Month of Months

October is chock-full of commemorations; Wikipedia lists 17, among them National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, LGBT History Month, National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Awareness and National Bullying Prevention Month (which we should probably celebrate more, considering what's happening all around us). The big one for our community is Filipino American History Month, officially declared by the US Congress in 2009. We mark this annual celebration with the first of a four-part documentary entitled "Filipino Americans: Discovering Their Past for the Future" in our Video of the Week.

Award-winning Filipino American author Marivi Soliven writes about domestic violence in mail-order families, "Carino Brutal - Plain Talk About Domestic Violence," after getting angry about NBC's planned sitcom on the topic. NBC has since scrapped the series following massive protests from the Fil-Am community, but as Marivi reminds, the problem of domestic abuse remains a festering wound.

Celia Ruiz Tomlinson, life lover, cancer survivor and compelling raconteur, makes hospice real for us in her piece about her late husband's last days, "A Ringside View of Hospice." "After eight years of [second] marriage," she says, "I became a serial widow."

And speaking of deaths, Positively Filipino mourns the passing of three giants in their respective fields:

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, she of the quick wit and acerbic tongue, "the best president the Philippines never had" (according to an avid supporter), on September 29 in Manila, from complications of cancer;

Danungan "Danny" Kalanduyan, a master musician and teacher from Maguindanao who introduced and taught the tradition of kulintang to a new and appreciative generation of Filipino Americans, on September 28, in California, from a heart ailment; and

Ceres Alabado, esteemed author of children's books and young adult literature, on October 3. Mrs. Alabado's most famous book, Kangkong 1896, about a 15-year old Filipino who joined the Katipunan, introduced the Philippine Revolution to generations of young Filipinos.

On a lighter note, our Happy Home Cook feature this week is from LA-based chef and cookbook author, Marvin Gapultos: Sweet Corn and Coconut Panna Cotta, his own twist to the traditional maja blanca.

Nostalgia in These Times

This is an unsettled and unsettling time in the Philippines and in the US. As a way to temper the tempest that might be creating havoc in our minds and hearts, let's indulge in some nostalgia. As Dr. Neel Burton, a columnist for Psychology Today, states, "The hauntings of times gone by, and the imaginings of times to come, strengthen us in lesser times."

Here are some Read Agains to take you back to relatively gentler times:

Postcards From the Age, a compilation of early 20th century postcards by Jonathan Best, illustrates the link between the US and its new colony, the Philippines.

Before Elorde and Pacquiao, There Was Luis Logan by Myles Garcia, previously untold story about the Spanish immigrant to the Philippines who won numerous boxing medals for his adopted country.

At Play in the Field of the Haves by Lou Gopal gives quite a colorful story of the origins of the Manila Polo Club, when Filipino elites played with the American colonizers.

Back to the present, veteran journalist and regular contributor Cherie Querol Moreno takes us with her as she visits family in Icking, a pastoral town in Bavaria, in southern Germany.

In Oak Forest, Illinois, Kusinang Pinoy touts Ilocano culinary culture as Positively Filipino Contributing Writer Rey de la Cruz reports.

From Kusinang Pinoy comes another version of the Ilocano staple, pinakbet, our Happy Home Cook feature this week.

On Video of the Week, we look back at Marissa Aroy's 2008 documentary "Little Manila: Filipinos in California's Heartland."

Shackled Art, Gran Oriente, the Oscars and Prince

In 1921, a group of 40 Filipino seamen, members of the Gran Oriente Filipino Masonic fraternity, pooled their earnings together to purchase a three-story Victorian in San Francisco's South Park. The Gran Oriente Filipino Hotel became a community center and residence for single Filipino workers. Today, in San Francisco's overheated real estate market, the building is worth millions, and therein lies the problem. Surrounded now by trendy cafes and restaurants, the Gran Oriente is clinging by a thread to its original mission, its outdated facade an anachronism in an area racing towards modernity. As backgrounder, we are re-publishing a story written in 1996 about the Gran Oriente (see "From Here to Fraternity") as segue to the current petition by Fil-Am community members to save the Gran Oriente as a Filipino heritage site (see Partner post). 

Today in history: the 44th anniversary of the declaration of martial law in the Philippines, a turbulent period that continues to ignite politics, alliances, emotions and discourse in our homeland. We again borrow from the popular historical trivia site, FilipiKnow.net, its "Ten Little-Known Photos from the Martial Law Years That Will Blow You Away." Warning: some pictures (or one in particular) may be cringe-inducing.

From the detention centers of martial law to current-day prisons in the Philippines, political detainees continue to create notable art, as literary giant Ed Maranan, a former political detainee himself, reports in "Shackled Art."

And another very different art exhibition currently showing in San Francisco is "After Pop Life," a tribute to the late musical legend Prince. Without planning it, participating Fil-Am artists France Viana and Jenifer Wofford, both injected Filipino undertones to their exhibited works. Ube and karaoke - how Filipino can you get!

In the stiff competition for Oscar nominations that is going on right now, Ma'Rosa, Filipino director Brillante Mendoza's critically acclaimed movie, is in contention for nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film. The Philippines has been sending entries to this category for decades but has not yet bagged a nomination. Rene Astudillo and David Dezern give us the dirt on how a movie gets to be nominated in "The Philippines' Long Road to an Oscar."

In our Video of the Week, ABC's The Chew features the Filipino custom of eating with your hands at Jeepney Gastropub in New York.

I hope you also read my blog this week on "That Awful Four-Letter Word."