Dahli Aspillera, Why Don’t You & I Connect, And Correct, PH History Of People, Places And Things, Including PH National Hero Jose Rizal – And Agriculture!?

How can you surprise an old foggie like me, 84, with a story about PH Heroes? Well, Dahli Aspillera, Malaya columnist, surprised me today, Saturday, 11 Jan 2025, sending an unexptected note about Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio and American author Glenn Anthony May. Old Golds!

I wrote Malaya aeons ago:

“About… Glenn May’s book Inventing A Hero (New Day Publishers), you and your very own Dahli Aspillera (“One Book On Books About Bonifacio” on Feb 6 and “Social Savvy” on Feb 8) – I say they’re all remarkable.

…Dahli, God bless her soul, is an extraordinary lady herself. Among other things, she is the only one among our newspaper journalists, columnists, or writers who (have) stood to be counted in the search for the historical Bonifacio.

…So she has sinned against her own kind, as well as against our historians, for believing that Glenn May is right and credible when he questions and presents evidence against the history written about Andres Bonifacio by a long list of Filipino historians, including some of the best and popular in the country. We have to re-study our history and historians.

Today, Saturday, Dahli has just sent me a note, an incomplete reproduction (Xerox), copy of a column?

History comes back to you if you are interested in it. I wrote the newspaper Malaya long, long ago:

“About one of our national heroes, Glenn May’s book Inventing A Hero (New Day Publishers), you and your very own Dahli Aspillera (“One Book On Books About Bonifacio” on Feb 6 and “Social Savvy” on Feb 8) – I say they’re all remarkable.”

“Andres Bonifacio was extraordinary, Dahli, God bless her soul, is an extraordinary lady herself. Among other things, she is the only one among our newspaper journalists, columnists, or writers who has stood to be counted in the search for the historical Bonifacio. And a woman at that! An insult to those who mind their machocism (my invention), This time, Dahli isn’t politically correct about it, but she doesn’t mind. So she has sinned against her own kind, as well as against our historians, for believing that Glenn May is right and credible when he questions and presents evidence aganst the history written about Andres Bonifacio by a long list of Filipino historians, including some of the best and popular in the country. We have to re-study our history and historians.”

History! ”I first came to know Dahli personally at the launching of Glenn May’s book at FEU end of last January. (For one thing, she likes chicharon). Before that, I happened to read her column on “Ligaya Ang Itawag Mo Sa Akin,” an embarrassment of a movie, and I liked what she said, and I told her so. (She said movie scriptwriters did not have to write below the belt.) She said thanks. For a change, she said; she gets mostly flak.”

We writers have to learn to be forceful and acceptable – readers too!@517
(image from tbrnewsmedia.com)