Or should I say ich bin more American than JFK claimed he was a Berliner. Without diminishing my love for my birth country I cannot erase the fact that half of my "conscious life" (ie whenever I started remembering things) has been spent in the US. My 16 year marriage occurred totally in the US. My four daughters were born in the US. I have paid and continue to pay my dues (mostly taxes but this should include the intolerance and prejudice that I have had to put up with). I have enough knowledge in American Civics and History I can teach an advanced course in College. I can speak fluently an "accentless variety of Oklahoma-English". I have never shied from contributing to the various communities I lived in. I have always been prepared to defend the country of my four daughter's birth.

So just because I wasn't born in the US and I can never renounce my beloved Philippines should not mean I am less of an American. For if being an American means being more generous and tolerant and civic-minded and patriotic then by all means I am proud to be an American. To those who don't agree, you can always exercise the option of trying to bite me.

No entries these last few days because time flies here in G-town. Today's topic is on ethanol not because I tend to consume greater quantities with my friends here but because the Philippines can save a lot of money by producing ethanol from the abundant amounts of sugar that can be grown in the now dormant fields (many books have been written outlining the disastrous policies that made our country so dependent on US quotas). We should follow Brazil and cease becoming dependent on fossil fuels. Poor nations need to have more initiative as well as imagination in looking for ways to conserve money and natural resources.

I truly appreciate my patients who tell me to stay in Guymon because they fear for my safety and they don't want me to get disillusioned with the ugliest face that politics can bare and believe me, it is so easy and so simple to become beguiled with this picture while you are in the panhandle of Oklahoma that is so unseasonably verdant.

They tell me to do it for my kids, so they might have the proper vaccinations, top-notch orthodontic care, Ivy-league schooling. They tell me to do it for myself so I can spend as much time with my wife and play all the golf I want at the pride of G-town, the 18 hole municipal golf course.

Partly out of jet lag I have spent the previous two nights thinking and thinking. So many reasons, all of them right but this is when I recall Pico Iyer's "The Lady and the Monk" "... I had often thought that the mind was, quite literally, a devil's advocate, an agent of diabolical sophistry that could argue any point and its opposite with equal conviction; an imp that delighted in self-contradiction and yet, though full of sound and fury, ultimately signified nothing. None of the truest things in life - like love or faith - was arrived at by thinking; indeed, one could almost define the things that mattered as the ones that came as suddenly as thunder"

A tad cross-eyed and a little sleepy but I am back at the clinic seeing patients. It's always good to return to the US where there is order. And the cure to the chronic congestion and pollution in high-density Manila will be found in the Oklahoma panhandle, wide-open and pristine. We've had an unusually wet August and it's never been greener in memory.

My wife donned her white smock for the first time in two months and began treating her grateful patients who were so happy to see her. Who says we can only have one home? I feel entirely comfortable here and in the future I will post in the gallery photos of selected Guymon people, among the most decent and friendly anywhere in this world.

If you really want to participate, you need to be on the ground continuously tracking the national pulse. These experiences must be supplemented with a rigorous reading schedule and the depth of one's understanding will only be enhanced with spiritual exercises following the precepts of St. Ignatius.

The end result should lead to a strengthened resolve, a greater appreciation of the widespread suffering and a deeper commitment towards the common good.