On the Wings of Culture

Pintado Dance

Raul Agner 2005

Acrylic on canvas

Culture and the Arts include all forms of creative expression that fall under any of the so-called seven arts: literature, music, dance, theater, film, visual arts, and architecture. These are distinct from the more anthropological sense of culture as a complex whole that encompasses the totality of learned and shared behavior acquired from being a member of a particular society. The latter, though, is a rich source of inspiration, memory, imagery and abstraction for the former which have been dubbed as the elitist meaning of the term because their artistic and creative output can be appreciated only by a few who have a specialized training or background.

That Culture and the Arts are elitist is however quite a sweeping statement. While there are works that seem esoteric and profound for the ordinary viewer or listener, there definitely are many that people can relate with, enjoy or be moved by. It is important to point out that there are works that are done purely for aesthetic reasons – the art for art’s sake variety - and there are those that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also rich and powerful in meaning and message as far as content is concerned. Just to name a few examples, the poems of Jose Garcia Villa, the paintings of Arturo Luz and the songs of Lea Salonga represent the first kind. But Rizal’s Noli and Fili, Juan Luna’s “Spoliarium,” and the films of Lino Brocka belong to the second category.

But elitist or not, there’s no gainsaying the fact that culture and the arts in general have the potential, nay, the power to influence our way of thinking and behaving and even bring about a better quality of life. In other words, aside from entertainment, they are effective tools and important components of education. It is within this context that the university has been earnestly integrating into its academic life various cultural performances and activities. One single important step it has taken in this direction was the major makeover of the theater in 2005. Since its completion, the renovated facility continues to reap cultural dividends that have brought about a different and enriching experience to students and the whole community. The buena mano dance drama performed by the Integrated Performings Arts Guild (IPAG) of Iligan raised awareness of certain Mindanao dance forms and environmental issues. The series of screenings of i-Witness documentaries offered object lessons in truthful journalism and painted a clear picture of pressing issues like poverty, environmental degradation and ordinary people’s heroism.

As of late, the doubleheader “Welcome to Intelstar” and “Pragress” of Tanghalang Pilipino were hilarious but deeply enlightening plays, the former a veritable litany of the ironies of a call center job, the latter a sarcastic characterization of corrupt government bureaucrats. And the hip jazz ballet Hi-Skul Musikahan staged by Lisa Macuja-Elizalde’s Ballet Manila mesmerized the audience with the endless possibilities of creative fusion of dance forms. If culture and the arts can make one wiser because they open up his eyes to the truth; if they can make one more human and humane because they inspire him to be creative and resourceful, sympathetic and compassionate; if they give one a sense of spiritual well-being because they bring him to an other-worldly dimension of serenity and inner bliss; in short, if culture and the arts do make one a better person, a better citizen and a better Adamsonian, then they should continue to play a major role in the university.

In the face of a stiff competition in the form of commercial entertainment and computer gaming that vie for young people’s attention, the serving up of the best oeuvres possible becomes a great challenge. Done consistently, the appreciation of the real value of culture and the arts will prevail and negative attitudes towards their necessity, including some misguided individuals’ whining about the cultural fee, will eventually sound hollow.

If the Falcon symbolizes the university’s aspiration for excellence, culture and the arts can be one steady wind that pushes up her wings.

"Resilience"

3rd Prize, 2006 Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) Annual Art Competition (Drawing Category), pen and ink on acid-free paper, Artist's collection

Drawings

Street Vendors, pen and ink on paper

...AND MILES TO DRIVE BEFORE HE SLEEPS

Raul Agner

Ever since, he is always a picture of equanimity, the dizzying network of roads he has traveled - as if represented in miniature by his silvery hair - notwithstanding. Still at it after more than thirty-five years, his face shows no telltale symptoms you expect would register as wrinkles and creases from dealing with the city's unforgiving traffic, rude motorists, badly maintained roads and long out-of-town drives.

On a typical Monday morning, he sits quietly behind the wheel of the university's spanking new bus while waiting for the nursing students bound for apprenticeship duty somewhere to fill up the seats. Inside, the bus smells factory fresh, its upholstered seats still wrapped in protective plastic covers which, vis-à-vis the students' clinically white uniforms, should be unnecessary. Outside, the exterior surface is flush with pictures of athletes, students, facilities and buildings - purposely done so the bus doubles as a humongous mobile billboard. This forty-seater, the latest addition to the school's fleet, is a world removed from the antiquated blue, snub-nosed oddity that he used to drive from way way back. That quaint artifact must be rotting somewhere but through it he once transported regular passengers from a lakeshore town to San Marcelino St. and back, in the process collecting memories he might someday in retirement get occasional flashes of. For example, he might remember them as super-behaved boys in prayerful silence on the way to school but as a boisterous lot on the return trip. He'll surely recall how on the way home they freely released their tension from studies by storytelling, arguing, singing, flashing the "peace" hand sign (so '70s) to every chick in sight and covering their noses from the stench of duck droppings upon finally reaching the access road to home sweet home. He might also remember that often the departure from school was stalled because some were still gaping at a skillful Iñaki or Oyarzabal swipe with the cesta over at the Jai-Alai building or sneak-quaffing beer at the walkway carinderia.

But the point in this bus driver's life is that he has parlayed hard work to ensure the success of his children who have earned college degrees and landed decent jobs. Quite a feat for a humble but dedicated driver. But not only that. Somehow, he is also part of the success of a lawyer in Manila or a fitness consultant in Alberta. There's no doubt that he is partly behind the professional achievements of an accountant in the Philippines or part of a Florida real state broker's thriving career. No one can question that whatever good deeds a Vincentian priest in Lebanon or in the Philippines has done is, again, partly due to him. In short, he has contributed a small part to his former regular passengers' attainment and realization of successes, dreams or calling. He steered them safely en route to their destinations, a role akin to being a benefactor to a beneficiary or a patron to a protégé but inconspicuously outside the pale of the limelight.

This down-home, portly man is one of life's many important little people. He has played his role to the hilt and is happy with it. Last time we checked, he still goes by the name of Mang Tony. And while he has experienced all kinds of roads, he still has "miles to drive before he sleeps and miles to drive before he sleeps…"

The Top and Nothing But

Raul Agner

His father, a retired overseas musician, has all the reasons to play one cool triumphant rock anthem on his guitar or keyboard these days. So does his Alma Mater, Adamson University. For Levi Layague Miranda has just nailed one feat in his relatively quiet academic life: garner the topmost spot in the latest board exams for chemical engineers given last April 21-23, 2008 at the Manuel L. Quezon University in Manila.
Equally proud are her mother and two siblings who saw in him an average student who was nevertheless serious with his studies in spite of a sickly frame. After third year at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, he was refused reenrollment after incurring a second long absence due to illness. When he applied for transfer at Adamson, he was readily admitted and went on to graduate on October 2007.
Levi was born on November 29, 1983 in Las Pinas City to Liberato Miranda, a Batangueno, and Sylvia Layague, an Ilocana. He attended high school in Molino, Cavite. After his stint at the PLM, he moved to Adamson in June 2004 where he had to repeat his third year studies to catch up on the demanding chemical engineering course. His enjoyment of a full academic scholarship for two semesters meant he was able to cope up with the rigorous studies. Then the course became just too heavy that he couldn’t maintain the grades required by the scholarship program. He didn’t enjoy that benefit in his last years in the school but he enjoyed studying anyway, thermodynamics being his favorite subject. When pressed for his favorite teacher, he declined to name one but hastened to say that all the professors he studied under were helpful and very professional. It also helped that the university’s facilities were excellent enough to respond to the needs of the students. These included the library, where he loved reading technical books, the laboratories that had new equipment, the air-conditioned classrooms and the relatively spacious campus.
When the results of the board exam were released, none was more surprised than himself because he didn’t expect to land at the top. Aside from his generally average performance in college, he found the exam really hard not even the one-year review he undertook was a guarantee he’d make it. That’s all water under the bridge now for this simple Adamsonian who chose a course that was her mother’s frustration (only a year short of her graduation at UST). One thing is sure though, he was not wanting in hard work, dedication and discipline. At the moment, he’s just happy to have made a milestone for himself and the university. Not used to being lavished with attention and praise, he appears a bit awkward when congratulated but acknowledges them the best way he can.
On May 25, 2008, he will join other new chemical engineers for the formal oath taking at the Manila Hotel. His proud family will be around to bask in the honor of his rare first-place achievement. The whole Adamson community warmly congratulates him for bringing a big honor to the institution. All Adamsonians at the moment are just happy and proud to be members of the tribe of Levi.

Perched On An Elevated Landscape

Raul Agner

It was a long and winding path that Christian Ceasar Pineda had to tread before he was finally able to set foot on a more pleasant landscape. His difficult climb to the second uppermost spot in the March 2008 Landscape Architect Licensure Examination goes back to when he was but a kid.
A 1994 BS Architecture graduate of Adamson University, Chris and his siblings grew up shuttling between their mother’s and their father’s – sometimes their uncle’s – house after their parents separated. He was barely four then and this moving about extended all the way to his college days. Born in Quezon City in 1972 to Ernesto Pineda and Nancy Evelyn Pineda, both of Pampanga, he graduated valedictorian from the Ramon Avancena High School in 1989. He then enrolled in Adamson, enjoying a full PESFA (Private Education Student Financial Assistance) scholarship from the beginning until he finished his course.
Today, Chris Pineda is based in the Middle East working for WS Atkins, an internationally renowned structural engineering, design and architecture company. He is the Senior Landscape Architect there and is happy to be in the center of all the mega architectural buzz and boom in full throttle that part of the globe. Sure the job pays well but it is in being able to give something big as a Filipino and as an Adamsonian that he finds most fulfilling. But in spite of the lofty perch he is in now, this Falcon cannot forget his stay in the University. He reminisces with joy and pride the good old days in Adamson when he and his friends had to help each other out especially during the advent of the feared thesis defense. Spending late nights in other friends’ houses, sweating out on projects, cramming for the deliberations and developing teamwork and camaraderie are valued memories. He and his friends even creatively fashioned a way of coaching each other during the thesis deliberations by signaling to each other keywords that instantly recalled answers to difficult questions. “The difficult times,” he says, “are the most memorable. My days in Adamson were very straightforward. I wouldn't really say there were a lot of happy moments. I was there for a purpose, to study and graduate so I can have a good job. I even enrolled during summers so I could graduate in five years.”
Asked for some personal reflection, he waxes philosophical. He likens life to an architectural structure where his parents who gave him good education are the foundation, his siblings the shell – walls and roof that give protection, his friends and society in general the landscape that gives color and meaning to life and God the terra firma where he stands. “Take away any of these and I’ll surely crumble,” he states.
His message to fellow Adamsonians: “We all have the potential to make a difference. No matter how small or simple our contribution may be, the ripple effect will be enormous. We are Adamsonians.”
Architect Pineda may be up high in the firmament of early success but his feet remain rooted in the ground. He is a precious addition to the numerous alumni the current crop of Adamson students can draw strength and inspiration from.

Angles: A Photo-Essay

At night, on the wall next to the ST gate, the names of the university and the congregation that runs it, and the year the school was founded glow with silvery luminosity. Stainless, each letter is backlit by neon tubes that follow its contour. Not quite diamond but very close to it, the color of the letters may remind us of the 75th anniversary of the school last 2007.
The whole assemblage is an interesting subject for amateur photography and so, one evening, I clicked my merry way, unmindful of the questioning look of some passers-by while relishing the ethereality of the moment.
Viewed up front, the whole text is easily readable. Shot up close from different angles, they hardly make any literal sense but present a different reality that borders on the abstract and purely conceptual, even surreal. Each shot can stand on its own and engender many associations and interpretations. It is amateur photography imitating art.
It is also photography imitating life. Life is a camera that allows people to view reality from the angle they choose, hence the multiple and differing points of view, opinions, beliefs, takes and spins anywhere you go, with tolerance and respect making their peaceful coexistence possible.
Huh! The letters brought us this far...

“Adamson University: 75 Touchstones At Year 75”

Raul Agner

Adamson University turned 75 last year. To mark this Diamond Jubilee, it commissioned a four-figure Jubilee sculpture which now graces the main building’s front yard. It also published and launched a coffee table book entitled “Adamson University: 75 Touchstones At Year 75” last February 5, 2007.
As the title suggests, the book gathers 75 stories in the university’s 75 years of existence in one sleek and elegant volume. Each is contained in a spread that is laid out with photographs, digital art and an accompanying write-up. The first for instance, entitled “The Adamopoulos Odyssey,” is an interesting graphic timeline retracing the journey of school founder George Lucas Adamopoulos from Greece, to Australia (where he changed his name to Adamson) and to the Philippines. Another article, “Adamson-Ozanam Educational Institutions 1964,” presents the turnover of Adamson University to the Congregation of the Mission or the Vincentians. It is illustrated with a huge blown-up photo of George Lucas (president for 32 years) and incoming president Fr. Leandro I. Montañana, C.M., signing documents with two other representatives witnessing. “AddyoU: Branding Adamson,” “The Evolution of the University Seal,” “Art in the Everyday Campus,” and “Campus Cuisine,” are some of the titles of the other articles in the book.
The book is not written as one continuing narrative but as a collection of easily digestible stories that are separate from yet related to each other. The reader can therefore start reading anywhere he wants. Written by a team of writers that includes Fr. Gregg L Bañaga, Jr., C.M., Fr. Francis Cruz, C.M., Raul D. Agner, Sharleen P. Banzon, Bianca S. Consunji and Kannika Claudine D. Peña, the writing style hews close to the techniques of creative nonfiction: fresh, playful, concise and loaded with information and imagery.
Book designer Manny Chaves, who also acted as editor, did the layout and design. Manny came up with a style that approximates the vibrant rhythms of motion graphics and advertising; really very hip and contemporary. Because it is colorful, generous with breathing space and balanced all throughout, it is not a boring read. Vintage photos from the university Archives provide defining moments and memories of the school. The photographs of Mar Bustamante, At Maculangan and Fr. Francis Cruz and the digital art of Ryan Abela illustrate the pages with an unmistakably sharp and discerning eye.
“Adamson University: 75 Touchstones At Year 75” is available at the university’s bookstore.

Within Biting Distance

"Bamboo Boat," installation art by Gerry Leonardo, Feb. 2008, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Pasinaya 2008.

Raul Agner 4/29/08

On any given weekday high noon, human and vehicular traffic at Zobel and Mercedes Sts. in Ermita are at their heaviest. A good part of the student demographic from schools in the hood swarm to the row of kainan for their lunchtime refueling. Caught up in the dizzying swirl of hungry stomachs and eager intestines crisscrossing the narrow backstreets to pick the best hole-in-the-wall are the hapless motorists taking a short-cut route to San Marcelino. From perhaps a smooth 50-kph sweep of Ayala bridge, they decelerate to pushcart speed on left turn to people-clogged Mercedes and Zobel. The scorching heat or the drenching torrential rains, whatever the case, raises the whole commingling one notch higher to inconvenience.
Even so, there's a fiesta mood in this quotidian chaos. Smiling faces, school uniforms (ditched on "wash Wednesdays" in favor of chic, colorful casuals or emo-gothic statements), personal accessories, school thingamajigs, smoking barbecue stands, vehicles of different colors and shapes, lingering election campaign buntings and posters - all make up a psychedelic assemblage reminiscent of a Joya abstract or a Pollock "dripwork." If a background musical score were to be supplied, any opus with displaced tonality would be hands-down appropriate.
Food counters display a slew of mouthwatering offerings to choose from, ranging from the succulent adobo to the hot and spicy Bikol express, from the crispy chicken to the sauce-dipped barbecue and from the crunchy half-cooked toge to the soupy mongo. But reality TV-type hindrances must first be hurdled before one can finally enjoy a piping hot meal, including dodging oncoming vehicles, steering clear of sidewalk grilling stands, vying for the food attendants' attention and jockeying for tables and chairs in trip-to-Jerusalem fashion. Once these are accomplished, then he can settle on the hard-earned chair and put the grub where the mouth is, in partial fulfillment of one's ego's requirements (parang thesis title ah?).
Yes, "in partial fulfillment" because food, wherever or whenever taken, satisfies only half of the human person, the body, but not the soul, which needs a totally different kind of nourishment. And while one won’t find such nourishment in this crowded nook of Ermita, it's not like you'll have to spend a fortune in order to enjoy it. In not a few cases, they can be had for free or at a minimal expense. All it takes is a nosy detective's perspicacity to find them. Art, literature, music, dance, architecture, theater, film - all food for the soul you’ll surely agree (in addition of course to your religious beliefs and practices) - are around every which way you look; and what better place to start than the vicinity of Adamson University.
For the architecture buff, the area around the university provides an eyeful. The dilapidated Meralco building along San Marcelino was a beautiful art deco structure in its heyday but even in its present state of rot, some elements remain artistically pleasing. On the extreme left of its façade is a big cement bas-relief by Francesco Monti consisting of female figures composed in an upward-left movement. Appearing sooty, one cannot quite make out what the figures are doing but its sheer size must have added a touch of class to the building when it was new. There are other smaller sculptures that can be seen in some wall niches and the decorative pattern beneath the second story overhang is quite pleasing. This is balanced by the rooftop iron grills and the main entrance iron gate. Monti was an Italian sculptor who taught at UST before the war. His works can also be seen gracing the exterior of the Manila Metropolitan Theater, itself a fine member of the art deco family that once included the now forever gone Jai-alai building, its disappearance courtesy of then Manila Mayor Lito Atienza. The hood teems with neoclassical stuff too. Easy shoo-ins as best representatives are the Post Office, the National Museum and the Tourism buildings, the Supreme Court, Department of Justice and U.P. Manila buildings. Our own SV building belongs to this grand architectural breed and tradition.
Visual arts groupies have many venues to visit. First off is the National Museum where the humongous Juan Luna masterpiece, the "Spoliarium," hangs as a proud testament to world class Filipino artistry. If one is looking for an equally impressive Filipino mural, there’s a Botong Francisco at the Manila City Hall and a freshly restored one at the Fleur-de-lis Theater of St. Paul University, Manila. In-house, we have the three newly acquired Amorsolos, all bequeathed by Sofia Adamson, late wife of the late George Athos Adamson, former Dean of the College of Engineering. Hunting for contemporary art is a no-brainer; all one has to do is go to nearby commercial and alternative galleries like the Galeria de las Islas and NCCA Galleries in Intramuros, the Kanlungan ng Sining at the Luneta, or the Philam Life building and Hiraya Gallery along U.N. Ave. Bobi Valenzuela, well-known and respected art curator, and Manny Chaves, his assistant, used to hold court at the Hiraya during the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Hiraya, still open at present, used to be an exhibition space that showed works that were not only well-crafted but also rich, relevant and progressively Filipino in content. Some of the best contemporary Filipino artists came out of that cul-de-sac: Santi Bose, Imelda Endaya, Emong Borlongan, Charlie Co, Nune Alvarado, Noel Cuizon, Mark Justiniani, Bobby Feleo to name a few. Skip the Mabini area tourist art galleries for they have been painting to death the same subjects over and over again from way way back.
Music enthusiasts also have different venues to pick the preferred free musical fare. Fridays at Paco Park is concert day with both amateur and professional performers giving out their best. Classical pieces, timeless kundiman, pop music are some tunes to sit down to in the quaint and airy ambience of the former cemetery. Sundays at the Luneta open-air theater are concert days too but with a more variegated offering. If you’re lucky, you can catch such rare gems as Joey Ayala, Grace Nono, Lester Demetillo, The Wuds, Susan Fernandez Magno, Noel Cabangon or Bayang Barrios. But they come few and far between. Last April 6, 2008, park habitués were treated to a four-hour music and dance concert by a cross-section of the best cultural groups and individuals within and outside Metro-Manila. What a rich variety of Pinoy talents and artistry on the occasion of “Concert at the Park’s” 30th anniversary.
Museums, where our Filipino soul can best be felt, are also in the vicinity. With the National Museum just a few brisk steps away, Adamsonians couldn’t get any luckier. With its new addition – the Museum of the Filipino People housed in the old but refurbished former Finance building, the neoclassical twin of the Tourism building which in turn was the former Agriculture building right up front – the place is a cultural gold mine waiting to be explored. In Intramuros, the culture-hungry Adamsonian can visit the San Agustin Museum, the Archdiocesan Museum of Manila and inside Fort Santiago, the Rizal Shrine. Along Roxas Boulevard stands the Museo Pambata beside the U.S. Embassy. In case one has a day to spare, he can purposely go to the Cultural Center of the Philippines not only for its shows but also to see the beautiful non-conventional set-up of the Museo ng Kalinangang Pilipino. In the CCP galleries and hallways, one has the added bonus of seeing ongoing art exhibitions by select contemporary visual artists.
Admittedly, theater is rarely free but tickets are not always prohibitive. If one is really interested in experiencing it, then he wouldn’t really mind the cost. An alternative to theater is performance art done usually by visual artists who act out their ideas and convictions alone or with the support of fellow artists or friends. These are for free. Last April 25, 2008, the Kanlungan ng Sining at the Luneta, home of the Art Association of the Philippines, held the “Tupada,” a performance art event joined by artists coming from different parts of the world.
There are more in the vicinity for the Adamsonian’s educational uplift. Public art, historical buildings, old churches, plazas, and many other cultural events abound. So next time you feel like spending another hour on a TV gossip show or get that itch to play a round of DotA (Defense of the Ancients!) or any other mind-zapping computer game, skip it. Think of these alternatives. Think about the finer things in life that your soul badly thirsts for. You may not realize it but you may be already culturally dehydrated and in danger of spiritual meltdown.
Food for the body, culture for the soul - no diet could be more perfectly balanced than this.

Walking Along the Brighter Side of Life

Raul Agner 4/20/08

Where I live is only two long blocks away from the university I work in and where my daughter, Marielle, goes to first year secondary. In very rare instances, such as when we see that she’d be late for the school’s 6:45 flag raising or when the skies threaten a downpour, we take the pedal-powered or motorized trike. Most days though, it’s a sole-powered 200-meter walk that we do, a ready-made form of physical exercise or a coin-saving scheme or both.
The stretch of San Marcelino St. that we negotiate from Padre Faura down to Adamson University may not be a postcard-pretty promenade but we have taught ourselves to appreciate what it has by making the most out of what we see along the way. If Joey Ayala in his light and playful song “Maglakad” encourages people to refresh their minds by taking a stroll, my daughter and I try to make the walk fruitful and enjoyable instead of just doing it as a passive performance of an almost requisite act.
Since we began, we decided to look at the benefits of walking, instead of complaining about the way it exacted a toll on our shoes and legs and dwelling on its negative side. Indeed we wouldn’t be able to experience or enjoy many things if we opt to ride.
One is safety. With walking, we are perfectly in control of where we’re headed and we have a full unobstructed view of the vehicles whizzing by in the opposite direction. By their rider-unfriendly design, trikes deny their passengers these simple but convenient privileges. With a sidecar that is nearly fully wrapped in tarp, including the part where a windshield is supposed to be, you’d feel like Jun Lozada being given a scary joyride to nowhere by someone whose identity you have no inkling of.
Another is the chance to engage in fruitful conversation while walking. We literally walk the talk, stride after stride, telling stories, learning some words or expressions or making observations of people and things that we see along the way. Once she asked what the expression “looking for greener pastures” means. In simple terms, I told her that it means moving from one situation to a better one, like the walk to school every day being actually a protracted effort at moving to a better quality of life in the future especially for her.
Still another is the serendipitous discovery of lessons that people would normally ignore or dismiss as insignificant. Every day, for instance, we pass by a regular huddle of homeless denizens along the perimeter wall of the Philippine Presidents’ Line (PPL) property engaged in various domestic chores in a house that has no hope of becoming. Some are cooking a simple meal kindled by bits of wooden scraps salvaged from everywhere. Others are sorting out trash not to be thrown away but as a stateless currency that the money changer they know best accepts and converts into pesos: the nearest scrap buyer or junk shop. One middle-aged man I saw was squatting against the cement fence contentedly puffing a cheap cigar, fully enjoying an after-meal piece of heaven in what passes for a long veranda otherwise known as a sidewalk. What’s there for us in this quotidian sight? In the cul-de-sac that we live in, that has the euphemistic name of studio-type apartment, we can call ourselves lucky. It is our family’s comfort zone, a home where we are able to bond and hug each other and carve out our cherished dreams. I therefore cringe at the thought that if we were in their place, God forbid, it would really be a horrible life. My daughter has developed a deeper appreciation of the word blessing.
Sometimes we while away the time by looking for something inspiring or amusing. Two people we always see are a married couple on a bicycle who we assume are on their way to work. With the man driving and the woman sitting sideways and cosily up his front, we conclude that they must be a sweet loving pair. They are also a lesson in punctuality because we gauge our own by where we meet them. Seeing them halfway from our starting point means we are on time; to see them just a minute after we left off means we better hurry; and if we don’t see them at all, not even a taxi ride will bail us out of tardiness. Hate late? Beat the couple, we kid ourselves.
Just like any other place, San Marcelino has its own downside. These are givens and we refuse to be discouraged. After all how can you avoid pollution, discourteous drivers, smelly beggars, impassable sidewalks and even unsightly and dilapidated old houses and buildings anyway? You can’t. They are an inextricable part of the territory. Only one’s political will to see the brighter side of the street will do the trick.
My daughter agrees that if we extend that mindset to the bigger reality called life, then we are in I guess for a rewarding journey.

Truth Bearer’s Gig at AdU

Raul Agner

If threats - death and otherwise - could not muzzle Jun Lozada, then there was no way that a downpour during the latter part of his visit to Adamson University could.
When he emerged from the Office for Student Affairs wearing a t-shirt printed with a multi-colored “AdU” last March 3, 2008, the ST quad went into overdrive. Necks craned and feet jockeyed for position. The ladies (and lady-wannabes) shrieked and the machos shouted. TV cameras rolled and phone cams went into frenzied clicking. Jun, looking more like a delighted emoticon than the harassed whistleblower that he initially was, waved back at the students. Halfway in his talk, the rains came, parting the audience in half, sending it into the hallways at both sides of the quadrangle. But the visitor, protected by a tarp tent set up on the stage, went on, later fielding questions from a motley group of students who braved the rains, crowded in another tent facing the stage. Once the rain stopped, those at the corridors reassembled at the quad to get closer to the guest who obliged photo-ops before leaving.
Jun reiterated in strong terms his crusade against corruption, repeating his call to those involved in the highly scandalous NBN-ZTE deal scam to reveal the truth and stop hiding under the mantle of executive privilege or escapist legalese. He gamely answered all questions, including those that he had already clarified in various media fora and forays to different schools.
While some students and student groups had a “Gloria Resign” stand, Lozada didn’t explicitly call for this. What was urgent, he said, was for the people to pressure the government into uncovering the extent of corruption in the NBN-ZTE deal so that once and for all, the evil and plague that hound it will be exorcised. He also drummed up the need to be truthful among young people in whose hands the future of the land lies.
For its part, the university is clear about its stand, not calling for resignation but echoing that of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines or CEAP, which essentially is summed up in the slogan “Speak The Truth.” It joins the general expression of indignation and disgust over the alleged corruption in the deal and for the government to reveal the truth instead of resorting to lying. Even so, the university respects the different stands and opinions of other people in the AdU community.
One faculty member for instance disagrees with the schools and the church being involved in politics. On the other hand, an observer noted that the issue was not politics but the basic tenets of honesty, transparency and truthfulness. Indeed many high officials in government had lost moral ascendancy in view of the string of scandals that has rocked the foundations of good governance, namely the “Hello Garci” episode, the Joc-Joc Bolante fertilizer scam, the Cha-Cha move in Congress whose agenda was the abolition of the Senate and extension of GMA’s hold on power beyond her term’s end.
Jun Lozada only knows too well that many government officials have lost their sense of delicadeza, an old Filipino value that is much wanting today. If one looks at the Japanese and the Koreans, for instance, they are protective of their personal honor. Their officials resign if they get linked to scandals and controversies. Lozada’s campaign for truth gains meaning and urgency in the light of the contrasting current situation obtaining in the country.

A Hair-Raising Horse Run

Raul Agner 11/28/07

It has been celebrated more than sixty times already but people don’t seem to get tired of it. Each year, the so-called Leyte Landing Anniversary, popularly known as Liberation Day, is observed. People troop to “Red Beach” in Palo, Leyte where during WW II Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed on October 20, 1944 to fulfill his famous “I Shall Return” promise. From Leyte, the General, with his trademark corncob pipe, went island hopping until he reached Manila to wrest the whole archipelago from the clutches of Japanese rule. My family, when I was about six years old - must have been 1960 - was one of those who planned to go to the beach that year and this is where my story of the stubborn horse that rebelliously galloped us into a freak accident, begins.
Ideally, it was important to go early to Red Beach (so called because that was its code name during the War and not because the seashore was colored red with blood during the fighting as some mistakenly believe). Aside from being able to easily get a ride, one also had the chance to spot important people, like the President of the Republic, in attendance at the outdoor ceremonies. For some reason, our family was not able to leave early. Tatay and Nanay must have been very busy with house work and all that. We became ready to leave only at around noon, when the sun was at its peak and scorching hot, as in your skin will get tanned even if you go under it for only a few minutes.
In those days, jeepneys were not as many as they are now. A more common and less expensive form of transportation was the kalesa, better known in our province as a tartanilla, a horse and carriage ensemble that was slightly different in design than those you see in Manila. Our province’s version had its entrance at the back and the seats were parallel to the sides so that the passengers sat facing each other (unless they opted to turn their heads right or left to avoid looking at an unpleasant face or something) the way passengers in a jeepney do. Although Tatay had already hailed a tartanilla and settled the fare amount with the kutsero (the rig driver), still some preparations had to be finished. We the kids had to strip off the outer skin of the banana trunk we felled at the backyard which we planned to use as abayan or floater that we clang to as we swam further off the shore. The kutsero patiently waited, parking his horse and tartanilla under the cool shade of the nearby tree that had the thickest foliage so that he and his horse had a sweet time waiting for us to finally come down from our house. In a short while, all eleven of us were tightly packed with our belongings you would think the frail woodwork of the carriage could break from our compacted force.
Finally, it was time to leave. We were all excited and raring to go...
Except the horse!
Given the searing heat of the noonday sun, it was probably thinking there’s no way you’re going to have me step out of this cool shade even just a fraction of an inch. Sensing the sheer recalcitrance of the animal after the usual few whips that were supposed to jumpstart the four-kilometer journey fell on deaf skin, the kutsero increased the intensity and quantity of the lashes. Still no horse leg moved. With the wounded pride of a master who is disobeyed by his slave, he flagellated the 500-kg. catatonic repeatedly with all the strength he could muster that in a split second it darted and ran very fast, jolting us like passengers in a roller coaster that makes a sudden and treacherous dive. Every one of us suddenly felt very tense, instinctively holding on to each other as the horse ignored intersections and perilously dodged vehicles passing the highway. The galloping intensified, as if the horse was trying to give the statement that “this is what you get for forcing me out of the shade.”
Meanwhile, near where the MacArthur historical marker (the spot were MacArthur was believed to have landed and long before it was expanded into a park that resulted in the eviction of a whole village), an overloaded jeepney was slowly inching its way through the thick crowd of slowly dispersing spectators. It was three quarters past twelve, the ceremonies and speeches were over and those who had nothing else to do were on their way home. The jeepney was going back to the town proper. After crossing the Bernard Reed Bridge (named after the first American soldier to have crossed the river during the first Liberation), it turned right instead of going straight to the main intersection where the road bifurcated, the westward branch leading to the terminal at the town market. Little did the driver know that at the curved end of the road where he just made a right turn for a short cut to the paradahan or terminal, a bad surprise was awaiting him and his passengers.
Hard as he tried, our kutsero could not slow down the horse’s tantrum clip, much less bring the whole tartanilla to a stop. The more he pulled the reins, the faster the horse went his angry way until we reached a downward slope that curved sharply to the right. Because of the lush vegetation on both sides, there was no way the hapless kutsero could see any incoming vehicle. Still nervously huddled inside the fast-moving cart, we could only expect the worst. I’m sure Nanay uttered a prayer or two even before we passed the old adobe church a few seconds back. But it seems her prayers were not heard for in a split second, our tartanilla rammed straight into the side of the incoming jeepney the moment it made the sharp right turn! The left one of the two wooden shafts in between which the horse is hitched gored the jeepney’s right fender with a thud, crumpling its upper part to an irregular shape. On impact the shaft and the lower right portion of the windshield broke with a cracking sound similar to that of a long bamboo pole being split by the worker Tatay once hired to build our fence. Both the jeepney and the tartanilla came to a full stop, with our faces looking like a Richter scale registering an indescribable shock. I saw our kutsero fall flat on his stomach on the asphalt pavement. I heard the screams of my sisters, I saw the cover of our kaldero roll off with a clanging noise to the ground. I felt the pain of a slightly displaced pelvis and could not utter a word. But the horse, unhurt and unmindful of everything, stood still as if nothing happened, easily reverting to catatonic mode once more because the collision took place in a shady area!
We gathered our belongings and walked slowly back home, feeling very sad that our excursion to Red Beach was not pushing through, still shocked from the accident but thankful nevertheless that nothing really serious happened to any one of us.
A couple of years later, when Nanay and I were relaxing in our porch one somnolent afternoon, I was stunned by her sudden invocation of the names of saints. “San Pedro, San Pablo, San Juan, Por Dios Por Santo!,” she blurted out in loud litany. When I turned my head in the direction of the street, I saw a swiftly moving tartanilla being pulled by its horse but without a kutsero or passenger on board! I was stunned. What if the driverless moving carriage hits unwary pedestrians or kids playing in the streets? My fear turned to a sigh of relief when a few minutes later I saw the kutsero running as quickly as he could after the vehicle, trying to catch up with the wayward horse. Wow, Nanay’s litany was quickly attended to this time by the saints in heaven. We never knew, though, whether the kutsero caught up with his horse or not but the absence of news of anyone being hit by an unmanned tartanilla was enough to assure us that no accident happened. This was clearly a different case, not of a horse refusing to budge but of one wanting to move on on his own probably because his driver was too lazy to work.

Drawing

"Glide," 2007, 6.5"x6.5," pen and ink on acid-free paper

Drawing

"Taho Peddler," 2007, 6.5"x6.5," pen and ink on acid-free paper

Drawing

"Toy Peddler," 2003, pen and ink on watercolor paper (sold)

Drawing

"Terra Firma," 2007, 16"x12.5,"
pen and ink on acid-free paper

E-mail the artist for inquiries.

"Material Fool"

"Material Fool" is a pen and ink drawing on Pinoy mall culture. The artwork focuses on the Pinoy's sometimes excessive predilection for malls: sale, entertainment, shopping, etc., as represented by a fool dancing mechanically to the motion graphics in a video monitor and the beat of loud music. It was adjudged Best Entry during the 57th Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) Annual Art Competition in 2004, held at the GSIS Museum, Pasay City.

"Material Fool," 2004
18" x 24"
pen and ink on watercolor paper
Artist's Collection

Adamson University Historical Marker

One of the highlights of Adamson University’s Diamond Jubilee celebration last year was its being declared a historic site on February 8, 2007 by the National Historical Institute. NHI Executive Director Ludovico Badoy and Deputy Executive Director Emelita Almosara attended the formal unveiling of the official marker in front of the SV building. With this distinct honor, AdU joins its historic site neighbors - the Manila City Hall, the old Congress building, the former Agriculture and Finance buildings, Sta. Isabel College, the adjacent St. Vincent de Paul parish church, the Casino Español, and Paco Park among others - in the list of “must-see” for a historic tourism itinerary.

Culture Interrupted: The DWU Museum In Retrospect

by Raul Agner (9/07)

Twelve years ago, the Eastern Visayas saw the lamented closure of its largest university, the Divine Word University of Tacloban, an institution run by the SVD congregation. With it inevitably came the locking up of the Leyte-Samar Museum and Library, an integral part of the university, a helpful educational tool and an important repository of East Visayan heritage. Attempts to keep it open to the public in spite of the university's closure hit a snag. Budget for personnel and upkeep was simply hard to come by.
Unofficial sources say that today the collection remains intact and in fact could still be viewed albeit by appointment only. Which is good news, if true, for enthusiasts, students and serious researchers of local history and culture alike although nothing can be more ideal than a restoration of its regular or daily accessibility. With no solution in sight, crossing one's fingers appears to be the only alternative for the eventual full reopening of this painstakingly assembled labor of love also known as the DWU Museum.

Birth and Growth
The museum, which would have been 41 years old this year had it continued operating, opened on November 26, 1966 to fill up a cultural vacuum. Fr. Anthony Buchcik, SVD, a German priest assigned at the university's Graduate School had challenged his students to gather artifacts that, if pieced together, would tell the story of their culture. As if mortified that they were more conversant with Longfellow and Shakespeare than local writers or that they knew more about the Taj Mahal or the pyramids than their own past material culture, the students responded with an encouraging initial salvo. One came up with an antique stoneware jar. Several lugged along different old wooden santos to school. Still others presented Chinese ceramic wares, rare traditional household implements like a sandstone water filter, yellowing manuscripts of poems and short stories by vernacular authors and an array of gold thread-embroidered church vestments and vessels. In a few months, the pieces were numerous enough to be exhibited in their entire quaintness and historical richness in a one-room museum.
After the formal opening, more items kept coming in as news of the museum's acceptance of donations spread. A huge hardwood door panel depicting in high relief a purgatory scene was turned over, ushering in the arrival of two wheel bells that further increased the cache of religious items. Wartime artifacts like Gen. Carlos P. Romulo's flare gun, Pres. Sergio Osmeña's leather shoes, a Japanese bayonet and machine gun found their niches in the exhibition room. But the more significant acquisition was a portion of the archaeological finds from the Sohoton caves complex in nearby Basey, Samar. Karl Hutterer, SVD, head of the excavation team that conducted research in that area around 1968 generously donated funerary materials that included a calcified skull and another one with a flattened forehead. Also in that inventory were stone tools (adzes, flake tools), rust-eaten iron blades, personal ornaments made of shell, glass beads and metal, and gold-plated teeth. The whole package was a veritable gold mine of the region's pre-colonial practices. Animistic belief, for instance, was apparent in the phallus-shaped shell pendant worn by women to induce fertility. Personal ornaments and heirloom pieces like large bowls lying side by side with human bones were clues to the widespread custom of having the dead buried with their wealth to ensure comfort beyond the grave. Just how artistic the so-called Pintados (the ancient tattooed inhabitants of Leyte and Samar) appeared was indicated by the abundance of personal ornaments recovered from the diggings: rings, earrings, pendants, bracelets.

Literature Round-up
The gathering of literature about the region for the library section hauled in a slew of rare pieces. Among these were the original manuscripts of local literary luminaries of the '40s and '50s like Iluminado Lucente, Eduardo Makabenta, Francisco Alvarado, Casiano Trinchera, Jaime C. de Veyra and Vicente de Veyra, to name a few. Copies of rare publications were a prize catch: Eco de Samar y Leyte, the Philippine Commission Reports, the Henry Allen Papers and old Waray-Spanish dictionaries. Entrusted to the museum was the voluminous Daniel Z. Romualdez (DZR) memorabilia, a compilation of speeches, correspondence, legal documents, news clippings, photographs, cards and various items about this former Speaker of the House of Representatives from Leyte. One highly valued manuscript was the "Las Islas e Indios de Bisaya…1668" written by Spanish Jesuit missionary Francisco Ignacio Alcina. It is a lengthy and richly detailed description of the local flora, fauna and way of life of pre-Spanish inhabitants of Leyte and Samar supplemented with drawings the author himself made. A typewritten English translation by Cantius Kobak, OFM was donated by the translator himself, a Franciscan missionary who worked for some time at the Christ the King College in Calbayog City, Samar during the '70s.
Fr. Raymund Quetchenbach, SVD, an American, was the second curator of the Leyte-Samar Museum and Library. Growing by leaps and bounds under his care, it was allotted a special place in the main building. Fr. Quetch collected vintage photographs. He also edited the Leyte-Samar Studies journal and other university publications. It was during his stewardship that the DWU Museum Foundation, Inc. was established. Prof. Marlu Vilches took over Fr. Ray's responsibilities and came up with her own accomplishments, including the editing and publication of the book "Readings in Leyte-Samar History." This writer became the next curator in 1979 when Ms. Vilches left. In a year's time, the museum relocated to its new home at the third floor of the VOR Hall, a new building named after the university's first law dean Vicente Orestes Romualdez. Wide, airy and well lighted, the third floor had more than enough space for the office, library, main exhibit hall, temporary exhibit hall, memorabilia section, museum shop and storeroom.

Makeover
After some time, the museum had to take on a different tack. New approaches began ditching the idea of museums as mere repositories or showcases, adopting instead the view of a museum as a living extension and affirmation of a community's culture, identity and memory. Along that more culturally correct line, the DWU Museum underwent a makeover in 1991. Tapped to do the redesign were Bobi Valenzuela, writer and then curator of Hiraya Gallery in Manila and Manny Chaves, graphic designer and then assistant curator of Hiraya. Later, the artist Mario de Rivera lent his fine touch in the arrangement of objects. Several brainstorming sessions later, "Sungdu-an" materialized as a working theme and title. A Waray term that refers to "the meeting point of two rivers," it can as well be the equivalent of the more abstract "confluence." The designers capitalized on the richness of its meaning, design possibilities and its aptness as a metaphor. First, the flat whiteness or usually drab interior of museums was avoided. To breathe color into the DWU Museum, the local banig (mat), which symbolizes folk artistry, cultural resilience and confluence, was extensively used as a design motif. One sees them as timeline markers and wall accents. Utilizing the banig (a local craft that even the chronicler Pigafetta took notice of during Magellan's Homonhon Island landfall in 1521) created a light atmosphere redolent of a Pinoy fiesta. Secondly, several small platforms (painted with the colors of the banig together with the boxes and pedestals) were joined together to form a wide central platform on which the various artifacts were displayed chronologically and in a clockwise direction. Around the platform were the narrative texts. The entire layout allowed for a smooth segue from one historical period to the next and a visual crossover to the opposite side, thus, like the local mat, hinting at the "sungdu-an" or interweaving of historical periods, indigenous elements and foreign influences in the local culture.

Users and Researchers
Many people looking for cultural and historical information about the Eastern Visayas found them at the museum's library. Part of historian Rolly Borrinaga's background info on the "Balangiga Massacre" in Samar was researched in that library, (in the process stumbling upon his potentially controversial hypothesis that the redoubtable Lapu-lapu was possibly a Waray!) Poet-writers Vic Sugbo and Nino de Veyra extensively explored the nooks and crannies of vernacular writing in the works of Lucente, Makabenta and other Waray writers. Marlu Vilches used the Waray riddles collection for her University of Leeds M.A. in Literature thesis, later published in 1981 as "A Collection of Visayan Riddles from Leyte and Samar." Prof. Nenita Tamayo made the museum's collection of Waray proverbs the subject of her master's thesis. Gregg Luangco edited "Waray Literature: An Anthology of Leyte-Samar Writings" and "Kandabao: Essays on Waray Language, Literature, and Culture" both in 1982, two books sourced largely from the library's compilation. Local artists like the Atitipalo Art Group, whose artmaking sought inspirations from local history and culture, thankfully found the museum a rich source of texts and images. Leo Villaflor, known for his tuba paintings, used the file photos of Leyte's past governors for his oil portrait series. When the Pintados Foundation was planning the first Pintados Festival of Tacloban in 1987, the museum library's source materials on the early pintados proved very helpful. Countless other people did research in the museum's library.

Save the Heritage
Today one wonders where those who want to take a glimpse of Leyte-Samar's past (and its connection with the present) or those who need information on East Visayan history and culture go. Sure there are other museums in Leyte and Samar but none compares to the DWU Museum and Library collection's quantity and quality. U.P. College-Tacloban's Leyte-Samar Heritage Center has local literature and traditional implements in its collection. Imelda's expensive objet d'art are what the Sto. Niño Shrine and Heritage Museum in Tacloban keeps (or shows off). The Zaldivar Museum in Albuera town in Leyte is a family collection of heirlooms, travel souvenirs, antiques, ceramic wares and curiosities. In Calbayog City, Samar, the Christ the King College Museum has archaeological pieces, church articles, ceramic wares and various items from Samar but doesn’t have a library section that made the DWU Museum truly informational. Biliran town in the island province of Biliran is just starting a museum with a few artifacts gathered so far.
It's bad enough that people of Leyte, Samar and Biliran can't have ready access to their own heritage. Allowing that same heritage to deteriorate would be even worse. No one knows if the DWU Museum collection, since its closure in 1995, has been cleaned up or checked for damages or given preservation treatment. If not, then the materials are in danger of disintegrating due to intrinsic and extrinsic factors and eventually lost. It is high time that concerned individuals, cultural organizations, academic institutions, the provincial and city governments and government agencies in the region join hands and take action. Among the things they can work on are the museum's possible reopening to the public, making a digital version for easier access, having the status of the collection examined and even moving the collection to a better location. They can coordinate with the SVD congregation that legally still owns the collection.
It's the people though who are the real stakeholders. If the Waray people wake up one day and find their heritage missing, they will have no one to blame but themselves.

_________
The author is former curator of the DWU Museum of Tacloban from 1979 until its closure in 1995, current archivist at Adamson University and co-authored the coffee table book "Adamson University: 75 Touchstones at Year 75."

"Pag-ahon" (Ascendancy), 2005

This is my 2005 drawing entitled "Pag-Ahon" (Ascendancy), a pen and ink drawing on paper using a pilot V-5 sign pen with Rotring ink on watercolor paper. The artwork is about choosing and going for the more important and substantial things in life as a key to our personal and national progress. If you remember the old coins that feature a Filipina holding a hammer beside an anvil as a symbol for industry, the image here is lifted from that. Here she is forging implements that have a practical use like long knives, plows, sickles, etc. At the same time, she is fashioning abstract geometric shapes that soar above to form a stylized star. This represents ideas, dreams, aspirations which are equally important. The figure she is stepping on is bubbleman, a symbol of futility and senselessness. The banig pattern is my personal motif taken from the colorful mats (banig) that Leyte and Samar, the region I come from, is known for.

"Pag-ahon" (Ascendancy), 24" x 18," Artist's Collection

Fishballs For The Adamsonian Soul

Raul Agner (11/2/2006)

"The Best Things In Life Are Free" is the title of a 1956 musical film and a 1992 Janet Jackson-Luther Vandross hit song.
But most especially, it's an enduring catchword, a wise reminder that even without shelling out cash, many good things come our way or that money can't buy many of life's essentials.
Free Things Around
That slogan rings true in Adamson University, a veritable grab bag of "freebies" that appear to have been dropped from above though no one asked for them. By some measure they may not be the best but they are free nonetheless for everyone to savor. Not that the university enjoys a special treatment from heaven's dispensers of graces, because many of these can also be found in other places. It's only a matter discovering and realizing that they've been there all these years and appreciating their real value.

Such as the trees inside the campus that play their roles quietly: as giver of cool shade, as recycler of San Marcelino's toxic emissions into breathable oxygen or as pliant sculptural forms adding pleasant aesthetics to the campus landscape (that’s multi-tasking long before humans adopted it in the workplace!). Often, they would send a short message, in the shedding of a leaf, that life is a cycle of endings and beginnings, of change and renewal.

Imposing and postcard-perfect, the SV building is another free thing we enjoy. One can simply feel good in its hallowed halls or one's sagging spirits can find solace in the beauty and strength of its neoclassical architecture that at the same time evokes endurance and tenacity. Its rich history gives the Adamsonian a sense of pride and lets him bask in an inherited glory. It would be nice to wrap the building like a gift, because it is, (the way the installation artist-couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude did with the Reichstag in Berlin and other structures), if only to dramatize its significance.

Other good things are found in the campus. Tinted glass doors can double as instant mirrors for walk-by grooming. Those craving for mental nourishment have the numerous journals and magazines in the library to pig out on. The throbbing dynamism of student activities fires up anyone's passion for life. In corridors and walkways, the congenial smile people flash makes your day a tad bearable. The big-crowd anonymity gives one a kind of psychological security cloak; and in the ethereal serenity of the chapel, one can feel the reassuring presence of the Maker …and Freegiver.

Person- Gifts
But more important are people who make a difference in your quotidian living. And they are for free at all times. There’s the kind classmate who helps out with your problems. There's the restroom cleaner that makes our answering to nature's calls a pleasant trip to an almost clinically sterile spot. Not to mention the roving security person who gets out of his way to maintain order or help people locate a classroom or office. Of course no one can ignore the traffic aide who risks health, life and limb so Adamsonians can reach the other side of the street intact.

This inventory and hundreds of other examples, enough to fill a book, point out only one fact: in our university, free gifts - big or small things and nice people - abound. No need to be extraordinarily perspicacious to sense their presence; only those in hopelessly irreversible “eyes-wide-shut” mode won't notice. A line in a song says, “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone." Knowing and valuing the free things and people around us lessens the chance of losing them.

In reality, when we come to think of it, each one of us is a gift. Every person can give or share himself or his gifts with others, a "person-gift." A community made up of mutually and freely giving “person-gifts" is an ideal groundwork for a socially oriented institution like Adamson.

In whatever form and quantity the free gift comes, it nourishes our souls to some degree, the way fishballs, a snack staple for many Adamsonians, succeeds in sustaining an empty stomach up until the next full meal, or even if none, comes.

AdU @ 75

AdU @ 75: Passage and Transition
Raul Agner

Forbidding and ugly, the massive wall in front of the SV building has been finally demolished, replaced with a grill fence that allows for appreciation of the SV building façade's full neoclassical glory. The inspiring view should awaken a sense of pride in every Adamsonian who takes his Alma Mater seriously.
To the unfamiliar, its fresh coat of paint makes the structure look so new and recently built it seems to belie a storied past. Its colonial period architecture helps to correct this wrong impression and establishes the SV building's true historical age. But it's not only the building that can boast of a history, for the whole university itself can.
At 75, Adamson University is one humongous storybook about passage, transition, and transformation. Over time, it has changed location, physical facilities, administration, institutional vision, and educational orientation. In the process, it has reinvented itself; more importantly, it has transformed lives and hopes to do so for as long as it lives.

An Itinerant School
1932 is the year of the one-room beginning in Sta. Cruz, Manila - captured in an extant sepia picture with all of 42 pioneering enrollees and the Adamsons packed together with a handful of chem lab equipment. Very seminal, a world removed from the numerous air-conditioned rooms and spacious labs available to the modern-day Adamsonian.
A month past its first founding anniversary, it moved to a better location in 1933, the first in a series of three nomadic transfers. Along General Solano St., San Miguel, Manila stood the baroque three-story building where students enjoyed more elbowroom for doing experiments and schoolwork. The place, though, couldn’t be big enough just yet. In 1939, a larger building in Intramuros became the school's third stop, where it attained university status in 1941. The new university found a permanent home along San Marcelino Street in 1946, re-opening in the SV building after a war that left a wake of destruction. From thereon, AdU was on a roll, crossing San Marcelino to acquire the Meralco building and its annexes and the whole St. Theresa's College - Manila campus.

Physical Facilities
Several buildings stand in the campus, with the iconic SV getting stellar billing. But while other schools erected buildings cumulatively on a sprawling field, Adamson did not. Except for the Ozanam (Engineering) and Francis Regis Clet (High School and Elementary), the rest are hand-me-downs - having had previous owners and uses but reused for educational purposes. The long one-story structure, old chem lab to many, that is now used for classrooms, offices, carpentry shop, university store and computer labs was the tranvia's pre-war Manila depot, the street railway system operated by Meralco. In the 60's, Meralco put up a main office building in front of it. That is now the CS or Cardinal Santos building. What also used to be a seminary and central house of the Congregation of the Mission (C.M.) is now the SV building. Except for some minor makeover, the STC-M cluster was the easiest to reuse because it was previously also a school.

Administration
From the Greeks to the Spaniards to the Filipinos - the ownership-administration succession follows that order. George Lucas Adamson, a chemist from Athens was the sole founder, some sort of reverse OCW who found the proverbial greener pastures in our land. He later invited his cousins, the brothers Alexander Athos Adamson and George Athos Adamson, to work in the school. Had the Filipinos heeded that line from the classics about fearing the Greeks even if they're bearing gifts, Adamson University wouldn’t be around today. When the C.M. assumed ownership, the Spanish Vincentians became the next set of administrators, with some Filipino confreres as understudy. Expectedly, the institution shifted from being a secular to a Catholic-Vincentian one. Upon the Spanish Vincentians' gradual return to Spain, the Filipinos became the new administrators.

Institutional Vision
To teach Filipinos how to make soap, salt, sugar and other products through a short training in industrial chemistry and to help the country manufacture local raw materials-based products was the goal of the Adamsons when they opened a school. Later they would have the broader vision of offering especially engineering and a mainly technical college education.
That of the Vincentians didn’t come from any hip advocacy but was anchored on their motto: the evangelization of the poor. To offer affordable quality education especially to the socially disadvantaged was the school's new vision, a war cry if you will, because providing education is a way of waging war on poverty. Consequently, Adamson continued to be one of the least expensive schools, made available many scholarships and strengthened the study grant program for student assistants.
At close range, one notices the parallelism of the Greek and Vincentian visions. Both looked upon education as key to attaining a better quality of life.

Educational Orientation
More recently, the administration has redirected the purely technical orientation of the students, veering to a more holistic one. Total development of the human person through a comprehensive cultural program is being pursued. Among the giant steps in this direction are: the establishment of the Cultural Affairs Office, the makeover of the theater, the opening of an art gallery, the recognition of several culturally-oriented student organizations, the opening of the university archives, the opening of the school's permanent history and memorabilia exhibit, the purchase of new books on literature and the arts, the installation of three plasma TVs in strategic areas playing videos on school history and activities, the much-improved library, the facelifting of facilities for a more aesthetic ambience - with a fountain and palm trees, the ST Quad looks more relaxing - and many other enriching servings.

Transformed Lives
That a tree is known by its fruits may sound jaded but the success stories of many alumni reflect the kind of tree that Adamson University is. It is one enduring institution that is faithful to its vision and mission and transforms lives by doing so. From schooldays struggles to rewarding careers, from being nameless to being known, from meager resources to abundant blessings - alumni homecomings are punctuated by falcon-like soars like these. Not only that, they walk the Adamsonian-Vincentian talk, extending their success beyond their personal boundaries. They support scholarships, sponsor school improvement projects, employ Adamsonians in their companies, involve themselves in their communities, serve in their parishes and help empower the poor. In short, they continue the cycle of sharing the benefits of their success, albeit in a low profile manner, hewing to the pay-it-forward ethic of their Adamson education.

Cuing The Future
February 5-11, 2007 was the weeklong celebration of the Diamond Jubilee. Within that week, many significant activities and events took place. A marker from the National Historical Institute declaring the whole university a historical site was unveiled. With its colorful past, there's no doubt that the university deserves the honor. It's another feather on its cap but one more reason for it not to rest on its laurels.
And so, as the new Jubilee sculpture (unveiled in the same week) cues, the transgenerational passage of the school will continue. St. Vincent de Paul, C.M. founder and university Patron Saint and George Lucas Adamson, school founder, are shown in the mis-en-scene as giving a young man and a little girl that precious legacy called an Adamsonian-Vincentian education. Two streams becoming one river on which young people sail to fulfil their dreams.
As history would have it, the one-room experiment became a full-blown project. Today it is an exciting work in progress, holding a lot of promise for the future.

Welcome!

welcome everyone. to have room to share my articles, artworks, photos, thoughts, etc., that's the reason i am having this blog. the big picture on this page is that of my pen and ink drawing entitled "bubbleman: off course." you can have your own interpretation of it. the picture on my profile is another drawing called "asinus asinum fricat." again you can figure out what it is all about.
"egotrikk," the blog title is a re-spelling of "ego trick," a title of another artwork which started my "taong bula" or bubbleman series of artworks featuring a soap-bubble-spewing pinoy archetypal fool as my metaphor for all the futile and senseless things that continue to hamper our national and personal lives. unfortunately, i don't have a photo of it at the moment.
the articles i write are mostly about adamson university where i have a regular job as an archivist. if you are an alum or a student of that school, chances are you could be interested in reading them. of course i write on other subjects too.
as for the photos, no promises but i'll try to share those that are worth sharing.

again, welcome!