Manuel L. Quezon III's Blog, page 98
July 11, 2011
I Will Survive.
I Will Survive.
July 10, 2011
mediumaevum:
The earliest medieval Robin Hood stories gave him…
The earliest medieval Robin Hood stories gave him no female companion. Maid Marian was originally a character in May Games festivities (held during May and early June, most commonly around Whitsun) and is sometimes associated with the Queen or Lady of May of May Day. Indeed, Marion remained associated with such celebrations long after the fashion of Robin Hood had faded again. She became associated with Robin Hood in this context, as Robin Hood became a central figure in May Day, associated as he was with the forest and archery.
Both Robin and Marian were certainly associated with May Day festivities in England (as was Friar Tuck); these were originally two distinct types of performance — Alexander Barclay, writing in c.1500, refers to "some merry fytte of Maid Marian or else of Robin Hood" — but the characters were brought together
image: Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood giving Enid Bennett as Maid Marian a dagger (1922)
"To be a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact,…"
- Nancy Milford, from her article in the August 2001 issue of Vanity Fair, "The Belle of Bohemia," concerning her writing the biography of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.
July 9, 2011
San Sebastian: How energy-saving bulbs and chandeliers don't…
San Sebastian: How energy-saving bulbs and chandeliers don't necessarily go together.
Malolos Jail, 1899.
Malolos Jail, 1899.
Climate Distribution.
Climate Distribution.
January 29, 2011
The Sixty-Five Hundred Sixty-Nine
The famous video of the precise moment Nicolai Ceausescu's iron grip on power was pried loose. The puzzle moments like these represent is that what worked so well for decades can, in an instant, unravel; Machiavelli pointed this out, saying leaders who rely too much on luck are destroyed the moment their luck changes; one of my favorite writers, the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, imn his book on the fall of the Shah of Iran, said the moment when things change, in a sense, is pre-ordained: the same iron fist that could squash dissent inevitably assures dissent will turn into an unbeatable opposition. If Machiavelli believed that the antidote to a stroke of ill-fortune for a leader was the ability to change tack depending on how the wind was blowing, Kapuskinski believed that strongmen, by their very nature (and their dim view of the nature of Man), would, in such a situation, be incapable of donning a new persona to try to recover their lost fortune: for in the end, the only solution might be to simply "cut and cut cleanly," as another strongman was advised a quarter century ago this coming February. Gary Wills, another great student of power, in turn believed that unless one has a healthy distrust of power, actively relishing possessing and wielding it carried the seeds of any leader's destruction.
From Tunisia the attention of the world has shifted to Egypt, where the government of Hosni Mubarak is fighting for its life on a truly operatic scale. Since the monarchy was abolished in the 1950s, Egypt has had only three leaders: the secularist Nasser, his assassinated successor, Sadat, and the pharaonic Mubarak. The immense weight of history and of the dynastic expectations of Mubarak's presidency inevitably lead to the current Egyptian crisis echoing Shelley's meditation on the futility of ambition. I've pointed to this poem before; at 82 years old, Mubarak belongs to the category of elderly, ailing strongmen, and that carries with it comparisons to the curiously pathetic last days of other, fallen strongmen. Not to mention the public shuddering of strongmen who see their peers toppling one by one.
I've mentioned before being struck by the observation made by a veteran official who once remarked to me, "We are all students of power," and in times like these, journalists, bloggers, historians, sociologists, political scientists, diplomats and officials all end up drawn to the flames of beleaguered governments like moths. All the more so because the crumbling of governments often happens quickly, unexpectedly, particularly when in the nature of a revolution: in which case the drama requires all the experts to come up with theories and explanations to camouflage their inability to predict what has begun to take place. Kapuskinsci has a marvelous passage on the surprising nature of revolutions.
Once these begin to unfold, there are, in turn, dilemmas that ensue, partoicularly if the revolution is in the nature of a peaceful and not violent one: See my reference to Timothy Garton Ash on Velvet Revolutions, and The Nutbox looking at the same article from the perspective of recent events in Tunisia (the shutting down of the Internet in that country is itself a historic milestone but brings to the fore the continuing debate over just how effective social networking is, in mobilizing the public).
Governments, of course, take a different look at events as they unfold: in the case of our government, its primary duty is to look after the welfare and safety of its citizens, as well as to be a voice for reason in times of crisis. This morning, Deputy Presidential Spokesperson Abigail Valte read the following Palace statament on radio:
The Philippine government expresses its concern over the events unfolding in Egypt, particularly for the safety of the more than 6,500 Filipinos living there. We hope for a peaceful and just resolution to the political unrest currently taking place and a swift return to stability. Here in Manila, we are monitoring the situation and our embassy in Cairo has contingencies in place and is prepared to relocate our citizens to safer areas if it becomes necessary to do so. As always, the safety of our citizens is the paramount concern and we are doing what we can to anticipate and attend to their needs.
In his Twitter account, Secretary Ramon Carandang gave updates last night: today, the Department of Foreign Affairs told the media it was prepared to evacuate 6,569 Filipinos in Egypt if the situation warranted it. In her Twitter account, Undersecretary Valte also provided updates on the President's instructions to the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Labor and Employment, Defense and the Presidential Management Staff, and the Philippine Embassy in Egypt's announcement that it has prepared four relocation sites should the need arise: three in Cairo and one in Alexandria.
You can keep track of unfolding events in Al-Jazeera's Liveblog, and refer to What's Happening in Egypt Explained.
December 12, 2010
Keynote Address, Philippine Blog Awards 2010
Keynote Address
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Blog Awards
RCBC Carlos P. Romulo Theater
December 11, 2010
We are, each of us, a product of our times. And our times have come to be defined by blogging.
But even the definition of blogging has changed. Or put another way, what constitutes blogging has changed, is changing, and by the time we see each other next year, will have changed some more.
So if each of us is a product of our times, we are, as bloggers, artifacts of the time we began blogging.
In my case I began as a writer in the papers and magazines who decided to take up blogging in search of new audiences and to expand my existing ones.
As an opinion writer, the transition was easy and in fact, quite natural. The only difference that required some getting used to, was the immediacy of feedback from the audience.
It was easier, for me, in a sense, because I have always been an opinion writer and never a reporter. It has been much tougher for reporters to take up blogging, and I'm not sure if they have ever reconciled themselves to the medium.
The debate between professional writers and professional bloggers can be summarized in three contrasting points of view.
Journalism at its finest is history written in a hurry. Blogging at its worst is history tweaked to maximize SEO.
Blogging at its best aspired to speak truth to power, but blogging at its worst has become the quest for the captive niche.
Blogging is about celebrating freedom but at its worst has become what Jaron Lanier has condemned as "Digital Maoism."
Let me state, however, that blogging is one of the best things to have happened but let me also caution everyone that much as we know, and generally, like, each other, and even as we have celebrated the communities and sub-communities we have formed over the years in events such as this one, we are still a small –pitifully small, mind you- group of people.
Last year some of us were given silly hats and proclaimed some sort of tribal leaders of the blogging world, which was of course particularly silly because it betrayed a ridiculous conception of what tribes are. But the silly hats came with trophies and prizes so we all gamely posed for pictures and had a good time.
However, we can take stock of where we are and where we are is that blogging and bloggers have their own establishment, their own hierarchies, their own us against them mentalities and an increasingly feeble desire to celebrate the whole.
In simplest terms, the challenge confronting bloggers is, the novelty has worn off. How many bloggers do we know, who have dropped out of sight, disillusioned or burned out, or who have taken up other new media activities that are both more lucrative, and more peaceful?
Of course I am primarily talking about the kind of blogging I know, which concerns itself with politics and current events. Your tribe –and I say your, and not my, tribe, because at this point I have had to make the transition to work that requires me to say as little for myself as possible- has not increased.
To be sure there are new voices but the new has not kept up with the many other voices joining in the conversations going on concerning other topics. There is a generational aspect to this. There is an educational dimension, too. We are discovering the full implications of living in a society where the idea of a civic culture is dead.
At its most basic level what is gone is the sense that there is much more that unites us than divides us. To the extent that we can agree to disagree if only because there remains much more on what we should be able to agree on.
Some of us mourn this. Others do not regret its loss. And there are those proposing we start anew and build afresh. The very lack of a consensus on this is, to my mind, reveals the massive extent of the problem.
From being an active blogger to becoming more of a lurker, from being part of the conversation to more often than not, listening in and simply mulling over the buzz, I have very mixed feelings about where I am and where we are.
At the most basic level of things, what I think we can celebrate tonight is being together, in this room. Sharing stories, seeing old friends, making new ones. Among the most basic of human compulsions is that of communicating, of sharing. With all the give-and-take, the laughter and even anger that can cause: we are here because we are human and to borrow that old phrase, I blog therefore I am.
We used to blog by means of words. We can now blog by means of pictures and videos. We can be more ourselves, revealing the many facets each of us possesses.
I do not know if this means we are, necessarily, more open about ourselves; we have, I think, increasingly had to find ways to be selective about ourselves.
We have essentially come to learn that cyberspace is not detached from real life and that the real world has been recreated in cyberspace more than we thought it might, or should.
And yet, here we are. Some of us wiser, some of us richer, some of us craftier and most of us perhaps, still none the wiser. But here we are, and that is a good thing. Because we have to believe that the basic compulsion to communicate will bring out the best, not just in each of us, but among all of us.
Because each of us, in our heart of hearts wants to leave something tangible out there, to show we once were, and that as we were, so did we care: mightily, even daringly, to the best of our ability and for posterity.
That is what tonight is about. That is what it means to be a blogger.
Thank you.
December 2, 2010
Tita Chitang
Tita Chitang
By Manuel L. Quezon III
[Remarks delivered at the launching of Heroes and Villains, Filipinas Heritage Library, December 2, 2010]
Tonight is too important to risk speaking off the cuff; and so I have taken the liberty of preparing something written.
Tonight we are gathered here as a cross-section of generations, of classes, and occupations, bound together by affection and recognition: affection for Tita Chitang and in recognition of this, her latest work. Some of us here are Tita Chitang's contemporaries; others, representatives of those who were and are her friends.
In my case, I am here as much to bear witness to Tita Chitang's friendship for my late father, to whom she gave the epitaph inscribed on his tomb; and to represent my mother, with whose family Tita Chitang has also been life-long friends. But I am also here for myself, as a writer who has received her encouragement and support. Over a decade ago, recovering from an eye operation, she not only allowed me to pester her for an essay for our late, lamented literary journal, Pen & Ink, but actually delivered, I'm pretty sure knowing at the time what I have only belatedly come to realize: what gall, what cheek, for us to badger her –but such is the folly of youth, and such is the wisdom of those of sufficient age to know it is, indeed, a good thing to indulge those follies.
For folly can truly be instructive, as Barbara Tuchman chronicled; and as the doyenne of Philippine writers, Tita Chitang, whom we honor here tonight, has taken pains to point out in her prose. In this, she is only being true to the fighting form of the Guerreros.
In his collection of essays titled We Filipinos, Tita Chitang's brother, the late Leon Ma. Guerrero wrote of the "glory and the shame" of our inheritance from Spain, and pointed to the Duke of Mura and his Grandeza y Decadencia de España, in which the duke observed that Spain's greatest weakness, which Guerrero says we seem to have inherited, is "the atrophy of the civic spirit, the lack of civic responsibility, the habit of submission to absolute and irresponsible power."
That mixed inheritance, too, includes "a primitive instinctive piety that sustains us in misfortune; a sense of personal dignity, the amor propio that drives us to do things which are sometimes comic and sometimes tragic; an avid and restless amorousness which contrives to combine the idolatry of woman with a selfish and boastful carnality; an understanding of death, death as the final sanction of life…"
Guerrero wrote that that inheritance could be found not in "masonry or literature" but rather in the "heart, the secret heart, of the nation," that is, "in a servant's sense of honor, in the dance hall girl going on her knees in the crowded aisle to kiss the feet of the Nazarene and pray for better trade, in the venal politician dreaming of a seat in the Senate, as Sancho Panza dreamed of the governorship of Barataria, and in the honest public servant who, like Don Quixote, sees a princess in every maid."
Thus did brother Leon write –so truthfully, so probingly, so eloquently- and so, too, has his sister Chitang written, whether in her journalism or her much-underappreciated novel The Rice Conspiracy, or in her volumes of memoirs: with an, at times, a mordant eye, a trenchant wit, but always, with a deep conviction of the innate dignity and beauty of the Filipino soul. If brother Leon was hispanist and anglophile, depending on which of his many works you decide to read, then sister Chitang is feminist and belle vivante, in everything of hers you read: independent and informative.
But I am not here to write her epitaph; rather, we are here to provide a kind of semicolon in one sentence in the continuing paragraph of her creative life; not full stop, but a meaningful pause, to take stock.
Of what? That we sorely lack mentors; that far too few have taken on that role, much less been able to fulfill it. For so many here and outside this small building, Tita Chitang has taken on that role, whether personally or through her writings, by means of sharing her memories and examining her own life and times.
In his slim volume on the Philippine Revolution, Apolinario Mabini, in his dedication, offered it up to the memory of his mother, saying it was an unworthy thing, but the best he could do. Whether in "The Benevolence" or in the book we will take home to read tonight, Tita Chitang has made so many offerings to God, country, and family, that I dare say I will be old and stooped and still be able to say, that wherever a home is fortunate enough to contain at least a volume of her work, the air is permamently sweet and redolent with the good odor, perhaps not of sanctity because that would be too cloying a term, but of patriotism and good character. Always fresh, always sweet. Always capable of bringing us where we, at times. have stopped believing we could ever end up: that self-assured state of true independence of mind and spirit Tita Chitang has already achieved.
Thank you and happy reading.
