"The man with the boots does not
mind where he places his foot."


"My optimism wears heavy boots
and is loud."



I've had these bad boys for 25 years. My dad bought them for me in 1983 to replace a crappy pair of Moon Boots. To this day probably one of the nicest things he has ever done for me and that is saying a lot.

I have lost track of how many sets of laces and liners I have gone through.
If you click on the photo and look at the toes you can see that they're shot.

I'm not sure why it is that our footwear tends to personify us more than any other article of our apparel. When soldiers lose a comrade they will march past his empty boots and salute. Of all the outrageous excesses of the Marcos Regime it was Imelda's 1060 pairs of shoes that everyone (at least in the states) remembers.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
And without good footwear, you're going nowhere.

Good boots are like good friends. The better they are, the more you can count on them. They can be taken for granted without being insulted by it. But then again boots are inanimate objects and don't have feelings.

What the @#$!$% am I talking about anyway?

I've gotten a lot of traffic (Like double) lately from people looking for fish house designs but none of these freeloading sunkinthaditches comment on my posts. Is nobody commenting because the quality of my posts is crap, or is the quality of my posts crap because nobody comments? I guess either way if I had to ask it isn't a good thing. According to my stats my most loyal reader is the vi@gr@worm robot who hits my RSS feed like 6000 times a day when he's not busy lighting up my custom 404 page with obscene (and non-existent) URLs.

Sorry this post melted down. I really had high hopes for it, too.

But then again what do you care, whoever you are?
You weren't reading this anyway, were you?

Labels: Dad, Friends, Tagalog, Web_Site

I found these insulting political cartoons at History News Network in an article entitled "The Philippine-American War as Race War" written by a chap named Paul A. Kramer.

It is a wonderful article written about the Philippine-American War, a forgotten war fought from 1899 to 1902 (Until 1913 if you include the Moro rebellion).
The article appears to be a snapshot from his book about Philippine-American colonial history.

Just in case you were wondering, here are some Philippine-American War statistics:

• 4,324 American soldiers dead
  (1,000 to 1,500 of which were from actual combat; the remainder died of disease)
• 2,818 American soldiers wounded
• 20,000 Filipino combatants estimated killed (16,000 actually counted)
• 510,000 Filipino civilian deaths
  (Taking into account those killed by war, malnutrition and a cholera epidemic that raged during the war)

There is lots here I could say to draw parallels to the modern day insurgency that we are fighting, but the truth is that it could be better said by a man who was alive back then, whose words are as true now:

"There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it - perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands - but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector - not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now - why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation."
-Mark Twain

Labels: History, Tagalog

Almost time to go home and cook a tasty meal.
Huwag kalimutan ang kanin!

Labels: Food_and_Recipes, Moleskine, Tagalog

Mabuhay ang Goldilocks!

Labels: Coffee, Food_and_Recipes, Moleskine, Tagalog

Today was Philippine day at the Landmark center in St. Paul. Our Praise & Worship team played an accoustic number and I played a few songs with a rondalla group. We didn't have a lot of practice under our belts and I could only hear the instruments on either side of me so I don't know how we sounded as an ensemble. Given the accoustics of the Landmark, if we did sound bad I doubt anyone noticed.

My sister Karen and my brother in law Dale brought my dad and they managed to catch both performances. They sampled the pinoy food and watched the folk dances. It was good to have dad in the crowd. I know that mom would have enjoyed herself too if she had been there. She never missed a chance to see me play.

Next Saturday is the celebration for Mama & Papa's 50th wedding anniversary. Their daughter Josephine had her tourist visa approved this past week. With her will come an octavina for me. I am excited about getting & learning a new instrument.

I got lots of pictures which I still need to unload & resize. I'll try to get those up later.

Labels: Music, Rondalla, Tagalog

"Maligayang Bati Sa Iyong Kaarawan" (Happy Birthday) to Gonzalo ("Papa") Olojan Sr., who is 78 years young today. Actually in his Cebuano dialect it would be "Maayong pagsaulog sa adlaw nga natawhan."

Papa was born in 1928 on the Philipine island of Leyte. He was twelve years old when the Japanese invaded his country. Like so many of his generation, he witnessed firsthand the brutality that was inflicted on his fellow countrymen during the war. He witnessed some of the battles between Japanese and American forces on and around Leyte during the liberation.

As he grew into a man he became an accomplished pastor in the PI (Philipine Islands) and in his prime had a very successful radio broadcast that went out each day over the lunch hour to reach workers who hungered for spiritual food.

In 1991 he came to Minnesota along with his wife Anita ("Mama") and helped to found the Filipino-American Christian Church. To this day he serves there as pastor emetrius.

Papa & Mama have earned their affectionate titles by acting as surrogate parents for so many of the Filipino transplants in the greater Minnesota community. Indeed, it was Papa who walked my beautiful wife down the aisle when her parents were unable to make it to the U.S. to attend our american wedding. Papa and Mama both have taken it upon themselves to act as my son's maternal grandparents in the absence of my wife's parents, earning themselves the additional titles of "Lolo" and "Lola" respectively.

Papa is an accomplished musician, talented in the guitar, Bandurria, Laud, piano, trumpet and the accordian. There isn't an instrument that the man couldn't learn how to play.

Papa has touched the hearts of countless people with his gentle demeanor forged with a firm and convicted faith in the Lord, and he never tires of spreading the Gospel or doing the Lord's work.

So here is my birthday wishes to Papa Olojan, may the Lord bless you with many more years!

Labels: Family, Friends, Life, Music, Rondalla, Tagalog

Summer is wizzing by at breakneck speed. I have not gotten out fishing again and August is halfway over. I spent part of yesterday afternoon visiting with mom at the hospital. There are rumors that she may have recovered to the point where she can be placed in a nursing home. It's hard to imagine that as an improvement on anyone's circumstances but in her case it is. The isolation and the amount of time she is spending alone is making her fuzzy around the edges, in a mental sense. I helped to sharpen her up by quizzing her on her sister's family. Who married who, who had what kids, which ones went to jail for writing bad checks, etc.

Well, I didn't ask about that last part, she just offered it up. The message is loud and clear to me that every day we have this woman around is a gift. She is not going to be able to answer these questions later, they need to be asked now, today. I have always been a bit of a genealogy buff, but this latest onset has come with a greater sense of urgency. The clock is ticking. And really there is no better time than when she is laid up with nothing to do. For a couple hours yesterday my mother had some purpose and was able to feel useful, which is something that she has not been able to do for quite some time.

I didn't get all the answers I wanted. There was a lot of grey area, but then again many of the facts I can get from my sisters. The point was to hear it from the horse's mouth. It is sad that the American cultural norm is to stick our elderly into storage, with little or no real mental stimulation. The mind dies off first, and the body lingers on like an unwelcome guest. I married into a culture that reveres their elderly and looks to them for wisdom and guidance. I get so caught up in my day to day life that more often than not I find myself more an American than the 'Filipino with a skin condition' that I boast of being. When I think of how much time I have let slip by, how many unanswered questions there are that I would like to ask my parents, I feel ashamed.

I thanked her for sharing and I promised to visit her again soon.

I meant it on both accounts.

Labels: Life, Mom, Summer, Tagalog

Sheesh. Another week goes by. March is practically shot, isn't it?

Mom got out of the nursing home last week. She's at home with dad. I don't think things will ever be back to the way that they were, but at least now they are back together. I don't think I could live away from the wife for three months. I think that would be worse than the stay in the nursing home.

We were supposed to get the motherload of snow today. Apparently down south they are, but here in the western suburbs (I'm at work right now) nary a flake. I suppose by tomorrow we will be lucky to find a hard frost on the ground.

After work tonight I am dropping by Mama & Papa Olojan's and dropping off Papa's La'ud. Last night I restrung it for him so that he can sound good at Philipine day at the Landmark Center this coming Sunday.

Mama & Papa are going back to the Philippines in April. When the come back they are bringing me a laud of my own. Hopefully Papa will teach me a few songs.

Have a great weekend.

Labels: Family, Mom, Snow, Tagalog