I WAS shelf-shocked.
One afternoon after class, I swapped lunch for a visit to one of my haunts for used books.
My mind was on finding body parts investigated by Kathy Reichs’ forensic anthropologist, Temperance “Bones” Brennan, when I spotted the greenblack spine resting on top of a pile of mint covers.
Breathe in, out. That’s what Tempe did when she came upon the freezer holding a serial killer’s collection of meticulously labeled plastic bags, mementoes of various kills.
Except that the book, age-mottled and seemingly abashed to be in such bright company, made me empathize more with the human predator, scanning lovingly such ghastly souvenirs and relishing the memories.
Was it possible that the gods of bibliophilia were smiling on me? Had I exchanged cold tuna and rice for a rare and valuable find?
Alas! The book did not turn out to be the Gutenberg Bible or even Shakespeare’s First Folio.
According to its title page, the “Het Boek der Psalmen” was published in Amsterdam in 1905.
By five years, it’s on the wrong side of the 19th century, which demarcates the period interesting to antiquarian book collectors.
A few years ago, I interviewed John, who now lives in Cebu but stores his treasured collectibles in another country he would not even disclose.
Unlike the rest of us who read books to breathe and only incidentally beg, borrow or steal something to read, John, due to his book trade and his proclivities, lives to dive to the bottom of bargain bins on the chance of bumping into, say, a first edition or, better yet, a handwritten artifact made before 1455, when Europeans discovered printing and first used the word “edition.”
While John confirmed that it does seem that the country is not as crazy about reading as texting or running for public office, he said we were at least conducive for book hunting and collecting.
Book sales and secondhand booksellers in the country ensure that books are still energetically sold, exchanged, even occasionally hurled at incorrigible readers in one of their deaf-to-the-world trances.
John the Collector impressed me, but I remained dubious. Aside from inescapable chores and bills, termites and humidity cool the passion for collecting books in this clime.
Surrounded by public schools without libraries and children who have never lost themselves in a book, it is also a sin to cling to bibliomania, the mild (only because it is not criminal) disorder dictating the compulsive accumulation and hoarding of books.
Then there is the Filipino value of “pakikisama,” or coexistence, which warns you to leave space in the marital bed for the person you marry, who will not take kindly to being displaced by any stiff-backed rival with perfect binding.
But a 104-year-old book of psalms converted me.
The first collectors in England moved to rescue books when the minions of kings plundered and stripped the monastic libraries.
Book collecting may seem downright exotic in this country, where public purses favor libraries less than flyovers and waiting sheds.
The volume I weighed on my hand was not owned by Voltaire, whose ownership made priceless his copy of an 18th-century book written by an author no one remembers.
Though neither bowed nor shelf-cocked, from resting crooked in a cabinet, the psalm book has its collectible value further reduced by the provenance written on its brittle flyleaf: “Minnie De Zeeuw, March 27, 1908, 12th birthday.”
This volume’s endpapers are stuck and torn; many pages, dogeared. Like a luckless fading beauty, the book has not escaped foxing, the brown spots that will someday tan as a prelude to crumbling.
Worst of all, the book is in Dutch and nearly covered in musical notes, two languages locking me out.
So why did I bring her home with me? Perhaps it was the price: P50. Curiosity about its first owner, Minnie-who-would-be-113-years-old-had-she-lived-till-now.
And a feeling that the obscure can illuminate; the deranged, enthrall.
mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131
* First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s Nov. 15, 2009 issue
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Skewered symbolisms
Judging by its bumper sticker, this Multicab I spotted during rush hour dreamed big: “When I grow up, I want to be a dump truck.”
Hours later, even after a grueling morning and a delayed lunch, I still had the chuckles when I recalled that wee car and its owner’s Goliath-sized humor.
I wish the same bug bit the brains behind those political ads.
Night after night, they’ve thrown everything at hapless voters eating their doomed dinners. Everything but humor.
From-rags-to-riches Manny. Loren Kalikasan. Chiz the Chipmunk. Now-showing-Erap. Noy and the Fireflies, flipsided with Galing at Tiyaga.
One night, I caught myself wondering if it was spray net or glue that kept Noynoy’s top strands from rearing up and flickering their forked tongues in the combined heat generated by the native torches in that sing-along ad.
Then I became ashamed. I missed the point.
The message wasn’t about not letting the journey towards democracy ruffle one’s hair. I think it was about the son of Cory and Ninoy not being overshadowed by overpriced imported lampposts.
Still niggled by a feeling I missed the ad’s subtlety, I consulted the third edition of “Media Effects Research” at the excellent library of St. Theresa’s College.
According to author Glenn G. Sparks, researcher and teacher at Purdue University, media effects research holds that there are two ways to convince people. The central route to persuasion appeals to reasoning.
However, this high road has the disadvantage of stimulating people to think of arguments to counter the persuasive message.
The cognitive approach to persuasion is particularly limited with audiences that perceive the message as counter-attitudinal. When you are exposed to something that is contrary to your beliefs or attitudes, you are naturally critical, defensive and combative.
Does that mean ads are useless on political foes?
Villar’s ads meet the two values of successful propaganda, as laid down by Fritz Hippler. According to Sparks, the mastermind of Nazi propaganda attributed Hitler’s success to his campaigns’ simplicity and repetition.
I’ve lost count of the ads multiplying Manny the Compassionate during primetime. I don’t remember the other dramatic personas he projects through his ads.
But I can confidently hum the ditty accompanying the little girl miming her way around one of the townhouses constructed by a Villar-owned company. So whenever the TV screen shows the latest paid-by-friends-of-Villar ad, testimonial or pseudo news story, I supply my own background music: “Bulilit… bulilittttt (small person).”
If not for foes, are political ads then for one’s supporters?
Sparks writes that fear, guilt and humor may be used to reinforce persuasion. The third element specially disarms people, a good tactic in these joke-ready islands.
But a joke that’s gone too far may be something that wasn’t one in the first place.
Noynoy’s overproduced MTV spotlighted the showbiz “friendships” forged by his popular youngest sister. In this glitzy sphere, perhaps the makeover of Noy’s sparsely furnished head was inevitable in the footages, even in his cut-out image sprayed on a yellow banner.
Noy’s media handlers should know that his believers (count me in) don’t mistake Noy the Wispy for Noy the Wimp. Those few straying strands covering his noggin might be all that distinguishes his profile from that of a mushroom, but I think the fellow offers a drastic change from the Fungus in the Palace.
So if neither for friends nor for foes, for whose benefit then is the airing of political ads?
When a message is packaged as mere entertainment, this peripheral route was found to be more effective in introducing changes. People watching gyrations in a noontime show are not gearing up like a talk show audience to rant and pummel their agendas into their opponents’ skulls.
Political ads may just be exercises in the driest form of humor, packaged ostensibly as samples of the art of self-delusion but actually inviting the audience to find the caricature, take aim and have a chuckle.
In the cost-conscious world of primetime advertising, there is no time to account for performance, discuss programs, recommend solutions. It’s not unlike being caught in traffic.
You have time to read a bumper sticker.
And hope you get the joke at the end.
mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131
* First published in “Matamata” on Sun.Star Cebu’s Nov. 8, 2009 issue
Hours later, even after a grueling morning and a delayed lunch, I still had the chuckles when I recalled that wee car and its owner’s Goliath-sized humor.
I wish the same bug bit the brains behind those political ads.
Night after night, they’ve thrown everything at hapless voters eating their doomed dinners. Everything but humor.
From-rags-to-riches Manny. Loren Kalikasan. Chiz the Chipmunk. Now-showing-Erap. Noy and the Fireflies, flipsided with Galing at Tiyaga.
One night, I caught myself wondering if it was spray net or glue that kept Noynoy’s top strands from rearing up and flickering their forked tongues in the combined heat generated by the native torches in that sing-along ad.
Then I became ashamed. I missed the point.
The message wasn’t about not letting the journey towards democracy ruffle one’s hair. I think it was about the son of Cory and Ninoy not being overshadowed by overpriced imported lampposts.
Still niggled by a feeling I missed the ad’s subtlety, I consulted the third edition of “Media Effects Research” at the excellent library of St. Theresa’s College.
According to author Glenn G. Sparks, researcher and teacher at Purdue University, media effects research holds that there are two ways to convince people. The central route to persuasion appeals to reasoning.
However, this high road has the disadvantage of stimulating people to think of arguments to counter the persuasive message.
The cognitive approach to persuasion is particularly limited with audiences that perceive the message as counter-attitudinal. When you are exposed to something that is contrary to your beliefs or attitudes, you are naturally critical, defensive and combative.
Does that mean ads are useless on political foes?
Villar’s ads meet the two values of successful propaganda, as laid down by Fritz Hippler. According to Sparks, the mastermind of Nazi propaganda attributed Hitler’s success to his campaigns’ simplicity and repetition.
I’ve lost count of the ads multiplying Manny the Compassionate during primetime. I don’t remember the other dramatic personas he projects through his ads.
But I can confidently hum the ditty accompanying the little girl miming her way around one of the townhouses constructed by a Villar-owned company. So whenever the TV screen shows the latest paid-by-friends-of-Villar ad, testimonial or pseudo news story, I supply my own background music: “Bulilit… bulilittttt (small person).”
If not for foes, are political ads then for one’s supporters?
Sparks writes that fear, guilt and humor may be used to reinforce persuasion. The third element specially disarms people, a good tactic in these joke-ready islands.
But a joke that’s gone too far may be something that wasn’t one in the first place.
Noynoy’s overproduced MTV spotlighted the showbiz “friendships” forged by his popular youngest sister. In this glitzy sphere, perhaps the makeover of Noy’s sparsely furnished head was inevitable in the footages, even in his cut-out image sprayed on a yellow banner.
Noy’s media handlers should know that his believers (count me in) don’t mistake Noy the Wispy for Noy the Wimp. Those few straying strands covering his noggin might be all that distinguishes his profile from that of a mushroom, but I think the fellow offers a drastic change from the Fungus in the Palace.
So if neither for friends nor for foes, for whose benefit then is the airing of political ads?
When a message is packaged as mere entertainment, this peripheral route was found to be more effective in introducing changes. People watching gyrations in a noontime show are not gearing up like a talk show audience to rant and pummel their agendas into their opponents’ skulls.
Political ads may just be exercises in the driest form of humor, packaged ostensibly as samples of the art of self-delusion but actually inviting the audience to find the caricature, take aim and have a chuckle.
In the cost-conscious world of primetime advertising, there is no time to account for performance, discuss programs, recommend solutions. It’s not unlike being caught in traffic.
You have time to read a bumper sticker.
And hope you get the joke at the end.
mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131
* First published in “Matamata” on Sun.Star Cebu’s Nov. 8, 2009 issue
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Live, work and die
NEARLY all of us work to live.
According to this article, we also work to die.
The news website, www.independent.co.uk, published the findings of a British study showing the link between death certificates and means of livelihood.
According to Andy McSmith’s Oct. 30, 2009 article, “Cause of death? It depends what you do for a living...,” a Southampton University research team collated the findings from 40,000 death certificates issued during the 1990s.
They established a pattern of death among people pursuing a certain occupation.
Asbestos puts to the grave a high number of carpenters, fitters, electricians, plumbers and gas fitters. Coal dust shortens the life of so many mine workers, black lung disease is also called coal workers' pneumoconiosis. Silicosis, the oldest known occupational disease, dooms sandblasters, rock cutters and miners inhaling silica in quarries or mines.
But the researchers also caution: “The results are purely statistical, which means that they cannot prove a causal link between an occupation and a disease, proving only evidence of a statistical association."
Instead of lifting all the veils, some of the findings deepen the final enigma, death.
Some examples:
Male hairdressers are more likely to die from Aids; women hairdressers, less likely. Researchers’ conclusion: cutting hair does not cause Aids.
Also exhibiting greater than average risk from Aids are tailors, dressmakers, nurses, journalists and creative people.
If Aids is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and HIV is spread by intercourse, contaminated needles, blood transfusion and contaminated breast milk, what risky behaviors are shared by hairdressers and journalists, nurses and dressmakers?
Literary and artistic types are more likely to die from drug abuse, established the Southampton University study.
If one is tempted to blame the casualties on intellectual meltdown, The Independent report dispels this: drug abuse also claims a lot of construction workers.
Another mystery: Lymphatic cancer claims many in teaching. Query the researchers: Is there something in the classroom or a lecture hall that is silently killing them?
Yet the academics have a very low death rate from lung cancer or heart disease. One statistician’s theory: sensible behavior.
The British statisticians stress a third point: there may exist “‘spurious consequence’ of an unusually high incidence of a different cancer.”
Thus, the suicide crashing doctors, dentists, vets, nurses, and ambulance workers is not from work-induced despair. The researchers say that health workers know how and can get hold of the means to rush to their own conclusions.
Among the most likely to be killed are bartenders. The risk is not from underworld denizens wheelin’ and dealin’ in clubs, but the elevated levels of violence bar patrons are prone to after putting away a lot of liquor.
Is there one unquestionable certainty the reader can extricate from this sticky web of statistics and interpretations?
Stay away from cars, advises the death monitors. During the study period, nearly 50 percent perished in car accidents while at work.
Will mass transit prolong our lives or rush us to premature oblivion?
mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131
* First published as “Matamata” column in Sun.Star Cebu’s Nov. 1, 2009 issue
According to this article, we also work to die.
The news website, www.independent.co.uk, published the findings of a British study showing the link between death certificates and means of livelihood.
According to Andy McSmith’s Oct. 30, 2009 article, “Cause of death? It depends what you do for a living...,” a Southampton University research team collated the findings from 40,000 death certificates issued during the 1990s.
They established a pattern of death among people pursuing a certain occupation.
Asbestos puts to the grave a high number of carpenters, fitters, electricians, plumbers and gas fitters. Coal dust shortens the life of so many mine workers, black lung disease is also called coal workers' pneumoconiosis. Silicosis, the oldest known occupational disease, dooms sandblasters, rock cutters and miners inhaling silica in quarries or mines.
But the researchers also caution: “The results are purely statistical, which means that they cannot prove a causal link between an occupation and a disease, proving only evidence of a statistical association."
Instead of lifting all the veils, some of the findings deepen the final enigma, death.
Some examples:
Male hairdressers are more likely to die from Aids; women hairdressers, less likely. Researchers’ conclusion: cutting hair does not cause Aids.
Also exhibiting greater than average risk from Aids are tailors, dressmakers, nurses, journalists and creative people.
If Aids is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and HIV is spread by intercourse, contaminated needles, blood transfusion and contaminated breast milk, what risky behaviors are shared by hairdressers and journalists, nurses and dressmakers?
Literary and artistic types are more likely to die from drug abuse, established the Southampton University study.
If one is tempted to blame the casualties on intellectual meltdown, The Independent report dispels this: drug abuse also claims a lot of construction workers.
Another mystery: Lymphatic cancer claims many in teaching. Query the researchers: Is there something in the classroom or a lecture hall that is silently killing them?
Yet the academics have a very low death rate from lung cancer or heart disease. One statistician’s theory: sensible behavior.
The British statisticians stress a third point: there may exist “‘spurious consequence’ of an unusually high incidence of a different cancer.”
Thus, the suicide crashing doctors, dentists, vets, nurses, and ambulance workers is not from work-induced despair. The researchers say that health workers know how and can get hold of the means to rush to their own conclusions.
Among the most likely to be killed are bartenders. The risk is not from underworld denizens wheelin’ and dealin’ in clubs, but the elevated levels of violence bar patrons are prone to after putting away a lot of liquor.
Is there one unquestionable certainty the reader can extricate from this sticky web of statistics and interpretations?
Stay away from cars, advises the death monitors. During the study period, nearly 50 percent perished in car accidents while at work.
Will mass transit prolong our lives or rush us to premature oblivion?
mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131
* First published as “Matamata” column in Sun.Star Cebu’s Nov. 1, 2009 issue
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