School on Blog
Spolarium by Juan Luna the greatest Filipino painter, and hero,. The original mural can be viewed at the National Museum, Manila
1. Admiral Horatius Nelson protected England by ruling the seas while Napoleon Bonaparte ruled the land – two titans who knew their respective games.
2. In her essay If I were given three days to see, Helen Keller said that on the first day she would feast her eyes on God’s creation, near and far.
3. Rembrandt, the greatest Dutch painter painted his masterpiece Nightwatch, a huge mural; he can be compared with our own Juan Luna who painted Spolarium.
4. Vincent Van Gogh is a founder of Impressionism, a revolution in art which started in France in the later part of the 18th century.
5. So realistic are Van Gogh’s paintings that sunflower is sunflower, and starry, starry night is starry, almost real to the senses.
6. Two saints who lived with the people – at the grassroots are Joan of Arc and Francis of Assisi. They are considered people’s saints.
7. Francis of Assisi is the father of ecology. Ecologists today have apparently missed St. Francis' brand of an ecologist, which is reverence for life. Before anything else, revere life.
8. Julius Caesar was so proud he compared himself with Alexander the Great that at the age 30, he said that there is no empire left which he had not conquered.
9. Alexander the Great, two thousand years ago conceived the idea of a United Nations, and a European Union, both of which are today the greatest institutions ever built by man.
10. Princess Diana’s greatest legacy to humanity is a life she led – so personal, so touching, so concerned for the commoner – nay, the unfortunate, that ultimately provided a “mirror on the wall” for the aristocracy, humiliating and humbling them.
11. Mother Teresa was never undaunted, never wavered from her commitment for the poorest among the poor; never losing hope, never doubted her fellowmen.
12. The Lady of the Lamp is referred to no other than the Madam Curie, because the radium she was handling emitted tremendous radiation.
13. Philosophy – both ancient and modern – can be traced ultimately to Socrates, be it Platonian, or Aristotelian, and the philosophies of Emmanuel Kant, Marx, Sarte, Thoreau.
14. There are great men who became famous for their prophesies - Nostrodamus and Malthus. One saw tomorrow, the other the four horsemen of Apocalypse.
15. Mozart and Beethoven had extreme temperaments, so with their music. Mozart is therapeutic, Beethoven’s forceful and majestic.
16. Charles Dickens was one of the greatest storytellers of all times, he wrote Les Miserables and War and Peace, the world acclaimed best novels.
17. Albert Schweitzer and David Livingstone were both explorers and Christian missionaries in the South America the end of the 19th century.
18. If Americans have Abraham Lincoln, Filipinos have Ramon Magsaysay.
19. If Austrians have Amadeus Mozart, we Filipinos have Nicanor Abelardo.
20. If the English have a Florence Nightingale, we have a Fe del Mundo.
21. If the US has a Luther Burbank, the plant wizard, we have also Nemesio Mendiola, the man who made kenaf spineless.
22. Louis Pasteur was a medical doctor, so was Charles Darwin. Both however, did not practice their profession.
23. Perhaps the greatest inventor of the 19th century with the greatest number of patented inventions was Thomas Alva Edison. His most difficult invention was the incandescent lamp – he experimented on hundreds of materials in search of the bulb’s filament.
24. One man fought a nation, and save a nation, abhorring violence His only weapon: peaceful protest and civil disobedience in asceticism that swept the land, people revering him as father and almost god. His name is Gandhi, Man of the Millenium.
25. Little do we know of the unknown great man, like the Unknown Soldier, yet he represents countless people whose deeds are also those of great men and women we revere today.
This unknown great man did not die in vain. All of us has the capacity to be great. Bringing up our children to become good citizens, being a Samaritan on a lonely road, embracing a returning Prodigal Son, “plugging a hole in the dike like the boy who saved Holland from being engulfed by the sea,” or living life the best way we can that make other live the same – these and countless deeds make us great, and if in that little way we fall short of it, then each and everyone of us putting each small deeds together, make the greatest ever deed, for the greatest thing human can do is collective goodness – the key to true unity and harmony.
Thus Thomas Gray, in his masterpiece Elegy on the Churchyard, succinctly implied, to quote:
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene.
The deep unfathomed caves the ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseeen,
And waste their sweetness in the desert air."
The truth is, good deeds are never wasted at all. ~
Answers: False 2, 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, 16, 17, 22; the rest, True. Give the correct answer for the false items.
Light from the Old Arch 2, AVR 2011
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