MEDIUM RARE ‘Twas a Liberal Party party, if you could call it that, although the event was billed as a book launching. Raul A. Daza, 90, Samar-born, former governor, former congressman, has been a Liberal since 1965. His new books come as a pair: A Life: Years of Crisis, covering the years 1974...
MEDIUM RARE It’s official. Survey shows two out of three respondents describing Transportation Secretary Vince Dizon as likeable. Those three individuals belong to one household — mine — the third member explaining that her YouTube habit includes only people she knows, such as television and...
MEDIUM RARE Besides his State of the Nation Address (SONA), the President’s report on his accomplishments, there’s one other list, which we may describe as “Sana,” our “wish” word in the vernacular, as in “maybe” or “hopefully.” Among his successes and soon-to-be projects, PBBM...
MEDIUM RARE An old song pays tribute to a city in the US with a phrase so descriptive — “climb halfway to the stars” — that it’s hard not to remember the lyrics as well as the music. A perfect wedding of pretty words and lovely music. In real life, San Francisco’s appeal — as with...
MEDIUM RARE Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. — Joyce Kilmer In her time, then first lady Imelda Marcos called coconut the “tree of life” — providing food, water (the cleanest, safest in nature), shelter and construction material. Now, one generation later and...
MEDIUM RARE She was not a typhoon, she was just a severe tropical storm. But wet and wild she was, just the same, at least as far as her effects were felt. “Crising” was nothing like Ondoy or Yolanda even if she unleashed winds and rain that inconvenienced the lot of us driving around Metro...
MEDIUM RARE Weekends are for recharging out of town. Life seems to get better as the landscape softens to a green that’s as clean as the sky is blue. Away from one’s usual haunts, the usual weather and what-nots, what unfolds is something like “shaking off the dust of everyday living.”...
MEDIUM RARE After feeding me a full meal — salad, noodle soup, chicken, dessert — my children led me, meek as a lamb about to be sacrificed on the altar, to the deepest section of the drugstore where a nurse was waiting for patients. The nurse was in a jumpsuit in two shades of blue, looking...
MEDIUM RARE It was the beer-guzzling novelist, dramatist, magazine editor and wordsmith Nick Joaquin who invented the word “Imeldific” to describe the first lady who was also governor of Metro Manila, the former beauty queen (‘Rose of Tacloban’) who would capture the heart of the...
MEDIUM RARE He was baptized Jaime. Friends and classmates called him Jimmy. Later, when he converted to Islam, he changed his first name to Jamil. But we still used his nickname when talking to him or about him. The bad news is that Jamil/Jimmy Maidan Flores is no longer with us. News of his...
MEDIUM RARE A new book calls for a celebration! In the age of AI, cellphones and larger screens, there’s no solitary pleasure to compare with the lonely joy of reading a book. A new book with its pristine covers and crisp white pages covered with words – what’s not to like? A book holds a...
MEDIUM RARE While President BBM was delivering his Independence Day speech, the woman directly behind him on the grandstand at Rizal Park was busy delivering her own speech to her one-man audience, a gentleman seated two chairs away from her. She was so busy talking and giggling that she did not...
