By Rex Catubig   IT was the ’70s. The world was on the cusp. The world they were born in was fast transitioning into the world they were growing up in. They were born at the tail end of the Platters as the world began gyrating and twisting with Elvis and Chubby Checker, screaming to Hard Day’s…

By Rex Catubig   MY barrio Calmay was self-contained–a tiny world unto itself. But when one had to venture to Baley–for work and other mundane reasons, the baloto was the mode of transport to rely on. Fashioned out of a single piece of carved wood, and secured with bamboo outrigger…

By Rex Catubig   THE darkness over the coconut grove coast of Bonuan was fanned by the gentle January breeze, when suddenly, it was pierced by sporadic shelling out of nowhere, that made the horizon appear like a night with a thousand blazing eyes. Inland, by the seashore, residents were…

(Photo by Willie Lomibao) By Rex Catubig   THE recent groundbreaking for a new bridge to link the city to its island barrios and become the modern gateway to the Western towns, auger well for the Calmay residents who, for ages and generations, have ridden off the rough river of…

By Rex Catubig   Note: For 90 years after the Franklin Bridge sank, island barrio folks had pinned their hopes on its replacement. Yet despite plans initiated by local leaders, it never took shape. It took a master stroke from Cong Toff de Venecia, the scion of the 1st Speaker…

By Rex Catubig   SOME 2,000 years ago, an unlikely untimely birth made the biblical headlines, and subsequently became the matrix of Christianity. We are familiar with the circumstances of Joseph and Mary’s trek to Bethlehem from their home in Nazareth to comply with an edict for villagers to return…

 A patriarch’s dream, a grandson’s mission By Rex Catubig   IT’S symbolic that the remnant of the Oriental Hotel’s facade is now overgrown with weeds and shrubbery and boarded up with galvanized sheets. As if to hide from public scrutiny, the bygone life it harbors. What stories does it keep…

By Rex Catubig   IT has sat there for years: a box building or what remains of it—having rectangular portals with flat apex, the sides indented with draped corners. In earlier days, big backhoes and other heavy machinery stood on the side like sentinels watching over a mausoleum. Now, it…

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…