Typhoon Yolanda: “The Storm of the Century” and more to come

by B.J. Stolbov

[Author's Note: Typhoon Yolanda, also known by its international name of Typhoon Haiyan, hit the Philippines on November 7, 2013.  In honor of the dead and missing, I will use its Filipino name, Yolanda.]

The Philippines are surprisingly long. They may look like just a bunch of specks (7107 islands) at the end of the Pacific Ocean, but from the Batanes Islands beyond the end of Luzon Island in the north to the Tawi-Tawi Islands at the end of Mindanao Island in the south, the Philippines are long (1,150 mi.). They are almost as long as west coast of the U.S. from Seattle to San Diego (1,293 mi.). Because of its length, its many islands, and its moving ocean currents, the weather can change considerably from island to island, even from the exposed windward side to the more protected leeward side of any island. 

Here, in Northern Luzon, we are protected from typhoons by the mountains. For a typhoon to hit us directly, it has to come in from the southeast, low off the water, through the beaches and lowlands of Aurora, then up the Cagayan Valley, and then into the hills and mountains. This is what we call a "low" typhoon.

Typhoon Labuyo, “the storm of the year” at that time, hit us on August 12 in Quirino. It came in “low,” knocked down all the corn, just before harvest; and all the bananas, which will grow back on their own in nine months. It flooded all the rice paddies, but rice is used to water. Lots of crops and houses were destroyed, but, thankfully, no deaths. 

Click to read more ...

Debt of Gratitude

by B.J. Stolbov 

The family, after doing without and saving for years and years, had finally bought a small farm of less than a hectare for 900,000 pesos. They had negotiated the price with the owner, an absentee landlord. He had wanted 1,000,000 pesos; the family had only 800,000 pesos. After long and difficult discussions, they agreed to a price of 900,000 pesos, not in installments, but paid as one sum. A retired judge officially wrote up the paperwork.  Both parties signed the bill of sale. 900,000 pesos were paid in full.

[Note: the currency exchange rate is 1 US $ = 43 Philippine pesos.  So, for a house and a hectare, less than 2.5 acres, the price is almost $21,000.]

As is necessary in such transactions, there are additional local fees: a Documentary Stamp, a Certification for the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and, finally, the largest, a Sales Tax.

In charge of the family finances is Maria, a pharmacist, who is good with numbers and knows how to run a business.  With Jerold, her brother-in-law, a large, friendly man, a mechanic and driver, who works for the local government and knows how it works, Maria goes to the Municipal Office to register the land.  At the Assessor’s, the land is again assessed.  It is from this assessed value that the sales tax to pay to the government is determined.

Click to read more ...

I Bought Myself a Wedding Ring in Siem Reap

by B.J. Stolbov

Today, in a shop in the public market of Siem Reap, Cambodia, I bought myself a wedding ring.

I had a wedding ring already, which I had bought last August in a jewelry shop in the Philippines on one of the hottest days of the year. My hands had been sweaty and swollen when I made the purchase. But as the days cooled, and my hands dried and shrank, it became obvious that the ring was too big. I would often find it dangling at the end of my finger, barely hanging on by a nail, only one intense instant away from eternal loss. I'd catch it and push it back on again.

I didn’t bring the ring to Siem Reap. It just didn’t fit.

It also didn’t fit because I wasn’t sure that I wanted it to fit. I had been married for 20 years and single for more than 10 years. I had slid easily into relationships and had slid easily out of relationships. Until Grace.

Click to read more ...

Santa Claus is Coming to School

by B.J. Stolbov 

As the only (old) white man with a (long) white beard in my rural Filipino community of Northern Luzon, I get the exceedingly great pleasure every December of being Santa Claus.

I am a volunteer high school teacher. My first year here, I was asked to play Santa Claus at my high school’s Christmas assembly.  I excitedly volunteered.  Dressed in a red t-shirt and red jogging pants (the colors of our school), my black rubber swamp tromping boots (cleaned), a red cap with battery operated white blinking stars, my wire-rimmed glasses, and my long white beard, I, Santa Claus, appeared from the back of the stage of the school gymnasium to loud amplified blaring Christmas music. 

One thousand students went wild. This was my ultimate rock star Santa Claus moment. I strode across the stage waving, and then waded down into the roaring crowd.  Carrying a red bag filled with candy, I threw handfuls of candy everywhere.  It was almost a sugar frenzy riot. Everyone loves Santa Claus. No wonder he does this!  What a rush! I felt like Santa Claus. 

Next year, I was again invited to play Santa Claus.  But not only at my high school, where now, of course, everyone knew me; but also at an elementary school, where few, if any, of the kids knew me.  I cheerfully accepted.

I arrived at the elementary school dressed in regular clothes, with my Santa outfit hidden in my tightly folded red bag.  The principal of the school had made all the arrangements, agreeing with me that no one, except for a few teachers, would know that Santa Claus was coming to their school.  In the principal’s office, I changed into my Santa outfit. 

Click to read more ...

Visiting Ferdinand Marcos

by B.J. Stolbov

Ferdinand Marcos died in 1989, except in Batac.  Here, in this small town, in his home province of Ilocos Norte in the Philippines, the memory (and more) of former President Ferdinand Marcos is preserved.  His house is preserved, just as he left it.  Next door to it, now, is the Ferdinand Marcos Museum, where his portraits, photographs, press clippings, clothes, shoes, furniture, and other memorabilia are preserved.  And down a hallway, behind a locked door, opened only by a uniformed guard, in a starkly painted black room, coldly refrigerated, with a single spotlight shining down on a glass coffin, most creepily, is preserved ― Ferdinand Marcos.

Ferdinand Marcos, the son of a local politician, was born on September 11, 1917.  From early on, he was a brilliant student, public speaker, handsome, charismatic, controversial, and larger than life.  He scored a near perfect grade in his Law Board Examinations while in prison on charges of assassinating one of his father’s political rivals.  He argued his own case before the Supreme Court and had himself acquitted, on a technicality.  He was, by his own accounts, the leader of a guerilla group that fought the Japanese in World War II, maybe.  (More on that later.)

Always a man in a hurry, he met, courted, and married, in eleven days, Imelda Romualdez, a tall beauty, 13 years younger than he, from a powerful political family.  A successful lawyer, rich from his law practice and other unknown sources, Marcos was the youngest elected Representative in 1949, the youngest elected Senator in 1959, and the youngest elected President in 1965, and, in 1969, became the first President to be re-elected.

Click to read more ...

Returning to Leyte Landing, For the First Time

by B.J. Stolbov

Battle of Leyte Gulf, USS Princeton via Wikipedia commons.If you were to go across the Pacific Ocean by ship to the southern Philippines, Leyte would be the one of the first places that you could land.  In October 1944, General Douglas MacArthur and the U.S. Army knew that, the Imperial Japanese Army and General Tomoyuki Yamashita knew that, and Captain Morton S. Stolbov, D.D.S., a U.S. Army Field Surgeon, also knew that.

Leyte Gulf is the biggest gulf in the southern Philippines that opens into the Pacific Ocean. Ships, hundreds of ships steamed in, then turned north into San Pedro Bay, then turned west, toward the town of Palo, then finally turned onto a long expanse of beach that the U.S. Army called Red Beach. Here, on October 20, 1944, the largest landing in the Pacific Theater took place.

One of the first to come ashore that morning was Captain Morton S. Stolbov. He didn’t have to be there. He didn’t have to go to war. He had graduated from Temple University Dental School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1939. He returned to his parents and his home, Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, a small town in the coal regions, and opened a dental practice. He was doing well in his hometown, his career, and his life. A short man with thick glasses and a receding hairline, he was already 27 years old, too old to be drafted, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But, in one of the few spontaneous acts of his life, he volunteered to go to war.

Click to read more ...