Celebrating Life, Celebrating Hope

I celebrate life. I thank God I turned 80 some 6 months ago, in September.

I celebrate hope.
Yja, one of my many grandchildren, 16 in all, turned 12 yesterday. I and my wife Ampywere there at the house of Paul & Celeste Hilario, if late, 9 PM. Our daughters Jennifer, Daphne and Graciela were already there. Daphne was there with her husband Mark Gonzales& their only son Franklin. Our kumpadre & kumadre, Rene & Pida Banaticla, parents of Celeste, were there ahead of us. The air was cold, but we smiled at each other warmly. Thank God for families!
(Yja in photo above taken by her father Paul when Lola Ampy celebrated her 70^th birthday at La Riqueza Hot Spring Villa in Calamba City, 5 years ago)

We celebrate life.
We must celebrate life. We have God’s love that we have reached this far in our existence on this earth. Rich or poor, we are lucky to be alive. Never mind that we are in a coronavirus pandemic lockdown all over the country; living is not in a lockdown. We must look up and say “God, thank you very much!”

I celebrate the village.
I celebrate life in the village. I have been doing that for 45 years, since 16 April 1975, when I began working for the Forest Research Institute (FORI), and one by one I became founder & Editor in Chief of the 3 publications of FORI: monthly newsletter Canopy, quarterly technical journal Sylvatrop; and quarterly color magazine Habitat. Where are the farmers & their families there? Unhappily, inside the forest, as slash-and-burn cultivators of the soil, illegal wood gatherers, or unlicensed collectors of wildlife. Happily, around the forest.

I celebrate teaching.
I graduated with a BS in Agriculture in 1965, major in Ag Education, passing the very first Teacher’s Exam given, in 1964, 80.6%, Professional Level. I taught high school in my hometown Asingan; I taught college at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture in Los Baños, at the College of Agriculture of Xavier University in Cagayan De Oro City.

I most celebrate blogging.
I learned that I was good at writing at senior year high school yet, 1957. Today, I celebrate my blogging, self-taught, for Filipino farmers and their families. I started doing this earnestly when in January 2007 now-Secretary of Agriculture William Dar hired me as international consulting writer for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), based in India, when he was Director General – that was an assignment that lasted 8 years, until Mr Dar retired as Director General in December 2014.

While essentially long distance, I loved my ICRISAT years as a work-from-home (WFH) writer, because I was actually researching the science of agriculture as applied by ICRISAT in Asia and Africa so that the same may be applied in the Philippines.

I just found the perfect ending for this one from the Facebook sharing of Jovita Movillon:

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. – Pablo Picasso@517