Lolo Iloy and his Anting Anting

Petronilo Noble de Vera was  grandfather to my mother.  She refers to him as Lolo Iloy.   She says “Ang apellido ng aking Lolo Iloy ay Noble de Vera.  Noong matagal na ay inalis na nang mga kastila ang isa.  Kagaya ng Bonus, iyan ay Bonus Santos at inalis ang Santos. “  (The surname of my Grandpa Iloy is Noble de Vera.  Eventually the Spaniards removed part of the surname, such as Bonus which was Bonus Santos but the Santos was removed.)

Aside from the confrontation incident with the Spanish artillery, my mother is proud to say that the baptismal records during that period bears his grandfather’s calligraphy.  Lolo Iloy was Escribiente of the Catholic Church in Pandacan.  As a young lad, he left his hometown, Saluysoy, Meykawayan, Bulacan and tagged along with priests which brought him to several places and eventually in Pandacan, Manila where he spent the rest of his life.

My mother used tell me that Lolo Iloy had an “anting-anting”, the kind which fell from the banana tree during the full moon; at midnight, one had to wrestle with evil spirits for the first drop of dew from the banana blossom.   The victor gets to keep the amulet, a pearl like droplet which one captures in a white handkerchief and swallows making one immortal.  Lolo Iloy, at the time of his death suffered an ordeal that tormented him so much he had to vomit the amulet to expire peacefully.  She also said that Lolo Iloy also had  an “oracion” in latin which gave him powers.

But that was when I was still very young and even then, I was already skeptical.  As I grew up, she stopped the anting anting story.  I learned to dismiss that part as a tall tale meant to wow children.

But she kept mentioning that her grandfather prayed in latin, something that was not unusual during that era.  One latin prayer that she kept mentioning  was “Sanctus Deus, Sanctus Fortis, Sanctus Immortális, miserére nobis..” 

I later discovered this to be from the Angelic Trisagion, a prayer of antiquity was unfamiliar to many Catholics.   Lately, it has gained a following as the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy.

Petronilo Noble

To localize the rebellion, Governor Ramon Blanco declared martial law on August 30, 1896.   Katipunan General Ramon Bernardo fled with what remained of his men who were armed only with bolos and outnumbered by the Spaniards hunting them. His troops dispersed to avoid being captured.  One soldier named Florentino Policarpio who accompanied the general became sick and was entrusted to compatriots at Masambong.  Bernardo wrote an account of his experience:

“We were defeated in the heated battle at Santa Mesa.  I had a thousand troops, more or les,who were armed with either bolos or guns.  We were overwhelmed by the superior number and arms of our enemy.  Many of my men died or were wounded; most of those seriously wounded were capured by the Spaniards.”

For weeks, the general continued to wander  around Caloocan, Biak na Bato and Balara where he was able to regroup with Bonifacio.  Meanwhile, the Spanish focused on Pandacan due to its notoriety as a “cradle of agitators” and being the home of General Bernardo. 

A battery of cannons was "nakaumang sa Pandacan" when the town was put under "juez de cuchillo" law according to Ricardo Mendoza, former principal of Zamora Elementary School.   Nobody dared to go out of their homes but it was Petronilo Noble who got out of the church raising a flag of truce who negotiated with the Spanish battery to spare the residents.  

Perhaps he convinced them that the Katipuneros have all left to join the fighting at Santa Mesa.  Noble was the parish escribiente and probably a prayerful soul that seeked the intercession of the Sto Niño.   Jocelyn Uy writing for the Philippine Daily Inquirer says the Sto. patron saint of Pandacan "saved the town from being crushed by Spanish colonial troops in the 1890s."

How Noble convinced the Spanish commander, no one remembers.  An inconspicuous street at Beata was later named Petronilo Noble.  

PHOTO: Spanish battery of two 8-centimeter caliber guns firing at Filipinos at the Zapote River bridge, Cavite Province.

Gen. Ramon Bernardo

On August 29, 1896 the Philippine Revolution was inaugurated with the ringing of the church bells.  General Ramon Bernardo of Pandacan was one of the key players.  General Santiago Alvarez, in “The katipunan and the revolution: memoirs of a general” says:

 “The troops under Gen. Ramon Bernardo were divided and organized into three contingents under the leadership of Katipuneros Celestino Manuel, Miguel Resurreccion, and Angel Bulong, respectively.  An hour after the siege at Mandaluong, they attacked the town hall of Pandacan; and they took it without resistance and easily confiscated two guns.  However, as in Mandaluyong, the parish priest eluded arrest; Father Angel of Pandacan had fled before the Katipuneros came.”

After taking Pandacan, Bernardo next turned his attention to Santa Mesa.  The column was waiting until morning for Bonifacio’s forces to join them.  Unfortunately, Bonifacio decided to go back to Balara for his men to rest.  

While Bernardo’s men were having breakfast, enemy troops fired at them.  The katipuneros fought gallantly but they suffered heavy losses.  The plan to take Manila failed.

Big Miracle

The story of  Crossbeak, Bonnet and Bone has been made into a movie with a 40 million dollar budget.  "Big Miracle" is based on the book "Freeing the Whales" by Thomas Rose and news reports about the incident at Port Barrow.  Showing in the US started on February 3 and to date has grossed 17 million dollars.  Philippine Release is on May 2012.

The names of the whales were changed to "Fred, Wilma and Bamm-Bamm" as well as a cast of fictional characters including a TV journalist (Adam Carlson}, a Greenpeace activist (Rachel Kramer)  an oil-company executive (Ted Danson), a struggling reporter (Kristen Bell); a National Guard officer (Dermot Mulroney); an Inupiat whaler (John Pingayak).

"Big Miracle" has the air of a workplace comedy played out in subzero weather.  John Krasinski plays Adam Carlson and Drew Barrymore plays Rachel Kramer.

My First Brawl

At four years of age, I went to nursery school at the parish convent. My first teacher was Mrs. Lucina Alday who lives in the same street where my father built a new house for us. My favorite school mate was a curly haired kid named Hector. He was very talkative and always had a running nose. I envied kids with running noses and wondered why I didn’t suffer the same privilege.

One day, during the customary recess, I noticed a group of four or five boys at the church patio. Hector was one of them and he seemed to have a nice discussion going on with another boy named Jimmy. I approached hoping to take part in their small convention. As I drew near, I heard Hector tell Jimmy “How about this one, will you fight him?”

Whatever dispute they had then, I did not have any idea. To this day, I still wonder what in Hector got us into doing what we did.

Before I knew what was happening, Jimmy and I were throwing fists at each other. Goodness, I never had any idea what fighting was all about. There was no television then and any form of physical combat was not in my vocabulary. But I did lock his neck in one arm and pummeled his head with the other.

Blood gushed out of his nose. No, I was not surprised even if that was the first time in my life that I saw blood. I must’ve thought it was just another case of a running nose.

I don’t know if I was delighted and had no any intention of stopping the fight. I never thought that I should go to my corner. No, I had no intention of allowing my opponent a chance to get his second wind.

Thank heavens, some of the other boys had the sense to stop the fight. But I was not mean. I was just a four year old who didn’t know what was going on.



PHOTO: PandAcan Catholic Kindergarten (circa 1948).  Front Row: Val Atienza and Jimmy Fajardo (2^nd and 3^rd from left).  Second Row: Vic Cruz, Pepe Bunda, Jose Carreon and Mrs. Lucing Alday (1^st, 4^th, 5^th and 6^th from left).  Third Row: Christia Umali, Erlana Gillo (3^rd and 6^th from left).  Fourth Row: Hector Kulot and Bayani Beltran.

First Published on June 16, 2006

For Want Of A Nail

Calesas are horse drawn carriages that was once the mode of transport in Manila.  This horse unshods a shoe as the cochero tries a farrier's job of shoeing the horse in the middle of Orosa Street at Rizal Park.  Reminds one of that proverbial rhyme on the importance of little things.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The Rainbow Passage

When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with its path high above, and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Throughout the centuries people have explained the rainbow in various ways. Some have accepted it as a miracle without physical explanation. To the Hebrews it was a token that there would be no more universal floods. The Greeks used to imagine that it was a sign from the gods to foretell war or heavy rain. The Norsemen considered the rainbow as a bridge over which the gods passed from earth to their home in the sky. Others have tried to explain the phenomenon physically. Aristotle thought that the rainbow was caused by reflection of the sun’s rays by the rain.

Since then physicists have found that it is not reflection, but refraction by the raindrops which causes the rainbows. Many complicated ideas about the rainbow have been formed. The difference in the rainbow depends considerably upon the size of the drops, and the width of the colored band increases as the size of the drops increases. The actual primary rainbow observed is said to be the effect of super-imposition of a number of bows. If the red of the second bow falls upon the green of the first, the result is to give a bow with an abnormally wide yellow band, since red and green light, when mixed, form yellow. This is a very common type of bow, one showing mainly red and yellow, with little or no green or blue.

The Rainbow Passage is one of the most common standard reading passages used to test an individual’s ability to produce connected speech. It was designed to contain almost all the English phonemes (it’s missing ʒ and the glottal stop).  It is a public domain text, can be found on page 127 of the 2nd edition of Grant Fairbanks’ Voice and Articulation Drillbook. New York: Harper & Row.