Pinoy Penman 2.0

Lest We Forget

Sun, 13 May 2012 17:37:12 +0800

Penman for Sunday, May 13, 2012

(Note: Only for this week, my column was published Sunday instead of the usual Monday.)

JO-ANN MAGLIPON, the book’s editor, almost self-deprecatingly called it “a small book that cost us plenty,” but everyone who attended the launch last Thursday at the Metropolitan Museum knew what she meant, especially the part about “plenty.” It wasn’t plenty of money, although there was a bit of that, too. Rather, Jo-Ann meant a lot of pain, both physical and otherwise, and all the other labors and losses that went with one’s commitment to radical politics at a time when it could kill you—and in far too many cases, it did.
The book was Not on Our Watch, subtitled Martial Law Really Happened: We Were There, and it was produced and published by LEADS-CEGP 6972, Inc. The longish acronym translates to the League of Editors for a Democratic Society-College Editors Guild of the Philippines (1969 to 1972)—an alumni association, if you will, of two major groups of campus editors and journalists from the early years of martial law and the tumultuous period leading up to it, which has come to be known as the First Quarter Storm.
Thirteen authors contributed their essays (in my case, a semi-fictionalized story) to the book: entrepreneur Angie Castillo, economist Calixto Chikiamco, former Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit, Beijing-based journalist Jaime FlorCruz, singer and actress Jay Valencia Glorioso, Bangko Sentral Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo, journalist Sol Juvida, corporate executive Victor Manarang, sportswriter Al Mendoza, art publisher Jack Teotico, engineer and social activist Roberto Verzola, entrepreneur Vic Wenceslao, and myself. Sydney-based artist Edd Aragon did the illustrations, Inquirer columnist Conrad de Quiros provided the introduction, and Yes! magazine editor in chief Jo-Ann Maglipon edited the book.
It would be easy and tempting to dismiss a book like this as a form of nostalgia tripping by doddering old veterans softened by an overdose of realism, cappuccinos, and foot massages. But what’s striking about this book is its composure and unsentimentality, which is not to say that it’s short on drama or discovery. The vignettes range from the domestic—Sol Juvida writes about living on the run as a young mother, always sleeping in jeans with some money in her pocket, ready to vault a wall with her baby in case the military came knocking on her door—to the ironic, such as Vic Manarang’s meeting the new chief of security at the company he worked with during martial law, none other than his detention officer in Camp Aguinaldo, now newly retired.
Vic (incidentally, my physics teacher in high school and later fraternity brother and Collegian editor at UP) also writes about the kind of changes at the top that few of us witnessed with our own eyes: “In 1978 I joined First Philippine Holdings Corporation (FPHC), the majority owner of the Manila Electric Company and a clutch of other companies supplying or servicing the power utility firm. It had been owned by the Lopez family before martial law but control was wrested from them, and for some time it was not clear to me by whom and how… but it soon became apparent, from lunchtime and cocktail-hour chatter among the executives, that actual corporate power was in the hands of an occasional visitor to the board room, a tall, stocky man with a shock of white hair, thus the reference to him as ‘Whitey.’” (You’ll have to buy the book to find out who Whitey was, but those with long political memories should be able to guess this easily.)
You see Jimi FlorCruz every time CNN needs the lowdown on what’s happening behind the Great Wall, but back in September 1972, he was just another 20-year-old student journalist from the Philippine College of Commerce on a study tour of China, stranded there by the sudden declaration of martial law. Facing possible arrest if he came home, Jimi—along with a few others such as UP Student Council Chairman Ericson Baculinao and La Salle firebrand Chito Sta. Romana (both of whom also became bureau chiefs of major media organizations)—decided to stay in China, little realizing what they had gotten themselves into.
“In 1973 we moved to Yantai in Shandong Province to work in a fishing corporation,” Jimi recounts. “Along with Chinese workers, I worked as an apprentice on trawler boats which sailed to Bohai Sea and beyond to catch fish, prawns, and other seafood. We typically sailed for five and seven days each trip, enduring back-breaking work and lonely nights. With few English books and limited news to read, I turned to studying Chinese. I talked with coworkers to improve my spoken Mandarin. To expand my vocabulary, I copied by hand words and phrases from dictionaries and various publications.” And thus was born the Beijing bureau chief of the world’s largest TV news network.
But lest we forget—and this is indeed the title of Obet Verzola’s piece—martial law was, above all, a show of State power over the individual, and nowhere was this more starkly seen and acutely felt than in the military’s torture chambers. Obet’s account of what he went through is the stuff of nightmares, which plagued Obet well into his 50s. He writes:
“Then they brought in The Machine. Two lengths of wire extended from it, both ending with bare wire, the insulation stripped. One end was tied around the handle of a spoon. The Machine is a field telephone generator. It has a wheel with a handle. The wheel turns a dynamo, which generates electricity that causes a distant telephone to ring…. My interrogators tied the end of one wire around my right index finger and inserted the spoon into my pants, on my right wrist, until it rested where the leg meets the waist, near the crotch. My body would complete the circuit.”
It might have been bad enough not to realize what was going on; Obet, however, was an electrical engineer, and understood exactly what his captors intended.
The palpable terror that many of us lived with during martial law is definitely in the book, and it should be, because martial law was as much an assault on the body as on the mind and spirit. It reminded us, in a way, of the ultimate physicality of ideas, of one’s personal stake in an otherwise abstract struggle.
The book is aptly dedicated to student journalists who made the ultimate sacrifice: Tony Tagamolila, Babes Calixto, Jessica Sales, Jack Peña, Manuel Bautista, Evelyn Pacheco, Tish Pascual, and Fred Bat-og. But lest we look back on martial law simply as a litany of losses—recalling how Homer bemoaned the grim harvest of the flower of Greek and Trojan youth in the Iliad—the book reminds us that many did survive to carry the struggle on to a new age, perhaps even on to new causes. It suggests that the way forward is neither to cower in terror nor to crow in triumphalism, but to adapt, and sometimes even to accept and to compromise (a word that would have made us shudder back in 1972), for as long as we served the people, for which mission there now exists a plenitude of options.
A few hours before the book was launched at the Metropolitan Museum, Beng and I took part one in one of the most private and moving rituals any person can attend—the cremation of her father Jess, a World War II veteran who died at 87. Our FQS generation was born within a decade of that war’s end. It’s hard to believe that the students we’re teaching now, say at an average of 18, were born more than 20 years after the declaration of martial law, and missed even EDSA 1. In other words, martial law is much more distant a memory to them than the war with the Japanese was to us. It’s no surprise that the idea for the book came about—as LEADS-CEGP members Elso Cabangon and Vic Wenceslao note in the prologue—because of another member’s lament that her children did not know her and what she did during martial law.
Now they will, as should many others, which will be another step toward making sure that the horrors of martial law do not happen again—not if we can help it, certainly not on our watch.
(The book should be available at Fully Booked.)

A Green Harvest

Tue, 8 May 2012 10:34:13 +0800

Penman for Monday, May 7, 2012

AS A professional writer and editor, I get to work on a lot of book projects, and now and then some projects mean a little more to me than others, because of a personal connection with the subject. Two such books came out recently, both having to do with the Lasallian Centennial in the Philippines, a continuing celebration that began in mid-2011. I wrote With Hearts Aflame, a history of the La Salle Brothers in the Philippines, and edited and contributed to The Future Begins Here, a compendium of Lasallian achievements in various fields of endeavor, from business and public service to sports and culture, among others. (Full disclosure: I went to La Salle Green Hills from Prep to Grade 7, 1960-66.)
Many people think of La Salle as a rich kids’ school, and indeed it was so for the greater part of its first century—an irony considering its original mission of serving the poor—but that came about only because the Brothers had practically been ordered by the Pope to set up shop in the Philippines even when they could scarcely afford it, and teaching little señoritos proved to be the way forward. In any event, the Brothers have since pursued an apostolate more focused on the poor.
Among all the inspiring stories I came to hear and to write about the Brothers, none touched me more than that of Br. Antonio “Bong” Servando who, as I noted in the book, “has spent nearly three decades as a Brother and has felt deeply fulfilled by them. As Vice-Chancellor for Administration for De La Salle Lipa, Br. Bong can look back to a long string of challenges and achievements in his career, but two incidents stand out for him for making an impact on his life as a Brother.
“The first took place when he was assigned to teach at the Holy Rosary College within the Tala Leprosarium in 1987. He recalls: ‘I had a student by the name of Isabel, who was about 16 years old already but because of leprosy, her body structure was like that of a Grade 6 kid. She was relatively participative in our class and eager to learn. A few days later I noticed that she was absent and I asked about her from her classmates. I was told that she was having a reaction—a term they use when her leprosy causes skin ulcers and the patient suddenly becomes very weak. I said that I would visit her that weekend if the students could bring me to her Quonset hut, a prefabricated structure, like a half-moon.
“‘As we entered the Quonset for single ladies, I saw Isabel lying on a bed under a mosquito net. A friend covered her private parts and used a fan to comfort her. There were skin ulcers all over her body—waterous, with a little blood dripping slowly—the way your skin would look if it had been rubbed against a rough cement wall. It was my first time to see such a condition. After the usual Kumusta na, she told me, “Brother, after I get well, I will go back to school.”
“‘At that time, I was enrolled for my MA units in DLSU on weekends, and it felt like such a chore for me to do because of the all the jeepney and LRT rides I had to take to get from Tala to Taft. It struck me to realize that here was Isabel, vowing to return to school as soon as she recovered, and here I was, able-bodied but too lazy to go to school. To make a long story short, she became my inspiration for my studies.
“‘In 2005, I was in my second year as an administrator in La Salle Ozamis. La Salle Ozamis prides itself on having over 200 working students on its campus. This is the best way Lasallian education can be made available through a scholarship program. As I made my rounds, I entered the Nursing library and greeted the working students assigned there. Then I saw Nelchie who was sunburnt, and I teased her, saying that she must have gone swimming over the weekend with friends and loved ones. Then she said, “No, Brother, on weekends I go to my grandmother’s farm and harvest rice. From whatever I harvest, I will be given some money for my allowance for the month.” After the usual pleasantries, as I left the library, Nelchie's reply continued to challenge me.
“‘These two stories reminded me that in education, it is not only the teacher who teaches the students, but the students also teach the teacher, sometimes on a higher level of learning.”
The Future Begins Here is more celebratory, looking back on a century of Lasallian accomplishments and achievers. After an introduction by longtime La Salle literary guru Isagani Cruz, I open the book with a chapter on the La Salle Brothers, an excerpt from my longer book. Architect and heritage advocate Augusto “Toti” Villalon then draws us into the rich history of the St. La Salle Hall on Taft Avenue, in one hallowed corner of which 17 Brothers were martyred by retreating Japanese soldiers in February 1945.
Former Presidential Management Staff chief Elfren Cruz and his son Leandro write about “Movers of Growth and Progress: Lasallians in Business,” an understandably long chapter that resonates with such surnames as Araneta, Ortigas, del Rosario, Consunji, Yuchengco, Cojuangco, Paterno, Mapa, and Concepcion, among many others. The same father-and-son team then introduces us to Lasallians in public service: Jose W. Diokno and Lorenzo M. Tañada, foremostly, all the way to a host of senators and Cabinet members—eight of them working with the Atenean incumbent in the Palace.
One of the book’s most gung-ho chapters is, not surprisingly, the one on Lasallian sports, written by no less than the “Dean” himself, Quinito Henson. Here’s an interesting factoid from that chapter: “Ironically, La Salle’s colors in the Rome motherhouse were blue and gold. But Br. John’s Irish lineage influenced the preference for green. White was the other primary color symbolizing the Philippines as the ‘pearl of the Orient seas.’ It wasn’t until 1939 that La Salle dubbed its senior varsity basketball players the Green Archers, owing to the precision shooting of the stars from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) champion squad that year.”
Prof. Renato de Castro writes on the social sciences and Prof. Alvin Culaba on science and technology in La Salle; author Carla Pacis explores arts and culture in La Salle; and fictionist and biographer Charlson Ong brings up the rear with another take on “green,” La Salle’s commitment to the environment.
Handsomely designed and produced by Studio 5 Designs, The Future Begins Here is the yearbook to end all yearbooks, as far as Lasallians might be concerned. But for the public at large, it’s also a compelling piece of social history—the story of how one school helped shaped a country’s social, political, and economic life in a way that not even the largest American universities can lay claim to.
I always feel privileged to be part of projects like this, especially because, as the editor, I get to see everything first. When I write or edit a book, I always ask myself, “Is this a book I’d like to read?” In these two cases, the answer was easily yes.
(Anyone interested in a copy of The Future Begins Here can write Marily Orosa of Studio 5 Designs at marilyo@yahoo.com.)

No Dominion

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:07:26 +0800

Penman for Monday, April 30, 2012

IN WHAT’S become almost a literary cliché, the poet T. S. Eliot famously described April as “the cruellest month” in The Waste Land (1922). Winter, he suggested, was kinder in the sense that it covered “the Earth in forgetful snow”—trapped us in a sort of uncaring oblivion. April, on the other hand, mixed “memory and desire,” teased life back out of the frozen soil.
It’s a bit of imagery that’s easily understood in another hemisphere, amid the eternal mutation of winter into spring. Here, in our alternately sunbaked and rainsoaked half of the planet, April is generally a month of celebration, with the somberness of Lent giving way to boisterous vacations and joyful graduations. As I wrote last week, we went up to Baguio this year, right after Holy Week, to perform our annual ritual of the writers’ workshop, where a new batch of bright, youngish authors were inducted, as it were, into the guild.
But also this year, this April, unseasonable clouds gathered on the horizon, bringing April closer to Eliot’s brooding landscape of life fighting its way through layers of frozen earth. I’ve never seen an April so shadowed by death. Not only has Beng’s father lain in that gray zone between here and the hereafter for weeks now, but five other people we knew or considered friends all passed away in numbing succession.
The first was no celebrity, but was a tall, handsome, gentle man who naturally commanded respect from those who met him. Ronaldo Marella worked in the insurance industry; a widower, he spent his retirement years in the familiar comfort of his house on Bulusan Street in Quezon City—the kind of jalousied neighborhood in which a 1960s drama might be set without too much modification—content to wait for the periodic visit from his England-based daughter Wendy, a travel writer, and her husband Terry, a film director and screenwriter. Our friendship with Terry and Wendy, forged in the fens of East Anglia, has been one of those hardy perennials that has survived over long stretches of time and distance, needing only the occasional sprinkling of water (and maybe a little tea). This month Beng and Wendy shared stories of their gallant fathers—somewhat bewildered, no doubt, by how such proud men can be humbled by indifferent disease.
The second was Bruce Bennett, one of Australia’s leading literary scholars and critics, and a friend to writers all over the region. We last saw Bruce in Perth last December, where he was scheduled to address a literary conference that brought together many of his friends and colleagues. He proved too frail to even give the talk he was supposed to deliver, but his presence alone, and that of his gracious wife Trish, spoke volumes about his commitment to the comradeship of letters.
Like I told Trish upon hearing of Bruce’s passing, Bruce was one of those people whose influence went far beyond his home, and not just because of his formidable knowledge but because of his genuine interest in others and the endearing cheerfulness with which he greeted us. He was Australia's literary ambassador to Southeast Asia, and for many of us, our interest in Australian literature and culture came as a result of meeting Bruce.
I still recall with much pleasure my first visit to Australia in 1997, which Bruce facilitated. One unforgettable highlight of that visit for me was stepping into the faculty bar at the University of Sydney (yes, a real bar with polished glasses hanging from the ceiling and row upon row of potent beverages behind the counter—this, I marveled, was a truly civilized campus) and seeing the renowned Australian poet Les Murray holding forth in what probably was his usual corner. Bruce introduced me to such estimable personages, and I, in turn, was happy to help configure his new PowerBook 190.
The third was Elenita “Tita” Ordoñez, wife of writer and professor Elmer. As befitted her former position as a Professor of Art Studies in UP, Tita was unfailingly stylish, always properly made up and smartly dressed. As women are wont to talk, Beng asked her once where she had her dresses made, and Tita said, “Oh, I make them myself!” On the surface, Tita was all sweetness and light (not unlike Beng herself, which was why they got along so well), but you could sense that underneath all that was one tough lady, steeled by her marriage to an accomplished writer forced into exile by martial law. Hers was a family of academics, artists, and achievers, and I’m sure Tita would not have had it otherwise.
The fourth was Mario Taguiwalo, who—before he became one of the Cory administration’s and the Liberal Party’s most formidable intellects—was friend, mentor, and hero to our batch of underclassmen at the Philippine Science High School. Mario, his girlfriend Beaulah, and his pal Rey Vea (now Mapua president) were members of the historic first batch; ours was the third, fated to be bullied in the dorm and in military training but for the intercession of a kuya like Mario.
Like Rey, and later myself, Mario edited the high school paper, and when I later entered UP and almost immediately joined the gloriously subversive company of the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan, it was to follow in the footsteps of these role models. As a rookie writer for the Collegian, in which Mario also wrote a column, I remember being taken aside by him once and given a generous but pointed critique of my work. It was as if Mario was telling me, “Look, this is how you do and write propaganda.” It was from him that I learned how language could be deployed to great satiric effect; he was the kind of fellow who would call a big belly a “prosperous midsection.”
The last was Br. Roly Dizon, whom I didn’t know too well, but whom I had the pleasure and the honor of interviewing for a book on the centenary of the La Salle Brothers in the Philippines (With Hearts Aflame, DLSP, 2011). In that book, I recall how Rolando Dizon, the son of affluent Bacolod gentry, ended up being a Brother, thanks to a full-court press in La Salle Bacolod:
“The school itself was very new and small when Br. Roly entered in the third grade. There were many Brothers among the teachers. He grew close to them, especially Br. Andrew Gonzalez and Br. Francis Cody. ‘They thought that I would make a good Brother, so these two started hounding me,’ he recounts. ‘It got to the point that I was starting to hide whenever I saw them because they would always ask me if I had finally decided.’
“The expectation was for the Dizon children to go to college and then take care of the hacienda. ‘And I said, that would be very, very dull and boring,’ Br. Roly says, laughing. He was 16 when he finished high school, and he felt that entering the Brotherhood seemed significant and meaningful. ‘Of course, my father had a fit. He was very, very angry. I told him at graduation. I was the valedictorian and had prepared a speech, but I put it aside and I announced to everybody that I was going to join the Brothers.’”
And so he did. And so did all these fine people choose their own paths to self-fulfillment, only perhaps to realize that fulfillment meant little unless it was shared with others, which they also did. That they departed in a sun-drenched tropic April seems more benign than cruel, and to T. S. Eliot’s dirge, another poet named Dylan Thomas had this to say, as I remarked to Elmer Ordoñez in a message conveying our sympathies on the passing of his life’s companion: “Though lovers be lost love shall not, and death shall have no dominion.”

Email me at penmanila@yahoo.com and check out my blog at www.penmanila.ph.

The Gathering Twilight

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 22:10:07 +0800

Penman for Monday, April 16, 2012

WE HAVE three octogenarians in the house, all of whom we love dearly, and whom we are honored to care for—my mother Emy, 83, Beng’s father Jess, 87, and Beng’s mother Julieta, also 87. My father Joe passed away 16 years ago, and my mother divides her time between my sister in the US and her children here, but as the kuya I suppose I get first rights to having my mom around. Beng’s elder brother Jess Jr. died way too early, and her younger sister Mimi works in the US, so her parents have moved in with us.
I’ve been extremely fortunate not only to have married Beng, but also to have married into her family. I couldn’t have wished for better in-laws. The wedding took place on my 20th birthday after Beng and I had been together for less than six months, so I hardly knew my in-laws, and they hardly knew me (something that might’ve been said, I suppose, for my bride as well). But as things turned out, our families made a good fit. Both our mothers were or had been teachers who didn’t think twice about working in places like a post office or a garments factory when they had to, and our fathers were men with sharp minds and high ambitions who may have stumbled here and there, but who quickly got back on their feet, dusted themselves up, and moved on.
My father-in-law Jess is that unusual combination of engineer and thinker, businessman and inventor, tinkerer and theosophist. He had a long and successful career in air cargo, traveling around the world, and then he went into trading and spin casting fabrication; late in his life, bitten by the mechanical bug, he invented a device that uses water to improve mileage in gas-powered cars. You’d think that a proud and accomplished man like him would be difficult to get along with—and in his driving days he did show a fearsome temper, usually directed at other motorists who tried to cut across his path—but at home, he was an easygoing guy, full of humor and optimism, unwilling to let life’s labors and disappointments get the better of him.
As a son-in-law, I wasn’t always on my best behavior, but he was ever the gentleman; in my wild 20s and even woollier 30s, I’d sometimes straggle home in my Volkswagen from a drunken binge with my buddies at 3 in the morning, and Papa would open the gate without a word of reproach but rather a kind inquiry as to whether I had had my supper. When Beng and I were flung apart by distance and by my vagrancy, Papa had only three words of counsel for me: “Win her back,” and I did.
While he never finished law, he knew his statutes, especially as they applied to business, and was generous with his expertise, sharing it with many others who went on to become far richer than him. His family would tease and reproach him for letting himself be taken advantage of by yet another operator, but guileless Papa would take it all in stride. He was a careful and capable writer, and one of his prize possessions was his Olympia typewriter, on which I pecked away at many a Palanca entry in the 1980s.
Sometimes the dialogue at the dinner table approaches Chekhovian theater. “There’s no end to these medicines,” my mother-in-law would say, poring over a list of the day’s capsules and tablets. “There’s no end to this pain,” my mother would answer, rubbing her aching knees. I ask my mother questions about her childhood and it seems to cheer her up: the youngest daughter of a Chinese-Filipino landlord in Romblon, she grew up riding horses, accompanying her father on hunting sorties for wild duck; they once owned a batel, a native sailboat, that traveled all the way to Manila laden with copra and other cargo, only to sink in a storm on the homebound leg of its maiden voyage. “Tatay had bought new shotguns, and they all went down with the boat,” she recalls. She remembers her ate Rosalia, her protector from the bullying of other older siblings. “But she died very young, from a dog bite.”
I remind myself that I—the writer of biographies for many other famous people—should sit down with my mother and record everything she can remember before further aging wipes it clean off her brow. She’s well aware of that threat, and actively seeks to fight it by keeping her neurons busy, playing games on the iPod Touch that’s become her lifeline, next to her cellphone. She uses FaceTime to call my sister Elaine in the US, and takes pictures of her fellow seniors in their Tuesday Circle with the digital camera on her iPod. She now has to use two four-footed canes to move around, and she laughs when now and then she can’t remember a word she needs, but my mom will enjoy life to the last lick of her macapuno ice cream.
My mother-in-law Julieta prefers to watch TV in the living room from her favorite chair, where she sits knitting. Her eyes and her hearing are weaker now, and she’s prone to fall asleep after a few minutes of viewing, but her mind remains sharp, and she’ll often comment on the news in a way that will make me take notice. She was a beauty in her youth, one of Jaro’s loveliest, and she never lost the regal demeanor that comes with that kind of natural privilege. She was the one who taught Demi how to read; for me, her ever-welcome gift has been a steaming bowl of pancit molo. In all the 38 years of my marriage to Beng, I’d never heard her or Papa utter a mean word to or about me. Indeed I feel spoiled and pampered, so that when we asked Beng’s folks to move in with us, it was by no means a burden, but long-overdue payback for a lifetime of kindness.
Papa’s been bravely struggling with illness for some time now, and last week, Beng decided to bring him home from the hospital, where he could rest with the family in the gathering twilight of his life. His other daughter Mimi and his granddaughters Demi and Eia were boarding flights home from the US as I wrote this piece. It occurred to me how we writers can write so extravagantly about the world at large but sometimes forget that our worthiest subjects have stood beside and behind us for ages.
To our three octogenarians—and especially for Jesus M. Poticar, Sr.—these belated but heartfelt thanks, and may the rest of our days together be filled with love, peace, and hope for more joyful meetings in another life.

A Plenitude of Pens

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:30:54 +0800

Penman for Monday, April 9, 2012

IT’S BEEN a while since I last wrote about my favorite object of “fancy” (as they used to call a hobby or interest in Victorian times—thus “cat fanciers” and “pen fanciers”), so I’m returning this week to fountain pens both old and new.
You wouldn’t think that pens would be newsworthy, except when someone comes out with the world’s most expensive signature scrawler (purportedly the Aurora Diamante, with 30 carats of diamonds and a price tag of $1.28 million). I have nothing so spectacular or ostentatious to report on, but I do want to take note of some local pen-related events, if only to show how this strange addiction has afflicted more souls hereabouts.
First of all, our group of fountain pen users, collectors, and enthusiasts, the Fountain Pen Network-Philippines (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fpn-p/), which we founded almost four years ago, now has over 200 members online, about 30 of whom regularly attend the monthly meetings (usually held on a Saturday at Amici in Ayala Triangle, Makati) to try out new pens, inks, and papers.
Our membership includes such people as Education Undersecretary and lawyer Albert Muyot, retired pharmaceuticals executive Chito Limson, advertising boss lady and master calligrapher Leigh Reyes, Ateneo chemistry guru Nestor Valera, horseracing journalist and prizewinning essayist Jenny Ortuoste, social science researcher Caloy Abad Santos, blogger Clem Dionglay, writer Mona Caccam, business consultant Karlo Tatad, poets Paolo Manalo and Issy Reyes, and magazine editor Carl Cunanan. We have members as young as fifteen and sixteen, and also members based in Davao, Indonesia, the US, the UK, and Singapore. Anyone with an interest in fountain pens—no need for them to be encrusted with diamonds—is welcome to join FPN-P by signing up at the website above.
The group got together recently for two happy occasions. Last February 21, the century-old line of Sheaffer pens had a Philippine launch in Greenbelt 5 under the auspices of National Book Store, which now carries the brand. The launch organizers sought the help of FPN-P (in this case, me and Clem) in mounting an exhibit of vintage and modern Sheaffers, and I was happy to oblige, trotting out an even dozen of my favorite Sheaffers, ranging from a huge Lifetime flattop from the late 1920s to a gorgeous sterling silver Targa from the mid-1970s, a gift from the gracious Puas of Luis Store on the Escolta (to those who don’t know, the oldest pen shop in the country, dating back to the 1940s).
Like I told Daphne Oseña Paez, who hosted the launch and interviewed us onstage, the great thing about Sheaffer is that it has always produced high-quality and technically innovative products (the lever filler that many people associate with fountain pens was designed and patented by jeweler Walter A. Sheaffer in 1908), and you can get a good Sheaffer at any price point, from limited editions to school pens.
Not to be outdone, the local distributors of Waterman and Parker pens attended our next meeting last March 24 to conduct a private sale of heavily discounted Watermans and Parkers. Along with Sheaffer (and a now-defunct company called Wahl-Eversharp), Parker and Waterman made up the “Big Four” of US pen companies in the early to mid-20th century, and some of the most collectible vintage pens in the world were produced by these companies. (If you want a quick education in vintage pen collecting, Google the terms “Waterman tree trunk” and “Parker snake pen.” You may not think that the pens in question are particularly beautiful—and I would agree with you—but it’s good to keep their images in mind just in case one turns up in a garage sale for a few pesos; and yes, it’s been known to happen.)
Indeed the focus of my personal collection is one particular Parker pen called the Vacumatic, produced between the mid-1930s and the early 1950s. It’s sickening to admit, but I have about 50 of these vintage beauties in every imaginable model and color, and I must be one of a dozen people in the world for whom the description “azure blue, 136mm capped, clear 1940 imprint, double-jeweled, with a Vac band” will induce severe heart palpitations, dizziness, and shortness of breath.
I’ve already told the story (but, heck, I’ll tell it again) of how, in 1994, while on a writing fellowship in Scotland, I walked into the Thistle Pen Shop in Edinburgh, and breezily asked the saleslady if they had my “grail” pen: “a 1936 Parker Vacumatic Oversize in burgundy red.” When she said, “As a matter of fact, we do!” and pulled the very pen I was describing out of a drawer, I nearly fainted with excitement. I recovered my composure well enough to croak “How much?”, and when she told me the price, I nearly fainted again, because it was a month’s pay for a lowly UP professor. But hallelujah (or should I exclaim alas!), I had a credit card, and walked out of that shop pen in hand—as James Joyce put it in Araby, “I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.”
Of course, as soon as I returned to my room in Hawthornden Castle, where I was supposed to be pecking away at a book project, I was overcome by buyer’s remorse. “Oh my Lord,” I muttered, “what have I done?” But it was then that I resolved to write a story about a man enamored of his Parker Vacumatic fountain pen, and I worked on that story for the next three days, and was pleased enough with the result to send it off, when I came home, to the Weekly Graphic, where “Penmanship” won first prize in a short story competition, and earned me my purchase money back. With such tales have I therefore justified the acquisition and accumulation of more pens (“My toys, my precious toys!” I gloat as I run my inky fingers through them).
Let me spread this disease to the innocent and uninitiated by announcing that a very fine and affordable fountain pen called the TWSBI 540 (don’t ask me what it means—it’s some Chinese voodoo that’s explained on www.twsbi.com) has arrived on our shores, specifically at the Scribe Writing Essentials shop at Eastwood Mall. If you know and like big Montblancs or Pelikans but can’t sell the family farm to get one, the TWSBI (twis-bee) is for you—large, wonderfully designed, with smooth, often springy nibs. It’s also what we call a “demonstrator”—a see-through pen that shows you the ink inside the barrel and whatever’s going on. If you want to get a starter fountain pen that you can enjoy writing with and will look good peeking out of your pocket, you could do worse than get a TWSBI. But don’t say you weren’t warned: it’s a steep, slippery slope, and we’ll see you at the bottom.