sunday workout

Ah, the Sunday paper. It's the only issue I read nowadays. On weekdays, I get my news either online or from a ticker running on the bottom of my TV screen. But there's something about Sunday that evokes-- or even demands-- the nostalgia of an old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness newspaper made of real paper. I spend many leisurely hours happily opening and folding piles and piles of grubby newsprint (because on Sundays, periodicals attempt to drown us in paper), just absorbing the myriad of wonderful ideas and events that seem to proliferate only on Sundays.

It is my firm belief that writers who are published in the Sunday paper are smarter, communicate better and are more relevant. They are less frivolous than the rest of the week's so-called serious journalists. They write about things that really matter (so trite, I know... but true) and the stuff that challenges the mind, feeds the soul and makes life worth living from Monday to Saturday. They're the people I would kill to be stuck on a desert island with: Jessica Zafra, Scott Garceau, Patricia Evangelista, Louie Cruz, Ruben V. Napales, Adel Tamano, Gilda Cordero Fernando and Chit Roces, just to name a few.

Last Sunday, 6 November 2011, F Sionil Jose wrote The Man who Holds a Candle: Cesar Virata in the Marcos Regime for The Philippine Star.

Basilico del Santo Niño, Cebu City, Philippines. 10 October 2011, 7:25AM.

An excerpt: "The creation of a stable and just state has always been man's greatest aspiration from ancient times to the present. The need for absolutes in morality as guidance, as a measure by which the legitimacy of the ruler is measured is always necessary, but such absolutes are more of a goal than a given in any government. The huge gray area between black and white is where many of us act out our fates."

Whoa. You talkin' to me?

Here's one more: "The abolition of poverty-- the wherewithal to diminish it and injustice as well-- does not spring from political or economic ideology but from a stern moral imperative."

In other words, to alleviate poverty, a nation must be led by someone who truly has the interests of the poor at heart, and who doesn't think of "helping the poor" as a mere intellectual exercise. This usually means someone who is poor himself. The problem is, the rich people won't let the poor lead.

Tomorrow is Sunday. Time to give the brain a little workout.