THE BLOG THAT THE BLOGGER FOLLOWS

     The blogger is a follower of the blog of Shelley's Scraps by John Shelly, an accomplished "roving" book illustrator and creator from the UK. He had a one-man show recently at the Yui Garden gallery in Nakamadchidai, Yokohama, Japan. I have great admiration for artists like Shelley, whose art has taken him to many countries. Not possessing his gift,  the blogger can only wished he had this inborn talent that he could have exploited. The blogger envies him. Juan S.P. Hidalgor, Jr., the Ilokano literary icon, is also endowed with this kind of art and the blogger wonders whether the former Bannawag magazine deskman profited from practising it. Reminds me also of the late Alejandro Hufana of Poro Point, La Union, an accomplished painter and poet.






Sunflowers on a roadside in Winchester CA

NOT THE BLOGGER'S COUNTRY MONOPOLY

     "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessings of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."--Winston Churchill

    
     The praying and preying politicians, they who stole the people's money, are not unique in my country as a democracy, Mehru Jaffer. They, too, populate even great and responsible countries of the world like America and India. Have you heard or read about the US governor who was convicted of corruption along with his wife? (Shade of the conjugal dictatorship?)
     But Filipino politicians are a unique breed: their greed is gargantuan and could not rein it, even passing their behavior to wives and sons and daughters. While they live the high life, residing in mansions, condominiums and gated subdivisions, the poor--and there are millions of them--fend for themselves in their barongbarong and makeshift shelters under bridges and overpasses, along esteros, river banks. In America, the homeless are taken care of by the state and fed adequately from state funds.
     Who will house and feed the hungry in the Philippines? The politicians who are supposed to make welfare laws for these marginalized people?

AN EMPTY HOUSE, ONE LUXURY

Yell.
Beheaded fellow journalists James Folly, Steven Sotloff
That black-hooded koranic barbarian
From multi-cultural neighborhood
London inflection
Damn.
No Starbucks coffee
Yell.
A godless, evil religion
These Moros who slew
Christian Batalla, Fr. Gallardo in Mindanao.
Damn.
Yell.

HOW DO YOU START A STORY?

     A male friend arrives in the middle of a conversation with an acquaintance. He is agitated and seems to have lost his voice and you asked, "What happened?" And he stammered," Somebody with a gun has just shoot down an elderly man at the corner liquor store."
     And then the usual questions posed by a journalist: Who is the person? Who was killed? Why was he killed? How was he killed? And so forth and so on.
     You have a picture of the incident. If it was murder, you ask why was the man killed?  A love triangle ? The man was married? Did he belong to a gang? Why was he in the store?
     Can one make a story out of  the narrative of the new arrival? How do you begin the story? Who is the story teller? Can you make the dead man the narrator of the story. Can you start the story with him seeing the gun firing toward his heart? The last seconds of his life, as the start of the story?
     

OUR PRAYERS AND ENERGIES FOR MARIEL

    She was scheduled for her second chemotherapy procedure at the end of last month. The blogger was planning to call her the following day but there was a lot of activities and we failed to lift the phone. We feel bad about it. But we hope by now she has recovered her strength. The procedure always weakened her physically. She has still six of this kind of cure. Our former colleague in a Philippine government agency has stage 2 cancer of the breasts.
     Mariel, who lives in Pomona with her married daughter and two grandchildren, still goes to work as a secretay of a company in California. Our prayers and energies to you, Mariel.

 

Quote of the Day

 

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts."--Winston Churchill

EYES WIDE OPEN/PETER LA. JULIAN

QUO VADIS, LITERATURA ILOKANO? 

   Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa was one of the judges of the Ilokano short story category of the 2014 Palanca Award for Literature in the Philippines. The others were Dr. Adel Lucero who does not write in the language, and Leonardo Belen, one-time film director whose Ilokano writing probably faded since time immemorial.

   Dr. Agcaoili's comments on the 16 short stories submitted for the Palanca are disturbing and need the attention of all Ilokano writers:

     1. The lot, 16 of them did not do justice to the ability of the Ilokano writers to write a good story. It looks like this year's entry is a rehash of the same pieces that did not win in previous Palanca contests or in other contests for that matter.
     2. The language, generally, is not the best that I expected. It lacks creativity, restraint, elegance, and, that capacity to suggest a symbolic meaning. We don't have there in these entries.
     3. NOTE BENE: I don't think any of these entries deserve a first prize. A first prize indicates capability, quality of the work, and a clarity of vision and insight. I did not see this in any of the works here.
     4. We must demand more from our Ilokano fictionists. What we have is the same format we have seen since time immemorial, the same soap-opera like stories, the same age-old issues that could be solved by using the magic wand or uttering abracadabra.
     5. When not awarding a first prize, we are suggesting to our writers this: "Hey, you shape up. We don't award you the first prize because you came in first in the ranking. We are awarding the first prize because that first prize meets all the criteria of the first prize, of the highest prize.

     Amen. But what will they do with the first prize money? Will it go back to Palanca and added to the prize money for the 2015 Ilokano short story category of the annual literary award?

Dr. Agcaoili (sitted) and the blogger in a San Fernando City, La Union restaurant

2014 PALANCA AWARDEES

 

Quote of the Day

 

"The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to be credible."--Mark Twain

 

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     In his Facebook account, Errol Abrew, a no-nonsense Ilokano writer from Caba, La Union, Philippines, congratulated the Ilokano fictiionists who won in the 2014 Palanca Literary Award for Literature. They are a certain Ramones, second place; and the esteemed Roy Vadil Aragon, 3rd place. The blogger does not know anything about Ramones. But for the writer to beat Mr. Aragon in the ranking is something.
       Who were the judges in this year's Ilokano short story category. The same Mafia? The veteran Ilokano writer Rey Duque, a perennial Palanca winner, is no longer there. He died this year. Rey, a Palanca Hall of Famer, has won the most number of awards in the annual contest and no Ilokano writer will be able to duplicate his feat in the years to come. Rest in peace, Rey. You have done your part not only in the vineyard of Ilokano fiction but also in Philippine fiction.
     The results indicate the the quality of Ilokano writing fiction this year? Why was there no first place winner?
      Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa made an acidic comment about the "artistry" of the entries this year. Did he sit as one of the judges in the Ilokano short story category?