Now/here no/where woman

At a Women's Month celebration the other day, I was seated with the Little Boss on my lap and her Papa, my Outrigger, stood behind us, ready to take her if needed. A woman I hold much respect for, a senior in academic circles, came up to me and commented on how the Little Boss has grown and I introduced her to the Outrigger. She smiled at him and said in a tone that I heard to be partly scolding, partly teasing,  "You're the one who's keeping her from being an anthropologist!" He and I responded in unison, "Noooo." But she had turned and walked away. I suppose she had said what she wanted to say and didn't need or want to hear an answer. The Outrigger shrugged and said, "Some people just feel they have to say something." And with that shrug, I knew that the Outrigger had already brushed aside that brief encounter and was just minutes away from forgetting the whole incident -- a gift I wish I had too. But I was bothered, and he...

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 metap...

Let's think about breasts and their super-powers with these four women whose work I admire. Holly McNish on breastfeeding in public. Senator Pia Cayetano on the breast-feeding law and the need to embrace the breastfeeding culture in the Philippines. Amanda Palmer responds to the Daily Mail's coverage of her boob falling out of her bra during a performance in the Glastonbury Festival. (I love it when she motions for the crowd to calm down and says, "It's just a naked woman!" Haha! The lyrics of her letter to the Daily Mail appear here .) And last but not least, Ibu Robin Lim, who was chosen CNN Hero of 2011 for her tireless work as a midwife and her worldwide campaign for gentle births and healthy motherhood for everyone. Here she breastfeeds her eldest daughter, back in 1976. Source: Ibu Robin Lim's facebook page.

I spoke too bloody soon. Too much unfinished business. I am still juggling three jobs and Motherhood, not to mention The Partner Ship. It looks like I dropped a few things. I'm somewhere down there, among those shards around my feet. "Shards." That's such a weak word for what I'm feeling right now. Insert photo here of something big and fierce and red and hurting. Something that stinks. Something that will make your mother say, "Don't go near that thing!"

One of the perils of freelance writing is that by the time the editors (well-meaning, I'm sure) are done bending your words to their needs, you may no longer recognize what you wrote; you may not even wish to have your name attached to the transmogrified piece of crap (which, admittedly, may not have been so great in the first place), and to make things worse, you get paid peanuts for it. Sigh. Although I try, cultivating a stance of gratitude -- for getting published, for bylines, for getting paid at all -- sometimes feels disgustingly close to martyrdom, which was never my cup of tea. Let them do what they want with my body and soul? No effing way. And yet, more often than not, I relent. I don't even know whether I can choose otherwise. This hack is now accepting suggestions for a nom de guerre. This could be fun. And yes, this is war.

Why do people insist on making claims to having conquered this or that mountain? When you get out there, the most you can claim to conquer are your own limitations and fears. You are nothing to the mountain. Go conquer your ego instead. Try it. It's tougher than taking a hike or a bike.

This is the f***ing front page of the effing Philippine Star? Lactum's advertising hacks had this to say about mothers and revolutions in the "headline story": "A small effort makes a small impact. Mothers can easily participate in the Nourishment Revolution by serving three balanced meals a day and a glass of Lactum to their children. Discreetly, as they mix the milk solution, mothers are incorporated into the movement through every revolution the spoon makes. With more mothers participating in the Lactum Nourishment Revolution, they can help Pinoy children achieve proper nourishment and moms can be 100% panatag." DISGUSTING. Where's the real news? Arundhati Roy had this to say about selling headlines in The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2004): "There's been a delicious debate in the Indian press of late. A prominent English daily announced that it would sell space on page three (its gossip section) to anyone who was willing to pay t...

I've been thinking about... why Manila wasn't prepared... When a 1977 government study saw the possibility of this happening. I've been wondering about... how we might get our acts together in the face of all this... ... when the administration's allies are busy undermining the government (that's us, the people, that they're undermining). I've been awed by the outpouring of love and the amazing resilience among Filipinos and our creativity in times of crisis . I respect and am grateful for those that have turned to prayer, and yet I ask myself, is prayer enough?

Here. Read all about annoying clichés in the natural sciences. In my dissertation I am guilty of "shedding light" on the messy complexities that get tangled up in each other when nature conservation and indigenous peoples' rights meet. I am pleased to note that I didn't call for any "paradigm shifts" but I probably said as much, given that there are countless "missing links" in the interactions between agents of conservation and indigenous communities . The former are searching for the "holy grail" of indigenous peoples living in harmony with nature and the latter just want a "silver bullet" with which to shoot the conservationists and other bossy werewolves in the head.

Image source: The Daily Dose by Manuel L. Quezon III 11 bottles of $510 champagne. Macapal-Arroyo must have been celebrating something. Some victory, perhaps, after her visit with Obama? What would that be, I wonder? Did she clinch yet another dirty deal at our expense? What does she have in store for us next? Image source: The Daily Dose by Manuel L. Quezon III A $20,000 dinner. Shameless. Oh please give me the strength to hold back all the cuss words piling up on my tongue! Read more At Midfield.

I absolutely love this video of Harlan Ellison ranting about monetary compensation for writers' work!!! I have Cor to thank for finding and sharing this gem! This brings me back to my own thoughts (not half as rabid, but ok, kinda rabid) and dilemmas about writing for free . I have more to say about this. Real soon!

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!

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...

For the first time ever I'm disappointed with blogspot.com. The month of June won't show up in my 2008 archives. GRRRRR! How dare! Does anybody out there know how to make June re-appear? I've already tried removing the archives and putting them back on. Several times.

The mosaics on Session Road are gone; erased from the face of the earth by public order from City Hall. In this article I wrote three years ago (Frank beat me to it and posted my article on the mosaics and my wonder child's poem, which she wrote when she was ten years old. Thanks, Frankie), I was gushing and optimistic about the possibilities of collaboration between our putative public servants in City Hall and our local artists. I thought the creation of the Session Road Mosaics heralded the beginnings of the practice of public art in Baguio city. I thought our elected officials (yes, we chose these people) in City Hall were finally opening their minds and expanding their idea of “beautification” so that it would include creativity, a plurality of visions and, well to put it simply, good taste! I was so effing wrong.

GMA's legacy may be putting more and more mothers at risk. Read it and weep. We never had separation of Church and State in this cowntry. We're still in the Dark Ages of reproductive health. This is for Manang Precious , who we haven't seen in over a month now.

I went to church today for the baptism of my inaanak, Armstrong. At the sermon during the mass prior to the baptism, the priest preached against divorce, contraceptives, and abortion, because "God wants all Catholic families to be just like the Holy Family." He said, "Even if 300 congressmen say that divorce is good, God still says that divorce is bad! Huwag natin pansinin ang mga conressman-congressman at senador-senador na yan!" Be afraid. Be very afraid. I felt a burning sensation in my skull, early warning signs of an oncoming migraine. I left early, thereby blowing my cover. Now everybody knows I'm the evil fairy godmother.

People don't get arrested anymore. They get "invited". And then they get "processed", like canned meat. What exactly do the officers of the PNP mean, when they say that people are being "invited for processing"? It sounds so benign, it's got to be a lie. Meanwhile, in Shoemart, a sign at the entrance asks us to kindly "submit" ourselves to the routine security inspection. And we are only too willing. What the hell are we coming to?

Everybody's talking trash these days. It's a bit late to jump on the bandwagon, but I must, lest I be "sunctioned" by our barangay chairperson, who issued an administrative order with instructions for waste segregation last month: Tie a red ribbon around garbage bags containing "nabubulok". Tie a blue ribbon around garbage bags containing "biodegradables or garbage that can be sold". (Ha? What part of the 3 R's did I not get?) Tie a yellow ribbon around garbage bags containing "residuals or di nabubulok". Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree. At last! At last! At last! Baguio is implementing a serious waste management program! (But I can't help but wonder, what's the barangay going to do with all those ribbons?) At last! At last! At last! All the waste segregation my mother drummed into our skulls since early childhood will actually mean something beyond the gates of our home! But the all or nothing style of...

Dear Mr. Bandonill, Warm greetings! Please allow me to comment on your column of 29 July 2007. In it you stated that the Ambuclao Dam is one of the few remaining pristine parts of the Philippines, unaffected by global warming, and that "It is a place where nature truly preserved itself from the destructive actions of man." I simply wish to point out that a large dam IS one of the most destructive actions of man. Of all the energy-producing technologies available to us today, dams are the most damaging to humans and the environment. If you will recall, many families were displaced by the building of Ambuclao dam. They lost their land and their homes. To add insult to injury, it took a long time before the communities that remained around the dam received electricity, years after the dam began supplying power to the lowlands. The river has been destroyed and the siltation of the dam is evident to the naked eye. I ask you please not to allow the proliferation of the idea ...