Emptiness at Sundown - a Challenge

   Emptiness at Sundown - a Challenge

"Wonder how Rodin created from bare rock The Great Thinker." avr

Dr Abe V Rotor

Sunset, Lemery Batangas, 2018

 

How can I be romantic when the world is sad and lonely, 

the sea in its ebb, the air still, save a passing breeze?
How can I love the classics, the timelessness of their beauty,  
the deafening silence, neither music nor of peace? 

How can I appreciate humanities, man's creativity,
peep into the biblical Garden of his birth?
How can I amend my evil ways, rise from human frailty
with the dying sun, soon to abandon the earth?

I am lesser than those who instead found opportunity
to explore the deep source where love and hope never cease. 
Monet taming a fiery sunset into a lovely beauty,
and on wasteland Wangari planted a million trees.  

I wonder how Rodin created from bare rock The Great Thinker;
Fleming by serendipity found from a moldy culture -
the life-saving Penicillin, a most potent drug ever,
while Thoreau alone wrote a treaty of man and nature.  

Crowning glory, masterpieces were not at all born in bed,
so with man faced with the impossible to solve,
when a tree stands alone leafless, the sea in ebb;   
and I, I wait for darkness envelop my world. ~  

 

Naturalism is a personal philosophy of life and everyday living.

Naturalism is a personal philosophy of life 

and everyday living.

Naturalism offers practical solutions to the many undesirable effects of excess capitalism being inflamed by consumerism.  Naturalism speaks of a healthy and harmonious relationship between man and his environment which is the key to the principle of sustainability. AVR

 Dr Abe V Rotor

  Living with Nature - School on Blog

 

Harvest Time, mural detail by the author. 

 Air pollution, Paris France 

All over the world people are "going back to Nature." They eat food grown without or least chemicals, wear clothes made of plant fiber, live in homes designed with the natural landscape.

They have learned to avoid genetically modified food, cuisine of unknown ingredients, and vitamin capsules claiming panacea. They shun from drug dependent medical treatments.

They find more time with family, friends, hobbies and relaxation. They have become wiser to know the difference between necessity and want, affluent and austere living.   

Many are moving out of the city and settle down on homestead, or country home in various versions of our own Nipa Hut where simplicity and self-sufficiency make living happy and healthy.  (Internet Photo)

These new breed of environment-friendly advocates are less dependent on the supermarket and the shopping mall. They have freed themselves in many respects from the burden of postmodern living, a kind of freedom from the clout of a materialistic culture, from the entrapment of corporate domination, from the artificiality of things made beautiful, and from the restlessness in living on the fast lane.  

Challenges of naturalism 

1.  Kamachile tree killed to give way to a road -  a requiem to a small living world.  

Naturalism is not new to us, by human nature we love the environment, we are hurt if it is destroyed; a tree is akin to our well-being as it gives food, oxygen, and shade.  

It buffers strong wind and filters dusts.  It anchors the soil from erosion as it binds silt before it is washed away. 

 A half century old kamachile (Pithecolobium dulce) deliberately killed (see girdle) to give way to a barangay road. Bantay Ilocos Sur.  

It absorbs  carbon dioxide which we and animals exhale, and exchange it with life-sustaining oxygen. 

A tree is home of many organisms. The death of one big tree means the death of its tenants and symbionts, and displacement of transient organisms like birds, insects and reptiles. It's indeed a requiem to a small living world.  

2. Red sunset - indicator of dirty, poisonous air

It may be romantic, but sad.  The air we breath is a potpourri of gases spewed by cars, factories, and products of modern living from automizer to Freon.  

Many of these substances do not settle down to earth but remain up in the sky visible as smog, a contraction of smoke and fog.  It is the invisible materials that destroy our health, affecting all eight systems in our body with our lungs the most vulnerable and the entry to various organs - heart to kidney to brain. 

When it rains these gases are carried down, funneled by the  watersheds down to rivers and lakes and ultimately to the sea. Even areas away of the path - farms and pastures decline in productivity. 
  Red sunset means foul air, MM 

It's a long stretch of destruction that continues  and worsens as long as pollution is not checked. 

And what would be the long term consequences? Acid rain destroys the very base of production.  Dioxin, the most potent man-made poison, kills at very low dosage. Rain water is no longer potable, even as it feeds the wells and spring.       

3. Rising sea and tidal wave consequences of global warming 

The sea is rising, the shoreline shrinking. 

Because many cities sit by the bay and on river banks, displacement of millions is expected to worsen. On low lying islands in the Pacific like Kiribati of the Micronesian group of islands residents are forced to leave their homes permanently. 

Seaside battered by tidal waves in Morong, Bataan 

We can only imagine how difficult it is to leave home and never see it again.  We call forcible evacuation as ecological migration.    

Swamps are formed and spread out;  salt intrusion destroys farmlands, fishponds are submerged, salination changes the structure and composition of lakes and rivers. To what extent? We can only guess how our children and grandchildren will inherit the worst scenario. 

The Arctic has been reduced to one half, the edges of Antarctica are falling off, the glaciers are disappearing. Greenland is being watched closely - its melting is likely to cause a considerable increase in sea level enough to change the map of the world. 

4. Floods, Floods - Modern Noah's curse

There is flood at any given time and place on earth.

Certain theories are down-to-earth occurrences, like flood.  A fine day and suddenly a thunderstorm dumps water equivalent to a month's rainfall. 
Typical scene of flooding. Typhoon Sandy at the Eastern US 2012 
The pattern of rainfall has drastically changed.  Rain forming mechanism is now influenced by loss of green cover, sprawling settlements in magacities, swirling atmosphere stirred by air transportation.

Altered water course by reclamation and dams, pollution in air changing  its composition, abuses in land use policies - or no policies at all.  These among others bring Noah to memory. But didn't Noah - like us - helped cause flood by cutting down forest after forest to build superstructures like Noah's version of a "floating world?"
 
5. Garbage - by-product of affluence
 
Affluence has a bigger and worse by-product - poverty.

Cities make a Janus face, one happy, the other sad; one of high rise buildings, the other of shanties; one of high social standing, the other of marginal existence. 

And yet garbage is a "resource whose use is not being tapped, or yet to be tapped." "Garbage is ones waste, but another's need." These of course are but rhetoric, adages. 

Payatas, Smokey Mountain, and similar sprawling dumpsites all over the world, speak of an antithesis of progress, a world of the poor and dejected, degenerated from the advances of civilization. 

 
Payatas dumpsite in QC, a garbage community

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About the former Living with Nature on the Internet and Radio 

738 DZRB AM with Dr Abe Rotor and Ms Melly Tenorio Mon to Fri 8-9 evening class.  Winner of 1st Gawad Oscar Florendo for Developmental Journalism 

Living with Nature-School on Blog was initiated by the author in May 2010 as a conduit of Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School on Air), offering the website viewer and the radio broadcast audience a simulcast audio-visual session of a particular topic/s for the day. The website (avrotor-blogspot.com) made the lessons available jointly or independently open worldwide.        

Within the period May 2910 to July 2015 alone, there were more than one million pageviews.  Topics of interests (top ten) were indicated, so with the participating countries, on daily, weekly and monthly basis other than the continuing total visitors record. PBH audience, other than blog viewers, were monitored by its sponsors (DZRB-PBS), which has 32 stations nationwide and worldwide access on the Internet. There were two satellite websites - Naturalism - The Eighth Sense and A Naturalist World of Dr Abe V Rotor. Selected articles from the Blog  were published in a series of books (Living with Nature Series), and in the author's column (Okeyka Apong) in Bannawag Weekly Magazine.  
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Angalo - legendary friendly giant of the Ilocos region

Angalo 

Legendary friendly giant of the Ilocos region

"We ponder on Angalo’s power, we kids of our time...

 it was a child’s gentle way of growing up to be a giant.

Dr Abe V Rotor

The mystical Pinsal Falls in Barangay Babal-lasioan, Sta. Maria (Ilocos Sur) is believed to be the footprint of a legendary giant named Angalo. The footprint shaped pool was formed when Angalo stepped on the top of Pinsal Falls while searching for his missing wife. Acknowledgment: Internet 2012

Imagine how big Angalo, the legendary giant of the Ilocos region is. One foot of his left an imprint on a rock in Pinsal falls in Sta. Maria, and the other has its mark way up north, somewhere in Magsingal, two towns in Ilocos Sur some fifty kilometers apart. He must be a giant indeed surpassing the size of King Kong or Gulliver of Lilliput. I once stood in his huge footprint and what a miniscule I must have looked.

We ponder on Angalo’s power, we kids of our time. He is friendly and helpful in our mind, just as our old folks told us in many stories, wrapping him up into one gentle giant. He would stop flood, hold mountains apart, stood guard against the sea, roll the clouds and bring rain. And we kids would like to be as strong and brave, friendly and helpful just like him. How could we have idolized one whom we never saw, one who exists only in our imagination? It was a child’s gentle way of growing up to be a giant.

Although legends live forever, Angalo and his kind, have been lost in the jungle of characters created on the screen and cyberspace. ~

"All in the name of civilization" - A Reflection

 "All in the name of civilization" - A Reflection

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature - School on Blog 

Home, Sweet Home with Mother Earth

“The ultimate test of any civilization
Is not in its inventions and deeds;
But the endurance of Mother Nature
In keeping up with man’s endless needs.”

- AVR, Light in the Woods.

What is civilization? Can’t civilization hear and heed the groaning of Creation?

1. It is civilization that wiped out the American Indians from the Great Plains, and plundered the Aztecs and Mayas Empires, among other cultures.
2. It is civilization that spurred the powerful West to "discover" and colonize the East for centuries.
3. It is civilization that resulted in the death of millions and the genocide of 6 million Jews in WWII.
4. It is civilization that built the atomic bomb – and dropped it on two cities of an "enemy."
5. It is civilization that made a clone animal, Dolly the Sheep, and inevitably man to be the next in the near future.
6. It is civilization that threatens the whale and the Philippine Eagle, and resulted to the extinctions of many species, and in threatening more.
7. It is civilization that is causing global warming and its untold consequences, destroying lives and properties, and the environment itself.
8. It is civilization that is causing today’s fuel crisis and food shortage, drastic inflation and loss of currency value, the recession of America and consequently the world, ad infinitum.
9. It is civilization that gave way to excesses of living, from obesity to promiscuity, license to abuse of power and wealth.
10. It is civilization that allowed growing inequities in resources distribution,
in bridging the rich and the poor.

First atomic bomb on Hiroshima Japan, 2014

But it is also civilization that brought us and our society to the highest level of consciousness no known species can parallel. It is civilization that makes the Earth a beautiful place to live in.
1. It is civilization that gave us consciousness as rational beings, guiding us to live peacefully as a group and with the things around us.
2. It is civilization that created our great institutions that bind us into a society, and as one humanity.
3. It is civilization that made the greatest masterpieces in the fields of philosophy, science and the arts.
4. It is civilization that gave us the greatest religions of the world that brought us closer to our Creator.
5. It is civilization that guarantees our basic rights as individuals and a people, and as a nation -  and international community.
6. It is civilization that instills in us pride and dignity in our continuing accomplishments and discoveries.
7. It is civilization that prods us to explore the ocean and space, and the mysteries of life making use of our faculties, the greatest gift to mankind.
8. It is civilization that treasures knowledge and history in libraries, archives and multimedia, ever expanding and mysteriously revealing.
9. It is civilization that inspires us all towards achieving our dreams and searching for a meaning in life in each of us, and as a people.
10. It is civilization that gives holism to our existence as Homo sapiens (thinking man), Homo faber (man the maker), Homo jugens (playing man), and Homo spiritus (praying man).

It is civilization that makes nations great - big and small - equally proud of their culture, and contribution to the world.

It is civilization that brings us all towards universal brotherhood and globalization, shrinking the world into a friendly village.

It is civilization that makes heroes and martyrs that always prevail at the end in keeping peace and order here in our only home, The Planet Earth.~

Civilization is a precarious balance. We still ask today why we build beautiful things and destroy them. We are puzzled by the answer of the madman who destroyed the Pieta with a sledge hammer –“because I cannot own beauty.” So, if one man can’t, why should he deprive humanity?

Human Life and Environment, presented at the Capiz Archdiocesan Gathering of Priests, August 4, 2011

Maintenance of Mural Paintings and Icons - Some Problems

Maintenance of Mural Paintings and Icons

- Some Problems

Due to their enormous size and vulnerability to the public and exposure, mural paintings are not easy to maintain and preserve their originality.  Firstly, because they are exposed to the elements and various human activities, including vandalism.  Secondly, the background and medium used may not be suitable to the local conditions. And thirdly, the mural may not serve its purpose at all, and therefore left neglected. Why many paintings are left in the attic if not in the open!  

Mural Paintings of Dr Abe V Rotor

Huge wall mural at St Paul University QC graces a dead end of a covered walk is now in a state of disrepair due to leaking concrete wall background. Painted in 2000 by the author.

A 10ft x 14 ft mural on canvas graces the elevated lobby of a home in QC.  Due to limited space the mural was folded at both ends, reducing the mural to 10ft x 10ft, square, instead of a panoramic horizontal view. Painted by the author, circa 2000

Details of  a mural on canvas, Quaintness of Countryside Life , showing only the left half portion.  Whatever happened to the other part.   Painted by he author, circa 2001

Claude Monet's mural has greatly deteriorated before it was restored.

The mural on the north wall of the University Co-Op was painted in 2003, but the co-op and artists say they don't have enough money to renovate the mural marred by graffiti. William Cumming’s Mural for Burlington High School, 1941, tempera on linen sailcloth (Eric Chauvin)The 1941 mural by famed Northwest artist Cumming sat undiscovered in a barn for decades and was identified after it was displayed at the Skagit County Fair in 2014. It’s now visible to the public — for a short time — at a Seattle gallery.

The original Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece, The Last Supper, was painstakingly restored on a wall on which it was painted. ~

Another work of Leonardo da Vinci, Mother and Child, before restoration. A second restoration was later required to patch up shotgun holes on the restored painting.  Two masterpieces were damaged by irrational visitors, Nightwatch mural by Rembrandt and the Pieta by Michelangelo. (lower photos)

Twice this famous mural by Rembrandt was slashed with knife, 

restored with the scars inflicted by the mad admirers.  

 

Pieta attacked with a hammer by a madman shouting, "I am the risen Christ!" The restored icon is now enclosed in a thick glass inside the St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.  ~

Auguries of Solitude

 Auguries of Solitude

Solitude brings out the best of human thoughts and ideas.

Dr Abe V Rotor 

Adversity makes a man, wealth monster,
War heroes, lethargy commoners.

To the hungry no bread is bad;
Glad is he, yet inside he’s mad.

Swords may clash and words may hurt,
In silence graver is a grieving heart.

The face, the index of the mind;
Groom, the glitter of a gold mine.

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for many years, liberated, and led his country, South Africa, to independence from Britain .
 

All men are fools, differing in degree,
Even philosophers themselves agree.

Patience is bitter, but sweet is its fruit;
To the old, the prize of Ginseng root.

Children are key to paradise,
Poor man’s riches, or compromise.

Love lives in castles, more in cottages
Where it knows no caprice through the ages.

Weakness of our enemy, our strength,
Yet unaware are we to our last breath.

Time is gold when rightly used,
And there is no other choice. 

Walden is one of the greatest books of all time. American philosopher Henry David Thoreau taught the world dignity in living alone by the Walden Pond, far away from civilization. It is here where he wrote a treatise between nature and man which today found new relevance to man's direct assult against Nature. 

Humanities and Photography: Morong (Bataan) Church - A Photo Study of Baroque Architecture

 Humanities and Photography: 

Morong (Bataan) Church

 - A Photo Study of Baroque Architecture 

Dr Abe V Rotor 

This is a series of photographs taken by a palm-size digital camera, with "point-and-shoot" ease and convenience.  And pronto! you can check on the monitor screen. This is how photos are taken today with the proliferation of digital cameras.  

This article is a simple reference not so much on the technical aspect of photography, but on creativity, considering that photography is a tool and expression of art. And like art and its various forms, the elements are basically the same: perspective, contrast, unity, balance, harmony, color, and such aspects as naturalness and adequacy or completeness. 

And the most important which is often missed by amateur artists and photographers are: specific subject, theme, and message.  

Suggestion: Describe each photo using as criteria the elements of art as mentioned. 

 

  

Questions to answer:

1. After studying these photos, what are the characteristics of Baroque architecture as compared to Gothic architecture? What are the commonalities of Baroque churches in the Philippines and in Renaissance Europe?

2. How would you relate Baroque architecture with Baroque music as in Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi? How about Gothic architecture with the music of Chopin and Mozart?

3. Describe Baroque and Gothic arts in our present era of Postmodernism. 

NOTE: These photos were taken by the author on April 26, 2014.  They were minimally edited using the Adobe Photoshop. 

Morong is a third class municipality in the province of Bataan, Philippines. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 26,171 people.  It is home to the Subic Bay International Airport, the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, and the former Philippine Refugee Processing Center. Morong was formerly known as Moron.
The municipality is accessible via the Bataan Provincial Expressway, off Exit 65. (Wikipedia)

Young Artists at work, UST

                        Young Artists at Work*

                                                          Dr Abe V Rotor 

*Intercollegiate painting competition, University of Santo Tomas, Manila 2013

Hours and hours they labored in their art,

     pouring out their best,

the years behind expressing memories

     putting skill to the test,

they haste for the hour of final judgment,

     without talk, without rest,  

colors in their command, at their fingertips,

     in creating their greatest,

the eyes of critics are theirs themselves,

     artists' eyes are deepest,

they seek the depth of passion, imagination 

     their limit the farthest

bringing down to earth, bringing back to life

     the lost to be caressed,

like a good shepherd heeding a distant cry 

     and braving darkness.

how far apart artists are from humanity 

     as they seek in redress

through competition and evolution of art

     to wake the world to the test.  ~  

      

Landscape Therapy

 Landscape Therapy 

"… when the curtain opens and the horizon rolls on with life passing this way but once, yet it’s more than destiny, more than eternity."

    
Painting and Poem by Dr Abe V Rotor

Landscape Therapy in acrylic, AVR 2014.

Landscape therapy is gaining back clarity and focus, though slowly from strained vision of light and shadow, of passing cars and blinking screens;  

Landscape therapy is getting the frayed nerves back to function in reflexes governed by the conscious and unconscious mind in peace and harmony;

Landscape therapy is when primary colors once more come as true colors, secondary colors and tertiary ones as sweet progeny of color combination;   

Landscape therapy is when the forests appear once more lush green, the mountains in the distance blue, and the sky azure as the deep sea;

Landscape therapy is when the consciousness once more map the migrating birds in the sky, the fish in the stream, a drop of pond water teeming with life;

Landscape therapy is when the biological clock is readjusted with the passing of seasons, understanding the reason behind Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring;

Landscape therapy is when - in the midst danger, courage is being afraid but doing brave thing, for the landscape of life is often perceived in duality;

Landscape therapy is when the swamp dries up to become a grassland, to become a woodland, in a magic sere that spawns rich life’s diversity;

Landscape therapy is finding once more a niche, bridging the past and present, tradition and modern, the living and the non-living world in Rousseau’s scenery;       

Landscape therapy is when raucous urchins sound in lilting joy; thunder a Beethoven’s bass drum, chirping a language in music – all in thanksgiving;

Landscape therapy is when a person like a prisoner in Plato’s Allegory frees himself to discover the realities of the world, which is the aim of education;   

Landscape therapy is when life is viewed with the power of the imagination – romantic or real or abstract - yet find meaning in reverence to the Creator;

Landscape therapy is when the curtain is lifted and the horizon rolls on with life passing this way but once, yet it’s more than destiny, more than eternity. ~

Little Gladiators - Game and Gamble

 Little Gladiators - Game and Gamble

Dr Abe V Rotor

Gagambang Hari

Gladiator Rhinoceros Beetle

Do you still play native games and sports? At least you remember the games you played on the countryside when you were a child. Or occasionally watch old folks playing the games in their own time.

Here are traditional games, many of them endangered. There are contemporary games which have traditional roots, while others are simply versions on old ones.

1. June Beetle Gladiators – Raise the tough outer pair of wings of this seasonal insect (Leucopholis irrorata) in a perpendicular position and clip it together with the split end of a barbecue stick five inches long. Do the same thing on another beetle of the same size so that each one faces the opposite direction. Draw a line between the two gladiators equidistant to each other. The contest begins. The struggle goes on until the stronger beetle pulls its opponent across the line and wins. A second or third round may be necessary to resolve any doubt.

2. Rhinoceros Beetle Gladiators – Oryctes rhinoceros is coconut beetle known as u-uang (Tag) or barra-irong (Ilk). The larva (grub) bores and feeds on the growing bud of the coconut. The males have horns which naturally makes fierce looking. The females on the other hand, have no horns and are relatively docile. During the mating season the males ferociously fight over their mates, a ritual that may last for hours, and this is what makes them favorite gladiators especially among the Thais who bet heavily on them like fighting cocks. The game is celebrated on a national scale during the emergence of the beetle usually from April to June. It is a traditional game for all ages and classes, lately the rearing of fighting beetles known as kwang has evolved into business in as much as the game has transformed into big time gambling.

Shielded by a tough armor made of chitin, the male is reminiscent of a medieval knight - clean, shiny, compact, and armed with horns. Normally the horn comes in a pair, vertically positioned, but in some species the horns form a trident with the lateral pair as long and as pointed as the central horn. Horns may reach a third of the body length of the insect, but these are more decorative than functional, except that in the insect world the horns are a deterrent to potential predators, and are used by the insect to bluff its own rival.

3. Spider Gladiators – Spiders are by nature ferocious and they attack even their own kind. Why, we do not find spiders living in group. It is because they will always try to defend their niche and will resort to kill any intruder. Even in mating the male which is smaller may end up instead as a meal. It is for this trait that this sport takes advantage of. Curious kid as we were, we would conceal our spider gladiator in empty individual match boxes. The matchmaker arranges the duel between two similar species of the same size.

The contest starts. Actually it is a game of death. Some people even bet to the point of gambling, especially for large spiders like the gagambang hari which measures up 5 inches from tip of front leg to tip of the hind leg. Tarantulas, other than being rare, are docile and would rather try to scare off their enemies before considering any bloody confrontation.

Our folks used to warn us, “Beware of the black widow spider!” We kids would hesitate to capture any unusual kind of a spider. The skull and crossbones insignia embosomed on the back of the black widow is still fresh in my mind. By the way, whatever kind of spider you find, take precaution; there are cases of allergy from spider bite and from inhaling hair dust specially during molting.

4. Beetle “kite” – It’s a game we children on the farm played when the salagubang (L. irrorata) finally emerges at the onset of the rainy season, usually in May or as early as April, although the insect normally comes out of the ground in June, hence its name – June beetle. We would tie the end of a thread like a kite on the pair of hind legs, then make the insect fly into the air. The beetle that flew the highest and the longest won. But we had to repeat the game over and over until the insect is exhausted, and then we replace it with fresh ones – or until we ourselves got tired.

5. Kite dog fight – Gladiator kites fight it out in the sky, but it’s the string that is the target more than the kite itself. This is how we did it in our plaza in San Vicente where we used to play kite come harvest time, in the months of October and November. At that time there was no nylon or monofilament, so it was the good old cotton thread, “numero viente” we used, which is the standard for kite string then. We would pound glass finely and mix it with egg yolk, then coat it on the kite string. When it gets dry the string is like sandpaper (papel de liha).

Here we go. The opponent’s kite and our kite are flown simultaneously. And when both kites are sufficiently stable in the air, we bring the two kites at striking distance, until the strings get entangled. Now the fight is whose kite falls – or which string breaks. Most often it is the string that spells victory. You can imagine the loser running after his kite across the fields, over fences and making sure no one gets ahead to retrieve it. A loose kite is everybody’s, and ends up to somebody.

10 comments:

Angela said...

I usually do witness these games when I go to the province. Children would tie a string on the salagubang and let it the poor insect fly around while being bound. However, for me, it is not really a pleasing sight. Not because I hate to see the poor insect suffer but because I just don't like insects.

MANARANG, Angela Therese C.
4CA2

March 5, 2009 3:52 AM 

darrel said...

When I pass by in our street I saw children holding a matchbox with different species of spider. Spiders are being played by the children and even the older one. They put the two spiders in battle and the one who falls down first is the loser.

March 5, 2009 3:59 AM 

darrel said...

I want to collect the different species of spiders. We should also take care of them because they are very important in our eco system.

March 5, 2009 4:04 AM 

darrel said...

Ever since I was a child I have been very grossed out by spider webs. I was afraid of spiders as a child and would scream and cry if a spider was in.

March 5, 2009 4:06 AM 

darrel said...

When I was a child I have been very grossed out by spider webs. I was afraid of spiders as a child and would scream and cry if a spider was in my room until one of my parents or sister would come and remove the invader.

March 5, 2009 4:59 AM 

annetukinn said...

I’m really missing these native games. I remember how my cousin, who’s in Batangas, would keep his spiders in a customized spider-box. He used matchboxes, and put divisions for each of his spider. It’s sad, howeve, that I don’t see kids nowadays collecting spiders or having fun with beettles.

March 5, 2009 9:23 AM 

Erick said...

In the first time, my friends used to catch spiders and beetles and make them fight. I thought it was bad, but later on I envious to their happiness, I also try to catch one and made a battle with them. I forgot the name of my spider but I used to put it in a matchbox or garapon and give him some flies or little worms for food. Is it bad? To play with the spiders or beetles? Well, I was a kid that time and all I know was to play. :)
-Erick I-BA-

March 7, 2009 5:32 PM 

darwin XD said...

sir, i caught one last night i think it is a rhinoceros beetle it had a horn-like on his head. i throw it on the sky to release it because it is very rare to one on this kind of day because of the pollution and industrialization and cutting down trees.

March 11, 2009 8:23 AM 

angelicapascual said...

When I was a kid, my busmates used to play spiders on a matchbox. They used to play it every dismissal time. My busmates playing these kind of game are not boys, they are girls and I think they enjoy playing it. :)

March 17, 2009 3:52 AM 

abelene marie said...

i really love seeing young boys in our street playing this kind of game but i am very sad when i see those little spider and beetles losing their head and even their feet after every fight. but it is a tradition for most young men today they are enjoying from what was happening to their so called "pamato sa laban".

March 26, 2009 2:46 AM