LANDSCAPE I am writing about Jim Toolen to show you that this world is filled with people who are interconnected without their knowing it, who made lasting impressions on each other without suspecting it, who are unaware that their lives have mingled like sand and water. Meeting someone again after...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta In my secret book, there are a select few who should have been and should be immortal; whom the Almighty should have frozen in time but in the pink of health and at the cusp of their creativity. These are (or were) the people who can live forever and should have lived...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta For us Asians, the 19 th century was pivotal because total and absolute colonization was achieved by the European powers that invaded our region with superior fire power and technology. Our ancestors did not only lose ancestral lands and waterways; they were...
LANDSCAPE Honorable ladies and gentlemen, many of you do not know me because you were not yet in office when I was working for the late Mayor Alfredo S. Lim. If memory serves, some of you I already know like Councilors Josie Siscar, Lou Veloso, Roberto Asilo, Uno Lim, Joel Chua, DJ Bagatsing, Mon...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta It is cheaper to kill them in a plane crash, a private plane crash, he said, rather cavalierly with a half smirk. There is no evidence, no smoking gun because the plane crashes, that is your smoking gun. He is John Perkins, retired chief economic adviser, and his...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta From a distance, I am watching how you are restoring Manila’s historical contours, deftly melding the past with the present, to assure a brighter future for the city of our birth (we are both Manila-born). Behind the City Hall, the Bonifacio monument with the...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Sometime in 2018, the Office of the President issued Executive Order (EO) 55 which had a rather quirky title: “…constituting a steering committee for the commemoration of the Quincentennial of the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in the Philippines, the victory of...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta Two decades ago, when I had a business of my own, I realized that my 13 employees had no idea of time. Although I had taught them to arrive punctually at work, none of them gave time an economic value since its only manifestation was the intensity of the sun, scorching...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta You are cordially invited to join the webinar “The Aromas and Flavors of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Route” this evening at 6 p.m. Kindly look for the link online. I lived in Mexico for 18 years, the longest I have been away from the motherland. Except for the...
LANDSCAPE Gemma Cruz Araneta In a recent palaver (via Zoom) my friends and I were wondering about the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the educational system, now that private and public schools are closed and distant learning, the alternative, is not available to the majority. When that spirited...
Gemma Cruz Araneta LANDSCAPE From Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, my mother: “I asked (Imelda) whether she and the President watched Ninoy’s funeral on TV, and she said, yes, they’d done so, together, in his bedroom. And that they’d been crushed, struck dumb by the enormity of what they were seeing...
Gemma Cruz Araneta LANDSCAPE At low tide, a sliver of white sand appears where Manila Bay meets the American embassy. In a wink, it is filled with naked street children and their scantily clad elders — dwellers of parks and sidewalks who want to escape the heat. They have probably heard of...
