Amy Winehouse: another victim of drug addiction, so it was reported. A young, so young a singer. Beautiful from what I have seen of her in pictures. Acclaimed artist, talented, so much future in the field of her art that is music. Found dead on July 23, 2011 at her home in north London. She is said to have joined the "27 Club," a list of music legends who have died at this young age after periods of battles with either drugs or alcoholism resulting in overdose of such or as a result of a fatal mix or a combination of different kinds of drugs: Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Brian Jones, all dying at the age of 27. But why 27? A conspiracy of the times? One can never explain.
I never knew Amy until now; never heard her singing; never knew how tragic was her personal life just as I never knew the lives of those other 27-year-olds till now. Except for Kurt Cobain whose name was turned into a verb by a columnist when this columnist had ended her eulogy with the caution, "Please, do not Cobain." I never knew them personally nor even knew their existence until tragedy ended their lives, but their deaths haunt me and I weep for them. These are not only the children of their parents: they are our children. Would that somebody had reached out to them, prayed for them, cared for them. Would it have made a difference? Could it? -Blanca Datuin
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Washington, D.C, Revisited
Flying is not exactly my favorite mode of reaching my destination. Is it acrophobia? No, I'm not having any panic attack. Nor spinning sensation. Rather, the psychogenic arises from mental images of the 9/11 events,air collisions, crashing in midair or into the ocean , plane bursting into flame. Not exactly my desired manner of exiting the world. Frankly, if God would allow it, when my mission in life is all done, I hope to breathe my last in a more unexcited manner, with the cool quiescence of going gently into that good night. Such morbid thoughts, you would say. Would I one day perhaps qualify to be in the company of the elite pilots of AAA (Altitude Avoidance Anonymous)? Ah, fear of flying (not to be mistaken for the kind of Erica Jong's Fear of Flying)--why is it fraught with tintinnabulation not so pleasant to hear?
And so, just to play it safe, prior to this flight, I reviewed my will (though there's really not much to will except some relics of my heritage and a few fruits of my and my husband's toil and sweat). I handed over to my children my living trust and my irrevocable wishes that I hope will find fruition upon my departure from this world, if not while I'm around to see them happen. Such business as putting one's house in order seems, however, to be always doomed to be left unfinished and I have to throw up my hands in complete abandon.
Strange, though, that once I was 35,000 feet above on that beautiful Wednesday morning in July, with the Psalm of David on my lips and my omnipresent rosary prayed, peace reigned, as it always does when I'm up there; the heart sensed a calm and stillness not felt when one is down to the earth of endless commotion and agitation. I was in the palm of His hand, floating up in the air where He was the captain of my soul (as He always is) and that of my co-passengers.
An elderly man seated beside me asked, "Where are you bound?" I furrowed my eyebrows; I didn't want my peace disturbed. "Huh?" and the man said, "Oh, you don't understand English? I see." I almost burst into laughter. Me, an English teacher, and I don't understand English. I shook my head and said, "No hablo Ingles." Good thing he didn't speak Spanish or he would have discovered the deception. Poor man, I thought, he's just being friendly and wanted to while away the hours of a long flight. It was his misfortune to be seated next to one basking in solitude. Back to my window side and back to my breathtaking view of clouds, white as snow, looking magnificently like cotton candy moving ever so gracefully as our plane sped away . I sat back and closed my eyes; the peace was heavenly.
Upon landing at the Reagan International, it was dear old friend, Dave Valderrama, I saw waiting for me. Dave and his wife Nelia I had not seen for 39 years since my late husband and my children left Washington, D.C. in 1972 after a brief stay in Virginia where we had waited for my husband to finish his summer teaching stint at the University of New York in Buffalo. I was not sure I would recognize Dave, but he easily spotted me, thank God. Seeing him now with a cane, so different from the sprightly Atty.David Valderrama we had known decades ago, I murmured vaguely after the preliminary greetings and hugs, "You didn't have to come. You could have just sent your driver." But he countered, "No, I wanted to be the one to welcome an old friend back to Washington." That was so like him--the brilliant, gracious, gallant politician that won the hearts of Maryland to become the first Filipino-American to be elected state assemblyman (delegate to the State of Maryland) in the whole United States. That was in the 1980's when a lot of racism still brewed, the times rife with division among the Whites, the Blacks and the Asians.
From the airport, Dave took me straight to the Multicultural Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland: He quipped "we have a reception for you." To which I uttered, "You're kidding." "No, I'm not, there's our welcome committee" he answered. Sure enough, there was Imelda Abella, multicultural affairs liaison officer, standing right. by the door as we went up the ramp to the entrance of that grand building. I found it rather amazing how he could make one feel welcomed, although I suspected that was the regular get-together day of Dave's gang of friends from the Philippine Embassy and it just happened to be my arrival time. After a hearty dinner, almost all took turns on the mike to belt out a few Sinatra songs and some native songs for entertainment.
The multicultural Center sits on a sprawling area at 7800 Livingston Road in Oxon Hill, Maryland. It's actually a dream fulfillment of Dave's as carried out by his daughter, Kris Valderrama, who has followed her father's footsteps in politics.(She is now the current Delegate of Prince George's County to the state of Maryland.) A tour of the Center showed an ambitious multicultural project in progress, the first phase having been inaugurated two years ago, the second and third phases still waiting to materialize as much-needed funds are yet to come. The objective? To develop a gathering place where people of different ethnicity can meet, exchange cultural talents in the arts and literature. have lively discussions of current issues affecting them, resolve any existing problems and enrich relationships. Dave remembered the times when racial discord was so rampant in the area he wouldn't even be allowed to enter his room to sit in his chair as the first probate judge of Filipino ancestry.
Thursday was spent visiting Dave's wife, Nelly, who has been ailing and wheelchair-bound, no longer her old vibrant self but still with traces of her old beauty. There in a high-rise condo overlooking the beautiful Potomac River, Dave has been spending a semi-retired life, if you can call it that--the kind of life that is still stubbornly committed to service as the honorary chair of the Fil-American National Foundation, Inc. that push the reality of the Multicultural Center. Seeing him run the Center, you wouldn't believe what he's going through, looking after his wife (whom he has provided with two caregivers for a 24-hour watch) even as he battles his own heart ailment and high blood pressure. Amazing how he has kept his laconic sense of humor through all his trials.
(
Dave took me back to their old house where the packages we had left them decades ago for safekeeping were supposed to be lodged in the old garage. This was actually my mission in going to D.C.--to retrieve, more specifically, the galley proofs of my husband's novel, But for the Lovers, with the notations of Hal Scharlatt, Wilfrido's editor at E.P. Dutton Publishing in New York. It's an important piece of my husband's memorabilia. To me, it was worth coming to D.C. for. If only I would recover them... Unfortunately, the garage was a labyrinth, as Dave had warned me earlier, and even with the help of the house' caretakers, I had to give up in the humid air. Empty-handed, I was none too happy, and had to content myself with leaving instructions/request to Manny and wife to please, please try to find the boxes marked "Nolledo" when the time comes that some daughter of Dave's will decide to clear the garage.
The galley proofs of But for the Lovers that I was after bore the marginal notes of the well-known New York literary editor Scharlatt, considered a genius in his field. They would make an interesting study by literary readers or researchers. Which paragraph(s) did he delete, which paragraph(s) did he retain after Wilfrido fought for such retention. I remember him arguing with HAl, "Four hundred years my country suffered under the Spaniards and I'm asking only that this chapter not be touched!" Wilfrido won. But alas, this piece of document, however, may just have been lost in oblivion.
Back to the Multicultural Center in Oxon Hill, I found a crowd of Filipino teachers of Prince George's County, Maryland, in a powwow on how to battle the war being waged against them by the US Immigration Bureau. Leave voluntarily or be deported--that was the message they got from the Immigration that early July, 2011 because their working visas would no longer be renewed. And on that account they could not be employed or re-hired. When in the past so many years, some reportedly 1044 educators from the Philippines were recruited by the Prince George's County Public School, they were deducted H1-B from their teacher's salaries. This was discovered by the Department of Labor that declared such fees should have been paid by the employers of the teachers. Thus the teachers were owed some $4,000 each in back pay. While teachers at first hailed this as just retribution for the unjust collection of fees from them, they soon discovered the implication of the County's being barred from participating in the H1-B program--those whose visas were about to expire cannot now be re-hired. The big question the teachers wanted answered was why they were the ones being punished by being deprived now of their right to continue working. The answer of course is that if the County was being barred from participating for two years in the HI-B program, how can it now re-hire or sponsor any of these teachers? With their visas expiring in just a few days, how can they just suddenly pack up and go?
I found one of them in a corner of the Center's kitchen area, weeping silently. I approached to comfort her. "How can I leave just like that?" She said. "I have loans, mortgage I need to pay or I'll lose all that I have invested." Another said, "I have been here for eight years, have paid taxes, contributed to the improvement of the economy and the quality of education Don't the Labor people have hearts? I have built my life here!" Panic and anger, but mostly anger. Afterall, no one would like to go on staying here and be hounded as undocumented residents. They were plucked out of their residences in the Philippines and they thought the greener pasture they were promised would never turn bleak. I wasn't able to follow up what happened after I had left D.C. But I heard they had taken their protest up the steps of the White House where all the Fil-Am teachers joined them in solidarity even though they were not affected.
Eve of my departure, a visit to the Library of Congress could not be missed. Again, Dave generously lent me his car for use the whole day as he was going to New York to deliver a speech as guest speaker at a Fil-American group there. I was able to see Reme Grefalda, indefatigable publisher of the online Our ereOwn Voice, who is now with the Asian Cultural Department of the Library. If you want to browse over some ancient Asian writings or doing research on such topics, that is the place to go to. Hundreds of tourists milled all over, taking photos here and there. It's impossible to visit all the nooks and cranny, and I had to confine myself to just a few exhibits, the famous Gutenberg Bible among them.
It would have been wonderful to have revisited our old Virginia residence where my family had spent a short but memorable experience with the children happily prancing in the open back patio and sometimes swimming in the pool with family friend Andy Afable (poet from the University of the Philippines) teaching them how to swim. and me being just a full-time mother as my husband taught Creative Writing at the University of New York. Not much, however, could be packed in a three-day visit. Time to say goodbye to all the gracious staff of Dave - Cora, Nanding, Imelda and all. There were interesting stories I gathered along the way on the lives of these lovely people. But that will be for another time, another piece to be woven together. -Blanca Datuin
And so, just to play it safe, prior to this flight, I reviewed my will (though there's really not much to will except some relics of my heritage and a few fruits of my and my husband's toil and sweat). I handed over to my children my living trust and my irrevocable wishes that I hope will find fruition upon my departure from this world, if not while I'm around to see them happen. Such business as putting one's house in order seems, however, to be always doomed to be left unfinished and I have to throw up my hands in complete abandon.
Strange, though, that once I was 35,000 feet above on that beautiful Wednesday morning in July, with the Psalm of David on my lips and my omnipresent rosary prayed, peace reigned, as it always does when I'm up there; the heart sensed a calm and stillness not felt when one is down to the earth of endless commotion and agitation. I was in the palm of His hand, floating up in the air where He was the captain of my soul (as He always is) and that of my co-passengers.
An elderly man seated beside me asked, "Where are you bound?" I furrowed my eyebrows; I didn't want my peace disturbed. "Huh?" and the man said, "Oh, you don't understand English? I see." I almost burst into laughter. Me, an English teacher, and I don't understand English. I shook my head and said, "No hablo Ingles." Good thing he didn't speak Spanish or he would have discovered the deception. Poor man, I thought, he's just being friendly and wanted to while away the hours of a long flight. It was his misfortune to be seated next to one basking in solitude. Back to my window side and back to my breathtaking view of clouds, white as snow, looking magnificently like cotton candy moving ever so gracefully as our plane sped away . I sat back and closed my eyes; the peace was heavenly.
Upon landing at the Reagan International, it was dear old friend, Dave Valderrama, I saw waiting for me. Dave and his wife Nelia I had not seen for 39 years since my late husband and my children left Washington, D.C. in 1972 after a brief stay in Virginia where we had waited for my husband to finish his summer teaching stint at the University of New York in Buffalo. I was not sure I would recognize Dave, but he easily spotted me, thank God. Seeing him now with a cane, so different from the sprightly Atty.David Valderrama we had known decades ago, I murmured vaguely after the preliminary greetings and hugs, "You didn't have to come. You could have just sent your driver." But he countered, "No, I wanted to be the one to welcome an old friend back to Washington." That was so like him--the brilliant, gracious, gallant politician that won the hearts of Maryland to become the first Filipino-American to be elected state assemblyman (delegate to the State of Maryland) in the whole United States. That was in the 1980's when a lot of racism still brewed, the times rife with division among the Whites, the Blacks and the Asians.
From the airport, Dave took me straight to the Multicultural Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland: He quipped "we have a reception for you." To which I uttered, "You're kidding." "No, I'm not, there's our welcome committee" he answered. Sure enough, there was Imelda Abella, multicultural affairs liaison officer, standing right. by the door as we went up the ramp to the entrance of that grand building. I found it rather amazing how he could make one feel welcomed, although I suspected that was the regular get-together day of Dave's gang of friends from the Philippine Embassy and it just happened to be my arrival time. After a hearty dinner, almost all took turns on the mike to belt out a few Sinatra songs and some native songs for entertainment.
The multicultural Center sits on a sprawling area at 7800 Livingston Road in Oxon Hill, Maryland. It's actually a dream fulfillment of Dave's as carried out by his daughter, Kris Valderrama, who has followed her father's footsteps in politics.(She is now the current Delegate of Prince George's County to the state of Maryland.) A tour of the Center showed an ambitious multicultural project in progress, the first phase having been inaugurated two years ago, the second and third phases still waiting to materialize as much-needed funds are yet to come. The objective? To develop a gathering place where people of different ethnicity can meet, exchange cultural talents in the arts and literature. have lively discussions of current issues affecting them, resolve any existing problems and enrich relationships. Dave remembered the times when racial discord was so rampant in the area he wouldn't even be allowed to enter his room to sit in his chair as the first probate judge of Filipino ancestry.
Thursday was spent visiting Dave's wife, Nelly, who has been ailing and wheelchair-bound, no longer her old vibrant self but still with traces of her old beauty. There in a high-rise condo overlooking the beautiful Potomac River, Dave has been spending a semi-retired life, if you can call it that--the kind of life that is still stubbornly committed to service as the honorary chair of the Fil-American National Foundation, Inc. that push the reality of the Multicultural Center. Seeing him run the Center, you wouldn't believe what he's going through, looking after his wife (whom he has provided with two caregivers for a 24-hour watch) even as he battles his own heart ailment and high blood pressure. Amazing how he has kept his laconic sense of humor through all his trials.
(
Dave took me back to their old house where the packages we had left them decades ago for safekeeping were supposed to be lodged in the old garage. This was actually my mission in going to D.C.--to retrieve, more specifically, the galley proofs of my husband's novel, But for the Lovers, with the notations of Hal Scharlatt, Wilfrido's editor at E.P. Dutton Publishing in New York. It's an important piece of my husband's memorabilia. To me, it was worth coming to D.C. for. If only I would recover them... Unfortunately, the garage was a labyrinth, as Dave had warned me earlier, and even with the help of the house' caretakers, I had to give up in the humid air. Empty-handed, I was none too happy, and had to content myself with leaving instructions/request to Manny and wife to please, please try to find the boxes marked "Nolledo" when the time comes that some daughter of Dave's will decide to clear the garage.
The galley proofs of But for the Lovers that I was after bore the marginal notes of the well-known New York literary editor Scharlatt, considered a genius in his field. They would make an interesting study by literary readers or researchers. Which paragraph(s) did he delete, which paragraph(s) did he retain after Wilfrido fought for such retention. I remember him arguing with HAl, "Four hundred years my country suffered under the Spaniards and I'm asking only that this chapter not be touched!" Wilfrido won. But alas, this piece of document, however, may just have been lost in oblivion.
Back to the Multicultural Center in Oxon Hill, I found a crowd of Filipino teachers of Prince George's County, Maryland, in a powwow on how to battle the war being waged against them by the US Immigration Bureau. Leave voluntarily or be deported--that was the message they got from the Immigration that early July, 2011 because their working visas would no longer be renewed. And on that account they could not be employed or re-hired. When in the past so many years, some reportedly 1044 educators from the Philippines were recruited by the Prince George's County Public School, they were deducted H1-B from their teacher's salaries. This was discovered by the Department of Labor that declared such fees should have been paid by the employers of the teachers. Thus the teachers were owed some $4,000 each in back pay. While teachers at first hailed this as just retribution for the unjust collection of fees from them, they soon discovered the implication of the County's being barred from participating in the H1-B program--those whose visas were about to expire cannot now be re-hired. The big question the teachers wanted answered was why they were the ones being punished by being deprived now of their right to continue working. The answer of course is that if the County was being barred from participating for two years in the HI-B program, how can it now re-hire or sponsor any of these teachers? With their visas expiring in just a few days, how can they just suddenly pack up and go?
I found one of them in a corner of the Center's kitchen area, weeping silently. I approached to comfort her. "How can I leave just like that?" She said. "I have loans, mortgage I need to pay or I'll lose all that I have invested." Another said, "I have been here for eight years, have paid taxes, contributed to the improvement of the economy and the quality of education Don't the Labor people have hearts? I have built my life here!" Panic and anger, but mostly anger. Afterall, no one would like to go on staying here and be hounded as undocumented residents. They were plucked out of their residences in the Philippines and they thought the greener pasture they were promised would never turn bleak. I wasn't able to follow up what happened after I had left D.C. But I heard they had taken their protest up the steps of the White House where all the Fil-Am teachers joined them in solidarity even though they were not affected.
Eve of my departure, a visit to the Library of Congress could not be missed. Again, Dave generously lent me his car for use the whole day as he was going to New York to deliver a speech as guest speaker at a Fil-American group there. I was able to see Reme Grefalda, indefatigable publisher of the online Our ereOwn Voice, who is now with the Asian Cultural Department of the Library. If you want to browse over some ancient Asian writings or doing research on such topics, that is the place to go to. Hundreds of tourists milled all over, taking photos here and there. It's impossible to visit all the nooks and cranny, and I had to confine myself to just a few exhibits, the famous Gutenberg Bible among them.
It would have been wonderful to have revisited our old Virginia residence where my family had spent a short but memorable experience with the children happily prancing in the open back patio and sometimes swimming in the pool with family friend Andy Afable (poet from the University of the Philippines) teaching them how to swim. and me being just a full-time mother as my husband taught Creative Writing at the University of New York. Not much, however, could be packed in a three-day visit. Time to say goodbye to all the gracious staff of Dave - Cora, Nanding, Imelda and all. There were interesting stories I gathered along the way on the lives of these lovely people. But that will be for another time, another piece to be woven together. -Blanca Datuin
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