12 Attributes of Nature's Classroom

           12 Attributes of Nature's Classroom 

"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books." -  John Lubbock.

 Abe V Rotor, PhD

Nature's Classroom in acrylic (20"x28") by the author, with RJ Ramos 

Living with Nature Center, San Vicente, Ilocos Sur, October 30, 2025

Nature's classroom - free of walls and borders, sans timepiece and calendar, where land, sky and water meet and blend, over the horizon, far as the eye can see; 

Nature's classroom -  where trees are living pillars of a temple, firm and strong, against time and space, force majeure, seasoned throughout history, to ad infinitum;

Nature's classroom - seat of knowledge and wisdom, evolving into movements and schools, integral and holistic, devotional and humanitarian, with solid foundation; 

Nature's classroom -  where early scholars founded an intelligible world - Socrates'  philosophy, Plato's academy, Aristotle's natural history, Confucius' filial piety;

Nature's classroom - alma mater of naturalists Thoreau, Attenborough, Goodall, Cousteau, Quisumbing, Irwin, Darwin et al, forerunners of today's Natural Science;

Nature's classroom - seat of adventure of boys Huck and Tom in Mark Twain novels, of Tarzan, Robinson Crusoe, Heidi, of nature movies, Secret Garden, Sound of Music, etc;

Nature's classroom - concert hall of birds and insects, singers Nora. Lea, Regine; setting of Beethoven's and Abelardo's music; Amorsolo's and Luna's paintings,

Nature's classroom - where teaching resources are varied and universal, in situ and hands-on, experiential, compatible with methods of research, education and extension; 

Nature's classroom - outdoor link to cyber communication that wires the four corners of the globe into a network, reaching out homes, establishments and communities; 

Nature's classroom - a corner of lost Eden on the backyard and landscape, recreating the biblical scene, in functional beauty, through man's regard as guardian of creation; 

Nature's classroom - domicile of mankind, brief and minuscule to the vast universe, in Blake's humility, "the world a grain of sand, heaven a wild flower, eternity an hour.."

Nature's classroom - arena where man aims at the finest level of being a Homo sapiens (thinker), Homo faber (maker) Homo ludens (player), and Homo spiritus (spiritual), rolled in one. ~

  

Details of painting

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. - Albert Einstein

 

Left photo, author (with cap), poses with Ronleych Joshua Ramos (center) and his dad. 

Right photo, author wife, Mrs Cecille Rotor joins the group.

  “Children more than ever, need opportunities to be in their bodies in the world – jumping rope, bicycling, stream hopping and fort building. It’s this engagement between limbs of the body and bones of the earth where true balance and centeredness emerge.” ~ David Sobel

Halloween: Dialogue with the Dead

Halloween: Dialogue with the Dead

Dr Abe V Rotor

Remember our dead beloved, the unsung, unknown;

     catch up with time for our failed expression,

prayers unsaid, love denied,  gesture unrequited -

     day of the souls to amend our infraction. 

Dialogue with the dead. 

"Everyone is a moon and has a dark side, which he never 

shows to anybody." - Mark Twain

 

   The evil spirit comes for a visit. Merging of the real and imaginary. 

 "What’s the good of being a ghost if you can’t frighten people away?" - Barbara, Beetlejuice

Transported to the land of the dead. 

"Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see." Edgar Allan Poe

 

 Treat or threat.

"A witch never gets caught. Don’t forget that she has magic in her fingers 

and devilry dancing in her blood." - Roald Dahl

   Whose party? Where have all the people gone?

"Halloween wraps fear in innocence, As though it were a slightly sour sweet.

 Let terror, then, be turned into a treat." - Nicholas Gordon

 

 

            Masks or real faces?

   Faces, faces, young and old,

  fair and coy and bold;

masks, masks, masks we are told,

sans feeling, and cold. 

    

The dead takes center stage. 

Come let's visit Dante's Inferno, and Milton's world,*

     call on Frankenstein,** his monstrous creation;

travel to Transylvania, track the undead Dracula;   

     join the dead, their ghosts in celebration. 

Good and evil for once their boundary open,

     so with that of heaven and hell we implore;

take the backseat apostasy, paganism alive!

     make haste, before Hades closes the door.   

* Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, epic by John Milton

** Frankenstein, novel by Mary Shelley

"There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand."

 - Mary Shelley, "Frankenstein"

Crossing the thin red line of life

 Crossing the thin red line of life

"It's across this line that we explore

by discovery and serendipity." - avr

 Dr Abe V Rotor

 How can you write terror with a smile?

Silence may reign silent inside,

to let the world go with the mob;

across a thin red line we're moved,

to stand for peace in the world.

Flower in her hair, feather on her pen  

How time moves on, creeps or flies,

sweeping across the thin red line,

never to return, never to retract, 

neither the unfinished nor sublime.

 

 Hermit crab, hermit kid

Imitation is inborn, we know;

 yet deny it in the things we do.

 Cub-Boy Scout  

Once a boy scout, always a boy scout;

     time may forget, but values do not;

what we're then when young, lives on,

     in discipline and action.

  

Surrender and Peace - two words for growing up 

Treasure its essence in transience,

with the world going round and around,

unceasingly over its remaining time  

so with ours on this planet bound. 

 

 Helping hand takes a rest

"When does learning truly start?"

I can only say, "it will never stop."

Street view when the door is locked

Where's the way to be free and happy?

     I can only say, even if we can't see

like Helen Keller, or hear like Beethoven.

     the way is open, the way to Heaven.

    

Dog is a girl's live doll

It's across this line that we explore

     by  discovery and serendipity;

and glancing back at sweet memory

     pushes us forward to be free.  ~

A Little Corner of Eden Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

          Dedicated to the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP) Foundation *

 A Little Corner of Eden 

Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

 " A Little Corner of Eden  resembles a tropical rainforest." - avr

Dr Abe V Rotor

A Little Corner of Eden in acrylic, painted by Dr Abe V. Rotor (30" x 40") for the (Philippine College of Physicians) PCP Foundation Inc, founder and guardian of Dr. Arturo B. Rotor Memorial Awards for Literature.

"Nature represents the idea of the entire universe in a state of perfection. Nature is one; it unites heaven and earth, connecting human beings with the stars and bringing them all together into a single family. Nature is beautiful; it is ordered. A divine law determines its arrangement - the subordination of the means to the end, and the parts to the whole. 

"I chose the tropical rainforest scenery since it is the richest of all ecosystems in the world. The Philippines, being one of the countries endowed with this natural wealth is indeed an ecological haven. For this reason, I believe that, the tropical rainforest closely resembles the description of the biblical paradise. It is not only a living bank of diversity; it is the most important sanctuary of living matters on earth." - AV Rotor, The Living with Nature Handbook

 

"Birds sing not only for their own kind,

     but to the world that shares their joy,

in melodies notes may not capture,

     but the heart and spirit they buoy." -avr

"No one tires with the rhythm of nature – the tides, waves, flowing rivulets, gusts of wind, bird songs, the fiddling of crickets, and the shrill of cicada. In the recesses of a happy mind, one could hear the earth waking up in spring, laughing in summer, yawning in autumn and snoring in winter – and waking up again the next year, and so on, ad infinitum." - AV Rotor, Listen to the Music of Nature!

                              The Forest - Living World in Microcosm

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

     And heaven in a wild flower;

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

     And Eternity in an hour.”

                        - William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

"This verse captures the essence of the title, The Forest - Living World in Microcosm. It condenses the universe into its elemental symbols from which we take a full view of the world we live in. It reduces the complexities and vastness of both non- living and the living world into a microcosm that is complete in itself- a plantilla of creation all contained in the hand and experienced within a lifetime." - AV Rotor, Living World in Microcosm

 

Cryptobiology and Augury

"Call cryptobiology a pseudoscience, but it is gaining acceptance and support from scholars and people in general, with the discovery of strange creatures like the Coelacanth and Kraken. The ancient Roman religion interpreted omens from the observed behavior of birds. A white dove means “peace”. A black dove means “war”. It could also pertain to matters of the heart, relationships, luck, misfortune, death, Remember the emissary bird in the biblical Noah's Ark?  With the breakthrough in cybercommunication, it is evident that soon we will be communicating with Nature more directly, over and above fantasy and imagination, which leads us to the idea of conscientization, in the pursuit of values, truth and the ideal in protecting Nature from the hands of man himself." - AV Rotor, Cryptobiology and Conscientization

 

 

A pair of lovely parrots perched up high,

higher than the flight of butterfly;

aimlessly below many a passerby

just let the world go with a sigh.

 

It is estimated that more than half the species of plants, animals and protists live in the tropical rainforests. Imagine a single tree as natural abode of ferns, orchids, insects, fungi, lichens, transient organisms - birds, monkeys, frogs, reptiles, insects and a multitude more that escape detection by our senses. 

  

Orchids, Family Orchidaceae, is one of the two largest families of flowering plants, with about 28,000 species, and with more constantly discovered. Orchids make up 6 to 11 percent of all species of seed plants, and are the most advanced in the Plant Kingdom, occupying the top position in the phylogeny and evolution of plants. 

Orchids:

white, delicate, immaculate, pure;

red, flaming, romantic, demure;

Orchids:

flowing, silky, translucent, queenly;

fiery, ascendant, stout, kingly.

Orchids:

endearing, fancy, coy, culpable;

ephemeral, magical, lovable.

* Verse and drawing in pastel by Anna Christina, author's daughter, an enthusiast in the arts, assisted in conducting summer art workshops for children during her student days. Cattleya, Dendrobium and Vanda are native orchids in the Philippines. These are representative images of Vanda and its variants, including Vanda merrillii var. rotorii, named after Dr Arturo B Rotor in his honor as an orchid hobbyist.

 

"Today, rather than defending himself against nature, 

man realized, he needed to defend nature against himself."

 - AV Rotor, Light from the Old Arch

Forest: Man's First home, Genesis' Final View

Richest in flora and fauna of all biomes,

     Big and small, in a common union,

Arranged in niches, divided by storeys,

     In competition and cooperation.

Heritage trees rise through the canopy,

     Living towers of the forest;

Divine columns of Nature's Parthenon,

     Cradle of harmony and rest.

Stories about the forest, queer but true,

     Seat of evolution, of biodiversity,

Ultimate of adventure, science laboratory,

     Man's first home, Genesis' final view.

Message of the Painting, A Little Corner of Eden 

"Quite often, images of nature enrapture us. These are reminiscences of childhood, a re-creation of a favorite spot we may have visited or seen, or products of the imagination greatly influenced by society we live in.

But the painting reflects a deep-seated biological longing to be part of nature. Putting it in the biblical sense, it is a natural searching for the lost paradise. The scenery represents a refuge from city living, a respite, and an escape from the daily grind.

But the scenery does not only tell us of what we are missing.  Rather, it reminds us of  what we are going to miss, perhaps forever, if we do not heed nature's signal towards a fast declining ecosystem.  If we do not change our way of life from too much dependence on consumerism, to one more closely linked to conservation of nature, we may end up building memories and future archives of a lost world. " - AV Rotor

          A Little Corner of Eden

If I were to return after the Fall

To where my forebears once lived;

If I were to trace back their footsteps

To their world of make believe.

What would I tell to my dear Creator

Whose open arms have waited so long

For man to return, to repent for his Sin -

And I, having also failed all along?

I would tell Him there is also a place,

A little green corner of grass and trees,

Of bees and flowers, rainbow and butterflies,

Where birds come and sing with the breeze.

An emerald river gently flowing,

Meandering between hills and on the plain,

Palms and trees bowing at its levees,

Its waters soothing the day's pain.

I would tell Him of this place also forgotten,

Abandoned by a bandwagon,

By those who nurture the Utopian dream,

Now orphaned and virtually alone.

Is forgetfulness also Your tool of creation

Where man shall be gone from here on?

Paradise is redeemed and once more born?

No wonder Nature triumphs when left alone.~

* Article and painting are lovingly dedicated to the PCP Foundation, founder and guardian of the Dr Arturo B Rotor Memorial Awards for Literature. Philippine College of Physicians Foundation is the social service arm of Philippine College of Physicians. Founded in 2008, PCP Foundation values social service and envisions a healthier Filipino nation through partnerships to co-create health-centric innovative solutions. 0917 654 8710 secretariat@pcpfoundation.com

Dr Arturo B Rotor Memorial Awards or Literature Winners 2025

Awardees 4th Year 2025

Dr. Arturo B. Rotor Memorial Awards for Literature, 2025

Philippine College of Physicians (PCP Foundation, Inc)

Executive Secretary of the Philippines

June 13, 1942 – November 30, 1944

President Manuel L. Quezon

Preceded by Manuel Roxas

Born June 7, 1907 Died April 9, 1988 (aged 80)

Profession Doctor, musician, writer, government official; scientist, Rotor Syndrome, a liver disease named after him; honoree, Dr Arturo B Rotor Memorial Awards for Literature (PCP Foundation) 

Creative Non-Fiction Category 

Poetry Category

3rd Placer

"ELEMENTS"

by Eva SE Aranas-Angel, MD

“We must have something to cling to. 

Some things must not change.”  

Message of Dr Arturo B Rotor then at 75, 

five years before he died in 1988  

ARTURO B. ROTOR (1907- 1988)

Rotor is a unique combination of writer, musician and physician who was once upon a time before the war one of the country’s most active and distinguished writers of short stories. His stories were so highly regarded that the first publication of the Philippine Book Guild was a collection of his stories called The Wound and the Scar (1937). But since he exchanged his pen for a stethoscope he has not done any writing except making out prescriptions for his patients. And the reason he gave is contained in a letter he wrote to Alejandro R. Roces:

           “. . . I am no longer young, and because when I entered the practice of medicine I discovered suddenly that I did not possess the vocabulary to record or describe what I saw. I could write vividly enough about characters which existed in my imagination. But when I saw them in my clinic and noted the caught breath or measured the quickening pulse, I found myself inarticulate. I knew then that what I had written before was written neither with understanding nor with compassion. And so I am learning how to write all over again. . .”

A collection of ten short stories by Dr Arturo B Rotor, published by Ateneo de Manila University Printing Press

            

Like Roces, Rotor is from Manila. He was born in Sampaloc in 1907 and had his elementary schooling at the Burgos Elementary School, but finished high school in U.P. High. When he was studying medicine at the University of the Philippines, he was also studying music at the Conservatory. He finished both courses. While still an undergraduate, he worked as magazine editor of the Philippines Herald; and after graduation as literary editor of the National Review. This is why the artist, the doctor and the journalist are evident in his stories where on finds in abundance the artist’s sensitiveness to music and beauty, a meticulous analysis of the physician’s behavior, and a newspaperman’s eyes for details.

            Though Rotor has faded out of the literary horizon, The Wound and the Scar still sustains his reputation as a writer. The title is of course indicative of the author’s medical background. Of the eleven stories in it, six are about doctors and the rest on varied subjects ranging from flowers to music and from journalism to bucolic life. One of them, “Dahong Palay,” won first prize in a story contest sponsored by a local daily before the war, but the best of them, in spite of the author’s courageous admission of his limitations as a writer, is the medicated stories based on his experiences as a medical practitioner.

            Reminiscent of Emerson’s indictment of the American scholar, Rotor once stirred a literary controversy with a speech, “Our Literary Heritage,” delivered before the first Congress of Filipino Writers’ League in 1940. He accused Filipino writers in English of lacking social consciousness and advocated for a dynamic proletarian literature to offset the timid and anemic literature being produced then by local writers. He lamented their art-for-art’s-sake attitude and their emphasis in form and pattern that have blinded them to the vital issues that affected themselves and their country.

            “While the rest of the country is talking about the slums of Tondo and the peasants in Central Luzon,” he said, “our poets still sing ecstatically about the sunset in Manila Bay. . . It is hard to say, but it seems our writers have lost all the contact with the people whom they are supposed to represent. . . While the rest of the English writers search the four corners of the world for new things to write about, all around us, to be had for the taking, is original, vitally significant material. Yet we go on ignoring this and using that others have discarded.” For his pains in arousing social consciousness among the writers, he was accused by a critic of advocating literary dictatorship.

            All of Rotor’s stories were written before the war when short-story writing had barely shed off its swaddling clothes. And yet some of them are some of the best written in this country with hardly any trace of craft amateurism. Others, however, display conspicuous evidence of theatricalism and other traces of romanticism. The over-rated “Zita,” for example, is very Byronic, while “Dahong Palay” melodramatic and contrived. But these minor flaws hardly tip the balance, which is more on the merit side. The best stories of Rotor are the realistic, plotless ones where things happen in an apparently casual sequence of events where incidents are seen and suggested rather than planned one after another to follow a regular order of occurrence and climactic ending. His training as a physician evidently schooled him in realizing that all things, however trivial, are in themselves important, that a casual remark or a seemingly trifling incident all contribute to the flow and force of the stream. This accounts for the sometimes mountain of details in the stories that seem unrelated and unnecessary but which in reality all fit in the complete picture.

            Rotor the writer developed side by side with Rotor the physician. His stories gradually came to depend more and more on actual observations and experiences for materials than on contrived plots. Imagination gave way to the reality of life. He stopped studying life from books and took lessons from those that came to him in pain. He wrote about what he saw and experienced. He became more autobiographical. Thus we see Rotor the socialite in “Color of Her Nails,” Rotor the musician in “Dance Music,” Rotor the flower lover in “Flower Shop,” and finally Rotor the doctor in “Convict’s Twilight” and in other stories.

           

            Rotor was in the United States when the war broke out in the Pacific. He worked as secretary to the exiled Philippine government in Washington and waded on the beach in Leyte with General MacArthur’s liberation forces in 1944. At present he is practicing his profession and teaching medicine at the University of the Philippines. Evidently he is “still learning to write all over again” because he has not yet done any writing since the war. He hopes, however, to write a history of the exiled Philippine government, of which he is qualified, but not still after all the active participants have departed.

Pathway to Philippine Literature in English
An Anthology with Biographical and Critical Introductions
- Arturo G. Roseburg 1958 

Author's Note: With apologies to Dr Eva SE Aranas-Angel for the delayed posting of her name as third placer, Poetry.  Congratulations to all contestants in both Non-Fiction and Poetry categories. - Dr AV Rotor