WALA LANG PICTURES OF MARTYRDOM A Japanese print representing Takayama Ukon. Photos from Google Images. February is not a happy month in Philippine-Japan relations. The Battle of Manila raged 76 years ago in February 1945 and a persecuted Japanese feudal lord died here in February 1615. By the late...
WALA LANG IMPORTANT CULTURAL PROPERTIES: NCCA invitation for comments on the delisting petition. The latest excitement in heritage circles is over a temple in Santa Ana that a Ms. Chloe Chizu Go , wants removed from the National Museum’s “Important Cultural Property” list. How she became...
COVID-19 has spawned a new generation of planters. Not sugar barons or coconut tycoons, but plantitos and plantitas growing super expensive plants often with weird-looking inedible green-and-white leaves. Spare time while in self-quarantine made me an accidental farmtito. I had tossed overripe...
WALA LANG SHARP OBJECTS AND BLADED WEAPONS Talibóng of the Mundo (Panay-Bukidnon) warriors and the handle of one, depicting a Makara, a mythical being of Hindu origin. (photo courtesy of Floy Quintos) Apart from what my kasambahay calls kutsilyo or nayp , the most familiar weapon nowadays is the...
WALA LANG PARK AT YOUR OWN RISK. The Rizal Monument at Rizal Park before the pandemic. Color/Number Coding . I’m all for reducing traffic and certainly number-coding helps. Those who can afford it, however, buy a second car, maybe even a third, to use when their first car is grounded. Traffic is...
WALA LANG PLACES OF WORSHIP. An imaginary church façade drawn with details of the Philippines’ 50 must-see churches on the cover of Regalado Trota Jose, Simbahán (Manila: The Crown Book, Inc., 2020). In Tagalog, simbahan is a noun meaning church and simbahán (with accent on the last syllable),...
WALA LANG 'MAIN STREET, MANILA Escolta, 1898. The Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War was signed on Dec. 10, 1898 seven months after Admiral George Dewey won the Battle of Manila Bay the preceding first of May. That was when journalist Margherita Arlina Hamm came our way. It took 30...
WALA LANG Jaime C. Laya Along with the photo of a 19th century belén , I posted the Tagalog greeting to my Facebook friends, taking for granted that it means “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” In minutes, a query arrived from Vallejo, California. Elmer de Leon , ex-SGV colleague, asked...
WALA LANG Jaime C. Laya It’s been nine months since life changed on March 17 when Covid-19 quarantined us all. I am in the super-vulnerable age group and am under doctor’s orders to stay locked in. I still work and the immediate impact of the lockdown is extra time. Before Covid, it took me an...
WALA LANG Jaime C. Laya I got a message from Jojo Canlas about the lost and found ivory parts of an image of Santa Ana ( Wala Lang , Nov.16, 2020) that’s too good not to share. Canlas had gone to see Antonio “Tony” Martino to report a vandalized santo that on the same day led to its...
WALA LANG We were witnessing a third birth, intoned the priest. He continued, the first is when one enters the world, the second when one is baptized and admitted into the church, the last is when one begins eternal life. It was a most elegant farewell to Conrado A. Escudero as he ended a fulfilled...
WALA LANG Jaime C. Laya Church authorities are often ignorant of the historical value of church contents. Probably not a rare case, Franciscan chronicler Fr. Felix de la Huerta mentions a relicario containing a relic of Santa Ana given ca. 1755 by Gov. Gen. Juan Josė de Obandó to Manila’s Santa...
