Penman No. 189: All of One Piece

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 16, 2026

A FEW weeks ago, soon after the New Year, I wrote to express my worry that the massive tide of protest against corruption that had built up over the second half of the year would drop and weaken over the holidays. That seems to have happened, despite a natural but passing pickup over the EDSA anniversary. 

The Independent Commission for Infrastructure is, for all intents and purposes, finished—or at least it says its job is, although we have no clear idea what its investigations have yielded or will lead to. Zaldy Co remains a fugitive, probably basking in the sun beside Atong Ang in some Club Med in another hemisphere. We don’t know how the cases against the Bulacan engineers, the Discayas, and their cohorts are proceeding. 

Hopefully something is going on, some incremental progress in the prosecution of the accused, but it’s no longer headline material, as if we’ve resigned ourselves to the inevitability of a marathon wait. (At this point I can’t help thinking of our starry-eyed countrymen who insist that Philippine justice would have sufficed to handle Republic of the Philippines v. Rodrigo Roa Duterte within the lifetimes of the accused and his presumptive victims.)

We’ve been distracted aplenty. From out of the blue, Donald Trump’s megalomaniacal warmongering in the Middle East and the crushing gas pump prices in its wake now dominate the news and our head space. 

Domestically, and for good reason, we’ve all been roiled by the emergence of the perverts in our midst. That the characters look utterly shameless and even bizarrely comical—one of them sporting a portrait of Adolf Hitler behind his desk—invites even more attention. 

Meanwhile, the impeachment ship that stalled a few months ago is finally inching its way out of port, but already some rats are deserting what they must be assuming is an ill-fated voyage.

The National Unity Party—which can’t even live up to its name, given the discord among its members—has declared that it won’t support the move to impeach VP Sara Duterte unless it’s presented with “ironclad” proof of her guilt. Instead of approaching it as the political exercise that it is, the NUP or at least its leadership now wants to treat it daintily as if it were a murder case, and as if the original articles the Congress passed a year ago—which the Supreme Court effectively set aside on a technicality—weren’t good enough. The seguristasseem convinced that the impeachment measure won’t pass in the divided Senate, and that VP Sara will then run for president and win, and look kindly on those who took her side (or at least straddled the fence) in her time of need.

All these threads may seem disparate and even at cross-purposes, but look more closely and you’ll see that they’re all of one piece.

The unifier is impunity—the idea that those in power can do anything they please, the consequences be damned. It’s what makes Trumps and Epsteins—and yes, Dutertes—not just possible but powerful and difficult to dislodge, because they intimidate or habituate us into believing that they are part of the natural order, of the givens of life we can do little about. The inflated hubris that drives these maniacs to bomb nations and their peoples off the face of the earth is the same brutish instinct that makes them feel entitled to sexual gratification on demand.

This is why, in the midst of all this turmoil, it’s even more important to focus on and pursue what’s right and doable within our means—as the impeachment is, because it’s about corruption and the abuse of power at its core. Recent issues may seem far removed from the particulars of the impeachment complaint against the VP, but they implicate the same principles.

If we recoil at the economic pain caused by a distant war, so must we recall the billions we lost to corruption that would now have given us relief. If we mourn the death of innocents in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran, so must we seek justice for our own victims whose deaths did not even come screaming randomly out of the sky, but from lists and quotas set by a president’s henchmen to please their boss.

That’s the same egotism driving Trump and his billionaire friends—the Epsteins included—to see the planet as their playground, respectful only of their fellow gangsters. We can’t fight Trump & Co. from here, but we can make sure that we hold our own abusers of power to account in our corner of the world. It’s not just to punish the guilty, but to remind ourselves that we still know right from wrong, and can—as the DDS insist—deliver justice within our territory.

Only clean government and good governance can help ensure that however difficult the global situation might become, we can survive together, take care of our poorest and weakest, and weather any economic storm.

Should the impeachment fail, not for lack of merit but because of rank opportunism, and should VP Sara push through with her campaign for the presidency as expected, then we should be even more focused and united. Stop insisting on ideological purity—remember how Bam Aquino was skewered for his seeming equivocation, with that one word “ideal”?—and learn how to build a united front, a coalition of the willing. 

As the American civil rights anthem went, we need to keep our “Eyes on the Prize”—which isn’t even the presidency itself but the just, capable, efficient, and honest government we’ve long wanted and deserved.

(Image from Rappler.com)

Qwertyman No. 188: Art Misappreciation

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 9, 2026

I TRY not to get triggered by everything I read on Facebook—half of which is probably fake or trash, but which we respond to all the same—but one recent post I just couldn’t ignore came from the Department of Education, happily announcing the removal of 15 core senior high school (SHS) subjects and their integration into five new “interdisciplinary” subjects. 

The subjects removed were Oral Communication; Reading and Writing Skills; 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World; Media and Information Literacy; Komunikasyon at Pananaliksik sa Wika at Kulturang Filipino; Pagbasa at Pagsuri ng Iba’t-ibang Teksto Tungo sa Pananaliksik; Personal Development; Physical Education/HOPE; Statistics and Probability; Earth and Life Science; Physical Science; Understanding Culture, Politics, and Society; Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Regions; and Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person.

They will be replaced by Effective Communication/Mabisang Komunikasyon; Life and Career Skills; General Mathematics; General Science; and Pag-aaral ng Kasaysayan at Lipunang Pilipino.

The rationale for the streamlining, says the DepEd, was that “Instead of treating the old core subjects separately, the revised core subjects integrate key competencies from related disciplines and will be offered across the entire academic year—supporting more sustained, in-depth learning and an interdisciplinary approach.”

That all sounds good on the surface—the word “streamlining” is one of those managerial buzzwords that instantly evokes efficiency, waste reduction, and forward movement—but I had to wonder at the wisdom of this decision, just looking, for example, at where the arts and culture will go under the new program, and how well they will be taught and learned under their new rubrics.

I can sense a general urgency to get the kids out of school sooner, to make them employable, and to get them employed. As it is, we already added two years with K-12 to their pre-collegiate education, with many parents, politicians, and even some teachers remaining unconvinced that those extra years were really necessary, given the added expense. I’m not sure if the reduction of 15 core subjects to five has budgetary implications, or was driven by them.

What worries me, going by the subject titles, is that once again, the arts (to include literature, music, dance, the visual arts, and art appreciation) are being subsumed into topics so broad that they will lose the specificity they require to make an impact and leave an impression on the student, to make it self-evident why the arts matter in human life.

I’ve often said in this respect that for far too long, the arts and culture have been treated by our government if not society in general as forms of entertainment, as intermission numbers to lighten the implicit gravity of business, politics, and science. (The guest of honor’s boring speech, following an equally long and tedious introduction, has to be framed by lively song and dance routines to awaken the audience.)

There’s value to that, of course—the ameliorative power of art is one of its primary functions—but as the dramatist will say, comedy is dead serious business behind the laughter. While science and math strive for certainty and precision, thereby addressing the best use of our increasingly limited resources, the arts remind us of our humanity—of our innate imperfections, of our capability to doubt, to weigh and choose between this and that, such as between self-interest and the collective good. 

That’s what happens when you read a good poem or novel or stand before a great painting: you begin to wonder more about yourself and your environment, about your standards of justice or beauty, about the distance between what should be or should have been and what is. Studying literature is about far more than learning communication skills (which you will, along the way)—it is, indeed, about “Life and Career Skills.” 

It is the arts that are inherently interdisciplinary; for example, when I discuss a short story by Manuel Arguilla, we will inevitably discuss history, geography, politics, economics, psychology, and language—while, at the same time, trying to understand the emotional experience we have just been put through. This is the specificity I mentioned earlier, which I fear will be lost in the abstractions of “interdisciplinarity.”

The EdCom II’s Final Report (Turning Point, 2026), where the SHS curricular changes are also noted, unfortunately sees this measure as mere “decongestion.” The report also tells us that the SHS streamlining will remove the dedicated Arts and Design track entirely as a recognized pathway. 

At this point, I’d like to borrow some words from a good friend and one of our leading arts educators, the sculptor Toym Imao, current dean of UP’s College of Fine Arts, who also pored over the EdCom II report and came away with these observations:

“Upon reflection, something becomes very clear to me. There is no substantial national discussion of arts and culture education. The absence is not minor. It reveals a blind spot in our imagining of national reform. Why does ACaD matter now?

“This is not nostalgia but strategy: in an AI-driven era, art, culture, and design are core competencies for critical thinking, ethical judgment, and human-centered innovation.

“We are living through a time of rapid technological change. Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than most institutions can process. Social media algorithms shape taste, identity, and even memory. Culture is packaged, flattened, and circulated at high speed. Labor markets are shifting. At the same time, we have the Creative Industries Development Act, Republic Act 11904, which positions creativity and culture as economic drivers, but sadly the EDCOM 2 reports is wanting in connecting this to urgent educational reform.

“As an artist and educator, I see what this means on the ground. Artificial intelligence systems are trained on massive global datasets that largely come from powerful nations and dominant languages. These systems are not neutral. They reflect the biases, priorities, and aesthetics of where they come from.

“In a country like the Philippines, with hundreds of distinct indigenous, regional, and linguistic cultures, this has consequences. If our own students are not deeply grounded in their cultural traditions, histories, and aesthetic languages, then what fills that space will be imported, automated, and algorithmically repeated. Without strong arts and culture education, cultural knowledge slowly thins out in global digital flows. Indigenous aesthetics risk becoming raw material for data, instead of living practices.

“Students become consumers of images and narratives without the tools to question them.

“In the studio and in the classroom, I see the difference. Arts education trains the eye, the hand, and the conscience. It develops judgment, sensitivity, context, and memory. It teaches students to ask where an image comes from, who it serves, and what it erases. These are not decorative skills. They are human skills.”

I can hardly overemphasize how important this is at a time when we are being roiled by massive corruption and when moral standards collapse or vanish to the point that a president can justify extrajudicial murder and be applauded by millions. A lesson in Greek tragedy is what you need for that.

PenmanNo. 483: High School Is Forever

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Penman for Sunday, March 8, 2026

ASK YOUR Boomer uncles and aunts what period of life shaped them the most, and I’ll bet you anything I have that their answer won’t be grade school, when they were still wetting their pants and wondering why God had to make the other, completely unnecessary sex as well. It won’t be college, either, by which time you were convinced you had the world figured out and that it was obliged to conform to your vision for it.

No, it’ll be that time of our lives that never seems to lose its vividness—not the metamorphosis of one’s body and of its most secret parts, not the quivering thrill of a first kiss or the crushing finality of a rejection, not the ecstasies and the embarrassments. That period, of course, is high school, when we all suddenly grew up, perhaps more in body than in mind.

If there’s any doubt that high school stays with us longest for the rest of our lives, just take a look at Facebook—today the social dominion of Boomers and Gen Xers, deserted by the young ones for Instagram, TikTok, and Discord. Some days you just don’t want to open Facebook because of all the flickering candles you’re bound to see—but you do, anyway, because you’re curious to know if Classmates X and Y are still together, how Classmate Z surely must have botox’ed or AI’d her way to that profile picture, and—on your Messenger or Viber group chat—when and where the next batch reunion is going to happen.

Ah, the high-school reunion! Time to look one’s best, to line-dance and to cha-cha, to trot out the family pictures, to share stories of doing the Camino and of struggling with sciatica, to scan the poundage on one’s old crush, to revive rumors and recriminations dormant for fifty years, to compare maintenance meds, Holy Land tour packages (well, maybe not right now), dermatologists and urologists, and adobo recipes. Most reunions are fun and happy, but not a few end up with someone grumbling, “I knew I should’ve stayed home!” While they say that time heals all wounds, nothing will tear the scabs off like a class reunion.

But then of course it all depends on the class chemistry, and I’m glad to report that mine has been blessed with extraordinary goodwill—maybe because, unlike many alumni batches, we don’t have class officers, we never published a jubilee yearbook (a surefire prescription for High School Horrors Part 2), and we don’t handle money beyond pooling it for impromptu causes.

A Subic sortie last weekend with my batchmates in the third cohort of the Philippine Science High School, which we entered in 1966, proved exactly that—get together for fun and food, no great overarching agenda like “Let’s contribute our talents to the betterment of the Filipino future!” (we’ve been doing that for half a century), just spend time chilling out, healing and commiserating, and feeling good to be alive, given that class reunions never really get larger over the years.

If there’s a group of people I know I should speak plainly and humbly with, it’s these guys and gals. If I think I’m smart, well, many of the folks I went to Subic with are certainly smarter—not just in math and science but in the complicated business of life itself (and I don’t mean just in making money—although some of them have done that quite nicely—but in such existential decisions as spending years in the revolutionary resistance and resurfacing to seek social justice in other ways). My friends are engineers, chemists, physicians, managers, educators, pastors, etc., all achievers and leaders in their own ways. But what I appreciate about them is that, in each other’s presence, no one feels obliged to boast about this and that—except perhaps about grandchildren. (Fair warning: if you start a bragging war in this company, you will lose.)

The thing about high school is that forty years down the road you could become a hotshot CEO or a senator, but your classmates will never forget when you were caught caricaturing the teacher or were busted by a crush or locked yourself in the restroom. High-school truths are for life, and you will never outlive your high-school self. That weekend in Subic allowed us to revert to those younger selves, albeit burdened by excess avoirdupois and challenged memory. 

My PSHS life was anything but studiously boring. I came in as the entrance exam topnotcher in 1966, almost got kicked out after our freshman year (my grade in English was 1.0 but in Math was 5.0, saved only by a letter of appeal in my best 12-year-old, 1.0 English).

Having gone to an all-boys elementary school, girls were an exciting mystery to me and I became something of a party animal and I jerked, boogalooed, and shingalinged to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, DC5, the Bee Gees, Herman’s Hermits, the Monkees, Spiral Starecase, Procol Harum, the Hollies, Freddie and the Dreamers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, etc. etc. I sometimes came to these dances in a green-and-white striped turtleneck and red-and-green checkered bellbottoms. 

We watched “Woodstock,” “The Graduate,” and “Camelot” in the moviehouses of Avenida and Cubao, huddled around a black-and-white TV in a boarding house on Maginhawa Street to watch the moon landing, and marched in the streets shouting “Student Powah!” Our eyes popped when we stumbled on a cache of Playboy magazines in a friend’s house. We bought Lumanog guitars in Raon and followed “Shindig” and “Combat” and “Ang Hiwaga sa Bahay na Bato” on TV. Despite the Vietnam War and the stirrings of activism in our ranks, there was an innocence about the ‘60s that vanished in a poof when the ‘70s opened and the tear gas and the truncheons began to hurt us more than heartbreaks.

That weekend we didn’t talk about anything much more serious than ER and OR survival stories—followed by the familiar catalogue of metformin, statins, saw palmetto, vitamin XYZ—the sort of chatter that would turn Gen Zers catatonic. 

A war broke out above our heads and we all sadly agreed that the world we were leaving was worse than the one we entered. We knew something about wars, but thankfully also knew something about having a good time, in spite of time. We went home thinking that indeed, like it or not, high school is forever.

Qwertyman No. 187: No Better Time for Philippine Publishing

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 2, 2026

I WAS asked by the National Book Development Board to give brief remarks last week at the media launch of this year’s Philippine Book Fair, which will take place from March 12 to 15 at the SM Megamall’s Megatrade Hall. I spoke alongside publishing stalwart Atty. Dominador Buhain of Rex Book Store, who laid out a legislative road map for the book industry in the Philippines.

For my part, I addressed myself to the young Filipino writer, speaking as a senior often accused of being a capo in our so-called “literary Mafia”—my tongue-in-cheek acceptance of which has been taken in dead seriousness by some parties intent on proving that a conspiracy exists out there to rob of them of their literary fame and fortune.

It was a happy coincidence that we were launching the PBF on the 40th anniversary of EDSA 1, because it provided a natural frame within which to appreciate the growth and progress of Philippine writing and publishing, from martial law to where we are today.

Forty years ago, in 1986, I had exactly one book, my first collection of stories. Today I can count more than 45, both fiction and nonfiction, so I guess I’ve been pretty busy (in fact I have another book deadline to meet over the weekend, after I turn in this column). But what many people don’t know is that it took me about a decade to come up with that first book, which was launched in December 1984, and I might have waited longer had it not been for a bet I had made with a dear friend, the late playwright Bienvenido “Boy” Noriega, that we would both come out with our first books by our 30th year (we did).

Having dropped out of college as a student activist after my freshman year, I had very little literary training beyond my own reading. I knew no one and no one knew me; no literary network, no doting mentor or sponsor. I sent out stories to the very few publications open under martial law, like Focus and the Manila Review. I joined all the literary competitions in sight, and lost as many times as I won. I never attended the UP Writers Workshop as a fellow, although I did get invited to the Silliman Writers Workshop in 1981 after the Tiempos came across a published story of mine, after which I felt fired up enough to resume my studies in UP and graduate with my AB in 1984 at age 30. 

My biggest stroke of luck was having a friend from martial-law prison, Raffy Benitez (who would found the Erehwon Arts Center), who ran a small printing press in Quezon City, and who offered to publish my first book from the scrap paper left over at his press. And so Oldtimer and Other Stories (Asphodel Books, 1984) was born. We had no marketing, no bookstore access. Somehow, the books got sold. 

I told this story—which wasn’t mine alone, but my generation’s—to emphasize that there has never been a better time for Philippine writing and publishing than the present. The PBF, now on its fourth year, is the best proof that hundreds of publishers exist out there for all manner of material, from ghost stories, romances, and comic books to big novels, biographies, and collections of essays. Add to that the support network that writers get from writers’ workshops, writing programs, book festivals like the PBF and Frankfurt, literary contests, and of course social media, print-on-demand, and online marketing.

What every writer needs to do to get published is what all writers have done from the very beginning: persevere, get those words on the page, and find a publisher (who will also hopefully provide good editing and marketing). 

There are, of course, writers who believe that “gatekeepers” like me (professors, editors, publishers, reviewers, etc.) merely stand in the way and spoil what should be a great literary experience accessible to everyone. To them I say that if you want complete control over your work and not have to engage in mainstream publishing, you can always publish yourself online, for free, without having to worry about contracts, royalties, launches, and such. 

Otherwise, if you want your book published and put out there, do your homework, find a publisher or agent, and prepare to compromise and negotiate. At its core, publishing remains a business, which has both its good and bad aspects, so learn to navigate the territory, because for the professional writer, it doesn’t end with that final period on the screen—you’re just halfway to your reader. If you think this is too sordid for you, too much of a sellout, then stay away and again, publish yourself (or look for an academic publisher, if your book is worthy enough) and be happy with your reading circle Contrariness can be a virtue; just don’t preach like you’re the only virtuous soul left on the planet.

I may sound like another hard-hearted Boomer, but I won’t echo what one senator said about Gen Z’ers being “weak”; they just deal differently with their realities. Still, there are realities that cut across generations. No one in the world owes you a reading, a publishing contract, a positive review, a spot on the syllabus, and a fistful of money. The demands that matter most are those you make on yourself. Sure, as in any business, contacts and networks count in publishing—but only to a point; again as in any business, no publisher will invest in something too poorly conceived or executed to connect with an audience.

Just write, and don’t let yourself get too distracted by the politics of writing or even of everyday life. If you believe strongly enough, the politics will find its way into your poem or story in the best ways possible—organically, without the shrillness or snarkiness of those who can’t make themselves heard otherwise. If it resonates with others, it will find its way to publication. The usual critics will pile on me for this, but I think there’s too much noise, too much drama, too much flag-waving out there; indulge in it if you will, but I’m too old to care, and I’d rather hole up in my home office with a cup of coffee and peck away at my next novel than prove that I’m more, uhm, Polynesian than thou.

Write your heart out, but with craft and composure; write something moving and memorable, and get that book out with your name on the spine. Me, I’ll be at the PBF to sign books all day on March 15.

Qwertyman No. 186: Countering the Sara Saga

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 23, 2026

TO NO one’s great surprise—except perhaps for the “why now”—Vice President Sara Duterte publicly announced last week her plan to run for president in 2028. 

I’ll leave the more informed and more nuanced readings of this event to the professional analysts, but from my pedestrian point of view, the timing’s the thing. By throwing down the gauntlet so early, more than two years before the actual election, VP Sara is leaving no doubt as to her intentions (which we all knew, already). 

It doesn’t take a PhD in Political Science to see that, more importantly, with her impeachment being revived in the House, presumably to be raised to the Senate, she is serving notice to our notoriously opportunistic politicos that they better fall in step now—or else. The Dutertes still hold sway over vast swaths of political territory especially in the south, where pro-impeachment legislators can be easily picked off and punished in a Duterte restoration. When it comes down to a vote, the math will tell the story of who’s afraid of Sara Duterte.

The question really is, what are we progressive-minded citizens and our leaders supposed to do? 

Right now, the DDS side has one advantage over everyone else. It’s fighting for its life, with whatever power and influence it retains. With its patriarch in prison and his successor in peril for her political future, it has to go all-in on Sara’s candidacy or face even greater and perhaps permanent debilitation. That gives it a clarity of purpose that’s easier to translate to specific actions, to a tight script and playbook, than it is for the yet amorphous, once improbable, and still highly hypothetical Pinklawan-administration united front to agree on the most basic terms of coalition.

I can sense the hand of AI in fleshing out the details of the aforementioned script, but as one recent DDS post puts it, here’s the winning scenario:

“…. A story, the kind of story that does not need advertising, does not need media allies, does not need oligarch money, because it tells itself. A father who loved his country enough to die for it in a foreign prison. A daughter who loved her father enough to fly across the world to sit with him in chains. A people who loved them both enough to wait, and watch, and when the moment came.. to roar!!!

“The grandmaster played his greatest game not from the presidential palace. Not from the campaign trail. Not from a position of power and comfort.

“He played it from a cell. With nothing but his mind, his daughter, and his unbroken faith in the Filipino people.

“And when Sara Duterte raises her right hand in 2028 when the Philippines renders its verdict on everything that has happened, everything that was done to them, everything they endured and refused to surrender — Rodrigo Duterte will not be there to see it. Or maybe he will, we do not know.

“But he will have made it happen.”

I commented on this post by saying “I wonder what the AI prompt was,” because it displays the kind of verbal cadence, the dramatic buildup employing sentence fragments, the repetition for emphasis, so common to AI-assisted compositions. 

But AI or not, it does create the kind of simple but spinnable story that appeals to soft-minded and soft-hearted voters, drawing on a long and deep Pinoy tradition of melodrama that sanctifies the api, the unjustly oppressed. The day before Sara’s announcement, Digong had played his part by casting himself in a letter to the International Criminal Court as a man “old, tired, and frail,” prepared to “die in prison” with his “heart and soul (always remaining) in the Philippines.”

Those of us who know better lost no time pointing out the hypocrisy of the old man’s demand for the “respect” he never showed his political enemies and tokhang victims, and we can all go to sleep convinced of his guilt and wishing for his expectation to be realized. But the truth, in a sense, is almost irrelevant now in what will be a war of narratives, which Sara hopes to win. 

From her side of the story, her father is already lost—and therein lies his political value, as sacrificial martyr, which can only rise should he in fact perish in prison or appear even more “old, tired, and frail” closer to 2028. Her impeachment, if it happens, will also amplify her kaapihan. Her disqualification from running for public office will require another step—a separate vote in the Senate, as far as I know (do correct me if I’m wrong)—or at least a separate and possibly concurrent criminal conviction. She could also resign before impeachment, surfacing the unresolved question of whether she can still be impeached and disqualified after. Clearly, if the point is to appear at a constant disadvantage to project persecution, Sara will not want for options.

And she shouldn’t, because if we believe in her guilt as much as we do in her father’s, then the only way forward is forceful prosecution, the awa factor be damned. Criminal convictions for both will provide a definitive conclusion. But on the safe assumption that nothing in this country, including some Supreme Court decisions, is ever truly final, it remains possible that Sara Duterte will be on the ticket in 2028. 

Whatever kind of opposition emerges to contest the DDS will need a powerful counter-narrative to the Sara saga—which, I suspect, will wear thin as the evidence of criminal wrongdoing piles up against the Dutertes at the Hague and in Manila. 

An ascendant story could emerge from someone who has her own underdog story to tell—of being diminished and marginalized in Digong’s regime, but of serving nobly nonetheless—and, more significantly, of keeping herself busy all this time far from messy Manila, improving the lives of her constituents in concrete and tangible ways. 

I think we all know who that person is, and what a compelling and positive comeback story she can offer, against the vengefulness and the sordidness of the successor who turned her office into a junk-food dispensary.

Qwertyman No. 185: A Joke for World Peace

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 16, 2026

U.S. President Donald Trump places a note in the Western Wall in Jerusalem May 22. (CNS photo/Jonathan Ernst, Reuters) See TRUMP-JERUSALEM-HOLY-SEPULCHER May 22, 2017.

I JUST love it when a piece of mine about the goings-on in the US gets a rise out of some MAGA expat—and you’ll be surprised how many of them have chosen to reside here, forsaking what I would have thought would have been the sweet comforts of life in Fortress America. 

A message from a guy we’ll call “Bob” reacted to my recent column on “What I Told the Fil-Ams” by suggesting that I had imbibed too much “Cali water,” referring to that state’s trenchant liberalism. I responded by sending him a joke about an American President in the Holy Land, which I hope he appreciated. (I’ve resolved that this is how I’ll deal with my critics from now on, as long as they remain friendly enough—which to his credit Bob was—kill them with kindness, or at least with corny jokes, of which I have a barrelful. I’ll save a special section for MAGA Pinoys, who keep telling me to butt out of their business but who can’t help doling out prescriptions for their ex-countrymen to find their way to the light.)

I’ve often wondered if our world can get much worse than it already is, knowing all the while that the answer can only be yes, yes, emphatically yes. Still, it comes as a rude shock every time fresh confirmation arrives of a new Marianas Trench in human greed, crassness, and stupidity. 

All by himself, Donald J. Trump accounts for more than half of every week’s lows, and I’d like to think that I’ve become immune to further aggravation by this man, only to be roundly disabused. Last week, Trump outdid himself in crudity by putting out a meme on his social network depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. 

When called out by even his own, usually docile partymates for the patently racist post, Trump passed it off to some unnamed “assistant” who supposedly made the mistake, which Trump claimed to have been too occupied to pay close attention to. Why the President of the United States would leave his personal account open to some junior flunky is ludicrous enough; that he would expect anyone to believe his lame excuse is beyond laughable. His spokesperson derided the ensuing protest as “fake outrage” and called for renewed attention to “the things that truly matter to the American people,” as though racism, decency, and honesty no longer mattered.

But Trump isn’t even the issue here any longer; the man is irredeemably vain, vile, and vicious. (Let’s not even mention—but heck, let’s—his offensiveness to beauty and good taste, with his insistence on gilding the White House, plastering his name all over the place, and picking Kid Rock over Bad Bunny.) Like our own Rodrigo Duterte, he has long cast his lot with Darth Vader & Co., not even pretending to be good, or to be aiming for such banalities as truth, freedom, and justice. In the words of one of his chief lieutenants, Stephen Miller, the age of “international niceties” is over; the only things that count today are “strength, force, and power,” which Trump & Co. have liberally deployed—not against global bullies like Vladimir Putin, but chiefly against the American people themselves. 

But again, let’s put the Orange Man aside for a minute. The real danger is that there are tens of millions of people who think the way he does, and who probably thought that way even before he gave Trumpism a face, a voice, and a name. These are people for whom daily doses of falsehood have become the norm, and I really couldn’t care less if they believe that Satanic Democrats drink the blood of kidnapped children, except that their weirdness creeps up to the White House and into the kind of domestic and foreign policy that makes life difficult for us 8,000 miles away, and emboldens other despots.

I’m not saying here that we don’t have our own version of Trumpers to deal with (and I’m adding this paragraph for the MAGAs who’ll remind me to stick to the local, a description I expect them to extend, in MAGA logic, to Greenland). Our DDS, in many ways, offer a parallel constituency; like many MAGA members, their grievances are rooted in historical neglect and a sense of displacement in rapidly changing times. They pinned their hopes on a man who was supposed to improve their lives—but who didn’t, distracted by a megalomaniacal drive to reshape society to his grim vision. 

This is why I haven’t given up on Digong’s faithful; there’s a valid cultural dimension to their disaffection in terms of Mindanao and Manila-centrism, but their issues can be addressed by attentive and equitable governance. The corruption issues that have gutted the country have devastated them as well. Except for the shrillest and most invested in a Sara succession, I feel that many can yet be persuaded to choose responsible leadership. 

In this respect—and this may not be shared by many, given the lows to which our own politicos have fallen, with some in need of growing a spine and others a brain or at least a heart—I feel more hopeful for the Philippines in the medium term than I do for America, and I think that’s saying a lot.

Now let’s wait for the MAGA backlash; I have lots of Trump jokes lined up to brighten their day, restore their sense of humor, and maybe help bring about world peace. 

Qwertyman No. 184: What I Told the Fil-Ams

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 9, 2026

LAST WEEK, at the Executive House of the University of the Philippines where he officially resides, UP President Angelo “Jijil” Jimenez graciously hosted a delegation of about twenty Filipino-American business and community leaders from San Diego, California, led by our honorary consul there, Atty. Audie de Castro. 

I was happy and proud to have helped facilitate this visit, having some close personal and professional ties myself to San Diego. Our unica hija Demi married a San Diegan, and has happily lived there with her husband Jerry for almost 20 years now. My wife Beng and I visit her nearly every year if we can afford it. 

San Diego also happens to be where a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Julie Hill, lives in a lovely home in Rancho Sta. Fe. Julie stayed in the Philippines for some years many decades ago when her husband was the Ford Foundation representative here and fell in love with the country and its people, and despite having traveled and served all over the world, the Philippines retains a special place in Julie’s heart. The last time I dropped in on her a year ago, Julie (who’s approaching 90) announced that she was donating what came out to more than P20 million to help the poorest of UP students. Atty. De Castro helped to formalize that donation as our consul in San Diego, cementing our relationship.

Professionally, but through Julie’s recommendation, I also served as Pacific Leadership Fellow in 2014 at the University of California San Diego, where I had previously lectured on Philippine-American affairs. Beng, meanwhile, observed operations and state-of-the-art techniques at the Balboa Art Conservation Center.

In other words, we’ve established rather close ties to this sunny and vibrant city in Southern California, where many generations of Fil-Ams have taken root, mainly because of the US naval base there, where thousands of Filipino sailors recruited from the Philippines have served. That’s how Demi’s in-laws came to San Diego from Bicol, their children born as Americans but deeply mindful of their Filipino heritage.

Many of our visitors never saw the Philippines until they were grown up, and I think most were setting foot on the UP campus for the first time. So we gave them the warmest reception and the best orientation we could, and engaged them over lunch in a lively discussion.

One of them asked: “What is the Filipino dream?” My UP colleagues responded to that in various ways, coming from different technical and academic disciplines. I tried to give a pedestrian answer: “The Filipino dream is actually a fairly simple one: a roof over one’s head, food on the table, a good education for the children, peace and justice in our communities. We dream for our families. But like all seemingly simple things, achieving that dream is difficult and complicated.”

The visitors had earlier asked President Jimenez about UP’s role in national leadership, and beyond citing how many presidents, senators, and Supreme Court justices we’ve produced—which, to be honest, has also contributed to the ruination of our nation—Jijil emphasized the value his administration places on service to the Filipino people, which can manifest even from beyond our shores. He spoke of UP sharing its knowledge and resources with other SUCs, of UP assuming its responsibilities as the country’s national university—a concept perhaps alien to the American situation but entirely relevant to ours. (I was aware, of course, that UP has many internal issues and priorities of its own to sort out—it always has, regardless of administration.)

A more challenging discussion was one that I had on the side with two ladies who admitted that they represented two ends of the American p0litical spectrum, but had managed to remain friends despite their differences. Their question for me was, what did I personally think of what was happening in America?

No longer in UP spokesman mode, I could have answered as bluntly as possible, but I wanted to give them the more nuanced answer their friendship deserved. 

I began by saying that I considered myself an exemplar of American colonial education, having gone to a private elementary school in the 1960s where I learned about “heifers” and “mackinaws” long before I ever got to see real ones, and even memorized American states and their capitals, to the dismay of my future American friends when we played Trivial Pursuit. I shed off much of the mystification as a student activist in the 1970s and took a far more critical view of the American influence over our history, economy, and politics. 

But the indoctrination was so effective that I retained a fundamental affection and even admiration for many aspects of American culture and technology, and maintained a lifelong and ultimately professional interest in the US. I studied and worked for five years in the Midwestern heartland, in Michigan and Wisconsin, I taught American literature—not just in UP but in America itself, to college students who seemed surprised that I seemed to know more about their country than they did. Not just because our daughter lives there, I continue to follow American affairs keenly, starting my day with the digital editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post (the latter now sadly degraded).

What I told them was that this America was no longer the America I once thought I knew and looked up to, despite its excesses. I said I thought I understood, at least in part, where MAGA was coming from, in the neglect of the American working class and their anxieties in a rapidly changed world. At the same time, Donald Trump had ridden on those grievances to empower and aggrandize himself and the billionaire elite, trampling on the very liberties that had once defined American democracy, imposing his racist and imperialist vision of America, and endangering global peace and security. The shootings in Minnesota were profoundly shocking and depressing. I said that as much as it saddened me, with loved ones in the US, I did not plan on visiting America again until this madness had passed. If even American citizens could be dragged by masked men into vans and summarily deported to El Salvador, then I did not want to risk an encounter with the American Gestapo.

I could have added that both Americans and Filipinos, as polarized as we have become, need to find some common ground, as we share problems that cut across our differences. Bu the time was short, and we sent our guests off with a smile.

Penman No. 482: Love in Ink: The Lost Art of the Love Letter

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Penman for Sunday, February 8, 2026

HAVING NO idea how Gen Z people write love letters (and if they even do), I asked AI, and this is what it told me:

“Gen Z love letters are characterized by digital-native, emotionally fluent, and, often, casual expressions that prioritize vulnerability, mental health, and boundary-setting. They frequently use lowercase, rapid-fire, multi-message formats, and ‘ily’ (informal) or ‘love ya’ to avoid excessive intensity. Common themes include a rejection of traditional, performative romance in favor of ‘soft launching’ relationships (gradually revealing a partner online) and a focus on authenticity over aesthetics.”

I have to confess that the answer left me feeling much relieved to be 72 years old and increasingly irrelevant. If I were young and seventeen today but with the mind and heart that I had back in 1971, I seriously doubt that I could make a significant connection to the Gen Z girl of my dreams, from whom I would have drawn derisive laughter for a long, convoluted, meandering letter asking for a first date (I will neither confirm nor deny that this actually happened). I may have lacked in “emotional fluency,” but certainly not for words, which were all I had when, in 1973, I met a pretty girl named Beng and pounded her with prose, in my crabbed, ungainly penmanship using a technical pen; within months we were married (and still are, 52 years later).

Time was when love needed to be declared in big, bold, wet letters—and I don’t mean letters as in ABC, but letters as in pages of paper filled with scribbled and impassioned professions of affection, sometimes of hurt, sometimes of longing, but always of desire for the addressee. Setting everything else aside, overtaken and overwhelmed by this most urgent need, a man or a woman sat at a desk—or kitchen table, or any hard surface on a beach or a moving vehicle—and put pen to paper to release a flood of pent-up emotion. 

It all came down to the same three-word idea: “I love you” (sometimes, or more often, with a fourth word, “but”). As with love poems, some letters were better, more unique, more persuasive than others; most, in hindsight, were likely mawkish or mediocre. But rarely—except perhaps to writers keen on grammar and style—did literary merit matter, neither to sender nor receiver; the profession of love alone was monumental enough. Because it was handwritten and signed, it was personal and deliberate, a statement of commitment impossible to deny. 

Indeed what was thought to be intimate and ephemeral sometimes became history. Little did lovers realize or perhaps care they would become famous, and that their private correspondence would become known—thankfully not to their peers but to posterity and the critical judgment of strangers. 

In one of the books I treasure most in my library titled The Magic of Handwriting: The Pedro Correa de Lago Collection (Taschen, 2018), two envelopes offer proof of love affairs—illicit in this case, as all the parties concerned were married to someone else—between Lord Nelson and his mistress Lady Hamilton, and between the revolutionary Leon Trotsky and artist Frida Kahlo (who had given the outcast Trotskys refuge in her home). 

This was the same free-spirited Frida who would write her husband Diego Rivera that “Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. You are the mirror of the night. The violent flash of lightning. The dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter. My fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.” (To be fair to Frida, Diego was far more liberal with his vagrant attentions.)

In one of literary history’s worst-kept secrets, Vita Sackville-West would write to Virginia Woolf that “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia… I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it should lose a little of its reality…. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it.” 

Jose Rizal’s letters to Leonor Rivera were reportedly all burned, but as Ambeth Ocampo notes, two of her letters to Rizal survive, in which she uses the pseudonym “Taimis” and tells him that “I was very much surprised that you had a letter for Papa and none for me; but at first when they told me about it I did not believe it, because he did not expect that a person like you would do such a thing. But later I was convinced that you are like a newly opened rose, very flushed and fragrant at the beginning, but afterwards it begins to wither…. Truly I tell you that I’m very resentful for what you have done and for another thing that I’ll tell you later when you come.” We know how that story ended, with the both of them going their separate ways and marrying another, although Leonor was said to have pined for Pepe to the end.

Again thanks to Ambeth, I can quote Manuel L. Quezon’s 1937 letter to his wife Doña Aurora, where he engages in what today might be called “gaslighting”: 

“Darling, I am still wondering if you really think that I love you less. Please don’t doubt me, my love has never changed from the first day I have realized that I was in love with you. I have my weakness as you know, but, dear, it’s all superficial and you know also, that, except for the case of that bailarina, my weaknesses in this respect have not been serious. When you married me, you were frankly informed by me of my shortcomings. I did not want to deceive you by promising something that I could not fulfill. After we have been married you have placed [me], sometimes, in a position when I thought that it was better that I should not confess to you what I had done that might hurt your feelings, but I want you to know that whenever such a thing took place I have felt very bad about it, because nothing I dislike more than not to tell the truth and I always resented the fact that you should prefer to put me in such a situation, thus making me almost hate myself.”

That would still have been more preferable than receiving this ardent letter from a king, and falling for him: “But if you please to do the office of a true loyal mistress and friend, and to give up yourself body and heart to me, who will be, and have been, your most loyal servant, (if your rigour does not forbid me) I promise you that not only the name shall be given you, but also that I will take you for my only mistress, casting off all others besides you out of my thoughts and affections, and serve you only…. And if it does not please you to answer me in writing, appoint some place where I may have it by word of mouth, and I will go thither with all my heart. No more, for fear of tiring you.” The recipient, Anne Boleyn, lost her head in more ways than one, and the sender, Henry VIII, went on to court her successor, Jane Seymour, who wisely returned his love letter unopened—sparking his interest in her even more intensely.

The letter I found too coarse and too embarrassing (brimming with scatological detail) to even quote was written by James Joyce to his wife Nora, but the technologically adept will surely find it online.

My own letters to Beng, and hers to me, are stored in a moldering box that occasionally gets lost and then resurfaces in a year or two, and when we go over them we laugh and cringe at their melodramatic prolixity, as though life itself would run out soon (as it did for many of our generation, under the cloud of martial law, and thus the urgency).

So how do the love letters that we—perhaps the last of the art’s practitioners—have written stack up against history’s and literature’s most memorable? But first, who are “we?”

The immediate “we” are members of our Fountain Pen Network-Philippines who still value and use pens for handwritten communication, beyond signing checks and office forms. Old fogeys like me naturally fall into that category, but surprisingly, given the fountain pen’s and handwriting’s resurgence as a form of protest, if you will, against digital homogenization, many younger people, even some Gen Z’ers, have taken up the cause. Ballpoints are all right—but there’s still nothing better than a vintage fountain pen nib, which flexes with pressure and gives the inked line more character, to convey emotion. 

From what I’ve gathered, the best love letters people write go far beyond the often vapid promises and profuse assertions of courtship. They’re unbidden reminders and reassurances of affection, a note quietly written in the morning, a message of congratulations. This, too, is love with a deeper, more hushed voice that comes with maturity and assurance.

I should take my own advice and write Beng more love letters with my hundreds of pens, every single act of which would validate that pen’s existence and probably exorbitant purchase price. I should employ all the colors of ink stored in the dozen bottles that crowd my desk to express love in all its shades and moods, in the same spirit that Robert Graves wrote: “As green commands the variables of green, so love my loves of you.”

But sadly this old man’s fingers have become cramped from being curled too long over keyboards, and can barely finish a page of handwriting before tiring. So instead—though not quite a Gen Z’er accustomed to “lowercase, rapid-fire, multi-message formats”—I write articles like this and stories on Facebook that suggest, ever so obliquely, how central she remains to my life, albeit in Georgia 12 points and .DOCX rather than flowing script. My idle pens, dear Beng, are like the books I’ve yet to write for you, the words still forming in the opaque ink, like the colorful and wide umbrellas I keep buying to shield you with, waiting for rain. So there, and Happy Valentine’s.

Qwertyman No. 183: Lawyers for the People

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 2, 2026

I MIGHT have become a lawyer in another life, given that, back in the sixties, the profession of law still carried with it a certain gravitas, a presumption of not only intellectual brilliance but a commitment to public service. The best of legal minds found themselves in the Supreme Court and the Senate, and the latter was studded with such stars as Jovito Salonga, Jose Diokno, Arturo Tolentino, and Tecla San Andres Ziga. (To Gen Z’ers unfamiliar with these names, Diokno topped both the bar and CPA exams—despite the fact that he never completed his law studies, for which the Supreme Court had to give him special dispensation, and was also too young to be given his CPA license, for which he had to wait a few years. Ziga was the first woman bar topnotcher.) 

My father studied to be a lawyer, but other priorities got in the way; his dream would be achieved by my sister Elaine and my brother Jess. As for me, activism and martial law happened, and in that environment where the law as we knew it suddenly didn’t seem to matter, I lost any urge to enter law school, and chose between English and history instead.

Thankfully, many others saw things differently, and now make up the cream of the profession, appearing on lists such as the Philippines’ Top 100 and Asia’s Top 500 Lawyers. Their skills are formidable—I’ve been told that some senior lawyers are so sharp (or so, shall we say, highly persuasive) that they can get a Supreme Court decision reversed—and their fees will certainly reflect that.

But my utmost admiration is reserved for lawyers who have devoted their careers to that portion of the Lawyer’s Oath that says: “I shall conscientiously and courageously work for justice, as well as safeguard the rights and meaningful freedoms of all persons, identities and communities. I shall ensure greater and equitable access to justice.” 

No better group of lawyers represents that than the Free Legal Assistance Group or FLAG, founded in 1974 by Diokno himself, then newly released from prison, together with Lorenzo M. Tanada, Joker P. Arroyo, Alejandro Lichauco, and Luis Mauricio, all fellow members of the Civil Liberties Union of the Philippines (CLUP), as martial law entrenched itself and civil liberties became increasingly threatened. 

In the half-century since then—documented in FLAG’s anniversary book Frontliners for Human Rights: FLAG of the People @50 (FLAG, 2025)—FLAG has worked to locate and release desaparecidos, or persons abducted by State agents, fight the death penalty, defend victims of extrajudicial killings, and contest the Anti-Terrorism law, among other key initiatives.

“From its birth, FLAG has kept faith in its philosophy of developmental legal advocacy—the adept use of the law and its processes and institutions not only to secure rights and freedoms but also to change the social structures that trigger and perpetuate injustice,” FLAG reports. “Over 50 years, FLAG has handled over 9,052 cases and assisted over 9,591 clients throughout the country. These figures are merely a fraction of the cases FLAG has handled, and the clients FLAG has served nationwide. The number of FLAG clients excludes the communities and barangays who had experienced massacres and hamletting, urban poor communities whose homes had been demolished, and landless farmers and tenant farmer associations, whose numbers are impossible to count. Overall, FLAG’s rate of success ranged from a low of 66.89% (in 1989) to a high of 79.11% in 1990. On average, FLAG has won 7 out of every 10 cases it has handled, or an impressive success rate of 72.92%.

“FLAG has always provided its legal services, free of charge. In line with its core mandate, FLAG renders free legal assistance primarily to those who cannot afford, or cannot find, competent legal services. FLAG counts clients among the urban poor, students, indigenous peoples, farmers, fishers, political prisoners, and non-unionized or non-organized workers.”

These gains have come at a huge personal cost—no less than 14 FLAG lawyers have died in the line of duty, presumably at the hands of State agents. FLAG lawyers have been Red-tagged, harassed, and put under surveillance. 

That hasn’t stopped its lawyers from pursuing their mission under its current Chairman, former Supreme Court spokesman Atty. Theodore Te. The need for their services certainly remains, with the Philippines ranking 38th out of 170 countries in the world in the 2023 Atlas of Impunity released by the Eurasia Group for “impunity,” defined as” the exercise of power without accountability, which becomes, in its starkest form, the commission of crimes without punishment.”

We can only wish Ted Te and his courageous colleagues well, as they operate in an environment more complex in many ways than martial law.

Speaking of law books, I’d like to recommend another book that was launched just recently, Constitutional Law for Filipinos: Mga Konsepto, Doktrina at Kaso (Central Books, 2026) by Atty. Roel Pulido. One of our leading environmental lawyers, Atty. Pulido teaches Constitutional and Environmental Law at Arellano University, where he also serves as Director of the Office of Legal Aid. 

“This is a project designed to be a learning aid,” says Roel. “It has a few unique features. First, It does not explain each and every Article of the Constitution. Instead, it focuses on Constitutional law concepts. Each concept is explained in simple language. Then Supreme Court rulings explaining the concepts are quoted. And in a box, I have placed a short and simple Filipino explanation of the concept. Second, the cases are quoted to explain and elaborate each concept. Instead of including all the convoluted issues in one case, it focuses only on the topic at hand. Third, the doctrine of each case cited is summarized in a sentence in both English and Filipino.”

We need more books like this that make the ideas and the language of the law more accessible to ordinary Filipinos. That’s the first requisite of legal literacy, which is also a form of empowering people. FLAG and Atty. Pulido are the kind of lawyers I would have wanted to become.

Qwertyman No. 182: Artists, Athletes, and Avatars

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 26, 2026

SOCIAL MEDIA was abuzz last week with mainly praises for but also some questions about Hidilyn Diaz’s appointment to teach weightlifting at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. 

I don’t think anyone doubted the Olympic gold medalist’s mastery of her subject. One post that went viral, however, wondered whether the athlete had what it took to teach at UP, considering that all the preparation she would have received was a four-day orientation the university gives all new faculty members. 

To be fair to the questioner, her concern was legitimate, taking Hidilyn the sports celebrity out of the picture for a minute. As I’ll discuss later, proficiency in a talent or profession doesn’t necessarily translate to good teaching. 

To be fair to Hidilyn, unlike many Filipino athletes, she’s no stranger to the classroom, having graduated in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in business management from St. Benilde, after several interruptions because of her training and the pandemic.

I have no doubt myself that despite her lack of teaching experience, Hidilyn will be a fine, welcome, and indeed a prize addition to the UP faculty roster. Her presence alone will galvanize student interest in her sport, and in UP athletics in general. 

Her teaching, I’m pretty sure, will take care of itself. Having trained with some of the world’s best coaches, she will not lack for topics and techniques. What will probably challenge her the most will be her transition from star to student—as the learner of teaching that she will have to be. Her students will have to get over their awe of her celebrity to imbibe her lessons. 

Her first year will be fraught with both exhilaration and frustration, as the enthusiasm and even the ecstasy of teaching are weighed down by the drudgery of academic bureaucracy—particularly in UP which, despite its leadership in many fields, remains a laggard in the prompt payment of salaries for new hires.

The fact that we’re even talking about this shows how far we’ve come from the past, when a good reputation was enough to get you in front of the blackboard.

The problem here isn’t Hidilyn, and not even just UP itself, but a global academic culture that seems to have been taken over by the accountants and professional managers from the dreamers. 

I have nothing per se against the numbers crunchers, who are central and vital to every modern university’s survival. But the seemingly ceaseless demand for performance metrics to justify budgets, promotions, and bonuses—a mind-numbing exercise for staff already exhausted from their regular chores—can produce a false dazzle that favors consistency of delivery and even of mediocrity over originality, non-conformity, and inspiration.

As a writer and also a professor and former university administrator myself, I can appreciate the peculiar challenges of recruiting and sustaining what we might call non-traditional academics like creatives and athletes in this kind of environment. You need them to identify and develop their successors among their students; conversely, many of them also need the security of a job. 

But teaching is its own art, its own sport, its own discipline—and I know, from sad experience, that not all artists and athletes, no matter how gifted they may be in their fields, can teach. Some lack the people skills and the empathy the classroom requires; the most expressive artists can be woefully inarticulate, the lithest athlete inexplicably clumsy. 

Those who do connect—performers who know their audiences and who value contact and feedback and continuous learning—become the best teachers.

Many of them might not even meet today’s stringent entrance standards. UP’s College of Science, for example and for good reason, now requires a PhD of its teaching applicants. The humanities and athletics obviously can’t enforce that rule, given that there are Literature PhDs who can’t write a decent poem and SportsEd PhDs who can’t swim.

On the other hand, some very fine writers have taught at UP without even a bachelor’s degree because of their extraordinary talent, notably NVM Gonzalez, IP Soliongco, Jose Lacaba, and Ricky Lee. 

This will be self-serving, but no better example of that kind of avatar exists at UP today than my wife June, who has been teaching the very first course in Art Conservation at the College of Fine Arts as a senior lecturer for the past three years.

Now 75, June came into teaching late in life, after a long career in the arts as a graphic designer, watercolorist, and for the past quarter-century as an art restorer and conservator running her own studio. Few people in this country (excuse the proud husband speaking) have her skill and experience, having worked on all the Filipino masters from Luna, Hidalgo, and Amorsolo onward, including the Spoliarium. She had always dreamt of teaching, knowing how few authentic and scientific conservators there are in the Philippines, and the need to train the young.

The only problem was, as a student activist, she had left UP under martial law a few units short of completing her Fine Arts degree. She married me, worked, became a mother, and never went back to school.

But she did train long and hard in conservation and restoration with the Agencia Internacional of the Spanish government, practically every day for a full year, in a program more rigorous than a master’s. On the strength of that training and her experience—she and her team have restored the collections of the Central Bank, the Philippine National Bank, and the GSIS, among others—she was taken in by UP to advise the administration on conserving the university’s vast art collections, leading to her appointment as lecturer (for a subject that, frankly, no one else in UP can teach right now). Aside from her classes, June has been advocating for UP to set up its degree program in conservation and an Arts Conservation Center to serve as both a teaching and service facility. She still runs her own Artemis Art Restoration company for private clients. For a 75-year-old dropout, that can’t be too bad. She complains of fatigue and of being perplexed by the world of AI, and says she wants to stop before dementia sets in, but I know her students love her and wish she would teach forever (because they tell her so).

I myself was a dropout for a decade and had worked as a journalist and screenwriter before returning to UP to finish my degree so I could teach—which I ended up doing for 35 years and still do long after retirement. 

When I think of Hidilyn Diaz coming in to UP amid all the fuss, I want to tell her to just relax, and to enjoy the campus and her students. Teaching in UP will be full of joys and aggravations, but the heaviest lifting will be within her—of doubts, fears, and the catcalls of the rabble in the bleachers. Welcome to the home of Honor, Excellence, and Service—and never mind that it also happens to be a hornets’ nest.