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DESIDERATA

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
(Max Ehrmann)

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High Seas

Sense and Sensibility : Romance in the high seas

Bambi Harper
Inquirer News Service

(The following article should open up an area of research that Filipinos in Spain interested in the subject or those on the lookout for Philippine artifacts and antiques may find informative. Since we're not given to keeping journals, diaries and letters, I overlooked the fact that others might have, or that commerce continued after the Galleon Trade ended.)

ALONG THE WHARFS in Santander were houses constructed by shipping magnates that composed a group and who had enriched themselves in overseas commerce. These were mansions, tall and massive, with balconies and bay windows on each floor. On the ground floors, facing the wharf, were the warehouses and offices of their enterprise. At the back of these houses was a plaza that bore the name of the richest of those rich men -- Plaza Pombo -- where they parked their carriages.

These merchants possessed some curious and rare collections -- not of paintings, sculptures or books, but items of a distinct type, amassed without any order or inventory. These were remembrances of the journeys of their frigates, presents that the captains had brought for their wives or their children and had accumulated in their cabinets and salons.

On top of a "piano de cola," or mahogany console, covered by "manton de Manila," were: nuggets of unrefined gold used as paperweights; Turkish sabers and Malay arrows; idols from Mindanao and Bornean tribes; parasols used by Mandarins, snuffboxes of shell and lacquer; tea pots of black enamel decorated with gold dragons; stuffed crocodiles, turtles and parrots; spurs made from the fish "Espada"; bolts of silk; shells of various sizes whose nacre reflected the light of the Indies; ivory miniatures carved and filigreed by artists with infinite patience.

The loquacious parrot wasn't lacking in his cage of thick brass bars plated in gold. The whole tropics, the entire jungle and the remote archipelagos were there represented by its most characteristic examples. Seeing these artifacts gave one the idea of what the Spanish realm had been when Cuba and the Philippines were still a part of it.

Don Ignacio Fernandez de Castro owned ships of 250-400 tons displacement that made the run between Cadiz and the Philippines (covering the 1820s to the 1850s). They bore names such as "La Hispano-Filipina," "La Paz," "La Guadalupe," "La Virgen del Carmen," "La Virgen de los Angeles" -- names of familiar devotions. They made the romantic and long trips, reaching the Indian Ocean via the Cape of Good Hope, docking at the ports of Goa, Macao, Canton but their goal was almost always the remote and beloved Manila.

Their cargo was composed of pleasant materials, clean and fragrant: cacao, coffee, cotton, bolts of silk, cinnamon and vanilla. Nothing of carbon, petroleum, grease and steel. The ships of Don Ignacio also brought mail and passengers. Aristocratic ladies related to high colonial officials trembled at the prospect of the 135 to 140 days that the voyage entailed from Santander to Manila or from Manila to Cadiz. It wasn't only the length but also the hardships that the trip inflicted on the passengers. Water was rationed, and if the ship entered a windless zone, a water shortage followed. It wasn't unusual that food would also be scarce and then a sailboat would be launched to beg from the rare ships that they might meet en route. In "Diarios de Navegacion del Capitan San Juan" are various references to these anguished demands:

"At 2:30 a brigantine was seen leeward and after six hours we were alongside it and they asked us for the longitude because their chronometer had stopped for eight days. We asked them for some supplies and salt. They answered that they couldn't provide any necessities but could give us salt."

Many of these ships had no doctors or medicine kits or first-aid stations; their captains had to serve as physicians in the event of emergencies. The cures were primitive as "Diario de Navegacion" illustrates: "At 1 o'clock, the ropes holding the taut foresail broke and the frame fell on the head of the cabin boy Paulino Ignacio, causing two big wounds. The profuse bleeding was stopped with sugar and brandy. After five hours, we were informed that the bleeding resumed and we tried to remedy it immediately but no matter how many things we tried we couldn't stop the bleeding. Finally at 8, it stopped after we applied quicklime with the consent of the patient." (It doesn't say whether the cure was worse than the injury and the patient died anyway.)

"There were many deaths and the corpses were thrown overboard even as sharks escorted the sailboat during a good part of the crossing. Mortality rates were high especially when the trip involved government exiles to the Philippines or prisoners returning from prison there. There were rarely ocean crossings without a death.

"At 10:00 the political detainee, a soldier by the name of Narciso la Barca, boarded in Manila with dysentery that was complicated by chicken pox. He was unable to make a last will and testament since he suddenly took a turn for the worse and was unable to speak. An inventory was made of his belongings."

(From Vertice, "Las Fragatas de Filipinas," Jose del Rio Sainz 1942.)