By Rex Catubig   THE burial lot for our dear departed has always been at the Catholic Church Cemetery in Careenan Street. Even in the advent of memorial parks, we stood by the final resting ground for our deceased. Ours is just a few tombs away on the right side…

By Rex Catubig   LOOKING back, I remember it as the holiest of days; of quiet and solitude: Huwebes Santo and Viernes Santo of Lent. It was hard on us kids because we were not allowed to play in the yard. And we were cautioned to be extra careful as…

By Rex Catubig    IT was for me the most awesome Easter experience. It happened during the confirmation rites of my niece, some years ago. Held at an unimposing chapel of the University of California in San Diego where she was enrolled, it was a 3-hour service that lasted from 10pm…

By Rex Catubig   THERE had been a portent of rain but at daybreak, a bright burning sun breaks through a bright, blue sky. At the city’s boundary welcome, the radiating heat wave creates the illusion of the bangus bas relief jumping out of the concrete arch as if in…

By Rex Catubig      WHEN Christina was relocated from Riyadh and reassigned in the remote township of Bisha, her life as an OFW changed forever. She was supposed to work for a family of 6, but she counted 11 –including a 7-month old baby. Everything seemed normal– until the…

By Rex Catubig   IT’S an oft repeated tale of OFW woe. The domestic helper being maltreated. One is already inured to these stories. Until it hits close to home. Christina Aquino, a single mom at 32,  of Sitio Bagong Barrio, Bonuan Gueset is our poster girl of worker abuse….

By Rex Catubig   TWO years close to the date, the world was caught unawares and put in shackles by a virulent virus that is a variant of corona. Here in Dagupan where I had retired a little over a year earlier, government imposed health protocol had me confined at…

By Rex Catubig   Note: This is a continuation of our tribute to the simple ordinary woman. Last week, due to space constraint, a couple of lines meant to paint the contrast between the two types of women who work the “night shift”, and the metaphorical coda at the end,…

By Rex Catubig   March is Women’s History Month. This year’s theme is “Women Providing Healing, Promoting Hope”, in reference to the “ceaseless work of caregivers and frontline workers” during the ongoing pandemic. More, it is “a recognition of the thousands of ways that women of all cultures have provided…

By Rex Catubig   IT’S been two years since it happened, the historic event on a February love month that made the world sit up and notice this tiny patch of islands, whose people became giant poster figures of bravery amid adversity. But as I lay on my bed watching…