Archie's bundle of joy

Tzuriel Phillip - nine months
Remember your cousin Archie? Here's his little bundle of joy.

Maileen and him sent me pics last night; they're safe in their home in Texas. The typhoon's path was far from them.
Come and visit.

Countdown

Sunday, July 27th Nike Half- Marathon in New York City - Ped is running! Load up on your carbs and watch your lytes, okay? Family, here's the link to Kuya (Utol, Tito, Lolo) Ped's marathon profile: http://www.athlinks.com/racer/37183597/Ferdinand-Tinio.aspx

"Race Broadcast -

Tune in to WABC-TV on race day. The NYC Half-Marathon Presented by NIKE will have live coverage on Sunday starting at 7:00 a.m. on WABC-TV Channel 7. Run the Half with WABC's Heidi Jones".

We'll be rooting for you. 'Sorry I can't be there to take your pics. This is a very exciting and popular event. Since many runners consider this an achievable long distance run, this event may even be bigger than the marathon race. Shorter, but certainly not a small feat. I kid you not - 13.1 miles!

That's quite a challenge.

Cousin MaAn's comment - "looks like kina-career mo na yong marathon, but at least it's something positive".
Go for it, Ped. Beat them Penduko!

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver
Isn't so true? How many times did I not know what a prayer is?
How many times did I not know how to pay attention?
One of my favorites.

Ge-rie (aka Brangelina?)

Gene writes:

"Dear all
In one of the rare moments that we are able to take

some R & R/have some fun.
Regards,
gene/lorie"

Hey looking good kids, but why not make it an everyday affair? Don't let fun take a backseat in your life.

And so the story began three or was it four years ago when Gene and Lorie (Ine) packed up with their kids Genny and Gil and left for the States. Genny, a pharmacist, landed a job at Kaiser as a Pharmacy Tech and will now start her PharmD studies while Gil, a Food Technologist by trade, decided to pursue a career in the health care field; he is now a traveling Respiratory Therapist currently working in Florida. I know how heartbroken they were to see their son move out of home from LA. It's called a show of freedom and so you must let him go!

Like many of us who immigrated to the States, the experience is an adventure and the roads may have been a bit bumpy and lonely at the start, but the end is a success story. And theirs is one. I’m proud of you guys.

Gene and Ine are looking forward to their trip to the Phil. this Sept. to visit Liaa and Glenn and their respective families. I imagine they went crazy buying toys and stuff for their apos Carl (Aba), Lukas and ........... you got me, I forgot the name of Liaa’s newborn! Old age creeping up on me guys, forgive me.

Hey kids, plan on spending Christmas here in NY, okay; we miss all of you.

Dali at the MoMA

Weird hallucinations and wacky dreams were my impressions of his work before I came to this exhibition. I never was a big Dali fan but in the hour and a half that I spent at the MoMA, his paintings and film work grew on me.

At the entrance, one is greeted by a photograph of this Catalonian, one eye looking through a metal piece which appears to have given him five other eyeballs. Bordering on the distasteful and disturbing, that's how I would best describe his style. Distorted images and his fascination for hands, swarming ants, eyeballs, melting watches, telephones are only a few of his subjects. I saw the provocative and the controversial in his work but at the same time I learned of the messages they convey.

A bit disappointed at the small size of his famous piece The Persistence of Memory (Photo credit: MoMA.org), I envisioned it would occupy a huge space on the wall. His visual work on the dream sequence from Hitchcock's Spellbound was cleverly presented with the movie clips as the backdrop. Metamorphosis is the Dali theme written all over this exhibition. The transformation of the giant swarming ants into cyclists in the short film Destino was impressive.

I must confess I didn't really know Dali's work until now. His passion for the cinema is something new to me. "The best cinema," he claimed, "is the kind that can be perceived with your eyes closed." There's a lot about his work I'll never understand, only now I have greater appreciation for them. Too bad picture taking is not allowed. I'd like to see this again.

The MoMA was packed on this Friday free night admission with tourists from all over the world, many of them Spaniards of course, students off from school and locals like me needing a mini-vacation. It was worth the trip to the city even with the hot air jetting out from underground in the subways.

The architecture of the renovated MoMA is an artwork in itself.
Highly recommended.

It's surreal.

My fine feathered friends

The nest was empty when I visited yesterday. The robins fled their roost.

I sought the expertise of my birder friend to check out the pictures. It turns out, what I thought were “mom and pop” were actually the juvenile robins - given away by their very pale colors and light brown breasts. What I also thought was a cardinal that was wildly shooing me away was either the mother or father robin. I did my own research and there it was a picture to match. At least I got one thing right - they are robins.

Maybe the fledged young had gone for their first flight. Good luck. One day I hope to find you guys foraging on the lawn.

Photo credits:Cornell University Lab of Ornithology

"What My Dad Gave Me"

Standing more than six stories at the Rockfeller Channel Gardens is the model skyscraper built out of replicas of Erector toy construction parts. The artist Chris Burden named his sculpture What My Dad Gave Me.

I didn't have the luxury of playing with Erector sets as a child so looking at that structure all I could say is, it’s bizarre. Until I read up on what kind of work was put into its creation, I didn’t appreciate this piece of sculpture. A couple of tourists asked me what it is and I told them a bit of what I've read. “Hmmm..only in New York” was the comment, and then they walked away.

Inspired by a child-like imagination, this was assembled out of about a million stainless steel parts into a 65-foot tall scaled down Rockefeller Center. You may call it a toy; however, it is anything but child’s play. It’s a work of art. What do you think?