Older than me

In 2002, I picked up a book called Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. I couldn’t put it down. Steinbeck traveled across America and wrote about it, hence, the title of the book. Charley was his old dog. But it wasn’t just the prose that blew my mind away. It was also Steinbeck’s account of his visit to the grand redwood trees of California.

Grand. Now there’s a word I don’t take lightly.

Steinbeck, if I recall it correctly, said he felt in awe of these giant trees not only because of their sheer monstrosity but also because of their age.

He stood before something that belonged to an ancient world, and yet it is alive. Here was a tree that was older than generations of men, and yet one that would live long after future generations of men would have gone to dust.

Early this month, I and my wife went to see the California Redwood.

We went up an unpaved road lined by one magnificent giant after another. If the redwood trees could speak, what would they tell me? Would they even care to speak? After all, they are as close to immortal as any being can get, and I am but human, who will remain a child to their eyes even if I were to live a very old age.

Imagine this: When the sun sets on the horizon, they will be the last to see it. Sunlight will linger on their tops while in my world below, it would already be dark.

But even they, the immortals, are leaving.

Only five percent of these ancient coast redwood forests remain today.

There are efforts to save them, but if they go, another link to that ancient past would have been broken, and the world will be a poorer place.

Write

I fell in love with writing a long time ago. It’s an addiction I can’t overcome. My problem is simple: I don’t know what else to do.

Settling in

I’m short of details, but at least I will be quick. In the past few months, I and my wife have been chasing a piece of the American dream. It appears like it’s finally going to happen. 

I’m happy. I’m almost 30 and I’m settling in.

Like I said, I’m short on details.

So it goes.

Beautiful!

Journalism is beautiful. One night I and a couple of reporters were staking a late night meeting between House and Senate Republicans at a state capitol. The budget discussions to fix a deficit of about $1.2 billion in the current fiscal year had been going on all week. The lawmakers were trying to hammer out an agreement before the end of January. In order to expedite the budget’s implementation, assuming they came to an agreement and they had the votes to pass the proposal, they needed the governor to call for a special session. So here’s the scenario. It was 9 p.m. The lawmakers huddled in the House Speaker’s office. The reporters waited outside the office, near the House gallery. One of us suspected they might try to sneak out. A head had popped out of the office’s backdoor, presumably to check if the reporters were still around. We were. So we guarded all possible exists we could see. And as it always happens, we missed one — the building’s back entranceway. So the lawmakers sneaked out — or so they thought. As soon as we found out they were gone, we rushed outside the building and tried to beat them before they entered the executive tower, which was a feet away from the House. We knew they were on the way to the governor’s office. That was the point of the marathon meetings — to twist enough arms so they could go to the governor and tell her they have the votes and she could now call for a special session. We caught them just outside the executive tower. They refused to answer questions. Later that night, the governor called for a special session.

So why is journalism beautiful? It’s the wait. It’s the rush. It’s being there. It’s asking the questions. It’s chronicling the event. It’s staying late into the night to type up a story. It’s staying until the wee hours of the next day to finish that story. And the best part? It’s telling the world what happened.

Writing

Bad news is everywhere for journalists nowadays. The American Journalism Review had a piece about the decline (or was it the demise?) of the regional bureaus in Washington, D.C. Signs are everywhere on the road to oblivion. I asked a former editor of mine: What do you do when you don’t know anything else? There will be room for writers and editors still, she assured me half-heartedly. I reckon that the appetite for the written word won’t subside. But it will all be electronic, mind you. But what I dread is the imminent death of the culture of investigative reporting. When you whizz by with the speed of light, will you have time to look and inspect the color of a rose? When you need to fill 24 hours of news, will you have time to think, to pause, to linger just a little bit more before you plunge into the craziness of it all?

So it goes.   

A puzzle, an idea and a slogan

Let me point out something quite obvious–it has been months since I updated this site. In this case, pointing out the obvious is a ploy to allow me to explain why. Here’s why: I didn’t make time to do it. I got swamped with work. Political slogans are still spinning in my head. Yes, we can. Drill, baby, Drill. Fired up and ready to go. Between June and now, I went to Denver and St. Paul, wrote furiously, solved a puzzle and entertained an idea. 

Here’s a little background. I hardly get angry. I get disappointed, unsatisfied, unhappy, but I can’t recall getting angry in the last two years or so. I feel righteous indignation, sure. There are plenty of reasons to rage: Injustice, racism, hubris. But I’m referring to every day occurences that usually produce anger, a driver cutting your way or an unstable workmate. I don’t angry at either. I don’t get angry at other things I should be upset about.

The puzzle is this: Why don’t I? That’s the puzzle I have solved.  

I said I entertained an idea. Here’s the background: Christians believe in the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit. They are co-equal. I notice that while Christians invoke the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is hardly acknowledged. So the idea I entertained is simply to invoke the Holy Spirit more often.

So it goes.

Cheers, mate. 

Sad day for journalism

I was stunned to learn that George “Kuya Geo” Evardo, a radio reporter, died of heart attack Friday, June 13^th. He was a dear friend and a dedicated reporter. He spoke my language, so we had a strong affinity right at the get-go. Closer to here, the media networks have reported that Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington Bureau chief and long-running host of Meet the Press, died of apparent heart attack at age 58. Thousands of miles apart, they were linked by a common passion to pursue the truth and to present it the best way they could. At a time when we need the most astute truth-seekers in the industry, they left too quickly, and the world dimmed and became poorer. 30

Estella

As a child, I used to accompany her as she hawked bread, pastries and other delicacies in schools, factories and offices that could only be reached after several hours of walk. She carried baskets and other plastic containers with her left and right hands, and what her hands could not carry she put on her head. The more she could carry, the more she could sell and the more commission she would get at the end of the day. The commission was a pittance, 10 cents out of every peso. One day, after walking for several kilometers, she stopped on the road and sat down to massage her legs. They were hurting, she told me. She was also crying, although she tried hard not to show it, a scene that I played out in my mind over and over again when I was older — only when I was older and could finally understand what it meant. And what it meant was that a single mom was doing all she could to raise nine kids and that one day, in the midst of her struggles, she got so tired of walking she had to sit down and massage her legs to ease the pain. And despite her weary legs she went on and hawked and earned some money and we survived. I survived.

Irena Sendler

Facing adversity, betrayal, even instant death, some chose to follow their conscience, simply because they know it is right. To turn down an opportunity to help would have been to turn off one of the most basic human instincts — to sympathize with the sufferer. And that would have been a kind of death, slower, but surer, and far graver than instant death. So Irena Sendler followed her conscience. Rebelliousness was in her genes, too. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Jews were herded into a giant camp. They faced starvation and squalor, ideal conditions for typhus, which also would have affected the Germans. A physician’s daughter, the Nazis let her and colleagues in the camp to distribute medicines and vaccines. She orchestrated the escape of many children. Getting caught would have meant instant death. In 2003, many years later, Poland awarded her the nation’s highest honor, the order of the White Eagle. She probably didn’t care. She did what she thought was right. She knew the risk, but she probably saw nothing extraordinary in it. She died on May 12, at age 98.

books

A paragraph transports you to another world. A sentence brings you closer to the heart of the universe. A word gives you the truth. That is the power of books.

closer

I am closer to her more than I ever have been. I have separation anxiety. I don’t want to be far from her. I hate saying goodbye in the morning on my way to work. I hate seeing her wave goodbye as she goes to work in the afternoon.  

weekends

You don’t work. You have time to read, to cook, to swim, to gaze at the sky without worry of deadlines, to lie down and be lazy, to take your time eating, to drive around town, to discover new places, to hunt books, to look for new bookstores, to go to the grocery, to spend time with her, to hold her hand, to touch her cheeks, to make love, to poke fun at the world, to poke fun at yourself, to clown around, to make faces, to be a child again.   

what happened in between

The start of the legislative session in Arizona sidelined my blog. I haven’t posted any entry for more than three months. My apologies. 

To summarize, this is what happened since. Arizona’s budget deficit has balooned to $3.1 billion through July 2009, I have bought 60 books, and read only three of them, a real shame.

Meanwhile, we are again scouting for a house. There’s one we like, but it’s too expensive. 

One night, I discovered Rainbow Las Vegas, a video game, and I’ve spent hours playing it, which partially explains why I haven’t read as much. 

The other explanation is that I’m simply too tired at the end of the day to finish a page.

So it goes.  

GK Chesterton

Here's one from G.K. Chesterton, bless his soul:

"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost." 

No news

OK–I haven't written any news item on this blog for months now. I should have, but I haven't. I did say maybe I wanted to write about something else. Maybe I did. Maybe I still do. But a blog site that says "news on weekend" doesn't really wash when there is no news on "news on weekend." Well, I still don't feel like writing about news on this site. Moving into this dry, desert, at times desolate world has perhaps sucked dry any motivation to write about news. I'm writing for a political paper here, the most political of any paper in the state. I breathe politics, digest it, weave it into words that make sense, if not to others, then at least to me. Writing about current events should be instinctive, and maybe it is. But not in this blog site. I still can't explain why. Perhaps the explanation will reveal itself in time. Perhaps it will not. At some point, I should start writing about news, slow news, again. 

gray

There is a gray quality here. It is dark, and the air is ominous, thick. I walked into it and saw my hands slowly disappear. I was disappearing myself, for the dark had swallowed me, and the only thing left, when everything was black, was the consciousness that I still was.
 

Judgment

Members of a Christian cult in Russia are waiting for the end of the world in a cave in a village 400 miles southeast of Moscow, the Associated Press reported. The cult believes that in the afterlife, they shall judge who will go to heaven or hell. A similar cult existed in Egypt 1,600 years ago. Its members believed they had to slit their throats to sit in the right hand of God on Judgment Day, when they are relegated the duty of deciding who gets eternal damnation. Some 157 days after they proclaimed their beliefs, only two of the original 30 members survived. One committed suicide by jumping into a well. The other, who disappeared, left a message that read, “Come to me, all ye who are weary, and I shall give you rest.” 

Older than nations

Somebody asked me why I left my country if I truly loved it. I asked him how old nations are. "Hundreds, maybe thousands of years old," he said. "Right," I said. "But love, my friend, is older than that."

Politicians’ convenient forgetfulnes

It’s convenient for a politician to try to wiggle out of a statement which results in severe criticism. First, he will say he was misquoted or he was quoted out of context, and when you produce your notes and recording proving the quote and context were right, he will say he forgot he made the remark, or forgot that a specific question, which elicited his statement, was ever asked. Politicians rely on their forgetfulness. A good reporter lets them have their say, but never lets them get away with it.

Writing fiction

I am not writing fiction, but I'm hardly writing any news story at all on this site. It's supposed to be news on weekend, I know. I disappoint myself, but that's hardly news to anyone, nor does it explain why there is no news on a supposedly news on weekend website. So let me try to explain. I mostly write about political news, mainstream political news at the state level. Maybe I want to write about something else other than mainstream news on this site. That's the best explanation I can think of this time. Maybe there's another reason. I am not yet aware of it though. 

Cheers.