Isang istorya ng pakikibaka

PINAGKAITAN siya ng kapalaran na maging martir ng armadong paghihimagsik upang kaipala’y biyayaan ng kasaysayan ng takdang papel na gagampanan sa patuloy na pakikibaka tungo sa ganap na kalayaan at pambansang demokrasya.
Pakikibaka – ito ang buod ng kasaysayan ni Oscar Samson Rodriguez. Pakikibaka – ito ang mismong ubod ng kanyang buhay.
Buhay na wari’y sadyang pinilas mula sa pambungad na bersikulo sa unang kapitulo ng mapagpalayang ebanghelyo nina Karl Marx at Friedrich Engels – and Communist Manifesto -- “Ang kasaysayan ng lahat ng naitayong lipunan ay kasaysayan ng pakikibaka – pakikibaka sa pagitan ng mga naghahari at pinaghahariang uri.”
Pakikibaka. Uring anak-pawis na ang kamusmusan ay tigib sa hagkis ng karalitaan, sa hagupit ng kalakarang piyudal, sa giyagis ng paghihimagsik.
Pakikibaka. Kayod sa araw, aral sa gabi. Sa limang kahig, iisang tuka. Kalam ng sikmura’y hindi na ininda. Sipag, sikap, tiyaga, tiis, tikis – pinuhunang pawis, luha’t dugo makatapos lamang sa pag-aaral.
Pakikibaka. Alab ng damdamin, puyos ng dibdib sumiklab, nagngalit mula paaralan tungo sa lansangan. Nagningas, lumiyab sa digmang bayan. Ka Jasmin isinilang, sa rebolusiyonaryong kilusan pumailanlang. Bartolina ang sinadlakan. Sa pusikit na kadiliman, isang dipang langit ang tanging tanglaw. Rehas na bakal na pampiit, paninindigang makabayan pinaalab pa nang higit.
Pakikibaka. Sandigan ng katotohanan, saligan ng mga karapatan, tanggulan ng bayan. Kampeon ng mga inaapi’t pinagkakaitan ng katarungan.
EDSA Uno. Bagong pulitika – paglingkuran ang sambayanan binuhay, pinairal sa Kapitolyo, sa bawat takbo sa Kongreso.
EDSA Dos. Atas ng kabayanihan muling tinupdan ng magiting na prosecutor ng bayan.
Pakikibaka. May hihigit pa kaya sa dusa’t pighati dala ng delubyo ng Bulkang Pinatubo? Sa gitna ng kawalang pag-asa, sa harap ng panawagan ng mga eksperto kuno, kasama na ang noo’y senador na Kapampangan daw, na hayaan na ang kalikasan at lisanin na ang lalawigan, matatag siyang nanindigan na ipaglaban ang lahing Kapampangan at hindi ito pababayaang mabura na lamang.
Pakikibaka. Patuloy na pakikibaka. Mula sa kanyang kabataan hanggang ngayon na ang timon ng pamahalaang local ay kanya nang tangan. Tangan tungo sa kadakilaan.
Ang istorya ni Oscar Rodriguez ay kaganapan ng pagsanib ng isang indibiduwal na buhay sa takbo ng kasaysayan. Na siyang piling pagkakataon ng kabayanihan.
“Ang mga bayani ay may kaukulang panahon, kung paaanong ang kapanahunan at mga pangyayaring umiiral ay lumilikha ng mga bayaning kailangan nila.” Ana ngang isang makabayang makata sa kanyang pagpapakahulugan sa konsepto ng “bayani ng kasaysayan.”
Ang istorya ni Oscar Rodriguez kung gayon ay marapat lamang na maisulat. Hindi para sa kaluwalhatian ng kanyang pangalan. Kundi sa mga aral na dulot nito – ang sidhi ng pangangailangan sa pakikibaka sa pagbabago ng lipunang Pilipino. At ang aral ng kasaysayan mismo: “Ang kahapon ay saligan ng ngayon, ang ngayon ay haligi ng bukas.”
(Kabuuan ng pina-iksing talumpati ng may-akda sa paglulunsad ng kanyang aklat na Oca…Isang Istorya ng Pakikibaka noong Setyembre 19 sa Paskuhan Village.)

Out of America

OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN – America did not want to let go of me. So it seemed.
At the Philadelphia International Airport, Northwest Flight 1785 came 30 minutes late; and when fully boarded for Detroit, was held at the taxiway for two hours. Amid the sweltering heat, the passengers were told that a weather turbulence somewhere along the route had to be waited out on ground.
So to Detroit-Wayne County International Airport we flew in, over three hours late; our connecting flight to Nagoya onto Manila was by then long gone.
A frantic scramble for the next flight ensued. We ran the whole breadth of the airport to look for the Northwest representative only to find that there were no other flights to Japan or the Philippines for the day.
By obligation, Northwest billeted us at nearby Hilton for the night – in a suite, provided us food vouchers for dinner, breakfast and lunch, and compensatory 500 miles credit to our World Perks Mileage Program for the inconvenience. NWA does care for its customers.
Stressed by the missed flight and running very low on resources, the wife and I preferred to hit the sack early rather than go on a Motown night-out. For the uninitiated, it was Detroit that gave birth to that distinctive sound that took its moniker, Motor Town, albeit in syllabically-contracted Afro-American speak.
A restful night opened to a bright new day and after going through rigorous security checks anew, we boarded NW Flight 11 to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. And here I am now pounding the old reliable hybrid laptop for this piece, the wife snoring by my side, light having given way to dark past the international dateline.
Impressions of America come out the deep recesses of the mind, not so randomly. Like LSS, that’s last-song syndrome after a musical or an opera, the most recent events flood the memory first, then ebb as the more pleasant ones flow in torrents.
The very stringent security checks – shoes, jackets, cellphones dumped into bins, laptops out of their bags, through x-ray machines; no liquids or gels in carry-on luggage, not even toothpaste or deodorant – have given a new meaning to the “travel light” advisory. Much to the dismay of Filipino travelers who, in addition to their bulky balikbayan boxes, stuff their carry-alls to bursting point with just about everything they could get their hands on for pasalubong home. With Bath and Body Works and Victoria’s Secret body sprays and lotions as chic favorites. What used to be carried in totes and rollers are now stowed in boxes and heavy luggage.
The new security schemes have begun to impact on the airline industry.
Increase in the volume of check-in luggage necessitated increase in manpower requirement, thus added labor costs. Haulers have started asking for greater health insurance coverage with the additional poundage they have to bear, yet another cost added. Man-hours required to load and off-load the baggage proportionately increased too, and that also costs a lot of money to the carriers.
Expect now higher airfares? Why should I be bothered? I am still in euphoria over this visit to America.
Fantasticks on Broadway, the Boston Pops and Rockapella at Mann Music Center in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, New York’s Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum and Museum of Natural History and the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art make a most enlightening cultural feast lapped up most pleasantly, nay, devoured most avariciously. With the Grounds of Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey and Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania serving as a delightful dessert.
The good Apu Ceto will most certainly love this. His prodigal son went to Mass in just about every major city he visited: at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York; St. Dominic’s Church in D.C; Shrines of the Miraculous Medal and St. Jude, and Mary Mother of the Redeemer Church in Philadelphia; Mary of the Angels Church in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania; St. Anne of the Sunset Church in San Francisco, and St. Philomena’s Church and the Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in LA. I’ve never gone to Mass this much since I left the seminary aeons ago.
Then there were the “must” sights to quench the tourist thirst: Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell in the City of Brotherly Love; Ground Zero, Central Park, Liberty and Ellis Islands, Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge, Rockefeller Center in the Big Apple; Universal Studios and Disneyland in Tinseltown; Sea World in San Diego; the Golden Gate, Lombard Street and Fisherman’s Wharf in the City by the Bay; and mighty, awe-inspiring Niagara Falls at the Canadian border.
This trip to America is truly a humongous – NO, a holistic socio, cultural and spiritual journey made even more wholesome by our re-bonding with the family and friends we came to visit.
We have come from home. And we are now at home.

SF in my heart

I WROTE it once. I write it again: You don’t leave your heart in San Francisco. You take San Francisco in your heart.
No apologies to Tony Bennett there, much as I love his song extolling the City by the Bay over Paris, Rome and New York.
Ah, crisp, fresh, cool, cool air. From the early morning mist to the high noon fog there is no avoiding the air of the city touching your skin, seeping into your pores, caressing your very soul.
A city with a soul San Francisco is. No wonder the love-peace movement was born here – at Haight-Ashbury Streets – maturing to the hippie culture. Yes, there are still remnants of the now aged Make-Love-Not-War generation there: bell-bottomed Levi’s, beads, medallions and banded long, albeit thinning hair. Though not the faintest trace of the acrid smell of hash and grass. Peace, man, peace.
Joy, childlike joy, comes to the heart at the sight of those little cable cars of song that “climb halfway to the sky” and slowly, slowly, roll down the hills, past Lombard – the world’s “crookedest” street where the zigs and the zags are really the sharpest Zs, totally unlike Baguio’s smooth Ss.
This defies explanation: going down Lombard – done that every time I come to San Francisco, five times including this one – gives me an enormous appetite.
That gets more than sated at the Fisherman’s Wharf: clam chowder soup in hollowed bread, calamari, shrimps, fish and fries, anyone?
Uh, oh. San Francisco found its way to my heart through my stomach too. Got the shock of my life when I tipped the scales in Don Robert David’s home at 200 ungainly pounds! And I was only a trim 184 coming in from Philadelphia less than a week ago.
Poundage aside, what piece on San Francisco can be complete without a mention of the Golden Gate Bridge. Contrary to the image that it generally conjures in the mind, the bridge is not golden. It is red. The appellation refers to the mouth of the bay to the Pacific – a way to opportunities weighed in gold in the glory days of conquests and empire, and conversely, the gateway of migrants from the Pacific to the American Dream.
The Golden Gate Bridge stands not only as an engineering marvel – think bridging the sea, erecting concrete posts in the deep – but also a symbol of might and power – of man mastering the elements, politically translated to a nation superior over lesser nations.
Got to check on the political and get more on the personal here.
My deep affinity to San Francisco is caused by dear friends and family who have taken residence in and around the city. The deep, abiding friendship of my seminary brothers -- Don Robert and his family, Perry Rodriguez, Fathers Raymond Reyes and Kenneth Sales, Edwin Bustos, his wife Anna and their lovely daughters Marie, Madonna and Camille – is way beyond measure.
Then there is my very own family here: my mommy – June V. Whitmer – whose hand rocked my journalism cradle that was The Regina at the then Assumption College in San Fernando; my dad Jim Whitmer, a dead-ringer for Don Johnson of 80’s TV’s Miami Vice; my sister Jeanbelle, her husband Mickey and sons Kevin and Shawn, future hockey stars and piano virtuosos both.
They all give San Francisco that special place in my heart.

'Relativity' of travel

LOS ANGELES, California – Travel, in the ultimate sense, is less about places than about people. And for us Filipinos, about family, and friends too.
Abroad, we seek relations ahead of directions. Most often, the former even providing the latter.
Have relatives and friends will travel.
So it was the wife’s sister Agnes Fuentes that moved mountains to let this current journey happen and once it did, took us under her aegis – fetching us from the Philadelphia airport on our arrival and taking us back for our departure, providing us with everything for our stay. Our most enjoyable sojourns to New York, Niagara and Washington D.C. we all owed to her.
In New York an instant call to boyhood friend Tom Batac produced the finest in Italian and French cuisine. And some other most valuable in-puts.
It was in the Big Apple too that the long-sought reunion of the wife and her best friend, Mary Jo Palencia, came to realization.
Our appreciation of the Humanities was greatly enhanced with visits to gardens and the museums – Longwood, Sculpture Ground, Rodin and the Philadelphia Museums – courtesy of Debbie Seva, friend of the wife’s family too.
In Washington, D.C., conflict in schedules constrained contacts with seminary brother Marlon De Ausen to phone conversations. Too bad we were not able to meet as I could have met too Marlon’s elder sister, Edna David, former board member and acting governor who’s vacationing in Maryland.
Most pleasant surprise is meeting some Filipinos with ties back home as I did in Niagara with brothers Jun and John Henson, younger siblings of good friend Rosve, once provincial board member and acting vice governor to Ninang Edna.
Coming to California, no face was more pleasant than the smiling, welcoming countenance of Ed Fuentes, the wife’s cousin, who took us to his Altadena home on board his Lexus SUV.
Bing Fuentes-Flores, another cousin, drove us up to Universal Studios, on a day tour that took us from Jurassic Park to Waterworld and Back to the Future. In between, there was Ah’nold’s Terminator 2 in 3-D, wonderfully funny Shrek in 4-D, the horrifying world of Van Helsing, the amazing animal actors, thrillingly fiery Backdraft, spectacular effects, the rockin’ and rollin’ Blues Brothers, and of course, the studio tour through the sets and effects of just about every movie Universal ever made, notably Spartacus, Psycho, Jaws, the Grinch, Bruce Almighty, and King Kong, in all its versions.
Ed’s wife Jessie it was that took us on a whirlwind tour of central LA and the pueblo-inspired, awe-inspiring Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels where we offered a high-noon Mass, visited the resting place of Gregory Peck at its crypt and met with my uncle Vic Bondoc.
Home to me in LA has always been the Bondoc residence in Carson City where lives Apu Soleng, my maternal grandaunt and last of her generation of the Canlas clan of Sto. Tomas, Pampanga. More than a chance of renewal of family ties, coming to the Bondocs is nothing short of a pilgrimage every time I come to the US.
Aunt Josie Bondoc, nee Bundalian, and Aunt Baby Bondoc took us to Sea World in San Diego where we had our close encounter with Shamu, the gentle, gentle killer whale and all sorts of marine life, not the least of which were the performing seals, dolphins, and walruses. As I write this piece, the wife is on a ladies’ day-out at the mall with Aunt Josie and some other friends.
From the City by the Bay, already nagging me to come are seminary classmate Perry Rodriguez, a sales executive for Mercedes Benz, and Don Robert David, uprooted from San Fernando to be hailed as “master artist” by the City Council of San Francisco for his parol exhibitions.
And yes, I have a date too with once newsman, now ex-man Sotero Chandler Ramas III, organizer par excellence in the US labor movement.
Indeed, have relatives and friends can travel. They are far more dependable – and superiorly enjoyable – than a gold Visa or even a platinum Mastercard. Take it from this traveler. Dirt poor in finances, but enormously rich in relatives and friends, this one has gone to America a number of times and to some other near and far reaches of the globe.