Fail at fatherhood? I did it myself

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘Lists & Families. The End Of One, The Beginning Of Another?’

In the Philippines, the only Roman Catholic country in Asia, the interjection ‘susmaryosep!’ actually has the names of the Holy Family but in a different order: Jesus, Mary, Joseph. The order has significance in Philippine culture, which is familial and, yes, matriarchal: At home, a mother is more important (and more powerful) than a father. The mother mentioned before the father; I don’t know about St Joseph, but as a father, I don’t mind.

(As a father), I don’t mind feeling less important because I feel that, actually, to the Filipinos neither the mother nor the father is important – the family is.

She said, ‘Thank you. Let us just pray that the soul of Papa gets to where he belongs.’ She meant Heaven. ¶ Except some people, Heaven is where we all want to go but we’re not in a hurry.

Where did his high blood pressure come from? I say from the pressures of fatherhood where it is easy to fail – I know, I’ve done it myself!

My wife says he learned to smoke when he was about 10. He never stopped until smoking stopped him.

We were both working with words in print – sometimes I was working with those of mine while he was always working with those of others. From a work well done, I had fulfillment while he had only satisfaction. I was creative; he was only productive. To summarize his life, let me just say he was always looking for fulfillment here and there while I had already found mine. Not necessarily in monetary terms.

For years my wife referred to herself as a ‘computer widow,’ and she wasn’t joking. Neither of us was a womanizer nor a drinker, but Osmundo was more a drifter outside the home while I was more a drifter inside. What’s the difference?

Tina is 40 (1968 February 14); Ela is 17 (1990 June 13); that is to say, 13 children in 23 years. So you see, when you talk about ‘family planning,’ or ‘population management’ or ‘birth control’ or ‘reproductive health’ or whatever you call it, be careful when a Roman Catholic is around who knows something, or someone from the Frank Hilario family, not to mention the Gabriel Reynoso family, even if they don’t know much about Catholicism. I will not apologize for the number. Instead of apologizing to population experts who subscribe to the Malthusian theory of the population geometrically overtaking the food supply, I would rather thank God for my life, for my wife, for my children – my family. Besides, man does not live by food alone!

Time’s lists are taken seriously because of the magazine’s reputation for intelligent journalism. I understand that – you can be intelligent and wrong, or intelligent and bad.

I don’t remember if I said something about doctors believing too much in their science, and not believing enough in a higher intelligence. But I remember I pointed up. I was angry outside; I was crying inside. The doctors had not learned to accept the inadequacy of their doctorhood; I had not learned to accept the inadequacy of my fatherhood.

‘That I may not seek to be consoled as to console …’ Yesterday, Chinky showed me the beauty of acceptance.

Translations don’t equal Rizal’s genius

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘Translating A Hero. When Words Collide And Meanings Get Lost’

Now that I’ve done my own bit of translating 19th century Spanish to 21st century English, I personally know that something is always lost in the translation. In the case of the greatest patriotic poem of that century, ‘Adios, Patria Adorada,’ I hope the loss is not too much of a good thing.

Both Filipinos, was Jose Rizal who was a Tagalog writing in Spanish different from a Frank Hilario who is an Ilocano writing in English? That is a question of colonialism. In the late 19th century, wasn’t Rizal a colonial of the Spanish friars, and in the early 21st century am I not a colonial of the Yankees who in the early 20th century came to my beloved Philippine Islands and welcomed themselves and stayed for 50 years?

One of the major commandments is: Select your target. A writer cannot write for everyone. Journalists and columnists know that, so they go down to the level of the man on the street. That’s freedom of speech along with freedom of choice – I choose to leave them alone.

Rizal wanted the intellectuals to read him, not the common man (embracing woman). So do I. So he wrote his best works in Spanish. So I write in English. He was writing to say ‘Goodbye’ while I’m writing to say ‘Hello.’ Our words differ, our aims do not: In the midst of so much obfuscation, to help make the Filipinos think not merely more clearly but more creatively.

(Of Jose Rizal’s ultimate poem), ‘A darte voy alegre’ (my translation: ‘I go give gladly’). This is the most powerful, most poignant, most expressive phrase of the whole poem. In 4 words, the poet summarizes what he is about to do, that is, to give his life willingly for his loved ones, for his country.

The 5th and last line of the stanza shows what I think is the most brilliant example of Rizal’s command of Spanish: ‘Tambien por ti la diera, la diera por tu bien.’ Note that the words separated by the single comma are mirror images, that is, they reflect on each other – la diera & la diera, por ti and por tu, tambien and tu bien. That is supreme command of the Spanish language if ever I saw one, or any language for that matter. And what does Garcia do when he encounters this superb, joyful Spanish? He makes me sad.

Rizal’s genius, I dare say, is to pack in the first stanza of his Adios poem of 14 stanzas the fullness of his self in his act and his faith in the eventual redemption of his country. Garcia’s translation does not equal Rizal’s genius.

Overall, Lozada’s is much better than Derbyshire’s translation. Derbyshire’s ‘clime of the sun caress’d’ is wrong while Lozada’s ‘treasured region of the sun’ is correct; this is an important difference. If you aren’t be faithful to the original in the first stanza, how faithful are you in the rest of your translation?

Here’s another genius not revising. Nick Joaquin gravely disappoints me with his lack of rhyme, and so no matter how good the rest of the translation is, I’m going to pass. There is no rhyme to his reason for not translating Rizal in the meticulous manner that he composed his Spanish.

The fire in his hands

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘Inventing A Hero. Each Of Us Looking Through The Mirror Of Everybody’

Every December 30, my country the Philippines celebrates Rizal Day, in honor of Jose Rizal, The National Hero, the one who gave his life for his country showing the fire in his mind when he had the choice to fight with the fire in his hands.

Filipino nationalists say he was invented by the Americans. They don’t know the Americans. They don’t know Rizal either. He invented himself. My hero!

The historian in Glenn May makes a very good case in putting to doubt the historian in Teodoro Agoncillo in his account of Bonifacio, his hero. Bonifacio was a hero, May says; one must not doubt about it; but an erudite one? Bonifacio’s intellectual genius has not been established. One must not think about it.

Actually, Time didn’t call them all heroes, but what’s in a name? That which Time calls a hero by any other name would smell as sweet. I can’t forgive Time for including the German Adolf Hitler and excluding the American Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, they who revolutionized personal computing, and excluding the Filipino Jose Rizal, the first Asian revolutionary, a thinker, a man of peace, even predating Mahatma Gandhi’s civil disobedience by 22 years, 1887 and 1909.

The century doesn’t matter: greatness is greatness.

The Philippine Bill of 1902 was approved by the US Congressmen because of a hero’s (Jose Rizal’) extreme witness. My hero had reinvented himself.

Rizal was a hero for peace, Bonifacio was a hero for war. Peace for peace, war for peace. Rizal stood for progress by way of reformation; Bonifacio stood for progress by way of revolution.

Do you advocate the Rizal hero or the Bonifacio hero? Will you do a Rizal or a Bonifacio?

Those Shakespearian characters tragic and comedic inside and outside the Philippine Senate have been playing hero to the country for too long and too often it has become their career, for want of something more productive to do. You did not elect them to play hero, did you?

I say, playing hero is too important to be left to the politicians alone!

And no, those who wish to make themselves heroes of the gun, I will not stand in their way!

What does a hero look like? Where do I look for heroes?

I will look for heroes in India. Heroes ICRISAT, the scientists and staff of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics led by Director General William Dar. They have the technologies of the poor at heart, in particular the seeds of sweet sorghum, what I have called ‘a poor man’s crop with a rich man’s dream’ (americanchronicle.com), the crop that grows on poor soils and does not beggar the farmer by way of water, fertilizer and pesticide. Science as hero for the poor.

I will look for a hero in the Senate. Hero Miguel Zubiri, the young Senator who masterminded the Biofuels Act of the Philippines signed into law 2007 January 17 by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Politics as hero for the environment.

I will look for heroes in the Los Baños Science Community. Heroes PCARRD, the directors and the directed of the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development led by Executive Director Patricio Faylon. They have the mind to show the way to entrepreneurship to scientists who are innovative, to private citizens who are risk-takers. Science as hero for business-mindedness.

I will look for heroes among entrepreneurs. Heroes negOsyo, the volunteer mentors of Go Negosyo (Go Business) in the Philippines, the ones who have travelled the route successfully and now wish to cultivate hope along with business-mindedness among millions of Filipinos. Businessmen as heroes for others.

I will look for heroes in the suburban areas. Heroes UP Los Baños? Only if the scholars are able to throw off the cloak of invisibility called academic freedom and begin to transform themselves into victual heroes, not only virtual.

I will look for heroes in Quezon City. Heroes UP Diliman? Only if the intellectuals inside and outside UP can control their penchant for destructing (and distracting) ideas and devote their time to constructing (and instructing) options. Why are only a handful of UP professors enjoying intellectual property rights? There are only a handful of those who spend their time in the mode of thinking creative. The rest prefer to spend their time in the mode of thinking critical.

So, day by day from January 1, I shall go on and look for The Hero Of The Year in me doing little heroisms. Today I see through a mirror, darkly, and then I shall see face to face, peace to peace.

Christmas is pagan. Let’s celebrate!

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘What’s Wrong With Christmas? Nothing. What’s Wrong With You?’

 

‘Merry Christmas anyway!’ Whatever Mikep was trying to say in his email, on December 19, I made the mistake of replying to my good friend with that greeting. He emailed back, ‘You know very well Christmas is a pagan holiday. So let’s celebrate!’

(God) created our Sun, and all the planets and those other suns and moons besides; he created Man (male and female He made them), geniuses and fools, wise men and idiots.

(God) continues to give life to Earth. He offers eternal salvation for our immortal, sinful souls. Salvation He proposes, Man disposes.

And yes, Christmas is a celebration of ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ and that it is a time for family (holidays.net). The attention is on all and not only on you (it’s not your birthday), not only on your scholastic achievement (you’re not graduating), not only on your sales success (for once you’re not competing), not only on your marketing genius (you’re simply enjoying the show), not only on your stocks rising high (you are reminded that you have stocks more precious than gold).

You celebrate what you have.

It is a Merry Christmas as we make it.

ut if you insist that Christmas is made up of pagan practices, I have to point out to you that much of modern life is in fact pagan in practice, and a matter of personal choice:

When you choose to abandon your spouse, that’s pagan practice.
When you choose to abort a child, that’s pagan practice.
When you choose to exact revenge, that’s pagan practice.
When you choose to execute people, that’s pagan practice.
When you choose to exploit people, that’s pagan practice.
When you choose to attack people, that’s pagan practice.
When you choose to invade territory and kill, that’s pagan practice.
When you choose to overthrow the government, that’s pagan practice.
When you choose to defend your rights only, that’s pagan practice.
When you refuse others your help, that’s pagan practice.

Because God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that all who love with Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Because this pagan celebration shows me the most difficult and therefore the greatest practice of all: Love.

I’m a wheel, I’m reinventing myself

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘New Gaia Hypothesis. No Rules, No Borders, No Limits, No Wheels?’

 

You heard it once: ‘Why reinvent the wheel?’ You heard it a thousand times: ‘Don’t reinvent the wheel!’ Once in a while, someone thinks: ‘Why not reinvent the wheel?’ I think differently: I’m a wheel – and I’m reinventing myself.

Earth itself has been reinvented. Aristotle (384-322 BC) saw Earth as the center of our universe; Copernicus (1473-1543) made us see that our Sun is the center of our universe, our planets revolving around it (csep10.phys.utk.edu). (Nonetheless, I say that if you are individualistic, conceited, selfish, lustful, you are Earth around which Planets revolve.)

James Lovelock saw a self-evolving and self-regulating living system and called it Earth. Unlike other planets, the whole Earth is alive as one organism. If you’re still not convinced, note that because of the biofuel craze, with the United States and Brazil and many other countries hastily setting up bioethanol and biodiesel distilleries, and because the sources of biofuels are food crops – for instance, corn for ethanol – the prices of foods that have corn as an ingredient have jumped all over the world. And you know what? The sad effect of biofuels on food proves to me the Gaia Hypothesis. I see and call it Chaos.

Earth is One Earth, except that Man divides it into such territories as Africa, Asia, Australia, America, Austria, Azerbaijan, Antarctica, Vatican City, Zimbabwe. Or First World and Third World. Or capitalist and communist. Man divides the world into Muslims and Christians. Or Black and White. Or fidels and infidels. Man himself needs to be reinvented, but only Man can do it himself. And climate change is his last chance to do that, to become a New Man.

To revise the Gaia Hypothesis, it is necessary for me to say initially that Man is a thinking creature and is capable of changing the world inside and out; therefore, Man has the choice between his willingness and his unwillingness to influence directly and indirectly Earth’s self-regulating living system. Man is not helpless, unless he chooses to be, or unless lust blinds him of his options. Therefore, the New Gaia Hypothesis according to Frank states that:

Earth is a self-evolving and self-regulating living system with the influence of one species (Man) radically altering both effect and cause.

He’s no angel, so Man (embracing Woman) is supposed to be creative. Creativity is a 2-step process. First, you create disorder out of order; then, you create order out of the disorder you created in the first place. It’s crazy, but it works!

We have to reinvent the wheel. Bruce Joyce says, ‘We have to reinvent the wheel every once in a while, not because we need a lot of wheels, but because we need a lot of inventors’ (wsc.ma.edu/math). Wheelers, if I may call them that.

To reinvent the wheel, for example, bring the mountain to Mohammed. Or create other Mohammeds, that is to say, teach people to understand why they must go to the mountain, why they must climb their own mountain. Teach them to search for the hows, and teach them to choose.

The mountain that we, all Wheelers, all Mohammeds, must climb today is The Mountain of Climate Change. Each of us must invest in that climb. Some of you have an investment in power for the millions of its potentialities – I don’t see hope in you. Some of you have an investment in oil for the millions of dollars – I don’t see help from you. I don’t know about the rest of us. I have an investment in about 200,000 words so far in American Chronicle (2,300 in this one) for quite a few of the millions of people I’m crazy enough to hope to inspire with my own hope.

The insight I have gained from my little study of Climate Change is this: We Wheelers have to reinvent everything. Otherwise, what? Otherwise, everything will reinvent us.

The car is the wheel reinvented. The Yankees must become Wheelers and reinvent the car too – reinvent the car from being a necessity to being an alternative. Whatever happened to the car pool or public transport?

We have to reinvent the farmer’s farm too – why not a collective? Land tenure is an outmoded model of working with the land. You don’t need to own the land to make it productive. Farmers have to learn to work with others.

We have to reinvent fire too, turning it into a New Fire. Instead of gasoline, alcohol. Instead of from the underground (petroleum), from aboveground (plant). Instead of boring a deep hole to plant a rig, boring a shallow hole to plant a seed.

I suggest that New Man acquire the seeds of the New Fire called bioethanol from sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor)… Why the choice of crop? Because sweet sorghum grows well in disadvantaged lands where sugarcane or corn will only survive. Because sugarcane is sweet but sweet sorghum is twice sweeter –and therefore twice a better choice of energy for Man or Animal or Car. Corn is a joke. My Bugong chicken (a Los Baños original), as well as your original Max or McDonald or Kentucky Fried chicken eats American corn, which as biofuel source has now become expensive – so, when I eat my favorite pricey chicken wing, I know I’m eating American corn even when I don’t feel like laughing. Can you imagine that? A luxury for me, I pay the price of a chicken ($3) for a joke.

Sir, that is because they are using the wrong crop for producing ethanol, that is, either sugarcane or corn, both of which are food crops. The battle between food and fuel is ignited by wrong logic. I mean: You can’t have your corn and eat it too.

The proper thing to do is recognize that food crops, apart from fuel crops, are defined by their own rules, their own borders, their own limits. I mean: Food and alcohol don’t mix.

Because this crop hardly needs water, fertilizer, pesticide, I say sweet sorghum is a poor man’s crop with a rich man’s dream

I write about climate change because, whether I like it or not, the climate is changing me. I write about Earth because I’m an Earthling, and it’s the best that I can do to influence my own species.

Many of you don’t want to acknowledge your role in the fate of the earth; I expect that in the fight against global warming, you will simply throw a cold shoulder. Or throw a fit.

Yet, smiling
I write for Earth Reborn in Chaos
Man loving Earth in such a way that
There is a climate change
From confusion to understanding
From doubt to faith
From injury to pardon
From getting to giving
From hate to love
From global heat to a global warming of the heart.

I’m eating American corn

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full essay)
‘Funny How George W Bush’s Biofuel Trap
Invades Our Animal Planet & We Go Ape’

I’m eating Yankee corn, and it tastes funny. Well, I’ve always known that the Americans are laughable. I’m a Filipino.

Actually, I’m not eating corn; I’m eating chicken. I’m eating the chicken that ate the Yankee corn. It’s not funny – it’s expensive.

Actually, I’m not eating chicken. My insides are eating me. You know, I’m debating with myself, and I hate it when I lose. I lose when I eat the Philippine chicken that ate the American corn because it’s hardly affordable. The chicken or the corn? Both.

And that’s all because the Yankees want to cash in on The New Green Gold. Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO Deputy Regional Chief for Asia and the Pacific says, ‘The worldwide upsurge of interest in biofuels can best be described as the Gold Rush of the 21st Century’ (adb.org). George W Bush wants the Yankees to lead in the new Gold Rush.

This time, the gold is not in dem dar hills; this time, the gold is coming from the sweat of the poor, and that they have plenty. It’s Robin Hood in reverse.

You know the story of Robin Hood, of course – he who steals from the rich to give to the poor. I’ll tell you the story of American corn – it’s a joke; it’s now made into ethanol for hungry cars, not food for hungry people. Robin Hood is a British invention of the mind that gives hope to the hopeless. Corn for ethanol is a Yankee invention of the mind that gives dough to the entrepreneur who is interested in bread and not in hope. The Americans are nutty optimists – in the doughnut, they see the dough and not the hole in it.

I believe corn is a joke as a bioethanol crop, just as sugarcane is. Shifting corn from feed to fuel, the Yankees have made a success out of a failure – they have solved the problem of high gasoline prices at the expense of food, meat, milk, eggs included. Opening more forestlands to sugarcane, the Brazilians have made a success out of a failure – they have solved the problem of high petroleum prices at the expense of the environment. Meanwhile, working with jatropha as a biodiesel crop, the Filipinos go ape.

It’s so funny I could cry.

US President George W Bush insists that the feedstock to produce ethanol from plants be the American corn, which scientists like to call Zea mays; it’s amazing how corn goes into so many feeds of poultry & livestock, goes into so many food products that if you’re making ethanol out of your corn, you’re competing against the makers of food products who are forced to buy your expensive corn – so the food makers raise their prices, and all the poor consumers can do is raise the roof – and empty their pockets.

The Brazilians insist that the feedstock to produce ethanol from plants be the Brazilian sugarcane, which scientists like to call Saccharum officinarum; the plant’s saccharine promise of energy security is at the expense of the forest which the Brazilian farmers cut down – the Brazilians solve a problem and create another, bigger problem. In response, the rest of the world can only create a ruckus.

On his part, Professor Teodoro C Mendoza of the College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines Los Baños has raised a howl with his paper of 17 pages (8,000+ words) ‘Are biofuels really beneficial for humanity?’ that appears on pages 83-98 in the December 2007 issue of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science (out soon). Do I agree with it as the journal’s Editor in Chief? It doesn’t matter; my policy is that I’ll publish you even if I disagree with you 100% – I have the right to be wrong! And so do you.

My friend the Professor does not believe biofuels will solve the oil crisis. Neither do I – instead, I believe it will solve the climate change crisis.

Water is wasted. Extraction of ethanol or diesel from plant matter requires tremendous amounts of water, threatening supply for other purposes, including home uses. Mendoza says a distillery needs about 10,000 liters of water to produce 1 liter of ethanol. Such a waste of water. Already, 1 in 3 people in the world is suffering from lack of water. Water is worth its weight in gold.

The need for biofuel lands will, Mendoza says, encroach on current crop lands as well as fragile environments, the ones that are too steep, too dry, or too barren. The farmers will then have to use more fertilizers; and since commercial fertilizers are derived from petroleum, that is solving a problem using the problem itself as the solution. Funny, but when I laugh it hurts.

Mendoza says tropical forests are being cleared (in Brazil and Borneo) and replanted with biofuel crops (oil palm in Borneo, sugarcane in Brazil). Worldwide, we are losing (biodiversity) more than we are getting back (biofuel). Our economics is good but we need wisdom.

Large-scale cropping is usually one-crop affairs, or mono-cropping, Mendoza says, which leads to soil erosion, nutrient leaching, and decline of crop resistance to pests (including diseases), which leads to the spraying of more pesticides. More of the same leads to more of the same.

Mendoza explains that because the supply of corn is being diverted to the making of ethanol instead of feed (for poultry & livestock) or food (for people), and since the US produces 40% of the world’s corn and supplies 70% of all corn exports, whatever ethanol science the US practices on corn, that’s the dominant science that applies. Thus, with American corn, science favors the rich. In Brazil, ethanol science is applied on sugarcane, but since it disfavors the environment, it is not sweet science either.

I know of an ethanol science that favors the poor, and it comes from the other side of the world, the land of Mahatma Gandhi, that is, India. The science is applicable to sweet sorghum as the feedstock for ethanol; sweet sorghum science has been generated by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) under the leadership of Director General William D Dar who has headed the Institute since 2000.

As far as I’m concerned, and learning from Team ICRISAT, I believe sweet sorghum is the ideal crop for ethanol because it does not encroach on food crop lands, and it grows on fragile environments where sugarcane or corn will grow but poorly if at all. You don’t have to fertilize sweet sorghum.

The sweet sorghum grain is for food, yes, but the source of ethanol is not the same as the source of food: grain for the food, stalk for the fuel, unlike corn (only the grain) or sugarcane (only the stalk).

If you fertilize and spray chemicals on your biofuel crop, as you must with sugarcane and corn, you waste energy as Mendoza explains in his paper. But you don’t have to fertilize and spray with sweet sorghum, so you save energy instead.

And yet, if you continue growing biofuel crops with so much fertilizer and so much pesticide, according to the good Professor, you are only adding to the pollution, not reducing it. And I agree. And if you are a Yankee growing corn for ethanol, you are the Sheriff of Nottingham robbing the poor to give to the rich. And only you and your Merry Men with all that fund will have all the fun.

The substitute is better!

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
My American Book. Embracing Science Embracing Faith

A newsmagazine has just given birth to a book by one of its writers; the newsmagazine is American Chronicle based in Beverly Hills, California, USA; the book is by a Filipino based in Manila in the Philippines, Frank A Hilario. The book: Team ICRISAT Champions the Poor, published 2007 November by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) based in Andhra Pradesh, India. The book comes with an inside back pocket with a CD, which contains the book itself in portable document format (pdf), that which opens with Adobe Reader. Excellent! Print and pdf in one package: I like to think that that is ICRISAT’s way of saying, ‘You can’t have too much of a good think.’

It is a think book. In a letter-size format of 128 pages, my book is my own selection of 22 essays (and a bonus of 1) all published by the American Chronicle:

‘The Yankee Dawdle. On Discovery Sorghum, The Great Climate Crop’ (February 4) – While the Yankee George W Bush twiddled his thumb, sweet sorghum was awaiting discovery of the world as the great climate change crop – according to The Gospel According To Frank.

‘An Inconvenient Truth: William Dar, The Filipino As Global Manager’ (February 26) – Can the Filipino ever be a world-class science manager? Here is one who has shown everyone that yes, the Filipino can: William Dar, an Ilocano from Ilocos Sur.

‘Primate Change? Or Climate Change? You Choose! – The Blogal Village Voice’ (March 3) – My plea for bloggers to upload and be counted in the campaign for the fight to mitigate climate change. Blogging is the freest speech I have ever seen, where you can easily insult or easily inform, easily enrage or easily enthuse.

‘The Children Of Maidanek. Or, Drawing Gas & Drawing Butterflies’ (May 20) – Q: How is it that the children waiting for their end in the gas chambers of Adolf Hitler had the insight to draw butterflies on the walls that would suffocate them to death? A: Butterflies are free!

‘Al Gore Of Science. Being About William Dar & ‘Science With A Human Face’’ (June 24) – Al Gore is a non-scientist educating us on the perils of petroleum; William Dar is a scientist educating us on the promise of plants as sources of substitute petroleum fuels. The substitute is better!

‘UP! Pinoy Chairs UN Scientific Body On Desertification’ (September 12) – A great honor for a Filipino to be elected by his peers as Chair of the United Nations’ Committee on Science & Technology focused on drylands turning to desertlands.

‘Being A Different Kind Of CV. Globally Yours, William Dar’ (September 21) – An attempt to write a complete essay based largely on the data listed in a curriculum vitae, a first. William Dar is of course the Filipino Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) based in India, ICRISAT being rated Outstanding 2007 by the World Bank for total performance in 2006.

‘The Telugu Paradigm. Understanding VASAT, The Illiterate’s Internet (September 25) – Here is an essay on a piece of the Internet that begins with the farmer asking a question, not a scientist providing the answer before the question has ever been asked – a unique bottom-to-top approach to knowledge diffusion.

‘To Catch An Insight. Forget Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis’ (September 27) – How do you translate, transform or rewrite technical language into plain English? First you try and catch an insight. (As in, go fly a kite.)

‘‘Survival Of The Fittest’ Revised. To The Breeders, To Make Much Of Time’ (October 1) – Instead of plant breeders looking for the best performance among varieties in a batch, I suggest that they look for the best performance of a particular variety in a particular site, so that if you have 13 varieties on test in 13 locations, you have 13 best performers to recommend to 13 sites. That’s fast-tracking research for development.

‘Learning From Microsoft R4D. The New Paradigm For Research’ (October 3) – Research for development, R4D. Microsoft is demand-driven, or should be; it conducts research intended to develop a product or service. This is instead of trying to conduct research for research’s sake, the development coming later if it proves appropriate, a waste of time, intelligence, money, efforts.

‘The Turning Point. Know That Silent Water Runs Deep’ (October 4) – My little story of Adarsha, an Indian village where the people learned the value of cooperation in water conservation, the missing link in the fight against drought in the Ranga Reddy District, Andhra Pradesh, India. The drylands of the world can learn from Adarsha.

‘GMA’s Indian Summer. Writing The Philippine Story’ (Revised Edition) (October 6) – When my President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo visited India in early October this year, the Philippines and India signed many an agreement, including on the development of biofuels. Plants instead of petroleum.

‘The Knowledge Initiative. ‘Let Knowledge Come From Everywhere’’ (October 6) – Currently, there is a US-India program called ‘The Knowledge Initiative’ wherein Indian nationals learn from their American counterparts such as drought management, food processing and so on to enhance the industrial development of their country. I propose that the Philippines procure the same arrangement with the United States.

‘Biofuel Islands. ‘We Are Producing The Fuel Of The Future’’ (October 9) – The Philippine National Oil Corporation is into the production of biodiesel from Jatropha curcas. The intention is good; the problem is that jatropha is poisonous and it is still a wild, untamed plant, its stable yield in terms of extracted yet unknown.

‘The Color Yellow. Run, Al Gore, Run’ (Run, ICRISAT, Run!)’ (October 14) – Al Gore and the UN panel on climate change win the Nobel Prize for Peace for their work on global warming. The color Yellow signifies that for mankind the next traffic change will be either for Green’ (for Go), or for Red (Full Stop).

‘What’s In A Name? IGNRM. A Phrase Or Some Other Name Would Be Nice’ (October 17) – The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics adopts ‘integrated genetic and natural resource management’ (IGNRM) as their ‘overarching strategy’ for institutional, team work. I try to explain in by playing with the letters IGNRM that when pronounced with 5 vowels and 1 consonant (OAOUS) and positioned exactly right means the exact opposite of what is meant.

‘Science Parks, Stops. Being A Proposal For Innovation Teams’ (October 17) – Team ICRISAT has made excellent use of the idea of a science park by inventing what it calls a business incubator, that which is science partnering with entrepreneurs partnering with cultivators of crops with active local government advocacy.

‘Talking To Strangers? Bill Gates Dotting His i’s, Crossing His Peas’ (October 18) – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds an African project on legumes, a strange field for a nerd. Thanks, Bill!

‘Choosing Joy. Being How To Interpret Science Language’ (October 22) – I guarantee you will find happiness in working with technical language and transforming it into popular language if you choose joy in the first place – first learn to love what you’re doing even before you do it, or you’ll never do it right and that will add to your misery.

‘Seeds For My Sweet. Sorghum For My Honey, Satisfaction Guaranteed!’ (October 26) – I compare sugarcane and corn and sweet sorghum as sources of bioethanol. Sugarcane is sweet, but sweet sorghum is sweeter.

‘Academe As Anti-Poor. The University Of The Philippines A Hundred Years Hence’ (October 27) – Unless my alma mater, the University of the Philippines (UP) understands poverty in its many senses, UP will always be in essence anti-poor.

A bonus essay is ‘BioPower To The People! The Song Of Sweet Sorghum.’ first published in frankahilario.com May 1. It is about the initiative of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics called ‘BioPower’ – the growing of biofuel crops that fit the circumstances of the poor: poor soils, poor access to capital, poor access to information, poor markets, poor distribution of benefits. I call sweet sorghum ‘a rich man’s choice of a poor man’s crop.’ Go and multiply!

The 22 essays in the book (and 48 more) were written between February 4 and October 27 this year all published by the American Chronicle. The 23 essays in my book are my love letters to my readers as well as these people of diverse and differing gray matters in the United States and in these Pearls of the Orient Seas, my country, the Philippines:

Al Gore, who awakened me to the danger of change – climate change;
George W Bush, who awakened me to the danger when people refuse to change;
Joseph Estrada, who awakened me to the danger in appearances;
Gringo Honasan, who awakened me to the danger in militant peace;
Antonio Trillanes, who awakened me to the danger in militant adventurism;
Intellectuals of the University of the Philippines, who awakened me to the danger in militant nationalism;
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who awakened me to the danger when people depreciate you for the size of your body and don’t appreciate you for the size of your mind.

Along with quite a few others of the male species:

Edward de Bono, who with his book The Mechanism Of Mind taught me not only critical thinking but more so creative thinking;

Rudolf Flesch, who with his book How To Write, Think And Speak More Effectively taught me to think beyond self-imposed borders of the mind;

Peter Drucker, who with his insights not only in the management of men and minds taught me to think of information as intellectual capital;

Jose Rizal, the national hero of my country, who with his genius showed the world, even before Mahatma Gandhi did, the matter of peace as the way to move people in the path of progress.

My book is about believing in a greater cause than money, greater than US President George W Bush, greater than the mightiest country in history, greater even than science: Global Warming. Each of the essays – for essays they are, very personal – shows warmth not so much coming from the writer as much as it is coming from the sun that will keep temperatures rising until we set it, the Sun of Climate Change.

You might think of my book as a multi-country enterprise, reflecting the intellectual geography where it’s coming from. Using your Mercator map, if you triangulate American Chronicle in the USA, me in the Philippines and ICRISAT in India, what countries do you find included? Asia of course, and Africa, where you find millions upon millions of the poor. Science is not good enough if it’s not good enough for the poor.

No, I don’t write for the poor. Of course not – they can’t read me.

And why not Filipino, my country’s national language? Because English is the richest language in the world, because only in English can you have the full measure of science – with apologies to German, which is Greek to me – only in English can I have the full measure (my cup runneth over) of my Catholic faith, only in English can I express myself completely, convincingly, competently, creatively.

Years ago, on some occasions when I was asked to speak before a group, while the previous speakers went into the Filipino (Tagalog) mode, I used to say, ‘You have to excuse me, for I too am a victim of colonial education.’ If English is colonial education, so be it; I find that it nourishes my brain and nurtures my soul – I would not have known about the two other sources of Roman Catholicism other than the Bible, and these are the Magisterium and Holy Tradition, if I didn’t read English.

And contrary to what in my country the activists claim, I don’t have to speak your language to help you.

My book formally introduces a new genre of science writing, that which I refer to as the Franciscan essay – Francisco is my full name and Franciscan reflects my Catholicism (as in no divorce in court, no condom in class) – the essay being a blend of the certainty of science with the credulity of faith, a blend of seriousness with playfulness – technical jargon translated into the popular much with confidence, often with humor, forever with an offbeat style.

In my book, you will find Robert Frost, who taught me to take the road less travelled. Norman Mailer, who taught me to write with heart. William Shakespeare, who taught me to appreciate the English language more than anyone of my teachers. John Kennedy, who taught me to ask what I can do for my country and not ask instead what my country can do for me, like the Manila complainers, mendicants, oppositionists do. Ray Bradbury, who taught me that to write is to ‘Live forever!’ William Dar, who is my Al Gore of Science. Santiago R Obien, who is my Wizard of Rice. Bill Gates, who is my Wizard of OS (as in operating system).

About my many faiths, the list includes the speed and quality of work one can do with the personal computer, the priceless treasures one can find in the Internet if one is intent, the infinite capacity of the human brain to see all things new, the goodness that men (embracing women) can do if they will.

My book is science with faith, not in the sense of Christian Science, but in that my science story is tempered with my Roman Catholic faith; it is East and West, and ever the twain meet. Science, because there must be a reason for everything. Faith, because I believe, and you cannot reason out a belief.

I believe in science; I believe in God and I believe in family, and you can’t take that away from me.

My book formally introduces a new genre of science writing, that which I refer to as the Franciscan essay – Francisco is my full name and Franciscan reflects my Catholicism (as in no divorce in court, no condom in class) – the essay being a blend of the certainty of science with the credulity of faith, a blend of seriousness with playfulness – technical jargon translated into the popular much with confidence, often with humor, forever with an offbeat style.

I’m glad ICRISAT found me because I liked the science I found in it, which Team ICRISAT has summarized into ‘Science with a human face’ (its mantra) for a ‘grey to green revolution’ (its motto).

My essays, where are all these coming from? In my book, some of the wit and without come from the Reader’s Digest – love at first sight; I’ve been in love with this creature since high school, and that’s a long, long time – would you believe 50 years? From the great copywriter David Ogilvy comes my long-windedness, from the great playwright George Bernard Shaw comes the irreverent wit, and from the great story teller Oscar Wilde, imagination.

Oh yes, with Ray Bradbury I imagine we will live forever!

Find your meaning!

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full essay)
‘Building Individuals Building Institutions
Building A Country Called The Philippines’

The History Place (historyplace.com) gives me a good list of what happened or who died or who was born who was important in the month of December throughout recorded time, but it misses on the most patriotic date celebrated in my country, the Philippines: 1896 December 30, in the early morning of which the frightened Spanish conquistadores executed Dr Jose Rizal, a man of peace whose very personality reminded his enemies the greatness his race was capable of.

I call Rizal’s execution The Spanish Mistake, since that act angered the Filipinos so much they rose in arms against the Spaniards and toppled an empire. Both The History Place and The Spanish Mistake remind me that when you make a mistake in history, someone is bound to take notice.

Thanks to the incomplete list of The History Place, I have had the insight that I have to jot down my own December List and record my own December Meanings. I forgot that in life any month of the year, only you can make your own lists and make your own meanings in the first place. Unless of course now you’re tired of making a list (and checking it twice), or now life has no meaning at all to you. Still, Phyxius says, ‘The fact that life has no meaning *is* the reason to live’ (phyxius.livejournal.com). Find your meaning!

I’m 67 going on 68 and life has more meaning to me now than when I was 30, 40, or 50. The years don’t necessarily add meaning to your life; rather, your life adds meaning to your years.

I realize today, December 12 in Manila, that December is a most meaningful month in the history of science in my country. I’m referring to making men out of boys and building institutions out of muddy ricefields. You make your own fun.

Largely because of its publications, in a few months, from unknown, FORI became an internationally respected name. Years later, a good friend and sometime mentor Jeremias A Canonizado (JAC) said to me even if I wasn’t asking: ‘You know, there were only two people who made FORI, Pete Bueno and Frank Hilario.’ JAC said that, not me. (Pete was my division chief who was very supportive – he left me to my own devices and lifted me up when I was down for the count.)

Thanks to the power of words.

In his book, SRO did not try to classify himself in the universe of management except to say what he did was ‘in the art of institution building’ – which I think is downgrading what he actually accomplished: he built individuals who together built the institution called PhilRice (see also my essay ‘The Wizard of Rice who cultivated minds,’ 2006 July 31, americanchronicle.com). Management is building people, not building buildings. Building people and buildings is building a country.

Thanks to the power of leadership.

With the help of 3 different successive yearly Board of Directors of the CSSP, I achieved the impossible: I finished the 2006 December issue of the journal in 2006 May 6, or 12 months before the next issue of April 2007 was to be published. That May, I could (and did) boast on the Internet: ‘We are the most advanced knowledge base in crops in the whole science world’ (cropsciencephilippines.blogspot.com). I was a one-man-band I didn’t know I could be. I was doing all the editing and desktop publishing myself. I also took to heart Robert Frost’s message, ‘The Road Not Taken,’ and chose not PageMaker but Bill Gates’ Microsoft Word XP. Now I’m using Word 2003, which is even better for high-end desktop publishing. (And Word 2007? A stranger to me – I don’t talk to strangers. Read also my 2007 May 31 essay, ‘Maxing Microsoft Word 2003,’ americanchronicle.com).

Thanks to the power of initiative.

December always reminds me there is only one Heaven and there is only one King. Even if this year I don’t see Christmas lights in the street where we live – I blame the dampened spirit on Those Who Would Be King in What Would Be Heaven to them – December is still the most festive of all months in the Philippines. If we could sharpen, perfect, polish our minds and fortify and educate our hearts for others, any month of the year would be the most festive of all for all.

Good news can be funny

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘What Do You Do With The Poor? Wrong Question’

Good news can be funny, and in the least expected place too. Funny, but it’s the Bible, yes. Know what? At 5 early this morning, Tuesday, December 11 in Manila, surfing the Web looking for the poor, I suddenly realized the New Testament has a funny bone. Here’s what made me laugh, this verse coming bright from the Gospel of St Matthew 11:5 (English Standard Version 2001, semanticbible.com):

The blind receive their sight, and
the lame walk, and
the lepers are cleansed, and
the deaf hear, and
the dead are raised up, and
the poor have good news preached to them.

St Matthew, not fair!

The national hero of the Philippines, Jose Rizal, himself wrote on the first page of his first book Noli Me Tangere (1887): ‘Like an electric jolt the news circulated around the world of social parasites, the pests or dregs which God in His infinite goodness created and very fondly breeds in Manila.’

Not funny. The rich receive gifts, the poor receive jokes.

His name was Jesus. He truly said, ‘For you always have the poor with you … But you will not always have me’ (Mark 14:7). Actually, the poor we do not always have with us either because:

(1) We cannot see ourselves.
(2) Often, we put the poor out of our mind.
(3) They’re not in the neighborhood. We don’t look out windows.
(4) They’re not in class. We send our children to a private school.
(5) They’re not in our conscience. They are poor because they’re lazy.
(6) They’re not in our bankbook. We are saving money for our family.
(7) They’re in the news asking for help. They’re the problem of government, not ours.

According to Wikipedia, the World Bank’s study of 20,000 of the poor in 23 countries, Voices Of The Poor, has identified these as what poor people think poverty is all about:
* precarious livelihoods
* excluded locations
* physical limitations
* gender relationships
* problems in social relationships
* lack of security
* abuse by those in power
* disempowering institutions
* limited capabilities
* weak community organizations.

Who are the poor? Not anymore those ‘lacking material possessions’ (Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online); not anymore ‘having little or no wealth and few or no possessions’ (American Heritage Dictionary). The World Bank report is science telling me I don’t know the poor anymore!

Now that we have science claiming to be the only arbiter of the true, the good and the beautiful, I ask our scientists:

Can the poor be helped?
A corollary question: Can the rich be helped?

I rather believe that the poor can be helped – The rich? Let them help themselves! Otherwise, the rich we will always have with us.

Yes, but first we must help those who would help the poor:
Do they know what they’re doing?
Do they know the cause(s) of poverty?
Do they know the options in eliminating poverty?
On one hand, have they asked the poor what they want?
On the other hand, can the poor distinguish real from felt needs?
What do the poor want? Wealth. What do they need? I’m afraid even they don’t know what they need.

They say they need to own a piece of land. They call it land tenure. But you don’t need to own a piece of land in order to cultivate it, to make it productive. Ask the economists.

They say they need capital. You don’t need your own capital either. Okay, but are they prepared to be entrepreneurs? I know of a place where the Mayor, a kindhearted man, had sufficient funds for development and hundreds of citizens borrowed from that fund after submitting very well-written feasibility studies. What happened? The feasibility studies were copies of copies. The millions were spent, and no one ever paid back the Mayor. The attitude was: ‘The money comes from the government anyway. We don’t have to repay the loan.’ And these were educated people, some of them professionals, by no means poor people. Poor people!

Scientists say the need is to cut down on the human population. Tell that to the marines! I have 1 wife, zero extra-marital affairs, zero adoptions, zero abortions, these many children (count them): Tina, Jomar, Dida, Jay, Techie, Cynthia, Dingot, Jinny, Daphne, Neenah, Edwin, Ela – a dozen, 12.

In any case, I don’t believe the population is the problem – instead, it’s the food distribution or, if you like, the wealth distribution. There are those above who have more than they can handle and there are those below who have nothing at all. (We’re above the below.) It’s the total number of those who are selfish that’s the problem, not the total population.

The Malthusian theory of human population forever overtaking the food supply does not consider human creativity and ingenuity. In fact, it is science that says science is inutile, utterly useless. Science cannot solve a scientific problem! Science cannot solve the food problem because it’s trying to solve the population problem, which is not the problem. That’s the problem with science.

From science, I’m back to my faith. Faith has reason that science itself doesn’t know.

Let’s try again: Why are the poor that poor?

It must be capitalism – there are 37 million poor in the United States of America, according to the British (observer.guardian.co.uk); there are 90 million according to American Richard Cook (theperfectsystem.net). (The American sees poor where the British doesn’t?)

It must be socialism – there are 80 million poor in China (Paromita Shastri, livemint.com).

It must be Islam – there are 37 million poor in Indonesia (Indonesia-pretoria.org.za).

It must be the caste system – India has the largest number of poor people in the world, according to Kaushik Basu (news.bbc.co.uk); the total is 250 million, according to Shastri (cited).

It must be Roman Catholicism – there are 24 million poor in these Pope-adoring, Mama-Mary-loving, rosary-praying thousands of islands called the Philippines (ifad.org).

It must be climate change aka global warming – there are billions of poor people all over the world.

George Soros tells us (woopidoo.com), ‘Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.’ I told you so! Nobody is to blame, except the poor people themselves.

In Manila, what do the poor people do? They protest. I think the Philippines is truly the Protestant country and not the United States of America. Every time something goes wrong, the noisy minority blame Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, a Roman Catholic, and they take to the streets in Metro Manila in protest; even some of the Roman Catholic bishops blame GMA. In fact, even the Senate has become a House of Protest – they call it ‘inquiry in aid of legislation.’ They’ve been doing that for years they must be ready for a mile-long Senate Bill to consider, if they can get their act together.

How do you explain the passion for the uninterruptible power supply grab attempts in Manila? Those who are always planning a coup are always doing it for the poor. The only problem is that they’re doing it without consulting the poor. They must assume that the poor cannot think for themselves. This is known as top-to-bottom approach to people development – the experts know better. They should know better!

Don’t look at the United States of America as role model. To cut the number of poor people in the world in half by 2015, developed countries like Britain, France and Germany have pledged 0.7% of their gross national product as their official development assistance (ODA) to developing countries (iht.com). The world’s richest country, USA, pledged only 0.1% ODA. Losing his touch of gold, here is King Midas giving a Scrooge of a gift.

In Manila, I want to eliminate the number of those with palms always open, always begging, always relying on the government for their welfare, or building hovels here and there and declaring preeminent domain – no one can dislodge them from squatting underneath bridges, along riverbanks in the cities, along streets in the metropolis, along railroad tracks elsewhere. That’s how the poor insinuate themselves on society, as matter occupying space.

If the government doesn’t help the poor, I’m not surprised: it’s historical. History repeats itself.

If the rich don’t help the poor, I’m not surprised: it’s biblical. The history of unlove repeats itself. (The Bible is historical, right?)

Actually, the poor are on the pages of history. The history of the poor repeats itself. And the rich are on the other pages of history. The history of the rich repeats itself too.

What do we do with those who are always attempting a coup? Remind the coup plotters that if they forget the past, they are bound to repeat it. The history of failure repeats itself too.

What do we do with the rest of the people? Remind the people that it was not God who made the poor that poor – it was the people themselves.

Know then that the poor we will always have with us. Because the poverty of our spirit we will always have with us. Us, meaning the rich, and the poor. The rich, who would not help the poor, and the poor, who would not help themselves.

Merry Christmas, rich! What do you do with the poor? They have to help themselves too. Instead of waiting for other people to make miracles for them, they have to help themselves make their miracles come true.

Why did Jesus never become rich? Wrong question!

How to harvest rain? Catch!

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘To Pray For Rain, Build A Pond & Get Rid Of The Witch Doctor’

People, water is every country’s greatest natural treasure, I say – no, people are not resources; they’re more – but we take water for granted until there’s a drought, we take people for granted until we know they’re not coming back. That’s when we lose not only the water, not only our loved ones but also our reason. We pray.

Governor Sonny Perdue, Pastor Maurice Watson and others prayed for rain on the steps of the Capitol of Georgia, the US of A on November 13; I wrote about it (‘Elementary, Pastor Watson. Georgia Prays For Rain …’ (americanchronicle.com), but I couldn’t stay around for God’s answer – I was thousands of miles away. Anyway, it would have been anticlimactic.

A little or no rain afterwards, I would not have been surprised. Even Lucian Lamar Sneed, Chair of the Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee (Indians) and a Methodist said (Bo Emerson, November 13, ajc.com), ‘God’s not impressed by rain dances. He’s impressed by the sincerity of the prayer.’

Lucian, I wasn’t impressed by the sincerity of the prayer myself. Because intelligent, liberal minds have declared the separation of Church and State, I thought it was illogical and irrational that the State (represented by man’s Reason) would ask for favor from God (represented by man’s Faith) whom it had alienated. No matter whose Constitution it is or what it says, since man’s (embracing woman’s) reason cannot really be separated from his faith (whatever it is), for you to pray for rain is to deny yourself (your reason). Where there is drought, there is drought not of faith but of reason.

I know, God works miracles; that’s why it’s easier to pray for rain than to work for it. That explains why the harvest is plenty but the workers are few. Now, do not pray the Lord of the Harvest will send more workers; rather, send yourselves.

What kind of workers? All kinds. Everyone. Believers all. Believers all in themselves.

‘Georgia was enduring its worst drought in a century,’ and there had been no rain for 14 months, says Michael Grunwald (November 19, time.com). Time’s headline asks: ‘Did Georgia bring the drought on itself?’ Of course. We all bring the sin on ourselves. We have not been good stewards, period. ‘We’re not going to break any drought,’ says meteorologist Robert Beasley (James Salzer, November 13, ajc.com), ‘but it’s better than nothing.’ No, Robert, it’s not praying that matters; it’s breaking the drought that does.

While the people of the State of Georgia in the USA were praying for rain, the people of the Raj Samadhiyala village in the State of Gujarat in India were harvesting rain, literally, no thanks to the witch doctors.

This story of the rainmakers of Raj Samadhiyala started in 1978 when Sri Hardevsingh Jadeja was elected Sarpanch. Jadeja, a postgraduate in English, believed in rajashahi (autocratic rule) (Sheela Bhatt, 2000, rediff.com). ‘Without discipline no development is possible,’ Jadeja said. He had a mind of his own.

At that time, Rajkot District, where Raj Samadhiyala lies, faced a major water drought. The groundwater table had receded to a depth of 250 meters below the Earth’s surface. During the crisis, while Government experts debated how to bring water to the villages, Jadeja taught the villagers what their forefathers knew: how to harvest rain.

Here’s a summary of what the people did in this Indian village:

(1) Instead of praying for the absent rain, they caught the present rain. They trapped the rain on the roof into water tanks to recharge their own thirsty homes.

(2) Instead of allowing the rain to run off from the farms, they build ponds to recharge their own open wells.

(3) Instead of allowing rainwater in other places to run off into rivers and streams, they trapped the water through check dams to recharge the thirsty underground water canals of their own village, their watershed.

(4) Improving on the check dams, they made dikes on the land where exist cracks underneath the earth, and these replenished the water in underground canals so much faster, and the levels of water in wells, lakes and springs rose. By 2002, the underground water level had risen to 15 meters near the soil surface, a rise of 235 meters in 17 years (rainwaterharvesting.org), an awesome rise of 14 meters a year.

Necessary as it is, a village doesn’t live by water alone. The ICRISAT report tells me that led by Sarpanch Jadeja, the Panchayat transformed Raj Samadhiyala from a village of lack to a village of filled needs, and beyond. A set of community rules were formulated and strictly enforced by the VDC to maintain discipline in the village. Aside from water harvesting, the village council generated and implemented several initiatives:

1. widening of roads
2. renovation of the Ram temple
3. getting rid of witch doctors
4. banning drinking of alcohol
5. banning the use of plastics.

These were to address the economic, religious, medical, social and environmental concerns of the village. The wider roads move the fresh produce faster from farm to market. The Ram temple nourishes the faith the more. The fake healers have to be emasculated. Drinking encourages other vices, not to mention being quick to anger. Not biodegradable, plastics obstinately clog the canals and waterways. Everything considered: The people are not just individuals; they are families; they are a village. The village is greater than the sum of the villagers.

No, God’s not impressed with rain dances but by the sincerity of the prayer. And there’s no prayer more sincere than going ahead and doing it. This is the story of Raj Samadhiyala, a village in India whose prosperity started not by praying for rain but harvesting rain. And no, these Indians didn’t pray the Lord of the Harvest send them more workers – they sent themselves.

I’m richer in hope

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link for source or click for full article)
‘GMA’s Trip To History. The Gain In Spain
Fails Merely On The Plain Of Brain’

If you belong to the Filipino opposition, or if you are plain of brain, which may be the same thing, you will not appreciate the fact that because of GMA’s visit to Spain Monday, December 3, the Spanish and Philippine Governments will be implementing, for example, several infrastructure projects worth a total of euros 206M in the Visayas and Mindanao (Michael Lim Ubac, globalnation.inquirer.net). That to me proves that the euro has a strong faith in my country as the dollar, Spain as the US.

Because of US Ambassador Kristie Kenney’s support to my President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo during the Manila Peninsula caper of Senator Antonio Trillanes and Brigadier General Danilo Lim and their cohorts, she is a hero in my Ilocano eyes, next only to GMA. The only other hero of mine is our national hero Jose Rizal, a Tagalog, who was a willing martyr to peaceful reforms, who said he was willing to die for his country – and did. My hero! Is Trillanes a hero? Is Lim a hero? Is Bonifacio a hero? Not in my poor Ilocano eyes – I do not believe in armed struggle. And GMA? She is small but terrible, and I thank God for that.

With that, you can accuse me of being pro-American, and I am: I prefer to write in (American) English than in the (Philippine) national language called Filipino. You can accuse me of being provincial, and I am – GMA’s mother comes from my province, Pangasinan. Because of the United States of America, I am rich in ideas, no matter that I am poor in the pocket. And with GMA? I am richer in hope for my country.

Euros 206M: Is Spain helping the Philippines as a means of saying sorry for having subjugated us from the 16th to the 19th century? Is the US supporting the Philippines as a means of saying she regrets colonizing us from 1900 to 1946? It doesn’t matter. These are the times that fry men’s (embracing women’s) souls, and we need all the help we can get.

During GMA’s visit, King Juan Carlos I said the diplomatic relations between Spain and the Philippines established 60 years ago was ‘a model which other countries in the (Asian) region have fortunately adopted’ (Lim Ubac, cited). ‘The great challenge of our time is to further the construction of democratic coexistence, and consolidate participative structures which include all citizens without distinction.’ To me, the King was not speaking metaphorically or vaguely. No matter how I look at it, an establishment of a military dictatorship is not a construction of democratic coexistence; it is not a consolidation of participative structures and includes citizens only with distinction. Which tells me democracy is too important to be left to the defense by the military.

In my country, the Philippines, the naysayers are a dime a dozen, and they are Filipinos and non-Filipinos. So, Sherwin Olaes writes ‘GMA’s Europe trip a waste of people’s money, says Migrante’ (December 3, tribune.net.ph). Migrante Europe, a group of Filipino workers abroad, pointed out that the tour was a big delegation of ‘Cabinet officials, ally congressmen and favored businessmen.’ A huge party? Of course! I’m not surprised. I credit GMA’s enemies for it. With so much whacking and walloping my country has been getting from nationalists, oppositionists and other saviors of the nation, all demonstrative – they’re always demonstrating – you need a huge delegation to show the world that the Philippines is alive and well, thank you very much.

So, Emma-Kate Symons writing in Manila has nothing but her negative views in the news item ‘Arroyo allies win trip to Spain’ (December 5, theaustralian.news.com.au); she didn’t even report the name of the plane. They could not have won, my dear Emma, as there was no contest – you are contesting why the planeload of GMA’s European party – it’s a European tour, in case you didn’t notice. You call it a junket? I call it a celebration.

You don’t think GMA and allies deserve to party after swiftly quelling the latest audacious and dramatic attempt at another coup in my country? Even US Ambassador Kristie Kenney sent her congratulations after the putsch, saying ‘I thought the way the situation was resolved safely, quickly, great professionalism was exhibited by the Philippine police, the Philippine Armed Forces’ (Sun Yunlong, December 4, xinhuanet.com). ‘I’m delighted it’s over and we can go back to business as usual.’ To top it all, Ms Kristie says, ‘We’re a strong ally and partner.’ We Filipinos can win them all if we will.

Rizal wrote his ultimate poem hours before he was executed on 1896 December 30. He displayed courage in facing the bullets of the enemy; he showed compassion even to those who would end his life by expressing love in that poem and not a hint of reproach to anyone. The Filipino is capable of sublime thoughts.

Not only in literature but also in the arts did Filipinos excel in Spain. In her speech at the Madrid City Hall, GMA pointed out that ‘It was also here in Madrid that our great artists, Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo brought honor to the Filipino community’ when during the National Exposition of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1884, Juan Luna’s canvas ‘Spoliarium’ won the gold medal and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s painting “Christian Virgins Exposed to the Populace’ won the silver medal (Gregorio F Zaide, Jose Rizal: Life, Works And Writing, 2003, Mandaluyong City: National Book Store, page 65). The Filipinos are capable of magnificent art.

In 1941, a Filipino journalist won the US’ top award for reporting, the Pulitzer Prize; he was Carlos P Romulo, who went on to become the first Asian to serve as President of the UN General Assembly in 1949 (answers.com). When Filipino reporters are good, they are among the best in the world; when they are bad, they think only of the freedom of the press, not freedom of the oppressed.

To write well, search well

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link or click for full article)
‘Science Serves The People When Media Create
Critical Mass Content, Not Discontent’

Among what I call climate change crops, jatropha is a strange species in science. Among the paths to take on the road to creative writing, math is a strange device. Stranger than fiction? In truth, that’s what I’d like to invite you to find out. (I’m no stranger to fiction myself.) What about the mass media? In the Philippines, judging from their performances in many an attempted coup, I think the mass media know about critical mass; what they have to learn is creative content and to differentiate it from creative contentiousness, which like jatropha can be beautiful and contain its own poison.

Since I can’t find a textbook or manual or guidebook on how to translate the language of scientists into the language of the marketplace, since I don’t know of any course on how to write on R&D for non-R&D people, I have decided to write the book on how to popularize science.

In my country the Philippines in the meantime, I want to discourage people from joining rallies of discontent and answering calls for People Power without content; instead, I want to encourage the articulate young ones, as well as the articulate young once, into intellectual exercises selling science in the countryside, to discourage them from selling violence in the city.

Adams says schools focus on education by cultivating memory, not cultivating the mind itself; I say our professors in their daily lessons and our journalists in their daily reports are guilty of stultifying the mind of those ever so young.

I note with sadness that the journalists of today in these Pearls of the Orient Seas have abnegated their duty to bring new or improved knowledge either to the city or the village.

In the Philippines, our reporters broadcasting on radio or TV, our journalists writing in newspapers or magazines are too preoccupied with observing and expostulating on the dimensions of dissent in the language of the nationalists and disunited opposition, the language of the New Protestation in the Philippines (where the ladies do protest too much), the tongue of the New Dissent (they do talk too much).

There is also the question of the national language that they (I don’t) call Filipino, which is in fact plain and not-so-simple Tagalog; our men of the mass media cannot be bothered to spend endless and English hours interpreting science (embracing technology) to benefit the vast majority of our people, especially those who have less in life and not much more in law (and cannot afford to buy newspapers).

I say you cannot write science in Filipino and be intelligent about it. I challenge the many nationalists in and out of the University of the Philippines to do just that. Let’s see that brilliance shine on the forehead, but not in the limelight.

To be meaningful to the people, science writing must come with the promise of added income as reward for honest & productive manual, mechanical or intellectual labor. Anyway, that’s the usual promise of science journalists; it’s has been that for the last 50 years at least.

To empower, to transform the mendicant, dependent, non-enterprising poor into self-reliant families – yes, I wish to focus on families, not simply individuals, not simply women – science writers must help cultivate the virtue of entrepreneurship, not adventureship, for citizens to add value to raw materials for consumers and to add value to their own lives, not depend on others to define their own lives.

Entrepreneurship is risk-taking. As of today, scholars in universities, policy makers in government, columnists in newspapers, hosts on TV recognize only one risk, and that is population explosion – and the solutions proposed are represented in one object of their desire: the condom. Not a very creative device, I must say, not to say an inconvenient ruse. That is to say, they have reduced the art & science of social progress to the size of your prophylactic.

Science writing must also be aimed at the national government, local government, as well as scientists themselves, not to mention ambitious politicians and pretenders to the seat of power. Governments think science is for scientists, and the scientists agree. Ladies and gentlemen, let us realize that science is far too important a subject to be left to scientists alone!

Science writing must be for the people at one end (feedforth) and from the people on the other end (feedback). Science without feedback (that is, supply-pushed) is devoid of common sense; with feedback, science gains relevance (that is, demand-driven).

In the Philippines, to many journalists, it is more exciting and psychically rewarding, if not financially so, to be pursuing the adventures of the Cute Crusaders in the Senate and the Pied Pipers of the House of Representatives who want to topple the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

If you aren’t using your head, you’ll find it easier to be anti than to learn to do the best you can in whatever you ought to be doing. You owe it to yourself first.

With science writing, I can’t blame the journalists – the schools didn’t teach them how to popularize science, that is to say, translate science into the language of the home, office, farm, waters, villages – the languages of the consumers. The schools taught them the who, what, where, when, why and how and not much else; if not that, then the students didn’t learn much more – which points back to the schools: If the students hadn’t learned, the teachers hadn’t taught.

There is also of course the science journalism of the know-it-alls: If you do it this way and no other, you will become rich, or richer. Their science journalism is reduced to a magic formula and all the science consumers have to do is follow the directions on the label. Their science is simply an instruction book. With your Core 2 Duo PC or your Nokia 5310, yes, you simply have to follow the user manual. But science must be an intellectual exercise; it must be a judgment call; there are many ways about it.

There are no courses on popularizing science; the subject they call Science Reporting is in fact technical writing, scientists writing for scientists. And to remind my protesting countrymen led by Senator Antonio Trillanes and Brigadier General Danilo Lim (see my essay ‘Manila Rain-Walk. The Day Senator Trillanes Declared A Revolt …,’ americanchronicle.com) that they ought to be using their own head, not that of others, I have decided to give out free advice on how to write science for the people without insulting their intelligence.

That brings me back to jatropha as ‘fuel for thought’ (Yolandi Groenewald, September 25, Mail & Guardian, mg.co.za). As to the science (embracing technology), how do you write creatively about jatropha, which Filipinos call tubang bakod (hedge fence), which scientists like to call instead with the Latinized name Jatropha curcas so that only they can understand?

I have in mind right now what I call the 5 Os of creative writing and I shall now illustrate how to use them using jatropha as the inconvenient fruit. Please note that the 5 Os are not stages in the creative process; they are not steps – you have to observe all the 5 Os, in any order, to be able to write well; the 5 are simply guides in writing:

On the other hand, Director General William Dar of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has asserted that there is really no science behind jatropha, meaning that there have not been reported and repeated formal experiments and trial plantings of jatropha whose consistent results could be used as basis for asserting information or sharing insights on this species.

What then is a poor science writer to do? Be open-minded and check out the counter-statements by asking other experts on the subject. Also search for available local literature on jatropha. If possible, go visit a farm where jatropha is being raised in commercial quantity, at least the seedlings.

Outside of local literature, outside of local experts, you need to go to sources of data and information outside the Philippines. You’re in luck; the Internet has been waiting for you for the last 20 years. Yes, the Internet is a wonderful knowledge source in most any subject; I thank God for the Internet. I can put in much content because of the World Wide Web.

At this point, to put order to the disorder, I recommend that you learn, if you don’t already use, the outline-organize feature of Microsoft Word 2003 – or Word 97 or Word XP but sorry, Word 2007 is a strange species to me – using working subtitles as organizing handles. Then you can collapse subtitles and texts and rearrange them at will: just cut & paste. That is only as much as I can tell you, as outlining-organizing is better seen than read. Yes, I say using the PC is a must if you want to be the best writer you can be. I must disagree with one of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury, whom there is no love lost with the computer.

The dictionary helps you understand terms and the long words that scientists are very fond of using, such as utilize instead of use, or experiment instead of try, or implement instead of do. The thesaurus helps you find the better (if not the best) word for what you’re thinking. The encyclopedia fills in the gaps of your knowledge or understanding. You can be so lucky!

On the other hand, objects of desire by readers include as many names, anecdotes, examples as you can put in. Again, if nothing else, the Internet can provide you materials for your article on jatropha, such as these:

You can find more jatropha data & information from the Internet. I googled simply for “jatropha” and got 648,000 English pages with Safesearch. If you want to write well, you have to search well.

Finally, there’s jatropha math.

At anytime during your writing, whether at the beginning, middle or end, to generate more ideas, in his book How To Write, Think And Speak More Effectively (amazon.com), Rudolf Flesch recommends math, that which you already know, My Dear Aunt Sally: multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. Like this:

Multiply what you have. Application: Stretch the argument of someone to the point of absurdity. From one basic proposition, derive one or two corollaries; the reverse is to generalize from particulars. From one observation, generate a few insights.

Divide what you don’t quite understand; for instance, break down a vague subject into something graspable, or reduce a big subject into smaller topics.

Add more of the same, or something different, to make it more attractive to your reader. Add more variety, more elements, more illustrations.

Subtract something you have difficulty handling, delete that which isn’t so convincing or which makes dull reading.

Jatropha math: You don’t have to perform all the operations at the same time; you don’t have to perform all the operations at one time, just one. And you don’t even have to perform addition or subtraction first before division or multiplication. Just do it!

Rudolf Flesch’s math helps explain why, while I’m not always right, I’m always original.

Celebrate life! not cerebrate

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link or click for full article)
‘Merry Christmas? Consequently, Merry Christmas!’

In his time, did Jose Rizal, emerging non-Catholic, celebrate Christmas? I thought he didn’t, until I checked the correspondence. I found two references to Christmas Day, and the two reveal much of Rizal’s idea of Christmas and of Christ. Rizal’s Christmas is as colorful as his life, except that his Christmas does not revolve around Christ as God. That takes color off my Christmas.

This is part of his letter of 24 December 1886 from Berlin to his friend Ferdinand Blumentritt in Leitmeritz:

A friend of mine from the Philippines (Dr Maximo Viola) arrived from Barcelona where he studied. He is studying German and wishes to stay nine or ten months in Berlin. We talk a great deal about you and your work and he wishes to meet you. I will spend Christmas with him and young Moret, who is sending you his Christmas greetings. Many thanks for your kind invitation. I should like to see a Christmas celebration with a Christmas tree, but the families who know me have invited me only for the New Year, either because they have no children or their children are already grown-ups. At home the whole family partake of a good soup at midnight; and the children decorate a Belen (Nativity scene) with the image of the Child Jesus, the animals etc. This season is the most beautiful and pleasant we have in the Philippines.

He does not mention a Christmas tree in Calamba; he does mention a Belén, which is the Spanish word for the Nativity scene, which every Roman Catholic in the Philippines knows means Christmas in all its senses. He speaks of that with love: ‘This season is the most beautiful and pleasant we have in the Philippines.’ If you are not a Filipino, I tell you it is as Rizal describes it. I’m talking of the countryside. Christmas in the City is too commercial now, even in the Philippines. That’s the Protestant Ethic.

On another Christmas Eve, in 1888, he again writes his friend, this time from London:

Only last night at eight o’clock, I returned here from a trip to Spain for a period of twelve days. I left so suddenly that I had no time to write you. Last night I received many letters, but I will answer yours first.

That shows they are more than friends in fact – They are soul brothers. It’s almost Christmas Day, and his first thoughts are that of his friend, and then his family. He writes a little of his story and history:

Today is Christmas Eve. This is the feast that I like to celebrate best. It reminds me of the many happy days not only of my childhood but also of history.

Is this the Roman Catholic Jose Rizal as his teachers and friends at the Ateneo and of Calamba, Laguna, as his mother Teodora knew him? Not anymore. He is intellectualizing. If you really believe, you don’t intellectualize; if you intellectualize, you don’t really believe:

Whether Christ was born or not exactly on this day, I don’t know; but chronological accuracy has nothing to do with tonight’s event. A grand genius had been born who preached truth and love; who suffered because of his mission, but on account of his sufferings, the world has become better, if not saved. Only it gives me nausea to see how some persons abuse his name to commit numerous crimes. If he is in heaven, he will certainly protest! Consequently, Merry Christmas! Let us celebrate the anniversary of the birth of a Divine Man!

‘… if not saved.’ ‘If he is in heaven …’ Two big ifs. Rizal is not willing to say that by the teachings of Christ the world has been saved. Not necessarily Savior, Christ is a genius of a man, a divine man, but a man nonetheless. As in man in the New Age.

‘… who suffered because of his mission, but on account of his sufferings, the world has become better, if not saved.’ Rizal must be thinking of his own mission – which is ‘to make men worthy,’ as he tells Fr Sanchez (letter of 2 February 1890 to Blumentritt) – and he may as well be predicting his own suffering.

‘Only it gives me nausea to see how some persons abuse his name to commit numerous crimes.’ Remember Rizal, now a non-Catholic, is writing to his friend, a Catholic. He is accusing the friars of abusing their authority, the whole Church for making money out of believers. ‘If he is in heaven, he will certainly protest!’ I’m not protesting. I’m only saying Rizal is thereby equating Roman Catholicism with the abuses of Roman Catholics, priests especially. That is like equating the apostleship of Jesus Christ with that of his worst apostle, Judas, who betrayed his master or, with that of his ‘best’ apostle, Peter, who denied him 3 times, on the night he was betrayed, remember?

Whether the baby Jesus who became Christ was born exactly on the 25th of December some 2000 years ago is beside the point, yes. He preached truth and love, yes. That is the point: truth and love, truth with love.

Truth alone is not enough. Science claims the truth – that is not enough. Without love, truth is nothing. Even if science claims love, what is the basis of that love? Man’s reason. It cannot be higher than that of mere animals (who, Science says, man is one of them), of mere man, mortal man. If your basis of love is God, then I love you! Three things remain, these three: faith, hope and love. And the greatest of this is love.

The thinking, rationalizing Rizal is not saying Christ is God; he is not saying Christ is God-Man; he is only willing to say ‘a grand genius’ and ‘Divine Man’ – not Christ as a member of the Holy Trinity, 3 persons in 1 God or Godhead. It is clear to me that he is putting his Reason above his Faith.

I believe that like oil and water, Reason and Faith don’t mix. Reason, otherwise called Science, otherwise called Logic, otherwise called Philosophy, which is belief in Man, cannot co-exist with Faith, otherwise called Religion, which is belief in God, who is greater than all men and all geniuses and all logicians and all philosophers combined, to say the least. Science calls itself the only mirror of Truth; it denies that Faith is another way of looking at, mirroring Truth. What is the basis for that denial? Science itself; Science is its own witness that Science is right! The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in our logic. Who created the stars? Not God but the Big Bang. Who is the Big Bang? Something or other.

Let Augustus be my Christmas gift to you. Christ was born in his time and under his empire.

Rizal is gifting his friend with a book or a painting or piece of sculpture called Augustus. Augustus was probably a book, but remember, Rizal can paint and sculpt. At least, Rizal is saying there that Christ was born, which means he as man is not denying the birth of Christ, but which he denies is God. Nowhere do I read that Blumentritt the ever-loyal Catholic ever complains that Rizal protests too much against the Catholic Church – a true friend.

So I say: Instead of cerebrating, celebrate life!

Revolution is leadership

Selections from my Franciscan essays (hover cursor over link or click for full article)
‘ The Day Senator Trillanes Called A 5-Star Revolt,
Peter Parcel Drank Coffee & The Bride Danced’

Senator Antonio Trillanes the other day (November 29 Manila) called for a revolution at the Manila Peninsula Hotel and nobody came: Why? Why, the Manila Pen is a 5-star hotel, and wasn’t that an invitation to dinner? But no, learning from Mao Tse Tung, the Filipinos didn’t think a revolution is a dinner party.

The rebels walked to the Manila Peninsula in a drizzle even as they called on the people to join them in their revolt. I would have imagined that the cooler heads would prevail. Were they sleepwalking? The renegades braved the rain of water; at the hotel, they could not brave the rain of bullets that came after they commandeered the hotel, refused to surrender while they enjoyed world-class accommodations, when elite government troops sprayed tear gas grenades and automatic fire into the lobby. ‘It was terrible,’ Peter Parcel said, who was at the lobby and had only dropped in for coffee; ‘gunfire was pouring in through the windows’ (Thomas Bell, telegraph.co.uk). The renegades could have learned from Fidel Castro that a revolution is not a bed of roses, or a cup of coffee.

Nothing fails like failure. I can explain the failure of the revolt as a failure in leadership. If the followers did not follow, the leader did not lead.

Or as too much reliance on ICT, too much confidence in the power of modern information and communication technology. In a conference room on the second floor of the Manila Pen, Trillanes & Friends, according to Kathy Marks (news.independent.co.uk) ‘worked their mobile phones furiously,’ calling and texting people to walk over to the hotel and support them in their revolt, to gather enough warm bodies to make People Power 3 to overthrow President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. A rather poor choice of technology. Despite its generic name, mobile phone, your Nokia is not made for walking; when you use the cell phone, you’re in the mood to talk, not walk, whatever model of Nokia you have, plain vanilla or fancy, 3rd class or 1st class, local or Stateside. Or did Trillanes & Friends fancy that they could reinvent the device as a phone for all reasons as the Filipinos had already reinvented it as a phone for all seasons? Filipinos can be very inventive, but dreams must die.

Or as a failure in psychology. You can’t come across as sincere in a phone or SMS. What Trillanes & Friends forgot was that body language is vital in communication. You cannot communicate body language except by body language. My latest Nokia 5310 can probably body-language me, but only if you can see me in luxurious 6 megapixels camera mode. I say, it’s not cost-effective. Now Trillanes & Friends know that moving People Power by Nokia is not cause-effective.

Or as a wrong understanding of media, the extensions of man in revolt. In the first People Power revolt, radio was the crucial mass medium (‘Radyo Bandido,’ it was called, ‘Bandit Radio’ – ask June Keithley and Fr James B Reuter now); in the second People Power revolt, TV was the critical mass medium (go ask ABS-CBN and GMA); in the Manila Peninsula attempt at People Power, the mobile phone failed Trillanes & Friends – they forgot that radio and TV are mass media and the cell phone is not quite a mass medium. You can gather a critical mass only with mass media. Elementary, my dear rebels, elementary. Nokia as a weapon of mass attraction? Not even a dozen dedicated, devout Roman Catholic bishops praying together can bring that miracle about.

Or as a foolish reliance on the Internet. Julie Aurelio (November 19, inquirer.net) reports that ‘a detailed website appeared as the uprising was launched that included harsh criticisms of the state of the nation under Arroyo.’ How many who surf the Internet with their pricey personal computers (as in Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM and a 17-inch LCD monitor) will join when someone calls for a revolt at a world-class hotel? Such expensive taste!

Or as a misplaced confidence on the power of the webmaster as marketing man selling the idea of revolution. I have yet to meet a webmaster who is articulate according to my standards. A website appearing like magic means it was planned in advanced, at least 30 days before, if I know how much energy and how many hours are devoted to creating a website and dictating or debating its content. (I have 50 websites, in case you wanted to know.) Especially if Trillanes & Friends had assigned a committee to do the work. Ah, everyone knows the best work of a committee is never done! (Follow me! I’m a one-man committee.)

Alternatively, I am inclined to look at yesterday’s call for a new people’s revolt as a picture of half-in-half. In fact, many journalists referred to the Manila Pen revolt as a ‘standoff’ – a tie, a draw, where one half neutralizes the other half. That’s not what happened, was it? I think that was a poor choice of words.

My choice of half-in-half is different:

One, visibly, the highest political supporter of Trillanes, former Philippine Vice President Teofisto Guingona was half the man he used to be, a respected, principled gentleman.

Two, visibly, half of Trillanes’ top military people supporters was Brigadier General Danilo Lim, who together with Trillanes ‘walked out of their court hearing yesterday morning at the Makati regional trial court escorted by military police, who apparently did not prevent them from leaving the court, and marched to the posh Makati hotel in the middle of the country’s financial district’ (TAU, November 30, mb.com.ph). It was Lim and not Trillanes who actually ‘issued a statement urging President Arroyo to resign and asking the AFP to withdraw support for her.’ Was Danilo Lim then the better half?

Three, ‘This is like EDSA,’ Guingona said. With that, I know that Guingona remembers nothing of the EDSA Revolution of 1986, People Power 1, or he wasn’t there at all. (I was there in the crush almost at arm’s length when Fidel Ramos and Johnny Ponce Enrile crossed EDSA from Fort Bonifacio to Camp Crame February 25 before Ferdinand Marcos flew to Hawaii in the evening.) Half of the people during the EDSA Revolution would be about half a million cool heads; in the Manila Peninsula Revolt, half of about 30 heads were hot, not enough critical mass.

Four, National Capital Region Police Chief Geary Barias met with dissidents and told them to vacate the hotel by mid-afternoon (3 pm) yesterday. The rebels didn’t even meet him halfway. They stood their grounds. Did they think Barias was half-joking?

Five, in previous putsches, rebel troops had been given half what they deserved; in one instance, in 1986, they were given only 40 push-ups (Carmen Crimmins, November 30, uk.reuters.com). This time, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said, ‘We want to assure our people that we will apply the full force of the law to maintain peace and order in the area and the rest of the country’ (TAU, November 30, mb.com.ph). I agree 100%.

Six, we know that ‘as the teargas filled the lobby, members of the rebel group herded journalists to the meeting room where civil society groups and Arroyo critics had gathered’ (Aurelio, cited). I can imagine the civil society groups must have been half-scared to death. They have not been reading underground literature? They could have learned from Che Guevara that ‘a revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe.’ (You can check in the Internet if you like.)

Seven, the rebels thought their adventure was going to be at worst a 50-50 proposition, half-in-half. Wrong. ‘This armed undertaking,’ wrote the Philippine Daily Inquirer, ‘had failure written all over it’ (AFP, November 30). The Inquirer is not one to mince editorial words. You can be sure the Inquirer is always 100%.

Eight, looking at the damage to the newly renovated lobby of the Manila Pen, hotel spokesman Mariano Andres Garchitorena’s heart broke in half. ‘We are quite unhappy about that, heart-broken to be exact’ (Crimmins, cited). Mr Garchitorena, wherever your sympathies lie, be glad this monster devoured only the plated glass entrance to your lobby and pock-marked your walls and furniture with bullet holes; from what I’ve heard, a revolution devours its own children.

Nine, ‘Dissent without action is consent,’ Danilo Lim said (Leo Lewis, November 30, timesonline.co.uk). In other words, dissent is only half the work necessary; the better half is action. If Trillanes is correct, then the adults who dissent without acting on their dissent are consenting adults.

Ten, when the renegade soldiers with rifles appeared at the lobby of the Manila Pen, Maria Stella Magtayo, regal with her bridal gown with a long train, only half-flinched and declared, ‘I’m going through with this: Rock n’ roll!’ (Lewis, cited). What about the bridegroom, Rian Montano, an executive at one of the biggest companies in the Philippines, San Miguel Corp (Raju Gopalakrishnan, November 29, africa.reuters.com)? Rian was half-amused. ‘I have to fix so many things, I have no time to be mad,’ he said (Carlos Conde, November 29, iht.com). Thank heaven for brides with a sense of humor! And a groom who understands.

We must understand that we Filipinos must respond positively to the appeal of our President for ‘everyone to put the standoff in Makati behind and focus on the fight against poverty and for justice’ (David Cagahastian, November 30, mb.com.ph). On my part, if I were the leader, I shall hole up in a conference room in the second floor of a world-class hotel myself armed with mobile phones, laptops with Bluetooth connection to the Internet, an instant website planned 365 days in advance, with civil society groups lending a helping hand and TV reporters shooting, and I shall call for a 5-star revolt – against poverty and for justice. But I must warn my walk-in revolutionaries that:

A revolution is not a dinner party – even when someone may drop in for a cup of coffee and the bride can dance.