By Rex Catubig   MY American journey took 8 long years of my mother’s life. She had to shuttle back and forth from Dagupan to Los Angeles to maintain her petitioner status—spending 10 months in the States and 2 months here in the Philippines. It was hard on her because…

By Rex Catubig   IT was the lifeline connecting the island barrios to the heart of Dagupan and “the gateway to the west” along the meandering Agno, “part of the 12- kilometer Golden Road” linking Dagupan to the western towns of Pangasinan. Built by the Americans in the 1920’s, the…

By Rex Catubig   CLASSES had just begun at the Calmay Primary School a couple of weeks earlier. It was a squat, unpainted, four-room wooden structure by the riverbank that housed Grades 1 to 4. It was my first time to attend school as a Grade 1 pupil. I was…

By Rex Catubig   THE patriotic fervor was at its crest. The centuries of unrest and uprising against two imperial powers and the gruesome resistance against a third would-be colonizer, had finally paid off. In July 4,1946, the Filipinos proudly raised its flag up high as it gained its penultimate…

By Rex Catubig   TO paraphrase a writer’s thought, “Why did our leaders give our people the freedom they don’t really need, rather than the bread he badly wants?” In the context of the colonial past, with the discrimination and abuses documented in two epochal novels, our leaders might have…

By Rex Catubig   (Note: In the wake of the Uvalde, Texas shooting that left 19 schoolchildren dead, a local business owner has donated customized caskets to honor them and to lessen the grief of the families. It’s coincidental that my post also touches on the trappings of death. But…

By Rex Catubig   HOW folks address me is a dead giveaway. I was called Kuya during the times of my holiday vacations from the US. When I retired and came back home, I was invariably called Uncle. But four years into retirement, I had become Tatay. I dread the…

By Rex  Catubig   “I don’t like the memories because the tears come easily, and once again I break my promise to myself for this day. It’s a constant battle, a war between remembering and forgetting.” ~E.E. Cummings. Other than his family, my brother Louie had three great loves: politics,…

By Rex Catubig   NOBLESSE oblige–nobility obliges. It is the trait of the highborn to regard the less privileged with generosity and kindness. In today’s context, to be more accepting and politically correct. Robin Padilla’s topping the senatorial slate has the nation’s intelligentsia crying fucking shit. He has only a…

By Rex Catubig   IT’S just an ordinary day for them, just another Sunday–no Facebook posts, no Instagram, no tweets, no flowers, no greeting cards, no video calls, no fancy lunch or dinners, no Tik Tok. Mother’s day is just a day in the life of the not-so-special mother –whom…