A friend just texted me that today's issue of The Philippine Star carries a review of The Baguio City Yearbook 2008. I went to Philstar.com and yes indeed, there is a review of the yearbook! What a pleasant surprise!

Here's a link to the review: http://www.philstar.com/index.php?Arts%20and%20Culture&p=49&type=2&sec=40&aid=2008042726

If you don't want to go to the link, here's the full article:

Arts and Culture

More treasures from Baguio
PENMAN By Butch Dalisay
Monday, April 28, 2008

Our recent visit to Baguio for the UP National Writers Workshop — an annual pilgrimage, really — turned up another bonus in the form of a new publication passed on to me by writer Chi Balmaceda Gutierrez, now Baguio-based: the Baguio City Yearbook 2008, which she co-edits with Jack Kintanar Cariño. Baguio City is gearing up for its centennial next year, and this yearbook is a picture- and story-rich contribution to that great city’s history.

I flipped through it quickly, and much as I’d like to say that the pictures of old Baguio alone are worth the price of the yearbook, I soon found myself engrossed by the articles, nearly all of them written by Baguio oldtimers.

The yearbook focuses on “Baguio’s Forgotten Ibaloi Heritage,” and one of its most fascinating stories (written by former UP workshopper Nonnette Bennett) is that of its cover girl, the resplendently named Eveline Chainus Guirey, who became Baguio’s first Carnival Queen in 1915 at the age of only 13. The daughter of a wealthy Igorot or baknang family, Chainus, as she was called, was said to have been known for her “golden smile and intelligence.” She wore a gold-plated tooth adornment called a shekang, and her clothes were made of green and purple silk. Alas — in a tragedy worthy of Poe — this pretty young woman did not live long, succumbing to tuberculosis at age 18. The article reports that when Chainus died, “Schools were closed, classes suspended, and a large crowd (of VIPs) attended her funeral on Oct. 5, 1920.” One sister — Helen, born seven years after her death — is still alive and preserves the memory of Chainus Guirey.

The yearbook has many other stories of Baguio lore — for example, about women cargadores who carried rations and ammunition for American soldiers during the War, about Benguet cowboys who looked over the vast cattle holdings of the Ibaloi, and about the “haunted” Laperal House on Leonard Wood Road — but one that touched a personal chord was a report, by architect Toti Villalon, on the rehabilitation of Teachers Camp, where I spent many a summer as a high-school conference- and partygoer. Indeed, Baguio’s white-and-green, colonial cottages are as unique as the city’s pines in the Philippine landscape.

And you can’t put down the engaging piece written by Linda Grace Cariño on “English Like a Native,” which traces the way English has been indigenized by Baguio speakers. For example: “Notice how natives say ‘country club’ like it was one word? Papanam? Diay countryclub. Manila cousins like to affect the answer: the club. The climbers actually say count-ry club, as in count your blessings.”

For true Baguio sons and daughters — or even avid visitors — there’s a long list of all the things every self-respecting Baguio native should know (e.g., “The only thrift shop you knew was the Pines Thrift Shop near the Justice Hall, managed by Mr. and Mrs. Woelke (it was the first ukay).” I don’t know if I should be proud of admitting to understanding one of these “insider” factoids (“You knew what Chaparral signified”) — but that’s another story.

Baguio City Yearbook 2008 is available for P350 at National Book Store and other outlets. For inquiries, e-mail the editors at baguioyearbook@gmail.com.

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And speaking of Baguio memories, workshopper and journalist-poet Frank Cimatu informed me that a literary anthology — a collection of essays, stories, and poems about Baguio — is now being put together for publication in time for the city’s 2009 centennial. If you’re interested in submitting your work to this anthology, please email Prof. Grace Subido of UP Baguio at miscommunication.arts@gmail.com.

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Toward the end of the UP Writers Workshop a couple of weeks ago, one workshopper raised a question that, I’m sure, has occurred more than once to many a young writer: “After the workshop, what?”

Writers workshops can be intoxicating, providing writers with something they’ll be hard put to find anywhere else: the company of sympathetic souls who understand what they want to do, and also how hard it is to do it. Workshops can occasionally get nasty and end in tears (or worse), but they serve, for the most part, to reaffirm and reinforce one’s commitment to the writing life.

The kind of “mid-career” workshops we now hold at UP aren’t even intended any longer to dwell on grammar and the other basics of writing; they’re meant to focus and to sharpen writers’ attitudes toward their own work and that of others. Admit it or not, entry-level workshops do a service to writing, the individual, and the environment by discouraging the unfit from wasting any more paper (and then again, I can imagine how some workshop judgments can be spectacularly wrong; workshop panelists are hardly gods, and have their own hang-ups to deal with). In the UP Writers Workshop, we don’t want people to stop writing; indeed, we want them to press on, more resolute than ever, and surer of their own voices.

But, yes, after the workshop, what?

I wanted to tell the fellow what immediately came to my mind: “Many more years of solitary confinement and hard labor.” It’s a fair summary, in many ways, of the writing life. You can drink and talk all you want, you can bask in the afterglow of Rilke and Plath and Neruda and whoever moves you, and quote them till the cows come home; but when it comes to your own work, it’ll still be just you and the blinking cursor, and maybe a tepid cup of coffee or a half-finished cigarette. No nodding readers, no owl-eyed critics, no triumphal bouquets, no one to say, “That’s good, can’t wait for the next chapter.”

But just think: a hundred years ago there were no workshops, no writing programs, not even computers (and, in many places, not even electricity). But authors churned out 300-page books. Writing is always a solitary act and solitude can get lonely, but the books get written and suddenly there’s more than you listening to your voice at 2 a.m.

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.

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Peter Rey to implement BLIST program by yearend 2008

I usually make it a point to watch the local news on TV, particularly TV Patrol Northern Luzon, every time I have the chance to do so. A report by anchor Dhobie de Guzman headlined “BLIST program maisasakatuparan na” in this afternoon’s edition caught my attention. Mayor Peter Rey Bautista was caught on camera telling Dhobie that he plans to “implement the BLIST program hopefully before the year ends.”

This is either a deception designed to mislead the public or Peter Rey does not know what he is talking about. First of all, the BLIST plan is a conceptual framework, a development framework designed to decongest Baguio and to disperse development initiatives to the outlying municipalities of Benguet. Realizing that Baguio was designed by the renowned American architect Daniel Burnham for a population of only 25,000 and that it is now literally bursting at its seams with a population of almost 400,000, the urban planning experts from the European Union formulated a BLIST plan after the July 1990 earthquake.

This BLIST plan is now outdated and obviously has to be updated. The BLIST mayors can come together and have dinner regularly, they could heap praises on the BLIST concept, they can even agree to implement it before yearend. But I am betting my balls that nothing meaningful will happen.

When I ran for councilor last elections I advocated for the creation of a Metro Baguio Development Authority or MBDA to oversee the implementation of the BLIST concept and an updated BLIST plan. If there is no MBDA, all talk about BLIST will be hot air.

This MBDA will need a Republic Act or legislation by Congress (Lower House and Senate) to become a reality. I volunteered myself to the Baguio electorate to be their pointman for the creation of this MBDA. I told them that as councilor I would untiringly liaise between all stakeholders and decision makers to make the MBDA and an updated BLIST plan a reality.

Furthermore, I told them that 3 years may be too short to realize this but with a pointman who will pursue this vision, substantial steps in this direction can be achieved.

This is why I think that Peter Rey does not know what he is talking about when he says that he will "implement the BLIST program before yearend." He can go to the NEDA offices and get a copy of the BLIST plan which is available. He can implement parts of the plan like the completion of the circumferential roads. But all this will be band-aid solutions to the chronic congestion problems of Baguio.

Actually, private citizens especially the “captains of industry” of Baguio City, if they really care for Baguio and its citizens, can implement the BLIST concept without any MBDA. Peter Rey can lead by example by initiating the relocation of the University of Baguio campuses to the BLIST outlying areas.

(Note on the past elections: Friends told me that they thought I was talking over the heads of the Baguio electorate when I talked about BLIST and the MBDA. Voters are more concerned about immediate results, such as a pig to butcher.)

Browse on Baguio History

    In the late 16^th century, the Spaniards colonized the Philippines.

    Seven years after the Spaniards settled in Manila, a

Spanish official, Juan    de Salcedo, went to the North and into the mountains to search for gold. He then stumbled into a land of fertile valleys, virgin forests and ore-rich streams.

   Gold was found and armies of soldiers, priests and fortune hunters came. Numerous battles with fierce mountain tribes resulted in loss of life and livelihood. The Spaniards found the mountain people difficult to rule, thus they parcelled the com

mandancias into rancherias that they placed in the hands of the landed gentry.

    In the summer of 1892, a young American zoological collector named Dean C. Worcester was approached in the wilds of Mindoro Island, while at work, by Domingo Sanchez, a member of the Spanish Forestry Bureau. Sanchez, in great detail, told of a fabulous country in the Luzon northlands at an elevation of 5000 feet which had a perpetual temperate climate and was sometimes

visited by frost.

    Worcester, like all Americans suffering in the steamy lowlands of the archipelago, listened to the dream picture hopefully. Upon his return to Manila en route back to America, he browsed through Forestry archives and found enough about the truth of Sanchez’ shangri-la to whet his adventurous spirit.

    Two years after Dewey’s guns silenced the Spaniards in Manila, Worcester reappeared as a member of the first Philippine Commission under the direction of Judge William Howard Taft.

    In July 1900, Worcester and a party of curious Americans decided to explore the truthfulness of the Spaniard’s story and began the ascent to Baguio. In Washington, the then Secretary of War Ellihu Root was also watching hopefully. Almost every one in the party except the dogged and persistent Worcester was skeptical. Frost, pine trees, cool breezes...they no doubt grumbled under their shortening breaths as they toiled throu

gh the heat and dense jungle vegetation that gave the lie to Worcester’s hopes.

    Until the globetrotter Frank G. Carpenter wrote, “all at once, within a space of 100 yards, the party left the tropics and found themselves in a region of pines carpeted by thick, short grass. At sunset, they looked down...on what is known as Trinidad Valley. That night, the most skeptical of the party, buried under blankets, acknowledged that Worcester’s faith in Domingo Sanchez had been j

ustified.”

    When the Americans came into the Cordillera after Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States of America for $20,000,000 in the year 1898, they rejoiced in discovering these pine covered hills and the cool heights that were ideal for summer retreats from the smelting heat of the lowlands.

   The wide low valley of Kafagway, a rancheria of 20 houses owned and headed by Ibaloi chieftain Mateo Cariño, was found in the year 1900. America then was just learning how to use the horseless buggy, while a village of Ibaloi Igorots, now known as the Benguets, were settled in their thatched huts in the area which is now Burnham Park.

    Baguio was derived from the abundant moss-like green plants the indigenous inhabitants called Bigyiw or Bag-iw.

    Also in the year 1900, the Americans established the first civil government in

Benguet. Kafagway which is now known as Baguio became the capital.

     In a the report of the Philippine Commission of 1903, an America governor-general said, “By shifting a portion of those stationed in the lowlands to Baguio for a proper period, and the reverse, the term of duty of the of troops in the Philippines Islands could be much extended and consequent saving made in the cost of frequent transportation to and fro of troops from the United States to the islands.... moreover, the Government would not so frequently suffer the loss of service and efficiency of its employees on account of the effects of a tropical climate.”

    Thus, on June 1, 1903, a resolution was passed by the American colonial government naming the town of Baguio the Summer Capital of the

Philippines. They built the Kennon Road and completed it in three years. It became the first road to connect Manila to the Mountain Province.

 The city prospered in the years before World War II but was destroyed by the repeated bombings during liberation by the American air force who wanted to flush out the dreaded Japanese under Gen. Yamashita. From the ruins, Baguio rose into a commecial and industrial center of the Cordilleras.

    On July 16, 1990, a great earthquake devastated the city, destroying many of its buildings and commercial establishments. A year later after the killer quake, Baguio has risen, a new city, proud of its rich heritage and legacy.

   Today, Baguio City is a self-governing member of the Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR). It is composed of the province of Abra, Benguet, Ifugao (where the famous Banaue Rice Terraces are located), Kalinga, Apayao, and Mountain Province. 

                                                      --   by JACK & CHi, with excerpts from various
                                                            sources including a metal tablet at
                                                             the Igorot Steps, Upper Session Rd.,  
                                                              Barrio Fiesta Restaurant

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Lisa Araneta has written a nice piece on Decongesting Baguio. She says that SLU may be thinking that the B in BLIST is Bakakeng, because they plan to expand their campus there. She says that that is not BLIST enough. Read Lisa's piece, together with various comments, here http://www.i-baguio.com/ 

It really is upon Baguio's "captains of Industry," which for us are the owners and administrators of our city's biggest schools, to "walk the talk" with regards to the BLIST plan. They and all our top officials have all been paying lip service to the BLIST concept, but this has all been empty talk, photo opportunities in Country Club or Rose Bowl. 

Peter Rey should put his foot where his mouth is, lead by example, by initiating the relocation of some of the University of Baguio's colleges to the BLIST outlying areas, not Bakakeng as SLU is doing, but further out in consonance with the spirit of the BLIST plan.

We certainly hope that that 'car plan' resolution is dead. For the good of all concerned, we should take a step back and reflect on the lessons learned.

But is it really dead?

Some are saying that the city council will override the mayor's veto. Moreover, others are criticizing the mayor for vetoing the resolution on a mere technicality.

Peter Rey said that the phrase "car plan" is inappropriate. What if the council revives the resolution without the phrase "car plan"? While vetoing the resolution Peter Rey said that he realizes the need for cars for the city council.

For everybody's sake, my dear city officials, let's FORGET the car plan and just concentrate on collecting our city's garbage. The irony of the car plan was that it was passed at the height of the garbage problem. Ano kayo sinuswerte? Di nyo nga ma-collect ang basura natin, gusto nyo pa ng sasakyan?

Mr. Mayor, sabi mo simple lang ang gusto mo, "malinis na Baguio." We hope that you roll up your sleeves and start cleaning up Baguio. Maybe you are realizing now that solving our garbage problem is really not that simple.

And to our dear councilors, gawin nyo muna trabaho nyo. If the city sees that you are doing your job, we won't begrudge your service vehicles. We just don't want to be shortchanged.

The emergence of the "Baguio First" movement is a welcome development. We hope that it does not go the way of the other multisectoral groups. If this "Baguio First" develops to be a positive force for Baguio then it may be the silver lining behind the 'car plan' cloud.

Baguio officials allot P20M to buy cars (for themselves)