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Ed Davad
Recalling the chaos and order of September
September follows the month of August that, by folk reckoning, is an anomalous month. Never get sick in the month of August or it will be a long way to recovery. Be careful that you do not wound yourself in August for they do not heal easily in that month. Even in the unpredictable weather brought about by climate change, the reputation of August precedes it. To Sylvia Plath, August is the “odd uneven time,” although her reason for that is in her world, where the month brings in “the August rain: the end of the best of summer gone…” It is to her own season that the month derives its dreariness.
Consulting the recent past
The dire present—sugar shortage, bureaucratic lapses and intrigues, flooded classrooms and many more—has brought me back to the shrine of an old book. Written by A. V. H. Hartendorp, the book, though titled, History of the Industry and Trade of the Philippines, carries a more significant subtitle, The Magsaysay Administration.
Harnessing the power of the country’s MSMEs
Micro, small and medium enterprises are the lifeblood of the economy. Post-pandemic, they are seen playing a vital role in creating jobs and driving economic growth. And they are a really potent force: The Department of Trade and Industry said MSMEs comprise 99.5 percent of all businesses in the Philippines, and generate 62.66 percent of the country’s employment in 2020.
How government can bring down pork prices
Two years after the deadly African swine fever (ASF) was first detected in a backyard piggery in Rizal, the hog disease continues to threaten the country’s livestock sector. While outbreaks have declined in recent months, the entire country cannot yet heave a sigh of relief (See, DA reports decline in ASF outbreaks, in the BusinessMirror, June 8, 2021). We can’t let our guard down yet because all it takes for outbreaks to flare up again is just one careless trader transporting infected pigs to abattoirs.
Commemorating not our histories
When the historians of a government protest over a rapper’s own version of history in a land where histories depend greatly upon foreign archives or documents written in the languages of the colonizers, then we are a truly pathetic, bathetic community of confused citizens, of a nation at best imagined and a territory at worst assumed.
The world according to a dying Cyrano
IN Act V of Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac,” the great swordsman and poet is back in the convent visiting Roxane. The beautiful woman has entered the convent after her great love, the handsome Christian, has died. Roxane will soon know that the letters that made her fall in love were written by Cyrano, and the voice in the dark that was her heart’s passion was that of this man about to die in front of her. Earlier, a man has dropped a log hitting Cyrano on the head. For all his injuries, he has to fulfill that visit to the woman he would love forever. Hiding his wound, Cyrano delivers the “Gazette” to Roxanne. It is a daily report of what is happening to the world outside.
The sounds of remembering
AT 2 or 3 in the morning, I would be awake. It was better to be awake then because after midnight, my mother would be calling me. By that time, the medicine that had helped her calm down and brought her sleep would have worn off. Before those hours, I would be by myself at the table, writing and, in between, listening to online music. They were old music, old sound —older than my mother’s age. She was 91 then.
When all this is over
When all this is over, documents would have recorded the number of deaths caused by the virus, and not the recoveries.
Readings from the Book of Repression
In a viral parallel universe, a folk tale
The first time the king of this island-republic announced he was holding a meeting in the Palace, citizens—the liking and disliking—waited, excited and hopeful. The next day, the Internet was a battlefield of those who saw through the vapid presentation, a reminder that protocol of the proper kind had long ago been deleted from the memory of this administration.
Reading and feeling poetry: The Himati project
This is a project that was born out of isolation. With the entire Luzon in full quarantine, the world was coming to a halt. This does not mean, however, that art and art should stop.
Ending an era
Imagining the Last Judgment
Counting the possibilities of isolation
I am at my table near the window of this hotel. With 11 other occupants, we are either on self-quarantine or forced to stay put given the enforced loss of mobility.
Should being ‘fat’ be acceptable?
IT is always unpleasant to talk about personal habits and that’s not beneficial. Yet, as a global society we have no problem discouraging and even forcing through legal means the use of tobacco, alcohol and even prescription drugs.
Listening to enchantment
Theories do not begin with dreams or nightmares. And yet, I have theorized about vanishing houses and enchantment because a dream, which I had many years ago, confirmed that the field site I have chosen was the right one.
The politics of rice trading
Three weeks after President Duterte asked Congress in his State of the Nation Address to prioritize the approval of the rice-tariffication measure, the House of Representatives on Tuesday passed on third and final reading House Bill (HB) 7735, or the proposed “Revised Agricultural Tariffication Act,” which would convert the quantitative restriction on rice into tariffs. The bill will now be transmitted to the Senate for its own deliberations and approval.