SAT Progress Report

WE SPENT $3.6K of hard-earned bucks on SAT Summer Camp at Kweller Prep to help Sara prepare for college applications, and the investment is paying off very well. Her last practice test score is 90 points short of the 2018 perfect score of 1600, and she is determined to hit the mark when she takes her first actual test this fall, after a short trip with her cousins and Mom to Mindoro and Taiwan. Can't go; all summer vacations had been snapped up by coworkers with higher seniority.

Mount Defiance, 1891

THE FEARLESS MANGYAN DAUGHTER who was up front about how repulsed she was by the idea and dared to defy the malagti-skinned men's order to bare herself before the camera. And a not-so-lucky bull tamaraw that came a-charging in rage. Of the original Filipino soul. Photos from the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Michigan Library.

Dr. Frank Bourns, Pinoy tracker Fulgencio Aceveda and Dean Worcester in Mindoro, 1891

Smart Cards

A SMART THING TO DO if you are in the nation's capital is to stop by the Library of Congress and apply for a free Reader Identification Card which takes five minutes to process but must be renewed in person every two years. Even if you do not intend to do your research in the library, the card will also allow you to access and download material from the vast digital resources of HathiTrust from your home computer if you do not belong to any of its other partner institutions.

And the New York Public Library (together with Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Library) now gives its cardholders free admission (for two or four people!) to more than thirty museums and cultural institutions throughout the city with its Culture Pass program. (The Museum of Natural History is not there yet, but the list is still growing.) How's that as a perk from a library card?

Dollars And Sense

I HAVE BEEN WITH American Express for more than thirty years, reflecting a long-held practice of not overspending and paying off the card at the end of each statement period to avoid being charged a whopping 19.99% interest on any unpaid balance--a good caution not to live beyond my means--while earning hotel points at the same time. I also keep with the company a High Yield Personal Savings Account with a competitive 1.75% Annual Percentage Yield, way beyond what is offered by brick-and-mortar financial institutions like Chase and Bank of America at 0.01-0.03%!

A New Book

SDSU FRIEND Marilyn Chin has a forthcoming book whose title poem came from Strange Attraction: The Best of Ten Years of ZYZZYVA where a piece of yours truly she recommended to the magazine also appeared. More power to you and ZYZZYVA!

Dirge For The Lost One

THE SIEGE OF BALER and Phil-Spanish Friendship Day. The beginning of American colonization, the slaughter of the infant First Philippine Republic and the advent of fifty years in Hollywood. World traveler Pico Iyer's observation about current Philippine popular culture puts us to shame: "The most conspicuous institutions that America had bequeathed to the Philippines seemed to be the disco, the variety show and the beauty pageant. In the Philippines, I found no sign of Lincoln or Thoreau or Sojourner Truth; just Dick Clark, Ronald McDonald and Madonna.” What can I say? I'm a filispanophile, if there is such a word. I lament the near obliteration of the filispanic legacy, despite all the trauma--the pure love for country, the language, the art, the medieval city of Intramuros, the (unknown) Filipino soul before it was bastardized by Yankees. Where would we be if the First Philippine Republic triumphed and flourished? That can only be left to the imagination. (Panamanian) Carlos Almaran's familiar composition haunts on this sad day (at least for me), and so does Jose Honorato Lozano's early painting (párvulo was misspelled). Notice how the Pinoy attire of the revolutionaries hasn't changed much after more than half a century, albeit with different materiel. Last is the Spanish version of a story about another lost infant. ¡Viva la república filipina!

La tropa del lugarteniente Simón Tecsón en Baler, Mayo 1899, La Ilustración Artística, M. Arias y Rodríguez

por José Honorato Lozano, ca. 1840, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid

Done With Sophomore Year

STRUGGLED WITH Algebra Honors, but still ended up in the '90s and won a gold in the NY Math Fair. Great job in Composition and European Lit. Here's to Junior Year in September!

Monkey See, Monkey Do?

QUIZ FOR THE DAY. What does (sic) "Mangyan artist" Mat Relox's painting and Jacob Maentz's photograph have in common?  It is quite obvious. Although he made blunders in some details that make him unrated, in addition to a lack of an original "voice", Relox still seems to have a lot of potential.

A Manila Magazine

"THE FOUNDLING" in the Father's Day issue of The Sunday Times Magazine, with edits by its literary editor (including wrong punctuation) that I protest against. Read the original version here.

Flotsam And Jetsam

NOT QUITE THERE YET, but I think I'm off to a start with this galleon story, wobbly though it may be. Putting a historical perspective to a piece of fiction is a challenge, and there are other sources to read, about how the early Mangyans of Mindoro and those who fled to Romblon were forced to conversion by the Jesuits through reducciones, the reasons for the mutiny on the Concepción, and the deceitful business of galleon trading during the 17th century. Posting this fragment to keep myself going.

The island of Maestro de Campo (Sibale to locals) is closer to Mindoro than to the rest of the province of Romblon that administers it, and its present residents have been clamoring for annexation to the province of Oriental Mindoro where they buy their basic goods and necessities (particularly in Pinamalayan, which is two hours by boat from Concepcion), go for education and hospitalization, and take the faster and more frequent and reliable transportation to Manila, but their petition remains stalled in the Congress.

Detail of the Baldwin map from the June 1763 issue of The London Magazine, showing the horseshoe-shaped Maestro de Campo east of Mindoro along the galleon track from Manila to the Embocadero in San Bernardino

An early photograph of Mangyans taken by Dean Worcester in 1891