Pete Bayuga

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Wanted: Baguio ‘Witches’

With the recent death of Cecile Afable at 95, if not the oldest editor in the country then the one who held a weekly column the longest (her “In and Out of Baguio” in the Baguio Midland Courier ran continuously from 1946 until June 2012), Baguio City has only one of the famous “Three Witches” left.

Leonora San Agustin, the country’s first woman chemical engineer and curator of the Baguio Museum, (aka “The Witch of Jungletown”) died in November last year after a lingering illness. Afable (aka “The Witch of Padre Burgos”) died on June 12.

Virginia de Guia, the city’s only woman mayor and former movie actress, (aka “The Witch of General Lim”) is the only one left, so the vacancies for two new witches had been announced.

Formal designation: “The Wayward Sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the Sea and Land … (Shakespeare, Macbeth)” also “Those pesky women who get in the way of overdevelopment of Baguio.”

Sex: Female.

Age: 80 and above. Ageism has nothing to do with it but in this job, it is a must that the witch should have seen Baguio in its youth. No amount of watching old movies on Baguio or downloading old photographs can qualify one for this. One should know what it feels like to walk in Burnham Park in the morning and step on the frosted meadows.

One should have been used to seeing fireflies and May beetles, as well as welcoming the monkeys coming down on buses as they passed by a zigzag road. When one hears the 6 p.m. Angelus, his or her first impulse is to just freeze and pray for blessings, as residents did decades ago. One remembers that time when everyone older was called either “Uncle” or “Auntie.”

Hometown: One should spend at least half a century in Baguio. Those who went abroad and returned like they know everything wrong with Baguio and can cure it, please pack your brooms and don’t come back. You can, however, bring along the special “Baguio” brooms, which we all know come from La Union or Nueva Vizcaya.

Special qualifications:

1. One should know how to mobilize the people.

2. One should laugh like a true-blue witch and know how to hold her drink. Humor is very important. One must laugh at the graves of your enemies and lovers.

3. One heart should be in the right place: carved inside the pine trees.

4. One should be very intelligent. So intelligent you can beat men in the battle of wits with a single repartee. So intelligent one can beat the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos in a college debate.

5. As the Witch of Padre Burgos loved to say, one must be the “bestest.” No ifs and buts.

6. One’s children should be as good as you. But not better.

7. Dancing skills highly required. Not only in ballroom dancing but in the various indigenous dances.

8. One must be a connoisseur of the arts. One must write well.

9. One must have balls in a manner of speaking. One must face off with the mayor and not budge an inch. One must be willing to lead protest rallies and tell police officers, “I used to kick the butts of your fathers who were also policemen.”

10. Leadership and negotiation skills required. Leadership and management trainings in Harvard, AIM, etc. will never be accepted. One must have the mark of a leader on the day you were born.

11. Of course, one must know how to brew (intrigues, development plans, backroom politics), cast a spell and make Baguio a better place than when you left.

Hurry! Submit application now. Know where to submit it. Those who will submit theirs at the Baguio City Hall will be immediately disqualified.

Frank Cimatu Philippine Daily Inquirer  June 26th, 2012

Old Stone Market

The market was still under construction when this photo was taken!  Early 1900's. Remember the eagle carving at the middle front-top, at the arch?  In WWII, German nationals were rounded up and became prisoners of war and somehow were taken to Baguio to make escape a more difficult one.  To engage their incarceration time, the  Americans  were made to work: one of their products was the eagle. When the market burned down, the eagle was placed in storage somewhere and then forgotten, until one worker found it stored in a men's room somewhere!  This sounds like material for a good Baguio short story. 

Baguio bedroom

Someone tagged this as "Baguio bedroom" in an Australian home design magazine.  Shucks, nag-awsome met!

In 1952, at Star Cafe

This was a meeting of Baguio businessmen and citizens with Salvador Araneta, Secretary of Agriculture under President Magsaysay.  Can you identify the people in this group?  My father, Jesus M. Domingo, is second from left.  I can remember that powder-blue tie, it was his favorite.  The lone woman is Mrs. Cecile Afable (may her soul rest in eternal peace).

Class 61- Flowers for Mrs. Cecile Afable

Thanks to Delma, she facilitated the sending of flowers for Mrs. Afable's funeral.  Well done, and thanks very much, Delma.

Colleen Abastillas-Blake, Senior HR Director

Picture this:    There are xxx women in the top managerial and operational positions of high—tech management jobs.

The success rate is xxx percent, of programs relating to the mainstreaming of women in top management.

The overall percentage of women in the total work force for IT jobs is xxx.

Mentoring, coaching, peer reviews, training, re-training:  how effective are these?

At San Jose, California, the Brocade Communications Systems sponsored the Corporate Women’s Initiative Consortium to look into these issues relating to women. The company’s senior HR director, Colleen Blake, said the Consortium will try to find means to measure the results of programs. 
She is the eldest daughter of Norma Go-Abastillas.  Colleen herself has three daughters, and predicts that it will still be an uphill climb for them to reach top jobs.  Congratulations to Norma’s family, for hurdling the barriers for women to “break the glass ceiling”!  

(See article, SanJose.bizjournals.com, 1^st June 2012).

Cecile Afable: A Baguio Giant

Cecile Afable, the second of the Three Witches of Baguio to succumb to the Grim Reaper, is no more.  Thus passes a legendary figure, a City High fixture at reunions.

Cecile Cariño Afable was the first female Igorot to attend UP Diliman.  She had a long-standing column in the Baguio Midland Courier, In and Out of Baguio, and has reviled and thrown verbal acid at the enemies of Baguio’s environment.

True to form, she had her heart attack at the Pines Doctors Hospital, and will be buried in Ibaloi style among her clansmen and women, in a pine box of which she had selected and stored the lumber for.

Farewell.

Star Cafe

Best pies! Coffee!  Breads! Noodles!   This was the Star Cafe when it burned down, then moved to its location across Session Road.

Guessing Game No. 29

Do guess on:

the white-socked girl, who went to UST to study architecture.

the james dean teenage wna-be

the year this photo was taken

the event on that day

and where was it taken?

if you get all of these right, you are a true, bona-fide member of Class 61!!!!

even if you get just one of the above correctly, you will also be considered as a Class 61 member.

photo courtesy of Jimmy Magalong on Facebook.