health in a year of drought

Tropical trauma - that's what this year in the Philippines feels like - for me personally. I was here the same time last year yet it feels like I landed in some foreign country I have never been - alien territory. 

I've been harping about the fact that the weather in the Philippines is so extreme we only have El Niño or La Niña conditions and all its dire options. 

high tide - Punta Bulata, Barangay Cauayan, Kabankalan

As an aging child of the seventies and proud boomer, I find myself particularly and personally challenged. Before May 24th's day long hard rain, we had not had anything like it since December. Too long a dry spell for our island home of Negros. 

ghost dancers

This is an homage to Mary Oliver and her poem Ghosts - her moving sermon for the lost bison herds of the American pioneer west, killed to starve the Native American tribes out.

It is also a eulogy to the sakadas of Negros Island - the migrant Filipino farm laborers who watched their children helpless as they starved to death, at the height of the Marcos martial law sugar plunder.

Bayan Negros protest streamer says, "behind the smiles of MassKara lie hunger and poverty."

In a decade of deliberate historical distortion the dictator's heirs have returned - brandishing their ill-gotten wealth in a bid to retell the tale of their ugly, nasty past into a burnished fable of their own making.

rally of hope

This image of donated strollers taken at the Przemysl train station in Poland has gone viral. Touching the hearts of people around the world.

Francesco Malavolta/AP Photo

Parents know how much these prams would unburden a mother who has had to carry her child to freedom in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The now-viral image of the strollers awaiting refugee families captured a moment of calm in a sea of uncertainty and human suffering.

KakamPINKs Pagla-um Rally, 11 March 2022

In the Philippines, people power is surging in support of the lone female candidate for president. With elections in May 2022, we are all on high alert to ensure Leni Robredo wins.

Although she leads on all fronts, the Filipino people know that ballots need to be protected and the COMELEC count watched closely.

70,000+ strong in our hometown alone, 11 March 2022

The opposition is brutal and corrupt and will attempt to win at all costs. They are desperate to bury their many publicized crimes and take control of the country without impunity.

They believe they can get away with it too - just like Putin is doing now. We the people have spoken and take our stand now. May it be enough to bring us this win we so badly need.