July 18, 2011
Connection with the Motherland
Summer Solstice this year was special. On this day I met and spent time with Max Dashu, the creator and keeper of the archives of The Suppressed Histories Archives, where she is “restoring women to cultural memory.” For several decades she has pioneered education about women’s spiritual roles through history, and has gathered a remarkable archive that is the basis for her current project “Woman Shaman: The Ancients.” (She is raising funds for the project here.)
We traveled to the Pinole Shoreline Park, situated along the northern section of the San Francisco East Bay. Walking across the hill and through the fields toward the shore, I felt the spirits of those who had walked the land before me. As the waves gently lapped the shore’s edge, we separated and spent time in silence.
Pebbles and shell fragments littered the beach. Then a pine cone glistened in the sunlight as the seafoam nudged it ashore.
A log jutting out from the hillside was the perfect place to stop and deposit my treasures. As I placed them, I became aware of being on one shore, here in California, and my family’s motherland far away in the Philippines, another shore, one to which I will always be tied.
At that moment, the clamshell broke in two, each half an individual piece of the whole that cradles me. I had a strong sense that we have traveled a long distance — from home, to home. We have landed on new shores, and found our way in a new land. We have brought our music, our dance, our culture, our food, our values, our very beings to these new shores. We have mixed with the prevalent culture, yet have never lost our ties, have never lost our Filipino soul.
The warm sun invited me to stretch out, to feel the sand beneath my feet. And then I began to move. Slowly at first, tracing patterns with my toes. Then the rhythm took over, and I danced. Here I share what I experienced and heard.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Here at Pinole Shores, where so many Filipinos live, I feel the pooled connections, the tides that continue to ebb and flow, unceasingly moving the flow, reshaping the rocks and the land, the ocean floor, the soul.
We come to the water and remember… we are a seafaring people, a land-based people, separated by land and water and experiences in life.
I don’t wish to focus on struggle. I wish to focus on triumph over them. Ancestors, please help me to properly honor those who have paved the way to today.
… And the ocean’s swells as we journeyed to another land, a new home, were like the feelings that welled up and rolled through unceasingly, without relenting, tears of pain and sorrow, loss and longing… when will I return to my land? My loved ones? All that has been so dear in my heart? My people, my food, my dances, my music — the smiles, oh, the gentle smiles so quick to appear. My mother, my father, oh brothers and sisters — I go so far away, yet my heart is still with you, will always be with you… as I remember your voices, the laughter, the warm embrace of home…
I am so far away, yet I hear your whispers on the water. I see your arms reaching across the waves.
We come to you, you whisper.
We love you.
We have never forgotten you.
Come home and taste the sea air,
Feel the sun on your skin,
Hear the sellers in the market.
Bagoong and bangus, lechon and pinakbet,
Sinigang and kutsinta, bulalo and
Sampalok, pusit and paksiw… we
call you… to nourish you.. body and
soul sewn together.
The water laps the shore unceasingly, over and over softening the hard edges, moving across the vast ocean. Through time, through space, across generations, the movement continues, traveling back and forth along ancient lines that tie and bind heart and soul.
June 16, 2011
What Are You? “Roots” Part 1
The other day I was part of a discussion that looked at “Filipino” versus “Filipino American” as an identity, an identifier. The discussion will be an ongoing one – internally and with others. I’m sure I’ll share more.
My cultural heritage is rooted in the Philippines. I am 3rd generation on my mother’s side (meaning, my maternal grandmother was the first to set foot on U.S. soil in the mid-1920′s), and 2nd generation on my father’s side (dad came over after World War II).
Angeles Amoroso and family gathered in La Paz, Philippines
My grandmother was from Jaro, Iloilo. In the mid-1920s she came here as a schoolgirl at the request of her bachelor uncle Fred Grecia – a request that would lift her out of a difficult life in Iloilo with a stepmother who treated her like Cinderella before the fairy godmothers arrived. I can’t imagine what it was like to leave her home country as a teenager, and to decide that once she left that she would never return. Yet, that is what my grandmother did. She turned her back and resolutely looked to her new life in the United States where the only person she knew was her uncle, and where she did not speak the language.
Luis Megino Family 1940s in Manila
During World War II my father was fortunate to be visiting relatives in Pangasinan when the letter calling him to duty arrived at the family’s home in Manila. He escaped to the mountains around Baguio and joined his uncle in a guerrilla unit. Most of his neighbors did not survive the war, and perished in Corregidor. After the war, he joined his oldest brother Patricio Megino in California, and continued his college studies at San Francisco State. Ultimately he received his bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of California in Berkeley, where he met my mother, Elizabeth Mendoza.
There were few Filipino families in the East Bay when I was growing up. That all changed in 1965… but I am getting ahead of myself.
In early 1996, I was part of a cultural exchange tour from San Francisco to the Philippines. Excerpts from my travel journal were published in 2002 in “Seven Card Stud, Seven Manangs Wild: An Anthology of Filipino American Writings” edited by Helen C. Toribio. Entitled “Roots,” it was the first story included in the first half of the book under the group title, “What Are You?”
It’s a question I was asked often as I grew up in California. No, I would reply, sometimes impatiently. I am Not Chinese. Or Japanese. Or Korean. Or Mexican. Or Hawaiian. “I am Filipino. My family is from the Philippines.”
My answer often prompted looks of puzzlement. Some even asked, “Where’s that?” or even “What’s that?”
Others said, “Oh, my dad/brother/uncle was there during the war,” or “I passed through there after the war.”
And yet others would say nothing and walk away, convinced that I was trying to trick them, and no matter what I said that they had identified me correctly, or that “Filipino” was some strange thing they could not understand (and did not care to). Still others would nod and say, “You’re my little brown sister!”
A few sneered, or shooed me out of the area away from their kids.
I was lucky the first 12 years of my life. I grew up in a multi-ethnic neighborhood of East Oakland. Living one block from the railroad tracks, I grew deaf to the rumble of the trains passing in the night. My classmates at St. Louis Bertrand Elementary School were Mexican, Black, Irish, Polish, Italian, and Caucasian. A handful were Filipino. No on was really considered “different.” I lived a colorblind childhood. I truly did not know what discrimination was until I left this neighborhood.
“ROOTS”
“9:30 p.m. Finally, we were on our way. As the city slipped into slumber and crystalline lights faded behind me, I realized that to get on this plane the last thing I had to do was to strip away all my non-essentials – the extra baggage that would not fit on the journey from America to my cultural homeland, the Philippines. As we traveled from the rush of San Francisco to the tropical rest stop in Hawaii, I sank into my seat to travel back in time.
“On the plane I read a tiny article about the awarding of “Certificates of Ancestral Domain Claims.” A total of 23 CADCs had been given to indigenous tribes for a total of 376,540 hectares, or 930,430 square miles. I wondered if these CADCs were based on anything like American Indian reservations in the U.S. What place and level of respect within society are given to these peoples? I wondered about the peoples in these areas – Kalinga, Puerto Princesa, the Mangyans,Zamboanga de Norte and del Sur, Basilan, Abra, Benguet, Ifugao, Mountain Province, Bohol, Lanao del Norte and del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya, Kasibu, and Quirino. What determines their value?”
~ * ~
December 8, 2010
Northside Community Center in San Jose, California
“Change the world for the better.” This is the undercurrent for all that I do. For most of us, this takes form in our daily lives with our families and work. Some are able to affect the wider circle of their communities. A few are able to create change at the highest levels, and therefore affect us all.
Over the past years have been looking into assisted living facilities – small multi-unit facilities, as well as large multi-phase communities. The wide range of service combinations is staggering, and the service provider model is the key determinant of the “feel” of the delivery of services. As a result each facility is unique.
When looking for communities with a new vision, I was encouraged to speak with Ben Menor, former executive director of the Northside Community Center. In this award-winning senior housing complex, Mr. Menor created a beautiful community space that integrates low-income senior housing with a community center.
http://www.dbarchitect.com/words/press/35/Builder%27s%20Choice.html
http://www.dbarchitect.com/project_detail/115/Northside%20Community%20Center.html
From a development standpoint, more important than the actual design of the physical space and programs is the thinking behind it that incorporated the inhabitants, the space, its programs, and its surrounding community into an interrelated whole.
In conceiving the Northside Community Center and Mabuhay Court, Mr. Menor drew from his many years working with several cultural communities locally and nationwide. Well respected as a business and organizational consultant, he understood the value in connecting the Center to the rest of the community.
Research has shown that people who are physically active, are allowed social interaction, and are part of a larger community are those who thrive well into their later years. The Center’s programs were designed to provide a caring, empowering environment that allowed each person to experience a fulfilled life of joy, comfort, rejuvenation and security.
Social interaction and physical activity was facilitated through daily programs and the flow and interface of the space design. The meditation garden created a space of beauty and peace for all to enjoy, while still aware of the community beyond. Art was strategically placed to draw people from space to space. Separate entries were reminiscent of neighborhood front stoops. Balconies and porches allowed privacy and limited interaction, while the community center served as dining facility and gathering space. Color and materials were carefully chosen to enhance the overall effect.
The spectrum of seniors being served in the facility and through its many services included Filipinos, Chinese, Indo-Asians, and veterans. Northside became a main provider of senior services for these communities. The strength of its infrastructure was flexible and resourceful enough to be able to respond quickly and efficiently when certain incidents resulted in a sudden influx of veterans in need of assistance.
Rather than excluding the youth from the project, Mr. Menor was able to include them by building in intergenerational programs. Families were encouraged to participate with the seniors, and elders were valued for their wisdom and experience. Activities with a culturally aware foundation created seamless support for engaging life, and continued many of the life activities residents most enjoyed while living outside the community.
Upon occasion the greater community was allowed to use the space for meetings. Through some of these events, the seniors were able to participate in the larger community in ways that were not otherwise easily accomplished.
For example, when former Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos is in town, Mr. Menor is the person asked to host and organize international community forums for Philippine-based and Filipino-American-based concerns. Northside has hosted these forums as well as other meetings held by the business community, local cultural community organizations, the Human Relations Commission of Santa Clara County, and organizations addressing broader community issues such as domestic violence. These meetings generated the revenue needed to allow Northside to sustain the great variety of programs and services offered, and to supplement its funding.
It’s clear that the Northside Community Center was the product of progressive thinking with a global, culturally sensitive view. As a result, when Mr. Menor headed the Center the senior residents enjoyed a vibrant community life that allowed them to thrive. This is an assisted living development model that holds great promise for the growing elder communities around the world.
Northside Community Center and Mabuhay Court received the following awards:
– 2004 Maxwell Award of Excellence from Fannie Mae Foundation
– 2004 Gold Nugget Grand Award for Best Senior Housing/Active Adult from the Pacific Coast Builders Conference
– 2004 Gold Nugget Grand Award for Best Affordable from the Pacific Coast Builders Conference
– 2004 Builder’s Choice Grand Award from Builder’s Magazine
– 2004 Builder’s Choice Project of the Year from Builder’s Magazine
– 2004 Merit Award for Design from the California Council of the American Institute of Architects
– 2004 National Award of Excellence from National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials
– 2003 Meritorious Achievement Award from the National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies HOME Awards Competition
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