On writing and being read:what do you write?

BENCHWARMER

Ramon Dacawi

 A journalism student asked me this when he dropped by one Wednesday afternoon.Why ask me, I asked. He said he saw this corner of this paper and decided to visit. He said the interview was in fulfillment of an assignment in his writing class. 

The young man’s question somehow affirmed the sneaky suspicion that had crept up my brain way back in college - about some columns being read by no one except those whose by-lines are attached to them. And a more recent one – about newspapers not being read, much less studied, even by those who study to become journalists.

 If he did read this column before coming to interview, he would have skipped  the “what” and focused on the “how” and “why”. He did ask those questions and drew answers which were partly cautious so as not to give the impression of ego-boosting, mental dishonesty or false humility.

We write, or talk, because we have a story to share which we want to be read or heard. Whether we’re read or heard depends on the timing and how, as the message lies on the medium.  To be read or listened to without our imposition is definitely the only measure of our work’s effectiveness.  That’s why we try to rein in the urge to talk about our own work. Except, of course, when triggered by a colleague’s own display of his story or photo on the front page of a national daily he is trying to attach himself to.  

The ego outbursts happen during those nights of loosening up with alcohol, to bring to stable levels the surge of adrenalin common to practitioners of one the most stressful and lowest-paying jobs around. Really, alcohol works wonders. It sharpens the tongue and loosens the brain, or loosens the tongue and sharpens the brain. Or both.

Gin, pressure of work and our week-end arguments exhausted  me and my editor, Steve Hamada, to sleep while bedding The Baguio Midland Courier. It was one Saturday night, way back in the ‘80s, when the opinion pages had to be set in linotype, that giant typewriter that embosses on thick sheets of lead the words, phrases and lines.

Unable to stir us back to life, the letterpress machine operator ran the editorial  page without the usual proofreading. He was worried then Benguet Gov. Ben Palispis would find his Sunday morning incomplete, without his copy of the Courier on his usual breakfast table at Session Café, then the hang-out of politicians and newsmen that is now Jollibee’s.

I woke up too late to wake up Steve. He rushed to the printing  machine and  snatched a copy of the editorial page. I saw terror in his eyes when he saw the lines of the editorial he had labored on with the hand-me-down Underwood mangled and  garbled, beyond coherence. When the operator told him he was almost through printing all the copies, Steve pulled the sheet towards his glasses, covering his face in utter helplessness.

“Saan ka kadi nga madanagan no han nga maawatan dayta insurat mo, anak (Just don’t worry if what you wrote can’t be understood, son),” the operator said, unaware he was turning into a Job’s comforter.  “Ammom met nga awan ti agbasbasa ti editoryal (You know pretty well no one reads the editorial).”

I couldn’t look at Steve, whose editorials and column (Fore and Aft)  I had always read -  partly because I had to proof-read them on Saturday nights.

To help fulfill his class assignment (and my own need for “psychic income”), I told the journalism student what I write – and read.

I write about ordinary people with extraordinary deeds, people whose names may never hit the papers. The latest then was about Tessie Panis-Romero, a volunteer day-care worker at Gibraltar Barangay. She had passed on, after spending the last 20 years of her life quietly taking care of toddlers while  their parents work and earn for their own families.

Why them? Because I’m inspired by stories about  lesser mortals that are the stuff the great writings of Frank McCourt, Jimmy Breslin, Dennis Brady and Lane DeGregory are made of.

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, media sought the expressions of grief and loss from  heads of states and political news makers. Driving against the grain, Breslin sought out, interviewed and wrote about the grave-digger assigned to prepare the president’s resting place at Arlington .       

Breslin wrote that 42-year old Clifton Pollard had bacon and egg prepared by his wife Hettie, before he was pulled out to dig the grave on a Sunday morning

“He was a good man,” Pollard was quoted by Breslin. “Now they’re going to come and put him right here in this grave I’m making up. You know, it’s an honor just for me to do this.”

Breslin’s story has been hailed as a mini-classic in journalism. They said Pollard’s words somehow summed up America ’s - and  the world’s – deep sense of loss.

Humor is enough motivation for one to write, even at the writer’s expense.  I saw this  three years before I acquired dual citizenship (Filipino and senior at 60). I was then in the market where I  asked a woman vendor the price of a bunch of bitter gourd (ampalaya)  leaves piled on her winnowing basket..

“Sangapulo, tang (Ten pesos, old man),” the woman replied. Her answer astonished me, as I swear he was then  more than old enough to be my mother. Or grandmother.

 “Maysa man ngarud, nakkong  (I’ll buy one bunch then, daughter),” I said,. taking her drift.

She must have truly believed what I said was gospel truth. It swept her to cloud nine as her wrinkled face broke out into a toothless, unforgettable ear-to-ear grin. 

The journalism student asked me if my daughter Beng and son Boogie also write. Beng was exposed to writing as managing editor of The Beacon, the college student publication of the University of Baguio . Boogie began to write later with his wife Lovelyn (nee Pontino), perhaps as balm to their aching for home while trying to work and raise their two boys in Italy . The couple’s blogs are for my grandsons – Lukie and Dylan – to read when they grow up. 

I was irretrievably magnetized by Lovelyn’s narratives about her family roots. Sometimes  I would  fill this page with Boogie’s own stories.   After reading a couple of Boogie’s articles, lawyer Bangsoy, the husband of Annabelle (nee Codiase, one of the best Baguio feature writers before she quit to raise their kids), texted: “Your son should take over your column.”

My boyhood buddy CamiloCandelario, out there raising three dogs and  chasing balls on the greens of Falon, Nevada,  also confirmed my judgment right when he e-mailed: “Your son sees and feels better than you do.

My daughter Beng e-mailed about her meeting another girl in her group therapy session: “She admitted she  had no childhood; I’m luckier because I had one.”

 Juxtapose that to Michael Jackson’s childhood denied by early celebrity status.

Sometime in 2005, Boogie, responded soberly to my excited e-mail telling him that, finally, in this life-time, I got the chance to visit the Muir Redwood Forest in Northern California. From the airport, Cordillera expat Joel Aliping drove me to where stood the ancient and  giant trees, some of which sprouted before the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England to the New World.

Boogie wrote back he had read somewhere that the redwoods withstood the seasons and the elements  over the centuries by embracing each other, life family, through their roots.

Those notes make me proud of my children’s sensitivity. They make me feel better, not as a journalist, but as a father and grandfather on the other side of the globe.  

The icing is that these people closest to me read what I write. Even when, deadline-pressed to fill this week-end corner, I turn redundant.

Why do I write? Well, there’s a need to share stories about of ordinary people with extraordinary acts of selflessness.  

Personally, the eyes still well each time I remember Elena Solis’ selfless gesture five Christmases past. She was a laundrywoman who had been knocking on doors to tell people Manellaine, her then 21-year old daughter, needed help.

Manellaine, she said, was afflicted with lupus nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys caused by a disease of the immune system. The girl needed to undergo chemotherapy every quarter of the year, and the costs per cycle were beyond her family’s means.

 Once they read of the girl’s medical plight, Samaritans responded. One generous soul traced Elena  and contributed while she was doing laundry inside a church compound along Bokawkan Rd. Others followed suit, allowing Manellaine to complete her treatment protocol.

 Sometime that yuletide, Elena dropped by our cubicle to share the good news. Manellaine’s doctors said she had been cured, now free of the illness. Her mother came to ask that her gratitude be published.

There’s another thing, Elena added. “Gusto ko sanang ibigay n’yo ito sa sino mang maysakit at nangangailangan ng tulong (I wish you can give this to whoever is sick and is in need of help),” she said.

She handed me four P500 bills which I later handed as she wished.  (e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments.)