Herstory of the Pampanga press

A DAY after the celebration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Pampanga Press Club elected its first woman president.

Sheer ahistorical coincidence that such had to happen too on the 70^th anniversary of Central Luzon’s unarguably oldest, concededly grandest, organization of working media persons. That is older than the 1952-founded National Press Club – if we may indulge in some unjournalistic conceit.

That it took seven decades before a woman became the face – brain and heart too – of the PPC conjures a chauvinistic all-boys club, or worse, a cabal of misogynists. Pure conjecture that, I assure you.

The fact is that throughout PPC’s history, of the club’s distaff members it was only the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Tonette Orejas that dared to run for its presidency.  

While it looked like an association exclusive to men, verily a fraternity in its early years, there were already a number of women members of the club by the 1980s, mainly staff writers of the Department of Public Information-Region 3 who also dabbled in column writing for the local publications The Voice, Pampanga Newsweek, Town Crier, and Pampanga Times.

There was Riza Angara-Moises who later also published her own newsmagazine Issues. Riza has since become the proprietor of the giant bus company Genesis Transport. Other women journos – called “newshen” then to differentiate them from the newsmen, no sexism here – were Gigi Llames, Erlie Tuazon, and Bunny David.

As formidable in the printed page as their male peers, alas, not one of them ever rose in the club roster above the position of secretary or treasurer. Not that that was warranted or mandated but that was…well, the way it was.   

Truly, it is some ironic twist of fate that the first ever club of media persons hereabouts rather came late in the elevation of women to its apex.

The Angeles City Press and Radio Club (ACPRC), founded in the 1960s and since evolved to the Metro Angeles City Journalists Association Inc. had for some time Hannah Bauzon-Tulud, publisher of the Central Luzon Times, as president.

It was the now departed Hannah that also founded and acted as first and only president of the Angeles City Tri-Media Association.

If ageing memory still serves right, the ACPRC had a woman president even earlier than Hannah in broadcaster Jenny Canlas of the now defunct dzYA.

In the immediate post-EDSA Revolution, there was the Pampanga PC-INP Press Corps with Thet Tan of People’s Journal as president, propped up by the Visayan troika of tabloid correspondents Jess Malabanan, Rudy Abular, and the now departed George Hubierna.   

So, it finally came to pass for the PPC after a lifetime of seven decades. Long years in coming, Tonette’s election to the club presidency brings to mind that 1970s Virginia Slims cigarette ad blurb: You’ve come a long way, Baby. Originally a strong feminist statement, aye, a voice of woman empowerment. Never mind its being perverted as some sexist denigration later.    

Tonette’s ascendance is beyond any denigration though, not even but a whiff of it.

In the 70 years of the PPC, no other president – this conceited one who served in 1990 not excluded – came to the position bringing as much acclaimed body of work, as much recognition for journalistic excellence – the Catholic Mass Media Awards, Most Outstanding Kapampangan Award, The Outstanding Fernandino Award, etcetera, etcetera – as Tonette.

Indeed, it cannot be mere coincidence but destiny that on the PPC’s septuagennial anniversary, aye, at its platinum jubilee, one lustrous jewel of journalism makes its crowning glory.  

Mayap a oras Tonette. Luid ya ing PPC.            

Going parochial

AMID THE cacophony of jeers and sneers, the damning, demanding and demeaning shrills rising out of the shambles that is the hosting of the 30^th Southeast Asian Games, I can only think of two things: kleptocracy and kakistocracy.

The first is defined as “a government with corrupt leaders that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political powers.”

“Typically, this system involves embezzlement of funds at the expense of the wider population,” furthered Wikipedia.

The rule of thieves, precisely.

The second references “a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens.”

The reign of idiots, unarguably.

Both systems confluence on a single face. I need not say a name. And sayeth further naught.

I leave the discourse to the more erudite national and foreign media, the snarling to the netizens, retreat to my own little neck of the woods, and indulge myself in purely parochial concerns.

Like the Christmas season and all the traffic that comes with it, on weekends especially.

In the cities of Angeles and San Fernando, road rules and regulations seemingly go on holidays too on Sundays.

Took 24+ minutes to cross AC-Porac Road via Circumferential Road this Sunday past, starting at Holy Family Academy or a distance of some 200 meters. Aside from the non-working traffic lights, there was not a single enforcer manning the intersection.

In San Fernando, all three-wheeled contraptions take over central downtown, where they are banned on weekdays. Yes, even Baluyut Bridge down to its northern approach serves as padyak-sikel terminal.

Of course, the violation of that Department of the Interior and Local Government banning tricycles from national roads has become the very rule in the two cities. The city governments apparently shirking their responsibility, indeed, abdicating on their duty to uphold lawful order.

Helmetless motorcycle riders, whether single or pillion, long the norm in San Fernando streets, have made a comeback in Angeles after their virtual eradication at the time of Mayor Ed Pamintuan. Sad, sad, sad to note the absence of any move from the Angeles City Traffic Development Office to revive implementation of the law. Yes, the law.

Traffic at the main entry to the Clark Freeport is a constant bad during rush hours and on weekends. Traffic through the roads of SM City Clark are even worse.

One Friday, it took me 25 minutes to negotiate the less than 200-meter stretch from the SM entry at the east lateral SM-Dau-Mabalacat Road to the steel deck parking. Reduced as it has been to one lane, valet parking occupying the other lane.

Can’t SM Clark management just designate one floor of the steel deck for valet parking, keeping thereby the roads around the mall at two-lane?

On record, I still do not subscribe to the double-visionary Deng Pangilinan’s take of the current “traffic mess” at SM City Clark as some manifestation of “greed atop profit.”

At the Clark Freeport, has the motorcycle-at-the-outermost-lane restriction been rescinded? A number of times I had to compete with them for the innermost lane, internationally designated as passing lane or for fast vehicles.

And then there is the 60-kph speed limit supposed to be prescribed in the freeport. Ain’t that some Third World retardation to the claims of world-classness of Clark?       

Fast-paced is an attribute of progress. Of course, this goes without any implication of recklessness, as breaking the speed limit is synonymous to.    

And when’s the road improvement in Clark targeted to be completed? It’s but five days (as I write this) to the opening of the 30^th SEAG and there are still a lot of asphalting going on.

No, I have too much respect for the Clark Development Corp. to even think of this as part of the games’ organizing committee’s klepto-kakisto affliction.     

The Malpractice

NOTHING BUT minutes of meetings.

So damned a grizzled local journalist of the stories – he would not call them news – appearing in the today’s papers.

So much advances in media technology. So much retardation in journalistic quality, syntax and grammar mangled, peg and context unheard, ethics perverted. And he went on to reminisce of the good old days in local journalism, ending: So,  why don’t you write about it?  

I thought I already did. But a click in my PC revealed:

IS IT the times, or it’s just me?

This feeling of being so Jurassic amid the current practice of journalism in the province, the subject of a recent coffee talk with a small group of impressionable college writers.

Bred in, if not born into, the web, the kids needed not a few repetition and re-illustration of the “old” way we gathered facts – interviews, on-spot coverage, clandestine meetings; we wrote the news – pen-on-paper, typewriter; and we sent stories – press collect call, courier service, via Philippine Rabbit Bus Line for photos with the negatives – to the editorial desks.

With communication lines routinely going static, we had to learn the spoken phonetic alphabet, especially with the names of suspects and their victims in crime stories. Many times, this spelled the difference between a simple erratum and a case of libel.

So how did we spell over the phone the name of some suspected rapist listed in the police blotter, such as one, fictional now, Zbigniew Levinski? Zulu-Bravo-India-Golf-November-India-Echo-Whiskey – Zbigniew. Lima-Echo-Victor-India-November-Sierra-Kilo-India – Levinski.

Imagine the phone lines going awry and poor correspondent me having to spell phonetically just about every name of persons and organizations, not to mention not-easily-discernible words in my story!

Pity more the poor deskman taking my story – phone cradled between neck and shoulder, patiently listening to my every word while clacking on his typewriter.

Yes, stiff necks – even “multi-level cervical spondylosis radiculopathy with kyphosis,” more commonly known as a pinched nerve was a common ailment of deskmen, long before it was appropriated for a former President.

Snopake

The fax coming into being vastly improved the facility of sending stories from the field to the desk, greatly relieving deskmen of their neck pains. But the fax spawned what has been derided as “Snopake journalism.”

Snopake is a brand of correction fluid.

A what?

So, I had to tell my young audience that before the coming of the PCs, our word processors were called typewriters. Where we can easily delete errors in our laptops and netbooks now, then we had to apply correction fluid on our typewriting paper to cover up errors in text. Blow on it to dry and then type the correction over it.

Snopake journalism works this way: After faxing his story to his desk, a newsman passes it to a peer who simply “snopakes” the original addressee and the name of the original author, types over it the name of his own deskman and his by-line, and then faxes the story as his very own.

Many a time one story appeared verbatim in a number of publications differentiated only by the by-lines each carried. A clear case of consensual plagiarism there.

This perversion of journalism later mutated, in adaptation to the web: E-mailed press releases, whether from government offices or business firms, are not even re-encoded but simply copy-pasted with the by-lines of reporters and forwarded to their respective – but now less respectable – papers.

Indeed perverted, aye, debauched in contemporary practice are the much-hallowed ways of olden days of enterprise journalism, interpretative reporting, and multiple coverage.

Coverage

In our time, multiple coverage was done this way: A single event is covered by a number of us newsmen, each carrying two or more publications plus the wire services, thus: Sonny Lopez of Malaya and United Press International; Elmer Cato of Manila Chronicle and Agence France-Presse; Jay Sangil of Philippine Daily Inquirer and Kyodo; Arnel San Pedro of Masa and Reuters; and me with People’s Journal, People’s Tonight and Associated Press. These aside from our local publications The Voice, Pampanga Newsweek and The Angeles Sun.

Thus, a single event would be carried by more publications and the wires than the number of newsmen who covered it. Here our efforts were maximized, the results multiplied.

Today, multiple coverage means just the opposite: A single event is covered by a number of newsmen representing the same media entities, thus: seven, the editor included, from one daily; 15, the janitor not excluded, from one radio station, etcetera.

Thus, the number of newspaper and radio stations publicizing the event is much, much lesser than the number of media workers who covered it.

The beat – or place of assignment – of a newsman is an exclusive domain which should not be encroached in by other newsmen belonging to the same media outlet. For example, one assigned to cover Angeles City has no business covering the Capitol, unless otherwise requested or instructed by his desk.

The beat boundaries so well defined – and respected – in the past are all too hazy, too porous now, resulting to an open, free-for-all coverage of the province.

Where before the number of newsmen in a coverage was dictated by the impact of the event, by its newsworthiness, now it is determined by the beneficence – and conversely, the miserliness – of the event’s principal. Hence, “atin keni” (there is) drawing just about everybody like bees to honey; “ala karin” (there’s none) avoiding that somebody like the plague.

Enterprising

Which inevitably leads to the corruption of the nobility of enterprise journalism.

Enterprise journalism goes beyond, indeed outside, the realm of press releases and media conferences.

It engages in investigation – hence its other incarnation as investigative reporting, in research and in-depth analyses, in diggings – thus its being tagged as muckraking.

Enterprise journalism does not merely report events but takes to light the forces that effect, that shape those events. Enterprise journalism is best paradigmed in the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
A number of the enterprise stories I filed in my time included: Central Luzon: the next war zone; Death knell for the Huk Movement; Fiesta time, killing time; Reds join ‘cola wars’; Requiem for a River; Clark: A Field of Dreams, among many others.

Enterprise journalism in Pampanga today is so debased as to engage in more search than research, less in dogged investigation than in dogging the most charitable newsmakers, its intended end not an earth-shaking scoop but a swoop – and the inevitable sweep of the pockets of the preyed upon subject.

Yes, what makes the enterprising journalist in Pampanga today is not the number of screaming headlines and frontpage multi-part series bearing his by-line. It is the number and thickness of white envelopes that centripetally come into his orbit.

And then, there is interpretative reporting. Basically, as The Sunday New York Times editor Lester Markel defined, as “reporting news depth and with care, news refreshed with background materials to make it comprehensive and meaningful… It is objective judgment based on background knowledge of a situation or appraisal of an event which are essential parts of news.”

A certain level of expertise is expected of a reporter doing interpretative reporting as this requires relevant historical background, interviews of advocates as well as adversaries, and the writer’s own informed opinion on the causes and possible consequences of the subject he is dealing with.

In current malpractice, interpretative reporting simply means the newsman giving his free interpretation, usually based on uninformed opinion, of the words and action of the news principal.

Thus, when Senator Lito Lapid filed a bill mandating free legal assistance to indigents, one paper bannered: “Lapid passes free legal aid law.”

Or when the good archbishop said he would not make any statements on the case of an errant priest, it being already under legal process and the accused well represented by a lawyer, came the report of the prelate issuing a gag order on the case.

Or when the governor met with the provincial medical personnel to address the 20 cases of loose bowel movement in the flooded towns of Pampanga, out came the headline: “Gov prevents diarrhea outbreak.”

Yes, I am of the mind that the body of journalism in Pampanga is diarrheal in irrelevancies and mediocrities, idiosyncrasies, and even outright idiocies. But like a pig in its sty, I’ve come to relish wallowing in the filth. Else, why am I still here?

(Zona Libre, Nov. 8, 2011 reprint)

The landfill imperative

LAST WEEK’S closure of four open dumpsites in Pampanga – two in Porac, one in Bacolor, and another in the City of San Fernando, notwithstanding the adamant protestations of Mayor Edwin Santiago – underscores the gravity and the breadth of waste mismanagement by the local governments.

Over 19 years have passed since the passage of Republic Act (RA) 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, which Section 17 (h) specifically mandates: “Open dump sites shall not be allowed as final disposal sites. If an open dump site is existing within the city or municipality, the plan shall make provisions for its closure or eventual phase out… As an alternative, sanitary landfill sites shall be developed and operated as a final disposal site for solid and, eventually, residual wastes of a municipality or city or a cluster of municipality and/or cities.”

Alas, to this day, no municipality or city in Pampanga hosts even the faintest semblance of a sanitary landfill.  

Nearest to the province is the government-approved Kalangitan, Capas landfill operated by the Metro Clark Waste Management Corp. While, arguably, capable of servicing the immediate needs of Pampanga LGUs, it has been made more of an alibi for the failings of the LGUs to efficiently, not to say effectively, manage their mounting garbage problems issues.

Aye, that the heaps of stinking unsorted garbage found at what the LGUs said were “transfer stations” were awaiting the MCWC trucks for transport to Kalangitan – an alibi that DENR Usec Benny Antiporda did not buy, promptly closing down the dumpsites.

Weak as it is, it is not enough for the national government – the DENR and the DILG, principally – to institute draconian measures against LGUs found utterly wanting in their compliance with RA 9003.  

The imperative of Pampanga having its own sanitary landfill – more advanced and multi-phased than that in Kalangitan – has assumed critical proportions, to say the least

Comes anew the promise of that waste-to-energy sanitary landfill planned in Floridablanca town.

Bukit Tagar

A 100-hectare property in Barangay Pabanlag stands as site for a replicate of Malaysia’s premiere sanitary landfill, the Bukit Tagar Sanitary Landfill (BTSL) and Waste-to-Energy Plant in operation since April 2005 from its location in Selangor state.

BTSL prides itself as a “state-of-the-art model facility for a long-term solid waste treatment serving the capital city of Kuala Lumpur” – a claim grounded on solid backing by the giant conglomerate Berjaya Corp. Berhad which interests run the gamut of property development and investments, hotels and resorts, and consumer marketing.

The BTSL facility is sited in a “landfill footprint” of 283 hectares, surrounded by a plantation buffer zone comprising 404 hectares.  Its operational life span is set for 100 years at 3,000 tons of waste per day, based on a population of about 3 million, with a total landfill cell capacity of 120 million tons.

The first thing that one notices upon coming to the place is the absence of the characteristic stench of landfills, and flies. This is effected by the use of “open minimal active cell” in the landfill where rubbish is dumped, leveled and covered with earth daily.

Excavated ground is used as filling even as different liners are used as a substitute for good clay materials at least two feet thick as a third layer of protection.

The landfill is lined with a high-density polyethylene, with the leachate instead of seeping through the aquifer directed at collection pipes that lead to a treatment plant. The leachate undergoes physical, biological, and chemical treatment before it is discharged into an open pond for irrigation of crops. With a capacity of 2,000 cubic meters a day, BTSL’s leachate treatment plant is one of the largest in Asia.

The landfill has a completely separate storm water and surface water drainage system.

Energy

With landfill gas pipes, BTSL has its own engine facility that produces methane gas generating 6.5 mega-watts of electricity daily, part of which is sold to the national grid in Malaysia as mandated by a Renewable Energy Power Purchase Agreement that Berjaya signed with the government.

One of the closed landfill cells has 42 interconnected wells embedded 25 to 60 meters leading to the waste energy plant.

Next in the BTSL agenda for sustainable and environmentally friendly solution to the garbage problem is the establishment of a solar farm.

So, did I read this in some brochure or the BTSL homepage in the web? Absolutely not.

In April 2018, I came a skeptic at the BTSL facility, probed the place, and left a believer. If it be but 80 percent of itself in Floridablanca, Pampanga’s garbage woes would melt in electric joy.   

Trashed to zero

PHILIPPINE CITY shows zero waste is achievable.

So screamed Rappler in an Oct. 13, 2019 story datelined Penang, Malaysia celebrating the City of San Fernando’s success in waste management:

Is zero waste really achievable?

San Fernando City in Pampanga leads Philippine cities in eliminating residual waste, or waste that cannot be recycled or composted, in a bid to reduce plastic pollution.

In a press briefing of #ZeroWaste cities on Sunday, October 13, San Fernando City Mayor Edwin Santiago shared how his city brought residual waste to just 20% from 85%.

Is zero waste really achievable?

San Fernando City in Pampanga leads Philippine cities in eliminating residual waste, or waste that cannot be recycled or composted, in a bid to reduce plastic pollution.

In a press briefing of #ZeroWaste cities on Sunday, October 13, San Fernando City Mayor Edwin Santiago shared how his city brought residual waste to just 20% from 85%.

CSF is zero waste champion in Asia.

So Punto shared the good news on Oct. 22, in a story coming out of Santiago’s guesting at the Balitaan of the Capampangan in Media:

Santiago said he just came from Malaysia where CSF was recognized as zero waste champion after presenting the city’s zero waste actions to thousands of delegates from different parts of the globe.

He said in attendance where ASEAN delegates, consumer associations, Europeans, the US, and Japan.

…Santiago said the city is not using plastic now since 2015 when the zero-waste campaign was fully implemented.

“Now, our residual waste is down to 22 percent,” he said.

Santiago said the city’s zero waste thrust was even featured in an international documentary on plastic pollution entitled: The Story of Plastic...

DENR shuts down 4 dumpsites in Pampanga

So blared a number of broadcast media, so screamed broadsheets and tabloids only last Nov. 12:

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on Tuesday issued cease-and-desist orders against two municipalities and one city in Pampanga province for operating open dumpsites, which is strictly prohibited under the Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.

DENR Undersecretary for Solid Waste Management and Local Government Unit Concerns Benny Antiporda led the closure of four dumpsites in the municipalities of Bacolor and Porac, and the city of San Fernando.

Antiporda, together with the DENR-Environmental Management Bureau in Central Luzon, padlocked the entrance gate of an open dumpsite at Brgy. Lara in San Fernando City…

No open dumpsite in San Fernando—Mayor EdSa

So press released the City of San Fernando on Nov. 12 too:

“We are not operating an open dumpsite. We only have the City Transfer Station.”

…City Environment and Natural Resources Officer Regina Rodriguez clarified that no dumpsite is operating in the city. The former dumpsite has been converted to a transfer station when it was rehabilitated through the city’s greening program.

“We are fully implementing RA 9003. From the garbage collection, to the sorting and transferring, our system works. We are in partnership with the Metro Clark Waste Management Corporation who collects the garbage every day from our transfer station. We will never tolerate the existence of an open dumpsite here in San Fernando,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez also stressed that the transfer station was reviewed and approved by the DENR Region 3 pursuant to the Department’s Administrative Order No. 09, series of 2006, or the “General Guidelines in the Closure and Rehabilitation of Open Dumpsite and Controlled Dump Facilities.”

Last August, the Environmental Management Bureau-3 issued a letter commending the initiatives of the city to hasten the implementation of the Ecological Waste Management Act of 2000.

The city was also one of the recipients of the Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) of the Department of the Interior and Local Government where “Environmental Management” is one of the criteria.

WHAT the DENR “commended” only last August, it damned in November!

There is more, much more than the eye sees here. Aye, in the context of the issue at hand, something really smells more than fishy here.  

We see no simple instance of the proverbial “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” In this wise, of Antiporda seeing a dumpsite in Santiago’s transfer station. Of the former – like the boy in that fable of the emperor’s new clothes – seeing though the bareness of the City of San Fernando’s claim to championing  zero waste.

The burden of proof now is dumped on Santiago. Just wondering what Rappler has to say.  

Faith. Food. Fiesta

MANGAN TAMU – let us eat in the Mequeni language – has opened at the Clark Freeport offering the widest variety of Capampangan gustatory delights. It is the latest celebration of the best that the province can offer.

Indeed, Pampanga has long been celebrated – and still is – as Culinary Capital of the Philippines. Food though is but – to me – one of the three things that not only celebrate but verily define the Capampangan.

At this, surfaced anew a book-in-mind conceived seven years ago but has remained in gestation.

Celebrating Pampanga

SUB-HEADED: Faith. Food. Fiesta. It’s a dream – grand, but hopefully, unimpossible – of encapsulating the Kapampangan character, if not the very soul, in a coffee table book.

Faith. Sermons in stone, searing the heart, stirring the soul. So, we wrote of the churches in Pampanga in an accompanying verse to our photo exhibit Visita Iglesia in March 2012.

As much as edifices of faith, our centuries-old churches have become tourist attractions with the grandiosity of their façades, with the magnificence of their retablos, evoking in the beholder the grandest cathedrals of Europe.

It was in 1572 that the Augustinian friars planted the faith in Lubao, spreading throughout the province and up and across the expanse of the central and northern regions of Luzon.

Consecrated to St. Augustine, the Lubao parish church though damaged in the last war and in some calamities has been restored to its old glory and assumes its place among the so-called legacy churches of Pampanga.

Two of these old churches have been declared by the National Museum as National Cultural Treasures — the Sta. Monica Parish Church in Minalin in August 2011, and the St. James the Apostle Parish Church in Betis, Guagua in November 2001.

The other “churches of antiquity” attracting pilgrims and tourists alike are the Holy Rosary  in Angeles City; Sta. Lucia in Sasmuan; Sta. Rita in Sta. Rita; San Guillermo in Bacolor; San Luis Gonzaga in San Luis; St. Peter the Apostle in Apalit; San Bartolome in Magalang; and the  Metropolitan Cathedral in the City of San Fernando.

A brief essay on the churches – to be penned by Lord Francis Musni, foremost Kapampangan scholar on the subject – will make the most appropriate introduction to the Faith section of the book.

Food. Pampanga prides itself as the culinary capital of the Philippines. There’s just some ingredient in the Kapampangan food that distinguishes it from any other in the country, be it from the Spanish heirloom recipes for morcon and galantina  to the exotic adobong camaru, betute, sisig and binulo to the ambrosiac buro.

Already, the mouth waters at the mere thought of these dishes, how much more with the photographs of Peter Alagos and Deng Pangilinan illustrative of a most delectable essay from Robbie Tantingco!

Fiesta. The resultant mix of faith and food. Of all the provinces, arguably, Pampanga has the most towns, barrios and sitios named after saints, not to mention subdivisions and housing developments.

The feast days of the saints make joyous celebrations of thanksgiving – for good harvests, for salvation from calamities – and cause for homecomings and family reunions, necessitating grand banquets, that usually last for days – from the start of novenas, to ante-vesperas, to the day of the fiesta itself.

From there evolved festivals that celebrate each the town’s peculiarity or product.

Thus, the Giant Lantern Festival in the City of San Fernando – and the Tugak Festival and Good Friday crucifixion rites too; the Ibon-Ebon in Candaba; Duman and Suman in Sta. Rita; Sampaguita in Lubao; Aguman Sandok in Minalin; Caragan in Mabalacat; Tigtigan, Terakan King Dalan and Sisig Festival in Angeles City.

Religious-themed festivals have remained though in Apalit with the fluvial procession on St. Peter’s feast day; Sabuaga honouring the Virgin Mary in Sto. Tomas on Easter Sunday; Kuraldal in Sasmuan on the feast of Sta. Lucia; and Makatapak in Bacolor, as a form of purification in the wake of the devastation wrought on the town by the Mount Pinatubo eruptions.

Faith. Food. Fiesta. Pampanga, but of course, is more than that.

So, I have in mind a separate section for Etcetera, in the language: At Miya-yaliwa Pa.

Eco-Tourism takes principal stage here: the Nabuclod highlands of Floridablanca with the magnificent view all-around. The wetlands of Candaba for bird watching. Majestic Mount Arayat and its cold springs. Mount Arayat. Miyamit Falls in Porac. Haduan Falls in Mabalacat City. Puning Hot Springs in Sapang Bato, Angeles City.

There. Celebrating Pampanga: Faith. Food. Fiesta. More than an interesting read, it is a journey through the Kapampangan character.

Time to look for some kind Kapampangan souls to make the project roll.  

AND I am still looking, and hoping.

Parul pride

THE LANTERNS are on, all is well, exceedingly well in the City of San Fernando.

Their sparkle of light bedazzling, bewitching, not the least blinding the eye long jaundiced by city blights.    

That uplifting feeling they invariably evoked, enough to forgive the city government and to forget, if only for the season, the contradictions between appealing praise releases and appalling street realities, to wit: the city acclaimed as “zero waste champion” amid the heaps of garbage, unsorted and unsegregated, dumped on electric posts; the city hailed as “most-child friendly” while bedraggled children roam the streets to beg; the elderly declared by hizzoner himself as pampered “senior-itos y senior-itas” even as the city streets have not been exactly spared of the sight of them in material want and mental poverty…Aww, why be glum?

‘Tis the season to be jolly, the city has donned its gay apparel, so shall we now sing tra-la-la-lanterns.

Nothing, absolutely nothing gives as much pride and glory to Pampanga’s capital city as the Parul Sampernandu. Oh, that thrill at every recalling…

From its rustic origins, the parul has gone around the world to universal acclaim.

In 1992, it was the toast at the World Expo in Spain. Its kaleidoscope of dancing lights and colors rousing Vivas! and Oles! from the dons and doñas of the Iberian Peninsula.

In 1993, the parul conquered Hollywood, holding its own stellar billing in Tinseltown already bedazzled by Liam Neeson in Schindler’s List, Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington in Philadelphia, Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, and the very young Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio in their breakout film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Some performance worthy of an Oscar for the parul there.

In Austria, it added up to the magnificence of the Stadtturm in Innsbruck; permeated the Rathausplatz Christkindlmarkt in Vienna with the Filipino spirit of Christmas; and became an object of curious wonder at the Ethnology Museum also in Vienna.

It brought Yuletide joy to the Lord Mayor’s House in Dublin, Ireland. It was the star of hope, love and joy that welcomed homesick Filipinos to the Good Shepherd Cathedral in Singapore.

It has become the seasonal motif, indeed the distinguishing seal, in Philippine embassies and consulates in Canada, Russia, Poland, Thailand, Malaysia and the United States. Not to mention in war-torn Iraq, at the time of charge d’ affaires Elmer Cato, and now this Yule season in war-zone Libya, again with the Kapampangan diplomat there.

In New York, it mesmerized the cosmopolitan crowd of Fifth Avenue when it was exhibited at the Philippine Center.

In San Francisco, it became one unifying factor for Fil-Ams when it was displayed at the main entrance of the St. Patrick’s Church, through the initiative of lantern-maker Robert David, even as it spawned a Ligligan Parul around the SoMa area, initiated by community organizer MC Canlas, a native of San Fernando.

In 2013, it made history as the first-ever Asian (outside China) entry in the exclusivist and revered Xiamen Lantern Festival.

That same year too, it drew crowds to the 2nd Annual Parol Festival in Honolulu, Hawaii where Vice Mayor Jimmy Lazatin defined the “message of hope that the lanterns of San Fernando bring to Filipinos here and abroad.”

Last year, it lighted up in spectacular hues the sacred walls of Jerusalem during the Festival of Lights in the Holy Land.  

As it has gone all around the globe, so it has all over the country too, from the main avenues of Davao City to Manila’s Roxas Boulevard to the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Thanks to the Gokongwei’s Robinsons mall, to Iloilo, Bacolod, and again Manila.  

It has put the City of San Fernando in the world map as, in the words of CNN, “Asia’s Christmas capital,” after a broadcast of the Giant Lantern Festival.

Every Fernando beams with pride, joy, and glory at the Parul Sampernandu.

Sadly, so sadly, amid the “innovations” in the designs and materials “modern technology” has brought to lantern-making, the Parul Sampernandu has become an endangered species.

Lose it and we lose not only the cultural icon that is our source of pride and joy, but moreso, the City of San Fernando is deprived of its very soul.