The human body betrays language in explicating unusual faculties. Our bodies are biologically designed to “tell” us if something is wrong— but not through words. It pinpoints a specific part and uses the dialects of pain, as if to...

Previous era of the arts had subversiveness, vulgarity, and blasphemy as its main problems. Now its inauthenticity—the single remaining line that shouldn’t be crossed. In Western theater, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle discussed “Thespis of Icaria” in his foundational literary...

Pablo Tariman in his hometown Baras, Catanduanes contemplating the island by the sea. (Photo: Floyd Evangelista Flores) As I turn 74 in December, I like to look back and sum up the modest journey of my life. I like to start...

More than 30 women entrepreneurs from across the Philippines have seen their businesses recover after taking part in the FLIP YOUR BIZ program delivered by GREAT Women in partnership with the Rebuilding Better Project of the International Labor Organization...

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...

March is women’s month, thus, among other stories, this take on women in Philippine politics, not by a political pundit, nor a social scientist but by one from womankind who hold up half the sky.           Thirty-six years apart, in...

From 1912 to 2003, the country’s premier horse racing events were held at what used to be the San Lazaro Hippodrome in the heart of Manila.     Fast forward to 2017 when a new kind of excitement first opened its...

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...

This essay is one of many written during a Memoir Writing workshop at Sunshine Place under the mentorship of Dr. Oscar Peñaranda, a Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas awardee. An educator, author, and advocate of Filipino-American studies, Dr. Peñaranda’s...

“The times they are a-changin,’ come gather round people, wherever you roam...” Bob Dylan No doubt those lyrics of Bob Dylan were progressive and attuned to the zeitgeist of 1960s America. Yet poetically inspiring as they were back then, its...

Our house in Provident Village, Marikina City, was first occupied by my son Kim, who was then studying Industrial Engineering at the Ateneo. He stayed there for four years while my husband Willie and I could not yet settle...

This essay is the first of many written during a Memoir Writing workshop at Sunshine Place under the mentorship of Dr. Oscar Peñaranda, a Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas awardee. An educator, author, and advocate of Filipino-American studies, Dr....