Malaking Gantimpala sa Tala Awards sa Parol Festival 2022

Malalaking gantimpala sa Tala Awards sa darating na Parol Festival 2022.

Isang magandang balita sa mga taga-SoMa Pilipinas at taga-San Francisco Bay Area.

Muling binabalik ang mayamang tradisyong Parol Stroll o Parada ng Parol sa taunang Parol Festival sa SoMa Pilipinas sa San Francisco.

Nitong taon, ipagdiriwang ang ika-20 anibersaryo ng taunang Parol Festival. At ang tema ay “Illuminating Legacy to Light our Path.” Sisilayan ang mga pamana para mailawan ang ating landas na daraanan.

Hindi lamang binabalik ang Parol Festival, pinalaki pa ang matatamong gantimpala ng mga lalahok sa tatanghaling TALA AWARDS; $1,000 sa unang premyo, $500 sa pangalawang premyo at $300 sa pangatlong premyo.

Kung maaalala natin simula nuong 2003 nagdaraos na ng taunang Parol Lantern Festival sa San Francisco sa inisyatiba ng Filipino American Development Foundation (FADF).

Inilunsad ng FADF ng Parol Festival kaugnay sa pagbubukas ng kanilang bagong tayong Bayanihan Community Center na matatagpuan sa 1010 Mission Street. Ninanais ng FADF na maipakilala sa San Francisco ang kahulugan ng Bayanihan o diwang pagbabayanihan sa komunidad.

Alam natin na iba ang imahen o paglalarawan ng pagbabayanihan ng mga tao sa Pilipinas; Ang pagpapasan o pagbubuhat ng bahay inililipat ng mga tao. Hindi ito magagawa ng isa o iilan lamang. Kailangan ang sama-samang paglahok at pagkilos.

Sa pamamagitan ng pagdadaraos ng parol making workshop o paggawa at paglikha ng parol mahusay na nababahagi sa mga kalahok ang diwa ng bayanihan.

Nuong una, ang kawayang ginamit sa paggawa ng tradisyonal na parol ay mula sa stick na ginagamit sa pagtutuhog ng barbecue, at nangalap ng mga anumang magagamit sa paggawa ng parol na mabibili sa mga dollar stores.

Naiparating ang diwang pagbabayanihan sa mga kalahok sa pamagitang ng pagtangkilik at pagtataguyod sa matayog na layunin nito: maging visible o lubusang makilala ang kultura at komunidad ng mga Pilipino sa tinatawag na multi-cultural fabrics ng San Francisco. Kaya’t sa halip na gumawa lamang ng isa at maiuwi sa kanilang tinitirahan ang gawang parol, inipon ito at binibilang hanggang maabot nito ang target na isang libong parol.

Ang parol ay simbolo ng liwanag sa kadiliman. Ito ang giya o talang patnubay ng tatlong mago sa paglalakbay nila tungo sa belen.

Nabigyan ng funding ang FADF nuong 2004 sa programang pagpapalaganap ng “community arts” mula sa San Francisco Arts Commission. Nagresulta ito ng pag-import ng kayas na kawayan, papel de jahon at cellophane mula sa Pilipinas. Lampas sa tatlong libong parol ang nagagawa sa parol making workshop season.

Naging malaganap ang paggawa ng parol at sumunod na stage ay pagandahan at pagaling ng gawang parol.

Dito inilusansad ang Tala Awards sa suhesyon ng Kularts, ang co-presenter ng FADF sa taunang Parol Festival simula nuong 2006.

Ang unang nagtamo ng Grand Prize ($500) nuong 2006 ay ang Contingent ng Filipino Community Center ng Excelsior. Ang kanilang parol ay may desenyong dyini.

Naging pinakatampok sa Parol Festival ang Tala Awards. Pinakahihintay ng mga kalahok at dumadalo sa Festival kung sinong tatanghaling Parol ng taon.

Ang Parol Festival ay isang taunang pagbubuklod at pagsasama-sama ng ibat-ibang Samahan, komunidad at programa sa SoMa Pilipinas.

Nagtaas ng kalidad at ningning ang mga parol kalahok sa Tala Awards. Ang samahang parating nananalo ay ang Galing Bata, Canon Kip Senior Center, Veteran/Bayanihan Equity Center, Samahan ng USF, at West Bay Center.

Sino kaya ang magtatamo ng Grand Prize sa Tala Awards sa 20anibersaryo ng parol Festival?

Tandaan: Sa Sabado, Disyembre 10, 2022 sa Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Gardens, and YBCA Forum sa SoMa Pilipinas, San Francisco.

Pakirating sa mga kaibigan at kamag-anak. Halina at dumalo sa 2022 Parol Festival sa SoMa Pilipinas.

Bakas-Bukas Podcast

Beginning today, 11/1/2022, I am introducing my new project, Bakas-Bukas Podcast. It is an open mic talk approach in storytelling which is inspired by StoryCorps' mission to record, preserve, and share stories of Filipinos in their journey and in search for "sarili, kapwa, and bayan" wherever they may be.

This is consistent with my Historian Statement of this homepage: (That) it is only by telling and retelling our story do we keep our collective memory of struggles for justice, freedom and democracy alive and to thrive for this generation and beyond.

Bakas is the Filipino word for [noun] footprint, trace, imprint, outline, sign, clue, and [adjective] traced, imprinted, outlined Root. While Bukas means open, tomorrow, opening, future, without cover, and state of being open.

Hence, Bakas Bukas may mean "Tomorrow's Footprints," "Legacy Tracks," "Be open or uncover of the past," and its profound interpretation: BAKAS is BAgong KASaysayan or new narratives, and BUKAS is to be open minded as in to make more responsive, understanding, or generous, to make known to the public, and to make available and accessible to all.

The format is audio. It is a podcast. A digital audio file made available on the internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device, typically available as a series, new installments where one can listen at their convenience and comfort.

No need for notes taking while listening. No worries, this homepage provides supplemental texts and readings of the topics or subject matters in the podcast. There are also videos and webinars to further and deepen the understanding.

For this inaugural launch of the Bakas Bukas Podcast I am sharing two StoryCorps tapes. First, Tina Alejo, a grade school teacher at Bessie Carmichael and a parent of two children who attended Filipino Education Center/Bessie Carmichael School. Tina is also my co-founder of the renowned Galing-Bata Program.

This is a story sharing of Tina Alejo and MC Canlas on their work in SoMa Pilipinas in San Francisco. It was taped on May 1,2011. Among the topics shared are parenting in this environment as immigrant family; The concept of Kapwa as immigrant Filipinos; the school system and Galing-Bata; sikolohiyang Pilipino and pantayong pananaw in history; building community and activism; bilingual education, and Filipino Education Center; The sense of longing and belonging.

The second Bakas Bukas is my conversation with Cristina Sprague, a longtime nurse and nurse practitioner of SoMa Health Center, also a StoryCorps audio documentation which was taped on August 12,2016. We talked about the help seeking behavior, attitude, and mindset of Filipinos with regards to their health and health care system. It is a good insight in the "barrio" mentality and rural culture of immigrant residents in San Francisco.

Bakas Bukas Podcast is still a work in progress. I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions. Happy listening.

My Parol State of Mind

10-9-2022

When October comes, this has been going on for the past 20 years in San Francisco, believe it or not, I am in a different state of mind.

Just flushing out of Martial Law anniversaries and reminiscences in September, while warming up for October’s Filipino American History Month celebrations and recollections, and when most Americans are gearing up for the Halloween, parol is all in my mind, and I am in a parol state of mind.

This state of mind is more pronounced to me this year primarily because we in SoMa Pilipinas, a designated Filipino Cultural Heritage in San Francisco, will be celebrating our 20th anniversary of the annual Parol Lantern Festival.

As in past celebrations, parol making workshops are the build-up activities gearing up to the Festival, which has been celebrated every second Saturday of December. Inspired by last year’s successful in-person workshops held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), we will be holding a series of parol making workshops from October 8 to December 3, from 2 to 5 PM at YBCA.

What is great in this year edition of the parol making workshops, SoMa Pilipinas is fielding 12 parol trainers, they are mostly young people, who will be paid hourly to learn and teach making parol to workshop participants. I will be their teacher, mentor, and coach for Parol 101.

This is great news. Our aim is to hone a new generation of passionate cultural bearers of our parol making tradition in SoMa Pilipinas.

There are many Filipino immigrant families before me who have been doing these parol making activities, and the parols they made are usually incorporated in the holiday decorations of their homes and churches.

Our Parol Festival is blessed with parol master Mang Filimon Balingit, an Octogenarian parishioner, and my fellow Kapampangan, who is renowned in the parish for his parols that adorn the beautiful and historic landmark St. Patrick Church during the celebration of the Advent. He brought this craftmanship from his hometown Masantol in Pampanga.

Our parol making workshops have also produced homegrown Parol Master. Gene Apellido learned and made his first parol in our workshops in 2003. He was a student at San Francisco City College then, and he was the most ardent and creative among participants. His parols are varied in designs, shapes and sizes, and the materials he used, but they are all elegantly and exquisitely crafted. A number of them were showcased in the Parol Gallery during the Festival, and in museums and social events.

The parol is the quintessential Filipino symbol of joy and hope during the holiday season. As folk art and craft, the basic parol design is a five-pointed star inside of a circle, usually made of bamboo stick, multi-colored papel de japon (tissue paper) and cellophanes.

For this parol making tradition to thrive in San Francisco, we also made sure that we have enough and available supplies and materials to use for the workshops. We imported bamboos and cellophanes from the Philippines. The inventory of supplies and materials is always on my mind before the workshop season.

Another reason why parol is always on mind because I would want to continue and enhance this parol making tradition in SoMa Pilipinas with passionate cultural bearers the like of Gene, a homegrown parol artist, and Mang Felimon who brought this folk art from his homeland.

But Parol is also my state of mind. I will explain why.

I still get annoyed then as well as now, mind you while I am drafting this essay, of this automatic spelling checker of MS Word’s Editor; it keeps bugging me to replace the word parol with red underscoring. The suggested words are parole, patrol, and parlor. It goes on and on until I click ignore all.

What is mind-boggling the two words - parole /pəˈrōl/ and parol [paˈɾol] - are pronounced and sounded the same to most people in America. They are homophones, words that sound the same but are different.

In other words, it is not only the automatic spell checker that is programmed to correct my use of parol to parole, even in real life people can be mistaken. Only Filipino immigrants can tell the difference.

This is a true story and interesting to share for its 20th anniversary and the genesis of the annual Parol Lantern Festival.

Working as consultant, I broached to Bernadette Sy, the executive director of FADF, the idea of having a parol festival for the soft opening of the Bayanihan Community Center on 6th Street and Mission. The late Msgr Fred Bitanga, a FADF Board member and the pastor of St Patrick’s Church, supported the idea but he even suggested to hold the event on the bisperas (eve of) of Simbang Gabi/ Misa de Gallo, which his parish is celebrating this novena (nine days) dawn masses tradition from the Philippines. For the FADF Board this was also the best opportune time to introduce the Filipino word Bayanihan, the practice of community working together for a cause or project to the public.

In one of our outreach activities, while we were tabling in a street fair – Positively Six Street Fair – we found a number of fairgoers lining up to sign up as volunteers. They expressed their excitement: “Thank you for doing this for us. I am a parolee. I am on parole. And I would want to volunteer for this parole festival.”

After that event and from then on, we decided to use Parol Lantern Festival, by adding the word lantern, instead of Parol Festival.

I look forward to the time when the word parol is in and fully accepted in the English language dictionary. For the meantime, the terms Christmas star lantern, Filipino lantern, and parol lantern are the accepted translation for parol. The word originated from the Spanish farol which means lantern.

During the height of the pandemic, the only time we did not hold in-person workshops; we instead did workshops and the Parol Festival online. The theme then was “Light Amidst Darkness.” The Festival’s theme for the 20th Anniversary is “Illuminating Legacy to Light our Paths.”

Although one of the original aims of mounting an annual Parol Festival is visibility in the multicultural fabrics of San Francisco, as pop-ed educator, community strategist, and historian, my strong drive is more than that. I am into navigating our search of “Sarili, Kapwa, Bayan” our Filipinoness (Kapilipinuhan) in this world.

This is only an introduction to why I have a “Parol state of mind.