MikeLigalig.com

By Jeff De Cagna

Many people argue that innovation is essential, but no one says it is easy. In fact, innovation is 
quite dificult. There should be no illusions about this reality. Organizations must generate a large
number of ideas from which they can isolate a comparatively smaller number of concepts for 
further exploration. From among these promising possibilities, only a handful of opportunities 
with genuine potential will emerge as appropriate for resource investments, and perhaps only 
one or two of those ideas will make a signiicant impact on an organization’s long-term fortunes.

Innovation always involves some element of risk along with the constant prospect of individual,
collective and organizational failure. Innovation creates deep concerns for human beings who fear
the negative impact of unintended consequences on their professional or personal lives. And yet, 
the only way to truly make innovation work both today and in the years ahead is to engage the whole
organization in the effort, i.e., everyone has a role to play in the work of innovation. It is the most
democratic form of organizational shift, a collaborative endeavor from which no one needs to be or
should be excluded. Indeed, organizations should seek to capitalize on every available brain cell 
in the quest to create a more vibrant future.

By Jeff De Cagna

There is widespread agreement among authors, consultants and thinkers in the ield of management
that innovation is the central capability for all organizations interested in maximizing their oppor-
tunities for success in the 21st century. While the pursuit of innovation cannot absolutely guarantee
meaningful growth, it is the best strategy most enterprises have for achieving it in a way that can
become sustainable over time.

Still, there are some leaders in organizations who push back on this fundamental premise, and ask
why they need to bother with innovation. After all, if their customers aren’t demanding it, and 
if already limited staff and resources are stretched too thin by existing priorities, doesn’t it make
more sense to simply stick to organizational knitting and do the best they can with what have? 
They argue that this approach would certainly be easier, much less risky and much less uncomfortable
for everyone concerned. Why do organizations need to innovate?

The answer to this basic question should be apparent to anyone paying attention to what is happen-
ing in our world right now. We live in a new world, with new rules that demand new responses.
Contrary to what some leaders believe, we do not live in a time of simple linear change. Rather, 
we are in the middle of the earliest stages of what I sometimes describe as profound, accelerating
and intensifying disruption and discontinuity, i.e., a genuine paradigm shift. Don’t like risk and
discomfort? That’s too bad, because there is an ample supply of both, and that supply will only grow
going forward.

As the powerful forces of demographic, economic, scientiic, social, political and
technological shifts continue to converge, their cumulative impact will recalibrate our society in ways
that eventually will make it unrecognizable. We are situated in a brand new context, one in which
doing more of what we’ve always done simply will not work. The acute challenges created by the
paradigm shift all organizations must face demand that leaders at all levels get serious about think-
ing, acting and learning like true innovators right away.

Written By Loy Palapos
Columnist, Bohol Sunday Post

Among the provinces all over the country, Bohol holds the distinction of zeroing in on tourism to spur economics growth. There is no way of separating tourism from arts, culture and heritage. The three constitute the biggest influence on tourism as an industry.

It is public knowledge that our churches and even houses have been robbed of priceless heritage possessions: ancient images of saints, icons, antiques, etc. There are also times when heritage buildings and edifices are obliterated. All for immediate cash and economic gains. Some months back I visited the Villa Escudero Museum, and I was amazed by its heritage collections; at the same time I wondered if some of them originated in Bohol. The Philadelphia Museum, which took me three days to explore, contained facades of churches, benches and varied church appliances and properties very similar to those in Bohol. The Batuan City Museum does not deny the fact that it houses several Boholano antiques.

Those other places I have been to convinced me that we have to protect and preserve our heritage.

Last December 10 and 12 there was a People's Referendum and Seminar Workshop on Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage Code Development at the University of Bohol, which I attended. It concluded with the finalization of the Code for a final reading at the Sangguniang Panlalawigan. This is a product of BACH (Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage) Council, in coordination of the Center for Culture and Arts Development (CCAD).

In the said seminar I met a very knowledgeable and impressive speaker, Dr. Eric Babar Zerrudo (EBZ), the Director of MET Museum and GSIS Museum, and GSIS Vice President. He lectured on heritage and economy, and how both could be dove-tailed in the development of a City or Province.

LMP: Being an economist and a lover of arts and culture is quite a gap. What is your explanation on this regard?
EBZ: This is just one of the many dilemmas of the people who meet me. For most I am an economist, but it is also my passion to be concerned with heritage. I know it is a challenge to put together culture and economics, heritage and politics. But I find it challenging that I can be of service to both. But I don't find any gaps here. I can be of service to both worlds.

LMP: When did you start being inclined to culture and the arts considering, your love for economics?
EBZ: I think it's really through exposure. We often hear officials talking about heritage and culture. I became interested because as an economist, I think it's very easy to join the two together. Like the Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage (BACH) which is a good example of putting arts and economics development together.

LMP: Which came first, your inclination towards economics or towards culture?
EBZ: Economics came earlier. It's only later that I realized my passion about humanities, of how you do things, of how you lead the people and how you deal with life eventually.

LMP: The way I look at it, you are a very well traveled man, how would you distinguish Philippine culture from the rest of the world?
EBZ: First and foremost, the Western approach to social development is so democratic. Very participatory. It is automatically assumed that they understand heritage. Here, you have to go back to the basics even though our heritage is not something to be given; we deal with it everyday.

LMP: There are times when people tend to be overly free in a democratic society, but if it's dictatorial, there would be a strict compliance and there's control. If you have your own way, what would you prefer, a democratic way in handling our heritage or the dictatorial way?
EBZ: For economists, the more effective way is the dictatorial way. But since we are a very democratic country, let us make people participate; let them have an ownership of our heritage, of our culture. But we also have to make sure that we have a set of leaders who know how to orchestrate all of these together.

LMP: Have you seen scenarios wherein the leaders are not culturally oriented? Would it not be like the blind leading the blind?
EBZ: There are cases like that in the Philippines, especially in towns where the heritage culture is visible. The town-people are aware of their resources, that's why they participate in its conservation. Unfortunately, the leaders don't have any idea how to get profit from it; that's why eventually everything is wasted.

LMP: Have you found the same scenario here in the province of Bohol?
EBZ: I tell you, Bohol is overly mature. You have reached a very high level in organizing and have so many seminars about the heritage of Bohol. You even have tours and publications. You only need a legislation to formalize and fortify these efforts.

LMP: In your experience with other provinces, how much success have they invested in their heritage?
EBZ: Bohol has gone so far already compared to the many provinces in the Philippines. The mere fact that you were able to manage your tourism industry successfully, plus the fact that you have separated your image from the laughing stock of the whole Visayas to something so respectable; that is already something good. More than anything, it's the organization, how mature you are as a cohesive community, that has been a big influence to do all of these.

LMP: Do you see something bright in the future for Bohol, as far as our heritage is concern?
EBZ: Yes. I think you already have so much in the open for the future, and this is something good because you are modeling yourself towards the world's heritage standards. This is something to be proud of globally. I have to congratulate Bohol for that.

LMP: How about the infusion of the foreign cultures. Is there no chance in having a Boholano culture alone for that matter?
EBZ: Even though there are foreigners coming here, it's more important for them to learn the culture of the Boholanos because they will soon regard it with respect and tolerance. But in terms of the destruction, in terms of the physical, that will only happen if you allow it to happen. If you will use your resources everyday, without giving it a chance to recuperate, then you will really tire it out. There must be a mechanism also, to rest everything.

LMP: There's a little controversy about the Baclayon road reconstruction, if you're going to asses the problem, then what is your comment?
EBZ: I think the Baclayon case is a traffic case. It is a community vigilance, community stewardship and effort, and let the government understand that this is a two-way cause. Consultations can do wonders, and you can come up with good solutions with these consultations. It's also a good model for others to follow.

LMP: Do you advise that each municipality should have its own guidelines?
EBZ: Definitely. The provincial code is a set of principles and philosophy, the implementation will differ in the different barangays and different towns. The international charters abroad are not very specific, but there is a very basic goal where beliefs and philosophies should be based.

LMP: There was a controversy regarding the Chocolate Hills. The Sangguniang Panlalawigan through the Chairman of the Committee on Tourism would like to have it. Now, the Municipal Government also would like to have it on its own. The private sector would also like to have it believing that privatization can develop it to the fullest potential. What can you say about privatization along this line?
EBZ: Privatization is good because there is a high level of competition, in that it evens the playing field of everyone and it elicits the best creativity. But I think there should be guidance by the public and the government because there should be parameters which expound the highest provincial interest. That is why if the private sectors will hold it they should be guided by the provincial interest.

LMP: We have an existing CCAD (Center for Culture and Arts Development.) There is also Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage (BACH) Council. Although there are those who believe in the possibility of conflict between the two, I personally cannot see this negative side. Any comment on this?
EBZ: We just have to try to maximize the talents of both Councils. But I see the good balance. It's so ideal, in fact. Eventually I think that would be the decision of the governor. I think if the government is in your side, the organization will be okay.

LMP: How do you see the future of arts, culture and heritage in the province of Bohol?
EBZ: When you come here it's always a celebration of the interconnectivity of the arts, heritage and business working very closely. Your tourism will continue, and you were able to maximize and is very far ahead compared to the other provinces. I think what you need now is technology. It's allowing the younger generation to see heritage through technology.

Meeting Dr. Eric B. Zerrudo was an opportune time to discuss and be enlightened by the necessity for arts and culture to be a part of development. All those years, being exposed to varied cultural activities of the City and Province has made me identify some stumbling block, like convincing leaders to be involved in cultural activities. It has been my personal observation that there are officials whose main thrust in governance is defined by economic needs. For instance, when invited to participate in the Sandugo Streetdancing, one common retort (although not always clearly expressed) is; "Makaon ba na?" It has always been disheartening to hear the sarcastic remark.

This is not to blame leaders, for the immediate need of people is economic in nature. When I heard the lecture of Zerrudo I saw an angle of persuading skeptics that heritage and economics can go together.

How I wish all Mayors, all Legislators, all leaders of the province would hear the message of Dr. Zerrudo. Except for a few, the Mayors who were invited to the forum did not come. Instead they sent their representatives. This is not to condescend the representative's capability to relay the meat of Dr. Zerrudo's lecture to their superiors, but it should have been better if the said officials were there themselves for some interactions.

This corner is very optimistic things will change for the better. Although not in a flash.

Quote from: smiffytheninja on December 18, 2007, 03:54:45 AM
My high school choir, Christian Brothers high school (the choir that sang Rosas Pandan from the video I posted) needs your guys' help! They're in a contest to see which one has the best Christmas song. Right now, we're second place.. but not by much!

You don't have to register, it's just one click, submit, and you're done!

http://www.kncifm.com/pages/390638.php


Thanks! 

Smiffy, I have voted for your high school: Christian Brothers High School

[mp3tube]ff7d86c6df6b42413ce56f042cd1db5d[/mp3tube]

I'm not sure...

So we have an orphanage visit and hospital visit.

Praise God. We are making Christmas and the eyeball more meaningful for all of us.

Precious, I can't be there on The Bohol Standard Christmas party? When will it be held?
Kindly extend my greetings to Atty. Lim, who is like my father. We have an eyeball this December 30. Please coordinate with St. Agnes of Tubag Bohol. You can also order a Tubag Bohol tshirt from her.

He is two years older than my father.

How I love his song: The Leader of the Band. This song is so meaningful and profound, a song you don't want to end singing.

Brownman, I'll look for the song and post it in our Music section.

Editorial of the Bohol Chronicle
By Bingo P. Dejaresco III

Like his favorite boxers, the vocal City Mayor Dan Lim knows infighting - uppercuts and all.
Perhaps chastened and in fact strengthened by three major city poll debacles before getting to Mt. Olympus as new city mayor in 2004, Mayor Lim is a political survivor. In every sense of the word.

Remember how like a lone wolf in his first term, Lim charmed his way into the hearts of 9 City Kagawads with different political stripes from his and converted them into allies? Remember how Lim even wooed a political rival in Nuevas Montes to instead be his running mate in the 2007 polls?

Astute and tough as the pugilists he adores, Lim traded punches with erstwhile buddy Kagawad Djingo Rama and later with another ferocious political camp mate, former OIC Governor Victor de la Serna. The Mayor takes all comers.

He did one more political acrobatic trapeze swing by wresting control over the Sangguniang Panglungsod over the bloodied faces of two trusted lieutenants - Kagawad Edgardo Kapirig and businessman Mario Uy - by placing his bets on the "right" man. Lim sided with Uy.

By sundown, dark horse SK chairman of Dampas Rammy June Alturas won as SK representative - adding one more ally to Lim's army. Eleven of the sixteen elected city SK chairmen sided with the Mayor's Choice. By dawn, the mayor's other candidate of choice Faro Cabalit - representing the barangay got elected.
In a blink of an eye - including exaggeration - the sometimes pugnacious city mayor wrested control of the city legislature that makes laws and appropriates budgets for the city by a 7-5 majority.

Populists have decried the fact that SK and barangay chairmen who win on the basis of a limited constituency are given equal votes as the city-wide elected kagawads and therefore play an equal role in deciding the destiny of the city. Is that fair? But for now, that's how the cookie crumbles.

Within the bounds of law, Lim check mated ace rival Vice Mayor Toto Veloso who was then in Manila. In a stroke that straddled between Lim's political charisma and practical economics, all SP chairmen declared their chairmanships of committees vacant.

And if Mayor Lim had a target, it had to be the powerful Appropriations Committee once headed by Veloso. Of course, that slipped away from Veloso's hands into the Mayor's hands.

In politics, the only permanent thing is change. And change people have to live with.
More than ever, with City Hall being controlled by Lim on both fronts, the Veloso Opposition Camp to include the vice mayor, and Kagawads Mariquit Oppus, Bebin Inting, Djingo Rama, Lucio Balbin and Edi Borja, should exercise their role as genuine fiscalizers inside the house of power.

Outside that house, in the world of public opinion, they will find genuine allies (among city residents and media) if they make constructive exposes and well-thought of legislation, regardless of the Mayor's feelings. They have to do their homework if they wish to become an effective counter foil to a leadership that is known to be both vocal and tough. They cannot say "we cannot fight City Hall." They are part of City Hall.

However, with 2.5 years left, we have no room for destructive obstructionism - the case of objecting for its own sake - to the detriment of the public good. We are sure ill-tempered debates will merely improve their oratorical prowess and bombastic vocabulary, but the public won't buy that either.

Vice Mayor Veloso should lead this defense of public interest with sterling acts of statesmanship and objectivity which we demand of the Opposition in the aftermath of all these.

For Mayor Dan Lim and the Administration, don't be too cock sure and aggressive to be overbearing on the Minority and always remember that the public eye which will now be very watchful with "control of one party" in place.

Of course, we are for progress - the faster, the better â€" for certainly time is not on the side of any Third World country. We have a lot of catching up to do. This is the decade for doers, not the dreamers.
But excuse you us, not at the expense of transparency and whistle-clean transactions. Let us move towards progress together with clean hands. Let that legacy of "achievement with honesty" be the hallmark of this administration.

For Comments: email to bingo_dejaresco@yahoo.com.ph Or bohol-rd@mozcom.com

Dear Ate Charo, It's so hirap talaga to study in UP, the University of the Poor. You know, I never wanted to study here. But my parents kasi, theyboth went to UP and they said na it was the best school talaga. Eh 'di I went.But no!

When I got here, Holy horrors! I was ready to make himatay afterthe first day pa lang. Would you believe, there's no aircon na nga in theclassrooms, the fan doesn't work pa. And then this guy who was like,wearing a sando, shorts and tsinelas lang made tabi next to me. He madepakilala pa! The nerve! So I made takbo to the CR to make tago. But I couldn't make hugas my hands that were so pawis from escaping such anear-death experience. There was no liquid soap! Not even a couchwhere I could sit to make kikay.

Do you feel my pain na ba? But wait, there's more. Last Thursday kasiDaddy's Volvo was bawal, eh the Eclipse was being repaired, so I had tomake sakay with my yaya in the Ikot jeep. It was so siksik! I couldlike, smell the putok of the girl next to me. Like, it was sobrang mabahotalaga. Kasi naman, the Ikot jeeps are old na nga, they're mainit pa!Sana they make palit na the jeeps with a shuttle system. Okey langnaman even if there's an increase in pamasahe 'di ba? So when the car isbawal, I can use my credit card na to make bayad.Isa pa, you know the Shopping Center? It's so kadiri talaga. I'm forcedna nga to make Xerox there, (as if naman I could be caught in that placeotherwise) pero I'm so inis because it's so maliit and madilim, and mostof the stalls don't have aircon. They should tear it down na and build amall na lang.

Then I wouldn't have to go to Katipunan pa to get my Starbucks fix.My ****, this place is so bulok I don't know nga why anyone would bothermaking turo here pa. Just yesterday, my professor was kinda inis kasi herwhiteboard marker had no more tinta! Then she tried to make hanap amatino whiteboard marker but of course there was none. Duh! Kasi naman if we had laptops instead of desks in every classroom there would beno more need or whiteboards diba? But you know even if there were laptops na,the seats are so tigas sometimes I find it mahirap to concentrate.

Dapat may cushioning para malambot sa butt, like Downy.Now I'm in my third year na. I don't want to stay in this place anymore.I don't give a paki if UP's the best university here. I'm gonig totransfer to Assumption, where the CRs have liquid soap. Now na

If things go as planned, convicted former congressman Romeo Jalosjos will be released today from the New Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa City.

In a text message late last night, Bureau of Corrections Director Ricardo Dapat confirmed that Jalosjos, convicted of raping a minor, will be freed this morning.

"Yes, Jalosjos will be released Sunday, perhaps in the morning," Dapat said.

Jalosjos' life sentence was commuted by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in April. As of May 30, 2007, Jalosjos had served 13 years, 5 months and 15 days, according to former BuCor Director Vicente Vinarao.

The Tagbilaran City Host Lions Club was ranked eighth in the list of 66 clubs under District 301-B comprising the Visayas region.

The ranking was based on the points the clubs were given as far as their performance ratings and points are concerned.

Ranking was based on the project reports submitted from July to October this year.

City Host Lions Club under its president, Fely Lim, was featured in “The Lions’ Roar” newsletter which published several of the club’s activities like the sight saving campaign and the bloodletting event.

-- The Bohol Chronicle

“Wander Wonderful” is this year’s theme for the Bohol Wisdom School Foundation Days that wowed the Boholano community with its majestic fairytale evening concert.

BWS commenced her grand December festivities with a colorful costume parade along C.P.G Avenue of this city on the 7th.

Spectators to the opening program at the school gymnasium were treated to a one of a kind fashion exhibition depicting 34 national costumes crafted out of recycled trash all in support to the World Environmental Preservation campaign. After the morning feat, the BWS family indulged in fun and games in an exclusive in-house Booth Fair salvo turning the campus into a leisure center for a full afternoon.
Not forgetting the BWS mission of serving the community, extensive outreach activities were conducted on December 7 and 8 by the College Department, Campus Ministry, Guidance Center, and Student Supreme Government Offices of the school.

Manga National High School was recipient of the book donation drive of the Elementary and College Departments, while Fatima High School of Cortes was the beneficiary of the Bundles of Joy program initiated by the High School students of BWS.

The best treat from the Bohol Wisdom School came on the evening of the 8th as she proudly presented the grand premiere of the Wander Wonderful dance spectacle. Opening the gala was a breath taking performance by a student talent who descended from the gymnasium roof by way of harness (courtesy of Habagat Outdoor Equipments) as she welcomed the audience to the one-and-a-half-hour mass dance demonstration special.

The venue was transformed into a fairytale land as timeless Walt Disney stories were showcased. Cited as best in props and one of the most grand was the first act Peter Pan by the Grade One where in main characters Peter Pan and Tinkerbell flew about in the gym by harness giving the piece an authentic rendition. Mary Poppins of the Grade Five and Cinderella of the Grade Two wowed the audience with their elegant costumes.  Aladdin of the Grade Four was most applauded with its well-choreographed piece and enchanting over-all appeal. Snow White of the Grade Three was appreciated as the most behaved presenters of the show while romantic Little Mermaid was most cheerful.

The China town rendition by the Second Years was judged most vibrant and colorful. Bringing the audience back to real world was the best musically scored Sweet Charity Broadway by the Fourth Years dubbed as the most creative for this year.

The Grade Six girls presented an impressive Classical Ballet performance giving them the citation as the most graceful group. The Acrobats of the Grade Six and Third year boys flaunted the athletic side of BWS.
The modern artists of the Glee Club and the Drum and Bugle Corps, the biggest participating group, gave full-blast Hip Hop and Pop performance at the later part of the show.

The College Department ,with the accompaniment of the selection of Grade One and Two as Ukelele Ensemble, rendered a choice act depicting Philippine Culture and Fashion that was applauded as the group with the most authentic costumes. Hailed as the Best Performance of the Year was the Third year’s West Side Story. And to top the dance special was an All Star Pinoy Big Brother inspired number by the BWS faculty.

This year’s Foundation Days in celebration of BWS’ 27th year is perhaps the most expensive production in her history as seen in the stage design, props, and talent costumes. “This is our biggest annual affair and we always want to make it grand for the BWS family. We are happy that Foundation Days 2007 was a success,” remarked Maria Socorro Navarrete, Administrative Head. A delayed telecast of the show and a BWS special was aired through BCCTV on December 15 in the evening.

-- The Bohol Chronicle

From the Bohol Fire Marshall

In line with the effort to reduce incidence of firecracker-related fires and injuries during the Holiday Season, the Bohol Bureau of Fire Protection (Bohol-BFP), through its City/Municipal Fire Stations and Municipal Fire Protection Offices, embarks on the project “Oplan: Iwas Paputok.”

The project is a means of promoting fire prevention and information dissemination on the danger of firecrackers, fireworks and other related emergencies.

The Office of the Provincial Fire Marshal will be the lead agency to implement on information in the respective City and Municipalities province-wide. The local radio stations and print media shall assign a pool of speakers to promote on the fire prevention and remind the public on the dangers of firecrackers, especially focusing on the dangers of using firecrackers and fireworks. Streamers and posters will be posted at strategic places and will be carried-out during the season.

All BFP offices/units/stations in the province will be on Code: Highten Red Alert on Dec. 24, 25, 31, 2007 and Jan. 1, 2008 to prepare emergency units and ensure prompt responses to fire alarms and emergency services to injured victims during the celebration.

Adequate manpower and firefighting apparatus among others will also be made available at all times.
There will be surveillance and monitoring by the Anti-Arson operatives and round-the-clock firetruck visibility/patrol especially at designated firecrackers display zone, crowded areas and public assembly places. Also, in occupancies during peak hours where everybody is busy preparing foods for the season and using electrical power in their Christmas lighting and decorations.

Certainly, the foregoing tips to curtail if not eliminate the occurrence of such disastrous fire incidents prove to be essential.

• Switch off all electrically â€" lighted Christmas decors before sleeping or when leaving your house.
• If you’re leaving your house during the holidays, please make sure to unplug all appliances and close your LPG tank valve.

• Adults must keep watch over children playing with fireworks. Ensure that they are having fun the right way â€" the safe way.

• Never hold firecrackers while lighting it.
• Don’t burn rubber tires or make bonfires on the street.
• It is safer to throw unlighted firecrackers into a drum with fire inside. Place the drum away from combustible materials.

• Never pick â€" up or hold a firecracker that failed to explode immediately. A loose fuse may delay explosion.
• Flying firecrackers should always be lighted on open ground, pointing straight up.
• Ensure that children don’t engage in pranks such as throwing lighted firecrackers or sparklers at others, or try to make fireworks themselves.

• Store fireworks in a safe place with no combustible materials.

• Keep a pail of water handy, it can be used to put out fire or as a first-aid for minor burns until the pain subjects.

• Buy only legally mandated firecrackers, don’t buy banned firecrackers such as “Pla â€" pla,” Super Lolo other highly explosive kinds.

• After the New Year’s Eve celebration, douse all firecrackers debris with water and sweep these away.
Lateral coordination with other City and Municipal offices of various government agencies such as PIA, PNP, DILG, DOH, DND and LGU concerned to strengthen the Operational Plan. The strategy is focusing against the use of illegal firecrackers which is prohibited under R.A. 7183 (Firecracker Law) and P.D. 1185.
All BFP offices/units/stations in the province are hereby declared a “Firecracker Free Zone.” As such, selling, vending of firecrackers is strictly prohibited within the facilities and premises. All City/Municipal Fire Marshals and Municipal Fire Protection coordinators are hereby instructed to disseminate the same guidelines to their personnel.

The PROSAFE Advocators and the Provincial Fire Marshal shall provide technical support likewise supervise the implementation of the project province-wide. (Nonilo P. Acero/Supt. (MPA) BFP)

Written By Jun T. Balbido

Christmas is just around the corner and many Boholanos will now look once again to one town in the province where a uniquely rich tradition still thrives, and how!

Yes, this music town â€" where it is said almost every house has either a piano or at least one music instrument which is played by at least 2 or 3 members of the household and which celebrates music as Vienna used to do â€" has a Christmas celebration to end all Christmas celebrations.
For in Loboc, the Yuletide Season begins â€" with a real big bang at that! On Dec. 24 and ends in similar fashion, literally and figuratively, on Candlemass Day or Candelaria on Feb. 2.

Loboc has this legendary “Suroy sa mga Musikero,” a caroling done from one house to the next by a brass band composed of volunteer musicians who get together for the singular purpose of performing daily from one designated barrio or barangay to the other for the entire holiday season. The musikeros are usually a mixed groups of professional musicians, professionals engaged in other trades but enjoy indulging their special gift of music, and musically talented students, collegiate or high school, who all join up for the simple fun of giving joy in this special season of joy.

Some of the more notable band members have been the late Iyo Ambo, the Bilirans, the Salig Brothers, the Balbins â€" from the late Manong Jose to grandson Rene who has since made quite a name in the European band music circuit â€" the Varquezes, the Requiermes and several others who have all contributed in putting Loboc in the music camp of the Philippines.

The band’s repertoire ranges from traditional Chritsmas carols to current popular hits which can get so jivey, they oftentimes prod a vivacious host to do a song number or revelers to dance to their hearts’ content.

No home, no matter how humble, “dares” excuse itself from playing host to these manaygunays first because this tradition has become so ingrained in every Lobocanon’s heart and psyche, and secondly, because these ambulant musikeros are prepared to receive a hu-og that could be anywhere from a peso to a hundred and yes, sometimes â€" luckily for them â€" a generous thousand pesos, usually from some visiting successful former townsfolk or “balikbayans.”

The Christmas spirit of the Lobocanons is also evident in the derigeur belen or nativity crèche and invariably a tree adorning a spruced up sala. The festival air is carried to the table fare laid out by the host celebrators of the “eats” that particular day. This can be filled by anything from such standards as the puto and suman to the much more sumptuous lechon. Residents love impressing visitors with stories about residents who are too lazy to prepare their own meals to be saved from starvation by simply keeping tab of which barrio or barangay is scheduled on which day and braving hills or miles of untrodden paths to be where the “suroy” is and help themselves to whatever is laid out on the table by the guisuroyan.

The municipal government has sactioned all these activities since time immemorial. In fact, it has of late been more than encouraging residents to continue the tradition to bolster an ongoing government thrust in the direction of tourism development with generous funding from business sectors and various donors, and its construction thru the most able management of the late Engr. Pablo O. Bastes (former Mayor of Loboc) with assistance of LOSPROD, the Loboc Special Project Development, Inc. Centerpiece of this tourism project is the development of “Kruz Daku,” the highest point of the mountain range that nearly surrounds the municipality where a gigantic cross of 80 feet and 4 by 4 feet in size has been built to be lit ablaze at night for even the neighboring towns to see.

The area around it which is made up of undulating land has also been artistically landscaped and resting stations are provided, enabling visitors to enjoy the breathtaking view of mountains, hills and valley all around and even the sea beyond Loay and slightly distant Panglao, reminiscent of German-Austrian landscapes (no not Vienna!) such as the famous Salzburg of the movie “Sound of Music.”

Below “Kruz Daku,” the typical relihiyosong Bol-anon that Lobocanons are have built in appropriate terrain the 14 stations of the Cross, the starting another tradition in town. Pilgrimage to “Kruz Daku” is usually done by devotees as far as from Tagbilaran City and farflung and various places to do their Station of the Cross. But that is another story.

For now, Loboc can rest with the laurel of having a Christmas celebration that is comparable to none in the entire archipelago and possibly throughout the world.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

By Leo Armando Boncales

The University of Bohol-National Service Training Program (UB-NSTP) in coordination with the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police will conduct a Security Awareness Symposium among university students on December 8, 2007, at the UB gymnasium.

The activity will start with an invocation by Dr. Ricardo Bullecer. CWTS Coordinator, followed by a welcome address by Dalia Melda Magno, School Registrar and NSTP Coordinator and an inspirational talk by Leo Armando Boncales, UB Alumni Affairs/Public Relations Officer. Col. Cesar B. Yano, Commanding Officer, 302 Brigade, Philippine Army, will speak in behalf of the AFP while a representative from the PNP will also share some inputs on security procedures.

1st Lt. Lino Garsuta (Res.) PA, and NSTP Implementor/CWTS Coordinator disclosed that the activity is aimed to enhance security awareness among the students and to define their roles in helping the administration maintain peace and order in the campus, and in the community as well.            .

Quote from: st. agnes on December 17, 2007, 09:08:51 PM
that's good... bitaw.. pwede rasad Mike sa may Provincial hospital sah? need pabah na ug permit nato? or letter?

Maybe we need a courtesy letter just to inform the hospital management that we'll distribute gifts to patients.

Most likely they will allow this kind of charitable act.

Just don't mention my name to the hospital head. She's the one who filed a libel case against me when I was still writing for the Bohol Chronicle.

By Lane R Ellis
Lead Editor
www.SearchEngineWorld.com

Mountain View, California-based search leader Google has announced a new user-generated  Google LogoWeb encyclopedia project dubbed "Knol," that will rival the most popular online reference work Wikipedia.

Google vice president of engineering Udi Manber wrote on the company's official blog that the project, which has been tested over the past week by a select group of invited guests, will soon allow anyone with "useful knowledge" to write entries, which Google calls "knols," about all manner of topics and to have them hosted at no cost on the project Web site.

Unlike Wikipedia, authors using Know will all have their name associated with the material they write, and other authors will not be able to edit their writing, a move Manber says will help increase quality content, as authors "will put their reputation on the line."

Lisud pildihon ning Filipino sa basketball kung sa SEA Games lang. Atong kontra Chinese ra gyud. Kana ra gyud sila makapildi nato sa basketball diri sa Asia.

Elsie, I am thinking of poor patients in the Provincial Hospital. We don't really have many street kids in Tagbilaran. What we consider as street kids are the Badjao kids.

Giving out goodies in the street may cause disorder and pandemonium among the Badjao kids.

This is just a suggestion: why not distribute goodies (not toys) randomly to patients at the provincial hospital who won't be able to join Christmas festivities due to some lingering illnesses?

Gemma Morris has offered her house in Tagbilaran where the TB family can stay there for lunch.

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

These two concepts and realities need not clash. In fact, they should not. Everyone, and especially those in media, no matter how hot on the trail of truth, justice and freedom, should work for charity.

This means that regardless of how we may be in conflict in any aspect of our life and activities, we should always care for one another. Patience, compassion, mercy, magnanimity, good manners, sobriety should prevail. We are all brothers and sisters, first, last and in between.

Besides, whatever amount of reason one may have on his side, the other party always has some reason too, and this should not just be dismissed completely.

Everyone has to learn to listen to everybody else and respect the position of others, even if one is convinced such position is inferior or even wrong. This is the law that governs our dealings with one another.

We always have to practice restraint and moderation in our discussions, keeping a good grip on our emotions and passions, and even on our reasoning. This is an elementary principle in civil behavior.

We don’t suppress them, because that is not human. It’s just to put the lid on them, because unguided by charity, they tend to exaggerate, twist and even pervert the proper order of values, making one self-righteous and misleading us.

Without charity, we can easily fall into misplaced ironies, gossipy detractions and calumnies, reckless stereotyping and labeling. Without charity, we tend to live in a black-and-white world, provoking polarity and division among the people.

We have to remember that charity always works within the system of our emotions, passions and reasoning. But because of our personal, spiritual nature, not to mention our supernatural calling, charity has requirements that transcend these human faculties.

Poor Erap, some newspapers automatically refer to him now as plunderer. He may have been convicted of plunder, but is it good taste, not to mention, charitable to say so?

In many letters to editor, the same transgressions of charity come aplenty. And many editors feel they can just present these letters as they are, in what I consider as an inappropriate show of journalistic objectivity.

They fail to realize that the views expressed are just opinions that need not be held as gospel-truth. Since they do not possess the only position, much less the whole truth, these opinions should be expressed with delicate respect for other opinions.

It would indeed be a great service to the media’s audience if those responsible in transmitting news, views and opinions take utmost care in meeting this fine requirement of good journalism.

They always have to mind balance, fairness and manners. They have to avoid sensationalism at all costs. That sadly seems to be a common sickness, a cheap trick often resorted to by media people to cover up lack of material or worse, one’s partisan views.

With sensationalism, readers and listeners are provoked to be more emotional than rational. This is not to mention that we are supposed to go beyond, not against, rationality to be charitable, which is always the ideal to pursue.

Media people, like everybody else, need to upgrade their communication skills always, polishing them to the point that their technical excellence begins and ends with charity.

They should not remain in the level of the technical, especially now when there are many rationalizations to justify lack of charity.

For example, there are those who claim that due to the rush and lack of time plus the other pressures, media people should be exempted from the strict adherence to the finer points of charity.

That may be true, but that just cannot be held as a principle to follow. It should be more of an exception. We commit mistakes sometimes, but we should manfully own and correct them.

There also are those who say that to be objective, realistic and just plain human in projecting things as they are, we should just relax the requirements of charity.

These are clearly cases of self-justifying sophistry. Everyone, including the media audience, should contribute to a fair, balanced journalism by truly living charity.

Wa jud ko katan-aw Brownman. Eskwela, trabaho man ko diri, Monday to Sunday. Layo pud ang venue from my location. It was held outside Bangkok.

By Jes Tirol
Columnist
The Bohol Chronicle

Proem

A few days ago the Pulse Asia released the results of its October 2007 public opinion survey.  The results for the most corrupt president was: Arroyo = 42%, Marcos = 35%, Estrada = 16%, Ramos = 5%, and Aquino = 1%.  The number of samples taken was 1,200 throughout the Philippines.

Administration’s Reaction

The reaction of the Arroyo administration was to disparage the poll survey results.  The apologists for the Arroyo administration said that the result was only a perception and not a reality; the 1,200 samples could not represent the 84 million Filipinos; and that the survey was paid by the opposition and therefore not reliable.  The apologists for the Arroyo administration missed the correct argument.

Definitions

In order that a poll survey must be credible, it must satisfy the following criteria: accuracy, reliability, and validity.

Accuracy means conformity to a standard rule or measure.  If the standard measure is meter, a measure up to a millimeter is more accurate than a measure up to a centimeter.

Reliability means consistency of result.  Supposing you have a steel tape to measure the distance from A to B; if it will give equal results when the steel tape is cold, normal, or hot, then the steel tape is reliable as a measuring instrument.

Validity means having a high degree of correlation with the criterion.  In other words you are measuring what you purport to measure.  If you want to know the height of Pedro by measuring the height of Juan, then the result is not valid.  To be valid, you must measure Pedro himself to determine his height.
Poll surveys rely on the science of statistics.  If everything is done properly, the results will be credible.

The Question

The question asked was, “In your opinion, which president is the most corrupt in Philippine history?”
The respondents were 1,200 Filipinos with ages from 18 years and above.  According to statistics, the 1,200 samples are already accurate if each of the 84 million Filipinos has an equal chance of being selected as the respondent.  This could be done with proper survey methods.  Therefore the result of the poll survey was accurate.

The Pulse Asia group has been using the same methods and procedures in former surveys.  It has been shown and demonstrated that previous results were correct.  Therefore the result of the survey was reliable and it did not depend on who funded the survey.

The problem is in the aspect of validity.  The presidency of President Marcos was from 1965 to 1986.  Those who were born in 1965 would be 42 years old by now.  Therefore the respondents from 18 to 42 years old or even 50 years old were not yet born or were still too young during the time of President Marcos.  These respondents are in no position to judge the corruption during the time of President Marcos.  Therefore the result of the poll survey was not valid.

Most of the respondents were asked to compare the ZTE scam, Malacañang payola to Governors and Congressmen, Hello Garci Tape, etc. to events during Marcos’ time which they have no knowledge.  It is like asking one million Boholanos who is the more corrupt U.S.A. president, President Bush or President Clinton.  One million samples are very accurate but the result will not be valid because we do not know the situation in the U.S.A.

The Best Argument

The best argument of President Arroyo’s apologist should be the non-validity of the poll survey.  There is such a thing as obsolescence of data.  In the case of perceptions, we remember what is recent and becomes vague about the past.  Asking the respondents about something they do not know or vaguely remember compared to the recent is certainly invalid.

Filipino Bert “Ninja” Batawang will try to give the Philippines its fourth world boxing crown today when he takes on IBF junior flyweight champ Ulises Solis at the Auditorio Benito Juarez here.

Batawang, who arrived Wednesday night accompanied by trainer Jeremiah Quijano and manager Sammy Gello-ani, has vowed to sustain the domination of the Filipino fighters over the Mexicans.

“I would continue the mastery of the Philippines over Mexico,” said Batawang during the pre-fight news conference.  The 35-year-old ring veteran was obviously referring to the Boxing World Cup last August in Sacramento, California where the Philippines defeated Mexico, 5-1, to take home the US$250,000 trophy.
Solis replied that he doesn’t keep track of the bouts featuring the Filipinos against Mexicans, but if he did, “Batawang will be the second consecutive Filipino I’m going to beat.”

Solis previously retained his belt with an eight-round stoppage of Cebuano Rodel “Batang Mandaue” Mayol last August 4 at the All-State Arena in Rosemount, Illinois.

It was Solis’ fifth defense of the IBF title he won by beating American Will Grigsby y unanimous decision on January 7 last year at the Madison Square Garden in New York.

Solis holds a 25-1 win-loss record spiked with 19KOs, while Batawang, who is managed by international promoter Sammy Gello-ani of SGG Sports Promotions, parades a 50-6 win-loss card dotted with 34KOs.

By Fred C. Fuertes

Maribojoc, Bohol - The 47th edition of the annual Maribojoc Chistmas Basketball League reeled off yesterday with 15 cage teams vying for the top prizes.

A parade around the town’s main thoroughfare preceded the opening rites at the Maribojoc Cultural Center. Fifteen tandems from the municipality’s 22 barangays featuring their beauteous muses displayed their wares before the townspeople who lined up the sidestreets and cheered the youthful players who paraded with the top officials of the league’s management committee.

Concededly the province’s oldest cage festivity, the yuletide tournament fired off last night and is set to end on Jan. 2, next year.

Mayor Leoncio “Boy” Evasco Jr., himself a cage standout during his seminary days and early years as a clergyman, guested the opening program. He recalled the youth to shy away from the dreaded drug menace and instead, concentrate on sports development.

Fifteen teams will exchanged the spheroid aimed to clinch the championship plum. These include Poblacion’s Sesame Street, Poblacion’s Goodah, Tinibgan Hilltop Hikers, Punsod, Bayacabac, Jandig, Punta Cruz, St. Isidore Foundation of the Agahay-Busao-Toril combination, Bood Kcabser, Cabawan, Aliguay-Lincod Cagers, San Roque Reptiles, Pagnitoan, Lagtangon, and Anislag.

The champion team will be richer by P5,000 including gold medals for all players, courtesy of the Philippine Sports Commission; 1st runner-up - P3,000; 2nd runner-up â€" P2,000; and 3rd runner-up â€" P1,000.

Legaspi lawyer Eddie Busalla, original cager of this 47-year old tourney will sponsor the Engr. Paulito Fuertes Cup to be given to the Most Valuable Player (MVP). Fuertes is the founding organizer of the yearly MCBL.

Winners of the Mythical Five Awards will also receive medals from the Philippine Sports Commission.
Veteran Sports leader Moises “Boy” Descallar is this season’s MCBL commissioner.

Filipino medalists in the 24th Southeast Asian Games will get an extra bonus for Christmas from President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Philippine Olympic Committee president Jose Cojuangco Jr. said.

“I have been informed by Malacañang that President Arroyo will give all of our Southeast Asian Games medalists bonuses, regardless whether they win the gold, silver or bronze,” said Cojuangco shortly after witnessing the Team Philippines swimmers perform at the end of the championships.

“This should be good news for all or our SEA Games achievers.  However, I was not informed how much they will get,” Cojuangco added.

He pointed out that the cash gifts were on top of the regular incentives given by the government through the Philippine Sports Commission for SEAG medalists.

Under the scheme, an individual gold medalist gets P100,000, the silver is worth P50,000 and the bronze P10,000.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

As others might have thought that the Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP) is gone but the contrary proved them wrong as the national governing body of basketball is alive and kicking.

The strength of the national basketball federation was manifested when its executive board convened and elected Prospero “Butch” Pichay to the presidency.  The election of the former congressman was ratified during the national congress held on December 12 at the IRTC of the Technological University of the Philippines (TUP) along Ayala Boulevard in Manila.

In his acceptance speech, “he would like to do a good role as a working leader and not just as a paper president.  I would not be confrontational in tackling the problems besetting by the BAP.  But I would rally behind with all your support to bring back our country to where it was in the 50’s and 60’s.”

Furthermore he said, “In regaining lost glory in basketball I want it done the Filipino way.  Just as those times when the likes of Jun Papa and Bogs Adornado burned the hoop with shots from way out.”
Currently the former solon also heads the National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) and the Federation of School Sports Association of the Philippines (FESSAP).

Aside from Pichay, other significant personalities who were in attendance of the said congress were Rep. Luis Villafuerte, chairman of the BAP, Gov. Douglas Ra. Cagas, vice chairman; Trisha Abundo, Vice chairman; Christian Tan, executive vice president; Wilson Young, vice president for Luzon; Mayor Senen Sarmiento, vice president for the Visayas; Tony Fabico, treasurer; and Graham C Lim, the ever workhorse secretary general.

The election of Pichay came into being because of the resignation Go Teng Kok.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

World Flyweight champ Nonito Donaire arrived in Cebu City yesterday afternoon to a red carpet welcome from Manila.

The 25-year-old who traces his roots to the progressive town of Talibon, Bohol arrived from San Francisco, California early Friday morning at the Centennial Airport in Manila and enplaned to Cebu early Saturday afternoon after a hectic schedule there which was arranged by Solar Sports, including a courtesy call to Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Malacañang.  The red carpet welcome was spearheaded by sportsman Jonathan Guardo for the IBF/IBO flyweight king who is also an official endorser of the Arthro Kontra Arthritis.

We are reprinting here in full yesterday’s article of boxing scholar Quinito Henson of the Philippine Star for the sake of our aspiring boxers for them to learn Donaire’s common goal in the likes of Rey “Boom Boom” Bautista, Czar Amonsot, up-and-coming Ricky Sismundo and others.

IBF flyweight champion Nonito Donaire Jr. arrived early Friday morning on a Philippine Airlines flight from San Francisco and said his newfound celebrity status won’t affect the way he sacrifices to give honor to the country in every fight.

Solar Sports brought Donaire over for a 10-day whirlwind trip to introduce him to media as boxing’s latest hero.  He is scheduled for TV appearances in “Unang Hirit” “Eat Bulaga” and the PBA, photo shoots for “Rogue” and “Men’s Health” and radio interviews on “Boys Night Out” “Max” and “Sports Talk.”

“This won’t change me as a person,” said Donaire who is visiting with his mother Imelda and girlfriend Rachel Marcial. “I’ll never forget my beginnings.  I know poverty.  Every day, I thank God for His blessings.  I want to inspire and motivate others to do what I did the way others inspired and motivated me.  I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity to become a world champion and to bring honor to my country.”
Donaire, 25, said talk of a brewing rift with his US promoter Gary Shaw is exaggerated.

“I have nothing against Gary,” said Donaire.  “There’s been some miscommunication and I know we can sort things out as soon as we sit down.  I was told Gary will be coming to Manila and I hope to meet with him.  Whatever he decides, I’ll do.  I’m a fighter.  I don’t choose my opponents.  I’ll fight whomever Gary wants.”
Donaire admitted he is to blame for the speculations on a supposed rift.

“I’m not used to media hype and controversy,” he said. “I should know better than to just his roots to Talibon, Bohol.  His mother’s brother Fr. Matias Gonzales is the Buenavista parish priest.
Donaire flew to Cebu as guest of the makers of Arthro herbal medicine which he endorses.

Donaire said he will train even while on vacation to make sure his weight is kept under control.  His egimen includes running and doing leg drills with Marcial, a Fil-Am taekwondo champion from San Francisco.

“A week after my fight against Maldonado, I went up to 135 pounds,” said Donaire shoot my mouth off.  I’ve got a live contract with Gary and I intend to abide by its terms.  If Gary wants me to fight one of the two Japanese champions in April, I’ll do it.  One of my goals is to unify the championship so that’s something I’m looking forward to.”

Donaire’s mother left for Buenavista, Bohol, on the 3 p.m. flight yesterday to visit her ailing father Francisco.  Donaire will also visit his grandfather, to whom he dedicated his victory over Luis Maldonado early this month.

Although Donaire was born in General Santos City, he traces who tipped the scales for his first title defense at 111, one under the flyweight limit.  “Then I began to do workouts and brought down my weight to 124.  Now, I’m about 130.  Weight doesn’t worry me.  All I need is two months preparation for a fight and I’ll take on anyone.”

Donaire said he will make it standard procedure to train in Cebu for each fight.  He trained in Tony Aldeguer’s facility for the Maldonado bout.  Donaire bloodied the Mexican challenger, dropped him in the seventh round and scored a stoppage in the eighth.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

Five days before Christmas will mark the induction of the new set of officers of the Dao Sta. Cruz Tennis Club led by Rev. Fr. Kiking Magdoza.

The 2008 officers will meet in a pre-Christmas party at the residence of Orly “Mr. Hawaii 5-0” Orilla.  Other officers include the following: Ex-PB Flor Cornell, v-pres.; Margie Buhay, secretary; Inday Policianos, treasurer; Nestor Galao, auditor; Totoy Policianos, court manager and Totoy Policianos and Floro Tabuno, match match makers.

Dr. Strong Lumapas, Quintin Lim, Engr. Nerio Llorente, Engr. Benjie Jamora, Archt. Raul Romo, Lito Meguillo, Kag. Eddie Apat, Boy Jo and Pilo Opalla â€" board of directors.
CPG tennis classic ends today.

The start of the two-day pre-Christmas Tennis/Invitational Tourney went on smoothly yesterday morning at the CPG Complex twin hardcourts.

The doubles final of the two categories will be held today.  The Racho Petron Servicenter sponsors the tournament in coordination with the Alturas Group of Companies.

A 30-minute mid-afternoon rain interrupted some of the games but organizers are hoping for an improved weather condition today to finish the tourney.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

Mansasa High School Blue Marlins trounced the unpredictable Central Visaya State College of Arts.  Forestry, and Technology Warriors, 90-72 in the resumption of the elimination round of the 13th Bohol Schools Amateur Athletic Association (BSAAA) 3rd Graham C Lim Basketball Challenge at the Holy Spirit School hard court.

Led by the foridable combination of pintsized point guard Raffy Taer, Mark “the Magic Man” Saligumba, and Elong “iron man” Casile, the Blue Marlins toyed the Warriors and extended their winning streak to 7 to stay on top of the standing at 9 wins against a solitary loss.

The triumvirate together with the off and on Angelito Cahapay proved to be more superior in arsenals in a shooting spree that ensued as the Warriors behind Maximo Sarte and Ruben Panilag failed to equal the firepower of the Blue Marlins.

The score at lemon time was 41-39 in favor of the MHS Blue Marlins.

Meanwhile, UB Baby Lemures nipped erstwhile stubborn Holy Spirit School Crusaders A, 68-60 keep a hold at third spot with 8 wins and 3 losses.

There ensued many lead exchanges as both teams fired their arsenals with accurate precision.  The Crusaders were on the thick of the fight at the start but lost steam fate in the fourth canto to yield as the final buzzer sounded.

The victory gave the Baby Lemurs in a triple tie for third spot with the BIT IC Jr Cruisers and guest team Bai Cristobal Camp.

Other results: DCPNHS Cyclones â€" 72 SIHS Monkeys â€" 62: BIT IC Mini Cruisers â€" 62 GCS Mini Eagles â€" 57.
The 13th BSAAA 3rd Graham C Lim Basketball Challenge is ably Supported by: City Mayor Dan Neri Lim; Petron Philippines; Mr. and Mrs. Gerardo B. Madanguit; Cebu PJ Stars; Mr. and Mrs. Allan Tenorio; Bon’s Lumber Supply; Congressman Edgar M. Chatto; SK Chair Bonefir Baguio; Mr. and Mrs. Leo B. Madanguit; STY Marketing; Bohol Wisdom School; BIG TOPZ; Holy Spirit School; Grandma’s Purified Drinking Water, Bohol Chronicle; DYRD AM/FM; Mr. and Mrs. Camilo Torralba; First Consolidated Bank; and Bohol Times.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

So young yet so good, Wesley So will again be tested when he spearheads a Philippine squad bound for the Asian Chess Team Championships in Visakhapatnam, South India, early next year.

Now the world’s youngest Grandmaster at 14, So may yet be given the top board assignment over fellow GMs Rogelio “Joey” Antonio, Eugene Torre and Mark Paragua and International master Julio Catalino Sadora when the Filipinos compete against the world-ranked Indians and Chinese and entries from the former Soviet Republics in the tournament set Jan. 2-11.

So, who became a full-fledged GM during the recent third Prospero Pichay Jr. Cup, is expected to overtake Antonio as the country’s top player when the Fide (World Chess Federation) releases its players’ rating in January.

National Chess Federation of the Philippines president Pichay is pleased with So’s rapid rise and wants to give him maximum exposure.

Pichay said he will also nominate So to be the Philippine Sportswriters Association’s “Athlete of the Year” for 2007.

“So’s accomplishment in the international chess scene is unprecedented,” said Pichay.  “Right now, he is the world’s youngest GM at age 14 years, one month and 28 days and the world’s seventh youngest to achieve the feat.”

So, the world’s strongest player in his age-group, Antonio, Torre and Paragua were all members of the RP men’s team that landed 44th in the 2006 Turin Chess Olympiad.  Paragua manned the top board then with Torre and Antonio playing board 2 and 3 and So serving as an alternate.

Composing the women’s team are Sheerie Joy Lomibao, Beverly Mendoza, Sherily Cua and Catherine Perena, the same players that gave the country 26th place in the Turin Olympiad.

He had a Boxing resume that could stand beside the greatest in his sport.  Yet Larry Holmes always seemed to have to justify himself as a champion.

There was no need for explanations Tuesday.

Holmes received the ultimate validation when he took his place in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.  Joining him in the 2008 class were 11 others boxers and ring personalities chosen by members of the Boxing Writers Association of America and a panel of international boxing historians.

He will be enshrined as the longest reigning world heavyweight champion in boxing history, holding the title for nearly seven years (1978-85).  Holmes’ 20 successful heavyweight title defenses were surpassed by only Joe Louis with 25.  He was on the verge of matching Rocky Marciano’s perfect 49-0 mark when he was upset by Michael Spinks for his first loss.

“I think there were some people who shortchanged me,” Holmes said by telephone.  “Sometimes the critics try to make you think you are less than what you are.”

Holmes will be inducted June 8.

By Bingo P. Dejaresco III
The Bohol Chronicle
Editor In Chief

On December 10, 1948, the world through the United Nations started the celebration of the “International Human Rights Day.”

Close to 50 years after last Monday, we observed the tattered flag of such declaration in the saga of the 55 farmers of Sumilao, Bukidnon, who are now trying to assert their “right of property.”

For close to two months since October 10, 2007, the farmers marched from Mindanao to the streets of Manila to dramatize their plight over a 144-hectare piece of land that they used to own. They used to own the land through Certificates of Land Ownership (CLOA) but surrendered their rights after the group of the Quisumbings applied for conversion of the rich farm land into an industrial estate.

They are asking the DAR to rescind the contract since the terms of the conversion were not honored by the new landlords and instead they sold the property recently to the San Miguel Foods Inc. (SMFI) to convert it into a huge piggery. This would house 162 piggery buildings with 4,400 female pigs and 44,000 piglets.

Under the Comprehensive Rules on Land Conversion (CRLC), the Quisumbing Group was to implement the conversion plan on year one and complete the project within five years back in 2004. The 144 hectares was to be converted into: 24 hectares (Development Academy of Mindanao), 67 hectares (Agro Industrial Park), 33 hectares (Forest Development) and 23 hectares (support facilities).

The Group did nothing of the above and instead sold the property to SMFI. It was clearly a land speculation deal that took Courts for a ride. The DAR regional offices had so declared in the years 2004-2006 that no such development ever took place.

It is violative of Section 34 of the CLRC which specifies the use of the land upon conversion and its successor (SMFI) to honor the terms of the conversion.

Aside from the non-compliance of the Law, the farmers contended they were mistreated by the landowners for the last decade. In the rural areas, without the presence of the State’s police power, those who have the guns rule the town. And so it was.

The farmers rightfully demanded their right to the property after these violations. The members of civil society, Bishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, the superiors of the religious orders, activist priests and nuns, Ateneo de Manila and other NGOs had supported the two month walk for justice of the 55 Sumilao farmers.
The Palace of course snubbed the march (while GMA was away), showing once again the disregard if not the condescension of the powers-that-be of the “informal sector” of our society, who because of their lack of education and economic power are not organized. They are not only denied, as informal sector, the benefits of SSS and Philhealth, but their access to the legal system is prohibitively low.

So they had to do the drama. The pitiful, emotionally laden road to Calvary of 55 dispossessed farmers in order to assert “their right to property.”

But this is not all soap opera for the farmers since under the law of Conversion of Land, they are entitled to their rights. It is very clear that if one keeps the blindfold of Lady Justice right there were her eyes are, the farmers should win the case.

Now, Jesus Arranza, the president of the Federation of Philippine Industries spoke in behalf of the capitalists â€" clouding the issue by saying that corn buyers who are afraid to lose their monopoly over the corn sales due to the possible entry of SMFI â€" are the mafia behind the farmers’ agitation.

That confused analysis pales against the genuine bid of farmers to claim ownership and development of the land they till. How dare the armchair industrialist use welfare economics to disguise his defense of his class interest.

Also, it has been raised as an issue that some of the protesting farmers had already gotten back their titles in some portions of the 144 hectares. It is not easy for those who care nothing but themselves to see people marching in behalf of their brethren who are prejudiced and disenfranchised like their brother farmers in Bukidnon.

Very often, farmers who are part of the “informal sector” are so driven by the need to survive and fight for their daily meal that they do not have the time nor the resources to seek legal remedies when their shanties are demolished, their lands stolen, their rights violated.

The remarkable, brave stand of this Gallant 55, leaving family and heart behind to put political drama to the violation of their “right to property” right in the heart of the Philippine capital is a good sign of new empowerment of the people.

That after two months they were able to file their formal legal protest at the DAR on December 10 â€" International Human Rights Day is in itself significant.

Democratic space should allow this kind of dissent and protest. Otherwise we are forcing the poor from becoming “the legally excluded poor to become socially condemned criminals” once we prevent the wheels of justice from turning.

For Comments: email to bingo_dejaresco@yahoo.com.ph Or bohol-rd@mozcom.com

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

By Kit Bagaipo

Two aspirants for the provincial presidency of the Liga ng mga Barangay and Federated Sangguniang Kabataan are virtually coming out unopposed.

The provincial Federated SK election is set tomorrow while the Liga ng mga Barangay will elect its officials on December 29.

Jean Censoria Cajes, daughter of second district Rep. Roberto Cajes and Trinidad Mayor Judith Cajes, is expected to replace her sister Frances Bobbith Cajes, the incumbent provincial federated president, as Jake Jala, a cousin of third district Rep. Adam Relson Jala has already backed out of the race.

Even with Jala’s declaration to abandon the provincial federated SK, city SK president Rammy June Alturas announced his candidacy to challenge Cajes last night.

Since the provincial SK federation election is done via nomination, Cajes could be in for a surprise tomorrow as several mayors of the first district reportedly agreed to support Alturas, according to trusted aides of City Mayor Dan Lim who is supporting the candidacy of Alturas.

There were other names of municipal SK federated presidents who were planning to oppose the younger Cajes but also quit the race.

They were Rochelle Brigitte Imboy, daughter of Loay Mayor Mae Imboy and Kag. Brigido Imboy; Maria Fe Cadeliña, daughter of Bilar Mayor Fanuel Cadeliña; and Sandrina Schreurs, daughter of Garcia-Hernandez Mayor Myrna Schreurs.

Observers asked how can Cajes serve as SK provincial chairman when she is studying in an exclusive school in Metro Manila.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

By Kit Bagaipo

The public is supporting the move to limit cockfights to Sundays and holidays only, instead of tolerating cockpit operators to hold it almost everyday.

This was the general reaction aired over dyRD’s top-rated “Tagbilaran-by-Nite” after PNP provincial director Edgardo Ingking issued notice to strictly implement the Sunday/holiday cockfighting executive order of Gov. Erico Aumentado.

The governor is supporting the move of SSupt. Ingking to limit cockfighting.

The governor said cockpit owners have been very abusive in holding cockfights almost everyday.
Complaints from parents and teachers reached the governor’s attention after some students are reportedly skipping classes and are engaged in cockfighting.

The governor said he has not received any complaints from town mayors opposing the enforcement of his order, through SSupt. Ingking.

Owners of cockpits, specifically the Bohol Association of Cockpit Operators, through its president Atty. Alexander Lim, said they will be constrained to file charges against SSupt. Ingking who insists on closing down cockpits that are allowing cockfights from Monday to Saturday.

Lim, who owns the Loay cockers arena, said all cockpits in the province are allowing “special cockfights”. Most of which are covered with a municipal or barangay ordinance, Lim said.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

Half of the 12 barangay captains boycotted the scheduled election for municipal federation officers of the Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) in Dauis town on Tuesday, but the remaining six took precedent by declaring a quorum and reelecting ABC Pres. Ephraim Bomediano.

It was reputedly the first of its case in the said island-town and the only of its case ever reported as far as the December 11 simultaneous ABC municipal federation polls in Bohol are concerned.

The six who did not turn up were led by Dao barangay captain Felix Milallos, who had already filed his candidacy against Bomediano but was “disqualified.”

Milallos filed his candidacy earlier as required in the guidelines of the election.

As the incumbent ABC head, Bomediano declared his group in quorum and moved to nullify the candidacy of Milallos for the latter’s alleged failure to fully account the fund of the municipal chapter of the league.
Municipal Local Government Operations Officer Ma. Dulce Alforque, Municipal Election Officer Ponciano Rubia and people’s organization representative Rogelio Pangiligan composed the Board of Election Supervisors (BES) for the Dauis ABC poll.

Milallos, identified with Mayor Luciano Bongalos, and his loyal five were reportedly advised to better not go to the poll venue after knowing the disqualification move against him, hoping that no quorum will be declared and no election done as a consequence. 

But the Bomediano group proceeded even if they were only six present because, according to Bomediano, the Constitution and By-Laws of the league only requires 50% of the chapter members to declare a quorum.

In the national election of the league, only 40% are required to constitute a quorum.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

Gov. Erico Aumentado has denounced political dynasties being perpetuated by some Bohol politicians and vowed that he will "never allow a single member of his family to run for public office while he is governor."

The governor lamented that until now, the Anti Dynasty Bill has not been acted upon by the country's legislators.

Aumentado bared during his weekly radio program The Governor Reports that he authored and filed the bill during his incumbency as congressman of the second district.

The Senate version of said bill was crafted by then Sen. Wigberto Tanada, he said.          

Aumentado explained that the bill was filed in accordance with the constitutional provision that ban politicians to endorse close relatives within the fourth degree of consanguinity in seeking elective positions at the same time.

However, such constitutional provision requires an enabling congressional law to be implemented, the governor said, hence, the Anti Dynasty Bill.

This pronouncements by the governor came in the midst of scions and relatives of powerful political families fighting over Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan seats.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

By Kit Bagaipo

The four operatives of the Traffic Management Group (TMG) being charged for "serious breach of procedure" in apprehending alleged stolen cars here are blaming the Bohol PNP Crime Laboratory for its failure to detect tampering of engine and chassis numbers of vehicles.

C/Insp. Joseph Orsos, head of the TMG legal division, said in an interview with the Chronicle that based on results of their investigation, all of the eight vehicles seized during recovery operations here are registered to its original owners in Manila.

According to their documents, Orsos claimed, all the 8 vehicles underwent macro-etching at the Bohol PNP Crime Lab and were issued certification, prior to having been cleared and registered by the TMG and later the Land Transportation Office.          

Orsos said the Crime Lab at Camp Dagohoy "failed to conduct an extensive examination of the vehicles" which the four TMG operatives eventually recovered here.

Although he considers it "a technical glitch", Orsos said the Bohol PNP Crime Lab is still "liable for [their] negligence."

Macro etching is done to determine the true identity of the vehicle by making a carbon copy of the car's secret codes (engine and chassis number). Secret codes of most stolen cars are altered, according to Ursos.

"The TMG only possess a list of stolen vehicles," he said. "It is the Crime Lab which can determine if the vehicles secret codes are tampered or not. If the Crime Lab releases an erroneous report on the results of its laboratory inspection, then the TMG will also issue an erroneous certification of the vehicle."

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

The preliminary investigation of the highway robbery case in Sierra Bullones town is set tomorrow at the Provincial Prosecutors Office, this city.

Police identified the suspect as Matias Bactasa, alias Dondon and Tamolo, a resident of Brgy. Aurora, Pilar town. He was positively identified by PO3 Georgie Sarabosing as among the suspects in the robbery victimizing six Japanese students who were on board a coaster en route to barangay Nan-od, Sierra Bullones town last Sept. 29.
          
The suspect together with two others blocked their way and pointed handgun towards the driver and passengers. Carted away by the suspects were cellular phones, four digital cameras, watches and wallets. The suspects boarded their black Yamaha DT motorcycle towards barangay Matin-ao.

The suspect was also identified by Bernado Tiongco, driver of Mountain Eagle bus who saw him board the black Yamaha DT motorcycle few minutes before the incident.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

By Ric Obedencio

Bohol Vice-Gov. Julius Caesar Herrera commended Corazon Gaviola-Atuel and her family of barangay Fatima, Ubay town, for being this year's "Model OFW Family of the Year" award (MOFYA) "Maybahay, Public Servant."

The vice-governor, who personally met Atuel recently in Ubay town, has demonstrated appreciation for Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) families. He said that OFWs have endured and thrived for struggle of being separated from their loved ones.

Atuel represented the Visayas along with other national awardees, Oscar De Jesus, Jr., Seaman, Ama, entrepreneur and Virgencita Lagunsay, domestic helper, Ina, peacekeeper. The award is courtesy of the Globe and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).          

Herrera recognized the heroic sacrifices of OFWs, who are considered the modern-day heroes, not only because for their respective families but also for their great contribution in terms of remittances to the country's economy.

The vice-governor said OFWs' contribution should not be underestimated because last year OFW contributed more than $12 billion dollars to help make the economy float. In the first ten months of this year, they already chipped in more than $11 billion.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

By Kit Bagaipo

Five policemen, including a ranking officer, were each meted a 60-day suspension for grave misconduct by the National Police Commission (Napolcom) Region-7.

P/Supt. Daniel Sales, of the PNP-Internal Affairs Service regional office and PO3 Hermenigildo Abella, PO3 Pablito Panis, PO2 Roberto Vistal and PO2 Edwin Melicor were found guilty of the administrative case filed against them by one Julius Suarez, a resident of barangay Cogon, Inabanga town.

The case stemmed from an accusation of Suarez against Supt. Sales, who was then chief of police of Inabanga, and the four policemen who allegedly arrested the complainant for possession of metamphetamine hydrochloride, also known as shabu, in a buy-bust operation last June 26, 2001.          

In his affidavit, Suarez claimed that on the said date, at around 8 pm after having dinner, he went to the waiting shed infront of their house where a certain Reynaldo Bagoy was also seated.

While they were talking, PO3 Abella, PO3 Ranis and PO2 Vistal approached and invited him to go with them at the Inabanga Police Station as Supt. Sales (then CInsp.) wanted to talk to Suarez.

Inside the office of Sales, the complainant was bodily searched which allegedly yielded one deck of shabu in his back pocket. Suarez protested on the search and that he did not possess the illegal substance.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

By Kit Bagaipo

The Medical Mission Group Hospital and Health Services Cooperative (Coop Hospital) has offered to pay the city government for the amount involved, including damages, for the uncovered padding of claims made on the Blue Card Hospitalization program.

This was bared by the Medical Mission Group federation's founder and chief executive officer Dr. Jose Tiongco who was interviewed over City Mayor Dan Lim's weekly radio program, "Katin-awan ug Baruganan" yesterday.

"There must be restitution for the amount of money involved and [for] damages," according to Tiongco.

Tiongco, who is based in Davao, said he learned of the anomalies at the Tagbilaran Coop Hospital last August and immediately came over to talk to the mayor who was already considering the termination of the Coop Hospital lease of the buildings owned by the city government.

source: <a href="http://www.boholchronicle.com">The Bohol Chronicle, A A Bi-Weekly Newspaper</a>

The regional development council of Central Visayas will ask the government to fund two vital power projects that will ensure the reliability of the electricity supply in the region.

The council wants a new sub-station built in Naga City in Cebu province and improved power transmission lines in Bohol province and they endorsed the projects for the approval of the Investment Coordination Committee of the National Economic and Development Authority, the council said in a statement.

The new Naga sub-station will be located at Barangays Colon and Tuyan in Naga City and is estimated to cost about P1.156 million, while the P1.3-billion Bohol Backbone Transmission Project will involve the improvement of transmission lines in the entire province.

The Neda regional office said the construction of the project can start in January, with a target date of completion on June 2010, if the Cabinet panel approves the funding requirement.

The old Naga switchyard has 10 diesel and coal-fired generators with varying capacities from 7.3 megawatts to 55 MW and they generated power from the diesel- and coal-fired power plants that transmitted power through five 138-KV lines.

The switchyard handles about 200 MW of electricity, or some 60 percent of the total generation capacity of Cebu.

According to the National Transmission Corp., the switchyard contains electrical equipment that have gone beyond their maximum usefulness and is already outdated according to current industry standards.

TransCo said a new sub-station will improve the reliability of the power supply and increase efficiency of transmission to the Visayas grid as well as ensure the security of the system.

On the other hand, the Bohol Backbone Transmission Project involves the expansion of the sub-station in Ubay town, the construction of a new one in Corella and the installation of transmission lines with more capacity.

The project will solve the current weakness of the Bohol Grid by expanding the Ubay sub-station and connecting it to the new sub-station in Corella via a 138-KV transmission line.

TransCo said the project was necessary to prevent the overloading of the existing 69-KV transmission lines since Bohol is dependent on electricity from the Leyte grid and the loss of any of the two lines that are currently in use will result in an island-wide blackout.

source: http://www.manilastandardtoday.com

Maajong pag-abot rupert balagosa

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God bless,
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Maajong pag-abot hotmilkdude

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God bless,
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Maajong pag-abot kankan

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God bless,
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Maajong pag-abot tin-tin

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Quote from: orChids on December 17, 2007, 03:14:10 PM
Bro. Mike, wherever he is,seems it's always an EB bisan mag chat lang mi for some seconds. And I will be happier to see him on his destination.Go for your destination Bro!Basta dia lang ko sa kilid-kilid,just buzz.
Malay nato didto ta sa akong Spain mag EB someday.
You're such a nice person Bro.And I wish you goodluck and Godspeed.
Basta buzz me at Christmas lang ha?Just wanna greet you .
Naghulat ko ug reply nimo sa akong pm,sus wala diay nako na click ang send,hehe pakataw-a lang god ko Bro oy.

My beautiful sister Aya, I have not received any PM from you ever since. I think you're still learning how to use the PM tool of Tubag Bohol.

I owe you a lot, Sis. Though we haven't seen each other for a long time, yet your friendship never fades.

I wish you to stay in Japan rather than going to Spain.

Quote from: B:) on December 17, 2007, 02:17:21 PM
Mike, I linked this site to my HNU HS class in our yahoog roup website around June/July this year. And I think I still have to link this to my HSS Elem.Class also. Anyway, I hope it's working!

Hello B,

Thank you very much for linking Tubag Bohol to your site. God bless.
How are you? Panagsa ra ka makabisita dah.

Ace Hits Rock Bottom

Published 1985

I  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Barbara Beasley Murphy was born to Dr. William De Ford (a physician) and Henryetta (Kurtz) Beasley on February 4, 1933 in Springfield, Ohio. When Murphy was a child, her mother read children’s books and recited poetry to her regularly. As Murphy grew up in Ohio, and then in North Carolina during World War II, many issues touched young Murphyâ€"including cultural diversity, violence, and racism. In addition to her love of children’s books, and reading and writing for children, Murphy believes that these early experiences began to set the stage for her future career as a writer.


As a young adult, Murphy attended Drake University from 1951-1953. She earned her bachelor of arts degree from the University of North Carolina in 1955. After graduation, Murphy pursued a career in junior high education as a teacher of English in Euclid, Ohio (1956-1957). She became a high school teacher of speech and drama in New York City (1957-1962). Her career also included an acting stint during the summer of 1957 at the Wilmington Summer Theatre in Ohio. The author later married Bill Murphy, a cartoonist and designer, in 1961, and raised their two children: Stephen and Jennifer.


Murphy told Contemporary Authors, (1984): “I’m in love with the visual, with seeing. I’m not naturally good with words as many writers are. Words sometimes come slowly. But I can’t draw or paint so I write.”


The author continued, “When I write, the story comes to me in pictures. I try to describe them well enough for a reader to see what I see. After the sentences are down, I mess around with the words, smoothing them like adobe, or plumping them up like pillows. It seems egotistical writing down your images for a year or so then waiting impatiently for other people to read them. My only excuse is that I’m grateful for the other writers who do it. Their words have added such richness to my life, I forgive the vanity and appreciate their impulse to share.”


The author believes that several things in her life helped her to get started writing books. As she experienced racial prejudices firsthand in the South during WWII, she grew concerned about this tension. It motivated her to write Home Free. Writing helped her to work through the problems she had with racism.


The author continued to write books about deep issues. She mitigated them with humor to present the issues kindly. Murphy wrote the book No Place to Run in response to the violence she heard about in New York news reports. This book tells how a New York City boy deals with his guilt, experiences self-forgiveness, and gains acceptance after he helps his friends spray paint a sleeping vagrant.


School board members in Calhoun County, Alabama, banned the book for “vulgar” language, and later placed the book on the restricted shelves of school libraries. Murphy, a deeply religious person and child advocate, fought the ban with the aid of the P.E.H. American Center with the belief that banning books “leads to the diminishment of human life.”


At the same time Murphy wrote No Place to Run, Murphy helped build the Saint Peter’s Church in Manhattan at Citicorp Center. For eight years, she served on the design and building committees and the church council. They tore down the old structure, had the new one designed, comforted the congregation during the move, maintained a ministry to the city, and watched the new church rise. Murphy believes that “a book is an interpretation of what life is.” To her, building and writing are “very passionate things.”


Murphy’s cowriter on the “Ace” books, Judie Wolkoff, was born to John Robert Edwards and Edna Godfrey on December 23, 1939 in Lewiston, Montana. As a child growing up with two siblings, Wolkoff always wrote. She recalled one poignant memory in an interview to Michelle Prebilic (July, 2000). She was a housebound eight- or nine-year-old child with measles, and her mother read her numerous books in an effort to entertain her. Even then, Wolkoff remembers the desire to write books.


In high school, Wolkoff served as assistant editor for the newspaper, writing editorial articles and feature stories. Wolkoff later graduated from the University of Utah and pursued careers in teaching and writing. She taught elementary school in California and in New York City. As a teacher, she took the opportunity to read her stories to her class, although she did not tell them she had written the stories.


Wolkoff says that she “never knew where to send her stories” for publication. As she raised her two children, she wrote picture books. She says that her characters seemed to “grow up with her children.” As Wolkoff began to send the picture book manuscripts to publishers, she received letters in return saying that she should publish her ideas in a novel. Then, she sent a picture book to Murphy’s editor. He returned the manuscript, also suggesting that the idea would be perfect for a novel.


She decided to write her first novel, Wally. Because of this editor’s assistance, Wolkoff published her first book, and continued to write and publish novels. She also wrote television scripts.


Wolkoff’s books presented realistic problems faced by young people in books lightened with humor. She wrote one serious book, Where the Elf King Sings, which she researched and wrote for a year and a half. She presented the conflicts of the Vietnam War through the eyes of the children whose fathers served. The book met with harsh criticism due to the country’s division over the Vietnam War. Many people saw it as an anti-war novel. Wolkoff decided that she felt more at home writing humorous tales.


In the summer of 1978, Wolkoff met co-author Murphy in a workshop at New School University in Greenwich Village, New York. As students taking this writing for children class, Wolkoff and Murphy both seemed to laugh at similar situations. They bonded through their senses of humor. Inspired by humor, by New York, and by the sympathy that they felt for boys struggling to become men, they decided to write a book together.


They wanted Ace to be humorous and to give hope to children. As they wrote the book over the next year, Wolkoff and Murphy did a lot of laughing as they came up with the zany cast of characters. Along the way, they got “lots of male advice.”


Writing a book together “turned out to be a lot of fun,” notes Murphy in an interview with Michelle Prebilic (July, 2000). As they wrote, the authors learned the struggles typical of rewriting a co-authored book for publication. They worked through the many disagreements inherent in this process. At the request of their editor, they wrote a second book in the series, Ace Hits Rock Bottom.


Wolkoff found the perfect idea for the sequel. Inspired by a 60 Minutes show about a retirement home for aged opera singers in Rome, Italy, Wolkoff believed it to be the perfect backdrop for the next round of adventures with Ace and the gang. She contacted Murphy, who bought the tape to view the show. The idea came to fruition in the sequel as Ace and the gang find jobs at the Wartzburg Theatre, a rest home for aging actors.


Critics tout Ace Hits the Big Time and Ace Hits Rock Bottom as some of Wolkoff’s best books. Filled with humor and action, critics believe they capture the attention of reluctant readers.


Wolkoff believes that young adults interested in a writing career should write about their own experiences or memories that they have from childhood. She believes that forming a good editor relationship is essential, as well as having a good sense of humor.

II  OVERVIEW


Delacorte Press published Murphy and Wolkoff’s novel Ace Hits Rock Bottom in 1985. In this second book of the Ace series, Ace and the gang are back on the streets of New York Cityâ€"in debt. Their movie careers fizzled quickly, and they need jobs to pay for all the goodies and gadgets they bought in advance of their earnings. Desperate for acting work, they leap at their shady agent’s offer to work at the Wartzburg Theater in the Bronx, only to discover that it is not a theater at all, but a rest home for aging actors.


The gang’s new jobs happen to be in the territory of a rival gang, the Piranhas. After facing the dreaded Piranhas in Ace Hits the Big Time, Ace and the gang do not want to cause trouble. How Ace and the Falcons deal with the Piranhas, earn the much-needed money, and serve the aging actors, delights and entertains readers.

III  SETTING


The authors develop the setting by bringing readers right into the sights and sounds of New York. The novel starts in “The Pits,” Ace’s New York apartment, with a scene that any teen can relate to. Flo, Ace’s mom, yells for him to wake up. Ace, whining that it is summer vacation, pulls the covers over his head. He reminisces about his stardom the previous school year as the lead actor in Bound and Gagged. At first a big hit, the movie fizzled quickly, leaving Ace and his friends, the Purple Falcon gang, with credit-card bills to pay. Now Flo expects Ace to get a job over the summer.


Desperate for money and not wanting to work at Gristede’s, the grocery store where his mom works, Ace accepts an acting job from his shady agent, Jerry Cone. Cone tells Ace that the job will be at the Wartzburg Theater in the Bronx. Ace dons his trademark eyepatch to head for the Dumont Health Club where the Falcons work out to build muscle. Ace persuades the Falcons to join him, and they head for their interviews.


The setting continues to develop as the Falcons travel on the New York subway. Suffering in un-air-conditioned cars, the Falcons move from car to car in hopes of finding relief. As they cross between cars, Ace smells corroded air that leaves “a metal taste” in his mouth. The train lurches and jerks to a stop, and the lights go out. Ace describes himself as feeling like “a poached egg” in his jeans. This scene typifies New York and brings readers right into the action of the city.


As Ace exits the train to see the Bronx for the first time, the authors take us vividly with him. Ace anxiously hopes to see Yankee Stadium. Instead, he notices a poor shopping-bag lady picking through a trash can. As the Falcons look out from the Grand Concourse, the main drag, Ace sees luxury buildings “going to seed,” with a couple of buildings that look like “burned-out shells.” These scenes place readers in New York City using sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.


As the Falcons’ adventures unfold, readers experience New York, including the Bronx, in a realistic and vivid way: living in an apartment, walking on busy city streets, riding the crowded, un-air-conditioned subway to and from the Wartzburg, and racing through the streets in a yellow Checker cab. The authors go into such detail that they show Ace concentrating on the “silver spire of the Chrysler Building” while Freddie glues his attention on a plane headed into La Guardia Airport.


Back at “The Pits,” Murphy and Wolkoff add realism by describing the typical life of the Hobarts: Ace’s dad sitting in a Barcalounger either snoozing or watching television, Nora sitting on the floor counting her money from her dog-walking job, and Ace’s mom sitting at the kitchen table in a pink robe, poring over a stack of bills.


From the Falcons’ first day of work, Murphy and Wolkoff draw readers vividly into the issues through adventures and action. For example, Ace and the Falcons begin to develop a mature perspective on the value of money as they wait tables, tend the landscape, and deal with the aging actors. Ace learns that acting and earning money takes practice, perseverance, and sometimes courage.


Increasing the effectiveness of the setting, Murphy and Wolkoff create a background with people contemporary to the mid-1980s. Ace thinks he sees Dustin Hoffman working on his biceps at the Dumont Health Club. Slick practices entrechats and tour jetes in front of a mirror as if he is admiring Rudolf Nureyev. George does aerobics with a group of Broadway chorus girls, and Freddy chins himself to the top bar with muscles that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger envious. Like Paul Newman, a method actor, Ace learns to observe people and knows how they feel inside.


To further enhance their re-creation of the era, the authors set the mood of the time through gadgets, games, and clothing. Gadgets and games include Monopoly, Barbie, Nautilus exercise equipment, and an Apple computer. The clothing of the time includes references to Cross-Your-Heart Bras, a white macramé bag, Adidas sports bags, and French-import designer sunglasses. George wears Joe Weider weight-lifting suitsâ€"one for every day of the week.


The use of expressive slang typical of New York teenagers helps to create believable characters. For example, the boys’ conversations (like “Get George first, would ya, Ace? I wanna do a few pliés. Whaddya think?” and “Message? Umm . . . naw. No thanks. I’ll call tomorrow”) sound realistic and keep the pace of the novel active and entertaining.


The authors also use references to the foods of the time to add humor. At the Wartzburg, the cook serves “cow’s brain,” mashed potatoes, baby peas, and melon balls. At Ace’s home, Flo serves a steaming casserole of leftovers: gummy noodles, born-again vegetables, and tuna-bake. Today’s family would have most likely ordered a take-out meal instead of picking at gummy leftovers. Throughout the novel, the authors interject the food of the 1980s: Schlitz beer, La Yogurt breakfasts, Kool-Aid, and graham crackers. These foods not only bring out the humor but also help readers identify with the characters and the era.

IV  THEMES AND CHARACTERS


The protagonist, Horace “Ace” Hobart, is a mischievous sixteen-year-old boy who has just finished his first year at Kennedy High and started summer vacation. Readers who met him in Ace Hits the Big Time will be familiar with Ace’s ability to look at himself and his life objectively. He relates his reactions, feelings, and shortcomings in a humorous, light-hearted way.


In a typical misadventure, Ace travels, at his agent’s suggestion, to the Garden Room at the Starlight Hotel to meet Myron Evans, the head of properties for Global Studios. Ace daydreams about the exciting opportunities this meeting will unveil and the fancy restaurant he is heading for. Instead he finds the place run down and dirty, and he meets “Stab” Evans, a member of the Piranhas. Realizing Evans tricked him, Ace tries to avoid food poisoning by ordering hot tea and three hard-boiled eggs. As they eat, Stab tells Ace about the ringleader responsible for the Bronx arsons. Stab explains that the Piranhas cannot call the police because they would “get their throats slit.” Needing the ten-grand reward money, Ace decides to call the police and turn in the ringleader. When the police sergeant tells Ace that the name and address he provides matches that of the New York City Police Commissioner, Ace realizes that the Piranhas set him up. Humiliated, Ace walks home and calls himself an “Idiot! Moron! Jackass!” He punches himself and kicks his shin, imagining that the Piranhas are sitting on a stoop laughing at him. He swears that he will carry his “gullible role in the Piranha con game” secretly to his grave. But as the novel ends, Ace has gained a new maturity as he uses sarcasm and humor to successfully avoid being set up by the Piranhas a second time.


Among the many facets of Ace’s rounded, dynamic character is his vulnerability, first revealed in Ace Hits the Big Time, and a central theme in this novel. When the Falcons take the jobs at the Wartzburg Theater in the Bronx, and subsequently realize that they will be on Piranha turf daily, Ace has to solve the problem. He remembers Nevada Culhane, his favorite fiction character, and the solution presents itself: disguise. Ace removes his eyepatch and puts on torn runny Supp-Hose, dirty tube socks, decayed leather slippers, a grungy sack dress, two sweaters, and a horse blanket. Ace and the Falcons successfully protect themselves from being discovered by the Piranhas and hide their vulnerability.


Ace’s developing maturity is another theme in the novel, along with self-realization, beauty and love, retaliation, and aging. As the novel begins, Ace is forced to face the reality that he must be responsible for his debt. As Flo points out, Ace owes money for a water bed, black sheets, a wall-mounted stereo, a tape deck, an Atari set, no-fog clock, a chiming telephone, many Claude Clerc shirts, and his Bloomingdale “nylon zebra pajamas.” Flo insists that he get a job immediately. As Ace’s luck has it, Jerry Cone, the Falcon’s questionable agent, calls to offer him work at the Wartzburg Theater.


The Falcons interview for the job and discover that the “theater” is an actors’ retirement home. Ms. Otterbridge, the Director, assigns Freddy and Slick to work at noon as gardeners and later clean up tea dishes and set the table for dinner, while J.D., Ace, and George are to report to work at 3:00 pm to bus and wait on tables. The jobs earn minimum wage for six hours a day, seven days a week. The Falcons take a five-minute conference to wrestle with their dilemma. Should they take these menial jobs or wait for an acting job? Feeling demeaned and ready to give up the jobs, the Falcons realize that they need the jobs. As Freddy says, “Man, we got to take those jobs!” biting the words as if they were a “piece of tough meat.” “We gotta do it. No dinero, no life! I’m half a guy without money.”


As they perform their daily chores, all the Falcons gradually mature and grow in understanding themselves. They learn to like the actors and appreciate their jobs. They realize the hard work that goes into running a retirement home and dealing with the many personalities. Slowly, Ace pays off his debts as he takes financial responsibility. Sir Cecil, an actor living at the rest home, takes a liking to Ace. He decides to give Ace daily acting lessons to perfect his skills. These lessons prepare Ace to take the lead role in the Wartzburg’s annual Dramafest. As Ace works through his intense fear of performing, and does a stellar job in the play, he realizes that he likes “having a breathing, live audience.” He describes it like “being on a roller coaster to play a part in front of people. I was a happy guy.” This self-realization boosts Ace’s confidence and shows that Ace has matured enough to work through his fear to try new things.


The significance of beauty subtly weaves itself through the novel. Raven Galvez’s physical beauty and kindness captured Ace’s imagination from the first day of school in Ace Hits the Big Time. Her charm continues in this novel, although she does not play as active a role. Raven’s beauty distracts Ace, as does her impeccable style. Their relationship is built on an innocent teenage love. Ace dreams of the things that he and Raven can do together, yet they never come to fruition. Readers share Ace’s hope but are not surprised when he discloses in the novel’s resolution that “she’s some kisser!”


Retaliation, another of the novel’s themes, threatens the Falcons’ unity. Angry that Slick has been acting like “Mr. Fancy Pants”â€"fooling around on the job and not doing his share, Freddy retaliates by describing to the Falcons how he “smooshed his [Slick’s] nose and stretched the corner of his mouth to his ear.” However, Freddy misses Slick at work and feels tremendous remorse as he relates the incident to the other Falcons.


When Slick recovers, Freddy and Slick make peace with each other. They create a new level of understanding, realizing that each person has special traits. Freddy, a sensitive boy, feared that Slick would end up “a no-good disco bum.” In response, Slick gave up “discos and bun-hugging pants forever.” Freddy realizes that Slick’s talent is for classical danceâ€"“it’s his ticket to the future.” Freddy even visits Slick’s classes on occasion and reports his progress to the Falcons, who have grown in maturity as they work through their feelings of anger.


Aging is another theme that the authors explore in Ace Hits Rock Bottom. When the Falcons first meet the actors at the retirement home, the teens want to quit. At best they are uncomfortable and awkward at their care-taking jobs. As the story unfolds, the Falcons hear the verve, see the vitality, and witness the humor of the aging actors. Readers, along with the Falcons, learn to like the actors and feel enriched by the experience. As the Falcons complete their summer jobs at the novel’s resolution, a tearful line of actors says goodbye.


Murphy and Wolkoff characterize the protagonist, Ace Hobart, indirectly by showing him in action. Readers hear him speak, think, and feel throughout the novel. The authors show readers how Ace’s thoughts differ from what he says, and how he behaves towards others, making him a believable character. Readers can see his dynamic character grow and change. His confidence builds as he plays the lead part in the Wartzburg Dramafest.


Friend Raven Galvez, a smart and conscientious teenager, helps bring Ace back to his passions, his fears, and his roots, as true friends do. In Ace Hits Rock Bottom, Sir Cecil hopes to entice Ace to play the lead role in the French play Cyrano de Bergerac at the Dramafest. As the event approaches, Ace tells Raven that acting does not appeal to him. Raven knows Ace too well, and she does not believe it. She suggests to Ace that he is scared. Later, Ace realizes that he feels frightened of going on stage. Raven helps Ace learn his lines, smiling when he messes up a word and giving him the correct one. The fear that Ace feels intensifies on opening night, almost preventing him from going on stage. Readers see and hear him mature as he works through his intense fear. Raven becomes instrumental in Ace’s transition to maturity.


Ace’s family continue in this sequel to provide a backdrop of conflict inherent in most teenagers’ lives. His mom, Flo, provides a necessary level of conflict, urging Ace to get a job and to take responsibility, as any mother would. She shows concern for his job and his travels to the Bronx, but keeps enough distance to show that she trusts his choices. Both she and his dad, Barney, show concern over Ace’s prolific spending habits in light of his lack of money. Ace’s sister, Nora, continues to provide the most conflict. She entertains the Piranhas when they visit Ace, confides in Raven, and tells Ace that he will never be a good actor. She is the perfect younger sister.


The Falcon gang is back and their characters have changed. For example, they have become “The cleanest, best-smelling gang in the city,” according to Ace. As they prepare to interview at the Wartzburg, they shower and shampoo at the Dumont Health Club in Times Square where they exercise. They have given up their black leather jackets and they carry Adidas sports bags.


Freddy is the farthest in the Nautilus exercise program and his muscles show it. J.D. looks conservativeâ€"he cropped his Afro and removed the zigzag part. George does aerobics and lifts weights in a different outfit for every day of the week. Slick got a body perm in his hair, wears leotards and tights, and does leg stretches, disco, and pliés like a ballerina. He no longer spits.


Nevada Culhane, the cool cowboy hero-detective in the books that Ace reads, continues to be Ace’s mentor and source of inner strength. As Ace encounters tough situations, he recalls the cowboy’s mottos and words that propel him into action.


Sir Cecil becomes vital in developing Ace’s acting abilities. The greatest Shakespearean actor of his day, knighted by the king of England in 1939, Sir Cecil acts like a race car driver in his wheel chair as he teaches Ace the discipline needed to be a great classical actor. Ace learns how to use his diaphragm, project his voice, and observe. Sir Cecil asks Ace to play the lead role in the annual Wartzburg Dramafest. Ace finally accepts, and meets his day of reckoning as he overcomes his stage fright. Sir Cecil helps Ace open up to new passions as he realizes that he enjoys acting in front of a live audience.

V  LITERARY QUALITIES


Murphy and Wolkoff use first-person point of view to present Ace Hits Rock Bottom. This technique allows readers to know what Ace knows, and to experience his adventures personally. Flashbacks appropriately provide readers with needed information, like Ace’s movie adventure in Ace Hits the Big Time.


The authors evoke a sense of New York City, the Bronx, and the characters, using images of taste, sight, smell, hearing, and touch to bring the scenes alive. For instance, Ace uses a sponge, hot water, and disinfectants to clean food cans that he organizes alphabetically in the hot Wartzburg pantry. Desperate to block out the radio as it broadcasts the baseball game at Yankee Stadium where the other Falcons and the residents are, Ace sings loudly. Sir Cecil bursts into the pantry, uttering a command that startles Ace, almost knocking him off a tall ladder. Sir Cecil heard Ace’s singing and wants to teach him to expand his diaphragm and to project his voice.


Murphy and Wolkoff also use the narrative technique of interior monologue to record Ace’s thoughts, memories, and feelings. Readers hear Ace think something that differs from what he says. This reveals Ace’s depth of character, and adds verbal irony. For example, Ace wants to tell agent Jerry Cone how the Falcons really feel about being mislead to a retirement home instead of an acting job. He mutters as the phone rings “Boy, you just wait, Mr. Jerry as-in-dairy Cone as-in-ice-cream! Who do you think you are, Huh? Sending us, the Purple Falcons, up to an old folks home. We’re actors. Movie star actors! And we demand . . .” As a receptionist answers the phone, Ace politely asks for Jerry. After a five-minute hold, she tells Ace that Jerry went out to lunch, at five-thirty! Readers feel Ace’s internal struggle over his fear of confrontation. It is only at the resolution of the novel that Ace musters the courage to leave a message to Jerry, firing him and telling him exactly how he feels.


The authors use comedy throughout the novel to deal with the issues of debt, self-esteem, and acceptance. Ace faces these issues in many adventures, emerging from them with a greater sense of freedom. He learns that he must be responsible for the choices that he makes; and the things that he buys, including his Gravity Guide System. He learns that he enjoys acting in front of live audiences, and that he can handle the Piranhas.


To create believable characters, the authors make extensive use of figurative languageâ€"describing one thing in terms of another. For example, figures of speech describe characters or actions, such as “cat walking over a pencil” to mean effortlessly, and “face carved out of lava rock” as Ace refers to Freddy’s features in the dark. Figurative language regularly describes scenes and situations: “snap like a turtle,” “break a leg,” “heart started galloping like a runaway horse” at the “goddess of J. F. Kennedy High,” and cheeks “pouched like a hamsters.”


The use of the New York City subway places readers directly in the region of the novel. If readers refer to a map of the New York City subway system as they read the book, they can literally follow the adventures of Ace and the gang. For example, the Falcons travel from Times Square to the Sixth Avenue subway station and hop an uptown train. They ride in a hot, crowded subway to the 170th Street station, which takes about half an hour. That is about the time it takes today’s travelers to go between those stations. The authors successfully integrate the region into the story.

VI  SOCIAL SENSITIVITY


Murphy and Wolkoff show sensitivity to the world they create in their story. They accept the diversity of cultures in New Yorkâ€"African American, Indian, Caucasian, French, and Latinâ€"showing respect for their differences. They describe each culture accurately, using typical mannerisms and dialects.


The novel portrays compassion and respect for the homeless. Ace experiences hunger as he rides the subway dressed as a bag lady. He cannot take his eyes off the fresh-baked chewy pretzel with rock salt that a little kid eats in a seat directly across from him. The kid’s mother catches Ace staring, and moves to another seat. As the subway reaches the 125th Street station, the mother passes Ace on her way out the door. She hands him a dollar bill saying, “Buy yourself something to eat . . . You look hungry.”


Another social issue the authors deal with is gangs and gang violence. Arson gangs regularly spark fires in the Bronx, burning down many businesses. The Wartzburg residents, the Falcons, and the Piranhas spend time figuring out who is destroying the buildings. In the end, the Piranhas give Nora, Ace’s sister, a tip on the mastermind behind the arson gangs. Nora turns the lead in, and collects reward money for her information, much to Ace’s dismay.


An appropriate level of family feeling is depicted in the concern that Ace’s family shows for one another. As the family watches Ace on television news during a subway fire, Flo cries. As Ace returns home, Nora hollers that Ace is home and he is not burned. Flo embraces Ace in a hug. Barney squeezes in between Flo and Ace and pats Ace’s shoulder. Barney shows concern again by asking Ace if he inhaled smoke; little does Barney know that seeing Raven waiting in the living room has rendered Ace speechless.


Murphy and Wolkoff tactfully develop Ace’s relationship with Raven, while maintaining the integrity of the characters, and their enduring friendship. Ace still believes that she is “the goddess of J. F. Kennedy High.” Her velvet skin with a deep coppery summer tan, her black silk hair floating over the sleeves of her ruffled organdy blouse as she is all dressed in white, make Ace feel that she has never been more beautiful. Although the authors show Ace plotting to have time alone with Raven and thinking of the private things he can do with her, Ace spends most of the novel trying to secure a kiss.

VII  TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION


1. Discuss Ace’s relationship with Raven. How does Raven support Ace? What impact did she have on Ace as he matures during the story?


2. Discuss Ace’s relationship with Jacqueline. What did he learn by co-starring in the Dramafest with her? What impact did she have on Ace?


3. Describe how the Falcons matured during the novel. What life lessons did they learn as they worked at the Wartzburg over the summer? Do you think they would work there again?


4. How do the authors use the technique of flashback? Interior monologue? Comedy and humor?


5. What significance does the cool cowboy Nevada Culhane play in Ace’s life? How and why does he help Ace? Do you have a fictional character that you admire and “lean on”?


6. Characterize Sir Cecil. How does he help Ace become a better actor? To mature?


7. Humor plays a mitigating role in dealing with several issues in the novel. What issues do the authors address and how does humor develop the ideas?


8. Characterize your favorite actor at the Wartzburg. What makes him or her special to you? How do you think he or she helped the story develop?


9. How do the authors address the issues of arson? Of fear? Of personality differences?


10. Ace bought several items, including a Gravity Guide System, when he expects to earn money as an actor. The money never materialized. How did he handle this financial responsibility? Describe a situation in which you bought things you could not afford. How did you handle the responsibility and what did you learn?


11. Slick enjoyed learning to dance, performing plies, entrechats, and tour jetes. What do you think inspired him to dance? What would a career in dance be like?


12. Ace and the Falcons felt uncomfortable traveling through Piranha territory to report to work each day. Discuss when you have felt uneasy in a new setting and how you coped. Compare it with how Ace coped.

VIII  IDEAS FOR REPORTS AND PAPERS


1. What characteristics in young adults cause them to form gangs? To commit arsons? What prevents gang violence?


2. Describe a summer job that you took that turned out to be very different than you originally thought. How did you handle it?


3. The authors use the New York Subway system as a backdrop for the regionalism in the novel. How has the subway system changed in the last twenty years? How will it change in the next twenty years?


4. Have eating patterns changed in the last twenty years? If so, how? How does this affect health of teenagers today?


5. Describe the skills that you would need if you wanted to be an actor. What kinds of movies or plays would you like to act in? How would you develop those skills and why?


6. With the aging of the “baby boom” population, retirement homes will become more common. What credentials does someone need to be a retirement home director? What would an ideal retirement home have and why?


7. What skills does it take to become a professional dancer? What would a typical day entail? How do you prepare for this profession?


8. Health clubs have become more sophisticated and service-oriented in the last twenty years. How have health clubs changed? How do health clubs use modern technology to help people exercise?

IX  RELATED TITLES AND ADAPTATIONS


Murphy and Wolkoff set the first novel in the series, Ace Hits the Big Time, in the New York City. It describes the adventures of Horace “Ace” Hobart, a sixteen-year-old boy, as he moves with his family from Guttenberg, New Jersey, to Manhattan, New York, so that his father will not have to “sweat the traffic anymore.” On his first day of school, Ace meets the Purple Falcons, the toughest gang in Kennedy High. How Ace greets the Falcons, meets the most beautiful girl he has ever known, and becomes a star propels readers through this lively comedy.


In the last sequel of the series by Murphy, Fly Like An Eagle, Ace’s forty-year-old dad, adopted Barney Hobart, decides to search out his natural parents. He asks Ace to accompany him on the journey. In a beat-up Volkswagen, they head to the Ohio orphanage where Barney lived as a child, then to Kansas to visit Barney’s spunky grandmother and her twin sister, then to a New Mexico Pueblo, where Barney and Ace meet their new, extended family. Ace learns that he is a quarter Native American. He learns to love and respect his dad by the story’s end. He grows comfortable in the circle of his new family and more confident of his place in the old.


If readers like reading about young adults working with aging people, they may enjoy Being with Henry by Martha Brooks. When a confrontation with his latest stepfather turns violent, sixteen-year-old Laker boards the first bus bound for anywhere and ends up panhandling on the street. He meets eighty-three-year-old widower, Henry, who cannot adjust to life alone. The two develop a friendship that spans the generations.


Summertime drama will lure readers to Robin Friedman’s How I Survived My Summer Vacation: And Lived to Write the Story. It reveals the story of thirteen-year-old Jackie Monterey who wants to write a novel the summer before he starts high school. Yet, he cannot get past the first sentence. His friends are no help. It looks like Jackie might find inspiration when he joins the swim team and falls in love with the coach’s daughter, but events with his friends start to get weird. Before the summer ends, everything Jackie counted on has changed.


Stage Fright, by Erica Field, develops the story of sixteen-year-old Alison and her new friend Kayla as they work summer jobs at an Elizabethan village. They meet a lively collection of characters, including a reckless young street entertainer. An escalating series of sabotage incidents convinces Alison that something evil lurks about in this bizarre Elizabethan village.


Contributed by: Michelle Prebilic


Source: Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults. Copyright by Gale Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

source: Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Absalom, Absalom!

Published 1936

I  ABOUT THE AUTHOR


William Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, in Albany, Mississippi. His family had roots in Mississippi, and Faulkner remained in the state for most of his life and became a renowned writer of Southern literature. Faulkner was not much of a student, however, and dropped out of high school. He then worked in various clerical positions and as a painter, a carpenter, and a coal shoveler. He attended the University of Mississippi for just one year, from 1919-1920, then launched into the writing career that he pursued for the rest of his life. Faulkner wrote poetry and held positions as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and for Warner Bros. before becoming widely acclaimed for his novels. When Faulkner’s third novel, The Sound and the Fury, was published in 1929, it established his reputation and he enjoyed a prolific career during the 1930s and 1940s. He won numerous literary awards, including the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949, the National Book Award for Collected Stories in 1951, the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for A Fable in 1955, and the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1962. Today Faulkner is hailed as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century. Volumes of literary criticism exist on his works. Much of Faulkner’s work, however, has received negative criticism, not for literary style but for appearing to promote immorality. He covers such themes as racism and incest, and his characters are often thought to condone such acts as well as to represent the thoughts and actions of Southerners in general. Faulkner died on July 6, 1962, after producing eighteen novels, many of which have been made into movies. Absalom, Absalom!, published in 1936, has been labeled one of the greatest novels ever written.

II  OVERVIEW


Absalom, Absalom! is both a legend of the South and a historical novel that chronicles the rise and fall of a man named Thomas Sutpen. Faulkner tells the story of the Sutpen family from different perspectives, and in so doing, he sheds light on Southern culture while detailing Sutpen’s motivations for starting a dynasty in Mississippi. The title of Faulkner’s novel alludes to David and Absalom of the Old Testament, a father and son who face incest and murder, as do Thomas Sutpen and his son Henry. But Faulkner’s story chronicles the relationships of many people in Yoknapatawpha County, all of whose lives have been affected by Sutpen and his dynasty in some way. The novel not only emerges as a family history and the history of a Southern county but also as a commentary on the South and on the deterioration of the ideals the Confederacy fought for in the Civil War.


Thomas Sutpen’s need to establish himself as a “Southern gentleman” stems from an experience he had living in poverty and being turned away by a Negro servant years before he moved to Mississippi. Sutpen becomes obsessed with establishing a plantation, amassing wealth, and owning both land and Negro slaves. Sutpen establishes his plantation, but in his drive for social position he sacrifices personal relationships and alienates everyone close to him. Because Sutpen’s drive clouds his vision, he never achieves his dream, and the injustices he committed in the past trigger events that lead to the collapse of his dynasty.

III  SETTING


Absalom, Absalom! is set in the fictional city of Jefferson, Mississippi, and in Yoknapatawpha County, the setting of fourteen other novels by Faulkner as well as for many of his short stories. Faulkner knew the setting well because he fashioned Jefferson after the Mississippi town of Oxford where he grew up. He thus provides detailed descriptions of the plantation houses, the run-down shacks of the tenant farmers, the rivers, the railroads, and the dirt roads. By the time Faulkner wrote Absalom, Absalom!, his vision of this mythic world he created was complete. He includes a map of the county as well as a chronology of historical events and a genealogy of the characters, all of which bring the county to life as a real place in the American South and an appropriate setting for Faulkner’s analysis of Southern culture and ideals.


Faulkner’s realism is convincing because he details the county’s past as well as its present to give his story historical perspective. Readers know the roads the characters traveled and the houses in which they lived, but they also know the history of those roads and those houses. Faulkner details the setting so well that readers become immersed in Yoknapatawpha County; they can almost feel the muggy weather and see the run-down plantation houses. The map of the county gives locations to the events that occur in all the books in his Yoknapatawpha series. True to Faulkner’s vision of making his story a living legend, Yoknapatawpha County epitomizes the mythical South.

IV  THEMES AND CHARACTERS


The story of Thomas Sutpen so captivated the people of Yoknapatawpha County that it took on the character of a living legend. The story is full of love and hate, terror and tragedy. It reveals human strengths and frailties so believable that Sutpen’s life becomes a legacy. To the people of Yoknapatawpha County, the legacy began in 1833, when Sutpen arrived in Jefferson, Mississippi, as a mysterious stranger with no intent to reveal his past. No one in the town knows anything about this man for a long time, and when he disappears from Jefferson and then returns with a group of slaves and sets his sights on building a plantation, the townspeople begin to see their own lives change irrevocably in numerous ways.


Sutpen is an enigma in Jefferson, Mississippi, because he reveals nothing of his past life nor anything about how he acquired his wealth. For this reason the people of Jefferson view him with skepticism and even contempt for quite some time, which appears to reveal Faulkner’s belief that Southerners are set in their ways and have difficulty accepting what goes against convention. But once Sutpen establishes his mansion, he marries Ellen Coldfield, the daughter of a respected citizen of Jefferson, and this gains him respect in the county. Sutpen and his wife raise two children, Henry and Judith, and before long gossip about this family and about Sutpen’s Hundred, their ostentatious one-hundred-square-mile plantation, seems to dominate the town.


Sutpen’s Hundred continues to be a topic of county gossip for years, and Faulkner uses it as a microcosm of Southern society. Southern society placed a high value on land ownership. In the nineteenth century, plantation owners ruled the South, and ownership of both land and people gave them license to do so. Thomas Sutpen built his plantation and worked toward creating his design for a perfect world. Then he attempted to make everything and everyone fit that design. The nature of ownership, as defined by Sutpen’s dynasty, leaves no room for human emotion. Sutpen amasses a great deal of wealth, but in the process he comes to disregard the very values that led him to create his plantation in the first place.


The truth behind Sutpen’s motivations remains buried in the past, and Faulkner uncovers it over the course of the novel. One of the primary themes in the novel is man’s relationship to the past, a theme that emerges early as the mystery of Sutpen’s life captivates the people of Yoknapatawpha County and sets the novel’s tone. As the narrators of the story reveal more and more of Sutpen’s story and delve further into history for explanations, the reader learns that Sutpen left Haiti and his wife Eulalia and child Charles Bon to come to Mississippi and start a new life. Sutpen abandoned his son when he learned that the boy’s mother was part African. But this son, Charles Bon, eventually came to Mississippi to haunt his father and force him to acknowledge his past life and family. But Thomas Sutpen refuses and turns his son away at the door. Charles courted Judith, his half sister, and intended to force an acknowledgment of his birthright by making Thomas prevent the incest that would occur once his children married.


The facts of this story are disclosed in the first chapter of the book, and from there Faulkner proceeds to embellish the story with few factual details. The first five chapters of the novel take place one day in September 1909, just before Quentin Compson, one of Faulkner’s four narrators, leaves for Harvard. The next four chapters take place later on, when Quentin and his roommate, Shreve McCannon, are in their dorm room at Harvard attempting to decipher the Sutpen story. It is not until the eighth chapter, when the novel reaches a climax, and the reader discovers the reason Thomas Sutpen is driven to establish his grand design: Sutpen was devastated by an experience he had as a child in Haiti when he was turned away by the Negro servant of a wealthy plantation owner. It was then Sutpen vowed to change his life, become an owner himself, and start a dynasty of his own.


This incident leads to an understanding of Faulkner’s rejected child theme which he juxtaposes with the theme of retribution and the theme of the interconnectedness between past and present. Sutpen was born poor, and he was indeed devastated by being sent to the back door of the planter’s house by a “monkey nigger.” This incident makes him vow to amass great wealth and create his own dynasty, and to devote his life to his own design, though at the expense of everyone else. But if he seeks retribution for the injustice done to him by the servant of the black plantation owner, then he fails to see how his rejection of his son years later dooms his life to failure. Sutpen cannot make sense of his past because he is blinded by ambition and determined to become a member of the Southern aristocracy.


Parallel to Sutpen’s drive for retribution, Charles Bon comes to Mississippi with a similar drive. It is Bon who is now rejected, when Sutpen dismisses his own son. Bon comes to Mississippi with the intention of marrying Judith, his half sister, so he befriends Henry, his half brother, and then begins to court Judith, pretending not to know of the relationship between them. Thomas Sutpen sees that the impending marriage will ruin his dynasty, yet he is a coward and can do nothing to rectify the situation without himself disrupting his perfect world. He refuses to recognize Bon, but tells his son Henry about his secret and lets Henry determine what course of action to follow. Henry kills Charles Bon to prevent incest and the miscegenation (the belief that whites should not marry or have children with members of another race).


The fact that Faulkner weaves the theme of man’s relationship to the past with the theme of injustice reveals an essential truth about Southern culture. Past injustices continue to haunt Thomas Sutpen just as past injustices continue to haunt Southerners today; the crimes committed against the slaves can never be erased from Southern history. Guilt emerges as a primary theme in Faulkner’s story and as a prominent emotion among the residents of Jefferson, Mississippi. Most of the characters in the novel suffer from guilt of some sort, partly as a result of their own evil doings and partly from the guilt they “inherited” from their ancestors who first became slaveholders.


Faulkner supports his theme of guilt by emphasizing the cruel treatment Southern plantation owners inflicted on their slaves. Slavery cannot help but be a big theme in a Southern novel because slavery does, in fact, characterize the nature of Southern ownership. Ownership, in the antebellum South, meant owning people as well as land. It meant exploiting people as well as the earth. Faulkner devotes much attention to the evils that result from the dehumanization of black people, and he creates in Thomas Sutpen a character who cannot recognize humanity because of his blind dedication to an abstract design. Sutpen is a cruel slaveholder who condones racism and thus dooms his design to failure. Readers are left to decipher the complex reasons why Sutpen’s design fails, as well as to answer other questions that arise during the course of the novel.


Questions arise during the retelling of Sutpen’s story because each of the four narrators, like everyone in Yoknapatawpha County, has their own take on what happened and why. Nothing is concrete because personal prejudices influence the townspeople’s thoughts and feelings. Sutpen’s mystery captivates the county, and gossip surrounds Judith and Henry as they grow up. By the time Charles Bon enters the picture and his life with Judith falls apart, each of the narrators has a different understanding of why Judith and Bon never married. They offer answers to this key question and to other questions that emerge, such as why Sutpen forbade the marriage, and why Henry killed Bon after appearing to stand up for him.


What readers must do as they read Absalom, Absalom!, and what the narrators must do as the novel progresses, is to order events and make sense of random pieces of information. The stories the narrators tell are to be considered but not taken as fact. This does not mean that the basic story these people tell is untrue, but simply that they each reveal a different side of the tale. The narrators of Faulkner’s novel are Rosa Coldfield, the younger sister of Sutpen’s wife Ellen; Jason Compson, an older, respected man in the county; Quentin Compson, Rosa Coldfield’s young friend; and Shreve McCannon, a Northerner and Quentin’s roommate at Harvard. Each of them has different reasons for arriving at the conclusions they do because Thomas Sutpen affected each of their lives in different ways. The structure of the narratives makes the book a psychological novel as well as a historical one, and it sheds light on the motivations of people as well as on the nature of Southern gossip. Because the accounts given by all of the narrators are biased and unreliable, Faulkner demonstrates that people’s personal stories largely mold the course of history, and thus the reader must question whether it is ever possible to get a truly accurate account of history in the first place.


One of the questions that emerges in the novel is why Rosa Coldfield agrees to marry Sutpen and then later refuses. As the reader learns more about the circumstances surrounding her decision, there is the realization that Rosa’s narration is unreliable because her view is tainted by Sutpen’s proposal that they have a child before they marry. For Thomas Sutpen, Rosa Coldfield is simply a means to obtaining his goal, providing an heir to carry on the dynasty. It is with Miss Rosa’s narration that readers begin to see an analogy between Sutpen’s rise and fall with that of the South. Miss Rosa believes that with men like Sutpen in control, the South is bound to fail. She considers Sutpen lacking in honor and compassion. He exploits people like he exploits the land and thus has to suffer the consequences of the collapse of his dynasty.


The theme of exploitation molds Faulkner’s characterization of Sutpen and defines his condemnation of Southern morals. Essentially, Sutpen puts the abstract notion of a perfect design before the concrete needs of the people around him. He chooses the life of a planter and thus becomes a natural exploiter, adopting the philosophy of production for profit and personal benefit. Thomas Sutpen exploits Rosa just as he exploited Milly Jones. He got Milly pregnant but abandoned her when she could not produce an heir for him. But he fails to see the consequences of his actions. Thomas Sutpen is unfeeling and unthinking and blind to the feelings of others. He has no imagination and remains so focused on his design that he cannot recognize how his actions will affect those around him. When Sutpen proposes to Rosa that they produce an heir before they marry, he does not foresee that this will cause her to reject him. When he rejects Milly Jones, Sutpen does not foresee that Walsh Jones will kill him in anger because of this. Charles Sutpen also fails to see the inevitability of the collapse of his dynasty and how his own failure to come to terms with the past can bring nothing but doom. With the killing of Charles, Henry disappears and the dynasty collapses. There will be no more heirs.


Absalom, Absalom! gives insight into the exploitation that defines the aristocratic South and which makes stories like Sutpen’s living legends. The book is very much an analysis of Southern myths and their roots: for example, the myth of Southern hospitality, the myth of Southerners as aristocracy, and the myth of white supremacy. The roots of these myths are embedded in history, and thus Faulkner makes the construction of these myths a primary theme. He uses all four of his narrators in the construction process, but the process becomes most noticeable as Quentin and Shreve tell their stories.


In the process of reconstructing the truths of the Sutpen story, Quentin and Shreve go through a laborious process. Not only does this process parallel the recreation of history and the birth of legend, it parallels the construction of a work of fiction. Quentin is a romantic figure, for Faulkner continually refers to his romantic nature. He knows some facts, but he romanticizes them, so as he and Shreve attempt to assimilate the facts, they use their imagination to draw conclusions. The process by which these boys arrive at their conclusion is crucial to understanding Faulkner’s message. He wishes to convey the process of recreating history as an imaginative act, one colored by personal bias. Though the truths are there, locked in the past, these truths are not easily discovered and any meaning derived from them is subject to personal interpretation. The fact that all of the narrators’ accounts are biased conveys the notion of historical materialism. For the historical materialist, reality is not learned but created. Sutpen and the other characters in the book create their own realities and thus see only a narrow view of the world.


Absalom, Absalom! is a book of such complexity that re-reading may be necessary in order to fully grasp Faulkner’s themes. But Faulkner succeeds in creating a vibrant cast of characters whose lives have been ruined by their historical materialism and their heritage of slavery and racism. Thomas Sutpen is a legacy as the South itself is a legacy; and even in Rosa’s view of Sutpen as a demon, he assumes heroic proportions. But there is nothing honorable about Sutpen’s legacy, or, Faulkner seems to say, that of the South. Sutpen’s honor is embodied in his design, and his design is doomed to failure. When, in chapter six, the reader learns of Sutpen’s motive for moving to Mississippi and of his vows to rise above poverty, the reader also discovers that he intended to right the injustice done to him by the planters of Haiti by becoming an “upstanding” member of the Southern aristocracy. He planned to value humanity above personal prejudice. But Sutpen falls prey to the abject materialism of the aristocratic culture and can only fail in his pursuit of it. General Compson sees Sutpen’s innocence as his weakness. Sutpen cannot assimilate his past experiences into his present life; therefore, he cannot understand how history has betrayed him. In this sense, he embodies the ideals of the Confederacy, attempting to move forward without looking back.

V  LITERARY QUALITIES


Absalom, Absalom! is a difficult book for some readers because Faulkner uses a technique called circumlocution to convey his story. Rather than tell his story from beginning to end in chronological order, he relates each event piecemeal and at different points in time. When a plot structure is circular rather than linear, readers often have a difficult time piecing together the entire story, and in this novel Faulkner makes this piecing together more difficult by using four separate narrators. In order for each narrator to tell their side of the tale, each must return to the same parts of the story the other narrators have already related.


The use of multiple viewpoints adds complexity to a story that is full of complexities itself. Because each narrator injects their personal opinions and prejudices into their story, none of them can be considered reliable, and readers must therefore distinguish fact from opinion. Readers must also understand that none of the narrators has all of the information pertinent to the story available to them, and that much of the information they do have is simply hearsay. Though readers gradually become aware of facts and events, they must take the emotions of each narrator into account as well as attempt to understand their motivation for telling the tale as they do. Faulkner’s use of multiple narrators certainly adds depth to his characters, but it disrupts the chronology of the Sutpen story. While Faulkner’s lengthy sentences serve to further complicate the story, it has been suggested that these lengthy sentences also help establish the time continuum as well as convey the complex nature of re-creating true accounts of times past.


The concept of time assumes primary importance in the novel, for Faulkner believed it was essential to create a vivid picture of the past. Because the Sutpen story so absorbed the people of Yoknapatawpha County, Faulkner wanted to establish the story as legend, and in order to do so he had to give his story a strong historical perspective. One way Faulkner accomplishes this is by telling the entire tale in the first chapter. This placed the story in the past right away and gave it credibility as an established myth. None of the narrators knows all of the facts of the Sutpen story because the events happened long ago and because each of them is affected by events in different ways. Only Faulkner, as author, knows the facts, so he uses omniscient narration in the first chapter to reveal them. He outlines the events as they happened, then allows the four narrators to embellish the events and thus establish a mythic tone. It is only after the story is told and the basic facts of the story are revealed that Faulkner allows his four narrators to repeat the tale and inject their own interpretations into the telling. This repetition and interpretation of the story helps characterize it as legend. Readers understand that, in Yoknapatawpha County, the Sutpen story has been accepted as true, ingrained in the minds of the people, and reinterpreted over time in many ways.


Faulkner’s frequent use of literary references also helps to establish a mythic tone. The title Absalom, Absalom! refers to the biblical story of David and Absalom, related in the Book of Samuel, which, like Faulkner’s story, deals with the themes of incest and murder and relates the moralistic message that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Biblical references permeate the novel, as do age-old themes such as guilt and injustice, which are critical to the literary interpretation of the novel as a legend from the South. But the fact that Faulkner uses the story as a complex metaphor is just as significant to its literary interpretation; for the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen is analogous to the rise and fall of the South.


The history of the Sutpen family is analogous to the history of the South in that Thomas Sutpen pretends to uphold the values of the South, yet he epitomizes its moral degeneration. Sutpen dedicates himself to his “design” and creates a dynasty based on his obsession with creating a perfect, ordered world. This clearly parallels the dedication of the Confederacy to create a perfect, ordered South. Both Sutpen and the Confederacy strove to establish their own sense of greatness, yet both sacrificed human concerns in the process. Sutpen’s design, by nature, dooms its creator to failure. Working to preserve his own honor and his own freedom, Sutpen, like the Confederacy, winds up epitomizing the dishonorable slaveholder and symbolizing the injustices carried out in the Antebellum South.


In the volumes of criticism that have been written about Absalom, Absalom!, the Sutpen story emerges not only as a metaphor for the Southern experience but as a metaphor for the process of writing fiction. Faulkner pieces together fragments of gossip and creates a viable tale. The fact that Faulkner uses bits and pieces of information, most of them hearsay, makes readers question the possibility of interpreting history and producing a viable account of the past. Indeed, the job of any author or storyteller involves the tasks of interpreting information and ordering facts. Faulkner seems to challenge his narrators, and his readers, to do this as well. Then, too, by challenging them to create something believable out of things they do not know to be true, Faulkner not only challenges them to assign meaning to a sequence of events but to question the reliability of history in the first place.

VI  SOCIAL SENSITIVITY


The plot of Absalom, Absalom! focuses on so many sensitive situations that the story seems almost too sensational to be true. However, each of the themes in Faulkner’s masterpiece have existed in human societies throughout history. Faulkner deals with lust, greed, incest, miscegenation, discrimination, slavery, and murder, all of which have been considered sins and have caused societal upheavals. Faulkner’s characters profess to uphold the ideals set forth for a Southern society, yet they expose Southern society as a place of hypocrisy. Jefferson, Mississippi, as a representative of the South in general, emerges as a place where those who fought to create a grand society did so by committing heinous crimes against humanity and thus betrayed the very values they strove to uphold.


One of the hypocrisies Faulkner reveals is that Southern societies profess to value a strong sense of family, yet they forfeit family readily in favor of upholding some predetermined social structure. They let community values rule their thinking and undermine their regard for human feelings. The fact that Henry was willing to condone incest, yet killed to prevent miscegenation, reveals the nature of this social structure as one based on hatred and illustrates Faulkner’s staunch criticism of the segregation and discrimination that permeated Southern society during the Civil War era. Even more telling is the fact that Sutpen, who claims to be a “Southern gentleman,” denies his own blood in order to carry forth his design. Charles Bon did not fit into the design because he was part black, even though he was one of Sutpen’s sons. Image was more important than family, and morality, tolerance, and even human kindness simply got in the way of creating a “perfect” society or a perfect design.


An examination of the significance of “Sutpen’s design” forces an evaluation of humanitarian ethics. The controversy surrounding slavery dominated the South and Faulkner outlines the evils that result from the Southerners’ inhumane treatment of black people. The slave owners in the novel are particularly cruel. Thomas Sutpen engages in savage fights with his slaves, and thus he not only condones racism but treats his black slaves as beasts. If the act of denying Charles Bon is viewed as an analogy for the act of denying Southern Negroes, then this one incident serves as the pivotal incident that illustrates Faulkner’s condemnation of Southern morals. Thomas Sutpen, as the stereotypical “Southern gentleman,” violated the very structure he claimed to create, and thus Sutpen’s design was doomed to failure.

VII  TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION


1. Do you think Faulkner liked women? Why or why not?


2. To what extent do you believe Faulkner used this novel to voice his own political views?


3. Discuss the narrators’ prejudices and how they interfere with their ability to give credible accounts of Sutpen’s story. Do you believe any one narrator has more credibility than the others? Why or why not?


4. Explain the meaning of “A house divided against itself cannot stand” as this saying relates to Sutpen’s story.


5. What is the essential irony of Sutpen’s design?


6. What factors influence Miss Rosa’s judgment of Thomas Sutpen as a “demon?”


7. How does Shreve McCannon’s understanding of Sutpen’s story differ from that of the other narrators?


8. How does the gossip in the tale contribute to Faulkner’s structuring of the novel?


9. What characterizes Sutpen’s Hundred as a legendary setting?


10. How is Thomas Sutpen’s treatment of both Rosa and Milly indicative of his misguided obsession with creating his design?

VIII  IDEAS FOR REPORTS AND PAPERS


1. Define the nature of a legend, and discuss the mythic elements in the novel that help characterize Faulkner’s story as a legend.


2. Determine the various ways Faulkner gave his novel historical perspective. What stylistic elements can authors use to bring the past to life?


3. Consider the role women play in Faulkner’s story, particularly Rosa, Ellen, and Judith. Do you think these women are exploited by men? Discuss the different kinds of exploitation that occurred in the South during the Civil War era.


4. Create a character who epitomizes the stereotypical image of the “Southern gentleman.”


5. Discuss the idea of capitalism and materialism as viewed by the residents of Yoknapatawpha County. Did these ideas prevail during the Civil War era, and do they prevail today?


6. Explain the notion of possession as it fits into the mode of thinking in nineteenth-century Southern society.


7. Exploitation occurs in different forms in Absalom, Absalom! Discuss the exploitation that occurred in the Antebellum South as it applied to blacks, to women, and to the earth.


8. Discuss the importance of how Quentin and Shreve come to the conclusions they do about Sutpen’s story. Discuss how they arrive at this conclusion, and illustrate how this process parallels the construction of a literary work of fiction.


9. After reading Absalom, Absalom!, the reader understands that the rift between blacks and whites so permeated Southern culture that miscegenation became a crime worse than incest. Recount the details from the novel, and particularly from Henry’s murder of Charles Bon, that support this statement.

IX  RELATED TITLES AND ADAPTATIONS


Anyone wishing to gain insight into Faulkner’s story should read the biblical story of David and Absalom. This can be a crucial aid in understanding Faulkner’s themes and deciphering his message. Anyone wishing to gain further insight into the characters’ thoughts and actions, and thus obtain a better understanding of the South that Faulkner created, should read the other books set in Yoknapatawpha County, which, when read in relation to one another, constitute a saga of mythic proportions. The Yoknapatawpha books begin with Sartoris, Faulkner’s third novel. Of particular interest to those studying Absalom, Absalom! are The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, and A Light in August, all of which cover events Faulkner identifies in the chronology included in Absalom, Absalom!


Like Faulkner, numerous other American writers gained fame by creating vivid chronicles of life in the South. William Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness is another moralistic, structurally complex saga of a Southern family. It resembles Faulkner’s novel in both style and technique, moving from present to past to give readers a strong historical perspective and to convey the importance of the past in explaining the events that occur in the present day.


Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, also bears a striking resemblance to Absalom, Absalom!, both in its literary style and in its message. Hurston relates the black Southern experience of Janie Crawford, a woman who lives in poverty, and who embraces black folk culture and rejects white bourgeois attitudes. Like Absalom, Absalom!, storytelling shapes Hurston’s novel, and a condemnation of white, aristocratic values defines the themes.


Source: Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults. Copyright by Gale Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Abracadabra Kid

Published 1996

I  ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Albert Sidney Fleischman was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 16, 1920, but grew up in San Diego, California. In his autobiography only some of his father’s activities are described in those years when the family lived in New York.


Fleischman’s father, originally named Rivven, anglicized to Reuben, was born in a shabby Ukrainian village named Olik. He never knew the exact day and year of his birth, as the family, in its poverty, had no calendars. To escape service in the Russian army, a wretched life of hazings and beatings, Rivven and his father paid Ukrainian smugglers to get them out of the country. They took an immigrant ship out of Hamburg bound for New York. Most of the male Fleischmans were either tailors or pressmen. Sid himself was the first in many generations who could not baste a hem. Reuben quickly adopted the name Louie in New York. He was the type of person called “luftmenschen,” or men of air, “impractical dreamers who necessarily mastered a dozen trades to keep afloat.” He worked as a tailor in the sweatshops until, tiring of the ten- and twelve-hour workdays, he bought a taxicab. After selling the taxi, he opened a notions and ribbon shop, which failed soon afterwards. His move to San Diego proved to be a good one. He began a shop on Fifth Avenue catering to sailors’ needs. Even during the Depression, sailors had income, and the naval base made San Diego more prosperous than most American cities at the time.


Fleischman’s mother also came from a family of immigrant tailors. A bright girl, she was forced to leave school in the sixth grade and operate a sewing machine in a factory making ladies’ shirtwaist dresses. She met Louie when she visited his notions and ribbon store. She was working in a ladies’ hat shop by that time. She would later help support her family during the Depression years by her winnings as a card player. Her skill at cards may have been part of her inheritance to her magician son.


Sid was only two when his father sent railway tickets so his family could join him in San Diego. As a child Fleischman was a “recalcitrant reader,” although certain books, such as Robin Hood, became favorites for a year or so. His father was a natural storyteller who knew how to get the best dramatic effects from the stories he told his children. His mother, Sadie (Solomon) Fleischman, read such books as Aesop’s Fables and Uncle Tom’s Cabin to her son. He says that for a time he nurtured an intense hatred for Simon Lagree. During his childhood, Fleischman became hooked on magic when his dad gave him a nickel to attend a magic show which was performed in a vacant store next to his father’s tailor shop. “Someone else could be president of the United States. I wanted to be a magician.” He scoured the libraries of San Diego for books on the subject of magic tricks. He became sufficiently skilled to join the San Diego Magicians Club while still a teenager. At sixteen he and his friend Buddy Ryan teamed up as the “Ryan Brothers” one summer to tour the Sierras and the Lake Tahoe region with their acts.


Sid became the first male Fleischman to graduate from high school, and then joined the Francisco Spook and Magic Show to tour the Midwest. At nineteen he wrote a book, Between Cocktails, on how to perform magic tricks. It was published in 1939 and is still in print.


In January 1940 Fleischman reluctantly left the touring magic show to enroll at San Francisco State College. By this time he was interested in how to become a writer. He soon learned that “Writing fiction wasn’t taught.” He hit the library stacks again for books on story writing techniques, but maintained: “I wasn’t exactly finding what I wanted.”


After reading Prescott’s The Conquest of Mexico, he went to Mexico to climb Aztec pyramids. There he met his future wife, Betty Taylor, a Spanish major at San Francisco State. Two days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Fleischman, who was in the Naval Reserve, was called up to serve. He skipped boot camp after the Navy learned he was a skilled typist. On January 25, 1942, he and Betty were married in Yuma, Arizona, then moved to New York where Fleischman worked at the U. S. Naval Recruiting Station. He sold a story to Liberty Magazine for $250. Although he continued to write all through World War II, this would be his last sale until after the war.


By the time Fleischman was ordered south to Norfolk in early 1944, he had become bored with handling enlistment papers for naval recruits. Betty found work in the Norfolk area while Fleischman waited for his ship, which had been detained at the Brooklyn Naval Yard. He and his group were finally sent north to pick up the USS Albert T. Harris. A shakedown cruise followed, which landed them in Bermuda by Christmas 1944. The Albert T. Harris, an escort vessel, was sent to the Pacific, where it took part in two invasions at Bora Bora and Borneo. Fleischman loved being at sea, despite missing his wife. After the surrender of Japan, the ship was ordered to Shanghai, China. The city, he said, “turned me into a novelist.” He would later write five suspense novels with the Far East as a setting.


After he and Betty returned to San Diego following his release from the Navy, Fleischman decided to become a freelance writer, rather than finish his degree at San Diego State College. But, in eighteen months his earnings as a writer totaled 470 dollars, and he decided to go back to college on the GI Bill. He was twenty-nine years old when he graduated.


Originally hired as a copy boy on the San Diego Daily Journal, he worked his way up to becoming a reporter, a job that lasted until the paper went out of business. He and some colleagues founded a weekly newspaper, The Point, but lacked the business sense to make their paper profitable.


During the 1950s until the early 1960s Sid Fleischman wrote detective and mystery stories for such paperback publishers as Gold Medal and Ace. One of these novels, Blood Alley, was bought by John Wayne’s production company, Batjac, and Fleischman was offered a job by the well-known director, William “Wild Bill” Wellman. Working with Wellman was “a graduate course in fiction writing” for Fleischman. Blood Alley became a major motion picture.


While still a screenwriter, Fleischman wrote his first piece of humorous writing for children, Mr. Mysterious and Company. Published in 1962, the book was written to amuse his own children, Jane, Paul, and Anne. “I had wandered into the field of children’s books,” he said in his Newbery Medal acceptance speech. “It was as if I had found myself and I didn’t know I had been lost.” He enjoys both the writing of the books and the response he gets from his young readers. While few adult readers actually write to authors about their books, young adults are not in the least inhibited. Fleischman spends part of each year touring high schools so he can interact more directly with his audience, since he regards his writing, in a sense, as another performance of magic tricks.


Fleischman’s humorous stories have won him critical acclaim from the beginning. He brings to them an ingenious wit and a writing style at once sophisticated but well suited to his audience. Mr. Mysterious and Company won the New York Herald Tribune Spring Book Award in 1962. By the Great Horn Spoon!, Fleischman’s second humorous book, won the Western Writers of America Spur Award in 1964, the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People Award in 1964, and the Boys’ Clubs of America Award in the same year. He was given the Commonwealth Club of California Juvenile Book Award in 1966 for Chancy and the Grand Rascal. McBroom Tells the Truth won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1969. McBroom the Rainmaker, was chosen as a Society of Children’s Book Writers Golden Kite Award honor book in 1974. Humbug Mountain was a National Book Award finalist in 1979, and also won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. The Whipping Boy, a book Fleischman worked on at intervals for nearly ten years, was the John Newbery Medal winner in 1987.

II  OVERVIEW


The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer’s Life is a fascinating account of how a writer of children’s books trained himself to produce the effects that hold his readers’ attention. It is a brief autobiography presenting Fleischman as a character as interesting as any the reader will find in his many books, with the same infectious humor that has made him outstanding. As a humorist, he can be compared to Mark Twain, although he does not claim to have ever attained the literary status of America’s premier comic writer. Twain’s wife would sometimes call her husband “youth.” There was always something boyish in the way he looked at life. This quality can be seen in Fleischman as well. His angle of vision brings a fresh way of seeing what goes on around him and an awareness of the absurdities and incongruities of human behavior. In his later years, Twain was obsessed by the flaws he saw in humans. There is none of this acrimony in Fleischman. People amuse him, but he does not feel they are hopeless. An enjoyment of life characterizes everything he has written and is very evident in his autobiography. Early in life Fleischman was determined to be a magician. He describes his progress from his first card tricks to his professional life on the vaudeville circuit. This was during the Great Depression and his tours took him from California to the Midwest and gave him the opportunity of seeing and, equally important, listening to many people. He decided to become a professional writer later in the 1930s and went to college with this aim in mind. During World War II he served in the Pacific Fleet of the U.S. Navy. He and his fellow sailors, officers and all, initially seemed totally inept. They soon learned basic seafaring. Their small, poorly armed vessel, in contrast to the giants of the fleet, was a subject of humor. Once out of the service, Fleischman tried a number of ways of entering the writer’s profession. He was a writer of detective fiction, a reporter on two newspapers, and a screenwriter. In all of these the unexpected happened. For example, while shooting a film based on one of his scripts, Blood Alley, the crew created so much fog that the foghorns on San Francisco Bay opened up and drowned out the actors.


Fleischman is adept in providing the historical background for the seventy-odd years of his life: the Great Depression, World War II, and developments in the publishing industry as he struggled to make his living as a writer. As a news reporter and screenwriter, he learned first hand what was required in those professions. This multifaceted career is covered in a book that is guaranteed to be a popular nonfiction addition to Fleischman’s long list of award-winning books.


Fleischman became a writer of humorous children’s stories almost by accident; he “backed into it,” as he puts it. He found that his talents and his outlook meshed completely in this type of writing. The books following Mr. Mysterious gave him ample opportunity to create unexpected situations and characters that gave him as much pleasure as the ones he has met during his long life.

III  SETTING


Fleischman’s autobiography has many settings. San Diego is the place where he spent his childhood and adolescence. After he becomes a skilled magician, he tours the Sierras and other parts of California. The Francisco Spook and Magic Show takes him to Nebraska, Missouri and other Midwestern states, and they go as far north as Chicago and Michigan.


Fleischman’s naval career took him to New York City, then to Norfolk, Virginia, to the Brooklyn Naval Yard, Bermuda, and finally to the Pacific, where he saw the Galapagos Islands en route to the ship’s assigned destination. The USS Albert T. Harris was sent to Bora Bora in the Society Islands. The crew took part in the invasion of Borneo, a very brief battle which was over by noon on the day it began. Next they patrolled the San Bernardino Strait in the Philippines where in August they learned that Japan had surrendered after atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For Fleischman the most interesting experience of his career in the war, quite possibly, was the three-week visit his ship made to Shanghai, which he felt made a profound impact on his career, turning him into a novelist. The Japanese had herded the Jewish refugees into a shabby ghetto across Soochow Creek in Hongkew. Blood Alley was a narrow bar-lined street in this district; the name fascinated him, and he would use it later as the title of a novel.


While working on screenplays, Fleischman moved to a house in Santa Monica, where he still lives. From here he travels each year around the country to visit high school audiences.

IV  THEMES AND CHARACTERS


Fleischman’s interest in performing magic tricks was the major focus of his early years. He became adept in handling cards and other standard props. He began to learn that human beings enjoy being deceived during these performances, and that they are very susceptible in many ways. This susceptibility would be proven when, while publishing a weekly newspaper, he and his friend thought they were perpetrating a harmless hoax by reporting the discovery of a twenty-seven-inch extraterrestrial man. The story was taken for absolute truth by many readers and received nationwide publicity.


The primary theme of The Abracadabra Kid is the process by which a writer is formed. Fleischman wants to acquire with words a skill comparable to that which he had developed in his magic.


An autobiography focuses on the character of its author. Fleischman shows how he became an astute observer of the world around him. He listens intently to speech patterns, to the expressions of the people in Missouri and Nebraska for example, in contrast to the voices he hears in California. He learns firsthand how Americans in many parts of the country talk. A very amiable person, he is fond of the people he meets, especially children and young adults.


Fleischman gives much credit to his teachers, the magicians who helped him master sleight-of-hand techniques and the ones who impressed him during his school years from grade school to college. Harry Snyder, whose troupe performed at the first magic show Fleischman had seen, became a friend and a mentor, as did Professor Fait, the chief performer at the San Diego Magicians Club. Harry Jones, a high school English teacher, introduced Fleischman to Shakespeare in a class that had the students playing roles in The Taming of the Shrew. Dr. Adams at San Diego State College helped Fleischman develop a sensitivity to nuance and the pleasures of the right word. “He taught me to read all over again.” William Brunner, whose short story course he took after returning to San Diego State during the postwar years, taught him to realize that only through persistent practice could he master the craft of writing. While this constant practice is going on, Brunner remarked, “There’s nothing wasted but the paper.”

V  LITERARY QUALITIES


Fleischman, like all highly competent writers, works hard to produce a style that meets his high, professional standards. When he was younger, he would often write whole chapters in a day; now he regards a paragraph a good day’s work. In college he tried to write sentences in imitation of Henry James. Writing these sentences was too much like “pulling taffy,” so he began using Ernest Hemingway’s deceptively simple style as a model instead.


Since fiction writing wasn’t part of the curriculum when Fleischman attended San Diego State College, he went to the library stacks as he had when he was a student of magic. But the existing books on story writing were not exactly what he felt he needed. The books did not tell him how to make a plot. “The trouble is every time you write page one you face a new wild set of variables.” He gradually learned to let the material for his plots assume the natural patterns his imagination mapped out for him. Details were important. Working with William Wellman also taught Fleischman the value of allowing a story to unfold in a series of dramatic scenes. Wellman, with an Academy Award film Wings in his list of successful films, which also included A Star Is Born and Oxbow Incident, had “a superb and subtle mind for story.” Fleischman has stated: “I learned for a lifetime that details accumulate and no detail is unimportant.” Wellman insisted that every scene end with a strong curtain line, which became an effective writing habit for Fleischman’s novels. His chapters typically end with a dramatic flourish.


Fleischman’s autobiography shows how his experiences have become fictionalized in his novels. A typhoon his ship weathered in the Pacific appears as a storm off Cape Horn in By the Great Horn Spoon!; his panning for gold in the Sierras during his high school days helped him understand the lives of the forty-niners in the same book. A writer stores in his memory events and characters he can use later. Fleischman’s first book, Mr Mysterious and Company, about a magician and his family, draws upon the years the author spent performing tricks to mystify audiences in California and across the Midwest.


The Abracadabra Kid gives an interesting account of how Fleischman revived the tall tale in his McBroom series. The genre had been characteristic of the frontier, but was moribund in this century. Fleischman’s mentor in magic, Professor Fait, told him a story. Fait had been trying to paddle a canoe, but it kept throwing him. This was because he had parted his hair on the right. Once he had parted his hair in the middle he could proceed with no difficulty. Remembering this tale later, Fleischman says that McBroom seemed to leap out of his typewriter at him.


Fleischman’s Iowa farmer Josh McBroom is a master of the tall tale, that very American type of humor. McBroom, his eleven children, and their amazing one-acre farm have become Fleischman’s best-known creations. He has written nine other books featuring McBroom since writing the first yarn, McBroom Tells the Truth, in 1966.


Fleishman uses his life in the navy as a source of humor. His ship, the USS Albert T. Harris, was loaded with sophisticated equipment to hunt submarines, but at the outset of their shakedown cruise, “the officers and men were out of Gilbert and Sullivan.” Scarcely any of them had been to sea before. Everybody was seasick and “hung over the rails like sailors in a comedy skit.” Armed only with five-inch guns fore and aft, the ship, while participating in invasions, was firing popguns in contrast to the tremendous firepower of the battleships and cruisers. “I’m sure we hit a couple of coconut trees at least.” Fleischman is skilled in using the comedy of the unexpected and the incongruous.

VI  SOCIAL SENSITIVITY


Fleischman’s autobiography tells the story of an immigrant Jewish family during the early twentieth century. The years of the Great Depression, vaudeville during its last years, and life aboard one of the smaller World War II naval ships are of historical interest. The publishing scene from the 1940s onward is treated insightfully.


Anti-Semitism does not seem to have been prevalent in the San Francisco of his youth. But Fleischman recalls that Henry Ford’s blatant dislike of Jews caused Louie Fleischman to refuse even to ride in a Ford. The national hero, Charles Lindbergh, came on the radio in the 1940s blaming all of the problems in Europe on the British and the Jews. It upset Fleischman and his family that a man of this stature could so readily accept such claptrap.

VII  TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION


1. What in your opinion is the most interesting period in Sid Fleischman’s life?


2. Fleischman never mentions the Holocaust in this book although he must have had relatives in Europe affected by it. Why is this?


3. Fleischman stopped being a professional magician and became a writer. Does he bring a sort of magic to his novels? How?


4. What did Fleischman learn by listening to the speech patterns of the Midwest? Is an ear for speech patterns absolutely necessary for a novelist?


5. In the 1950s we were told that only American colleges and universities attempted to teach their students their own language. Would Fleischman have found freshman English more profitable today than he did in the late 1930s?


6. Fleischman, despite the fact that he missed his wife and his family, seems to have enjoyed his life in the U.S. Navy. Was he at all typical of many men during World War II in the services?


7. What qualities enabled Fleischman, after only three weeks in Shanghai, to use his visit as the basis of five books?


8. After writing detective and adventure novels and screenplays, Fleischman became a very accomplished author of children’s books. Having read The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer’s Life, can you see why he made this choice of a profession?


9. Considering the tips Fleischman gives to writers in this book and the twelve suggestions he includes in the chapter entitled “Footsteps,” is his book a valuable manual for a would-be author?

VIII  IDEAS FOR REPORTS AND PAPERS


1. Fleischman devotes the early part of his autobiography to the process by which he became a magician. Have the more noted magicians of our time, David Copperfield, for example, undergone similar training? Are they different in any way from the ones who were on the vaudeville circuit in the 1920s and 1930s?


2. Compare Fleischman’s tall stories to those of Mark Twain and other writers of the nineteenth century. Is he their equal in the creation of these stories?


3. Bill Goldfarb, of John Wayne’s production company Batjac, tells Fleischman: “You write so visually, so cinematically.” How does the author accomplish this? Was the talent an asset for a writer of children’s books?


4. Paul Fleischman won the Newbery Medal a few years after his dad. Compare their styles of writing. Are they similar?


5. Fleischman says that his novel, By the Great Horn Spoon!, is used in California’s public schools in history courses dealing with the Gold Rush. What does this novel contribute to the history of the era? Compare it with a textbook account of California history.

IX  RELATED TITLES


Louie Fleischman was part of that great influx of immigrants who entered the country during the first decade of this century. He was one of approximately two million Jews who had left Europe since 1880. Irving Howe’s World of Our Fathers is a fascinating history of these people and their customs. Most of them like the Fleischmans came from eastern Europe. Once outside of the shtetls of Russia, they tended to be less orthodox in their religious beliefs. Readers will have noticed that Sid Fleischman never mentions religion. Howe’s book stresses the cultural and political issues which most concerned these people.


Contributed by: Karl E. Avery


Source: Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults. Copyright by Gale Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Abe Lincoln Grows Up

Published 1928

I  ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Carl Sandburg was born to Swedish-American parents on January 6, 1878, in Galesburg, Illinois, a prairie town that attracted large numbers of immigrants because of job opportunities at the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroad shops. His father worked in the railroad yards and never earned more than nine dollars a week, barely enough to feed, house, and clothe a young family and certainly not enough to send the children to high school. At the age of thirteen, Carl left school and began a succession of odd jobs. When he was nineteen, he left Galesburg in a boxcar, working his way to Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado. Shortly after his return to Illinois in 1898, he enlisted in the state militia and fought in Cuba and Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. He sent long letters about his experiences in Latin America to the Galesburg Evening Mail.


After young Sandburg's discharge from the service, he enrolled at Lombard College, where as a veteran he was entitled to a year's free tuition. Admitted as a special student because he had not gone to high school, he spent four years at the college but left shortly before receiving his degree and resumed his roaming, this time to the East Coast. Back in Galesburg after a number of adventures, including ten days in jail for riding the rails without a ticket, Sandburg worked as a fireman and a salesman.


Although he first published his poems in 1904, he did not gain recognition as a poet until 1914, when he published 'Chicago.' By this time, he had left Galesburg permanently and had worked as an organizer for the Social-Democratic party, as a newspaperman in Wisconsin, and as secretary to the mayor of Milwaukee. In 1908 he married Lillian Steichen, whose brother Edward later became a famous photographer. In 1912 Sandburg moved to Chicago, where he worked on various newspapers. He wrote editorials for the Chicago Daily News from 1918 to 1932 and began his work on Abraham Lincoln. The several volumes of poetry he published during this period gained a wide reputation for their informal style.


His two-volume Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years appeared in 1927, and his four-volume, Pulitzer Prize-winning Abraham Lincoln: The War Years followed in 1939. Describing previous biographies of Lincoln as too idealistic, Sandburg offered his versions as more realistic. Historians note that Sandburg's interpretations add little new information and no insights to the study of Lincoln but that his work's value lies in its emotional and poetic intensity.


Sandburg wrote versions of his works on Lincoln and his autobiography that are geared toward younger audiences. Abe Lincoln Grows Up is taken from Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years; Storm Over the Land derives from Abraham Lincoln: The War Years; and Prairie Town Boy is based on the autobiographical Always the Young Strangers (1952).


His other writings include a novel and some children's fantasies. Sandburg is also widely known as a collector of folk songs. In recognition of his achievements, Sandburg was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. He died on July 22, 1967, in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

II  OVERVIEW


Based on the first 27 chapters of Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, Sandburg's Abe Lincoln Grows Up presents the first twenty years of Lincoln's life, from his birth in a log cabin, through the migrations of the Lincoln family in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, until the time that Abe gathers his few belongings and leaves home for New Salem, in search of an education and a better life. This is a classic example of the American success story: a boy born and raised in poverty, with many hardships and very little formal education, struggles to make something of himself. Although the story ends just as Lincoln leaves home, all readers know that he is destined to become one of the best known and most loved presidents of the United States.


This biography offers an outstanding depiction of American frontier living, describing the wilderness, the farms, and the settlements; Sandburg shows how the settlers built their houses, grew their crops, and battled Native Americans. He faithfully recounts their joys, such as a wedding feast with 'bearmeat, venison, wild turkey and ducks,' and their sorrows, such as the epidemics of strange illnesses that took the lives of many people, including Lincoln's mother.


Following Lincoln down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers on a flatboat to New Orleans, the reader also glimpses the world beyond the frontier. Sandburg includes many interesting sidelights, such as Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign, that place Lincoln's early life in historical context.

III  SETTING


Abe Lincoln Grows Up begins in 1776, in Rockingham County, Virginia, where Lincoln's paternal grandparents live. In 1782 Lincoln's grandfather moves his family to the Kentucky wilderness. This wonderful new land teems with fertile black earth and bluegrass, but settlers face great dangers as well, particularly from Native Americans who try to protect their land from the newcomers. Brutal encounters are common; in fact, some towns offer rewards for Native American scalps.


When the future president is born in Kentucky in 1809, the frontier is still full of hardships. His family moves to Indiana, where they live in a pole shed, open on one side, for over a year while they accumulate the resources to build a cabin. Abe's mother soon dies of a mysterious disease known as 'milk sickness.' The settlers lack simple material goods, such as comfortable beds, and they also lack education. Abe and his sister hike nine miles to school and nine miles home. The long journey makes it impossible to attend regularly. All told, Abe receives only about four months of formal education.


With little entertainment to occupy sparse leisure time, the frontier can also be very monotonous. Recreational activities often involve some form of violence; for instance, the sports in which young Abe engages often involve scuffling, knocking off hats, and wrestling. Drinking, gambling, and fighting abound, but religion plays an important role in frontier life as well. Families attend long services in log cabin churches and pray together twice a day, sustained by their faith that they will enjoy a better afterlife.


Sandburg's biography follows the tremendous hardships and simple joys of Lincoln's childhood adventures in this challenging environment that produced one of America's most famous presidents.

IV  THEMES AND CHARACTERS


Because Abe Lincoln Grows Up is biographical rather than fictional, it lacks a true plot. There is no rising action leading to a climax that changes the lives of the people involved. Instead, Sandburg creates a realistic backgroundâ€"the frontier wilderness of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinoisâ€"and then populates it with historical figures. The major characters are Abe Lincoln; his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln; and his stepmother, Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln.


Sandburg characterizes the young Abe Lincoln as mischievous with his friends and serious in his work and studies. Lincoln's developing sense of responsibility and his growing interest in the law, government, and the world beyond the wilderness receive a good deal of attention from his biographer. His work ferrying passengers out to steamboats on the Ohio River and his trip to New Orleans on a flatboat demonstrate the future president's independence and his resourcefulness. Sandburg's emphasis on Lincoln's positive personality traits develops one of the biography's major themes: success is often the result of perseverance in the face of obstacles.


The biography covers Lincoln's relationships with family members as well. A colorful and interesting character, Lincoln's father, Tom, is devoted to his family and does not drink much or curse. But he clings to the old ways, as reflected in his impatience with education, which he believes should be limited to 'readin', writin', and cipherin'.' He does not understand his son's need for more knowledge, but when Abe's stepmother interferes, Tom yields to her. Thus Sandburg presents the time-honored theme of the old giving way to the new.


Abe's mother and stepmother are depicted with warmth and sympathy. Both love and nurture their children, although Nancy Hanks's origins are somewhat mysterious, and she is described as a bit 'strange.' Sarah Bush Johnston, on the other hand, is out-going, drawing the two motherless Lincoln children to her as if they were her own. When she holds him to her, Abe feels 'like a cold chick warming under the soft feathers of a big wing.' She embodies the theme of overcoming hardships with love.


The many rather vague and sketchy minor characters are generally developed as much as necessary in the context of the biography. Sandburg introduces characters who actually play no direct role in the Lincoln story but who add depth and richness. Information about the activities of Napoleon Bonaparte and Andrew Jackson lends historical perspective to the work, while the description of Mike Fink, a character of tall tales, provides a glimpse of the myths inspired by the frontier.

V  LITERARY QUALITIES


The most outstanding literary characteristic of this work is the language. Sandburg's prose often flows like his free verse poetry. A figurative device that Sandburg frequently uses in both poetry and prose is personificationâ€"that is, the endowment of an inanimate object with human qualities. For example, in chapter 10, Sandburg hypothesizes: 'He [Abe] might have asked the moon, 'What do you see?' And the moon might have told him many things.' The extensive description of all that the moon might have witnessed in the past few years helps the reader to see and feel the current of life in those times.


Similes and metaphors appear in virtually every chapter. Chapter 16 includes particularly powerful examples, for instance: 'The footsteps of death, silent as the moving sundial of a tall sycamore, were a presence. Time and death, the partners who operate leaving no more track than mist, had to be reckoned in the theme of life. A day is a shooting star.' This style, tending toward long but clear sentences, provides an interesting model for aspiring writers.

VI  SOCIAL SENSITIVITY


The attitudes toward violence, Native Americans, and blacks depicted in Abe Lincoln Grows Up may concern parents and teachers. Sandburg frequently makes violence sound attractive: 'Three boys teased him one day...they would not be satisfied till he had punched their noses.' Some descriptions of Mike Fink's and Andrew Jackson's escapades may be viewed as glorifications of physical violence. When Sandburg writes about social injustice, such as the treatment of Native Americans and slaves, he never offers any comment of his own. Some critics defend him on the grounds that the irony implicit in the situations amounts to a form of recrimination, but young readers may not recognize the irony as such and may instead interpret the lack of comment as moral neutrality or, worse yet, as approval. Most of these problems occur because the work was written over 60 years ago, when the collective social conscience was not as well-developed as it is now. The realization that moral standards change rapidly in American society is an important part of education today.


The old-fashioned virtues of hard work, family values, and love for God and one's country are certainly prominent in the biography, but Sandburg's streak of realism tempers any overoptimism about the advantages of living in accordance with these standards. The author points out more than once, 'The wilderness is careless,' and he quotes the folk proverb, 'The cowards never started and the weak ones died by the way.'

VII  TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION


1. In this biography, Sandburg does more than merely recount the facts about the first twenty years of Abe Lincoln's life. He tells about such assorted characters as Daniel Boone, Mike Fink, and Napoleon Bonaparte. What is the value of such digressions?


2. Sandburg said that he wrote his biography of Lincoln because other biographies were too idealistic and he wanted to contribute a realistic portrayal. Do you think that Sandburg accomplished this goal?


3. What was the attitude of the settlers toward Native Americans? Why did they feel that way? Are our attitudes different today? If so, why?


4. Examine the text to find similes and metaphors. Do you think they are effective in this nonfiction work? Why or why not?


5. How was it possible for Abe Lincoln to achieve so much with so little formal education? Did his success result from the quality of his scant education or from his own motivation?


6. Examine the text for Sandburg's allusions to slavery. Is the attitude revealed that of the author or of his characters? What is that attitude? Be sure to consider the description of the New Orleans slave markets in the last chapter.

VIII  IDEAS FOR REPORTS AND PAPERS


1. Sandburg mentions several games played at parties on the frontier, such as 'Skip to My Lou.' How were these games played? What kind of musical instruments might have been used? (A valuable source here might be Sandburg's own collection of folk songs, The New American Songbag. New York: Broadcast Music, 1950.)


2. One of the digressions from the main story of Abe Lincoln concerns the presidential campaign and administration of Andrew Jackson. How do these events resemble or differ from present-day campaigns and administrations?


3. The Mike Fink stories that were popular in Lincoln's time belong to a tradition known as 'frontier humor.' What other examples of this kind of humor can you find? How are they similar to or different from the Mike Fink stories?


4. Read some of Sandburg's poetry. Which literary devices does he use in both his poetry and prose? Is his use of these devices more effective in some instances than in others? Give examples.


5. Look through the story for references to violence, such as Abe's fight with William Grigsby. Are violent confrontations like these still common in our society? Why or why not?

IX  RELATED TITLES


Abe Lincoln Grows Up is adapted from the first part of Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, Sandburg's biography of Lincoln. Storm Over the Land: A Profile of the Civil War is a similar volume taken from Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. On a somewhat higher reading level than Abe Lincoln Grows Up, Storm Over the Land is much longer, covering all the years of the Civil War.


Contributed by: Mary K. Boyd, University of Missouri-Rolla


Source: Beacham’s Guide to Literature for Young Adults. Copyright by Gale Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

A & P

Published 1961

I  ABOUT THE AUTHOR


John Updike is one of America’s most prominent contemporary authors. He has written novels, short stories, essays, poetry, reviews, articles, memoirs, art criticism, and drama. His work has been adapted for television and film, and he has won numerous awards, including a National Book Award and two Pulitzer Prizes.


Updike was born on March 18, 1932, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and lived in nearby Shillington until he was thirteen. Many of Updike’s stories exhibit autobiographical elements, and his fictional town of Olinger is patterned after Shillington. When he was thirteen he moved with his parents and grandparents to a farm in Plowville, Pennsylvania, where his mother had been born. His father was a junior high school math teacher, and his mother a writer who wrote stories for the New Yorker magazine, as her son later did. Updike did well in school, graduated from high school as co-valedictorian, and attended Harvard University on a scholarship. In college, he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon.


In 1953 Updike married Mary Pennington, and the couple traveled to England on a Knox Fellowship. He enrolled in the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford, and for a while he considered a career drawing cartoons for Walt Disney or the New Yorker. In 1955 his daughter Elizabeth was born. For the sake of his growing family, Updike took a job at the New Yorker, which he held for two years before deciding to move to Ipswich, Massachusetts, and devote himself to fiction writing as an independent author. He and Mary eventually had four children before the couple divorced in 1977. He subsequently married Martha Bernhard.


The late 1950s were productive for Updike. He published his first novel, Poorhouse Fair; a collection of short stories, The Same Door; and a book of poems, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures. In 1960 the first of his “Rabbit” books, Rabbit, Run, introduced the world to Harry Angstrom, a man whose life peaked at eighteen when he was a high-school basketball star. To Harry’s continued amazement and sorrow, he lives his life as a shadow of what he used to be.


Critics have praised the character of Harry Angstrom highly, and Updike has won two Pulitzer Prizes for his “Rabbit” books; one in 1982 for Rabbit Is Rich, and one in 1991 for Rabbit at Rest. Another of Updike’s most popular novels is The Witches of Eastwick, the story of three divorced women in New England who gain magical skills to attract men. Their enticements backfire when a devilish man moves into the neighborhood. The book was made into a film in 1987 starring Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon, and Cher. Throughout the many forms Updike’s writing takesâ€"novels, stories, poems, and essaysâ€"the author’s primary concerns are Protestant, middle-class, contemporary American life, and the roles that marriage, divorce, sexuality, and religion play in it.

II  OVERVIEW


“A & P” was first published in the July 22, 1961 issue of the New Yorker and was published again the following year in the author’s collection Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories. Arthur Mizener’s review of the collection in the New York Times Book Review exalted Updike in terms that soon became commonplace for the writer: “his natural talent is so great that for some time it has been a positive handicap to him.” Almost 40 years later, “A & P” remains Updike’s most anthologized story and one of his most popular.


The story opens with Sammy, the teenaged narrator, describing three girls who have walked into the A & P grocery store where he works. They are wearing nothing but bathing suits. He is so distracted by them that he cannot remember if he rang up a box of crackers or not. As it turns out, he rings them up twice, a fact that his customer, “a witch about fifty,” lets him know quickly and loudly. He finishes ringing up the customer’s items as the girls, who have disappeared down an aisle, circle back into view. He notices that they are barefoot. He describes each: there is a “chunky one...and a tall one [with] a chin that was too long” and the “queen,” whom he imagines is their leader. She catches his eye for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the straps of her bathing suit have fallen off her shoulders.


Sammy watches the reactions of the other shoppers to the girls. He refers to the store’s other customers as “sheep” and “a few houseslaves in pink pin curlers.” Another clerk, Stokesie, a married 22-year-old with two children, trades innuendoes with him.


The narrator announces that he has come to what his family deems “the sad part” of the story, though he does not agree. The girls come to his checkout station, and the girl Sammy has dubbed “Queenie” puts down a jar of herring snacks and pulls a dollar from her bathing-suit top, a motion that makes Sammy nearly swoon. The store’s manager, Lengel, spots the girls and reprimands them for their attire, telling them that they should be decently dressed when they shop at the A & P.


Sammy rings up Queenie’s item, carefully handling the bill that just came from between Queenie’s breasts. Other customers appear nervous at the scene Lengel has made at the checkout, and the girls are embarrassed and want to leave quickly. Sammy, in a passionate moment, tells Lengel that he quits. The girls, however, fail to notice his act of chivalry and continue walking out of the store. Lengel asks him if he said something, and Sammy replies, “I said I quit.” Lengel, a longtime friend of Sammy’s parents, tries to talk him out of it, but Sammy folds his apron, puts it on the counter, punches “No Sale” on the cash register, and walks out.


Critics responded enthusiastically to “A & P,” and readers’ identification with Sammy’s predicament has contributed to the story’s continuing popularity. Though little action occurs in the story, Sammy’s character is finely drawn in the space of a few pages, and his brush with authority has large implications. He has been compared to Holden Caulfield, J. D. Salinger’s protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye, and Walter Wells in his essay “‘A & P’: A Return Visit to Araby,” has suggested that Sammy’s moment of protest is similar to the epiphanyâ€"or sudden moment of insightâ€"experienced by the narrator in James Joyce’s story “Araby,” a comment that places Updike in the pantheon of the most accomplished writers of the 20th century. Negative reactions to the story center on what some readers perceive as Sammy’s misogynist views. Other critics consider “A & P” a slight story, though one into which a lifetime of dignity, choices, and consequences is compressed.


Updike was only in his twenties when he wrote “A & P,” but he had already gained a reputation for his concise and elegant prose. In a New York Times Book Review article on Pigeon Feathers, the collection in which “A & P” was reprinted, Arthur Mizener called him “the most talented writer of his age in America...and perhaps the most serious.” Having already published two novels and a collection each of stories and poems, Updike had familiarized reviewers with his propensity for capturing small moments in his fiction. Though many claimed he did so with grace, others criticized Updike because the moments were small, and in their opinion, insignificant. “A & P” originally suffered from this view. An anonymous reviewer in Time magazine remarked that Updike “says very little and says it well”â€"this critic echoes the sentiment of many of his contemporaries. The reviewer went on to say that “even the book’s best storyâ€"a young A & P food checker watches three girls in bathing suits pad through the store and quits his job impulsively when his boss reproaches them for their immodestyâ€"is as forgettable as last week’s New Yorker.” Yet, “A & P” has become Updike’s most popular story over the years and has appeared in more than twenty anthologies. Young people especially seem to identify with Sammy and respond to the way he tells his story. Robert Detweiler surmised in his book John Updike that Sammy’s popularity is due to his “integrity, one that divorces him from his unthinking conservative environment.” M. Gilbert Porter, in an essay for English Journal, noted that Sammy’s overreaction “does not detract from the basic nobility of his chivalric intent, nor does it reduce the magnitude of his personal commitment.” Ronald E. McFarland, in an essay in Short Studies in Fiction, claimed that the story’s enduring popularity was due in part to the ambiguity of the narrator’s actions. This sentiment was first proposed by Suzanne Uphaus, who stated in her book John Updike that Sammy’s behavior is an attempt by Updike to reflect on his conviction that “the heroic gesture is often meaningless and usually arises from selfish rather than unselfish impulses.” Other critics are similarly interested in the character of Sammy. In an essay titled “Irony and Innocence in John Updike’s ‘A & P,’” Lawrence Jay Dessner lauded the story’s “brevity and its outrageously naive yet morally ambitious teen-age hero,” whom he called “boisterously inventive and rebellious.” Walter Wells discussed the story as a modern interpretation of James Joyce’s classic tale of adolescent initiation, “Araby.” Calling Sammy’s “the more ambivalent epiphany,” Wells drew comparisons between the sudden realizations of the narrator of “Araby” and that of Updike’s story, and speculated that the author’s purpose in updating Joyce’s story was “to contrast the spiritual value-systems and the adolescent sexual folkways of Joyce’s Dublin with those of suburban New England in the Atomic Age.” Donald J. Greiner, in The Other John Updike: Poems, Short Stories, Prose, Play, summarized the attraction many readers feel to Sammy: The end of the story suggests that all is not self-righteousness and slang. Sammy has sympathy and a sense of outrage. However ironic, his sacrificial gesture is as refreshing as his colloquial candor.... An observer of his social world, he resolves not just to record but also to act upon his impressions.



III  SETTING


The action of “A & P” takes place in a grocery store in a town north of Boston that is five miles from the nearest beach. Updike told Short Stories for Students that he wrote “A & P” “in 1961, when I was living in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Driving past the local A & P, I asked myself, Why are there no short stories that take place inside an A & P?’ I proceeded to write one, based on a glimpse I had had of some girls in bathing suits shopping in the aisles. They looked strikingly naked.” Updike added: “Originally the story went on, past the ending it now has: Sammy goes down to the beach to find the girls, and never does find them. But the story’s editor at the New Yorker thought that the story ended where it now does, and I agreed with him.”

IV  THEMES AND CHARACTERS


The encounter of Sammy, a checkout clerk at an A & P supermarket, with a trio of swimsuited girls encompasses many of the themes central to adolescence, including accepting the repercussions of one’s choices. When Sammy quits in protest of how the girls were treated by the store’s manager, he perceives that from now on, the world will be a more difficult place. As Sammy tells the story his language indicates that, at age nineteen, he is both cynical and romantic. He notes, for instance, that there are “about twenty-seven old freeloaders” working on a sewer main up the street, and he wonders what the “bum” in “baggy gray pants” could possibly do with “four giant cans of pineapple juice.” Yet, when Queenie approaches him at the checkout, Sammy describes her “prim look” as “she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top.” “Really,” he says, “I thought that was so cute.” He vacillates back and forth between these extremes of opinion during the story. He considers some of the customers “houseslaves in pin curlers,” yet he is sensitive enough that when Lengel makes Queenie blush, he feels “scrunchy inside.” At the end of the story, he quits his job in an effort to be a hero to the girls and as a way of rebelling against a strict society. Experiencing an epiphany, he suddenly realizes “how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter” if he refuses to follow acceptable paths.


Sammy most pointedly embodies an important theme in “A & P”: that of choices and consequences. While all of the main characters in the story must make a choice and endure the consequences of that choice, Sammy makes the most obvious and most meaningful choice, and on some level he is aware of the consequences. When he chooses to quit his job, he knows that this decision will have ramifications in his life that will last for a long time. His family is affected, and it causes him to recount the situation as “sad.” Because he has stood up for something on principleâ€"he acted in protest of the manager’s chastisement of the girlsâ€"he knows life will be difficult for him. If Sammy quits his job every time he encounters a situation he dislikes, his life will become extremely complicated. In the short term, the consequence of quitting is having to find another job, and with his rash decision comes the possibility he will be branded a troublemaker or misfit by the community in which he lives.


“Queenie” is the name Sammy gives to the pretty girl who leads her two friends through the grocery store in their bathing suits. He has never seen her before but immediately becomes infatuated with her. He comments on her regal and tantalizing appearance. She is somewhat objectified by Sammy, who notes the shape of her body and the seductiveness of the straps which have slipped off her shoulders. When the girls are chastised for their attire by Lengel, Queenie, who Sammy imagines lives in an upper-middle-class world of backyard swimming pools and fancy hors d’oeuvres, becomes “sore now that she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A & P must look pretty crummy.” Sammy becomes indignant at Lengel’s treatment of the girls and tries to help them save face by quitting his job. Queenie, however, appears not to notice and leaves the store promptly, diminishing the impact of Sammy’s gesture.


The three girls must suffer the consequences of having gone to the grocery store in their bathing suits. It is hard to believe that they had no idea they were improperly dressed. In the early 1960s women still wore dresses, hats, and gloves most of the time when they were in public. In their youthful exuberance to push the limits of propriety, the girls have been reprimanded by an adult. They have also made quite an impression on two young men, Sammy and Stokesie, which was, perhaps unconsciously, their intention in the first place. Nevertheless, because of their choice to violate community standards, they suffer embarrassment by being reprimanded by an authority figure. Even Sammy’s attempt at solidarity with them is not enough to salvage the situation; they make a hasty retreat from the store and disappear without taking a stand, unlike Sammy. From the girls’ meek reaction, one can surmise that the girls will not take many more risks of the same sort in the future. Such a brush with authority will likely hem them in, successfully socializing them to accept community norms. Sammy, however, because of his quick defiance, is less likely to blindly adhere to arbitrary rules for the sake of maintaining peace.


Lengel’s choice to confront the girls has the unforeseen consequence of losing an employee when Sammy resigns in protest. Lengel spends most of his days in his office. Entering the story near the end, he represents the system: management, policy, decency, and the way things are. But he is not a one-dimensional character. He has known Sammy’s parents for a long time, and he tells Sammy that he should, at least for his parents’ sake, not quit his job in such a dramatic, knee-jerk way. He warns Sammy that he will have a hard time dealing with life from now on, should he quit. He seems truly concerned even while he feels the need to enforce store policy.


When he comes into the store after “haggling with a truck full of cabbages,” he could have ignored the three girls. They were, after all, standing in the checkout line, and he is “about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER.” Instead, he makes the choice to confront the girls in front of Sammy. If he considers any consequences to his actions, he does not show it. He is merely enforcing the social codes of his time and place. He expects that the girls will comply and that Sammy, and anyone else within hearing, will agree with him.


The girls inevitably stop their protestations, as Lengel expected they would, but Sammy quitsâ€"an act that Lengel could not have imagined ahead of time. To Lengel’s credit, in spite of his stuffiness and self-importance, he shows Sammy patience. He does not yell or order him immediately out of the store, but warns him of the very real consequences of his act. Yet, it is Lengel’s adherence to the social codeâ€"which says that this behavior must go into Sammy’s personnel fileâ€"that cause those consequences. It is, in a small way, like classical tragedy. The players in this drama are helpless to act other than the way they do, but it is not the gods who set the parameters of their behavior, but society, with its written and unwritten list of expected behaviors and consequences for deviating from that list.


A related theme in “A & P” is individualism. Sammy asserts his individuality when he quits his job. He knows that Lengel has every right, according to the standards of the time, to speak to the girls as he does. However, by standing up for the girls, Sammy questions those standards and asserts that there is a higher standard of decency that says one should not embarrass others. In deciding which rules of conduct are more important, he asserts his individuality, unlike the girls who slink away because they know they have violated the rules of conduct.


Sammy is the only character in this story who asserts his individuality. Two of the girls are simply following their leader, and Queenie is easily embarrassed and capitulates to Lengel. The other shoppers in the A & P are only “sheep,” nervously herding together at Stokesie’s cash register to avoid the confrontation. Lengel is the enforcer of policy, a term often used for rules that cannot be easily explained with any degree of rationality. He blindly follows the dictates of society, unable to articulate the reasons for those dictates beyond saying that the A & P “isn’t the beach,” an observation so obvious and so lacking in reason that it causes Sammy to smileâ€"a small, but definite step toward his rebellion.


Stokesie, the young, married man who works with Sammy at the A & P checkout, has little to say or do in this story, though, like Sammy, he observes the girls in the store with interest. Only three years older than Sammy, he provides a glimpse of what Sammy’s future might be like; Stokesie’s wife and two children comprise “the only difference” between them, Sammy comments.

V  LITERARY QUALITIES


Sammy narrates this story in the first person. His voice is colloquial and intimate. His speech is informal, a factor that highlights his individuality and propensity to question authority. His use of slang, like describing a dollar bill that had “just come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known” characterize him as a fairly typical teenage boy. Using the present tense to make the story seem immediate, he speaks as if to a friendâ€"“I uncrease the bill, tenderly as you may imagine”â€"drawing the reader immediately to his side. Everything that happens, the reader sees through his eyes. When the girls in bathing suits disappear from his view, they disappear from the reader’s view, as well.


Sammy’s diction indicates that he is probably not a well-educated person. “In walks these three girls,” he says at the very beginning of the story. He also uses a kind of wisecracking slang when talking to Stokesie. Yet, because of the immediacy of his voice, he seems to be a reliable narrator, telling the truth even when it does not flatter him.


“A & P” is rich in symbolism. The HiHo crackers Sammy is ringing up at the beginning of the story are an exclamation. When he rings them up the second time, he is saying “Heigh-ho! Something out of the ordinary is happening!” And the older woman takes him to task for it. The other shoppers are described as “sheep” who follow blindly up and down the aisles, finally entering the chutes where they will check out. Near the end of the story, they bunch up in Stokesie’s chute, crowding together like the nervous sheep they are.


The girls themselves are associated with bees, from the moment that Sammy notices one of them is the “queen,” leading the others around the store. Shortly after that, he wonders what goes on in their minds, if it is “just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar.” Like buzzing bees, they make everyone just a little bit nervous. They are the catalyst in the story, stirring things up as they buzz around the store. Of course the girls, especially Queenie with her shoulder straps hanging loosely, symbolize sexual freedom. It is a sexual freedom that is bottled up rather quickly when Lengel arrives. At the end, Lengel tries to talk Sammy into staying, but Sammy cannot get the picture of the girls’ embarrassment out of his mind, so he rings up “No Sale” on the cash register. He is not buying.


In literary terms, an epiphany is an instance of sudden truth brought about by a mundane event. What began for Sammy as an ordinary day results in the realization of an important truth: “I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.” This final statement of “A & P” is the culmination of the fairly minor event of witnessing three inappropriately dressed girls reprimanded for their appearance. In presenting this epiphany, Updike illustrates how average people grow and change. Prosaic events become significant as people examine their motives and reasons for their decisions and behavior. At nineteen, Sammy is ripe for experiences that will define who he is going to be. He discovers, as “his stomach kind of fell,” that he prefers not to be a sheep who blindly follows the dictates of society. Like the protagonist in James Joyce’s “Araby,” in which an adolescent realizes the futility of romantic quests, Sammy learns, in the words of Walter Wells, that “the whole chivalric world view [is], in modern times, counterproductive.”

VI  SOCIAL SENSITIVITY


Today it is common for businesses to post signs stating the rules of their premises: “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service,” or for movie theaters to run service announcements reminding people not to talk during a film. Society has become so informal that reminders of basic decency and courtesy are commonplace. This is in sharp contrast to the era in which “A & P” is set, when standards of appearance and behavior were more rigid and more accepted. Women were required to wear hats in church, and men were required to take theirs off. In the office, rules were largely unwritten, but rarely broken. Women wore dresses, nylons, and girdles. Men wore gray, blue, or black suits and never left home without a tie. During the 1950s and early 1960s, conservative dress mirrored conservative social values. Conformity was a measure of popularity as well as a measure of moral rightness. Most people, particularly members of the middle class, wanted to fit in with their neighbors. Suburbs were constructed of identical houses, and the American dream was to have a family, a car, and the modern conveniences that would make one equal to others of one’s social standing. Those who bucked the trends were frequently labeled eccentric or bohemian. The rebellion of many young people from the mid-1960s onward stemmed from what they perceived as the oppression of the staunch rules their parents imposed upon them. In the story Sammy is a good example of this. He knows what the rules are, but he does not admire the “sheep” who so willingly follow them. When he quits his job at the grocery store, he has upset the status quo, an event that Sammy’s parents deem “sad.” In refusing to smooth over his behavior and return to his job, Sammy takes a stand that makes him aware of “how hard the world was going to be...hereafter.” In such a rigid society, he knows he may be relegated to the status of an outsider or troublemaker for disagreeing with the unwritten code of acceptable behavior.


There was little positive incentive for Sammy to act as he did. In the late 1950s, the culture had its iconoclasts, but they were never sanctioned by the mainstream. In Nicholas Ray’s 1955 film Rebel without a Cause, starring James Dean, a teenager’s quest for love and warmth in a cold and loveless world turns to tragedy. All movies were subject to censorship from the Hayes Office before the current rating system was devised in the late 1960s. Not only were sex, obscene language, and violence strictly curtailed, but characters of low morals were required to suffer negative consequences of their actions within the course of the film. Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel On the Road, published in 1957, tells of beatnik outcasts Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty who drive across the United States listening to jazz and smoking marijuana while trying to find something authentic in American culture. It was also during this era that Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl was published. In it, Ginsberg condemns a conformist culture for crushing the creative spirit of artists: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.” Such strong language was not received warmly by mainstream society. The poem became the subject of a landmark obscenity trial, and the poem’s publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, was jailed by the San Francisco Police Department.


Rock’n’ roll music got its start in the 1950s. At best, it was dismissed as a fad, at worst, it was considered the devil’s work. The new music was filled with a sensuality that middle America vehemently condemned, if only because it was causing young people to swoon with emotions previously kept largely in check. Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry were considered suspicious for their wild movements, flashy clothes, and for beguiling American youth away from the path of safe, decent, sexually modest entertainment. This is the world into which Updike introduces the three teenage girls in bathing suits in “A & P.”

VII  TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION


1. If three girls in bathing suits walked into your local supermarket, what do you think the reaction would be today? Has society’s attitude towards such issues as dress changed or remained essentially the same in the past 40 years?


2. Consider the events in the story from the girls’ point of view. Why do you think they went to the grocery store in their swimsuits?


3. If you were to make this story into a film that takes place today, what song would you have playing over the store’s speakers? Think of the themes involved in both the story and the song as you make your decision.


4. At the end of the story, Sammy says “I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.” Do you agree? Why or why not?


5. Try to put yourself in Sammy’s place. Would you have defended the girls’ behavior? Would their humiliation be worth losing your job?


6. Originally Updike continued the story with Sammy looking for the girls at the beach. In your view, what happens next in the story?

VIII  IDEAS FOR REPORTS AND PAPERS


1. Rewrite the first paragraph of this story in the third person. Why do you think Updike wrote it in the first person?


2. Compare and contrast Sammy’s epiphany in “A & P” with that experienced by the protagonist in “Araby” by James Joyce.


3. Describe some similarities between Sammy and Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of J. D. Salinger’s controversial coming-of-age story, The Catcher in the Rye.


4. Identify which symbols you consider richest in adding meaning to the events in the story. Why?


5. Discuss the impact of the events in the story on the characters other than Sammy.


6. Research teenage life of the late 1950s and early 1960s and compare that with life today. Consider such aspects as education, employment and marriage prospects, family and parental relationships, peer pressure, unsupervised leisure activities, and consumer buying power. Relate what you find to the characters in “A & P.”

IX  RELATED TITLES AND ADAPTATIONS


Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (1962) by John Updike. “A & P” is one of the stories in this collection which contains stories about characters making choices and living with those choices as they grow.


Source: Beacham’s Guide to Literature for Young Adults. Copyright by Gale Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

Source: Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2007. © 1993-2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

By Des Ferriols
The Philippine Star

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) expects total remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to reach $16.2 billion in 2008 with labor deployment increasing despite the slowdown in the US economy.

BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. told reporters over the weekend that gross OFW inflows would expand by eight percent next year, including remittances that go through informal and non-bank channels.

Remittances that go through banks, on the other hand, are projected to grow at a faster rate of 10 percent to reach $15.7 billion compared to only $14 billion this year.

According to Tetangco, the latest estimates of the BSP also upgraded the full-year projection for 2007 when OFW remittances are expected to increase faster by seven percent.

"Originally, we expected remittances to grow by five percent but based on what we have seen so far, we think total remittances will actually grow by seven percent," Tetangco said.

At this rate, Tetangco said total remittances are projected to reach $15 billion, about $300 million more than the $14.7 billion total projected earlier in the year.

Remittances that go through banks, on the other hand, are projected to end 2007 at $14.3 billion, slightly over the original projection of $14 billion.

Tetangco said there was an expected pick-up in deployment in 2008 but said that over the medium term, the sustainability of remittances would depend on the availability of manpower.

"The demand is likely to stay, it all depends on how fast and how many we can train to fill up that demand," Tetangco said.

Labor deployment, however, has been criticized by economist as a "cop-out" as the Arroyo administration opted to train workers for off-shore employment rather than working to create higher-paying local jobs.

A 2005 survey of the National Statistics Office revealed that the country has so far deployed over 1.4 million workers abroad, about 76.6 percent were working in Asian and the rest in Europe, North and South America.

The NSO said 50.3 percent were makes and the rest were females with female OFWs aged 25 to 29 years. The NSO said one in every three (33.1 percent) OFWs was employed as unskilled worker while those who worked as trade workers or trade-related workers comprised 14.5 percent of the total number of OFWs.

source: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryID=102665

I know why this story was never published in Bohol newspapers.

During my journalism days, I had written several news reports which were trashed by the newspaper management.

PM me if you wish to know the reason.

Sinulat ni Nestor Daarol
DYTR Reporter

Naukay ang mga magbabalaod sa Sangguniang Panlalawigan kalabot sa usa ka matod pa hitabo nga gitaguan sa lalawigan sa Bohol. Atol sa sesyon sa milabay nga Martes (Desyembre 11, 2007) gipresentar ni Board Member Maria Fe Camacho Lejos ang kabahin sa lindog ni Leo Lastimosa (Usa ka inilang komintarista sa radio, telibisyon ug pamantalaan  sa Sugbo) sa pamantalaang The Freeman sa milabay nga Desyembre 08, 2007.

Nakurat si Lejos sa dihang nagpadayon ang ilang sesyon sa dihang usa ka papil nga kopya sa lindog ni Lastimosa ang gitunol sa reporter sa estasyon DYTR nga si Dave Responte . Wala maglangan si Lejos human mabasa niini ang  unod sa papil gipresentar dayon kini ngadto sa iyang mga kauban atol sa Other Matters nga porsyon sa sesyon. Si Lejos mao ang Chairman sa Committee on Peace and Order sa SP og nabalaka  kaayo sa maong  kasayuran

Mao kini ang  kabahin sa column ni Mr. Leo Lastimosa nga Arangkada  sa The Freeman nga giulohan ug “Ang tinaguan sa Bohol?” nga gibasa ni Lejos:

“Mga turistang langyaw gitulis samtang nanuroy sa Bohol. Unom ka tinun-ang Hapones nga nagsakay og coaster gibanhigan sa tulo ka tulisan sa Barangay Nan -od, Sierra Bullones, gitionan og mga rebolber ug gipanguhaan sa ilang alahas, cellular phones ug kuwarta. Nakasibat ang mga tulisan bisan kun ang mga turista gikuyogan og polis gikan sa Kampo Dagohoy sa Tagbilaran City.

Kuwestiyonable nang daan nganong way nahimo ang polis pagpanalipod sa mga turista. Kuwestiyonable sang gikatahong kapakyas sa kapolisan sa Bohol pagpahibawo sa ilang kadagkoan. Labing kuwestiyonable ang gikatahong pagpasidaan nila sa mga biktima sa di pagsaba sa ilang kasinatian. Gikahadlokan nga di ni unang higayon nga gitagoan ang mga krimen batok sa mga turista.

* * *
Angay’ng pasidunggan ang mga Bol-anon sa malambuon nilang industriya sa turismo. Usa ko sa nakatilaw sa mainiton nilang pag-abi-abi ug hapsay nga pagpatuman sa tour packages pila na ka Semana Santa ang nilabay. Di ko gustong motuo nga ang pagpamakak maoy usa sa sukaranan sa ilang kalamposan pagdani sa lokal ug langyaw’ng mga turista.

Angay’ng angkunon sa kadagkoan sa Bohol nga ang pagdagsang sa mga turista makadani sab sa mga kriminal. Mas dali ning masulbad kun angkunon nga duna silay problema inay paundayonan ang pagpaka aron-ingnon nga giurom lang ang ilang mga bisita. Di katabonan ang atraso sa ilang kapakyas pagsikop sa mga tulisan pinaagi sa pagpasiugda sa mas dakong atraso pagtago sa mga krimen gikan sa katawhan.”

Gumikan niini ang komitiba sa kahusay ug kalinaw maoy gitahasan sa SP nga moimbistigar niini uban sa komitiba sa turismo . Gusto sa mga bokal nga masuse gayod kining maong hitabo kon unsa kini katinuod kay matod pa ni Board Member Lejos nga kon namakak si Lastimosa sa iyang gisulat angayan lang nga iya kining korihian, “Piro kon tinuod kini maayo gyud nga dunay reporma sa atong mga kapolisan ilabi na sa paggukod sa mga kriminal,” dugang pa ni Lejos sa dihang nahinabi sa JBBN.

Human sa sesyon dali nga gitawagan ni Lejos si Lastimosa nga didto sa kaulohan. Gisaysay sa bokal nga mipasalig kaniya si Leo Lastimosa nga hatagan siya ug kopya sa blotter kalabot sa maong hitabo nga tulis sa mga istudyanting hapon didto sa Nan-od lungsod sa Siera Bullones.

Usa ka kasaligang tinubdan nga anaa usab sa nigusyo sa turismo nga dili lang magpahingalan ang mibutyag ngadto sa JBBN nga tinuod ang maong hitabo apan dugay na kini mga duha na ka bulan ang nakalabay. Gani matod pa niiini nga naukay usab sila gumikan kay makadaghan sila gipatawag sa usa ka dakong player sa turismo dinhi aron lang mapugngan nga dili makagawas ang maong balita ngadto sa media.

Gidugang pa niini nga atol sa maong hitabo adunay duha ka mga Tourist Police nga kuyog ang maong mga estudyanting hapon. Gani matod pa niini nga kadudahan usab kay gawas nga walay nahimo ang duha ka police batok sa tulo ka mga tulisan ang driver sa coaster nga naila sa pangalang Dave wala kuhai sa iyang cellular phone.

Gidugang pa niini nga ang travel agency nga nagdala sa maong mga hapon mao ang gipanag-iya sa asawa ni Walter Sultan. Wala makatug-an sa JBBN sa insaktong petsa sa hitabo ang tinubdan apan iyang gisiguro nga anaa kini sa bulan sa Septembre ug Oktobre.

Gisuwayan ning tigbalita ug tawag si Police Superintendent Edgardo Ingking apan nakakyas kita gumikan kay adunay kini giatindihan nga tigom.

Sa iyang bahin si Board Member Corazon Galbreath ang Chairman komitiba sa Turismo sa SP sa Bohol namahayag nga kwestyunabli ang gibuhat ni Leo Lastimosa sa pagsuwat sa  niini kay iyang giakosahan ang mga leader sa Bohol sa pagtago sa kamatuoran. Apan dugang pa ni Galbreath  nga kong ang ilang gilantaw mao ang kalambuansa turismo sa Bohol ngano man usab nga ilang ipabutang sa newspaper ang mga dautang balita.

Sa iyang bahin ang abugadang magbabalaod  nga gikan sa Trisero distrito nga si Bokal Aster Piolio namahayag usab nga  kon dili mapamatod-an ni Lastomosa ug dili niya masuportahan ang iyang gusuwat angayan lang nga pasakahan ug kaso ang komintarista ug ingon man sa pamantalaan nga gisuwatan niini aron malikayan na ang pagamit sa katungopn sa prensa aron pagdaot sa repotasyon sa usa ka probinsya.
Samtang si bokal Alfonso Damalerio II sa unang distrito kinsa kauban ni Leo Lastimosa sa Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas kon KBP  mihangyo ngadto ni Lastimosa sa pagsumiter sa kamatuoran uban sa mga ibidinsya  aron sa pag-justipy  sa maong matod pa hitabo, kay sumala pa ni Damalerio nga kini napatik sa lapad nga serkulasyon nga pamantalaan makaapikto gayod kini sa turismo sa Bohol.

Sa pagsuwat ning balita wala pa madawat sa buhatan ni Board Member Maria Fe Camacho Lejos ang gisaad ni Lastimosa nga kopya sa blotter nga iyang gibasihan sa unod sa iyang gisuwat. Apan giklaro gyud ni Lastimosa ngadto ni Lejos nga blotter sa pulis ang iyang gibasihan ug wala siya magtumo-tumo.

So kind and generous of you, Bran. That would happen with limited presence of female friends.  We'll talk history and politics from dusk till dawn.

If you happen to be in New York, I wish you to meet my precious Shael and Shobel.

As for chess, I haven't played the game for five or six years already. I think I am no match to your chess prowess.

It was my father who was really good in chess. He always surprised me with unexpected moves.

Bran, while the heroes and thinkers of Asia remained in Asia, our Philippine heroes and revolutionaries were exploring Europe and other great nations and capitals of the past.

Like you Bran, I love history books, too. I just don't have the time to read them now. Too engrossed with computer and web stuff.

Dear Friends,

We wish to reach out more Boholanos around the world. Since our website is still a baby (mag 8 months pa), many Bol-anons have not actually discovered our baby site.

The volume of traffic in Tubag Bohol is generated by search engine results. Tubag Bohol is highly optimized in Google and Yahoo, which give Tubag Bohol No. 1 or Top 10 rank in search engine results for certain keywords, terms, and phrases.

We can become a formidable force that can change our province if we are united. But we cannot be united if we do not know each other.

Do you know that Boholanos have presence in all provinces in the Philippines? But our lost brethren could no longer trace their roots in Bohol due to distance, time, and financial constraints. The Internet can help build the broken links of relatives and friends. Tubag Bohol wishes to build relationships. Not a hi-and-hello kind of relationship, but true friendships rooted in love, trust, passion, respect, and commitment. And we have seen that happening in Tubag Bohol (nearly 6,000 PMs generated by all of us).

You can help build a bridge to our lost Boholanos by linking Tubag Bohol in blogs, blogrolls, blog comments, forum sites signatures, and in other major websites such as friendster.com, myspace.com, flickr.com, multiply.com, hi5.com and many other websites.

Kindly use this url: http://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com This is our proper web address.

www.tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com is not recognized in search engine results, but

http://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com is the official url address indexed by Google and Yahoo.

Let's continue to make friends as we enrich our minds and hearts through unlimited knowledge-sharing (and of course, the laughters and tears)

yours truly,
your friend

Angie, pictures cannot be seen in Tubag Bohol unless they are available in the world wide web. Have your pictures hosted in photobucket.com or flickr.com.

Quote from: Joker on December 17, 2007, 06:28:12 AM
Hello Mike,
How are you today? Where can I send my gift to you to help purchase your ticket.

Joker, I'm really sorry. I will send you a PM. You standing by me during my days of grief and pain was more than enough.

I'm saving now so I could join the US Eyeball or the Europe Eyeball.

In the meantime, let's celebrate our friendship online. Though we don't see each other here, yet our hearts and minds will always be one, for Bohol and for our beloved nation.

Quote from: asianfairy on December 17, 2007, 06:37:00 AM
Joker...good idea.

Of course our admin deserves all our help kay without him di unta ta malingaw magkitakita dire.

I think daghan nang TB members ang mioffer ni Mike pero di niya dawaton.

Pila man ang amount sa ticket so we will know how much we need?
Thanks.

It's true, Alicia. I have humbly and politely turned down the support though I know it comes from our friends' hearts as I am already overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of our friends here.

I will always be here for all of you so long as my laptop is running and our school Internet is not disconnected, with God's blessing of health and time.

Maajong pag-abot Z153090

Hope you'd enjoy our friendship and our sharing of information in Bohol's most active forum site.

Feel free to contact anyone of us if you have concerns about this site.


God bless,
Tubag Bohol Global Family

Maajong pag-abot afroditerose

Hope you'd enjoy our friendship and our sharing of information in Bohol's most active forum site.

Feel free to contact anyone of us if you have concerns about this site.


God bless,
Tubag Bohol Global Family

Maajong pag-abot warrenjade

Hope you'd enjoy our friendship and our sharing of information in Bohol's most active forum site.

Feel free to contact anyone of us if you have concerns about this site.


God bless,
Tubag Bohol Global Family

Elsie, it works fine with me. I've seen the result. Really fast.

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

source: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1299854/posts

Quote from: balong on December 16, 2007, 07:20:30 PM
BULAK nga matahom, pananglitan kong ang salabat imnon ni sigbin, mahimo ba ug ikaw na lay ahong imnon 

Tulukibon kining imong pangutana, Balong. Adunay nagpahiping kahulugan nga ikaw lamang ang makatug-an.

Maajong pag-abot Joker

Hope you'd enjoy our friendship and our sharing of information in Bohol's most active forum site.

Feel free to contact anyone of us if you have concerns about this site.


God bless,
Tubag Bohol Global Family

Maajong pag-abot vanix

Hope you'd enjoy our friendship and our sharing of information in Bohol's most active forum site.

Feel free to contact anyone of us if you have concerns about this site.


God bless,
Tubag Bohol Global Family

source: pizdaus.com

source: pizdaus.com

source: pizdaus.com

source: pizdaus.com

source: pizdaus.com

source: pizdaus.com

source: pizdaus.com

source: pizdaus.com

source: pizdaus.com

By Ven Arigo
The Bohol Chronicle

A Boholano took a flight to history by scoring the second highest in the 2007 Philippine Aeronautical Engineering Licensure Examination given by the Board of Aeronautical Engineering (BAE) and the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC).

Second placer Vitto Paolo “Butch” Barrera Sarceno, whose “career objective” is to get a “challenging position by which I can effectively contribute my skills and theoretical knowledge to the aviation industry,” is also reputedly the first Boholano ever to top and rate such high in a Philippine board exam for aviation.

The Antequeranhon graduate of the Philippine State College of Aeronautics (PSCA) in Pasay City rated 82.90, which ranked him the next highest among the only 36 board test passers. The first placer got 83.05.
A native of Poblacion in Antequera, Sarceno is a grandson of former Provincial Board Member Isabelito Tongco.

Sarceno and his fellow successful examinees took their Oath of Professional at the Bayview Park Hotel in Manila last night.

He has worked as a junior aircraft mechanic for the Lufthansa Technik Philippines.

Sarceno, now a highly-regarded member of the Society of Aerospace Engineers of the Philippines (SAEP), took the first four years of his course at the Philippine State College of Aeronautics at Mactan Airbase in Lapulapu City before finishing his final year at its sister school at the Villamor Airbase in Pasay City.

In his grade years, Sarceno transferred to the Holy Spirit School from Antequera Central Elementary School and then took his secondary education at the Tagbilaran City Campus of the Central Visayas State College of Agriculture, Forestry and Technology (CVSCAFT). (Ven Rebo Arigo)

By Kit Bagaipo
The Bohol Chronicle

A treasurer of barangay Bacani, Clarin town was shot dead by a still unidentified gunman while on her way home Friday night.

The victim, identified as one Isidra Poquita y Viodor, 52, married and barangay treasurer of Bacani, Clarin, was passing through an unlit barangay road on her way home with a daughter when the assailant shot her three times.

The victim was hit on the back, left hand and left hip and was rushed to the St. Joseph Clinic in Tubigon town where she was already declared critical.

She was later transferred to the Gov. Celestino Gallares Regional Hospital where she expired early Saturday morning.

Responding police recovered 3 caliber .38 slugs at the crime scene.
According to SPO4 Fortunato Remedio, the motive of the killing has yet to be established.

The Panglao Bohol International Airport Development Project (PBIADP) Task Force eyed to tap the Gawad Kalinga (GK) in establishing a resettlement area for the lot owners affected by the project.
   During the regular meeting of the PBIADP Task Force on December 12, former Tagbilaran City mayor Jose Torralba, the task force chairman, suggested to tap GK to facilitate the construction of houses of the affected lot owners at the property that the government had secured for those who opted for barter scheme.
   In GK project, the affected lot owners only have to provide sweat equity, while the Couples for Christ provides the materials. This will give assurance that the displaced lot owners will have an immediate home after the government takes over their property for the PBIADP.
   Torralba cited that in his knowledge, first district Representative Edgar Chatto had allocated P5 million for GK which the affected lot owners can avail.
   Provincial Board Member Alfonse Damalerio II has been tasked to coordinate the plan.
   For the PBIADP, the DOTC had provided P66.5 million of the P100.6-million requirement.
   Meanwhile, Provincial Legal Officer Handel Lagunay of the Committee for Acquisition of Properties of the PBIADP task force reported during the meeting that of the 195 hectares requirement, they had already secured 147.3 hectares or 75.5 percent of the requirement.
   Lagunay said that of the 147.3 hectares comprising 232 lots, 142 lots equivalent to 104.8 hectares were already paid, 35 lots equivalent to 18.5 are on now process and 55 lots equivalent to 23.8 hectares are for barter.
   â€œSome of those who earlier submitted letters of intent to barter their land opted to sell and were, in fact, already paid. The aggregate area of the remaining landowners proposing barter totals to 23.8 hectares,” Lagunay added.
   This led to the estimated available area for barter and relocation site from previous acquisition at 40 hectares.   
   Lagunay also said that some lots were found to be already subdivided and portions sold by the original landowners.
   Only 2.4 percent of the total land area acquired will be for expropriation totaling to 4.8 hectares for seven lots.
   Most of landownerss who received the five-day final written remarks have started processing for the sale of their lots, Lagunay added.
   For the technical survey of the properties acquired for the PBIADP, the survey contractor had already accomplished 90 percent of the scope of work. (AV-PGMA)

Written By Chito A. Fuentes
The Bohol Chronicle

Unknown to outsiders and even to some residents of Loboc town here, Simbang Gabi, which starts tomorrow at dawn, provides an unusual rite of passage to a local band.

Simbang Gabi is unique to the Filipinos as “we are the only country celebrating Christmas nine days earlier than the rest of the Universal Church,” explained Fr. Genaro Diwa, liturgical minister of the Archdiocese of Manila.

The Catholic Church in the Philippines received an “indult” or a special permission from the Vatican to conduct dawn Masses, he says.

“Before one can become a member of the Loboc Band, he will have to sing solo at the Simbang Gabi,” says composer-arranger Rene Balbin.

Balbin, Loboc’s resident bandmaster for the past 20 years, says this rule has been practiced since the band started during the Spanish period.

The calenda, which is how the song is called, is sung before the dawn Mass on Dec. 24 when virtually all the faithful are present.

“The song was originally in Spanish but it was translated to Cebuano during the Second World War,” Balbin says.

The song tells the story of the people who were present when Christ was born.

LIFE-CHANGING

Balbin, who was initiated when he was 11, says the experience is “life-changing.”
The prospective band member is chosen not on the basis of age, but on his readiness.
As early as October, the chosen member is the calenda which is about seven minutes long.

After the successful initiation on Dec. 24, the band goes to the new member’s house and they celebrate with a feast that includes the traditional lechon.

Despite the band’s dwindling number â€" currently 30 when they used to have as many as 80 â€" there is a new member initiated every year.

Balbin says he is training some 300 recruits, assuring the people of Loboc that the calenda is here to stay.

LOBOC CHILDREN’S CHOIR

Another highlight of the season in this town is the Loboc Children’s Choir.
The critically acclaimed group is one of the three choirs that will alternately provide music for the duration of the Simbang Gabi here.

“They are the ones assigned because this Mass is for the youth,” says Fr. Alger Angcla, Loboc parish priest.

The Loboc Children’s Choir, which has won critical acclaim in music festivals abroad, is as much an attraction here as the town’s observance of the traditional dawn Mass.
“People from other places call ahead and inquire when the children are singing so they can adjust their schedules,” Angcla says.

PREPARING FOR CHRIST

Simbang Gabi is traditionally a “Mass of thanksgiving,” says Diwa.

Nine novena Masses re celebrated to give thanks for the gift of faith that we have received as a nation and, of course, for the gift of Christmas that is Christ, he explains.

Diwa adds that the Simbang Gabi is the Filipino way of preparing to receive “the greatest gift of all” this season.

“A big gift needs a big container. The gift of Christmas is Christ, our salvation. That is why we need to prepare and enlarge our hearts,” he says.

GESTATING WITH MARY

According to Msgr. Pedro Quitorio, spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the Simbang Gabi is also the Filipino’s way of accompanying Mary as the Christ gestates in her womb.

At the same time, the faithful also “gestates” Christ in their hearts.

“We enter into the spirit of Mary herself, who gestated Jesus in her womb.  We wait for that time when Jesus is ‘born’ into our lives,” says Quitorio, pointing out that this depicts the Marian character of the dawn Masses, and of the Filipino faith in general.

Historically, however, Filipino farmers chose to hear Mass at dawn, before they went to the fields.

UNIQUE TO FILIPINOS

During advent, the Universal church is in a penitential mood, with priest wearing violet garments to signify the act of waiting.  The Filipinos, Diwa notes, enter a “quasi-celebratory mood” starting Dec. 16.
During the Simbang Gabi the priest wears his white garments and the faithful sing “Gloria,” as if Christ is already born, he says. The Universal Church does not get to do this until Christmas Eve Mass.

DON’T MISS THE GIFT

“It is typical for Filipinos to be excited for Christmas,” Diwa says.

However, he cautions: “We need to focus so that we don’t miss out on the one great gift.”
Particularly at this time when the country reels from problems and confusion, Diwa says, the faithful can use this opportunity as a nation to prepare for the birth of Christ in all our hearts â€" from the highest official in the land to the most ordinary citizen.

By Kit Bagaipo
The Bohol Chronicle

City Vice Mayor Jose Antonio Veloso was stripped of his chairmanship of the city council’s most powerful committee shortly after two new ex officio members of the Sanggunian Panlungsod (SP) were sworn into office last Wednesday.

Veloso was in Manila attending a conference of vice mayors when the coup was carried out during the SP session.

The revamp was viewed by many as an indication of how the so-called new majority of the SP will rule on issues and cast their vote every time a legislative measure will be adopted.

Engineered by Kag. Danilo Bantugan, nine councilors voted for a resolution declaring all positions of all committees vacant.

A second resolution followed naming the members of the SP’s 23 standing committees with a change in chairmanships in two of the most important committees, the committee on appropriations and the committee on engineering and public works.

The move came when other opposition kagawads Bebiano Inting and Lucio Balbin were out of town. Inting was in Manila while Balbin is still in the US.

The two committees were chaired by Veloso and Kag. Zenaido Rama, both critics of City Mayor Dan Lim.
Kag. Oscar Glovasa replaced Veloso as chairman with Kag. Lucio Balbin as vice chair.

Glovasa was also elected as chair of the committee on engineering with Kag. Edgar Kapirig as vice chair.

The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that the Philippines was reaping the benefit of economic reform and that its economy was likely to grow 6.7 percent in 2007, up from an earlier forecast of 6.3 percent.

It also said that the government would "comfortably" meet its target of bringing in the 2007 budget deficit within 63 billion pesos , although it noted that it was important to reverse weak tax collections.

"This has been a strong year for the Philippines," Il Houng Lee, the head of an IMF mission visiting the Philippines, told a news conference.

"Based on the momentum through the year, the mission has raised its growth forecast to 6.7 percent for 2007 from 6.3 percent previously and to 6.0 percent for 2008, from 5.8 percent previously," the IMF said in a statement.

It said strong interest in the government's privatisation programme had led to an increase in revenues and helped reduce the deficit ahead of schedule although tax reform, and legislative support for such reform, was needed.

"Two important areas of reform would be to rationalise fiscal incentives and adjust the excise rate on tobacco and alcohol products and index it to inflation," the IMF said.

source: www.yahoo.com and www.reuters.com

Quote from: Lorenzo on December 16, 2007, 03:12:14 AM
Mike is a poet of poets
Mike is a man of many men
Mike is friend of many friends
Mike is one who walks in the blessed path

We are lucky to have him as a friend and I am honored to call him a brother.
More power to you, Mike.
May the sun shine on your path, wherever you go.

Thank you, Bran. But I'm just a dust. To God be the glory alone, the Creator of all.

I will wait for C2H4's comments on this.

Where is Bambi? She should read this letter.

How about Da Binsi? Why the silence?

ajaw intawon ibulgar, hazel.

She cannot finish the letter.

There are several types of business enterprises an investor can choose from in establishing operations in the Philippines.

ORGANIZED UNDER PHILIPPINE LAWS

Sole Proprietorship

Sole Proprietorship is a business structure owned by an individual who has full control/authority of its own and owns all the assets, personally owes and answers all liabilities or suffers all losses but enjoys all the profits to the exclusion of others.

A Sole Proprietorship must apply for a Business Name and be registered with the Department of Trade and Industry- National Capital Region(DTI-NCR).

In the provinces, application may be filed with the extension offices of the DTI.

Partnership

Under the Civil Code of the Philippines, a partnership is treated as juridical person, having a separate legal personality from that of its members. Partnerships may either be general partnerships, where the partners have unlimited liability for the debts and obligation of the partnership, or limited partnerships, where one or more general partners have unlimited liability and the limited partners have liability only up to the amount of their capital contributions. It consists of two (2) or more partners. A partnership with more than three thousand pesos (P3,000.00) capital must register with Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC).

Corporation

Corporations are juridical persons established under the Corporation Code and regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission with a personality separate and distinct from that of its stockholders. The liability of the shareholders of a corporation is limited to the amount of their share capital. It consists of at least five (5) to fifteen (15) incorporators each of whom must hold at least one share and must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Minimum paid up capital: five thousand pesos (P5,000.00).

A corporation can either be stock or non-stock company regardless of nationality. Such company, if 60% Filipino-40% foreign-owned, is considered a Filipino corporation; If more than 40% foreign-owned, it is considered a domestic foreign- owned corporation.

    * Stock Corporation

This is a corporation with capital stock divided into shares and authorized to distribute to the holders of such shares dividends or allotments of the surplus profits on the basis of the shares held.

    * Non-stock Corporation

It is a corporation organized principally for public purposes such as charitable, educational, cultural or similar purposes and does not issue shares of stock to its members.

ORGANIZED UNDER FOREIGN LAWS

Branch Office

A Branch office is a foreign corporation organized and existing under foreign laws that carries out business activities of the head office and derives income from the host country. It is required to put up a minimum paid up capital of US$200,000.00, which can be reduced to US$100,000.00 if (a) activity involves advanced technology, or (b) company employs at least 50 direct employees. Registration with the SEC is mandatory.

Representative Office

A Representative Office is foreign corporation organizedand existing under foreign laws. It does not derive income from the host country and is fully subsidized by its head office. It deals directly with clients of the parent company as it undertakes such activities as information dissemination, acts as a communication center and promote company products, as well as quality control of products for export. It is required to have an initial minimum inward remittance in the amount of US$30,000.00 to cover its operating expenses and must be registered with SEC.

Under RA 8756, any multinational company may establish an RHQ or ROHQ as long as they are existing under laws other than the Philippines, with branches, affiliates and subsidiaries in the Asia Pacific Region and other foreign markets.

Regional Headquarters(RHQs)

    * An RHQ undertakes activities that shall be limited to acting as supervisory, communication and coordinating center for its subsidiaries, affiliates and branches in the Asia-Pacific region.
    * It acts as an administrative branch of a multinational company engaged in international trade.
    * It does not derive income from sources within the Philippines and does not participate in any manner in the management of any subsidiary or branch office it might have in the Philippines.
    * Required capital: US$50,000.00 annually to cover operating expenses.

Regional Operating Headquarters (ROHQs)

    * An ROHQ performs the following qualifying services to its affiliates, subsidiaries, and branches in the Philippines.
          o General administration and planning
          o Business planning and coordination
          o Sourcing/procurement of raw materials components
          o Corporate finance advisory services
          o Marketing Control and sales promotion
          o Training and personnel management
          o Logistic services
          o Research and development services and product development
          o Technical support and communications
          o Business development
                + Derives income in the Philippines
                + Required capital: US$200,000.00 one time remittance.

source: http://www.boi.gov.ph

    *  Capital Gains Tax is a tax imposed on the gains presumed to have been realized by the seller from the sale, exchange, or other disposition of capital assets located in the Philippines, including pacto de retro sales and other forms of conditional sale.

    * Documentary Stamp Tax is a tax on documents, instruments, loan agreements and papers evidencing the acceptance, assignment, sale or transfer of an obligation, rights, or property incident thereto.

    * Donor’s Tax is a tax on a donation or gift, and is imposed on the gratuitous transfer of property between two or more persons who are living at the time of the transfer.

    * Estate Tax is a tax on the right of the deceased person to transmit his/her estate to his/her lawful heirs and beneficiaries at the time of death and on certain transfers which are made by law as equivalent to testamentary disposition.

    * Income Tax is a tax on all yearly profits arising from property, profession, trades or offices or as a tax on a person’s income, emoluments, profits and the like.

    * Percentage Tax is a business tax imposed on persons or entities who sell or lease goods, properties or services in the course of trade or business whose gross annual sales or receipts do not exceed P550,000 and are not VAT-registered.

    * Value-Added Tax is a business tax imposed and collected from the seller in the course of trade or business on every sale of properties (real or personal) lease of goods or properties (real or personal) or vendors of services. It is an indirect tax, thus, it can be passed on to the buyer.

    * Withholding Tax on Compensation is the tax withheld from individuals receiving purely compensation income.
          o Expanded Withholding Tax is a kind of withholding tax which is prescribed only for certain payors and is creditable against the income tax of the payee for the taxable year.

          o Final Withholding Tax is a kind of withholding tax which is prescribed only for certain payors and is creditable against the income of the payee for the taxable year.

          o Withholding Tax on Government Money Payments is the withholding tax withheld by government offices and instrumentalities, including government-owned or -controlled corporations and local government units, before making any payments to private individuals, corporations, partnerships and/or associations.


    * Excise Tax is a tax imposed on goods manufactured or produced in the Philippines for domestic sale or consumption or any other disposition. It is also imposed on things that are imported. www.gov.ph

   1.  Birth Certificate (BC) in Security Paper (SECPA) issued by the National Statistics Office (NSO) or Certified True Copy (CTC) and photocopy of BC issued by the Local Civil Registrar duly authenticated by NSO and document indicating fullname, date and place of birth and citizenship (e.g. valid employment's ID, voter's affidavit, NBI clearance and driver's license).

    * IN CASE OF NO BIRTH RECORD:
         1. If born after 1950:
                o In case of birth certificates with delayed registration, submit authenticated BC and supporting documents indicating date, place of birth and citizenship.
         2. If born on or before 1950:
                o Certificate of Non-availability of Birth Record from the NSO.
                o Joint Birth Affidavit signed and executed by two (2) disinterested persons.
                o Baptismal Certificate or Certified True Copy of Voter's Affidavit from COMELEC or any public document indicating date and place of birth and citizenship.

   2. Three (3) copies 4.5 cm x 3.5 cm new photo (colored with plain white background). Photo should show applicant in decent attire with collar.

   3. Personal appearance except when the applicant is:
          * 8 years old and below;
          * 65 years old and above; or
          * mentally or physically incapacitated

4 ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS

A.  For married women who chose to adopt surname of husband

    * Marriage Contract (MC) in Security Paper issued by the National Statistics Office (NSO) or CTC  issued by the Local Civil Registrar duly authenticated by NSO.
    * For married women opting to  use maiden name, submit MC & affidavit indicating that she has not use her Married name.

B.  For women who obtained an annulment or were divorced by foreign husband

    * Authenticated copy and photocopy of the first page and the dispositive portion of the judgment granting divorce or annulment.
    * Certified true copy and photocopy of the first page and the dispositive portion of the judgment granting divorce or annulment, authenticated by the Philippine Embassy/Consulate when the divorce was obtained.
    * Annotated Marriage Contract (MC) in Security Paper (SECPA)

C.  For fiancees and spouses of foreign nationals

    * Original and photocopy of Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) Guidance and Counseling Certificate of Attendance.

D.  For minors (below 18 years old)

    * Personal appearance of either parent.
    * if minor is not travelling with either parent, submit an original and photocopy of DSWD Clearance and Affidavit of Support and Consent indicating the name of the travelling companion and relationship to the minor.
    * If both parents are abroad, such an affidavit must be authenticated by the nearest  Philippine Embassy or Consulate General.
    * If both parents are abroad, person applying in behalf of the minor must submit Special Power of Attorney authenticated by the nearest Philippine Embassy or Consulate General.
    * Passport and photocopy of the passport of person travelling with the minor.

      (If minor is 8 years old and below and travelling unaccompanied by mother, mother's consent is required)

E.  For adopted children

    * Authenticated copy and photocopy of the dispositive portion of the Court Order on adoption.
    * Authenticated copy of original and amended Birth Certificate.
    * DSWD Travel Clearance

F.  For illegitimate children born after August 13, 1988:

    * Personal appearance and written consent of mother
    * DSWD Clearance if minor is  travelling with Father/other persons.

G.  For Legitimated Children due to subsequent marriage of parents

    * Authenticate BC with annotation of the amended surname of the child and MC of parents.

H.  For Muslim applicants

    * For those whose births were registered, follow requirements for new applicants.
    * For those whose births were not registered.
          o Certified True Copy of Late Registered Birth Certificate from the National Statistics Office.
          o Original and photocopy of Voter's Affidavit or NBI Clearance or other supporting documents indicating date and place of birth and citizenship.
          o Certificate from the Office on Muslim Affairs for Muslim convert
          o Fro Muslim converts, submit annotated BC in Security Paper (SECPA)
          o Court Order to change name.
          o Shari'ah Court Order.

source: http://www.gov.ph/faqs/passport.asp

By Helen Flores
The Philippine Star

The Korean government will begin to offer scholarship programs to Filipino scientists and researchers next year as part of the memorandum of understanding on basic research collaboration signed between the Korea Research Foundation and the Department of Science and Technology’s National Research Council of the Philippines (NCRP).

NRCP president Olivia Caoili said the partnership aims to strengthen scientific and technological cooperation through joint research and development, exchange visits and training courses, exchange of experts and technical workshops and seminars.

DOST Undersecretary for Research and Development Graciano Yumul said this partnership opens a lot of possibilities for collaborative studies through exchange of scholars, use of laboratories, and co-funding support.

Caoili said the two parties agreed to conduct joint research on basic research in governmental, educational and international policies; mathematical, medical, pharmaceutical, biological, chemical engineering, industrial, social, space and earth sciences; agriculture and forestry; physics, and humanities.

She said interested universities in the country may now submit proposals to the NRCP for future endorsement, adding that these proposals “must be worthy of support.”

Under the MOU, the international travel expenses of the scientists will be shouldered by the sending partner while the receiving partner will provide “local hospitality.”

By Mary Ann Ll. Reyes
The Philippine Star

As part of its bid to become a global company, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) is eyeing three other countries where it will offer its cellular phone services and operate it as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said that Smart Communications Inc. in partnership with PLDT Global Corp. (PGC) will begin offering mobile phone services in Italy early next year under an MVNO arrangement with a  mobile network operator (MNO) based in the European country.

An MVNO is a company that provides mobile phone service in another country but does not have its own radio frequency allocation, nor does it have all of the infrastructure required to provide mobile telephone service in the foreign country. Instead, MVNOs have business arrangements with traditional mobile operators to buy minutes of use for sale to their own customers or utilize the foreign operator’s infrastructure to offer the MVNO’s own brand or services under a profit-sharing agreement.

The arrangement allows PLDT to expand its presence and offer its mobile services worldwide without the accompanying huge investments. However, Pangilinan emphasized that this does not mean that PLDT or its parent company First Pacific of Hong Kong have abandoned plans of acquiring or investing in foreign telecommunications companies.

Smart and PLDT Global currently have two MVNO arrangements, one in Hong Kong and another in Singapore in partnership with CSL Limited and Mobile One, respectively.

By Iris C. Gonzales
The Philippine Star

State-owned Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) has increased the amount of monthly pensions for old-age beneficiaries.

In a resolution, the GSIS Board of Trustees, raised the amount of the average monthly benefit of old-age pensions to P7,200, compared to an average of only P3,000 monthly given by other pension funds.

Since 2000, the GSIS has increased its monthly pension benefit by as much as 84 percent.

The pension it initially provides goes as high as 90 percent of the average monthly salary for the last three years of a retiring employee who attained 36 years of creditable service.

The pension adjustment, which takes effect in January, provides for a two percent increase based on 2005 monthly benefits of old age pensioners who are getting pension as of end-2005.

For the first nine months of the year, GSIS has recorded a 20-percent increase in its net operating revenues to P35 billion from P29.2 billion in the same period last year.

By Helen Flores
The Philippine Star

Meteor showers seen today.

Filipino sky-watchers will have a nice view of the Geminid meteor showers before dawn today as clear sky conditions are expected to prevail over the country in the next two days, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said yesterday.

Dr. Bernardo Soriano, chief of Pagasa’s Atmospheric, Geophysical and Space Sciences Branch (AGSSB), said latest weather forecasts showed that the skies will be clear in the next two days.

He said Geminids is one of the most spectacular annual showers, as it sometimes exceeds 100 meteors per hour.

Soriano said Geminids will peak on Dec. 14 to 15, with an average rate of 60 showers per hour.

He said Geminids is active from Dec. 6 to 19, but the best time to watch is in the morning of Dec. 15.

He said the showers will be visible all over the Philippines.

“The best time to look is during the early morning hours between about 2 a.m. and dawn,” Soriano said.

Observers won’t need binoculars or a telescope because the naked eye is usually best for seeing meteors, which often streak more than 45 degrees across the sky, it said.

By Mayen Jaymalin, Cecille Suerte Felipe
The Philippine Star

More tourists arrived in the country from January to October despite the deadly Glorietta 2 explosion, the Department of Tourism reported yesterday.

“From January to October, we have recorded a total of 2.5 million foreign visitors compared to 2.3 million international arrivals during the same period last year,” Tourism Secretary Joseph Ace Durano said.

In October alone, Durano said foreign visitors totaled 229,250 or 7.1 percent more than the 214,055 recorded in the same period last year.

The number of tourists swelled despite some foreign advisories against traveling to the Philippines in the aftermath of the Glorietta 2 blast, which killed 11 people and wounded more than a hundred others and was initially blamed on terrorists.

Based on DOT data, South Koreans represent the biggest number of foreign tourists at 522, 410, followed by visitors from the United States at 477,752, and Japan at 333,874. Bigger numbers of tourists also arrived from China, Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

With the steady increase in the number of tourists, Durano said he is confident that tourist arrivals will breach the three million mark by yearend.

By Mayen Jaymalin
The Philippine Star

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) has been overcharging overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), collecting a $25 membership fee from them based on an exchange rate of P51 to $1.

Amid complaints from OFWs and criticism from Senate President Manuel Villar, the POEA the membership fee imposed by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) on all departing OFWs would be based on the exchange rate of P42 to $1, or P1,050, instead of the current fee of P1,275 based on an exchange rate of P51 to $1.

But the rate adjustment will take effect only next year, the POEA said.

POEA chief Rosalinda Baldoz said the agency should not be accused of overcharging because they only collect the fees based on the rate imposed by the OWWA for processing work papers.

Earlier, the local recruitment industry claimed that POEA continues to collect higher processing fees, particularly the OWWA membership fee, despite the continuing dollar depreciation.

Lito Soriano, former president of the Philippine Association of Service Exporters, Inc. (PASEI), said OFWs are being shortchanged for the processing of their contracts with the POEA.

Although OWWA has already agreed to lower the membership fee, Soriano insisted that the new rate should be implemented immediately and not next year.

“OWWA should not wait a second longer to implement the lower fee because it would cost P2.5 million for the 100,000 OFWs who are mandated to pay such fees before returning to their jobs abroad after the holidays,” Soriano said.

Senate President Manuel Villar Jr., in a statement released yesterday, said the corrective move must be implemented immediately.

“I am calling for the immediate implementation of the reduction of the fee charged to overseas Filipino workers and the accounting of all excess collections,” he said.

Written By Karla Maquiling
www.pinoycentric.com
May 21, 2007

He writes a weekly column for a local daily in the Visayas (The Bohol Standard), comes up with five to six poems a day, and has published short stories in local magazines and in an anthology (Sands and Coral by Ian Rosales Casocot).

Except he writes them all in Bisaya.

Thailand-based Pinoy poet Mike Ligalig, 27, explained, “This is my means of telling the world that there is another way of looking at things, another way of expressing something beyond the trivialities of the common sense.”

Now pursuing his master’s degree in business administration at the Troy University of Alabama, USA through its Thailand campus (St. Theresa Inti College), Ligalig started writing poems in Bisaya when he was 12 years old, becoming even more prolific while at Silliman University in Dumaguete City where he completed his undergraduate degree in mass communication.

Now with a collection of some 100 pieces, Ligalig expects to finish 10,000 poems before he turns 40.

One in a million

While Bisaya is spoken by some 45 million Filipinos in most cities in the Philippinesâ€"about 50 percent of overall populationâ€"Ligalig is only a handful of writers and poets that strive to unfurl creativity in a language that most others look down on, wishing that one day Bisaya speakers would appreciate the lilt or tone of their native language.

“Bisaya is a beautiful language,” Ligalig said. “Like any other language in the world, it has the power to move hearts and minds.”

Unlike most Bisayan literature dealing with love, poverty, and domestic violence, Ligalig’s poetry is the opposite of what his family name stands for in Filipino (“cheerful”).

“My poetry is nostalgicâ€"loaded with longings of the past, whether a known or unknown past, existent or nonexistent. It’s about love and affection whose beauty has been overshadowed by the inconsistencies of the present time,” the sentimental poet shared.

But while most creative days are filled with frustrations over unrequited love and lost romances, Ligalig also has a more serious issue to consider: the fact that Bisayan literature is neglected, overlooked, and not taken seriously.

“The government has done nothing to promote and preserve the Bisayan language. Even the Carlos Palanca Awards has only one category for Bisaya, and only for short story at that. We don’t hear of contests, workshops, or scholarships dedicated to the promotion of the Bisayan literature,” he said.

Hope in the horizon

With a limited outlet for Bisayan creative expressionâ€"only one magazine caters to this type of literature: Bisaya magazine, recently acquired by Manila Bulletin, Ligalig has brought his esoteric poetry to a whole new level: the Internet.

Things have been rosy lately, shared Ligalig, who recently discovered the functionality of fora, blogs, bulletin boards, and yes, even social-networking sites.

“When I started publishing my poems on Friendster, I received encouraging comments from friends and even strangers,” Ligalig exclaimed. “I never realized they also appreciated Bisayan poetry.”

One of Ligalig’s ongoing projects is archiving the works of great Bisayan writers and producing an intensive English-Cebuano-English online dictionary, which is the reason he is learning Web design on the side.

While the aspiration may be a bit lofty and exclusiveâ€"and only because Ligalig and his league write for a particular niche of readersâ€"Ligalig has high hopes that Bisayan literature has potential, and will be appreciated and acknowledged by Filipinos, especially those based abroad.

“When you live in a country not your own, you begin to appreciate where you come from and what language you speak. You will miss the sounds and voices of people who speak your language,” he shared from experience. “With Bisayan literature widely available online, I am certain that those living abroad would find their way back home to where their native tongue is nurtured.”

source: http://www.pinoycentric.com/2007/05/21/poet-in-the-minority/