Rare Periodicals

Panorama

Media

Part of Panorama

Title

Panorama

Description

All these are either original productions or selective adaptions and condensations from Philippine and foreign publications. Usually brief and compact, lasting from two to ten minutes to read, each article offers a rewarding experience in one’s moments of leisure.

Issue Date

Volume VII (Issue No. 13) December 1955

Publisher

Community Publishers, Inc.

Year

1955

Language

English

Subject

Books and reading

Recreational reading

Rights

Place of publication

Manila

extracted text

MAGAZINE OF GOOD READING DECEMBER 1 9 5 5 Rizal: Rebel or Pacifist? An appraisal of a hero's role The Bottomless Cockpit By E. AGUILAR CRUZ Filipino Writing Through American Eyes By N.V.M. GONZALEZ • Philippine . Elections, 195.5 On a Chinese Stage • CENTAVOS CONTENTS ARTICLES Land of the Long Christmases .... Jim Austria Jose Rizal: Rebel or Pacifist? . Elmer A. Ordoii.ez Look Homeward, Pinoy . . . . . . . Bartlett Stoodley Philippine Elections, 1955 ...... F. C. Sta. Maria In a Chinese Make-Believe World . Yao Hsin Nung Americans Look at Filipino Writing ........... . N.V.M. Gonzalez Great Rivers Beneath the Oceans . Richard Parsons A Screwball in Ev~ry Family ... Jose D. Roy, Jr. When Is Christmas? ........... : ............ . The Bottomless Cockpit . . . . . . . . E. Aguilar Cruz Tornados in a Philippine Settin~ . . . Efren Sunico Dance, the Joyous Past ..................... . You and Your Income Tax ... Jose C. Campos, Jr. Romeo and Juliet on the Screen . Miguel A. Bernad When Giants Walked on Earth . . . . . Ben Revilla The Rocks at Baguio ......... Mateo H. Tupas The Walls I Have Broken . Aprodicio -A. Laquian Green Turmoil of Forests . . . . . . . . Fenix Madura FICTION 1 1~ 16 21 25 29 34 36 37 48 53 ss' 65 69 73 79 87 Christmas Gift . . . . . . . . . . . . Francisco Arce11ana 44 REGULAR FEATURES Are You Word Wise? ......... _ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24' Panorama Peek ......................... -· . . . 43 Book Review-Prize Stories of 1955 ......... . Leonard Casper 54 Literary Personality- XII: Grahame Greene . . . 62 Panorama Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 In the Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Philippine Panorama - XIII: Dagupan . . . . . . . . . 82 Fun-Orama by Elmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 PANORAMA is published monthly by the Community Publishers, Inc., 1986 Herran, Manila, Philippines Editor: JAIME LUCAS Business Manager: MRS. C. A. MARAMAG Subscription rates: In the Philippines, one year PS.00; two years P9.00. Foreign subscription: one year $4.00 U.S.; two years $7.00 U.S. Single copy 50 centavos. Entered as a second class mail matter at the Manila Post Office on Dec. 8, 1955 MANILA, PHILIPPINES It's an old Filipino custom DECEMBER 1 9 5 5 No. 13 Land of the Long @hristmases By JIM AUSTRIA • f"'<""','1Ji,4Ff:'Y''i:i HRISTMAS IN THE Philippines is a 22-day fiesta. The great celebration commences on the morning of December 16, at cock's crow, with the ringing of church bells in towns, villages and cities, when the folk awake to a world seemingly changed of a sudden and they say, "It's Christmas already." This is the start of the Christmas novena, and the signal for the hanging of Christmas lanterns in the windows and the display of the be/en in the sala, and in the churches, of the life-size tableaus of Mary and Joseph with angels and shepherds around the crib of Jesus. The symbols of Christmas remain there until January 6 on the feast of Three Kings when the season ends and the holidays are over. It is the longest Christmas in the world, and custom has had it so for 200 years more or less. The extension of the Pascuas to include Three Kings Day is a Spanish tradition, but the nineday prelude to Christmas is exclusively Filipino. The Philippines is the only country in the world which prepares for the feast of the birth of Christ with a novena of masses given to obtain graces and divine favors of the Christ Child and Mary, for which reason the devout call it the misa aguinaldo. Each of the masses is said at 4 o'clock in the morning, and in some towns even earlier, at cock's crow, so that the folk prefer to call it by its commoner name, the misa de gallo. It was a Spanish priest of a certain town who gave Filipinos their first misa de gallo, although he had no means of knowing it at the time. This happened way back in the early 1700's one harvest season after an extra9rdinarily rich and bountiful crop. The good priest, awed by the infallible sign of heavenly goodwill, drew all the pious farmers together and bade them give thanks to their sainted patron through a novena of masses for their good fortune, so that by this act they may obtain graces and repeated favors the com2 ing year. Since it has been the practice, long before the advent of sainted patrons, to celebrate good harvests with pagan feasting, the priest probably thought it best to blend the native with religious custom and accorditigly resolved that the proposed novena be climaxed with a day of rejoicing and festival. To make the plan practical, it was further resolved that the novena be started exactly nine days before Christmas Day, so that the end might coincide with Christmas Eve and the solid feed that went with the noche buena. This was done, and with such happy results that the act to obtain graces was repeated the following year, and the next year after that. Soon it spread to neighboring pueblos and then to the entire countryside. From this crude beginning evolved the misa de gallo as it is known today, and although grandmothers look back to the misas of their day with deer nostalgia - remembering how a myriad candles had shed their light on the kneeling figures on the unpaved floor of the village church, and how women in their thick black veil and chine/as, and young girls in shawls, and children in their plain dresses had flocked to the belen at the side altar while the Christmas star made of tinsel and transparent Japanese paper m w'U. mysteriously overhead - still the tradition has been conserved PANORAMA and remains today an essential element of the Filipino Christmas. It is the misa, with its blend of folk and religious magic which takes the native Christmas back to the middle ages. Much of the old-fashioned flavor has worn off, with the coming of the Christmas saint and the tinselled tree, but some facets of the custom still remain. From the 16th of December to the 24th, the bells ring out at cock's crow to call the folk to the misa, while musicians or groups of young men and boys serenade the neighborhood with guitars and bandurias and old familiar Christmas songs. Meanwhile, in the houses the women hustle the children out of bed and the household gets ready for church. At the last pealing of the bells from the church spires, the household is ready, and wrapped in shawls and sweaters, venture out into the D e c e m b e r cold and walk through the streets past the lighted lanterns which ha n g from every window. The gladdest songs of Christendom are sting at the misa de gallo to the accompaniment of the organ. and castanets. A choir, with angels' voices, sings at the loft and the church is lighted from top to bottom and a great star hangs over the beJen. But for all this, it is with difficulty that the small fry keep from dozing off after the DECEMBER 1955 Gloria (this, too, is part; of the tradition), although this state does not last long, because of the thunderous drum which from time to time awakens them while sleeping at their heaviest. ft ND AS SOON as the misa ends, the people file out of the church, and some wind their way straight home, although the now fully-awakened children stop by the small tiendas in the patio, attracted by the faint but persistent fragrance of latik and the smell of bibingka cooking in the coals. There is the hiss of carbide from the lamps beside which are displayed baskets of puto and suman of many forms and flavors and the pots of hot tea which go with them. This is the children's festival of the misa de gallo and all the rigors of the holy sacrifice are endured for the sake of the bibingka breakfast after. The misa de gallo, the first delightful premonition of Christmas here, is but one of the many ways by which Filipinos seek to make the meaning of Christmas clearer. It starts a season humming _with festival, during which the folk, returning to ageold pageants and ceremonies, illustrate with native love and gaiety the various episodes of the Christ story. There is a ceremony in many Tagalog towns, performed on Christmas Eve, recording the 3 •• sad pilgrimage of Mary and Joseph through the streets of Bethlehem in search of the elusive innkeeper. An hour before midnight, the loveliest girl in town selected to play the Virgin, and the make-believe St. Joseph, likewise selected for his looks, dress up in the traditional robes and set off on the ghostly wandering that is to lead them to nowhere. The pair present themselves at the doors of the houses of the rich, begging a night's lodging, while the people follow behind, singing the familiar songs of Christmas. All the doors are shut in their faces, and the pair, in the- last minutes before the stroke of midnight, finally turn their steps toward the church. Meanwhile, the cast in the Christmas story has gathered in church: the angels, the shepherd, the Three Wise Men, even the lamb, the goat and donkey. They go up the altar, and hidden, gather about in the ready creche and at the stroke of midnight, the bells peal fortli and ring, music rises from the choirloft, and unseen hands part the curtains revealing the belen, complete with Mary and Joseph and the Child Jesus. Visayans have a more exotic custom. On Christmas Eve, immediately after the angelus, a great bonfire is built in the town plaza, accompanied by the deep and loud pealing of the bells. The whole town gathers about DECEMBER 1955 the bonfire, at the same time the priest, alone with his church boys and acolytes and cantores, officiates at a strange ceremony. He takes a hollow plate with the engraved images of the serene Madonna and her Child, and washes it reverently with alcohol. The plate is then scented with eau de cologne, or any scented water from the Chinese tienda, then bundled up in sheer and flowing raiment and blessed in the presence of the sacristans and cantores. Just what facet of the Christmas story this ceremony is supposed to celebrate has not been made very clear. Elsewhere in the Philippines, Christmas Eve finds the women of the house preparing confections of cakes, pastries and turrones traditional to Christmas. The squealing of pigs, cackling of chickens, and the clatter of silver in the kitchen prove that all thoughts at this time are on the midnight supper and the dinner tomorrow, while children rally round their elders, always underfoot, begging to run errands. All are awake on noche buena, in obedience to that ancient custom, still clung to by families of the old order, which proclaimed that everybody, from the head of the house to the smallest toddler, should not sleep on Christmas Eve. 5 "Esta noche es noche buena Y no es noche para dormir." <[Hus, THE Andalusian couplet, and the town provides such revelry, such sounds, sights and smells, as would keep even the babies well awake. Brass bands parade down the streets, outplaying the native musikong buho from, the barrio, as usual followed by running children. All doors are open, all houses are lighted, in the spirit of Christmas cheer and hospitality. At the church plaza, people waiting for the midnight mass mill around several booths displaying standard "exhibits" depicting scenes from the Christmas story. The movement of the people and vehicles quickens as it nears midnight. Christmas shines in the eyes of the little girl who dresses up in her new clothes for the evening, and who troops out along with the rest of the town to church to hear the solemn beautiful midnight mass of Christmas Eve. This is the climax of the season, and people filling the church to overflowing say, "Maligayang Pasko" to the neighbors. T he r e is beauty about it, the way Filipinos greet one another on Christmas Eve, under the bright glow of Christmas stars in the church patio, which is never approximated by the toasts of "Merry Christmas" over the English eggnog. 6 Soon the midnight mass is over, and the congregation queues up at the altar to kiss the feet of the image of Jesus which is lifted from the beien and brought around to the altar. Celebrated in all Roman Catholic churches throughout the world, the midnight mass is the real celebration of the feast of the Nativity. Then from church, the people go home to their "noche buena" which has become synonymou~ with hams and chicken soups, roasted chestnuts, oranges and grapes where the tables are varied and richer, and, where the tastes are simpler, with native cake or arroz caldo. The midnight supper is virtually the end of the religious Christmas, and from here on to Christmas Monday it is a children's festival. m ANY FILIPINOS of an older generation w i 11 recall with what sentimental longing the Christmases of yesteryear, when the holidays marked the loving participation of all the family, the church and the school, when Christmas was no casual undertaking, finished with a trip to the bazaar and the trimming of a Christmas tree, but a properly long and loving work over the belen in the sala and the family recipes in the kitchen and the laborious preparations for the Christmas Day visits - all done according to PANORAMA classic admonitions sanctified by generations of use. On the morning of Christmas Day, the Filipino boy does not look under the Christmas tree for presents, but goes solemnly to breakfast, dressed stiffly in his new clothes, ready to sweep off to church and then to his round of visits, accompanied by an l'lUnt or an elder sister, to ,collect aguinaldos from grand"mothers, uncles and godparents - the ninong anc:! ninang who, having probably neglected their Christian duty the whole year, are now expected to play the role of Santa Claus to the hilt. The boy kisses the ninong's hand, all according to custom, in.utters a shy "Maligayang Pasko," and hangs back belligerently, while the victim fishes in his pockets for the bright silver coins he has been saving for this day, or for the package of Tshirts he has kept ready for the 0EcEMBER 1955 occasion, piled among similar packages on his table for the hosts of other godchildren sure to greet him that day. The spirit of English Christmas first came to the Philippines in the early 1900's, soon after the American occupation. It marked the first shipment h e r e of · made - in - Germany Christmas trees which became the craze on the Escolta, and the heyday of Clarke's, the big department store on the Escolta, where traditional pop-corn strands were strung about dur7 ing Christmas, and a barrel of red apples stood near the doorway, beside a crate of big California oranges. But sweetest sight of all to youthful eyes was the beautiful red-striped candy canes hanging from the chandeliers above the Christmas tree from Benguet. In those days the block between Calle Rosario and the end of the Escolta was called the City of Gold, owing to the multicolored lights that blazed in that shopping center. But even if, today, the whole town still converges on the Escolta for the Christmas shopping, times have indeed changed. The candy canes are gone, and in their place, the spangles and tinsel and showers of metallic fibers in the showcases. For all that, however, the Philippines is still the land of the long Christmases, and the lanterns lighted on the 16th of December are not taken down until the eve of the New Year. Christmas cards keep coming, the Christmas shopping goes on. And to the religious who would not let go of a three-centuries tradition, the fiesta is prolonge<! beyond New Year's Day, to the feast of Three Kings when the folk hold their age-old pageant of the Three Wise Men, and the season of gift-giving reaches its climax. - from the Philippines Quarterly. * * * 8 In Waitomo Cave, New Zealand, the lights shining on the roof are glowworms-a kind called Arachnocampa luminosa, found in New Zealand. Glowworms are the larval stage of a small flying insect, having hatched from eggs laid on the ceiling. Hanging in a self-spun hammock, each glowwonn dangles beneath it a score of sticky threads. Then, through some process which still baffles scientists, it turns on a blue-green light in its tail. Moths and midges, which are attracted by the light, fly to it and are entangled in a thread. Promptly the glowworm reels in the thread, swallowing it and insect together. After several months of gfowing and eating, the worm becomes a chrysalis and later turns into a fly. Along with the inects it eats, the Arachnocarnpa luminosa- attracts -tourists, who are rowed through the cave to admire the glowworm galaxy. * PANORAMA Jose Rizal: Rebel or Pacifist? He didn't wish to have a part in the rebellion he incited By ELMER A. ORDONEZ FIFTEEN days before the execution of Jose P. Rizal at Bagumbayan in Luneta, the well-revered hero wrote a manifesto addressed to his countrymen who were in the thick of an armed rebellion against the Spanish rulers. Maintaining that education and industry were the best means to achieve the liberties that the people had been deprived of, Rizal condemned "this uprising - as absurd, savage, and plotted behind my back - which dishonors us Filipinos and discredits those who could plead our cause." The statement of Rizal also reflected the position of many of the Filipino intellectuals at the time - who through their pamphleteering sought reforms for the country, if not immediate independence. But for the plebians in the field, there DECEMBER 1955 • was no turning back; they were anxious to have a rallying point for the success of the revolution. Rizal's statement must have struck them as utterly reactionary; they went on fighting. Later, Rizal's death, historians seem to be agreed, served to incense further the revolutionists into prosecuting the war to the bitter end. As we well know, the course of the revolution twisted and its objective of independence w a s subverted, when another army landed m the Philippines. The Americans succeeded in checking the "insurrection" of Aguinaldo and now professed to show the "only road by which the Filipino people can establish a government of their own that the United States will consider stable." Having had costly battles and skirmishes with the Fi9 THE DAY RIZAL WAS SHOT "It was early morning, December 30, 1896, and the bright sunshine of the tropics streamed down upon the open space, casting hard fantastic shadows, and drenching with its splendor two crowds of sightseers. The one was composed of Filipinos, cowed, melancholy, sullen, gazing through hopeless eyes at the final scene in the life of their great countryman-the man who had dared to champion their cause, and to tell the world the story of their miseries; the other was blithe of air, gay with the unifomrs of officers and the bright dresses of Spanish ladies, the men jesting and laughing, the women shamelessly applauding with waving handkerchiefs and clapping palms, all alike truimphing openly in the death of he hated "Indian", the "brother of the water-buffalo," whole insolence had wounded their pride." lipino army, the Americans naturally discredited any Filipino leader who believed in violence as a means to the independence they were now purporting to "grant" after a period of "education in self-government." Rizal, whom an American writer described as "a Filipino who understood and preferred the Anglo-Saxon idea of Liberty", fitted into the American's program for "the new Philippines." Considering the pacifist approach of Rizal towards the problems of his country, the Americans favored him over other Filipino patriots like Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo and proceeded to build a cult ab o u t the hero to the extent that Rizal today, school children are still taught, 10 -Sir Hugh Clifford is the foremost national hero of the Philippines. T HERE WAS official endorsement of Rizal. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, said to have stud'.ed Rizal's "The Indolence of the Filipinos" and "The Phliippines a Century Hience,'' declared in 1903: "lo the Philippine Islands the American government has tried, and is trying, to carry out exactly what the greatest genius and most revered patriot ever known in the Philippines, Jose Rizal, steadfastly advocates." Secretary of War Elihu Root, who reportedly wrote the "Mckinley Instructions" upon which the American Philippine policy had been based, also said: "The greatest genius and most revered patriot of -the Philippines PANORAM.A was Jose Rizal. Shortly before he was done to death by Spain he sent a message to his countrymen. It must have been his hist message; and in it he condemned the insurrection of Aguinaldo, which terminated just before our navy appeared upon the scene, and pointed out the path his people should follow to liberty and enlightenment. This message is the platform of the American government in the Philippines." The minor writings of Rizal, excluding his two novels, had been compiled by an American writer as "of utmost importance to those who would understand the attitude of America toward these Islands." This writer further said: "That vexed phrase 'stable government' in the preamble to the Jones Act is to be interpreted as Jose Rizal would interpret it, and only the study of his writings can make clear what his interpretation would be. Economic independence, as the basis of political independence, it will be seen is not an American innovation but a rep e t i t i o n of what R i z a I preached." J T MAY be said that the American authorities succeeded in preventing an extension of an armed movement by making the Filipino nationalists accept the peaceful alternatives of Rizal. The irrepressible fight for independence was thereby waged in parliamentary halls and the people absorbed as much American education as they could. Nine years after the proclamation of Philippine independence by the Americans in July 4, 1946 (coinciding with the U.S. Independence Day) Filipinos are still arguing whether we really have the political and economic independence promised us. There is hardly any doubt that Rizal, notwithstanding the Americans' attempt to build him up as a myth of their liking, was a great patriot who gave so much to his country. His function was primarily as an intellectual; he had the benefit of education in the sciences and the liberal arts. He was able to write convincingly about the evils of friars and the Spanish administration, and the means by which his countrymen could correct their own faults. His analysis of the country's political and social problems was scholarly. He was no demagogue nor a military man. And when the armed movement, which he indirectly helped to incite, got on the way, there were other leaders and other patriots, for he had no wish to have a part in it. * * * lJEcEMBER 1955 11 Loo le 1-toineward, Vinoy The Philippines zs NOT America! If N EUROPEAN and American !l sociology, the movement from rural to urban social structures is taken for granted - is looked at, in fact, as an irreversible and inevitable process. Yet, in the first place, the nature of that movement and its goal has been given varied and c on t r a d i c t o r y interpretations; and secondly, it may not even apply to the Philippines. In the late nineteenth century, under the influence of Darwin, Herbert Spencer had predicted the inevitable evolution of more complex societies from the simple, that is, urban from rural. Later, Durkheim observed, however, that many primitive societies h a v e not changed appreciably during hundreds of years. 12 By BARTLETT STOODLEY Yet even Durkheim believed that wherever .population does increase, this is matched by an increase in moral density. Soon, however, the skepticism of a new century - of men like Spengler and Tonybee - had concluded that the growth of cities has invariably been associated with the growth of disorganization and social breakdown. In either case, the sociological conclusion is misleading because it is based on massive generalizations before studies in sufficient detail and of particular societies have been ace om-: PANORAMA plished; because it tends to present a deterministic view (the inevitability of industrialization and the city) which remains to 'be proven; and because its concept of the urban and rural patterns, being oversimplified, leaves no room for exceptions or variations which, presumably, would require modifications in the views of social change and even social values. 13 EFORE THEORIES based on intercontinental p e o p 1 e s over centuries of time can have scientific validity, a closer scrutiny must be made of individual communities in smaller segments of history. It is just possible that so-called historical processes can be reversed or altered; and that sociologists, with the help of political scientists, economists, and psychologists, can help plan their own century, instead of merely accepting what they think it must become. The old "sponge" concepts (sacred vs. secular societies, mechanical vs. organic solidarity, etc.), intended to soak up and account for all aspects of society, only oversimplify data and gravitate toward only "either-or" alternatives, theories of opposites, wit h little visible range of variation possible. The terms in such systems need clarification, and the systems themselves must be made more flexible. Otherwise, they are DECEMBER 1955 fictions, conveniences that can be applied only by force. Certainly, present classifications and theoretical movements would hardly seem to apply to the Philippines. The Philippines is not America: the conditions, procedures and goals of one are not necessarily those of the other. Sociologists here need to test their theories against the Philippine setting. Even offhand, several national differences are visible. A. The indigenous culture. In the United States the indigenous culture (that of the American Indian) has had but little eff~ct on the dominant culture which was carried from Europe and England. Even the casual observer in the Philippines, however, must be struck by the fact that important cultural elements in this society are derived not from the invading Spanish or American cultures but from the culture of the "aboriginal" Filipino. B. Catholicism. The United States has, from the beginning, been a predominantly Protestant country. Deep-seated characteristics of American society stem from the Protestant Reformation and from forces closely related to the Reformation such as the Industrial Revolution. The Spanish culture was not a carrier of these ideas. It was rather a carrier of feudal ideas. 13 The disturbing "modern" ideas fomenting in central and northern Europe and England were diffused largely through Filipinos who traveled and studied on the Continent. These influences entered the Philippines en masse from the United States at the close of the nineteenth century. By all means the most important cultural bequest to the Philippines from Spain was Catholicism. It would appear that Philippine society is just as definitely and significantly Catholic as American society is Protestant. C. An economically dominant cultural minority. The United States experienced a massive immigration of about 25 million Europeans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Philippines, in modern times, has experienced no such tide. In the States, hO\vever, no single ethnic group arose to a position of economic dominance. In the Philippines a small invasion of Chinese has resulted in the creation of a dominant economic minority. D. Class and culture. In the States, the upper class is severely atrophied. The concentration of social, political and economic power is attached to what has been termed the "upper-middltt" class. In the Philippines an important upper class, in association with a repressive military authority, develooed during Spanish times. 14 Although the Spanish regime has come to an end, it appears that the upper class has retained important elements of Spanish culture and Spanish orientations: On the other hand, American influence appears to have infused into and encouraged the growth of the middle class in this society. E. The rural culture and the planned economy. In the United States the change from rural to urban culture took place with dramatic rapidity. Certainly, in the Philippines, the dominant culture is still rural. In the United States you go "to the country" for a vacation, not to "go home." Even the early American farmers had a strong "rational" bent. In addition, immigrants to the United States were frequently individuals who had become dislodged within their own social groups at home. Social and personality fragmentations were involved in the immigration process itself and were strengthened by the process of Western expansion. The rural culture of the Philippines was not exposed to these disruptive forces. It represents a solid "cake of custom." It may be assumed that this rural culture will strongly resist radical change and that any change will be associated with a higher incidence of social disorganization than even that in the States. PANORAMA F. Strategic position of the Filipino family. In the United States the American middleclass family has been fragment't!d. In size it has been reduced to parents and children: not relatives. The Filipino family, on the other hand, is not only large in size but also exerts a controlling influence on the behavior of its members. It attracts loyalty and exacts self-sacrifice. ization. The "ladder type" of authority that exists in the Filipino family forms a strong contrast to the distribution of authority in the American family, and must be of decisive importance in the formation of basic personality types. It therefore stands as a bulwark against the "individuation" that is associated with urbanThe Filipino family will certainly be of utmost importance in culture change, in the process of urbanization, and in economic and class organization. -Adapted from the Philippine Sociological Review. * * * RIZAL ON NATIONALISM "The lack of national sentiment brings another evil, moreover which the absence of all opposition to measures prejudicial to the people and the absence of any initiative in whatever may redound to its good. A man in the Philippines is only an individual, he is not a member of a nation. He is forbidden and denied the right of association, and is therefore weak and sluggish. The Philippines are an organism whose cells seem to have no arterial system to irrigate it or nervous system to communicate its impressions; these cells must, nevertheless, yield their product, get it where they can; if they perish, let them perish. In view of some this is expedient so that a colony may be a colony; perhaps they are right, but not to the effect that a colony may flourish." -Rizal, "Indolence of the Filipino" * * INEVITABLE MACGREGOR-"! hear you and Elspeth are to be mamed after all." MACDONALD-" Quite right. You see, Elspeth has put on so much weight we couldn't get the engagement ring off her finger." * DECEMBER 1955 15 An appraisal Philippine Elections, 1955 By Felixberto C. Sta. Maria I I A s THE GENEVA foreign ministers' conference broke up in a huff of mutual accusations and the Middle East tumult settled to a quiescent simmer, Philippine voters last month went to the polls to elect senators and local government officials. Indeed, important world events took a back seat in the Philippine press, as more than four million voters asserted their voice. The results of the recent elections are remarkable in many respects. Exceeding even the honest expectations of the party in power is the tremendous support given by the people to the N acionalista candidates in both senatorial and local elections. Almost as remarkable perhaps are the surprising strength of the lone woman candidate in the N acionalista slate, and the poor showing of President Magsay16 say's arch critic, Senator Claro M. Recto. But the 1955 off-season election is also significant in other ways, notably in the disturbing fact that organized opposition in the Philippines has been dealt a virtual death blow. Here is how the country voted for the first ten in the senatorial contest, according to the latest available (Nov. 15) release of the Commission on Elections: 1. Pacita M. Warns .. . 2. Lorenzo Sumulong .. . 3. Quintin Paredes .... . 4. Francisco Rodrigo .. . 5. Peclr;, Sabido ....... . 6. Claro M. Recto 7. Domocao Alonto .... . 8. Decoroso Rosales .... . 9. Juan Chioco ....... . 10. Diosdado Macapagal . 2,630,607 2,342,634 2,216,935 2,179,161 1,868, 732 1,757,262 1,655,629 1,634,943 1,524,498 1.499,235 For t h e special two-year term: 1. Roseller T. Lim . . . . . 1,129,173 2. Simeon Toribio 698, 781 PANORAMA All the elected senators (first eight of the ten and Lim of the special term) are official Nacionalista candidates, with the exception of Recto who ran under the Liberal Party banner as a guest candidate. The Liberal Party man that came closest to victory was Macapagal, who polled at least 135,000 votes below the lowest winning Nacionalista candidate (Rosales). Macapagal gallantly held to the winning column until the overwhelming votes from the V i s a y a s and Mindanao dislodged him. The rest of the Liberal Party candidates, veterans as they are in Philippine politics, succumbed to the Nacionalista landslide. THE MANDATE of the electorate is quite clear: President Magsaysay and the party he pulled out from the doldrums is still popular with the people. Pre-election forecasts fr o m impartial sources gave the nottoo-strong N acionalista senatorial ticket a better-than-even chance of winning. But total victory, as achieved on November 8, was not predicted by even a single wiseacre. Alonto, Rosales, Sabido and even Paredes and Rodrigo came under the "doubtful" category before elections. On the other hand, the Liberal Party's Pecson, Macapagal, Osias, Peralta and Magalona were given "good" chances of winning. And cerDECEMBER 1955 tainly Recto, the LP guest candidate, was conceded to land among the tcp winners. The decisive victory of the N acionalista Party, both in the senatorial fight and in the gubernatorial and other local contests, implies several things. First, President Magsuysay's personal popularity is still high among the electorate. This fact is undeniable in the light of the N acionalista victory, despite the admitted .weakness - in the political sense - of the NP candidates. Practically all candidates Magsaysay specifically endorsed beat their more experienced opponents. (Liberal-dominated Fangasinan province, bailiwick of former Speaker Eugenio Perez of the LP, is the best example: Newcomer Estrella, endorsed by Magsaysay, beat Veteran Allas in the gubernatorial race). Second, the Liberal Party has been repudiated by the people. Hard to admit for the Liberals, this bitter fact was clinched by the last (and third consecutive) defeat of the party. As one defeated LP candidate said after the elections, the sins of the Liberal Party are still fresh in the memory of the Filipino people. And this ill-feeling brought down in defeat the best bets of the party. Third, the rural areas, particularly the barrios, still carry the decisive vote in Philippine elections. It is this "lowly" seg17 ment that catapulted Ramon Magsaysay to power; awakened to a realization of its vast potential energy, it still wields the power that makes and unmakes national leaders in politics. Significantly, the fired imagination of the masses gave Pacita Madrigal Warns a vote plurality unmatched in any Philippine senatorial election. Fourth, the opposition is in its death throes, as a result of the resounding defeat of the Liberal Party. The election battle-cry of the Liberals - give the country an effective opposition - was wantonly ignored by the electorate. THE INDIVIDUAL showing of the senatorial candidates also invite interesting scrutiny. For instance, Warns' topping of the winning list came as a surprise probably even to her own supporters. Garnering an amazing vote lead (almost 300,000 votes beyond Sumulong, the second place winner, and over a million over Rosales, the last place winner), Warns, above all, proved the soundness of Magsaysay's "Barrio first" theory. Her victory, however, was compounded of other fortunate elements: a well-financed, wellorganized campaign; tremendous publicity and contacts she made first as a Magsaysay-forPresident-Movement ( MPM) campaigner and later as a social welfare administrator (she 18 was present in all major disasters, distributing relief), and her sincere, if over-pious, claims of concern for the poor. Warns set the imagination of the sug~ gestible masses aflame, and she hit the jackpot. Sumulong's victory, on the other hand, was unspectacular, considering his good record and brilliant qualifications. He was favored to win even before the elections. At the outset controversial, Paredes had the singular fortune of having gotten on the winning bandwagon. His decision to switch to the Nacionalista Party made all the difference: he might have suffered the humiliating fate of Osias or Pecson of the Liberal Party. That is not to say, of course, that Paredes is unqualified. By training and experience, he probably deserves better than the third place that the electorate grudgingly gave him. On the reverse side of the political coin, the NP slate surely profited from the deal, too. It was, in other words, an arrangement for mutual advantage. Rodrigo's election may be attributed to three factors, in this order: ( 1) his fortunate inclusion in the NP ticket, ( 2) his popularity as both a radio commentator and a good lawyer, and ( 3) the support of Catholic voters. It is doubtful if, as his detractors claim, the alleged support of the Church could PANORAMA have made him win. Outside the NP ticket, Rodrigo would have lost. But undoubtedly the focus of unabated public interest was Claro M. Recto. To many, especially in cities and urban areas, the 1955 election was a test of strength between Magsaysay and Recto. And judging from Recto's unimpressive victory, the electorate have chosen •to ignore the fighting senator's indictment of President Magsaysay's administration. R ECTo's ELECTION showing reveals, a m o n g other things, the following: ( 1) his personal popularity is quite high; ( 2) pitted against Magsaysay's however, this popularity dims considerably, at least as of 1955; (3) his victory, premised as it were on his personal qualifications, is not necessarily an acceptance of his anti-Magsaysay views and policies (for example, his dictatorship charge) but a public admission of the fact that effective opposition is essential in a democratic government; ( 4) his poor performance in Manila and other metropolitan areas, traditionally oppositionist and intellectual centers, presages his diminishing political following, and certainly discourages him from running against Magsaysay in the 1957 presidential elections. Mr. Recto, as most Filipinos know, is a strong-minded critic DECEMBER 1955 who makes a dangerous political enemy. But it is also a well-known fact that the Batangas senator is a better academician than a field leader. He will have to show a more concrete and practical approach to national problems than his brilliant theories (which may, but usually don't, work) if he wishes to win the support of the rural folk. If an indirect lesson should be gained from the last elections by Recto, it is therefore this: the grass-roots charm of President Magsaysay has been hewn by rugged, dirt-stained hands out of the common people's basic, everyday p r o b 1 e m s . It would do well for any presidential aspirant to have this fact in mind. The cold, hair-splitting logic of a Recto will not fire the common tao's imagination. Among the genuine Liberals, Macapagal could have broken the party jinx. He is a very capable legislator with an unsullied record. Well-founded rumors before elections had it that President Magsaysay favored his candidacy - a speculation which was not unlikely. But even Macapagal lost: a case of the parents' sin being visited on the children. BY COMMON JUDGMENT, the 1955 election was one of the b e st conducted, notwithstanding pre-election crimes and isolated cases of post-election 19 violence. It cannot be explained easily, however, '.'1hy the election turnout was poor. Since 19 51 voters have increased from 4. 7 millions to 6.5 millions. Yet only about 4 millions (or 707o) turned out in 1955, as against about 4.4 millions (or 92 'lo) in 1951. One reason for the poor response may be suggested by the frequency of elections in the country. There is, in plain words, too much politics for the people to either cope with or afford. The statement is not really as trite as it sounds. For the professional politicians and hangers-on, there is never enough; but for the average working tao, whose main concern is to make two or three square meals a day, election every two years is just too much. The suggestion often made that elections be held every four years is indeed a sound one. It should be studied carefully. After all, there is no valid reason why we should copy the United States, for instance, or any other country. Finally, in keeping with democratic principles, the opposition party in the Philippines must be revitalized. If the moribund Liberal Party is too weak• to take even a blood transfusion, it must be killed promptly. A coup de grace, in the style of relieving a suffering horse, will p r o v e considerably merciful. Then perhaps a new party, composed of younger and untainted leaders, would rise to give a legitimate opposition. Even President Magsaysay would welcome one. * * * 20 SULU MINIATURES A tiny Sulu island called Siasi declared war on the United States all by itself. Another island, Laminasa, is only 200 yards wide and a kilometer long, but 12,000 people live on it, weaving the finest nipa mats in the Philippines and selling them from Luzon to Jolo for floor and wall coverings. Sibutu has the finest dancing in the countrY and a curious technique of intricate etching on cane. Kabingaan is an island only at low tide: a few hours later it vanishes under several feet of water, but 10,000 people live there on houseboats moored permanently to the sand bank. - Santha Rama Rau * PANORAMA . ~ n a t3'-t-ee4e ?ltak-~duwe World The mind is its own stage T 0 CALL THE traditional Chinese theater "opera" Ds as misleading as to dub a beaver a fish because it swims. For Chinese stagecraft is, in fact, a synthesis of singing, dancing, acting (as distinguished from mere behaving), acrobatics, pantomimes, gestures, postures and ensembles. It embodies the elements of opera, ballet and the legitimate drama, yet does not fall under any one of these categories. Like the Elizabethan stage, it makes no pretense of reflecting life as it is. This is the basic concept with which an untutored spectator may find it easier to comprehend and appreciate the Chinese dramatic art, in spite of the language barrier, the exotic music (call it din if DECEMBER 1955 By YAO HSIN-NUNG you will), and the more or less baffling conventions. Chinese stagecraft is so far removed from realism, in fact, that even such simple actions as walking, laughing and crying are rigidly stylized according to the role of the actor. The mastery of the correct style is the essential requirement to be fulfilled by a Chinese actor; and that means many solid years of rigorous training at the dramatic academy. It is true that great actors often have a style of their own, but the individual touch is usually a glorification of, rather than a departure from, the basic style of their role. In harmony with the stylized 21 acting, the Chinese uses practically no decors except a backdrop that has two openings, one for entrance and the other for exit. A few chairs and tables are brought into the scene by the property man, when required, to serve as furniture; as well as many other things, such as a bed, a bridge, a jail door, a mountain, and so forth. An embroidered curtain attached to a bamboo frame stands for a fourposter, a tent, a court of law, or the court of a king, as the case may be. A whip represents a horse; an oar, a boat; a blue cloth curtain with an opening in the middle, the gate of a walled city - to mention but a few conventions. 7HE WANT of realism, however, is compensated for by an ab1J_11dance of symbolism. Four flag-bearers running across the stage, for instnace, suggest a forthcoming gale. The color of paint on the actor's face, too, has symbolic significance. White indicates treachery; black, candor; red, uprightness and loyalty; green, demonry; blue, cruelty; a patch between the eyes, villainy, frivolity or comic nature; and so forth. On the bare stage the actor conjures and properties out of the air by means of conventional movements and gestures. He creates a door by deliberately lifting a foot to step over the imaginary threshold, or by do22 SCENE STEALERS "In the Japanese theater, it is not necessary to lower the , curtain to change the scene. Stagehands, wearing black suits, dart from behind a black curtain to shift scenery and help actors change costumes while the performance goes on. The audience understands from the black curtain ( caJJ. ed kuromaku) that the stagehands aren't really there. Jap- i· anese politics also has its background manipulators who pretend not to be there and plainly are, and they are appropriately called kuromaku." -Time Magazine ing the pantomime of shutting or opening it. To mount an absentee horse, he touches the invisible saddle and, wielding a whip, puts his feet into the intangible stirrups. Now he is astride the steed's back and lo! there he goes, into the wind! By covering his head with a sleeve or a fan, the actor brings before the mind's eye a raging storm. A flight of stairs comes to life under his stamping gait; a scene shifts from an interior to a battlefield, from a river to a mountain, or from the abode of the gods to the bottom of purgatory, as he struts in a circuit on the stage. In other words, he is not only an actor but at once a property man and PANORAMA a scene designer as well. In order to appreciate the actor's efforts, therefore, the theater-goer must coax his mind's eye to see things which a.re not physically present on the Chinese stage. Yet, on the other hand, he must pretend not to see things which are very very much there but not meant to be seen, such as the orchestra, the property man's frequent intrusions, or a "slain" character .who gets up and struts to the exit in full view of the audience, in spite of his being "dead." Such conventions and practices may seem queer to those who are accustomed to the unimaginative authenticity or "realism" of an American "little theater" group. But if one accepts these superficial peculiarities with an open mind, one may yet find Chinese stagecraft entertaining, if not inspiring. For, as Goethe said, "Art is art because it is not nature." * * * Blan (an lake Jt 11ltt hat happens to a human placed in an oven hot enough to cook an egg? Dr. Craig Taylor of the University of California at Los Angeles found in an experiment extremely important to modern aviation. In the present 800-mph jet-propelled planes, air compression and friction make the cabin almost unbearably hot when the refrigeration system fails. In even faster planes, the heat might be great enough to turn the cabin into a furnace. The Air Force therefore must know how much heat a pilot can stand and for how long without suffering skin burns or internal injury. Dr. Taylor has exposed himself to temperatures as high as 262°F. He once endured 220°F. for 25 minutes. Except for a temporarily increased pulse rate, the tests produced no serious effects. The hea_t-recording thermocouples connected to his head and body show why. Because the body has its own cooling system (perspiration and mucous secretion), it lowers almost to body temperature air coming into the lungs. And even when exposed to extreme heat the body does not let its own temperature rise more than one or two degrees above normal. DECEMBER 1955 23 . Most of the twenty words given below should be in your reading vocabulary. That ia, you should be able to recognize them, although you may not be able to define or actualb' .use them in writing. Select the proper definition for each, then turn to Pa&e 80 for the correct answers. Fifl.een is passinl{. 1. insipid-(a) stupid; (b) without sufficient taste to be attractive; (c) somewhat unpleasant in appearance; (d) very ugly. 2. jargon-(a) meaningless talk or writing; (b) militaristic view; ( c) a serious offense; ( d) a large clay jar. 3. prosaic-(a) unpoetic in composition; (b) long and tiresome; (c) like decorative glass; ( d) commonplace or dull. 4. trance--(a) a dazed or bewildered condition; (b) a mathematical formula; (c) a vehicle; (d) a spirit. 5. baffle-(a) to confuse; (b) to disregard; (c) to prevent; 'd) to set up a hindrance. 6. canter-(a) a singer; (b) an easy gallop; (c) a glass container oi vessel; (d) a banner. 7. transcend-(a) to send by air; (b) to go above or beyond; (c) to become dazed or confused; (d) to violate. 8. analgesic-(a) acidic in quality; (b) unappealing; (c) a pain remover; (d) an abnormal or neurotic person. 9. carnal-(a) worldly; (b) heavenly; (c) pertaining to the heart; ( d) pertaining to the respiration. 10. banal-(a) evil; (b) spetcacular; (c) crude; (d) trite or commonplace. 11. bland-(a) great in size; (b) gentle or mild; (c) discouraging; ( d) meaningless. 12. replete-(a) abundantly supplied; (b) repeatedly said; (c) achorus or refrain; (d) awkward. 13. seer-(a) an inspector; (b) a guard or watcher; (c) a prophet; (d) one who investigates closely. 14. numismatics-(a) the science of sounds; (b) the art of ballet; (c) the science of coins and medals; ( d) the practice of spiritualism. 15. repress-(a) to express again; (b) to keep under control; (c) to remove forcibly; (d) to count again. 16. clientele-(a) a lawyer's office; (b) practicing lawyers, as a whole; (c) customers or patients as a whole; (d) a protector. 17. grass-roots-(a) close to, or emerging from, the people; (b) fundamental; ( c) indispensable; ( d) agricultural in aspect. 18. mince-(a) to spare from harm; (b) to express vigorously; (c) to undertake with determination; (d) to cut or chop into small pieces. 19. odious-(a) unpleasant in order; (b) hateful; (c) heavy; (d) transparent 20. perk-(a) straight; (b) tall; (c) smart or brisk; (d) spoiled. 24 PANORAMA It has become more and more evident in the course of years that without the critical attitude of American readers, Philippine literature would be greatly handicapped Americans Look at Filipino Writing * * * * By N.V.M. GONZALEZ p HILIPPINE writing, as we like to call it, has drawn its materials from our life, it is true; but its methods have been somewhat American, its very dress has been American; sometimes I wonder whether it doe;:; not make its utterances in American accents. These utterances, however, concern a different subject. The materials are so very gravely and heavily ours - it may well be that we ought not to be too forgetful of our own grandfathers. But English has somewhat made us forget. There is a generation of Filipinos, perhaps three or four generations, whuse literary memories are entirely This article has been derived from - a paper read to American Fulbright conferees by the author, who is president of the Philippine Writers Association. DECEMBER 1955 Americana. And some of these are writers; some even try to be poets. I h a v e wondered, though, whether the advent of English in this country was not largely brought about by the exigencies of the time, and that had the vernacular literatures been stronger and had our people the facilities to spread their writing, whether we would have today a rather vigorous literature in the smaller language groups such as Hiligaynon, Ilocano, and Pampango. ·- As a boy, I remember hearing my grandfather discuss books in Hiligaynon. There was at that time a town in Iloilo that had become quite famous because of its modest printing industry. We do not 25 hear of Manduriao, Iloilo, any more. An English of sorts has become so widely-spoken and so widely-read. Whether or not it was planned that English should become so central to our national life, the fact remains that the language is here with us and there are some of us who have so very boldly - even at the risk of our very spiritual well-being - used it as a means of saying what often is unsayable, as a means of conveying meanings so tenuous, of describing relations so subtle - that we are fortunate we have this foreign tongue as our slave. Those of you who have become curious as to how we have so used this language may doubt, however, whether we have really become masters of it. Certainly there are enough examples in the press, in books, and in talks like this one, to prove your point. Let us not worry the issue out of its time. But what I am anxious to describe are the two basic attitudes which I have known my American friends to have about our writers and their works. On the one side, we have the man of good will. Enthusiastic, understanding, conscious of the sacrifice and the labor involved in getting a new tool and putting it to good use - this is the kind of American reader who writes happily whenever he can about our work. You 26 cannot doubt his sincerity, because what he says in true -· although perhaps not all of it. You c a n n o t announce his friendship to the four winds, either - because that would be unbecoming on your part. Vaguely the word patron comes to your mind, and the word patronage rings in the air like a bell. T HERE IS the other kind of reader: with all the avowed good will which has p r o p e 11 e d him sufficiently_ enough to pick up Philippine writing and spend an hour or so, perhaps an entire evening, with it. And he discovers a rhs crepancy between intention anc! outcome, between the effort af'.d the fruit of the effort. He becomes, in short, disappointed. For what does he find, indeed? He might, at the outset, quarrel with the idiom. Here is an altogether different language. Should he overlook this and push his interest on to what the words add up to? He might, and he would find what? - confusion? meaninglessness? neurosis, possibly? A kind of sophistication three degrees removed from that of the New Yorker; and a sluggishness not unlike that of the Pasig River at low tide. A murkiness in imagery that recalls a mirror on a damp day. This and other impressions could be well worl.h our mutual PANORAMA und"!n:tandin~;, if only someone would bother. Then, it might be pointed out, that all bad writing is the same everywhere; 'lhat in art the shortcomings are among those things which are easiest to imitate; that myopia is not a condition known only to oculists but also to readers of literatm e. And it might well be that the whole effort to have English with us should stand answerable to this literary development. In the course of years, however, it has become more .and more evident that without the American reader Philippine writing would be greatly handicapp:od. It would lack, especially if it wished to keep its main activity in English, a critical attitude which it has so badly needed. As early as 1927, it w3s hoped that a Filipino bestseller may yet be written. We must admit the simplemindedness of such a hope; at the same time we must recognize that the measure of success, even then, is no different from what is now commonly in use. Thanks, however, to our readings of criticism developed in the United States by writers like Richards, Blackmur, Caroline Gordon, Mark Scharer, DECEMBER 1955 Allen Tate and Robert Stallman and many others, it has become possible in the Philippines to talk in an orderly fashion about I it e r a r y matters. Many have informed me that in literary circles in Southeast Asia, objective criticism has not been possible. Critics are hated as a tribe; they become tolerable only when they perform as diplomats or politicians. In the Philippines, they have adopted many roles, but mostly they have been teachers, and in this way they have helped developed the national literature with the least risk of physical harm. This ability to objectify literature, both on the part of the writer and on the part of the critic, is something we have learned from American criticism. Had it not been for this circumstance in the growth of American literature itself, Fhilippine writing would remain where it was floundering in 1930. p ERSISTENCE HAS been also another virtue. Because in American literature we have seen scores of writers enjoy critical success rather than material success, Philippine writing, at this stage at least, has become indifferent to material 27 success. This is a fact which for some might be difficult to believe. Energy and a certam amount of stubbornness, a respect for skill and efficiency on all levels imaginable - these are qualities we have yet to develop. How? I hope that here I am understood to be only speakmg for myself and not for any group, but I believe that your participation in Philippine writing has been indicated long before you have ever thought of it. You can help where your home-based compatriots can only make their influence felt through their books. The classroom and the press are places where I have not known any American scholar to have been denied admission, and I have not known either that the schoolrooms in this country as well as the press have ceased to be influential. What dividends might be expected out of such a participation? No more and no less than what might be expected in any moral activity, by which the seas of cultures are crossed and the hinterlands of understanding between peoples and nations explored and cleared up and farmed out, eventually perhaps to be converted into flourishing hacienda~. Postscript A. V. H. Hartendorp, Edward ]. O'Brien, Whit Burnett and Martha Foley - these were, in a sense, the pioneers. They read and published Manuel E Arguilla, who was later to find another reader in Pearl S. BucK. They certainly read Estrella Alfon, who then wrote only about her native Cebu. Edward J. O'Brien was later to remark expansively about Jose Garcia Villa: that Villa was one of the very few masters of the short story in America. Likewise. O'Brien defined the comin~ Filipino novel - vaguely, of course, - as a meeting of twc sensibilities, that of the East and West. And then more recently we have the fortune to draw the interest of Katherine Anne Porter, William Faulkner, Wallace Stegner, Leonard Casper, John E. Palmer, Robert Stallman, and a few others, not excluding those directly connected with publishing - Alan Swallow, Ernst Noth, Arabel Porter, Malcolm Cowley. The Filipino writer in the late twenties counted, as Pedro de la Liana did, only with H. L. Mencken. * * * 28 Next to entertaining of impressive talk, a thorough-going silence manages to intngue most people. -Mrs. ]. Borden Harriman PANORAMA Great Rivers Secrets of the deep beneath W ATCHING THE quiet sea on a summer afternoon, few would even hazard a guess that not far off the coast a great torrent of water thunders down through the ocean in a fall that dwarfs five Niagaras. The astounding waterfall is way below the ocean surface - one of the great rivers in the vast oceans where water flows through water just as surely as a land stream between its earthen banks. Some of these ocean rivers, or currents, reverse their paths according to the season, others have one side of their surface higher than the other and, not least, yet others make a mock DECEMBER 1955 Oceans By RICHARD PARSONS of the law of gravity by flowing uphill. While we learned of the Gulf Stream at school it was probably only the success of the KonTiki voyage that brought to our notice some knowledge of another ocean river - the Humboldt Current. There are many others: some twenty-one major streams with lesser currents or deeper and perhaps unknown ones going about their mysterious ocean business influencing climate of many lands, as they advanced or retarded early mariners and played a part in the building of civilizations. A world-diagram would show where the great ocean rivers run. 29 T HERE ARE two types: the Currents, which are fast flowing; and the Drifts, slower in motion. They have been on their way for untold ages - the Gulf Stream being credited with a life of over 60 million years. We might expect that the constant spin of this planet is the key which keeps the rivers wound up and moving. It does play a part, but at least three other factors are also at work. These are the winds, the different temperatures of the seas and the varying saltiness of the water. The source of the motion lies in the inequality between the cold polar regions, north :and south, and the heated equator belt.- The heavier cold air i;inks, the lighter warm air rises, and so the winds are born. These aid and abet the movement of the waters, which also sink when cold and rise when warm. When there is little chance of outward escape for a body of water, such as in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the effect of high temperatures causes the water to evaporate and so make the remainder saltier and therefore heavier. Where this does flow away, such as through the Sraits of Gibraltar, the dense salt water will sink. But it may meet a deeper layer that is denser because of coldness. On this it will float. In fact, oceanographers recog30 nize several of these distinct layers of water in one body of ocean lying one below the other like a multiple sandwich. In genera!, the average sea water contains 35 parts of salt in 1,000 parts. The Red Sea has reached 46 parts per 1,000. The Sargasso Sea, which is a body of water in the Atlantic, with no land shores, also has a high salt content of 38 parts in 1,000. !THERE IS a little mixing at the edges of these different layers and rivers, but less than one would imagine. So we find that the seas of the earth, technically called the hydrosphere, is not so much one mass of water as a whole writhing bundle of different types of water. They move up and down or longitudinally or, l!ke the Sargasso and similar areas, revolve slowly on some strange axis of their own. Let us look more closely at these ocean rivers and see how they have been charted and are still being explored. The Gulf Stream begins as part of the North and South Equatorial Currents, )thrusting up through the Carribean to pass through the Straits of Florida. Here it is a mighty river 95 miles wide and 2 miles deep, speeding on its way at 3 miles an hour in the center, but slower at the sides. It is actually flowing downhill, for easterly winds maintain a higher sea lePANORAMA vel in the Gulf of Mexico than in the open Atlantic. And thee Stream, too, slopes up from left to right on its surface, due to t11e earth's rotation and deflection of the lighter water. No simple river is this Stream. Its color is a vivid indigo blue. In winter, there is change of temperature. On the surface this is 80 degrees Fahrenheit during the first 400 miles of its course, sufficient for one to remove winter overcoats and imagine it summertime. The grey surrounding sea will be so much as 40 degrees less than this brilliant blue Gulf Stream whose personal climate carries its own population of fish, seaweeds and VANISHING LANDS The countries of Ncrfolk and Suffolk in England ar J being eaten away on their eastern sides by the sea. Th'-' cliffs are undermined by the waves and by the water from springs. The cliffs are undermined by the waves and oy the water from springs, and occasionally a big piece slips down on to the beach. In a few months the fallen earth is washed away by the sea and the whole process starts again. Between them NorfoTh: and Suffolk lose about thirty-six acres a year in this way. If this went on, the two countries would be removed in about 60,000 years. DECEMBER 1955 sea creatures. It has also saved human lives, at least one occasion being when an aircraft crashed into the sea on a January day, and but for the warm water all aboard would have perished. In its course the Stream loses speed, gains width - to 300 miles across - and eventaully splits into north and south currents as it nears Europe: the wutherly portion sweeping round to return to Mexico, pick up heat and pace, a_n.d again become part of the Blue River of the green Atlantic. T HE HUMBOLDT Current is not so well defined, but its path swells to 500 miles wide of such cold water that entering it from tropic heat one has to put on his overcoat. This Current swings up from the icy Antarctic Drift to bathe the coast of Peru - as the Peru Current - and then roll up along the Equator. Oddly enough, although cold, it bears along a luxury of animal and plant life, for cold water contains more oxygen than warm water. This in turn means more bird life on the lands along its "banks"; birds by the millions. Incidentally this bird life creates a trade for men who harvest the rich guano deposits, particularly on the Galapagos Islands. But today the Humboldt, flowing uphill out of the South 31 Polar depths, is known because it proved correct the theories of Thor Heyerdahl on the 4,300 miles rlrift of the Kon-Tiki raft. In the North Pacific is the Kuroshio, sometimes k;nown as the Black Current for its deep indigo color, a type of warm Gulf Stream flowing at 2 miles an hour up past Japan. One part of it can be recognized nearly to Hawaii; the other loses a struggle with the cold Oyashio which flows south from sub-Arctic Alaska. This now cooler current makes a temperate climate of tropic summer California - and then flows to join into the North Equatorial Current and the Counter Equatorial Current. South of India is one of the strangest ocean rivers - in summer it flows from west to east; in winter, the exact reverse. This is the Monsoon Drift, and clearly here the monsoon winds which change with the seasons play a large part in the moving life of the seas. Drifts travel as slowly as one-third of a mile an hour and are not so confined to regular channels as the fast-flowing Currents. The oceanographer traces them by a precise analysis of the water for salt content, dissolved oxygen .and temperature. A NOTABLE DIFFERENCE in the south of the world is the fact that an ocean river can flow right round the Antarctic 32 continent with no land to check its course. Nowhere else on earth does this formation occur. It is a drift from west tu east, but it is not a self-contained. water; branches flow up the eastern coasts of South America and South Africa and it is joined at various places by lighter warmer streams. This sends the dense, cold water sinkmg vertically to spread along the ocean floor where it has been traced far north as Cape Hatteras. How is one amount ot water in a whole mass charted and checked from surface level? The means are simple. They consist to a large extent of "drift bottles" - vessels specially designed with a cross of metal suspended below to increase stability; "current meters" - boxes anchored to sea bottom with propellers set facing the flow and mechanism recording the velocity; "drift buoys" - released from ships and observed for distance and direction for a period of time. Other information comes from icebergs and wreckage on the surface, from the analysis of water brought up from various depths, from temperatures taken at varying depths. Plotting the contours of the sea bed, too, aids the exploring oceanographer, for when there is an underwater ridge lying across the flow of deep water it can cause the ocean river to flow upwards. PANORAMA Conversely, a rift in the sea bottom allows a cold Polar stream to flow down into the 2byss as a submarine waterfall. gathered a wealth of information. Sailors have known something of the ocean rivers for hundreds, probably thousands of years. But the foundations of scientific ocean study were laid by the world cruise of H.M.S. Challenger in the 1872-76. Voy~ aging 69,000 miles in Atlantic, Antartic and Pacific Oceans, the little ship of 2,000 tons Since then, men from many lands have gone exploring the sea, and not least was Prince Albert of Monaco, who in four of his own yachts, 1;tudied the North Atlantic and Mediterranea!1 and founded the famous Oceanographic :Museum and laboratory at Monaco - where perhaps one thought there were only gambling casinos. - From the Quiver. * * * WISHFUL THINKING In this age in which we live we hear a great deal about wishful thinking: and almost invariably the term is uttered in accents of contempt. Is wishful thinking always bad? Usually it is, for it consists largely of unrealistic day-dreaming. But wishful thinking may be just another word for hope, and hope i1 one of the greatest of Christian virtues. Hope is desire cherished with a confident sense of anticipation. In hope we not only wish for something but we entertain the strong conviction that we will get it. Certainly wishful thinking of this variety is a lot of bet· ter than the dark, despairing cynicism and melancholy with which many people view life. People so afflicted confidently believe that the worst is always sure to come, that there ·is no hope for the world, and that after a slippery descent in which we may grasp at a thousand unstable things by which we hope to be saved, we come at last to the precipice and drop over. Give rrie wishful thinking before an attitude such as that. -from the Quiver. * * "Your grandmother is a little deaf, isn't she?" "A little? Why, yesterday she conducted family prayers kneeling" on the cat." DECEMBER 1955 33 How's yours? A S~ in Every Family s VERY F A M I L y has its own share of screwballseccentrics, in more polite language. Now take my relatives for instance. You would not believe how many screwballs there are in my family, especially on my father's side. His line has contributed more than it should. There is an uncle of mine who fancies himself an artist of the first degree. When we had our house built in my father's hometown, Uncle Jet (that's what he calls himself) volunteered to do the painting. My Dad did not know any better. He took up my uncle on his offer. I warned my Dad, but he would not listen. \Vhen the house was finished, my uncle came to Dad to get some money for the paint. Here's how he wanted to paint our house: He wanted to coat the exterior with a 34 By Jose D. Roy, Jr., flashy silver. "To match the tin roof," he said. And the ceiling was to be painted blue, like the sky. The walls were to be painted red. He even wanted to paint the floors with a brilliant orange. As a final touch, he wanted to trim the panels with green paint. My room was to be coated with a livid purple shade. Needless to say, my father said "No." Poor uncle Jet. At least my father could have let him paint the leaves in the ga1 - den. Anyway he had wanted to do that-paint the leaves and the trees. He had always wanted to improve on nature. Then there is my uncle on my mother's side. Uncle Pol used to write a lot of things. He used to write about the future: space ships, disintegrator rays and the like. He said that these things were coming. He even predicted that he would PANORAMA be the first human being to land on the moon. As a matter of fact, he once drew up elaborate plans for a rocket Ii.hip. A can of lighter fluid would be enough to propel the ship into space. Thank heavens he's all right now. But now and then he suffers a relapse. ~UT OF ALL the screwballs in our family, my Dad's cousin takes the cake. Uncle "Nonong is his name. He fancies himself a Lothario and a superman. Some friends of his ·used to go to the house and look for "Kapitan Nonong." He used to introduced himself as a captain in the Philippine Scouts. The fact is, he was only a corporal. Oh, how he loved to tell stories of his exploits during "War Wurl nomber wan." His favorite story is about how he saved his company from annihilation. This happened in France. He also claims to have met the fa. mom Sgt. Yark in person. And not only that, he claims to have had the same Sgt. York under his command. I just shake my head. Because I know he was stuck here in the Philippines behind a desk, doing paper work. Uncle Nonong also fancies himself to be a great marksman. He boasts of his prowess in shooting. One day, a friend of mine invited him to the shooting range in Marikina. While we were still on the way he began shooting off his mouth. On the way home he <iidn't say a word. He had a perfect score: zero. My uncle is a regular Romeo besides. He was once telling me of the girls he courted. They were all beautiful, he said. There was one in particular. She was a knockout. They used to meet in church. One day she got sick. She was dying and she wanted him to marry her. He was all for it. But the parents of the girl whisked her off to Spain. Whether this story is true or not I donit know. But anyway, I would not blame the girl's parents. And, by the way, he ended up with a homely woman for a wife. * * * [Double DECEMBER 1955 TWO WEEKS OF LOVE TO HELL AND BACK 35 36 -~Christmas (i.e., the M&ss of Christ) was not among the earliest festivals of the Church, and before the fifth century, Cl>.ristans were not agreed as to when it should come in the calendar, whether on January 6, March 25, or December 25. The earliest identification of December 25 with the birthday of Jesus Christ is in a statement made by Theophilus of Antioch that the Gauls celebrated the birth of the Lord on December 25 and his resurrection on March 25. Another passage, in Hippolytus' commentary on Daniel, says that Jesus was born at Bethlehem on Wednesday, December 25, in the 42nd year of Augustus, but he mentions no feast; any such feast, indeed, would conflict with the then orthodox ideas. As late as 245 Origen repudiated the idea of keepping the birthday of Christ, "as if he were King Pharaoh." For some time in the West, the birth festival was appended to the baptismal feast on January 6 and was altogether supplanted by it in Jerusalem. In Britain, December 25 was a festival long before the conversion to Christianity. The Parliament of England in 1644 forbade the observance of Christmas; Charles II revived the feast, but the Scots adhered to the Puritan view. PANORAMA 7lie Bottomless Cockpit Q NE OF the first acts of the Americans when they took the Philippines was to wean the people away from cockfighting. As the older generation was beyond reform, cockfighting was not abolished outright but placed under severe restrictions. No longer were fights to be held any day, but only on Sundays, legal holidays and fiestas. Thus the reformers figured that within a generation the evil pastime would be wiped out and the brown brother won completely over to baseball. The steps taken to this end were subtle but elaborate. In the minds of people back in the States, the typical Filipino was a barefoot native who squatted all day by the roadside, caressing his gamecocks. To educate this indolent fellow it was necessary first of all to teach him a wholesome sport. Baseball equipment was sent to the benighted land along with Protestant bibles and smallpox vaccine. McVenn's ''Health DECEMBER 1955 By E. AGUILAR CRUZ and Sanitation for the Tropics," a hardy perennial of a textbook, inveighed against cockfighting as well as cholera morbus. Ministers, American and,native preached a jehad against the town cockpit. Meanwhile, the first Filipino schoolteachers trained under the new regime 37 led the crusade in the schools. English compositions were on such topics as ''How I Earned My First Peso" and "Our Team" but not on "The Town Cockpit" or "How To Train Fighting Roosters." The effects of this indoctrination were immediately evident. As the products of the public schools took over the reins of government, their elders began to lose influence in the cultural life. Communities were split between the people who patronized the cockpit and those who did not. The former were the benighted generation; the latter were the youth to whom Rizal had addressed his inspired strophes. Presently the ef•ect desirecl by the reformers had taker:. hold; cockfighting \Vas not only not respectable, it was not progressive. In a land just learning what progress had meant to the Victorians of a generation before, not to be progressive was a mortal sin. 13 UT THE reformers did not reckon with the universal appeal of cockfighting. Its influence might be dimmed but not obliterated by educational propaganda. During the long vacation in the hot months, schoolchildren freed from official athletics did not always play "indoor baseball" in the local equivalent of the sandlot. They played at cockfighting 38 with pullets, using limetree thorns for spurs. It also became evident in due time that the local aristocracy, the people who were short on English verbs but long on money, went to the cockpits regularly but still remained good citizens. The governor himself was more likely than not to be a cockfighting addict. It was only too clear by now that cockfighting could not be wiped out. The cockpit, like the church and the municipio and the ubiquitous Rizal monument, was still the local landmark by which distances and directions were reckoned. The cockpit simply could not be ignored if only because it was one of the most important buildings in town. In the days before movies invaded the hinterlands, the cockpit was a theater, a forum, and dance hall rolled into one. On fiestas the populace flocked to it to see the famous men of the province ranged about the gallera, winning and losing fabulous sums. A fiesta was also the occasion for a pintakasi or gala day at the cockpit. It was heralded by handbills and posters stuck on the backs of carromatas and on the bulletin board of the railroad station. After twenty years of trying to suppress or snub cockfighting out of exis1ience, the American mentors gave up. Or rather, the early Puritans had PANORAMA been replaced by a more relaxed breed of rulers. At any rate, it was now considered safe to leave the Filipinos to cockfighting because they had been inoculated against an exclusive DECEMBER 1955 devotion to it. After all, only the very rich and the very poor were caught in its snares. Actually, baseball alone could not have prevented cockfighting from again becoming the na39 tional sport. It took basketball, a game that needed a smaller playing field, to save the day for progress and civilization. If basketball had not come on the scene at the time it did, cockfighting would by now be indisputably the national sport of the Filipinos, young and old. Even so, the betting that goes on under the counter during the colossal inter-collegiate season in Manila is reminiscent of the activity around a provincial gallera. And on fight nights at the local stadia, odds are called in the same terminology used in cockfighting. Driving through a town on a Sunday, you cannot miss the cockpit. Somehow all roads lead to it for while the rest of the town may be somnolent, there is a hubbub in the direction of the cockpit and the roar of the fans is as unmistakable as that of a baseball stadium when a player clouts a homerun. The standardized architecture of a cockpit attests to the long history of cockfighting in this country as everywhere else. The pit proper is a platform with a floor of tightly packed earth, surrounded by a grill for the protection of the patrons. From the ground and behind the ringside seats for important patrons rise tiers of benches enabling spectators to watch the matches at close quarters. This pocket-size colossewn is 40 covered by an iron roof supported on wooden posts, and the whole structure from the outside resembles a rice grana·ry. On cockfight days the grounds are occupied by the makeshift tables of refreshment and food vendors. You pay a twenty-or-fifty-centavo fee at the gate which entitles you to a place in the entrada general or bleachers. [, IKE HORSE-RACING, cockfighting has its bookies and touts, but the best known character of the gallera, because he is everywhere, is the kristo, named for some unaccountable reason after the Lord. Without bets or money of his own, he cries out the odds for the tahur, who has money as well as roosters. The sortador makes the matches, which are. refereed by the toprrtan of them all, the sen.tenciador. The sentenciador's word, whether i11 the court of Henry VIII or in a Manila slum, is law. When cocks with deadly metal spurs were first set against each other in a duel to the death is not known with certainty. It is known for sure, though, that cockfighting (or cocking as it is better known in the United States) flourished in ancient Greece, where the Romans picked it up and introduced it later to their dominions. It is a safe bet, however, that the Greeks got the idea PANORAMA from East, for cockfighting was known in India and China and Southeastern Asia three thou~ sand years before Themistocles made it official. So much for the scholars. It might be just as true to say that cockfighting has always existed wherever there have been roosters to impress men with their fighting qualities. It was common in Cuba at the time of the Spanish galleon trade, but it could just as well have reached that country from Manila as from the Pilgrims, or the aborigines of Central America. The people of Luzon and the Visayas presumably were born to the sport as wer.e the Malays of the Asian mainland. But the European sailors who came to these islands in the Age of Exploration had also seen cockfighting at home. If there is a universal sport, cockfighting deserves the title both as to age and dispersion. It is still practiced in many parts of the United States, but especially in the South, where a magazine of small international circulation, with a correspondent or two in the Philippines, is devoted to cocking activities, breeding lore and fighting paraphernalia. Most Western countries have outlawed it, but it survives in most of them covertly. England led the reform by closing its cockpits in the reign of Victoria, but not beDEcEMBER 1955 fore reigning for centuries as the center of cockfighting in the Western world. As late as the 18th Century, there was a Royal Cockpit, where the bluebloods joined chimney sweeps in the "cocking main," an imposing structure bearing the royal crest on its walls. The British introduced cockfighting in the A m e r i c a n colonies. It flourishes yet in many parts of South America, although Argentina and some other countries have officially banned it. In Manila, cockfighting has been under interdiction for fifty years, and was all but forgotten during that time. But in the overcrowded districts, away from the law's eye, it has always had its loyal devotees who hold tupadas, or unlicensed fights. whenever there are two suitably matched cocks and bets to make a set-to worth while. Under prodding by a cockfight-loving councilor, the Manila municipal board last year passed an ordinance legalizing cockfighting over the solid opposition of all civic organizations backed by all the newspapers. The Mayor, an amateur pugilist in · his salad days, vetoed the proposal, and the council threatened to appeal to the President of the Philippines. 7HE AUTHOR of the ordinance envisioned for Manila a dream cockpit which 41 would have put the cockpits of the Stuart kings to shame. lt was to have been a concrete, air-conditioned amphitheatre, with the odds flashed on electric totalizators instead of being hawked by the ktistos. A first-class restaurant for the ringside crowd arid a popular bar for the denizens of the upper galleries would have replaced the puto vendors of the oldtime pit. Manila cocking fans, who now must go to the suburbs if they wish to indulge legally in their favorite sport, have not given up hope of seeing the millenium. After last year's example, no municipal council worth its salt can be without a champion of cocking. Their hope is bolstered by the latest census, which lists 1,102 cockpits in the country, as compared to 112 public dance halls and 19 boxing pavilions. Against them, are the active opponents o f cockfighting - churches, women's clubs, newspapers and schools. These are supported by the classes of people who are either opposed to cockfighting on principle or believe it is a vestige of the past which should be liquidated or allowed to die out. This issue has social ramifications which are bound to engross anthropologists of the postatomic age. Our councilor might rejoice to see posterity, huddled in dimlylit caves, matching roosters as its first act in reviving civilization after the universities with their basketball leagues shall have been wiped out. * * * 42 m T. ETNA in Sicily is a much harder working volcano than its rival Vesuvius which has refused to erupt since 1944. Nevertheless, Etna's actions ar" less alarming and lass destructive, because it is the larger mountain, with a cone nearly 25 miles in du•meter. Consequently, the molten lava can flow further without encountering human dwellings. Usually it has slowed down grown cool before it has dama2ed cultivated areas. Vesuvius, on the other hand, seems to build up pressure over a period of years and then burst violently. Etna leaks its lava out gradually, through a number of channels. Its 1951 eruption found openings at 9,500 feet as well as a whole series of outlets at 4,00(J feet above sea level: Although it flowed at 2·00 yards an hour, it covered largely only a wide :rocky plateau where no farmer had his house. PANORAMA Panorama Peek Photo b11 DERRICK KNIGHT, Shell Photographic Unit, L.ond<m IT ISN'T OFTEN that Carabao and friends can pose for a picture like this, considering the time of day and the work yet to be done. CHRISTMAS GIFT By FRANCISCO ARCELLAN A I WALKED INTO tne bazaar not knowing what I wanted really, not sure what exactly to expect. To be certain, I wanted gifts 1:0 give away to friends but just what to get for them I had not the least idea. The place was startlingly crowded; there was a barker at the door vociferous and savage with voice and megaphone and gesture; people streamed steadily in and out; ,,feet shuffled in confusion and clamor and babel; the cash register rang unceasingly; coins . clinked and changed hands; dolls piped: Mamma, Mamrn.a. I was standing still, trying to make up my mind, somehow not doing a very good job of it, when I saw the girl. I saw her and I knew what I wanted. I wanted whatever she had in her stall for sale. I walked to where she was, stood before her stall, she stood beside me with an eager air. She had Disney rabbits for sale, canvas and wlute fur, dressed in many colors. There was a pile of them, the ones on top had their faces soiled as if they had been pressed into mire, ears awry and, in some, totally misplaced from too much handling, legs loosened from their socket~, feet squeezed out of shape, beards pressed back and dirty against their faces. Some of the rabbits were oneeyed: their eyes were red glass beads. DECEMBER 1955 I dug .into the pile, started searching for whole and more or less untouched ones. I wanted only four but after I saw the girl, I knew I was going to purchase five. Are there male and female rabbits? I asked, and if there are, how do we tell them apart?. S HE WAS NOT more than a girl, she was perhaps seventeen or ~ighteen and not older than that, she had very fine eyes and they laughed and they shone in the flood of lights in spite of themselves (It must be the season, I thought), her face was pale and oval, her hair was like a dark crown about her face (a c r o w n that shone and g l e a m e d nonetheless), she reached up to my shoulder, she was not really very tall, her shoulders were slight and her body was slim and young and straight. Somehow she did not belong to. the place. She laughed and I imagined glass tinkling. There are, she said, and the male rabbits have pants and suspenders, the female have shirts and skirts. Of course, of course, I said. It was that simple: there were male and female rabbits, skirts for the female, pants and suspenders for the male, it had always been so since very long ago. So I picked among the rabbits, and every time I picked out one I asked her, Do you 45 think ,he is all right, or Do you think she is all right? as the case might be. And if the rabbit was all right she said, All right, and if the rabbit was not, she said, He has a clubfoot or His hips are dislocated or His left ear or eye is missing. I looked at her all the time, and the more I looked at her the more I knew she did not belong to the place. She seemed to me one meant, that is to say, born to receive gifts. I had picked out four rabbits, two male and two female, each had a different dress. I need a fifth one, I said, I want a fifth rabbit, and it has to be female, I want it for a girl, I want it for a lovely girl. Will you pick out one for me? Yes, she said and I stepped aside and she stepped forward to the table and her hands went expertly among the rabbits. She was not very long in picking. Here, she said She held out to a me a female rabbit, the cotton and the fur shining and white, the canvas neat and clean, looking very tidy and very new. The rabbit had a white with polka dots in blue shirt and a blue skirt. She is very beautiful, I said. Do you think she will do for a lovely girl? 0 yes; she said. Here, I said, handing over to h~r the other rabbits, I want them WI'apped up in five separate boxes with different wrap46 ping paper for each, and for the rabbit with the blue skirt I want a blue wrapper. SHE BUNDLED the rabbits in her arms male and female· together, ears stuck out in ev· ery direction, the rabbits were funny and at the same time holy in her arms, she was like a picture of the Madonna, her face looking at me over the pile of rabbits in her arms was courious and wondering - What did I want so many rabbits for? - her eyes amused and shining. She walked away to wrap the rabbits and I followed her. I watched her while she wrapped them up. The wrapping paper and the boxes were near a stall where they had toy organolas. I picked up one of them and worked out the tune of Holy night, silent night on the keys. When she was through she placed the boxes one on top of the other. Topmost was the blue-wrapped box. How much is it? I asked, gathering the boxes from her arms, fumbling and being clumsy about it. She turned after her arms were free at last, bent, removed the pencil that rested on her ear, started figuring. I looked over her shoulder and saw that she was doing multiplication. I took out a bill. She took it without a word, we walked to the cash register, PANORAMA a bell rang, the box with many compartments sprang out like a jack in the box, there were a lot of coins there and bills. She counted out my change. I put out my palm and she placed the coins there. Thank you, she said. SHE STARTED to move away. I stowed the loose change away in my pocket, caught her arm and said, But that is not all. I took out the topmost box, the one with the female rabbit ·in the white blue-polka dotted shirt and blue skirt, the one with the white and shining fur, the blue-wrapped box. It is for you, I said. Please, I can't take it, she said. Please take it, I said, I was going to purchase only four because I really needed only four; but I took five because I meant to make a gift of the fifth one to you, the fifth rabbit, the female one, the beautiful one was meant for you, you picked her out yourself. Please take it. 0 no, I can't take it, she cried helplessly. Please take it, I begged, please do not refuse me. I meant it for you. I shan't leave until you take it; besides, the season is with us - don't you know? Please take it, don't make it too hard for me. I will be very happy if you take it. She looked around her confusedly. Will it make you unhappy if I don't take it? she asked. It will make me very miserable, I said. All right, she said taking the box. Thank you, I said. She walked to her stall with the box under her arm. She stood beside the stall for a moment not knowing what to do with the box. Then she stopped and placed the box on the footrest under the table. I saw her before a group of schoolgirls flocked about her, she half-smiled and half-frowned at me. I left the bazaar only after I could not see her any more as she was bent over the red-beaded-eyed Disney rabbits, and the barker had begun to eye me with unchristian suspicion. * * * HOPEFUL Senior (at a basketball game)-"See that big substitute down there playing forward? I think he's i:;oi~ to be our best man next year." Co-ed-"Oh darling, this is so sudden!" DEcEMllER 1955 47 By EFREN SUNICO A TORNADO is commonly associated with what geographers call the "upper middle latitudes," particularly with the great plains of the United States. A typical picture shows the swirling funnel-like pendent 48 TORNADOS in a PHILIPPINE SETTING A scientist describes how that s w i r l i n g mass of destruction, not common locally, is born from a mass of black cloud, cutting a swath of destruction to life and property. In the Philippines, a tornado is consid e r e d an "extreme rarity"; hence when one hit the Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines on July 4, 1949, much interest was shown by the public and the press towards this apparently western phenomenom. Marvin S. Pittman, who was with the department of geology and geography in U.P. at the time (he was later killed in the Mt. Province) gave an explanation to the Diliman tornado which wrecked several goodsized quonsets, twisted some houses, and distorted the girPANORAMA ders of a steel warset structure. (Damage was placed at Pl00,000. The .university had just moved to its new campus, vacated by the U.S. Anny.) Pittman described tornados as "violently unstable areas of low pressure" and which "behave as lows do in rotating counterclockwise in the Northern hemisphere, and clockwise in the Southern hemispheres." The tornado at Diliman, he said, was a typical V-shaped cyclone the velocity of which reaches intensities of 500 mile~ per hour. A large dining hall building at Diliman explodep, he said, as a result not from the winds themselves but from the contrast in pressures which suddenly results when an extreme low centers itself over a building. '!'he resultant contrast between th i s and the relatively higher pressure remaining within a closed building caused the complete leveling of the dining hall, he explained. He added that "the open nature of most structures in the Philippines results in far less of the dramatic explosive factor so omnipresent in middle latitude tomados." The dining hall in question was U.S. army built and the only building in the entire group of sixteen buildings which actually "exploded." A NSWERING questions concerning the site of the DECEMBER 1955 U.P. campus, Pittman said that "the extreme infrequency of su~h violently unstable air and the high degree of improbability on the recurrence of such phenomena in any specific spot should remove all qualms regarding the undesirability of an particular location in the Philippines." In middle latitude areas, he said, tornados usually result from tongues of maritime Pacific or maritime Atlantic cold fronts overriding maritime tropical fronts which are stabilized. The violence of instability necessary to create tornados occurs most frequently in the Great Plains area of the United States or in the great plains of Ukraine, Russua. The velocity of the maritime Pacific or maritime Atlantic air, as the case may be, is suddenly increased on moving eastward over the slopes of the Rockies in the United States, or the Carpathians in Eastern Europe, and tobogganing rapidly downward along the eastern slopes of these mountains where warm moist air is encountered, which has been in the region sufficiently long to have become stable. Thereupon, Pittman continued, the tongues of maritime Pacific or maritime Atlantic air proceed to plane upward overriding the warm front and causing violent local instability. 49 Marvin S. Pittman, Jr. was associate professor of geography at the University of the Philippines at the time of his death in December, 1949 in the mountain fastnesses of northern Luzon. He received his B.S. and C.L.S. degrees from Duke University and Georgia Teachers CoIIeges, and his M.S. degree from the University of Chicago A veteran of the Second World War, he had seen action in the Battle of Europe and was captured by the Germans. Paying tribute to Pittman's memory, the late Prof. Jose M. Feliciano, head of the department of geology and geography at U.P., said that "young as he was, he paid a high price for his scientific curiousity." Everywhere he went, Feliciano said, "he collected samples of soil in his study on Land Utilization as related to Soil Types. His large plan of studies in this field was to cover the whole of Southeast Asia which he anticipated to be the battleground of the next war, if there should be one." A counterpart to the tornado is the waterspout. The latter is the occurrence of the same phenomenon over water. He said the waterspouts of the North Adriatic off Trieste where the Bora pli.i.nges down through the Trieste Pear Tree Pass and overrides the stable warm air of the Adriatic, or the Mistral coursing down the Rhone Valley from the Alps overriding warm Mediterranean air of the Gulf of Lyons and causing the waterspouts of Marseille, illustrate the type of situation which creates the waterspouts of Manila Bay. p ITTMAN INDICATED that the small total mass of air involved in the tornado, and the fact that it is strictly a Iowea air phenomenon preclude accurate and timely forecasting of such an occurrence. Regions of probability however may be plotted with some accuracy. Certain common factors of tornado occurrence are presented by the geographer: ( 1) Warm, moist relatively stable air: this can be found almost anywhere in the Philippines. ( 2) A mountain chain or cordillera of sufficient mass and so PANORAMA precipitousness of leeward slope to create considerable velocity in sudden overpourings of air masses previously blocked in their movement by the cordiilera. ( 3) Meteorological possibility of masses of considerably different nature existing on opposite sides of the cordillera. ( 4) A topographic situation in the area being overrun by the invading mass of sufficient uniformity to provide relative stability. ( S) A microtographic feature which might provide a lateral or horizontal vector on the surface. Pittman said that while the Philippines is an insular area lying within the tropics and therefore removed from the normal frontal situation which develop in the · N orthem hemisphere, tropical air is characterized by its instability, and it often develops masses of true frontal nature and behavior, though usually of an extremely short duration. Officially recorded tornados in the Philippines are each distributed as follows: Lipa, 1905; 1937; Sta. Cruz, 1923; Calauan, 1928; Manila Bay, 1937 (waterspout); 1 9 4 3 (waterspout); 1944 (waterspout); Diliman, 1939, 1949. Questionable records based on oral reports of observers of reasonable competency show that tomados occurred in PaDECEMBER 1955 sig, 1903; Batangas, 1908; Cabanatuan, 1 9 1 3 ; Cotabato (two), 1933; Veruela, 1934; Talakogan, 1944; and Kapalong, 1948. THOSE ISLANDS with no cordilleras, or one with broken crests, have reported no tornados, Pittman further revealed. The Cagayan Valley with m a r k e d cordilleras on both sides but a broad open northfacing mouth, has also reported no tornados. The areas of concentration are the central vi:i.1ley of Luzon, and the Agusan and Koronadal Valleys of Mindanao. The local site factors are consistently in closed bays or homogenous small plains. Describing the Diliman site, Pittman said that this lava-plain area in Quezon City adequately fulfills tornado qualifications. This plain sloping toward Manila Bay from the eastern cordillera only thirty kilometers distant is broken by the Marikina valley to the west which is some sixty to eighty feet lower than the Diliman plain. Any overriding air crossing the eastern cordillera at this position and moving down toward Manila Bay, would find itself overriding a trapped mass of warm moist air constantly invading from the Laguna de Bay (a large rift valley fresh-water lake) only some twenty kilometers to the south. The re51 <iultant hyperinstability thus created might well cause favorable conditions for the development of storms in the nature displayed. ince, Pittman declared that storms of tornado nature are not common in the Philippines, and are probably in the main confined to waterspouts. He noted that the popular interest in th~ study of such a phenomenon provides a challenge for continuous study of the meteorology and microclimatology of the Philippines. Concluding his address to the Philippine National Research Council on August 27, 1949, a little after the Diliman tornado and a few months before he was killed in the Mt. Prov52 * * * RUSSIAN FILIPINOS In 1949 on a coconut island in the Philippines, a 6-month-old child of Russian parents died and was 0buried. The child had been conceived in Tihwa, in China's remote interior province of Sinkiang. It had been carried in its mother's womb 1,400 miles to Lanchow where it was born and then in her arms 1,300 miles more to Shanghai and 1,500 miles beyond Shanghai to the island of Samar. This strange and tragic odyssey of the child was no new thing to its parents or their people. For 30 years White Russian refugees from the Soviet Union have wandered across 1;he vast map of Asia, always moving just beyond th~ reaching arms of Communism. Until 1948, Shanghai was the ultimate haven. Then the sweep of Chinese Communist armies and the growing pressure exerted by Soviet officials on stateless refugees made Shanghai a risky sanctuary. The International Refugee Organization came to the rescue with an offer of temporary shelter in the Philippines. In 1949 the migration beg;m, by air and Chinese steamer. Among the migrants were the Russians of Tihwa, who had fled the Soviet Union in the early 1930s to escape the collectivization program and- then had gone on the coast. There were nearly 5,000 from Shanghai itself, professional men, merchants, churchmen, plain people who once again had to find and make a new world for themselves. There were some 1,500 refugees who had reclaimed Russian citizenship after the war and then-frightened by guarded letters from "home"-had changed their minds and renounced it. Finally there were the ·non-Russian stateless who have come to share the disabilities of the Soviet refugees--Shanghailanders of Baltic, Polish and Czech antecedents whose countries now lie behind the curtain. The new camp in hot and sticky Samar was no permanent answer, but it provides temporary shelter while the refugees waited for visas or a new sanctuary. For some, like the child of the Tihwa family, there would be graves. 'PANORAMA 7 HAT PRE-VICTORIAN Philippines had its share of the lively. joyous past is evident as soon as one experiences the folk dances of that past, particulariy as done by salty old folk. In the :r.Ioro and Tagalog love dances, for example, there is little timidity or coyness. The Pandango Malaguena from Laguna al· lows girls to flirt, tease, whip up their skirts to show theit ankles, and kick their heals to show their legs. Moreover, tra· ditional dances have even been able to make fun of over-starched courtship method, as in the Bicol Pantomina, where the wife take$ the dance seriously but the husband ends each fervent imploration, each languishing attitude with a snicker or a wink, to avenge himself for all the humiliations he has suffered as a lover. Most native and most pagan of the remembered dances is the Subli of Batani;:;as ( susub and bali signify submission), in which crouching male dancers prance with flailing arms rapidly around rigid, haughty women. The dance which best marks the changeover from pagan to Spanish is the Palo-Palo dance of Batanes, which led to the dramatic Moro-moro plays. The palo, wooden clubs used to fight the Spaniards, today serve only as washerwoman's sticki. Some Moro love dances betray their foreign origin: the Mangalay has Indonesian arm and hand movements; the Maglanka is a Chinese fan dance. The Polkabol of Tayabas is European in its hopping movements, although it also has Flame:-ico ir•terludes. lilut the Igorot war dance, like the Subli, is more deeply rooted in the temper of the Filipino. In the Bontoc rain ritual, two warriors armed with spears simulate battle in the center of a group of elders. Seven men with gongs weave a shuffling circle around them, while two isolated maidens dance on the fringe. Suddenly, at a cry, one warrior falls, the- other strikes; the gongs fall silent, the elders are motionless. A related ritual dance is the Dugso, harvest ceremony of the warlike Bukidnon Manobos. In thanksgiving, on the last day of the harvest, the tribe gathers before a dying fire where a female semicircle wearing anklet bells march gravely back and forth, with no other sound but the chant of the men's prayer. As the fire dies, the tempo rises. Suddenly, the bells stop: the women squat and bow; the prayer dance is over. DECEMBER 1955 53 p&l Book ~! ~to'Lies 1955 By LEONARD CASPER DURING ITS annual conference in November, the Philippine Writers Association spoke hopefully of finding new government sponsorship to replace the old Commonwealth prizes and more recent Republic awards - but hardly sounded convinci:1g even to its own ears. Partly because Commonwealth prize manuscripts become government property and partly because Gen. Aguinaldo held several administrations at bay, Teodoro Agoncillo's biography of Bonifacio ha!! still not been published. Furthermore, royalties have never been paid the various authors represented in one of the standard government Prose and Poetry volumes. Nevertheless, if the Philippine government is not dependable as a patron of art, still there are the writers themselves or private sponsors. It was announced that part of the Races family are planning a series of literary prizes, in 1956, to supplement the Palanca and Philippines Free Press awards. Races judges, presumably, will be looking .for the sort of quality in fiction that has become synonymous with winners of these other contests. At least the presence of another patron will help satisfy those readers whose favorite story was not chosen by previous judges: for, certainly, even among professional critics there are differences of opinion. Not many readers, for example, have felt satified with the apologetics of this year's Palanca judges. Particularly Virgilio Samonte's "The Other Woman" hardly seemed worthy of preference above Gonzalez' "Whispering Woman," Brillantes' "Wind Over the Earth,'' or stories by Viray, Roperos, and Bienvenido Santos. Although its use of an exacting "central 54 PANORAMA authority" (narrator) was compared by T. D. Agcaoili with the technique of Henry James, that critic forgot that James' major ir!terest invests itself in the psychological or moral impact on that narrator of his own slowly discovered and revealed experience of life. Samonte's narrator, however, is all device, a pair of blinders to prevent a conclusion from being foreseen. Unfortunately, the conclusion (that the dying man's lover is his hare-lipped servant, not his sister-in-law) is easily foreseen, since itfits exactly the gothic formula established, through setting particularly, from the start. As in a tricked-up detective story, one need only suspect the least suspicious character. How all this affects the point of view narrator, however, is anybody's guess! "Ceremony" (J. C. Tuvera) is less predictable, its texture more exciting for its fine-edged perceptions. The significance of the story, nevertheless, is elusive: the young rfieumatic's leaning towards incest may be only the natural effect of his being lonely, diseased and deprived. As perversion, that incest may even parallel his mother's misplaced trust in herboJarios. But there, as a doubled description of twisted human frailty, the story stands: static, unmoved and unmoving. Ji T LEAST Mr. Rosales, in "The Dam" (Edith Tiempo) is a more complicated character - lonely but possessing substitute power of a sort and therefore dangerous, a figure of latent homosexuality which, however, may be only a symptom of the psychological and moral alienation which he suffers, from his own family and from the larger family of man. Although judgment in the Free Press contest was necessarily more circumscribed, perhaps less disagreement was caused by the awardings. Among a calendar of unmentionables, "stories" that failed to put breath into the nostrils of their characters, "A Man's Name" (Jose Ma. Gallardo) was a memorable exception. The simplicity of its technique is a sign not of incompetence but of sufficiency, appropriate therefore to the old revolucionario's independence, his moving claim to self-determination. A young man, proud of having earned the right not to be anonymous, clings like the shadow of flesh sunken deep between bones but still visible in the hands and face of the old man who insists on suffering the learnings of his own signature. DECEMBER 19S5 SS The material for sentiment is everywhere in this story; but is everywhere restrained by the man's incorruptible and unhumiliated sense of his human worth. Inviolable as an onyx flame, character and story seem deserving of high praise. By contrast, the often more brilliant "Chambers of the Sea" (Edith Tiempo) cannot submit to the sev~rest scrutiny of heart and intellect. Its magnificent beached-merfolk symbol, reflective of Tio Teban's anguished because forced removal from the splendors of his private world, is more than he can comfortably bear despite the lengthy simmering of his characterization. Because the fineness of his sensibility is never established by incident, anguish at its loss can hardly raise sympathy: it is rather assumed by his own conceit and by his opposition to philistines like his land-lord father. It may be that he is self-deceived, and that the merfolk &re intentionally more magnificent than himself; it may be that his imaginative response to them is also excessive and wrongheaded, that they are seals tangled in kelp. The irony of either alternative cannot be proven by the story. If a central character is misled or misleading, the story's truth can emerge either through symbols which reveal to the reader what the character himself cannot know or by placin.g the point of narration outside that character. Unfortunately, the major symbol of "Chambers" is inseparable from the consciousness of Tio Tehan - our version of it is necessarily his --and although there is a brief introductory passage outside his consciousness at the story's start, this is a tactical error and offers, no dependable iasight into the truth of Tio Tehan. The apparatus for irony, therefore, is confused and so must be the ultimate function of the merfolk discovery in the story's total meaning. Ji PPARENTLY THE author, seized intellectually by the relations between her character and Eliot's "Prufrock," was satisfied with that cold parallel and s·o did not bother to finish the flesh of Tehan in hot procreation. The story seems written not for a reader but for a critic d'=voted to finding and praising abstract designs, completed or not. The character is inadequate to its symbol; the symbol, therefore, however gigantic, becomes palsied. Although there is no single moment of such striking quality in "The Crowded Room" (Virgilio Samonte), its theme, the waste of living, is felt through the absolute reference of all its 56 PANORAMA persons and things. The story;s peculiarity is that although its characters are crammed hip against backbone, cheek against breastbone in their cramped settlement project, emotionally they are infinitely separate, sometimes untouchable against the sweat of their will. The feeling that wells from these dying ones, struggling to be r.live and not incongruous, is something that Samonte usually fails to achieve. Yet the making of one such memorable can absolve many an unmentionable. * * * Thomas Carlyle was sitting one day in the humble home of his mother in Eccleiechan, Scotland. His mother was a humble housewife but wise in the deep things of life. Said Carlyle, "If I were a preacher, I would go into the pulpit and say 'You people know what you ought to do; now go out and do it.'" But his mother after a few minutes of silence said, "Yes, Thomas, but ye must tell them how.'' There's the rub! Most of us know what is right and what is wrong, but how to do the right and avoid doing the wrong constitutes life's greatest problem. The healthy soul is always deeply conscious of what is right and what is wrong. The gruelling ques~ tion eating into the minds of such people at all times is, "How can I do the good and abstain from doing the evil?" It is not enough simply to know - we must will to do the right. And that takes character, faith and persistence. - E. L. DOUGLASS * DECEMBER 1955 57 You and Your Income Tax By JOSE C. CAMPOS, Jr. College of Law, University {)f Lhe Philippines PART TWO p !CNSIONS paid by the government or any of its instrumentalities to a pensionado abroad a re taxable income. They are in the nature of salaries received. Per diems and travelling allowances given to an employe while travelling on official business should be included in his gross income, but income actually spent are deductible therefrom. The following items are not taxable: ( 1) Life insurance: proceeds of policies paid to beneficiaries upon the death of the insured. (2) The amount received by the insured, as a return of premiums paid by him under life insurance, endowment or annuity contracts. 58 In this concluding installment the author, a taxation expert, tells you how to reduce your tax liability without falling into the pitfalls of income tax. ( 3) The value of property ~ccquired by gift, bequest, devise or descent; but income from such property should be includeci in the gross income. ( 4) Interest on government securities, obligations of the Government of the Philippines or a n y political subdivision thereof. (5) Amounts received, through accide~t or health insurance under the Workmen's Compensation Acts. ( 6) Income of any kind to the extent required by any treaty obligation binding upon the government of the Philippines. ( 7) Income of foreign governments received from their investments - the Philippines in PANORAMA stocks, bonds, and other domestic securities. (8) Amount received by ofi:lcers, enlisted men, and their .beneficiaries by way of backpay for services rendered during 1942-1945. (9) Amounts received from the U.S. government, or of the Philippines from any agency on account of damages or losses suffered during the last war. ( 10) Amounts received from the U.S. Veterans Administration. In computing the net income, the following are allowed as deductions from the gross income: ( 1 ) All the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business. (2) Amount of interest paid within the taxable year on indebtedness except that interest incurred or continued to pur>ehase bonds and other securities, the interest upon which is exempt from tax is not deductible. ( 3) Taxes paid or accrued during the taxable year. This includes import duties, business, occupation license, privilege, excise; documentary stamp taxes, residence taxes A and B, and other taxes of every name and nature paid directly to the Government or to any of its political subdivisions. (The following taxes are not deductible: (a) income tax; DECEMBER 1955 (b) income, war profits and excess pr<:ifits imposed by the authority of a foreign country; ( c) estate inheritance and gift taxes; ( d) special assessment or taxes assessed against local benefits of a kind tending to increase the value of property assessed.) ( 4) Losses actually sustained during the taxable year and not compensated for by insurance or otherwise. ( 5) Debts due to the taxpayer actually ascertained to be worthless and charged off within the taxable year. ( 6) A reasonable allowance for the deterioration of property arising out of its use or employment in the business or trade, or out of its not being used. ( 7) Depletion of oil . and gas wells and mines. ( 8) Contributions or gifts actually paid or made to or for use of the government; to domestic corporations or associations organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, athletic, cultural or educational purposes or for rehabilitation of veterans, not part of the net income of which inures to the benefit of any private stockholder or individual. F o~ PURPOSES ?f administrative convemence and to enable individual taxpayers to make a short-cut in filing their tax returns, an individual may elect a standard deduction in 59 lieu of the aforementioned deductions. Such optional deductions shall be in the amount of Pl,000 or an amount of 10 per cent of his gross income. For those who are on a salary basis, the optional standard deduction is most beneficial both from the standpoint of convenience and economy. A person earning P6,000 per annum will have to do a lot of mental gymnastics and paper work to show and prove that his deductions under Schedule A would amount to P600. Moreover, if one chooses the standard deduction, the revenue officers stop asking him questions. The law does not allow deductions for any of the following items: (a) personal, living or family expenses; (b) amounts spent for permanent improvements, new buildings, or any improvement to increase the value of any property; ( c) amounts expended and (d) premiums paid on any life insurance policy covering the life of any officer or employe or of any person financially interested in any trade or busines!\ carried on by the taxpayers. Although income tax is a drastic revenue measure, its proponents have tempered its harshness by allowing tl!l.xpayers a certain amount of personal ex.i. emption for themselves and for their dependents. If the taxpayer is single or a married per-. son legally separated or divorced from his or her spouse, he is allowed a personal exemption of f>l,800. If the taxpayer is a married man or woman not legally separated or divorced or is the head of a family, he is allowed P3,000. Where husband and wife file separate returns, only one exemption of P3,000 Not Recommended 60 "Some people manage to pass as head of a family with several dependents without inviting scrutiny from the tax collectors. Others do succeed in claiming additional exemptions for dependent children who are not legitimate, recognized natural or legally adopted children. In so far as such practices do not attract the attention of the revenue officers, you can claim personal exemptions beyond the amount you are legally entitled to, thus indirectly reducing your tax liability. But I have one word of caution. Should the Collector discover that your returns were fraudulent, a surcharge of 50 per cent of the amount of your tax liability as rectified will be levied and collected from you, plus the threat of a criminal prosecution." -]. C. Campos, Jr. PANORAMA shall be allowed from their aggregate income. An unmarried person m a y claim the personal exemption of P3,000 provided that he or she is a "head of the family." For income tax purposes, a head of the family includes an unmarried minor woman with one or both parents, or one or more brothers or sisters, or one or more legitimate recognized natural, adopted children dependent upon him or her for their chief support provided such brothers, sisters, or children are less than 21 years of age or where such children are incapable ot self-support because they are physically or mentally defective. In addition, an additional exemption of P600 is allowed a head of a family for each legitimate, recognized natural, or adopted child wholly dependent upon the taxpayer, if such rlependents are under 21 years of age or incapable of self-support because they are mentally or physically defective. J F THE STATUS of a person changes during the taxable year by reason of marriage, birth, emancipation, or death, how will it affect his tax liability? If a person married in the middle of the year, is he entitled to claim the full exemption of P3,000? If a child is born in December of the same year, is he entitled to claim the full exemption of P600? The answer is in the affirmaDECEMBER 1955 tive. The personal and additional exemptions shall be determined by the status of the taxpayer at the close of the taxable year, except in the case ot death. The person, whether he is a minor or of lawful age, a citizen or an alien resident, must file a tax return on or before March 31 of every calendar year and pay the corresponding income tax after proper assessment hy the Collector of Internal Revenue. An alien resident pays a tax on his entire net income received from all sources in the same manner as Filipino citizens. A non-resident alien pays income tax on his entire net income received from all sources only within the Philippines if such alien is engaged in trade or business or has an office or place of business in the Philippines. The returns must be made personally by the taxpayer, unless by reason of minority, sickness, or other disability, or absence from the Philippines, the taxpayer is unable to make his own return in which case it may be made by a duly authorized representative. The best way of reducing one's tax liability is first, to know his rights under the Tax Code, and second, to know his liabilities. With these as his weapons, he can watch his step against the pitfalls in income tax. 61 Literary Personality-XII q':.ahame q':.eeae: ~ouad .. 1':.ack to':. tlie ~oul Evil is at home a LTHOUGH Graham Greene writes no scenarios for movies, fourteen of his novels have been filmed, four of them making first-rate productions: The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, Confidential Agent, and The End of the Affair. In 1948, The Heart of the Matter became a Book of the Month Club choice in America. Fortunately, perhaps no British author deserves popularity so much as Greene. He himself usually divides his work into serious novels and "entertainments" (hke This Gun for Hire). Yet even thE former, by exploring sin in convincing human terms, are as personal and exciting as the morning headlines. Greene fotlows the drama of the soul not through abstract theologic~l. discussion, but with dark naked images so flesh-eaten and visible that the reader's eye itself becomes a camera (not an in~ nocent bystander). If sin is attractive, to Greene the labyrinthine way of purgation is far more interesting. Because he is a convert, a Roman Catholic by choice, he has not let himself be harassed by churchmen some of whom are Catholic by birth and coercion. For Greene, saints begin their long ascension as human beings. The unbending demonstration of that conviction is in his work. Graham Greene was born ( 1904) not far from London, ir, a hatefully ordinary little town where his father was headmaster of a harsh, plain school. The schoolboys slept in a large dormitory, there were no locks on the lavatories, and solitary walks were forbidden. Greene was repelled by this lack of privacy: "One began to believe in heaven because one 62 PANORAMA believed in hell, but for a long time it was only hell one could picture with a certain intimacy." He tried to escape by reading melodramatic yarns about Italian dukes, but discovered in their brutality that "Goodness has only once found a perfect incarnation in a human body and never will again, but evil can always find a home there." J3 Y THE AGE of 14, he had attempted suicide several times: by drinking photograph developing fluid and hay-fever lotion; by jumping into the school swimming pool after swallowing 20 aspirins. At 16, he left his psychoanalyst's house in London relieved but bored. At 17, he tried "Russian roulette": he put a bullet in a revolver, spun the chambers, placed the muzzle to his head and pulled the trigger, on a gamble. By the sixth miss he was bored even by this risking of his life. At Oxford he drifted unresistingly through classes and published Babbling April, a book of limp and limping verses. More important, faced later with the prospect of marriage of n Roman Catholic, he began religious instructions in 1926. Although the conversion was intellectual, gradually his emotional convictions transferred also: love trailed belief. After his first novel and several years as a journalist, Greene was subsidized by a publisher while working on murky, heavily contrived melodramas. Gradually the suspense ,ghtened iq his fiction, although both critics and his popular 3.Udience refused to recognize terrifying glimpses of sin which he presented. Finally, The Power and the Glory ( 1940) shocked them beyond entertainment. Writing of the Mexican persecution of the Catholic Church, Greene centered his real investigation on a "whisky priest," a weak and guilt-ridden man _whose love of God, however, ultimately helps him survive even the egotism of that guilt and, presumably, eternal death at the hands of the police. The Heart of the Matter (1948) dramatized the manner of a virtue's (pity) becoming a vice when it placed African official Scobie above God as self-appointed minister of moral desert. Scobie, however, would seem to have saved his soul v.-hen, rather than injure God longer by sacrilege, he kills himself, risking that soul's salvation out of pity for his maker. (Pitiless rival British author, Evelyn Waugh, was reported certain that Scobie was in hell, not even in purgatory.) DECEMBER 1955 63 <]'HE END OF THE AFFAIR (1951) forces its adulterous heroine into a compact to serve only God, if her lover's life (lost in a London blitz) is restored. She keeps her word, despite severest temptations of the flesh, and it is suggested is en route to sainthood. "I believe there's a God," he says, "I believe the whole bag of tricks; there's nothing I don't believe, they could subdivide the Trinity into a dozen parts and I'd still believe. They could dig up records that proved Christ had been invented by Pilate to get himself promoted and I'd believe just the same. I've caught belief like a disease. I've fallen into belief like I fell in love." Graham Greene finds his situations by looking for them. Although he himself dre~es seedily and is careless about his own body, he pursues the lives of others straight beneath the flesh with an irresistible interest in the inmost workings of their souls. Almost every morning he forces down 500 words, in pencil, on lined paper. Yet he manages to visit every nick and nook of the world: besides Mexico and Africa, he has prowled restlessly through Malaya (whose English rubber planters, overrun with Communist guerrillas, he visited in 1950), the Mediterranean shores and sea, occupied Vienna, and Indo-China. His eyes turn everywhere, looking troubled, intense, obsessed, because they reflect the spirit of man, wormy with evil but mustering grace for survival, which he has seen everywhere and which he gives back to his readers and, in dramatic granite slabs of light and shadow, to the viewers of his movie "thrillers." 64 * * * DOES A FLEA FLY OR FLEE? A flea and fly in a flue Were imprisoned, so what could they do? Said the fly, "Let us flee!" "Let us fly!" said the flea, And they flew through a flaw in the flue. * PANORAMA Despite the universal acclaim that it has received, this Shakespearean play, according to our critic, is a very imperfect one. The movie has emphasized some of these imperfections. Jlomeo and Juliet on the .Screen By MIGUEL A. BERNAD, S.J. ]! XUBERANCE is a difficult thing to portray on the screen-and exuberance is the chief characteristic of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Yet all of what Coleridge has called this "exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life" Mr. Castellani has captured in his screen version. This film is a gorgeous spectacle, pleasing to eye and ear, a feast of s o u n d and color doubtless surpassing the Venetian festival itself at which this film was awarded the grand prize. The photography is superb: the rich architectural deDECEMBER 1955 tails of halls and buildings, of church, cell, and cloister; the realistic street scenes; the splendid costumes; the stately dance; the elaborate religious ritual-all these combine with the sound of bells and birds and sacred chant and medieval music to produce that tone of exuberance which is so characteristic of the play. Alas, however, for fallen humanity! Our virtues often carry with them their own weaknesses: and the gorgeous realism of this film also proves its own undoing. There is, after all, something to be said fer 65 Charles Lamb's paradoxical opm1on that Shakespeare's plays, precisely because they are such excellent plays, should not be acted on the stage at all. And if not the stage, how much less on the vivid screen! The film's chief merit is its capturing of a renaissance city in the springtime of life when youth is in love, and in the hot summer when the blood is hot and brawls are frequent. For instance, there is the clever device of the nest of fledglings in the cornice-symbol of young love-noticed by the camera every time Romeo comes to the cloister for a talk with Friar Laurence about Juliet. But according to the most stringent laws of the Church, this cloister is off-limits to women. For the film, therefore, to portray Juliet as bursting into the monastery, 3.ad hurryinl? down the cloister (to the amazement of two friars, who, however, do nothing to stop her), inquiring her way to Friar Laurence's room, and, being directed thereto by a friar, bursting into the cell and asking the friar to shut the door-all this detailed realism is incredible, unrealistic. The stageplay, by leaving the scene of the conversation indefinite, encourages the audience to ask no question, but to submit to the poetry. The film makes the audience believe its eyes. 66 ~ R TAKE the balcony scene. Again, in Shakespeare's time this would have caused no difficulty. Juliet would come out on the upper stage, Romec) on the lower; the audience could image the upper stage as a balcony, the lower as a garden; and the two lovers could profess their love to each other to their hearts' content. But the film-again by attempting to be entirely realistic-does not put Juliet in a balcony, with Romeo in the garden below. Instead, the cameras take us to a real Italian palace, where: the "balcony" is really an arcaded corridor running along one side of the building. Juliet takes up her stand on this corridor, Romeo takes up his on the great stone stairway leading up from the patio. The whispered nothings of the lovers are not whispered at all; instead they have to be shouted back and forth from these two vantage points. It becomes impossible to imagine why the entire Capulet household is not aroused! This is where realism defeats itself. Fidelity to the letter is often infidelity to the spirit. Charles Lamb is quite right: seeing is not believing, but on the contrary destroys faith. In the absence of stark realism, however, the film uses another means of emphasizing, for example, the presence of PANORAMA Tybalt's "festering" corpse in the tomb. This is done by a clever interpolation in the scene in Friar Laurei:ice's ~ell. There is no mention of Tybalt's corpse in the text; but the scriptwriters have inserted it m the film. "Wilt thou not be afraid when thou seest the corpse of thy cousin Tybalt?" Friar Laurence is made to say as he hands Juliet the vial. This is the kind of infidelity to the let' ter which achieves a greater fidelity to the drama. Besides strengthening the characterization of Juliet by proving her fear of the tomb and yet her resolution to drink the potion, the film makes much of the fact that Romeo and Juliet are husband and wife. Theirs are not the clandestine meetings of illicit love. Their love is holy, their mutual devotion a fulfillment of marriage vows. Therefore the proposed marriage of Juliet and Paris is not only sentimentally abhorrent to Juliet, but legally impossible and morally sinful. JI. OWEVER, THE very realism which, in such cases, exploits the play's strong points, at other times demonstrates the play's weaknesses. How, for example, is it possible for a .young man to love one woman to distraction one minute, and the next minute to be vowing eternal love to another woman. a love that leads to marriage DECEMBER 1955 in a day and to suicide in four? Only in the conventions of romantic, not realistic, love is such a plot credible. Another defect of the play emphasized by the film is that of "double time." How can Friar John, who goes to Mantua and is walled up in a plague-str~tken house there, get back to Verona before Juliet's "two and forty hours" of sleep are over? A more serious difficulty comes from the extreme youth of both Romeo and Juliet. The latter is only fourteen. It must be said that the actress who played Juliet's role in the film deserved every praise. She looked like a child, and in many respects acted like one, yet with the poise and maturity required by the part. The same could not be said of Romeo who must age visibly before our eyes. Romeo at the balcony is a lad in his teens; the Romeo who kills himself to "shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-weary flesh" is an old man weary of life. This profound change in a character does not offend in the reading, but it is difficult to portray visibly. The truth of the matter is that, despite the universal acclaim that this play has received, it is a very imperfect play. It is early Shakespeare, full of the vigor of youth, but lacking the profundi1:y of a 67 Hamlet or a Macbeth or a Lear. It is a lyric, rather than a dramatic, masterpiece. Yet it is not without dramatic power: it is a tragedy of misdeeds. If there had been no unreasoning hatred between Capulets and Montagues, if old Capulet had not been so ambitious to marry his daughter off to a count, if he had been more understanding and less high-handed, if Romeo had not been so intent on self-destruction, and, having seen the apparently dead Juliet, had hied away to church for the good of her soul, or to bed for the good of his body, the story would have had a happy ending. J HE BASIC cause of the tragedy is partly the family feud, but chiefly the notion of romantic love itself. Romantic love is not ordinary love. It is idolatrous love-the love of Tristan and Isolde, the love of the troubadours. It is also selfish. These two young lovers begin with a healthy, ingenuous love; but their love does not remain healthy. It is selfishness, not true love, to refuse to live on without one's beloved. Call it folly, rather than wickedness. But in the final analysis, in this, as in all other Shakespearean tragedies, the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves. Romeo and Juliet are not victims merely of circumstances entirely beyond their control: they are victims of human folly, their parents' and their own. * * * 68 lf ISHING INVOLVES more than a line and a hook. In the J' clear waters of northeastern Sumatra, fzsh have been caught with equipment and methods as old as the islands. One man propels a small boat (PROA) and two men swim at each end of a seine net (PAYANO PINGGIR). Together they approach a school of fzsh in the teeming coastal waters and close in. Their catch ensnared, they head for shore, dragging up to 300 pounds of fzsh- food staple for the natives of the Netherland East Indies. * PANORAMA The story of Bienvenido M. Gonzalez 'J(J~ GIANTS • E ARLY AFTERNOON on December 30, two years a~o, the city desk of a Manila paper picked up a call from a police reporter. A rewrite man nonchalantly took the call, a brief one, wrote the story, and handed the copy to the city editor. Upon reading the story, the editor dropped his copy pencil and called up the desk of the afternoon edition. It was too late, he was told; the final edition had come out, and the story had to be run next morning. Being off for the day, the city editor turned over the brief story to the night editor, an older and wiser man, who promptly called a reporter to get the full story. The brief report was: Dr. Bienvenido M. Gonzalez, one-time president of the University of the Philippines, died of heart attack at a suburban hospital that noon. The story was told the next morning in matter-of-fact newspaper prose. It needed no embellishment; the facts spoke of DECEMBER 1955 By BEN REVILLA the life and death of a man who was known as the sixth president of the state university. The man's greatness was there in undertones. Editorial writers who once studied at the U.P. had to pay tribute to him. One wrote that Gonzalez "stood out in an age of compromise as a man who would not stoop to the law - though sometimes necessary - gesture of politics to get what he wanted." Another said that the quality which endeared the man to faculty and students of the institution he once headed was "his complete faith in the democratic liberalism in which his generation grew up in our country." Q N THAT evening of the day he died, his remains were moved to lie in state at the Diliman chapel. It was his wish. Two and a half years ago, he had regretfully left the University, after resigning as president 6() because of principle. His forced retirement provoked an issue not only in the campus but outside as well, and students rallied behind him, invoking academic independence for the university. They laid him to rest the next day, at a cem_etery on the southern outskirts of the city, on the eve of a new year. Several kilometers of cars and buses filled with students, faculty, alumni and friends, followed the hearse bearing his remains to his final resting place. More tribute to the man came. In Congress where he usually had trouble with politicians who had ideas for the U.P., some former colleagues who had become senators delivered eulogies in his memory. From Malacafiang, the source of the intrigue to ease him out of the U.P. helm came a posthumous citation signed by the new incumbent president. Former students and colleagues in the faculty wrote pieces remembering the achievements of a great man. Somehow it was little realized that the best monument to his memory is the modern Diliman campus of the university. It is agreed that his decision to transfer the U.P. from its rubbled home in Padre Faura to a new, hopeful site was the wisest he ever made. The odyssey of Dr. Gonzalez in the university began on December 13, 1913 when he was appointed assistant instructor in animal husbandry at Los Banos. He became instructor on June 12, 1916; assistant professor on June 1, 1917; associate professor on January 1, 1917; professor on January 1, 1920; head of the department of animal husbandry on October 6, 1923; acting dean of the college of agriculture on August 27, 1927; dean of the college on October 24, 1928; and president of the university on April 29, 1939. This last position he held, except for some years during the War, until his retirement on April 22, 1951. Besides being the first alumnus and the first scientist to become president of the U.P., Dr. Gonzalez was the youngest president of the university and the first alumnus regent, serving in that capacity from 1918-1921. Dr. Gonzalez's own father, a physician, was the president of the first state university, the Universidad Literaria de Filipinas, founded during the shortlived Philippine Republic under General Aguinaldo. The father was also a member of the Malolos Congress of the Revolutionary Government which drafted the first constitution of the Philippines on November 29, 1898. D R. GONZALEZ was born March 22, 1893 in Apalit, Pampanga. It is noted by a writer that when the ferment of "As a State institution, the University of the Philippines is in duty bound to provide educational opportunities for everybody. Its facilities, however, are naturally limited, and it is therefore constrained to restrict this privilege to th::ise who can profit most by higher education. While it may seem that only profit could accrue to individuals from the functions of the University, the State as a social entity would suffer in the end from too promiscuous admittance to seats of higher learning. It would be futile to vest its efforts on individuals that are neither temperamentally disposed nor mentally conditioned to profit from higher education. Mass education all too often defeats its objectives. In an attempt to open the doors of the university to the greatest possible number, facilities are spread too thin and everybody suffers from mental inanition. But the State suffers most because the mentally privileged few are cheated of an ~pportunity to attain their fullest development. While almost anyone as an individual may profit to a limited extent from unlimited education, very little social benefit, if any, can redound to the State from mediocre service. Again, mass education is bound to create an oversupply of workers along certain lines so that they find it well nigh impossible to make a living." agrarian unrest in his home province was beginning to rise, Dr. Gonzalez had the "clarity of vision and the intelligence to favor land reforms." Dr. Gonzalez himself was the scion of a wealthy and powerful landlord family in central Luzon, but perhaps because of his "firstrate scientist's mind" he succeeded in "cleansing his attitude and decisions from the traditional bias of the cacique mentality." The distinction of the late President Gonzalez, of course, lies in the field of science and ~------~ 11'\r'!~ -B. M. Gonzalez education. As an agriculturist he specialized in animal genetics and improvement of Philippine livestock; he initiated the development of the Berkjala breed of swine and the Los Banos Cantonese chicken-long established as improved breeds, and established the beginnings of the Philamin breed of beefdraft cattle. He devoted much of his time in Los Banos to research. As a university president, he strove "to set high standards in the acquisition and interpretation of knowledge so the pronouncements of the faculty on any subject would be authoritative." He gave to the university an atmosphere of freedom which enabled faculty and students alike to . pursue knowledge in the best academic tradition. He was well loved by the university constituents. When he decided to leave the university, the students to whom he hardly ingratiated himself staged a grand and spontaneous demonstration of faith, and in loyalty to him. At the University of Wisconsin where he received his master's degree in 1915, Dr. Gonzalez has a place in the school's Hall of Fame. In 1940 he was designated as the U.P. most distinguished alumnus. But the best tribute to Dr. Gonzalez was paid in 1951 by the students whose welfare he had always looked after. 72 * * * {;jalathea expedition aJ ENMARK has a more-than-a-century-old tradition of collaboration between our Royal Navy and our Science in the study of seas. This was also manifested by our fzrst round-the-world expedition in 1845-47 on the corvette GALATHEA, from which we took over the name for our expedition. The old GALATHEA visited Manila in 1846 and so did our second round-the-world expedition on the research vessel DANA in 1929 under the leadership of the late Professor Johannes Schmidt. This was also my fzrst visit to Manila ... For two years the DANA cruised the oceans, and a young lieutenant on board, Svend Greve and I, then an assistant zoologist, started our very fzrst dim plans tor a future expedition. For a long time they remained dim, the idea lived only in our minds, but already during the Second World War it was decided that the main object should be the study of organisms in the deeper half of the oceans and if possible, in the greatest of depths. -A. BRUUN * PANORAMA Through a geologisfs eye The Rocks I at Baguio By MATEO H. TUPAS Head, Department of Geology University of the Philippines T HE TRAVELLER, taking the Zigzag along the famous Kennon Road, will observe topography, which is characterized by steep-walled valleys and narrow or even knife-edged crestlines. This topography is the result of streams cutting vigorously and rapidly down the valleys. The valley walls frequently slide, especially during heavy rains; hence they are rocky and almost devoid of vegetation. Such a topography a geologist would describe as youthful. Within the youthful topography, however, are isolated plateaus like the site of Baguio City. These plateaus are characterized by smooth rolling hills, such as those in the heart of the city, and wide valleys DECEMBER 1955 like the site of Loakan airfield. Within these plateaus the streams are mere freshets, and the rivers wander about, hardly able to erode. The soil 1s red and thick, and vegetation is lush. The scenery seems graceful and calm, typical of topography which a geologist would describe as mature. Why do the plateaus occur in the midst of mountainous terrain? Moreover, why are there a number of them, occurring separately and at different levels? Standing at Mines View Park and looking into the deep valley of the Antamok River, one can realize that streams a1 e rapidly dissecting the plateau on which Baguio city rests into rugged mountains. Here is 73 youthful topography encroaching upon and destroying the mature. The plateaus must have beeu parts of a once widespread mature terrain, now separate from one another simply because of the vagaries of erosion. If the surface of this terrain were reconstructed by joining the tops of the remnant plateaus, it would be something like parts of the Zamb'.lles Range broadly undulating, with a relief of a few hundred feet. Geologists call this terrain, which about half a million years ago formed a large part of the Mountain Province, the Baguio Matureland. T HE OLDEST known rock in the Baguio district are schists, rock which have been so intensely altered by high temperature and pressure and have already lost their original character. These rocks which are exposed along Antamok River, about ten kilometers east of the heart of Baguio City, have metamorphosed i n t o sands and clays. Sands and clays are composed of fine particles eroded from pre-existing rocks older than the schist - rocks from which the sandstones and shale were derived, and rocks upon which they were deposited. In the Baguio district, however, these rocks have not been found. The oldest event, there74 fore, of which there is geologichistorical record, is deposition of sands and clays probably under a shallow sea. What follows is the alteration of the sands and clays into schist. In the eastern and southeastern portions of the Baguio district, outcrops of diorite are found. Diorites, in general, are believed to have crystallized from molten rock-melts a few kilometers deep within the, earth, giving off an immense amount of heat that alters whatever rocks it penetrates or comes in contact with. We in~ fer that after the sands and clays were deposited, they were intruded by the diorite and altered into schists. Rocks record the geologic events of a certain time-period. It is logical to expect that rocks corresponding to all periods of geologic time exist. But because rocks are the result of localized conditions, and because during each period conditions in diferent parts of the earth are different, rocks corresponding to all periods of geologic time can hardly be expected to exist within, say, the Philippine Islands. Thus it is that within the Baguio district the rocks corresponding to the period succeeding the intrusion of the diorite perhaps do not exist. It is known, however, that the diorite-schist had undergone erosion before the rocks that now overlie them were depoPANORAMA sited. Whether other rocks were deposited on the dioriteschist and then eroded, no one knows. s UDDENLY, though 0 v er a hundreds of y e a r s , the Baguio region was convulsed by volcanic action. The hills of diorite and schist must have exploded as lava rose to the surface to form volcanoes. During llulls in the eruptions, these rocks were eroded and the products of erosion were transported and later laid down by 'streams as flood-plain and delta deposits. Vulcanism, however, was dominant over erosion and sedimentation. Rocks which are now exposed in the eastern portion of Baguio city and four to five kilometers east of the city limits, attest to these phenomena. They are the rocks in which the gold deposits of the AtokBig Wedge, Baguio Gold and Antamok Mines are found. After a time, vulcanism subsided. Erosion became the dominant geologic process. It wore down the volcanoes until in a few places only a little volcanic material remained above the diorite-schist, and it would have continued into the dioriteschist had not the region sunk beneath the sea. A shallow sea once covered the Baguio district. This we know from the conglomerates, sandstones, and shales - all DECEMBER 1955 shallow sea sediments - that lie on top of the Antamok. The sediments are in a large part composed of material derived from Antamok rocks. They are exposed in the southeastern portion of Baguio city, extending for about a kilometer south and east of the city limits. A thick section is seen in the upper Bued River near the Zigzag. The rocks that overlie the Zigzag are coralline limestones. They are ancient reefs, and in their time much like the" reefs that fringe many of our islands today. Now they are high and dry, capping Mt. Mirador (hence the name - Mirador limestones) and Dominican and Quezon Hills. The Mirador contains fossils of the Pliocene epoch - which ended about a million years ago. The Zigzag must belong to the next older epoch, the Miocene. The Antamok could belong to a still older epoch. the Oligocene, but because elsewhere in northern Luzon rocks similar to it are known to be of lower Miocene age, it is probably 1 owe r Miocene rather than Oligocene. D URING THE Pliocene epoch the Baguio district continued to sink farther below sea level, whereas the surrounding areas had stopped rising. During the ensuing period, however, it seemed that the district 75 not only continued to sink but also sank much faster. Also, the area north of the district resumed its rise and rose much faster than anytime before. The rapid sinking of the Baguio district and the equally rapid rising of the area to the north is known as warping, accompanied by mild stretching and renting of the earth's crust. Through such rents lava sometimes pours out. While lava flows are found interlayered so rare that they are significant with the conglomerate, they are only as they are related to the rocks formed during the ensuing epoch. The Baguio region emerged above the sea early in the Pleistocene epoch, about a million years ago, probably even as the rocks were being folded and faulted. Just as soon as the region emerged, erosion began and, as the land rose ever higher, became more powerful. After a time, the emergence stopped; erosion however continued, though with diminishing intensity. The result of this erosion is the Baguio Matureland overlaid by a thin c o v e r of Klondyke and Zigzag rocks. After the development of thr: Matureland, the Baguio region was elevated and gradually subjected to destruction by erosion. Thus Baguio today is rugged mountains, the result of the destruction of the Matureland. That the erosion is still 76 BAGUIO'S GOLD "Shortly after the intrusion of the andesites molten material, the solutions that deposited the gold ores of the Baguio district rose through the diorite-schist, the Antamok, and even into the Klondyke and the Zigzag. That the solutions came after the intrusion of the andesites is evident from the fact of mineralization of the andesites themselves. "Most of the ores, however, are in the diorite-schist and Antamok, at some distances beneath the cover of Klondyke and Zigzag. The characteristics of the ores in· dicate that their deposition was controlled by the ground surface that then existed. The period of deposition, coming as it did after the in· trusion of the andesites, must have coincided with the period of development of the Baguio Matureland. Ore deposition being a relatively short-lived phenomenorn, it probably was largely finished even before the development of the Baguio Matureland was completed." - M. H. Tupas. so overwhelmingly active suggests that the process of elevation is still going on, though, or course, imperceptible to us. Elevation is usually accompanied by some kind of thermal activity which in places results PANORAMA in ore deposition. Who knows, the hotsprings in the Baguio region may be the remains of waters from which ores were abstracted and deposited at depth? Perhaps thousands of years from how, erosion shall have already destroyed Baguio as we know it today. If ores are being deposited today, these shall then be exhumed to provide for an industry which long heretofore had already ceased and been forgotten. Baguio lives again! - Adapted from the 1953 U.P. Faculty Conference proceedings.. * * * CHRISTMAS IN THE STOMACH ;(;") ne week before Christmas, people gather before C/ sunrise and just after simbang gabi, to eat putobumbong and bibingka and to drink hot salabat in the churchyards. Puto-bumbong, which is made from tawny rice and served with grated coconut, is more reminiscent of Chrisfs festival than the yule or hoily, in the Philippines. In the homes, traditional simple dishes are served: arroz caldo, pancit molo, mechado and menudo: in memory of the Son of God's giving His own flesh to be eaten in commemoration of His divine sacrifice. llocanos have their caldereta: goat meat boiled in vinegar, seasoned and served with redpepper; or papait: goat rubbed with bile juice and lemons, and then roasted. Pampangos have pancit luglog: Chinese noodles covered with shrimps, oysters, hard-boiled eggs, and served with bizcocho or empanadas, meat pies shaped like sea sheIIs. Tagalogs are likely to prefer arroz caldo: chicken boiled with rice; or a la Valenciana, with a sauce instead of broth. Bicolanos have their cari de poilo: curried chicken with coconut cream; and fish cooked in vegetable-leaf wrappers. The pancit-molo of the Visayans is a rich broth garnished with meat ,baIIs in paper-thin, edible wrappers. With it is eaten hojaldres, biscuits made of many flaky layers. l>EcEMBER 1955 77 g HERE is a wall between me and my father. When I was born, we were one. I was happy then because I did not know. But t1',e walls grew with me, thickened with my bodywidened with my mind. Until I could not see my father, could neither touch nor hear him. But I knew he was there at the other side of the wall. That little I knew. Th:at much I remembered. Some walls were built there by my mother who taught me to respect him-my father. Some walls were built there by my grandmother who taught me to pray, and kiss the hands of _hi,m-my father. Some walls were built by my brothers wµo bullied me, and I cried, and I was whipped-by the hands I kiss~d. Some walls were built my only sister who was loved more than me (I thought then)-by my father. But my mother and grandmother died and my brother and sister went away with their spouses, and we were left, my fatner and I, with the long thick walls between us. Most of the walls broke down with _their going. Some walls broke down when he blessed me without making me kiss his hand. Some of the walls crumbled down with the dropping of courtesy and modesty. Some walls broke down with the loud whack of his belt on me, for there were no brothers to share the guilt with and no sister to put it all on me. All I received to me were due. Until there were no walls left at all and we were one. I was happiest then because I knew. But my father built another wall. A woman. It was only one wall, just one wall, and I tried hard to se:e through it, hear through it, clasp my father's hand through it. Block by block, I tore it down, with soft kind word, with a friendly smile. Stone by stone, I tore it down, until I could reach the top. I scampered atop it and eagerly searched for my father. But when I did see him, I was atop the wall, looking down upon him. And I cried and wished I'd never broken down that last wail. - Aprodicio A. Laquian ' PANO~ One mark of an educated man is the possession of a reasonable fund of general information. The highly specialized individual, often dubbed an "expert," frequently knows little or nothing outside his own line. Try yourself on the followinK questions. then turn to the next page for the correct answers. 1. It is a well-known fact that Niagara is not the highest waterfall in the world but: A. Victoria (in Africa); B. Angel (in South America); C. Yosemite (in California); D. Yellowstone (in Wyoming). 2. Modern jet planes can fly considerably faster than sound, which travels at sea level at about: A. 300 miles per hour; B. 620 miles per hour; C. 760 miles per hour; D. 980 miles per hour. 3. You must have heard about, or read, an 80-year old physician who is also a world literary figure, and who spent most of his life in French Equatorial Africa. He is: A. Albert Einstein: B. Ralph Bunche; C. Albert Schweitzer; D. Antoine Finay. 4. Who is Jose Maza? He is: A. flyweight champion of the world; B. president of the United Nations general assembly; C. president of Peru; D. Philippine ambassador to Spain. 5. If your friend is a numismatist, he would be very grateful for your gift of: A. a rare stamp; B. an antique vase; C. a rare volume; D. a very old coin. 6. Perhaps the world's most respected painter today, with the death of Henry Matisse, is: A. Pablo Picasso; B. Salvador Dali; C. Diego·Rivera; D. William Turner. 7. If a botanist offers you at dinner some Lycopersicon esculentum salad, he is really giving you: A. cucumbers; B. lettuce; C. avocado; D. tomatoes. 8. As a Filipino you would remember that after Magellan was killed at Mactan, in 1521, the first circumnavigation of the globe was carrjed on by: A. Pigafetta; B. Vasco de Gama; C'. Amerigo Vespucci; D. Sebastian del Cano. 9. The precious substance that flows in the pipes of your refrigerator and which makes it cool is: A. ammonia gas; B. freon gas; C. nitrogen gas; D. helium. 10. When you sing or hum ''White Christmas" you pay tribute to its immortal composer: A. Cole Porter; B. Irving Berlin; C. Hoagy Carmichael; D. George Gershwin. l>ECEMBER 1955 79 ARE YOU WORD WISE? ANSWER 1. (b) without sufficient taste to be attractive 2. (a) meaningless talk or writing 3. (d) commonplace or dull 4. (a) a dazed or bewildered condition S. (a) to confuse 6. (b) an easy gallop 7. (b) to go above or beyond 8. (c) a pain remover 9. (a) worldly 10. (a) evil 11. ( b) gentle or mild 12. (a) abundantly supplied 13. (c) a prophet 14. (c) the science of coins or medals 15. (b) to keep under control 16. {c) customers or patients as a whole 17. (a) close to, or emerging from, the people 18. (d) to cut or chop into small pieces 19. (b) hateful 20. (c) smart or brisk ANSWERS TO PANORAMA QUIZ 1. B. Angel Falls (Venezuela, 3,212 ft. high; Niagara in New York is only 167 ft. high) 2. C. 760 miles per hour 3. C. Albert Schweitzer 4. B. president of the United Nations general assembly S. D. a very old coin 6. A. Pablo PicaJ;so (born 1881, Sp.) 7. D. tomatoes 8. D. Sebastian de! Cano 9. A. ammonia gas 10. B. Irving Berlin * * * 80 ATTENTION: HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS The PANORAMA will give a prize of PlO for the best and 'PS for the next best essay on any problem of national or international significance. The best essay will be published in this magazine. The essays, which should not be less than 300 words, should not exceed 500 words. Entries must be typewritten, double-spaced on 8 x 11 bond paper and must be accompanied by a statement from the principal that the contestant is enrolled in the school he is representing. The decision of the editors will be final. PANORAMA In the Beginning . .. HERMIT (one who retires from society and lives in solitude) Among the Greeks eremites meant desert or solitude. From the term is derived the modem hermit or "desert dweller." L"K:EMJIER 1955 FOOL (a fellow deficient in judgment) The stupid person has been described by the Latin word follis, meaning a bellows or windbag. (A fitting name indeed!) P 0 P LI N (a corded fabric usually of silk, used especially for wo· men's dresses) In Italian papalino means "papal"the word used to describe the cloth made in the papal city of Avignon. 81 'Philippine Vanorama-XIII Its fame lies in bangus, bocayo and a rich historical past nan chieftain, who ordered his men to kill all Spaniards, including the missionaries, in his kingdom. The superstitious monarch, however, while delivering his execution order, fell from the ladder of his palace and, taking this as a token of the wrath of the god of the white men, soon remanded his order and instead asked his people to lis<Dagupan: ~ateway to the north AGUPAN w AS Bacnotan when it was founded by the Spanish Augustin.,. ian missionaries in 1590. A haughty, hootile, superstitious king named Kasikas of the Layug na Caboloan ruled the marshy kingdom upon which the present site was first built. The coming of the blacked robed fathers and the bearded white men irked the proud Pangasi82 ten to the missionaries' gospel. The town developed into a prosperous community, people from neighboring towns and provinces soon made it a trade center. The Spaniards built roads, public buildings and private residences for government employes and the officers and· men on the Spanish army. In 1616, Andres Malong with a bunch of revolution-inspired PANORAY.A men set fire to the whole town; levelling the entire commercial district and the parish church. The dauntless victims of the town's first tragedy soon started another community on the ruins of their former tonw. This time, the rebuilt community was given a new name - N andaragupan - which means ''where once stood the commercial center." Wider streets and bigger buildings replaced the former ~ines, and soon afterwards Nandaragupan was again a thriving trade and population center. ~N 1720, THE people decided that their town had too long a name, dropped down two syllables and renamed the place Dagupan. For more than a century the town was practically ,undisturbed by major disasters; the boom was rising, and the town was getting to be an important trade center in that part of Pangasinan and northern Luzon. The town's rapid growth and prosperity came to another temporary end on March 16, 1892, when an earthquake destroyed the whole town, leaving practically nothing in its wake. Much of the present city is the Dagupan that was rebuilt after that fateful tremor. Even in its present form, the town has gone through minor changes; it has had several major fires since it was reconstructed after liberation. Biggest in its recent history was the one on March 15, l>ECEMBER 1955 1952, which gutted down "P3 million worth of property including its modern market which occupied a whole block. The town's series of misfortunes has taught the people of Dagupan to be alert against what it considers its constant enemy - fire. Hampered by the lack of an adequate water system (the city gets its water from artesian wells which are pumped into homes), its administrators have devised what might be the most unique firefighting system in the country today. Set up at strategic corners along the city's main thoroughfare are fire hydrants with water hoses already mounted for action. The fire hydrants are connected to pumping machines along the bank of the Agno River which straddles the city and bisects it into upper and lower Dagupan. When a fire starts, the water pumps are simply cranked into motion, and the battle against fire starts. The city's fire department consists of a few trucks and men, obviously just a skeleton force to direct volunteers in manning the fire hoses. The position of the city alongside the Agno River benefits Dagupan in another way. The former marshlands and swamps bordering the city near the river mouth have been converted into fishponds, giving rise to a thriving bangus raising industry. The 83 city has more than 1,000 parcels of fishponds covering a total area of 1,170 hectares. The city's supply of fish is further bolstered by fishermen who cast their nets into nearby Lingayen Gulf, and by the Agno River which yields shrimps and freshwater varieties. 13 ANGUS RAISING is only one of the city's many industries. The industrious Dagupefios make bocayo (a native confection of coconut and sugar molasses), bagoong and soap. The city's main street, along which the greater part of the city is built, teems with drug stores and dry goods shops, bustles all day long with horsedriven rigs which congest traffic. The two or three streets are minor thoroughfares, the city's main business being conducted along its long crooked principal street. The 1953 city directory lists nine printing presses, five theaters, two bowling alleys, two billiard halls, 11 studios, 2 7 drug stores, 71 general merchandising stores, 6 hotels, three lodging houses and two private hospitals. It claims to be the educational center of northern Luzon, since students from the north would often rather study in Dagupan than come to Manila for a college education. Among the city's leading private schools are the Dagupan Colleges, Orient Colleges, Luzon College of Commerce and Business Administration, Northwestern Educational Institution, Dagupan City Memorial College, Blessed Imelda's Academy, the National Radio School- and Institute of Technology and the Samson Vocational School. It also has, besides a radio broadcasting station, three weekly tabloids, the Pioneer Herald, the Pangasinan Courier, and the Agna V ailey Sentinel. The present city territory embraces an area of 4,384 hectares and counts with a population of 48,185. There are 23 barrios, each with a small community reading center which w-.:re built through community effort. The average Dagupan resident takes to the palm shaded Bunuan Beach along Lingayen Gulf for leisure. On this beach resort are a nine-hole golf course, a shooting range, and the radio station. On another shore a marker was set up in 1948 to commemorate the landing of the Sixth Army under General MacArthur on B 1 u e Beach in the early part of 1945. * * * 84 PANORAMA 77"'e~~. • • • • • • by Elme "ff' here "'•uld ~ou "'••t th;, C '•1"st-as "' · ,,, tree, Dear?" A traveler's Philippines q'teen 1u'tmoil o~ 1o'tesls By FENIX MADURA IF ONE tried to picture the Philippines solely on the basis of photographs accompanying Santha Rama Rau's article in the August Holiday, one would think it peopled only by extremes, Kalinga headhunters and Manild' socialites whose main occupation is to wear a smile as bright as their diamond brilliants. This lopsidedness, however, can be accounted for: Santha Rama Rau is not a photographer. The pictures hardly illustrate the intimate, knowing text prepared by this wandering woman journalist from India to whom aU Asia and even more distant climates of custom are as familiar as her own backyard. PANORAMA In her frequent visits here, Santha Rama Rau has experienced the living history of these islands. Proto-historic tribes, she recalls, still inhabit tlie difficult country surrounding Baguio, that modern resort city in the mountains. She even makes the bus ride sound pleasant: chickens and piglets and gossiping passengers make traveling in a foreign land more friendly. The mountain jungle is a mixnire of tropical ferns and northern pines, laced with great fields of calla lilies and orchids. In l:he Bontoc market pla~e, she watched G-stringed Igorots bartering produce for rum, salt and a stake in the afternoon's gambling. She has seen on the heads of unmarried youths the little basket hats decorated with mirrors and buttons; on older men the complicated tattoos, mark of the successful headhunter; and on their women, snake-backbone "beads." She has enjoyed the sights of a Bontoc village: the raised pavilion ( ato) where village elders decide disputes, or perform ceremonies; the long dormitories where boys and girls lodge until marriage has been contracted for them, and the lengthy celebration afterwards, with suckling pigs, "goat meat cooked in lime ju i c-e, and sometimes even stewed dog meat." DECEMBER 1955 n ORTHEAST OF Bontoc, still in the mountains a n d dense rain forests, Santha Rama Rau has seen the ancient, stillyielding rice terraces of Ifugao whose farmers return by night to their baya rice wine, their stilt-high houses, and their tireless weaving women. Their hammered silver and hardwood carvings illustrate the grotesque world of their imagination. "Pockets of leftover history" await the traveler on other islands also: the Negritos of Zambales; the pigmies of Mindoro; the tree dwellers of the Visayas. Most interesting of all to Santha Rama Rau has always been the Moros with their dual government, M a n i 1 a - appointed provincial officials functioning next to their datus, and agama courts of Moslem law. The Sulu Sea still flaunts its pirates and smugglers, running whisky and cigarettes, compacts and batik from Borneo to J olo. Sulu also has its gr~at pearl banks, and the Turtle Islands where, every 18 days, "thousands of turtles totter up the shore to lay their eggs (between 100 and 145 each) in the sand and scuttle back to the water," having contributed their delicacy to the archipelago's tables. Jolo harbors sea gypsies who, having rested a day or a month at the wharf on theil one-man-wide boats, drying octopus and mixing coconut meat with cassava, one night disap87 pear in a sea scarlet with fish. Nearby live the Samals, in houses built over the water on stilts. Their women paint their faces with a "dead-white makeup of rice powder and spices." In the market place are the famous durian (tasting as delicious as its smell is foul), betel nut, reed mats, daggers, and Japanese umbrellas. Ji FTER A pearling expedition to Parang, Santha Rama Rau sat down to a village meal of shark, dried sting ray, oyster stew, "the liver of a fish called pogot dressed with lime juice and chilis, and a plate of what looked like dented pingpong balls and. turned out to be turtle eggs." In Mindanao, her favorite place was Dansalan, where flowers grows lavishly inside houses and out, and even appear in men's headcloths and women's hair. Small gongs (kulingtan) call to big gongs and drums; singers improvise for long hours on heroic lovers. In contrast with such older cultures, the Indian visitor found more recent remnants of Spanish influence in the Visayan islands. Distinguished old families there reminisce in · that tongue and even dance the traditionally formal quadrilles, trying hard to act leisurely and timeless and faintly aristocratic. But in the Visayas also are the country's only sugar refinery one of its most progressive plantations, and perhaps its fines modern church. Manila is the intersection of all these cultures: Spanish, American and Filipino name:-' crisscross on streetcorner · am square. In that cosmopolita1 city, if one has enough pesos, he can eat, sleep and breathe with any one of several nationalities day after day, without being reminded of the existence of others. Or: "A Filipino woman may wear an American dress for lunch, or appear is a patadiong with its characteristic starched gauze sleeves-itself an adaptation of the 19th century Spanish dress - and wrap a short skirt, a remnant of her own Tagalog ancestry,over the long foreign skirt. Beneath the western lacquer, however, is always the "Asiatic condition,'' the huddled slums, the lives fouled with disease and poverty and carefreeness turned carelessness. What really ameliorates this condition is the Filipino's generosity and gentle gaiet)l, his great courtesy which, despite the war, has never wholly succumbed. It is the strongest memory which strangers take away, the most-beloved image Filipinos have of them~ selves. • * • 88 PANORAMI Republic of the Philippines Department of Public Works and Communications BUREAU OF POSTS Manila SWORN STATEMENT (Required by Act 2580) The undersigned, C. A. MARAMAG, business manager of PANORAMA, published monthly in English at 1986 Herran, Sta. Ana, M2nila, after having been duly sworn in accordance \vith law, hereby submits the following statement of ownership, management, circulation, etc., '\vhich is required by Act 2580, as amended by Commnowealth Act No. 201: Name Post-Office Address Editor: Jaime Lucas 1986 Herran, Sta. Ana, Manila Business Manaoer: c. A. Maramag 1986 Herran, Sta. Ana, Manila Owner: Community Publishers, Inc. 1986 Herran, Sta. Ana, Manila Publisher: Community Publishers, Inc. 1986 Herran, Sta. Ana, Manila Printer: Community Publishers, Inc. 1986 Herran, Sta. Ana, Manila Office of Publication: Community Publishers, Inc. 1986 Herran, Sta. Ana, Manila •If publication is owned by a corporation, stockholders owning one per cent or more -.he total amount of stocks: VICENTE G. SINCO SOFIA S. SINCO ARTURO G. SINCO Bondholders, mortgagees, or other ~ecurity holders owiiing one per cent or more of total amount of sPCurity: NONE In case of publication other than daily, total of the last issue dated OctobP.r, 1955: number of copies printed and circulated 1. Sent to paid subscribers ........................................ . 250 750 2. Sent to others than paid subscribers Total ...................... . 1,000 (Sgd.) C. A. MARAMAG Business Manager Subscribffl and sworn to before me this 6th day of December, 1955, at Manila the ~fiant exhibiting her Residence Certiiicate No. A-4683725' issued at Pasay City, on February 26, 1905. (Sgd. l DIONISIO V ALDRES Post Office Inspector WTE: This form is f'>Xempt from the payment of documentary stamp tax. You and Your Income Tax By JOSE C. CAMPOS, JR. Review of Prize Stories of 1955 By LEONARD CASPER Fiction * Cartoons * Features Philippines: Land of the Long Christmases (See page