Heroes

To commemorate the 110th anniversary of the Cry of Pugad Lawin (aka Cry of Balintawak) in 1896, which signaled the beginning of the Philippine Revolution against Spain, it's a good time to get to know better the hero of that hour, Andres Bonifacio. Here are "Seven Little-Known Facts About the Supremo," which we borrowed with permission from Filipiknow.net, the popular historical blog of Lui Batungbacal. 

Still on the subject of heroes, Read Again Robby Tantingco's tribute to the brave women of his forebears, "Why Women Rule Pampanga."

And for those seeking information on the heroes in their family, historical researcher Marie Silva Vallejo points the way. Marie has successfully done research on her father Saturnino Silva, a US Army soldier during World War II who valiantly led the Battle of Ising in Davao against the Japanese. The records are from the US National Archives and Marie is part of a massive digitization project that has made the records available to Filipino researchers.

Switching now to food, Contributing Writer Elizabeth Ann Quirino profiles Louise Mabulo, a 17-year-old Filipina chef who shares with us her own recipe for Kinilaw ng Tanigue Topped with Lechon-style Pork. Note: tanigue is Spanish mackerel. 

For fans of songwriter Jose Mari Chan, here's a treat for you, our Video of the Week. 

As you may have noticed, we have a new set of photos for our mastheads from Joni Ramos, a visual artist/photographer based in Santa Barbara, Pangasinan. Thank you, Joni, for adding color to our pages. 

Sky Is No Limit

"Women hold up half the sky." - Mao Tse Tung

This month, we celebrate with the whole world our sister sky-holders out there who are toiling, dreaming, managing, caring, creating, healing and doing all the other tasks that they have set out to do. But most of all, we pay tribute to the amazing women who do unexpected things, like what cultural historian Robby Tantingco writes about in "Why Women Rule Pampanga."

Also worth celebrating: the emergence of a basketball star who we can partly claim as our own. Regular contributor Anthony Maddela takes us to his exclusive interview with the LA Lakers' 22-year-old rookie point guard Jordan Clarkson, who was brought up by his Filipino lola and his mother, Annette. 

In Chicago, Rey E. de la Cruz gives us a taste of Sariling Atin, a Filipino restaurant that serves comfort food and a lot of kababayan warmth.

Our resident web sleuth Myles A. Garcia digs up the dirt on the long-playing inheritance wars within the family of Potenciano Ilusorio, a very public conflict involving billions of pesos that pitted husband against wife, children against parents and siblings against each other. The rich are different from you and me, as the saying goes, and in this instance, thank goodness for that.

For our Video of the Week, we look back in pain and horror at the battle for the liberation of Manila, February to March 1945. Manila was the most devastated city in the Allied world and this video says it all.

And in my blog, I pay tribute to my "amazona" relatives.

Keep on holding up the sky!