Copia de Paris

The Beach at Sta. Eulalia, Spain

This picture is photographed by Mark Hodgins and is under the creative commons (attribution) , which means – you can freely use the picture but you have to give credit to the photographer.

The URL of this photo is http://www.flickr.com/photos/markhodgins/2327077697/
I. Opening Prayer

II. Thought of the Day

III. Reading of the Minutes of the Previous Meeting

IV. Meeting Proper

a. Agenda A
b. Agenda B
c. Agenda C
d. Agenda D
e. Agenda E

V. Other Matters

VI. Closing Prayer

This can be modified of course, to your own preference.

These pictures are free as long as you attribute the owner for them and link back to this site. http://jenaislemixedbag.blogspot.com

This one is from the movie The Barnyard (A cartoon movie).

Otis- the central character was despondent as he feels he could not handle the enormous task of being a leader.

This is what his friend said to him:

” A GOOD LEADER IS NOT ALWAYS THE STRONGEST AND THE BIGGEST. A GOOD LEADER IS SOMEONE WHO CARES THE MOST.”

Let’s bow our heads and place ourselves in the presence of the Lord.

Dear God, we are gathered here before you to map out plans for this academic year.

Grant us the wisdom and spiritual enlightenment to be able to come up with plans that are beneficial to all of us.

Make us realize that we have the moral responsibility to render service to the best of our ability.

Give us the strength to be able to overcome all the challenges that may come our way.

This we ask through Christ our Lord Amen.

You may want to read Chapter 5 first.

It was a standoff!

“Sir, they won’t budge an inch,” the scrawny private reported to Major Abunda and Lieutenant Antonio.

They have been there for almost an hour and no prodding nor cajoling could convince the throng of men, women, and children of Tindayan to leave the road. Tindayan was the nearest village from where they were.

Major Abunda spoke through his handy loudspeaker, ” Please disperse, we are not here to harm you or drive you away from your homes. Just let us pass through.”

Photo by BitHead

There was irritation in his voice. “They had traveled through the treacherous, winding road of Kalinga for 12 hours and they could not just turn around now,” Major Abunda thought to himself. They had to deliver the dam’s construction materials or their arduous trip would be in vain. The task would have been simpler if their air support was sufficient and capable of accomplishing the enormous assignment. He cursed inwardly.

A hundred yards away from where Major Abunda stood, the women in their ginamat(woven clothing) – their bare feet and arms still caked with mud from the fields – had linked their arms to each other.

In front of them were the children – they were sweating profusely amidst the searing heat of the noonday sun. Most of the children were crying. Perhaps their keen child-like perception had sensed the gravity of the situation.

Photo by: toOliver2
The unarmed men , on the other hand, stood stubbornly – shoulder to shoulder – at the middle of the narrow road.

It was a “human” barricade!

For the army to be able to pass through, they would have to run them over.

There was no other way in. The verdant mountains towered on both sides of the narrow dilapidated opening.

Major Abunda consulted with his junior. ” We will have to fire some guns, ” he said, “just to scare them off – fire them up in the air.”

Just then there was a cheer from the other side, A man with a white flag emerged from the throng.

He was unarmed.

They could see that he was instructing the women and children to take cover behind the thick foliage at the further end of the road while the unarmed men stood unmoving. and unperturbed . Benny was in the lead, waving the white flag high up in the air.

“Sir, it’s Ka Benny,” Lt. Antonio whispered in awe, unable to conceal his emotions . “He obviously wants to negotiate.”

Major Abunda spat on the ground and cursed. “Let’s go.”

He stared balefully at Lt. Antonio when the latter indicated that he should leave his gun. He unceremoniously tossed the gun to the private, before he swaggered towards Benny. His lumbering frame leaving an unpleasant scent of cigarette and booze in his wake. Lt. Antonio followed him grudgingly, his growing disrespect for the major evident in his manner.

Benny met him halfway. ” You can’t force your way through, Major, ” Benny calmly pronounced.

” Oh, the charismatic rebel! ” the Major jeered, “perhaps not so much in his leadership abilities but because he is such a good looking man, more than anything else,” he continued sarcastically.

Benny ignored his remark. ” You have to accept defeat like a gentleman. As we speak, people from the barrio of Liba and Taloctoc are on their way,” he was thinking of Julia as he said this – his beloved Julia would soon be there.

“We will pass through by hook or by crook. Yes we will,” Major Abunda assured him condescendingly.

“All we want is to live in peace in the land that our forefathers tilled for decades even before you and I were born,” Benny continued, like he had not been interrupted. “Leave us in peace.”

Lt. Antonio, spoke for the first time, ” Ka Benny, the dam will provide the electricity that we need… ,” he was saying.

“That YOU need, Lt. Antonio. Let’s not argue about that again.”

“The government is willing to relocate them, ” the general cut in irritatedly, “now allow us to get on with our job”.

“Don’t you see Major? You obey your orders because it is your job, but these people are here because they believe in their cause. Now that the peace pact is in place, they will have peace. They have simple needs and simple wants. They are happy with what they have right now. They consider this land holy and sacred and would be willing to die for it.”

“So you won’t mediate and tell them to leave peacefully,” Major Abunda spat angrily.

“No, I came here to help avoid bloodshed. Think about it Major. You will be the first one to go down in Philippine history as the notorious officer who murdered hundreds of unarmed and innocent civilians. I am telling you now, they won’t give in. ” Benny was speaking to the Major but he was looking at Lt. Antonio.

Major Abunda’s face flashed a crimson red. “Let’s see, ” he said and turned on his heels in rage. Lt. Antonio ran to keep up with him.

“Ka Benny is a rebel, shoot him,” he commanded Lt. Antonio

Lt. Antonio looked at him agape. “We can’t do that here sir, he’s unarmed, and we have hundreds of witnesses. “

“Shoot them!” he roared the command to the soldiers behind him.

No one moved. The company of soldiers stood at attention – but no one moved.

Photo by: Department of Defense

The conversation that occurred in the middle of the road echoed a hundred fold due to the deathly quietness around them, and the soldiers had heard every point Benny raised. Most of them came from tribal minorities and they understood what Benny had firmly and uneqiuvocally stated.

One would not understand this, if one did not live in that part of the mountains.

They also trusted the judgment of Lt. Antonio and they were willing to stand behind his decision – court martial or no court martial! They have been under his direct command for years now and he had proven to be a competent and able leader.

Generals and Majors usually come and go!

“What are you waiting for, shoot them,” the Major roared.

“Sir, we can’t do that. ” Lt. Antonio’s face was incredulous.

Still no one obeyed the order.

Without warning, the Major grabbed his gun and fired several rounds at Benny. One bullet found its mark, and Benny went down with a painful groan.

Anxious cries came from the women and children, they surged forward like a herd gone berserk.

Lt. Antonio grappled for the gun from the Major, “Don’t shoot, Don’t shoot!” he shouted to the men behind them.

There was a short scuffle and the Major was finally disarmed and handcuffed.

” I place you under arrest for the attempted murder of Ka Benny,” Lt. Antonio went into the litany of the Major’s rights.

The Major was livid with anger but he stopped struggling. “You will all pay for this in a court martial, ” he screeched at them, but no one listened to him.

Lt. Antonio summoned the medic and they ran towards Benny.

Benny was trying to sit up and was reassuring everyone he was fine, “It’s just a minor wound,”

But the large amount of blood that was splattered on the dusty, dry ground told the opposite story.

Lt. Antonio knew Benny was downplaying the injury. This was to avoid inspiring the people’s wrath which would have caused a confrontation between the two groups.

He knew in his heart, Benny would give up his life for his people’s safety and happiness.

The medic, worriedly whispered something to Lt. Antonio.

Lt. Antonio tapped Benny lightly on the shoulder, ” Well , mate, it seems, I have captured one of the regional commanders of the NPA. I will have to turn you in. You need prompt and highly specialized, medical attention ,” he said nonchalantly, injecting the gaiety in his voice which he did not feel.

Lt. Antonio’s admiration for Benny, was evident. “Don’t worry, I’ll personally take charge of you”. They will have to call in the helicopter, Lt. Antonio was extremely worried.

Benny opened his eyes and smiled weakly at his former, college classmate, ” Well,. you deserve it lieutenant. Turn me in, and earn the accolade. Just leave my people alone.”

(TO BE CONTINUED)

HOME

BACK TO UMMA AYAM CHAPTERS
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________

If someone told me less than four months ago that I would be a blogger, I would laugh it off.
You see, at that time, I didn’t even know what a blog was all about.

But let me tell you this significant story from the start.

I work with the academe. I try my best to meet up with the ideals of the university where I am engaged in. It is a daunting and formidable task, because it requires one not only to have a mastery of the subject matter but also to be innovative enough to be able to incorporate the updates in science and technology – into one’s didactic methodology.

It was for this reason that I wanted to conduct an experimental study on how I could effectively use solely – the world wide web resources in my particular subject.

One computer expert in the University advised me to open a main “site” of my own.

“How will I do that?” (I only know the basic rudiments of the computer) I could not help but ask him.

“Just surf in the internet, and you’ll learn how.” was the curt reply.

…So there I was, hunkered down on the computer, going over pages and pages of related literature.

Then I chanced upon this:

” Blogger create your blog now — Free!”

I was curious what it was all about, so I clicked on it and followed the prompts.
I got excited when I learned that by making use of this “blog”, I would be able to write about anything under the sun and be “published” in the internet. Incidentally, I forgot to mention earlier that I love writing. In fact, I would have ended up being a journalist if my parents didn’t insist otherwise.

“There is no money in writing, ” they said. Topic closed.

I didn’t have the option but to be an obedient child.

Going back to the story – so that day, I created my very first blog.

I wrote my first post – it was entitled: “ The Value of Honesty”.
It was composed of only one paragraph. I was just curious of how it would work.

As soon as I saw the outcome, I was hooked. I started “blogging”, and within the week, I created 5 blogs (imagine that!) – each with a topic of its own.

And yes, I was able to create 2 blogs for my subject.

After several days however, I realized that my blogs did not appear in any search engine.

I had presumed that they would, because they have been created for the internet. Sadly though, people came to me asking what the URLs were as they could not find them.

So I conducted another search and found this; “Add Your URL to Google”. I got some pointers from google and painstakingly copied the meta tags, etc, to my blogs.

Would you believe me if I say that I had 15 tries before I was able to properly paste the verification code to my blogs’ HTML?

I was ready to give up then!

This computer language was all Greek to me and I didn’t know the “body tag” even if it was there in front of me.

But because of my desire to write, I persisted and learned painstakingly and slowly.

All my sites now had the verification codes in their HTML. BRAVO!

I had also started enlisting my blogs in Bloglists and other blog ranking sites.

To my dismay though, I still got little traffic.

I had a snippet of success – my blogs’ names now appear with google search but not with any other search engine.

I wanted to be read just like any blogger. I wrote because I loved to.
But wouldn’t it be wonderful to share these thoughts, ideas and facts with people around the globe – regardless of race, color or creed? I wanted to share with others my culture in this corner of the world, and learn from them too.

I had dreamed about this to happen one day.

Miracle of miracles, IT DID eventually!

And this is how it happened.

I was going over an interesting site which I had chanced upon the search engine when I noticed this small rectangular logo - ENTRECARD!
I clicked on it and it led me to another site. I discovered that the card was like an endless link to several blogs.

“Get one” the card said, so I registered and got one – more out of curiosity.

And that was the day, my real blogging days began.

I met writers who were excellent in their own genre of writing. The icing on the cake was that- my traffic and rank increased in leaps and bounds.

I could now type “The Clamor of Kalinga” in any search engine and it appears in one of the top searches, or even on top of all the search results.

I have discovered a new and exciting world.

There were varieties of blogs dealing with any topic that I could think of. Blogs that were simply amazing and incredibly informative.

I realized the fact, that to be able to maximize the benefits of entrecard. I will have to consider that entrecard is a community of people – of bloggers, and that in a community – respect for one another, understanding and cooperation – should be observed.

Presently, I try to reach the maximum drops per day, but I don’t make it as my sole target. I usually stop and comment on articles I find worth reading and there are several noteworthy and information laden posts. It is much more rewarding to learn something new and interact with people all around the globe.

I took my chances with ENTRECARD and I had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

I laud ENTRECARD for continuously trying to improve their services. I am sure the blogging community recognizes your efforts.

Without you, blogging would never be a dynamic experience.

TO ENTRECARD , THANK YOU AND MORE POWER!

By Francis Scudellari

Careless he falls into ritual pose
Do dropped, down before this mothering knot;
Her gathering brown limbs, machine-carved smooth
In hollow, molded arc, to cradle him;

His knees nudge close, drawn by a heavy pulse,
Curiosity fed by seeming cord;
Hesitant he fingers the glassy skin,
Conceiving ways through this liquid portal;

Pressed tips against her bulged belly aglow,
Electric blue halos ripple round each;
Touch-transmitted urge: to be reverse born,
Head-first pulled again into womb-like warmth;

To lie, fetal curled in a bubble’s bath,
Washed in white noise, Technicolor shadows;
His senses bombarded numb, readied when
He’s unquestioning tossed, back to the world.

ABOUT THE POET AND THE ARTIST:

FRANCIS SCUDELLARI of CAUGHT IN THE STREAM (Abstracting Art From Life), is an artist extraordinaire. He draws/paints, writes short stories and poems. His poems have a particular enigmatic appeal that leaves the reader a wide variety of wondrous interpretations.

His artist’s hand reminds me of Gadamer ’s hermeneutic approach to literature and arts – that of an interplay between the artist and the receiver; that the representation the art implies, should not be taken as is , but as a part of the union of what the artist wants to symbolize and the receiver’s personal experiences . The “space ” between the two is merged. This then produces a new meaning for each viewing individual/receiver – to his work of art.

The poem above is for the drawing posted below. Observe how you would relate the wonderful poem to his drawing. You would experience what I have cited above – the merging of your perception and of his – a dynamic interplay. That is what ” true art” is all about!

Visit his blog and be amazed at his unique brand of art and literature.

Thank you Francis, for the honor.