What New Year is to Me

I have always wondered if there is any meaningful difference between December 31 (last day of the "old" year and January 1 (first day of the "new" year), the two days that straddle New Year's Eve.  The New Year period, of course, includes the last week of December and the first week of January.

When I was a little boy, my mother, uncles, aunts, lolos, and lolas. and older siblings always reminded me that New Year's Day is the first day that I should practice what I have resolved to do for the next year as per my new year's resolution.  Of course, when one is young and a bit restless, the meaning of the new year's resolution is largely incoherent in spite of good intentions.

When I was a bit older, school, church, and family always combined their forces to remind us, youngsters, that the New Year symbolized the beginning of a new life that we all had to cultivate so that we would live in prosperity the next year; and life the year after would be governed by another set of new year's resolutions.  That didn't work well either.  We always slid back to normal life right on New Year's Day.  As it turned out, our New Year's Resolution was simply a dream at the dawn of New Year's Day.

When I became a young adult, New Year's Day became less important and less meaningful.  We forgot largely what it was all about.  But we did learn about social issues and social evils.  We even began questioning a lot of contemporary norms.   We learned a lot of these but we were short of the real solutions to real social problems.  As young adults, apparently our job was to identify what we would call social issues and complain about them even as we didn't offer appropriate solutions.

As professionals, we added experience to our stock knowledge and tried to solve social problems.  Strangely. in spite of applying what we learned from school, from being government workers, from being members of the NGO community, from being elected local and national officials, from being high level government officials, from being followers of our respective religions,  from having been members of the international bureaucracy, and in spite of international aid, we have failed big time in solving our problems.

We sure have learned a lot.  We have learned to be global thinkers, and we have identified all the social issues besetting our only country.  And we have failed spectacularly.

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Five on my Bucket List for 2017

Many would refer to this exercise as writing a New Year’s Resolution, but I’d simply call it listing of the possibilities for me.  I wish to call them my bucket list for 2017.   Not all of them are completely within my own power to undertake and complete, but let’s just say they are my expectations that I will try to work hard to achieve.

One.  Stay alive and healthy.  I hope to have a healthier life in 2017.  On this matter, I’d like to quote Woody Allen.  He once said, “I’m not afraid of death.  I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Bottom line is, I wish that I would not only be alive but must be able to function as I did, say, a couple of decades ago.  I sure hope that would be enough for me to do the things I still feel I need to do.  

Two.  I hope to be able to continue doing the things that I did in 2016 that provided me with some resources to continue living my life.  It is important to me to be able to provide for my needs as an ageing man, including that for my partner in life.  It is absolutely very important to me that I know and feel I'm still useful to myself and to those I love.

Three.  I hope that more friends will have access to my forthcoming book titled, Agcom-Devcom Crossover, A Participant-Observer’s Journey. I certainly would enjoy being invited to various HEIs to talk about the book and about the Devcom academic program at UPOU.

Four.  It is definitely my hope to be able to put into writing other things that I have not been able to do these past few years.  It certainly would be useful to be able to write about my experience as Chancellor of UPOU.  Up until now, I haven’t been able to write my memoirs.  Is this worth pursuing?  I wonder.  But I guess I would need a URA for this.

Five.  I hope I would gain more time to research and write about my life in Batanes.  More importantly, I would like to write about the farming system in Itbayat, Batanes.  This would entail some funding.  I hope I will be able to discover how this project idea could be pursued and completed.  

Christmas 2016

Published by Lex and Jegs Librero

Why This Newsletter?

More than a decade ago, a family newsletter titled similarly ceased publication.  It was a case of “we just dropped it because the editor (which was Lex) started having too many things to attend to.”  Since then, there have been major changes in the family, like Lex had become widower and got married again after some years, and King himself got his own family.  Over the years, friends have been asking where that “Newsletter” is.  Besides, we have not been able to share with friends what had been happening in our lives.  Hence, we are reviving the “newsletter.”

The basic difference with this “newsletter” is that it shall now focus on the major activities of Lex and Jegs, although we would mention special things about the Libreros and the Garcias (Jegs’ family side) every now and then.

We don’t have to elaborate on this.  Just take a peep into our lives up to the point we can permit you to do so. 

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Lex Slowed Down on Activities

For 2016, Lex reports having completed the manuscript of his latest book titled Agcom-Devcom Crossover, A Participant-Observer’s Journey,  an account of his professional growth and development in the field of agricultural communications and development communication.  The book has just been submitted to the UPOU as an output of his project as Professor Emeritus.   He hopes that this book would be useful to students of development communication not only at UPOU and UPLB, but in other universities and higher education institutions as well.  Of course in previous years, he had various publications and research projects.

This year, he has slowed down having retired some 8 years ago (he’s now 73). 

He continued to serve as President of the UP Open University Foundation, Inc., a position he was elected to under two years ago due to  the requirement that the Chancellor could not legally serve such position concurrently with the Chancellorship.  He took over from then UPOU Chancellor Gigi Alfonso.    Lex was awarded in 2008 by UP the honorific title of Professor Emeritus, a lifetime title from the University of the Philippines System.

Beginning this year, Lex has been appointed Chief Editor of the International Journal on Open e-Learning (IJODeL), the official online academic publication of the UPOU.

Of course, as Professor Emeritus, Lex continues to serve as adviser or member of the academic advisory committees of graduate students at UPOU, on top of teaching one doctorate course per semester.

Lex is also serving as volunteer writer for BUHAY, the revived newsletter (online and printed) of the UPLB Alumni Association.

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Multiple Achievements for Jegs

One, in June, Jegs received officially her PhD degree in environmental science from the UPLB.  This newsletter is proud of such achievement.  Her dissertation was on ecotourism in Batanes, which she visited four times from 2012 to 2015.

Two, one of her photographs (of a bug) was used in a book titled  The Class Lady Bug, A Polka Dot Winner.  This book, authored by Luz Enriquez-Lombos, was published in the USA during this year. 

Three, in November, Jegs published a book of photographs about Panyesanan, the farm of our late Kuya Flor in Bgy. Rizal, Lipa City.  It’s a beautiful coffee-book type publication, which, incidentally, has caught the attention of some friends and have actually started inquiring if they could buy the book.  Jegs is doing it step-by-step.  She did not do it for commercial purposes initially, but that could be included as one of the objectives now.

Four, in the previous year (2015), Jegs presented a paper in the First National Conference on Integrated Natural Resources Management, held at UPLB.  The title of her paper was Biodiversity in Key Ecotourism Sites as Potential Priority Conservation Target in Small Island Settings.  This was later accepted for publication in the JESAM Journal, published by the School of Environmental Science and Management (JESAM), titled as From Baseline Data to Improved Biodiversity Knowledge and Conservation: the Ecotourism Trail Experience in Batan Island.

Five, the year before last, she passed the professional Board Exam for Environmental Planners.  That made her a licensed environmental planner in the Philippines.  

                            

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Updates on the Extended Family

Jegs assisted Marjo Duritan, our niece, in organizing a get-together of members of the Librero Clan on October 16^th, the 82^nd birthday of our late Kuya Flor, who died on September 24, at 11:16 p.m.

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Al attended various conferences in Europe and Asia during the year.

Vani (Librero) presented a paper in an international conference on breast-feeding in Vietnam in December.

As a family, they have travelled to Europe and Asia during the year.  It’s a good thing that the Apo, Aidan, is experiencing international travel early.

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Both Jay and Blanche (Garcia) have found work in Pampanga.  Jay, however, is trying to seek a new work in Laguna.  Basti, their son, is growing up well.

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Danyelle (Garcia) is doing very well at school, Xavier Nuvali, where she has a scholarship grant.  She’s now a young lady, and is growing up an independent teener.  It’s nice that every now and then she consults with her Tita Jegs on school matters.  Binay is doing well in guiding her daughter grow up.

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For now, Nonie (Garcia) is very busy with his two pet cats.  Of course, he knows that taking care of cats can be expensive and time consuming.  He’s obviously enjoying them, though.

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Sis Nita (Juanillas) and her children have been doing well.  Ja, the eldest, is back to school.  She’s pursuing her MS at UPLB.  Jon, a licensed  chemist, is enjoying his work at San Miguel, and has been travelling quite frequently.  Kin, a civil engineer, has transferred to the private sector from UPLB.  Fatima is working in Kuala Lumpur where she undertook her OJT.  Nita, who just retired, is still working part-time with the LSPU, enjoying the perks of being member of the Accrediting Committee of PASUC.

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MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

One

I’m starting a series in this blog, each post being identified simply numerically.  Hence, this first article is titled ONE.  The next one shall be TWO, and so on.  Why am I doing this?  Well, I shall be writing about a particular topic but most likely it shall not appear in this blog regularly.  I shall continue to write about the usual stuff that I have been writing about previously, which is, really nothing specific.  But for this series I wish to talk about my random thoughts on my personal views about passing through this dimension.  I must confess that much of what I’ll probably blabber about is pseudo-philosophical, and might not even make any sense to many readers.

At the outset, I’d like to clarify where I’m coming from.  Many talk about passing through, or simply dying, as a philosophical orientation.  As many would say that they’re ready to die anytime, anywhere, any way; that they’re not afraid to die.  Well, I’m not that committed to the philosophy.  Perhaps you’ll find out later what my own thoughts are about the whole thing.

To the question, are you ready to die?,  I’m neither scared nor embarrassed to admit I’m not ready to die.  I don’t know when I’ll be ready.  May be I will never be.  I know I will die anytime, but ready?   Heck, I’m scared of the darn thing.

To me, if one says one’s ready to die, that’s up to the fellow … but I consider that as a philosophical orientation.  But really ready?  That’s not my personal feeling; not my orientation at all.  I am scared to die, may be for various reasons that I am not prepared to talk about now.  So, don’t push it.  Just wait as it unfolds, possibly in future articles in this series.

This is where I’m coming from.  I’m scared to die, and may be I’ll stop being scared to die when I’m dead.