Sargassum: Giant Seaweed

Sargassum: Giant Seaweed

Dr Abe V Rotor

Sargassum*

You make a forest on the sea floor

Where the fishes hide from the storm,

What puzzles those who explore

Is your massive yet simple form. ~

Sargassum is a genus of brown macroalgae in the order Fucales. Numerous species are distributed throughout the temperate and tropical oceans of the world, where they generally inhabit shallow water and coral reefs, and the genus is widely known for its planktonic species. Wikipedia

Some Common Superstitious Beliefs

Some Common Superstitious Beliefs

Dr Abe V Rotor

1. When you got a fishbone stuck in the throat, get the cat and gently rub its paws around the affected area.


2. Never allow a conceiving mother to get near a fruiting tree, else the fruits will fall prematurely.

3. Beware! Dogs can detect a dog eater. He is prone to dog bite or even a pack attack. 

4. Food offering at the family altar during festivals is homage to the spirits

5. Say tabi-tabi when entering a thicket.

6. Put sugar as fertilizer to get sweeter fruits.

7. Some people suffer body aches before a typhoon brews near.

8. When walking through a forest, wear a face mask backward to ward of tiger or lion attack.

9. When harvesting the first fruits, get an oversize basket and pretend that the harvest is heavy.

10. Expect rain if hordes of dragonflies hover low.~

Ecology Enhances the Good Life

Ecology Enhances the Good Life

Original Title: Ecology - Reflection of the Good Life

Dr Abe V Rotor

There are people who live happy and full lives while others do not. This leads us to look into the role of human faculties. When we talk of human faculties we refer to holistic intelligence. It is beyond IQ. It dwarfs the common concept of rationality. 

The Good Life in two perspectives. Mural painting by students in Humanities, SPUQC, circa 2000

In fact, it defies definitions that scientists thought of plotting into various fields.
All of us are endowed with a wide range of intelligence which is divided into eight realms, namely:

• Interpersonal (social intelligence)
• Intrapersonal (meditational, spirituality)
• Kinesthetic (athletics, dance, body language)
• Languages or linguistic
• Logic (dialectics, mathematics)
• Music (Auditory art)
• Spatial intelligence (drawing and painting, sculpture, architecture, photography)
• Naturalism (green thumb, relationship with the Natural World)

These realms reside in both left and right hemispheres of our brain, with the left doing more of the reasoning and the right of creativity. How we live a happy and fulfilled life largely rests on how balance we use our brain, making use of these eight God-given faculties. It is also with this premise that we find peace with ourselves and with our environment and ultimately with God. Thus it is not only how much we are endowed with this gift, but more importantly, it is how we make use of it fully and in the right way.

Why don’t you make your own assessment? Rate yourself in each realm. Analyze your top three. Are you not proud of them? Look at the other realms. You may not have tapped them well. Do you realize that there is a big room of improvement, and that there are latecomers in this world?

Lastly, let me emphasize another component of peace, that of sharing. I can not find a shorter way to explain it more clearly than to present this excerpt from “How to Live With Life,” published by Reader’s Digest. To wit:

“Every human being on this earth faces a constant problem: how to make the most of life. There is no simple solution; the art of living is the most difficult of all the arts. But fortunately for all of us, experience can be shared. Insights can be learned. Wisdom can be taught. Experiences, insights and wisdom of men and women – from teachers to clergymen, housewives to scientists, ordinary citizens to statesmen - who have lived deeply, thought profoundly and cared enormously about sharing with others what they learned have found some fragment of truth that cushions the harsh impact of reality or brightens the marvelous tapestry of living. From them we find some answers to the most fundamental of all questions: how to live with life.”

A Piece of the Lost Eden in acrylic 

by AV Rotor 2024 

Final Reflections
Let us

• Reflect on re-creating Nature with the image of the lost Eden
• Reflect on bringing the dead tree back to life.
• Reflect that everything in this world is interconnected. Reflect on the lost lamb, the prodigal son.
• Reflect on the new concept of heroes, hope of a tired Planet Earth
• Reflect that our lives can not be ruled by the faceless side of
• science and technology
• Reflect on long life but one lived with noble cause
• Reflect on that sailboat riding on the wave and wind towards a destination.
• Reflect on the multiple intelligence which God endowed singularly to man and how we make use of it in gratitude to the Giver.
• And if we think we are too little in this wide, wide world to make any difference, let this verse permeate in our thoughts and heart.

                                       Cumulus

Rise up from the sea and come as rain,

wake the ponds, make the rivers flow,

fill the lakes, make the fields green;

the trees a curtain to hide the sun

a moment of your ephemeral beauty

of changing faces and a myriad figures;

delight many a child to draw,

to dream and grow;

and if one day the water of the sea is not enough,

drink, drink deep

from my little cup.

Rocky cliff against cumulus cloud,

 in acrylic by the author 2020

  

Oh, time! You are a friend.

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Brief rest before taking a test.

Dream, yesterday was a dream!

A unicorn I rode to rainbow's end

to where a pot of gold might lie.

Oh, time! I thought you're a friend.

And to the other end I walked the trail,

To find my rainbow gone at the bend;

And I, on a crossroad I stood alone.

Oh, time, I thought you are a friend.

What road shall I take - the less trodden?

I gazed at the horizon to its end,

Rough was the way and never ending.

Oh, time! I thought you are a friend.

And here I am, half gone, long is the way;

Lo! I see again my rainbow at the end;

Tread on I must, there's no unicorn now;

Oh, time! you are indeed a friend.

Make your own transforms for teaching and decoration

Make your own transforms for teaching and decoration 

Museum of Natural History, UPLB 

Mt Makiling, Laguna 

Dr Abe V Rotor

 Replica of whale attracts teachers on field trip.  On the left is a painting of the blue whale

 Giant outline of a damsel fly and a butterfly

 Scorpion on the wall; wooden exoskeleton of insect.

 Modern sculptural representation of an insect's exoskeleton 

Fairy tale mushroom; anatomy of a tree

 Sowbug, a relative of the insect - a terrestrial crustacean

A representation of a "new" species of  lizard.