MINIATURES

Rizal in his letter to Blumentritt, dated 19. December 1893, described his normal day in Dapitan, his place of exile for almost four years. That part of the letter goes : "I am going to tell you how we live here. I have a square house, another hexagonal, and another octagonal - all made of bamboo, wood, and nipa. In the square one my mother, my sister Trinida d, a nephew, and I live. In the octagonal, my boys live - some boys whom I teach arithmetic, Spanish, and English - and now and then a patient who has been operated on. In the hexagonal are my chickens. From my house, I hear the murmur of a crystalline rivulet that comes from the high rocks. I see the beach, the sea where I have two small crafts - two canoes or barotos, as they call them here. I have many fruit trees - mangoes, lanzone, guayabanos, baluno, nanka, etc. I have rabbits, dogs, cats, etc. I get up early - at 5:00. I visit my fields, I feed the chickens, I wake up my folks, and start them moving. At 7:30 we tak...

I have in my palm, replicas of Roman coins from different epochs. Only one fits in the time of the historical Jesus -- The smallest of the supposed to be a silver coin, which is actually a reproduction of the "denarius" of Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD). Now let's imagine ourselves in Roman times. How many denarii would you need for a common household product, fo r example, wine? For a bottle of wine in today's standard, which is equivalent to the imperial measurement of 2 "sextarius", you have to pay 30 denarii. Quite expensive, to let's say a teacher, who at that time only earns 180 dinarri per annum. A soldier in the time of Augustus gets almost double, at 300 denarii (Kawawang teacher, noon pa). Coins were not only for commerce, but it was also a symbol of imperial power, the face of the emperor molded in the metal currency acting as his "profile picture". With it, citizens of the empire would have that experience of coming face to face with t...