By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   THE role of stories in the evolution of human societies had been a subject of voluminous study. Among the writers who had expounded on this subject is historian Yuval Noah Harari whose work focuses on how civilizations are shaped by their stories and “how these…

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   THROUGHOUT my life, I have lived a practice of keeping myself healthy through natural, indigenous ways. It is a tradition I adopted from my grandfather who is an herbalist and lived a longer life than most, with his knowledge of plants and indigenous healing methods….

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   NOVEMBER 12, after midnight that airplane, the one that just passed by with a steady sound, brings me back to the day of the storm everything just flew on the street with the wild howling of the wind but there was this airplane, moving steadily…

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   WHEN you left me I promised to contain my tears in between the petals of a wild flower nurtured into bloom by the water from the well you dug in my heart   I have drenched my denims and my cotton blouse with my tears…

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   (This is the last part of my  account of the trek to Secret Haven, Norzagaray, Bulacan, 10 October 2021). SHE left us there, waiting for the driver to come back and tell us what to do. Then we saw Bryan, slipping through the mud at…

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo A group of eight bikers arrived as we were leaving the area before three o’clock in the afternoon. My companions took their turns taking a bath in a makeshift shack made of bamboos. JC and Chloe took a shower in a faucet under the bamboo trees….

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo IT was an experience, unexpected and unpredictably dangerous trek. My nephew, JC, thought his head was going to be staked in a bamboo after the vehicle he rode in skidded 30 kilometers per hour going down a ravine 20 feet below, so he ducked his head….

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   THE Lingayen Gulf is described by the ICLARM Technical Report: Lingayen Gulf coastal area management plan: National Economic Development Authority, Region 1: San Fernando, La Union (Philippines), United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 1992 as follows: “The coastal area of Lingayen Gulf represents a continuum…

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   MY dad’s garden was a garden of necessity. He planted for nourishment. We had abundant supply of pechay, ampalaya, kabatiti, patola, upo, kjalabasa, pallang, kardis, saluyot and some others whose names I have forgotten. We had mangoes, papayas, bayabas, lomboy, various citrus fruits. The neighbors…

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo   THERE are friends we can entrust some of our secrets, although there are very few of them, not more than half the total count of our fingers. In these fingers, the secrets live a life, free and unconstrained, in total trust and acceptance, and thrive,…