am on Saturday, repeating until August 31, 2019
Information Session – Youth Entrepreneurship Program YMCA-YWCA of Winnipeg
Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery
203-290 McDermot Ave
Winnipeg, R3B 0T2 CA Google Map
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Motor Cars
Riley : The Legendary RMs
4 (2 ratings by Goodreads)
By (author) John Price Williams
The RM series, which came out immediately after the Second World War, was highly-successful, combining mechanical innovations, like independent front suspension and rack-and-pinion steering, with traditional coachbuilding qualities. The four-door sporting saloons in 1 -litre and 2 -litre versions were fast, comfortable cars with notably good roadholding. The 2 -litre was especially quick, being able to exceed 90mph, something that few cars of the time could achieve. Drophead coupe and roadster versions followed, with less success, and the RM line ended with the ill-fated Pathfinder model, a result of mismanagement by Riley's owners, BMC.
Dimensions 200 x 255 x 19.05mm | 798g
Publication date 15 Nov 2006
Publisher The Crowood Press Ltd
Publication City/Country Ramsbury, United Kingdom
Illustrations note 8 page colour section & 172 black & white photographs
About John Price Williams
John Price Williams is a journalist who has been on the staff of national newspapers and the BBC. He has written several books on classic cars and contributes to motoring magazines. He is a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers.
4 100% (2)
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Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Fourth Edition
by Peter Piot
AIDS as an International Political Issue
AIDS as an International Political Issue (eBook)
by Peter Piot (Author)
9,392 Words
Peter Piot, founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), reports on the influence of civil society in international relations and traditional partisan divides. AIDS thrust health into national and international politics where, he argues, it rightly belongs. The global reaction to AIDS over the past decade is the positive result of this partnership, showing what can be acheved when science, politics, and policy converge on the ground. Piot describes funding mechanisms for AIDS, the first international declarations, the response of the UN system, the establishment of UNAIDS, the response of high income countries to AIDS, The Global Fund and PEPFAR as game-changers, and lessons for other health problems.
Categories: Education, Politics & Current Events
Publisher: Columbia University Press
AIDS as an Internation...
Peter Piot
Write a Review for AIDS as an International Political Issue: A Selection from AIDS Between Science and Politics
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Class Schedule Class Schedule menu
Get Started Get Started menu
No Sweat Consultation
Free Membership Sign-Up
Branded One Heroes
Meet the Branded Heroes!
Paid memberships and community donations help fund our gym to be able to provide free memberships to Disabled Heroes.
Phellep S.
“My name is Phellep Snow and this is my Branded One CrossFit story. I am a former Marine who now works in readjustment counseling at the Department of Veterans Affairs. I discovered Branded One through its participation in the American Patriot Fest, an annual free event in North Las Vegas that celebrates and thanks to our veterans. Prior to this, I knew very little about CrossFit and was a bit intimidated by what I heard. After talking with Nick about Branded One’s mission and its approach to exercise and wellness for the veteran community, I decided to give it a try. I came in for my first workout in July of 2017, and it immediately reminded me of the camaraderie I was used to seeing while doing PT in the military.
From the moment I arrived, I felt welcomed and encouraged. The environment is always friendly and the coaches are challenging yet understanding. I am very happy with my experience at Branded One and I am proud to be a part of their mission to help Veterans and their family members experience health and happiness.
On behalf of the Branded One community of veterans in Southern Nevada, I want to thank you for your support of the organization, and if you haven’t had the opportunity to get in the gym yet, please do come by and give it a try.
Miguel T.
Staff Sergeant (Ssgt) in the United State Air Force 00-06. Conducted over 75 convoy missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OFI 3) followed by 12 years in the casino industry. Currently conquering a Traumatic Brain Injury.
Simon N.
Active duty Air Force for 6 years, but currently in the Air National Guard since 2015 – TSgt/E-6
Elizabeth H.
“I was active duty Air Force for 4.5 years, and I’ve been in the Air National Guard for 5 years. I am an E-5/ Staff Sergeant. OIF/OEF veteran. Branded One CrossFit has helped to put structure back into my life. I am finding myself looking forward to going to the gym bright and early in the morning when it used to be hard to get out of bed. I really enjoy the sense of community and friendly competition that this gym provides. I had ACL reconstructive surgery in 2016, and getting back into the gym and gaining strength seemed impossible on my own. I never thought that CrossFit would be for me, but I am finally confident in heavy lifting again. I highly recommend Branded One to anyone, it’s made such an amazing impact in my life.”
Deidre “Mama Dee” D.
U.S. Navy Seabee Mechanic and Master-At-Arms
Originally from Chicago (GO BEARS!!) and currently living in Vegas (GO KNIGHTS!!). Served 23 yrs and retired as an E6. Struggling with PTSD and LIFE, while sedentary and depressed for 6 years. Started walking on my own, then started Paleo Plan and now Crossfit. Stopped taking prescribed pills for my mind and body, and discovered medical marijuana does the job just fine, if not better. Still suffer with fibromyalgia but I push through my Crossfit workouts anyway. This is my first time doing Crossfit, except for the small taste of it in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Oh yeah, I turn 54 yrs older in December 2018, so age is no factor with getting started again. The trainers will always find another way to do a workout or get the exercise in, if you’re injured. And after 23 yrs of Navy pushups, I finally learned the correct way to do them (and so much more) at Branded One!!
P.J. J.
"In 2003, after a divorce and an extremely rash decision to move to Las Vegas(to be a magician of all things), P.J. joined the Nevada Army National Guard to provide some motivation and direction to his life. Now, 15 years later his life has most definitely been a journey that most of his friends could not have predicted.
Called to duty several times, P.J. has held several different positions in the Army ranging from a Tanker, scout, and most recently as a Mortuary Affairs Specialist. He has spent time in Afghanistan and in Egypt is support of various operations.
Back home, he did actually perform as a magician for a while, worked as a Pit Boss, and is now a member of a law enforcement agency in the Las Vegas Area, while still serving in the National Guard. P.J is involved in the veteran community as the current Chapter Executive Officer of the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association Chapter 41-1, whose tag line is, “Vets Helping Vets.” He is also the father of two, one who recently graduated from the University of Nebraska, and a second who will be attending University of Oregon in the fall.
For the past several years he has suffered from the typical issues that face many veterans after service. Sleep issues, readjustment problems, and recurring injuries have kept P.J from staying motivated when it comes to his fitness. A recent surgery on his feet have allowed him to start running again, but he is now looking for a new challenge. CrossFit is seeming to fit the bill, but he refuses to talk about it…"
Chuck K.
“My name is Chuck Kolpack and I am a disabled Marine Corps veteran. I served on active duty from Sep 2000-Oct 2008 and I am an OIF/OEF veteran. After leaving the Corps, I have struggled to maintain a healthy weight and to find a place where I felt like I belonged. I first heard of Branded One CrossFit from Coach Jeremy, whom I work with. After many months of him giving me a hard time, I finally showed up for a Saturday workout. All it took was one workout and I was hooked. It is funny to think about because I never would have pictured myself as a CrossFitter, but the sense of camaraderie at Branded One made me feel at home. So while I may still consider myself a powerlifter who happens to workout at a CrossFit gym, I highly encourage anyone who is looking for acceptance while getting in killer shape to give Branded One a try.”
Kimberly K.
Having spent 2 years in CrossFit, it’s safe to say I will never find myself back in a traditional gym ever again. Through out the years in the Navy I meet so many people entering the service longing to feel apart of something. The CrossFit community is a great example
of that sense of family and
belonging. While you might see members leaving the service with no physical aliments, an internal struggle sometimes still exists. Having experienced the responsibility of flying out to ships to pick up sailors who have taken their own life, nothing more is disheartening then when you see people struggle. The way that every CrossFit gym welcomes people with open arms gives me more hope then ever.
Jason K.
As a 12 year veteran I have seen a variety of different styles of physical training. Being judged on how well I performed was the standard that produced results that effected me professionally and personally. Being apart of crossfit has not only opened doors professionally and personally, it has promoted an atmosphere of motivation and encouragement. You have the opportunity to enhance your physical abilities and stay accountable, as well as encourage others to better themselves. This very atmosphere is in-boded at Branded One CrossFit. If you are looking for a place to grow and be apart of a great family, this is the place.
Dannia R.
Jody R.
Tammra M.
Cole G.
Andrea A.
Brad O.
James V.
Peter L.
PJ J.
Sparkle M.
Devar J.
Cshampaigne S.
Copyright © 2019, Branded One CrossFit. Website Donated By Sync Las Vegas
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Melissa Gorga on Joe Giudice's Deportation Ruling: "It's Hard to Even Talk About"
November 9, 2018, 2:58 PM ET
The Real Housewives of New Jersey mom shared how she's standing by her family during this difficult time.
By Laura Rosenfeld
Teresa Giudice and Melissa Gorga may be reigniting their drama this season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, but these sisters-in-law will always be there for each other during a time of need. That moment is now for Teresa, who is currently waiting to find out the fate of her husband, Joe Giudice, after appealing a judge's ruling that he is to be deported back to Italy following the completion of his 41-month prison sentence in spring 2019.
Melissa shared how she has been showing her support for Teresa during a recent interview with Cosmopolitan. "I told her, ‘I know you don’t like to talk about these things, but you know I’m here’," she said. "It’s a very personal thing. It’s very hard when it involves kids. It’s hard to even talk about, so we’re all praying and hope that it turns around. We’re all just here trying to help and figure out what’s next."
Have Teresa and Joe Giudice Talked About the Possibility of Moving to Italy?
Teresa and Melissa's fellow New Jersey Housewife Margaret Josephs was also devastated by this ruling. She called it "the most upsetting news" in the history of RHONJ during an interview with The Daily Dish last week. "I immediately had reached out to Teresa. She answered me right away. She is very, very strong. And I have said this, if anybody can hold it together, it's Teresa Giudice. She's gonna be strong for her daughters, she's gonna be strong for her family, and whatever the outcome is, if he is actually deported, she'll deal with it accordingly and hold her family together like she has all along," Margaret shared. "I mean, this is the most unfortunate news, and I'm devastated. It's heartbreaking, and it's the worst hand that you can be dealt. But she will handle it like the champ that she is."
During her appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen on Wednesday, November 7, which you can view above, Teresa said that she was "shocked" by the deportation ruling, and the couple's four daughters (Gia, 17, Gabriella, 14, Milania, 12, and Audriana, 9) were "very upset" by the news. Teresa also confirmed that the paperwork for the appeal has been submitted, and they are now awaiting the court's decision.
Teresa previously confirmed to ET that RHONJ fans will not see her and her family deal with Joe's deportation ruling in the current season of the show, which premiered on Wednesday, November 7.
Watch a preview of an all-new episode of RHONJ coming up on Wednesday at 9/8c, below.
Margaret Josephs
Melissa Gorga
Teresa Giudice
Audriana Giudice
Gabriella Giudice
Gia Giudice
Joe Giudice
Milania Giudice
Margaret Is "Devastated" by Joe's Deportation Ruling
Joe's Deportation Ruling Is Not in Season 9 of RHONJ
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Diplomat Cable Leaks
Khan’s London
Salvini vs Open Borders NGOs
Pro-EU Cambridge Professor: ‘Lower Voting Age to Six’
Alexandra Beier/Getty Images
The Head of Politics at the University of Cambridge has called for the voting age to be lowered to six in the wake of the EU referendum.
Professor David Runciman proposed a dramatic expansion of the franchise on his Talking Politics podcast, claiming it would help to correct what he described as a “huge structural imbalance” in favour of older Britons in the voting system.
“I would lower the voting age to six, not 16. And I’m serious about that,” he insisted, as most children are able to read by that age.
“What’s the worst that could happen? At least it would be exciting, it would make elections more fun,” he added.
Wondering if teaching establishment's Left-liberal bias is likely to be influencing pupils? Mock elections results point to emphatic “YES”. pic.twitter.com/wW6YaVrHDO
— Jack Montgomery ن (@JackBMontgomery) June 15, 2017
“Old people” currently have “a huge inbuilt advantage in representative democratic politics,” according to Runciman.
“Young people are massively outnumbered because the voting age is 18, whereas there isn’t a cutoff point at the other end. You don’t lose the vote when you get to be 75. You can carry on voting until the day you die and there is no test. You could be frankly demented and still get to vote,” he exclaimed.
He dismissed more modest proposals to lower the voting age to 16, as was done for the referendum on whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom by the regional government’s ruling left-wing separatist party, as insufficiently radical.
“If 16- or 17-year-olds voted in the 2017 general election, there is a chance that [Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn would now be Prime Minister… If 16- or 17-year-olds voted in the Brexit referendum, it would have been closer, but it probably still wouldn’t have been enough to overturn the result,” he complained.
“Talking about two years isn’t enough. There is such a huge structural imbalance that adding two years to a story that at the other end of the scale now extends to people in their 80s, 90s, 100s [isn’t enough].”
University Lecturers Plying Students with ‘Stop Brexit’ Progaganda
https://t.co/ZNrV7i7d7j
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) October 26, 2017
Runicman’s comments on altering the Brexit vote may betray some of the reason for his interest in lowering the voting age.
The professor told his university’s student newspaper he was a Remainer shortly before the referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2016, declaring: “I am in favour of Remain, partly because I have spent most of my adult life attached to the ideal of a more united Europe and I’d be sorry to give up on that, and partly because I think the political risks of leaving outweigh those of staying.”
He admitted, however, that these were “fairly fragile arguments – one quite wishful and one quite negative,” and that there were “serious arguments on the other side”.
“People have good reason to be suspicious of the EU and some of the claims made on its behalf,” he conceded.
Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery
Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London
EducationLondon / EuropeSocial Justiceacademiaacademic biasBrexitBritainCambridgecambridge universityEUEuropean UnionUnited KingdomUniversity of Cambridge
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Get InvolvedDonate
Main Menu With Nesting
Fair Courts
Government & Court Reform
Liberty & National Security
Voting Rights & Elections
Policy Proposals
Statements & Testimony
Celebrating Justice Brennan
Reported Instances of Voter Caging
The following is a compilation of reported instances of voter caging or attempted voter caging.
Justin Levitt
Andrew Allison
Click here to download as a PDF.
Voter caging is the practice of sending mail to addresses on the voter rolls, compiling a list of the mail that is returned undelivered, and using that list to try to purge or challenge voters registrations on the grounds that the voters on the list do not legally reside at their registered addresses. The following is a compilation of reported instances of voter caging or attempted voter caging.As we become aware of further examples, we will add summaries to the compilation below.
In 1958, nonforwardable campaign literature was sent to 18,000 registered Democrats.[1] The mail that was returned undelivered was used to generate a list of voters to be challenged at the polls.[2] Contemporary reports on the challenge program noted that challengers using these lists were active in certain precincts but the precincts mentioned were those with substantial minority populations.[3]
In 1960, postcards were sent to 349 registered Republicans in one particular Arizona district.[4] These postcards specifically warned of punishment if the voters had moved but voted in the precinct in which they were formerly registered.[5] A list of the postcards returned undelivered was compiled, presumably for challenges at the polls.[6]
In 1964, a partisan campaign named Operation Eagle Eye sent 1.8 million pieces of mail to voters in what the campaign called many of the more suspect precincts in 15 key cities, such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Kansas City and St. Louis all cities with substantial minority populations.[7] The undeliverable mail was returned to a local address, and an anomaly in most voter caging programs local campaign workers were instructed to make personal checks at the suspect addresses.[8] Program officials stated that at least 2,963 names in Chicago alone were purged from the rolls before the election based on the caging lists generated by this campaign.
Volunteers were also instructed to challenge voters on the caging list at the polls on Election Day.[9] The national director of Operation Eagle Eye claimed that program participants expected to successfully challenge or discourage from voting 1,250,000 persons.[10] At least some of these challenges may have been racially motivated: in Washington, D.C., for example, one coordinator said that his challengers would keep an eye out for people who look like they dont belong in the community or are not the kind of people who would register and vote.[11]
In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent mailings to New Jersey voters in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods.[12] The 45,000 letters that could not be delivered were used to compile a challenge list to remove those voters from the rolls.[13] As a result of a lawsuit filed against the effort, the Republican National Committee and New Jersey Republican State Committee entered into a consent decree with their Democratic party counterparts, prohibiting most racially targeted voter caging. In the decree, they agreed, in relevant part, to:
refrain from undertaking any ballot security activities in polling places or election districts where the racial or ethnic composition of such districts is a factor in the decision to conduct, or the actual conduct of, such activities there and where a purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting . . . .[14]
In 1986, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners sent mailings to all registered voters in Chicago.[15] 116,541 pieces could not be delivered.[16] The corresponding voters were to be checked in a door-to-door canvass, and if their registration status remained in doubt, they were to be purged from the rolls.[17] The extent to which voters were actually purged from the rolls is not clear from published reports.
Later in the year, the Republican National Committee hired a vendor known as Ballot Integrity Group Inc. to carry out a voter caging effort in Louisiana, Indiana, and Missouri; further efforts were apparently planned for Michigan.[18] In Louisiana, the program entailed sending nonforwardable envelopes with emergency contact numbers to 350,000 voters registered in heavily Democratic districts.[19] Most districts that fit the profile were African-American neighborhoods, and in at least one instance, the office producing the data for the mailing list was asked specifically for the listings of African-American voters.[20]
An internal memorandum to the RNCs southern regional political director recognized the effect of the caging program on the upcoming Senate race in Louisiana:
I know this race is really important to you. I would guess that this program will eliminate at least 60-80,000 folks from the rolls. . . . If it’s a close race, which I’m assuming it is, this could keep the black vote down considerably.[21]
Ultimately, 30,000 letters were returned undelivered in Louisiana; as predicted, most of the returned letters were addressed to African-Americans.[22] These letters were turned over to election officials with a request to purge the voters from the rolls; the letters were also compiled onto a list for investigation by law enforcement and for challenge at the polls.[23]
A Louisiana state court judge enjoined the program, finding that the clear intent was to remove blacks from the voting rolls.[24] The national party organizations also returned to federal court in New Jersey, in litigation filed under the 1981 consent decree described above. In the short term, the RNC stipulated that it would not compile voter challenge lists or challenge voters on the basis of direct mail returned as undelivered.[25] Ultimately, the case again settled, with a modification of the 1981 decree prohibiting the RNC from undertaking any ballot security program without the courts consent.[26]
In 1990, the Republican Party of North Carolina and Senator Jesse Helms re-election campaign committee mailed postcards to 125,000 voters; 81,000 cards were mailed to registered Democrats in precincts that were 94% African-American, and 44,000 cards were mailed to African-American voters exclusively.[27] Undelivered cards were then used to create a list of voters to be challenged.[28] The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit, again ending in a consent decree. This agreement prohibited the state party from targeting voters based on their racial minority status, and required it to obtain prior court approval for its anti-fraud activities.[29]
Evidence of voter caging or of preparation for voter caging surfaced in at least five states in 2004. In Ohio, letters were sent to all voters who registered between January 1 and August 31 of 2004; the 35,427 letters that were returned undelivered were used to create a challenge list.[30] The list included names from mostly urban and minority areas, including 17,717 challenges in Cuyahoga County.[31] Some challenges were executed before Election Day, and others were withdrawn; due in part to an extended court challenge, almost no voters on the list were ultimately challenged at the polls.[32]
In Nevada, a businessman looking to take Democrats off the voter rolls challenged 17,000 registered Clark County voters who had been sent mail that was returned undelivered.[33] The countys Registrar of Voters denied all of the challenges.[34]
In Pennsylvania, letters were sent to 130,000 newly registered Philadelphia voters.[35] Ten thousand letters allegedly could not be delivered, and were used to compile a challenge list.[36] There were no reports that the list was actually used for challenges on Election Day.
In Florida, letters were sent to newly registered voters in Duval County, and 2,663 voters for whom letters were returned as undeliverable were placed on a controversial list.[37] 1,833 of these voters were attached to disclosed emails labeled caging, and sent by Florida campaign staff to political and research staff at the Republican National Committee; Tim Griffin, the national research director for the RNC, acknowledged receipt.[38] No explanation has been given for why the list was forwarded to RNC headquarters. Later analysis using registration records coded for race showed that the list disproportionately captured minority voters.[39] State campaign spokespersons claimed that the list was not intended to be used for challenging voter eligibility, though they also acknowledged that the names were forwarded to county officials;[40] a Department of Justice attorney sent to Florida in 2004 helped procure an agreement that voters would not be challenged at the polls using any such list.[41]
Wisconsin saw a variant of voter caging, relying not on undeliverable mail, but on a technological equivalent: attempts to match the addresses on Milwaukees voter rolls to the U.S. Postal Services database of street addresses.[42] (Mail sent to these addresses would presumably have been returned as undeliverable.) 5,619 voters were challenged, with questions raised about approximately 31,500 additional entries.[43] The bipartisan Milwaukee Election Commission found insufficient evidence that the registrations were invalid, and rejected the challenges.[44]
1 CHANDLER DAVIDSON ET AL., REPUBLICAN BALLOT SECURITY PROGRAMS: VOTE PROTECTION OR MINORITY VOTE SUPPRESSIONOR BOTH? 17 (2004), available at http://www.votelaw.com/blog/ blogdocs/GOP_Ballot_Security_Programs.pdf.
2 Id.
3 See id. at 18-19.
4 Id. at 17 n.14.
7 Cabell Phillips, G.O.P. Opens Drive to Prevent Fraud, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 30, 1964, at 25.
8 Id. There is little readily available information to determine whether these personal follow-up checks were actually conducted and if so, the means by which they were conducted.
10 Democrats Charge G.O.P. Poll Watch Today Will Harass the Negroes and the Poor, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 3, 1964.
12 CHANDLER DAVIDSON ET AL., supra note 1, at 50; PEOPLE FOR THE AM. WAY FOUND. & NAACP, THE LONG SHADOW OF JIM CROW: VOTER INTIMIDATION AND SUPPRESSION IN AMERICA TODAY 14 (2004), available at http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/dfiles/file_462.pdf; Jo Becker, GOP Challenging Voter Registrations, WASH. POST, Oct. 29, 2004, at A5.
13 Becker, supra note 12.
14 Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee, Civil Action No. 81-3876 (D.N.J. Nov. 1, 1982 (consent order).
15 John Kass, 116,000 Chicago Voters Warned They Must Re-Register, CHI. TRIBUNE, Feb. 17, 1986, at C7.
18 CHANDLER DAVIDSON ET AL., supra note 1, at 60; PEOPLE FOR THE AM. WAY FOUND. & NAACP, supra note 12, at 12; Bernard Weinraub, Suit Charging G.O.P. Sought To Cut Black Vote Is Settled, N.Y. TIMES, July 24, 1987, at A15; Martin Tolchin, The Political Campaign, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 26, 1986, at B19; Martin Tolchin, G.O.P. Memo Tells of Black Vote Cut, N.Y. TIMES, Oct. 25, 1986, at 17; Thomas B. Edsall, Ballot Security Effects Calculated, WASH. POST, Oct. 24, 1986, at A1.
19 CHANDLER DAVIDSON ET AL., supra note 1, at 60; PEOPLE FOR THE AM. WAY FOUND. & NAACP, supra note 12, at 12; Weinraub, supra note 18; Jon Margolis, GOP Agrees to Limits on Ballot Security Plan, CHI. TRIBUNE, July 24, 1987, at C6.
20 Thomas M. Burton, Democrats Sue Over GOP Bid to Mail Down the Vote, CHI. TRIBUNE, Sept. 25, 1986, at C1.
21 Tolchin, G.O.P. Memo Tells of Black Vote Cut, supra note 18; Edsall, supra note 18.
22 CHANDLER DAVIDSON ET AL., supra note 1, at 60.
23 Edsall, supra note 18.
25 Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee, Civil Action No. 86-3972 (D.N.J. Oct. 20, 1986) (stipulation) (valid until March 1, 1987, at the latest).
26 Weinraub, supra note 18; see Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee, Civil Action No. 86-3972 (D.N.J. July 27, 1987) (settlement stipulation and order of dismissal).
27 ADVANCEMENT PROJECT, REPORT TO STATE AND LOCAL ELECTION OFFICIALS ON THE URGENT NEED FOR INSTRUCTIONS FOR PARTISAN POLL WATCHERS (2004); PEOPLE FOR THE AM. WAY FOUND. & NAACP, supra note 12, at 3.
28 ADVANCEMENT PROJECT, supra note 27.
29 Id. (citing United States v. Republican Party of North Carolina, Civil Action No. 92-161-CIO-5F (E.D.N.C. Feb. 27, 1992); CHANDLER DAVIDSON ET AL., supra note 1, at 75.
30 Robert Vitale, GOP Misfiled Some Voter Challenges, Board Says, COLUMBUS DISPATCH, Oct. 24, 2004, at 1A.
31 Becker, supra note 12; Vitale, supra note 30; Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee, No. 04-4186, at 5 (3d Cir., Nov. 1, 2004) (denial of motion for stay pending appeal), revd en banc (3d Cir., Nov. 2, 2004).
32 John Riley, Complications, Challenges Abound, N.Y. NEWSDAY, Oct. 31, 2004, at A37; Sandy Theis, Fraud-busters Busted, CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER, Oct. 31, 2004, at H1; Summit County Democratic Central & Executive Comm. v. Blackwell, 388 F.3d 547 (6th Cir. 2004); Democratic National Committee v. Republican National Committee, No. 04-4186 (3d Cir., Nov. 2, 2004) (en banc).
33 Sides Debate Registrations, LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, Oct. 10, 2004, at 2B; Erin Neff, Challenge to 17,000 Voters Blocked, LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, Oct. 12, 2004, at 3B.
34 Neff, supra note 33.
35 ADVANCEMENT PROJECT, supra note 27; Becker, supra note 12.
36 ADVANCEMENT PROJECT, supra note 27; Suzette Parmley et al., Voting Access, Challenges Debated With Hours To Go, PHILA. INQUIRER, Nov. 2, 2004; Kate Zernike & William Yardley, Charges of Dirty Tricks, Fraud and Voter Suppression Already Flying in Several States, N.Y. TIMES, Nov. 1, 2004, at A16; Tom Infield, Both Parties Complain of Vote Fraud, PHILA. INQUIRER, Oct. 25, 2004, at B1.
37 Joni James & Tamara Lush, Gov. Bush: Poll Watchers Can, Should Challenge Voters, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, Oct. 28, 2004.
38 GeorgeWBush.org, Dead Letter Office, http://2004.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/index.asp (last visited June 19, 2007).
39 Mark Johnston, Voter Suppression, June 26, 2007, at http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2007/20070621_supressing_the_vote_2004.html; Paul Kiel, TPMMuckraker.com, Cage Match: Did Griffin Try to Disenfranchise African-American Voters in 2004?, http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003523.php (June 26, 2007, 11:21 EDT).
40 Greg Palast, New Florida Vote Scandal Feared, BBC NEWS, Oct. 26, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm; John M. Glionna, The Race for the White House, L.A. TIMES, Oct. 28, 2004, at A18; Tim Reynolds, Parties Trade Pre-Election Accusations in Florida, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, Oct. 29, 2004, at A12. 41 Kiel, supra note 39.
42 Greg Borowski, GOP Demands IDs of 37,000 in City, MILWAUKEE J. SENTINEL, Oct. 30, 2004.
43 Greg Borowski, GOP Fails to Get 5,619 Names Removed From Voting Lists, MILWAUKEE J. SENTINEL, Oct. 28, 2004; Greg Borowski & Steven Walters, Vote Inquiry Sharpens Focus, MILWAUKEE J. SENTINEL, Oct. 29, 2004; Greg Borowski, supra note 42; Editorial, Protect Voter Rights Today, MILWAUKEE J. SENTINEL, Nov. 1, 2004.
44 Borowski, supra note 43.
Restricting the Vote
Voting Rights and Elections
New Constitutional Vision
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UNC diversity workshop says beige bandaids are white privilege
Anthony Gockowski Contributing Editor/Investigative Reporter @AGockowski on Mar 29, 2016 at 5:24 PM EDT
The workshop teaches that anyone who can wear 'flesh' colored makeup has white privilege.
It also says anyone who knows how to find a good rummage sale likely grew up in poverty.
As part of a “cultural competency workshop,” students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are being assigned a score based on the amount of “white privilege” they may have.
During the workshop, students can participate in several activities that “examine white privilege and how it is more powerful than other types of benefits afforded by society.” One activity in particular, called the “white privilege survey,” requires students to quantify their privilege based on their responses to a series of statements.
“I can choose blemish cover or bandages in ‘flesh’ color and have them more or less match the color of my skin,” one statement reads, for which students then apply a number between zero and five based on how true the statement bears in relation to their daily lives.
Another set of statements fixates on the presence of each student’s race in pop-culture with questions such as:
· “I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the newspaper and see people of my race widely and positively represented.”
· “I can conveniently buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.”
One oddly phrased statement asserts that swearing, wearing hand-me-downs, or not handling correspondences in a timely manner without racist consequences is a privilege.
“I can swear, dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my races,” it states.
Another “cultural competency” activity, called “Uncovering the Hidden Rules of Class,” groups students into their respective “class” based on whether or not they know how to complete certain tasks affiliated with that class.
Students likely grew up in poverty, for example, if they know how to:
· “Find the best rummage sales”
· “Get around without a car”
· “Move in half a day”
· “Entertain friends with just [a] personality and stories”
The document then describes activities like setting a table, using a credit card, knowing how to repair household items, and being able to read a menu in multiple languages as exclusively middle or upper-class traits, but leaves questions about the purpose of the exercise unanswered.
The workshop includes many other similar activities and could last up to “several hours,” according to a description listed on the school’s wellness center page.
It is unclear if all students are required to complete the workshop, but a handbook for proctors of the workshop indicates that at least some students are “mandated to attend.”
“Be aware that some members of the audience may not want to be there (e.g., they were mandated to attend),” it says. “Try to encourage them to participate and change their feelings about the workshop.”
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Loan Round-Up: Mourgos scores a brace for FC Dordrecht
Savvas Mourgos scored a brace for FC Dordrecht on Friday night, helping the Dutch side pick up their first win of the season.
The 20-year-old forward claimed his first two goals for the club against Cambuur, which led to his side winning 3-0 at the GN Bouw Stadion.
Elsewhere overseas, Marcel Franke started for Darmstadt against third placed Hamburger SV, in a game which saw them lose 2-1.
Remi Matthews was unable to keep Blackburn’s Bradley Dack away from the score sheet, as the midfielder scored the only goal of the game, ending in a 1-0 defeat for Bolton. Yanic Wildschut was introduced at half-time, but was unable to break down the Rovers defence.
James Husband limped off and was replaced in the 10th minute for Fleetwood Town on Saturday. The Cod Army went on to beat Doncaster Rovers 4-0 at the Keepmoat Stadium.
Sean Raggett missed out on Rotherham United’s 3-1 loss against Birmingham City, as the defender continues to recover from injury.
Diallang Jaiyesimi’s Yeovil Town and Tristan Abrahams’s Exeter City met each other in League Two, however neither featured. Jaiyesimi missed out due to injury, whilst Abrahams was an unused substitute as both teams shared the spoils in a 2-2 draw.
Steven Naismith played 90 minutes for Hearts; the Scottish Premier League leaders lost for the first time in the league this season, against Steven Gerrard’s Rangers. Naismith missed a good chance which would have made it 1-1, however his shot was comfortably saved. Rangers went on to win 3-1 at the Ibrox Stadium.
Mason Bloomfield wasn’t named in the squad for Hamilton Academical who were beaten 6-0 against Hibernian at Easter Road.
Sean Raggett
Marcel Franke
James Husband
Diallang Jaiyesimi
Tristan Abrahams
Mason Bloomfield
Savvas Mourgos
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Tuesday 05 March 2019
Audi Q4 e-tron: compact electric SUV coming soon
Joshua Dowling
National Motoring Editor
Hot hatch fans, this is what your electric future looks like until someone builds a Golf GTI EV
Audi has unveiled the next chapter in its rollout of electric vehicles. The Audi Q4 e-tron is about as big as a Toyota Corolla but rides as high as an SUV and has the performance of a hot hatch.
The 2019 Geneva motor show concept has a combined 225kW of power via two electric motors, one each for the front and rear axles.
That’s enough to produce a claimed 0 to 100km/h time of 6.3 seconds, which is in the neighbourhood of the VW Golf GTI and Renault Megane RS.
The 82kWh battery pack takes up almost the entire space on the vehicle’s “skateboard-style” platform.
It has a driving range of 450km based on new, stricter measurement standards, which is why Audi claims it’s a real-world benchmark for the class. The battery can be recharged up to 80 per cent capacity in 30 minutes on a fast charger.
The Q4 e-tron is based on the Volkswagen-Audi Group’s modular electrification platform (MEB) that will underpin dozens of new models in the coming years.
The official Audi blurb says: “The Audi Q4 e-tron concept gives an advance look at what will already be the fifth series production electric vehicle that the manufacturer will introduce by the end of 2020”.
Sales of the first Audi e-tron have already started, and the first vehicles will be delivered to European customers by the end of this month.
Meanwhile, the Audi Q2L e-tron, designed specifically for the Chinese market, is also due to start production in the coming months.
A high performance Audi e-tron GT is planned for the second half of 2020, about the same time as the production version of this Geneva concept car will arrive in showrooms.
Audi Australia is yet to confirm if the Q4 e-tron is heading Down Under, however it is likely given the brand is already taking other, more expensive e-tron models.
The Q4 will likely give Audi a sub-$100,000 starting price into its electric SUV range when it arrives in late 2020 or early 2021.
The show car has the next generation of Audi’s digital widescreen “virtual cockpit” but the production is expected to have similar themes, as well as a larger format “heads-up” display reflected into the windscreen.
Extra detail for tech geeks who’ve read this far: the Q4 e-tron’s rear electric motor has an output of 150 kW and 310Nm; the front electric motor has a 75kW/150Nm output.
MORE: Audi news, reviews, comparisons and videos
MORE: Geneva motor show coverage
This reporter is on Twitter: @JoshuaDowling
Audi driving experience: The driving course you need to do
CarAdvice Winners Circle: Audi RS4 Avant
2019 Genesis G70 3.3T Sport v BMW 330i M Sport v Lexus IS350 F Sport comparison
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CASE STUDY: TAIPEI 101
Taipei Financial Center Corp.
LEED® O+M v4 Platinum recertification of a 2.1 million square-foot office tower
TAIPEI 101 is one of the world’s tallest buildings, with more than 125 tenants and 10,000 people working there every day. The iconic, 101-story skyscraper was completed in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2004 by developer and owner, Taipei Financial Center Corp. (TFCC). Emphasis on sustainability resulted in the inclusion of some best-practice green building features during design, including a triple low-e glass facade, comprehensive rainwater capture system, and thermal energy storage system.
TAIPEI 101 was not originally certified as a green building during design, but in 2009, TFCC began the certification process using the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance (LEED EB:OM) rating tool. LEED EB:OM is a consensus developed system that provides a framework for verifying green building performance.
Over a two-year period, TFCC invested in a number of projects and operational changes required to meet the LEED EB:OM requirements. TAIPEI 101 successfully reduced energy consumption by 33.41 million kWh and saved more than US$2 million annually. In 2011, TAIPEI 101 was awarded the prestigious LEED EB:OM v2009 Platinum certification, an impressive feat for a tower of its size and complexity.
But TFCC faced a new challenge: LEED EB:OM requires recertification within five years. Recertification requires that performance levels from the original certification are maintained and tracked to verify that a building has kept up with the standards expected of a LEED EB:OM building. However, USGBC requirements evolve subtly over time, even within the same version of LEED, key property management personnel can change and performance tracking can often lapse. For successful recertification, it’s important to understand the process and timing involved and update critical issues in the right way. The process requires ongoing monitoring and documenting of sustainability efforts for the entire 5-year recertification period, with a special emphasis on the final 18 months prior to recertification submission.
CBRE had been advising TFCC on sustainability issues since 2012, having consulted on their first corporate responsibility report, released the following year. The CBRE Sustainability Asia team, having a detailed knowledge of the building and how it operates, realized that TFCC would need to start planning for recertification much earlier than most project teams anticipate. In addition, since TAIPEI 101’s original Platinum certification using LEED EB:OM v2009, the USGBC had released LEED v4, offering a new option for TFCC to consider.
To proactively provide sound advice to its client, the CBRE Sustainability Asia team partnered with CBRE’s U.S. LEED programs group, which has helped clients achieve certification for nearly 500 buildings worldwide, including dozens of recertification projects since it was founded in 2008.
CBRE explained the LEED recertification process, and importance of starting early, laying out all of the options for TFCC, who agreed that certifying to LEED v4, while retaining the prestigious Platinum-level award, would maintain the skyscraper’s reputation as a building managed to premier global standards and continue to attract world-class tenants. While TCFF’s property management and engineering team had done an excellent job following the requirements to maintain the certification, CBRE helped to clarify which systems and practices needed to be enhanced, updated or changed, and on what timeline. CBRE provided full LEED consulting services to ensure a successful outcome, including the training of property management staff and engineering teams on new LEED requirements and practices, as well as translating the requirements of the USGBC’s new system to the context of a super tall building in Asia. TFCC benefited from an international team of CBRE green building experts, with local market knowledge and language capability, coupled with global expertise, including a former USGBC staff member who worked on the development of LEED v4.
LEED v4 is still relatively new, and many of the requirements and new credits present challenges, particularly in Asia, and particularly in the context of a super tall building with 125 individual tenants. CBRE worked directly with the USGBC to make certain that unique and creative strategies employed for the recertification were in line with LEED requirements. In addition, where certain credits seemed unfeasible at first glance, CBRE was able to develop solutions that were practical for the client and acceptable to the USGBC. The efforts were a success. TAIPEI 101 became the first LEED v4 certified project of any type in the world to achieve 90 points and the word’s first LEED v4 Platinum super tall building.
CBRE’s expertise helped maintain the profile of TAIPEI 101 as a true leader in green buildings, not only in Taiwan but also on the global stage. Because TAIPEI 101 was the first LEED v4 Platinum project in Taiwan, the certification fee was waived under the USGBC’s LEED Earth program, adding further value to TFCC.
“Our knowledge of the recertification process and LEED v4 meant we were well positioned to guide TFCC in their desire to continue to demonstrate leadership on an international level by recertifying TAIPEI 101 using the new system. Leveraging the experience of our US based team that has completed close to 500 LEED certification projects, and collaborating with the CBRE Sustainability team in Asia, we accomplished a very challenging endeavor that resulted in an excellent outcome for the client.”
Gary Thomas, Global Director of Sustainability CBRE Global Energy and Sustainability (US)
Helping Shanghai Tower, an iconic skyscraper set the bar for building management
Tour First
Helping France's tallest tower stand taller.
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Teen Prescription Abuse Is Rising
By Lloyd Vries
December 19, 2005 / 9:23 AM / CBS/AP
Cigarette smoking is at its lowest level in a survey of teenagers and use of illicit drugs has been declining, but continuing high rates of abuse for prescription painkillers remain a worry, the government reported Monday.
"Prescription drugs are very powerful medicines that are effective when used properly and with a doctor's supervision," Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in issuing the agency's annual survey of drug use by children in grades eight, 10 and 12.
"Using these drugs without a prescription is dangerous. It's imperative that teens get this message," she said.
"I'm pleased to see the decreased drug use noted in this survey; however, the upward trend in prescription drug abuse is disturbing," said Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health. "We need to ensure that young people understand the very real risks of abusing any drug."
In the study, 9.5 percent of 12th-graders reported using the painkiller Vicodin and 5.5 percent reported using OxyContin in the past year. Long-term trends show a significant increase in the abuse of OxyContin from 2002 to 2005 among 12th-graders.
Also of concern is the significant increase in the use of sedatives and barbiturates among 12th-graders since 2001.
Overall, however, the report had good news, particularly about cigarette smoking.
It cited a 19 percent decline over the past four years in the use of any illegal drug in the month before the survey was done.
"Teens are getting the message. Drugs are harmful and will not only hurt their brains and bodies, but also damage their futures," said John P. Walters, director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy.
In the survey, teens were asked about use of drugs, tobacco and alcohol in their lifetime, in the month before the survey and in the year before the survey.
Lifetime use of cigarettes declined 2 percent among eighth-graders, decreased 1.7 percent among 10th-graders and declined 2.8 percent among 12th-graders, according to the Monitoring the Future survey done by the University of Michigan. The study surveyed 49,347 students in 402 public and private schools.
Smoking is a concern because cigarette use is often seen prior to use of other drugs.
Other findings included:
Use of alcohol during the year before the survey was down 2.7 percent among eighth-graders; down 1.5 percent among 10th-graders; and down 2.1 percent among 12th-graders.
Use of methamphetamine during their lives fell 1.2 percent among 10th-graders and fell 1.7 percent among 12th-graders.
Between 2001 and 2005, lifetime and last-year use of steroids declined for all grades.
Lifetime use of marijuana fell from 2001 to 2005 for all grades and past-month use declined for 8th- and 10th-graders.
By Randolph E. Schmid
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The Circus Stops By The Plaza
By Rome Neal
November 25, 2003 / 1:32 PM / CBS
The Big Apple Circus hits the Big Apple, also known as New York City, for its 26th edition and it's scheduled to stop by The Early Show's plaza with several of its acts to perform and share the history of the one-ring circus under the Big Top.
The Big Apple Circus started in Kent, England, 1974, where American entertainers and Big Apple Circus co-founders Paul Binder and Michael Christensen crafted a comedic juggling act that, over the next 18 months, they took to street corners all over Europe.
In 1976, after a season with Annie Fratellini's one-ring Nouveau Cirque de Paris that changed their lives, they returned home to America. One year later, they created what would become a world-renowned performing arts organization, which has entertained millions of people across the country.
For more information about The Big Apple Cirucs, go to Bigapplecircus.org
First published on November 25, 2003 / 1:32 PM
© 2003 CBS. All rights reserved.
McAleenan concerned border crisis just a "political issue" for some
Kevin McAleenan testified about conditions at the border one day after meeting with Norah O'Donnell in Texas
Are tensions with Iran a sign of war?
Tensions continue to rise with Iran after a U.S. warship shot down an Iranian drone. So is America headed to war in the Middle East? "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan joins "CBS Evening News" to explain.
Warship takes down Iranian drone
A U.S. warship took down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz. That's a key transit point for much of the world's oil supply. There are reports the Pentagon is sending 500 more troops to the region. David Martin reports.
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Anaplasmosis: Maine’s other tick-borne disease
Few people have heard of the disease, which infects white blood cells and can sometimes be fatal, but cases in Maine have increased tenfold over the past decade.
By Matt Hongoltz-HetlingStaff Writer
The patient, who had cancer, had come down with some flu-like symptoms.
It was 2008 and Tim Borelli, now a physician who specializes in infectious diseases at MaineGeneral Health Center in Augusta, was in his fellowship at the time.
Preventing tick-borne diseases
The Centers for Disease Control recommends these steps to prevent anaplasmosis and other tick-borne diseases:
• Avoid wooded and bushy areas with high grass and leaf litter.
• Walk in the center of trails.
• Use repellents that contain 20 to 30 percent DEET (N, N-diethyl-m-toluamide) on exposed skin and clothing for protection that lasts up to several hours. Always follow product instructions. Parents should apply this product to their children, avoiding hands, eyes and mouth.
• Use products that contain permethrin on clothing. Treat clothing and gear, such as boots, pants, socks and tents. It remains protective through several washings. Pre-treated clothing is available and remains protective for up to 70 washings.
• Other repellents registered by the Environmental Protection Agency may be found on the EPA’s website.
• Bathe or shower as soon as possible after coming indoors (preferably within two hours) to wash off and more easily find ticks that are crawling on you.
• Conduct a full-body tick check using a hand-held or full-length mirror to view all parts of your body upon return from tick-infested areas. Parents should check their children for ticks under the arms, in and around the ears, inside the navel, behind the knees, between the legs, around the waist and especially in their hair.
• Examine gear and pets. Ticks can ride into the home on clothing and pets, then attach to a person later, so carefully examine pets, coats and day packs.
• Tumble clothes in a dryer on high heat for an hour to kill remaining ticks. (Some research suggests that shorter drying times also might be effective, particularly if the clothing is not wet.)
Reprinted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases
“She had an illness,” he said. “It was kind of nonspecific.”
The patient’s symptoms ordinarily wouldn’t be cause for alarm, but because the woman was weakened by cancer, Borelli took them seriously.
“We tested her for all kinds of things,” he said. “We look for all possible causes. We check their lungs to make sure they don’t have pneumonia. We do physical exams. Do they have any rashes?”
Tests of her urine showed nothing. Her X-ray was clear. She had no skin infections or stomach problems.
“Then you have to start thinking about different possibilities, such as viral or tick-borne diseases,” Borelli said. “It was in a summer month. Tick-borne diseases are always things we need to consider. And we learned she had had some tick exposure.”
Some of the blood work showed that the woman’s blood didn’t have enough white blood cells in it. Tests also revealed a high level of liver enzymes in the blood, most commonly seen when the liver is damaged or inflamed.
Taken together, the two things pointed to anaplasmosis.
A tick bite usually spurs thoughts of Lyme disease, but a recent rise in anaplasmosis has caught the attention of epidemiologists in the state.
Many people shrug off the effects of anaplasmosis — symptoms can include fever, chills, fatigue, a headache or muscle pain — but in rare cases, especially for those with compromised immune systems, it can kill.
The diagnosis is confirmed most often with a serology test, which tests the blood for very specific antigens — in this case, antigens that the body produces only when anaplasmosis is present.
The woman’s diagnosis wouldn’t have been a problem for the majority of people. Most healthy people don’t even require treatment. A two-week course of doxycycline, the same antibiotic that is used to treat Lyme disease, usually kills the bacteria for those who do need treatment.
But Borelli’s patient’s system was already so weak that it was the final blow.
“She did succumb to that illness,” Borelli said. “That was a sad case.”
The anaplasmosis wasn’t considered the cause of death, he said, but it was a contributing factor.
“Your body’s already being attacked by that cancer,” he said. “The chemo squashes it some more. Then you get an infection that lowers it even further. Then you’re trying to fight that infection with a weakened immune system. That stress, they can’t overcome it sometimes.”
Anyone whose spleen has been removed, who has had a bone marrow transplant or undergone chemotherapy and then gets anaplasmosis is at risk, Borelli said.
About one in 200 people who are diagnosed with the disease die as a result of it, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
TICK ATTACKS LETTERMAN
About a year after Borelli lost a patient to anaplasmosis, David Letterman, host of “The Late Show” on CBS, told millions of viewers in late July 2009 that he was sick, but he didn’t tell them what he was suffering from, touching off widespread speculation about what it could be.
For a few days in a row, he took his temperature on air, which was more than 100 degrees one night and which topped out at 102.5. He joked that the thermometer reading meant someone won $100 in a pool among the show’s staffers.
That Thursday, he told the audience that he was recovering from anaplasmosis, which he said he probably contracted from a tick while spending the night in a treehouse with his son. He said it left him feeling worse than he had in the aftermath of heart bypass surgery.
Letterman’s experience taught many the name of the disease just when it was starting to become more common in the United States, mostly in the upper Midwest and Northeast regions.
First discovered in the country in the mid-1990s, the number of cases has increased steadily.
When Letterman got it in 2009, the Centers for Disease Control reported 1,163 cases nationally, the first time it had topped 1,000 cases. In 2010, nearly 1,800 cases were reported, more than 10 times the number from 1998.
That rapid increase has also been seen in Maine.
Ten years ago, the disease was virtually unheard of in the state, with just one diagnosed case in 2004.
Over the past decade though, the number has been climbing, especially in the past few years. In 2012, the number of cases doubled, from 26 to 52. In 2013, preliminary figures released by the Maine CDC in response to a request from the Morning Sentinel show 94 reported cases, a new high, according to state epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Sears.
In its 2012 annual report on infectious diseases, the Maine CDC said the rise highlights “the importance of awareness and prevention efforts around tickborne diseases in Maine.”
Borelli said that before anaplasmosis was recognized in the United State in the 1990s, most doctors assumed that people with the disease were actually suffering from ehrlichiosis, a very similar tickborne bacterial infection that is commonly carried by the Lone Star tick in the South.
“They’re almost identical, clinically,” he said.
Now, though, doctors recognize that the Northeast has its own unique strain of bacteria that distinguishes itself from ehrlichiosis, creating one more difference, however subtle, between the two regions.
Borelli said the increase in the number of reported cases in Maine is probably at least partially a result of the increase of awareness and improved diagnostics among health care professionals.
“We’re looking for it a little bit more,” he said. “As providers get more educated on tickborne diseases, they’re going to test for it more. The more you test for them, the more you find them.”
Another factor might be the last couple of mild winters, which have been easy on the ticks that carry the disease.
But he also said many people get anaplasmosis at the same time they get Lyme disease. Since the treatment for both is the same, many cases of anaplasmosis probably go unnoticed.
When a person with Lyme disease seems to be struggling with it more than would be expected, it is often a sign that they’ve been co-infected by both bacteria at the same time.
“We don’t get too excited about anaplasma with most people,” he said. “In immunoconfident people, the infection is generally self-limited in a period of time, usually about two weeks. There’s no evidence that it causes any kind of chronic infection. That’s the good news about this disease.”
The CDC recommends that people take steps to avoid contact with ticks by staying clear of wooded and bushy areas with high grass and leaf litter and by walking in the center of trails.
It also recommends the use of tick repellents that contain DEET or permethrin on skin, clothing and items such as tents.
As soon as possible after being outdoors, bathe or shower and conduct a full-body tick check, paying special attention to the underarm, in and around the ears, inside the navel, behind the knees, between the legs, around the waist and especially in the hair. Gear and pets should also be checked.
Ticks on clothing can be killed by putting the clothes in a dryer on high heat for up to an hour.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling — 861-9287 [email protected] Twitter: @hh_matt
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Dayforce
Why Dayforce
Ceridian HR / Payroll
Employee Support
HR/Payroll - Small Business
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Champion Home Builders creates affordable housing, jobs with new Kentucky plant
Benton, Kentucky, September 20, 2016 – Champion Home Builders unveiled its newest facility dedicated to the production of manufactured homes during a grand opening celebration in Benton, Kentucky, today. In attendance were Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin, State Senator Danny Carroll, State Representative Will Coursey, Rita Dotson, Mayor City of Benton, Judge/Executive Kevin Neal, company executives, manufacturing team members and local media.
"Champion Home Builders has provided quality homes for more than 60 years and has become a highly trusted brand in the process,” said Gov. Matt Bevin. “Kentucky is a great fit for this project and we are honored by Champion's investment. We welcome Champion Home Builders to the Bluegrass State and look forward to partnering with them in their continued success.”
After Governor Bevin spoke, he and Champion CEO, Keith Anderson cut the ceremonial ribbon to mark the official launch of the site.
Ribbon cutting with Governor Matt Bevin
“At Champion, we’re driven to produce the highest-quality affordable housing in part because we understand the special feeling our customers have when they first move into their new home,” said Anderson. “This is a day we’ll cherish for years because we’re experiencing that same feeling here today in Benton.”
Keith Anderson, Champion CEO, credited the strong craftsmanship available in the Benton-area workforce as a chief reason for selecting the location. The Benton plant will be dedicated to manufacturing. The company’s Dresden, Tennessee, site (which also includes production facilities) will manage business responsibilities such as sales, service and accounting, as well as comprehensive employee training programs.
“The heart and soul of today’s celebration is really about what this new location means for our customers: better access to affordable housing, remarkable Champion value and increased convenience,” Anderson said. “We’re thrilled for them and look forward to what our collective futures hold.”
About Champion Home Builders, Inc.
Founded in 1953, Champion specializes in a wide variety of manufactured, modular and park model homes, as well as modular buildings for the multi-family, hospitality, senior and workforce housing sectors. Champion started as a single manufacturing facility in rural Michigan and grew to offer factory-built housing and other structures throughout the U.S., U.K. and western Canada. The company operates 28 manufacturing facilities throughout North America and Europe, and employs more than 4,200 people worldwide.
For more information on Champion Home Builders, visit www.ChampionHomes.com.
Paul Perugi
Director, Marketing Services
Champion Home Builders, Inc.
248-614-8275 pperugi@championhomes.com
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Are Taylor Swift & Selena Gomez Still Best Friends?
Abeni Tinubu
Taylor Swift is no stranger to star-studded music video releases. Who could forget when she released “Bad Blood” back in 2014, which featured no less than 18 celebrities and won the GRAMMY award for Video of the Year. Just this morning, Swift shattered her own personal record with the release of “You Need To Calm Down”, which also featured a bevy of celebs. Noticeably missing from the video was Swift’s long-time bestie, Selena Gomez. Gomez’s absence led fans to start questioning whether the two are still best friends today. Let’s take a look at the facts.
Selena Gomez & Taylor Swift | Photo by Christopher Polk/TAS18/Getty Images
The friendship between Gomez and Swift stretches all the way back to 2006 when the pair began to be spotted together around town. Though there are three years between them, it was clear immediately that the two had a very close bond. We can actually thank the Jonas Brothers for the friendship between the two. According to Gomez, the pair clicked when she was dating Nick Jonas and Swift was simultaneously dating Joe Jonas.
“We actually dated the Jonas brothers together! It was hysterical. It was amazing because she was the girl with the big curly hair and all the bracelets and the cowboy boots. And I was definitely up-and-coming, and we just clicked. It was the best thing we got out of those relationships” the “I Can’t Get Enough” singer confessed.
I’m grateful for those I surround myself with. And this woman right here happens to be one of my favorites. Love our tradition and I love you.
A post shared by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) on May 20, 2018 at 7:10pm PDT
But, this wasn’t the first or last time that Gomez gushed about Swift. Last year, the singer was asked on Instagram live how Swift was doing and she had nothing but sweet things to say about her bestie. “Taylor’s awesome. I love her. She’s amazing. I just talked to her today. She’s literally like my big sister. I tell her everything. She’s so smart it freaks me out.” The Dead Don’t Die actress said fondly.
Reputation tour
And Gomez hasn’t been the only one to show her love publicly. Swift also has an affinity for showing support for her bestie. During the Reputation Tour, the pair continued their tradition of surprising the audience and performing a duet together. Singing Gomez’s hit song “Hands To Myself” the pair wowed the crowd. Following the performance, Swift shared the sweetest message about Gomez.
To the person I could call at any time of day, who has been there no matter what… you absolutely KILLED IT tonight and everyone was so excited to see you. I love you, and 60,000 people at the Rose Bowl loved you too. @selenagomez : @Polkimaging @GettyEntertainment
A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on May 20, 2018 at 2:15am PDT
“To the person I could call at any time of day, who has been there no matter what… you absolutely KILLED IT tonight and everyone was so excited to see you. I love you, and 60,000 people at the Rose Bowl loved you too, Selena Gomez” the ME! singer wrote in a heartfelt caption.
If we needed any further proof that these two performers are still friends, we need look no further than Swift’s new song “ME!” which was the first single released from her upcoming album, Lover. For months, Swift teased fans by dropping easter egg clues about her next single title. But what fans may have missed is that Gomez dropped the original clue way back in December of 2017! When Gomez wished Swift a happy birthday, she casually dropped the name of the song in the caption and even stylized it correctly.
I’m glad you were born. You write all the thoughts some aren’t able to articulate. (ME!) Thank you for giving a voice to this world that is authentic and inspiring. I wish some knew how big your heart actually is.. it’s fierce, bold and freaking wild with light. I’m glad you protect that. Love you @taylorswift
A post shared by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) on Dec 13, 2017 at 1:24pm PST
“I’m glad you were born. You write all the thoughts some aren’t able to articulate. (ME!) Thank you for giving a voice to this world that is authentic and inspiring. I wish some knew how big your heart actually is… it’s fierce, bold and freaking wild with light. I’m glad you protect that. Love you Taylor Swift” the 26-year old wrote. This obviously serves as evidence that the pair are still very close if they still talk about their music in great detail. Especially given how secretive Swift is known to be about her music.
And the friendship between Gomez and Swift has continued into present day. At the top of the year, Swift posted an image of her and Gomez ringing in the new year together laughing and enjoying wine. As the pair lives on opposite coasts (Gomez currently lives in the O.C., whilst Swift oscillates between New York and Nashville) it’s great to see that they still make the effort to get together in person and spend time with one another.
20wineteen
A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Jan 10, 2019 at 3:04pm PST
Though the two women are fiercely private about their personal and social lives, it’s clear that they still maintain a close friendship today. For everyone who is constantly making up rumors that these two singers are no longer best friends, we have one thing to say to you, “You Need To Calm Down.”
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Showbiz Cheat Sheet
Home / Money & Career /
Staples Bleeds Red, Will Board Up 225 Stores By 2015
Staples (NASDAQ:SPLS) released its fourth-quarter earnings Thursday and reported some significant news: it will board up 225 stores in North America by 2015. Staples’s announcement isn’t entirely surprising, considering the Framingham, Massachusetts-based company has been suffering slowing sales as of late thanks to consumers visiting e-retailers and mass market chains to satisfy their office supply needs. However, the shut down figure is still steep, and represents up to 12 percent of Staples’s 1,846 stores in the U.S. and Canada.
According to Reuters, Staples said Thursday that it expects sales to continue declining in its current quarter, and that’s after the company’s sales dropped 10.6 percent to $5.87 billion in the quarter that ended February 1. That reflects Staples’s fourth straight quarter of decline. Same-store sales in North America also fell 7 percent, while net income from continuing operations rose to $212 million, or 33 cents per share, from $90 million, or 14 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Shares of Staples sat down 15.07 percent at $11.38 after its earnings release Thursday, but sat up 1.31 percent at $11.63, as the close of trading the following Monday.
It is significant that Staples’s results continue to disappoint, because the company is the largest U.S. office supplies retailer, and its current financial situation evidences the reality that traditional retailers are simply not realizing the success they once enjoyed on account of customers no longer coming into brick-and-mortar stores to buy office supplies when they can easily order them online, or grab them when they are at other mass merchants like Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE:WMT) or Target (NYSE:TGT). Staples’s biggest rival Office Depot (NYSE:ODP) is also in the red, and Reuters reports that the company said last week that it expected sales to continue falling in 2014 after it reported its own respective quarterly loss.
Now, Staples is being forced to adapt its business to have a greater focus on business technologies, breakroom supplies, and copy and print services like paper and toner, according to Reuters. The company is also working to fortify its online offerings, hoping that if shoppers want to shop online, they’ll do it at Staples.com, rather than e-commerce giants like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). According to Tech Crunch, Staples now sells 500,000 products online, compared to 100,000 a year earlier. Last year, it also acquired Runa, a specialist in e-commerce personalisation technology, to help it improve its customers’ experience online.
Now, it is clear that Staples will need to put even greater of a focus on its online services, now that it is closing many of its brick-and-mortar stores. Chief Executive Ronald Sargent evidenced a recognition during his post-earnings call last week that Staples needs to have more of an online presence if it wants to sustain its business, and he maintained Thursday, “Our customers are using less office supplies, they’re shopping less often in our stores and more online, and their focus on value has made the marketplace even more competitive.”
In going along with its new plan to focus on technology and the items it can offer customers, Tech Crunch reports that Staples now sells devices such as 3D printers and other gadgets, and it also has developed its own Staples Connect hub as part of a partnership with smart home tech company, Zonoff. This device lets consumers connect “smart” products in their home and control them via one convenient app.
Staples executives hope that the company’s new tech products, its online presence, and its aforementioned store closings will help it offset the bleeding it has suffered in recent quarters. The company is also sticking to a multi-year reduction plan that Reuters highlighted Thursday that executives hope will generate annualized pretax cost savings of about $500 million by 2015. Those savings, coupled with the ones Staples will realize from the store cuts, is what the company is now concentrating on to keep its head above water.
Not So Easy Route for the Office Depot/Max Merger
Staples Rears Its Head: Plans to Match Amazon’s Prices
Will Staples Top the Whisper Number This Quarter?
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G-7 Leaders Condemn Russia In Scathing Statement
Mar. 2, 2014, 7:44 PM
REUTERS/Yves Herman
The leaders of the G-7 countries — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States — released a scathing statement Sunday night condemning Russia's "clear violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine."
The joint statement also said that the leaders have agreed to suspend participation in the G-8 summit scheduled in June in Sochi, Russia.
Here's the full statement:
We, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and the President of the European Council and President of the European Commission, join together today to condemn the Russian Federation's clear violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, in contravention of Russia's obligations under the UN Charter and its 1997 basing agreement with Ukraine. We call on Russia to address any ongoing security or human rights concerns that it has with Ukraine through direct negotiations, and/or via international observation or mediation under the auspices of the UN or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. We stand ready to assist with these efforts.
We also call on all parties concerned to behave with the greatest extent of self-restraint and responsibility, and to decrease the tensions.
We note that Russia's actions in Ukraine also contravene the principles and values on which the G-7 and the G-8 operate. As such, we have decided for the time being to suspend our participation in activities associated with the preparation of the scheduled G-8 Summit in Sochi in June, until the environment comes back where the G-8 is able to have meaningful discussion.
We are united in supporting Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and its right to choose its own future. We commit ourselves to support Ukraine in its efforts to restore unity, stability, and political and economic health to the country. To that end, we will support Ukraine's work with the International Monetary Fund to negotiate a new program and to implement needed reforms. IMF support will be critical in unlocking additional assistance from the World Bank, other international financial institutions, the EU, and bilateral sources.
The statement comes a day after Russia's parliament approved the use of military force in Ukraine, a move the West has said is a violation of sovereignty and a breach of international law.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday of a "stunning, willful choice" to invade another country. Kerry is traveling to Kiev on Tuesday, where he will meet with the leaders of Ukraine's new government.
More: White House Ukraine
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Germany to Push Aid to Greece
The Daily Reckoning
The currencies, led by the resurgent euro ( EUR), are stronger across the board versus the dollar, this morning. A German newspaper reported that Germany was considering dropping its push for early restructuring of Greek debt before they would facilitate aid for Greece. This news has lifted a heavy weight from the euro's shoulders, and the single unit is up to 1.4410… I would have to think that when the boys and girls return from the Hamptons, the US traders would tend to like this news too, and the euro could see a further push higher today.
I would like to think that this Greek debt thing can all be put to bed…but I'm not naïve… And I didn't just fall off the turnip truck! Their debt problems have become a huge albatross hanging on the neck of the euro… And some people/analysts believe this will eventually be the end of the euro…or that we end up with a "northern euro" and a "southern euro"…
All I'll say about that is that in 2005 - when the euro suffered "no votes" and the US had an amnesty tax - these same analysts said the euro would collapse… It didn't… In 2008, when the financial meltdown brought about a huge dollar rally, these same analysts again said the euro would collapse… In fact, one analyst - with whom I traveled on the FX University Tours - told the audiences that not only would the euro collapse, but that the dollar was going to go on a multi-year rally… Neither one happened… And then in January of 2010, when Greece's problems first appeared on the scene, the euro got sold, and those same analysts called for a collapse of the euro again… It didn't happen… Of course if they just keep crying wolf, eventually they might be right, but… When will that be? HA!
While I think the euro will suffer periods of deep-rooted selling, it's like I've described to you before… It's ugly… But what's uglier? Greece, Ireland and Portugal… Or California, Michigan and Illinois? And in the end, that's what it's all about… Who's uglier?
The New Zealand dollar/kiwi ( NZD) has really caught some strong wind in its sails for the past week. In fact, overnight, kiwi hit a post-float high of 0.8254 (right now at 0.8240)… Think about that for a minute, folks… This country has experienced some devastating earthquakes, and just like I said when it all happened, the kiwis are strong people and are likely to rebound quickly, along with the currency… And now, here we are at the end of May, and the currency just hit an all-time high! Remember last week when I told you that the kiwi hadn't traded at 81-cents since before the financial meltdown…. Well, it's stronger than that now!
The thing that really kicked kiwi higher overnight was the printing of a very strong rebound of Business Confidence in May…
New Zealand's kissin' cousin across the Tasman, Australia, is seeing some mixed trading, with the Aussie dollar ( AUD) stronger, but being held back by rumors that Australia will print negative growth for the second quarter… After the floods, cyclones, and other things the Aussies have had to deal with in the past year, one would expect that a battening down of the hatches at home would occur, and GDP would take a temporary hit, which is exactly what I see here…
Yesterday, Canada printed a very strong follow-through for their economy… Following up on the fourth quarter 3.1% growth, first quarter GDP printed at 3.9%… I would think that Bank of Canada Governor Carney, would back off his concern that the strength of the Canadian dollar/loonie ( CAD) wasn't a problem for the economy… Or maybe I'm just "wishin', and hopin', and thinkin' and prayin'" that he would… But for some strange reason, something keeps telling me that Carney isn't going to use the strong loonie to his advantage. Why would he? He was educated here and at Oxford… Same old teachings to economists that become central bankers… Let's see… There's another one on the tip of my tongue… Oh yeah! Big Ben Bernanke!
So… In the end, the loonie has everything going for it right now… A strong economy… Oil over $100 (actually at $102 this morning)… And their other raw materials rising in price. Yes, all the things that scream "rate hikes" … Maybe, eventually, Carney will see the writing on the wall! Until then, the loonie should remain underpinned by the strong data…
OH! And the Bank of Canada (BOC) meets this morning to discuss rates… With Carney's current frame of mind on the strength of the loonie, I doubt that we'll see a rate hike today…
And then in Brazil… Where just a couple of weeks ago it looked like the government's attempts to stem the gains in the real ( BRL) were beginning to work… The real goes on a 3-day rally that has the currency back below 1.60…
And as I look at the screens, gold and silver are posting positive numbers, this morning… Silver continues to work its way back in the good graces of metals investors, and gold just carries on despite all the calls for the opposite to happen to the shiny metal… Not from me, of course! But from people that don't "get it" about gold…
And then here in the US we just finished a week where we saw below-forecast economic growth, and a weaker-than-expected consumer spending number for the first quarter… And foreclosures that are really gearing up again. Then we'll end this week with a Jobs Jamboree… The downside risks for jobs growth will hang over the markets this week, like the Sword of Damocles… Until we get to Friday, however, when we have some other data that won't be dollar-friendly…
First, today, we'll see the color of the March S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Index, which will most likely show further rot on the vine for home prices… And with each disappointing data print, the whispering campaign for further stimulus that began last week (but that Pfennig readers knew about for months) will get a little louder…
And with a quick look to the "bond page" on my Bloomie, I see that 10-year Treasury yields continue to slip (3.10%)… Well with US yields grinding lower, the rate differentials - which I talked about as coming back as a fundamental for currencies - just work against the dollar…
The "other country with a huge debt burden" (Japan) saw Moody's put their credit rating on review for a possible downgrade… The rating agency, Fitch, had announced the same thing last Friday… I really don't think that these shots across Japan's bow by the ratings agencies have much to do with the yen's ability to remain strong or not… Basically, yen ( JPY) is weaker today because of the rise in risk appetite… Which means that dollars and yen get sold…
Then there was this… From USA Today…
Two years have passed since the Great Recession ended, but the US recovery is weak. Previously, deep US recessions were followed by robust rebounds, but that's not happening this time. A survey by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 55% of Americans think the US economy is poor. "We're two years into a recovery, and everybody's yelling, 'Are we there yet?'" says Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner. "You should be putting the recession behind you and talking about where growth is coming from. Instead, we're still dealing with residual problems from the recession."
Yes… This is what I've been talking about… And I chuckle about the "official end of the recession being June 9, 2009… Yeah, tell that to the over 20% of Americans still looking for jobs!
And I can't forget to explain something I talked about in Friday's "First Quarter US GDP Sends the Dollar to the Woodshed"… I was really remiss in not talking about the difference between the US's GDP and Sweden's… What I was thinking and then forgot to type, was that the US economy had received trillions of dollars of stimulus, while Sweden had not received any… Which is why I was more impressed with Sweden's GDP than ours… Hope that helps explain my thought..
To recap… There are reports that the Germans will give Greece aid without requiring a restructuring of the debt first… This news has the euro rallying and dragging all the other currencies along for the rally versus the dollar. Kiwi hit a post-float high overnight, and Aussie dollars remain strong in spite of the rumors of a disappointing quarter for growth. The Bank of Canada meets today, but no rate hike is expected, as Governor Carney is not happy with the loonie strength right now.
for The Daily Reckoning
Germany to Push Aid to Greece originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning provides over half a million subscribers with literary economic perspective, global market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas.
Read more posts on The Daily Reckoning »
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Read more about Mark Gordon
Keith Senglaub, a top executive with one of the largest family entertainment companies in the world, might have the toughest gig in show business — and he never gets on stage.
Senglaub is a senior vice president and CFO of Feld Entertainment, which has a global production headquarters in Ellenton, in northeast Manatee County. The company has more than 550 full-time employees in the region, and at least 30 million people attend one of Feld's 5,000 live entertainment shows every year. That's hundreds of millions a year in revenues.
Senglaub, 56, has to deliver up-to-date financial metrics to other senior leaders and decision makers at Feld, which on any given weekend has 35 performances worldwide, each its own traveling city. Senglaub also has to maintain a forward attack plan at the ready for any acquisition opportunity Feld has to buy another entertainment operation, where millions of dollars are at stake.
Senglaub's success at Feld, and a key takeaway for financial executives at any large enterprise, can mostly be traced to a combination of his approach on three Ps: process, people and planning. Senglaub makes a point to keep the finance department nimble, even with the sometimes-overwhelming size of the business.
“You have to be ready for something to change all the time, and you have to be very adaptive,” says Senglaub, who has been with Feld's finances department since 2004 and CFO since 2009. “In this business, the show must go on no matter what.”
Process has shaped a chunk of Senglaub's career. That goes back to the late 1980s, when he was CFO for U.S. News & World Report magazine. “It wasn't performing at peak financial efficiency,” says Senglaub.
There weren't one or two large weaknesses at the magazine, Senglaub says, more like several small ones. First he changed the reporting structures and deadlines for audits and other metrics, to add a level of consistency and expectations. Next came training. Then he created a culture where everyone in the department was held accountable for underperforming.
“You have to set new standards,” he says, “and guide people on how to get there.”
After several other financial management jobs around metro Washington, D.C., in 2004 Senglaub, through networking, came up for a job at Feld, which has a corporate office in Vienna, Va. Feld also had some numbers issues back then. Reports weren't coming in on time, and audits, Senglaub says, were a “bit messy.”
“It had some financial challenges,” he adds. “The company was growing, but it was poised to grow much faster.”
Senglaub, now based in Manatee County, reset some goals and reporting structures at Feld. He also hired more people for his department, which has about 125 employees and includes IT and several other functions.
A crucial step Senglaub took at Feld was to expand the tour financial manager program, where every Feld performance has someone from the finance department there, in person on the road. This allows for on-the-ground decisions about spending, for any number of calamities in live entertainment. Even better: The traveling tour managers, usually by the Monday after the weekend performances, files a complete profit and loss report of the show for top executives.
Senglaub says the work, and the constant pace of change at Feld, is a motivator, not at an obstacle. “I spend a lot of time looking at how we will grow,” he says. “I spend very little time looking in my rearview mirror about how we did.”
Keith Senglaub
Company: Feld Entertainment
Title: CFO
Education: Accounting degree from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y.; M.B.A. in corporate finance from Virginia Tech.
Experience: Started career with Pricewaterhouse in 1981, in accounting. Worked on media and publishing accounts, and was part of the audit team at Gannett Co. behind the debut of USA Today. Also held senior financial roles with publishing companies, magazines and AARP.
Follow Mark Gordon on Twitter @markigordon
Click here to see more Business Observer news
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India Carney Sings a Whitney Houston Song in 'The Voice' Top 10 & Proves That She's Not Afraid To Take Risks
By Jessica Molinari
Taking on a Whitney Houston song is no easy feat for any performer — but India Carney has proved that she is not afraid to take risks. The Voice contestant took on "Run to You" and totally nailed it. But the triumph for her wasn't that she was singing a Whitney Houston song, it was that she was singing a Whitney Houston song that she previously sang at a Broadway audition where she was told "no." (Kudos to her for even auditioning for The Lion King — that takes lots of guts.) Performing this song was a major fear of Carney's, but one that she tackled head on. That sort of willingness to take chances is what's going to take Carney far in this competition, and we can't wait to see what she chooses to battle next.
Being told "no" is a tough thing to get used to, but something that artists hear far too often. It's the musicians that choose to work harder to hear that "yes" that are the ones to make it in this industry — and Carney is definitely one of those artists. The 21-year-old could've chosen any sang in the world to sing for her Top 10 performance, but she chose one that has turned against her in the past. We're at a point in the competition where that kind of move could totally backfire. But thankfully for Carney, it was the best move she could've made. She seriously channeled the late Whitney Houston while she was onstage, but brought her own unique style to the song. Her performance was simple, emotional, and absolutely beautiful — something we have come to expect from the Team Christina contestant.
Carney has wowed the coaches week after week, and it's this type of move that has helped her win them over. She has sung Christina Aguilera and now Whitney Houston so far in this competition — two divas who's songs aren't to be touched because of how amazing they are. What's next, Beyonce? But Carney has sung the unsingable and continues to nail it. As long as Carney continues to push the boundaries in this competition, she's sure to stay in the game for a while.
Image: Trae Patton/NBC
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Community Foundation News
Community Foundation Welcomes Two New Team Members
The Charlottesville Area Community Foundation is pleased to announce the addition of two new team members. Aiyana Marcus joined the Foundation as Programs Manager on January 7, and Latibe Seidou began her role as Executive Assistant on January 14.
Marcus brings significant experience in the nonprofit sector to her new role as Programs Manager. A Certified Nonprofit Professional, she previously worked for nonprofit organizations and as Program Officer for the Dayton Foundation in Dayton, Ohio. At the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, Marcus will be responsible for managing large grant programs, including the Strengthening Systems and Shaping Futures programs. A Cum Laude graduate of The Ohio State University, she has also been a playwright, producer, director, choreographer and dancer in a series of original plays and dance productions exploring poverty, race relations, single motherhood and the cultural experiences of black peoples.
“Aiyana has been planning to relocate to Charlottesville and has already built relationships with local community and nonprofit leaders, who are excited for her to join our community,” says Director of Programs Eboni Bugg. “She has a strong background in grassroots community work, trust-building and nonprofit collaboration, and she’s been a leader in community conversations about equity.”
Latibe Seidou most recently worked in a similar role at the Focused Ultrasound Foundation in Charlottesville, before joining the Foundation team as Executive Assistant. Throughout her almost 20-year career, Seidou has served in executive administration roles in Charlottesville, Washington DC, Northern Virginia and New Jersey. Fluent in French, she holds degrees from the University of Benin, Togo.
“I am delighted to welcome Latibe to the Community Foundation — she brings a wealth of experience and talent to our organization with her excellent, organizational, administrative and event-planning skills,” says Brennan Gould, President and CEO. “Her past colleagues describe her as highly professional, personable and extremely trustworthy.”
This spring, the Community Foundation will be recruiting a Director of Advancement and a Communications Manager. Updates about these opportunities will be available on the Foundation’s website.
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Caithness Chamber of Commerce
Gold Premier Partner
Bronze Premier Partner
Silver Premier Partner
Solid majority of Scots businesses still favour staying in the EU
Published 17 Feb 2016
A new poll of Scottish Chambers of Commerce members appears to show a slight weakening of business enthusiasm towards EU membership within the last five months, though a solid majority of Scottish businesses would still vote for the UK to stay in the 28-nation group.
According to the new poll, 68% of the Scottish-based Chambers members who responded said that they would vote for Britain to remain a member “if the poll were held tomorrow”. This represents a slight decline from the 74% declaring for staying in the previous survey, conducted in September 2015.
Support for leaving the EU has risen more markedly, from 13.5% to 20%, or one in five of those polled. Meanwhile the number of those who are still undecided has decreased from 12% to 10%.
On the controversial issue of the timing of the referendum, the survey also showed that Scottish respondents have a preference for delaying the poll until September 2016 (25%), with slighty more wishing for the vote to be deferred still further until next year (26%). However 20% of respondents would be content for the poll to be held in June 2016, a date which some Scottish political parties have argued follows too quickly after campaigning for the May 2016 Scottish Parliamentary elections. Only 4.3% of those who stated a preference want the vote to take place in July 2016.
The poll, which asked respondents “What does the EU referendum mean for your business?” also gives a revealing snapshot of current Scottish business attitudes towards the EU, and of Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempts to wrest the much-anticipated “reforms” out of his counterparts on the European continent.
When asked to rate the importance of the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU to their business, 40.1% of businesses indicated that it was “very important”, while 20.2% stated it was “important”. Conversely, 10.6% stated that it was not important and 6.9% regarded it as “not at all important”.
Areas of potential negative impact for Scottish business if the UK were to vote to leave, were ranked as follows: overall growth strategy (40.2%), company profitability (40.2%) and import/supply chain strategy (36.3%).
Out of the four objectives outline outlined by the Prime Minister as priorities for his renegotiation of the UK’s membership of the European Union, the three that respondents thought most likely to have a positive impact were: "Boosting competitiveness by setting a target for reducing the ‘burden’ of red tape" (63.0%), "exempting Britain from ever-closer union", “enhancing national parliaments’ ability to block EU legislation" (43.5%) and "ensuring that steps to further financial union cannot be imposed on non- Eurozone countries, such as the UK" (38.7%).
Scottish businesses seem relatively less concerned by the issue of restricting migrants’ benefits as an issue that could potentially affect their business. Just under a quarter (24.8%) state that an agreement to restrict benefits would have a positive impact, while 54.1% say that it would have no impact, and only 11.3% indicated that it would have a negative impact.
However despite all the political emphasis currently being placed on the details of David Cameron’s attempted renegotiation, the majority of businesses (64.7%) stated that it was “unlikely” that the outcome of the Prime Minister’s efforts would affect their voting intentions in either direction.
The survey also reveals little evidence so far that the Conservative UK Government’s decision to hold an in-out referendum on EU membership would in itself be a damaging distraction in the eyes of Scottish business. The majority of respondents reported that the referendum debate so far has had “no impact” on the following key aspects of their business: business orders and sales (85.7%); ability to recruit new staff (91.2%); ability to attract investment (86.8%) or additions to the total costs incurred by their business e.g. overheads, staff costs etc. (86.9%).
Liz Cameron, chief executive of Scottish Chambers of Commerce said: “There is no doubt that the EU referendum debate is being taken very seriously by the Scottish business community and we will continue to watch for shifts in sentiment. We hope that businesses will continue to study the issues and weigh very carefully the implications of staying in or getting out on job security and future trading opportunities.”
She added: “Growing Scotland’s exporting opportunities is a priority for business, irrespective of the outcome of the EU referendum. Scotland’s exports to the EU fell by 7.8% to £11.6 billion, according to the most recent export figures but this still accounts for 42% of the international market for our goods and services. Scottish businesses will be keen to hear from both sides of the EU referendum debate as to how their competing visions would deliver more exporting opportunities and enable increased growth and competitiveness.”
The resulting charts from the survey can be found here: European Union Referendum Survey Result Analysis PDF
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Phil Mickelson, in full Philip Alfred Mickelson, byname Lefty, (born June 16, 1970, San Diego, California, U.S.), American professional golfer who became one of the most dominant players on the Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) Tour in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Phil Mickelson, 2007. © Photogolfer/Shutterstock.com
Mickelson took to golf at an extremely young age, hitting his first golf balls at just age 18 months. He learned the basics of the sport by mirroring his father’s swing, which led the naturally right-handed Phil to adopt the left-handed stroke that would later lead to his nickname, “Lefty.” He won dozens of San Diego-area tournaments as a junior golfer, and he captured an unprecedented three consecutive national Junior Player of the Year awards (1986, 1987, 1988). His golfing prowess earned him a full scholarship to Arizona State University (ASU), where he established a reputation as one of the greatest American amateur golfers of all time. Mickelson was named first-team All-American in each of his four years at ASU, and he won three National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) individual championships (1989, 1990, 1992). In 1990 he won the U.S. Amateur Championship, and the following year he won his first PGA Tour event, the Northern Telecom Open, becoming only the fourth amateur to win a PGA tournament.
Mickelson joined the PGA Tour in 1992. His first professional win came in 1993 at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego, where he had played golf matches in high school. Mickelson won at least one tournament in each of the following three years, and he finished the 1996 PGA season with his first top-10 world ranking (seventh). He rose to second in the rankings in 2001, finishing behind Tiger Woods. The two golfers developed a rivalry that came to dominate the sport throughout the decade as the outgoing Mickelson and the more-reserved Woods divided golf fans with their disparate personalities and approaches to the game. Despite his great success on the Tour, Mickelson gained a reputation as the best player in the world to have never won a major tournament (the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open [Open Championship], or the PGA Championship), a distinction made more burdensome by his finishing second or third in six majors between 1999 and 2003.
Mickelson, PhilPhil Mickelson, 2010. Chuck Burton/AP
He finally broke through with a major victory in 2004 when he won the Masters by one stroke over Ernie Els. His hot play continued through the rest of the season, and he finished in the top six in the remainder of the 2004 majors. Mickelson waited just one year for a second major win, the 2005 PGA Championship, which he followed with a victory in the very next major, the 2006 Masters. In April 2010 Mickelson won his third green jacket as Masters champion, placing himself into a tie with four others for the third highest career total in the tournament’s history.
Phil Mickelson participating in the 2009 U.S. Open in Farmingdale, New York. © David Leindecker/Shutterstock.com
Mickelson fell off slightly after his third Masters victory, winning just one tournament each year from 2010 to 2012. In 2013 he made up a five-shot deficit on the final day of the British Open to capture his first victory in that tournament. He subsequently struggled and did not win another PGA Tour event until 2018. The following year he claimed his 45th career PGA title with his victory at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am. During this time he also competed in the Ryder Cup and was on the winning team in 1999, 2008, and 2016.
Adam Augustyn The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Article Title: Phil Mickelson
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
URL: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phil-Mickelson
Access Date: July 18, 2019
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By: Dr. Christiane Paney PhD on June 26th, 2018
Shifting from Post-Concussion Syndrome to Post-Concussion Symptoms
What comes to mind when you think of the word “syndrome?” Many commonly known syndromes are often associated with genetic factors or medical diseases that are often lifelong or have lasting effects. Because we know that many post-concussion symptoms are treatable, Cognitive FX agrees with the recent change in terminology and diagnosis that replaced post-concussion syndrome with the more accurate title of post-concussion symptoms.
What was post-concussion syndrome?
According to the latest International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), post-concussion syndrome included “subjective physical complaints (i.e. Headache, dizziness), cognitive, emotional, and behavioral changes. These disturbances can be chronic, permanent, or late emerging” (King, Crawford, Wenden, Moss, & Wade, 1995). More specifically, post-concussion syndrome referred to a cluster of problems that emerge or worsen after receiving a concussion, with symptoms lasting longer than three months.
These post-concussion symptoms could include:
Sound sensitivity
Light (brightness) sensitivity
Forgetfulness/memory impairment
Poor concentration
Blurred vision/double vision
Feeling more depressed or emotional
Feeling more frustrated or impatient
Some people report struggling with speech, word finding, and processing speed as well.
Dealing with these symptoms long-term presents many challenges to daily living. Add to that the discouragement of hearing them termed as a syndrome? This identification has left many patients feeling hopeless.
Why the shift from syndrome to symptoms?
This shift in language for diagnosis and treatment for the TBI community comes from Congressman Bill Pascrell. At the Brain Injury Awareness Day on Capitol Hill in March 2018, he discussed a new way of seeing post-concussion symptoms.
Until the last decade, little was understood about how to support or treat those suffering after a concussion or TBI. It was believed that, once injured, the brain’s ability to recover was limited at best. However, recent, revolutionary developments in concussion treatment have shown the brain’s remarkable ability to heal itself with the proper mode of treatment. As the brain heals, symptoms are significantly improved and eased, proving that these post-concussion symptoms are that: symptoms, not a syndrome.
Our research has clinically shown significant improvement in symptoms associated with post-concussion effects (Wing, Tucker, Fong, & Allen, 2017). Our patients self-report an average improvement from symptoms of 60% in one week. At CFX, we are finding these improvements both objectively with biomarkers in our imaging protocol and subjectively with patient symptom reports. Other medical providers and clinicians are also finding that both improvement and recovery are possible, even when a patient has dealt with post-concussion symptoms for many years.
Because of these advancements in concussion research and treatment, we know that long-term concussion symptoms do not need to be presented as a chronic or permanent syndrome. Because improvement in these symptoms can be—and, in many cases, already have been—achieved, symptoms should be presented to affected individuals as symptoms that can be treated. Concussion and TBI survivors need to know that their symptoms may not be enduring. Their symptoms need not be accepted as a permanent part of life.
How will the shift from post-concussion syndrome to post-concussion symptoms impact the community?
Seeing a concussion as a syndrome is a dead-end diagnosis that limits a patient’s ability to find treatment and recovery, making the recovery journey seem like an uphill battle. We see many patients who were taught to believe that, because they had “post-concussion syndrome,” their symptoms were permanent with no hope for improvement. This shift in terminology will not only alter the way that patients see their own capability, but also the way that doctors and medical providers treat and support patients throughout recovery, as they recognize that recovery and improvements are not hopeless.
If you suspect that you or someone you love may have post-concussion symptoms, schedule a complimentary consultation with Cognitive FX or sign up for a quick overview of Cognitive FX to learn more about our treatment and how we help TBI survivors find relief from post-concussion symptoms.
King, N.S., Crawford, S., Wenden, F.J., Moss, N.E.G., Wade, D.T. (1995). The Rivermead Post Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire: A measure of symptoms commonly experienced after head injury and its reliability. Journal of Neurology, 242, 587. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00868811
Wing B.H., Tucker B.J., Fong A.K., Allen M.D. (2017). Developing the standard of care for post-concussion treatment: Neuroimaging-guided rehabilitation of neurovascular coupling. The Open Neuroimaging Journal, 11, 58-71.
About Dr. Christiane Paney PhD
Dr. Christiane Paney is a licensed Neuropsychologist who earned her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Azusa Pacific University following undergraduate studies and extensive research at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Her neuropsychological expertise spans inpatient, outpatient, and rehabilitative settings. She works with children, adolescents, and adults with emphasis on athletic populations and the role of medical and genetic factors in neuropsychological presentations. After completing her clinical internship at Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, her interest in cutting-edge treatments in imaging led her to Cognitive FX. At Cognitive FX, Dr. Paney enjoys playing an active role in treatment and watching patients thrive in their recovery.
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George Eliot Hospital
George Elliot Hospital (GEH) and University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire Trust (UHCW)
Plans for a single A&E and Maternity Unit for Coventry and Warwickshire have not been discussed or agreed as part of the STP planning process
John Siddle
Accident and Emergency at the George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton.
Following a series of articles concerning Coventry and Warwickshire's Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP), in which we said that the A&E Department, Maternity and Childrens' Unit at GEH were set to close and move to UHCW the STP board has confirmed that plans for a single A&E and Maternity Unit for Coventry and Warwickshire have not been discussed or agreed as part of the STP planning process, that no decisions have been made for the future of A & E or Maternity Services at the George Eliot Hospital and that no changes will be made to any service without full engagement with public and staff.
Further, UHCW state: “The STP plans are not about hospitals closing. It is about designing services differently with the resources that we have and focusing on preventing physical and mental ill health. The joint vision across health and social care is to work together to deliver high quality care which supports our communities to live well, stay independent and enjoy life.”
University Hospital Coventry
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Smith Tower
Landmark Seattle Tower Sold for Second Time in Three Years
What is arguably Seattle’s most historic office tower has just added another page to its history.
West 05 February 2015 15:33
CBRE Unit Acquires Historic Seattle Office Tower by Foreclosure
Smith Tower, an iconic 42-story office building in Seattle, and the adjacent Florence Building, a 6,000-square-foot retail-and-mixed-use building, have been acquired by CBRE Capital Partners following a foreclosure.
West 09 April 2012 12:11
JV to Open 530 MSF Industrial Property in OR
The half-million-square-foot warehouse and beverage distribution facility is set to include office space, with possibility to add an additional 224,000 square feet.
Entergy HQ Commands $15M in Jackson, MS
The deal marks the second time CBRE has arranged the sale of the Class A building in the past 15 months.
PwC-Anchored Office Tower Tops Out in St. Louis
The Class A building is part of the second phase of Ballpark Village. The Cordish Cos. and the St. Louis Cardinals are in charge of the $260 million mixed-use project.
Keystone Arranges $36M for San Diego County Flex Buildings
The four buildings add to buyer RAF Pacifica Group’s portfolio. Almost all purchases were renovated within the past two years and are fully occupied.
CPE Poll: Investment Influences
We want to know which of the following factors is most likely to influence investment during the second half of 2019.
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Vivid and exotic opera in Crawley
Published: 11:30 Thursday 07 September 2017
The Russian State Opera returns to Crawley as part of a UK wide tour of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Tosca.
Spokeswoman Julia Ignatowa promises perfect tragic operas, with music by Giacomo Puccini, sung in Italian with English surtitles
“No opera can match the tragedy and sorrow of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
“Set in Japan at the turn of the century, Madama Butterfly is among the most colourful and exotic of all operas, and from its theme of noble self-sacrifice spring melodies that grip your heart. It tells the story of a doomed love affair between an American naval officer and his young Japanese bride, whose self-sacrifice and defiance of her family lead to heartbreak and tragedy.
“The premiere of this production, with its beautiful set and costumes, intensifies the emotion in an already heart-breaking opera.”
Julia added: “Puccini’s Tosca is a melodrama where love and politics collide and murder takes place at the highest level. Originally set in Rome in 1800s, it tells the story of two idealistic lovers, Tosca and Cavaradossi. Their trust is set to be tested by Scarpia, the ruthless police officer who has no boundaries. Scarpia has sentenced Cavaradossi to death. The officer is prepared to let Cavaradossi go if Tosca is willing to spend the night with Scarpia…
“If you’ve never tried opera before, you will love this full orchestra experience with brand new settings and fantastic costumes, exquisite singing and those wonderful tunes that the audience will still be humming to themselves on their way home.”
Opera performances of Madama Butterfly and Tosca are at The Hawth on September 12 and 13.
Julia added: “With extensive national tours that get our productions seen the length and breadth of the country, we are able to offer national audiences in various theatres an unforgettable experience at a fraction of the price, all without sacrificing quality.
“No experience is needed to enjoy these classics. Our sets and costume designs, as well as the informative programmes, make the productions very accessible and most of all, enjoyable. For opera, English surtitles make it easy to follow the story as you listen to the performance sung in its original language.”
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Home > All news > Sudan police raid hostage sites, refugees in custody
Sudan police raid hostage sites, refugees in custody
April 20 - 2018 PORT SUDAN
Sudan police stop human traffickers transporting Eritrean refugees in eastern Sudan (file photo)
Police in eastern Sudan have raided places where 25 illegal immigrants, most of them from Eritrea, were being held hostage by a human trafficking gang. The immigrants have been taken into custody.
The human trafficking gangs in Port Sudan, capital of Red Sea state, held 25 hostages including 18 girls in apartments in the city.
Two of the hostages were injured as they were trying to jump from the balcony of the apartment where they had been held, on Wednesday evening. They have been taken to the emergency section of the Port Sudan hospital.
Local journalist Osman Hashim told Radio Dabanga that the gang had distributed the hostages to a number of houses and apartments. “On Tuesday and Wednesday police raided the detention places, managed to free the hostages, and put them into custody.
“They have not yet found the gang’s members.”
The hostages had crossed the border and fled into Sudan with the help of other human traffickers. They were reportedly preparing to smuggle the refugees into Egypt when the human trafficking gang discovered them, held them hostage, and forced them to pay large sums of money for their release.
Human trafficking networks
Human trafficking gangs in Sudan are known to take refugees hostage. In January, police in Kassala freed 95 foreign hostages from human traffickers. Two Eritrean refugees were killed in a gunfight between human traffickers and a security force in Kassala in October last year.
In February this year, African intelligence agencies announced a cooperation plan with the African Union (AU) and the United Nations to curb illegal immigration. The agencies plan to dismantle human trafficking networks which are known to smuggle Africans through Sudan and Libya to Europe.
According to the UN Refugee agency (UNHCR), Sudan is one of the main transit countries for eastern Africans who want to travel to Europe by sea. In recent years large funding by the European Commission to the Sudanese government, implemented under the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (see box below), addressed “the root causes of irregular migration in the country” and “improve migration management processes”.
The USA-based activist organisation Enough Project warned in April 2017 that EU’s financial support to Sudan in mitigating and combating illegal migration would assist the RSF – which the EU denied.
Funds for Sudan
In April 2016, the EU said it would provide about €100 million (an estimated $110 million) to address irregular migration and improve living conditions of refugees and host communities in eastern Sudan. €40 million (about $42.5 million) from the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa is earmarked for a programme to better manage migration in the region.
On 15 December, the European Commission approved a package of 11 new actions under the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa to improve stability and address the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement in the Horn of Africa region. The €170 million ($177.28 million) package includes a project in three cross-border areas of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan. For Sudan specifically, three projects will address instability and forced displacement through improved access to primary education (with €22 million), strengthening of livelihoods in southern and eastern regions (€9 million) and enhancing nutrition of 400,000 women and children in northeastern Sudan (€8 million).
RSF militia captures 66 migrants in North Darfur
Commander of Sudan’s main militia wants international recognition
April 9 - 2018
Man killed by RSF militiamen in eastern Sudan
Israel scraps new migrant resettlement deal with UN
March 5 - 2018
Human traffickers arrested in Sudan capital, 177 foreigners freed
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Opinion: Political money game may look different
By Jeremy AlfordLapolitics.com
Feb 11, 2019 at 6:01 PM Feb 12, 2019 at 5:34 PM
While Democratic boosters in Louisiana are eager to double down on the candidacy of Gov. John Bel Edwards, Republican donors and conservative-minded associations are taking a wait-and-see approach. For now.
At the same time, political observers are beginning to wonder just how far a dollar can be stretched by modern campaigns. Sure, money still drives narratives and voters, but uncertainty about the coming cycle is keeping some cash locked away.
“We’re advising our folks to keep their powder dry,” said one political operative in a conversation that’s being mirrored by the movers on the GOP campaigns and the shakers on the right side of the spectrum. “Money needs to be sent to (Congressman Ralph) Abraham, because even if he loses, he’s still going to be on the Hill. But I’m not sure donors who play on that side should be maxing out in the primary. Any big decisions should probably wait until the runoff.”
From the perspective of pinching pennies, the ability of businessman Eddie Rispone, the other major GOP contender, to self-fund may be distracting donors from being as helpful as they otherwise would be. Moreover, Rispone has yet to prove himself in a forum or even a paid commercial. Abraham, while a known political brand, is likewise unproven on a statewide level.
GOP boosters are still trying to figure out the convoluted regional politics of this developing race. Abraham, of course, has to galvanize north Louisiana to be competitive and lock down his own 5th Congressional District, which has a minority population just under 35 percent. Rispone will do well in his native Baton Rouge and probably the River Parishes, leaving two critical battlegrounds for this pair of Republican contenders, assuming they remain the only two.
Reporting exclusively for LaPolitics.com, student journalists Sheridan Wall and Lauren Heffker of the LSU Manship School News Service penned a piece that asked a single question about the race: How much will money matter?
"Edwards’ campaign announced it has raised a total of $8.4 million so far, while Rispone pledged to use $5 million of his personal cash and has raised an additional $554,000," the student journalists reported. "Abraham has not yet reported donations or spending for this race."
Wall and Heffker likewise asked political pros what they thought:
— "(The) value of a dollar diminishes a little bit as you go. I think money matters, but I think it matters more up to a point," said James Carville, a Democratic political consultant, who also tagged $7.5 million as the threshold where political dollars begin to diminish.
— "It’s been a while since north Louisiana has won a statewide race of this importance. Those are a lot of challenges, and it takes a ton of money to do that. I don’t know how much that is, but probably more than (Abraham has) got," said Bob Mann, a professor at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication.
— "So it’s really most critical for Ralph Abraham to show fundraising capacity and energy and ability, as opposed to Rispone, and the governor’s already shown it. The onus is on Abraham," said Baton Rouge consultant Roy Fletcher.
— "Maybe people like Rispone look at (President Donald) Trump and say, ‘Hey, if Donald Trump can do it, I can do it too,’ but Trump had a following," Mann added.
— "(Edwards) is going to have a tough fight, there’s no doubt about that," Carville said.
For now, the gubernatorial campaign has a grassroots feel to it, which should change sooner than later.
Edwards dropped the first digital spots of the 2019 campaign last week, a pair of 15- and 30-second spots touting the state’s economic status during his time in office. "We’re moving in the right direction," the governor says in the video, "but we’ve still got work to do." A campaign spokesperson said that the "statewide" spot is the first in a series dubbed "Better Off."
But what about the other candidates? Right now there are none. Insiders close to former Congressman John Fleming say that he will be making a final decision on the race "very soon" and state Sen. Sharon Hewitt, remains on lists of maybe-candidates.
For the announced contenders, that’s just fine. After all, there’s only so much money to go around, unless you’re willing to spend some of your own.
-- Jeremy Alford is publisher-editor of LaPolitics.com and LaPolitics Weekly. Email him at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
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The sex-positive saga of Laci Green
Professor writes article defending ‘Asian romantic preference’—and no one is here for it
Siobhan Ball— July 18
Illustration by Tiffany Pai
Rae Votta—
“When I first started online, it was so unbelievably vile,” says YouTuber Laci Green over a late-June brunch of chicken sausage scrambles in her Berkeley, California, neighborhood. “I couldn’t believe the stuff people sent me. There was a point where it got so creepy I had to move apartments. People were taking pictures of me without my knowledge, and just sending it to me online and being creepy. There’s been a lot of bullshit online, but these days I just don’t give a shit. I honestly don’t give a shit. I don’t care. Like, I’m ready to die.”
Green is perched across from me at Venus, a California seasonal eatery, in a white lace top and black stretch pants. Her bangs frame her boxy glasses. She talks with such stark conviction that it’s easy to find yourself nodding along, ready to walk out the door and start a nonprofit that very day. It’s that charisma that makes Green such an effective voice online, calling out hypocrisy and bringing controversial topics to her audience with little hesitation, even if she’s under attack every time she posts something. Over the last few years, she’s become one of the most prominent women on YouTube and a leader in the larger sex-positive movement.
Breeze through Green’s most recent videos, and you’ll quickly see the barrage of trolls she deals with on a daily basis. “If a nightmare of mine ever came to life to haunt my existence, it would be this horrible bitch,” one commenter wrote on a recent video. Others toss around terms like “feminazi cunt” and drop sexist non sequiturs like, “Damn she has huge tits.”
“That’s really what brought me on YouTube: a pursuit of justice.”
In 2012, she received death threats accompanied by images of her home—in response to an older video in which she used the word “tranny.” Green deleted the video, apologized, and called herself “18 and ignorant” at the time of its filming. The backlash made her take a step back from social media and had other prominent YouTubers like John Green (no relation) up in arms over how women are treated and threatened on the platform.
The experience of women online hasn’t changed much since then. Simply existing as a woman on the internet in the past year has led to threats of violence and death. Gamergate garnered national attention for threats against women like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian who dared talk about sexism. But Green and her contemporaries have not backed down in their pursuit of a more women-friendly web.
Of course, Green’s “ready to die” stance is hyperbole, punctuated with pointed laughter. The 26-year-old doesn’t plan to go anywhere anytime soon; if anything, she’s just getting started. But as a highly visible feministand sex-positive vlogger on perhaps the worst platform for women—at least in terms of threats, violence, and all-around misogyny—Green has learned how to roll with the punches.
Green didn’t originally intend to be one of the faces of feminism. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, she was raised Mormon, and she spent most of her childhood in Portland, Oregon, before her family moved to Sacramento, California. There, she finally began questioning the religious doctrines she’d been raised to believe but had no outlet to discuss or explore her feelings.
“I went online and started making videos about my gripes” at age 18, she recalls. “My first channel was very teen angst. There was a bit of rabble-rousing, and I was talking about things that really affected me, like sexism and homophobia in the church. I was coming into myself intellectually and realizing how many things did not add up. I was feeling so frustrated, feeling like I was on another planet. Some of the stuff was so mind-blowing to me. How do you justify this? I was extremely angry about it.”
Green first ran with the disaffected atheist crowd on YouTube, on the channel gogreen18. It’s since been purged but for one video, “Why Atheists Care About YOUR Religion,” a monologue underscored with dramatic music outlining her views. Through her vlogging there, she found a community, albeit a fleeting one.
“Now that community largely happens to be an MRA [men’s rights activists] community,” she said. “Funny how that works out. In the atheist community online, there’s a lot of really smart people there, for sure, but a lot of them ended up going into the weird MRA land.”
Within a year she’d moved to her namesake channel, LaciGreen, reflecting her shift from a frustrated ex-Mormon to a more generally frustrated American woman—in short, a feminist. “That’s really what brought me on YouTube: a pursuit of justice,” she says. “At the time, my context was religious, but then it became broader, realizing, ‘Oh shit, religion is not the only place you’re going to find vile misogyny.’ You’re going to find it everywhere.”
She filmed at her parents’ house, and while they were aware of her content, they didn’t approve and were “kind of hostile” about her work.
“We fought about it all the time,” she says. “There was this moment when I was featured by YouTube, and it got a million views in a couple days. Then my family paid attention. That was kind of a turning point.”
“I know it’s weird, because I’m a YouTuber, but I don’t particularly like being on camera.”
With the increased attention, her extended family’s approach to her YouTube channel is to “pretend it’s not there.”
“My parents just kind of turned a blind eye to it,” she says. “There’s a tacit disapproval.”
It’s not hard to understand why, given that the Mormons preached abstinence until marriage. She was raised to believe that while boys were off on missions, she should be waiting for her greater purpose of motherhood and wifedom. By contrast, her most-viewed videos are “Dirty Vag!nas”—a myth-busting guide to feminine hygiene—and “Laci’s Guide to BUTT SEX”—which is exactly what it sounds like.
Her videos are frank and bubbly, edited in the jump-cut style defining the vlogger set. She’s the older sister you wish you had, cutting out all the small talk and getting down to the real deal. In the same way that YouTube is increasingly being used to complement lessons in the classroom, Green’s videos fill a void in sex education for the teens who need it most. Now more than 1.5 million subscribers follow her discussions on topics like consent, relationships, and dress codes.
“I’d really like to speak at high schools, but in most states it would not be easy,” she says, noting that most states require if you talk about sex you must mention you can be harmed from it. “You have to not only emphasize abstinence, but also the dangers of sex. That’s very fear-based, and that’s not what I am about.”
Green’s growing audience has put her in the spotlight, and it’s not always a comfortable position. It’s made her feel responsible, as when her open letter to Sam Pepper—the YouTuber who touched women without their consentin the name of “pranks” and subsequently faced allegations of sexual misconduct by fellow YouTubers—rallied the YouTube community to call out abuse and impropriety. Green says during that time, as people informed her about Pepper’s conduct, she was mid-tour and trying to help do research for each woman to figure out the best course of action.
“It’s a mess, but I am happy to be that person,” she says. “It’s just very stressful.”
Green spent years working as a crisis counselor for a state-funded legal clinic for domestic and sexual violence victims in Oakland, California. But when faced with a different kind of crisis, she felt like she wasn’t sure exactly how to help everyone who needed her. “I was like, ‘I don’t know how to help you; I don’t know what our police force is like,’” she recalls. “I felt like a helpless vessel, where you could deposit all of your troubles and fucked-up stuff, but I don’t know what to do.”
Pepper’s wasn’t the only incident of sexual misconduct to rock the YouTube community in 2014 and 2015. YouTube musician Tom Milsom sexually coerced a 15-year-old fan when he was 22; his former bandmate Alex Day allegedly sexually assaulted women, including his ex-girlfriend. As the list of alleged abusers grew, Green never shied away from lending an ear, speaking out, and helping creators and fans alike figure out how to cope.
In the aftermath, Green thinks there’s been an increase in feminist rhetoric and support, but she doesn’t think the culture has radically changed, at least not yet. “I think we have a lot more male allies on board, and that helps because, unfortunately, we are in a sexist culture that tells us that women are shrill and freak out about nothing, and hearing it from a guy is more validating for a lot of those people,” she said. “Fucked up, but that is the truth.”
But, she says, the YouTube community’s focus on feminism and sex positivity is part of a greater cultural shift, of which Green is happy to be even a small part.
“I think 2014 was the year of the reemergence of online feminism,” she said. In years past, luminaries of the digital teenscape had skirted the issue, but Taylor Swift embraced the term in a 2014 Guardian interview. Beyoncé stood in front of the word midway through her 2014 VMA performance, causing a flurry of viral images and general swooning. While 82 percent of Americans still don’t consider themselves feminists, more than a third do say they believe in “social, political, legal, and economic equality of the sexes” and “equality for women,” according to a Vox poll.
Thanks to people like Green, the online millennial set can easily find a world of digital influencers waiting to help them learn more. “[Feminism] really started to take over the Internet,” she says. “There’s been a huge online shift, and that’s been the result of a lot of different people being fearless about it. I do think my audience has helped to accelerate that conversation.”
Green’s prominence brought her directly to a larger audience. In 2014, Green launched Braless, an MTV (other) production that uses pop culture as an entryway to explaining feminism for the tween and millennial set. Now in its fourth season, it’s not so different from what Green had been achieving on her own channel, but it boasts the cachet and reach of MTV’s already established brand.
When she’s not in front of the camera, Green still commands audiences at colleges and universities as a speaker, helping to change how people think about sex and sexuality. She does the same thing as a consultant for health organizations within corporations. For Green, these activities are about changing the culture and pushing for “substantive, across-the-board change” that pushes feminist initiatives in business and in education. In some ways, she’s more comfortable in that realm her work.
“I know it’s weird, because I’m a YouTuber, but I don’t particularly like being on camera,” she says. “I’m down to do it to start the conversation and stuff, but I don’t know; I like behind-the-scenes stuff more. In the past year or so, I’ve made fewer videos. I feel less stressed out by the work I do offline.”
“I felt like a helpless vessel, where you could deposit all of your troubles and fucked-up stuff, but I don’t know what to do.”
Outside of her professional life, Green is a hiker and a self-described “foodie,” even if she hates the term. But there’s very little time to relax, as she’s interested in finding more avenues to affect change, be it via academia or by publishing a book. For now, she feels like working on the issues in a real and intimate way is more effective than earning another degree.
It’s all part of a larger, ongoing fight for social progress. And as for the haters?
She laughs. “I see it as like, ‘Well, I must be doing something right, because you’re pissed off.’”
A version of this story originally appeared in the July 19, 2015 issue of the Kernel.
A former YouTube reporter for the Daily Dot, Rae Votta has more than a decade of experience in the digital and entertainment industries. Her work has appeared on AOL, Huffington Post, Out Magazine, Logo, VH1, Current TV, Billboard, and NYMag. She joined Netflix in 2016.
Laci Green Sex Women Of Youtube Youtube
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British troops target Saddam henchmen
British forces are carrying out "surgical" strikes on Saddam Hussein loyalists on the outskirts of Basra
Targets included facilities used by the Special Security Organisation and Fedayeen fighters.
Last night members of the 7th Armoured Brigade raided the local headquarters of Saddam's Baath Party, capturing a party official.
A military source said: "We want to separate the political and military elements of the leadership."
The original battle plan was for British forces to surround Basra, Iraq's second biggest city, but not attack it.
It had been hoped that they would be welcomed into the city by a grateful population.
But hundreds of hard-core fighters appear to have been inserted into the city and were using it as a base to launch attacks on British troops.
They have come under heavy fire from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades and in one exchange the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, one of four Desert Rats battle groups, had to retreat 10 miles.
There are thought to have been around a a dozen artillery exchanges with the Iraqi forces over the last 24 hours.
There was also fierce fighting to the west of Basra in the town of Al Zubayr.
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17 percent of women and girls in Texas live in poverty, Dallas study finds
Filed under Social Justice at Feb 2017
Tasha Tsiaperas, Staff Writer
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Women on average still make less than men and struggle to pay for child care, and about 17 percent of all women and girls in Texas live in poverty.
The statistics are even worse for women of color. For example, Hispanic women are more likely to live in poverty than white women, according to a report on women's economic issues released Thursday by the Dallas Women's Foundation. The study delved into gender inequality in child care, higher education, housing and health insurance.
"Some of the statistics are really a bummer," said Roslyn Dawson Thompson, president and chief executive officer of the foundation. "But the reality is, there are things we can do and that we must do."
She said cities can implement ordinances to protect low-income renters who use federal housing vouchers, state legislators could fund full-day pre-kindergarten programs and school districts could create dual enrollment courses so that high school students can earn college credits.
The economic playing field between genders is equal during childhood. Children live in poverty at the rates of their parents. But once they reach adulthood and live on their own, women are significantly more likely to live in poverty than men, the 2017 Economic Issues for Women in Texas study showed.
"Boys and girls start the same, and then the cliff hits," Thompson said.
The reasons are many: men typically make more money than women, women are more likely to temporarily leave the workforce after they have children, and women tend to work in lower-paid careers, such as the service industry or home healthcare. About 63 percent of workers earning minimum wage or less are women.
The study was conducted by the Center for Public Policy Priorities and supported by Texas Woman's University. The report analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data and federal and state agency data, including from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
Though incomes increase at higher education levels, women make less at each level than men. And in some cases, a higher-educated woman makes less than a less-educated man. For example, men without a high school diploma on average make more than women who graduated from high school.
Among those who have received a bachelor's degree or graduate degree, men on average make $25,000 more than women.
"The wealth accumulation that $30,000 difference over a lifetime is extraordinary," Thompson said.
It's important to understand the economic differences between men and women to fix the problem, said Frances Deviney, a senior research associate for the Center for Public Policy Priorities.
"We're not trying to pit a battle between men and women. We're trying to make sure there's equity," she said.
Racial wage gap is widest it has been in nearly 4 decades, study says
But the differences are worse for women of color. Only 25 percent of Hispanic women between 25 and 34 in Texas have some level of higher education, compared with 34 percent of African-American women, 55 percent of white women and 72 percent of Asian women.
And though many African-American women who finished high school go to college, many don't graduate. Deviney said studies show that's because many don't see other faces like theirs at school and feel like they don't belong.
SOURCE: Dallas Women's Foundation
Rishun Beasley, a single mother of four, is nearly finished with her bachelor's degree at Texas Woman's University. Though there aren't many other black students in her classes, she was encouraged by an instructor.
"Just to see an African-American instructor made me feel comfortable," she said.
Nationally, 30 percent of community college students and 15 percent of four-year college students are parents. Of those, 43 percent are single mothers, the study says.
And with the rising cost of child care, many women aren't able to go to school.
"If I didn't have child care, I would have to leave school," Beasley said.
The cost of higher education in Texas has risen 40 percent in 16 years. And the average annual cost of child care in Texas is between $7,000 and $9,000, higher than the average yearly college tuition fees, the study says.
And women in poverty spend 30 percent of their income on child care, cutting into what they can spend on quality housing or education, Deviney said.
Though it would be easy to just call the statistics part of "women's issues," the economic impact of the disparity affects every community, said Thompson.
That's why the Dallas Women's Foundation is calling on legislators to consider policies that can boost women out of poverty.
Carine Feyten, chancellor and president of Texas Woman's University, speaks on a panel as the Dallas Women's Foundation presents its Economic Issues for Women in Texas 2017 study. (Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer)
But sometimes it's hard to persuade male legislators who simply have a different perspective because of their own experiences, said Carine Feyten, chancellor and president of Texas Woman's University.
"We need more women to step up and share these perspectives," she said.
Watch: Former Mesquite officer testifies in retrial for shooting unarmed man in back
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Texas writers' book on Timothy Leary gets the TV treatment with Woody Harrelson to star
Taking you back to
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Bill seeks protection for illegal Pakistanis in US
From the NewspaperJanuary 16, 2011
WASHINGTON, Jan 16: The Temporary Protection Status Bill for illegal Pakistani immigrants in the United States has been moved in the US Congress.
AL Green, the Democratic Party congressman from Texas, tabled the TPS Bill earlier this week.
The US constitution allows temporary protection status to illegal immigrants from the countries that suffer a natural disaster like floods or an earthquake. Last year, unprecedented floods devastated various parts of Pakistan, leaving over 1,600 people dead and affecting millions.
After the passage of the bill in Congress, illegal Pakistani immigrants would be able to enjoy temporary residence status in the United States, while the bill will also benefit students and those staying in the US on visit visas.
An identical bill was presented before the previous Congress in December by a panel of eight members. But it expired after the mid-term elections brought in a new Congress. Last year, the United States provided temporary protection status to thousands of Haitians living here after an earthquake killed an estimated 250,000 people and sparked a humanitarian crisis.
Meanwhile, Pakistanis demonstrated outside the White House and the UN headquarters in New York in favour of the bill. Similar demonstrations were held in Boston and Chicago.
NAB summons ex-PM Abbasi in LNG case
Seven of a family killed in roof collapse in Sheikhupura
US says it’s ‘incredibly supportive’ of any move to boost Pak-India ties
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Soldier Missing From Korean War Identified (Larkin)
Release No: 12-016 April 20, 2012
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
Army Cpl. James N. Larkin, 34, of Kirkwood, Mo., will be buried April 24, in St. Louis, Mo. On Feb. 11, 1951, Larkin and his unit known as “Support Force 21,” from the 2nd Infantry Division, were attacked by Chinese forces near Changbong-ni, South Korea. The unit withdrew to a more defensible position and suffered many losses. Following the battle, Larkin was listed as missing in action.
After the 1953 armistice, surviving prisoners of war who returned during “Operation Big Switch” said Larkin had died in April 1951, from battle wounds and malnutrition while captive in the Chinese operated POW camp known as “Bean Camp” located in North Korea. His remains were not returned during Operation Glory in 1954.
Between 1991 and 1994, North Korea gave the United States 208 boxes of remains believed to contain the remains of 200-400 U.S. servicemen. North Korean documents, turned over with some of the boxes, indicated that some of the human remains were recovered from Suan County, where Larkin was held as a POW.
Scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used circumstantial evidence, as well as dental comparisons, radiographs, and mitochondrial DNA – which matched that of Larkin’s nephews—in the identification of the remains.
For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1420.
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Opinion: We Need To Hit ISIS With Everything We Have, Starting With TOW® And Javelin Missiles
Opinion Politics
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Opinion: Are we dead or just in Kuwait?
The following is an op-ed article written by James Mason, a spokesman for the Raytheon Company, a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, security, and civil markets throughout the world.
You have no doubt seen the horrific videos members of ISIS, or so-called “Islamic State” in Iraq and Syria have posted. They are a demon’s resume of crimes against men, women and children. I’ll forego going into detail as much of their litany of horrors has been shared extensively in other venues.
The question we must face is, are we going to sit back and allow these crimes to go unpunished? Are we going to help secure a better future for the people of Iraq and Syria? Are we going to pave a way to a better world by hitting the enemy — and only the enemy — with Raytheon-built, precision munitions? For the obvious benefit of mankind, of course.
Our TVs show a nightly procession of ISIS terrorists utilizing American-made vehicles and weapons to oppress the good people of Syria and Iraq. Given the state of repair on some vehicles, their new, neglectful owners seem determined to park these vehicles in a tow zone. That’s exactly what they’ll get when they meet the tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided (TOW® weapon system, with the multimission TOW 2A, TOW 2B Aero and TOW Bunker Buster missiles. TOW® is the premier long-range, heavy assault, precision anti-armor, anti-fortification and anti-amphibious landing weapon system used throughout the world today.
The ISIS propagandists, in their magazine, “Dabiq,” make mention of goods acquired “under the shadow of the spear,” a reference to the Koran and a cute euphemism for looted items stolen from enemy soldiers. They won’t think it’s so cute when they find themselves under the shadow of the Javelin, the world’s most versatile and lethal one-man-portable, anti-tank, guided munition and surveillance weapon system. Javelin has been adopted by international armed forces around the world. It is currently fielded with the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps, but it has also been approved for foreign military sales to 12 nations.
The snakes in ISIS should come to fear the retribution that will come from the United States military and her allies. You will recall seeing that they captured an airfield in eastern Syria recently, along with numerous intact aircraft. If they happen to get one of these Russki rust buckets in the air, they’ll find themselves face-to-face with a snake of our own, the AIM-9 Sidewinder. It is the most advanced infrared-tracking, short-range air-to-air missile in the world. Sidewinder is configured for easy installation on a wide range of modern aircraft, including the F-15, F-16, F/A-18 and F-4 fighters, A-4, A-6 and AV-8B attack aircraft, and the AH-1 helicopter. Allied aircraft configured for Sidewinders include the Tornado, the JA-37 Viggen and the Sea Harrier.
It is imperative that Congress authorize our president to act in whatever manner he sees fit to execute this war against ISIS, using whatever means and weapons designed, built and tested in the good old US of A by us, the good folks at Raytheon.
Won’t somebody think of the children?
Related Topics:JavelinRaytheonTerrorismTOWWar
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Great names of British art for £10,000 or less
The Old Master Drawings and British Drawings and Watercolours sale on 7 December offers new collectors the opportunity to acquire works by historic artists, as junior specialist Annabel Kishor reveals
Around £10,000
A study of weather and light by John Ruskin
John Ruskin, H.R.W.S. (London 1819-1900), The Sun Setting through Clouds. Pencil and watercolour, heightened with bodycolour, 5⅜ x 8⅞ in (13.8 x 22.5 cm). Estimate: £8,000-12,000. This lot is offered in Old Master Drawings and British Drawings and Watercolours on 7 December 2016 at Christie’s in London, South Kensington
John Ruskin was a great friend and champion of J. M. W. Turner, and this drawing clearly shows Turner’s influence on his own artistic practice. Like Turner, he was fascinated by the effects of weather and light, and this rapid sketch perfectly captures the shifting light of a sunset over water. Inscribed with colour notes to remind him of the atmosphere, it has the freshness and immediacy of a much more modern work.
Around £5,000
The 18th century’s greatest portraitists working on paper
Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A. (Bristol, Portrait Head of Mrs Jens Wolff, in profile to the right, Wearing a Turban. Pencil, black and red chalk, 7⅜ x 5¾ in (18.7 x 14.6 cm). Estimate: £4,000-6,000. This lot is offered in Old Master Drawings and British Drawings and Watercolours on 7 December 2016 at Christie’s in London, South Kensington
Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. (1723-1792), 'The Young Student', After Guercino. Pen and brown ink on buff paper, 9¾ x 7½ in (24.8 x 19.1 cm). Estimate: £4,000-6,000. This lot is offered in Old Master Drawings and British Drawings and Watercolours on 7 December 2016 at Christie’s in London, South Kensington
Sir Thomas Lawrence and Sir Joshua Reynolds were perhaps the greatest portraitists of the 18th century, and their paintings of well-known sitters command huge prices. Lawrence’s intimate sketch (above) is of Mrs Isabella Wolff, the wife of the Danish ambassador to London, and rumoured to be Lawrence’s lover. She was one of his favourite sitters, and there are eight known drawings of her, largely in museums — this particular drawing relates to a masterful portrait now in the Art Institute of Chicago.
Sir Joshua Reynolds was the first President of the Royal Academy, but even the greatest artists learnt by copying earlier masters. This early study after a drawing by Guercino, now in the Ashmolean Museum, gives a fascinating insight into Reynolds’ training and early development.
An Edward Lear drawing of the Nile
Edward Lear (London 1812-1888 San Remo, View Near El Kab, Wadi Hallal, Egypt. Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour, 3⅜ x 9⅞ in (8.6 x 25.1 cm). Estimate: £3,000-5,000. This lot is offered in Old Master Drawings and British Drawings and Watercolours on 7 December 2016 at Christie’s in London, South Kensington
Edward Lear, perhaps most familiar as a writer of nonsense poetry, was first and foremost an artist, and spent much of his life travelling around the Mediterranean and northern Africa. The drawings he made there are dated, and often timed, giving us a kind of visual diary of his travels, and were often worked up later into grand compositions.
While his great oil painting of The Forest of Bavella will be offered in the Old Masters Evening Sale (estimate £600,000-800,000), there are several of his light-filled topographical watercolours on offer here for around £4,000 or less. The work shown above, and lots 228 and 229 all date from an 1867 expedition along the Nile, while lots 222 to 227 all date from his time in Italy in the 1840s.
The lighter side of Sir Edwin Landseer
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, R.A. (London, Five studies of members of the Bedford family, including the Duchess of Bedford holding a trowel (illustrated); Cosmo Russell; Wriothesley Russell; a Study of Big Isabel; and an illustrated letter to Romilly. Two pen and brown ink, one with blind stamp 'Invergarry', watermark 'Joseph Coles/1833', two pencil and black chalk, heightened with white on buff paper, one black chalk on stone grey paper, one pencil, 14 x 9¾ in (35.6 x 24.7 cm); and smaller, (6). Estimate: £2,000-3,000. This lot is offered in Old Master Drawings and British Drawings and Watercolours on 7 December 2016 at Christie’s in London, South Kensington
Landseer is best known for his paintings of animals and the Scottish Highlands, none more so than The Monarch of the Glen, seen at Christie’s during the summer, and now, it is hoped, going to the National Gallery of Scotland. However, he also made witty and intimate drawings of his friends in high society, particularly those with whom he spent so much time in the Highlands.
Favourite among these was the Duchess of Bedford, Landseer’s great friend and rumoured lover, who first introduced him to the Highlands and their country sports. Two drawings of her are included in lot 135, which also includes sketches of her children. Lot 136 depicts two further members of Landseer’s Scottish circle, while lot 137 features two drawings of the Munro of Novar, the great collector of Turner, about to swim in the sea at Brighton, and as Landseer imagined him as an infant.
William Payne watercolours in immaculate condition
William Payne, O.W.S. (London 1760-1833), Figures in a Storm on the Shore, a Castle Beyond. Pencil and watercolour, 8½ x 12 in (21.6 x 30.5 cm). Estimate: £1,200-1,800. This lot is offered in Old Master Drawings and British Drawings and Watercolours on 7 December 2016 at Christie’s in London, South Kensington
Condition is crucial to drawings, and the sale features a group of 10 watercolours by William Payne which has been kept in a folio and never hung on a wall, thus retaining an incredible freshness and vibrancy. Payne travelled through the British Isles, and several of these drawings are of recognisable places, while others are capriccio landscapes, constructed solely in the artist’s mind.
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Edwin henry landseer
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News . Feature Stories . Museum premiere of Kasumi film at Transformer Station Jan. 31, Feb. 1
Museum premiere of Kasumi film at Transformer Station Jan. 31, Feb. 1
CIA artist in residence premieres her "genuinely new and original cinematic language," Shockwaves
Kasumi, the internationally known media artist, professor for 13 years and now artist in residence at Cleveland Institute of Art, has been invited to premier her looping feature-length film, Shockwaves, at The Transformer Station, a contemporary art gallery and museum in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood.
The museum premiere of Shockwaves will play on a loop on Saturday, Jan. 31 and Sunday, Feb. 1, 10am to 5pm.
Shockwaves is an 80-minute perpetually looping media installation that depicts a man’s subconscious mind in the moments before his death. In this darkly comic psychological thriller, a man’s traumatic childhood memories send him on a hallucinogenic carnival ride of self-destruction and murder.
Kasumi deploys an astonishing 25,000 public domain film samples, rotoscoped and live action film clips, dance choreography, animation, and sound design to produce an exploration of the nature of memory and our collective consciousness that is at once grotesque, beautiful, and transcendent.
“Shockwaves is a film like no other,” said Cleveland Institute of Art President Grafton Nunes. “Kasumi has created a genuinely new and original cinematic language that depicts the dissociative and improvisational nature of the internal monologue of our minds. The film thus evokes the powerful and unsettling experience of epiphany-like memories with its borderless flow of nostalgia and alienation and the powerfully articulated themes of identity, exile, abandonment, homecoming, disguise and temptation.”
Nunes, who produced The Loveless (directed by Kathryn Bigelow), continued, “The originality of Shockwaves is also very much of this historical moment—one in which the very concept of originality is questioned and mashups and collage are at the forefront of artistic and literary thinking. Watching Shockwaves, with its cascading system of allusions and concentric circularity that replaces linear narrative development, requires close attention moment to moment, shot by shot.
“But beyond the pyrotechnics of Kasumi’s editing, Shockwaves is to be understood like a piece of fine art – disassembled and reassembled in the mind of the viewer, analyzed and interpreted by students and scholars for years to come,” Nunes said.
In 2011, Kasumi was awarded competitive fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Cleveland-based Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, which funded her extensive work on this project. She was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and Cleveland Arts Prize in 2014.
Shockwaves is available for purchase and rental on Vimeo On Demand. Vimeo’s General Manager, Audience Networks Greg Clayman said “Shockwaves is a powerfully articulated piece that breaks all boundaries in media art.”
Kasumi speaks about the process of making Shockwaves, her approach to her art form and her artistic influences in interviews recently published on justluxe.com and inmag.com. Cleveland art critic and painter Douglas Max Utter writes about Shockwaves in an article published in the CAN Journal.
Her previous work has been exhibited at hundreds venues worldwide including international film festivals in Sapporo, Melbourne, and Hamburg; major fine art fairs like Art Miami and the UNPAINTED media art fair in Munich; and museums such as The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, and The Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow. Among her live performances have been collaborations with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Grandmaster Flash, and DJ Spooky. Kasumi’s Breakdown won the Vimeo Festival Award for Best Remix in 2010.
For more information, please see websites for:
Shockwaves: shockwavesthemovie.com
Kasumi: kasumifilms.com
Cleveland Institute of Art
Above: From Shockwaves, courtesy of Kasumi Films.
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Africa :: Zambia
Introduction :: Zambia
The territory of Northern Rhodesia was administered by the former British South Africa Company from 1891 until it was taken over by the UK in 1923. During the 1920s and 1930s, advances in mining spurred development and immigration. The name was changed to Zambia upon independence in 1964. In the 1980s and 1990s, declining copper prices, economic mismanagement, and a prolonged drought hurt the economy. Elections in 1991 brought an end to one-party rule and propelled the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) to government. The subsequent vote in 1996, however, saw increasing harassment of opposition parties and abuse of state media and other resources. The election in 2001 was marked by administrative problems, with three parties filing a legal petition challenging the election of ruling party candidate Levy MWANAWASA. MWANAWASA was reelected in 2006 in an election that was deemed free and fair. Upon his death in August 2008, he was succeeded by his vice president, Rupiah BANDA, who won a special presidential byelection later that year. The MMD and BANDA lost to the Patriotic Front (PF) and Michael SATA in the 2011 general elections. SATA, however, presided over a period of haphazard economic management and attempted to silence opposition to PF policies. SATA died in October 2014 and was succeeded by his vice president, Guy SCOTT, who served as interim president until January 2015, when Edgar LUNGU won the presidential byelection and completed SATA's term. LUNGU then won a full term in August 2016 presidential elections.
Geography :: Zambia
Southern Africa, east of Angola, south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
15 00 S, 30 00 E
total: 752,618 sq km
country comparison to the world: 40
almost five times the size of Georgia; slightly larger than Texas
Area comparison map:
The World Factbook Field Image Modal
Africa :: Zambia Print
total: 6,043.15 km
border countries (8): Angola 1065 km, Botswana 0.15 km, Democratic Republic of the Congo 2332 km, Malawi 847 km, Mozambique 439 km, Namibia 244 km, Tanzania 353 km, Zimbabwe 763 km
0 km (landlocked)
none (landlocked)
tropical; modified by altitude; rainy season (October to April)
mostly high plateau with some hills and mountains
mean elevation: 1,138 m
lowest point: Zambezi river 329 m
highest point: unnamed elevation in Mafinga Hills 2,301 m
copper, cobalt, zinc, lead, coal, emeralds, gold, silver, uranium, hydropower
agricultural land: 31.7% (2011 est.)
arable land: 4.8% (2011 est.) / permanent crops: 0% (2011 est.) / permanent pasture: 26.9% (2011 est.)
forest: 66.3% (2011 est.)
other: 2% (2011 est.)
1,560 sq km (2012)
one of the highest levels of urbanization in Africa; high density in the central area, particularly around the cities of Lusaka, Ndola, Kitwe, and Mufulira
periodic drought; tropical storms (November to April)
air pollution and resulting acid rain in the mineral extraction and refining region; chemical runoff into watersheds; loss of biodiversity; poaching seriously threatens rhinoceros, elephant, antelope, and large cat populations; deforestation; soil erosion; desertification; lack of adequate water treatment presents human health risks
Environment - international agreements:
party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Wetlands
landlocked; the Zambezi forms a natural riverine boundary with Zimbabwe; Lake Kariba on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border forms the world's largest reservoir by volume (180 cu km; 43 cu mi)
People and Society :: Zambia
16,445,079 (July 2018 est.)
note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, higher death rates, lower population growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected
noun: Zambian(s)
adjective: Zambian
Bemba 21%, Tonga 13.6%, Chewa 7.4%, Lozi 5.7%, Nsenga 5.3%, Tumbuka 4.4%, Ngoni 4%, Lala 3.1%, Kaonde 2.9%, Namwanga 2.8%, Lunda (north Western) 2.6%, Mambwe 2.5%, Luvale 2.2%, Lamba 2.1%, Ushi 1.9%, Lenje 1.6%, Bisa 1.6%, Mbunda 1.2%, other 13.8%, unspecified 0.4% (2010 est.)
Bemba 33.4%, Nyanja 14.7%, Tonga 11.4%, Lozi 5.5%, Chewa 4.5%, Nsenga 2.9%, Tumbuka 2.5%, Lunda (North Western) 1.9%, Kaonde 1.8%, Lala 1.8%, Lamba 1.8%, English (official) 1.7%, Luvale 1.5%, Mambwe 1.3%, Namwanga 1.2%, Lenje 1.1%, Bisa 1%, other 9.7%, unspecified 0.2% (2010 est.)
note: Zambia is said to have over 70 languages, although many of these may be considered dialects; all of Zambia's major languages are members of the Bantu family
Protestant 75.3%, Roman Catholic 20.2%, other 2.7% (includes Muslim Buddhist, Hindu, and Baha'i), none 1.8% (2010 est.)
Demographic profile:
Zambia’s poor, youthful population consists primarily of Bantu-speaking people representing nearly 70 different ethnicities. Zambia’s high fertility rate continues to drive rapid population growth, averaging almost 3 percent annually between 2000 and 2010. The country’s total fertility rate has fallen by less than 1.5 children per woman during the last 30 years and still averages among the world’s highest, almost 6 children per woman, largely because of the country’s lack of access to family planning services, education for girls, and employment for women. Zambia also exhibits wide fertility disparities based on rural or urban location, education, and income. Poor, uneducated women from rural areas are more likely to marry young, to give birth early, and to have more children, viewing children as a sign of prestige and recognizing that not all of their children will live to adulthood. HIV/AIDS is prevalent in Zambia and contributes to its low life expectancy.
Zambian emigration is low compared to many other African countries and is comprised predominantly of the well-educated. The small amount of brain drain, however, has a major impact in Zambia because of its limited human capital and lack of educational infrastructure for developing skilled professionals in key fields. For example, Zambia has few schools for training doctors, nurses, and other health care workers. Its spending on education is low compared to other sub-Saharan countries.
Age structure:
0-14 years: 45.95% (male 3,796,548 /female 3,759,624)
15-24 years: 20% (male 1,643,364 /female 1,645,713)
25-54 years: 28.79% (male 2,384,765 /female 2,349,877)
55-64 years: 2.95% (male 225,586 /female 260,252)
65 years and over: 2.31% (male 166,224 /female 213,126) (2018 est.)
population pyramid:
This is the population pyramid for Zambia. A population pyramid illustrates the age and sex structure of a country's population and may provide insights about political and social stability, as well as economic development. The population is distributed along the horizontal axis, with males shown on the left and females on the right. The male and female populations are broken down into 5-year age groups represented as horizontal bars along the vertical axis, with the youngest age groups at the bottom and the oldest at the top. The shape of the population pyramid gradually evolves over time based on fertility, mortality, and international migration trends.
For additional information, please see the entry for Population pyramid on the Definitions and Notes page under the References tab.
Dependency ratios:
total dependency ratio: 91.9 (2015 est.)
youth dependency ratio: 87.1 (2015 est.)
elderly dependency ratio: 4.8 (2015 est.)
potential support ratio: 20.8 (2015 est.)
total: 16.8 years
2.91% (2018 est.)
Birth rate:
41.1 births/1,000 population (2018 est.)
country comparison to the world: 6
Death rate:
12 deaths/1,000 population (2018 est.)
Net migration rate:
0 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.)
urban population: 43.5% of total population (2018)
Major urban areas - population:
2.524 million LUSAKA (capital) (2018)
at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female
15-24 years: 1 male(s)/female
total population: 1 male(s)/female (2018 est.)
Mother's mean age at first birth:
19.2 years (2013/14 est.)
note: median age at first birth among women 25-29
Maternal mortality rate:
224 deaths/100,000 live births (2015 est.)
total: 59.3 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 64.6 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 53.9 deaths/1,000 live births (2018 est.)
total population: 53 years
5.58 children born/woman (2018 est.)
Contraceptive prevalence rate:
49% (2013/14)
Health expenditures:
5% of GDP (2014)
Hospital bed density:
2 beds/1,000 population (2010)
improved: urban: 85.6% of population
unimproved: urban: 14.4% of population
improved: urban: 55.6% of population (2015 est.)
rural: 35.7% of population (2015 est.)
unimproved: urban: 44.4% of population (2015 est.)
11.5% (2017 est.)
1.1 million (2017 est.)
16,000 (2017 est.)
Major infectious diseases:
degree of risk: very high (2016)
food or waterborne diseases: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever (2016)
vectorborne diseases: malaria and dengue fever (2016)
water contact diseases: schistosomiasis (2016)
animal contact diseases: rabies (2016)
Obesity - adult prevalence rate:
8.1% (2016)
Children under the age of 5 years underweight:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write English (2015 est.)
total population: 63.4%
male: 70.9%
female: 56% (2015 est.)
Unemployment, youth ages 15-24:
total: 24%
Government :: Zambia
conventional long form: Republic of Zambia
conventional short form: Zambia
former: Northern Rhodesia
etymology: name derived from the Zambezi River, which flows through the western part of the country and forms its southern border with neighboring Zimbabwe
presidential republic
name: Lusaka; note - a proposal to build a new capital city in Ngabwe was announced in May 2017
geographic coordinates: 15 25 S, 28 17 E
10 provinces; Central, Copperbelt, Eastern, Luapula, Lusaka, Muchinga, Northern, North-Western, Southern, Western
24 October 1964 (from the UK)
Independence Day, 24 October (1964)
history: several previous; latest adopted 24 August 1991, promulgated 30 August 1991
amendments: proposed by the National Assembly; passage requires two-thirds majority vote by the Assembly in two separate readings at least 30 days apart; passage of amendments affecting fundamental rights and freedoms requires approval by at least one-half of votes cast in a referendum prior to consideration and voting by the Assembly; amended 1996, 2015, last in 2016 (2019)
mixed legal system of English common law and customary law
International law organization participation:
has not submitted an ICJ jurisdiction declaration; accepts ICCt jurisdiction
citizenship by birth: only if at least one parent is a citizen of Zambia
citizenship by descent only: yes, if at least one parent was a citizen of Zambia
dual citizenship recognized: yes
residency requirement for naturalization: 5 years for those with an ancestor who was a citizen of Zambia, otherwise 10 years residency is required
chief of state: President Edgar LUNGU (since 25 January 2015); Vice President Inonge WINA (since 26 January 2015); note - the president is both chief of state and head of government
head of government: President Edgar LUNGU (since 25 January 2015); Vice President Inonge WINA (since 26 January 2015)
cabinet: Cabinet appointed by president from among members of the National Assembly
elections/appointments: president directly elected by absolute majority popular vote in 2 rounds if needed for a 5-year term (eligible for a second term); last held on 11 August 2016 (next to be held in 2021)
election results: Edgar LUNGU reelected president in the first round; percent of vote - Edgar LUNGU (PF) 50.4%, Hakainde HICHILEMA (UPND) 47.6%, other 2.0%
description: unicameral National Assembly (165 seats; 156 members directly elected in single-seat constituencies by simple majority vote in 2 rounds if needed, and up to 8 appointed by the president; members serve 5-year terms); note - 6 additional electoral seats were added for the 11 August 2016 election, up from 150 electoral seats in the 2011 election
elections: last held on 11 August 2016 (next to be held in 2021)
election results: percent of vote by party - PF 42%, UPND 41.7%, MMD 2.7%, FDD 2.2%, other 1.9%,independent 9.5%; seats by party - PF 89, UPND 54, MMD 5, FDD 1, NDC 1, independent 14; composition - men 135, women 30, percent of women 18.2%
highest courts: Supreme Court (consists of the chief justice, deputy chief justice, and at least 11 judges); Constitutional Court (consists of the court president, vice president, and 11 judges); note - the Constitutional Court began operation in June 2016
judge selection and term of office: Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judges appointed by the president of the republic upon the advice of the 9-member Judicial Service Commission, which is headed by the chief justice, and ratified by the National Assembly; judges normally serve until age 65
subordinate courts: Court of Appeal; High Court; Industrial Relations Court; subordinate courts (3 levels, based on upper limit of money involved); Small Claims Court; local courts (2 grades, based on upper limit of money involved)
Alliance for Democracy and Development or ADD [Charles MILUPI]
Forum for Democracy and Development or FDD [Edith NAWAKWI]
Movement for Multiparty Democracy or MMD [Felix MUTATI]
National Democratic Congress or NDC [Chishimba KAMBWILI]
Patriotic Front or PF [Edgar LUNGU]
United Party for National Development or UPND [Hakainde HICHILEMA]
ACP, AfDB, AU, C, COMESA, EITI (compliant country), FAO, G-77, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICCt, ICRM, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, Interpol, IOC, IOM, IPU, ISO (correspondent), ITSO, ITU, ITUC (NGOs), MIGA, MONUSCO, NAM, OPCW, PCA, SADC, UN, UNAMID, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UNISFA, UNMIL, UNMISS, UNOCI, UNWTO, UPU, WCO, WHO, WIPO, WMO, WTO
chief of mission: Ambassador Ngosa SIMBYAKULA (since 29 November 2017)
chancery: 2200 R Street NW, Washington, DC 20008
telephone: [1] (202) 265-9717 through 9719
chief of mission: Ambassador Daniel L. FOOTE (since December 2017)
embassy: Eastern end of Kabulonga Road, Ibex Hill, Lusaka
mailing address: P. O. Box 320065, Lusaka
telephone: [260] 211-357-000
FAX: [260] 211-357-224
green field with a panel of three vertical bands of red (hoist side), black, and orange below a soaring orange eagle, on the outer edge of the flag; green stands for the country's natural resources and vegetation, red symbolizes the struggle for freedom, black the people of Zambia, and orange the country's mineral wealth; the eagle represents the people's ability to rise above the nation's problems
African fish eagle; national colors: green, red, black, orange
name: "Lumbanyeni Zambia" (Stand and Sing of Zambia, Proud and Free)
lyrics/music: multiple/Enoch Mankayi SONTONGA
note: adopted 1964; the melody, from the popular song "God Bless Africa," is the same as that of Tanzania but with different lyrics; the melody is also incorporated into South Africa's anthem
Economy :: Zambia
Zambia had one of the world’s fastest growing economies for the ten years up to 2014, with real GDP growth averaging roughly 6.7% per annum, though growth slowed during the period 2015 to 2017, due to falling copper prices, reduced power generation, and depreciation of the kwacha. Zambia’s lack of economic diversification and dependency on copper as its sole major export makes it vulnerable to fluctuations in the world commodities market and prices turned downward in 2015 due to declining demand from China; Zambia was overtaken by the Democratic Republic of Congo as Africa’s largest copper producer. GDP growth picked up in 2017 as mineral prices rose.
Despite recent strong economic growth and its status as a lower middle-income country, widespread and extreme rural poverty and high unemployment levels remain significant problems, made worse by a high birth rate, a relatively high HIV/AIDS burden, by market-distorting agricultural and energy policies, and growing government debt. Zambia raised $7 billion from international investors by issuing separate sovereign bonds in 2012, 2014, and 2015. Concurrently, it issued over $4 billion in domestic debt and agreed to Chinese-financed infrastructure projects, significantly increasing the country’s public debt burden to more than 60% of GDP. The government has considered refinancing $3 billion worth of Eurobonds and significant Chinese loans to cut debt servicing costs.
$68.93 billion (2017 est.)
3.4% (2017 est.)
Gross national saving:
38.3% of GDP (2017 est.)
GDP - composition, by end use:
household consumption: 52.6% (2017 est.)
government consumption: 21% (2017 est.)
investment in fixed capital: 27.1% (2017 est.)
investment in inventories: 1.2% (2017 est.)
exports of goods and services: 43% (2017 est.)
agriculture: 7.5% (2017 est.)
industry: 35.3% (2017 est.)
services: 57% (2017 est.)
corn, sorghum, rice, peanuts, sunflower seeds, vegetables, flowers, tobacco, cotton, sugarcane, cassava (manioc, tapioca), coffee; cattle, goats, pigs, poultry, milk, eggs, hides
copper mining and processing, emerald mining, construction, foodstuffs, beverages, chemicals, textiles, fertilizer, horticulture
Industrial production growth rate:
6.898 million (2017 est.)
Labor force - by occupation:
agriculture: 54.8%
industry: 9.9%
15% (2008 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 1.5%
Distribution of family income - Gini index:
revenues: 4.473 billion (2017 est.)
expenditures: 6.357 billion (2017 est.)
Taxes and other revenues:
17.4% (of GDP) (2017 est.)
Budget surplus (+) or deficit (-):
-7.3% (of GDP) (2017 est.)
Public debt:
Central bank discount rate:
9.1% (31 December 2012)
19% (31 December 2011)
Commercial bank prime lending rate:
12.5% (31 December 2017 est.)
Stock of narrow money:
$1.764 billion (31 December 2017 est.)
Stock of broad money:
Stock of domestic credit:
Market value of publicly traded shares:
Current account balance:
-$1.006 billion (2017 est.)
-$934 million (2016 est.)
$8.216 billion (2017 est.)
Exports - partners:
Switzerland 44.8%, China 16.1%, Democratic Republic of the Congo 6.2%, Singapore 6%, South Africa 5.9% (2017)
copper/cobalt, cobalt, electricity; tobacco, flowers, cotton
machinery, transportation equipment, petroleum products, electricity, fertilizer, foodstuffs, clothing
Imports - partners:
South Africa 28.2%, Democratic Republic of the Congo 20.8%, China 12.9%, Kuwait 5.4%, UAE 4.6% (2017)
Reserves of foreign exchange and gold:
Debt - external:
$11.66 billion (31 December 2017 est.)
Stock of direct foreign investment - at home:
Stock of direct foreign investment - abroad:
Zambian kwacha (ZMK) per US dollar -
9.2 (2017 est.)
10.3 (2016 est.)
Energy :: Zambia
Electricity access:
population without electricity: 12 million (2017)
electrification - total population: 33% (2017)
electrification - urban areas: 67% (2017)
electrification - rural areas: 6% (2017)
Electricity - production:
11.55 billion kWh (2016 est.)
Electricity - consumption:
Electricity - exports:
1.176 billion kWh (2015 est.)
Electricity - imports:
Electricity - installed generating capacity:
2.573 million kW (2016 est.)
Electricity - from fossil fuels:
5% of total installed capacity (2016 est.)
Electricity - from nuclear fuels:
Electricity - from hydroelectric plants:
93% of total installed capacity (2017 est.)
Electricity - from other renewable sources:
Crude oil - production:
0 bbl/day (2017 est.)
Crude oil - exports:
Crude oil - imports:
12,860 bbl/day (2015 est.)
Refined petroleum products - production:
Refined petroleum products - consumption:
Refined petroleum products - exports:
371 bbl/day (2015 est.)
Refined petroleum products - imports:
Natural gas - production:
0 cu m (2017 est.)
Natural gas - consumption:
Natural gas - exports:
Natural gas - imports:
Natural gas - proved reserves:
0 cu m (1 January 2014 est.)
Carbon dioxide emissions from consumption of energy:
3.777 million Mt (2017 est.)
Communications :: Zambia
total subscriptions: 101,444 (2017 est.)
subscriptions per 100 inhabitants: 1 (2017 est.)
Telephones - mobile cellular:
total subscriptions: 13,438,539 (2017 est.)
subscriptions per 100 inhabitants: 84 (2017 est.)
general assessment:
service is among the best in sub-Saharan Africa; regulatory approach promotes competition and a cohort of private sector service providers offering mobile voice and Internet at some of the lowest prices in the region
domestic: fiber optic connections are available between most larger towns and cities with microwave radio relays serving more rural areas; 3 cellular telephone providers currently in operation plus several data only ISPs; fixed-line infrastructure has degraded significantly and is often being discontinued or replaced with fixed wireless service; Internet service is widely available via mobile or fixed wireless terminals (LTE and 3G), with FTTx in limited urban areas and private Ku or Ka band VSAT terminals in remote locations; fixed-line 1 per 100 and mobile-cellular 84 per 100
international: country code - 260; multiple providers operate overland fiber optic routes via Zimbabwe/South Africa, Botswana/Namibia and Tanzania provide access to the major undersea cables
according to the Independent Broadcast Authority, there are 137 radio stations and 47 television stations in Zambia; out of the 137 radio stations, 133 are private (categorized as either commercial or community radio stations), while 4 are public-owned; state-owned Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) operates 2 television channels and 3 radio stations; ZNBC owns 75% shares in GoTV, 40% in MultiChoice, and 40% in TopStar Communications Company, all of which operate in-country
total: 3,956,252 (July 2016 est.)
Broadband - fixed subscriptions:
total: 35,912 (2017 est.)
subscriptions per 100 inhabitants: less than 1 (2017 est.)
Transportation :: Zambia
National air transport system:
number of registered air carriers: 1 (2015)
inventory of registered aircraft operated by air carriers: 1 (2015)
annual passenger traffic on registered air carriers: 11,796 (2015)
annual freight traffic on registered air carriers: 79,092,826 mt-km (2015)
Civil aircraft registration country code prefix:
9J (2016)
Airports - with paved runways:
total: 8 (2013)
over 3,047 m: 1 (2013)
2,438 to 3,047 m: 3 (2013)
914 to 1,523 m: 1 (2013)
Airports - with unpaved runways:
total: 80 (2013)
914 to 1,523 m: 53 (2013)
Pipelines:
771 km oil (2013)
Railways:
total: 3,126 km (2014)
narrow gauge: 3,126 km 1.067-m gauge (2014)
note: includes 1,860 km of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA)
Roadways:
Waterways:
2,250 km (includes Lake Tanganyika and the Zambezi and Luapula Rivers) (2010)
Merchant marine:
by type: other 1 (2017)
river port(s): Mpulungu (Zambezi)
Military and Security :: Zambia
Military expenditures:
1.25% of GDP (2018)
1.3% of GDP (2017)
Military branches:
Zambian Defense Force (ZDF): Zambia Army, Zambia Air Force, Zambia National Service (support organization) (2015)
Military service age and obligation:
national registration required at age 16; 18-25 years of age for male and female voluntary military service (16 years of age with parental consent); no conscription; Zambian citizenship required; grade 12 certification required; mandatory HIV testing on enlistment; mandatory retirement for officers at age 65 (Army, Air Force) (2012)
Transnational Issues :: Zambia
in 2004, Zimbabwe dropped objections to plans between Botswana and Zambia to build a bridge over the Zambezi River, thereby de facto recognizing a short, but not clearly delimited, Botswana-Zambia boundary in the river
Refugees and internally displaced persons:
refugees (country of origin): 42,705 (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (refugees and asylum seekers) (2019)
Illicit drugs:
transshipment point for moderate amounts of methaqualone, small amounts of heroin, and cocaine bound for southern Africa and possibly Europe; a poorly developed financial infrastructure coupled with a government commitment to combating money laundering make it an unattractive venue for money launderers; major consumer of cannabis
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State should take addiction treatment fraud claims seriously (editorial)
If allegations against Connections Community Support Programs are true, there must b serious consequences.
State should take addiction treatment fraud claims seriously (editorial) If allegations against Connections Community Support Programs are true, there must b serious consequences. Check out this story on delawareonline.com: https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/editorials/2019/05/16/state-should-take-addiction-treatment-fraud-claims-seriously-editorial/3668582002/
The News Journal Editorial Board Published 6:00 a.m. ET May 16, 2019
The addiction crisis is one of the most urgent problems in Delaware.
Last year, 400 people died of a drug overdose in our state — the most ever recorded — and an estimated 11,000 have a substance use disorder.
The prison system is at the front lines of this battle. Almost half of Delaware's inmates have an addiction, and experts say that makes it a critical piece of any lasting solution.
That's what's so disturbing about a rash of accusations that Connections Community Support programs, a state contractor tasked with providing drug counseling to inmates, is failing to do its job and falsifying records to cover it up.
These are deadly serious claims that deserve a thorough, unsparing investigation. If true, Connections has defrauded taxpayers and undermined the fight against an addiction crisis that is killing hundreds of Delawareans a year — and it deserves to face serious consequences.
In a recent investigation, The News Journal talked to more than a dozen former patients and five former counselors at the Crest South program in Georgetown. They say Connections was often providing little or none of the counseling it claims to provide under its contract.
They also say counselors were told to "back-date" records to make it appear that they had provided more services than they actually did.
On Monday, the Department of Justice said it was investigating those claims. That's in addition to an internal probe by the Department of Correction. That's in addition to an internal probe by the Department of Correction.
Maranda Cekmecelioglu holds up her treatment plan given to her while she was at Crest South in Georgetown. (Photo: Jerry Habraken, The News Journal)
Connections denies the accusations and says it welcomes the investigations, claiming they will prove innocence.
Taxpayers deserve answers on whether their money was wasted. The Department of Correction paid Connections $15 million last year for mental health and substance abuse services. All told, the agency received roughly $72 million in contracts with the state that year.
Defrauding taxpayers is outrageous under any circumstances, but these allegations are particularly troubling given the toll addiction has taken on Delaware.
Previous editorial: Politicians who abuse their office ought to face more than just a rebuke
If it turns out that Connections has been abusing the public trust, that has massive implications for Delaware. The agency dominates the addiction treatment landscape, both in the number of people served and in the scope of government contracts.
So much of the debate over the opioid crisis focuses on what government can do, but it might be time for a tougher conversation on what private firms are doing too.
All of this starts with a thorough, in-depth, and honest search for what may have gone wrong at Crest South. It needs to be abundantly clear that nobody can get away with failing and defrauding taxpayers while pretending to save lives.
Read or Share this story: https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/editorials/2019/05/16/state-should-take-addiction-treatment-fraud-claims-seriously-editorial/3668582002/
Gov. Carney: We're making progress on issues Delaware cares about
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The Mexican ‘Propietario’ and ‘Suplente’ system shows the degree to which quotas can empower women in politics
How do gender quotas interact with women’s empowerment? Looking at evidence from Mexico, Fernanda Vidal shows that the system of candidate nomination for the Congress, the ‘Propietario’ and ‘Suplente’ system has overcome early difficulties to be an effective tool for ensuring a degree of gender representation.
Palacio Nacional, Mexico (Credit: Bradleyolin, CC BY 2.0)
Federalism can expand the range of powers available to sub-national units, which then decide on policy on a range of topics, including education, health, reproductive rights, political affairs, and others. In this sense, federalism should matter to women, because federal constitutions may assign jurisdiction over policy to central or meso–level governments.
In Mexico, federalism pluralised competition in sub-national legislatures and gave space for opposition parties to challenge the hegemonic party. Federalism helped shape Mexico’s democratic transition, and in doing so it also affected and transformed the opportunities that women had to become politically engaged.
The federal system has allowed for different institutional arrangements to affect the representation of women in different ways. The variations across the States makes it important to distinguish and interpret the impact of Mexico’s federal arrangements on the political representation of women, taking into consideration that these generate different institutional contexts, as well as creating different opportunities and constraints that women must either face or take advantage of.
Disparities between the rules concerning gender equality at the sub-national level in Mexico have been previously assessed. Studies have claimed that in some states, such as the Federal District or at the national level, regulations generate better conditions for women to pursue a political career. Within these rules it is important to highlight the zipping lists in the election of Proportional Representation (PR) representatives as well as quotas applied in PR and First Past the Post (FPTP).
However, there are some states, like Aguascalientes, BajaCalifornia Sur or Querétaro, where no zipping applied or no quota exists. In that sense, federalism in Mexico resulted in inconsistent regulations that affect differently, for better or worse, women across the country. Nonetheless, some changes are happening and consequences are yet to be observed.
In February 2014 changes to the electoral system were passed in Congress, including relevant federal regulations regarding women’s representation. These changes originate from a decision that was taken by the Electoral Court on November 2011. This was to prevent the possibility of the so–called “Juanitas” cases being repeated. Initially, the term was used to make reference to federal deputies, many of them women, that after two days of having been sworn as deputies, requested leaves of absence, making way for the suplentes candidates, who were men. Moreover, the men that got the seats were related to these women. Some were siblings or husbands. Women were pressured, through loyalty and career expectancy arguments, to resign and leave their seats to their joint ticket partners.
According to the Milenio newspaper, of the 15 suplentes, 11 of them replaced an equal number of Juanitas deputies from different political parties, including the PRI, the PAN, the PVEM and the PT2. The newspaper reported that this resulted in 13 women in total being displaced from their seats by family members or political patrons in the 61st Legislature. Thus, the Electoral Court established the criteria to ensure that 40% of nominees were women in the joint ticket system.
The ruling file (SUP–JDC–12624/2011) established that the nomination of women as propietarios would have to be accompanied by a suplente of the same sex in order to prevent substitutions by male representatives. The effects of this change were visible in the difficult and intricate candidate selection process of the 2012 Federal Election. In an unprecedented result, women accounted 37.2% of the Deputies Chamber, an increase of 9%. However, this ruling had no consequences for the state nominations process.
In order to secure the ruling of the Court, in the 2014 electoral reforms, Congress approved new party laws that include specific regulations regarding women’s representation. First, registered candidates (propietario and suplente) should be of the same gender. Second,political parties ought to promote and ensure gender balance in the nomination of candidates at any level of government (legislative branch). Third, Proportional Representation lists will be composed by formulas of candidates; each with a propietario and a suplente of the same gender and different formulas will alternate to ensure gender parity (this means zipping the joint ticket). Finally, formulas of candidates running for the Senate must be composed by people of different gender and must be zipped too.
The approval of these new laws may be met with modifications in State Constitutions. The former must make changes in order to secure the second part of the amendment, which demands from all levels of legislative government, to comply with mechanisms that promote and ensure gender balance. This may take some time. Nonetheless, the consequences of this change may be observed in the forthcoming 2015 elections, and certainly, if sustained, the democratic process may be reinforced, and federalism may start working for women in Mexico.
Note: this post gives the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit UK or the LSE. Please read our comments policy before posting.
Fernanda Vidal is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Universersidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Evidence from Australia: women are under-represented in senior political appointments, and this affects the representation of women in parliament
Why can’t some parliamentary select committees get female witnesses?
To enhance women’s representation, internal party democracy may need to be ‘managed’ in the short term
Has the gender gap in voter turnout really disappeared?
Older women in local parties: marginalised or empowered?
Posted in: Elections and electoral systems, Parliament
@LSEPubAffairs
The Mexican ‘Propietario’ and ‘Suplente’ system shows the degree to which quotas can empower women in politics http://t.co/wfQbhA2xMi
@democraticaudit
The Mexican ‘Propietario’ and ‘Suplente’ system shows the degree to which quotas can empower women in politics http://t.co/wcY5mKdB6I
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Parks & Recreation News
Parks Foundation of Clark County - Florence B. Wager Awards for 2019
Cassi Marshall is one of the award winners this year. She epitomizes the saying, “If you want to get something done, ask a busy person.” As a full-time employee with the Washougal School District Cassi’s passion for Camas parks, trails and trees are evident in her volunteerism and the drive she brings to each need and group.
Serving on the Camas Parks and Recreation Commission since 2010 Cassie has participated in several ad-hoc committees, ranging from park naming to tree preservation. In 2017 she founded the Ivy League, a group of 40 to 50 volunteers who meet regularly to remove ivy from trees at Camas’ Fallen Leaf Lake Park. The Ivy League’s efforts will improve the health of, and possibly save, numerous trees at Fallen Leaf Lake Park. As a member of the Commission Cassi has been instrumental in collaborating on the Parks Comprehensive Plan, a guiding document for Camas park projects, including the recent planning for Crown Park.
Cassi also served as a member of the steering committee to develop the Urban Tree ordinance to ensure Camas’ tree canopy is maintained as the city and community continue to expand. She has been involved in the Sierra Club, Lacamas Little League Softball, Hellen Baller PTA and a host gardener for the Clark County Natural Beautiful Backyards Program.
Her volunteerism doesn’t stop there. Cassi has been instrumental in fundraising for the Partners with Camas Parks and Recreation group, which seeks to raise money for park projects, advocate for the Community Center, and the completion of several Community Center projects.
“Cassi’s continued dedication exemplifies her understanding of the value of the Camas Parks system, and its contribution to the quality of life in our community,” noted Shannon Turk, Mayor of Camas. “She is always willing to roll up her sleeves and do the hard work to improve the parks. Her enthusiasm and positive attitude make her someone that you want to work with. The fact that she can encourage so many people to give up several of their Saturdays to remove ivy from trees demonstrates her passion for our parks is an inspiration to others. If Cassie volunteers to do something, you can rest assured that it is in capable hands.”
Jerry Acheson will also be receiving the award this year. Not many communities have the benefit of 30 years of impassioned leadership from one individual. However, Camas has had Jerry Acheson at the helm as Parks and Recreation Manager for nearly 30 years. The population of Camas has increased by 350% during that time and Jerry has been instrumental in helping to create a beloved parks system that will maintain the natural beauty of Camas’ trails, open spaces, and parks long into the future.
“Typically you’ll find Jerry quietly working behind the scenes to accomplish things that benefit the citizens of Camas and Clark County,” noted City Administrator, Pete Capell. “The past several years Jerry has been working on a legacy project and this has brought Jerry and his dedication into the spotlight.”
Through devotion to the legacy project, Jerry acquired a Clark County Conservation Futures Grant. This combined with bonds supplemented by the City of Camas launched the charge to acquire 140 acres on the north shore of Lacamas Lake. This Legacy Lands Project will ultimately provide space for the community to enjoy passive and active recreation all around Lacamas Lake. Camas-Washougal Wildlife League and the CJ Dens, Mills, Rose and Buma Family properties as part of the Legacy Lands Project and Jerry’s vision. To-date 70 acres of the project have been donated or acquired. Through Jerry’s service to the community and property owners, purchase of the remaining properties are in progress. Once all the land is acquired, plans to create large community parks, build connecting trails and possibly restore the Leadbetter house for wedding and special occasion use will continue.
In addition to the Legacy Lands Project, Jerry has been working with Georgia-Pacific to acquire some of their property for the City of Camas as they complete their partial closure of the paper mill. Camas Parks and Recreation has gained the two dams that create Lacamas Lake and the Mill Ditch, which previously deliver water to the paper mill. Plans for the ditch include converting it to a multi-modal trail that will connect many trails to the downtown area.
The Lacamas Lake and Georgia-Pacific projects bring Jerry’s vision to life of a parks system that conserves and highlights Camas’ natural beauty and attraction long into the future. We are all the beneficiaries of his service and passion.
Join us in celebrating Jerry Acheson and Cassi Marshall at the May 14th Annual Luncheon & Membership Meeting from 11:30 – 1:00 p.m. at the Hilton Vancouver Washington. Tickets and table sponsorships are still available.
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View this article online: https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2015/02/04/261277.htm
Federal Judge Wants Changes Made to NFL Concussion Settlement
The judge presiding over thousands of NFL concussion lawsuits wants lawyers to tweak the proposed settlement to benefit more retired players.
Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody in Philadelphia has been nudging both sides toward a plan that could pay out $1 billion over 65 years.
Brody granted preliminary approval last year after the NFL agreed to lift a $765 million funding cap. On Monday, she asked for further revisions that would let more retirees, or the families of deceased players, claim awards or seek neurological testing.
Both sides remained confident the plan was moving toward settlement.
“We … continue to have a high degree of confidence that this settlement – which has been accepted by more than 99 percent of retirees – will receive final approval and provide important and generous benefits to retirees and their families,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said.
The NFL expects 6,000 of nearly 20,000 retired players to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or moderate dementia someday. The settlement would pay them about $190,000 on average, given that most would be diagnosed in their later years.
The awards could reach $1 million to $5 million for those diagnosed in their 30s and 40s with Parkinson’s disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease, or for deaths involving the brain trauma CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Brody, in the interest of fairness, suggested Monday that the agreement cover more recent deaths that involved CTE. The proposed July 7, 2014, cutoff would be extended until the date of final approval.
She also asked that players get at least some credit in their award calculation for time spent with NFL Europe and other NFL affiliates.
“We are grateful to Judge Brody for her guidance and continued efforts to protect the rights of all class members,” co-lead players’ lawyer Christopher Seeger said. “We look forward to finalizing this agreement so that retired players can begin taking advantage of its benefits.”
The judge also asked that the $75 million allotted for baseline testing be expanded if necessary to cover everyone who takes part in the settlement.
The lawsuits accuse the NFL of long hiding what it knew about concussions and brain injuries to keep players on the field. Only a few hundred retirees or family members have decided to opt out and pursue individual suits.
Some critics feel the fund lets the NFL off lightly, given the league’s $10 billion in annual revenues. At hearings before Brody held last fall, some researchers and family members complained that there are no awards for depression, mood swings and other problems they link to football concussions. Brody did not raise those issues in Monday’s order.
Other critics fault the plan for excluding future payments for CTE, which some call the signature disease of football. Currently, it can only be diagnosed after death. Negotiators have said they did not want to “incentivize” future suicides.
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Member Wizard Step 1 of 4: Contact Info
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HVACRDB
HVAC Distribution: Munch's Supply Acquires Colorado's Comfort Air
Munch's Supply will now operate 27 locations in nine states.
Munch’s Supply, a leading Midwest-based heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) distributor, has acquired Comfort Air Distributing and its three Colorado branches. This will expand the company’s geographic footprint to 27 locations in nine states.
“The Comfort Air Distributing purchase is part of Munch’s long-term strategy to expand our platform into other regions through strategic acquisitions,” said Munch’s Supply CEO Robert Munch. “We are excited to welcome Comfort Air Distributing’s customers and employees. Customer service will remain our No. 1 priority.”
The company will continue to operate under the Comfort Air Distributing name, offering Rheem heating and air conditioning equipment.
The company will continue to operate under the Comfort Air Distributing name, offering Rheem heating and air conditioning equipment. It will continue to serve Colorado and 13 Wyoming counties out of branches in Denver, Centennial and Colorado Springs, Colorado.
“We couldn’t have made it 30 years without the tremendous support from our customers and team members. I am very happy to find a trusted company in Munch’s to continue the Comfort Air legacy,” said Comfort Air Distributing president Jim O’Mara.
Dave Schrock, executive vice president of Comfort Air Distributing, added, “We are excited to find a company with similar values that is focused on preserving our family culture. It was important for us to find a partner who will care about our employees as much as we do.”
“Jim and Dave have done a wonderful job building a company with great people and a great culture. These are only found in the best organizations, and we are happy to support the team to continue to build on this foundation,” said Munch.
Sources say the acquisition demonstrates Munch’s ongoing commitment to the HVAC marketplace.
Munch’s Supply was founded in 1956 by Willard Munch, who wanted to develop a local source of electrical supplies for area contractors. Today the company has more than 500 employees focused exclusively on supplying heating and cooling industry contractors with quality products.
Munch’s Supply has been operating in the Chicagoland area since 1956. Rotunda Capital Partners, a private equity firm focused on lower middle-market and family-owned holdings, acquired a majority stake in Munch’s in 2015. Rotunda Capital Partners is a private equity firm that invests equity capital in established and profitable lower middle-market companies. As an independent deal sponsor, Rotunda Capital raises and invests the capital of its principals, institutions, family offices and high net worth individuals on a deal-by-deal basis.
CapitalValue Advisors served as financial advisor to Comfort Air Distributing on the transaction.
O'Connor Company Acquires Hunton's Oklahoma Business
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DOL Home > WHD > Fact Sheets > Fact Sheet 43
Child Labor Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for Nonagricultural Occupations
(Revised December 2016) (PDF)
This Fact Sheet provides general information about the Federal youth employment provisions applicable to nonagricultural occupations. Different standards apply to farm work.
The Department of Labor is committed to helping young workers find those positive and early employment experiences that can be so important to their development, but the work must be safe. The youth employment provisions of the FLSA were enacted to ensure that when young people work, the work does not jeopardize their health, well-being or educational opportunities. Employers are subject to the youth employment provisions generally under the same coverage criteria as established for the other provisions of the FLSA.
It is an unfortunate fact that children do get injured, even killed, in the workplace. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimates that 160,000 American children suffer occupational injuries every year—and 54,800 of these injuries are serious enough to warrant emergency room treatment.
Both Federal and State laws govern the employment of young workers and when both are applicable, the law with the stricter standard must be obeyed.
The Federal youth employment provisions do not:
require minors to obtain "working papers" or "work permits," though many States do;
restrict the number of hours or times of day that workers 16 years of age and older may be employed, though many States do;
apply where no FLSA employment relationship exists;
regulate or require such things as breaks, meal periods, or fringe benefits;
regulate such issues as discrimination, harassment, verbal or physical abuse, or morality, though other Federal and State laws may.
Minimum Age Standards For Employment
The FLSA and the youth employment regulations issued at 29 CFR, Part 570, establish both hours and occupational standards for youth. Children of any age are generally permitted to work for businesses entirely owned by their parents, except those under age 16 may not be employed in mining or manufacturing and no one under 18 may be employed in any occupation the Secretary of Labor has declared to be hazardous.
18 - Once a youth reaches 18 years of age, he or she is no longer subject to the Federal youth employment provisions.
16 - Basic minimum age for employment. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds may be employed for unlimited hours in any occupation other than those declared hazardous by the Secretary of Labor.
14 - Young persons 14 and 15 years of age may be employed outside school hours in a variety of non-manufacturing and non-hazardous jobs for limited periods of time and under specified conditions.
Under 14 - Children under 14 years of age may not be employed in non-agricultural occupations covered by the FLSA. Permissible employment for such children is limited to work that is exempt from the FLSA (such as delivering newspapers to the consumer and acting). Children may also perform work not covered by the FLSA such as completing minor chores around private homes or casual baby-sitting.
OCCUPATIONS BANNED FOR ALL MINORS UNDER THE AGE OF 18
The Hazardous Occupations Orders (HO)
The FLSA establishes an 18-year minimum age for those nonagricultural occupations that the Secretary of Labor finds and declares to be particularly hazardous for 16- and 17-year-old minors, or detrimental to their health or well-being. In addition, Child Labor Regulation No. 3 also bans 14- and 15-year-olds from performing any work proscribed by the HOs. There are currently 17 HOs which include a partial or total ban on the occupations or industries they cover.
HO 1. Manufacturing or storing explosives—bans minors working where explosives are manufactured or stored, but permits work in retail stores selling ammunition, gun shops, trap and skeet ranges, and police stations.
HO 2. Driving a motor vehicle or work as an outside helper on motor vehicles—bans operating motor vehicles on public roads and working as outside helpers on motor vehicles, except 17-year-olds may drive cars or small trucks during daylight hours for limited times and under strictly limited circumstances (see Fact Sheet #34 in this series for information about on-the-job driving).
HO 3. Coal mining—bans most jobs in coal mining.
HO 4. Occupations in forest fire fighting, forest fire prevention, timber tract, forestry service, and occupations in logging and sawmilling operations—bans most jobs in: forest fire fighting; forest fire prevention that entails extinguishing an actual fire; timber tract management; forestry services; logging; and sawmills.
HO 5. Power-driven woodworking machines—bans the operation of most power-driven woodworking machines, including chain saws, nailing machines, and sanders. *
HO 6. Exposure to radioactive substances and ionizing radiation—bans employment of minors where they are exposed to radioactive materials.
HO 7. Power-driven hoisting apparatus—bans operating, riding on, and assisting in the operation of most power-driven hoisting apparatus such as forklifts, non-automatic elevators, skid-steers, skid-steer loaders, backhoes, manlifts, scissor lifts, cherry pickers, work-assist platforms, boom trucks, and cranes. Does not apply to chair-lifts at ski resorts or electric and pneumatic lifts used to raise cars in garages and gasoline service stations.
HO 8. Power-driven metal-forming, punching and shearing machines—bans the operation of certain power-driven metal-working machines but permits the use of most machine tools.*
HO 9. Mining, other than coal—bans most jobs in mining at metal mines, quarries, aggregate mines, and other mining sites including underground work in mines, work in or about open cut mines, open quarries, and sand and gravel operations.
HO 10. Power-driven meat-processing machines, slaughtering and meat packing plants—bans the operation of power-driven meat processing machines, such as meat slicers, saws and meat choppers, wherever used (including restaurants and delicatessens). Also prohibits minors from cleaning such equipment, including the hand-washing of the disassembled machine parts. This ban also includes the use of this machinery on items other than meat, such as cheese and vegetables. HO 10 also bans most jobs in meat and poultry slaughtering, processing, rendering, and packing establishments.*
HO 11. Power-driven bakery machines—bans the operation of power-driven bakery machines such as vertical dough and batter mixers; dough rollers, rounders, dividers, and sheeters; and cookie or cracker machines. Permits 16- and 17-year-olds to operate certain lightweight, small, portable, counter-top mixers and certain pizza dough rollers under certain conditions.
HO 12. Balers, compactors, and power-driven paper-products machines—bans the operation of all compactors and balers and certain power-driven paper products machines such as platen-type printing presses and envelope die cutting presses. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds may load, but not operate or unload, certain scrap paper balers and paper box compactors under very specific guidelines (see Fact Sheet #57). *
HO 13. Manufacturing of brick, tile and related products—bans most jobs in the manufacture of brick, tile and similar products.
HO 14. Power-driven circular saws, band saws, guillotine shears, chain saws, reciprocating saws, wood chippers, and abrasive cutting discs—bans the operation of, and working as a helper on, the named types of power-driven equipment, no matter what kind of items are being cut by the equipment.*
HO 15. Wrecking, demolition, and ship-breaking operations—bans most jobs in wrecking, demolition, and ship-breaking operations, but does not apply to remodeling or repair work which is not extensive.
HO 16. Roofing operations and work performed on or about a roof—bans most jobs in roofing operations, including work performed on the ground and removal of the old roof, and all work on or about a roof* (see Fact Sheet #74)
HO 17. Trenching and excavation operations—bans most jobs in trenching and excavation work, including working in a trench more than four feet deep.*
* The regulations provide a limited exemption from HOs 5, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 17 for apprentices and student-learners who are at least 16 years of age and enrolled in approved programs.
The term "operation" as used in HOs 5, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 14 generally includes the tasks of setting up, adjusting, repairing, oiling or cleaning the equipment.
HOURS OF WORK AND PERMITTED OCCUPATIONS FOR 14- AND 15-YEAR-OLDS IN NONAGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT
The Federal youth employment provisions limit the times of day, number of hours, and industries and occupations in which 14- and 15-year-olds may be employed.
Child Labor Regulation No. 3, 29 C.F.R. § 570.35, limits the hours and the times of day that 14- and 15-year-olds may work to:
outside school hours;
no more than 3 hours on a school day , including Fridays;
no more than 8 hours on a nonschool day;
no more than 18 hours during a week when school is in session;
no more than 40 hours during a week when school is not in session;
between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.—except between June 1 and Labor day when the evening hour is extended to 9 p.m.
Child Labor Regulation No. 3, 29 C.F.R. §§ 570.33 lists some of the jobs that 14- and 15-year-olds may not hold. The following is just a sample of prohibited occupations:
They are prohibited from working in any of the Hazardous Orders or in most occupations involving transportation, construction, warehousing, communications and public utilities.
They may not work in processing, mining, in any workroom or workplace where goods are manufactured or processed, in freezers, or in meat coolers.
They may not operate or tend any power-driven machinery, except office machines.
They may not perform any baking operations.
They may not be employed in youth peddling, sign waving, or door-to-door sales activities.
They may not work from ladders, scaffolds, or their substitutes.
They may not be employed to catch or coop poultry.
Child Labor Regulation No. 3, 29 C.F.R. §§ 570.34 lists those jobs that 14- and 15-year-olds may hold. WHAT IS NOT PERMITTED IS PROHIBITED:
They may work in most office jobs and retail and food service establishments.
They may be employed in occupations such as bagging groceries, office work, stocking shelves, and cashiering.
They may work in intellectual or artistically creative occupations such as teacher, musician, artist, and performer.
They may perform limited kitchen work involving the preparation of food and beverages.
They may perform only limited cooking duties (see Fact Sheet #58). They may cook over electric or gas grills that do not involve cooking over an open flame and they may cook with deep fryers that are equipped with and utilize a device that automatically lowers the baskets into the hot oil or grease and automatically raised the baskets from the hot oil or grease.
They may clean cooking equipment and surfaces (not otherwise prohibited), and filter, transport, and dispose of grease as long as the temperature of the surfaces, containers, and grease do not exceed 100°F.
Properly certified 15-year-olds may work as lifeguards and swimming instructors at traditional swimming pools and water amusement parks.
Special Provisions Permitting the Employment of 15-year-olds, but not 14-year-olds, as Lifeguards at Traditional Swimming Pools and Water Amusement Parks
Regulations, 29 C.F.R. § 570.34(l) permits the employment of 15-year-olds as lifeguards at traditional swimming pools and water amusement parks when such youth have been trained and certified by the American Red Cross, or a similar certifying organization, in aquatics and water safety. The federal child labor provisions require that a 15-year-old must acquire additional certification if he or she is to be employed as a swim instructor.
A traditional swimming pool means a water-tight structure of concrete, masonry, or other approved materials located either indoors or outdoors, used for bathing or swimming and filled with a filtered and disinfected water supply, together with buildings, appurtenances and equipment used in connection therewith.
A water amusement park means an establishment that not only encompasses the features of a traditional swimming pool, but may also include such additional attractions as wave pools; lazy rivers; specialized activities areas such as baby pools, water falls, and sprinklers; and elevated water slides. Properly certified 15-year-olds would be permitted to be employed as lifeguards at most of these water park features, but not as attendants or dispatchers at the top of elevated water slides.
Not included in the definition of a traditional swimming pool or a water amusement park would be such natural environment swimming facilities as rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs, wharfs, piers, canals, or oceanside beaches. Lifeguards must be at least 16 years of age to be employed at such natural environment facilities.
For more information about these provisions, please read Fact Sheet # 60: Application of the Federal Youth Employment Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to the Employment of Lifeguards.
Special Provisions Permitting the Employment of Certain Minors in Places of Business that Use Machinery to Process Wood Products
Section 13(c)(7) of the FLSA permits the employment of certain minors between the ages of 14 and 18 inside and outside of places of businesses where machinery is used to process wood products. This exemption applies only to a minor who is:
exempt from compulsory school attendance beyond the eighth grade either by statute or judicial order, and,
is supervised in the work place by an adult relative or adult member of the same religious sect or division as the minor.
Although a minor meeting these requirements may be employed inside and outside of places of businesses that use machinery to process wood products—activities normally prohibited by Child Labor Regulation No. 3 and HO 4—the minor is still prohibited from operating, or assisting to operate, any power-driven woodworking machines. This prohibition includes the starting and stopping of the machines and the feeding of materials into the machines as well as the off-bearing of materials from the machines. Such minors are also prohibited from cleaning, oiling, setting-up, adjusting and maintaining the machines. In addition, such minors must be protected from wood particles or other flying debris within the workplace by a barrier appropriate to the potential hazard of such wood particles or flying debris or by maintaining a sufficient distance from machinery in operation. The minor is also required to use personal protective equipment to prevent exposure to excessive levels of noise and sawdust (see Fact Sheet No. 55 in this series for more information about this exemption).
Work Experience and Career Exploration Program (WECEP)
This program is designed to provide a carefully planned work experience and career exploration program for 14- and 15-year-old youths who can benefit from a career-oriented educational program designed to meet the participants' needs, interests and abilities. The program is aimed at helping youths to become reoriented and motivated toward education and to prepare them for the world of work.
State Departments of Education are granted approval to operate a WECEP by the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division for a 2-year period. Certain provisions of CL Reg. 3 are modified for 14- and 15-year-old participants during the school term.
They may work during school hours.
They may work up to 3 hours on a school day; and as many as 23 hours in a school week.
They also may work in some occupations that would otherwise be prohibited under a variance issued by the Administrator, but they may not work in manufacturing, mining or any of the 17 Hazardous Occupations.
Work-Study Programs (WSP)
Some of the provisions of Child Labor Regulation No. 3 are varied for 14- and 15-year-old participants in approved school-administered WSPs. A WSP participant must be 14 or 15 years of age, enrolled in a college preparatory curriculum, and be identified by authoritative personnel from his or her school as being able to benefit from a work-study program.
Employment of participants in WSPs shall be confined to not more than 18 hours in any one week when school is in session, a portion of which may be during school hours in accordance with the following formula that is based upon a continuous four-week cycle:
In three of the four weeks, the participant is permitted to work during school hours on only one day per week, and for no more than for eight hours on that day.
During the remaining week of the four-week cycle, the participant is permitted to work during school hours on no more than two days, and for no more than for eight hours on each of those two days.
The employment of WSP participants is still subject to the time of day and number of hours standards contained in 29 C.F.R. §§ 570.35(a)(2), (a)(3), (a)(4), and (a)(6). The superintendent of the public or private school system wishing to supervise and administer a WSP as discussed in this section must first receive permission form the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division.
Investigators of the Wage and Hour Division who are stationed across the U.S. enforce the youth employment provisions of the FLSA. As the Secretary of Labor’s representatives, they have the authority to conduct investigations and gather data on wages, hours, and other employment conditions or practices in order to assess compliance with all the provisions of the FLSA.
An employer that violates the youth employment provisions may be subject to civil money penalties (CMPs). The amount of the CMP assessment, which may not exceed a cap set by statute, depends upon the application of statutory and regulatory factors to the specific circumstances of the case.
As a general matter, child labor CMP assessments will be higher if the violation contributed to the injury or death of the youth involved in the violation. The severity of any such injury will be taken into account in determining the amount of a CMP.
CMP assessments may be decreased based on the size of the business.
CMP assessments will reflect the gravity of the violation and may be doubled if the violation is determined to be willful or repeated.
A CMP assessment for a violation that causes the death or serious injury of a minor is subject to a higher statutory cap.
An injury qualifies as a “serious injury” for this purpose if it involves permanent or substantial harm. Both the significance of the injury and the duration of recovery are relevant in determining whether an injury is serious.
If more than one violation caused a single death or serious injury, more than one CMP may be assessed.
CMP assessments based on the death or serious injury of a minor may be doubled up to a higher statutory cap if the violation is determined to be willful or repeated.
For current maximum CMP amounts, please visit https://www.dol.gov/WHD/flsa/index.htm.
Where to Obtain Additional Information
For more information on youth employment laws, visit the YouthRules! Web site at www.youthrules.dol.gov or call toll-free 1-866-4US-WAGE (1-866-487-9243).
For additional information on the Fair Labor Standards Act, visit the Wage and Hour Division Web site: http://www.wagehour.dol.gov and/or call our toll-free information and helpline, available 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in your time zone, 1-866-4USWAGE (1-866-487-9243).
When state youth employment laws differ from the federal provisions, an employer must comply with the higher standard. Links to your state labor department can be found at http://www.dol.gov/whd/contacts/state_of.htm.
This publication is for general information and is not to be considered in the same light as official statements of position contained in the regulations.
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The ground is shifting
Ashis Biswas
Published at 07:25 am April 17th, 2018
Last updated at 11:59 am April 17th, 2018
Pakistan’s decision to procure advanced air defense equipment and jet fighters from Russia shows how profoundly international alignments have changed in South Asia. For India and Pakistan, warm relationships with yesterday’s time-tested allies have turned cold. In contrast, countries other than immediate neighbours have become noticeably friendlier, as new East-vs-West tensions play out in the region. The major change, with Russia and Pakistan enjoying their most cordial relationship in recent decades, has been dictated by an equally dramatic shift in Indo-US relations. Today, the US considers India its “strategic partner” in South Asia -- a far cry from 1970-71, when its mighty Seventh Fleet approached the Bay of Bengal, as Bangladesh wrested its freedom from Pakistan. This has certainly affected India’s earlier non-aligned foreign policy more profoundly than that of Pakistan, which had joined pro-West military blocs. At present, major sections of public opinion in both countries are critical of their present foreign policy directions. Pakistan is seeking to rev up its punching power by acquiring latest Russian-designed tanks. It had earlier ordered four attack helicopters, and new Russian engines for its PAF JF-7 fighter jets. The two countries have conducted joint army exercises, causing Indian eyebrows to rise. A comprehensive energy deal involving an investment of $10 billion, including the construction of a long gas pipeline within Pakistan, is also on the cards. Such bilateral decisions, insofar as they prove anything, point to the dangers inherent in politicians trying to write instant history. Observers well recall the triumphalist gloating of the late Benazir Bhutto, following the collapse of the erstwhile Soviet Union. To a wildly cheering American audience, she had said: “Together you, the US, and we, Pakistan, fought side by side to defeat the Soviet Union. Together, we drained it of its will to survive as an independent nation.” How political fortunes have changed, especially for the new resurgent Russia since those times. In view of today’s reconstructive narrative of Pak-Russia relations, had she been alive, no doubt the PPP leader would have looked somewhat like a poor Rip Van Winkle in 2018! It needs stressing that the morphing of Pakistan as a new ally of Russia has paid rich dividends to Islamabad. Not only does it help the country maintain a combative spirit vis-à-vis the larger neighbour it loves to hate, India, it enjoys a full member status within the anti-NATO SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organization) grouping, working in tandem with Iran. Its continuing bonhomie with China remains an added political bonus. This certainly puts off the US and the EU, which are fed up with Pakistan’s not-exactly-secret support to Islamic terrorist groups. However, Islamabad takes care not to alienate Washington’s most trusted all-weather ally, Saudi Arabia. After initially refusing, Pakistan has now agreed to send troops to serve under Riyadh’s command near Yemen’s border areas, as the US-backed Saudi war against non- Sunni civilians continues. Pakistani leaders, for all their domestic economic difficulties and image problems within the international community, are therefore not totally isolated. Accustomed as successive Pakistani administrations have been to lean on and play off, one power bloc against another for its survival, their leaders do not stand on diplomatic niceties when sending a strong message to their detractors and critics. Only weeks ago, Pakistani generals, mocking US warnings to cut off financial aid and other help, reminded Washington that the Chinese would stand by them as their trusted friends. In fact, they responded with a taunt of their own. Referring obliquely to recent developments in Syria and Ukraine, they added that the West had declined as a power bloc. Militarily or economically, the joint alliance between China and Russia was now more powerful. “This was the first clear indication of Pakistan declaring that it was no longer scared of antagonizing the West anymore and their generals did not mince their words,” says Kolkata-based observer Charubrata Ray.
Such bilateral decisions, insofar as they prove anything, point to the dangers inherent in politicians trying to write instant history
Friends with benefits Recent history also played a role. What Mrs Bhutto failed to appreciate was that Pakistan’s strategic value to the West plummeted as the USSR collapsed, giving way to a politically reduced Russian Federation. For the West, the need to build up India as a counterweight to growing Chinese domination in South Asia was clearly a far more urgent task. With the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party taking over in India, Indo-US relations have grown exponentially. There have been joint army, navy, and air exercises involving the US and India since 2005, when the epochal bilateral nuclear deal was signed. Since then, it has been bilaterally agreed to increase trade from an earlier $100bn to $500bn during the next few years. A $10bn defense deal involving the supply of C-130 planes, C-17, and P-80 types of aircraft was drawn up. Further, to make sure China does not dominate the Indian Ocean region, the US, Japan, India, and Australia have agreed to work in close coordination. Clearly the intention was to send a strong message to China, that it did not enjoy a monopoly of military strength. Despite India’s active involvement in the SCO and its membership in BRICS, frosty undercurrents continue to affect the uneasy Indo-China relationship. The shooting war may have ended in 1962, but periodic recurrence of border tensions continue. Also, the shift towards adopting a closer position to the US did not begin with the BJP’s present tenure beginning in 2014. It had started in India earlier, during Dr Manmohan Singh’s tenure as prime minister during Congress rule. Left-wing critics of India’s present policies point out that in the name of “helping India stand up against China,” the US has consistently walked away with tangible benefits of improved bilateral ties, especially in financial terms. President Obama had ended his India visit with a five-year-long contract for Indians buying equipment from the ailing Westinghouse company, to say nothing about India buying (slightly outdated) US made arms. Ditto for President Trump, who for all his apparent bonhomie with Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not made things easier for technically competent Indian visa seekers to enter the US or secure promotions in their US work places. On the contrary, he has publicly pulled up India for its import duties in US-made motor bikes and other items, despite India reducing some of them. As for selling India its upgraded weaponry, while Israel and Japan do not find it difficult to buy the latest F-35 fighters, their sale is not discussed in talks with India. Neither Obama nor Trump ever responded to India’s repeated urgings to get easier access to the large US market nor to secure much advanced technology. Russia, in contrast, has already offered to sell its latest Mig-35 fighter jets to India, and even Bangladesh has expressed interest in discussing a possible purchase. So what do these facts indicate? In the West, the colonial perception that the East is East and the West is West refuses to die? Readers can judge for themselves. Ashis Biswas writes from Kolkata, India.
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Woman rescued as death toll rises in Mumbai building collapse
The politics of belonging in Assam
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Rosalie Y. Blady Obituary
Leitz-Eagan Funeral Home
4747 Veterans Blvd, Metairie, LA
Rosalie Y. Blady
November 28, 1933 – July 10, 2019
Rosalie Yost Blady (Babe), passed away peacefully at home on July 10, 2019, at the age of 85, surrounded by her loving family. She was the loving wife and soulmate of Jefferson (Jeff) D. Blady (Honey), for over 65 years. Preceded in death by her mother, Margaret Pumilia Radosta of Independence, Louisiana, father, Harry E. Yost of Montgomery, Ohio, and step-father, Sal Radosta. Sister of Doris Yost Laansoo, Sarah (deceased), and Betty Lou (deceased). Cherished mama to Nick Blady, Sr. (Cathy), the late Allen Blady (Gertrud), Howard Blady (Mary George), Rosalie Maricich Voltolina, Jeffry Blady (Jane Ellen), Darren Blady (Donna), and Roxanne Blady Rose (Stephen). Grandma of Nick, Jr., Jason, Sabine (Steve), Nicole (Jimmy), Gavin (Amber), Justin (Pepper), Greg (Lacee), Kristal (Mason), Andrew, Scott, Katie, Marcus, Katelyn, Lauren, Dylan, 11 1/2 great-grandchildren and a multitude of extended family and friends. Memorial Services will be held on Saturday, July 20, 2019 at St. Joseph Catholic Church, 1802 Tulane Ave., New Orleans, Louisiana. Visitation will begin at 9:30 am, followed by a Funeral Mass at 10:30 am. In lieu of flowers, please consider a gift in her honor to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Online condolences may be left for the family at www.leitzeaganfuneralhome.com.
She was the loving wife and soulmate of Jefferson (Jeff) D. Blady (Honey), for over 65 years. Preceded in death by her mother, Margaret Pumilia Radosta of Independence, Louisiana, father, Harry E. Yost of Montgomery, Ohio, and step-father, Sal Radosta. Sister of Doris Yost Laansoo, Sarah (deceased), and Betty Lou (deceased). Cherished mama to Nick Blady, Sr. (Cathy), the late Allen Blady (Gertrud), Howard Blady (Mary George), Rosalie Maricich Voltolina, Jeffry Blady (Jane Ellen), Darren Blady (Donna), and Roxanne Blady Rose (Stephen). Grandma of Nick, Jr., Jason, Sabine (Steve), Nicole (Jimmy), Gavin (Amber), Justin (Pepper), Greg (Lacee), Kristal (Mason), Andrew, Scott, Katie, Marcus, Katelyn, Lauren, Dylan, 11 1/2 great-grandchildren and a multitude of extended family and friends.
Add a Memory Share Obituary
St. Joseph Catholic Church
1802 Tulane Ave.
Shirley Engelhardt
Our sincere condolences to the Blady family. I've lived across the street for most of my life and will miss Ms. Rose's smiles, waves, hello's, and conversations through the years. I will truly miss her.
In Memory Of Rosalie Y. Blady
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/metairie-la/rosalie-blady-8775959
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Alec Baldwin Will Be Trump On 'SNL' For Whole Season
By Hope Schreiber
We feel like this move speaks volumes of just how much Alec Baldwin detests the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
After all, the Emmy-award winning actor has quite a full plate. He hosts his own podcast, "Here's the Thing," he's the host of the revival of the hit game show "Match Game," and he and Hilaria Baldwin just welcomed a new baby in September.
So for Baldwin, who currently holds the record for most times hosting "Saturday Night Live" with 16 episodes, to take time out of his busy schedule to play "The Apprentice" star Trump is no small task.
On the season premiere of "SNL" on October 1, Alec Baldwin will play Trump, a role he will play for the entire season.
It will work in about the same way as how Larry David appeared as Bernie Sanders last year.
Saturday Night Live on YouTube
Previously, Darrell Hammond, a former cast member and now the announcer of the show, played Trump. This, however, will certainly free up the impressionist to appear as Bill Clinton.
Before Hammond donned the orange makeup, Taran Killam, who will not join the cast for season 42, played the presidential hopeful.
Baldwin, who is a close friend with producer Lorne Michaels and also appeared on his NBC sitcom "30 Rock," signed on, officially, earlier this week.
Despite Baldwin's tenure as host, where he impersonated Al Pacino, Bono, Tony Bennett and Texas Governor Rick Perry, this will be his first time portraying Donald Trump.
The actor has had a number of choice words for Trump. Recently, he said to Ellen DeGeneres,
We don't really want a president who looks like he's been dipped in movie popcorn butter.
He also told The Telegraph,
Trump is the first presidential candidate made of hate.
"SNL" returns for its 42nd season on NBC on October 1. Margot Robbie will host with musical guest The Weeknd.
Citations: 'Saturday Night Live' Casts Alec Baldwin as Its New Donald Trump (Hollywood Reporter)
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Home » A Short History of Silk Scarves
A Short History of Silk Scarves and Silk Production
According to legend, the production of silk began accidentally. The story states that in the 27th century B.C. a Chinese empress dropped a silk cocoon into her cup of tea. As she retrieved the cocoon from the cup, it unfolded into a shimmering thread. The empress, enchanted by the raw beauty of the thread, had a loom created so that the silk could be woven into a fabric.
No one will ever know if this story is truth or myth, but we do know that around that time the Chinese began cultivating silk worms and producingsilk as a fabric.
Initially, silk was a luxury. Only the Emperor and his court were allowed to wear silk clothing. Before long, though, sericulture (the cultivationof silk worms and the production of silk fiber) was spread throughout the entire empire. Silk was woven for clothes, fishing lines, bowstrings, rag paper, and musical instruments. Silk became a form of currency. Farmers paid taxes in silk. Servants were paid in silk. Silk became an important commodity in Chinese trade.
For almost 3000 years the emperors of China, in order to keep a monopoly on sericulture, strove to keep it a secret from other countries. This was mostly successful, although Chinese settlers did bring sericulture to Korea and Japan around 200 BC, and by 300 AD India was producing silk.
An Egyptian mummy dating 1070 BC shows evidence of ancient silk trading. At first, trade was held to neighboring countries, but as time went on, more regions gained access to silk, until it spread all the way to Northern Africa and Western Europe, creating what is known as the Silk Road.
It took until the 6th century AD before the Western World began silk production, when the Roman Emperor Justinian sent two monks to Asia. When the monks returned to Constantinople, they hid silk worm eggs and mulberry leaves in their canes. Thus, the Byzantines now were able to begin silk production.
Byzantium was as determined as China to retain a monopoly over the silk trade. Weavers and looms were not allowed outside of the Imperial Palace and their fabric was worn almost exclusively by political and military leaders. What little silk wasn’t worn by them was sold at exorbitant prices. Silk cultivation then spread throughout Asia Minor and Greece.
In the 7th century, the Arabs conquered the Persians, and with them, the magnificent Persian silks The Arabs then spread silk throughout Africa,Spain, and Sicily as they expanded their empire. Marco Polo’s journeys to China, The Crusaders, and the formation of the Mongol Empire led to even more development of the silk trade between East and West.
By the 12th century, Italy became the silk capital of the Western World, thanks to the Venetian merchants. Presently, most Italian silk is made in Northern Italy near the city of Como, where the white mulberry trees are planted for the silk worms.
In the 15th century, King Francois I started a silk production monopoly in Lyon, France which challenged Italy’s leadership in silk production.In 1685, though, Louis XIV reversed the Edict of Nantes, which had given Protestants (Huguenots) a number of rights in France. Many Huguenots were textile weavers and they fled France establishing silk mills in Great Britain, Germany and Switzerland.
The silkworm, however, did not flourish in these cool climates, nor has it ever done well in the United States. In 1804, Joseph-Marie Jacquard developed a complex loom that weaved complicated floral or figured patterns onto a simpler background. This weave is still very desirable and expensive.
King James I introduced silk growing to the American colonies around 1619, but only the Shakers in Kentucky adopted the process, and it did not become an industry. In the 1800’s a new effort to produce silk in the United States began in New Jersey with European born weavers and in 1810 the first silk mill in the U.S. was established. High tariffs against imported textiles during the American Civil War and the onset of the power loom allowed a period of growth of the silk weaving industry in the United States. The silk itself was produced mostly in China, Japan and to a lesser extent, France and Italy.
The 20th century heralded in a new era in textile working. Now, man began to create fibers. These man-made fibers quickly became cheap to produce and distribute. Production of natural fibers, like silk, began to reduce.
The Second World War had a tremendous effect on the production of silk. Japan’s raw silk supplies were cut off from the Allied countries and the price of silk rose dramatically. Countries began using alternative synthetic fibers for traditional silk products like parachutes and stockings.
In the last 30 years, world silk production has doubled. The allure and appeal of this remarkable luxury fabric continues to grow and be appreciated.
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Science, Health & Technology
News From The Science, Health & Technology World
Neha Gore
Extinct Tortoise Spotted in South America
A giant tortoise believed extinct, was spotted after more than a century in Galapagos Island of Fernandina in Ecuador on February 16, 2019. The adult female Chelonoidis Phantasticus, also called Fernandina Giant Tortoise, was spotted in a joint expedition of the Galapagos National Park and the U.S.-based Galapagos Conservancy, Ecuador.
Saridon no Longer a Banned Drug
The pain relief tablet Saridon by Piramal Enterprises Ltd’s (PEL) has been exempted from the list of banned fixed dose combinations (FDCs) by the Supreme Court. The government had banned 328 FDCs in September 2018.
Supercomputer PARAM Shivay Inaugurated by PM
PM Narendra Modi inaugurated the supercomputer 'PARAM Shivay' at IIT-Banaras Hindu University (BHU) on February 19, 2019. The supercomputer of 833 teraflop capacity is built for ₹32.5 crore. India’s first supercomputer called PARAM 8000, made by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) was launched on July 1, 1991.
The New Universe Map Reveals 3,00,000 More Galaxies
A new map of the night sky revealing several previously unknown galaxies was published on February 19, 2019. The galaxies were discovered using a LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) telescope that can detect light sources which optical instruments cannot see. More than 200 astronomers from 18 countries were involved in the study looking at a segment of sky over the northern hemisphere.
current affairs157
157 current affairs 20 sbi po 15 knowledgehub 14 sbi clerk 12 puzzles 11 tips & tricks 11 neet 9 cat
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Home State Immunity The UK Supreme Court’s Blockbuster Decision in Belhaj
The UK Supreme Court’s Blockbuster Decision in Belhaj
Published on January 18, 2017 Author: Natasha Simonsen
The UK Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected the contention that state immunity and/or foreign act of state barred courts from hearing claims of UK complicity in abduction and torture. The judgment in Belhaj & Rahmatullah (No 1) v Straw & Ors [2017] UKSC 3 – just one of three “blockbuster” decisions handed down in yesterday’s bonanza- has finally cleared the way for these important claims to be tried.
The facts of the cases are well known (and are set out in more detail in this post on the Court of Appeal’s judgment). In short, Abdul-Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife allege that UK security services cooperated with US and Libyan authorities in their unlawful rendition in 2004 and their subsequent detention and torture. Mr Rahmatullah, a Pakistani national, was detained by UK forces in Iraq, also in 2004, before being transferred to the custody of US forces, at whose hands he was allegedly tortured. Mr Belhaj was detained by the Gaddafi regime for six years; Mr Rahmatullah was held at Bagram air base for ten years.
There are many striking features of the Supreme Court’s judgment. These include Lord Sumption’s careful discussion of jus cogens; the surprisingly short shrift given to the government’s argument based on state immunity; and the strident dismissal of the argument that UK courts should refrain from adjudicating on foreign acts of state where doing so would embarrass the UK in its international relations (per Lord Mance at [11](iv)(d)]; Lord Neuberger at [134]; and Lord Sumption at [241]). In these brief initial comments, I focus on the doctrine of foreign act of state, which was characterised differently by each of Lord Mance, Lord Sumption and Lord Neuberger (notwithstanding that they agreed in the result).
To the extent that the opinions differ on foreign act of state, it is Lord Neuberger’s view that binds, since he attracted Lord Wilson, Lady Hale and Lord Clarke to his side. So, a majority, but by a hair’s breadth: in their brief, almost parenthetical opinion, Lady Hale and Lord Clarke described Lord Mance and Lord Neuberger as having reached “the same conclusion… for essentially the same reasons”. That word, “essentially”, is capable of masking quite a lot, as the discussion which follows will show.
Lord Mance and Lord Neuberger identified three types of foreign act of state:
The rule of private international law that a foreign state’s legislation is normally treated as valid insofar as it affects movable or immovable property within the foreign state’s jurisdiction;
The rule that a domestic court will not normally question the validity of a foreign governmental act in respect of property within the foreign state’s jurisdiction (both Lord Mance and Lord Neuberger expressed reservations as to the existence of this second rule. If it did exist, the rule “is and should be limited to acts relating to property within the jurisdiction of the foreign state” (per Lord Mance) [§11(iv)(a)]);
The rule of non-justiciability or judicial abstention whereby a domestic court will not adjudicate upon sovereign acts committed by a foreign state abroad (per Lord Mance at [40]; per Lord Neuberger at [123]).
The third rule was the critical issue in this case, and it was here that the differences between Lord Mance and Lord Neuberger were most pronounced.
For Lord Mance, detention in the context of an armed conflict overseas could in some circumstances constitute a foreign act of state. However, the arbitrary rendition, detention and severe mistreatment at issue in these cases “goes far beyond any conduct previously recognised as requiring judicial abstention” (at [97]). In view of “the nature and seriousness of the infringements of individual fundamental rights involved”, the fact that the appellants were allegedly complicit, rather than the prime actors, in the conduct alleged, did not constitute a basis on which domestic courts should abstain from adjudicating (per Lord Mance at [102]).
For Lord Neuberger, the acts alleged in these cases would never have been within the scope of the third rule. In contrast to cases requiring judicial abstention, here there was “no suggestion that there was some sort of formal or high-level agreement or treaty between any of the states involved which governed the cooperation between the executives of the various countries concerned” (at [167]). But even if the third rule had applied, that rule was subject to a public policy exception. Lord Neuberger did not define the scope of that exception, but noted that “any treatment which amounts to a breach of jus cogens or peremptory norms would almost always fall within [it]” (at [168]). While Lord Neuberger described Lord Sumption’s analysis of jus cogens as “impressive” (at [168]), he fell short of a full-throated endorsement. In Lord Neuberger’s view, the domestic origin of foreign act of state rendered it unnecessary for claimants to show that their treatment contravened a jus cogens norm to fall within the public policy exception.
In contrast to Lord Mance and Lord Neuberger, Lord Sumption considered the doctrine of foreign act of state to be comprised of two principles (at [227]):
The first principle, which he labelled “municipal law act of state”, comprises the first two types of foreign act of state identified by Lord Mance, and it is necessarily limited territorially (at [235]-[236]). Municipal law act of state is the rule that “English courts will not adjudicate on the lawfulness or validity of a state’s sovereign acts under its own law” (at [228]). Unlike Lord Mance and Lord Neuberger, Lord Sumption considered that “personal injury and other wrongs against the person inflicted by the agents of a foreign state are as much capable of being acts of state as the destruction or detention of property” (at [231]). This rule (subject to any exceptions) applies to the acts of Malaysia and Thailand against Mr Belhaj and Mrs Boudchar insofar as those acts were taken within their respective jurisdictions (at [233]).
The second principle, which Lord Sumption labelled “international law act of state”, broadly corresponds to Lord Mance’s third type of foreign act of state. It is the rule that “English courts will not adjudicate on the lawfulness of the extraterritorial acts of foreign states in their dealings with other states or the subjects of other states” (at [234]). This principle applies “wherever the relevant act of the foreign state occurs” and is not territorially limited (at [237]). This rule (subject to any exceptions) applies to the acts alleged against US officials in the present cases (at [238]).
For Lord Sumption, both limbs of the doctrine were capable of application “only where the invalidity or unlawfulness of the state’s sovereign acts is part of the very subject matter of the action in the sense that the issue cannot be resolved without determining it” (at [240]). In the present case, the unlawfulness of the acts alleged against foreign states was “essential to the pleaded causes of action” (at [242]). Prima facie, then, the doctrine applied.
However, Lord Sumption held that there was an exception. Neither limb of the doctrine could apply where it “would be contrary to the fundamental requirements of justice administered by an English court” (at [262]). This exception covered allegations of torture and complicity in torture (at [268]), and detention without legal basis or recourse to the courts (at [272], [278]). However, it does not necessarily apply to ill-treatment falling short of torture, which does not have the same claim to jus cogens status (at [280]).
In view of their conclusion that the foreign act of state doctrine did not apply to these claims, it was not necessary for Lord Mance or Lord Neuberger to decide whether that doctrine was inconsistent with Article 6 ECHR (per Lord Mance at [11(v)(b)]; Lord Neuberger did not expressly say as much, but it follows from his reasoning).
However, Lord Sumption’s conclusion that ill-treatment falling short of torture was outside the scope of the exception to foreign act of state, meant that the question of the compatibility of that doctrine with Article 6 did arise. Nevertheless, he quickly rejected that contention: applying Roche v United Kingdom (2005) 42 EHRR 30 Lord Sumption held that foreign act of state was “a rule of substantive law which operates as a limitation on the subject-matter jurisdiction of the English court” (at [282]).
The unanimous rejection of foreign act of state in Belhaj & Rahmatullah (No 1) makes the related judgment on Crown act of state in Rahmatullah (No 2) all the more surprising. In that judgment, which was also handed down yesterday, a different panel of seven judges unanimously held that the doctrine of Crown act of state is in principle available as a defence to tort claims arising from the detention and transfer of the claimants by UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reasoning in that judgment—which is in many respects unsatisfactory—I will leave for another day.
Nevertheless, it is 12 years since Mr Belhaj, Mrs Boudchar and Mr Rahmatullah allege they were detained, abducted and tortured. If UK secret services, and/or the then foreign secretary, were complicit in those abuses, it is high time that they were hauled before the courts. Yesterday’s judgment brings that outcome closer. To that extent at least, it should be applauded.
Filed under: State Immunity, Torture
Tags: Foreign Act of State, Jus Cogens
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Scarves, Slaves and the Nearly Headless NPD | Verfassungsblog
[…] state liability for wrongful acts in fighting international terrorism, and one of them – Belhaj & Ramatullah v. Straw – is examined in detail by NATASHA SIMONSEN and also by DOMINIC RUCK […]
Kriangsak Kittichaisaree
Surprised that no comments to date on your post re: this landmark judgment by the UK Supreme Court.
Since the immunity of State official from foreign criminal jurisdiction is said to derive from sovereign immunity/State immunity, would you say that this judgment shows that the officials implicated in the allegations made by the plaintiffs would have no personal and/or functional immunity when they are prosecuted before a foreign criminal court?
Natasha Simonsen
Natasha Simonsen recently submitted her doctoral thesis on torture in international law. She previously worked as a lecturer in law at New College, St Peter's College, and St Anne's College at the University of Oxford and as a teaching fellow at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. Natasha has also worked as a consultant on human rights and criminal justice for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), the Government of Pakistan, and for NGOs in Pakistan and Iraq. Read Full
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Cimabue was a renowned and influential Italian painter and mosaicist whose work has largely influenced and shaped the Italo-Byzantine style. Cimabue’s artistic approach and aesthetics were in open rebellion against the conventions and traditions of the artistic societies of the conservative 14th century, and his art and endeavors gave way to newer traditions and a more natural style to the 14th century western European painting. His works make the largest contributions to early medieval Italian art and most of his surviving works are frescos such as ‘Madonna Enthroned with St. Francis’, ‘Sta. Trinita Madonna’, and the New Testament scenes in the upper church of S. Francesco.
Cimabue, whose birth name was Benicivieni di Pepo, is said to have been born around 1250 in Italy. Details of his life have been recorded from different discourses and writings of other prolific artists such as Dante and Lorenzo Ghiberti who describe Cimabue as arrogant and haughty, yet extremely talented. However, Giorgio Vasari relates incidents that show Cimabue’s generosity and good will, for instance, when he saw Giotto for the first time, working as a shepherd and drawing on a flat stone, so taken was Cimabue with the young artist’s devotion that he offered to take him up as san apprentice.
According to Vasari, Cimabue was given the responsibility to design, monitor and organize all the decorations and ornaments for the Upper Church, and it was under this commission that he created some of his most remarkable and highly acclaimed works, a wide and rich array of frescoes that were to adorn and embellish the Upper Church of S. Francesco, Assisi. The large Crucifixion depiction is indeed Cimabue’s masterpiece among his extensive work in frescos, this particular piece takes its inspiration for Byzantine iconography and fills the fresco with Cimabue’s unique and distinctive flair for drama and expression. Cimabue’s unique and powerfully evocative style became immensely popular and acclaimed for breaking away from traditions and developing a more natural approach of painting.
The Evangelist’s portraits that adorn the vaults of the crossing are another remarkable exhibit of Cimabue’s natural talent and his evocative style of expression and creation of plastic forms. The widely acclaimed and praised frescos, ‘Madonna Enthroned with Angels and St. Francis’, is another example of his raw and naked talent. Although worn and torn with the ravages and trials of time, for centuries, this painting has influenced generations of artists on the Byzantine style.
Towards the peak of his career, Cimabue began to evolve his style and outgrow the influence of the traditional Italian-Byzantine approach, and began experimenting with linear definitions, gold striations and discovered a new softness of modelling. For instance, his work at the Sta Croce, Florence, which mainly consisted of murals and frescoes, marks a clear abandonment of the Byzantine conventions and signifies a move towards naturalism. Sadly, these remarkable works were destroyed in 1966.
The huge and expansive ‘Madonna Enthroned’ that adorns the walls of the Church of Sta Trinita, Florence, is indeed the best and foremost example of Cimabue’s talent and skill. This painting is an intermingling of the traditional Byzantine motifs with a softer, more natural and warm depiction of a loving, easily approachable and earthly mother.
Cimabue is said to have died in 1302.
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Boohoo.com announces three year sponsorship agreement with Burnley Cricket Club
Online fashion retailer boohoo.com has announced a sponsorship agreement with Burnley Cricket Club. The local area of Burnley plays an instrumental part in the boohoo operation, being the home to our Distribution & Customer Service Operations who serve all customers globally. The 3-year partnership between the online retailer and the cricket club will see the ground renamed as “The boohoo.com Turf Moor”, and significant investment will be put into “The Boohoo Junior Cricket Academy” to help develop both boys and girls cricket. President of Burnley Cricket Club, Michael Brown comments; “We are absolutely delighted to have a partner and sponsor as well-known as boohoo. It is not only a huge Company in its own right but is a big part of the Burnley community and it is fantastic they want to invest in junior and senior cricket and put even more back into the town through Burnley Cricket Club. We hope this agreement can be the start of a long and happy partnership.” Mike Suban, Head of HR at boohoo.com, said: “As one of the largest employers in Burnley, boohoo are proud to be part of the local community. We are continually looking to identify opportunities to create meaningful local partnerships and invest in the future of Burnley and its people. Burnley Cricket Club do a lot of great work nurturing junior talent through their academy, some of whom will be sons and daughters of our colleagues, and we are delighted to help support this initiative through this new partnership”.
www.boohoo.com
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Precise Sanskrit translations by the translation agency Fasttranslator
We are happy to advise you on your Sanskrit translation. Contact us!
Sanskrit is an umbrella term denoting various old Indian languages. The oldest written form of Sanskrit is in the Vedas, the holy book of Hinduism. These texts were created over one thousand years before Christ. Sanskrit is the language of the Brahmin, the highest caste group in the Indian caste system. Sanskrit is mostly written using Devanagari script, the common Indian alphabetic script. It is possible that there are other writings in different scripts. Classical Sanskrit contains forty-eight different phonemes while the older Vedic Sanskrit has forty-nine. Some Indian people still speak Sanskrit as their mother tongue to this day. In India, church services, wedding ceremonies, and funerals are still held in Sanskrit. This language holds the key to the culture and society of the South Asian region. Knowledge of this language is essential to understanding the religious and cultural heritage of South Asia. For this reason, we employ exclusively native speaking translators raised with this language and culture. They are capable of translating your documents from every language reliably and with pinpoint accuracy. We can even handle any of the various subject areas without a problem. Contact us and see what we can do. Our experienced project managers are happy to advise you by phone and by email.
Sanskrit in modern India
The importance of Sanskrit to religious Indian people can be compared to that of Latin to the European theologians or Hebrew to Jewish rabbis. India's most important religious, scientific, and philosophical texts are written in Sanskrit. Although Sanskrit is hardly spoken in modern India, six thousand of the country’s people named it as their native language in a survey conducted at the end of the twentieth century. At this point in time, nearly two hundred thousand Indian people still spoke Sanskrit as a second language. There are efforts being made in India to keep the language alive. There are Sanskrit language newspapers and radio stations. In many schools, Sanskrit is at least taught as a third language after Hindi and English.
The history of Sanskrit
Sanskrit is the oldest variant of the Indo-Aryan languages. All modern languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent developed from this language. These modern spin offs include Romani, Hindi-Urdu, Kashmiri, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, and Nepalese. In contrast to the colloquial Prakrit, Sanskrit has always been considered a purer and holier language. At first, many Sanskrit texts were passed down orally, centuries passing before it even partially began to be written down. The first Sanskrit grammar was recorded at some point in the fifth century BC by Panini. Our project managers are happy to serve as your contact partner in your professional translation into or from the Sanskrit language. Contact us now by email or phone.
The relationship of Sanskrit to other languages
Sanskrit is related to all languages of the Indo-European language family. Relationships also exist with Latin and Greek. For example, the Latin word for God, "deus", corresponds to the Sanskrit word for God,"deva". The noticeable similarity between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek was first discovered during the colonization of India after incoming Europeans began to translate classical Indian literature. Sanskrit derived loanwords can also be found in the English language. Examples of this are: Avatar, guru, jungle, karma, mantra, and yoga. If you would like to learn more about this old Indian script, we are happy to be of service to you. All you have to do is contact us.
Send Maria an emailFemale83950
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Feinstein, Collins Introduce Bill to Create Smithsonian Women’s History Museum
Washington – Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) introduced the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum Act (S. 959), a bipartisan bill to establish an American women’s history museum in our nation’s capital. Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.), and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives.
“As we celebrate Women’s History Month, I’m pleased to support Senator Collins in this worthwhile legislation,” said Senator Feinstein. “We need a permanent place to showcase the accomplishments and tell the stories of women throughout our country’s history. A Smithsonian museum would be a fitting and long-overdue way to properly recognize women’s contributions to our nation’s narrative.”
“American women have made invaluable contributions to our country in every field, such as government, business, medicine, law, literature, sports, entertainment, the arts, and the military. Telling the history of American women matters, and a museum recognizing these achievements and experiences is long overdue,” said Senator Collins. “A museum dedicated to women’s history would help ensure that future generations understand what we owe to those American women who have helped build, sustain, and advance our society.”
“I believe that one of the most important things we can do is show young women and girls they can be and do anything. How can we empower women if we do not even recognize them?” said Rep. Maloney. “The U.S. needs and deserves a comprehensive women’s history museum that will inspire men and women of all ages and for future generations. For too long, women who have made extraordinary contributions to our nation have been left out of the telling of our history. We can, and we must, change that. I’m proud to introduce this bipartisan bill during Women’s History Month to do just that.”
In December 2014, Congress created a Congressional Commission to study the potential for an American museum of women’s history in Washington, D.C. This bipartisan commission’s report recommended the creation of a new Smithsonian Museum dedicated to women’s history. Incorporating the recommendations of the bipartisan Commission, this bill would establish a national museum to collect, study, and create programs on a wide spectrum of American women’s experiences, contributions, and history.
“As our bipartisan Commission unanimously concluded, the American people need and deserve a museum dedicated to telling the story of American women,” said Jane Abraham, chair of the American Museum of Women's History Congressional Commission. “I’m proud to support this bipartisan bill that took our commission’s recommendations to make this museum a reality. Women’s history is as rich as it is vast and to truly learn about and celebrate our country’s history, women’s contributions must be showcased in a dedicated museum.”
The Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum Act would:
Create a Council of 25 members to make recommendations regarding the planning, design, and construction of a museum; advise on Museum administration, operations, maintenance, and preservation; acquire and manage artifacts and collections; and manage programming, education, exhibits, and research.
Authorize a Museum Director to collaborate with schools and to carry out education and liaison programs to support the goals of the Museum.
Allow the Board of Regents to designate a site for the Museum and include the consideration of two sites on the National Mall
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Department of Homeland Security Releases Details of Plan to Secure Unfilled Border Tunnels
Washington, DC – In a letter to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has unveiled its plan to secure unfilled tunnels along the border. DHS has assigned responsibility to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for identifying, securing, and filling tunnels that are discovered along the border.
The details were released to Senator Feinstein in a February 27, 2007 letter from DHS Assistant Secretary Donald Kent. In response, Senator Feinstein yesterday sent a letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff.
Senator Feinstein authored legislation in the 109th Congress to criminalize the act of constructing or financing a tunnel or subterranean passage across an international border into the United States. The measure was included FY’07 DHS Appropriations bill and has been signed into law.
A copy of both the letter from DHS and Senator Feinstein’s response to DHS Secretary Chertoff are copied below.
First, the following is the text of Senator Feinstein’s letter to Secretary Chertoff:
Secretary Michael Chertoff
Nebraska Avenue Center, N.W.
Dear Secretary Chertoff:
Thank you for your letter of February 27, 2007, forwarding information on the Department of Homeland Security’s policy on border tunnels.
In recent weeks, we’ve learned that seven of the largest border tunnels under the U.S.-Mexico border remain unfilled. This is a serious national security risk and I am committed to ensuring that these tunnels are filled in a timely manner to prevent smugglers from moving drugs, guns, and people under the border.
Your letter indicates that:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection will have responsibility for border tunnel remediation, including ultimately filling in the border tunnels;
U.S. Customs and Border Protection now has the necessary funding to complete this project and is currently in the process of awarding contracts to fill in these tunnels; and
The Department of Homeland Security intends to designate a single point of contact on all tunnel issues.
These are significant steps toward resolving the jurisdictional and financial impediments to remedying this ongoing threat to our nation’s borders. I trust that U.S. Customs and Border Protection will move expeditiously toward filling in these tunnels, and I ask for notification when the project is completed.
The issue of cross-border tunnels is a significant one, and I hope that the Department of Homeland Security will do all that it can to seal these tunnels permanently.
I thank you for your continued attention to this important matter.
The following is DHS Assistant Secretary Kent’s letter to Senator Feinstein:
The Honorable Dianne Feinstein
Dear Senator Feinstein:
Thank you for your February 5, 2007 and February 23, 2007 letters concerning the unfilled tunnels under the U.S.-Mexico border. The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) response to the congressional requirement to develop a Departmental policy regarding tunnels, including identifying the responsible agency and the source of funds to close and fill tunnels, is complete and will be delivered to Congress within the week. I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that DHS has the matter of tunnel remediation under control and that all known tunnels have been filled or otherwise rendered unusable.
DHS treats subterranean passages as a significant threat to the security of our borders and considers tunnel remediation a high priority. A Joint Task Force comprised of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Drug Enforcement Administration, the California Department of Justice, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was created in the San Diego Sector to coordinate and prioritize activities to locate, investigate, and prevent border tunnels and other subterranean passages. Additionally, specially-trained tunnel response teams are available in all southern border sectors.
CBP has the responsibility for border tunnel remediation, which involves filling or otherwise impeding passage through tunnels, and closing entry and exit points located on United States soil. There have been 58 tunnels discovered along the Southwest and Northern Borders since 1990. All but seven of the largest and most sophisticated tunnels have been rendered unusable. These seven tunnels have been plugged with concrete in one or more areas as a temporary measure until they can be permanently filled. Plugging a tunnel is a much more complex and effective measure than simply capping the entrance and involves drilling a 6-foot diameter hole through the earth to the actual tunnel and creating a concrete obstruction. (A photo illustrating the plugging process is attached.) The seven plugged tunnels are also being monitored with sensors or surveillance to deny re-use until they are permanently filled.
An engineering survey for permanently filling the seven tunnels has been completed, and CBP is now in the process of executing its plan to fill the tunnels. CBP has the necessary funding, $2.74 million, available in fiscal year 2007 to fill in these tunnels. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) will serve as the contracting and technical agent to CBP for these projects. Currently, USACE is taking the appropriate steps to negotiate with affected landowners to gain Rights of Entry into areas where contractors must work. Also, USACE is in the process of awarding contracts to construction firms to fill the tunnels. Assuming clear Rights of Entry, CBP is targeting to have all seven tunnels filled by May 15, 2007.
Beyond the remediation of existing tunnels, DHS is taking action to develop and demonstrate robust and reliable tunnel detection technologies. The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is coordinating efforts with other entities that share the common objective of developing tunnel detection technologies. These include U.S. Northern Command, Joint Task Force North, USACE, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the Tunnel Detection Technical Support Working Group. On February 1, 2007, S&T posted the Tunnel Detection Technologies Broad Agency Announcement, a High Impact Technology Solution designed to identify, pursue; and provide proofs-of-concept that could result in high-payoff technology breakthroughs. Initial proposals are due March 18, 2007 with subsequent awards in April and May 2007. Also, S&T plans to leverage a promising technology previously funded as a Small Business Innovation Research project under the U.S. Navy's Counter-Narcotics Terrorism Program Office to develop a prototype airborne electromagnetic gradiometer sensor system using an unmanned aerial vehicle. A demonstration of this capability is planned in the summer of 2007.
DHS and CBP will continue to make every effort to expeditiously secure, plug and fill (or otherwise render unusable) all tunnels as they are discovered. Further, CBP is designating a single point of contact on all tunnel issues to ensure that accurate and consistent information is provided to legislators and the media.
I hope the information provided addresses your concerns. Should you desire a briefing to provide additional clarification, please let me know and I will ensure one is arranged. If I may be of further assistance, please contact the Office of Legis1ative and Intergovernmental Affairs (202) 447-5890.
Donald H. Kent, Jr.
Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs
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Difference between revisions of "224: Lisp"
Revision as of 12:24, 27 November 2015 (edit)
173.245.54.21 (talk)
(→Explanation)
Revision as of 09:57, 28 November 2015 (edit) (undo)
In the comic, Cueball marvels at the fundamental and complete nature of the language of creation that he sees in his dream. In the Lisp programming language, "car" is a primitive (i.e. basic) function which produces the first item in a list. The line "My God, It's full of '{{w|CAR_and_CDR|car}}'s" is a pun, most likely referring to the movie {{w|2010 (film)|2010: The Year We Make Contact}}, the sequel to {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (movie)|2001: A Space Odyssey}}. In the book {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (novel)|2001: A Space Odyssey}} when astronaut David Bowman accidentally activates a star gate he exclaims as he enters it "The thing's hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God - it's full of stars!", although he does not say anything in the first movie during the final sequence.
In the second panel, Cueball remarks that, "At once, just like they said, I felt a great enlightenment". This is a reference to a pattern of observations among programmers and computer scientists that while Lisp often seems alien or arcane, — even deliberately so, even to experienced hackers, even with repeated exposure over time — truly ''understanding'' Lisp, such that one in fact genuinely comprehends it in more than just a superficial way, results in a profound ''illumination'', a sudden and abiding epiphany wherein one's preconceived notions about computation and programming are fundamentally transfigured. Lispers commonly describe the experience as being akin to learning programming for the first time ''again'', which {{w|Daniel P. Friedman}} (author of much ground-breaking research and many popular introductory texts on Lisp and programming language design) described as "''[learning] to think recursively''", and contended that "thinking about [functional] computing is one of the most exciting things the human mind can do".
In the second panel, Cueball remarks that, "At once, just like they said, I felt a great enlightenment". This is a reference to a pattern of observations among programmers and computer scientists that while Lisp often seems alien or arcane, — even deliberately so, even to experienced hackers, even with repeated exposure over time — truly ''understanding'' Lisp, such that one in fact genuinely comprehends it in more than just a superficial way, results in a profound ''illumination'', a sudden and abiding epiphany wherein one's preconceived notions about computation and programming are fundamentally transfigured. Lispers commonly describe the experience as being akin to learning programming for the first time ''again'', which {{w|Daniel P. Friedman}} (author of much ground-breaking research and many popular introductory texts on Lisp and programming language design) described as "[learning] ''to think recursively''", and contended that "thinking about [functional] computing is one of the most exciting things the human mind can do".
Cueball's remarks about patterns, metapatterns, and the disappearance of syntax are reactions to the elegant simplicity of the Lisp programming language, in which it is relatively easy to build immensely sophisticated programs using simple recursive elaborations of structure. This is fundamentally unlike the much more typical and common {{w|Imperative programming|imperative programming languages}}, in which programs are written as chains of instructions for the machine to follow.
God replies that the universe was actually hacked together with the programming language {{w|Perl}}. Perl employs an idiosyncratic syntax which borrows from a number of other languages. Although a versatile language often employed for assembling projects quickly (some might say "hastily"), the language has a reputation for being ugly and inelegant. It was famously described as a "{{w|Swiss Army knife|Swiss-Army}} chainsaw", because it is very powerful but also unwieldy and unattractive. By contrast, {{w|Larry Wall}}, the creator of Perl, famously criticised the highly cerebral Lisp attitude toward programming with the words
God replies that the universe was actually hacked together with the programming language {{w|Perl}}. Perl employs an idiosyncratic syntax which borrows from a number of other languages. Although a versatile language often employed for assembling projects quickly (some might say "hastily"), the language has a reputation for being ugly and inelegant. It was famously described as a "{{w|Swiss Army knife|Swiss-Army}} chainsaw", because it is very powerful but also unwieldy and unattractive. By way of contrast to Daniel Friedman above, {{w|Larry Wall}}, the creator of Perl, famously criticised the highly cerebral Lisp attitude toward programming with the words
<blockquote>"By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals.</blockquote>
<blockquote>And, of course, mere mortals have never really forgiven LISP for not catering to them."</blockquote>
Comic #224 (February 16, 2007)
Title text: We lost the documentation on quantum mechanics. You'll have to decode the regexes yourself.
Lisp is a computer programming language with simple, highly regular syntax. The language's most notable feature is that programs take the same form as the language's primary data structure (the linked list). This blurs the line between code and data and permits programs to inspect and even alter their own source code, thereby opening up deep opportunities for metaprogramming. Lisp is also a functional programming language (though not purely functional, as some more recent languages are), meaning that programs are are expressed in terms which are often simple elaborations or extensions of the lambda calculus, a formal mathematical expression of computation. This gives programs written in functional languages such as Lisp a distinctively abstract, mathematical form that is commonly considered difficult to fully grok.
The phrase A suffusion of blue is a reference to Douglas Adams' book The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. In it, an I Ching calculator calculates everything above the value of 4 is a suffusion of yellow.
In the comic, Cueball marvels at the fundamental and complete nature of the language of creation that he sees in his dream. In the Lisp programming language, "car" is a primitive (i.e. basic) function which produces the first item in a list. The line "My God, It's full of 'car's" is a pun, most likely referring to the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the book 2001: A Space Odyssey when astronaut David Bowman accidentally activates a star gate he exclaims as he enters it "The thing's hollow — it goes on forever — and — oh my God - it's full of stars!", although he does not say anything in the first movie during the final sequence.
In the second panel, Cueball remarks that, "At once, just like they said, I felt a great enlightenment". This is a reference to a pattern of observations among programmers and computer scientists that while Lisp often seems alien or arcane, — even deliberately so, even to experienced hackers, even with repeated exposure over time — truly understanding Lisp, such that one in fact genuinely comprehends it in more than just a superficial way, results in a profound illumination, a sudden and abiding epiphany wherein one's preconceived notions about computation and programming are fundamentally transfigured. Lispers commonly describe the experience as being akin to learning programming for the first time again, which Daniel P. Friedman (author of much ground-breaking research and many popular introductory texts on Lisp and programming language design) described as "[learning] to think recursively", and contended that "thinking about [functional] computing is one of the most exciting things the human mind can do".
Cueball's remarks about patterns, metapatterns, and the disappearance of syntax are reactions to the elegant simplicity of the Lisp programming language, in which it is relatively easy to build immensely sophisticated programs using simple recursive elaborations of structure. This is fundamentally unlike the much more typical and common imperative programming languages, in which programs are written as chains of instructions for the machine to follow.
God replies that the universe was actually hacked together with the programming language Perl. Perl employs an idiosyncratic syntax which borrows from a number of other languages. Although a versatile language often employed for assembling projects quickly (some might say "hastily"), the language has a reputation for being ugly and inelegant. It was famously described as a "Swiss-Army chainsaw", because it is very powerful but also unwieldy and unattractive. By way of contrast to Daniel Friedman above, Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, famously criticised the highly cerebral Lisp attitude toward programming with the words
"By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals.
And, of course, mere mortals have never really forgiven LISP for not catering to them."
The joke is that the Creator, like many software developers, was a bit rushed and chose to quickly throw together a working prototype rather than do the job right from the beginning; and concurrently, that Cueball, thinking he has discovered an amazing and beautiful secret in the hidden world of Lisp, learns that in fact the real world is filled with ugly hacks and quick-and-dirty imperative code.
A (possible) hidden joke might be an oblique reference to Greenspun's tenth rule when God replies with "I mean, ostensibly, yes". Greenspun's tenth rule says that any sufficiently complex program written in another high level programming language will necessarily contain an imperfect, undocumented, slow, and bug-ridden implementation of about half of Common Lisp. This explains why such a program might look or feel "Lispy" to an unfamiliar observer. Greenspun's tenth rule was meant to express the belief that Common Lisp, a large, full-featured Lisp dialect, is so flexible and and robust that any attempt to render any really sophisticated program in most other languages requires the programmer to expend extraordinary effort unwittingly duplicating, in needlessly convoluted fashion, features and systems that would be elegant and trivial in Common Lisp.
The title text continues the analogy by suggesting that the theory of quantum mechanics was written in regular expressions ("regexes"), a complex language for pattern matching used heavily in Perl. Regular expressions are often criticized as being a write-only language, that is, a language so complicated in syntax that any significant program written in them cannot be understood by anybody (often not even the original author). Documentation is essential to assist in the understanding of complex regular expressions. The title text claims that at some point, the documentation for quantum mechanics was lost, which explains why quantum mechanics is so bizarre and counterintuitive.
[Floating in space.]
Speaker: Last night I drifted off while reading a Lisp book.
Cueball: Huh?
Speaker: Suddenly, I was bathed in a suffusion of blue.
[Floating in space before a vast concept tree.]
Speaker: At once, just like they said, I felt a great enlightenment. I saw the naked structure of Lisp code unfold before me.
Cueball: My God
Cueball: It's full of 'car's
Speaker: The patterns and metapatterns danced. Syntax faded, and I swam in the purity of quantified conception. Of ideas manifest.
[Close-up of floating in space before part of a concept tree.]
Truly, this was the language from which the gods wrought the Universe.
[Floating in space with God appearing through a line of clouds.]
God: No, it's not.
Cueball: It's not?
God: I mean, ostensibly, yes. Honestly, we hacked most of it together with Perl.
In his Google-speech, Randall said that he spent 3–4 hours on getting the blue shading just right.
I reckon I disagree with this:
In the comic, Cueball marvels at the fundamental and complete nature of the language of creation that he sees in his dream, the ultimate low level language, before being told by God that the universe was mostly built using a high level programming language, perl.
But, despite it's age, Lisp is also a high-level language and lispers probably spend more of their time dealing with higher-level abstractions than perlists.
What's causing the narrator's marvel in the comic is that Lisp has a very elegant (almost non-existent) syntax and the language has a very close relationship with the underlying syntactical structure of the program, and that thinking about it does tend to give suitably-minded hackers feelings of awe and reverence, once they grok it. Even Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, will readily concede that Lisp is beautiful.
Perl, on the other hand, has masses of totally unrelated syntactical bits and pieces drawn from almost everywhere (basic syntax from C, a bunch of environment variables from shell or awk, an inline documentation format, inline regular expressions, formats borrowed from Fortran, bolted-on pseudo-OO from god-knows-where, you name it), so the language, is huge, messy, non-orthogonal, and ugly - but it does have the advantage that if you need a small job done, you can usually get it done in perl rather fast, at the cost, perhaps, of maintainability for long-term or large projects.
So the narrator dreams that the entire universe was created using the cleanest, most elegant and beautiful computer language so far discovered, one which allows the user to create software in terms of high-level abstractions if he or she chooses to; but in reality, God tells him it was a quick-dirty hack-job done in the dirtiest, ugliest - but effective nonetheless - language around. -- 86.165.192.2 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
I think that A) you've missed the point of that statement, and B) If you believe the explanation to be inaccurate or incomplete you are fully encouraged to edit it. Also, Perl is not the dirtiest, ugliest language around. There are innumerable contenders, but I'd say Brainfuck is definitely in the running, and I personally would say that Java is in there too. lcarsos_a (talk) 05:03, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Perl isn't a bad language. The regular expressions that it offers are fantastic, and it's at least consistent. Java's a slow messy and vulnerability-ridden language, but I'd have to go with PHP for the most awful, broken and incomplete piece of crap you could possibly use. Literally has no redeeming features outside of momentum and inexplicably widespread support. Davidy22[talk] 05:44, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
I never said Perl was bad. I need to teach myself Perl. and that Regular Expressions as we know them today came from Perl, is evidence enough that Perl is a wonderful language. And, I'll agree with you that PHP is an ugly, ugly, disgusting piece of trash. As someone who's had to do OO-PHP, just don't, run far away. I did. I ran to Ruby on Rails, and my life, as a web developer, has been heavenly. lcarsos_a (talk) 07:03, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
Lisp, the "ultimate low level language"? Ok, whoever wrote that really does not know what he/she is talknig about.
One of the most valuable characteristics of Lisp is the fact that is can be used in functional paradigm. Perl can also be used that way, but is considered a more hackish language and not as elegant as Lisp. Perl language can solve problems with different methods, and the phrase "ostensibly, yes. Honestly, we hacked most of it together with perl" means that the universe was created with perl, but trying to use Lisp way of programing (probably functional paradigm), instead of actually doing it on Lisp (probably for speed)
Oh, in case is not clear to somebody, Lisp is a HIGH LEVEL LANGUAGE.
Java and php would have to compete for the title of the "the dirtiest, ugliest - but effective nonetheless - language around" 189.135.124.172 18:32, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
Ok, somewhat a Perl-head here, but not going to add to the arguments about that. Instead: I think "My God, it's full of stars!" is not a quote from 2001 (where I'm fairly sure there's no broadcast dialoguge at all after Hal is silenced), but from the sequal, 2010, in the part where they 'review' the final recordings of the 2001 mission. But I really need someone who has these two films at hand to check before amending the explanation.
(Oh, go on then. Can I nominate Ada as the most godawful 'proper' language? Not as awkward as COBOL can be (for a proper programmer who doesn't need the "Business Orientated" tendencies), but has just the right (or wrong) mix of strictness to get my back up even while maintaining a pretence of being readable. Mind you, it's 20 years since I've used it, so memories about it may be distorted or outdated.) 178.98.31.27 21:50, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Java is much more elegant and far less hacky than C++, and it's much faster than some people like to admit. It amazes me how many people complain about how "slow" it is, but have nothing but praise for languages like Python. Of course, C++ is much easier to optimize where time is critical. </minirant> 72.9.93.56 13:59, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
There is a direct reference to the "Lisp epiphany" that many non-LISP programmers are said to experience upon realizing how heavily influenced LISP was by mathematical logic. This is explained far better in a later explanation. It could be brought in here. --Quicksilver (talk) 03:37, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't know whether it's important or not, but the line "My God, it's full of stars!" is the title of a chapter in The Little Schemer, which is considered (IMO) a classic CompSci book. If Randall has, by chance, read the book he may have also pulled the inspiration from there as well as 2001. I don't know whetiher this warrents a trivia block or not. 67.176.146.186 06:34, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
the quote comes from the book, not the movie. 173.245.53.129 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Lisp is the best language, unfortunately it's not that widely used.
Lisp is a high and low level language.
The worst programming language ever has to be Kodu game lab. Or possibly Malbodge. 141.101.98.244 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Perl is the language designed for the convenience of use. It mimics the natural language in the sense that it has great many slightly different features but each feature makes the most sense for its intended use and allows to write the easily understandable programs. An example of opposite is Pascal, which is a tiny language (i.e. "elegant" in the terms of its creator) but you can't do may things with it at all, and for what you can do, you have to turn yourself inside out. Lisp started in 1950s kind of like Pascal but then collected great many different features over time, each one to fix some of its inborn limitations. You still have to turn yourself inside out when you write in Lisp but nowadays there are great many ways to do so. If you wonder, Pascal had been extended as well, and Delphi is an example of an overgrown Pascal. 108.162.246.5 21:56, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
About the 2001 quote... I have the October 1968 Arrow paperback edition (09 001530 4) by A.C.Clarke and on page 221 Dave Bowman remarks "The thing's hollow - it goes on for ever - and - oh my God - it's full of stars!". So yes, in the movie this line was never used but in Clarke's novelization of his and Kubrick's screenplay it's there. Fast forward to 1984 with the release of 2010 and the filmmakers decided to put this soundbite in the intro to good effect. So yes it was never in the 2001 movie and was in the 2010 movie but as aforementioned, it was in the 2001 book. Squirreltape (talk) 20:18, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
I believe that the "ostensibly, yes" refers to Greenspun's tenth rule so I added this to the explanation. A complete set of rules for the universe is complex enough for the rule to apply. Meneldal (talk) 04:52, 11 March 2015 (UTC)meneldal
Remeber, one day we must all go through those Perly gates. 173.245.54.254 16:25, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
On the subject of the Universe's implementation language: http://www.songworm.com/lyrics/songworm-parody/EternalFlame.html Chrullrich (talk) 15:30, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=224:_Lisp&oldid=105968"
Comics from February
Friday comics
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Eye For Film >> Features >> Riding high
Of Horses and Men director Benedikt Erlingsson talks sagas, mankind and Mitty.
by Amber Wilkinson
Of Horses And Men won the Tridens and FIPRESCI prizes at Tallinn's Black Nights Film Festival
Benedikt Erlingsson's Of Horses And Men (Hross i Oss) has been galloping around the festival circuit all year - picking up the Best New Director's award at San Sebastian and FIPRESCI prize in Tallin among other accolades. And though several Hollywood films have recently been taking advantage of Iceland's wild side - including Ben Stiller's comedy drama The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty and the upcoming Tom Cruise thriller Oblivion and Darren Aronofsky's Biblical epic Noah - it is arguably Erlingsson's homegrown story that is most in touch with the spirit of the country and its landscape.
The film takes its lead in terms from structure from that oldest of Icelandic art forms - the sagas. And Erlingsson, whose feature-length debut comes after a long and very successful career in theatre, is happy to acknowledge the connection.
"I've done two performances in which I've told the sagas," he said, speaking from the theatre as he prepared for his latest production of Aristophanes' Congresswomen. "A lot of the elements of the story are based on this. You can say the Icelandic sagas are like episodes that intertwine. In essence, it comes down to oral culture, because the sagas come from the oral culture of telling stories.
Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson in Of Horses And Men. 'The stories of this film are like stories that have the oral culture aura around them.'
"And when you tell a story it is told again and again and you hear it and it changes a little bit and becomes exaggerated and the stories are formed in the oral tradition and have a kind of character and I think, in that sense, the stories of this film are like stories that have the oral culture aura around them."
The film reflects on the life of the islanders from the perspective of the horses that they live alongside. Each segment begins with someone mirrored in the eye of one of the animals and almost all feature a mixture of comedy and tragedy - from an alcoholic so desperate he rides a horse out to sea to a randy stallion with an insatiable appetite and a couple whose lust almost outruns their horses'.
Erlingsson is a keen horseman and has owned the animals since he was 13 years old.
"I had a horse that was born in 82," he says. "She was 33 years old and I had to put her down just a week ago. She was my companion. In fact, I have a daughter with the same name, I named my daughter after her and she, the horse, is also named after my grandmother so this issue that a horse can be a part of a family or a character is a reality in my life."
It wasn't just the director who was good rider, it was also a prerequisite for his crew and, particularly, his cast, many of whom have to ride the horses as part of their tales.
He added: "In Iceland, it happens that horsemanship is a very common sport among actors.You don't have to be an aristocrat to have a lot of horses in Iceland - it's a common man's sport. So there are a lot of actors who have horses. When I talk to my European friends and tell them I have five horses, they think I am a very rich man but it's a cultural difference. I did not want to fake that element, that the actor was a good horseman."
Because of this, Erlingsson says that capturing the animals on camera "turned out to be rather easy".
Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson, my cinematographer and I are both trained horseman and tame horses so we both have some knowledge of how you whisper to a horse, as you say, talk to the horse. But the first day there was much more trouble working with the tractor than with the horses. I was criticised in the shooting period because I was always congratulating the horses for a good performance but didn't say anything to the actors.
"Of course, this is something you have to be prepared for. I had a lot of professional horsemen and had divided the work between them. This is my first film and none of them had worked in show business like this, we were just working with our horses - none of them were specially changed, its just characters."
Erlingsson's film captures the essence of these characters and is full of striking images, such as a stallion driven so wild with lust that it mounts a mare without waiting for the rider to get off and or the scene where the alcoholic takes his horse into the ocean. He says these tales are based on anecdotes, including the tale of a man who swam out to a French schooner in order to buy booze.
Saying that the story relates how the man let the horse tread water while he boarded the ship, Erlingsson adds: "That was the most brutal thing. He just tied a horse with a rope and he climbed up with a rope while the horse was swimming all the time while he was buying some cognac."
And he says that the horses - who are often very good swimmers - had no problem taking to the water.
"It's not so hard for the horse as you think it is."
"We had, of course, veterinarians always with us," he said. "This was interesting because the horse was swimming for maybe two or three minutes and the vet was measuring the lactic acid in his blood; if you have exercise too much you have too much of this in your muscles. And he compared this with horses running 250m with a man on their back. And the horse was not so exhausted, he had only seven in his blood after two or three minutes of swimming but after running he has 12 or 13. So it's not so hard for the horse as you think it is."
As for that stallion sex scene - which he describes as "the sandwich" - initial fears that the male horse might bite the rider were ill-founded.
He adds: "It turned out easy but we worried about it a lot. The essence is that the mare had to be ready and there are one or two days in her cycle when she gives off the hormones that makes the stallion crazy. And when she is ready, nothing will stop her and nothing can stop the stallion. If you have the right stallion that's not very tame and is a little bit without respect for humans. So it was all about the timing. To be with the right mare at the right time."
In terms of timing, the shoot did prove slightly tricky thanks to the number of Hollywood films that were being made in his homeland at the same time - it's clear that though they presented a few logistical problems they also gave the islanders a lot of laughs, whether they intended to or not.
"Tom Cruise was also doing Oblivion and Ben Stiller and Aronofsky were also there. Russell Crowe was working there with Aronofsky," said Erlingsson. "So they had hoovered up the most professional crews in Iceland, so we were working with the rest. A lot of us were beginners and it was hell in some sense but, in the end, they turned out to be the best. We learned a lot. We tried to have as many people in the crew that were horsemen also.
Benedikt Erlingsson with his Kutxa-New Directors award at San Sebastian Film Festival. Photo: Montse Castillo/©Festival de San Sebastián
"Then we joked when we heard the stories of the waste of money that Hollywood spent. For us, it was just a circus of waste when you heard how Ben Stiller took a dialogue scene in a little bakery and he closed the supermarket and the school and then he closed the bridge over the fjord and then he came in a helicopter to take a little dialogue in a type of house. There are stories... I had less than one per cent of the budget of these guys. Of course, I had into a social capital in a way because it was my first film, so a lot of my actors were on minimal salaries and a lot of people around the country were giving their work or being very cheap or helping us. So I tapped into a social capital that these guys didn't have."
With a slew of awards under its belt and the honour of being Iceland's nominated film for the Oscars - although it didn't make the shortlist - this may be Erlingsson's first feature but it's unlikely to be the last. The director says that film gives him more freedom in his writing than his theatrical work, which he generates "not by sitting on my arse but by standing on my feet and miming and performing and so on".
He added: But when I write a film manuscript, I feel freedom, because it's not literature that I am creating so my magical child is totally free in that sense, I feel I can play with that medium."
And he is certainly planning more.
"I joke to my wife - Charlotte Boving, the main actress, is my wife - that the theatre is my wife and film is my lover and I'm trying to divorce my wife and take a steady relationship up with my lover. So that's the aim. But, of course, there are a lot of great filmmakers that come from theatre and film is a very young art. We have an Icelandic film fund that has been cut down and there is a lot of havoc in Icelandic social and economical life so this will continue to be a fight. But I hope that this film will help you to make the next one.
"I want to make more 'silent' films like this. As a filmmaker from Iceland - and island of 300,000 people - I need a bigger audience, I think, just to survive as a filmmaker."
Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson and Charlotte Bøving. 'I joke to my wife - Charlotte Boving, the main actress, is my wife - that the theatre is my wife and film is my lover and I'm trying to divorce my wife and take a steady relationship up with my lover.'
Whatever comes next for him, it's likely to continue to explore the more feral side of humans.
"This theme of human being as an animal has followed me for a long time," he said "When you work with a play like this [Aristophanes' The Congresswomen] that is so old, you see the same animal working with the same social problems - the same injustice, the same corruption - they have not changed. It's like old faces. I made a short film once, called The Nail and it was about a man who got a nail in his head and changed into some kind of animal. It has been a theme, that is, of course, international."
International festival programmers appear to agree as the film continues to globe-trot - next appearing at Palm Springs International Film Festival in January - where it will compete in the Awards Buzz and New Voices, New Visions sections - It's also going to be screened at the Scandinavian Film Festival in LA which runs from January 18 to 26. Let's hope it gets a UK distributor soon.
Editor's note: Our wish has been granted and the film will now be released by Axiom in the UK on June 13. We also caught up with Erlingsson again when his film showed at New Directors/New Films in New York, read what he told us about his next project
Movies out this week include:
The Dead Don't Die Gwen Jaws The Matrix The Matrix Reloaded The Matrix Revolutions Only You Stuber Varda by Agnès The Wedding Guest
Queering The Script Stare Kursk: The Last Mission Only You Idol Papi Chulo She's Just A Shadow Mystery Of The Night The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil Schemers Gwen Critters Attack! The Art Of Self-Defense The Deeper You Dig Sadako The Hidden City Stuber This Perfect Day Blood Paradise Synonyms
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Marked contradictions Claudio Giovannesi on Olivia Bellini, the screenplay, Piranhas and Giorgio Armani
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Five to look forward to at Fantasia Our pick of what's coming up in Montreal
Constructing the Sentence John Hawkes and Elfar Adalsteins on motivation and midges in their road trip drama
A familiar face Perry Blackshear on male friendship, mental illness and They Look Like People
Parasite joins Pearls San Sebastian announces first titles in Audience Award contest
David Copperfield adaptation to open LFF Armando Iannucci's 'fresh take' stars Dev Patel
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Gene drive reversibility introduces new layer of biosafety
Ability to introduce or reverse the spread of genetic traits through populations could one day improve pest management and disease control
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
(BOSTON) - In parallel with their development of the first synthetic gene drives - which greatly increase the chance a specific gene will be passed on to all offspring - George Church, Ph.D., and Kevin Esvelt, Ph.D., helped pioneer proactive biosafety measures to ensure that gene drives are investigated effectively and safely in confined laboratory experiments. They envision that synthetic gene drives designed using an RNA-guided gene editing system known as CRISPR-Cas9 - which works like a pair of molecular scissors to precisely cut or edit DNA - could one day be used outside of the lab to prevent transmission of deadly insect and animal-borne diseases and eradicate invasive species that threaten the ecosystem and agriculture.
Now, in a new study published in Nature Biotechnology on November 16, a team led by Church and Esvelt at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School (HMS) demonstrates effective safeguarding mechanisms for working with gene drives and unveils a first-of-its-kind method for reversing the changes they spread.
"Any claim of reversibility of modern technology requires strong evidence," said Church, who is a Wyss Core Faculty member, the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at HMS, and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT. "This is a major step in that direction for the field of synthetic biology."
Alongside researchers on the Wyss Institute's Synthetic Biology platform, Church and Esvelt, who is a Wyss Technology Development Fellow, have led the gene drive research community in discussions about responsible laboratory conduct and proactive confinement guidelines for the safeguarding of gene drive research. Their latest study verifies the efficacy of safeguarding protocols developed by their team, such as increased and improved physical biocontainment barriers and the introduction of so-called "molecular confinement" mechanisms which use genetic engineering to block laboratory organisms from surviving and reproducing in the highly unlikely event they ever escaped into the ecosystem.
"The gene drive research community has been actively discussing what should be done to safeguard shared ecosystems, and now we have demonstrated that the proposed safeguards work extremely well and should therefore be used by every gene drive researcher in every relevant lab organism," said Esvelt.
CRISPR gene drives work by using sequences of RNA to guide the gene-cutting Cas9 protein to a specific target gene for editing. The molecular confinement mechanisms developed by the team prevent gene drives from functioning in the wild by manipulating these biological components. By separating the guide RNA and the Cas9 protein so that they are not encoded together in the same organism, or by inserting an artificial sequence into the targeted gene, gene drives can only be activated in lab organisms and are therefore not able to function in the wild.
"Using yeast in the lab, we also showed that a trait imposed on a population using a gene drive could be reversed," said the paper's first co-first author James Dicarlo, a graduate research assistant at the Wyss Institute and HMS. The team notes that using this safeguard, essentially any population-level change mediated by a gene drive could be subsequently overwritten if the need ever arose. In such a case, the originally imposed trait would be reversed and the biological "machinery" of the CRISPR gene drive system - the guide RNAs and the Cas9 protein - would remain present, albeit rendered inactive, in the DNA of organisms.
The reversibility mechanism isn't just a useful backup to have on hand in case a gene drive ever had an unexpected side-effect; the ability to impose or reverse gene drive effects could also one day prove useful for the management of disease transmitting organisms such as mosquitoes, invasive species, and crop-destroying insects.
Although more research needs to be done in the lab before gene drives will ever potentially be ready for use outside of confined laboratory experiments, researchers now have the tools to perform those experiments safely. And in the meantime, gene drives themselves are useful lab tools for perturbing the genomes of lab organisms and unlocking new insights into the complex interplay of genes.
"Gene drive technology has great potential to solve global problems, such as malaria, for which we have no solutions today," said Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D, who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at HMS and Boston Children's Hospital and Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "But the field needs to proactively develop safeguard mechanisms and reversibility capabilities to ensure the safety of this new technology and enable its enormous potential for doing good. I am proud that our team - led by George Church and Kevin Esvelt - is championing this charge."
ANIMATION AVAILABLE
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing that are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and formation of new startups. The Wyss Institute creates transformative technological breakthroughs by engaging in high risk research, and crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers, working as an alliance that includes Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, Arts & Sciences and Design, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University, Tufts University, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, University of Zurich and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Harvard Medical School has more than 7,500 full-time faculty working in 11 academic departments located at the School's Boston campus or in one of 47 hospital-based clinical departments at 16 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes. Those affiliates include Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Hebrew Senior Life, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Children's Center, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System.
Kat J. McAlpine
katherine.mcalpine@wyss.harvard.edu
@wyssinstitute
http://wyss.harvard.edu/
Nature Biotechnology
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POLICY/ETHICS
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Knowledge >
Sci-tech >
Project Anywhere: an out-of-body experience of a new kind
It’s what dreams are made of for any avid gamer – controlling an avatar with your body in real time.
Project Anywhere is the brainchild of Constantinos Miltiadis, a student at ETH Zurich, who claims to have created the most advanced virtual digital avatar, which allows multiple gamers on different continents to compete in the same virtual space.
One of the most interesting parts of the kit is a pair of lightweight 3D-printed so-called “Inteligloves”, which allow gamers to use their hands directly in a game, free of wires.
“This is an elastic PLA material that you can print on a home 3D printer. These are flex sensors, we have a wireless module. This is a nine degree of freedom inertia measuring unit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit), so it has an accelerometer, gyroscope, and digital compass,” explains Miltiadis.
The user’s iPhone is fitted to a cheap 3D-printed plastic mask, enabling him to become fully immersed in the game.
A Kinect sensor connected to a Java program tracks the user’s exact position, while synchronising data from a web cloud. The software, called Omnitracker, can be accessed in games that use the cross-platform game creation system Unity 3D.
“I don’t know of anything else that can have your own body in a digital environment, so you can control an avatar through a joystick but your body doesn’t play any role. So if you can, in real time, interact in this kind of augmented reality environment and have your own body as a digital avatar, I think this is the different innovation that it brings,” says Miltiadis.
While shooting games are one of the most obvious beneficiaries of this technology, its inventor wants to use it to create a virtual museum, in which visitors equipped with the omni mask could download an application and move around in an empty space full of virtual exhibits – an idea which has already earned him an architectural design prize.
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JPMorgan In Court With Ukrainian Billionaire
Tatiana Serafin Contributor
Billions Contributor Group
In the latest twist in a multi-year legal tussle between investment banking giant, JPMorgan and manganese company Consolidated Minerals, the mining operator chose not to call any defense witnesses to rebut JPMorgan's claim it owes money on a $45 million bill.
JPMorgan served as an advisor to Palmary Enterprises, owned by Ukrainian billionaire, Henadiy Boholyubov, in the bidding war for Consolidated Minerals, four years ago. In January 2008, his winning bid called for Consolidated Minerals shareholders to receive $5 per share (up from $2 at the start of the bidding), and JPMorgan sent an invoice for incentive fees based on the difference between the final and initial offer plus expenses.
Though Consolidated Minerals dropped its counterclaims which included allegations that JPMorgan had agreed to cap fees at about $6 million, and that the bank engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct, it continues to insist that it was over-billed. Among the disputed items JPMorgan apparently expensed to the company: $6.32 for a Big Mac.
The miner has paid $18 million of the invoice so far. Boholyubov says the "negotiating process" continues.
He is also gearing up for another fight - this time over Australia's OM Holdings, regarded as the world's last independent supplier of high-grade manganese. Boholyubov currently holds a 12% stake in the company.
I'm a writer based in New York, head Global Markets and Ideas (tatianaserafin.com) and cover billionaires and businesses in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Russia. I ...
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Wal-Mart And Target: Who's Winning The Price Point War?
John Clarke Contributor
Covering the business of sports and the Olympics.
(Image via AP)
It looks like Target has won the latest fight in the battle against Wal-Mart.
This month Target had lower prices than Wal-Mart for the first time since October, according to research conducted by Bloomberg Industries, which examined the gap in average price across a basket of 150 like items at stores within five miles of each other.
Target also led by its widest margin since the monthly study began two years ago.
“[Consumers] are trying to stretch their budgetary dollars as much as possible,” Jennifer Bartashus, an analyst for Bloomberg Industries in Skillman, New Jersey, said in an interview. “They will be driven to whatever store offers the better value.”
According to the report, Target won this month by cutting into Wal-Mart’s lead in food prices. Wal-Mart’s advantage in groceries fell to 1.35 percentage points from 4.5 percentage points in July.
Target’s improvement in food may have come because of more promotions tied to back-to-school shopping, Bartashus said.
Follow me on Twitter @johnmclarkejr or e-mail me at johnmclarkejr@gmail.com.
I write about sports, entertainment and business. My work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, ESPN and Sports Illustrated. I'...
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Lok Sabha election Phase 1: Mohan Bhagwat, Bhaiyyaji Joshi among first to cast vote in Nagpur
"Voting is necessary and a sacred responsibility of all. Vote for national security, development and identity," he said. On the None of the Above (NOTA) option available to voters on the electronic voting machines (EVMs), he said one has to say what he/she wants. "Being quiet does not work, you have to say yes or no," he said.
Talking to media-persons after exercising his franchise, Bhagwat appealed people to come out to vote in large numbers. (ANI)
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was among the early ones to cast his vote on Thursday for the Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra’s Nagpur constituency, where Union minister Nitin Gadkari is the BJP’s candidate. Bhagwat along with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi arrived at a polling booth at Bhauji Daftari School in Mahal area around 6.50 am. Talking to media-persons after exercising his franchise, Bhagwat appealed people to come out to vote in large numbers.
“Voting is necessary and a sacred responsibility of all. Vote for national security, development and identity,” he said. On the None of the Above (NOTA) option available to voters on the electronic voting machines (EVMs), he said one has to say what he/she wants. “Being quiet does not work, you have to say yes or no,” he said.
Also read: Lok Sabha election Phase 1: PM Modi, Amit Shah appeal to people to vote in large numbers
Joshi also appealed people to support voting. People should express their choice, he said, and urged them to vote for the candidate whom they think is suitable.
“I hope the government elected after polls will work in the interest of the nation,” he added. Polling for the first phase of Lok Sabha elections began in the morning in Maharashtra’s seven constituencies -Nagpur, Wardha, Ramtek, Bhandara-Gondiya, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli-Chimur and Yavatmal-Washim. All these constituencies are located in the state’s Vidarbha region. The Congress has fielded Nana Patole, a former BJP MP, from Nagpur seat. P
Follow financialexpress.com for all news and analysis on the Lok Sabha Elections 2019. Check Lok Sabha election 2019 schedule, Lok Sabha Constituency Details and updates on campaigning by Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter.
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Faster Payments Take Flight in the U.S.
Chris Thompson Senior Writer, Fiserv
Finding the right strategies, partnerships and technology to meet expectations for instant money movement
A small-business owner sits in her office on a Saturday afternoon. Her company is starting a big road project Monday, and she needs to replace broken equipment today so it's ready when her crew gets to the job.
She has a line of credit with her financial institution, and she wants to access that money and move it right now. But under her bank's payments system, she really can't do anything with her money until Monday.
She's frustrated. She knows there are plenty of lending startups that could put $50,000 into her checking account in 15 minutes, no matter the time or day. But her money is in the bank.
That bothers John Macaluso, who spends the majority of his time working with financial institutions to devise their payments strategies. When Macaluso, a Fiserv senior vice president, talks about payments shifting to real time in financial services, he thinks about that business owner.
Her problem illustrates not only the need for faster payments but also the breadth of the transformation.
"How do financial institutions measure up to that?" Macaluso said. "In the next generation of payments, financial institutions will move money in real time for consumers and businesses. Making that change is the challenge right now."
But it's a challenge people expect their financial institutions to overcome, said Whitney Stewart Russell, a Fiserv senior vice president who focuses on digital payments strategies. Real-time, 24/7 money movement, immediate credit for payments and mobile engagement fueled by intuitive use of consumer data are becoming the baseline expectations.
"We're talking about real time and its implications," Stewart Russell said. "If you can get diapers delivered to your doorstep the same day you order them, it's ridiculous that you can't move money the same day. Enabling that movement for consumers and businesses is a differentiator."
Online and mobile banking changed how people and financial institutions engage, and that digital transformation continues to influence massive changes throughout financial services. Payments is the next transformational wave for financial institutions, and it holds the potential to be even more significant than digital transformation, Macaluso said, because it will prompt changes across all operations.
"The digital transformation let financial institutions cast a wider net for consumers and allowed for cost savings in processing," he said. "The payments transformation will force true change to the most expensive part of the financial institution: the back office."
Ready for Real Time? Start With Your Back Office
Real-time money movement inevitably will change how people interact with their financial institutions and how back offices operate.
When it comes to payments, everything in financial institutions traditionally has been based in silos, whether it's ATMs, ACH, wire or check processing, said Trevor LaFleche, a Fiserv senior director who has been on the front lines of the real-time payments transformation in Europe. Those silos will break down with real-time payments.
"When you start looking at how payments transfer, those resources become more fungible," he said. "Processing now really looks the same no matter what type of payment. One clerk can operate across all payment types. There's just more coverage and effective use of resources."
That new reality, LaFleche said, will drive the need for payments infrastructure modernization because, without that change, delivering the ideal experience becomes more difficult.
"In much of the rest of the world, markets are moving to a single infrastructure for real-time payments," LaFleche said. "If you're sending a real-time payment, it doesn't matter where it's coming from or going to. Digital payments are the equivalent of cash."
That's where payment hubs enter the conversation. With real-time payments, the time from initiation to availability of money takes seconds rather than minutes or hours. When all of the processing and network steps are considered, each must be completed within a second at most, including validation, accounting and fraud detection.
Payment-hub technology slots into that space because it enables the management of all noncard payment types on a single platform and promises better risk analysis, faster settlement, lower routing costs and a real-time view of transactions. Stewart Russell sees it as a way to break down silos and allow the back office to manage money movement from multiple directions.
In a real-time environment, the back office will need to orchestrate workflow from all channels, whether mobile or call center. It will need to manage commercial and consumer payments through all applications, from person-to-person (P2P) to ACH, and integrate multiple platforms, including biller networks, lending and compliance.
And it's all within the framework of banking becoming a seven-day, 24-hour, real-time venture.
"How do they staff it? How do they look at risk?" LaFleche said. "This is a change in business operations and processes, and that's significant. It's why we're investing a lot of time into helping clients deliver new payment propositions."
Or, as Macaluso put it: "When you move to a real-time world, that's where the game changes."
Succeeding at the game, he said, depends on finding the right place to play.
"It's not about having your payments strategy," Macaluso said. "It's about having your business strategy, and payments are a part of it."
Creating the Right Real-Time Strategy
There may be no single correct strategy for employing real-time payments, and mimicking what others do won't necessarily work. Financial institutions need to understand their specific audiences and be creative in how they deliver a unique experience that meets consumer and business expectations.
"Real-time payments is a frictionless channel," LaFleche said. "Putting together the whole offering and explaining how it makes sense is what financial institutions have to do. And you have to make sure to capture the value. If you understand the whole scenario, that likelihood goes up."
For the past several years, LaFleche has watched those scenarios play out in multiple creative ways across Europe's regulatory-driven market, which is leading the way in real-time payments. The market-driven U.S. environment is more complex, he said, leaving financial institutions with all the real-time puzzle pieces spread out on the floor and the challenge of figuring out how they fit together.
With Fintechs such as Venmo and Kabbage flooding the market with a nimbler approach to everything from P2P to gig payments, LaFleche said U.S. financial institutions should look to their own business models and strengths to build differentiating real-time payments strategies. It's becoming more critical to work with a partner that is connected to every link in the chain and can help identify how to match long-term strategies to the complexities of a rapidly changing U.S. system.
A sense of strategic urgency will have to factor in to any real-time approach U.S. financial institutions choose, LaFleche said. It takes time to roll out real-time payments because it's a network and all the connections have to move. But this is the moment to fit the pieces together and build a creative strategy.
"It's like the telephone," he said. "If there's only one, it's boring. If there are two, it's still boring. You need an entire network to make it useful, and it really only gets valuable when you reach 96, 97 percent saturation. That's when you see an inflection point when you can reliably make instant payments to anyone."
The rise of Zelle® in P2P payments shows the power of a real-time network once it reaches ubiquity with the support of major financial institutions. John Thomas, executive vice president leading U.S. payments and U.S. data for TD Bank, said Zelle is helping TD deliver a real-time experience that customers love.
"Before Zelle, banks weren't losing the P2P battle; we had lost it," he said. "I'm a big believer that – in any service vertical – the best way to stave off competition is to get it right for your customers in the first place. We knew we had a clear problem with P2P. At TD, we now have two years of experience with Zelle and P2P under our belt."
In the U.K., LaFleche said, it took about four years for real-time to reach an overall inflection point. The U.S., while advancing in some areas of real-time, has the challenge of moving a long tail of financial institutions. That means an insurance company might want to remit, but it can't necessarily send money instantly with all institutions.
Financial institutions won't immediately meet every real-time expectation for everyone. But Thomas said successful strategies depend on forming the right partnerships, solving the most critical problems for people and understanding that some areas of progress will be measured in months, while others are measured in quarters or years.
"As a company and as an industry, I think you'll see us moving very, very quickly into some of those consumer spaces where it's crystal clear we've lost the interaction," he said. "I think in other spaces, you'll see us move more slowly and deliberately because it's not crystal clear what the customer problem is that we're solving."
Certainly, financial institutions should act quickly to stay ahead of the real-time wave, LaFleche said, but they should balance that by acknowledging it's also a fundamental re-engineering of the way they look at payments.
"I think everybody," he said, "is slowly realizing, 'If we don't do real time, we're going to be left behind.'"
Real Time, Right Now in the U.S. Market
Zelle is clear evidence that financial institutions in the U.S. already are investing in real-time payments, Stewart Russell said. That, in turn, has opened the door to other real-time possibilities, giving the market a push to expand its mindset that it hasn't gotten elsewhere.
There are benefits to real-time beyond P2P, including using data to better understand consumers and businesses and optimize their experiences.
"Financial institutions probably know more about people than anyone other than their doctor or spouse," Stewart Russell said. "But traditionally, institutions haven't used all the transactional data at their disposal."
That is changing, she said. Say a consumer has set up alerts for when an AT&T bill payment is due. The consumer gets the alert while at the mall. Instead of using a smartphone to pay the bill as usual, the consumer chooses to pay at a nearby AT&T store.
An intelligent system realizes the bill has been paid and stops the alerts immediately. It also can learn from that activity, using the interaction to update the consumer's information and give guidance for future actions.
"Financial institutions are now thinking about real-time in a more holistic way than just a snapshot application such as P2P," Stewart Russell said. "They are considering a longer-term viable strategy."
Finding the right strategy, though, will continue to be a challenge for financial institutions. With so many payments options in the market, it can be confusing.
"Financial institutions are still deciding where the different payment rails fit together or compete," she said. "That's why we're focused on helping clients identify approaches that fit their strategies and goals."
P2P is the first rail, but Macaluso said financial institutions will incrementally embrace the payments hub over time. He expects the entire payments transformation to real time in the U.S. will take place over the next two to three years.
That will include even more sophistication around auto-decisioning and more use of artificial intelligence and chatbots to manage 24/7 money movement and reconciliation.
It also means a fundamental change in how financial institutions handle payments. Right now, multiple people at multiple levels manage payments, depending on the amount and type. If it's $50, it can move through an ACH check. If it's $50,000, it would move through wire.
"But when we move to the next generation of payments, we can't have those requirements in place," Macaluso said. "We can't move money in real time with the same security, risk management and rules of an older system."
What's on the Horizon for Real Time?
The payments transformation to real-time will lead financial institutions to rethink their strategies in terms of technology, staffing, partnerships and how they can uniquely serve their specific audiences. The twin roles that define financial institutions – managing and moving money – are not changing, but how that happens is constantly evolving.
"Any banking activity that consumers and businesses want to do can and will occur 24/7," Macaluso said. "And to be successful, financial institutions will need to support real-time capabilities because Fintechs are beginning to support it today. And they need to use technology to accomplish it because they can't use people 24/7."
But for consumers and businesses, it's a far simpler equation: People want to move their money how they choose when they choose, and that includes small-business owners who want access to a line of credit on a Saturday afternoon.
It's up to financial institutions and their partners to manage the complexities and pave the way.
"The payments transformation is so fundamentally significant," Macaluso said. "With the digital transformation, we opened up another lane. With payments, we're changing the asphalt."
2019 Trends: Security Strategies Evolve to Match the Need for Speed in Financial Services
Speed brings new challenges in the fight against fraud. Here are three trends to watch in the coming year as financial institutions balance speed and security.
Finextra Trevor LaFleche Interview
Trevor LaFleche, Fiserv, talks about the evidence and experience of payment hubs and how banks can use the technology to capture the instant payments market.
Payments Transformation: Jostling for Position in the New Digital Landscape
This survey by Fiserv and Finextra explores the current views on how money is moved and the underlying trends in the payments market.
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A New Era For Labor Relations? Fisher Phillips Lawyers Predict Fate Of Top 10 Key Issues
Among the most crucial federal agencies undergoing a transformation under the new presidential administration is the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). During the eight years of the Obama administration, with the Board stocked with a majority of Democratic appointees, the NLRB issued decision after decision tilting the playing field decidedly in favor of unions and workers. However, the five-member NLRB is poised to soon be led by a majority of Republican appointees, and we expect changes to soon follow.
We polled some of our firm’s foremost thought leaders to discuss 10 specific topics that we expect to evolve for the better in the near future. Employers – both unionized and non-unionized – should pay particular attention to these topics.
Use Of Company Email
Perhaps no Board decision of the recent past has been derided more than 2014’s Purple Communications, which held that employers – whether unionized or not – generally must allow employees to use corporate email systems during non-work time to engage in concerted and protected activity under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). As San Diego attorney Chris Conti puts it, “this decision opened the floodgates for organizing activity through corporate email servers.” It also resulted in most employers having to rewrite solicitation policies and rules governing email use, particularly those that restricted email use to “business reasons only,” and created a Catch-22 for employers that want to legitimately monitor email activity but also want to avoid engaging in unlawful surveillance.
In early 2017, the Board once again upheld the decision. But once it has a majority of Trump appointees, Conti expects the Board will eventually issue a decision overturning Purple Communications. “Overturning this decision would bring about a return to normalcy that employers had come to expect since at least 2007,” he says. That year, the Board explicitly held that employees have no statutory right to use their employers’ email servers to engage in protected activity, based predominantly on the employer’s property interest in its own information technology (Register Guard). If Purple Communications is overturned as Conti expects, employers would regain the right to restrict corporate email use for business purposes only, and would be freer to monitor email activity for legitimate reasons without facing unfair labor practice charges.
Mandatory Class Waivers
Beginning with 2012’s infamous D.R. Horton decision, the Board has repeatedly struck down arbitration agreements that contain mandatory class and collective action waivers. Todd Lyon, a partner in the Portland office, explains: “The Board has reasoned that requiring employees to enter into such agreements violates Section 7 of the NLRA, preventing them from engaging in protected concerted activity.” Employers have been faced with uncertainty ever since, as the Board continued to strike down mandatory waivers even after they had been overturned by several circuit courts. But in 2016, Lyon explains, a circuit split emerged, when both the 7th Circuit (in Lewis v. Epic Systems Corp.) and 9th Circuit (in Morris v. Ernst & Young LLP) struck down class and collective waivers.
Lyon says there is reason for optimism, even without the pending transformation at the NLRB. “There is a strong likelihood that this circuit split will be resolved by the end of the year,” he says, “because the Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on this issue in October. Although employers should be cautiously optimistic after the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch, there is no guarantee he will strike down the decisions by the NLRB.” The decision will ultimately decide the question of Section 7’s applicability to class and collective action waivers, and will be binding on the Board. “It’s impossible to predict what the Board will do after the Court issues its decision, as the ruling could take many forms,” says Lyon, “but its new political composition will certainly mean a change from the last eight years of union-friendly precedent.”
Joint Employment Doctrine
Another recent controversial decision from the NLRB came in 2015’s Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI), where the Board vastly broadened the definition of “joint employer” for purposes of collective bargaining and union organizing. A business may now be considered a joint employer if it exercises even “indirect control” over working conditions of another company’s employees, or if it merely reserves the right to do so. As New Jersey’s Alvaro Hasani says, “to be sure, the decision has arguably jeopardized long-standing business models and created a great deal of uncertainty regarding liability risks that companies may not be able to control.”
Hasani explains there are three possible avenues for this decision to be reversed. The case has already been appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will likely have the first say on whether the decision should be reversed. However, even if the court upholds the NLRB’s decision, it is likely a newly Republican-controlled NLRB will revert the current broad “indirect control” standard to the more exact “direct control” standard that preceded the BFI decision. A yet faster repudiation may come by way of legislation, such as the “Save Local Business Act” introduced in July. Given the current makeup of Congress and the Trump administration’s announced intention of rolling back joint employer expansions, Hasani believes it is only a matter of time before the BFI decision is repudiated for a more even-handed formulation.
Temporary Worker Organizing
Hand-in-hand with BFI comes 2016’s Miller & Anderson decision, where the NLRB reinstated a union-friendly standard for unionizing temp workers. “The Board ruled that employer consent is no longer necessary for bargaining units that combine regular employees and temporary workers jointly employed by another employer,” explains Hasani. The combined impact of these two decisions means that an entity is more likely to be deemed a joint employer and will be forced to bargain with employees whose terms and conditions of employment are controlled by another entity.
Hasani predicts this decision is likely to be changed by the Republican-controlled Board in the near future. To reverse the decision the Board will have to wait for another similar case to come before it, but Hasani thinks it will be worth the wait for employers. “Given the business necessity for using temporary employees,” he says, “employers would no longer need to engage in a risk-benefit analysis to determine if they should rely on this type of work.”
Confidentiality In Internal Investigations
While the aforementioned cases achieved a certain amount of notoriety, there have been several less prominent decisions that flew under the radar in recent years, but still had a significant impact on labor relations. One such case, identified by Tampa Managing Partner Steve Bernstein, is the Board’s 2015 ruling in Banner Healthcare. “The upshot of this case is that it effectively precludes all employers, union and non-union alike, from compelling employees to maintain a modicum of confidentiality over information exchanged in the course of internal investigations, including those conducted in response to allegations of workplace harassment,” he explains. This works at cross-purposes with years of experience telling employers that complainants are less likely to come forward if their concerns are at risk of dissemination by fellow witnesses during the pendency of the investigation.
Although the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently had an opportunity to rule on the lawfulness of a general confidentiality policy, it instead chose to overturn the decision on narrower grounds and left the underlying doctrine intact. Bernstein is hopeful, however; “A reconstituted NLRB will soon have the opportunity to reexamine that doctrine in light of broader legal implications, and I hope the new Board preserves the integrity of open-door and EEO policies that are important to all of our clients,” he says.
Workplace Civility Rules
Under the current Board interpretation of Lutheran Heritage, the seminal 2004 decision on workplace civility rules, an employer handbook rule or policy will be held unlawful if employees “would reasonably construe” the rule to prohibit protected Section 7 activities. “This interpretation has led to reasonable rules implemented with the purpose of creating a respectful and well-managed workplace being struck down as illegal,” explains Atlanta’s Josh Viau.
The best predictor of the approach that Trump’s Board will take on workplace rules can be found in the frequent dissents authored as of late by its minority members, says Viau. They included strong disagreements about the way the Obama Board analyzed and decided cases involving employee civility rules. “I would expect the Trump Board, once the opportunity presents itself through the appropriate challenge, to adopt some form of the balancing test that would take into account employers’ legitimate justification for the rule or policy,” he concludes.
Confidentiality And Other Handbook Provisions
Another little-known landmine in many company handbooks is the typical confidentiality policy, restricting employees from discussing certain topics among each other or with members of the public. “Currently, many employer policies run afoul of what the Board considers to be an illegal restriction preventing employees from engaging in protected concerted activity,” explains Danielle Garcia, an attorney in the San Diego office. Board decisions on this topic and several other common handbook policies are all based on the 2015 memo issued by the General Counsel (also known as the “Wendy’s Memo”).
Once a new General Counsel is in place at the NLRB, Garcia says, we can expect new directives regarding how polices are interpreted. “I’d expect the new Board to interpret handbook policies, including confidentiality provisions, in a less restrictive manner for employers,” she predicts. The changes will come not only from a new directive memo from the incoming General Counsel, but also through the federal courts which are now starting to scrutinize the Board’s recent decisions. Garcia’s prediction: “Current Board precedent forbidding policies that restrict workplace recordings, among other things, will likely be overturned, giving employers more say in their workplaces and more control over their policies and handbooks.”
Micro-Units
“The NLRB’s 2011 Specialty Healthcare decision altered the labor landscape by revisiting the way determinations are made about whether proposed bargaining units are appropriate,” explains Louisville partner Ray Haley. In a two-step analysis, he says, the Board will first examine whether members of a petitioned-for unit share a community of interest and are “clearly identifiable as a group.” If an employer should object, they can only enlarge the unit by showing that those excluded “share an overwhelming community of interest” with the petitioned-for group. Haley points out that the Board has long enjoyed substantial judicial deference in matters of unit determination, noting that every federal court of appeals called upon to review determinations made pursuant to the Specialty Healthcare analysis has affirmed the NLRB, including a very recent August 2017 decision by the D.C. Circuit.
Employers might now see a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Two 2016 decisions from the 2nd and 5th Circuit Courts of Appeal displayed a heightened degree of scrutiny when applying facts to the NLRB standard. Haley believes these decisions are a sign of good things to come, especially once the Board is fully reconstituted with a majority of Republican appointees.
“The roadmap for overruling Specialty Healthcare has been clearly laid out by these courts,” Haley says, “and the mischief caused by rote-and-verse application of its test is soon likely to be ameliorated if not in its entirety, then at least in substantial part.”
“Quickie Election” Rules
The adoption of accelerated election rules by the NLRB in April 2015 – dubbed “quickie elections” by disaffected employers and their counsel – has tipped the scales in favor of unions, according to Irvine partner Warren Nelson. The union success rate in elections has risen to 70 percent, no doubt due to the accelerated timeframe for elections that has seen the average campaign shrink from 42 days to between 23 and 25 days. Nelson says this new timeframe impacts both large and small employers, as “smaller employers do not have the administrative staff to gather and produce the required information in the fast-tracked timeframe, and large employers have a massive task of culling their records to accurately provide required information.” He points to the “Draconian penalties” imposed for failure to meet these timelines as another example of how the scales are not presently in balance.
The good news? “I predict that the newly reconstituted Board will focus on the election schedule and shift it to a more manageable timeframe,” says Nelson. Establishing this new procedure will take time, he says – “expect at least three to six months for formal rulemaking to be followed.”
Student Organizing
The final issue to keep an eye on is of particular importance to institutions of higher education. As explained by Boston Managing Partner Joe Ambash, for decades the NLRB declined to find students who serve as teaching and research assistants at private universities to be employees under the NLRA, but all that changed in 2016.
In the now-infamous Columbia University decision, the Board ruled that such students were employees under the Act, and thus able to organize into unions. As Ambash says, “this decision, which was aggressively pursued by the unions for years, opened up a floodgate of graduate assistant organizing at private sector institutions across the country.” The Columbia decision has since been expanded to cover undergraduate resident advisors, so it follows that under current Board logic, virtually any graduate student or undergraduate who performs services for a private college or university for compensation – including, presumably, free housing – could be considered an employee eligible to be represented by a union.
“This is expected to change under the Trump Board,” says Ambash. “I anticipate that the newly formulated Board will eventually reverse the Columbia decision.” The implications for higher education in this battle are significant, and could help shape the academic experience of private sector students for decades to come.
Joseph Ambash
Steven Bernstein
Christopher Conti
Raymond Haley III
Alvaro Hasani
Todd Lyon
Warren Nelson
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Les Savy Fav
Valley Maker
Allison Ullrich
THE HOLD STEADY ANNOUNCE NEW SINGLE!
“ENTITLEMENT CREW” B/W “A SNAKE IN THE SHOWER”
ARRIVES AT ALL DSPS AND STREAMING SERVICES
VIA FRENCHKISS RECORDS ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1ST
SINGLE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD NOW EXCLUSIVELY
VIA DONATION TO THE K+L GUARDIAN FOUNDATION
FOUR-SHOW “MASSIVE NIGHTS” CELEBRATION AT THE BROOKLYN BOWL
STARTS TONIGHT AND CULMINATES SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2ND
(New York, NY) The Hold Steady has released a new single. “Entitlement Crew” b/w “A Snake In The Shower,” arriving at all DSPs and streaming services via Frenchkiss Records on Friday, December 1st.
“Entitlement Crew” b/w “A Snake In The Shower” is currently available exclusively to members of the official Hold Steady fan community, The Unified Scene. Members who wish to download the single can do so by donating to The K + L Guardian Foundation, a fund set up to benefit the children of Unified Scene founder Mike Van Jura, who died in November 2012.
Recorded this November in Brooklyn, NY, with producer Josh Kaufmann, “Entitlement” b/w “A Snake In The Shower” marks the first new music from The Hold Steady in nearly four years as well as the first studio recording to feature longtime keyboard player Franz Nicolay since 2008’s beloved fourth album, STAY POSITIVE. Additional performers include Stuart Bogie, Michael Leonhart, and Annie Nero.
“Entitlement” b/w “A Snake In The Shower” arrives just as The Hold Steady wrap up “Massive Nights,” a remarkable four-show run at the Brooklyn Bowl celebrating the music, community, and positivity that has defined the band since its very beginning. The sold out shows – each featuring surprise-opening guests – start tonight and conclude Saturday, December 2nd. The Hold Steady cross the Atlantic for a very special pair of shows slated for March 9th and 10th at London’s famed Electric Ballroom. For live updates, please visit theholdsteady.net/shows.
The Hold Steady is: Bobby Drake (drums), Craig Finn (vocals), Tad Kubler (guitar, vocals), Franz Nicolay (keyboards), Galen Polivka (bass), and Steve Selvidge (guitar, vocals).
Newer PostSTRANGE NAMES RELEASE NEW SONG "UFO"; ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM DATA TO BE RELEASED FEBRUARY 23
Older PostWelcome To Frenchkiss Records, NEDELLE TORRISI
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Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
Front. Behav. Neurosci., 16 December 2013 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00200
Working memory reloaded: tyrosine repletes updating in the N-back task
Lorenza S. Colzato*, Bryant J. Jongkees, Roberta Sellaro and Bernhard Hommel
Institute for Psychological Research, Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
In this study we tested the idea that the food supplement l-Tyrosine (TYR) repletes resources required for cognitive-control operations. We investigated whether the “updating” (and monitoring) of working memory (WM) representations, a key cognitive-control function, can be promoted by administering TYR, the biochemical precursor of dopamine. Participants performed an N-back task where we compared the WM-demanding 2-back condition with the WM-undemanding 1-back condition. As expected, TYR promoted performance in the more demanding (2-back) but not in the easier (1-back) condition, suggesting that TYR selectively targets cognitive-control operations. This result suggests that TYR can replete cognitive resources when more control is needed and, more generally, that food can act as a cognitive enhancer.
In a seminal essay (1862/1960), the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach claimed that “Der Mensch ist, was er ißt” (you are what you eat). Feuerbach was probably the first intellectual to promote the idea that the food one eats has a bearing on one’s state of mind. This idea later became the motto of the hippie culture, which promoted eating organic and healthy food. Since then, the idea that the food we eat modulates the way we think and perceive the world has been very suggestive in popular culture and the focus of scientific research. One of the most investigated amino acids (building blocks of proteins) is tyrosine (TYR), which is contained in food such as fish, soy, eggs, milk, and bananas. In healthy population the average daily intake of TYR is 7 mg/kg, one half of the (World Health Organization) WHOs upper requirement of 14 mg/kg (see Deijen, 2005). Importantly, tyrosine is the biochemical precursor of two important brain catecholamine neurotransmitters: norepinephrine (NE) and dopamine (DA). The supplementation of TYR, or TYR-containing diets, increase plasma TYR and enhance brain DA and NE release (Lehnert et al., 1984; Reinstein et al., 1984; Acworth et al., 1988; During et al., 1988; see Deijen, 2005, for a comprehensive review). Glaeser et al. (1979) found, after the administration of a single oral dose of 100 mg/kg TYR, that mean plasma TYR levels were maximal after 2 h, rising from 69 ± 3.9 to 154 ± 9.5 nmol/ml. Previous literature has mainly focused on the role of TYR as “counteractor” of conditions that cause brain DA and NE depletion, such as stress (Deijen and Orlebeke, 1994; Shurtleff et al., 1994; Mahoney et al., 2007). Only in one study TYR has been administered without exposure to stress (Thomas et al., 1999), using a multiple task battery (SYNWORK1; Elsmore, 1994) designed to measure working memory (WM), arithmetic skills, and visual and auditory monitoring simultaneously, and a simple task battery consisting of only two of the subtasks: the Sternberg Memory task (Sternberg, 1966) and the Visual Monitoring task (Loeb and Binford, 1968). The results revealed beneficial effects of TYR supplementation when competing requirements to perform other tasks simultaneously degrade performance (Thomas et al., 1999). This indicates that TYR may replete cognitive resources, but only under sufficiently demanding conditions.
Interestingly, executive control has been considered to emerge from the interplay between cognitive stability (defined as the maintenance of task-relevant representations) and flexibility (defined as the ability to adapt, update, and shift between informational states) – two major, but partially antagonistic functions of cognitive control, related correspondingly to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the striatum, which both are modulated by DA (Cools, 2006; Cools and D’Esposito, 2010) – the precursor of which is TYR. According to Cools (2006), the same high DA levels in the PFC that are beneficial for the stability of representations may reduce the ability to flexibly alter cognitive representations. Low DA levels in the PFC may in turn be beneficial for the flexible updating of cognitive representations, but at the same time impair the ability to maintain representations in the face of intervening distractors. Several studies have shown that striatal dopamine plays a crucial role in WM updating. According to Moustafa et al. (2008), the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathway serves as a gate to signal when and when not to update information in prefrontal WM. Consistent with this idea, Siessmeier et al. (2006) found that administering DA agents to healthy subjects led to a correlation between DA uptake in the striatum and BOLD activity in the dorsolateral PFC, suggesting that the striatum might drive WM activity in the PFC. Moreover, a PET study showed that individual WM capacity predicts the striatal dopamine synthesis capacity: subjects with low WM capacity have a low synthesis capacity while subjects with high WM capacity have a high synthesis capacity (Cools et al., 2008).
The current study focused, for the first time, on the acute effect of TYR supplementation on the updating (and monitoring) of WM representations – a key cognitive-control function (Miyake et al., 2000). We tested whether WM updating can be promoted by administering the food supplement TYR. We investigated the link between TYR supplementation and the monitoring of WM in healthy adults exposed to an oral dose of either TYR or a neutral placebo. WM updating was measured by the N-back task: participants were required to decide whether each stimulus in a sequence matched the one that appeared n items ago. In conditions with n = 2 or higher (where the match is for the stimulus that appeared two or more items ago), this task requires the on-line monitoring and updating of WM content, which is known to be cognitively demanding (Kane et al., 2007). In contrast, performance in the easiest 1-back condition (where the match is for the previous item) can rely on immediate perceptual priming (as the two matching items appear in direct succession), which makes this condition a suitable (i.e., WM-undemanding) control condition. Accordingly, we assumed that the depletion of cognitive resources would affect performance in the N-2 condition more than performance in the less demanding N-1 condition. If so, and if the hypothesized repleting effect of TYR is really restricted to cognitively challenging conditions (Anisman and Sklar, 1979), the positive impact of TYR should be stronger in the more demanding 2-back condition than in the easier 1-back condition.
Twenty-two undergraduate students of the Leiden University (all females, mean age = 19.7 years, range 18–25; mean Body Mass Index = 21.5, range 18–24; all right-handed) with no cardiac, hepatic, renal, neurological or psychiatric disorders, personal or family history of depression, migraine, and medication or drug use participated in the experiment. Participants were selected individually via a phone interview by the same lab-assistant using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (M.I.N.I.; Sheehan et al., 1998). The M.I.N.I. is a well-established brief diagnostic tool in clinical and stress research that screens for several psychiatric disorders and drug use (Sheehan et al., 1998; Elzinga et al., 2007). Psychoactive substance use was not assessed.
Written informed consent was obtained from all subjects; the protocol and the remuneration arrangements of 20 euro in cash payment were approved by the local ethical committee (Leiden University, Institute for Psychological Research).
In separate sessions participants were exposed to either an oral dose (powder) of 2.0 g of l-Tyrosine (TYR) (supplied by Bulkpowders Ltd.) or of 2.0 g of microcrystalline cellulose (Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC), a neutral placebo, dissolved in 400 ml of orange juice. The two sessions were separated by 3–7 days. A double blind, placebo-controlled, randomized cross-over design with counterbalancing of the order of conditions was used to avoid expectancy effects.
Following Markus et al. (2008) women using contraception were tested when they actually used the contraception pill. On each experimental morning, participants arrived at the laboratory at 9:30 a.m. Participants had been instructed to fast overnight; only water or tea without sugar was permitted. In addition, subjects were not allowed to use any kind of drugs before and during the experiment or to drink alcohol the day before their participation and arrival at the laboratory. Thirty minutes after the administration of either TYR or the neutral placebo participants were allowed to eat an apple.
Apparatus and Procedure
All participants were tested individually. Upon arrival, participants were asked to rate their mood on a 9 × 9 Pleasure × Arousal grid (Russell et al., 1989) with values ranging from −4 to 4. Heart rate (HR) and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DPB) were collected from the non-dominant arm with an OSZ 3 Automatic Digital Electronic Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor (Spiedel and Keller). One hour following the administration of TYR (corresponding to the beginning of the 1 h-peak of the plasma concentration; Glaeser et al., 1979) or placebo, participants rated again their mood before having HR, SBP, and DBP measured for the second time. Immediately after, participants were asked to perform the N-back task.
After completing the N-back task, participants again rated their mood before having HR, SBP, and DBP measured for the third time.
N-back task
The experiment was controlled by a ACPI uniprocessor PC running on an Intel Celeron 2.8 GHz processor, attached to a Philips 109B6 17″ monitor (LightFrame 3, 96 dpi with a refresh rate of 120 Hz). Responses were made by pressing the left shift-key and the right shift-key of the QWERTY computer keyboard with the left and right index finger, respectively. Stimulus presentation and data collection were controlled using E-Prime 2.0. Software system (Psychology Software Tools, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, USA).
The two conditions of the N-back task were adopted from Colzato et al. (2009). A stream of single visual letters (taken from B, C, D, G, P, T, F, N, L) was presented (stimulus–onset asynchrony 2000 ms; duration of presentation 1000 ms). Participants responded to targets (presented in 33% of the trials) and to non-targets.
Half of the participants pressed the left shift-key in response to a target and the right shift-key in response to a non-target; the other half of the participants received the opposite mapping. Target definition differed with respect to the experimental condition. In the 1-back condition, targets were defined as stimuli within the sequence that were identical to the immediately preceding one. In the 2-back condition, participants had to respond if the presented letter matched the one that was presented two trials before. Each condition consisted of 18 practice trials followed by two blocks of 52 stimuli each. All participants performed the 1-back condition first and then the 2-back condition. Stimuli presentation was pseudo-randomized to avoid the occurrence of lure trials (i.e., non-target letters that match a recent letter in the sequence but not the letter N-back), which are known to elicit more false alarms (FA) and misses than non-lure non-targets because of their familiarity and resemblance to targets (see Kane et al., 2007).
Mood, HR, BPS, and BPD were analyzed separately by means of repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with condition (TYR vs. Placebo) and effect of time (first vs. second vs. third measurement) as within-subjects factor. For the N-back task, repeated-measures ANOVAs with load (1-back vs. 2-back) and condition (TYR vs. Placebo) as within-subjects factors were carried out on reaction times (RTs) on correct trials as well as accuracy, hits, correct rejections, FA, and misses in percent. Furthermore, the sensitivity index d′ was calculated for both experimental conditions and the two WM loads separately (see Haatveit et al., 2010; Buckert et al., 2012). This index, which derives from signal detection theory (Swets et al., 1961), provides a combined measure of correct hits and FA and thus reflects participants’ ability to discriminate target from non-targets, with higher d′ indicating better signal detection. d′ was computed from hit rate and FA rate using the following formula: ZHIT − ZFA, where Z represents the z-scores of the two rates (Macmillan and Creelman, 1991). The Z transformation was done using the inverse cumulative distribution function in Microsoft Excel 2007 (NORMSINV). Perfect scores were adjusted using these formulas: 1 − 1/(2n) for perfect (i.e., 100%) hits, and 1/(2n) for zero FA, where n was number of total hits or FA (Macmillan and Creelman, 1991).
Data analyses were performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) for Windows, Version 21.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). A significance level of p < 0.05 was adopted for all statistical tests.
Table 1 shows mean RTs (in ms), hits, correct rejections, FA, and misses (in percent) for the N-back task separately for placebo and TYR conditions.
Table 1. Mean RTs (in ms), hits, correct rejections, false alarms, and misses (in percent) for the N-back task for placebo and TYR conditions.
Load affected all dependent measures, showing that higher load increased RTs, F(1, 21) = 61.09, p = 0.0001, MSE = 1547.315, ηp2=0.74, and reduced accuracy, F(1, 21) = 14.00, p = 0.001, MSE = 30.774, ηp2=0.40. Higher load also produced fewer hits, F(1, 21) = 8.94, p = 0.007, MSE = 85.638, ηp2=0.30, and correct rejections, F(1, 21) = 19.84, p = 0.0001, MSE = 15.592, ηp2=0.49, but more FA, F(1, 21) = 29.30, p = 0.0001, MSE = 15.255, ηp2=0.58, and misses, F(1, 21) = 8.94, p = 0.007, MSE = 85.638, ηp2=0.30, than the lower load did. With regard to the effect of condition, the intake of TYR, as compared to placebo, reduced significantly RTs, F(1, 21) = 6.67, p = 0.02, MSE = 5188.740, ηp2=0.24, produced fewer misses, F(1, 21) = 5.27, p = 0.03, MSE = 54.864, ηp2=0.20, and higher hits, F(1, 21) = 5.27, p = 0.03, MSE = 54.864, ηp2=0.20, but it did not affect the number of FA, correct rejections, and accuracy (F’s ≤ 2.54, p’s ≥ 0.07).
Most importantly, significant interactions between load and condition were observed for FA, F(1, 21) = 6.43, p = 0.02, MSE = 13.800, ηp2=0.23, correct rejections, F(1, 21) = 7.31, p = 0.01, MSE = 15.039, and, as expected, for accuracy, F(1, 21) = 11.04, p = 0.003, MSE = 12.654, ηp2=0.35. In the 1-back condition, participants’ performance after placebo and TYR was comparable (4.4 vs. 4.2% FA, 95.6 vs. 95.8% correct rejections, and 93.5 vs. 93.3% correct responses), t’s < 1, [d′(placebo)=33,d′(TYR)=3.5]. In contrast, in the 2-back, the intake of TYR reduced significantly the percentage of FA (10.9 vs. 6.7%, after placebo and TYR, respectively), t(21) = 2.29, p = 0.03, and increased significantly the number of correct rejections (89.6 vs. 94.3%, after placebo and TYR, respectively), t(21) = 2.47, p = 0.02, and participants’ accuracy (86.5 vs. 91.4% after placebo and TYR, respectively), t(21) = 2.54, p = 0.02, see Figure 1, [d′(placebo)=2.4,d′(TYR)=2.9].
Figure 1. Mean Accuracy (in %) as a function of load (1-back vs. 2-back) and condition (Placebo vs. TYR). Asterisk indicates significant (*p < 0.05) effect of TYR on the 2-back task. Vertical capped lines atop bars indicate SE of the mean.
Physiological and Mood Measurements
ANOVAs revealed that HR (73 vs. 67 vs. 65 and 71 vs. 68 vs. 63 after placebo and TYR, respectively), BPD (70 vs. 66 vs. 68 and 68 vs. 71 vs. 68 after placebo and TYR), BPS (112 vs. 111 vs. 110 and 113 vs. 113 vs. 109 after placebo and TYR), and mood (1.4 vs. 1.6 vs. 1.2 and 1.7 vs. 1.7 vs. 1.5 after placebo and TYR) did not significantly change after the intake of TYR, F’s < 1. This suggests that we can rule out an account of our results in terms of physiological and mood changes.
The present study is the first to demonstrate that TYR supplementation promotes WM updating. As expected, the more challenging 2-back condition was more sensitive to the effect of TYR, which reinforces our suspicion that only tasks with considerable cognitive demands benefit from TYR. As we have argued in the introduction, this may be because more demanding cognitive operations are more likely or more efficient to exhaust the available cognitive resources, which can then be repleted by TYR. The idea that cognitive-control operations are particularly likely to exhaust cognitive resources fits with the concept of “ego-depletion” suggested by Baumeister et al. (1998), which would suggest that TYR can be used as an effective “ego-repletor.”
Our results support the materialist approach that “you are what you eat” (Feuerbach, 1862/1960). The food we eat may thus act as a cognitive enhancer that modulates the way we deal with the physical world, but at least with our own short-term memory traces. At short-term, the supplementation of TYR or consuming TYR-rich food to improve cognitive processes is safe and healthy and can be regarded as an alternative to cognitive-enhancing drugs, such as Ritalin or Modafinil, the use of which is quite popular among students to improve their academic performance. In contrast to TYR, these prescribed drugs do not have FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status and are often associated with side effects commonly experienced with amphetamine-like drugs.
In view of the evidence that striatal dopaminergic pathways play a major role in the updating of WM (Siessmeier et al., 2006; Cools et al., 2008; Moustafa et al., 2008), our findings further suggest that TYR is involved in the monitoring of cognitive representations. A limitation of our study is the lacking of plasma TYR levels measurements. In a replication of our study, it would be important to correlate those assessments with the accuracy performance in the 2-back condition.
Future research needs to explore the direct effect of prolonged use of tyrosine supplementation on the brain. It remains to be demonstrated, for instance, that tyrosine use produces long-term changes at the neuromodulatory (enhanced functioning of DA receptors) and at functional level (in PFC and striatum) proportionally to the degree of behavioral performance enhancements. Moreover, it will be also important to take individual differences into account. There is ample evidence suggesting a considerable role for individual differences with respect to the efficiency of cognitive-control processes and the neurotransmitter systems driving them (Cools, 2006). Furthermore, in healthy humans tyrosine has been shown to reverse stress-induced deficits in WM and attentional tasks, but in particular in individuals who were most affected by the stressors (Deijen and Orlebeke, 1994; Shurtleff et al., 1994; Mahoney et al., 2007) – suggesting individual differences in the reactivity to tyrosine. It makes sense to assume that preexisting neuro-developmental factors (such as genetic variability related to levels of the neurotransmitter systems) affect the degree to which individuals can benefit from tyrosine supplementation, especially because many of them are arguably tapping into cognitive-control processes.
In sum, even if long-term effects are yet to be demonstrated, our findings suggest that the supplementation of TYR, or TYR-containing diets, may promote cognitive enhancement in inexpensive, efficient, and healthy ways.
This work was supported by research grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded to Lorenza S. Colzato (Vidi grant: #452-12-001).
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Keywords: working memory, tyrosine, dopamine, updating
Citation: Colzato LS, Jongkees BJ, Sellaro R and Hommel B (2013) Working memory reloaded: tyrosine repletes updating in the N-back task. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 7:200. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00200
Received: 15 July 2013; Accepted: 25 November 2013;
Published online: 16 December 2013.
Dominique J. F. De Quervain, University of Basel, Switzerland
Alicia Izquierdo, University of California Los Angeles, USA
Charlotte A. Boettiger, The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, USA
Copyright: © 2013 Colzato, Jongkees, Sellaro and Hommel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Lorenza S. Colzato, Department of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology Unit, Leiden University, Netherlands e-mail: colzato@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
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Tennis | June 30, 2017
Wimbledon 2017: All you need to know about SW19
The curtain is set to raise on the tennis calendar’s third major of the year as the world’s top talent gather in London.
The action gets underway on Monday morning, but how much do you actually know about Wimbledon?
FOX Sports Asia gives you the lowdown on all you need to know about The Championships.
The tournament was first held at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club in 1877.
Three men have won Wimbledon seven times – William Renshaw, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer. Can Federer claim a record eighth title this year?
It’s five years since number seven.
Martina Navratilova holds the record for the most wins in the women’s singles with nine, she is also the oldest ever winner of a title, claiming the mixed doubles crown in 2003 at the age of 46 years and 261 days.
The youngest ever winner is Martina Hingis, the Swiss miss claimed the Ladies’ Doubles Championship in 1996 at the tender age of 15 years and 282 days.
The longest tennis match ever played was at Wimbledon in 2010, American John Isner defeated Nicolas Mahut of France in a match that lasted 11 hours and five minutes and was played over three days. The final set consisted of 138 games as there are no tie-breakers in fifth sets at Wimbledon. The final score was 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 70-68.
The fastest serve ever recorded at Wimbledon was measured at 148mph and came off the racquet of American Taylor Dent in 2010. Venus Williams holds the record for women at 129mph in 2008.
Taylor Dent fires another cannon.
The Championships stringing team string an average of more than 2,000 rackets during the fortnight, which totals more than 40 miles of string.
The total prize money for 2017 stands at £31,600,000. The men’s and women’s singles champions each receive £2.2 million.
A total of 54,250 balls were used over the course of the 2016 championships, which were handled by 250 ball girls and boys. They are paid £150 for their efforts.
674 matches will take place during the tournament, which last year featured 757 players (including qualifying). The matches will be handled by a total of 360 umpires, linesmen and women.
No play is scheduled for middle Sunday to allow the courts to recover from Week 1 and ensure optimum performance during Week 2. But thanks to the British summer play has taken place on Middle Sunday on four occasions in 1991, 1997, 2004, 2016.
The green, green grass of Wimbledon.
Only seven Championships have been completed without any rain interruptions since 1922. They were in 1931, 1976, 1977, 1993, 1995, 2009, and 2010.
In the event of rain, the retractable roof on Centre Court takes 10 minutes to close, and keep the 15,000 spectators that Centre Court holds dry.
It would take 290 million tennis balls to fill Centre Court with the roof closed.
Five bombs hit Centre Court during World War II. It took nine years for the court to be fully restored.
Rufus is ruthless.
Other things flying around Centre Court include Rufus, a Harris Hawk. Rufus visits the Club most weeks throughout the year to deter local pigeons from roosting in the grounds by making them aware of the presence of a predator. During the Championships he flies for one hour most mornings before the gates open.
The price for a portion of strawberries and cream at Wimbledon has remained at £2.50 per serving for the last seven years. A total of 28,000kg are consumed during the tournament with more than 10,000 litres of fresh cream.
The strawberries are picked at 4am and delivered to the Club by 11am. They are then enjoyed by guests on the same day.
Home Tennis Wimbledon Wimbledon 2017: All you need to know about SW19
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President Trump? Who’s Who in Trump’s Foreign Policy Inner Circle? US War Machine Rolls On
By Eric Draitser
New Eastern Outlook 26 March 2016
There’s little doubt that, as president, Hillary Clinton will enact the same sorts of disastrous and criminal policies that her predecessors of both parties have pursued. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is being lauded by many as a much needed change in terms of US foreign policy, someone whose ideas and actions will be guided by a very different understanding of the world.
With one breath Trump talks about wanting to “get along with Russia,” and with another proclaims the need to “punish China” for what he describes as currency manipulation and aggression in the South China Sea. The difficulty in ascertaining just what sort of foreign policy Trump would pursue has led many international observers to wonder aloud whether a Trump presidency might not be the best thing for world peace.
Indeed, when it comes to the Middle East and issues as complex as international terrorism, Syria, and Israel-Palestine, there has been speculation that Trump might in fact be something of a non-interventionist, someone who would focus on US domestic problems and rein in US aggression around the world.
But there is no reason to wonder anymore as Trump recently revealed to the Washington Post some of his core advisers on foreign policy. And, to put it bluntly, a Trump presidency means little more than a continuation of US aggression, criminality, and imperialism.
Who’s Who in Trump’s Foreign Policy Inner Circle?
If, as the old adage goes, you are known by the company you keep, then we already know what to expect from a Trump presidency. While The Donald did not provide a complete list of his advisers, just the small sampling should give pause to anyone who has become enamored of the idea that Trump would tone down US foreign policy.
First up for scrutiny is Walid Phares, perhaps the most well known of Trump’s foreign policy team. Phares is a regular commentator on FOX News where he generally espouses more or less the same policies as any typical Washington neoconservative. Indeed, his pedigree and history place him squarely in the aggressive neocon camp, including as one of the main advisers (along with notable neocons Robert Kagan, Eliot Cohen, Eric Edelman, et al) to Mitt Romney in his failed 2012 presidential campaign.
Phares spent a decade as a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a well known neoconservative think tank long since understood as pro-Israel, and widely regarded as part of the influential Israel Lobby. In fact, FDD president and founder Clifford May described the group’s mission as being “to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.”
To that end, Phares has long-standing ties, both professionally and ideologically, with Israel and the hardliner policies of Tel Aviv. As Professor As`ad AbuKhalil of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley wrote in 2011:
Phares’ first career began early in the Lebanese civil war of the 1975-1990 when he allied himself with the right-wing militias, armed and financed by Israel… After Genral [sic] Michel Auon assumed the presidency of Lebanon in 1988, Phares joined the right-wing coalition known as the Lebanese Front, which consisted of various sectarian groupings and militia [sic]. The Front backed Gen. Auon in his struggles against the Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad and the Muslims of Lebanon. Phares’s role was not small, according to Beirut newspaper accounts.. He served as vice chair of another front’s political leadership committee, headed by a man named Etienne Saqr, whose Guardians of Cedar militia voiced the slogan “Kill a Palestinian and you shall enter Heaven.”… The Front was also backed by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, a bitter foe of the Syrians.
Indeed, as respected foreign policy analyst Jim Lobe noted, Phares is “controversial for his past ties to the militant Phalange movement in Lebanon.” For the uninitiated, the Phalange movement is responsible for brutal repression of Palestinians and has been deeply connected to the Israeli state going back to the founding of Israel in 1948. As the New York Times wrote in July 1983 in the aftermath of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, “The Maronite Christians of Lebanon and their Phalangist Party became Israel’s key allies during the war in Lebanon that began when Israeli troops invaded Lebanon in June 1982… the Phalangist militias [showed] ruthlessness in massacring hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut last September.”
And this is the world from which the FOX News “expert” and key foreign policy advisor to Trump emerges. So while Mr. Trump touts his “fairness” and not wanting to “take sides” in the Israel-Palestine conflict, he’ll have a key belligerent and party to war crimes against Palestinians whispering in his ear. Not exactly the sort of revelation that engenders much hope. Also interesting to note is the decades old hatred of the Assad family in Syria that Phares has evinced. Perhaps this explains, at least in part, why Trump has publicly called for a ground invasion of Syria and Iraq with up to 30,000 US troops; so much for non-interventionism.
Chairing Trump’s foreign policy team is Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, a far right conservative whose actual positions on the key issues of war and peace demonstrate unmitigated imperialistic views. He voted YES to enlarging NATO to include Eastern Europe (along with his colleague Hillary Clinton), which certainly calls into question the very notion that Trump has any real intention to move the US away from NATO. Additionally, in perhaps the most important political vote in the last few decades, Sessions was unabashedly in favor of the Iraq War. He proclaimed on the floor of the US Senate at the time:
Our motive is good, our goals positive and realistic, and our leaders honest, careful, principled and have the courage to act on those beliefs… I know the vision that President Bush has to protect his people and improve the world… The American people did not sacrifice to create the greatest military in history to allow China, Russia or even France to have a veto over its use. It is no wonder that these nations would like, through the mechanism of the United Nations, to seize control over our military and to use it as they will.
Aside from being disastrously wrong on Iraq (along with Hillary Clinton), Sessions also voted YES on designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization as part of the National Defense Authorization Act in 2007. He steadfastly supported continued occupation of Iraq long into 2008, when many others had already conceded the war as a disaster and were ready to leave. And, lest anyone think Sessions merely voted this way out of party loyalty during the Bush administration, it should be noted that he voted YES on the bombing of Kosovo under Bill Clinton, yet another instance where he and Hillary were in agreement. Other examples abound of Trump’s foreign policy Chair’s serial warmongering.
Trump also named Keith Kellogg, a former Army lieutenant general, as one of his key advisers. Mr. Kellogg, after having left the Army, has served in executive positions in a number of military contracting firms, including CACI International at the time its employees took part in torture programs at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Having overseen a company directly involved in torturing prisoners of the US military, it should come as no surprise then that Kellogg is a principal foreign policy adviser to Trump who on numerous occasions has promised that under his watch, the US would bring back “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”
Kellogg has deep ties to various sections of the military-industrial complex, both from his time as principal adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the disastrous Bush administration (along with other high ranking posts in the Pentagon), and from his myriad positions with private contractors and mercenary organizations; not exactly an anti-establishment outsider.
Then there’s Joe Schmitz – or as Trump referred to him, “the honorable Joe Schmitz” – who was the inspector general at the Defense Department during the Bush administration. Under his watch the US committed countless war crimes for which no one was ever prosecuted. In fact, it was his refusal to prosecute military criminality, including lying to Congress and protecting criminals highly placed in the military bureaucracy, that led to his being investigated by the US Congress.
Rather than face any scrutiny, Schmitz simply resigned his position and immediately took an executive position with the infamous Blackwater USA (mercenary company that has committed war crimes all over the globe) where he served as chief operation officer and general counsel. Again, one has to wonder about a Trump presidency in which wanton criminality is not only stated publicly by the candidate, but is in fact precisely the track record of his foreign policy team.
Finally there are Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, both connected to the “energy-industrial complex,” that is, Big Oil and all the myriad institutions devoted to it.
Page is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy Capital, a private equity firm that invests in big energy projects and sits at the intersection of Wall Street and Big Oil. Page is a veteran of Wall Street big shots Merrill Lynch where he served as Chief Operating Officer of the Energy and Power Group. Merrill Lynch is of course the corporate and investment banking division of Bank of America, one of the largest financial institutions in the world. In effect then, Carter Page was the top ranking energy executive within the Bank of America investment arm.
Page’s foreign policy experience comes into play when considering that he was the executive in charge of dealing with Russian energy investments, and those in the Caspian region, on behalf of Wall Street interests. He was also a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the primary centers of policy analysis in the US, and one which is firmly within the orbit of the political and financial establishment. Again, one has to question the very notion that Trump’s candidacy represents any sort of threat to the establishment. If anything, it seems to be merely a reflection of it, just like every other candidate.
Finally, George Papadopolous is the director of the Center for International Energy and Natural Resources Law & Security at theLondon Center of International Law Practice. A former adviser to the Ben Carson campaign, Papadopolous is a mostly unknown quantity in energy policy and analysis circles whose minimal published work and analysis has been entirely focused on Israeli gas discoveries in the Leviathan Gas Field,with Papadopolous arguing a pro-Israel position that boils down to Israeli-EU cooperation in the form of Israeli gas sales to Cyprus. He is also an advocate of further NATO expansion to include Cyprus, as well as the permanent stationing of US naval assets on the Greek island of Crete.
As the Washington Post noted, Papadopolous wrote in 2014 that, “Regional economic cooperation between Israel and Cyprus should be the guiding principle that anchors Israel economically to Europe,” and in 2015 argued that “Israel’s energy exports can serve as the basis for enhancing strategic relations between Israel and Egypt. They could also serve as the foundation for political and security cooperation with Greece and Cyprus.”
These clearly pro-Israel analyses, coupled with the fact that his resume boasts publications in staunchly right wing, pro-Israeli outlets such as the Jamestown Foundation and Hudson Institute, among others, point to an obvious slant to his outlook. Indeed, there’s been some question as to whether he’s not simply a mouthpiece for Israel, as suggested by even pro-Israel think tanks such as the Center for a New American Security.
What to Expect from a Trump Foreign Policy
Just the early look at Trump’s foreign policy advisers does not bode well for the notion of non-interventionism being hyped by many. While Trump has publicly voiced such sentiments at times, it remains an open question whether he really believes them, or if he’s just playing to the far right wing, isolationist tendency of many of his supporters. Is it genuine belief or pure demagoguery?
Sitting in the Oval Office, Trump will listen carefully to the advice of Walid Phares who no doubt will advocate for regime change and aggressive policies in the Middle East, as he has throughout the last three decades. Trump will be told of the need to dispense massively lucrative contracts to the private military firms with whom his close advisers Keith Kellogg and Joe Schmitz have long relationships. He’ll be cajoled to follow through with aggressive actions that will benefit Big Oil and Wall Street, all the buddies and pals of people like Carter Page. Trump will “make deals” based on the advice of Israeli mouthpieces like George Papadopolous, not based on reason, let alone strategy in the interests of the US.
In practical terms, Trump will likely escalate America’s mostly fictional and superficial “War on ISIS,” embroiling the US in yet another regional war as he puts boots on the ground in Syria and/or Iraq. Trump will do nothing to rein in NATO, he might simply advocate for a shifting of the burden onto European NATO partners, something that will likely not happen.
Trump will aggressively deal with Russia and Putin, puffing out his chest and acting like some kind of strongman with Putin for public relations effect only. In fact, Trump is likely to damage further the US-Russia relationship with reckless rhetoric and policies, rather than moving toward genuine understanding and reconciliation. One can only cringe to imagine the blustering Trump alongside the always calm and collected Putin whose every move and word is calculated to maximum effect.
In short, Trump represents only the most superficial change in US foreign policy. His manner of plain speaking may be a breath of fresh air to Americans, and many around the world, who have tired of the usual political doublespeak and hollow babble, but his policies and actions will do little to stop the Empire. Trump is, simply put, Hope and ChangeTM of a different sort. And, as with the current Hope and ChangeTM the effect will be disastrous.
Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Copyright © Eric Draitser, New Eastern Outlook, 2016
Articles by: Eric Draitser
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Tejay Van Garderen of the U.S. is treated by a medic after he crashed during the seventh stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 230 kilometers (142,9 miles) with start in Belfort and finish in Chalon sur Saone, France, Friday.
Top American rider Tejay Van Garderen out of Tour de France
By SAMUEL PETREQUIN Associated Press
COLONGE, France (AP) — American Tejay van Garderen has pulled out of the Tour de France after breaking his left hand in a crash during the seventh stage on Friday.
Van Garderen hit a road divider and fell on his head and face seven kilometers into the 230-kilometer trek to Chalon-sur-Saone in eastern-central France.
The ED Education First team leader was attended by teammates and the race doctor. He got back on his bike, his face bloodied and his jersey ripped, to reach the finish of the Tour’s longest stage.
He underwent X-rays after the stage, which confirmed the broken hand.
“He was placed in a splint and will not start stage eight,” team doctor Kevin Sprouse said.
After finishing runner-up at the Criterium du Dauphine, a traditional warmup race for the Tour, the 30-year-old van Garderen high expectations at the Tour, where he finished fifth twice during his years with the BMC team.
“The crash was a result of a personal error,” van Garderen added in a statement released by his team. “I was looking down at my bike because I saw something caught up in it, like a piece of paper, so I was looking down and I hit a median. I have no one to blame but myself, and I really hope that no one else got hurt because of me.”
The Top American rider in the race, van Garderen was 36th overall, 10 minutes and 26 seconds behind race leader Giulio Ciccone.
“We will miss having him in the team,” EF Education First manager Jonathan Vaughters said. “He has showed great form coming into the race. We wish him a speedy recovery and hope that he’ll be back racing again soon.”
Kevin Sprouse
Tejay Van Garderen
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Cremation services in Abbot(ME) are completed respectfully and diligently, which is exactly what you would expect from anyone involved with funeral services and providing a dignified end to a person's life.
Approximately 50% of people are cremated with cremation services in Abbot(ME) with the other 50% making the choice to encompass a burial within a funeral service. The numbers of people being cremated is a much higher percentage than the majority of the US, but in every state the numbers are increasing annually. There are a number of reasons for this.
Why do People Choose Cremation Services in Abbot(ME)?
Cremation services in Abbot(ME) will almost certainly be less expensive than arranging a burial. For some people, relations have to travel a long way and perhaps arrive from abroad. Cremation allows for a memorial service to be held several weeks or even months after the deceased has passed on.
Some people suggest to cremation services in Abbot(ME) that they do not like the idea of a person's body decaying in the ground and much prefer the quicker and cleaner method used within a crematorium.
As directed by Abbot(ME) cremation services, the remains - the ashes - can be placed in an urn and be scattered at a most significant location, which might mean in a local cemetery for a religious person. Other people who are less religious may prefer the ashes to be scattered in a private area at home or perhaps over a favorite lake.
Where you choose to have the ashes scattered in a public area, you may have to seek permission from the owners of that area to allow a scattering to take place. Nevertheless, there are many places, like sports fields, that won't give permission in advance for ashes to be scattered across the field, but might be quite amenable to accept a small private service when the stadium is completely empty and quiet. Your cremation services in Abbot(ME) will be to help you with these decisions.
Many people will prefer the option of agreeing to an environmentally friendly funeral service. Cremation services in Abbot(ME) will be able to direct you to the correct locations to assist your requirements.
Where a burial is involved, Abbot(ME) cremation services will make clear that it has been traditional that a formaldehyde-based embalming fluid is used for the body to be presented correctly. This is not essential when a cremation is your preferred decision. Some people are against land being used to bury a coffin and many large cities and towns have already run out of space within many churchyards.
Abbot(ME) cremation services will explain that the scattering of the remains do not require any land to be used at all, as the ashes may be kept in an urn at your home or they may be scattered in a particular location of the person's choice. Some people still choose to have their ashes buried where a close family member is found, but this will not take up any more land space.
Cremation services in Abbot(ME) will explain how a funeral service provides a social support system for all of the people involved. It also allows for all of the bereaved to finally accept that the death of the person cannot be reversed and that part of living is to know that you are going to die one day.
A funeral service offered by cremation services in Abbot(ME) will help reintegrate the bereaved family back into local community, because they may have been set apart for a few days or more during the grieving process.
Abbot(ME) cremation services will be able to help reaffirm everyone's relationship to the person who has recently died and the funeral service will provide a perfect opportunity to say goodbye properly and share the experience with close members of family and friends.
A cremation arranged by Abbot(ME) cremation services can reflect a full funeral service with the only difference, from a burial, being the way a body is committed forwards. With Abbot(ME) cremation services, this means the coffin will pass through curtains and that will be your final memory for that part of the process.
Worrying about whether you need to make different funeral arrangements because you have chosen a cremation is not necessary. Abbot(ME) cremation services will explain how you can have a funeral service before cremation or perhaps you may wish to choose a memorial service along with the cremation. Some people will choose to have the funeral service after the cremation so that the urn may be present.
Many crematoriums have areas set aside purposely as a spot set out as a garden of remembrance. This can be a perfect area for you to scatter the cremation ashes. Many churches have similar areas where people who are more religious may be happier with the decision that the ashes are scattered on religious grounds. All of this can be explained carefully to you by Abbot(ME) cremation services.
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New event looks to connected and autonomous future
A new event that brings together global experts in connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) with live demonstrations has been set up to assess the latest developments and debate and discuss the way forward, with future trials and research across the world, including in Scotland.
CAV Scotland 2018, which is a Transport Scotland event, will be organised by Transport Network, part of the Hemming Group, publishers of SMART Highways, Highways magazine and organisers of Traffex Road Expo Scotland, Traffex and Traffex Seeing is Believing.
The aim of this new event, which will take place on 31 October and 1 November at the Royal Highland Centre in Edinburgh, alongside Traffex Road Expo Scotland, is to bring together the sectors of the industry in Scotland who will be responsible for the delivery, regulation and management of CAVs on the Scottish network with the world’s leading experts and thought leaders in the field alongside the technology companies/demonstrators and associated organisations with an interest in connected and autonomous vehicles.
Although the regulation and policy around CAVs are not devolved, the Scottish Government wants Scotland to be at the forefront of developments in this area, offering high quality test and demonstrator opportunities to developers and industry. Scotland has huge geographic and socio-economic diversity and can offer opportunities to test and develop CAVs in a wide range of environments, including some very remote rural areas where infrastructure and communications are very different from large metropolitan areas.
The Scottish Government’s Programme for Government sets very clear objectives for Scotland in delivering a low carbon economy. This includes commitments to low and ultra-low emission vehicles, the phasing out of the need for new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2032 and the introduction of an ‘Electric Highway’ along the A9, demonstrating that electric vehicles offer important advantages to motorists in rural, as well as urban Scotland.
Cabinet secretary for transport, infrastructure and connectivity, Michael Matheson MSP, said: ‘The deployment of connected and autonomous vehicles in Scotland will bring transformative change to the way we travel and work, as well as having a positive impact on the economy, the environment and safety. Scotland is very much open for business when it comes to trialling these vehicles, with our trunk road network providing a wide range of environments as a diverse testing ground.
‘The CAV Scotland event is an excellent opportunity for leading motor manufacturers, suppliers of autonomous vehicles, regulators, innovators, business leaders and academics to debate Scotland’s role in developing and deploying this exciting new technology.’
Adrian Tatum, events producer and head of content for Transport Network, said: ‘There has been significant development with CAVs across the globe and now it is time to step back and assess all this and decide where we need to go next. It is clear there are still many unanswered questions that surround CAV development, not least how we prepare our roads ready to accept autonomous vehicles. There are also questions around insurance, legal issues and public confidence.
'The CAV Scotland event is the perfect opportunity to answer some of those questions and demonstrate why Scotland is the ideal place not only to continue to debate but to host further necessary trials and research.’
If you are interested in taking part in the event either as a speaker, demonstrator or sponsor, please contact Adrian Tatum for further details. a.tatum@hgluk.com or 07866 422523.
connected and autonomous vehicles transport planning
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I Thought I Didn't Need Gay Friends; I Was Wrong
Rob LeDonne
Why Mitch McConnell Is Willing to Throw Mueller to the Wolves
Remember Merrick Garland? The Senate majority leader has pulled off this stunt before.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Mitch McConnell was asked if he plans to bring to the Senate floor a bipartisan bill that would statutorily prohibit President Trump from terminating special counsel Robert Mueller, the man charged with investigating him. McConnell, who at this point has been analogized to every comic book supervillain and every known species of turtle, acted as if this were the most ridiculous proposition he'd ever heard. "That's not necessary," he scoffed, blinking furiously. "I don't think the the president is going to do that. And just as a practical matter, even if we passed it, why would he sign it?"
There are good reasons for a legislative body to pass a bill despite the threat of a veto, if it were so inclined. It could, for example, do so to send a message about their view on the limits of presidential power. It could use the bill to make its case to voters about what the law should be, and leave it to the president to deal with the political fallout associated with using the veto power in such a blatantly self-interested manner. McConnell knows these things, but still stared helplessly at Neil Cavuto as if he were physically shackled to the chair in which he sat. "I'm the one who decides what we take to the floor. That's my responsibility as the majority leader," he declared. "We will not be having this on the floor of the Senate."
McConnell's position—that he doesn't believe Trump will fire Mueller, and that therefore taking action to prevent it would be bad—is a facially absurd one, roughly akin to removing the seat belts from your cab driver's car because you are confident in his abilities behind the wheel. But the only thing about which Mitch McConnell has ever cared is consolidating power in his Republican Party. It doesn't matter to him who the president is, or what they do in the Oval Office, as long as they rubber-stamp the bills he places on their desk. If the answer to those questions is, respectively, "a racist reality TV star" and "obstruct justice with the tacit approval of a GOP-controlled legislature," he can work with that.
Trump is Finished
Political pragmatism, however, isn't the only thing motivating this refusal to head off a constitutional crisis. Remember 2016, when McConnell refused to give Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland the courtesy of a hearing, asserting without a shred of evidence that the next president should be allowed to fill that vacancy? At the time, this looked like a wild, Hail Mary-attempt to prevent President Obama from fulfilling his constitutional duties, and many idiots predicted that offering such a blatantly bad-faith argument would prompt Americans to punish the GOP at the polls. McConnell, though, saw preserving the Court's ideological balance as a cause around which his fractured-at-the-time party could rally. Even if that effort hadn't proved as successful as it did, the stakes were too high for him to do anything else.
The same is true today. If McConnell honestly believed that this bill isn't "necessary" because Trump won't fire Mueller, then at the very least, there would be no harm in allowing the Senate to vote on it. But he knows that Trump might do it, both because the investigation seems to be penetrating the president's inner circle, and also because the president lies all the time. Republicans plan to use the Russia probe and the prospect of impeachment to motivate the base to turn out, and for the sake of his party's agenda, McConnell has to preserve Trump's power to act in the meantime.
The majority leader is also warily keeping tabs on the usual gaggle of Roy Moore-esque goons who, if they were to win their primaries, could threaten the GOP's chances of winning toss-up seats in the general election. Democrats are going to attack McConnell and the Republican Party no matter what, of course. But if at this critical juncture he were to bring to the floor a bill that limits Trump's ability to fight back against Sean Hannity's "Mueller crime family", far-right voices could excoriate him for this capitulation, too. Doing something that could imperil the presidency in what may be the final eight months of unified Republican government is a risk that he cannot take.
Mitch McConnell knows that his party is in danger in November. His refusal to protect Robert Mueller is another high-risk, high-reward bet that the voters who applaud him for this stunt will outnumber those who are disgusted by it. He was right once. He might not be as lucky this time around.
Related Stories for GQMitch McConnell
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New & Selected Poems
Jane Kenyon; Afterword by Donald Hall
Otherwise collects a lifetime's work by one of contemporary poetry's most cherished talents. Opening with twenty new poems and including generous selections from Jane Kenyon's four previous books—From Room to Room, The Boat of Quiet Hours, Let Evening Come, and Constance—this collection was selected and arranged by Kenyon herself—alongside her husband, the esteemed poet Donald Hall—shortly before her death in April 1995.
This extensive gathering reveals a scrupulously crafted body of work in which poem after poem achieves a rare and somber grace. Light and shade are never far apart in these telling narratives of life and love and work at the poet's rural New Hampshire home. The shadow of depression in Kenyon's verse, which grew much darker and longer at certain intervals, has the force and heft of a spiritual presence—a god, demon, angel. Yet her work emphasizes the constant effort of her imagination to confront and even find redemption in suffering. However quiet or domesticated or subtle in her moods and methods, Kenyon was a poet who sought to discover the extraordinary within the ordinary, and her poems continue to make this discovery. As Hall writes in the afterword to Otherwise, we share "her joy in the body and the creation, in flowers, music, and paintings, in hayfields and a dog."
"Here was a poet who wrote about traditional subjects—her family, the farm she shared with her husband, the rhythms of the natural world—and yet was celebrated by some of [the twentieth] century's most prominent writers and publishers. Kenyon's work was a model of simplicity: the perfect voice for an age that shuns adornment . . . There is often a strong undertow beneath the smooth exteriors."—Elizabeth Lund, The Christian Science Monitor
"Her words, with their quiet, rapt force, their pensiveness and wit, come to us from natural speech, from the Bible and hymns, from which she derived the singular psalmlike music that is hers alone."—The New York Times Book Review
Credit: Ken Williams
Jane Kenyon was born in Ann Arbor and graduated from the University of Michigan. She published four collections of poetry during her lifetime—From Room to Room (Alice James Books, 1978), The Boat of Quiet Hours (Graywolf Press, 1986), Let Evening Come (Graywolf Press, 1990), and Constance (Graywolf Press, 1993)—and a volume of translations, Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova (Eighties Press/Ally Press, 1985). She is the author of a posthumous collection, Otherwise: New & Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1996). A Hundred White Daffodils (Graywolf Press, 1999) collects Kenyon’s essays, interviews, newspaper columns, and other work. Before his death, her husband, Donald Hall, selected The Best Poems of Jane Kenyon (Graywolf Press, 2020). Kenyon lived in Wilmot, New Hampshire, until her death in 1995.
On Immunity
I Am Not Sidney Poitier
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