By Rec Catubig I did not get to meet Pangasinan’s political luminary, Speaker Eugenio Perez Sr, who authored the charter that made Dagupan into a City, whose birthday, November 13th has been declared a Special Holiday in the province, in recognition of his pivotal role as the First Speaker…
By Rex Catubig WITH Typhoon Marce hovering in the vicinity as if casing the surroundings, and its tentative winds blowing the dust off the cover of memories, unearthing the treasure of past remembrances, one discovers anew the coveted fossils of time, resurrecting the worn images of life pressed on…
Smoke Sonata
By Rex Catubig THE past week held us hostage in a cliffhanger situation, dreading the landfall of Typhoon Kristine, who from all accounts, is the personification of the saying: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Close on its heels, another typhoon named Leon, like a spurned lover, was on a…
My typhoon story
By Rex Catubig WHEN I see Nanang, our old-maid aunt, in the kitchen, stirring black gooey Deremen in a deep kawali perched on the wood-fired clay dalikan, I know it’s Pistay Inatey—All Saint’s Day, the highlight of Ani or harvest month—when religion and folk custom meld into one celebration. Following the belief that the spirits of…
Pistay Inatey
By Rex Catubig NOTE: I’m reprising this previous column in support of the National Mental Health Awareness Month and to give a face to the menace of suicide that afflicts even the seemingly normal person, robbing the young of their power to dream and cutting short the future that…
Enigma of suicide
By Rex Catubig “ I Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” ― T.S. Eliot YOU’D think that fifty years of friendship would be arduous for ebbing memory to process and recall. But for twelve unending hours one Saturday past, memories…
Bonfire of banalities: The fire of October
By Rex Catubig HIS name is Cesar. Yet there is nothing remotely noble about his birth nor upbringing. Born into poverty, his family was forced out of their home because they didn’t have money for the rent. With no other place to go, they squatted on a vacant lot…
The rise of Cesar
By Rex Catubig CONVALESCING September through expectant October is when the tall, slender and majestic talahib bursts into silky white feathery flowers. And as the gentle Amihan blows from the northeast, the talahib sways and dances rhythmically with the refreshing breeze–waving its plumy gossamer quill bloom at the colorful…
The travails of talahib
By Rex Catubig SHE was the joy of his heart, the love of his life. For Adams, an amiable young man who worked as a waiter in a local diner, Lyka was like no other–the beauteous surprise of his dreams. They had met nine years earlier on a blind…
Sad September surprise
By Rex Catubig THERE’S always an urgency to reach out and express oneself. Man’s burning desire to communicate his being is second nature to him. When he coughed, he began to articulate a sound, and learned to speak and then as he screamed, he began to sing. When he…