A Few Words About My List Of Ten Books + 1

Many of us have read hundreds of books. So, when friends asked what ten books stand out from top of mind, I found out that there is a reason for our choices apart from hoarding these in our book shelves. 

The first on my list is the Human Agenda by Dr. Roderic Gorney. From this book, I learned the mantra that happiness is a result or a derivative of a zestful engagement with love, work and play. In this book, I saw the biological sciences as the cupcake and the social sciences as the icing. 

           Picture credit: Title Wave (a Facebook page)

Then, from Wind, Sand & Stars, the voice of Antoine de Saint Exupery, who also wrote the The Little Prince, has stayed with me. This pioneer pilot was stranded in the desert and these lines are worth quoting,"Here I possessed nothing in the world. I was no more than a mortal strayed between sand and stars, conscious of the single blessing of breath. And yet I discovered myself filled with dreams....and shutting my eyes I gave myself up to the enchantment of my memory."

In the non fiction Fear of Fifty, Erica Jong, who wrote the bestseller Fear of Flying, looks at life in anticipation after the age of fifty: our feminism, sex, love, marriage, getting older and the writing life. My favorite is the chapter on "Dona Juana Gets Smart, or A Good Girl's Guide to Bad Boys." I have used some wisdom here in counseling women whose husbands have cheated them. A few lines from that chapter: To the wife: "You can realize it has nothing to do with you. He does it for his manhood, not against your womanhood." And then, of course, Polyamory is another philosophy or state or books, altogether. 

American Pastoral, by Philip Roth is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. This novel using the social upheavals of the 60's and the 70's as backdrop is a poignant tale of a successful businessman who just wanted an idyllic pastoral in New Jersey then suddenly finds his daughter caught up in political activism and terrorism in protest of the Vietnam war and this single incident shatters the imagined perfect American life. This daughter, as told by the narrator in a high school reunion, stands to inherit great wealth but choose to  live in squalor in the slums of Newark & continued to set off several bombs. American Pastoral is one of 100 "all time greatest novels" by TIME.

American Pastoral is now a 2016 movie: 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/13/american-pastoral-ewan-mcgregor-roth-review

I am fascinated by the life of Michael Crichton who has a degree in Medicine from Harvard & went on to be one of our bestselling authors who wrote Jurassic Park, Sphere, etc. His book Travels is a non fiction and chronicles his travels as a way of finding a facet of oneself in a different setting. 

From America to Africa: Voices of Filipino Women Overseas & edited by Lorna Kalaw -Tirol is a reader on diaspora & the life of the Filipino woman who is found all over the planet. My favorite chapter is Setting The World's Women Free and written by lawyer Emelina Quintillan. 

A sequel to Passages, the book by Gail Sheehy on the predictable crises of adult life is New Passages: Mapping Your Life Across Time. A good reading of real life stories and of new chances and options at second adulthood called the retirement age and what we fondly call the "seasoned senior citizen" years. 

For my international course on Sexuality, our reader is Culture, Society & Sexuality by Parker & Aggleton edition. This is a book on sexuality discourses and its socio-cultural & historical underpinnings that can guide us on how to proceed to do more research & training & as an aid in crafting policy instruments. 

On Writing by Stephen King explains how writing proceeds from words to paragraphs & elegant language; why writing is a solitary pursuit and why writing as art is done always away from the noise of life.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway is set in Paris and provides great tips for writing; and even on how to end addiction immortalized in these words, "....By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But, if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better...." 

             Picture credit: Title Wave (a Facebook page)

Finally, I hope you will have access to my chapter (Chapter 6)  from our new book published by Springer and the title is The Sociology of Sharia: Case Studies from Around the World. 

Latest edition: 1st appeared online: April 11, 2023 

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-27188-5_8?fbclid=IwAR1jFfmkrVvpWsZ4YZ0orCEpNADUA8ZTpmjpmsesrbyJ_UpLI5ONOEAkuwg  

Our tagline in promoting this book: "the first book that is sociological and that provides a global analysis of the phenomenon that goes beyond the usual dichotomy of the ‘West versus the rest’. On top of this, the choices of case studies in Muslim minority countries are not exclusively located in the West (e.g. South Africa, China, Singapore and the Philippines)."  

http://www.springer.com/new+%26+forthcoming+titles+(default)/book/978-3-319-09604-9

http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319096049

2013: My New Year’s Prayer

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. 
That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies; that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life."
                           ~J Krishnamurti

My favorite anecdote about prayer is about court pleadings. One time, a devoutly religious client of our office upon reading the last page of a case pleading saw that it contained a prayer concluded & said, “because of this prayer, we will win the case.” My late father, as a member of Adoracion Nocturna in our parish wrote a paper on prayer which I remember today with so much fondness. Mincode, my NGO network’s Pablo Relief Operations in 3 Provinces that were hardest hit by Typhoon Pablo is called "Our Help is our Christmas Prayer!"

So, my first act for 2013 is to articulate my litany of prayers:

Access to beaches: For many of us, owning beaches is not important but access is.  It is heartwarming to note that the Department Of Environment & Natural Resources (DENR) is enforcing the 20 meter plus 5 meter water easement from the highest water mark. This easement of “25 meters from the water line” is based on the 20 meters easement from the highest water mark plus the 5 meters setback from walkway or beach pavement. My prayer is that this is enforced in all of our 7,100 islands.

Baganga: During this relief period, some of us are already grappling with short term & long term rehabilitation of communities. We will be putting up cacao nurseries in Baganga in time for planting in the next few months. Rice & corn grains can already be planted with perennial fruit & forest trees soon after clearing or grubbing operation is had with fallen trees. My prayer is enough funds for this endeavor. 

Copra price is very low & our prayer is for the coco levy funds to be used for the rehabilitation of the coconut industry. My prayer is for many coco farmers to be organized (as against individual farmer recipients of coco levy funds) around the proper use of these coco levy funds.

Divorce is long overdue. We thank our own Congresswoman Luz Ilagan & Gabriela for representing us women in this advocacy. Except for our Muslim communities, we are the last nation - state in this post modern world that does not have divorce & so our prayer is for the divorce law to be available as an option.  Our advocacy for divorce is related to our fight against violence against women. It is also in keeping with the women’s movement toward the promotion for bodily rights, autonomy and empowerment of the oppressed gender. It is not against men. It is against oppressors. 

Exercise: It has been said that sitting in front of e-gadgets is the new vice. My prayer is enough time to stretch and run or walk and burn calories. Even doing household chores is better than sitting.

Facebook & Social Media: There is so much to say and our prayer is for our right to freedom of expression to be always guaranteed. My prayer in this age of social media when news can be reported by anyone & accessed readily is a professional redefinition of the journalist’s role. Because anyone or everyone is now into reportage, the professional journalist’s role should be to make sure that facts in news reporting are correct and analysis is incisive & can be empirically validated.

I joined the signing of the people’s petition by the The Save Our Sunset (SOS) Manila Bay Coalition against the reclamation of Manila Bay. The prayer is to “stop the planned and future reclamation of Manila Bay & …to enact a master plan that maximizes the opportunities and potential of the waterfront for the enjoyment of the people,” among others.

Finally, from Regina Brett, I am adopting this as my prayer for aspiring writers, “A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.”

"Everyone has unique gifts and talents. 
What you love is what you're gifted at. 
To be completely happy, to live a completely fulfilled life, you have to do what you love."  
                       ~~~ Barbara Sher 

www.mindanaotimes.net/womenwise-2013-more-new-year-reflections/ 

I just finished writing a project design and I feel kind of drained. It is a pleasant tiredness, though, like one who has created something. Ernest Hemingway has a line on this, “After writing a story I was always empty and both sad & happy, as though I had made love & I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.” 

Writing a project design which one wants to implement in a year or two is akin to planning our next days and weeks and years. In futures studies, we call this colonizing our near & far future. This is not unlike when one is planning a program of study or when one decides what university course to pursue. A Facebook friend of mine shared that she made a mistake in taking a college course. So, my advice was to look forward to when the course will grow on her, in time, or that she should turn back because to continue with the journey means she is further removed from where she wants to go. Of course, this is granting she knows where to go. A relevant mantra here are these lines from Alice in Wonderland: 

Alice, asked the Cat, Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

`I don't much care where--' said Alice.

`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

`--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.

`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.' 

In writing project designs, like in life, one imagines the outcomes and results. What will it take to get the desired results?

In writing project designs, like in life, one imagines the outcomes and results. What will it take to get the desired results?

Every January, I always try to plan my year so as not to end up just doing the motions. But, recently, I find myself enjoying the moments like in a drift.

I am also in a stage where it is so easy to say that I have been there or I have done that. So, my mantra is no more of the same, please.

Truth to tell, there are always spaces for changes, like 2012 is an end of an era & 2013 is another era. We live our lives in seasons and cycles. The 10 year primary & high school cycle,  the four or more university years, the trying twenties, the young & middle adulthood, the empty nest syndrome years, & the retirement years. Life sounds simple when seen this way. And life is simpler too, when planning is done in cycles. What university course to take? What do I want to be? What will I do to be rich or famous? What will make me happy?

New Year is about resolutions. My mantra for when one quits bad habits comes from these lines, again, from Ernest Hemingway, “By then I knew that everything good & bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But, if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better….”  Or finding that which is just as good.

I found myself listening to singer Adele during the holidays and for the lovesick & brokenhearted out there, she says, “Never mind, I will find someone like you.”

The Internet & Search Engine Optimization

A writer must empathize with her audience and so I must always be attuned to what my readers want to know. Many of us were born before the Internet was invented and so this piece is for those of us who are catching up with this electronic age. So, since many of my readers are into the marketing of ideas, we might as well be well versed in knowledge management through the Internet. Knowledge management ( KM) is simply a set of systems or practices that individuals or organizations use in creating and marketing of ideas, insights and experiences.

I am now linked to a national group of bloggers and political pundits who are into electronic marketing of ideas and so let me share with you some tips. For example, how do we promote our websites? This is the concern of the webmasters or content providers which could be you. The first tip is to use keywords that are search engine friendly from the title tag to the content. Google, Yahoo and Bing are examples of search engines. Savvy webmasters are skilled in website design, menus, content management, imbedding images & videos, etc. To promote a website or a blog, a content writer must use frequently searched keywords and must be in touch with what people want to know or are frequently searching. A writer who wants to be on the first page of a search engine result, among others, must understand the concept of search engine optimization ( SEO). Good SEO ( white hat ) is simply effective marketing of the website and there are yet no laws for this. For now, the guidelines are simply that what a search engine like Google or Yahoo or Bing catalogs ( or indexes) and orders in a hierarchy of search results and ultimately publishes in the search results are the exact results that Internet users want to see.

But, keywords can also be abused by webmasters such as when popular title keywords are not represented in the content of the website or in individual pieces in the blog or website. I have also come across some gray practices in the Internet. For example, what are the ethics involved when another website uses my entire web page ? A profit oriented travel website used my non profit blog entry and all I could do was ogle at the travel website page which was imbedded with a galore of advertisements. Is acknowledgement and attribution enough? I would prefer also to be sent a copy or link or thread of the usage. In fairness, the website owner retained my byline and so perhaps it can be argued that my own website was promoted, as well.

The URL is the address of a website page and I have promoted some of my work by sharing URL links to popular websites or even popular Facebook accounts. For example, if I want to share information about peace talks then I attach the URL of my published work or the link to the popular Facebook account of the chief peace negotiator.

A likeabilty feature can also be imbedded in your website. It has been determined by a group of bloggers that a blog or website entry is likeable when it is friendly, it has relevance, have empathy and the information is ready. It has empathy when it is able to feel others or when it is able to capture what people want to know.

What do people want to know? In truth, it is really different for various audiences across generations, across social classes, across gender and sexual orientation, religion and belief systems, and various persuasions. So, the challenge is to capture what most everyone and all want to know.

When one is in the business of sharing knowledge through the Internet one will experience sheer joy when one’s work lands on page one of the search results of popular search engines.

On Writing ( Part 2 )

Mi unica hija is poised to go into serious writing and so I am passing on some tools of the trade like I am sharing a simple gift to my beloved scion.
For some parts of the weekend, I had to find time to go back to reading my favorite great writers.
I have focused on Stephen King and his memoirs of the craft and so this sharing is also inspired by his experience.

On top of our writing kit is mastery of language: wide vocabulary and correct grammar.
This is the reason why they say that you cannot be a writer if you are not a voracious reader.
Grammar is, of course, learned like anything.
It is said that to write we start with writing one true sentence.
And a sentence is composed of the subject noun and the predicate verb.
To be able to express what we mean, we group the sentences into a coherent paragraph.
We call this messaging as in text messaging. See, it is very simple, really.

I guess, the magic of writing is in the style. Style can be learned as well.
And again, that is why it is best to read and read or go to school for it.
I like the style of Ernest Hemingway.
There is brilliance in his simple sentences.
Of contemporary writers and political pundits in the Philippines, we see original and refreshing styles in the writings of Marites Danguilan Vitug, Conrado de Quiros, Rina Jimenez- David and Randy David.

We write what we know. In this sense, writing is authoritative.
I am able to write about issues and concerns of women because I have spent half my life working with women.
I am able to pepper my writing with sociology and law because I went to various universities for it, here and abroad.
But, I am much pleased that we have developed a technology to make possible citizen journalism through social media ( Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc).
This has really democratized communication for everyone. As well, we have developed Knowledge Management (KM) as a scientific tool for communication and making information useful.

Is there money in writing? Yes and No.
There is money of course, if you get to be like J.K.Rowling of the Harry Potter fame or Stephen King or John Grisham or Thomas Harris or Philip Roth or any one of the bestsellers.
Our local daily papers have been thriving more on advertising placements and if the circulation is not that wide, there is not much income here.
And so, for columnists, writing will be more like a vocation or a mission.
Therefore, marketing is crucial for a newspaper to survive.

For example, in most universities, I find only one copy each of the local dailies for hundreds of students who are paying for library products and services.
Universities have more than one library so these schools should have several copies.
One of my banks has cut costs by unsubscribing from a local newspaper subscription.
I found the decision pathetic and I do not wish to be in account with a bank that is not interested in the local current daily composition so I closed my account there, among other reasons.

We have just finished writing the draft of an 80 page or so Guidebook on the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for Shari’a court judges.

To be able to write it, we had to study this United Nations convention by heart and we had to travel all over Mindanao and talk to many women and men plus some experts as part of the research and collection of data.

This kind of writing can be categorized under technical writing for a specific audience.
Still, making the writing interesting to capture the attention of the readers is a constant challenge.
 
The challenge was to capture into words or prose significant human experiences and material cultural practices and emotions in a distinctive style.
In this sense, one must have the inclination or interest to listen to stories of women and men from all kinds of persuasions and political affiliations and social classes.
Most important, one must like the topic or theme because the gestation and composition could be long and drawn out across time.

Writing is an art through prose or magical language; a distillation of our thoughts through words and a representation of reality as we perceive it.
But, I believe that some are really gifted with a love for words more than the others.
For these people, the development of this craft is fun and free and by choice.

New Year 2010 Reflections ( First of a series)

Life is very much bigger than one year’s events or successes or failures.
The trick, as we always say, is to have a proper perspective and be guided by road maps such as values we have learned and will continue to learn in life.
 For the new year, let’s make our resolutions measurable, whether quantitatively or qualitatively.
 So, I’m sharing my new year’s thoughts in alphabetical order :

Arriving is just one part of travel. Enjoy the preparations and the trip itself. It is true that travel widens our horizon. A city in the world map is meaningless if one is not able to relate to a friend or its people. An exchange can be had between peoples through representatives and leaders of organizations or nations or tribes. Globalization has helped the women’s movement worldwide in this way.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so check out also how others see you. This is the looking glass self. In elections, how voters see you is crucial in winning elections. That is why candidates must package their core messages in a way that appeal to their constituents. Most importantly, voters can tell if a candidate is sincere or just a charlatan.

Conflict is a part of life. Conflict resolution is a skill that can be learned. That we understand the issues and work towards peace and harmony are what matters. An omelette is made by breaking the eggs. Sometimes, one cannot accomplish something without risking some bad side effects. In development parlance, we develop risk mitigating measures. And, we must bear in mind that one cannot unscramble a scrambled egg.

A Day is just a the time between sunrise and sunset or period of twenty-four hours, counted from midnight to midnight and corresponds to the rotation of the earth around its axis. What matters is making each day ‘one’s day” or a success. This is not to say that enjoying reality is less important than creating reality. The attainment and measurement of new year’s goals and resolutions depends on our indicators for success or how we define success.

Everything has an appointed time. I believe in the ecclesiastic teaching that there is a time for everything under the sun : a time to build and a time to tear down. But, every day is a chance to learn.

Faith is like hope and love. But, we must respect those that have not come near the so called “leap of faith.” These are the humanists and they are increasing in numbers.
This freedom of choosing religious and belief systems is one of our basic human rights.

Guns, goons and gold are anathema to the sacredness of the ballot. Going around in poor communities, I have witnessed that the poor are expecting largesse from politicians like orphans expecting inheritance. What chutzpah!
But, these kind of shameless audacity and mind sets can be overcome with political education.

Humor, if have it, is a measure of intelligence.
The Filipinos are scientifically known to be a happy and a resilient people. They say it is part of our Spanish heritage. Or perhaps, living in the tropics and having the sun everyday makes us happy.
My surname “SOLAMO” in Spanish means I love you, sun.
So, I will always try to be sunny and vivacious amidst conflict that is a constant part of life.

“I think therefore I am.” I write therefore I am. Writing is an act. Rhetoric is a first step. Writing is describing, examining and analyzing reality. The written word when published is one of the ways of knowledge management. Suddenly, through citizen journalism, our world is made real and described by more people from all walks of life, like never before. ( To be continued.)

ON WRITING

Every columnist writes to be read. Apart from the pressure of a due date, writing is its own reward and its own sense of fulfillment. Of course, writing is work as school is work. What to write? The great writer Hemingway said in Paris in his book, A Moveable Feast , “…. All you have to do is write one true sentence. ….and then go on from there. It was easy because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say….” In the movie, The Weatherman, the character of Michael Caine told his son, played by Nicolas Cage, who felt so inadequate as an aspiring writer, that writing is something that Caine has had to develop over the years as a craft. Indeed, all things are learned. In school, we all went through THEME WRITING and taught to be coherent and to be able to write what we mean.

It surely helps to write if one is a voracious reader. But, Ralph Waldo Emerson said that one needs to spend more time thinking and writing one’s own thoughts instead of reading other people’s thoughts and transcripts all the time. For this, one needs a room of one’s own to be able to withdraw from all the hustle and bustle of life. Stephen King said in his book, On Writing, “ It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

photo credit : Title Wave a Facebook page 

What to write for my column in my city ( Davao City) in the Philippines? To be sure, the Davao City literati ( the businessmen, office workers from private & government, the students in the library, the depositors in banks & passengers while waiting, health patients while waiting for their turn in hospitals, housewives, etc ) will want to read. For my assignment in this local daily, the ideal as suggested by a friend is to capture a readership from many walks of life especially on themes addressing women's issues. But, all issues are women’s issues so the metes & bounds are limitless. One can easily lose the reader if one writes quoting grand theories without specific examples.

I was advised that the trick always is to select issues -- closer to the readers' concerns-- and then intersperse these with how the world community is addressing the problem so that the reader can get a sense of how he/she should act, and can see models from other countries -- whether that is to lobby the Davao City council, the regional development council, or national legislators or organize with other NGOs, etc. So, it has been best for me to plan a series, and develop an outline for the next columns as overall guide. I imagine myself reading the article to a typical reader when writing a topic and lace it with compelling issues that will draw my readers' attention. So, it is a must for me to know the recent events and current local condition and study the subject matter. I keep it in mind that it is not always the literati that I am addressing but all who can read.

Language is a social construction of reality. Which is why feminists have always been careful about reinforcing the invisibility of women when we write “he” to refer to both he and she. In writing about women’s issues, we make issues of women politically visible. We imagine an ideal against which we evaluate actual condition and practices.

Writing is symbolic representation. There is authorial intention and readers’ interpretation. A reader could be reading against the intention of the author. All text are cultural. We all have embodied experiences and it informs how we perceive things. The danger of representation is that any writing can be trivialized or oversimplified or read against the grain. Who has the power to determine meaning? In social science, we say, an observation is objective, if at least two or more persons read a thing the same way.

email : isabelita_solamo@yahoo.com

    Writing as messaging  and more 

   

I found out that some school libraries are collecting my columns as clippings on various themes. And as well, in this digital age, I am much pleased that Mindanao Times is also so accessible online. So, today as students are finishing papers and reports, I wish to demystify once more the world of words. First off, is to identify a theme or topic. Find a subject that you are passionate about or a theme that you want other people to know. Then, plot the frame or the outline. Finish the draft. Revise or polish later. Then, just write. 

 What is the message? Do you have something to say? Clarity of mind is important. Even if perspective is in the eye of the beholder, one’s perspective could be wrong or limited based on some standards. It is limited when it is not validated by the reality as you see it or some other desired ideal. What is real? A good tip is finding out whether two or more people look at the same thing the same way. This is sometimes called objectivity. Is it precise? Precision means repeatability as in one minute will yield 60 seconds when you repeat this process of counting for an infinite time. 

 We capture and write about a reality at a particular point in time and that reality changes all the time. So, information is dated all the time. I read recently that the farther you are from the source of illumination (existing knowledge or new things), the less you are going to change. My example for this is the explanation as to why we prefer to listen to old songs. Mostly, we like to listen to old songs simply because we have not heard of the new songs. My liking for the songs of Amy Winehouse or of the French songs of Lara Fabian is fairly recent and by constant listening, I have learned to like their songs. All liking is learned. All love for truth or knowledge is learned and a habit. So, also one can learn a lot from nature and from surroundings and from people when they speak. Or we learn from others when they speak in sign or non verbal cues or when they say nothing at all. 

 Paradigms or theories as ways of thinking to inform our world or our projects are also learned. So, how do we learn? Mostly, we observe using our senses. And yes, we must read and cite the sources and credit those who have been there before us. 

 The world is very old and tons of knowledge are ready and very accessible. The technology to access and to share is as instant as fast food. Just as fast food is the ultimate proof of the folly of the fast life, uploading or downloading of so much information per se is not the same as good analysis. It is not always the equivalent of truth. It is not always the wisdom which we all wish to learn. My analogy for this is that it is still the thinking doctor which decides on the diagnosis and prognosis of a case based on the tale of the patient, from the physical examination, from doing the percussion or auscultation & from a battery of tests. It is not the test results or the voluminous data which decides but the person making the analysis. Many students cannot distinguish between compilation of voluminous information from analysis or truth. Here, tools, theories or existing policy instruments may come in handy. Your new analysis could lead to new reformulations and new truths. Such is what we call pushing the frontiers of knowledge. 

 As much as you can, always deliver the message in an elegant language. Of course, the basic infrastructure is correct grammar. Grammar is about the subject and the predicate. A noun is a name word. In today’s tourism and marketing language, we say “branding.” In gender, sexual orientation or race, we say identity. In behavioral psychology, it could be name calling. The predicate is the action word. And a sentence is composed of the subject noun and the predicate verb. It is said that to write we start with writing one true sentence. To be able to express what we mean, we group the sentences into a coherent paragraph. We call this messaging. And, that in a few words is one perspective about what writing is all about.