AFTER the embittered battle for Speakership which resulted in the dismal oust of Speaker Jose de Venecia, and the election of Mindanao’s Rep. Nograles, many Pangasinenses are left wondering why three of Pangasinan’s five congressmen voted the way they did. Whey didn’t the five vote as one solid group the way the “Mindanao Bloc” voted for Mindanao’s son? Not that their three votes would have overturned the results, this time, but hey, where has the “Pangasinan Spirit” to fend for one’s own, gone?

According to historian Miguel de Loarca, “the people of Pangasinan were industrious. They were spirited and a proud race of men and women, and such materials in other’s hands would form the foundation of all that is good and excellent” failed to express itself when given the chance in Congress to do so. The materials to form the foundation was there in the good congressmen and women of Pangasinan. But alas, politics is more complicated and involved than a mere historian’s observation. And few would admit that, yes, it is not as simple as supporting someone just because that person is from the same province especially if philosophies and political views differ. However,  one tends to believe that when one is projected to the national scene and is expected to defend “homeland” one’s choices are limited especially if that choice, that vote, is not a deciding factor anyway in the outcome.  What’s the point of rubbing it in? Read more

THE BIBLICAL reference to Pangasinan being the place where the “salt of the earth” is found, is turning truer as time passes. The meaning of Pangasinan or “the place where salt is made” is derived from the salt harvested from its earth, which is known all over the country for its extraordinary quality.

Every so often, the allegory refers to the quality of its people, attributing the quality of her salt to her people alleging that the consistent use of this excellent salt to their diet contributes to theirextraordinary intelligence, their natural patriotism and heroism, and their pursuit of excellence in whichever field they find themselves in. Here in the land of salt, extraordinary leaders are born and bred, claims only that the salt, a gift from God to the people of the province, makes them so.

While the above claim maybe conjured to be purely more poetic, more and more of the medicinal properties or iodine in natural salt in the right amounts especially for the mental development of babies of pregnant women become relevant. We seriously take a second look at Pangasinan’s salt and wonder aloud, if indeed, we have taken this extraordinary gift which doubly underlines the quality of its people too, as first claimed. As they say in the expression, it is worth “putting your money where your mouth is”. Does it stand close scrutiny and pass the test? Is it scientifically founded? Is the quality truly rare and indigenous to the salt harvested in Pangasinan, and therefore worth marketing? Indeed, it is not only pure poetry, or even pure talk, to say with impunity, that “Yes, indeed, Pangasinan’s salt is all of the above.” Read more

From ‘Seasons’ by MITA Q. SISON-DUQUE 
LOVE songs are expressions of the soul’s longings directed to one’s object of affections. While the more common love songs are written by love-struck lovers of all ages, the rare and purest of love songs are the ones that surpass physical parameters of love, but speaks of allegorical longings for one’s beloved.

When one listens to the love song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”, the city is given more pre-eminence than the object of one’s romantic dreams. The hills, the cable cars climbing high way to the stars, the morning sun clearing the air invites the perfect setting for love. And yet, it is never quite sure, if being in San Francisco makes one fall in love, or the place being what it is, the writer is in love with San Francisco awakening in the writer the stirrings of romantic love. Read more

SEASONS by MITA Q. SISON DUQUE

WHILE going through old family pictures and papers, this columnist found an unmailed letter, type written on yellowed and brittled onion skin paper. Dated February 28, 1966, it was wrtiten by one who was at the time, young, and as they say, just “wisp-of-a-girl”, addressed to a known female newspaper journalist, one of the first woman suffragettes in the country, a strong pioneering newspaper woman, a rarity at the time. It was indeed a revelation, but how youth can be impressionable, easy to passion and vulnerable to lessons.

The letter was addressed to the prospective recipient who was a columnist of the Pangasinan Courier, Dagupan City. The letter referred to a particular column where the columnist admits to not recognizing the two easily recognizable people in this still small town who came to her newspaper office as they occasionally did. Referring to a college dean and his popular politician wife, that afternoon when straight from law school at the young DJC (Dagupan Junior College now “Dagupan Colleges”, today the University of Pangasinan dropped by her office before driving home to Lingayen after classes. In her column she particularly mentioned not recognizing the lady, no big deal, but nay, without a trace of unintended casualness, she has grown older, she wrote. Read more

by MITA Q. SISON-DUQUE

THE discoveries and inventions of the 21st century has extended and bettered life in contemporary times. It has therefore become incomprehensible adn unpardonable that the same world tha constantly seeks to better herself has quietly become a world of working children. Child labor, most often concealed and cloaked under the label of family economic survival is widespread across the globe.

While adults uncover and device ways to save energy, cut down on costs and conserve our resources, as the answer to the needs of overpopulation, the most important human resource, the child, has been overlooked and at times of crises has been deliberately set aside as last priority and an expendable item. Unfortunately, what is the most formidable resource for the future has been put back far enough. These small people, the adults of tomorrow deserve more importance than just extra hands to help in farms and factories for families. More important, the child has to be given the chance to develop his own potentials, be educated and allowed to mature under optimum conditions to maximize his potentials. Read more

By Mita Q. Sison-Duque
 

TIME holds parallel perspectives. Years ago when we first brought our children home from Washington, D.C., an incident at that time stands out in memory. A little boy of 5 or 6, one of twin boys had this to say about a well-loved old hometown.
 

“Mom,” he said as we drove our children around Lingayen the very first time. “Is  this the Lingayen of all your stories?” “One and the same, son.” “This one?” “We’re here!” “The one you said had all these heroes walking the streets? I don’t see any…” “At some time in the past, yes, they did. Not your superheroes…” “Oh…” his voice trailing off a little disappointed. “Real heroes found in historic books.”
 

Still unimpressed, he asked more. “The one you said is… beautiful?” he questioned as he looked around when my husband drove the length of the boulevard turning the bend behind the Capitol. Upon seeing the expanse of the beach, he agreed. “The beach is there, all right.” “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Silence. “Well… Mom…” he answered after some pause… “I guess so, if you love it.” Minutes later, overheard as he sat scrounged beside his twin brother and his siblings… “Looks a rotten egg to me…” he said in a whisper.
 

“Rotten egg” in the developing vocabulary of a 6 year old means undeveloped. And time marched on, ready or not. During the spurt of time it took to develop a boy into manhood, symbolically and in parallels, was the time it took a town to evolve into a city-worth town.
 

Today that small town breaking off from the images of what that little boy has gathered, has grown into what it is today, a busy, bustling capital town whose time has come to be a city. Like the young man now a Doctor of Medicine, who is on the threshold of a promising career in Medicine with God’s blessings and help, the palpable energy of an almost city is unmistakable, the mornings of a city met in its proper place. It’s about to happen. It’s long in coming. Lingayen City, God Bless her.
 

One inspirational thought is that if Lingayen can give birth to one president out of 14 in the Republic among millions of Filipinos in a historical period of more than 100 years, certainly, she can muster enough criteria and decorum to become a capital city. Not only because time has come, but also because she has earned well.
 

Lingayen, holds a historical tradition. In early history it is the town in Pangasinan where Martin de Goiti first landed and settled down up the close of the 15^th century. It is here General Homma of the Japanese Imperial Army and the Lingayen Force of Lt. General Yuichi Tauchibahl’s 48^th Division landed and eventually where the Liberation Forces headed by Gen. Douglas Mc Arthur landed along the expanse of the Lingayen Gulf. And although Lingayen has always been the capital town some erroneous impression had lingered on that Binalatongan, now San Carlos was the capital. It was of course a misconception brought about by several factors. First, Binalatongan was  part of the Dominican Province in the area and therefore the dateline of all documents and historical records were datelined Binalatongan. Binalatongan was also part of the ‘encomienda’, the landholdings of the King of Spain and logically was the choice for the capital.
 

Another reason is that the town had the largest population. But when the Spanish Alcalde first came to Spain, he chose the Pueblo of Lingayen to set up his government soliciting help from the town principales, the prefix ‘Don’ attached to their names. The organization of Lingayen as the First Pueblo was a major success and established her as the head or ‘Cabesera’ of the group of new towns, and has thus remained the capital town of Pangasinan.
 

Fast tracking it to the present, the ‘Cabesera’ of the province of Pangasinan, has stayed by the wayside in the order of becoming a city, time behind San Carlos, Urdaneta, Alaminos and of course, Dagupan City, the chartered city. Imagine an Olympic torch passed from the Olympic flame, and Lingayen was not on its route for the past years. But in the spurt of time since a young boy now  a fine gentleman had his observations, the torch has passed to the ‘Cabesera’s’ hand. The Olympian, if he were to pass through Lingayen, would enter through Malindong from Dagupan City and Binmaley, a healthy industry lining both sides of the winding corridor which houses Lingayen’s furniture industry and the artisans of hand carved wooden furniture. Nipa huts of the past have all but disappeared from view to give way to beautiful homes with impressive landscapings, all with the original context of previous homes. Architecture has contributed greatly to the terrain, as has several modern gasoline stations run by uniformed servicemen, and convenience stores and clean rest rooms, interrupting pleasantly the route leading to Avenida Rizal East and into town.
 

The old boulevard, the Maramba Boulevard named after an earlier governor, Gov. Daniel Maramba, is undergoing major landscaping through the initiative of the governor of Vision and Action, Victor Agbayani, scion of the late well-love Gov. Aguedo Agbayani. Unexplained deep crevices along the boulevard which could pass for water basins are reclaimed to give way to what promises to be flowering parks and walks leading all the way to the Capitol and the government complex, the Malong Building and executive buildings. A stone’s throw away to the left is the Hall of Justice and the Sison Auditorium where once in the past, a prophecy that a son of Lingayen was one day destined to be the President of the country, was promised by one distinguished elder of the province.

by Mita Q. Sison Duque

THERE has not been a more powerful phrase in diplomacy or etiquette than the French responde sil vous plait, R.S.V.P., or in English business language, please reply. For therein lies the core of communications to insure a full understanding of issues involved to establish peace between peoples, and eventually, nations. In more ways than one, the French had a hand in bringing about peace early on. For it is quite important that a simple courtesy of responding politely to inquiries and invitations, bring about communications and peaceful co-existence.

Why a French phrase to an English speaking world? It can be said with confidence that the French coined a phrase, or even invented a phrase that is most necessary to modern civilization, revealing what was to be a necessary tool in diplomacy. The rules of courtesy in modern civilization or ‘etiquette’ first accepted in the west and today around the world, found its roots in the behavior among nobility in the 16th century. Many of the practices came from the French Court of Louis XIV in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In his palace in Versailles, Louis XIV had rules for court behavior written on what was referred to a ‘tickets’ or ‘etiquette’. The rules of etiquette were printed at the back of the tickets and the tickets were posted at Versailles or were used as invitations issued to court events. Other versions are given by experts on the origin of etiquette, but the French origin is the most accepted version.

These early issue known as tickets, and the signages posted on walls, are precursors of future accepted cultural behavior of the civilized human race, whether they be in casual society or in the more formal echelons of government, diplomatic corps or high society… Despite such credited claims naming France as the birthplace of etiquette, it was an Italian diplomat who wrote the first book on etiquette reporting on the expected behavior among nobility in the 16th century. Nonetheless, French being the language of refinement in high society through the 19th century in the United States, a contemporary author and columnist of etiquette, American Judith Martin more popularly known as Miss Manners, thinks that RSVP came about as a polite way to remind people to respond with a reply should an invitation be extended for whatever purpose, and where necessary response is expected as a matter of courtesy, a consideration reminiscent of the behavior in the court of King Louis XIV of France in earlier times.