A Gulliver's Adventure on a Wall Mural

"Everything's so small, I'm Gulliver of Lilliput." avr

Mural paintings by Dr Abe V Rotor 

LIVING with NATURE CENTER

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

Everything's so small, I'm Gulliver
of Lilliput, so goes the legend;
every once in a while we are giants,
but never, never to the end.  

 

Touch the treetops, the rising clouds,

catch the doves flying free;

the fate of a boat in your hands,

but only in imagery. 

NOTE:. Article inspired by Gulliver's Travels, particularly the first part and most popular of the four - Gulliver of Lilliput, a prose satire by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and a literary sub-genre.

A Touch of Kindness

A Touch of Kindness
By: Genevieve V. Andrada

Every page a whimsical fantasy

Words and phrases come alive freely

An orchestra’s crescendo escalates in one’s mind

Becoming a magical dream never to be left behind.

Colourful sceneries and thoughts so fanciful

Present a life s vivid, true and meaningful.

A field of flowers being kissed by the sun

Moonlight in the stream, the light if dawn

Memories of moments spent with a friend

Cherishing relationships that will never end.

Sharing laughs, hugs and smiles

Tender feelings travelling through miles.

With every line and verse

Arching wounds it will nurse

Bringing light to someone’s darkness

By weaving a touch of kindness.

Drawing by the author's granddaughter Mackie 7 (a self portrait with her brother Markus 4)

About Miss Genevieve V. Andrada

She was a Dean’s Lister, an active campus leader and writer at St. Paul College. She says that writing to her is “more than a hobby, it is a communication tool,” a piece if herself that she shares unselfishly to others. Viva as she is fondly called was a student in Humanities under the author as professor She published a book, Light of Dawn, on the occasion of her 18th birthday The author provided the paintings and illustrations of the book.

A Visit to a Nature Gallery

A Visit to a Nature Gallery 

How do artists re-create a scene?

it's all in the mind, talent and will,

and an unseen hand moving,

'til the wind and sea become still.

Paintings by Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature Center

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

A young artist, simple in taste and beauty,

came to .visit our home gallery;

She's also a teacher and sports enthusiast.

a standout among the millennials.

Wonder not what the world would be with us

 grownups and the generations past.  

Make-believe scenes of nature on the wall,

faithful to those before the biblical Fall;

artists challenge viewers into action 

and warn them of the Armageddon.

How do artists re-create a scene?

it's all in the mind, talent and will,

and an unseen hand moving,

'til the wind and sea become still.

Culture and Sustainability - Guiding our children to the Good Life in a changing environment (20 scenarios)

Culture and Sustainability: Guiding our children to the Good Life in a changing environment  (20 scenarios)

Postmodernism may do more harm than good for our children in a runaway technology and culture. They cannot and will not be able to keep with the pace and direction of change. Is this true?

Dr Abe V Rotor

 
Dr Rotor receives certificate of appreciation as Plenary Speaker, from Dr.Teresa R Perez, president of Philippine Society for Educational Research and Evaluaion during the 20th annual conference of PSERE at JB Lacson Foundation Maritime University. Arevalo, Iloilo.

1. Our children’s development depends largely on interrelated factors and stages:

• genetic (inherited)
• fetal (in the womb)
• childhood (environment & training)
• lifestyle (influence of society)

Like a house these are the 4 posts –pillars of our children’s personality and well-being.

2. Our children are likely to affected by "Your head is in the cloud" syndrome. - Inundated by more information than they can possibly hold in their heads, they’re increasingly handing off the job of remembering to search engines and smart phones.

Never mind memorizing the multiplication table, or Mendeleev's Periodic Table of Elements. Spelling of a word, its homonym, antonym? Check it out on the computer. Assignment? Search, download, print, submit - just don't forget to place your name. Psychologists proposed a new term - transactive memory, a prelude to blending natural and artificial intelligence.

3. Our children are becoming more and more transient in domicile where work may require, and for personal reasons, and when given the choice and opportunity in a global perspective.

“Citizen of the world” is a person without a specific country. He is rootless, baseless, transient. Compared, humans since creation live together under a specific culture.

4. Our children face more frequent, and deeper, forms of stress. People with higher levels of education and in higher status occupations and higher income are experiencing higher levels of stressors. ¨

Success can make life harder if you are driven, work-devoted that high status persons tend to be. Mental and physical health benefits associated with greater affluence fade away. It is harder to cope with stress when you have reached the top of your career.

5. Our children face – more than we do today - the consequences of loss of privacy and secrecy. “There is no place you can remain with comfortable anonymity.”

Wikileak unveiled classified information about the Iraq and Afghanistan war. DNA test proves real parental lineage. Bank secrecy laws and safeguards are changing. Citizens claim their right to access to hidden financial transactions.

6. Our children will face deprivation of natural beauty and bounty with the unabated shrinking wildlife, conversion of farms and pastures into settlements, and destruction of natural habitats and ecosystems. The challenge to restore nature will be placed in their care.

“Canned Nature” (delata) – pseudo Nature Centers. Gubat sa Siyudad, Fantasyland, Ocean Park, Disneyland, Eco Village, zoos, botanical gardens.

7. Our children are at the front line and center of people’s revolution spreading worldwide.

Arab Spring is sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, so with the escalating unrest questioning the present world order. All over US the young are angry at the inability of government and capitalism to narrow down economic inequity. Occupy Wall Street! is the battle cry. Syria is sitting on social volcano. Greece, Italy, Spain, once world powers in their own time are undergoing a similar revolution.

8. Our children will be part of devolution of power, decentralization of authority, and will be part of a new breed of more dedicated leaders.

Children hold the key to change. It’s the Little Prince that changed and saved the pilot in an ill-fated plane crash in Sahara.

9. Our children face acculturation and inter racial marriages. Mélange of races is on the rise – Eurasian, Afro-American, Afro-Asian, etc. – a homogenization process that reduces as a consequence, the diversity and vigor, of gene pools.

The benefits – economic, cultural and scientific - may not hold in the long run. Homogenization leads to narrowing down of the gene pool, and may threaten races and ultimately the species.
.
10. Our children may find themselves in a new norm of living alone. Solitary living is spreading all over the world, the biggest social change that has been long undermined.

Living solo is highest in Sweden (47%), followed by Britain (37%), Japan, Italy, US, Canada, Russia, South Africa, Kenya, and Brazil (10%). Living alone may help people pursue modern values - individual freedom, and self realization – but detrimental to health and happiness, and in the long run, to the community and nation. It could lead to more, and deeper, gender problems mainly on homosexuality.

11. Our children may find themselves among the increasing rank of the Nones - people who have no religious affiliation, rejecting organized religion as being rigid and dogmatic - hoping to eventually find the right religious home.

It is a kind of freedom to feel more devoted to God, of moving away from the problems of the church, and money-making religions. However, this could lead to deeper consequences since such loss may include loss of faith in other institutions.

12. Recycling the Suburbs. Environmentalists will celebrate the demise of sprawling suburbs, which left nations addicted to cars. Infrastructures will be converted in favor of "green", town centers, public libraries, museums, sports centers, parks.

More and more countries are imposing regulation to green the cities, from sidewalks to rooftops. Hanging Gardens of Babylon, anyone? If this was one of the wonders of the ancient world, why certainly we can make a replicate - perhaps a bigger one - given all our modern technology and enormous available capital.

13. Our children face the age of singularity whereby human and artificial intelligence are integrated. Robotics robs human of his rights and freedom – new realm of curtailment and suppression. (2045 – The Year Man Becomes Immortal – Time Magazine). This is falsehood!

14. Our children will continue looking for the missing links of science, history, religion, astronomy etc., among them the source of life itself and its link with the physical world.

Linking of disciplines, narrowing down the gaps of specializations, is vital in the making of a new culture.

15. Our children will witness in their time the beginning of a post-capitalism order, environmental revolution, rise of growth centers and shift in economic dominance and order, more green technologies, and space exploration.

Success of China, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, Vietnam, has opened other post-capitalism models.

16. Our children, as they grow old, will be living in an aging society, and learn to age gracefully themselves. They will find , and become part of the Aging Niche.

Longevity is increasing all over the world: the average age of a Japanese is 78 years, the American 75 or 76 years. We are quite close to China with at least 70 years.¨Niche communities are where people as they advance in age opt to grow old alongside others who share a specific interest.

17. Our children will carry on a lifestyle "Handprints, not Footprints“. They will carry on this way of caring the Earth which we started.

They will reduce the impact of living against the environment - less CO2, less CFC, less non-biodegradables and other synthetics, less pesticides, etc. On the other side of the equation would be the number of trees they plant, their savings on electricity and water. Lesser pollutants, if not arresting pollution itself - and the like. Our children will clean the land, water and air we the generation before littered. They will heal the earth we defaced, damaged.

18. Our children will fit into any society where racism and apartheid had once divided people because of the color of their skin and region of origin.

Today colored athletes dominate many sports, many are great leaders of states and movements. Kopi Annan, an African, served the UN for many years, Kenyan Wangari planted millions of trees. Both are Nobel Prize recipients. President Obama of the US, and the living hero of South Africa, Nelson Mandela are the world’s most popular leaders today. Man is created equal beneath their skin, and in fact, by circumstance, the colored races have proved superiority over the non-colored: in schools, scientific discoveries, business, technology - name it and you have a colored standing out.

19. Our children will realize and enjoy the benefits that jobs are assets. A sampling of fast-growing occupations - Actuaries, financial analyst, computer programmer, fitness trainer, biophysicists, translators, manicurists, marriage counselors, radiologists.

Need a design for your product? Give it to an IT graduate with a background in design. Need a kind of product or service not found in the mall or supermarket, search the Internet. Entrepreneurs have taken over much of the functions of big business.

20. Finally, postmodernism may do more harm than good for our children in a runaway technology and culture. They cannot and will not be able to keep with the pace and direction of change.

This is not true. “I am the master of my fate, I’s the captain of my soul.” And this is what we want our children to become – but only when they are CHILDREN OF NATURE. ~

The Incredible Bromeliad

Bromeliaceae is a family of monocot flowering plants of 51 genera and around 3475 known species. Bromeliads are naturally growing in the tropics.  

Dr Abe V Rotor

LIVING with NATURE CENTER

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

Pineapple (Ananas comosus) is the only commercially edible species belonging to
Family Bromeliaceae. It fact pineapple is one of the top ten fruits in the world market. Its uses are varied from fresh fruit and juice to ingredients in various recipes. The fresh fruit is rich in calories, vitamins, minerals and high digestible fiber. Philippines is among the world's top producers of pineapple on the backyard, as intercrop with coconut and orchard trees, and on plantations.

 

Bromeliads are raised as ornamental plants in gardens, greenhouses, and indoors. They are treasured by florists and gardeners for their colorful false flowers which vary in shades and hues as influenced by local environmental conditions. Bromeliads require a lot of water; other than this, they are easy to grow and maintain.

 

Miniature pond in the heart of the bromeliad is nursery and home of many organisms, including frogs and fish. It is Nature's pond in the sky where bromeliads live as epiphytes. It constitutes a complete ecosystem.

A seedling of a fig grows from the dead heart of a bromeliad and develops into a monstrous tree monster - the strangler's fig or balete, which will eventually colonize and kill the host tree and all its symbionts. ~

Give a new lease of life to old pencils.

Give a new lease of life to old pencils.

Dr Abe V Rotor

The art of gleaning extends far and wide, and now with pencils (and capless ballpens) thrown away before their time is up - why not give them another chance?

Simply wrap up, roll over each one a colorful, pliant paper from handouts and color magazines (just like the photos shown here), and there you have made a beautiful piece of art!

Pencil stubs once more fit for writing - oh, how precious they are to you their savior; they have defied the category of waste for the duration of their second life; 

Like scabbards you sheath an unassuming dagger, saving someone from getting stabbed on the skin or in the eye, in a simple act of  "prevention by protection" principle;

Why didn't the manufacturer think of that? To provide safety caps to pencils before they reach the market, to warn of danger to school kids, and grownups too? 

There is meaning in small things, we do -  a bit of economy, a little ingenuity, a simple expression of beauty, a little act of goodness -  and a little prayer.~

Dawn is a Child

Dawn is the child of sunrise...
Like the dawn I'm a child,
rising up as she rises.

Dr Abe V Rotor

LIVING with NATURE CENTER 

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur 

Old church of San Vicente, Ilocos Sur 2017.  View from my window. 

Dawn is the child of sunrise,
azure, crimson, emerald,
curtain of a new day,
a call for all to rise.

Through the church's window,
she joins hymns and psalms,
prayers of the faithful
seated row by row.

Over the mountain range
a reclining profile rises,
her gown of darkness fades
and soon will change.

Like the dawn I'm a child,
rising up as she rises,
to her ephemeral beauty
devoid of any pride. ~

 
 Cordillera Mountain and Old Church Profile 2017 (Photos by the author.)

Karimbuaya - Secret of for Tasty Lechon

Karimbuaya or Soro-soro

- Secret of for Tasty Lechon

Dr Abe V Rotor 

It grows everywhere in the tropics, on wastelands, on idle farms and gardens, and untrodden corners of the field.

Yet its presence is unsuspecting. Actually it grows almost into a tree. Its four cornered branches and stems are crowned with rows of stubby thorns, and bleed profusely with milky sap when cut, that browsing animals would not dare trespass, more so eat. Thus this perennial wild plant is an ideal natural fence and border.

Young Euphorbia nerifolia grown directly from cutting. 

But sorosoro or karimbuaya (Ilk) has another value very few people are aware. But to Ilocanos, no lechon is without karimbuaya.

This is the basic culinary procedure.

• Gather mature leaves as many as needed.
• Cut the leaves diagonally and thinly. Avoid skin contact as much as possible.
• Stuff the inside of the chicken or piglet and secure it closed. Similarly do the same with lechon baka and rellenong bangos.
• The stuff goes through the whole cooking period. It is served on the table as side dish vegetable for the lechon. It has a mild sour taste.

Why use karimbuaya? The sap removes unpleasant odor of meat and fish. It imparts a mild aroma, and improves taste. It is compatible with tanglad and ginger, onion and garlic, and most food adjuncts and additives.

Try karimbuaya next time you prepare lechon and relleno.~

Caution: Sap can cause eye and skin irritation. 

Useful Garden Plants: atsuete, Alovera, gumamela

Garden Plants Series:

Atsuete, Alovera, Gumamela 

Dr Abe V Rotor 

LIVING with NATURE CENTER 

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur 

Atsuete or anatto (Bixa orellana) is the best natural food color and adjunct, in cooking paella, upo, noodles, frog, etc. It is used extensively in imparting color of cheese and butter, also yogurt. Natural cosmetics are made from atsuete. Flowers are colorful in the garden. Its a small tree, provides good shade and does not attract insects.

Aloe vera is a used mainly as hair conditioner, stimulating hair growth, and giving shine and smoothness on dull and rough hair. It is mixed with fruit juice. Commercial fruit juice products use aloevera as solids or pulps. As home remedy, it is used to treat minor burns.Gumamela: It comes in more than a dozen varieties. Other than its all year round flowers that make a garden attractive and home of butterflies, the gumamela serves as home remedy for boil and mumps. Young petals are also cooked as vegetable.

The Lamp of Knowledge

Teaching is an art. It is an art of the masters - Aristotle, Plato, Christ, and many great teachers of the Renaissance that brought the world out of the Dark Ages. While we have developed modern techniques in teaching, it is important to look back into the past.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Socrates, father of Philosophy, on his deathbed. He was condemned to die by drinking hemlock, a  poison, for corrupting the minds of the youth. The Lamp of Knowledge


It is looking back at the lamp that enabled our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, to write his last masterpiece, the lamp Florence Nightingale held over her patients at the warfront, the lamp that made Scheherazade’s “one thousand and one nights” stories, the lamp a Greek philosopher held high at daylight “searching for an honest man.” Or the lamp fireflies make and glow with the spirit of joy and adventure to a child. 

But why do we look back and ponder on a tiny light when the world basks in the sunshine of progress and development, of huge networks of learning, of high technologies in practically all fields of endeavor? I’ll tell you why – and why we teachers must.

But first let me tell a story of a computer enthusiast, who like the modern student today relies greatly on this electronic gadget, doing his school work so conveniently like downloading data for his assignment. So one day he worked on his assigned topic – love. 

He printed the word and set the computer to define for him L-O-V-E. Pronto the computer came up with a hundred definitions and in different languages. Remembering his teacher’s instruction to ask, “How does it feel to be in love?” again he set the computer to respond. And you know what?

After several attempts, the computer printed on its screen in big letters, “I can not feel.”

Where is that main ingredient of human relations – feeling – today?

• Where is the true feeling between teacher and student?
• Where is the feeling of joy at the end of a teaching day, in spite of how hard the day had been?
• Where is that tingling feeling of the student for having recited well in class? 
• Where is that feeling in singing the National Anthem, the school hymn?
• Where is that feeling Rizal felt when a moth circled the lamp in his prison cell while he wrote, Mi Ultimo Adios? 
• Where is that burning desire that drove Michaelangelo to finish single-handedly the huge murals of the Sistine Chapel?
• That drove Vincent Van Gogh to madness – madness the world learned a new movement in the art – expressionism - years after?
• That kept Florence Nightingale, the founder of the nursing profession, make her rounds in the hospital in the wee hours of the morning?
• The lamp that strengthened Plato’s resolve to change the way people should think in the light of truth and justice.

Feeling. There is a song Feelin, and the lyrics ask a lot of questions about human nature changing with the times. I do not think human nature has changed. It is as stable as Nature herself and the natural laws that govern the universe. 

What we are saying is that our ways are changing. The conformity of our actions is more with the rules we set rather than the philosophies on which they are founded. It is our quest for want above our needs that has blinded us and benumbed our feelings, that has taken us to the so-called fast lane so that we no longer see objects as they are, but abstracts, that has made us half-humans in the sense that we spend half of our lives dealing with machines – who have no feelings. 

What then is modern man? I am afraid we have to review some of our references on the Janus-like character of man, like - 

• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• The Prince and the Pauper
• The Princess and the Frog
• The movies - Mask, Superman, Batman, Spiderman 
• Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter
• Cartoons and animated movies 

The doubling of characters in man has led him away from permanence. Today, the biggest crisis in man is his impermanence. Impermanence in his domicile, nay, his nationality, political party. Affiliation in business and social organizations, and most disturbingly, with his marriage and family.
When was the last time we said to ourselves – or experienced - the following. 

• It’s a weekday for my family and nothing else.
• How I wish I can help my child of his math assignment.
• I’ll teach only this year and will find a more rewarding job after.
• I think it’s time to settle down.
• I want to go to a concert and enjoy the fine art of music.
• Can’t I put all my ideas in a book?
• It’s always meeting – can’t we just talk?
• This dizziness, it must be the pressure of my work.
• Maybe I can concentrate on my thesis this time.
• I have not finished reading “Da Vinci Code”. 
• This summer I’ll be with my parents.

Here are ways by which we can brighten up our lamp amidst the factors that test our dedication of our profession as teachers. 

1. Be yourself. Be natural. 
2. Keep on learning 
3. Be a model of your family and community
4. Relax
5. Use you faculties fully and wisely 

Be Natural

Naturalness is a key to teaching. I saw a film, Natural with then young award-winning Robert Redford as the principal actor. It is a story of a baseball player who became famous. The central theme of his success is his naturalness. Naturalness in pitching, batting - in the sport itself, above all, in his relationship with his team and fans. 

Our students can easily sense our sincerity. They shun from us if we are not. They cannot fully express themselves, unless we show our genuine love and care for them. Develop that aura that attracts them, that keeps relationship easy to adapt or adjust.
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“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.”
- John Cotton Dana 
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Be a Model

Florence Nightingale  Lady with the Lamp - founder of the nursing profession 

A teacher must have more time for himself and for his family. Teaching is an extension of family life. And this is the primordial stimulus that makes your family a model family and you as a model teacher – because you cause the light of the lamp to radiate to others. And it is not only the school that you bring in the light. It is the community because you are also lighting the lamp of others, including the tiny glow in your young students. When they get home, when they interact with their community in whatever capacity they can, even only among their playmates, relatives and neighbors, they are in effect sharing that light which is also the light of understanding and unity. 

Relax

Great achievements are usually products of relaxed minds. Relaxation allows the incubation of thoughts and ideas. Churchill found time to paint during the Second World War. In his relaxed mind he made great decisions that saved Great Britain and countless lives. Or take Einstein for instance. His formula which explains the relationship of energy and matter in E=mc2 was drawn out from casually observing moving objects - train, heavenly bodies, marbles. Galileo watched a huge chandelier in a church sway with the breeze and later came up with the principles of pendulum movement. 

Darwin studied biology around the world as if he were on a leisure cruise, and summed up his findings that founded the most controversial Theory of Evolution by means of natural selection. An apple fell on Newton’s head when everything was still. Examine closely the parables of Christ. How relaxed the Great Teacher was in telling these stories to the faithful. The lamp shines the brightest when there is no wind. When held high with steady hands and given time to examine things around, views become clearer, and the more certain we are along our way. 

Use Your Faculties Fully and Wisely

Our brain is made up of the left hemisphere, the thinking and reasoning part, and the right hemisphere, the seat of creativity and imagination. Together they reveal an enormous capacity of intelligence, which are pictured in eight realms. These are 

1. Logic 
2. Languages
3. Music 
4. Spatial
5. Interpersonal
6. Intrapersonal 
7. Kinesthetics 
8. Naturalism 

From these realms the teacher draws out his best qualities. He explores, decides, adapts, entertains, leads, and stands courageously to lead the young. 

Here he sows the seed of knowledge. And in the young the seed grows, and grows, which the educator Henry Adams expresses in this line.

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

Nicanor Abelardo and Francisco Santiago - Titans in Philippine Music

They perfected the Kundiman, distinctly Filipino,  into world class sonata and art song.

Dr Abe V Rotor 
 

Nicanor Abelardo (1893-1934) "Father of the Sonata in the Philippines".

Composer, pianist, and teacher.  His most popular works include the official song of the University of the Philippines,U.P. Beloved, Magbalik Ka Hirang, Himutok, Nasaan Ka Irog, Kundiman ng Luha, Bituing Marikit, and Mutya ng Pasig.

At age five the young Abelardo learned solfeggio  and how to play the bandurria; at six he was already able to play the William Tell Overture on the guitar; at age eight, he composed a waltz, Ang Unang Buko, He later learned to play the piano while working for his uncle, painter Juan Abelardo, in Manila, where he studied in primary schools.  He was barely 15 years old when he taught music in .schools in San Ildefonso and San Miguel, Bulacan,

Before he enrolled at the University of the Philippines Conservatory of Music, he worked as a pianist in pubs and theaters in Manila.

He eventually became a full-fledged instructor and obtained his teacher’s certificate in science and composition in 1921. In 1924, he became the head of the Conservatory’s composition department. He pursued further studies at the Chicago Musical College.

When he returned to the Philippines, he continued teaching at U.P. He also taught music to students in a boarding house run by his family. Among his students were National Artist Antonino Buenaventura, Alfredo Lozano and Lucino Sacramento.
  
Abelardo was credited for bringing the kundiman to the level of art. He also composed music for the sarswela as well as songs in different musical forms. He completed more than 140 compositions. He was given the title the "Father of the Sonata in the Philippines".
Our foremost Kundiman composer also showed the elements of modernism in his music. This is heard in his “Cinderella Overture” and Sinfonietta for Strings.

He died on March 21, 1934, at the age of 41. He left behind a number of unfinished works, including a symphony, an opera, and a concerto.The main theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and the U.P. College of Music were named after him.

 Francisco Santiago (1889-1947) The Father of Kundiman Art Song. 

A renowned pianist, composer and teacher, he earned his masters degree and doctorate in music from the Conservatory of Chicago in 1924. College of Music from 1930-1946. Among his compositions are Kundiman and Anak Dalita, the first art song kundiman, was sung Royal Court of Spain upon the request of King Alfonso II. His masterpiece Concerto in B flat minor for pianoforte and orchestra was presented at the Chicago Music School, where he received his doctorate degree in 1924.

He became the Director of the University of the Philippines Conservatory of Music from 1930 to 1946. He also directed the music for such films as Manileña, Madaling Araw, and Pakiusap. Other compositions are  "Sakali Man", "Hibik ng Filipinas", "Pakiusap", "Ang Pag-ibig", "Suyuan", "Alaala Kita", "Ikaw at Ako", "Ano Kaya ang Kapalaran?", "Hatol Hari Kaya?", "Sakali't Mamatay", "Dalit ng Pag-ibig", "Aking Bituin", "Madaling Araw" and "Pagsikat ng Araw". 

He died in September 28, 1947. Twenty-one years later, he was given a posthumous award as Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan by the City of Manila. A hall at BDO Makati head office is named Franscisco Santiago Hall in his honor. 

Visit http://www.unipronow.org/blog/10-kundiman-songs-know/ Listen to popular Kundiman songs sung by the country’s best singers.