The book “Ang Dyip ni Mang Tomas” (Mang Tomas and His Jeep), written in Tagalog by Genaro R. Gojo Cruz, with English translation by Heidi Emily E. Abad and paintings by Anthony E. Palomo (Canvas and the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2009) is not a new release. But it is worth revisiting since at the Ayala Town Center, 10 huge billboards feature the text and the lovely illustrations of the book.
EVEN ACTIVIST nun Sr. Mary John Mananzan, OSB, like all the rest of us Scholastican jubilarians, loved the homecoming theme for 2012 that the silver jubilarians, led by woman pilot Brooke Castillo, adopted: Walang Kupas! A logical running theme in the light of numerous recent natural disasters was the love and care for the environment.
As tradition has dictated for the past 29 years, National Children’s Book Day is celebrated on the third Tuesday in July.
Contemporary Philippine history records August as the month of deaths of individuals highly admired like Cory Aquino (Aug. 1), Cory Aquino’s Interior Secretary Jaime Ferrer (Aug. 2), Ninoy Aquino (Aug. 21), and the most recent, P-Noy’s Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo (Aug. 18). These dates should give greater relevance and meaning to the annual holiday at the end of the month, National Heroes Day.
On a Sunday morning in April, Mario Taguiwalo, former Health undersecretary and political activist and thinker, passed away quietly at home, and was immediately cremated. He had neither wake nor obituary—just as he had specified in the months before what he knew was an imminent death.
The annual conference of Wendy Kopp’s Teach for All global network of chapters from 32 countries, held this year in Tengchong, Yunnan province in China, began with a more exclusive retreat in Shanghai.
The news that Amy Gary, editor of the Margaret Wise Brown Estate, found hundreds of pages of unpublished manuscripts in a cedar trunk in the attic of Margaret’s sister, is significant.
Two days before the Nov. 26 launch of “The Aquino Legacy: An Enduring Narrative” (Imprint Publishing) that my husband Elfren and I authored, we were having a dry run of the program at the venue, the Writers Bar of Raffles Makati.
A year ago, on Oct. 5, Joker Arroyo left us. All too characteristic of him, he had left strict instructions that he did not want any public announcements, no memorial ceremonies from Congress and the Senate, or the usual ninth-day or 40th-day commemorations, not even the traditional farewell ceremony of his fraternity, the Upsilon Sigma Phi.
My Scholastican schoolmates (GS ’59, HS ’63, College ’67) had vowed we would keep on traveling near and far, for as long as our legs could carry us—and with what we anticipated may be a limited time left, we did so with such a frenzy this past year.
