Memories and friends

This Bystander started this month bidding the Old Year 2012 goodbye, and welcoming this New Year of Faith 2013 with prayers for hope, peace and love as we move along with the changing times.

After we welcomed the birth of the Holy Child at Christmas last month, we observed with prayers the Solemnity and His Feast as the Sto. Niño in Cebu last Sunday, the 20th . And so, to paraphrase a religious quotation, a child, the Child, has led us through this memorable month.

We prayed through the novena Masses, participated and rejoiced in festivities after Mass each Mass day, participated in the preliminary processions, the fluvial parade, and solemn procession for Him last Saturday, and the solemn Mass last Sunday, His Feast Day. After Mass, in joyous thanksgiving and celebration, we danced for Him in the Sinulog. a term now associated with the extended week of prayer and celebration as an extended Sinulog Week. Thanks to modern mass media today, all Sinulog activities were available to everyone.

I remember actively participating in early Sinulog week years before as a radio broadcaster, covering and reporting religious festivities and the celebratory Sinulog when Juan “Dodong” Aquino was actively in charge. Now as a mostly stay-at-home Bystander, I still keep in touch with the times through broadcast and press media.

A celebrity highlight of the Sinulog festivities was Asian Queen of Song, Cebuana Pilita Corrales gracing the 2013 Balik Cebu Welcome Dinner and Humanitarian Cultural show at the Ayala Center last Jan. 7th.

The aftermath of Sinulog still lingers with us even as, still through mass media, the current events bring out the nitty-gritty realities of the day in this pre-election season. We are happy suspended governor Gwen Garcia joined the closing dance in the Sinulog celebration, this being her 9th and last time during her third and final elected term in peace. But to date, the contested situation at the Capitol continues, as she awaits a final decision on her contested suspension, while governance peacefully proceeds with Acting Gov. Agnes Magpale at the helm.

Disturbingly, we seem to have gone back to peace and order problems in this pre-election campaign season: “mud-slinging” among candidates, the shocking prevalence of killings directly or by ambush of private persons or candidates by disgruntled people or political parties, despite the so-called current gun ban. After the Atimonan, Quezon massacre resulting in the deaths of 13 people last Jan. 6th , the latest incident involved a resident Canadian retiree, on a shooting rampage, resulting in the death of three including his suicidal self. And this (of all places!) in a Municipal Trial Court at the Palace of Justice behind the Capitol!

Then in the Senate, wrangling in the exchange of insults among senators on pre-election actuations, particularly the “gifting” of favoured fellow members, not to even mention what is happening in the other local branches of government in other cities ands towns.

Ecology-wise there is the grounding of the USS Navy ship minesweeper Guardian off Palawan, destroying a vast stretch of the Tubbataha coral reefs there, a World Heritage Site declared by the Unesco in 1993.

But personally, post Sinulog days, particularly this week, have brought me blessings “from the past” in visits from guests who have had connections with friends long gone to the Great Beyond. Last Monday, Cebuana Paz Fernan Shepheds, now residing in Calgary in Canada, visited me at the house, bringing me gifts from my immigrant son and his family now residing there who are now figuratively her “next door” neighbors. With Paz and her brother Marino are first cousins to the late former chief justice Marcelo Fernan, also a friend of mine. Marino revealed the late piano wizard and good friend of mine, Marcial Sanson, was his half-brother., while his (Marino’s) wife, Carmencita Naya was the daughter of my late friend from post World War II evacuation days, Gregoria “Goyang” Naya.

Together with them was Rosario “Sarsi” Villaraza Pasco (also a relarive of another good friend here in Cebu Lucy Villaraza), residing in Rockland, New York City who also joined the Sinulog week festivities. Both Paz and Sarsi are nurses who will be in Calgary in September for their reunion there on the 35th anniversary get-together of Cebu’s Velez School of Nursing Class 1978. My nurse daughter Amelia, working in Texas and a co-graduate of theirs is also going to be there. Hopefully, I might also be there with her in connection with my annual visit to her in the States.

This Bystander, watching and even going along with the stream of life, also got together at lunch last Tuesday with a former University of the Philipines Cebu MassCom student of mine, Raymund Canoy and his wife Dorotea “Tea” Gail Canoy of Frankfurt, Germany. At lunch with them we shared memories of his late grandmother, dentist Dr. Marina Tabelon Osmeña, popular for her lifetime involvement with the Philippine National Red Cross in Cebu, whom I met in post-World War II days, when, already in radio broadcasting by then, I announced and even covered some of her many active community-oriented Red Cross activities, as well as with the Cebu Women’s Club behind the respected Cebu Maternity House.

Marina’s daughter, Raymund’s active mother Leticia “Letty” Osmeña Canoy a nurse by profession, headed Administration at the Cebu Provincial Health Department until her retirement. Now she is even more actively involved in some 10 current community projects regarding women and children’s health and well-being as well as education for the youth among others. Letty and I are also fellow members of Cebu Zonta Club and the Cebu Council of the Girl Scouts of the Philippines.

Raymund, now a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, and his wife Dorothea “Thea” Gail Canoy, a doctor of musicology at the University of Michigan, both recently married, are on a one-year leave so they came over less than a month ago to visit his mother, and have been travelling the length and breadth of Cebu to see the sights. Thea leaves tomorrow for Germany while Raymund returns to the States to clear up some concerns there before he joins Thea in Germany. Raymund has spent time in Germany to study, now speaks German and is familiar with German history and culture. I wished them both bon voyage.

Again, with so much more to share with you next week next month (this is now getting to be a cliché of a closing, I am afraid) till then, as always, may God continue to bless us, one and all!