Gabo 101

JUST GOT MY HANDS on the first edition of Márquez's Cien Años (Barcelona, Círculo de Lectores, 1967) and Eréndira (México City, Editorial Hermes, 1972), both for less than $40. In Spanish, of course. Buen provecho!

Spring Reading

ARGENTINE WRITER CÉSAR AIRA a fascinating read, and this spring break, I got my hands on his fictional memoir The Linden Tree which is about the small town he grew up in and how Perón's presidency roiled his parents' marriage. Classified as a realist, surrealist, absurdist, cubist, philosophical, master of the supernatural, he has published more than one hundred books of stories, novels and essays, all of which he claims as "a footnote to Borges". Read an excerpt from the memoir here.

Yowza!

An Unlocked Door

BUT RATHER HEAVY. Can she open it? Sara's first college invitation from the Ivy League after her SAT scores.

The Thing With History

SARA'S (BELLY DANCE) GROUP in this year's SING! and her fall semester report card. Kinda low in history and computer science, but Spanish and American Lit rock. So does the diversity of these Stuyvesant girls.

Open Hands

AND THIS IS OPEN. There is nothing legal here, just humor and a clean slate (like a Mangyan clearing) for everyone to mark on and tweak into whatever they like.

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
Martín Espada

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours

at a printing plant

that manufactured legal pads:

Yellow paper

stacked seven feet high

and leaning

as I slipped cardboard

between the pages,

then brushed red glue

up and down the stack.

No gloves: fingertips required

for the perfection of paper,

smoothing the exact rectangle.

Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands

would slide along suddenly sharp paper,

and gather slits thinner than the crevices

of the skin, hidden.

Then the glue would sting,

hands oozing

till both palms burned

at the punchclock.

Ten years later, in law school,

I knew that every legal pad

was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,

that every open lawbook

was a pair of hands

upturned and burning.

Shutdown!

I LIKE AMBROSE BIERCE for his sardonic humor and macabre stories, written before he vanished in Mexico in 1913 after joining Pancho Villa's revolution. Here is one from my $1 copy of The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories from Dover Thrift, narrated by homeless Canadian Otis Jiry, to pass this ear-gnawing winter, pay freeze and unknown end to the government agency shutdown. Nonetheless, let's give no money for the wall, only the board for the window of the Congress House!

From The Skylands

HUMOR FOR THE HOLIDAYS as I mark my tenth year of service in the agency. And Sara's SAT score, out of a perfect 1600, on her first attempt a couple of weeks ago. Happy holidays to all!

Maspeth couch

Through The Years

I USED TO WORRY sick about Sara tackling the subway by herself some years ago, but I guess changes just happen, like the rapid growth of the oak and plane trees I planted in front of the house in Maspeth when we first moved in, and those sure to come (good or bad) when big resident Amazon  moves into the Queens neighborhood beginning early next year.

THE LOCATION OF AMAZON’S NEW HEADQUARTERS IN NYC. COURTESY OF AMAZON

A President's Message

MI HIJA, MI PATRIA. In one of his "fireside chats", periodic public affairs radio broadcasts from Malacañang through which he updated Filipinos on the activities of the republic, former Philippine President Elpidio Quirino spoke about fatherly pride and the country's affection for Spain, a powerful message for the Día de la Hispanidad, its purity unblemished by the annoying background noise. Still a grieving widower when he ascended to presidency in 1948 (his wife Alicia and three children Armando, Norma and Fe Angela were killed by the Japanese during the Battle of Manila), Quirino also faced the challenges of postwar reconstruction and the Hukbalahap insurrectos. His only surviving daughter Victoria became the youngest official hostess of Malacañang at 16, performing the functions traditionally ascribed to a First Lady, this time having returned with a medal from an official trip to Spain. 

Staying Alive

DÍA DE LA HISPANIDAD (October 12) is observed on the same week as Columbus Day. Spanish is the most widely-spoken foreign language in the city, and as a filispanophile trying to learn it late in life, I find memory trainer Anthony Metivier's book interesting, what with the Philippine flag on its cover, and am delighted to see and hear Pinoys speak the language. The use of Spanish in the Philippines started its rapid decline after the Second World War when American pop culture flooded the country (The New York Times' effect on man?) and got another nail in the coffin when the new constitution removed it as one of the country's three official languages in 1987. Its comatose state got some jolt when Spanish-speaking presidenta Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed a directive in 2007 requiring the Philippine school system to resume including Spanish in its curriculum, for which she deserves some credit. And thanks to the (dwindling) number of Spanish-speakers in the country (and maybe to the creole Chavacanos), we maintain memberships in the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española and the Unión Latina. 

Also thanks to programs of the Instituto Cervantes de Manila, partnerships with the Spanish and Chilean governments which offer scholarships and teacher-training programs to Pinoy students and educators, and other filispanophiles like Pepe Alas of San Pedro, Laguna (his blog went belly-up in 2016; ¡Alas, que lástima!), the Spanish language torch in the Philippines is still alive, barely. Whatever. But this Chavacana girl's love song, applauded by viewers from as far away as Spain and Mexico, is haunting. TV Patrol Chavacano is equally interesting, although I cringe every time I hear the improper use of simple articles--el calle, el universidad--in every other sentence. Also check out these hour-long broadcasts of the radio program Filipinas, Ahora Mismo before it also folded up in 2009 when the Spanish government discontinued funding as it faced its own economic recession. (More ¡que lástima! Any wealthy sponsors out there?) Finally, let's move to madre España and watch the performance of "Yo Te Diré" by filispañola Alexandra Masangkay, star of the movie 1898, Los Ultimos de Filipinas, if only to see just how pretty she is. And this not-so-HD file of the anti-war movie (shot in the Canary Islands and Equatorial Guinea) without subtitles for exercise and look for the controversial Pinoy sex in public scene.

I think we Pinoys have the natural gift of learning a language, given the multitude of dialects in the country many of us know how to speak, and that we are losing out on opportunities in the Latin world, job-wise and otherwise, by skipping on this endeavor to learn a not-so-new language. I believe we Pinoys will be better served, and will discover a whole new horizon, if we learn and know how to read, write and speak Spanish the way we do English.

Miembros de la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE)