Culture and Arts Notebook

POEM     The sun will rise and set this day The sap will flow unseen to clothe the coffee bark of stark and wintry trees anew a primorous virgin green And I shall flow with morning, afternoon and twilight…

BOOK REVIEW     The world is on fire like never before: “Wildfires Have Erupted Across the Globe Scorching Places That Rarely Burned Before” (CNN headlines July 22, 2021) but not only is fire raging, Biblical floods are destroying entire…

TELEVISION FICTION/BROADCAST MEDIA       by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury In 1939, the Nazi regime in Germany under the command of nefarious Adolf Hitler carried out a program called the T4, euthanizing hundreds of thousands of people with autism,…

POEM       Wax and wane days weeks whoosh by I am seasons a door ajar   last year’s grass cut soon overgrown my young cats here a decade old   birdsong evening blooms   incense wafts Oropel by…

ESSAY       By Mona Gonzalez We must safeguard the web of life and care about the other living species that we share this planet with. Pygmy tarsiers eat and host bugs that we’ve seen at home — insects,…

MEDIA     by Perfecto Caparas PHILIPPINE journalists and various media organizations recently signed a pledge “to provide accurate, reliable and essential information that will empower voters and encourage public discussion and debate” in the lead-up to the nation’s May…

BOOK COMMENTARY Guwahati, 21 July 2021: India does not only preach but practices secularism, democracy and pluralism as the great nation follows the concept of vasudhaiva kutumbakam (world is one). Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Dr. Mohan Bhagwat, while inaugurating…

ARTIST’S PROFILE I first met Junyee when I was a student at the University of the Philippines in the early seventies. Together with some artist friends, we would later visit him when he began living in the campus of UP,…

POEM  I love your poetry he said and poured his soul into my teacup   I was as usual afire with thirst It was still winter   No end in sight   Being a geisha of words an angel stunned…

INDIGENOUS CULTURE By Fr. Samuel Maximo and Genevieve Balance Kupang Ayuweng emanates from the sacred land, the heartbeats and music of the Cordillera indigenous peoples. The animating sound-beats of the land in harmony with the umili’s (village’s) chants, the sound…