We accidentally found crash site that killed 265 people

“Death by plane crash scares me. I travel a lot, and when you hit turbulence, and post 9/11, that's in the back of my mind a bit.”

—Robert Englund

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

TWO months after the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York City’s Twin Towers in 2001, a commercial plane carrying 260 people crashed in a neighborhood near the beach after taking off from the John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport in Queens.

Of the 265 killed, five were on the ground.

In the Philippines, my media colleague in Iloilo, who became a controversial Youtube vlogger, criticized the dummy sheet of our community newspaper I was preparing when he noticed I placed the plane crash story on front page.

“Sa Pilipinas ina natabo?” (Did it happen in the Philippines?)” he inquired. Thinking he found the answer to his own question after reading the first paragraph, I didn’t say anything.

He probably knew it happened in the United States and only wanted to suggest innocuously an international story didn’t necessarily warrant a front page treatment in a community newspaper, unless we were a national or international broadsheet.

He neither complained nor insisted, thus I retained the story on front page.

I realized he had a point; but, I thought I was also slightly correct.

Local stories in the local paper were more catchy and appealing to community readers.

They were more interested to read what’s happening around them, first and foremost, and they wanted it quick. National and international news maybe interesting sometimes, but they didn’t really excite local readers who always had appetite for fresh local news.

My colleague was correct had he pressed his issue and elucidated further.

 

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But, wait a minute, 265 passengers, crew, and those on the ground perished in the crash.

In every rule there is exemption, and it also applies to newspapers or, to be more precise, treatment of news.

National or international news, if there are casualties, can be a candidate for a headline even in a community paper in the absence of more sensational or “blockbuster” local stories.

Thus news of the plane crash with scores dead that happened in a faraway beach in New York, at the editor’s discretion, deserved to be on front page.

Going back to the crash’s details, eureka, we accidentally located the area where it happened 21 years after the scrimmage over which page the news about the horrible air mishap should be lay-outed in our newspaper in the Philippines.

It’s a neighborhood of Belle Harbor on the Rockaway Peninsula.

It was actually our second visit there on August 15, 2022. The first was during the pandemic; we reached the area even if our movements had been restricted by social distancing and Covid-19-induced protocol.

We boarded the Q53-SBS bus from the Woodside’s 61^st Street-Roosevelt Avenue via Broadway Street (+Select Bus Rockaway Pk B. 116 St Via Woodhaven Bl Via Cross Bay Bl) and arrived at Beach 116 St/Rockaway Beach Bl after 23 stops and one hour of travel.

After a 10-minute walk to the beach, we reached the Flight 587 Memorial Park. 

An American Airlines Flight 587 out of JFK Airport crashed into the neighborhood after takeoff on November 12, 2001, killing 265 people. 

Although some initially speculated that the crash was the result of terrorism, as it came exactly two months after the September 11 attacks, the cause was quickly proven to be a combination of pilot error and wind conditions, according to HISTORY.

The plane took off at 9:14 a.m., bound for the Dominican Republic with 260 passengers and crew on board. Just ahead of the Airbus 300 jet, also using runway 31, was a Japan Air 747. Even with the standard four-mile distance between them, the 747 created some wake turbulence that hit Flight 587 just minutes after takeoff. As the plane climbed to 13,000 feet, there were two significant shudders and then a violent heave, according to HISTORY.

“Unfortunately, the pilots of Flight 587 overreacted to the wake turbulence and their subsequent maneuvers put too much strain on the tail section of the plane. The tail, along with the rudder in the rear, broke off completely and fell into Rockaway Bay. Without this part of the plane, Flight 587 crashed to the ground,” added the HISTORY.

“As Flight 587 was in its final moments, Kevin McKeon was in his house on Queens’ Rockaway Peninsula. In an instant, his house virtually exploded; he was thrown out into his yard as the plane fell onto his house. In all, 10 homes were set ablaze, and five people on the ground, as well as all 260 people on the plane, lost their lives. The disaster hit Rockaway especially hard, as the community was still reeling from the September 11 attacks, in which 65 area residents lost their lives.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)

 

 

 

Monkey business will kill us, not Monkeypox

“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”

—Gore Vidal

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

IF health authorities will require us all to have a vaccine for Monkeypox, time to suspect it’s a monkey business.

They have been spreading fear and panic; and although there has been no immediate major knee-jerk reaction from the public, it’s another story if we will be mandated to have a vaccine for Monkeypox. 

It is the monkey business of some unscrupulous “health experts” that will kill us, not this rare disease caused by infection with the monkeypox virus. 

Strike while the iron is hot? While people are still smarting from the terror of coronavirus pandemic that have not been totally eradicated? 

Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox. It’s not as deadly as Covid-19.

With symptoms similar to smallpox symptoms, but milder, according to health experts, Monkeypox is rarely fatal and isn’t related to chickenpox. No need to panic like a house on fire.

We have always been at the mercy of health experts. Giant corporations that produced the vaccines for the coronavirus have made billions of dollars while most of us have lost our livelihood and became poorer.

They stand to earn more if they can trick us into getting the vaccine for the Monkeypox. 

Governments around the world will again scramble for funds to purchase vaccines. No way. No more. Not again.

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A large body of research currently points out that the viral outbreak known as Monkeypox is an STD that is more likely to infect homosexual men.

If this is the case, granting it is true, not all people are engaging in homosexual activities. For sure, not all those who have been infected with Monkeypox were homosexuals.

In the past month, it was reported that three new studies concluded monkeypox primarily spreads through sexual intercourse between men, as opposed to prior data suggesting that it is due to skin contact occurring during sex. 

Published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet, the newly emerging studies debunk a core belief about how Monkeypox spreads. 

Experts and health institutions had previously said that monkeypox spread mostly through skin-to-skin contact that could take place without sexual contact.

The World Health Organization classified the escalating outbreak of the once-rare disease as an international emergency in July; the U.S. declared it a national emergency earlier this month, just after Illinois declared a public health emergency over the virus. 

A total of 14,115 cases have been reported across the U.S., with 888 of them in Illinois, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said most cases "are coming from much more intimate skin-to-skin contact or kissing."

Person-to-person transmission is possible through "close physical contact with monkeypox sores, items that have been contaminated with fluids or sores (clothing, bedding, etc.), or through respiratory droplets following prolonged face-to-face contact," according to the Chicago Department of Public Health.

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What are the symptoms? Monkeypox often begins with flu-like symptoms and swelling of the lymph nodes, and progresses to a rash on the face and body, according to health authorities.

Virus symptoms range from fever, aches and rashes all over the body.

"Suspected cases may present with early flu-like symptoms and progress to lesions that may begin on one site on the body and spread to other parts," Chicago Department of Public Health previously stated, according to NBCChicago.

Dr. Irfan Hafiz, an infectious disease specialist with Northwestern Medicine’s McHenry and Huntley hospitals, said the virus causes symptoms that are similar to several maladies, including chickenpox or smallpox, as reported by NBCChicago.

“It can, to the layperson, look like chickenpox or warts,” he previously said. “But these (sores) tend to be in exposed areas.”

Health experts also stated the illness can be confused with a sexually transmitted infection like syphilis or herpes, or with varicella zoster virus.

In the U.S., some experts have speculated whether monkeypox might be on the verge of becoming an entrenched sexually transmitted disease in the country, like gonorrhea, herpes and HIV.

“The bottom line is we’ve seen a shift in the epidemiology of monkeypox where there’s now widespread, unexpected transmission,” said Dr. Albert Ko, a professor of public health and epidemiology at Yale University. “There are some genetic mutations in the virus that suggest why that may be happening, but we do need a globally-coordinated response to get it under control."

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

Passcodes change in Starbucks bathrooms

 

“At the end of the day, the goals are simple: safety and security.”

—Jodi Rell

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

I CAN confirm with absolute truthfulness that Starbucks has started modifying its open-bathroom policy that allowed anyone—including non-customers—to use the restroom at its stores.

I’m talking only of the Starbucks in the United States. I have no idea if the same policy is also being implemented in other  Starbucks outside the U.S., including the ones in the Philippines.

After four years, U.S. Starbucks employees now have been given the option to close bathrooms if there are safety concerns.

Some people didn’t like the new policy, but I support it 100 percent. I have no complaints.

I witnessed how some non-customers abused this privilege given by Starbucks. Some drug addicts used Starbucks bathrooms and didn’t dispose the syringe and other drugs paraphernalia properly.

At my favorite Starbucks store in Rego Park, Queens Boulevard, the management has changed the passcodes of the bathroom. 

In two other stores in Queens and Manhattan I usually visited, the passcodes of their bathrooms have also changed. 

Meaning, you can’t use the Starbucks restroom anymore if you’re not a customer, or if you enter the store and go directly to the bathroom with no intention to buy a coffee or whatever items.

A customer has to ask the cashier the passcode before he can use the bathroom. 

 

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In at least three Starbucks I regularly patronized, the management had posted the passcodes on the door for all to read. They usually composed of six numbers: 6-5-4-3-2-1. 

On August 15 at past 12 noon when I visited the Starbucks in Rego Park, I went to the bathroom and punched the numbers and they didn’t work anymore. Because I’m a regular customer and I have already ordered hot Matcha Green Tea, the cashier gave me the new numbers: 1-4-7-8-9.

In 2018, Starbucks management all over the United States started to implement the open-bathroom policy after the controversial arrest of two Black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks. 

Starting July this year, the Seattle-based coffee chain announced that store employees would be able to close bathrooms if it wasn’t possible to maintain safety.

The policy tweak came as part of an announcement that Starbucks would be closing 16 stores across the United States, according to writer Rodrigo Torrejon.

“(We) don’t want to become a public bathroom. But we’re going to make the right decision 100% of the time and give people the key, because we don’t want anyone at Starbucks to feel as if we are not giving access to you to the bathroom because you are less than,” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said in 2018. “We want you to be more than.”

 

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In a statement posted to the Starbucks website, the company’s senior vice presidents of U.S. operations wrote that giving employees the option to close restrooms was one of several initiatives geared toward making Starbucks shops safer for workers and customers.

In 2018, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were waiting for a business associate at the Starbucks at 18th and Spruce Streets. 

During a television appearance at the time, Nelson said he had asked to use the bathroom but was denied access because he wasn’t a customer.

Most recently, the New York Post quoted Schultz as saying Starbucks was exploring whether to alter the policy, which allows non-customers to use store bathrooms, due to a nationwide “mental health” problem that was posing difficulties for the coffeehouse chains’ employees.

“There is an issue of, just, safety in our stores, in terms of people coming in who use our stores as a public bathroom,” Schultz said during an event, quoted by New York Post. “We have to provide a safe environment for our people and our customers. The mental health crisis in the country is severe, acute and getting worse.”

“We have to harden our stores and provide safety for our people,” Schultz added. “I don’t know if we can keep our bathrooms open.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

   

  

 

 

Ping-pong diplomacy in peril anew

“In the world of diplomacy, some things are better left unsaid.”

—Lincoln Chafee

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

THERE we go again. Hardly had the tension brought by U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit in Taiwan two weeks ago simmered down, a five-member U.S. congressional delegation arrived in Taiwan on August 14, or less than two weeks after Pelosi’s contentious visit that infuriated China and drew intense Chinese military drills off the island’s coast.

Led by Democrat Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, the bipartisan delegation was welcomed by Taiwanese officials who said they appreciated the show of solidarity during the escalating tensions with Beijing.

Analysts said the presence of the five American lawmakers so quickly after Pelosi’s visit was likely to provoke a sharp reaction, possibly of more military exercises, although there was no immediate response from Beijing as of this writing.

Now that tension has again escalated between China and the USA, all the efforts put forward in the past to improve diplomatic relations between the two countries through sports, are in danger of being put to waste once more.

When the war was raging in Vietnam and the Cold War was entering its 26th year in April 1971 or 51 years ago, a Pan Am 707 landed in Detroit, Michigan, carrying the People’s Republic of China’s world champion table tennis team for a series of matches and tours in 10 cities around the United States.

 

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The era of Ping-pong diplomacy had begun 12 months earlier when the American team-- in Nagoya, Japan, for the World Table Tennis Championship--got a surprise invitation from their Chinese colleagues to visit the People’s Republic. 

Time magazine called it "The ping heard round the world." And with good reason: no group of Americans had been invited to China since the Communist takeover in 1949.

Why had they been invited? Smithsonian’s David A. DeVoss said the Chinese felt that by opening a door to the United States, they could put their mostly hostile neighbors on notice about a possible shift in alliances. 

The United States welcomed the opportunity; President Richard M. Nixon had written: "We simply cannot afford to leave China outside the family of nations."

Soon after the U.S. team’s trip, Nixon, not wanting to lose momentum, secretly sent Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Peking to arrange a Presidential visit to China. 

Nixon’s journey seven months later, in February 1972, became one of the most important events in U.S. postwar history. "Never before in history has a sport been used so effectively as a tool of international diplomacy," said Chinese Premier Chou En-lai. 

For Nixon, it was "the week that changed the world."

In February 2002, President George W. Bush, in his second trip to China, recalled the meeting that came out of Ping-Pong diplomacy, telling President Jiang Zemin: "Thirty years ago this week, President Richard Nixon showed the world that two vastly different governments could meet on the grounds of common interest and in a spirit of mutual respect."

Despite its critical diplomatic relationship with Iran, the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs sent a delegation of 12 Americans, including eight female athletes, coaches, and managers representing USA Badminton, to Tehran, Iran, from February 3-9, 2009.

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The team competed in the Fajr International Badminton Tournament at the invitation of the Iranian Badminton Federation.

From pingpong, U.S. had embarked on another peaceful mission through badminton in the hostile territory in a bid to improve its relationship with the Islamic country which has blamed the West for its various problems.

The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and USA Badminton also hosted the Iranian Badminton Federation for the U.S. Open in July 2009. 

The visit was reportedly part of the US’s "people-to-people" exchanges with Iran.

Since 2006, the US has included Iranians in a range of educational, professional, and cultural exchange programs. 

In the past two years, over 250 Iranians, including artists, athletes, and medical professionals, have participated in exchange programs in the United States.

Through its Sports United program, the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has brought the Iranian National Teams for Basketball, Water Polo, Weightlifting, and members of the men’s and women’s National Table Tennis teams to the United States. 

The US also sent 20 members of USA Wrestling to Iran to compete in the prestigious Takhti Cup in January 2007.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

Let’s read Rushdie’s book if we want to help him

“I hate admitting that my enemies have a point.”

—Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

THE first international event I tackled in the Oddsmaker, title of my first newspaper column in 1988, was about the The Satanic Verses, not the book, but the news about the issuance by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader of Iran and a Shiite scholar, of a fatwa calling for the death of the book author, Salman Rushdie, and his publishers.

It also called for Muslims to point Rushdie out to those who can kill him if they cannot themselves.

I chose the event for my November 1988 column over the controversial appearance of Yasser Arafat to speak in the United Nations (UN) and the publication of Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time after The Satanic Verses, officially published on September 26, 1988, had provoked great controversy in the Muslim community which condemned its “blasphemous” references.

The novel’s enemies had also accused the author of misusing freedom of speech, the central subject matter in the Philippines in that period after the restoration of democracy two years earlier in the EDSA Revolution.

Before Khomeini’s issuance of a fatwa, the novel had sparked a widespread outrage from Muslim communities all over the world after Pakistan called to ban it two months after it rolled off the press followed by a 10,000-strong protest against both Rushdie and the book in Islamabad.

 

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In an attack on the American Cultural Center, six protesters were murdered, and an American Express office was ransacked. As the controversy spread, the importing of the book was banned in India and it was burned in demonstrations in the United Kingdom.

British Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher gave Rushdie round-the-clock police protection.

Facing a religiously sanctioned bounty on his life, Rushdie, now 75, went into hiding for more than a decade, a dislocating, despair-inducing experience that he wrote about in his 2012 memoir, Joseph Anton, Randy Boyagoda wrote in The Atlantic.

Since then, he has largely returned to public life; before he was attacked at the Chautauqua Institution, in western New York on August 12, Rushdie was moving around freely, both in his adopted home of New York City and throughout the cultural and literary world.

Boyagoda pointed out that The Satanic Verses was published 10 years before Rushdie’s 24-year-old alleged attacker, Hadi Matar, was even born. And more than three decades have passed since Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, a religious edict, calling for Rushdie’s death because of the novelist’s representations of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam. 

Dire enough consequences followed in the fatwa’s early years: Deadly riots and bookstore bombings occurred around the world; several of Rushdie’s publishers and translators were attacked, including the Japanese professor Hitoshi Igarashi, who was stabbed to death. All told, some 45 people were killed amid the international tumult that greeted the novel.

 

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Facing a religiously sanctioned bounty on his life, Rushdie went into hiding for more than a decade, a dislocating, despair-inducing experience that he wrote about in his 2012 memoir, Joseph Anton. Since then, he has largely returned to public life; before yesterday’s attack, Rushdie was moving around freely, both in his adopted home of New York City and throughout the cultural and literary world.

In decades and centuries past, writers took what seem today extraordinary, heroic risks to say what they wanted about religion and politics: Solzhenitsyn, Joyce, Wilde, Voltaire, Dante, lamented Boyagoda, who urged those who sympathize with Rushdie to read his book as a sign of helping him.

“But writers in our current literary culture struggle to achieve such relevance. They must negotiate the publishing industry’s sensitivity readers, then hope to find actual readers, and still hold onto an idea of themselves as artists rather than algorithmically regulated identarian protagonists (or antagonists). Lamenting all of that is, admittedly, easier than following Rushdie’s model,” Boyagoda wrote.

Rushdie was expected to live after suffering stab wound in the body but he might lose one of his eyes, it was reported.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

A loss to tennis, a big win for motherhood

“Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.”

—Barbara Kingsolver

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

THERE are two reasons why I won’t be seeing Serena Williams anymore when the U.S. Open 2022 unwraps at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City on August 29.

One, I have decided to skip this year’s tournament (except during the Covid-19 restrictions, I regularly watched mostly the preliminary matches because the venue was just 15 minutes away by walk from where I live in Queens) due to prior commitment.

Two, Serena, 40, as we all know, has announced her retirement from tennis.

Serena’s exit actually will be a not-so-big loss to tennis, but a big victory for motherhood. She is 40 and super rich; she and older sister, Venus, have accumulated their wealth by entertaining us in the grass, clay, and hard courts in the major “Opens” of Wimbledon, French, Australian and U.S. for many years.

On September 1, 2017, while still active off and on, Serena welcomed Olympia, her daughter with Alexis Ohanian and the little one became her mini-me. 

The 23-time grand slam champion wrote via Instagram in February 2020 that “working and being a mom is not easy” even if she loved sharing her moments with the toddler.

She has nothing to prove as a tennis champion, but she still has to show her fans she is a good mother as she has been trying to these past five years.

She has accumulated 73 career singles titles, 23 doubles titles and two mixed doubles titles which includes 39 grand slam titles—23 singles titles, 14 doubles titles and two mixed doubles titles.

"It was a lot of emotions, obviously," Serena told the crowd, speaking about her last match in Toronto where she was waylaid by Belinda Bencic, 6-2 6-4  in the second round of the Canadian Open.

"I love playing here, I've always loved playing here. I wish I could have played better but Belinda played so well today. It's been an interesting 24 hours.”

 

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Months earlier, when she was pregnant, Serena had confessed to me that she worried intensely about whether she’d make a good mother, Rob Haskell confessed in an article in Vogue on January 10, 2018.

Haskell described her as perfectionist, she is rule-bound (“Am I allowed to eat that marshmallow?”), and her longtime fans know that her fiery self-belief is sometimes undercut with self-doubt; in fact, that tension is part of what makes a Serena Williams match such nail-biting entertainment. 

Two rather harrowing months after giving birth, though, Mother has her sea legs—just in time to get those legs back onto the tennis court. From her new vantage point, Olympia is both irresistible temptation and ultimate reality check.

This was how Haskell narrated his impression of the celebrity tennis player:

“We’re not spending a day apart until she’s eighteen,” Serena says, only half-joking. “Now that I’m 36 and I look at my baby, I remember that this was also one of my goals when I was little, before tennis took over, when I was still kind of a normal girl who played with dolls. Oh, my God, I loved my dolls.” She breaks into the jingle for Baby Alive, the doll with an eerie array of lifelike bodily functions: “I love the way you make me feel,” she croons in a cracking falsetto. “You’re so real.” Serena named her Baby Alive Victoria, drawn even then to triumphal monikers. Suddenly, shrieking with laughter, she’s on YouTube watching eighties TV commercials in which little girls in soft focus change their dolls’ wet diapers.

 

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“To be honest, there’s something really attractive about the idea of moving to San Francisco and just being a mom,” she says. Reddit, the news aggregator of which Alexis is a cofounder, is based there, and they’ve just found a house in Silicon Valley. 

“But not yet. Maybe this goes without saying, but it needs to be said in a powerful way: I absolutely want more Grand Slams. I’m well aware of the record books, unfortunately. It’s not a secret that I have my sights on 25.” She means 25 Grand Slam victories, which would surpass the record of 24 held by the Australian tennis legend Margaret Court and make her the undisputed greatest of all time. (Serena, already widely regarded as the best there ever was, currently owns 23.) 

“And actually, I think having a baby might help. When I’m too anxious I lose matches, and I feel like a lot of that anxiety disappeared when Olympia was born. Knowing I’ve got this beautiful baby to go home to makes me feel like I don’t have to play another match. I don’t need the money or the titles or the prestige. I want them, but I don’t need them. That’s a different feeling for me.”

 

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Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg is a longtime hero of Serena’s, and in the last year she has offered invaluable advice about marriage and motherhood. 

The two met years ago after Serena, in an interview, was asked to name someone she’d like to have dinner with and chose Sandberg. “I saw that, and I called her and said, ‘I’d love to have dinner with you!’ ” Sandberg recalls. They did not become close until after Sandberg’s husband, Dave Goldberg, died unexpectedly in 2015. “Serena really stepped up. I’d get texts and emails from her from all over the world telling me how strong I was at a time when I didn’t feel strong. She had experienced loss in her own life, and I think she knew what to do.”

Many of her friends from women’s tennis—Caroline Wozniacki, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Angelique Kerber—have reached out to remind her how much she’s been missed this year. This is hugely important to Serena, who insists that contrary to the rumors, this is a group of women that genuinely cares for and respects one another. 

“I really believe that we have to build each other up and build our tour up,” she says. 

“The women in Billie Jean King’s day supported each other even though they competed fiercely. We’ve got to do that. That’s kind of the mark I want to leave. Play each other hard, but keep growing the sport.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

Diay did in India what Owens did in Germany

“For a time, at least, I was the most famous person in the entire world.”

—Jesse Owens 

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

I WAS high school student when I started to seriously fall in love with three sports—chess, boxing, running (marathon and track and field); I did not just fancy these disciplines, I played them all, modesty aside.

The major world sports events I could still vividly remember then were: the United States’ boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics (the Soviet Union retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics), Andrei Sokolov’s crowning as world junior chess king in Copenhagen in 1982, Rolando Navarette’s upset 5^th round KO win against Uganda’s Cornelius Boza Edwards to pocket the WBC junior lightweight championship in Italy in 1981, and Lydia “Diay” de Vega-Mercado’s gold in the 100-meter dash in the 1982 New Delhi Asian Games.

Let’s skip the USA-USSR Olympics tit for tat, Sokolov (I remember him only because Baguio City hosted the 1987 edition won by India’s Viswanathan Anand and, mea culpa, I thought he would show up. I realized Sokolov was not anymore qualified because he was already more than 21), and Navarette.

Let’s focus on Lydia de Vega-Mercado, who died of breast cancer at 57 on August 10.

There was one particular moment where I became interested on Diay and this was when she really made headlines literally in the 1982 New Delhi Asian Games.

Like many Filipinos who monitored and chronicled the Games at that time, I was awestruck.

 

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P.T. Usha, older by one year to Lydia, 17, was India’s national heroine. 

Of the 4,595 athletes from 33 Asian countries, Usha, 18, known as the “Golden Girl” and stood five feet and seven inches, was so popular she was picked to administer the 1982 Asian Games’ Athlete’s Oath. She became instant celebrity.

Everywhere she went, Usha attracted the fans’ attention, according to the journals I read and collected at that time. 

Usha was the fastest woman in India and penciled to dominate the 100-meter and 200-meter in the distaff side of the track and field competition, having won multiple medals at the 1979 National Games and 1980 National inter-state meet setting many meet records. 

Usha was also the star of the show at the senior inter-state meet in Bangalore in 1981, where she clocked 11.8 seconds in the 100-m and 24.6 seconds in the 200-m setting national records in both.

What made the story so interesting was Usha was touted as the equivalent of the highly regarded long jumper Luz Long, Adolf Hitler’s most prized athlete in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. 

When the talented American Jesse Owens repulsed Long, Hitler was very angry and devastated. He was reportedly fuming mad when he left the stadium as Germany failed to prove the Aryan race’s supremacy as he had boasted. 

 

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Usha was Indian President Zail Singh’s best bet and the Games’ poster girl. As hosts, the Indians pinned their hopes on Usha and were confident she would bring home the coveted gold in the two major events (100-m and 200-m).

To make the long story short, the sprinter from Meycauayan, Bulacan, coached by her father known to many of us then only as “Tatang”, dashed to pieces the hopes of President Singh, who didn’t react like Hitler, and the Indians when she upset Usha in the 100-meter dash, clocking 11.76 to Usha’s 11.95. South Korea’s Mo Myung-hee finished third at 11.99 for the bronze.

Lydia’s thumping of Usha grabbed headlines in most newspapers in Asia the following morning, as it heralded the emergence of the new “fastest woman in Asia” from the Philippines.

It was one of the only two golds won by the Philippines in the Games. Swimmer William Wilson secured the other gold in the men’s 200-meter freestyle. Boxing, swimming, and sailing pumped three silver medals even as the Philippines got another 9 bronze medals in cycling, equestrian, athletics, and shooting for a total of 14 medals, good for 10^th place behind China (61-51-41 gold, silver, bronze), Japan (57-52-44), South Korea (28-28-37), North Korean (17-19-20), India (13-19-25), Indonesia (4-4-7), Iran (4-4-4), Pakistan (3-3-5), and Mongolia (3-3-1).

Although Lydia didn’t fare well when she qualified for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (her very best was “good only” in Asia), she became an icon and role model for the young Filipino athletes who wanted to follow what she had reached and achieved in the world of sports. Paalam, Diay.

For a time, at least, to paraphrase Jesse Owens, you were the most famous person in the Asian Games.

Thank you for making the Filipinos proud and for your great contributions in the Philippine sports. 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are hopelessly devoted and honestly love you, Sandy

“A million lights are dancing and there you are, a shooting star. An everlasting world and you're here with me, eternally.”

—Olivia Newton-John in her song, Xanadu

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

SOMETIME in 2005 in Iloilo City, Philippines, then 12-year-old Sharmane and I sent by air mail our photo together holding a VCD of the blockbuster 1977 musical film, Grease, to Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John) in her Hollywood, California address. 

We wrote a brief note in the back.

We had been watching the film together like crazy multiple times—morning, noon, and night time.

Like Snow White caterwauling when she saw her favorite dimwitted Dopey dwarf, Sharmane would scream on top of her voice each time she saw Sandy Olsson gyrate in the film together with Danny Zuko (John Travolta), a matinee idol and dance virtuoso nonpareil.

While Sharmane was enamored with Sandy’s film, I was hooked on her love songs (I Honestly Love You, Hopelessly Devoted To You, Sam, Suspended In Time, Xanadu). 

“Will she be able to receive it?” Sharmane asked with raised eyebrows and tight lips, casting some veneer of doubts to our project.

“Of course, yes. Look, we have here her complete mailing address,” I boasted with holistic confidence.

“After receiving it, will she answer us?” dyed-in-the-wool Sharmane inquired anew, this time in a firm face and wary eyes.

“Yes, of course. Our note was unique; I’m sure she would be able to spot the difference compared to the hundreds of letters from the fans she regularly receives from all over the world,” I boldly assured her, avoiding a direct contact with her pair of skeptical eyes.

“Basta ha. I will wait (for Sandy’s answer),” Sharmane vowed.

 

-o0o-

 

Weeks of wait turned into months. And even years. 

But back before 2006 came, just when I thought Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo) had forgotten waiting for Godot, Sharmane dug something down the memory lane.

“It’s been a long time. The photo we sent probably didn’t reach Sandy. Or, if she received it, she must have thought we weren’t that important to warrant a reply,” she theorized, her voice cluttered in sordid incredulity. 

“Or she received it but was only too busy to reply; and if she forgets today, she will probably remember (to reply) later. Let’s not lose hopes,” I assured the now getting cynical young lady. 

When I visited Hollywood in 2008, I was tempted to play tricks on Sharmane by telling her, “I will visit Sandy personally and if I have a chance to cone face to face with her, I will ask why she didn’t reply to our communication.”

Sharmane, now 15 and wiser, didn’t take my antics seriously. 

Without saying a word, she smirked like Jane who found Tarzan too enfeebled mentally to introduce himself while uttering T-A-R-Z-A-N.     

If the slim prospect of it-might-still-be-possible-to-get-a-reply anytime didn’t anymore titillate Sharmane, it’s her virtual resignation to the growing odds that have stacked after years of grappling with the elements of surprise. And her adolescence has upped her ante on  contemporary Hollywood stars like Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and Jessica Alba, to name only a few.   

Of course, I traveled to Hollywood several times without even trying to find out Sandy’s whereabouts. 

 

-o0o-

 

Years have passed—I mean, long years. Sharmane, now a Registered Nurse, no longer fancy herself into believing Sandy will eventually take time to give the ill-fated photo we sent years ago an iota of chance to be even “shortlisted” for a reply. 

It’s been buried in the past, we both have accepted it; but the nostalgia and thrill—the immortality of Grease and her lovely and unforgettable songs—are still imbedded in our memory.

As a matter of fact, Sharmane still kept a copy of that VCD until now, while I secured the album containing Sandy’s nerve-tingling songs and play it from time to time.

Sandy or Olivia Newton-John, English-born and grew up in Australia, sang some of the biggest hits of the 1970s and ’80s while recasting her image as the virginal girl next door into a spandex-clad vixen—a transformation reflected in miniature by her starring role in Grease, one of the most popular movie musicals of its era.

She died on August 8, 2022 at her ranch in Southern California. She was 73. 

Sandy’s real life husband, John Easterling, announced her death. She had lived with a breast cancer diagnosis since 1992 and in 2017 announced that the cancer had returned and spread. 

According to The New York Times, she was a prominent advocate for cancer research, starting a foundation in her name to support it and opening a research and wellness center in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia for years. 

Rest in peace, Sandy. We are hopelessly devoted and honestly love you.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)

 

 

 

Let the First Lady teach at WVSU

“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” 

― Aristotle

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

THE National Union of Peoples' Lawyers—Panay Law Students (NUPL-PLS) Chapter did not only oppose the appointment of First Lady Louise "Liza" Araneta Marcos as a faculty member of the West Visayas State University (WVSU) College of Law, but also "vehemently denounced and condemned" it.

In a statement, NUPL-PLS cited the Marcoses’ “long record of graft and corrupt practices and human rights violations supported by judicial decisions, as well as blatant moves of historical revisionism, fake news peddling, and dis- and misinformation campaigns.”

If she was allowed to teach Criminal Law I to the incoming freshmen of the college this semeters, the NUPLS-PLS said it would “run afoul of the tenets of the legal profossion.”

For being a Marcos, the First Lady is a threat to the morals of the Ilonggo law students in that university, if we will interpret the NUPL-PLS’s cold-blooded rejection of Atty. Araneta-Marcos’ employment in that university.

“As the presence of Araneta-Marcos in our academic spaces looms large, we likewise urge all other sectors to prevent her teaching stint in the university,” screamed the NUPL-PLS statement.

“This is a call not just to the legal professionals and students of law, but to all academic stakeholders of the university. We slam any call to remain silent and keep mum about the issue at hand. We won't take this sitting down.” 

The group’s statement concluded with a swusbuckling sucker punch: “A fascist enabler has no place in our academic institutions! Never Again! Never Forget!”

 

-o0o-

 

Whether the NUPL-PLS’s stand will influence the decision to hire the First Lady, the final say would still be with the WVSU.

As long as she is qualified, I would not stand in the way if I were a powerful voice in the decision-making on the composition of faculty members for the soon-to-open College of law in that institution.

But I would respect the stand of the NUPL-PLS and other groups or individuals who decried and loathed the assimilation of a Marcos in WVSU’s educational family.

As a faculty member, however, Atty. Araneta-Marcos would be teaching incoming law students specifically the first year curriculum, which is the brick and mortar of their law school education.

The subject matters would be about tort, contracts, civil procedure, property, criminal law, constitutional law, and legal methods. 

They’re not about whether Ninoy Aquino was a hero and the late former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was a dictator; whether the grand thievery during the Marcos hegemony in the 70s and 80s was truth or fiction; whether Martial Law was the Philippines’ golden years or a moment of total darkness for human rights abuses.

It’s another story if Atty. Araneta-Marcos would take advantage of her access to the law students and the entire student community in that university in general, and digressed from the curriculum she was tasked to handle.

What should be emphasized here is the competence or expertise of Atty. Araneta-Marcos as a teacher, not her affinity or (political, fraternity, religious and family) connection and position outside the academe.

As C.S. Lewis once said, “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”

 

-o0o-

 

“We expect that this decision by the administration will cause dismay and contempt, where potential students and faculty will be discouraged to pursue the legal studies or career in WVSU, especially since the Marcoses are gradually establishing their presence in the region,” read part of the NUPL-PLS stament.

“Further, we urge the WVSU Law Student Council and other law student councils in Panay to unite and oppose this act of WVSU Administration. As the representatives of the WVSU-COL student body, it is the responsibility of the council to give a platform for the students to express their concerns and grievances and to communicate these through the proper channels. We encourage these leaders not to just leave their constituents hanging and drowning just to maintain security and status quo, and instead lobby their concerns to the WVSU Administration.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)