By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
(Note: On the road thus this rerun.
Thank you for your kind consideration)
Minutes ago, I went into the stock room and unearthed from the piles of paper the issue of the ZigZag Weekly where this column first appeared. With my memory failing me again, I first looked into the April 2002 issues but it was not there so I back-tracked and found it finally – March 17, 2002. The initial column was intriguing – a string of blind items on shenanigans of government officials. One such official was accused of pressuring the then jueteng operator who at the time was based in Quezon, Isabela to raise his take from 2 percent to 8 percent of the estimated P100,000.00 a day collection from the municipality. The official had sworn to me that his soul would burn in hell if there is any basis for the accusation. Another item was about the effects of an anonymous letter assailing flagrant absenteeism in one line agency and how it forced some of those involved to report to work against their will and how two of them went back to their merry ways a week after playing good employees for a change. It is now safe to name the agency: Department of Agrarian Reform.
Making my initial column tabloid-like was intentional. It was a tack intended to force the editor-publisher to take a second look at my potential as an opinion writer of the paper. It was more out of frustration because my first attempt to open a column a couple of weeks earlier was rejected with no clear explanations leaving me to guess the real reason. One possible reason that came to mind was that my English prose was inferior to that of all the columnists except perhaps for one and perhaps the editor-publisher did not want readers to lower the literary quality of the opinion page. But then I remembered mentioning my English deficiency in my request to try out as column writer and despite that, the editor-publisher told me to go ahead.
But in the first place what gave me the idea that I was qualified to be a column-writer of a regional newspaper? Frankly, it was the thought that I was good enough to write a column for the Manuel L. Quezon University student publication more than two decades earlier and likewise for the Kalinga Highland Leader, the provincial paper which was published by the Philippine Information Agency from the early 90s to the early 2000s. In early 2002 or around three years after I started contributing news items for the ZigZag Weekly, it entered my mind that I was ripe to move into the opinion page.
Of course, the issue of qualifications to maintain this corner has become academic a long time ago. Had there been any serious questions of this space being put to better use by giving it to another writer or filling it up with some trivia instead of devoting it to my inane and preposterous opinions, then I am sure the publisher-editor would have acted on it pronto. I must also mention that during the interlude when I transferred to the Skyland News in 2004, the authorities of that paper also accommodated this column.
My worry when my dream to have a pulpit in a regional newspaper was finally fulfilled with the appearance of my initial column was how to keep the pieces regularly coming. I still have a piece of paper where I scheduled the topics for the first three months of the column. Keeping up with the weekly frequency was difficult at first but after a while, it became a part of my weekly routine. At times when I scrape the bottom of the barrel for interesting ideas, opinions, information, jokes and what have you, the duty to maintain the column would weigh heavily on me and make my Thursday nights very long indeed. So far and only on account of grave illness, however, I have only missed around 10 issues in the last 525 issues.
And what did I get in exchance for all that mental exertion and sleepness nights? Above, I referred to the opinion space as a pulpit. It is a stage from which one could speak one’s mind and share the burdens of his soul with journalism rules and one’s supply of courage being the only limits. The column also affords the freedom to swing from one side of the emotional spectrum to the other. One could be all gentleness this week and be as a provoked tiger the next. Not many people become pastors and priests and neither do a lot get the opportunity to lash at the world left and right from the opinion pages of a newspaper. It’s a unique privilege and responsibility which I relish.
Personally, whatever the contents of the column, I always strive to be interesting because I know that when a column is not, there is no guarantee that the efforts of coming out with the piece will be compensated with the assurance that the same will be read. Of course that’s a tall order but in fairness to myself, I guess I manage to make the column interesting once in a while. The advantage of the preacher in this respect is that he could right away assess if the hours he put into preparation of the sermon was well worth it by just the number of the people in the church and also the number of those who are asleep or whispering to each other. In my case, it is harder to determine if my work was perused or not. Most often it is only in the references and reactions of some readers to what I have written that I get assurance that my columns are read and those remarks are not too many. And so it makes my day when someone positively comments on something I have written like some months back when a retired educator called to inform me that her husband was guffawing while listening to her read my collection of jokes on names which includes a couple of jokes on the retiree’s sister.
At any rate, I am content that there was no point in the last decade the dissatisfaction of readers with my output had reached that level when they wrote the editor-publisher to stop my column on account of lunatic and idiotic opinions and outpourings. Thanks to all of you for being so tolerant of me. I hope you could still stand me in the next ten years.**
