This from the wire service: “A hostage-taking incident at a manpower placement agency ended peacefully after the suspect released his victim and gave up to police.

The suspect, applicant Gilbert Ember, 23, held Ergie Alcala, 27, officer-in-charge of the Triple I Manpower Agency with a jungle bolo, allegedly to demand the refund of his P40 registration fee.”

We are talking about an amount less than a dollar here but I hope it is clear to one and all that the desperation stems from the kind of work these people apply for and the $125 that they can potentially send back home very month if they don’t spend hardly anything on themselves, meaning they rely on kindly employers and friends for toothpaste and soap.

It takes a major investment to be “deployed” abroad. This is an operation that requires the efforts of the whole family. If you are going to work as a “domestic” (euphemistic term for maid) in Lebanon, it will take you about 18 months to break even with your initial investment. And the work is drudgery, manual and above all, lonely. And we are not factoring yet the abundant cases of abuse that are overwhelmingly kept secret.

Meanwhile your family back in the Philippines becomes inured to the monthly stipend and the kids, to compensate for your absence are allowed every whim and fancy to remind them that they are loved and not forgotten. This is an opportune period for the stay-behind spouse to ponder his/her human need for companionship.

It’s a tough life these “applicants” are headed for. In many countries, there is no religious freedom and in a court of law, all it takes is the testimony of the employer to secure a conviction. So understand why even you will reach for a machete when you realize the rape begins at home.

August 19 and 21 are coming up. Birthday of Quezon and the other, the day Ninoy Aquino was assassinated. I think it’s safe to judge these 2 men by now: vainglorious patriots, heroes. My grandfather, Jose S Bautista worshipped Quezon who appointed him Judge over half of all Mindanao (Davao and Cotabato) during the Commonwealth. Out of respect I never argued with him whenever he’d begin extolling Quezon’s achievements. Until he died at the age of 102, my grandfather regarded Manuel Luis Quezon as the Filipino Prometheus. I was born 18 years after Quezon died and thus I was free to form my own objective judgment on the man. Remember, I am Quezon City-born and I frequently went to the Quezon Memorial Circle when I was a child and I was exposed to all those exhibits about his life and accomplishments. I saw Pope Paul VI at the Quezon Memorial and I can clearly recall the colored fountains that entertained us, the hoi polloi during summer evenings. We always set aside a “Linggo ng Wika” (week of the native language) throughout grade school and high school to learn and appreciate the greatness and patriotic foresight of Quezon. At first I felt MLQ compromised too much and sought political power too fiercely; I thought he was inordinately awed by Douglas MacArthur. It didn’t help that he clearly relished the trappings of pomp. I did get to know him a lot more from his speeches and from the numerous books and essays by historians who were eager to weigh-in with their own opinions about the man. And all in all, considering he came from the rugged remote eastern coast of Luzon facing the Pacific, and taking advantage of whatever education available to the natives at that time Quezon will be remembered well because of his love for the Philippines and for this alone, all his human failings will be forgiven.

Ditto on Aquino. These days all we hear about him are his daring exploits, courageous speeches as well as his unshakeable faith and unwavering bravery. Hagiography, they call it. Not that Ninoy is entitled to every bit of it but a major part of the lesson will be lost if we don’t consider that he had many moments of doubt and fear. That he succumbed to temptation often. Ninoy Aquino should rightfully be venerated because he was able to overcome his core of ambition and ruthlessness and arrogance and pride and sacrifice all that he had for his country.

Our country is on a dangerous drift . We have almost completely rehabilitated the Marcos dictatorship. Many ignorant people even hearken back to those imagined halcyon times. And who is to blame? Many benefited and got away scot-free. There are no lessons to be learned. Nothing personal on Marcos here. He was as human as our heroes and the rest of us and he simply took advantage of his superior political instincts and skills to promote a culture of unsurpassed corruption and rapacious personal aggrandizement. It is that we should not idealize what went on during that period which was the complete opposite of the communitarian patriotism that Quezon and Aquino lived and died for. We need to be ever vigilant not to allow our base nature to take over because just as the crowd chose Barabbas, we will do the same if we are not careful.

Spent my final day in LA visiting the Reagan library in Simi Valley. These libraries are the modern day equivalent of the pyramids and the architecture, setting, contents reflect how a former president wants to be remembered. This place was redolent with Reagan-era memorabilia and properly reflected what defined the Reagan magic: heavy on show biz and light on substance. There was the entire Boeing 707 Air Force 1 on display in a specially-built hangar as well as the Marine 1 helicopter that he frequently used throughout his term. His years with the movie industry were well documented and the Iran-Contra scandal was justifiably downplayed.

Reagan represented what a good ordinary man can become with extraordinary luck. Talk about a charmed life. His worldview was simple and his faith in his country was absolute. He strove to leave the world a better place. Unlike his predecessor Jimmy Carter who was considerably more nuanced and thoughtful, Reagan sought to define his leadership with uncomplicated choices. If his style sometimes worked against the less-fortunate it was because Reagan did not fully comprehend the almost limitless amount of good that his position endowed.

Whenever someone visited us during our years in New York City we’d always include stops to the Metropolitan Museum, the MOMA, the Guggenheim, the Brooklyn Museum, there were so many places of profound interest. There were obviously far less similar venues in Oklahoma but we were busy building our professional careers and we hardly missed those heady days.

Yesterday, we found ourselves at the Getty Center. I will admit we were reluctant visitors because our time in California was limited and we wanted to shop for golf clubs and books and for an idiot-proof digital camera. Turned out to be one of those exceptional, totally unexpected eye-opening experiences.

We could have stayed there a full week and only scratch the surface of the vast repository of human experience available. Must have been my age and the kids were not with us and we had the whole day but seeing those sculptures and paintings and glassware and furniture and jewelry and photographs displayed in a fabulously designed building amid the most expensive real estate on earth filled me with wonder. I remember being awed by the display of wealth and power in New York and I would always muse as to how far we were in the Philippines from attaining these soaring feats of achievement.

Years ago, Emerson decried the absence of such a tradition in the US. He wrote about not having pyramids, history and authors but instead of being discouraged he wrote that “our day is come; we have been born out of the eternal silence; and now we live,--live for ourselves,--not as the pallbearers of a funeral, but as the upholders and creators of our age; and neither Greece nor Rome, nor the three Unities of Aristotle, nor the three Kings of Cologne, nor the College of the Sorbonne, nor the Edinburgh Review, is to command any longer…”.

I know our day is coming.

Tom Coburn, MD is one of two US Senators who represents Oklahoma. He is a very conservative Republican and I agree with him on very few issues. He sees the world in a markedly different way from how I see it. But this does not take away my deep respect for Coburn who continues to practice medicine, free of charge during the weekends when he is away from Washington. Before he became a Senator, he was a congressman for 3 terms and because of a previous pledge to limit his service to 3 terms, retired to his clinic in Muskogee, Oklahoma when his 9 years were up.

Coburn is a straight shooter. He may have some idiotic ideas but his commitment to his country is beyond reproach. As a freshman Senator, he challenged a 40-year veteran Senate president pro tempore Ted Stevens on his pork barrel project that was famously known as the “bridge to nowhere”, a 200 million dollar bridge that would connect fifty people to a coast somewhere in Alaska. When it came to a vote, 82 Senators chose to support Stevens and only 14 had the courage to oppose what was clearly an abusive exhibition of political power. He is convinced that the longstanding politicians who have inhabited congress do not possess the will to enact revolutionary changes. Coburn is horrified at the 9 trillion dollar US debt (for once, we in the Philippines can count our blessings). He has a personal crusade to make the American people aware that the succeeding generations will be responsible for dealing with this problem and every time money is spent irresponsibly, the debt only zooms higher.

We need politicians like Tom Coburn. Part-time legislators, who do not depend on politics for their livelihood and unafraid to tangle with the traditional old-timers whenever they exercise their oversight responsibilities.