By Rex Catubig   SHE was variously viewed as intimidating, domineering, haughty. But she was also a most kind, caring, and faithful friend who valued her late husband’s associates like they were her own. And the respectful regard extended to their family, the way she extended her hospitality to this…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…