My recent three-day bout with the flu was anything but normal. Younger, I was of the habit of easily dispensing with the bone and muscle pain which go with the viral infection. Close to fifty-six, it appears that my body...

The previous weekend saw me and my wife in the middle of two very important events: a dinner invitation by none other than National Artist for Literature F. Sionil José, and a book launch-cum-birthday bash the day after of...

  Growing old is not what I thought it would be. As the Polish poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert wrote, it’s like owning a dog-eared dictionary, published long ago, with absentee words clinging at the hem of its tattered cover jacket. A...

We hear it often said how important press freedom is to the nation’s sociopolitical health. The reason being is that information is currency, and with such currency in the hands of the people, their chances for survival are greater than...

I’m no historian. Call me a history buff with an insatiable liking for what is either vintage or ancient. I love reading anything that reeks of the sands and pyramids of Egypt, the lost city of Atlantis, the ancient...

Summer comes, and with it mosquitoes and dengue. Even as the holiday cold fritters away, the Department of Health has already noticed an alarming spike in cases of what is otherwise known in its extreme form as hemorrhagic fever. Some 2,100...

In journalism, there are two ways—and these must be achieved simultaneously—to guarantee accuracy. First, go hot on the trail of the facts, thereby securing backdrop, history and context; and second, the proper use of language. By the latter, I mean the...

  The first filtered photographs that did the rounds of social media came to me as a shock. The explosion ripped the old wooden pews like these were matchsticks, leaving long shards of wood and the occasional metal from God-knows-what scattered...

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” — Novelist James Baldwin Let’s begin with the fact that child crimes are real. And if we’re not careful, this could...

A long a narrow pavement behind the garage of our old home, on a cold night too distant to recall in detail, I stood to give the stars a sidelong glance, poked a 9mm semiautomatic Llama at my temple,...

This June, the Philippines Graphic magazine turns 92 as a magazine title. On our 100th anniversary, the year 2027 (God willing I live that long), I would have reached my 63rd year on this benighted planet—roughly 20 years of which...

The New Year heralds hope. Well, at least, that’s what we all want to believe. Kinda like kicking off a new beginning after the previous 365 days of nonstop pain in the bleep. Call it our personal reboot, the time...