MINIATURES

 French comic series called "Vigor", published by Artima (France).  Last weekend, I spent two quiet evenings with my boys watching the Netflix anime series “Trese”. We finished all six episodes but now and then I have to do some explanation as the boys wanted more backgrounders on the featured Filipino mythological creatures. Once my youngest had to click the “pause” button laughing at me and saying how my explanation had become too academic ( way too “Austronesian” perhaps) especially when I mentioned the connection of the “Tianak” to the Malay folklore “pontianak”. In the end, they had to calm me down: “Dad manood ka na lang” The Netflix anime series reminded me of the art of "komiks" and the culture it spawned in the Filipino consciousness. Somehow I recall my elementary days when you have to fight your way in a group of classmates who were crowding around reading a DC Comics. We used to do science experiments at school with the aide of comic strips. I still reme...

Not many Pasiguenos  still remember the once vibrant duck industry of Pasig. Perhaps others,  like the younger generation, don't even have an idea about it. In a distinct time, when much of the town then was agrarian, duck raising and the production of duck eggs were a source of livelihood for several families of Pasig. In the early 1980s, the industry began to wane, until it was all but gone in the 1990s.  Pasig duck farms along the Pasig River. The enclosures "puyahan" were located along the river banks. The ideal environment for the domesticated duck to produce eggs. Early Spanish chronicles discuss the different customs, traditions, and way of life of the natives of our islands -- Duck raising was mentioned as one unique industry which many agriculture and animal husbandry scholars also believe, was brought by the Chinese many years before the hispanization of the Philippines. One extensive description of the duck industry in the Pasig River during the Spanish times w...

  I recall the works of Ignazio Silone — Last night I was going through my old files and found the notes I have taken in a lecture about exiled writers in Zurich. They were somehow accommodated by Swiss writers two of which were giants: Duerrenmatt and Frisch. It was through old newspaper and magazine interviews of the two that I came across Silone. That was in the 1990s. Silone the anti-fascist then anti-communist, anti-Stalinist — He was an attractive study in that distinct time when totalitarianism of the right and the left were being revoked. Funny, but I even went to visit the cafés and restaurants where Silone and the likes of Frisch or Duerrenmatt frequented if only to fill the gaps brought by questions that will never be answered. Suddenly, news detailing Silone's early collaboration with the Fascist regime of Mussolini came to light. Then followed by more revelations about his relationship with the American intelligence (OSS- precursor of the CIA). The writer a political m...