Sermons on the Lowland

It was on my first attendance as a new parishoner when the cura pounded on the pulpit for someone more conservative than he. He said he was criticized by an informant for his rewording of the directive of offering peace to one’s fellowmen during a mass as a “kiss of Christ.” His intention was misunderstood to be malicious. With a violent voice, he condemned his unknown detractor, “I am not afraid of anymore complaints as I already talked to someone of authority in church.”

The next homily was not remarkable but the response of another churchgoer was.

“Buang ning pari-a!” [Translation: Crazy pr....!]

The next Sunday came and I found myself trying to pass through a gate to get in. The warden was old and slow in his movement as he tried to unlock it. Suddenly, I was pushed hard by someone who could not wait to get it. It came from heavy, rough and cruel hands. I did look back though there was no need for I already heard the voice of the owner of those hands. It was the cura. For me who eats, moves and walks fast, he seemed surprisingly impatient for a man who was to lead a community–patrons who went to this unattractive structure that was just recently declared as a pilgrim center.

It was not the abominable structure I supposed that led to the declaration, rather it was the miraculous BVM statue that continued to draw local pilgrims from across the islands. Here lay a statue surrounded by crooks who peddled.

“The guard will get you if you bring in white candles. It should be these maroon candles with a logo that I sell.”

While I paid for a set of maroon candles, the vendor took my white candles with her which I had bought from another vendor. I got in to area where the statue was kept; different colors of melting lighted candles were scattered in disarray. In between, was a huge pool of the melted wax. I was never cheated like this at other religious centers. This was not an isolated experience. I experienced another kind from these vendors stationed outside the same church.

Another Sunday came and I was glad to arrive early. The celebrant was a benevolent priest. An interpreter for the deaf stood by his side, making hand signs to deliver his homily. I was attending the regular schedule where hearing disabilities were mainstreamed. The singing went great.

I arrived 9:30 am the next Sunday, the cura was singing his own version of an operatic concierto of the liturgy. He sounded like a homosexual. It seemed to have dragged the length of the mass. I was glad to have missed the homily.

I was early again the next Sunday, the choir was coming from the sharp angelic voices of young students in school uniform conducted by their Music or Religion teacher I supposed. It was an inspiring mass to be in.

The next week came and I was at a church in another location. The homily from a priest that had a special relationship with God to the concluding rites went fine. I was thanking God for choosing the concelebrant who delivered his homily to be his servant.

This Sunday, the gospel was about two brothers invited to the vineyard. One said he would go but did not while the other said, he would go but did. The cura talked of the choir singing and the coming feast and Saint Lorenzo. It was irrelevant to the gospel of Matthew Chapter 21 at hand. He did not prepare.

I walked out of the church.

I resolved either coming early the next time to listen to another celebrant’s homily or to go to another church from the same the denomination where the mass is meaningful.

A Few Basic Notes on Subject-Verb Agreeement

I am ambivalent about descriptive and prescriptive grammars. When someone communicates, I am rather tolerant over subject-verb agreement and almost always consider first the intent and message that the other person wants to convey.  I amaze myself at how the person can use the language to express and be understood. O’Grady in his co-edited Contemporary Linguistics Analysis: An Introduction notes that such will not earn a scholarship but is OK at some point in modern linguistics. However, when I read from someone who uses Standard English, immediately that person earns my respect. Writing, as I had thought so before having confirmed it from an online course at Harvest Christian School International is more rigorous than spoken English. What are acceptable in spoken English like the word, gonna or the phrase, between you and I, are not in formal writing. The standard as defined by Kelly and Lee Brandon is conventional among educated people, used in school assignments, in most published writing and in most important public speaking situations; although people can shift language between formal and informal occasions. Below are what I have derived from:

• Kelly and Lee Brandon “Sentences, Paragraphs, and Beyond” 4^th ed. Houghton Mifflin Co. USA. c2005. 130-132, 159.
  
• Margaret L. Benner. “Online Writing Support: Usage-Subject-Verb Agreement” Towson University. c2008. 27 Sept 2008. http://www.towson.edu/ows/sub-verb.htm
• “The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation” cited in Jane Straus. Subject and Verb Agreement. 27 Sept 2008. http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/subjectVerbAgree.asp

Text and Work Book

1.  Do not let the agreement of subject and verb be affected by:

• words that come in between them:

-phrases (e.g. as well as)

-clauses (e.g. who went to the market)

• inversions (of word order)

2.  A singular verb agrees with:

• a singular indefinite pronoun (e.g. someone)
• a singular antecedent (e.g. the word the pronoun his refers back to)
• a collective noun that is considered as a unit (e.g. Congress)
• a title (e.g. Star Wars)
• a name of a business (e.g. Warner Bros..)
• money, distances and measurements when the individual elements are considered ($10)
• some nouns ending in –s (e.g. Economics)
• the phrase “one of those___who,” where the antecedent is usually the plural noun that follows
• the singular noun in the of-phrase (e.g. Fifty percent of the pie)

3. Take a plural verb for:

• a plural indefinite pronoun (e.g. both)
• when the nearer subject actor of compound subjects joined by nor or or is plural and closer to the verb (e.g. Neither the producer nor the actors)
• usually, two or more subjects joined by and (e.g. Sue and John)
• the nearest of two alternative subjects (e.g. Either Theresa or her children)
• some nouns that only have a plural form (e.g. scissors)
• a collective group considered as a number of individuals (e.g. Congress)
• the phrase “only one of those ___who,” where the antecedent is usually the singular word, one
• the plural object of the preposition modifying a portion (E.g. Fifty percent of the pies) 

What better way to keep pests from eating my piles and plies of notes but save and review it online?  

Achieving Emphasis and Variety

(Condensed to less than 300 words from my 4-page report.  Both teasers and guidelines use the same set of references.)

Teaser

• Place the subordinate clause before the main clause–that’s one way of emphasizing.
• Avoid stringing together a number of short independent clauses. Either connect them with subordinating connectives thereby making some depending clauses or making some clause into separate sentences.
• Eliminate unnecessary words and avoid the pile up of prepositional phrases that can make reading very difficult.
• To emphasize, deliberately repeat and do not overdo.
  
• Put the most important idea first or last, or in some conspicuous place.
• Use punctuation marks and standard text devices. These prompt the reader to give a word or sentence more than usual emphasis. On a computer, you may also find other ways of emphasizing, such as using shadow, double underline, etc. Consider the computer on which it will be read. If you are using graphics on a website, for example, it could make the reader with a slow modem give up waiting before they’ve even set eyes on it. One word causes a slight tension; a whole section amplifies and sustains this. If you use emphasis a lot, it will lose its effect and is likely to make the other person rather annoyed!! So be conservative.
• Prefer verbs to noun and verbs of action to verbs of being.
• Don’t think that the longer the sentence, the better it is. Short sentences often pack the most punch but the best essays contain a variety of sentence lengths, mixed within any given paragraph.
• Don’t use too many short sentences successively to avoid sounding choppy.
• Vary a sentence by using a question after a series of statements.
• Use a variety of sentence beginnings.

REFERENCES:

• Writing Connections: You, College and Careers by Lee Brandon c2004
• Strategies for College Writing by Jeanette Harris and Ann Moseley c2000
• The Bedford Handbook for Writers by Diana Hacker 4th Edition c1994
• Let’s Write English by Wishon and Burks c1968

Other sources (Viewed July 5, 2008 and may no longer be there):

• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac_paper/style
• http://www.erraticimpact.com/cyberedit/lf_variety.html
• http://changingminds.org/techniques/language/modifying_meaning/emphasis_writing.htm
• http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/sentences.htm
• www.owens.edu/writing/addemph.pdf
• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/609/01/
• books.google.com/books?isbn=0764126903…

The Right Side of the Library

When I am free, I spend time at the Joseph Baumgartner Center Library that lends you a pass labeled as a “temporary seat.” Without it, I cannot walk through its modern-looking stands that replaced the cafeteria-inspired railing. Atop is a huge-faced clock I thought of once as a weighing scale. Beside it, is Knowledge for Development Center which I have never been inside except for the time they were renovating the place—the only area it left for transactions. To its immediate right is Circulation looking across Information that holds CDs in a cabinet. In between are three low tables shared by twenty cushioned seats illuminated by about half of dozen of decorated energy savers (The video, a Congressman’s controversial speech on energy saver light bulbs–thanks to whoever posted it in YouTube, is far from my subject; I know. I so want to include a visual so this will not be such a boring material—so, don’t tease me, please. At least, it broadens this post to another territory. =D All chosen links to the highlighted texts here, however, connect to the subject.) hung from the ceiling—the best place to relax, catch people, rendezvous then go some place else or kill time until the school bell rings for the next class. From here, I see people accessing either the internet or its online catalog and smell them as they glide or flip whatever footwear going to or from behind the shelves that are unfriendly to be all categorized scantily as either Humanities or Social Sciences. However, books are readily accessible after it tore down that mezzanine where all but novels were kept in closed stacks. I hear the carefree bluster from outside amid these first few large green-painted columns that lead to Filipiniana—the first to be air-conditioned before every corner has been. Over there, it is not the coldest anymore but it still retains its solitude visited only by the ticking of calculators. I recall looking through its glass panel on a day of study, envying users as they scan the periodicals for leisure and wondering why the school bell is inaudible. The new system has turned me from a client who used to frustrate over finding no furniture to sit on at this side of the library to a contented one as I exit handing back my temporary pass to the guard so he can give it to its next visitor.

Unlimited Mobile-to-PC Chat

Apparently not everyone got texted about the free Unlimited Yahoo Chat Trial, I asked some friends; but I was. The application is currently downloadable for free on selected phones only; with Globe Telecom promising that it will be available to other phone units soon. Chatting by handset phones has long been available to Yahoo Messenger users who are subscribers of selected phone networks around the globe. I can either access the link Yahoo provides and log in with my username and password or confirm via text as I add a mobile number to my Y Messenger account and be shown as continuously online after closing Y Chat to choose log-in-to-my-phone option. This is my first time downloading an application though. There’s the difference. Of course, with the promo running until Oct 4, 2008, I don’t have to pay the old rate of Php2.50/text. I see from globe.com.ph that they will be charging Php25/day of unlimited access which is cheaper but not as cheap, I suppose, for my Malaysian friend studying in Egypt who chats and accesses the internet using mobile technology. The application has its limitations: First, it takes a while to log-in. All few available emoticons work but the user status options do not work. No matter what status I choose, I always appear as “online” when I log in to the application. Adding and deleting to/from my list of friends take 48 years. There is a “help” to that so labeled but is not really available. My contacts are limited to the list of friends I have. I can’t go to any other room. While PC-to-PC calls from and to other Y Messenger ID’s are free, the phone icon is not available in the Unlichat application. A chat mate can only call me by dialing my mobile number of course. With a phone keyboard too small or my fingers too fast for a touch typist =D, I keep depressing other nearby keys so I am out of the application and have to open it again. Isn’t that great, the free trial will give me a lot of practice? Well, I know this will be perfected later.

The last time I dialed a hotline number.

I was at church when call cards of a telecounseling service were distributed. Inside a cab, I saw a poster carrying the same hotline number. What a blessing to be in a dilemma and invited access to such a free service!

Apparently, I called the hotline. A woman I judged from her voice to be older than I was, answered the phone. As we conversed, I noticed she was leading me back to myself. It was opposite to my expectation that she would tell me what it was that I had to do. Like one of Oprah’s studio guests who talked about mirroring I saw years after, the lady acknowledged my feelings. On the phone, it was like talking aloud to myself as I tried to clear the cobwebs in my mind. As I let her trod with me, I felt like I had an invisible guide, shedding light to one path after another. It was clearer to see where each turn would lead to. I thanked the counselor profusely before I hung up.

When I dialed the hotline number again, a lad answered the phone. I was rather disappointed to hear him admit meeting and making out with his counselee; although, I was in fact the one who talked him into admitting it. I questioned the legitimacy of their service and the qualifications of people providing it, forgetting my first near-perfect encounter with a counselor.  What did I expect out of volunteer work?

Counselors were humans too who struggled, get tempted or committed mistakes.

Guidance in the Classroom Setting

Below, a quote shared to us in 2003 by our teacher of Guidance and Counseling, who introduced herself as a parent-teacher experienced with counseling the juvenile delinquents. I remembered the heartwarming smile she would readily give to our class:

GUIDANCE CREED

I believe in the essential goodness of human heart.

The student who is disciplined is merely misunderstood.

I shall strive therefore to understand my students, to befriend them, to win their confidence and trust so that I may be fit to guide them towards the good and useful life.

I believe in the subject I teach. But I believe that over and above my subject is my student. I must know him as a boy so I can make him a better man. I must understand her as a girl so I can make her fit to mother the future race.

Fangs

Born to a Bitch

that enslaved

its Mate,

seemingly powerless

to an atrocious slave driver;

Like its masochistic progenitor,

an underdog it preferred to be;

controllable and yet bore power;

Of goat in sheep’s clothing and

fanged like the clan,

that Bitch commanded its pack:

multiply, resurrect the clan only through Beauty.

Create other beasts in deceptive forms.

With nares invitingly wide for lost wasps

gushing and seeking for Beauty;

Or so it thought it had found

but was a poor Leech

recompensed by a Witch

disowned from the same clan

of the denying Bitch.

Fleeting cubs

existing only by craft the second Witch;

the clan would be no more.

Shutter

Genre: Horror

Considered a little crazy for being into sleeping pills, Nagumi committed suicide haunting the surviving that wrecked her once while she was still living. The Jap’s intense emotions, like earthbound souls, are captured in rolls of films.  Shutter was spooky!