Compilation of short MORNING THOUGHTS on Facebook.

Sublimities evolve in us. We just have to “listen” to the insistent voice inside. As a boy, I formulated many questions that didn’t get response/s from adults around me. So I hushed, and sought answers myself. I wrote, I created art, I explored my surroundings. Next, I had to share what I “discovered.” Words on paper weren’t enough. So I made art. Music, as well. Those were better, more peaceful, and certainly a lot more effective—than talking. Or screaming. ✍️🎼✍️

Longest Christmas in the world? In the Philippines. Four months, at least, starts on September—and ends on the first week of January. Not just religious or cultural. It is also primal response after months of typhoon misery. Employees are given a 13th-month pay or extra 1-month pay in November per labor law, excluding bonus. Most workers rest from work, paid, from Dec 15 to Jan 3. No excuse not to party or eat a feast of food! 🏵🎪🏵

I was a media liaison staff for Presidential Commission on Good Government, directly under then President Corazon Aquino. PCGG was tasked to recover ill-gotten wealth by the Marcos family. I also sat with political think-tanks that ran the campaign of presidential candidates. I started my journalism career with Ang Pahayagang Malaya (The Free Newspaper), which battled the dictatorship. Looking back, I realize how different it was then. 1980s and 2000 onwards. So different.☎️📸📰

Winter isn’t here yet but I am already thinking of springtime planting. Flowers and vegetables. Hoping to do “earth romancin’” better in 2022. I guess, gardening comes with old(er) age? My most colorful memory of sweetly tilling the good land is my grandpa Severino diligently tending to his veggie patch in the city and his garlic farm in the province, and grandma Luz and her orchids, roses, bougainvillea etcetera. Nurturing seeds, nourishing life. 🌴🌱🌿

The Lost Art of Chillen. Dogs and cats remind us. No fail, right after the obligatories of morning food and bathroom moment, Arrow and Cyd go chill on the sun room. Chillen. That’s what we humans were before computer technology defocused, distracted, diverted—and divided us. Wake up on rooster’s crow, feed the animals, sweep the yard, cook/eat breakfast, read the morning paper just once, and the day happens sweatin’. We pursued the light irrelevant we waded in the dark. 

       It’s not like we don’t pursue change or “the light” these days. We do. But we seek change as a massively divided front and broken peripheries. So call for "change" takes the form of a reactive/reactionary yell. 🌼🍂🍀

We don’t observe Thanksgiving back home in the Philippines. And many other “holidays” that we do here in America. It’s fun! All I see and experience are people gathered, cool vibes converged for dinner. Although I am alone today, I am not lonely. I am with the dogs and cat. Enjoying the blessing of sweet warm light in the sun room, old rhythm & blues on the turntable. Later, I’ll share dinner with Arrow The Brat Doog, Rockin’ Riley, and Cyd The Koolcat! ☮️❤️☮️

Day before Thanksgiving. Travel time. Also, the day for many to spew grade school level mischief—insults, shaming, putdowns. `Though I don’t believe kids hurl inane asides in general compared with adults these days who throw all kinds of dirt just to be noticed or “liked.” But I get it. I get the historical backstory, Covid-19 caution, turkey drama. Politics. Yet Thanksgiving is family and collective dinner to thank the God/dess that we are still alive.

       I am spending my Thanksgiving alone with the dogs and cat but if it’d be easy to just hop in Elon Musk’s spaceship, I’d be where my family is so far away. ❤️☮️❤️

Remember the days when we had to conserve (camera) films, careful with each shot, not to waste them? We develop negatives in a dark room or wait for a week for a photoshop to process them? We neatly arrange those photographs in an album and show them to visiting friends and kin. These days, easy! Click, presto! Then we post them for the universe to ogle at, anytime of the day! So why would I be concerned if Facebook “steals” them? LOL! I still got a lot and more coming. 📷🤪📸

When holidays approach, especially if it is Christian, expect a lot of dissing, shaming, insults. I don’t get the sense of these at all. We are never contented with spewing fire over political diversity and stuff. There’s just got to be a daily dose of reasons to toss a darkness trash at each other. All I see in holidays are break from work or routinary grind of life and family/friendship gathering. Yet we don’t see those. We see more reasons to thumbs-down. Ah. 🏵🎪🏵

Reading old work and reading new work are worlds apart. It isn’t about 1912 compared with 1985. Not that I am saying writers these days, mostly 21st century authors, are less smart. They could be. The problem is "writers" proliferate these days and we are not even half-certain if they are legit or whatever they wrote, which end up in heavily trafficked memes and links, got credibility. As long as words capture the political bias or cultural prejudice, people click and share. 

       Exactly what Alvin Toffler wrote in 1970: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” 📚🖊📚

HOW IT WAS. Compiled from my previous Facebook posts.

Fiesta. Rooted in Christianity, dating back to the Spanish colonial period. Communities of the predominantly Catholic Philippines have a patron saint assigned to each of them. Filipinos treat these days as a communal party. Rain or shine, good times or bad. Fiesta must go on! Friends and families and strangers exchange fun banters: Basketball, boxing, beauty pageants, adobo recipes, and stuff. No Trump, Biden or Imelda drama, please! Thanksgiving is Fiesta Day. 🎪🇵🇭🎪

My childhood snacks. Merienda: 10 AM and 4 PM on no-school days. On school days, “recess” snacks were eaten in those time/s as well. Then, there were no McDonald’s or Jollibee, the Filipino version. So no burgers, fries, pizza, Coke in cups and the likes. There was ice cream but the “dirty ice cream” that is peddled via a homemade cart in the streets. Usual snacks were “turon” or fried plantains, “halo-halo,” fresh fruits, “puto” or rice cake, and coconut juice. 🍎🥯🥥

Canning and/or pickling are methods of food preservation in which food is processed and sealed in an airtight container like Mason jars, and steel and tin cans. I am sure, canning is still a huge home-based activity these days but not how it was then. I used to watch my grandmother “canned” or pickled cucumbers, onions, peppers, and other vegetables. A favorite was “burong talangka” or fermented crab roe. Basically fresh river crabs stored and covered in salt. 🫙🦀🫙

The Soap Box Derby is a youth-oriented (7 to 20 years old) soap box car racing program held in Akron, Ohio each year. “Cars” race downhill, propelled by gravity alone. The race has been running in the United States since 1934. But are your kids aware of this popular family-oriented activity? Community winners travel from across the U.S., Canada, Germany and Japan to compete. This year’s event was held in July at Derby Downs Drive in Akron. (Photo: The Detroit News.) 🚘👦🚘

Jukebox, a machine that automatically plays a selected musical recording when a coin is inserted. Many are still around, especially in small town bars, pool halls, and diners. But the young may seem unacquainted with these “strange” thingies. But, oh my, I remember those high school days. I’d take my date to a restaurant and would insert 10 centavos to play Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love” for her. These days, a jukebox would cost from $800 to $12,000! 🎼🎧🎼

Kitchens such as this in Asia, photo credit to Marcus Lacey (grabbed via Google). Wood, charcoal smear, smell of smoke. Basically, outdoors or doors and windows are kept wide open. Scent of food wafted through the next few neighbors’ houses. No prob. Summer rain would fall nonstop and the earth floor sometimes got flooded. The “inconvenience” was primal existence or day-to-day life so we were used to it. Somehow, I miss those “natural” kitchens, no e-gadgets. 🥥🔥🥣

I was born into and grew old(er) in a culture where laughter is life’s staple. Laughing is breathing. Each time people gather or hang out, jokes are tossed. In between workplace meetings or editorial deliberations, jokes are shared. These days, a joke doesn’t seem funny if it’s not “political humor,” which of course ridicules the other side of the spectrum. Or you gotta be careful with that joke. You might lose your job. Or massively insulted (shamed) online. A joke must be correct? 😁😅🤣

Chess in the “sari-sari” store front. In between moves, people would banter about stuff. Neighborhood gossip, last night’s basketball game on TV, coming elections, Tour of Luzon bicycle race, new popular movie, stuff. Fun. Sublime staple of community. The convenience store was “convenient” in the real sense of the word. Village folk could take out loans in goodies, payable on payday. People were talkin’. Humans, not AI. 📺☎️📸

Backyard vegetables. Apart from the ordinary “ampalaya” (bitter gourd) and “talong” (eggplant) that we usually planted at the backyard or “bakuran,” other leafy vegetables simply grew. Examples are “kangkong” or water spinach, “saluyot” or jute leaves, “alugbati” or malabar spinach, sayote, and “talbos ng kamote” or leaves of sweet potato, which are very nutritious and medicinal. Meat (pork, chicken, beef) and fish/seashells are mixed with these veggies. Swarap! 😋🍽😋

Leftover food. My mom used to call leftover rice, “kilabban,” and insisted that those were healthier than freshly-cooked rice. Leftover foods were dinner staples of my childhood years. These days, I notice that few younger people eat food that is a day old. They prefer “new” chows or “fastfood” offerings. When I was a boy, I didn’t trust food eaten beyond the house or those in restaurants, especially meat or fish. For me, it was all about food cooked by mom and dad or grandma. 🍲🍜🍛

HOW IT WAS. Compiled from my previous Facebook posts.

Scrabble days, family days, friendship days. Those days when home games were about people, collectives, gatherings. Before video games, internet games, and computer stuff took over our home existence. Scrabble was a favorite childhood leisure in my family. Parents and children were into it. Scrabble tournaments were held in school. Scrabble brought friends together. These days, humanity is mostly alone. Hence, funky inertia takes over. What’d life be when AI takes over? 🧮📝🗂

House chore implements. <>“Walis tingting” is an outdoor hard-broom made from the hard primary veins of the leaves of the coconut palm. Houses back home in the Philippines are usually gated. Cleaning the yard with “walis tingting” is an ordinary task. “Bunot” is "coconut brush" used in polishing/brushing the floor, usually wood house flooring. Good exercise as well to use “bunot” over floor polishers, which are used only in work offices. These house tools save electric power as well. 🧹🧺🧹

Vinyl library. I still keep vinyls and play them, once in a while. In fact, I prefer vinyl records spinning on a turntable over other ways to listen and enjoy music. I don’t like 1,001 songs in downloads or stocked up in a computer file. Those years, as a boy, when I spent hours and hours reading what was written on LP sleeves, listening to all kinds of music. The vinyl was invented by Emile Berliner in 1887, a lateral-cut flat disc to be played on the gramophone. Cool! 🎼🎧🎼

When I was in high school, me and some choice classmates would organize “disco-dancing” at a friend’s house. We’d pool resources or money for food and stuff but no alcoholic beverages because parents are at home. Even when mom and dad were out somewhere for the weekend, neighbors will know. Although they will not call the police, they will surely report to parents what’s going on. Those Friday or Saturday night dance frolic were fun. Of course, it was “Saturday Night Fever” and salsa days. 💃👯‍♀️🕺

When I was in middle high school, I co-founded a “little secret club” called Bredspays. That was after I saw the movie “Bless the Beasts and Children.” The 1971 film follows six teenaged “misfit” boys who are ostracized by other boys but form a bond among themselves. After seeing a herd of bison selected for culling by local hunters, they resolve to set the penned bison free. The Bredspays did similar stuff as well. Just remembering youth when we actually gathered as a cohesive unit and had fun doing good deeds. ☮️🦬☮️

Partially inspired by American mainstream comic strips and comic books, “komiks” has been widespread and popular throughout the Philippines from the 1920s to the present. I grew up with them; whenever my dad got home from work, he’d bring home a Liwayway “komiks-magasin” for mom and two boxes of Max’s fried chicken for the family. I will go for Liwayway, instead. My most favorite “komiks” author was Jim Fernandez, who crafted the wildly popular “Zuma” series. 📰🗞📰

How did you record rock concerts then? This dude (photo credit, CTTO) is quite inventive, isn’t it? Music festivals were fun! Remember Woodstock? Sure, there were fights or disturbances then. For example, the Altamont rock concert in California in 1969 where the Hells Angels were involved. But I didn’t shun concerts then, 1980s to early 2000s. It was still relatively peaceful. Unlike these days. Mass shootings and insane theatrics of hate mar concerts or public gatherings. 🎸☮️🪘

As a little boy, I was a huge fan of war/soldier TV shows: Combat! Rat Patrol. Garrison’s Gorillas. And cowboy movies. I still watch war movies, Westerns, and police procedurals, of course. Guns and bombs and crime or human annihilation are staples of these shows. Yet I evolved as a virulent anti-war activist and advocate of gun regulation. I am anti-war but I am not anti-military, I must repeat. And I hope discussion of this subject is as civil and grown-up as in the past. ☮️☮️☮️

Building or crafting a diorama from old luggages (“maleta”) was a childhood obsession. I would gather my toy soldiers and animals and superheroes and other tiny implements and construct a village, war zone, school ground, zoo, jungle, or sports plaza etcetera. That way, I could “create” a physical manifestation of the fictions in my head as a kid. I would spend hours and hours in a room while other children played outside. Busy, busy brain cells of mine. (Photo: Freepik.) 👦🧸👦

Flying kites in the meadow. That was my childhood. Summertime fun! Most kites were devised from old newspapers, crafted on bamboo stick frames. Strings were just about anything that we could find or improvise. There were afternoons when dozens of kites flew and soared in the air. There were even “dogfights” or kite battles up there! Some kids would save money, from school allowance, to buy colorful crepe papers for their kite body and tails. Cool! (Photo: CTTO.) 🌬🌤🎉