Baguio Day and Baguio Stone

Today is Baguio Day.

Below are two images of Baguio stone in the same city but in different locations.

This is Baguio stone.

Below, is Baguio stone after city government beautification of the public market.

To be fair, they painted over this Baguio stone pillar because it was charred black after the market fire of March 2009. Still, I can't help but wonder, couldn't there have been some other way to treat it so that it's natural beauty could shine through again? So that people could look directly at a part of our heritage, these being the original pillars of the old stone market that rose and thrived here one year before Baguio became a chartered city? Couldn't the city and market officials have done some research on treating the Baguio stone, instead of simply painting over the problem?

Certainly, we who live in Baguio have much to be grateful for; there is still plenty to love about life in this city. But I give you this Baguio stone as a metaphor for the way our elected officials seem to think and operate, for the way they choose to "transform" our city. If we don't speak up and make ourselves very clear about what we love about Baguio, they are going to "modernize", cement, "beautify", world-class-my-ass and whitewash our heritage beyond recognition.

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Cordillera Folktales and Story-telling

It was cold and wet outside on the day of the launching of The Golden Arrow of Mt. Makilkilang and other Cordillera Folktales . But inside Mt. Cloud Bookshop we were warmed by stories read and performed by the Aanak di Kabiligan community theater group. Storytelling on a stormy afternoon. Paco Paco. A Benguet story from the book, published by the Cordillera Green Network. Aanak di Kabiligan means children of the mountains. The theater group was born out of the Cordillera Green Network's eleven years of conducting workshops in which children transform their grandparents' stories into theater productions. Here they perform the title story of the Golden Arrow of Mt. Makilkilang and Other Cordillera Folktales.

Lola of Maipon

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The Golden Arrow of Mt. Makilkilang

On June 30, 2013 at 2 PM, Mt. Cloud Bookshop will host the launching of the new children’s book, The Golden Arrow of Mt. Makilkilang and Other Cordillera Folktales . The event is open to the public and will include story-telling and a performance for children by the Aanak di Kabiligan Community Theater Group. After eleven years of telling stories through the Community Theatre, the Cordillera Green Network (CGN) and its theater company, The Aanak di Kabiligan has published a compilation of Cordillera folklore. These stories were the inspiration behind the CGN's successful environmental education campaign, dubbed as the "Eco-Theatre Caravan", a roving theater community of young Cordillerans, theatre artists and volunteers performing in different communities in the Philippines and prefectures in Japan advocating environmental causes through performance. The book is a collection of folktales from Kalinga, Benguet, Apayao and Mt. Province. These storie

Now/here no/where woman

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