Skip to main content

Ruminating on my 42nd orbit around the Sun

This is really high summer. March 9 is high summer in the Philippines (although the start of spring in the USA and autumn in Australia) with temperatures reaching the 37 degree Celsius mark. Humidity is probably in the 80% region or more.

This is also my high summer. My hemisphere should be tilted to my Sun and supposedly I am at the peak of my cerebral powers. I should be at the top of a challenging career! (oooops some friends of my own age make 4X more than I do!) But this week was marked by two sad events. Pinoy rapper Francis Magalona passed away this week after happily battling leukemia. Jeepers FrancisM was only two years older than me! Think about reminders that we are all mortal!

Another shocker, a classmate from primary school whom I haven't seen in 29 years I found on Facebook. He told me he had a stroke quite recently.

Nonetheless my birthday cake by tradition has only one candle! Well at least that has less carbon impact on the atmosphere! LOL! :-) Anyway everytime I blow the candle off my cake I sing not the Happy Birthday song but

Bob Dylan's "Forever Young"

which goes

"May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young."

Dylan's song is traditionally sung on a child's 1st birthday. Hence I have only 1 candle on my cake!

BTW National Bookstore has again bargain hardbound books that sell for 65 pesos each! I got the last in the series of the Dalziel and Pascoe novels, Ten Days to D Day and Grace under Fire. The last one is appropriate reading for Lent since it deals with Soldier's letters about their faith in wartime. One thing is sure, there are really no Atheists in the foxholes!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Simoun's lamp has been lit, finally.. not by one but by the many!

"So often have we been haunted by the spectre of subversion which, with some fostering, has come to be a positive and real being, whose very name steals our serenity and makes us commit the greatest blunders... If before the reality, instead of changing the fear of one is increased, and the confusion of the other is exacerbated, then they must be left in the hands of time..." Dr Jose Rizal "To the Filipino People and their Government" Jose Rizal dominates the Luneta, which is sacred to the Philippine nation as a place of martyrdom. And many perhaps all of those executed in the Luneta, with the exception of the three Filipino secular priests martyred in 1872, have read Rizal's  El Filibusterismo . Dr Rizal's second novel is a darker and more sinister one that its prequel but has much significance across the century and more after it was published for it preaches the need for revolution with caveats,  which are when the time is right and who will in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Leonard Co (1953-2010), Filipino botanist

With much sadness and shock I learned from WWF chair Lory Tan that internationally renowned botanist Leonard Co was killed together with a guide and a forest ranger last Monday, 15 November in a firefight in Leyte between Armed Forces of the Philippines soldiers and Communist guerrillas. As the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports it ,  Co and his researchers were surveying a forest plot of the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) for native Philippine trees and plants especially those that are in danger of extinction, like this Rafflesia flower (the picture I got from Dr Julie Barcelona's blog . Thank you Julie) The 41 year old Communist insurgency has again claimed another life of the best and brightest of the Philippines. In Leonard Co's case, a bright life that cannot be replaced. For he was one of if not the last of  the classically trained botanists in plant taxonomy and systematics in the Philippines. While one can learn the basics of these disciplines i...
6 comments
Read more

How should we remember General Antonio Luna?

Well it seems with that proposal to rename Camp Aguinaldo to Camp Antonio Luna in time for National Heroes Day has generated a lot of social media buzz. We really have to really understand our national heroes. Antonio Luna was a remarkable personality but like all of us was flawed. He likely would be an academic had the revolution not intervened. He would have been the first Dean of a College of Science of the Philippine University had the nation made the transition to indepe ndence in a peaceful manner. That was recognized by the American College of Pharmacy when they feted Dr Luna on what would have been his 60th birthday noting his work in combating malaria. But that was not to be. He became a soldier. General Luna was for a professional military within the bounds of the constitution. Perhaps that is the biggest sign of contradiction for today. Please answer the question: Would President Duterte (or a President Aquino, Marcos, Arroyo, Quezon etc) have a General Luna as his c...
Post a Comment
Read more