Family news

we just got back from the funeral mass for the cook's son, a teacher at the local high school.

The church was packed with kids and relatives and friends.

I used my age as an excuse to leave toward the end of the service. Actually, I tend to faint in hot crowded churches, and it's not age, it's been that way all my life.

After church, everyone will go to the gravesite for a short ceremony. Most folks march on the street with the coffin, and some will take cars or tricycles to the cemetery. A sad day for the family.

Instead of going to the cemetery, we went to a restaurant for a snack then home. The custom here is to eat on the way home from a funeral (The custom started with a superstition that if the dead spirit follows you, he'll stop off at the restaurant and bother them instead of following you home).

Ruby has class pictures and a party to go to at her school tomorrow, so they will leave later this afternoon for Manila. She is dressing up as Mary Poppins for the party. She had planned to dress up as one of the Suicide Squad, but decided she'd better not, since it is a strict Christian school.

The Suicide Squad is the next big thing for teenagers: Another one of the Marvel/comic book universe, but the movie plot seems to be a makeover of the Dirty Dozen meets the punks.

On the other hand, most plots are not original. I was just reading Ibsen's play The Enemy of the People, and realized the reason that the plot sounded familiar was that it was essentially Jaws. Of course, punishing the one warning a town of danger goes back to Laocoon,...

In other news, we will now have a curfew here for kids: It is to stop drugs and violence.

Do they still have this in the USA? I am old enough to remember when we had to be home by midnight unless we had an adult with us, and we couldn't drive after midnight if we were under 18.

Well, the critics are getting up in arms over the druggies being killed, often by vigilanties who seek "pay back" against those who harmed a relative, but the policy remains popular.

And although most of the drugs kingpins were linked to China, we are also a transshipment site for the Mexican cartels, because they viewed it safe to export via the Philippines than through the US due to the drug war there.

Finally, I read the gov't, who sponsors organic rice and veggies (note: we grow there) is now planning to push organic chicken.

This would be good, if the prices stay high enough to make a profit. In the early 1990's we got into the broiler chicken business, but rarely made a profit due to cheaper imports from VietNam etc. Then our chicken houses were flattened by the typhoon that ruined our rice crop a few years ago. Luckily the farmer had just harvested the chickens so we didn't have to bury 5000 dead chickens. But we decided not to rebuild the chicken houses, So we are no longer in the "chicken" business. Instead we use that land (which is on a hill and not good for growing rice) to process our rice (drier, rice mill, and store palay/fertilizer etc).

We had a house up on the hill and Lolo and I used to stay there a lot, until our nephew was killed by a rogue NPA unit hired by the ex mayor. When we left, we held a dinner that included neighbors and those with NPA connections to show we knew they weren't behind the murder. But later that year, the government sent the military to the area, inspected everyone on the road, arrested some and killed a fewe others, so since then they have been quiet (I think). Actually, I have avoided the farm for years, because Lolo's son was busy wasting money in constructing a house/conference center there that is rarely used, and I just had to hold my tongue in wrath to see the money wasted. Sigh..