Home Sweet Home this Christmas - and now we are going back to work, to our destination away from home, from our loved ones, from our place of birth, and where we grew up.

50 Shared Versions

Building Memories of Our Home Sweet Home and Keeping Our Homing Instinct Alive  

Dr Abe V Rotor

Brick House in the Country, living room painting in acrylic by the author

Home Sweet Home

By John Howard Payne

Music by Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-1855)

(Arranged for the violin and piano by Henry Farmer)

‘Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;

A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,

Which seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.

Home, Home, sweet, sweet Home!

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain;

O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again!

The birds singingly gaily, that came to my call –

Give me them – and the peace of mind, dearer than all.

Home, Home sweet, sweet Home.

There’s no place like Home!

There’s no place like Home!

Home Sweet Home is one of my favorite pieces on the violin. My daughter would accompany me on the piano in my lectures, and on one occasion, in a concert. The arrangement made by Henry Farmer is made up of three variations revolving on the popular melody of the song. Home Sweet Home was popularized by the pioneers who left their homes in the Old World and settled in the New World - America.

One of the lessons I discussed on the school-on-air program - Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid - is about home and family. It was one of the liveliest lessons ever conducted on air with many enthusiastic callers who shared their concepts and views about a happy home. Here is a short list.

1. Home is a roof for everyone, residents and guests.
2. Home is a wall with large windows that let the sun and the breeze in.
3. Home is where fish in the aquarium sparkle in the morning’s sun.
4. Home is a baby smiling, of children playing.
5. Home is a faithful husband and wife.
6. Home is a “place for everything and everything in its place,” but not always.
7. Home is dad and mom waiting for us from school.
8. Home is a workshop for hobbies and inventions.
9. Home is where your dog lies on the doormat waiting for its master.
10. Home is a litter of puppies and kittens.
11. Home is a rooster crowing, nature’s alarm clock.
12. Home is a house lizard’s crispy announcement of a guest coming.
13. Home is a frog croaking in the rain.
14. Home is a safari of wildlife – from insects to migratory birds.
15. Home is a cat purring on your lap 
16. Home is a cup of coffee, a sip of wine, a newspaper.
17. Home is a warm bath, a cold shower, a bath tub.
18. Home is National Geographic, Time Magazine, Daily Inquirer.
19. Home is ripe tomato, succulent radish, dangling string beans,
20. Home is a brooding mother hen in her nest.
21. Home is fresh eggs everyday.
22. Home is the sound of birds and crickets.
23. Home is the sweet smell of flowers, falling leaves, swaying branches in the wind.
24. Home is the sweet smell of the earth after the first rain in May.
25. Home is a singing cicada in the tree.
26. Home is a swarming of gamugamo in the evening.
27. Home is a sala too small for so many friends.
28. Home is a cabinet of books, a study table, a computer.
29. Home is music of Beethoven, Mozart, Abelardo, Santiago.
30. Home is music of Charlotte Church, Josh Groban, Sharon Cuneta.
31. Home is Amorsolo. Picasso, Van Gogh.
32. Home is potpourri of appetizing recipes, of the proverbial grandmother apple pie.
33. Home is pinakbet, lechon, karekare, suman, bibingka.
34. Home is a garden of roses, a grass lawn to lie on.
35. Home is an herbarium of plants, a "living gene bank", a home garden.
36. Home is home for biodiversity, a living museum.
37. Home is doing repair that has no end.
38. Home is sorting out and disposing old newspapers, bottles, used clothes.
39. Home is a midnight candle before an exam.
40. Home is a shoulder, a pillow, to cry on.
41. Home is Noche Buena.
42. Home is fireworks on New Year.
43. Home is general cleaning on weekends.
44. Home is a soft bed that soothes tired nerves and muscles.
45. Home is a fire place, a hearth, which takes the cold out of the body and spirit.
46. Home is a Prodigal Son returning, a Good Samaritan.
47. Home is a round table where thanksgiving prayer is said.
48. Home is laughter and music, prose and poetry with the family.
49. Home is forgiving, rejoicing, celebrating.
50. Home is angelus and rosary hour.

To sum it all, Home is Home Sweet Home.

Why don't you make your own checklist out of these versions? Add more!  Share your list with your family and friends cum photos and memorabilia - and treasure all these as sweet memory. Keep your "homing instinct" fresh and alive.  Return home now and then, like a balikbayan does. ~

Rizal's "My Last Farewell" speaks of Nature and Nurture on the highest level

 Rizal's "My Last Farewell" speaks of Nature and Nurture on the highest level  

In commemoration of Rizal's 126th Death Anniversary December 30, 2022 

 "My Last Farewell" - Jose Rizal’s Valedictory Poem

Living with Nature School on Blog

Lesson on former 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

On the way to execution by musketry of Dr Jose P Rizal, Philippine National Hero,

on December 30, 1896, at Bagumbayan, now Rizal Park ( Luneta), Manila .

By Nick Joaquin
Translated from the Spanish

Notes on Rizal’s Farewell Poem

A few days before his execution, Rizal wrote this touching poem in Spanish. He wrote it with no trembling hands; no erasures. The hero wrote on a commercial blue-lined paper measuring 9.5 cm wide and 15.5 cm long. The poem is untitled, undated and unsigned. Rizal hid it inside an alcohol stove he was using. In the afternoon of December 29, 1896, Rizal gave this alcohol stove as a gift to his younger sister Trinidad and whispered: “There is something inside.”

After the hero’s execution, Josephine Bracken got hold of the poem and brought it with her to Hong Kong. She sold it to an American who brought it to the US. In 1908, the US War Department informed the Philippine Gov. Gen. James Smith who instructed the Philippine Government to buy it back. The poem has been translated into practically all major languages of the world, and in many dialects.

Land that I love: farewell: O land the sun loves:
Pearl of the sea of the Orient: Eden lost to your brood!
Gaily go I to present you this hapless hopeless life;
Were it more brilliant: had it more freshness, more bloom:
Still for you would I give it: would give it for your good!

In barricades embattled, fighting in delirium,
Others give you their lives without doubts, without gloom.
The site nought matters: cypress, laurel or lily:
Gibbet or open field: combat or cruel martyrdom
Are equal if demanded by country and home.

I am to die when I see the heavens go vivid,
announcing the day at last behind the dead night.
If you need color – color to stain that dawn with,
Let spill my blood: scatter it in good hour:
And drench in its gold one beam of the newborn light.

My dream when a lad, when scarcely adolescent:
My dreams when a young man, now with vigor inflamed:
Were to behold you one day: Jewel of eastern waters:
Griefless the dusky eyes: lofty the upright brow:
Unclouded, unfurrowed, unblemished and unashamed!

Enchantment of my life: my ardent avid obsession:
To your health! Cries the soul, so soon to take the last leap:
To your health! O lovely: how lovely: to fall that you may rise!
To perish that you may live! To die beneath you skies!
And upon your enchanted ground the eternities to sleep!

Should you find some day somewhere on my gravemound, fluttering
Among tall grasses, a flower of simple fame:
Caress it with your lips and you kiss my soul:
I shall feel on my face across the cold tombstone:
Of your tenderness, the breath; of your breath, the flame.

Suffer the moon to keep watch, tranquil and suave, over me:
Suffer the dawn its flying lights to release:
Suffer the wind to lament in murmurous and grave manner:
And should a bird drift down and alight on my cross,
Suffer the bird to intone its canticle of peace.

Suffer the rains to dissolve in the fiery sunlight
And purified reascending heavenward bear my cause:
Suffer a friend to grieve I perished so soon:
And on fine evenings, when prays in my memory,
Pray also – O my land! – that in God I repose.

Pray for all who have fallen befriended by not fate:
For all who braved the bearing of torments all bearing past:
To our poor mothers piteously breathing in bitterness:
For widows and orphans: for those in tortured captivity
and yourself: pray to behold your redemption at last.

And when in dark night shrouded obscurely the graveyard lies
And only, only the dead keep vigil the night through:
Keep holy the place: keep holy the mystery.
Strains, perhaps, you will hear – of zither, or of psalter:
It is I – O land I love! – it is I, singing to you!

And when my grave is wholly unremembered
And unlocated (no cross upon it, no stone there plain):
Let the site be wracked by the plow and cracked by the spade
And let my ashes, before they vanish to nothing,
As dust be formed a part of your carpet again.

Nothing then will it matter to place me in oblivion!
Across your air, your space, your valleys shall pass my wraith!
A pure chord, strong and resonant, shall I be in your ears:
Fragrance, light and color: whispers, lyric and sigh:
Constantly repeating the essence of my faith!

Land that I idolized: prime sorrow among my sorrows:
Beloved Filipinas, hear me the farewell word:
I bequeath you everything – my family, my affections:
I go where no slaves are – nor butchers: nor oppressors:
Where faith cannot kill: where God’s the sovereign lord!

Farewell, my parents, my brothers – fragments of my soul:
Friends of old and playmates in childhood’s vanished house:
Offer thanks that I rest from the restless day!
Farewell, sweet foreigner – my darling, my delight!
Creatures I love, farewell! To die is to repose. ~

Execution by musketry of Dr Jose P Rizal, Philippine National Hero, on December 30, 1896, at Bagumbayan, now Rizal Park ( Luneta), Manila .

 Rizal's Last Farewell in Pilipino

Acknowledgment: Rizal and Josephine, by Gene Cabrera, courtesy of Philip Cabrera.

Great Men and Women – Reviving Classical Greatness

Reflection on the Martyrdom of Dr. Jose P Rizal, 126th Anniversary (Dec 30, 2022)

Dr Abe V Rotor

Execution by musketry of Dr Jose Rizal at Bagumbayan (now Luneta Park, Manila) 126 years ago

It is said, that indeed everyone is great in his or her own way, if greatness is measured by ones ultimate capacity to do good, and goodness means being of service to others and of contributing something, even only a drop in the bucket, so to speak, towards betterment of mankind, and of making this world a better place to live in. Nay, but how so few come to the knowledge of others for the good they have done. They are like the unknown soldier. They are like what Thomas said in his famous poem “Elegy on the Country Churchyard.”

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The deep unfathomed caves the ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And wastes their sweetness in the desert air.”

The poem makes us think though, that if we do not make use of that which can make us great, then we are like the obscure gem under the sea and the blooming flower in the desert.

Amongst us stand rare and distinct men and women who have excelled, more than most of us have ever done. Their contributions are of outstanding significance that has invariably affected us, our way of living, our thinking and even our perception of the future. And indeed if we have to look back without them we would doubt if ever we would be in the present state we are in. What would the world be without them?

Undoubtedly too, greatness is mirrored not only on the norms of how most of us live and would like to live, but on how these rare breed of men and women perceived ideas beyond their time in the way of the pioneer, in space and in time that few would dare to travel by, which in the words of   Robert Frost goes like this –

“ I will be telling you this with a sigh,

Ages and ages hence where two roads meet in a wood.

And I, I took the road less traveled by.

And that is what made the difference.”

How many people dare to take the road less traveled? How many of us found true freedom while treading on it? How many of us have dared to take the road of truth? The lonely road, the road barely a path? And to beat it in order to make one? Is it a choice? Is it fate? And fate we associate with gift – or luck we often refer to as serendipity?

Our world goes around and around, fortunate that there are people whose ideas were born ahead of their time? From these ideas bloomed into many ideas that found expression in a multitude of ways that feed of rationality as being and society. It is to these people to whom we have dedicated this lesson in the former Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid. In so doing we may lay down an alternative path and present models of living particularly to the youth of today.

We have chosen for this purpose the following great men and women from various nations. 

1. Charles Darwin – Interpreter of the pattern of life, founder of theory of evolution
2. Louis Pasteur – Father of immunology, science in the service of man

3. Florence Nightingale – Founder of the nursing profession
4. Mother Teresa of Calcutta – The living saint.
5. Joan of Arc – The saint who freed France 
6. Albert Schweitzer – Road of “the life of service” PHOTO
7. Abraham Lincoln – Champion in the emancipation of slavery
8. Jose Rizal – The pride of the Malay race
9. Francis of Assisi – Father of Ecology, the “upside down” Saint
10. Robert Baden-Powell – Chief scout of the world
11. Leonardo da Vinci – The man of many minds
12. Pablo Picasso – Painter of an epoch
13. Anna Pavlova – Prima Ballerina
14. Ludwig van Beethoven Stormy genius of music
15. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Prodigy whose genius is therapy

 

 

 

Great musicians and composers

Top: Filipino composers Nicanor Abelardo and Francisco Santiago;

middle row: Mozart, Debussy; bottom: Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi

16. Galileo – Greatest of early scientist

17. Carolus Linnaeus – Introduced systematic classification of living things
18. Juan Luna – His Spolarium inspired a people to gain freedom

19. Fernando Amorsolo – Master of romantic-classical painting
20. Thomas Alva Edison – Man of practical knowledge
21. Wilbur and Orville Wright – Conquerors of the Air
22. Charles Dickens – Life of the imagination
23. Gregor Mendel – Founder of the laws of heredity
24. Ramon Magsaysay – Champion of the masses PHOTO
25. Christopher Columbus – Discoverer of a new world
26. Alexander the Great – Conqueror of Kings 
27. Socrates – Man of Character
28. John F Kennedy – Charismatic American leader.
29. William, Shakespeare – Greatest dramatist
30. Mao Tze Tung – Steered The Sleeping Giant China to become a modern nation

Characters that accompany greatness

1. Genetic propensity, genius, talented
2. Meeting challenge in early life
3. Endurance of pain and various trials
4. Persistence, often stubbornness,
5. Resoluteness
6. dedication
7. Inquisitiveness
8. enthusiasm
9. Pioneering
10. Humility
11. Sacrifice
12. selflessness
13. Courageous,
14. Steel character
15. Competitiveness, often against oneself
16. Accuracy
17. Perfectionism
18. Strong character
19. Grateful
20. Admired, vice versa

The other “side of midnight” in the lives of many great men and women may be characterized by the following:

1. Short-lived
2. Unhappy
3. Loner
4. Turbulent
5. Sickly/with infirmity
6. Misunderstood
7. Outcast
8. Maligned
9. Non-conformist
10. Poor, and the like.

Challenge to our former radio audience of Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid (School-on-Air), DZRB 8-9 pm Mon to Fri with Ms Melly Tenorio

1. Tell something about the legendary character - The Boy who Save Holland
2. “Serve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” Is this parameter a good measure of how great a deed we have done?
3. Greatness can be demonstrated by certain leaders in our local community. What are the qualities of these leaders?
x x x

Acknowledgement: Internet, Wikipedia, Google

I talk to the trees - and they listen to me. (16 Cases)

I talk to the trees - and they listen to me.

"When in bloom golden, only for a day or two;
confetti follows where the bees have gone,
in every flower is born a new life
in another place and time."

Dr Abe V Rotor

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Re-encarnation - this elephant tree had been
once roaming around in band;
threatened, endangered and gone,
what would it become the next time around?

Tagbilaran, Bohol

Saplings race to meet the sun,
lanky to posts they shall become;
sans branches but bole and round
soon fall to the ax one by one.

Mt Makiling, Laguna

You bear the hardest wood -
ebony in deep shiny black;
your foes no less my kind
feeling and love we lack.


Tierra Pura, Tandang Sora, QC

Sunrise, sunset, the ground is alive,
lilting children under your care
that make up for your loneliness
in a world with so little to share.

Masinloc, Zambales

You were once doomed by the wind,
but benevolence saved you;
by your fruits and resting limbs,
sanctuary and playground, too.


Mt Makiling, UPLB Laguna

Black and white makes you bold and real
of your strangler's reputation,
climbing on your host tree to the sky,
a piece of mystery of creation.

Burgos, La Union

Tree house I see built on your limbs
has stolen your view on the scene,
the breeze in your leaves hushed away,
a living monument unseen.

 
Cebu City

Embroidered leaves by the bagworm,
turning to crimson and fall;
mutual indeed is host and tenant,
nature and creatures all.

Lagro QC

Whoever felled this old balete tree,
drove the deities away;
and the spirit of the tree shall not rest,
no prayer can repay.

UST Manila

Shadow of death I see across the lawn,
save the sun all mourning;
haunting the playground empty and quiet,
save a dead tree walking.

 
Ateneo de Manila University QC

To the conscious passerby,
in the morning holy,
in the evening scary,
a veil to laugh or to cry.

St Paul University QC

Young devil tree, but you aren't;
your eyes but holes to your heart;
your arm raised to praise, to call
a friend, such is nature's art.

Agoo, La Union

Over laden, if all these fruits,
a burst of a lifetime -
young to die like a mother
cut in her prime.

UST Manila

Living cradle to while away the time,
to catch up with many a lost sleep;
watch out, a nap gone over the clime,
where time and opportunity slip.

Ateneo de Manila University QC

Pendants you wear in the night,
blinking with the chilly air,
bring tidings beyond your shade,
to far places poor and fair.

St Paul University QC

When in bloom golden, only for a day or two;
confetti follows where the bees have gone,
in every flower is born a new life, the embryo,
seed to a tree in another place and time. ~

Oh God, there's no mistake!

Oh God, there's no mistake!

Former Title: The Duhat and the Watermelon

Dr Abe V Rotor

Duhat or Java Plum (Syzygium cumini), Family Myrtaceae; and

pakwan or watermelon (Citrulus vulgaris), Family Cruciferae

Wearily I walked one summer day,

The sky was as the sea is blue.

And thought, “Water must be nearby.”

And so I walked on to where it lay –

A hill rose, a tree stood untold,

Old were its branches but full;

By measure of my thirst and hunger,

Its fruits were the sweetest of all.

With bare hands I cupped the manna,

And feasted on it with no choice,

Then laid down under the tree’s shade

Yearning still for a greater fill.

Thus I searched beyond for more gifts;

And on a crawling vine did appear

Big, big fruits, but bigger was my lust,

And I had my fill at last.

“A full stomach makes the head light,”

My father used to tell me then,

“From thoughts to dreams they go wild,

Seeking for other dreams.”

I dreamt I asked God something trivial -

Why so small are the duhat fruits;

And the watermelon, frail and crawling,

Bears the biggest fruit on earth.

“There must be some mistake,” I said

And waited for any response.

“There must be reason in faith,” I implored.

But only silence that I heard.

All of a sudden I woke up in a jolt,

A berry had fallen on my head,

Whether by Sir Newton’s law that it fell,

Or a Darwin’s finch came to tell.

I raised my hands to the sky and cried

In atonement and in praise,

“Oh God, Oh God, there’s no mistake,

There’s no mistake.” ~

Nativity in the Forest

 Nativity in the Forest

Dr Abe V Rotor

Nativity Scene, Christmas 2012. Forest mural by the author, 2010

Creatures in the forest welcome a holy guest: 

     the wild and tough wake up to a stirring,

the feathered and furred, the mimicked and camouflaged,

     follow a beam of light in a clearing. 

It is an altar hemmed by a cathedral of giant trees,

     curtained by the living art of the vine;

and marked by emergent towers, the home of the eagle

     that proclaims the birth of a child divine.

Woodsmen there who live in communities ever since, 

     join their children sing the songs of the trees,

fiddling crickets and hooting owls and playful primates,

     the wind tamed into the whisper of the breeze.

Here the sun is sieved into moving shadows and art,

     the rains nourish life from ground to the sky,

epiphytes of liana and orchid in grandiose bloom,

     shower the newly born, birds singing up high.

How benevolent the wild, how humble the creatures,

     how simple the scene created by nature;

here beauty is simple, unspoiled by civilization,

     it offers comfort and refuge and nurture. 

              

Unconventional the forest seems the bastion of faith 

    for those seeking life's meaning here and far,

for lack of a manger for the spirit of modern man,

    to find here a Child and protect the green altar. ~

Giant Plastic Straw Christmas Tree

Giant Plastic Straw Christmas Tree

(before plastic straw was banned)

 

Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature School on Blog

Giant Christmas Tree made of soft drinks plastic straw - one for the Book of Guinness.  Photos taken by the author at a parish church plaza in Bulacan, circa 2010.

Call it waste turned beautiful by small and innocent hands
into a thousand-and-one stars on a pylon rising to the sky
what we grownups simply throw away and pollute the earth,
and the manufacturers reap profits while the young ones cry.

Call it Christmas Tree, call it tree of nativity and offering,
to a Messiah when the world seeks for peace and rest;
call it a tree of Conscientization* in shrouded light and truth,
in a modern world deluged with technology and progress. ~

                  Acknowledgement: Internet illustration 

 

Family Togetherness is the theme of Christmas

Family Togetherness is the theme of Christmas

Original title: The Family is the Focus of Christmas

"Mankind is a great, an immense family. This is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas."  - Pope John XXIII

Dr Abe V Rotor

A gathering of four generations in the city whose roots are traced to the provinces.  Such an occasion is a hallmark of Christmas in reviving the old tradition in natural communities now threatened by urban migration. Members come from many and different places here and abroad to attend the occasion that comes but once a year. Christmas is also the time to remember our departed loved ones.

  

Children's feeding program is an extension of family consciousness that brings joy and strengthens bonding particularly in marginal  communities. Shalom Philippines is among the organizations conducting annual feeding programs for kids on Christmas  in coordination with other NGOs and DILG leaders. 

A gathering of members of a religious community (St Paul of Chartres, Antipolo Rizal) with their relatives and friends is indeed a respite during the holiday season particularly to those who don't have the opportunity to visit their respective families.

It's double treat for those born in Christmas Season, a family get together with parents and godparents (ninong and ninang). Christmas is perhaps the happiest season for kids.    

From home to home, and heart to heart, from one place to another. The warmth and joy of Christmas, brings us closer to each other. Emily Matthews

Christmas is a holiday that we celebrate not as individuals nor as a nation, but as a human family. Ronald Reagan 

 

Christmas is welcoming new members of the clan.

 

Christmas is meeting new acquaintances and friends.  

Christmas is a gathering of relatives by consanguinity and affinity.

 

Christmas is outing with the family. ~

"Christmas is all about love, family and children. it doesn’t matter what we eat or what presents we get as long as the holidays are spent with loved ones. happy happy happy Christmas." - Anonymous

"Christmas time is cherished family time. family time is sacred time." - Anonymous

"Christmas is the season of joy, of holiday greetings exchanged, of gift-giving, and of families united." -  Norman Vincent Peale ~