WHEN HANGING BALLET SHOES

BY WILHELMINA S. OROZCO

How should we treat an artist-icon whose time is slowly eroding her capacities to perform? How should we make her still be functional and provide good presentations that are worthy of emulation of the younger set?

These are the dilemmas facing any fan of Liza Macuja who just performed her last role as Dulcinea in Don Quixote Liza pirouetted for the last 30 times on stage in perfect shape, form, and flawlessly, not even losing her balance at the end of each step. Is that not an amazing feat, for some in her 45th year.

Yet her performance left me feeling cold, knowing that she is slowly retiring from stage as a ballet dancer and the Philippines shall not have anyone who could equal her performances in many classical pieces that have brought fame to her not only locally but internationally.

And so, with that last performance of Liza, so many things cropped up in my mind. If in Tibet and outlying areas in Nepal, people could live beyond a hundred and yet still carry sacks of rice, or bundles of firewood on their backs, why can’t our inventors research on what could prolong a dancer’s muscles to make it still supple, and her bones strong enough to withstand all types of steps? Why can’t the government pour so much resources on research on how to make the human body almost un-aging so that there would not be so much need for cosmetic surgeries that have only superficially restored the self-esteem or he patients but never their respect for themselves. For how can an artificial reconstruction of the face and the human torso ever be a substitute for natural shape and form?

In our midst though, lots of herbal supplements have been imported promising many uses, among which is to retard aging. That is very good advertising but the efficaciousness of these supplements must withstood the test of time. Or else they could just be products of marketing gimmicks to waylay many gullible and insecure individuals.

Now going back to Liza, of course, she can continue being the impresario of Ballet Manila the productions of which have earned the company a good label of being the only one to produce full classical pieces like Don Q, Carmen, and most recently even Pilipino pieces like Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang. She can also conduct classes, deliver talks, write long pieces on dancing and being a dancer as she is now doing and which I find truly admirable as many dancers are not inclined to verbalize, much more so write about their lives. Maybe the discipline that Liza got in Russia had introduced her to the idea that an artist has to be compleat – not just honed in one skill.

However, I remember Margot Fonteyn performing Romeo and Juliet or was it Swan Lake at age 65 here in the country and her body was as light and supple as if she were only aged 28 or so. She should actually reveal her secrets for having done that feat and so impress to other dancers that age is not really a liability, so long as one is focused on her or his career.

Well, actually, even actors and actresses, more so the latter suffer from social stigma once they reach 40 and above. The roles they get are either mother, witch, or some other second-place role that could be forgettable unless the scriptwriter and director are kind enough to give a better depiction, showing more challenging scenes for them to express their skills. Actors are much more lucky as there is a social notion that they become like wine that age as the years go by. Hence, we have Eddie Garcia who is as busy as ever performing different kinds of aging men-roles, Dr. ___________, stage director whose dignified looks earn him highly regarded roles; and others, like Dante Rivero and even those legislator ex-actors who are able to wangle roles in many films showcasing their physique and ability to ride horses with agility.

But Gloria Romero suffered much as her roles are sometimes pathetic, that of being a ghost grandmother visiting an antique house; one time she was even a witch, and another time, a crazy woman amidst a family setting. Nova Villa gets forgettable roles on TV, while Dina Bonnevie hardly appears nowadays which is unfair as she is one of the intelligent actresses in town.

Anyway, Liza has been able to carve her own niche, not only in ballet, with her own studio and auditorium, but also raise the level of appreciation of the art amongst the Filipino people who are used to the regular predictable fares on TV. She has been able to get thousands of audience for her shows, mostly students who could be required to write a review for their classes.

Liza is also artistic director and producer of her many shows thus she is able to put her own stamp on her productions which after all are characterized by mostly flawless steps and complete with emotional gut-wrenching scenes most of the time. By the way, her 25th anniversary was simply unbeatable as she was able to essay excerpts from many productions including those seemingly endless pirouetting from right to left stage, and/or spinning in one place as if it were the most natural thing for a dancer to do.

Nonetheless, we hope that Liza could bring us another “Liza Macuja” look-alike approximating her perfect performances, and thus making the Filipino people continue to appreciate the art without end. For after all the art of dancing should not end at all when the ballet shoes are hanged.

(LATEST NEWS: LIZA IS TAKING ON A MOTHER ROLE IN HER LATEST BALLET PRODUCTION. SIGH, WE CAN REST ASSURED THAT WE CAN STILL VIEW HER PERFORM.)

PHOTO BY JIM KELLY

DANCING ICON OF THE WORLD

By Wilhelmina S. Orozco



Dancing for 25 years is no joke especially when it is ballet. Lisa Macuja-Elizalde the prima ballerina and creator of Ballet Manila (BM) celebrated her anniversary with a grand program showcasing the highlights of her ballet dancing from year 1984 when she graduated from the Russian Ballet Academy to the present.



Way back in the 70’s classical ballet was considered dance for the elite, as lessons were expensive and most of the students belonged to the middle and upper classes. Moreover, it was regarded as colonial since its roots are European, with the costumes very much un-Filipino, the tutus showing the legs, albeit stockinged, and the arms of female dancers in open display. Yet ballet was viewed as a high form of dance, compared to the rock and roll and boogie-woogie steps in vogue then. It was also considered a great ambition of dancers to study ballet in foreign countries, or to join international companies as the audience was not readily available then.



But today, through the efforts of Lisa, ballet has been introduced to the youth, especially students from public schools who are given free entrance most of the time or reduced rates of tickets in order to savor a story that has literary qualities through dance and music, and with a story.



Lisa’s story of 25 years is unfolded through screen projections of her pictures and videos together with her family, beginning with her as a toddler and then being trained to dance ballet here and in Russia. The images are well designed, not cut-and-dried projection but rather dancing on screen as well, dissolving and shifting positions as they contain Lisa dancing different characters upon her graduation from the famous Leningrad’s Vaganova Choreographic Institute in famous plays like The Nutcracker Suite, Don Quixote, and Carmen, among others, then segueing to her onstage dancing excerpts from them. Then when Lisa is on stage, the screen turns into scenes of nature, snowflakes falling on the mountains, a lake with moving swans, silhouetted trees where red petals fall, or an English scenery of that Balcony in Romeo and Juliet. Other projections include only the black and white images of pointed toes shifting from left to right, upper and lower screens.



What made ballet an easy field for Lisa is her what she calls her “deep love for the classics.” The classics would be those stories that contain complicated plots and relationships among characters which require intelligent reading as well. Translated as dance libretto, these classics would prove to be especially difficult, because instead of words, the ideas in them have to be translated physically, through dance, costumes, sets, and music – in other words, a realization of the stories onstage.



How did Lisa make ballet an appreciated art in the country? In the 80’s she dreamed of popularizing ballet, of having a wider audience. She wanted “visibility in media.” So she immersed herself in various public appearances -on TV shows, pop concerts and lately even malls. She even appeared in a print ad showing her leaping with a split. She also danced ballet to pop tunes familiar to the ears of the TV audience thus imprinting her presence, and of course her personality in their minds. Her winning ways – not looking tired after dancing, of always smiling and not showing any airs at all of being in a high class dance field, captured the hearts and minds of the public who then gathered that ballet is after all an easy and a happy field, and therefore worthwhile watching.



Eventually, she grew tired of these kinds of public exposure and so turned to more serious endeavors, that of putting up a ballet studio and a theatre where she could present the plays that she wants to be produced.



Perfect form

As a dancer, Lisa exhibits that perfect form and exact timing of steps that are sometimes too unbelievable for a petite female dancer to possess. Her movements shift without jagged lines, whether starting on toes, coming down on the floor and then leaping up to the arms of a male dancer. In one adagio, she is carried on the shoulders of one who then twirls her from his left to right shoulders and back as if she were just a plate being shifted around. In another scene she is brought up by male dancers on their shoulders and then in another, she reaches to her lover in the scene tumbling down and then with her legs on air they move together to hint at lovemaking. The most breathtaking steps that she takes are those pirouettes done 8 to 30 times on toes and even moving from one end of the stage to the other without her showing any ounce of dizziness. (These spinning steps earned her lots of applause from the audience of that presentation on October 11, 2009) In all these, Lisa appears like a feather leaping, flying, soaring, and being held by sensitive hands. Her toes falling on the floor is hardly heard nor does it create noise that could distract the attention of the audience from the story of the dance.



Now what makes Lisa a consummate artist? One can glean this from the small steps and movements that she takes to those of leaps and bounces as she dances with a male dancer or several groups. Lisa’s Carmen is full of love and sensuality, apart from her wearing a black negligee with her half-bare lover. The twist of her hip to the left indicates her sexy bearing hinting at her profession as a prostitute. In her solo dancing of an Original Pilipino Music or OPM, Lisa is able to show the angst, the hankering for involvement to the tune of “Somewhere in Time” played on the violin by Robert Atchison. She projects her desire for company in the way she wraps her arms around her body and then by the way her arms would flail in the air a few times revealing the emptiness of being without her lover yet also bearing that unrequited or requited love. She also projects that hesitancy to ask her absent lover to return in her movements showing one foot stepping forward and then back, and then the motion repeated, as if wanting and not wanting in the song “Sana’y Maulit Muli.” In all her dances, Lisa is able to present the whole gamut of human emotions from happiness (as Odine in Swan Lake), to sadness (OPM songs) to longing (as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet) and even sensual feelings (as Carmen).



Then all the other ingredients of the presentation are well chosen, from the costumes, to the screen settings, and even the souvenir program which contains not only the briefs about the dancers and guest teachers like Tatiana Udalenkova of the Russian Ballet Academy, St. Petersburg, Russia, who has come to the country to give ballet lessons at BM, and Rober Atchison, English violinist who played touching the classical and OPM music to which Lisa danced, Luz Fernandez, the Lola Basyang of radio, Gia Macuja who has acted lead roles of Nala, in The Lion King, and Gigi and Ellen in Miss Saigon, both presented in England, and other individuals who contributed to the success of the presentation. The generous spaces devoted to the artists’ biography, no matter how brief, reflect the high regard of BM to them, an aim that is worthwhile copying by every cultural presentation.



The culminating points of the anniversary show Lisa and her lover in the play, Prinsipe ng Mga Ibon, based on the story by Severino Reyes retold by Christine Bellen, and illustrated by Panch Alcaraz, standing on a box that flies from the stage to the back of the theatre with the song “Lipad” composed by Jesse Lasaten. A little later, she emerges from the same but now dressed all white and coming down as if flying to be with all the dancers on stage. There Lisa draws a standing ovation from the audience who clapped seemingly without end and stopped only when the curtains fell onstage.



Yet, Lisa is also aware of the travails of her profession, where creeping age can cramp the style and eventually deaden the dancer’s artistic aspirations. She gives this reason for being on top of her field: “One of the reasons I was able to maintain my active career in dancing is that I have a very strong constitution. I rarely get sick…get injured. I have maintained my body and a lot of it has to do with the ballet classes I take, and the training I had with the Vaganova method which begins with 1 ½ hours of strong technical combinations and steps.”



Actually her strength and perseverance are extraordinary as exhibited very well when she danced Swan Lake in Cuba after only a week of rehearsal under the direction of Alicia Alonzo. Then, in this particular presentation, she showed great stamina, dancing from scene to scene, changing costumes, getting into the emotional make-up of every character that she is supposed to portray, within 3 hours of the program. Viewing her is being with someone with a great muscle strength, strong respiratory system and a really deep love of dance and theatre, firstly, as an aesthetic endeavor and secondly, as a profession.



The repertoire of Ballet Manila include full length performances of Swan Lake, Don Quixote, The Nutcracker, Giselle, La Bayadere, Romeo and Juliet, Carmen, Le Corsaire, and “contemporary Filipino ballet pieces by some of the country’s most distinguished choreographers.” This makes the assertion of Lisa that Ballet Manila is the only Filipino company that can “capably stage a full classical repertoire in any given concert season.”



Discipline and blessings of having a supportive family and her own company have made Lisa what she is now. Her company has all the necessary facilities needed to support any production, from rehearsal studios, to ballet books and video as well as music library, a warehouse for costumes and equipment, living quarters, and of course, the administrative, logistics and marketing staff. The environment is there for any dancer to make use of to deepen one’s understanding of any role to be played and danced.



In turn Lisa shares her success by giving scholarships, free ballet education to public elementary and high school students under the Ballet Manila School. She also has directed the Artists’ Welfare Project Inc., an NGO that “guarantees welfare benefits to all its artist-members.”



Truly, the country has a gem of a dancer in Lisa, the best that the country has produced in the whole history of dance. She exhibits not only a firm grasp of the ballet techniques but also a deep understanding of the meaning of every story that is presented, every line of a song that accompanies her dance, a real “storyteller on toes,” (as Lisa would say of her company, Ballet Manila). She has shown that the Filipina dancer can excel and even garner international acclaim given proper training and in her case, Russian training, as well as preserving her roots as a Filipina. That ability to put emotions into her dances is a product of her being a “kababayan” as we are known to be sensitive to feelings and thoughts, our own and those of others’. Lisa credits her husband Fred Elizalde of being a strong pillar in her ascent to success as she expressed in her Sunday radio program over DZRH while being interviewed by Ruth Abao, “In fact I would classify my life as a dancer in this way ‘before and after Fred.” The latter has given her his wholehearted and financial support for her to give expression to her dancing talents and abilities as well as her director capabilities. Yet, despite her being onstage most of the time, she remains a devoted mother to their children and a grateful wife which she always showed by thanking Fred who happens to sit among the audience every time she plays.



Osias Barroso, BM Artistic Associate and Ballet Master, says it all, Lisa is the “ ‘Ballerina of the People’ who will dance anywhere as long as there’s a floor for her to dance on.”



Maybe there is really something about dreaming that can make an individual reach the highest of heights of success. Let us add to the accolades, Lisa is also the “Ballet Icon Dancer of the World.”



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SHAMAN IN MEDICAL PRACTICE

MERCED, Calif. — The patient in Room 328 had diabetes and hypertension. But when Va Meng Lee, a Hmong shaman, began the healing process by looping a coiled thread around the patient’s wrist, Mr. Lee’s chief concern was summoning the ailing man’s runaway soul.

Multimedia

Slide Show
Welcoming Shamans
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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Va Meng Lee, another shaman, at Mercy Medical Center in Merced, Calif. More Photos »
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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Paraphernalia used in a home by Ma Vue, another shaman, to ward off bad spirits for a newborn. More Photos >
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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Ma Vue with her husband and assistant, Yong Chue Xiong, warding away bad spirits for Lance Vang, a newborn, in Winton, Calif. More Photos >
“Doctors are good at disease,” Mr. Lee said as he encircled the patient, Chang Teng Thao, a widower from Laos, in an invisible “protective shield” traced in the air with his finger. “The soul is the shaman’s responsibility.”

At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than IV drips, syringes and blood glucose monitors. Because many Hmong rely on their spiritual beliefs to get them through illnesses, the hospital’s new Hmong shaman policy, the country’s first, formally recognizes the cultural role of traditional healers like Mr. Lee, inviting them to perform nine approved ceremonies in the hospital, including “soul calling” and chanting in a soft voice.

The policy and a novel training program to introduce shamans to the principles of Western medicine are part of a national movement to consider patients’ cultural beliefs and values when deciding their medical treatment. The approach is being adopted by dozens of medical institutions and clinics across the country that cater to immigrant, refugee and ethnic-minority populations.

Certified shamans, with their embroidered jackets and official badges, have the same unrestricted access to patients given to clergy members.

Shamans do not take insurance or other payment, although they have been known to accept a live chicken.

A recent survey of 60 hospitals in the United States by the Joint Commission, the country’s largest hospital accrediting group, found that the hospitals were increasingly embracing cultural beliefs, driven sometimes by marketing, whether by adding calcium- and iron-rich Korean seaweed soup to the maternity ward menu at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, on the edge of Koreatown, or providing birthing doulas for Somali women in Minneapolis.

In Merced, about 120 miles southeast of San Francisco, the Mercy hospital shaman program was designed to strengthen the trust between doctors and the Hmong community — a form of healing in the broadest sense. It tries to redress years of misunderstanding between the medical establishment and the Hmong, whose lives in the mountains of Laos were irreparably altered by the Vietnam War. Hmong soldiers, Mr. Lee among them, were recruited by the C.I.A. in the 1960s to fight the covert war against Communist insurgents in Laos and afterward, to avoid retribution, were forced to flee to the refugee camps, with most resettling in California’s Central Valley and in the Midwest.

During a seven-week training program at Mercy Medical Center, 89 shamans learned elements of Western-style medicine, including germ theory. They visited operating rooms and peered through microscopes for the first time. Looking at heart cells, one shaman, an elderly woman, asked the pathologist to show her a “happy heart.”

Designed to defuse the Hmong fear of Western medicine, the program has “built trust both ways,” said Dr. John Paik-Tesch, director of the Merced Family Medicine Residency Program, which trains resident physicians at Mercy Medical Center.

Since the refugees began arriving 30 years ago, health professionals like Marilyn Mochel, a registered nurse who helped create the hospital’s policy on shamans, have wrestled with how best to resolve immigrants’ health needs given the Hmong belief system, in which surgery, anesthesia, blood transfusions and other common procedures are taboo.

The result has been a high incidence of ruptured appendixes, complications from diabetes, and end-stage cancers, with fears of medical intervention and delays in treatment exacerbated by “our inability to explain to patients how physicians make decisions and recommendations,” Ms. Mochel said.

The consequences of miscommunication between a Hmong family and the hospital in Merced was the subject of the book “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and The Collision of Two Cultures” by Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997). The book follows a young girl’s treatment for epilepsy and the hospital’s failure to recognize the family’s deep-seated cultural beliefs. The fallout from the case and the book prompted much soul-searching at the hospital and helped lead to its shaman policy.

The Hmong believe that souls, like errant children, are capable of wandering off or being captured by malevolent spirits, causing illness. Mr. Lee’s ceremony for the diabetic man was a spiritual inoculation, meant to protect his soul from being kidnapped by his late wife and thus extending his “life visa.”

Such ceremonies, which last 10 minutes to 15 minutes and must be cleared with a patient’s roommates, are tame versions of elaborate rituals that abound in Merced, especially on weekends, when suburban living rooms and garages are transformed into sacred spaces and crowded by over a hundred friends and family members. Shamans like Ma Vue, a 4-foot, 70-something dynamo with a tight bun, go into trances for hours, negotiating with spirits in return for sacrificed animals — a pig, for instance, was laid out recently on camouflage fabric on a living room floor.

Certain elements of Hmong healing ceremonies, like the use of gongs, finger bells and other boisterous spiritual accelerators, require the hospital’s permission. Janice Wilkerson, the hospital’s “integration” director, said it was also unlikely that the hospital would allow ceremonies involving animals, like one in which evil spirits are transferred onto a live rooster that struts across a patient’s chest.

“The infection control nurse would have a few problems with that,” Ms. Wilkerson said.

A turning point in the skepticism of staff members occurred a decade ago, when a major Hmong clan leader was hospitalized here with a gangrenous bowel. Dr. Jim McDiarmid, a clinical psychologist and director of the residency program, said that in deference hundreds of well-wishers, a shaman was allowed to perform rituals, including placing a long sword at the door to ward off evil spirits. The man miraculously recovered. “That made a big impression, especially on the residents,” Dr. McDiarmid said.

Social support and beliefs affect a patient’s ability to rebound from illness, Dr. McDiarmid added, pointing out that over half of the people who respond to antidepressants do so because of the placebo effect.

One of the goals of the new policy, Ms. Mochel said, is to speed up medical intervention by having a healing ceremony coincide with a hospital stay, rather than waiting days for a patient to confer with family and clan leaders after a ceremony at home.

Attitudes toward Western doctors have begun to loosen as young, assimilated Hmong-Americans assume more powerful roles in the family. Dr. Kathie Culhane-Pera, the associate medical director of the West Side Community Health Center in St. Paul, home to the country’s largest concentration of Hmong, said she worked informally with shamans, obtaining permission from the hospital to turn off the smoke alarms for incense, for example. Signs of the growing movement in cross-cultural health care can be found on the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona, where the federal Indian Health Service has three medicine men on staff and recently instituted a training program similar to Mercy’s.
At White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dr. Hector Flores, the chairman of the family medicine department, refers patients to, traditional Hispanic healers, curanderos, on a case-by-case basis. The facility also trains community members as “promotores de salud,” or health promoters. Dr. Flores called it a “low-tech approach in which the physician is not the end-all, but part of a collaborative team geared toward prevention.”

At the hospital in Merced, Dr. Lesley Xiong, 26, a resident physician, grew up as the granddaughter of two distinguished shamans. Though she chose to become a doctor, she said there was ample room for both approaches. “If I were sick, I would want a shaman to be there,” Dr. Xiong said. “But I’d go to the hospital.”

Row over Afghan wife-starving law

By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News


Critics accuse President Hamid Karzai of betraying Afghan women
An Afghan bill allowing a husband to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex has been published in the official gazette and become law.
The original bill caused outrage earlier this year, forcing Afghan President Hamid Karzai to withdraw it.
But critics say the amended version of the law remains highly repressive.
They accuse Mr Karzai of selling out Afghan women for the sake of conservative Shia support at next week's presidential election.
The law governs family life for Afghanistan's Shia minority.
Sexual demands
The original version obliged Shia women to have sex with their husbands every four days at a minimum, and it effectively condoned rape by removing the need for consent to sex within marriage.

The original bill caused outrage within Afghanistan and around the world
Western leaders and Afghan women's groups were united in condemning an apparent reversal of key freedoms won by women after the fall of the Taliban.
Now an amended version of the same bill has passed quietly into law with the apparent approval of President Karzai.
Just ahead of this Thursday's Afghan presidential election, human rights groups suggest the timing is no accident.
"There was a review process - Karzai came under huge pressure from all over the world to amend this law, but many of the most oppressive laws remain," Rachel Reid, the Human Rights Watch representative in Kabul, told the BBC.
"What matters more to Karzai is the support of fundamentalists and hardliners here in Afghanistan whose support he thinks he needs in the elections."
Women's groups say its new wording still violates the principle of equality that is enshrined in their constitution.
It allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands; a woman must get her husband's permission to work; and fathers and grandfathers are given exclusive custody of children.

WANTED ACTORS AND ACTRESSES

Some occurrences in theatrical work are operating which hamper the development of one form -- usually theatre. Actors appearing in dramatic pieces suddenly get pirated by the more lucrative forms like tv and advertisements which give higher pay. Is there a way by which we can have an agreement among the media that those who are performing in one should finish their contract first before jumping to the other, and those companies who get them have to reimburse the previous organization to which the actor/actress used to be connected should they need their services immediately?

I think that give-and-take in the artforms have to be emphasized to really prosper and develop in our country.

EMMA S. OROZCO

WILLIE, NEXT KING OF COMEDY

Comedy is important in social life. It makes the people realize how flippant and serious life can be and therefore view it as a journey, not necessarily an end in itself. Very few comedians exist in our country because it is difficult to make people laugh.

However, comedians like Willie Nepomuceno exist tickling the audience with laughter, in order to provide a diversion from their monotonous life or to make them realize something very important without being given a sermon. They are capable of providing another angle of looking at life actually, and could make the students expand their imagination when faced with difficult problems in life, today and in the future. Moreover they show that human frailties like committing errors, being imperfect are traits that are normal to human beings and need not be sources of insecurities.

Willie Nepomuceno is the first and foremost intelligent stand-up comedian in our country appealing to all crowds, young and old, and all sexes without offending their sensibilities. His jokes do not laugh at the disabled and other weak sectors of our society. They are witty, done with finesse and exhibit etiquette, qualities that are educational for the young audience to know and most possibly to imitate later on. His stories make high class personalities human like us, fallible and not god-like that they could overpower and dominate us. He makes us feel that they are just like one of us, human and capable of making mistakes like those of FPJ and Erap.

His performances can be short or fast-paced providing a succession of humorous stories, short jokes (called "bits"), and one-liners. Sometimes he uses props but always has minus-one music for his songs. He has performed at nightclubs, bars, colleges and theaters, as well as celebrations of companies, regaling the audience with his off-beat treatment of any subject and topic. All writer, editor, performer and and director, he has staff that takes care of his technical needs.

In college, the study of drama includes tragedy and comedy distinguishing between the two and showing that both are important forms of literature and entertainment. By being introduced to comedy, the students will realize the deeper value of humour in life. They will learn to practice humour as a good defense in life.

Children would do well to know Willie Nepomuceno in person rather than as a featured tv or radio guest. Though projected as the main and only feature of this event his performance is a whole “menu” by itself rolled into one, speaking, joking, impersonating and singing directly to them.
His performance can educate on:
1. what is comedy;
2. being comical without being offensive;
3. knowing how to laugh at serious matters yet not departing from the fact that they have to be dealt with seriously;
4. knowing that comedy is as important as politics and all other fields of endeavor;
5. knowing the difference between high and low comedy and how they as students should aspire for more uplifting types of entertainment that will showcase humanity as humane yet humorous;
6. knowing what is solo performance and its being a good source of education and entertainment, and
7. Thus, raising their cultural taste as to what is good for their soul (ethics), mind and body.

HISTORIAN SPEAKS OUT

Word reached me last night that i'm being considered for a commission to write a Philippine history textbook. a meeting with the publishers will soon be scheduled. Offhand i feel honored. But it will also be a worthwhile effort only if it's about the history that our citizenry needs to know.

Instead of what events happened in the past?, it should rather focus on how have most of the people been living, and what factors determined it? what have been their patterns of thinking, behavior and interaction, and what factors determined them? how briefly or how long did those patterns last? what factors accounted for all the quick and the slow changes? what patterns of thinking, behavior and interaction are prevalent in our lives now? and what will they be in the coming decades and centuries?

Otherwise, my book would just be giving our students more trivia, more inconsequential details to memorize throughout a semester only to recall them only once -- during exams. Our sense of history should guide us, enlighten us with experiential lessons in our long paths toward upliftment and fulfillment, invigorate us with a well-deserved sense of pride as tempered by an honest sense of humility. Our collective sense of history should be the pillar of our collective sense of mission as a nation in the service of humanity. This is what Kamalaysayan exists for. This is what its members should be joining, and reamining in, this organization for.

Prof. Ed Aurelio C. "Ding" Reyes
Lead Founder and National Spokesman,
Kamalaysayan (Kaisahan sa Kamalayan sa Kasaysayan)
(Subic, Zambales 08-01-09)

FROM GENE DE LOYOLA, PAINTER

HANGAD KO LANG NA MAGING MAAYOS ANG PAGTURING SA MGA ARTISTS LALO NA ANG MGA NAGBUHOS NG PANAHON SAKRIPISYO UPANG MALINANG AT MAKABAHAGI SA PAG-ULAD NG SINING NA NAGHAHATID NG KALAYAAN SA KAMANGMANGAN AT SA TULOY-TULOY NA PAG-UNLAD SA PISIKAL AT PANG KAISIPAN SA SINING NG BUHAY.

NAKITA KO NA MAGANDA ANG SITE NYO LALO NA FILIPINO ART GALLERY HOPE NA MAGING MAAYOS AT MAUNLAD PA KAYO PARA SA IKABUBUTI NG KABUOAN AT BAHAGI DIN KAYO, PASENSYA NA RIN SA HINDI PAGKAKAUNAWAAN.

NAILABAS KO LANG ANG AKING SINASALOOB ITO AY BAHAGI NG ATING KALAYAANG MAY RESPOSIBILIDAD BILANG ANG INYONG SITE AY IMAHE NG SINING SANA AY LALO PANG MAPAGANDA

WHY CULTURE?

Culture defines a people's noble purpose, gives national identity, strengthens their artistic souls, and builds up their hopes for a country that is democratic, prosperous, just and equal.

The Cultural Program of TF-PRG promotes the best of Philippine arts, literature, and education to cultural and academic institutions across the country and the world. Thus we have this blog for everybody to read, comment on and feed with information and reviews.

This blog shall have articles that are conceptual, critical, and promotional of all Philippine cultural products, administration, policies and programs. Our view is to focus attention that is prompt, sustained and high-spirited on cultural issues between and among amateurs, professionals and administrators of cultural groups, events, academes, and all other institutions, concerning the products of artists, writers, thinkers, students, and educators, as well as to increase the number of opportunities for them to develop their fields.

The blog shall draw attention to developments in Philippine culture, including contemporary and indigenous dances; music; theater, plays, and other forms of literature.

We shall always be interested in new and challenging ideas that will bring Philippine and foreign peoples together in debating and discussing issues related to culture. In particular, this blog will raise public interest in the recognition of exceptional artistic and academic accomplishments and the need for public support, material and spiritual, of such endeavors.

We hope you will join us by feeding information, remarks and reviews of the different cultural events that you find happening in your community, or locality.

-by Wilhelmina S. Orozco, Ph.D.

--Margie Politzer Photo Print, Woman leaving an offering on Mt. Batur, Bali, Indonesia

JOSE INGLES: Finding the Right Mix

by Wilhelmina S. Orozco

With curly hair flowing like Einstein’s, wearing faded blue jeans, and easy gait as he walks, Jose Ingles, Inner Alchemist, Filipino Inventors society member looks every inch like any inventor who cares not whatever happens to the world except perfecting his product. He is the typical science-oriented individual whose focus is on how to extract, blend, mix and come up, voila! with a new or improved product.

Right now Ingles is very busy propagating flowering plants – ylangylang, roses, -- as well as calamansi, from which he can extract essences and market them as medicinal herbal products. Elemi, an essence that contains oils from the wild pili, citrus, rose, sampaguita and lemongrass, and has aromatherapic qualities that relax and provide a really restful feeling is his latest product. “Ipahid mo sa ilong, masarap ang tulog mo pagkatapos,” he said.

Another product of Ingles, who conducts training at the Department of Agriculture Training Institute on homemade probiotics extracts essences alchemy, is Colloidal Elixir made of a combination of two or more elements Silver. In his study, Ingles unearthed a 1940’s revelation of Dr. R. R. Rife MD that bacteria and virus are “vulnerable to suffocation from the catalytic action of Colloidal Silver, “ which then results in its having healing properties.

In another study done in Salt Lake City, Utah, Ingles mentioned that silver “is a powerful, natural antibiotic prophylactic antiseptic, known anciently and at the turn of the century as an invaluable medication.” The compound does not damage the organs of the body but in fact “accelerates healing” he said. Hence, this product has curative qualities on the skin, and treats rushes, hematoma, and when ingested, can also be anti-bacterial and anti-viral. “I am promoting this as it can cheapen the treatment of many illnesses. It is the first formulation of several mineral elements,

Actually, Ingles, a member of the Filipino Society of Inventors has traveled around the world as his father, Minister Jose Ingles during the 80’s was assigned in many places with the longest period in New York City. He finally settled down in the Philippines and got interested in chemistry when as a researcher at a Japanese okra company in Moncada, Tarlac, he discovered a distiller of ilang-ilang flowers next town and helped improved the distillation of the oils which made it more marketable as it brings a very fragrant smell. His theory which was proved to be true that ilang-ilang flowers when picked early morning, when it is most fragrant can produce the best essences.

Each 5 ml is worth P100 while 35ml is P700. With ylang-ylang, it is priced at P1,000 as the process becomes of extraction is more expensive. “It takes 5,000 kilos of rose petals to produce 1 liter, and 100 kilos of ylang-ylang to get 1 liter.

Ingles is one among so many of our inventors whose prime motivation is to increase knowledge, discover original products that can be known by the world with profit as a secondary objective. Unfortunately, the Technology Application and Promotion Institute, the agency tasked to help inventors seems to be eyeing other schemes.

WHY CULTURE?

Culture defines a people's noble purpose, gives national identity, strengthens their artistic souls, and builds up their hopes for a country that is democratic, prosperous, just and equal.

The Cultural Program of TF-PRG promotes the best of Philippine arts, literature, and education to cultural and academic institutions across the country and the world. Thus we have this blog for everybody to read, comment on and feed with information and reviews.

This blog shall have articles that are conceptual, critical, and promotional of all Philippine cultural products, administration, policies and programs. Our view is to focus attention that is prompt, sustained and high-spirited on cultural issues between and among amateurs, professionals and administrators of cultural groups, events, academes, and all other institutions, concerning the products of artists, writers, thinkers, students, and educators, as well as to increase the number of opportunities for them to develop their fields.

The blog shall draw attention to developments in Philippine culture, including contemporary and indigenous dances; music; theater, plays, and other forms of literature.

We shall always be interested in new and challenging ideas that will bring Philippine and foreign peoples together in debating and discussing issues related to culture. In particular, this blog will raise public interest in the recognition of exceptional artistic and academic accomplishments and the need for public support, material and spiritual, of such endeavors.

We hope you will join us by feeding information, remarks and reviews of the different cultural events that you find happening in your community, or locality.

-by Wilhelmina S. Orozco, Ph.D.

--Margie Politzer Photo Print, Woman leaving an offering on Mt. Batur, Bali, Indonesia

PANAHON NG PAGKILALA SA MUNDO

Para kay Mang Freddie ang Paglalayag ay
Panahon ng Pagkilala ng Mundo
Wilhelmina S. Orozco

Ang buhay ng isang seaman ay hindi biro. Sa loob ng barko, paulit-ulit araw-araw ang trabaho. Bago ka makakita ng isla, aabutin ka ng buwan-buwan at pagkatapos may panganib pa ngayon na ma-hostage ng mga pirata sa Aprika.

Subalit para kay Mang Alfredo Mendoza, isang retiradong seaman napawi lahat ng hirap niya sa pamumuhay sa Pilipinas mula ng naging seaman siya hanggang sa nagretiro siya sa loob ng 35 taon mula noong 1969 hanggang 2000. At hindi baleng mababa ang naging pusisyon niya sa barko,. Pangatlo naman siya sa mahahalagang pusisyon sa barko. Mataas na yun para sa kanya dahil hindi naman daw siya puwedeng tumaas pa duon dahilan sa hayskul gradweyt lang siya. Wala naman siyang pinag-aralang nautical science na requirement para sa mga magiging opisyal ng barko. Naging supervisor siya ng mga taong naglilinis, nagpipinta ng barko.

Sa mga naging karanasan niya sa paglalayag, ang pinakamagagandang pagkakataon niya ay sa Gresya, sa Hapon, sa Caribbean Islands, at sa Venice. Noong nasa Gresya siya, nagustuhan niya ang pagkain at ang mga tanawin, pati na ang mga tao. Natuto siya ng salitang Griyego dahil talagang nais niyang matuto. Araw-araw ay nag-aaral siya ng 2 salita, tulad ng “Thank you, I love you”. Apat na taon siya sa Gresya subalit sa loob ng isang taon ay natuto siya kaagad ng wika nito.

Sa Hapon naman, nagustuhan niya ito dahilan sa maganda ang bansa at disiplinado ang mga tao kaya umuunlad, wika niya. Kung bibili ka ng isang bagay sa halagang P5 kahit saan ka magpunta sa buong syudad, P5 rin ang halaga nito, hindi nag-iiba. At minsan nagtanong siya sa isang may-ari ng tindahan kung nasaan ang post office. Walang kaabug-abog na sinara nung may-ari ang kanyang tindahan at isinama siya kung nasaan ang post office.

Nagustuhan din ni Mang Freddie ang Caribbean Islands dahil sa klima, parang Pilipinas. Espanol ang salita na kanya ring naiintindihan dahilan sa ang Tagalog ay maraming salitang galling ditto. Parati rin siyang nasa tabi ng beach, sa pampang kung saan ay marahil naiisip-isip niyang sa kabila ng dagat ay mga isla na ng Pilipinas. Sa Venice naman ay natuwa siya dahilan sa ang mga kalye ay puro tubig at ang mga tao ay tumatawid ng mga bahagi ng syudad sa pamamagitan ng bangka.

Kung meron mang hindi magandang karanasan si Mang Freddie, ito ay noong nagretiro siya sa idad na 45 years. Forced retirement kung baga dahil kaya pa niyang maglayag noon. Kaya lang may isang batas daw na inihain si Edgardo Angara at naipasa ng Kongreso na nagtatakda ng retirement age. Dati rati noon, kahit 50 o 55 years old kayang maglayag. Pero ngayon ginawang 35 below.

Nagtapos si Mang Freddie ng hayskul sa Centro Escolar University kung saan naging kaeskwela niya si Nora Aunor. Hiwalay si Mang Freddie sa asawa niya subali’t sa halip na mag-migrate, siya ngayon ay nasa Pilipinas at aktibo sa kanyang born-again na simbahan ang Jesus Miracle Crusade International. Dito ay kasama-sama rin niya sina Mel at Nanding Pasion, mag-asawang mataimtim na dumadalo sa mga pagsamba na tinuturing siyang kapamilya. Ang misyon na lamang niya ngayon ay ang magsilbi sa Panginoon dahil para sa kanya natupad niya ang kanyang mga pangarap. Natupad niya ang kanyang mga pangarap, “I wanted to see the world,” (Nais kong makita ang mundo) at kumita siya.

Mang Angel, Tenacious Violin-Maker

Mang Angel, Tenacious Violin-Maker
By Wilhelmina S. Orozco

From north to south, the Philippines marvel at violinists for their ability to play on their instrument with great enthusiasm. They ooh and ahh over the pieces played by Master Gil Lopez Kabayao whose folk song album remains to be a precious relic in the music world. For my part, I also treasure the pieces played by another master violinist Alfonso Corpus Bolipata like Sana Wala Nang Wakas, and Kahit Na composed by Willy Cruz, the latter with arrangement by Alfredo Buenaventura in the tape, Pelikula which can make lovers swoon to every note.

Thus, music has that tendency to convert all ill into humanistic feelings. Perhaps, even those thinking of getting into wars would turn into peace-niks or pacifists if only they would listen to violin music, think of the world on a standstill, and just allow the
notes to carry them through the wind. Yet, are they aware that violins are now being made in the country?

Angelito Gabute or Mang Angel is one such maker who has crafted lots of violins, violas and double basses through the years embracing his craft and art with great discipline without any kind of assistance from any financial institution. Born in Romblon, he is highly proud that many of the violinists today have been his customers. In his whole lifespan, he must have made a mark already of handling over a thousand violins owned by both professionals and amateurs including those by Gil Lopez Kabayao who introduced him to working as a professional in the field of music.

The studio site of Mang Angel is a simple abode in Bagong Silang, Caloocan City where he lives with his wife, Evelyn and his daughter,Angeline, their only child, a nursing student. Evelyn helps him in marketing, judiciously going to academic institutions where orders or requests are made for him to repair instruments and also help him with the financial accounting and the pricing of his output. Whether repairing or making a new violin, he goes about the small space of his studio, measuring only about 3 x 3 meters, sawing, shaping, sanding, and then assembling wood, after which he attaches the pegs and the strings. Of course the process is more complicated than that as he also tacks in pieces of wood inside the violin to make it produce sounds more pleasing to the ears. His major tools are only his hands and a handful of machines, big and small, for wood cutting
and shaping.

From birth, Mang Angel has been a musician all along having been largely influenced by his father, Juan, a guitar maker and an arts-inclined family.Besides guitar-making, Mang Angel's father knew wood carving, blacksmithing -creating knives, axes, and horseshoes out of iron. His mother, Leonora Mirano has many relatives who are also musicians. His grandfather by his mother, and the cousins of his mother, now abroad, know how to play the harp. A brother, Roberto, has traveled already to other countries like Italy, Germany, America, Japan to learn and to work as a maker of bows used for the string instruments. Meanwhile, his sisters, Paz and Marilyn are handicraft maker and educator respectively while harp.

Mang Angel's father, Juan, learned how to make the guitar from a Spain-educated Cebuano, Mr. Jose Flaviano who went to Romblon and put up a seminar on guitar-making. Juan attended the seminar which launched his career as a guitar maker. Mr. Flaviano bowed out of the
market as the products of my father became more sellable because of their better quality and lower priced, Mang Angel narrated gleefully knowing how competition plays even in the musical world.

To learn a craft requires a good mentor, interest and perseverance. Mang Angel had all three. Although an associate in agricultural technology in the province, producing crops using highly scientific methods, Mang Angel opted for the joy of making sounds, a very difficult and highly skilled work. His source of inspiration: no less than the master violin icon, Gil Lopez Kabayao and the unqualified support of his better half, Evelyn.

"Hindi ako nag-aral ng music. Self-study lang ako. (Pero) nag-aral ako sa mga musicians sa pagbasa ng nota," he confessed. Three years old pa lang ako, marunong na ako ng tono. Tumutugtog na ako ng bandurya at 5 years old. Kung ano ang sound, kaya kong gayahin. Tinuruan ako ni Mr. Aguedo Faderon, sa Romblon. Conductor siya ng rondalla, (at)lumalaban kami sa kumpetisyon sa Western Visayas, Nananalo (rin) sa kumpetisyon kasi magaling ang teacher," he narrated. In the seventies, Mang Angel went to Manila abandoning his profession , and sought out Mr. Kabayao who encouraged him to work as an apprentice to Mr. Amador Tamayo, the violin-maker schooled under Italian violin makers.

For 17 years, he dutifully studied the intricate and difficult ways of making a violin under Mr. Tamayo, broken only by a year of paid work at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Every violin he did he used to pay his tuition as an apprentice but after three years, he got more regularly paid.

Actually, he just accidentally met Mr. Kabayao, when the latter visited his hometown to deliver a concert. Fortunately, after the event, Mr. Kabayao met his mother backstage, who showed him a ukulele made by his father. Wondering how in that very distant place anyone
could be making such an instrument, Kabayao walked through 8 kilometers of rough roads with his mother just to meet his father and there Angel learned about the beauty of music from the master himself.

Local and international customers

Aside from students of violin studies, Mang Angel=92s list of customers now include Mr. Kabayao who had ordered several new instruments from him like the violin, the viola and the double bass as well as a Canadian, Jack Gagnon, a musician who had bought 20 pieces already of the latter.

Wise wood choice for good tones
Nothing can make Mang Angel come up with a violin quickly. Two months or more is the minimum for finishing one especially if the wood is not dry enough. "Maganda kung 10 years na natuyo ang kahoy para hindi na gagalaw," he said meaning that the woodgrain would no longer be contracting anymore once the instrument is made. "Pangit kung may tubig, kasi nagiging damp yung tunog. Hindi pa matured yung kahoy," Mang Angel added. (It's not good if the wood is damp because it means the wood is not mature enough=92 thus it would produce a tone too low than what a violin should have. )

Mang Angel explained that the top of the line is usually cut from trees found in the high mountains like those used for the Stradivarius, creating good and high tones. Such wood are best because their grains are closer to each other; the wood will not shrink anymore once shaped or used as material for instruments.

"Ang Class A top of the line nasa tono, maganda ang kahoy, maganda ang pinagkuhaan. Yung Stradivarius, kinuha sa bundok. Yung (mas)mataas (ang pinagkuhaan) yun ang maganda...(yung) masinsin ang grain yung annual ring. Kung napakalaki ng haspe, abnormal ang paglaki, (ibig sabihin) mabilis ang paglaki niya. Kailangan (gamitin) siya sa mababa (ang tunog na instrument katulad) ng bajo, Mang Angel further explained.

"Pero kung masinsin ang grain, kailangan (gawin) pang violin. Yung magandang klase, masinsin (ang haspe), mataas ang tunog (na napo-produce). Ang mga nota matataas," Mang Angel explained.

Unfortunately, the Philippines is not a haven for wood. Mang Angel has to import wood from Italy, Germany or Canada via air freight or sometimes by boat; sometimes this takes ages. On the other hand, he prefers purchasing the strings from Austria and the pegs from Hongkong or the United States rather than making them himself, which he finds too laborious to do. With great tenacity, he could make 12 instruments costing around P60,000 per piece depending on the class of the wood every year, which is almost one a month.

Practical Experience over academic learning
Many Filipino musicians are self-taught or play by ouido, Angel learned music while working as a violin repair technician in the beginning. "Hindi ako nag-aral ng music. Self-study lang ako. Nag-aral ako sa mga musicians magbasa ng nota," he confessed. (I did not study music (in the academe.) I just studied it myself and also learned it from the musicians who taught me how to read notes.)

Violins belong to the family of two-stringed upright fiddles which originated from the nomads found in Turkey and Mongolia in Inner Asia. These instruments used the horses's hair as strings and for bows to play them. Thus as a professional violinmaker, Mang Angel could be said to descend from a long line of musicmakers in Asia.

By his achievements, Mang Angel proves that anyone with grit, courage and tenacity can succeed even without help from institutions. But he wishes anyone wanting to be in this profession to go abroad and learn in those countries that have been making violins for centuries. Also he advises them to take care of their ears, as this profession requires sharp listening skills.

How many hearts and minds have been touched by music coming from a violin? How many souls have been appeased by its tones floating through the wind? Truly, Mang Angel is an angel of the musicians so that, through his care for their instruments, they may continue to heal the world of its anxieties and stresses and make everyone think of goodness and a creative life for everyone.

WITH THESE HANDS

FE BAGUIWA PADUYAO AND HER WEAVING PASSION

BY Wilhelmina S. Orozco


FE BAGUIWA PADUYAO AND HER WEAVING PASSION

BY Wilhelmina S. Orozco

The mantra to solve recession nowadays is “Go Negosyo or get into business.” Thus many trade fairs and exhibits are being conducted to provide markets for products, but not all could be said to be ethically-run. Fe Baguiwa Paduyao, farmwoman from Ifugao turned entrepreneur had to contend with festival organizers who did not fulfill their obligations, those persons who went into get-rich-quick schemes.

“Minsan nagpunta kami sa Brent School (sa Baguio). Duon nakatinda ako. Pero yung ibang mga festival ayoko. Lolokohin ka. Pagdating mo run, wala kang puwesto. Yung mga kasamahan kong vendors, (ang nagkuwento,) she narrated. (One time, we went to Brent School in Baguio. There I was able to make a good sale. But in other festivals, I don’t like anymore. They fool you. When you arrive at the site, you won’t have any space to sell. One time, my Ifugao townmates told me they had paid in advance for a space to put up their wares but when they arrived at the exhibit venue, no space was available.)

Another time, Fe narrated that her townmates also tried Pinagbenga (Festival of Flowers in Baguio City). “O yung sa Pinagbenga. Nagdown (ang mga kasamahan ko.) Pagdating nila run, wala na yung tao..) Wala silang puwesto, ” she woefully narrated. (There at Pinagbenga, my friends gave a downpayment to sell their stuff. But when they arrived, the person in charge was no longer there and the space for the stall was nowhere to be found.)

“Kaya naawa ako (sa) mga kasamahan kong vendors, kasamahan ko sila sa tiangge-tiangge at yung may cooperative. Luging-lugi sila. Kaya ayaw ko na yung ganun, ” Fe sadly reported. (I pity my friend-vendors. They are my companions in selling, some belong to a cooperatives. They really lost a lot. That’s why I don’t like those (exhibits) anymore.)

Handmade, hand-cared for products
Fe’s products include hand-embroidered blouses and dresses made of cotton for women and also some baby dresses. Her business dates back to the 70’s when UP now retired Prof. Rosario De Santos and Artist-Painter Anna Fer started Pinangga and later on helped her continue the business by contributing ideas for design and giving her tips on marketing. The idea for baby dresses cropped and then a foreigner, Odille, Malay, married to a Filipino intellectual, joined her business for two years after which they separated, each continuing the business on their own.

At present, Fe has 30 or more women, mostly homebased and subcontracted to do the sewing and embroidery while in her house, a sewer does the drawing and ironing. “Ako nagbibigay ng lahat ng gamit, tela, sinulid, drawing. Binibigay sa mga nanay, tapos kinokolek ng isang lider, nilalabhan, at pagkatuyo, pinapalantsa. (I supply everything to them, equipment, cloth, thread, drawing (of design). I give these to the mothers, and when finished a leader of the group collects them, and bring them to Fe to be washed, dried, and ironed.)

“Kasi pag embroidery, maraming lapis na marks; hindi papasa ang mga yun kung hindi lalabahan. Yung ordinary soap lang naman, pagkatapos nilalagyan ng softener,” she continued. (With embroidered cloth, left over pencil drawings of the designs will bring down the quality and price of the product. So it is better if these are washed away using ordinary soap and then rinsed with softener.)

Marketing woes
Marketing is a big problem for Fe because she holds business informally and yet the business establishments require her to provide so many papers before she can sell her stuff.

“Last year, nag try ako ng cotton knit, mabili rin. Ininvite din ako ng Kultura na nasa Mall of Asia. Kaya lang wala akong papeles ng city hall. Kasi kung kukuha ako ng papeles, maraming gastos. Kaya maliit ang returns sa manggagawa.

So registered ang business sa DTI na lang, na nire-renew every time it expires,” she said. (Last year, I tried using cotton knit and found it sellable. Then I got invited by a store in Mall of Asia. Unfortunately, I did not have the necessary papers from City Hall. But instead of paying for those permits, I would rather use the money for paying the workers. So I just register with the Department of Trade and Industry, which I renew everytime the papers expire.)

Not much profit can be had from the products. At most Fe would earn only about 30%. Payments to sewers are not fixed. Per embroidered product, if complicated, she pays them from P60 up to P200, but if simple would be only P25. A blouse could cost from P500 to P1,000 depending on the intricacy of the design.

Aside from the sewer, she has to take care of the artist who draws the designs on the cloth, and the finisher who sews the buttonhole and/or the hemlines. Her expenditures include thread, light and water added to the personnel costs, as well as transportation fares in going to Divisoria to buy the supplies. Fe also draws her own honorarium only as the administrator of the business.

Through the years, Fe has gotten the hang of her business setting up the price, budgeting her expenses to make the products sellable in the market and talking to managers of stores. Sometimes though, she wishes she could stop; but the workers do not want her to. It is a rare opportunity for them to be a part of the business as they have to stay home, and yet be able to earn extra income for their families.

Lonely trek to Manila
From far away Tinoc, Ifugao, where she was born, Fe came to Manila with Prof. Rosario, an anthropologist in the seventies. They traveled for almost 12 hours by bus.

Fe is the only girl and second to the eldest among 7 children. Most of her relatives have gone abroad, some to Taiwan, working at factories while her brothers are still in Ifugao, farming. Two other brothers are engaged in Benguet, planting and selling vegetables.

Used to hard work, Fe finished high school by being employed as a home helper at the same time. “Bata pa ako, nag grade 1 hanggang grade 4 ako sa Ifugao. Tapos nagpunta ako ng Kiangan, sa Ifugao pa rin, at nagpatuloy mag-aral hanggang high school. Working student ako. Nakitira ako sa mga tao sa pinagtatrabahuhan kong bahay at pag araw, nag-aaral,” she narrated.

Sometimes she worked in the fields, or washed clothes for a certain religious organization. After her third year in high school she met Prof. Rosario who then invited her to spend her vacation in Manila and work at the same time to earn her tuition fees for the next schoolyear. However, instead of returning, she decided, upon Prof. Rosario’s invitation to just finish schooling in Manila, transferring to Roosevelt Memorial High School in San Juan, Metromanila.

After that, Prof. Rosario enrolled her at the Miriam College adult education class in tailoring and later on in basic dressmaking to acquire skills that would be her stepping stone to financial independence.

Pinangga birthpangs

Upon Fe’s graduation, Prof. Rosario and Anna Fer absorbed her in Pinangga, a shop that specialized in handembroidered clothes and other products located at Cortada in Ermita, Manila. She became the errand girl, buying the supplies from Divisoria as well as the tailor who sewed the T-shirts to be given to the homebased workers for embroidery.

“Hanggang 1974 to 75, nag-boom noon. Kaso natuklasan kami ng malalaking kompanya. Ginaya ang aming produkto tulad ng crochet at embroidery. After some time, nag-close na yung shop sa Cortada. Kulang ang pondo. Tinuloy ko na lang unti-unti,” she narrated with great regret.

The business boomed again but big companies copied their products which then made them lose in the market. Though having meager funds, Fe continued the business and in the 80’s started making cotton blouses.

A lot of outlets are open to Fe’s business. Her products appeal to both local and foreign buyers. However, the marketing terms are not always palatable. At shops at UP Arcade in Diliman, at Intramuros and in Makati, the products are sold on consignment basis.

This is a big headache for her because her capital does not move as fast as she would want them to. Thus, she wishes everyday would be like the American women’s bazaar at Roxas Boulevard where she easily makes good sales. An American woman approached her one time at an exhibit, “You want to join?” she was asked and after that, she has been a regular exhibitor at that place.

Through the years, Fe has been a single parent and now also a grandmother. She has grown used to being partner-less, knowing the great difficulties of keeping a husband and supporting a family at the same time.

Sometimes though she reminisces on those more profitable times and wishes they would return. She recalled going to Batangas, the land of Ate Vi, as she referred to her. “Kumita ako.” Another time was in Tarlac, “kina Cory” wherein a group of women invited her. “Maganda, provided pa yung tulugan namin for 2 nights,” she described her experience. (It was good; they even provided for our resting place for two nights.)

The bane of business is when the mothers do not speed up their work and deliver on time. Fe is not able to keep up with the orders at the malls, despite the fact that she has one embroiderer from Cainta who is working full time. “Kasi hindi lang yun ang gawa nila. Magpapakain muna,” she explained. (Embroidering is not their sole work; they still have to take care of the gastronomic needs of their family first.)

Intricacies of the trade

Despite the hardships, Fe sticks to hand-made embroidery as her customers appreciate their uniqueness, are discerning of what is handmade and machine-made, and always preferring the former. Besides, she said it is difficult to work with a machine if a piece requires several colors of thread.

“Gusto ng mga buyer maraming burda, kaya bihira yung mga kokonti; so binibigay ko talaga at sa mababang halaga,” she said. (More buyers prefer plenty of embroidery; so I really give it to them and at a low price.)

Even the tastes of her customers are embedded in Fe’s system. “Mga high end ang bumibili. Pag summer gusto ng mga tao sleeveless. Bihira yung may gusto ng ¾. Pag December naman, hanap nila yung long sleeved, mga Kaftan. Pero hanap rin nila, may kolar, o walang kolar.” (Products are for high end. In summer, customers prefer sleeveless, rarely with ¾. In December, they look for the sleeved blouses or Kaftan dresses. They are also selective of blouses that have collar or no collar.)

The network of Fe’s sewers is rather extensive, with leaders from Cainta, Novaliches, and Caloocan getting from and delivering orders to her. This eases up a lot of her work, making her concentrate on marketing and other minor tasks.

Fe wishes she could feel inspired to continue the business no matter how great the difficulties are now – like low production, marketing on consignment basis which saps up her capital and profit. The greatest dent in her business is the lack of time to even take a vacation. One time she still cannot manage to pay up a loan from an international women’s fund due to her low sales and the unpredictability of the market.

“Sabi ng mga kababaihan, ‘Ito si Pinangga, ang yaman-yaman na nito.’ Pero hindi nila alam, na kaunti lang. isang kahig, isang tuka ang kita ko. Pagkolek, mo, maraming bayarin. Kailangang mamili na naman ng supplies. Kasi kailangang magtinda ka na naman,” she said with sadness. “Pero wala ka naming mapagtindahan araw-araw.”
(Women would say, ‘Pinangga is very rich already.’ They don’t know that it earns only a little, a scratch and a peck. After getting the payment, out goes the funds again for purchase of supplies so you can keep on selling. )

Weak body, high spirits

Fe now is also facing health problems like diabetes, fading eyesight and physical weakness from having to take care of administrative duties like going to Divisoria to buy the supplies, taxiing the products and then attending bazaars where she has to sales talk her customers into buying her products.

Her advice to anyone entering the business: “Kailangan dito, may kaalaman ka at tiyaga.” (You must have knowledge and perseverance.)

Perhaps another advice should be given to trade and industry officials for them to provide regular outlets with ethical practices for her products and not just let her float in the laissez-faire economy.

Every product of Fe goes through the soft touch of her women workers, which actually gives reality to the name of their business, Pinangga, a Visayan term meaning “minahal” or loved. So as customers wear the clothes, they feel much loved and cared for.
Pinangga can be reached at tel. no. 7248284 or Cellfone: 09294507729

SAMPAGUITA NG AKING BUHAY
KAY BANGO PAG-IBIG ANG ALAY
BAWA’T BUTIL MAY DALANG ALAALA
TUWA AT LUNGKOT, HIRAP AT GINHAWA

ISA-ISA KANG TINUTUHOG
PERLAS NA MGA TALULOT
KARAKA’Y SA LEEG NAGIGING HIYAS
HALIMUYAK MO’Y ABOT-LANGIT SA WAGAS

SAMPAGUITA ALAY SA LAHAT
HALINA’T ILAWIT SA DIBDIB
O IKORONA SA BUHOK AT ULO
PALAMUTI SA REYNA AT SA HARI

ALTERNATIVE HEALING: WHEN HEALTH IS WEALTH

By Wilhelmina S. Orozco

Many people when feeling sick or have sick relatives readily run to a medical clinic or doctor in order to get healed. And usually, the kind of treatment they get is allopathic, or that which uses medicines processed by laboratories. Rarely do they get naturapathic treatment which is a not really new movement in the field of healing.

In our country, naturapathic goes back centuries even before the coming of the Spaniards. Our ancestors, the herbalists in them, were already using herbs, plants, and other natural substances in order to produce concoctions that could heal their subjects, coupled with prayers and even dancing. The Babaylan mostly women with a sprinkling of men, were such people readily approached by the common folks in order to heal their sick, and among other things, pray over the dead, as well as over start of and harvest gains in order to appease or thank their gods and goddesses. In other words, using natural herbs and plants, the Babaylan sought godly intervention and guidance in order to conduct all of those activities.

Behind those practices were the beliefs that healing takes place with divine intervention and not through human touch alone, and that healing also has to be connected with Mother Nature, not apart from it.

Hence, naturapathic healing is very much an easy but long-lasting approach to treatment which has now gained its rightful place in the health field in our country. No less than the Philippine General Hospital has a Department of Traditional and Indigenous Medicines proposed by former Secretary of Health, Jaime Galvez Tan. Amidst us are many herbal medicines, ranging from capsulized charantia and lagundi, to the herbal teas like the same lagundi, pito-pito (seven herbs) both concocted by inventor Erlinda Sanqui and her husband Jose, tsaang gubat, and many more. Then we also have Bioneem, a bacteria cleaning agent sourced from the neem leaves by no less than the most famous woman inventor, Carlita Rex Doran; herbal eyedrops with toothache healing properties like the Panlapu by Ms. Ramona Castro-Acuna, and liniment oils that are used for body massage. Probiotics drink and elemi oil have been invented by Jose Ingles with the first helping those having problems with elimination, and also who want to undergo rejuvenation. Elemi oil meanwhile is used as aromatherapy and for massage also.

In terms of treatment, the Richter Alternative Medicinal Clinic espouses the use of naturapathic practices. It was started in 1994 by Ms. Cecilia Almasa married to Ruel Lucentalles and who hails from Davao.

“Taga Davao kami, Ilonggo. Pero ang parents ko, taga Iloilo. My mother Nieves Esmejarda is from ilioilo and my father Bernardino Alamasa is from Bohol. 9kapatid, ako ang panganay. Nag nursing ako kasi yun ang gusto ko.” Thus, Ms. Lucentalles took up preparatory nursing at Centro Escolar University 1974 and then proceeded with her internship at Ortanez University from 1974-75.

From Mindanao to Manila
Being the eldest, Ms. Lucentalles had the drive to pursue further studies like iridology and naturapathy, especially colonics, which then attracted her to start her own clinic offering those practices. Iridology is a form of eye examination which reveals the diseases in the body while colonics is a form of intestinal cleansing.

The family established the first clinic in 1998, in Davao, and then the branches in 2000, in Cebu and Manila during which they also included medical practices thus allowing patients to get confined for complete detoxification therapy. In other words, they started this integrative practice of using medical drugs, blood transfusion, and use of antibiotics, side by side with alternative forms.

“Dati alternative (lang ang offer naming) like colonics, herbal therapy and other modalities, but in 2000, we started medical, (accepting patients for inhouse detoxification. Complete detoxification therapy which enhances the condition of the eliminative organs includes “irrigating” the skin, lungs, kidney, colon, and the lymphatics system. ‘Habang nililinis yung katawan, ina-adres talaga ang sakit.’

Richter Clinic also has resident doctors and consultants for medical treatment while on the naturapathic side, Ms. Lucentalles guides every program they offer, whether infrared, accupuncture, juicing therapy, and iridology.

Mel Pasion, a breast cancer patient once confined was given dextrose as her body was expelling food taken through the mouth, while her health medicines included both vegetarian pills and antibiotics to counter the spreading cancer cells in her body organs.



All kinds of cancer patients from breast to brain tumor and even those who do not feel pain but have tumor are admitted at the clinic. Many prefer it probably because of its homey atmosphere, a room having an extra bed for those caring for a patient the whole day, colorful curtains and decorative paintings adorning the walls.

Timing important in arresting cancer
However, full medical support is not enough for a patient to heal. The patient and the immediate family have to work together to show courage in overcoming the disease. Ms. Lucentalles said that if only patients would come to them when their cancer is just benign, there is 100 percent chance of recovering. However, “90 per cent of cancer patients enter Richter when their condition can be labeled grave to gravest already. They refuse to go to the hospital. Ayaw nilang lumipat sa hospital. Galing na sila duon. Ayaw na nilang ma-ICU. So dito na lang sila hanggang mamatay sila.” (They refuse to transfer to a hospital; some who had been there also refuse; they don’t want to undergo ICU treatment. So some stay here until they eventually die.)

Ironically, the name of the clinic, Richter is no fancy name but rather that of the discoverer of the scale used for measuring earthquakes. Richter is also the name of Ms Lucentalles’ son,Richter Jose born in 1980, and whom they had named as such, because of their past experience with a strong earthquake registering 7 in the Richter scale and which hit Cotabato City in 1976.

Since 1994, the clinic has had over 35,000 patients overall including Cebu and Davao which do not offer confinement unlike that in Manila with patients numbering about 3000 already.

Types of naturapathic herbs
Naturapathic consists of oral, injectable and paretheral. Oral food supplements are for cleansing, reparing cells, strengthening and nourishing the body. Some patients who cannot tolerate oral administration are giveninjectables like the vitamin C drip.

Ms. Lucentalles has found that those patients with families not offering support for alternative therapy do not get cured. This is because at present, to go alternative is considered conservative as against modern. “Sa atin, pag nagkasakit punta ka sa duktor, bili ka ng medicine (unlike) in other countries, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, traditional muna ang punta bago ang medical.

Nutraceutical - for natural healing herbals
“But this (naturapathy) is the original way of healing,” said Ms. Lucentalles. “Yan ang sinauna. Labatiba. Magkasakit ka, sumakit ang tiyan, labatibahin. Hilot, kasama yan. Ngayon Medicol, Biogesic tablets (pag masakit ang ulo.) Mas mabilis ang bumili ng gamut.
Nutraceutical is the opposite of pharmaceutical as it is a take off from the word nutrition. Nutraceutical means converting herbs into capsule forms. For example, malunggay leaves are dried and inserted in capsules for sale in packs.

To propagate “Wellness is better than cure,” mission, Richter conducts seminars about naturapathy and iridology. Promotion of its offerings is by word of mouth now which has been proven more effective. Its approaches are integrative, touching on the “spiritual, physical and emotional needs of the patient. ” Prayers and counseling are included to relax the many cancer patients who suffer from all kinds of stresses.

As medicines are too expensive to purchase for those sickly individuals, naturapathy affords a type of healing that could well be longer-lasting than those pills and capsules that could induce speedy recovery but not stronger resistance to viruses and bacteria that cause illnesses. Hence the adage, "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure." Cheap herbs that are easy to make into naturapathic healing elements could prove to be the Philippines' saving grace now and for all times.

ABUNDANT PLACE OFFERS ELEGANT DINING

The Filipino people are a cultured lot. We have all kinds of thriving arts: music, painting, sculpture, performing arts, handicrafts, etcetera.

Last week, I had the chance to go to Tagaytay courtesy of Brother Carmelo Go, Chairperson of the five spiritual groups. We passed by a handicraft store-cum coffee shop owned by Pastor Dong and spouse Cecille.

Pastor Dong was able to design its interiors into a cozy casbah-like restaurant complete with dividers made of cotton gauze screens and wooden-iron dining chairs and tables. The curtains have fringes knotted with shells at the end. Then at corners are dried wood with green plants in pots.

For snacks, we were served delicious chocolate drinks and true malagkit palitaw with roasted rice on top, muscovado and splashed with bits of grated coconut.

Then we drank water from glasses also covered with cotton cloth fringed with beads. At every corner were dried wood with crawling plants.

The experience was like eating in heavenlike atmosphere. After snacking we visited the handicraft store inside selling native products from sweets and chocolates to bags.

Actually, Pastor Melo, having a prophetic vision, had advised them about putting up this business and now it is thriving well.

So in case you want to visit Tagaytay, drop by: Abundant Place, Garden Cafe and Restaurant owned by Pastor Dong and spouse Cecille 0928364050563

WHY CULTURE?

Culture defines a people's noble purpose, gives national identity, strengthens their artistic souls, and builds up their hopes for a country that is democratic, prosperous, just and equal.

The Cultural Program of TF-PRG promotes the best of Philippine arts, literature, and education to cultural and academic institutions across the country and the world. Thus we have this blog for everybody to read, comment on and feed with information and reviews.

This blog shall have articles that are conceptual, critical, and promotional of all Philippine cultural products, administration, policies and programs. Our view is to focus attention that is prompt, sustained and high-spirited on cultural issues between and among amateurs, professionals and administrators of cultural groups, events, academes, and all other institutions, concerning the products of artists, writers, thinkers, students, and educators, as well as to increase the number of opportunities for them to develop their fields.

The blog shall draw attention to developments in Philippine culture, including contemporary and indigenous dances; music; theater, plays, and other forms of literature.

We shall always be interested in new and challenging ideas that will bring Philippine and foreign peoples together in debating and discussing issues related to culture. In particular, this blog will raise public interest in the recognition of exceptional artistic and academic accomplishments and the need for public support, material and spiritual, of such endeavors.

We hope you will join us by feeding information, remarks and reviews of the different cultural events that you find happening in your community, or locality.

-by Wilhelmina S. Orozco, Ph.D.

--Margie Politzer Photo Print, Woman leaving an offering on Mt. Batur, Bali, Indonesia

JOBS FOR ENTERTAINERS

Letter to Filipino Society of Composers

From: robert rull
Date: Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 10:15 AM
Subject: Entertainers to do concert here in Australia
To: Jecel Basilides


Hi Jecel,

Im looking for popular old and new singers, or stand up comediene to have concerts shows series here in Australia free accomodation, travel tickets, food,working permit licence, but lower price to be paid in Australian dollars. please send this to interested entertainers and they have to submit their resume with photos, availability and details plus talent fees.
please send my email address:

Thanks Jesel,
from
robertrull@hotmail.com
securityfirstservices@live.com.au

DRAFT BILL ON STRENGTHENING CULTURAL SENSITIVITY

This is a draft of a bill to raise interest on culture and develop the sensitivity of the Filipino people on art and culture, covering fine arts, music, film, theatre, and all the other arts. Please send in your comments to miravera2010@gmail.com.
or emmaorozco8008@gmail.com.

A LAW TO ENCOURAGE THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CRITICAL FACULTIES OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLE ON ART AND MUSIC

BY WILHELMINA S. OROZCO,
DIWATA SOCIETY OF WOMEN IN PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION

Whereas the existence of dynamic art and music fields in a country encourages the commitment of the people to democratic processes as they allow the truthful, untrammeled and politically-free expression of their artistic urges;

Whereas a nation is in need of artists and musicians who can reflect, through their products, the soul of her people, as well as their historical experiences;

Whereas art and music criticisms are important aspects for the development of these fields;

Whereas the Philippines has not come up with original and novel forms of art and music;

Whereas, mostly, the products of these fields reflect imitation if not adaptation of western forms, which although laudable, are still not enough;

Whereas a need exists for the country to develop original forms, whether based on indigenous art and music, or other wise, in order that the identity of the nation shall be recognized in artistic forms and soci-culturally as well;

Whereas art and music criticisms have been ignored and instead praise releases have been resorted to by media organizations;

Whereas instead of cultivating art and music criticisms, media have heavily emphasized advertising, a commercial undertaking which limits if not inhibits the exposure of art and music in general;

Whereas media has the capacity to develop the artistic and musical perspectives in order to review, point out, praise, encourage all artists to become novel, unique and original in their approaches to creation,

Whereas, exposure of the public in art and music criticism is in order to raise the level of cultural taste;

Whereas a need exists to bridge the gap between the cultural elite who have knowledge of critical perspectives and the audience groups majority of whom are just fed with scandal-ridden news of artists and performers;

Whereas the government is as guilty of blocking the development of critical art and music criticisms;

Whereas government institutions encourage panhandling instead of dignified sponsorships of art and music performances, exhibitions by providing advertising products in exchange for patronage, that showcase the faces of certain government officials especially those in the presidency, a form of feudal relationship that is anathema to the development of art and music that are free;


Ergo, It is hereby mandated that:

That the NCCA shall develop a system of raising the need and spaces, both print and air, for art and music criticisms;

That the NCCA shall require that at every performance, in all cultural venues, whether inside a building or outside, a review of exhibitions and performances shall be done in national papers, if they have been done in NCR, and in community and/or local papers if regional.

That broadcast stations shall devote 30% of their programming to cultural programs, and shall have critical reviews of all the art forms and music on a daily basis;

To encourage legitimate critics, 10% number of tickets for performances shall be reserved for media critics;

That writers/critics shall be compensated properly by media organizations;

That media shall reserve 20% of total salaries for media personnel to critics;

That they shall reserve 30% space for critical articles in the lifestyle section covering the different arts and music;

ergo, the NCCA is mandated to produce critical reviews on a regular basis in all the printed media and broadcast stations, allotting 30% of its budget for the purpose.

That every radio and tv station shall devote 20% of its programming to critical programs, showcasing knowledgeable critics and reviewers’ writings on relevant issues and events;

That media shall also devote space for feedback of audience on what they have seen and heard;

Whereas advertising in lifestyle sections where reviews and criticisms are usually carried shall be limited to 30% of its space in order to make the readers focus their mind and eyes on the substantial aspects.

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES (DRAFT)

WE PARTICIPANTS TO THE THIRD FORCE MEETINGS DO HEREBY AGREE AND UNITE ON THE FOLLOWING PRINCIPLED STATEMENTS:

1. THAT WE NEED TO LOVE OUR COUNTRY AND THE FILIPINO PEOPLE;
2. WE UNITE TO RESPECT EACH OTHERS’ HUMAN RIGHTS;
3. THAT THE PHILIPPINE SOCIETY NEEDS MANY CHANGES SO THAT THE PEOPLE SHALL EXPERIENCE JUSTICE, PEACE, PROSPERITY AND TRUE DEMOCRACY, AMONG OTHERS; AND
4. THAT EQUALITY AMONG THE SEXES IS VERY MUCH IMPERATIVE FOR IMPLEMENTATION;

THAT IN PARTICULAR,

a, we need to consider 2010 as a very important period in our

political life as a people to achieve the changes we desire;

2. we need to nominate and promote the candidacies of people who will be carrying on the changes we need;
3. we shall unite in order to be a strong third force in insuring peaceful, honest and credible elections nationally and locally; and
4. beyond 2010 we shall continue to be united to insure that the next set of leaders of the country shall pursue and effect the changes we need and have set up.