ANL February 2012 Issue

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H a p p y    V a l e n t I n e ’ s ,    A s i n g a n !

GO for a gimmick, or for a breather.  Gimmick would be nice a proposal for the love-struck! For dear hometown Asingan,  a breather is most soothing as political climate  simmers rather too early around town.  Either way, Valentine’s Day may be a good prescription to temper emotions, wear away stress and dispel tensions.  

Then we could perhaps buckle down to work  refreshed and focused from a brief respite.

Unluckily though,  Asingan remains just like no other—cocooned in the old silk of patronage politics known derisively as “trapo” [“rag”], or traditional politics. Worse, Asingan’s upbeat mood of having elected two lady top executives of the town was gradually eroded when the fabled “motherly sobriety” of a woman was seen slowly being tainted with distrust and animosity much early in their tandem.

Things soured up reportedly when the administration hiked to a high 300% the rate of realty tax just as the opposition raised questions on the exorbitant cost. Not much later, higher-ups allegedly ordered the installation of a CCTV camera at the office of the vice-mayor less a comely notice. Now comes the jockeying for the 2013 local elections heating up even more the political landscape.

For a three-year term,  hardly anyone would really buy time nor settle for less in deference to the common good; not the “trapos” [traditional politicians], anyway. For worse, the voters and taxpayers are in their usual run struggling to make both ends meet; fending off spiraling costs of farm inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides; reeling on their knees with the pestering weekly hike in oil prices and the concomitant price upheaval of basic commodities including health care and education of rural school children.

Nailing down further the battered rural folks,  farm produce of the farmers are feasted upon by middlemen who rip prices down for rice and vegetables less any remedial efforts from the local government and the National Food Authority to reign in the exploitative feudal relation or rural economic imbalance. Landlocked Asingan is  even less fortunate in having no seashores for fishing to augment scant farming income during off-season.

Genuine development is no less anchored on genuine democracy, that is, attending to the needs of the majority poor and oppressed be it  election year or not. Social change is a patriotic commitment and not a campaign slogan to deodorize narrow selfish interests of politicians and their respective political families and dynasties.

If only for Valentine’s Day,  deeper reflection for a humane social agenda of development among the rural folks  is worth an offering of good faith for genuine social change. Only  then can Asingan NewsLine heartily say “Cheers on Valentine’s!”  eb . anl

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R.A. Class ’68 eyes “cooperative venture”

By:  Engr. Joe L. Sevilla

       Asingan Correspondent

“Go ‘COOP’ and engage in cooperative business venture!”

It sounds both like a marching order and a slogan for members of the Rizal Academy Class ’68 Alumni Association. More than this, it was actually a decision-plan made by the association’s Board of Directors during its first regular meeting this year held January 28 in  Taguig City, Philippines.

In a bid to further consolidate its alumni members after its very first grand reunion and alumni homecoming in 43 years held April last year, the association decided to push through its initial efforts at putting up its own cooperative and seriously engage in business to raise funds and provides services to its less affluent members in particular, and to Asinganians in general.

Putting up a cooperative is considered a sound collective venture and a productive bonding structure for the retiring members of the Class fueled with the desire of serving their mother town Asingan. The Association conducted the requisite Basic Cooperative Orientation Seminar August 2011 with 12 members participating in the 5-hour course held at the residence of classmate Viring Lopez-Jover in Barangay Domanpot.

Rod A. Layco, a CPA-businessman and elected Auditor of the RA Class ‘68 Alumni Association is encouraging the Class to try the trucking business wherein he himself is an official of a freight service cooperative. He is bullish on the idea as he speaks from his profitable experience in cooperative business for years now which for a bonus, he says, is a tax-free venture.  Rod offered to orient the Class on this particular business venture and welcomed us to “loan” a truck unit or two to his trucking cooperative through a MOA [memorandum of agreement] system.

Major highlights of the BOD Meeting were the Chairman’s Achievement Report and the accompanying Financial Report for the April 2011 Reunion-Homecoming. Five key association officers and two adopted class members attended the four-hour meeting that commenced 2pm and ended at 6pm. The tackled agenda and the corresponding minutes of the meeting were immediately signed over by the participating officers after duly re-read by the Secretary. Further agreed on is for the same body to meet upon the arrival from Vancover of  the association’s Chair for External Affairs, Rudy D. Antonio, April 15 this year.  jls . anl

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Commentary:   “W h o   i s   w h o?”

                                [First  of  Two  Series]   

By: Ruben M. Balino

“WHO is who” on the matter of deforestation is one heated technical discourse. Some quarters posing as environmental pundits but who actually have stakes in the wood industry even insist that so far no “authoritative” and/or “conclusive” studies would show direct link between deforestation and severe flooding [see ANL’s 1-12 issue]. Further beclouding the issue and insulting common sense, these self-professed experts tend to gang up on the so-called “kaingeros” as the main culprit to deforestation.

But alas! Forestry has been here in this country for almost a century now and here’s an alibi of having no conclusive study yet to boot on these ticklish issues. Blame a senile academe? A mindless government? Or both?

The first forestry graduates of Thailand, Korea and other Asian countries studied at UP Los Banos, Philippines. They founded their respective forestry schools out of what they learned from this country of eloquent and honorable politicians and generals. They nourished their country’s agriculture out of the expertise of their graduates who sacrificed and studied seriously here for years.

Meantime, Lakai Teban Malunao [deceased], an unschooled and soft-spoken Kankannaey native of Benguet province in the Cordilleras, used to lecture and amuse us with stories of  mountains and rivers,  and of a certain  Apo Kabunian—the god and guardian, he said, of  the Cordillera mountain ranges. When still agile and coherent, Lakai Teban recounts every now and then the circumstances leading them to drift deeper into the hinterlands.

Poverty and landlessness, he surmised, forced them up into the slopes of northern Benguet from the fringes of the Cordilleras adjoining the Ilocos provinces up north. He remembered vividly of stranger-claimants, or land grabbers, as rampant in their time when the lands are already cleared and developed by the natives. Writer-environmentalist Stewart Vriesinga calls this the onslaught of “modern predatory civilization”, referring to a variety of intruders to include land speculators and loggers.

Lakai Teban asserts that when they treaded upwards  northern Benguet right before the outbreak of Worl War II portions of the mountains there are already bald or logged-over by “loggers with big machines” [referring to huge trucks and bulldozers].  When the “big machines” are gone, he stressed, small truck owners and “carabao loggers” from the lowlands come in for the “tablon” [small squared log]. Both the small truck owners and carabao loggers are considered illegal [“salabadyok” in native tongue] although they were there to gather the “morsels”, or the much smaller trees spared by tenured loggers.

We do not burn trees, only the wild grasses in the clearings left by the loggers which we eventually inhabited, explained Lakai Teban. We only gather posts for our huts and branches for fuel, he stressed. Big trees are sacred to us, he affirmed, dispelling the wrong notion of the term “slash-and-burn farmers” or kaingeros, or “swidden farmers”, whatever.

Old and unschooled Teban was my first “professor” in forest resource management, forest utilization engineering, and environmental science out and away from the walls of academe. He is a native “forest scientist” in his own right. Incidentally, Lakai Teban is my “Apong Lakai” [grandpa]—“Amang” [father] of my “Inang” [mother].  [To be continued at ANL’s March issue]

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A  MATH  STUDENT’S  LOVE  LETTER

[Lifted from the internet and sent via email to ANL by classmate Arno A. Bautista who had just arrived this month from Vancouver, B.C. after a few months’ vacation—for  a “mathematical”  Valentine’s, he jokingly quipped   on the phone. –ed.].

My Dear Love,   

Yesterday, I was passing by your rectangular
house in trigonometric lane. There I saw you with
your cute circular face, conical nose and spherical eyes,
standing in your triangular garden.
Before seeing you, my heart was a null set,
but when a vector of magnitude (likeness) from your
eyes at a deviation of theta radians made a tangent to
my heart, it differentiated.

My love for you is a quadratic equation with
real roots, which only you can solve by making good
binary relation with me. The cosine of my love for you
extends to infinity. I promise that I should not resolve you into
partial functions but if I do so, you can integrate me by
applying the limits from zero to infinity.

You are as essential to me as an element to
a set. The geometry of my life revolves around your
acute personality. My love, if you do not meet me at parabola
restaurant on date 10 at sunset, when the sun is making
an angle of 160 degrees, my heart would be like a
solved polynomial of degree 10.

With love from your higher order derivatives of maxima and minima, of an unknown
function.

Yours  ever loving,

Pythagoras...:)

P.  S .  :

WE at ANL deeply mourn the untimely demise February 11, 2012 of  WHITNEY  HOUSTON, 48 — a legendary, gentle and beauteous lady singer of our time.  Bon voyage to the good life beyond!

E D I T O R I A L    B O A R D

MEMBERS:  Rudy D. Antonio & Arno A. Bautista [Canada Correspondents]; Engr. Silver Casilla  &  RN Merly Grospe-Mayo [U.S. Correspondents];  Engr. Joe  L. Sevilla [Asingan Correspondent];  Col. Lalin Layos-Pascual;  Ross C. Diaz; Engr. Lorie dG. Estrada; CPA Rod A. Layco; Wena A. Balino [Photo & Lay-out Artist]; Ruben “Bencio” Balino [Managing Editor].

ANL January 2012 Issue

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“H a p p y   N e w   Y e a r,   A s i n g a n!”

Asingan NewsLine isn’t inclined to dampen the upbeat mood of the new year nor to spoil the spirit of the year of the dragon that is 2012. Neither shall ANL would bite hook and sinker the gloomy predictions for this year even as the doomsayers call a dragon always a dragon. “Nasa tao ‘yan” [it’s all in us, people] retorts the more sober in us.  

But for some unsettling events faced by Asinganians in 2011, let the dragon claw its way on to the new year while we pore back more seriously into the past year’s “unsavory news”.  

A couple of major events never before experienced in the annals of Asingan shocked the town last year. One, the so-called “wirewolves”. These are robbers engaged in stealing TV and  Phone lines even in broad day light along highways and streets. This syndicate was reported to have started attacking towns in Region 1 [Ilocos Region] as early as mid-2010 at times paralyzing communication, TV viewing and internet use. Asingan town of Pangasinan province that is well within the Ilocos Region was not spared in the attack feeling the pinch beginning May last year.

Two, the bunch of robbers called “boltcutters”. Wee hours of December 11, 2011  when this modus operandi group  struck a computer shop right at the heart of Asingan town [Poblacion West] using  a boltcutter to force their way in and ransacked the place carting away computer units and equipment installed at the shop.

The crux of the matter? One, these are “firsts” in the crime history of the town. Two, the apparent looseness of security in the crime scenes. Three, the audacity of these criminals. Four, it detracts economic activity.

Though prevalent in big metropolitan areas of the country like Metro-Manila, these “wirewolves” and “boltcutters” are vague and unlikely occurrences for Asinganians. Though it looks like these events are purely police matter, vigilance of local barangay officials and residents are needed to secure rural communities. The audacity of these robbers signals the obvious syndication of these groups with backers and financiers coddling these criminals.

No less than a serious quadripartite effort by and among municipal and barangay officials, the police and the citizenry at large is needed to counter such a disturbing crime with the end in view of protecting local economic activity and enhancing peace and order so everybody can sleep soundly and dream for a peaceful, prosperous and blessed year of the dragon..  rmb . anl

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The year that was, the year that comes…

by: wena agaton-balino

Year 2011 was  a year of the rabbit. Rabbit is associated with the color white. A rabbit runs rather fast and jumps when agitated. Comes 2012, a year of the dragon. Dragon comes to mind as the fire-spitting beast. For this year, uncomely predictions of more disasters—social, economic and environmental alike—abound to scare us to-the-bone.

The past year was punctuated with the usual naive P-Noy trying hard to mimic a Ninoy, or a Cory, to no avail [Ninoy was not tested  as president and Cory was a tested lame duck chief executive of the land]. Second, P-Noy focused on nailing down his political foe Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her ilk Chief Justice Renato Corona instead of zeroing in on the social and economic well-being of the grassroots.

Third, 2011 ended tragically with typhoon “Sendong” sending northern Mindanao and southern Visayas to the gutter with floods and landslides. More than 3,000 victims were either killed, injured or missing and several billions of pesos worth of crops, animals and properties stashed away courtesy of nature’s wrath aggravated by human sins and excesses.

Now comes 2012, a year of the beastly dragon. Doomsayers say it would be a disastrous year as personified by the dragon. But the dragon is now an imaginary character just like the dinosaur of million years past. The “dragon” actually dwells in us humans in the person of our corrupt politicians and political dynasties, police and military generals, the  profit-hungry loggers both legal and illegal, the oil cartels that bleed the public with weekly price hike, the smugglers and all sort of criminal syndicates, and the likes.

Year 2012 will go down the drain as more disastrous not as per predictions but because the social infrastructure refuses to change even as the forgetful and forgiving Filipinos are wont to espouse radical change. Years to come will be just bad—if not worse—because the system will just be bred by the same culture of passivity and divisiveness, of rigged elections and politics of patronage. Government will just be there as coffer for the corrupt and poker-faced.

And the doomsayers will just be true and faithful as ever to their profession.  wab . anl   

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Commentary:  Which is which?

By:  Ruben M. Balino

Some sectors are playing pundits in saying that there is no conclusive scientific study so far proving a direct link between flooding and deforestation. Furthering such theory, they cite excessive rainfall as the main culprit together with climate change.

A native son of the Kankannaey tribe of the Cordilleras, this writer upholds the practical knowledge derived from the indigenous people’s direct communion with and keen observance   of nature’s attributes and behavioral pattern. Notwithstanding a masteral course on environmental science, this former logging supervisor recognizes even more such time-tested indigenous learning and practices as better barometer than any “pundit’s theory” espoused by elite academicians, armchair scientists and paid researchers.  

In light of the killer typhoon Sendong that sends off year 2011 to a tragic end for thousands of victims in northern Mindanao, some good reading may validate practical knowledge on the indigenous people’s close interaction with nature being their immediate physical environment and abode—the forest and the land.

“TREES cool and moisten the air and fill it with oxygen. They calm the winds and shade the land from sunlight. They shelter various species, anchor the soil, and slow the movement of water. They provide food, fuel, medicine, and building materials for human activity…They also help balance Earth’s carbon budget.” —Michael Carlowicz, NASA Earth Observatory, 9 Jan 2011 [underscoring mine].

If we may add, trees not just slow the movement of water but do absorb a certain quantity [no matter small] and store it in their system thus reducing the volume of water cascading down the plains on rainy days but otherwise help beef up supply during lean days.

As to excessive rainfall and the prevalent climate change now felt by planet earth, these “pundits” seem not to consider the totality of the forest flora and fauna as one of the major actors in  the all-too important natural process called hydrologic cycle, or the making of the intervening wet and dry spells and their respective “efficacies” on the socio-physical environment. The whole forest ecosystem likewise play a major balancing role on climate change in that it serves as one of the major agents in carbon sequestration and heat absorption above land.

Diminishing forest and other vegetative cover on a wide scale such as in various continents of the globe drastically aggravates the world’s weather and climate pattern [climate change] as exemplified by severe flooding and drought and the overall heating up of global temperature, or global warming.

As per experience of the indigenous communities in the many regions of the country,  many if not  most  are  victims  of dislocation from, or obliteration of their  abode  due to  logging  and/or

mining  operations which entails massive cutting of trees and excessive movement of earth unduly  depleting biodiversity, forest and mineral resources while exacting huge profit for big business on the one hand; and bringing about pollution and disasters like landslides and flooding aggravated by excessive surface run-off cascading from critically logged-over and mined areas, on the other.

To the nitpicking “pundits”: Deforestation by way of logging—both legal and illegal—and mining too, have a definitive and undeniable link to flooding, directly or indirectly.

[ Nota Bene:  The conclusion of this discourse—Which is which?—will appear in the upcoming February 2012 Issue of Asingan NewsLine with the title, Who is who? ].  rmb . anl

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“Noah in Modern Times”

From:  GodVine [Sent by Silver Casilla & Merly Mayo: U.S. Correspondents]

[ Here’s a funny modern day take on Noah’s Ark. It’s just for a laugh, so please don’t take it too seriously.]

And the Lord spoke to Noah and said: “In six months I’m going to make it rain until the whole earth is covered with water and all the evil people are destroyed. But I want to save a few good people, and two of every kind of living thing on the planet. I am ordering you to build Me an Ark.

And in a flash of lightning He delivered the specifications for the Ark.

“OK,” said Noah, trembling in fear and fumbling with the blueprints.

“Six months and it starts to rain,” thundered the Lord. “You better have my Ark completed, or better learn how to swim for a very long time!”

And six months passed. The skies began to cloud up and rain began to fall. The Lord saw that Noah was sitting in his front yard, weeping. And there was no Ark.

“Noah,” shouted the Lord, “where is my Ark?” A lightning bolt crashed to the ground next to Noah.

“Lord, please forgive me!”  begged Noah. “I did my best but there were big problems.”

First, I had to get a building permit for the Ark’s construction, and Your plans didn’t meet code. So I had to hire an engineer to redraw the plans.

Then I got a big fight over whether or not the Ark needed a  fire sprinkler system.

My neighbors objected, claiming I was violating zoning by building the Ark in my front yard, so I had to get a variance from the city planning commission.

Then I had a big problem getting enough wood for the Ark because there was a ban on cutting trees to save the Spotted Owl. I had to convince the U.S. Fish and Wildlife that I needed wood to save the owls. But they wouldn’t let me catch any owls. So no owls.

Then the carpenters formed a union and went out on strike. I had to negotiate a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board before anyone would pick up a saw or hammer. Now we have 16 carpenters going on the boat and still no owls.

Then I started gathering up animals, and got sued by an animal rights group. They objected to me taking  only two of each kind.

Just when I got the suit dismissed, EPA notified me that I couldn’t complete the Ark without filing an environmental impact assessment on Your proposed flood. They didn’t take kindly to the idea that they had no jurisdiction over the conduct of a Supreme Being.

Then the Army Corps of Engineers wanted a map of the proposed new flood plain. I sent them a globe.

Right now I’m still trying to resolve a complaint from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over how many Croatians I’m supposed to hire, with the IRS seizing all my assets claiming I’m trying to avoid paying taxes by leaving the country. And I just got a notice from the state about owing some kind of use tax.

“I really don’t think I can finish Your Ark for at least another five years,” wailed Noah.

The sky began to clear. The sun began to shine. A rainbow arched across the sky.

Noah looked up and smiled. “You mean You’re not going to destroy the earth?” Noah asked, hopefully.

“NO,” said the Lord sadly. “The government already has!” gv

E D I T O R I A L   B O A R D

MEMBERS:  Rudy D. Antonio & Arno A. Bautista [Canada Correspondents]; Engr. Silver Casilla & RN Merly Grospe-Mayo [U.S. Correspondents]; Engr. Joe L. Sevilla [Asingan Correspondent]; Col. Lalin Layos-Pascual; Ross C. Diaz; Engr. Lorie dG. Estrada; CPA Rod A. Layco; Wena A. Balino [Photo & Lay-out Artist]; Ruben “Bencio” Balino [Managing Editor].