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Abe Florendo who was my editor at TODAY asked me to contribute an essay to a book he’s putting together. The subject is Teachers. My mother was a public school teacher. Here’s a snippet from my essay.

Paakpaak. Sculpture by Leo Abaya.

My mother had a reputation as an excellent teacher, slightly fearsome in the enforcement of standards, but fair. Her students seemed devoted to her—they frequently hung around our house after school, sometimes with their mothers. True, many of them were her co-teachers.

I don’t know if this sort of extracurricular fraternizing (sororizing?) is condoned these days, but it seemed perfectly natural in the Seventies. In fact my mother would casually tell her students’ mothers, “Ay naku mare, medyo mahina ang utak ng anak mo at may katamaran.” (My dear, your kid is a little slow on the uptake and rather lazy.) Then they would laugh, and within hearing distance of the child in question.

Under the current code this would be denounced as a violation of the student’s rights and self-esteem, but my mother’s brutal honesty had good results. Her pupils, she pointed out, became doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, managers, and expats. She taught them to exercise their strengths, mitigate their failings, and accept themselves for what they were. It’s the kind of clear-eyed appraisal we lack in this digital age, when technology enables and empowers so much mediocrity.

A still from Kagadanan sa Banwaan ning nga Engkanto (Death in the Land of Encantos)

There are too many self-proclaimed experts making pompous, facile statements about Maguindanao as if they knew what they were talking about. We need to hear from someone who’s actually lived there and knows what it’s like, not just theoretically but viscerally.

Sherad Sanchez (who made Huling Balyan Ng Buhi and Imburnal) reminded me that Lav Diaz (Heremias, Encantos) is from Maguindanao. So I emailed Lav Diaz, who is in New York to visit his kids. He will be back after Xmas to finish his film in Bicol. His reply:

“Maguindanao… ang hirap, ang sakit. I’m numbed. Puro iyak at galit na lang ang nagagawa natin. Last May, I participated in La Salle University’s “Designing Peace: The Role of Imagination in Conflict Resolution”. I submitted an installation piece called Mindanao: A work-in-progress.

“Salamat gid. Lav”

Published my Favorite Books list of 2009 too early. Since posting the list I’ve read another four or five books that belong in it. But then I’d have to knock out entries from the previous list and I like them all. So let’s just say there was an early cutoff and leave it at that.

The best beginning of a novel I read in 2009 is that of No Tomorrow by Vivant Denon, a writer and artist who worked for Louis XV, survived the revolution, joined Napoleon and became his director-general of museums. That wing of the Louvre is named after him.

The first lines:

“I was desperately in love with the Comtesse de _____; I was twenty years old and I was naive. She deceived me, I got angry, she left me. I was naive, I missed her. I was twenty years old, she forgave me, and, because I was twenty years old, because I was naive—still deceived, but no longer abandoned—I thought myself to be the best-loved lover, and therefore the happiest of men.”

Yes, like Choderlos de Laclos, but very short.

The last line:

“I looked hard for the moral of this whole adventure. . .and found none.”

No Tomorrow is an NYRB Classics original with the English translation by Lydia Davis and the text in French. The effect is to make you feel like you know French. With an introduction by Peter Brooks. I found this copy at National in Rockwell, P545.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our last LitWit Challenge for the year: Heating Up Twilight. Your entries were disgusting, gross, hideous, and better than the originals! The winning Twilight rewrite gets a box set of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga. The winner is…fork scraping across blackboard…root!

As for the readers who reserved copies of Twisted 8 1/2, we put all your names in a hat and picked out one winner. (We didn’t publish your names, so you’ll have to take our word for it.) The winner gets this big, good-looking book:

The winner is. . .sound of cats fighting. . .daibasu!

Congratulations, root and daibasu. You can pick up your prizes any day after Saturday, 26 December, at Wild Ginger restaurant in the basement of Power Plant, Rockwell, Makati (If it’s too far you can have someone pick it up, no problem).

More LitWit Challenges next year. Thanks to everyone who joined our weekly contests, we all had a blast. The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by the very nice people of National Bookstore.

Photo from the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day archive.

The winter solstice is at 1747, their time (+800 ours). Doesn’t mean much around here, but the shortest day of the year seems like a good time to wind up unfinished business. We’ll announce the winners of the ongoing contests—the LitWit Rewrite Twilight challenge and the raffle for readers who reserved copies of Twisted 8 1/2—at 8pm. We are no longer accepting reservations, but if you have a last-minute Twilight rewrite (and 7 times out of 10 it’s better than the Meyer) post it now so you’re eligible for the prize.

It’s also the season of benders, when you overindulge at office parties in a vain effort to avert your eyes from the dance numbers. Here’s something to do on your next drunken binge: Buy a Warhol! Hugh Grant did. For 2 million pounds. Then he sold it for 13 million pounds so that was a good hangover. We like a rich person who gets drunk and buys art.

Bad Astronomy’s Top 10 Astronomy Pictures of 2009.