10 Ways to Enjoy Homemade Meatballs (bolabola) Dish.

It takes a few minutes - and a happy heart - to prepare it. Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog

Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio

738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class Monday to Friday

Bola bola dish goes well with take home food.  It gives the quaint feeling you are at home with the family.
  
Ask Gelyn how to make a dish of bola bola soup - it's a complete dish for a whole family - children and adults alike. Don't forget the vegetable. Ask Dahlia the formula: Ground beef or pork, rice flour, egg, carrot, garlic, black pepper and a dash of salt. Roll into balls.

When caught in heavy traffic, tired and hungry, and home from work you are bound;

When it's a weekend and for a change, you enjoy culinary art at home;

When food has become plentiful, but the palate has grown too familiar;

When the weather is inclement and there’s warning sign not to go out;

When you must heed the harmful effects of taking food with MSG or Vetsin;

When you have a garden to supply some of your needs in the kitchen; 

When there's limited time to cook for your guests for lunch and dinner time; 

When there's going to be a party, and you have a say on what menus to serve;

When teaching in school or community about food as key to good health.  

When a poor fellow knocks at the gate, thirsty and hungry.

Reach out  for a bowl of bolabola dish homemade.  It takes a few minutes - and a happy heart - to prepare it. ~

Reviving Lola Basyang: Stories for Children by Severino Reyes a.k.a Lola Basyang

Compiled and Edited by Dr Abe V Rotor 

Acknowledgment: To all sources of information I used in this educational blog, including the movie producers of Lola Basyang stories, magazine and Klasiks publishers, Ballet Manila and all its performers, book publishers and distributors, the Internet, family and friends of the greatest Filipino storyteller for children of all times, and the University of Santo Tomas where he graduated a long time ago. I was told he finished a prestigious degree in Philosophy and Letters. 

There is one very extraordinary lesson about the storyteller which should inspire his audience, and particularly writers like me, and that is, there is nothing too late to achieve something valuable: Mang Binoy as he was fondly called, wrote the first of his four hundred children's stories at the age of seventy-five.  It inspires us all for an old man to talk the language of children and make them real men and women, courageous and happy to face the world where fantasy makes reality not only bearable but kind and fulfilling.  

I invite my readers to revive the good tradition of Lola Basyang amidst conflicting values that make children difficult to raise. It is tradition I know to be the best alternative to too much exposure to today's living conditions, what with all the computers and malls, and too much expectations we demand from our children.  Let them be in their own sweet time.  Knowledge is also learned in leisure and quiet, in sitting by the fireplace listening to a Lola Basyang, when the roads turn rough, so with the tides of life. Be children like the children in Lola Basyang's time.  

 Lola Basyang stories were translated into Tagalog Komiks which

became popular among the masses in sixties and seventies.

Popularly known as Mang Binoy, Don Severino Reyes, was also the co-founder and editor of the Liwayway in 1923. The very first years of the Liwayway was a struggle, and there was scarcity of literature to include in its contents, so Mang Binoy created the "Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang" in 1925 as filler. He did not sign it with his name though because he thought it was unethical, while still serving as editor of the magazine.

And so Mang Binoy used the byline "Lola Basyang" after a friend's neighbor named Gervacia Guzman de Zamora, who was known as "Tandang Basyang". It was from her where Mang Binoy took the inspiration to create"Lola Basyang".

In real life, Tandang Basyang was described as an old bespectacled woman in baro't saya, seated in her famous silyon, and reading her timeless classic stories - dug from her ancient baul (wooden chest) - to her fascinated grandchildren.  The grandchildren were more than eager to hear stories about faraway castles, heroic princes, lovely maidens, giants, and elves. Always, at the end of each story is a moral lesson to be learned.

The first story of the "Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang" was entitled ang "Plautin ni Periking", a wonderful story of a kindhearted kid who has a magical flute and flying carpet. It was the first of the more than 400 "Lola Basyang" stories to have graced the Liwayway, and only discontinued because of Mang Binoy's death in 1942. (Wikipedia)

    

In 2006, Anvil Publishing, Inc. relaunched  a series of picture books based on the tales written by Severino Reyes and retold by Christine Bellen. All books were illustrated by Frances C. Alcaraz, Albert Gamos, Elbert Or, Liza A. Flores and Ruben de Jesus. The 11 picture books are:

·         Ang Alamat ng Lamok (The Legend of the Mosquito), which was originally titled Ang Parusa ng Higante (The Giant's Curse)

·         Ang Mahiwagang Biyulin (Magical Violin)

·         Ang Sultan Saif (Saif the Sultan)

·         Parusa ng Duwende (The Dwarf's Curse)

·         Plautin ni Periking (Periking's Flute)

·         Rosa Mistica (Mystical Rose)

·         Ang Binibining Tumalo sa Hari (The Maiden Who Defeated a King)

·         Ang Prinsipe ng mga Ibon (Prince of Birds)

·         Ang Prinsipeng Duwag (The Cowardly Prince)

·         Si Pandakotyong

·         Ang Prinsipeng Mahaba ang Ilong (The Prince with the Long Nose)

Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang (TV series)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Season 1

·         Ang Mahiwagang Kuba (The Enchanted Hunchback)

·         Ang Prinsipeng Unggoy (The Monkey Prince)

·         Ang Parusa ng Duwende (The Dwarf's Punishment)

·         Ang Binibining Tumalo sa Mahal Datu (The Maiden Who Defeated the Datu)

·         Ang Mahiwagang Biyulin (The Enchanted Violin)

·         Ang Prinsipeng Mahaba ang Ilong (The Prince with A Long Nose)

·         Ang Sumpa ng Higanteng si Amok (The Curse of Amok the Giant)

·         Ang Walong Bulag (The Eight Blind Men)

·         Ang Prinsipeng Duwag (The Cowardly Prince)

·         Akong Ikit

·         Maria Alimango

·         Si Sultan Saif (Sultan Saif)

·         Ang Prinsipe ng mga Ibon (The Prince of the Birds)

Season 2

·         Si Pedrong Walang Takot (Fearless Pedro)

·         Ang Gwapong Sastre (The Handsome Tailor)

·         Ang Palasyo ng mga Duwende (The Palace of the Dwarves)

·         Ang Kapatid ng Tatlong Maria (The Brother of the Three Marias)

·         Ang Hukbo ni Padre Pedro (The Legion of Father Pedro)

·         Ang Plautin ni Periking (The Flute of Periking)

·         Anting-anting (The Amulet)

·         Ang Mahiwagang Balabal (The Enchanted Cape)

·         Ang Dragon sa Ilog Lingwa (The Dragon in Lingwa River)

·         Pandakotyong

·         Ang Kastilyong Bakal (The Iron-made Palace)

·         Prinsesang Kalbo (The Bald Princess)

·         Ang Pitong Hilo (The Seven Idiots)

Remembering Our Suffering Mother Nature this Lenten Season 1: Nature Crucified

"I am Nature crucified, hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, naked, abandoned – wishing some souls to stop, look and listen. " AVR

Dr Abe V Rotor 
Living with Nature - School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday [www.pbs.gov.ph]

                                                            Silhouette of a tree skeleton, Manila


I am Nature crucified, Paradise lost to my own guardian
whom my Creator assigned custodian of the living earth;

I am Nature crucified by loggers, my kin and neighbors
annihilated, forever removed from their place of birth;

I am Nature crucified by slash-and-burn farming dreaded
- once lush forests now bare, desertification their fate;

I am Nature crucified, greedy men with giant machines
take hours to destroy what I built for thousands of years;

I am Nature crucified in the name of progress, countries
vying for wealth and power, fighting among themselves;

I am Nature crucified, rivers are dammed, lakes dried up,
swamps drained, estuaries blocked, waterways silted;

I am Nature crucified, the landscape littered with wastes,
gases into the air form acid rain, and thin the ozone layer;

I am Nature crucified, flora and fauna losing their natural
gene pools by selective breeding and genetic engineering;

I am Nature crucified, the earth is in fever steadily rising,
ice caps and glaciers melting, raising the level of the sea;

I am Nature crucified, privacy and rest becoming a luxury
in a runaway population living on fast lanes, and rat race.

I am Nature crucified, inequitable distribution of wealth
the source of conflict, greed and poverty, unhappiness;

I am Nature crucified by the promise of heaven in afterlife,
the faithful restrained to regain Paradise while on earth.

I am Nature crucified by scholars of never ending debates,
on the goodness of the human race in fraternal praises;

I am Nature crucified by the many denominations of faith,
pitting God against one another in endless proselytizing;

I am Nature crucified by licenses of freedom in extremism,
human rights and democracy - tools of inaction and abuse;

I am Nature crucified by mad scientists splitting the atom,
building cities, tearing the earth, probing ocean and space;

I am Nature crucified by capitalism, consumerism its tool
to stir economy worldwide, wastefulness it consequence;

I am Nature crucified by the unending pursuit of progress,
the goal and measure of superiority, nation against nation;

I am Nature crucified by man’s folly to become immortal:
cryonics, cloning, robotics - triumvirates for singularity.

I am Nature crucified, hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, naked,
abandoned – wishing some souls to stop, look and listen. ~

Remembering Our Suffering Mother Nature this Lenten Season 2: A Dirge of the Pasig River

"Mother, let me die, there's no more sense of living, for I do not belong to humans anymore, I swear; I'm no longer a part of creation, I'm but a stranger..."

Dr Abe V Rotor

Death of an estero (tributary), the result of unabated pollution and siltation. 
Pasig River, Pasay City MM. Photo by Mary Kathleen Manalastas

I am dying, Mother, my mother whose womb was
as virgin as the day I was born a rivulet to stream,
estero to a tributary that feeds the mighty sea,
as virgin as the Paradise of Milton's dream.

Mother, let me die - or let me sleep then forever,
for neither can I flow out to sea nor keep in the sun;
let me die with garbage and silently sink in the murk,
with foul gases, on thickening sludge, silt and sand.

I hear no songs anymore, Abelardo is long dead;
I see no living garlands, not a bird building nest
among lilies and floating kiapo, among the nilad,
pride of a race, woven into mats for lovely rest.

Ahoy there! Two children are staring at my water;
but they can't see what is inside me, I am as black,
as a dark night, but oh, how my heart longs for them!
I have lost all things good - even as a mirror I lack.

Mother, let me die, there's no more sense of living,
for I do not belong to humans anymore, I swear;
I'm no longer a part of creation, I'm but a stranger;
but my mother doesn't answer;
my mother doesn't answer.~

Lenten Season Offering: Face of Christ Appears in a Painting

Dr Abe V Rotor

Dr Anselmo S Cabigan stands before the miraculous painting at a former university museum where hundreds of pilgrims and other visitors for the last fifteen years saw and pondered on it. It is said that the image remains obscure, and appears only to keen observers. The photos here have been edited to enhance the image.
NOTE: I received queries if the painting has any message at all. I heard comments to relate the painting with the growing problems of the world, notably the recent earthquake in Japan that sent tsunami inland and radiation from broken nuclear plants into the atmosphere. Simultaneously the Arab world is engulfed with social unrest heretofore unimagined, other grave problems like global warming and global recession, notwithstanding. I am therefore reprinting this article earlier posted in this blog in response to our audience's request. Please enter your comments at the end of the article. Thank you.

Into Your Light

“Lead me to where I should lead them,
The little ones to my care You'll send;
That they may solve this awesome maze
And burst out bright into Your Light." 

- Anselmo S Cabigan, 1995

“Did you see the face of Christ?”

“Where?”

"On a painting.”

"What is this they are talking about, " I asked Sel.

We went to the Audio-Visual Room, spent a moment of silence as we searched for the Face on the 36" x 24" landscape painting. It was painted and a month ago, and presented in a seminar-workshop at then St. Paul College QC. The theme signifies unity and cooperation among faculty and staff members.

"Can you see it?” I asked.

Sel traced the outline, his finger touching the rough canvas.

"Can you see it?” He threw back the question.

"I see a different one,” I countered and traced the figure differently.

Silence fell again. We exchanged notes and soon enough we were looking at the same face.

Were we seeing The Thing, or only imagining it?

I recalled a story, Images of Illusion. A man was viewing an antique painting and saw himself as one of the torturers of Christ.

“Impossible,” he raged. How could it be possible for the painter to have composed a scenery combining a biblical event and a future character? He demanded the art gallery an explanation.

What is illusion?

In metaphysics, the workings of the human mind have been the subject of research and discourse from the time of Plato who coined psyche or mind or soul, to Kant whose theory of Existentialism remains as the binding force of man and his Creator which is a fundamental doctrine of major religions. Lately, Jung's primary idea of a person as a whole, and not as assemblage of parts, gave rise to the modern concept of holistic personality. Jung’s work as a psychoanalyst was to recover the lost wholeness of personality, and to strengthen the psyche through the process of psychoanalysis and psycho synthesis.

What Jung was saying is that the mind is made up of three levels: the consciousness, the only part of the mind that is known directly by the individual; the personal unconscious which is the level of the mind that adjoins the ego: and the collective unconscious which he inherited from his ancestral past. All three levels are always in a dynamic state. They are never static like a rock or a tree.

When one is afraid of the dark he is expressing the collective unconscious. If he is afraid a the dark because he may be kidnapped, he is expressing the personal unconscious level, an experience which may have been created by distraught thoughts or brought about by personal conflict or raised a moral issue before. In the dark he may be "seeing” a would-be kidnapper at the slightest suggestion.

Now where does the first level come in? His conscious awareness is put to test in such a situation. He then makes to fullest use his four mental functions, which Jung called thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting. Depending on the development of these faculties from the time of his birth to his present age, the individual tries to overcome - or enhance - the other two levels of the mind which at that moment has caused in him fear.

What I am saying is that a mental image may arise from the interplay of the three levels of the mind. First, there is the “model” or an archetype from which the consciousness makes something out of it. This, in turn, is pictured or deleted in the mind through consciousness.

When Sel and I stood before the painting searching we had different archetypes in our mind. But people who have been raised in the same environment and had undergone similar training have many common archetypes from which images can be similarly patterned.

Suppose one does not readily take from the mind's bank a suitable archetype?

“I don't see anything.”

“Face of Christ, you said?”

"What are you talking about? I can only see trees and a stream flowing through them.”

"I still cannot figure it out.”

These observers, based on Jungian psychology, did not have the archetype at the moment to suit the picture they are looking for.

Quite often discussions may ensue while viewing the piece with someone taking the role of a teacher, or one insisting of seeing another thing.

Again, according to Jung, archetypes can be enlarged or reinforced so that they can surface with the help of the consciousness. However, this may not always work.

“I can see it now.”

“Yes, there it is. There is a bigger one beside it. No, actually there are three faces.”

“There is Blessed Virgin Mary at the center.”

“But it looks like a resurrected Christ.”

“See the trunk at the right? Scourging at the pillar.”

"My God! There's a devil clinging on Christ's nose.”

Now, now, the painting is getting overloaded,

As the painter I wanted to put it back to its real and down-to-earth perspective. It is a forest landscape, all right. The trees are the symbol of strength and unity; the flowing stream is life; the rocks are the obstacles we encounter in life; the light rays penetrating through the forest is hope and guidance; the forest itself characterizes the present world we live in; and the central perspective of the painting leads us to the attainment of a common vision and goal.

As I was about to leave, a very young boy came along with his mother. His eyes were bright and his face radiated the innocence of a child.

"Do you see the little cross, mama?” He was pointing at a orange figure, an empty cross laid upon a rock. Then he scanned the whole piece and quickly pointed at things none of us had earlier seen.

“Here is the Holy Family. Here is baby Jesus. There you see angels. You can count them, 1, 2 3, 4, 5, 6..."

“There are thirty-three trees, I was told," interrupted his mother.

"Those are children playing, mama - there under the trees and on the rocks."

I stood beside, speechless. I realized I only read Plato, Kant and Jung. l did not consult the Greatest of them all. ~

Light in the Woods became the title of the painting, and a book of the same title was published by Megabooks Manila in 1995. The book was presented by the late Jaime Cardinal Sin to Pope John Paul II on his visit to the Philippines in 1995. The book is now a collectors' item.

Dr Cabigan and the author were classmates and co-workers in the government, and co-professors. They have known each other for the last 50 years. The painting was made after a poem composed by Dr Cabigan, Into Your Light (above). The original painting has been transferred to a secured place where it can be viewed on special arrangement. Photos of the painting are found in Light from the Old Arch, by AVR, UST Publishing House 2000; Nymphaea: Beauty in the Morning, AVR, Giraffe Books 1996;Light in the Woods, AVR, Megabooks, 1995, and Light from the Old Arch 2000, UST-AVR Publishing House.

Landscape Therapy

"… when the curtain is lifted and the horizon rolls on with life passing this way but once, yet it’s more than destiny, more than eternity."

    
Painting and Poem by Dr Abe V Rotor

Landscape Therapy in acrylic, AVR 2014, showing details.

 Landscape therapy is gaining back clarity and focus, though slowly from strained vision of light and shadow, of passing cars and blinking screens;  

Landscape therapy is getting the frayed nerves back to function in reflexes governed by the conscious and unconscious mind in peace and harmony;

Landscape therapy is when primary colors once more come as true colors, secondary colors and tertiary ones as sweet progeny of color combination;   

Landscape therapy is when the forests appear once more lush green, the mountains in the distance blue, and the sky azure as the deep sea;

Landscape therapy is when the consciousness once more map the migrating birds in the sky, the fish in the stream, a drop of pond water teeming with life;

Landscape therapy is when the biological clock is readjusted with the passing of seasons, understanding the reason behind Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring;

Landscape therapy is when - in the midst danger, courage is being afraid but doing brave thing, for the landscape of life is often perceived in duality;

Landscape therapy is when the swamp dries up to become a grassland, to become a woodland, in a magic sere that spawns rich life’s diversity;

Landscape therapy is finding once more a niche, bridging the past and present, tradition and modern, the living and the non-living world in Rousseau’s scenery;       

Landscape therapy is when raucous urchins sound in lilting joy; thunder a Beethoven’s bass drum, chirping a language in music – all in thanksgiving;

Landscape therapy is when a person like a prisoner in Plato’s Allegory frees himself to discover the realities of the world, which is the aim of education;   

Landscape therapy is when life is viewed with the power of the imagination – romantic or real or abstract - yet find meaning in reverence to the Creator;

Landscape therapy is when the curtain is lifted and the horizon rolls on with life passing this way but once, yet it’s more than destiny, more than eternity. ~

Abercio V Rotor, Ph.D. is the award-winning author of Living with Nature Handbook (Gintong Aklat Award 203), Living with Nature in Our Times (National Book Award 2006), and radio instructor of People’s School on Air (Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid, Gawad Oscar Florentino Award for Development Communication on radio). He is also author of other books in essays and poetry, and textbooks in Humanities and Literature. Dr Rotor is a professor at UST, a former director of NFA and consultant of the Philippine Senate. He is married to Cecilia A Rojas, CPA, MBA, CESO3, with whom they have three children: Matthew Marlo, Anna Christina, and Leo Carlo.  The family hails from San Vicente, Ilocos Sur.   

Bromeliads form a unique aerial ecosystem

Only the pineapple (Ananas comosus) is the edible species in the large Family Bromeliaceae.
Dr Abe V Rotor

Brightly colored false petals of bromeliad attract insects and other organisms to fertilize its shy, short-live flowers. The bright pseudo flowers serve as markers in the dense and vast forest high up in the trees. Here bromeliads form colonies with connecting rhizomes, and with other epiphytes - ferns, orchids and lianas - make a unique aerial ecosystem. 

Domesticated bromeliads are popular ornamental plants in gardens and around homes. One disadvantages though is that it becomes a breeding place of mosquitoes and other vermin. It is because we have detached them from their natural habitat where they are part of a complex food web. Here mosquito wrigglers are preyed upon by naiads of Odonatans (dragonflies and damselflies), while the adults are trapped in spider webs. Tree frogs have their fill of flies and other insects.  Fish live in the axil ponds and can even transfer to nearby bromeliads and even to the water below to hunt and to mate.  While reptiles occupy the top of the food pyramid, hawks and eagles come to prey on them. Like a chain, just one link broken, and the system fails. 

Bromeliads, which includes the pineapple (the only edible member in the family), are nature's reservoir of miniature ponds that provide abode to many organisms from insects to fish. The central receptacle collects water from dew and rain which spills over to the adjoining leaf axils, making a contiguous pond. The sequence, like a series of terraces, makes water collection and retention efficient, giving chance for the various resident organisms to complete - and repeat - their life cycles. And for transient organisms to have their regular visit.

In this pond system, detritus accumulates and fertilizes the bromeliad as well as other plants around and below it, including its host tree, in exchange for its foothold and other benefits. And being epiphytic and colonial in growing habit on trunks and limbs of trees, bromeliads  form a unique aerial ecosystem with other epiphytes, and the surrounding trees.~