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Essay

The Prince of Tagurabong

I lived in a big house with my widowed mother, a grandmother and an unmarried aunt. My mother, Sofia Villasin Peñaranda, was a schoolteacher. We would walk to school together. But after class, I would walk home with my classmates who would linger...

Moves like Brocka

The Philippines Graphic shares with its readers the life, conviction, and passion of this much venerated, singularly gifted, and internationally-acclaimed film director whose best works spanned one of the most difficult junctures in our nation’s history. Written by multi-awarded poet, screenwriter, editor, and...

A gentle woman (our Yaya Taling)

“How did Taling end up in our household, Mommy?”  I have turned my curiosity during the pandemic to our family history and my question to my Mom must have sent the neurons in her 90-year-old brain firing. But she did recall Taling’s story...

Marra comes back to Philippines Graphic

She was there when Philippines Graphic was born in June 1990. In those early days, Marra PL Lanot and her husband Jose “Pete” Lacaba were protégés of the late National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin, then the Editor-in-Chief of the Graphic.             Marra was...

Love of my life

The corridor was circular, lined with curved benches along the wall. Behind the benches were glass windows that overlooked the street below.    As you sat on those benches, you faced another glass window of a room with closed blinds to ensure the privacy...

Covering the essential Blas F. Ople

A journalist remembers how the former labor and foreign affairs secretary and Senate President remained a lifelong newspaperman at heart The opportunity to cover Blas Fajardo Ople, the late labor and foreign affairs secretary and lifelong newsman, when he became a senator, was a...

Random Pickings

An afternoon with Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones

Of private school tuition increases, Marawi, foreign-assisted projects, lumad education, and teachers’ loans The security guard told us to enter via the back entrance....

Unintended consequences: Why I believe the destruction of donated goods was justified

A howl of outrage rose from the public after the Bureau of Customs announced it was destroying four containers of donated goods intended for...

Covering the Marawi siege

“War cannot be reported as breaking news.” This was one reminder emphasized during a forum organized by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR)...

The talk

W­hat am I doing wrong? In a few weeks, I will be turning 51 and have been conversing with God nightly for almost as long....