i do not understand this insistence that PNoy calling out Noli de Castro and TV Patrol on doing commentary instead of straightforward news delivery, is like the emperor’s new clothes. is like a kid having the temerity to tell the emperor, you’re naked sir, everyone — including yourself — has been duped into thinking you’re wearing something. (more…)
i’m sure there is truth to much of what PNoy said in that SONA — propaganda after all, as with press releases, have the facts that we need so that a google search should reveal those to be true. and of course the State of the Nation is the nation according to the government’s statistics, numbers always look better than real life, and that isn’t new either.
PNoy should really just stop pretending that he is different from GMA, when he sounds exactly like her, speaks of the state of the nation the way she always has. we should also just stop expecting more from him, even more so putting words in his mouth: the stand on responsible parenthood IS NOT a pro-reproductive health stand, anobah. (more…)
one of the blurbs for this first book asked: what took you so long, ina?
and in truth, i’d like to think i took exactly the amount of time i needed. much of what’s in Of Love and Other Lemons is about refusing to write the way i’m expected to, or at least the way i did when i wrote mirrors. i read too much of the personal essay as it’s written and published in these shores, but also i read poetry in english by our contemporary women poets. i read works in English and Filipino. but more than the reading, i’d like to think i took my time at living: through teaching, some broken hearts, losses large and larger, a career in writing, writing, writing. (more…)
It’s difficult to imagine childhood without Dolphy, even when all he was to me was the image of a father on television, even as who I identified with was Maricel Soriano or Claudine Barretto playing his daughters in two different sitcoms, across two different generations. At some point this father image became interwoven with that of Enteng Kabisote, father to Aiza.
The images are real to me, the characterization of fatherhood that was protective but had difficulty providing, that was faced with the rich mother-in-law who disapproved, that struggled financially but had a posse who depended on him, underground as the economy was that they all created and fueled. (more…)
which is to say there are many reasons for Cynthia Alexander’s leaving for Seattle. none of them is about the lack of support for her music in these shores. this short essay responds mostly to the Francis Brew piece, which painted a narrative that actually made it seem like Cynthia was upping and leaving, complaining and whining, about nation. all untrue. (more…)