Now/here no/where woman

Senator Villar would have us believe that he is the Guardian of Filipino Morality. I believe he is Small-Mindedness Personified and his Anti-Obscenity and Pornography Senate Bill No. 2464 demonstrates this beautifully. Nash, baka ka ma-arrest on arrival if this bill is passed! Why it doesn't take much of a leap of imagination to see how sex education or discussions on reproductive health could be considered "obscene" and thereby penalized. Here's John Silva's take on this ridiculous bill . Take the time to peruse the comments as well. Read it and weep, people. The powers that be are making idiots of us all. IMAGE CREDITS: JOHN SILVA P.S. John Silva draws an interesting comparison between this and a similar bill in Indonesia, where Muslims are the majority. Makes for lots of things to chew on combined with the link I posted above to an article on Islamic pop culture -- literature in particular!

Baguio Benguet Studies brings us another wonderful photo exhibition this time featuring archival treasures focusing on the palengke in Baguio. This year our market is one hundred years old. The market began a year before Baguio became a chartered city. Although it is rather sad and ironic that the exhibit hangs in Baguio Benguet Studies' usual venue, the lower basement entrance of SM, it cannot be said that they didn't try. They set up a number of meetings in city hall and with the market council in order to organize for the exhibit to be put up in the market itself. However, sadly, nobody from the market council (I would like to know, who makes up the market council?) showed up at these meetings. Sayang. I find this hard to understand, given that my sukis were very eager to see the exhibit when I told them about it. Maybe market and city officials aren't interested in it, but the vendors certainly are! The exhibit hangs in SM until December. I am still hoping that it w...

I mustn't be selfish. Besides, anybody who has the time to comb through the market, and the curiosity to probe it's inner alleys, and the eternal itch of an explorer would eventually find JMJ Marketing. All one has to do to get to this little unassuming store packed with all manner of spices and goodies from Assad's (Manila's favorite Indian grocery) is to walk past the Garcia and Umali coffee sellers, along the edge of the Hangar Market, past the beauty parlors, look out for a cramped eatery with motley green walls, and you come to a store front crammed with plastic bags for sale. Don't be fooled. On their shelves you will find this: But there's the rub, this breaks rule of thumb number two for choosing food: The less distance it had to travel to get to your table, the better. For an occasional dish of fresh greens sauteed in ghee and garlic and onions, I would turn a blind eye to this rule.

Goodbye, White Rabbit . In the last decade we have witnessed the surfacing of previously invisible dangers in the food we eat. Some of these things were dangers that the industry put into the food to make plants and animals unnnaturally highly-productive, to prolong shelf-life, to make products that are stripped bare of essential vitamins and minerals appear healthier or "fortified", and to make it cheaper for transnational companies to sell processed food all over the world. Now is a good time to rediscover fresh, locally grown food in your palengke or neighborhood talipapa. Over yesterday's lunch of chicken curry cooked in kakang gata with a salad of winged beans, tomatoes, and sili, my nanay and I started drawing up some rules of thumb for choosing food. So yesterday's thoughts on food were: 1. Don't buy it if your lola would not recognize it as food. 2. The less distance the food had to travel to get to your table, the better. 3. If it's known n...

"... thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking." Rebecca Solnit in Wanderlust: A History of Walking .

Get your rickety old bikes out! Dust your frame, pump up your tires, oil your chain, we're going on a ride! Cyclists are taking the city streets again! Anyone who has a bicycle and wants to ride in a pack of fun-loving, easy-going bikers, join the Baguio Centennial Ride on Sunday, September 7. We start at 9a.m. from Convention Center! Every one on a bicycle is welcome! The crazier your costume, the better! Well, actually the organizers would like people to come dressed in their profession's attire but I have a bit of a problem with that. Do anthropologists have a dress code? And if conference clothes are anthro outfits, there's no way I'm going to ride my bike in conference clothes. Ugh. PLEASE WEAR A HELMET WHEN YOU RIDE! And remember, cyclists can have a say on how traffic flows in Baguio, and how Baguio changes in the next one hundred years. (For the better, we hope.) Bring your pedaling power to an advocacy for clean air and better road courtesy between cyclists an...

... But is Baguio still wonderful? Karlo Altomonte looks back in time and concludes that...