Benjamin Franklin is quoted to have said: “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” If he lived in Metro Manila today, he would have added traffic to the list. With online shopping and courier service readily available, I wouldn’t...

Rewriting Philippine history is not exclusive to academics. Politicians indulge in it too, when they name or rename the streets that define us. Take Arsenio H. Lacson street, named after the feisty mayor of Manila who served from 1952-1962, that connects Sampaloc to...

Pam Pastor’s “My Inquirer Story” in the Lifestyle section made me look back on my own. My first Inquirer Opinion column appeared on July 17, 1991. That makes “Looking Back” the second oldest Inquirer OpEd column, next to Ceres Doyo’s “Human Face.” At 33, going on 34...

An object previously described as “priceless” fetched P31,240,600 at auction last weekend. Small and fragile because it is made of plaster, it is one of the last few pieces of sculpture by Jose Rizal that was previously in the possession of his descendants. Everyone,...

Iloilo is one of my favorite cities. Last year it was declared by Unesco as a “Creative City of Gastronomy.” And that is not just for their iconic batchoy or sugar-laced goodies from the Panaderia de Molo. Iloilo also boasts of the National Museum branch in...

Tempus fugit. Times flies indeed. Café Adriatico got its name from Macario Adriatico street on Remedios Circle. It turned 45 years old yesterday, a rude reminder that I have crossed over into being a “Tito of Manila.” Mercifully, not yet a “Lolo of Manila.” I first...

After the antics of the Vice President made international news recently, I looked up her midnight press conference on YouTube to see what all the fuss was about. Optics was very bad. A Zoom recording of the Vice President in the dark, conversing with people...

In 1989, I was given access to original documents on Andres Bonifacio from the collection of Epifanio de los Santos, the historian honored by the most important road in Metro Manila. I was drawn to Bonifacio’s handsome penmanship, written on printed letterhead. His...

Josephine Bracken, Jose Rizal’s common-law wife, lived a short life, alternating between romance and tragedy. Displayed in the National Museum is a copy of Thomas à Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ” inscribed “to my dear and unhappy wife Josephine.” Furthermore, Rizal...

One of the largely untapped sources in the National Library of the Philippines is a mass of documents once known as the “Philippine Insurgent Records” returned to the Philippines by the United States National Archives and Records Administration (Nara) in 1957. Some...