Family heirlooms

I belong to a family of collectors. For the most part and for sentimental reasons, I consider myself lucky. For the rest of the part, well, I say I’m beginning to worry about the shrinking space. Nevertheless, I am grateful that my mother and her mother know how to keep things, including their crochet and embroidery projects made during their youth that have survived the weather and the pests to this day. Then I realized: I do not only belong to a family of collectors; I belong to a family of “practicals”. That should have been our surname. I mean: Why buy something when we can make it ourselves?

When my maternal grandmother asked her husband for an ironing board, my lolo made a sturdy one out of a dead jackfruit tree from the backyard rather than buying from the neighbour; he was a carpenter after all (and a darn good one!). My dad, when he was younger, made a wooden hanger for a class project. In the process of gaining knowledge on how to do it, he, too, gained the penchant for producing more for home use. My aunts sewed and embroidered their own dresses. My mother, while she knows the basics, does not have the dexterity that my grandmother and her eldest sister possessed, and so she lets lola do or complete her school projects on crocheting and embroidery, much to my lola’s frustration.

But my mother is good at something else—collecting, keeping, and preserving. Thanks to her, I feel extremely lucky to be holding my grandmother’s crochet masterpieces made out of thread once used to stitch a sack of rice. I remember during my elementary years when my grandmother was still alive, I would help my mother roll the threads into a ball and give it to lola. I had to connect one sack’s thread to another to keep the ball rolling. I got the threads from our store where we sell rice in kilos (talk about being practical). My lola was always pleased when she received the thread because it meant another project for her, another way to pass the time. Then she would get her bent rusty hook (which I borrowed and misplaced, much to my mother's frutration) and start exuding this admirable aura of contentment.

My grandmother was really good at what she did. When I learned how to crochet at school, I tried using the threads from the sacks but they were very tricky, always curling up and knotting by itself. I gave up and went back to using a neat piece of yarn bought from Almis, a small decent store beside my old high school, St. Joseph's Academy. The way the sack’s threads are very annoying made me admire my grandmother even more; she produced so many beautiful table covers, all of them white (save for a green one that was my mother’s elementary project my lola completed) because during her time, not only was white yarn practical, it was also the fad. These days, bright colors are the trend, and you could just see my basket bursting with ‘em yarns. Oh, I see a lot of possibilities with each of them—bonnets, socks, scarves, belts, necklaces, and so much more!

Crocheting is nothing new to many of us. This act of pulling loops through other loops with a hook is said to have originated from Iran, South America, or China. Just the same, this is not a Cebuano tradition, although we have our unique forms of weaving, such as sarok weaving in Consolacion, buri weaving in Bogo City, and hablon in Argao. Crocheting is a manifestation of foreign influences most likely during the time of war. I learned the skill at school, which is part of an education system heavily influenced by Americans. Below is a one-minute video clip of me crocheting a small center table cover, one of my many latest (unfinished) projects. Being left-handed, it is one of the rare right-handed things I could do (and there you could see my right pointer finger inked with proof of how I recently exercised democracy).

 

I recently added to my mother’s inventory of heirlooms the headband I made and used as part of my gypsy costume in a Christmas party last December because I could not find a suitable one in the department stores. I also crocheted a blue belt to break the plainness of a boring dress rather than buying a belt or a sash, and handmade cellphone and table covers as gifts to escape the terrible holiday shopping rush. And all I require is a ball of yarn...and labor of love. I belong to a family of collectors and practicals after all.

- Nancy -

A trip down memory lane...to the post office with handwritten letters

Do you remember this line: “What happened to romance? Sappy, soppy long-hand love letters...”? If you have seen the film, Beastly (2011), a nice modern-day rendition of one of my classic fairytales, Beauty and the Beast, then you have heard this line said about twice (if my poor memory serves me right).

And it’s really something to think about: What happened to romance AND handwritten love letters?

Maybe the best question should be: Where have all the men who would choose to brave the intricacies of grammar and the battlefield of composition writing gone? The next best question would probably be: Where are the women who demand (deftly and creatively without being too obvious) these letters given to them without the dictates of holiday spirits?

Better yet, looking at the big picture, why is our constantly evolving culture failing to support a certain system commonly called post office that is deemed capable of feeding the thrills and joys of a titanic population of romantics who constantly wish at the back of their minds for handwritten letters?

Perhaps the population is not that titanic anymore... Perhaps the demand is declining more rapidly than I think... Perhaps a lot of us has finally succumbed to the convenience of sending letters quickly and merely looking at them on a monitor rather than waiting for a few days, running to the mailman, holding the letter with a special thump of the heart, running back to the room, and opening the letter with a characteristic sense of excitement, and rereading the whole thing more than twice without being aware of that glowing smile...

I still remember this feeling vividly from old times when I would receive a letter full of advice coupled with a ten-dollar bill from an aunt living in Kansas or a letter full of stories of adventures from a distant American cousin or a letter of instructions from my Bible teacher from Wisconsin or a new pen pal from Greece. Each time, the feeling of having received a letter was the same: thrilling yet intimate. You see, young as I was, while I was making friends in my neighborhood, I was already building connections with the world. For me, a shy girl, it was a big deal.

And so, to keep feeding on that exhilarating experience of intimate connections, I made frequent trips to the Mandaue City Post Office, which was--and still is--a stone’s throw away from where I studied elementary and high school, hoping that I had written understandably and enough to prompt them to write me back. Shelling out some of my allowance for the stamps was not a biggie at all. In many cases, handwritten letters and post offices just have to go together.

Somehow, between the time I graduated high school and now, email became popular and my relatives and friends started to prefer it for its convenience and efficiency. Over time, I learned to catch up with the trend and started doing more than just emailing them; I tag them on Facebook and I tweet them on certain announcements. The next thing I know, I nearly forgot how the Mandaue City Post Office looks like such that recently I have to ask my mother if the said facility is still alive, to which she answered that yes, it is still very much alive because she just arrived from there after sending my aunt in Kansas a package of dried fish and whatnot. Oh, lucky aunt. All I get by traditional mail these days are credit card flyers, insurance premium notices, and subscriptions. And they are hardly romantic, you know.

Truth be told, I have grown accustomed to keying in my thoughts through a keypad. Cursive writing is already a hardship. When I tried writing again a letter by hand, the experience was an uphill battle. The culture of technology has encouraged real-time objective, if not impulsive, reporting through a variety of platforms like Twitter and God-knows-what, but what happened to wracking of the brains to get a the right sentimental word out, to the sweaty holding of the pen, and the rough walk to the post office? All these efforts make any letter doubly romantic.

Oh, I’m not saying we abandon the modern ways. I’m just wishing that handwritten letters and post offices won’t fade into mere cherished memories. I pray for them to be still around when I have grandchildren and they have their own grandchildren. I dread the day when my grandchildren would ask me themselves, “La, what happened to romance? What happened to sappy, soppy long-hand love letters?”

- Nancy -

My mother and her unusual breakfast time tales

My mother is a born storyteller, very verbose and quite animated. Just like her own mother, she remembers many stories from long ago, even from the time when she started first grade. Mind you, not all of these are happy bedtime stories that make you smile before you sleep. These are tragic tales of the Japanese occupation, of unrequited love, of regrets, and of what-could-have-beens and what-ifs, pretty much balanced off with stories of climbing the neighbor’s mango tree (and harvesting some fruits without permission), of harvesting cacao at her family’s own backyard, and of endless talking over laundry by the riverside.

Unsurprisingly, my mother being my mother—a maddening petite package of bluntness and gentleness, of friendliness and sarcasm—would hover at me at breakfast time, and I would get this foreboding feeling that something creepy is going to happen in the next 30 seconds. Almost always, that something would: my mother would sit down on one side of the table and ask a subtle question about life in general, and then before I know it, she would be telling me stories of bloody suicide attempts that happened close to home during the war while I would attempt to finish my breakfast plate of ham and bacon and gulp down as much as I could a bowl of her utan bisaya.

I really don’t mind hearing these stories. In fact, I like listening to my mother, just like I sat as a rapt young listener to my late paternal grandfather’s stories of dealing with guerrillas and to my late maternal mother’s tales of fleeing from her war-threatened neighborhood to the mountains fresh from giving birth to her first child. Since these are things one does not get to hear everyday, I would say I am privileged to be a holder of some true stories of courage, sacrifice, and love that happened within my family, which I could pass on to the next line.

Here is an old photo of my mom visiting her mother's grave

As we celebrate Mother’s Day this Sunday, I remember my mother and her unusual breakfast time stories. Some days, there are stories told before and repeated. Other days, there are new tales that are either too fantastic to believe or too horrendous to imagine (but either way, my melodramatic mother has achieved her goal of capturing my attention and her childish desire to have an audience).

My mother would tell me how her father, a gentle carpenter, would walk all day long with a cabinet on his head needed to be sold for a few pesos to feed his seven children; how she and her siblings would walk so far to go to school; how they have to make several rounds everyday to the well to gather water enough to feed and bath 10 members of the family; how a well not far off from where they fetched water has become a tragic scene of a pretty female neighbor who committed suicide to escape an abusive father (the well has to be closed off and abandoned); how family scandals in town are “contained”; and how cruel war was to a simple family and neighborhood like her own (and here I thought flogging only happened in Voltaire’s “Candide”.).

Come Mother’s Day, allow me to share with you my appreciation of my own mother and how she has kept our family alive with stories passed from her mother and her mother’s mother to her daughters (who are both still wrestling with how to deal with them in these digital times and Korean culture frenzy) and stories that happened to her and to her family, forcing us to deal with realities and teaching us by way of true events that courage, love, hard work, and understanding are way better than cowardice, hatred, and discord.

Go give your mother a hug this Mother’s Day. And listen to her stories. Really listen. Don’t worry too much if some of them are too hard to believe. She is your mother after all. (And if you are a female reading this post, you might become one soon with your own set of stories to tell.)

- Nancy -

P.S. I have entered this blog post in the 2013 Grandmother Power Blogging Campaign.

Me, women, and the web

My journey from print journalism to blogging starting four years ago has been a sort of whirlwind love-hate experience. Well, my original exposure has been fraught with pyramids, upside and otherwise, filled with strict instructions on pattern, proper transitions, and words that are big on impact (or at least with strong force enough to send subjects to act, hide, and/or complain). Then, by some force of nature backed up with a sense of curiosity tempered with the eagerness to learn, I started blogging.

For some time, I was in a mental pain—oftentimes grimacing at the sight of wrong spellings, wincing at poorly structured sentences, shaking my head countless times over the potential of some blog posts gone somehow wrong, and coming into terms with how many blogs have digressed from the writing rules I have learned in school and kept in my heart. Knowing my own grammar is certainly far from perfect, I stumped down the teacher in me who wants to point out these mistakes and told myself to let these pass. For me, the fact that many bloggers are regularly writing is a favorable indicator that they will improve.

Between the period I started to blog seriously and now, I won an award, which propelled me head on into the local blogging scene. I was hesitant at first; I felt that since my education about web development and Internet marketing is very inadequate, I was not really a blogger in the full sense of the term. Even up to now, while trying to stumble my way through the vacillations of online trends, I consider myself, above all, just a writer, continuously wanting to improve. In this tech-dazed time, having basic technical knowledge in blogging is a bonus. Because of this, I would tend to shy away from invitations to be a speaker or a panelist. My public speaking jitters are so hopeless.

So far, I have only really spoken before a crowd thrice this past year. The first one was during the Social Good Summit Cebu at Marcelo Fernan Cebu Press Center in September last year, and I have so nervous I had to read my two-page speech. Part of the speech went like this:

“At the end of the day, my blog is not about me. It’s about how I am doing with my goals. Am I inspiring change through blogging and social media? Am I getting other people to really appreciate and understand Philippine literature? I don’t have a monitoring tool like radian6 for me to know. But with comments received, with conversations made, and relationships built, I want to think I’m making small steps—small but moving forward.

You remember I told you I was a Jughead before? Now I’m bent on making an impact, on inspiring change, by being diligent and patient and passionate in blogging and social media, quite an opposite of Jughead.  And you know, you could do it, too. Blog with a purpose. Do social media for a good cause. Act now.”

My second exposure was in a poetry reading last December. The third one was as a panelist during the Cebuanas on the Web Meet-up last Saturday at Location63. It was organized by Google Business Group and JCI Womandaue. Notwithstanding another set of unwelcome jitters, the good thing that happened before the event was it gave me a good opportunity to learn more about the situation of women in the area of technology. Most of what I found painted a bleak yet not totally hopeless picture.

Cebuanas on the Web Meet-up at Location 63

There are stories of women who made tech innovations in their companies, were lauded and recognized, and went on maternity leave only to come back having been demoted or their projects taken advantage of. While sexism is pretty much alive in a workplace perceived to be dominated by men, many women in the underdeveloped economies are still bewildered by the mere presence of computers mainly for cultural reasons. In other parts of the world, we also read of stories of how there is a decline in terms of women population for senior technology-related positions only to be countered by comments coming from women themselves that women are leaving corporate positions to build their own start-ups. Well, I would like to think this is the case. And I would like to believe that there are more women in tech industries today than there has been 10 years ago.

Break and networking. Here, I pose with Hannah Amora and Iren Licera.

My turn to speak (Photo by JKAR Photography)

During the Cebuanas (women from Cebu, Philippines) on the Web event, the panelists—there were four of us—were asked how women in our respective fields are making waves and accomplishing things Cebuanas should know of. I cited the event’s keynote speaker, Hannah Amora, whose inspiring story manifests how her dedicate to her cause has transformed the lives of her family for the better. She put up Maven’s Heart Fund to raise Php 1 million in three months for her son’s surgery. I also cited Fleire Castro of Third Team Media and organizer of Google Business Group Cebu who balances one hell of an act as a digital entrepreneur, wife, mother, and teacher to her home-schooled son. In the field of journalism, I cited my former professor, Mayette Tabada, also a columnist for Sun.Star Cebu, who inspires me to be a better writer. She is what I would consider my mentor, but I’m not sure she knows that. I pointed out to the participants that many women are making waves and accomplishing many things. All we need to do is ask and network.

The speakers and panelists of Cebuanas on the Web Meet-up (Photo by JKAR Photography)

The Cebuanas on the Web Meet-up was, for me, successful, what with the humor and dynamic interaction during the event, and I would like to congratulate Fleire and her team for another milestone.

(And as I end this post, I expressed to Fleire my hope that there will be a sequel of the event but of much grander scale, such as the Women in the Web Philippines.)

So all these that I have been saying are meant to draw a picture of how women are capable to be in tech jobs. Take me, for instance, who started with rigid print journalism training to become someone who is now into blogging as a hobby and digital management for a huge foundation as a full-time job. If given equal opportunities and treated as counterparts, women can do what man can, and that includes information technology and digital entrepreneurship.

Nancy

Cebu’s reading champs

Pay it forward. This sounds like a trite line picked up in a regular charity event. But a year-old group of reading advocates, the same one that often gets mentioned in this blog, jazzed up the meaning of that statement.

Last March 23, Basadours, an enthusiastic circle of students and young professionals dedicated to promoting the love for reading, invited partners and community stakeholders to a simple yet intimate gathering they aptly called “Panagtambayayong” (Cebuano term for partnership or collaboration) at the Cebu City Public Library (CCPL) and Information Center along Osmena Boulevard.

Meeting old and new friends. 

I got re-acquainted with a couple of students from St. Theresa's College, my alma mater.

Attending the event as a long-time fan, I reconnected with former colleague Cris Evert Lato, five months pregnant with fraternal twins (hooray!) and working around in her usual sanguine energy. I also met familiar faces like Bea Martinez and Keena Martinez whom I met during the opening of the Junquera branch of La Belle Aurore Bookshop, Ms. ConCon Cabarron whom I previously met in a couple of social gatherings, and two students from St. Theresa’s College. I also met new faces like Bartolome Mariscal, a barangay librarian, and Cebu City librarian Ms. Rosario Chua.

Bea, Basadour’s secretary-general, filled in the audience—there were more or less 20 of us (not counting the members of Basadours)—on the group’s performance for the last 12 months. She presented an interesting timeline from the formation of the group in Feb. 25, 2012 with 10 members, which was shortly followed by the kick-off of a year-long reading project aptly called, “I Love to Read” Project. The project features a lot of creative monthly and seasonal activities, including Storygami, It’s Story Time at the Library, Hugpong, National Children’s Book Day, Storytelling goes to Town, Banilad Town Center Story Hour, Yard Sale, and Storython, which all manifests just how the dedicated and committed the lean-membered group is to their advocacy.

Bea Martinez gives the Basadour's updates.

“Reading is a dying culture among the young, and that’s a shame. We at the Basadours want to keep this reading culture alive by way of a non-formal non-class approach. Through stories, we can teach children so much. We believe in the importance of books and libraries and so we partner with CCPL and other groups,” Bea said. “We bring kids to the library for them to make a connection, for them to create a bond with the library. More than that, we open books for children to read, believing that we open a world for them.”

Rapt, I found myself nodding in agreement. Let’s face it; the reading population is in a decline over the past few years as books struggle for our attention, digital crazies that we are. By reading, I mean getting through several pages of the book from start to end, from epilogue to prologue. I think we are so distracted with so many things today that it is quite hard for us to concentrate a full time on a good book. Expert studies may show the decline, but the pain of the fact is extremely aggravating when I realize the kind of dispiriting attitude many of my college students have towards the printed word.

Marvin Legaspi, president of Basadours, facilitates the open forum with partners. 

Perhaps acknowledging this decline during the Panagtambayayong is what drove the stakeholders to nurture the Basadours with insights for improvement, each personally sending a silent prayer to God and the ancestors that the Basadours will last long as it should. We need more groups like them with members who are admirably dedicated to sharing the love for reading more than anyone I know. One concern pointed out was the lean membership. At present, it only has 10-12 members, maintaining about the same number over the past 12 months. Evert pointed out the group has not extensively promoted its membership since they want to build a track record first. And what a track record they have, always organizing well-planned (often library-based) events one month after the other!

“Let’s make the library alive; not a repository of old books,” Evert said, adding that as long as the Basadours is around, the Cebu City Public Library won’t close shop. To recall, it nearly did in 2008 when Cebu City Government officials decided to do so, only to have the statement and plan retracted amidst a lively public protest, and instead put forward the plan to have the building, a charming neoclassical architecture established in 1919 in one of the busy modern sections of the city, under renovation for several months.

At the time, Mrs. Rosario Chua was a newly appointed City Librarian, and she shared that the experience was truly a “baptism of fire”. Fast forward several years later, Mrs. Chua continues to serve as the City Librarian, continuously striving to put the library out of a hellhole ornamented with budget cuts and lack of government back-up by banking on the strong public support for reading, such as the one manifested by the Basadours. Just so you know, CCPL has been provided with a budget of Php 1.8 million this year, Php 500,000 of which is intended for the purchase of additional books and other reading materials. Do you think that’s enough?

I personally admire her for the way she is rallying beside the public’s call to extend library hours on weekdays and open on Saturdays. Not only is the library low on budget, it is also understaffed, which means extension of hours on weekdays sounds impossible but opening on Saturdays is feasible. This requires permission from the Cebu City Council, though. (And I just got struck with a provocative thought: This coming May 13, 2013 polls, I’ll elect leaders who support libraries.)

Mrs. Chua very kindly gave me a brief tour of CCPL. It was not my first time in the library but I went along with it. She showed me one section she is very proud of: the Children’s Reading Corner, where the library’s monthly read-aloud sessions with children from the different barangays are held. (Can you picture me? For someone who loves children’s literature, I was practically gushing with awe.) Mrs. Chua shared how a father from Talamban would bring his daughter to this corner several times a week to nurture that (addictive) love for reading. She did a thorough job of making my day.

Mrs. Rosario Chua poses inside the Zonta Children's Reading Center. 

And we took turns posing! :)

What a heavenly set-up, big thanks to CCPL and the Zonta group!

It is also under Mrs. Chua’s librarianship to ensure that barangays put up a functional reading center in their area, as required by law. Currently, there are 37 out of 80 barangays in Cebu City that have reading centers. That’s quite a feat, considering the lack of sustainability plans of many government officials as far as maintaining the resources of the library and putting someone reliable in charge of the facility are concerned.  

(L-R) I am sitting beside Mr. Bartolome Mariscal and Mrs. Rosario Chua.

 Mrs. Chua cited Barangay Ermita as one of the barangays with a very efficient reading center. During the Basadour’s event, I was happy to have met Ermita’s barangay librarian, Mr. Bartolome Mariscal, a grassroots hero in his own right. He shared with me some funny anecdotes, such as how the air-conditioning of the facility encourages children to come indoors and read, and how his library services expanded to include free tutorials for children who are actually bright but merely lack parental guidance.

So… To the Basadours, thank you. May you continue what you do, always breathing fresh air into the library and opening up fantastic worlds for kids through books. May you continue to pay it forward.

Your ever supportive fan,

Nancy