Somebody asked me yesterday (Thursday) if I have written anything on dynasties. Of course, he was referring to local political dynasties and their kind running in the coming elections, but I associate dynasties with the ancient Chinese ceramics of: Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming or Ching.
Some years ago, I advised a friend looking for a dining table that she was better off buying a second-hand hardwood table from Bangkal in Makati than getting the plastic or glass-top versions readily available in the malls and department stores. With some effort, I told her: You can find a good table of Philippine [...]
The correspondence of Vicente Lukban (1860-1916), the military general in charge of Samar and Leyte during the Philippine-American War, awaits a local historian to work on it. Some of his letters, orders, decrees and reports translated from the original Spanish were published in the five-volume compilation by Capt. John R.M. Taylor. The compilation is known [...]
Facebook is a wonderful tool in our world because it provides faces to names and turns strangers into friends. Moderating a Facebook Fan Page for some time now, I have been posting photos of people who figure in Philippine history so that through a face-name connection, they come out not just as textbook references to be memorized but real people to a new generation.
Onofre D. Corpuz (1926-2013) served as education secretary not once but twice, first in 1968-1971 then in 1979-1983. He served as president of the University of the Philippines in 1975-1979. These are challenging posts that make or break careers. He excelled in both, but a reputation based on administration is fleeting, and he is best [...]
There has been much comment on the way Pope Francis is opening windows in the Vatican. That he happens to be the first Jesuit pope, and who resembles Inquirer columnist Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ, has not escaped comment in social networking sites. One question that bugs me relates to the Jesuits’ vow of obedience to their superiors and the special vow of obedience to the Pope. When Pope Francis (the “White Pope”) met the Jesuit Father General (the “Black Pope”), the roles were reversed, so who obeys who now?
Historians searching for primary-source material on the Philippine-American War often turn up at the National Library in Manila, which preserves thousands of official documents by Filipinos that were captured by the enemy. For an eyewitness account of the Battle of Caloocan in 1899, a historian can look under the files of Antonio Luna for the [...]
We are advised never to judge a book by its cover. We are also advised not to judge people because they are not books. However, we have to accept the fact that what initially attracts us to a book on a shelf or a person in a crowd is the cover! The thickest Filipiniana title [...]
Everyone in the world recognizes the face on the US hundred-dollar bill as that of Benjamin Franklin. He is said to have invented many things, including the lighting rod that captured electricity from a thundering sky. He also left us with many wonderful one-liners, the most famous being from a letter he wrote to Jean-Baptiste Leroy in 1789 that goes: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Crocodiles were believed to cry, thus luring their sympathetic (and stupid) victims to their end. Crocodiles were believed to shed tears as they devoured their victims, thus making “crocodile tears” a figure of speech that describes insincere remorse or sympathy. Shakespeare refers to crocodile tears in “Othello” in these lines remembered from my high school literature class: “O devil, devil. If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears, each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.” Closer to home, we have the novel “Luha ng Buwaya” by National Artist Amado V. Hernandez.
A sense of order must be second nature to someone who rules the Philippines because there is so much in our everyday life that needs to be put in order. One significant historical figure with a sense of order was Narciso Claveria y Zaldua, governor-general of the Spanish Philippines in 1844-1849, who issued two decrees that still affect us in 2013.
One of the things I hated about history classes in school was memorization. Some of my teachers made us memorize assorted facts: dates, names, places and events that fit into exam questions. Of course, all these were forgotten after the course ended, because the stray data were not relevant to life. While memorization gives the [...]
