A Shade of Noah’s Flood.

Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class Monday to Friday (www.pbs.gov.ph)

Flash flood as I recall it in painting, acrylic 2009

 The water kept on rising and dad made another notch on the post of our stair.

It is the season of siyamsiyam we call in Ilocano nepnep, the phenomenal – or is it proverbial? – “nine-plus-nine days of continuous rainfall” which occurs usually in August, the rainiest month in the country and peak of the monsoon in the Asian region. But it had been raining much longer than that, and dad said it would last for forty days, citing the story in the bible about Noah’s Flood.

I was in the elementary but I was then strong enough to wade and retrieve our empty basi jars or burnay being swept away by the flood. Since there was no dry ground left I pulled the jars from the rushing current. It was not easy to restrain a jar partly filled with water so that you have to empty it as much as you can before you could pull it to safety. Dad and I barely understood each other at the top of our voices in the downpour and rumbling flood, but I knew he was telling me to let the jars go because of the extreme danger, pointing at the main current just across the house.

But I simply ignored him not realizing the danger until he pulled me, letting off the jars to roll in the current sometimes banging at one another. We never gave up though with whatever we could under the extreme situation. My brother Eugene was even more daring, overtaking the jars before they were swept to the street. Manang Veny kept an watchful eye on the jars in the cellar and under the sagumbi (kichen-granary).

When we were nearly exhausted dad examined the water level he marked earlier. It was down two marks which meant the water was receding. Only then did we realize we had been working in danger, cold and hungry, for the whole morning. In the afternoon the jars came to a halt in the muddy sediment.  The flood was over. I thought I saw a white dove flying above.

Where did the floodwater come from? Towards the east is the edge of the Cordillera range running parallel with the coast of South China Sea. Dad used to tell me that when he was like me then, it was verdant green, bluish in the morning mist and before dusk.

I realized how different it was on that day the floodwater came down.  It is worse today.  When the day is clear you can see the scars of erosion in roan and orange and ochre, breaking the monotony and giving it a somewhat romantic touch. But these are not good signs.  In fact they are signs of destruction of the forest cover, the watershed of the narrow strip of flat land spreading out northward and spilling westward to the South China Sea. Along it is a chain of villages around towns wedged by the mountain and the sea. One can imagine the movement of water when it rains, and how ground water is trapped and stored to irrigate tobacco, vegetables and other summer crops.

But without trees, runoff water simply rushes down into flood, scouring on its way riverbanks, farms and houses.  There is not enough time and foothold for rain to seep into the ground and feed the spring and aquifers.  And there is not enough ground water to be drawn out from wells. Because water is scarce and too deep trees succumb in summer and brushfire often sweeps and consumes the dying vegetation.   

Many years has passed since the Noah’s Flood of my childhood.  I trained my tired aging eyes over the Cordillera of my childhood.  It too, is now old, tired and worn.~

Kamote Tops Beauty

In observance of World Food Day October 16, 2016
Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature - School on Blog [avrotor.blogspot.com]
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid  738 DZRB AM with Ms Melly C Tenorio 
8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday

Kamote Tops Beauty 

(Model: Miss Gelyn S Gabao, 19 Filipina)

Kamote (Ipomea batatas) tops contain more minerals and vitamins than any other vegetables, or its equivalent weight in meat and poultry. It is a glow food that enhances natural beauty and health, and gives that gait, poise and stride that many beauties display. It is the secret to acquiring and maintaining natural immunity and high resistance against diseases and other ailments. It contains substances that sharpen the brain and quicken responses to situations and the environment. 

It is a vegetable all year round. In summer kamote is grown in the fields and gardens for its enlarged roots or tubers which are rich in carbohydrates (go food) and rich in protein (grow food). In the habagat, it grows wild and luxuriant on hilltops, on levees and dikes, on the uplands, covering wide areas, keeping weeds down and protecting the soil from erosion. 

Kamote tops make an excellent dish with mungo and pork, bulanglang with shrimp or fish, and mushroom, or cooked in other recipes, or served as salad, blanched with red, ripe tomatoes and sliced onions, with a dash of salt, or a dip of fish sauce - bagoong or patis. Or cooked in tinola in place of pepper leaves, and green papaya. Why not blanch the tops on rice in its final stage of cooking? Add bagoong squeezed with calamansi or lemon. 

Kamote tops, maligned for being a poor man's food, rise to the apex of the food pyramid, top the list health programs, and doctors' prescription. Kamote tops occupies the rank of malunggay, alugbati, talinum, and spinach, relegating lettuce and other crucifers - cabbage and cauliflower and pechay - to the backseat.

Kamote tops are safe to health and the environment because they don't carry residues of pesticides applied on the field on many crops, and also those of toxic metals like lead, mercury and cadmium. Damaged parts are simply discarded, harvesting only the succulent and healthy leaves for further safety and better presentation.

Kamote tops come in green and purple, characteristic of the plant varieties, but in both cases, the same nutritive values are derived, with some advantage from the purple variety which contains xanthophyll in addition to chlorophyl. Both are recommended for anemic persons for their high iron content, and to those suffering from poor bone development, poor eyesight, and poor metabolism.

Kamote tops are used as planting materials, a case of cloning in the plant world, each stem becoming a new plant rejuvenated and true to type genetically - and younger than the parent source.  The new plant is capable of carrying all processes that constitute the plant's cycle.  It is a phenomenon known in variable observations in the living world, which heretofore remains unsolved by science.

Beauties come naturally with good food, simple and active lifestyle, in the rural areas where sunshine, clean air and surrounding, make a perfect combination from which spring the true beauty of man and woman, as compared to the makeup beauty from cosmetics, expensive salons, and by the so-called wonders of science and technology like liposuction and surgery. Why can't we simply eat kamote tops more often?~

Where have all our native fruits gone?

Where have all our native fruits gone?

Living with Nature Botanical Garden 

San Vicente, Ilocos Sur 

Dr Abe V Rotor

 
Tiesa (Lucuma nervosa), siniguelas (Spondias purpurea)

Where have all the native guava gone,
the bats and birds and the young one?

Where have all the sweet nangka gone,
its fruits buried under the ground?

Where have all the old piña gone,
on the upland, sweetened by the sun?

Where have all the red papaya gone,
solo by name, the only tree of a kind?

Where have all the pomegranate gone,
friendly though like the deadly one.

Where have all the pako mango gone,
to cook the finest sinigang?

Where have all the big pomelo gone,
its rind made into jelly and jam?

Where have all the red macopa gone,
the laughing children in its arm?

Where have all the native santol gone,
set aside for a large-seeded one?

Where have all the tall mabolo gone,
sapote and caimito that ripe into tan?

Gone to the genie everyone,
technology’s child becoming man. ~

 
Black Sapote (Diospyrus digyna), Atis (Anona squamosa)

 

Native guava (Psidium guajava), macopa (Eugenia jambalana),

Caimito (Chrysophylum cainito)

Jackfruit - Outburst of a Lifetime

Jackfruit - Outburst of a Lifetime 

A phenomenon beyond our understanding,

yet in our very eyes does happen,

from algal and fungi bloom, to locust swarming,

 at the threshold of life before its end.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Author's wife Cecille counts the fruits of a single nangka tree,

including those arising from underground,  Agoo, La Union

Over laden with all these fruits,

a burst of a lifetime -

young to die, like a mother

cut in her prime.

Where have all the salmon gone? We might as well ask now.

Genetically Modified salmon could escape from farms and irreversibly destroy wild salmon populations and ultimately the ecosystem. 

A First for Fish: Genetically Modified Salmon 

Reprint by Catherine Zuckerman

National Geographic, January 2015

Love them or hate them, genetically modified foods are making their way into grocery stores. 

Soybeans and corn have been for sale in the US since the 1990s.  Now if the FDA gives the green light, the first GM animal, a farmed fish known as AquAdvantage salmon, could one day join the ranks.

Developed by Canadian scientists, the fish (photo) is an Atlantic salmon with two tweaks  of its DNA: a growth-hormone gene from the large king salmon and genetic material from the eel-like ocean pout, to keep that growth hormone activated.  The fish which is female and sterile, should reach maximum size quickly in the land-based tanks where it could be raised. 

To keep feed a hungry planet, the GM technology could be used in other species, says spokesman Dave Conley: "Many of the benefits have been downplayed or ignored."

Still, the company was fined for environmental violations, and critics worry the fish could escape into the wild and create new problems.  The FDA has yet to approve it for human consumption.  If allowed, says Ocean Conservancy chief scientist George H Leonard, "it's imperative to be labelled, so consumers can vote with their wallet." 

AquaBounty salmon is the first genetically modified food animal to be approved for sale in Canada. (AquaBounty)

I mourn for the inevitable fate of the beloved wild salmon

 Dr Abe V Rotor

David and Goliath, native and GM types in the wild, won't end up with the biblical ending; the smaller salmon won't stand any chance in competing for food, territory and mate, in fact in all aspects of competition in nature. 

Sockeyed salmon on the run to spawn upstream.

GM salmons will consume more - preys and other food sources - to mature earlier and bigger, armed with planned voraciousness, unwittingly limiting supply for their native counterparts, thinning the latter's population. 

It is not just simple one-on-one competition; it is overall and interconnected displacement of members in the food chain, cutting links; worse, the food web is disrupted as chains are disturbed, destroying the integrity of the food web, and may collapse pulling down the local ecosystem.

Why the change in feeding habits? GM salmon carries genetic materials of two unrelated species of fish with different eating habits rolled into one - a heretofore salmon feeding, eating almost anything, small and big, live or dead, freely or covertly or savagely, often in quantities more than it needs called luxury feeding, a laboratory induced characteristic to gain Goliath size in a short time. 

GM salmon invade and dominate, native salmon population narrows down, soon the overall biological diversity of streams and rivers and lakes, in fact even the ocean since salmons travel far and wide into the open sea before returning to their place of birth - exacerbated by unabated pollution, infrastructures like dam impeding free movement, over and illegal fishing notwithstanding. 

Why GM salmon in the first place? Short term economic advantage to feed an exploding human population and meet virtually endless affluent living. Corporate dominance, cartel in the supply GM stock and methodology of production, making GM salmon growers down the line, captive of the "package" they themselves cannot provide except to grow the fish commercially.

Through corporate linkage with the exclusive supplier can GM producers operate, in the like of Bt Corn which is unprofitable to plant the F2 harvest in the hands of the farmer; the GM female salmon is made sterile, in the same way hybrid seeds carry suicide gene, and that hybrid vigor declines in the succeeding generations, an ethico-moral issue worldwide, on patenting life and depriving the small man of his right and need. 

Fishing as sport loses its essence, it is like fishing in a fishpond. The thrill dies with the GM salmon et al. In the first place, has the GM salmon lost its homing instinct? Would it rather join its half-brother eel fish living freely in the ocean? Or would the GM salmon rather stay put in its borrowed spawning ground - rivers and lakes? How about the GM-contaminated wild type, now a GM-native hybrid. Has it lost its homing instinct, or its adventurous lifestyle? 

How fast will GM contamination spoil natural salmon gene pools; the answer is disturbing as egg fertilization occurs in open water, where the GM sperm fertilizes the native salmon egg, by the millions, nay billions, and here the GM female produces only sterile eggs; which means a single GM salmon male can spoil a whole stream in a short time of GM2 degenerate salmon, like BtCorn polluting whole fields of corn sans its intended resistance - both cases sowing fear, in reality and uncertainty, as to the consequences on humans and the environment.  

It might be the Waterloo of the natural salmon - symbol of pride, culture and values, barometer of pristine environment, doyen of Ichthyology, iconic specimen of natural history; I fear and lament, it might be gone forever, because genetic pollution is permanent, and that it spreads out indefinitely to contaminate the last member of the genetically related species. 

Community fishing, a favorite Canadian sport; lodging house for guests in Lac Du Bonnet where the author spent weekends fishing. 

Many a weekend I spent fishing in Lac Du Bonnet, Winnipeg River and Red River in pre-GMO era, when the adventure of youth was free of threats of modern technology, but today, in postmodern era, I can only go back to cherish sweet memories in archive - and holding hope for the brighter side of Homo sapiens to examine sustainability for the sake of future generations and our living world. ~  

Salmon farming in floating cages and fish pens.  

Acknowledgement: Internet photos

Tell a Story by Drawing (Visual Composition)

Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM 8 to 9 Evening Class, Monday to Friday

A dying tree in a wasteland

 

Two versions in pencil and pastel 

Model of a landscape – watershed, the source of

freshwater In lakes and rivers, home and farm.

Creating a living landscape from a wasteland

 

Neighborhood children at work with author.  Concentration and 

reflection, imagination and creativity are important in composition.  

Neither they are men of letters - not yet -
nor artists, masters on all levels;
But kids growing up fast to rise someday  

above their dreams and models.

How can kids tell a story beautiful to the eyes
of God and men, of peace and joy,
Sans the spirit of the pen, the pain of living?
oh yes, by drawing, a tool and toy.

Pure they are by heart and thought and soul;  
while the sun rises to its summit,
touching the trees, the sea, the landscape,
doubtless for whosoever's sake

But their own, their future, so with mankind,
unknowing, unquestioning, obliging
to a guiding hand strong with faith and trial,
    whose golden sun is sinking, sinking.  ~   

Light Across the Bay

Dr Abe V Rotor

Moon with a companion star - reflection on the forest

Lights at the edge of at the forest

Born in the forest, weaned on two feet,
Wanderer on the plains. Lost.
Builder of the Tower of Babel. He fell.
He looks back. Homeless.

The moon hangs. A diamond at its side.
Man wonders. He pierces space.
Reflects. Sees his beginning - the forest 
Shrinking, shrinking, its edge on fire.

The gods descend. Their chariot on fire.
Raging, raging in their ire.

Photographs taken in Virac, Catanduanes, October 20, 2010 

..

Nature on a wall mural builds happy imagery

"To children, Nature is a beautiful world,
as pristine as they are innocent and pure."

Wall Mural by Dr Abe V Rotor 
Lagro, QC

Living with Nature - School on Blog [avrotor.blogspot.com]
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class, Monday to Friday [www.pbs.gov.ph]

"Boys in a row all eager to discover the world

give them not the computer, but a boat to row"

 

 "Adolescents at the boundary of childhood and  the real world -

one fashioned by man, the other, by Nature alone." 

 "Closest to the heart is the will, 
will the prime mover of action -
action in pursuit of dream."

   "Girth is the measure of age of a tree, 

growing to the fullest 

with the least intervention of man

 - or none at all."

"Wonder the child, wonder the hornbill;

who have not really seen each other before."

"Living with nature by a wall mural builds memories -   

memories into archives if we fail to preserve nature."   

"However perfect an image is, it is but a piece of art;
 life has no replica in man's hand."

"A moment of rest by a stream on a grass under the trees,

recharges a tired soul like a whole night's sleep." 

"From a cave opens a world of our ancestors;

beyond, their dreams - and the future of mankind."

 

"Imagination is more powerful than reason, 

for it has wings that split light not into black and white, 

but into the beautiful colors of the rainbow." 

"Love is primal, love is sweet;

and sweeter still wiith nature."

"There is no generation or diversity gap in nature; 

nature is one roof under which organisms - 

including man -  are knitted by their own life cycles

that form a dynamic order and network."

 

"To a baby Nature is a beautiful world,

as pristine as he is innocent and pure."

  

"To the very young, 
Nature is a bud in spring 
that grows into a crown, 

and flower to bejewels it." 

                                

"The age of make believe,
 is incongruous as it may appear,

with curiosity riding fantacy."

Museo de Santa Monica, Roxas City, Capiz 
In loving memory of Very Rev Msgr Benjamin F Advincula, PC, Episcopal Vicar for the Clergy, Archdiocese of Capiz, and parish priest, Santa Monica Parish.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog [avrotor.blogspot.com]

Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (People's School-on-Air) with Ms Melly C Tenorio

738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class Monday to Friday

The museum is housed in a renovated convent beside the old church.

Church of Sta Monica originally built in the 17th century

National Historical Marker. The old church itself is a museum.

Memorabilia

Centuries-old relics and icons

Gasera, oil lamps

Altar made of carved and molded silver plate

Mediogori Mother and Child icon

Blessed Sacrament

Relics and carved wooden table-chest

Original altar piece

St. Augustine

Author pays respect to the dead Christ; sacred garments (above)

Map of the Province of Panay

Sta Monica, tabernacle, halo of gold and silver

German accordion; Microphone, WWII

Acknowledgment:  Museo de Santa Monica curator and staff; Rev Msgr Vicente F Kilata, Rev Fr Vic Bendico, Fr Anthony Bautista, Fr Mark Granflor, Fr Nonoy Abalajon, Fr Noel Abalajon, Fr Robert Alba, Bro Ray Bofil et al