My poem “The Tahamaling” has just been published in Mirror Dance, edited by Megan Arkenberg.
Check it out here.
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Tag: Philippines
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Publication: ‘The Tahamaling’ in Mirror Dance
Posted at 10:13 am , on April 8, 2019
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Cheers!
Posted at 11:12 am , on January 15, 2019
Over the holidays, toasts are usually a thing. Often in a lot of languages: Cheers, some say, or L’Chaim, Prost, Sláinte, Salute, Kampai, Salud … and I didn’t know what was said in the Philippines.Here’s the thing: there isn’t a direct translation, because the tradition is different.
On Gideon Lasco’s website, he explains how there’s no word for cheers in Tagalog because of the tradition of people drinking from the same glass to mark celebrations and special occasions. That is, unlike having everyone raise their own glass to toast or clink them together, in the Philippines one person becomes the pourer (the tanggero) and fills a glass that gets passed around for everyone to share in a communal way. The custom is called tagay.
Laso even finds a definition of tagay in a 1630 dictionary, and writes:
Then, as now, tagay is defined as the rationing of the liquor around the group using just one cup. Strikingly, this cup is also given a name in the same vocabulario passage, one that is familiar in street corners on Friday nights: tagayan.
You can also read this account on Medium, in which Rina Diane Caballar writes:
The tanggero makes sure that all the drinkers have their fill, that everyone gets their fair share. The drinkers return the favor by drinking bottoms up from the glass, in the custom known as tagay. Tagay means that you trust each other enough to drink from that single glass. Tagay means everyone is united. Tagay is synonymous with goodwill and camaraderie.
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Friday Photo: One Peso Note from Philippines, 1922
Posted at 10:02 am , on November 2, 2018
On the wall of The Bahn Mi Shop restaurant in White Plains, NY, a one peso note from the Philippines. The small text across the top of the currency says, “BY AUTHORITY OF AN ACT OF THE PHILIPPINE LEGISLATURE, APPROVED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES JUNE 13, 1922.” That president in 1922 was Warren G. Harding, often regarded as one of the worst presidents. The signature in the center of the note says “S. Osmeña” (for Sergio Osmeña). Beneath that is says “President,” and he was president of the Philippines from 1944 to 1946.
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‘Positively No Filipinos Allowed’
Posted at 11:32 am , on January 3, 2018
I came across this image while looking up something else. I couldn’t find the name of a photographer for it, though some say it is likely a hotel in Stockton, California, in and around 1930. Though I had read about such signs, especially in the great Carlos Bulosan book America is in the Heart, I hadn’t seen one before.There is something visceral and powerful about this image. How dark it is. How well-used the door, floor, and walls look. It doesn’t appear to be a place of wealth; rather, it is a place on the margins of American economic security and who gets counted as belonging.
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2017 in Review in Publishing
Posted at 11:48 am , on December 27, 2017
Thank you goes out to all the readers out there who’ve read my stuff, and to the editors and publisher who put my poetry and fiction out there for the world to read. Continue reading
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13 things about my Lolo, Col. Maximiano Saqui Janairo, for Veterans Day
Posted at 3:14 pm , on November 11, 2017
This is my Lolo, Maximiano Saqui Janairo, in a studio photo taken in Manila around 1930, when he was about 24 or 25 years old. On his lapel, you can see the castle emblem of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Note the shoulder patch — the gold carabao on a red field — the symbol of the Philippine Scouts.
Here’s a photo of my Lolo, Maximiano Saqui Janairo.
- 1930 graduate of U.S. Military Academy at West Point
- Commission in the Philippine Scouts
- Chief engineer with the Philippine Army in 1941
- Captured by the Japanese in April 1942
- Survived the Bataan Death March
- Prisoner of War in Camp O’Donnell
- Escaped while being transferred to a hospital for malaria and dysentery
- Joined the guerrilla units fighting the Japanese occupation
- Served in Korea during the Korean War
- Served with NATO in Paris
- Retired as a colonel, stationed at the engineer school at Fort Belvoir
- Awarded Legion of Merit “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the Government of the United States from 8 December 1941 to 9 April 1942”
- Buried at Arlington National Cemetery
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Photo: An early all-girls basketball game in the Philippines
Posted at 9:14 am , on October 31, 2017
“P.I. : Filipino girls playing basketball (early 1900’s). (Worcester); 1855; 1900/1910.” http://quod.lib.umich.edu/s/sclphilimg/x-1855/phld038. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections.
Basketball is a huge sport in the Philippines. In trying to figure out how that happened, I came across this image in the archives University of Michigan Library Digital Collections, which includes lots of images from the early interactions of the US in the Philippines.
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Book review: ‘A War of Frontier and Empire’
Posted at 8:22 pm , on October 30, 2017
First published: Sunday, October 7, 2007, in the Albany Times Union
As President Bush tries to shape his legacy in regards to the Iraq war, he should pick up David Silbey’s engaging history “A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902” (Hill and Wang; 272 pages; $26).Though both were wars of choice, the details are quite different. Still, the generalizations that can be gleaned from Silbey’s account are eerily familiar: a quick and stunning conventional military victory turns into longer-than-expected guerrilla warfare; a failure by the United States to understand its enemy; a sense of racial superiority that enflames troops and politicians in Washington; and a native population whose loyalties seemed to change depending on the time of day.
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