Eulogy for my Father

Alfredo Templonuevo Yano (November 23, 1930 – December 14, 2011)

Eulogy Dec 19, 2011

My mother wanted me to tell you my father’s story.

He was born in Manila, Philippines and grew up during the Japanese occupation in World War II. After the war, he graduated from the University of Santo Tomas, then married my mother 53 years ago this Christmas. They had five children.

My father was a reluctant immigrant. When in 1965 America liberalized its immigration policy and allowed more non-Europeans to come to the country, my father “Tatay” could have gone then.

But he was a homebody and did not want to leave his family.

Martial law was declared in the Philippines in 1972, which started a decline in his employment security. So he made a difficult decision to leave the Philippines to go to America in 1974. He made the sacrifice for his family, to find a better life for his wife and five children.

* * *

1974 to 1975 was a difficult year for my father.

It was a year of looking for jobs in Philadelphia, then New York.

It was a year of going from building to building with his architectural portfolio, getting short-term drafting jobs and then multiple layoffs.

It was a year of sharing cramped living spaces with other fellow Filipino immigrants, four in a one bedroom apartment, sleeping on couches.

It was a year of trying his luck and a year of tears without his wife and kids.

But he persisted with support of relatives and advice from friends. He finally found stable work in Connecticut and petitioned to bring his family to the US in 1975.

After that it was just icing on the cake for us, especially his children. There was abundant food, better housing and amazing opportunities. These were the gifts of a reluctant immigrant, who finally found steady work at Pfizer, where he retired in 1992.

* * *

My father was a modest man but quietly proud of his children and their spouses and their children. He made it all happen for us, for my mom, my brothers and sisters, for my nieces and nephews.

We were given gifts of the great American life while being imbued with Filipino values: of loving quietly but deeply, of doing all for family, of sharing and sacrificing for others.

From many of his gifts, I value these I received from my father’s year of solitude and sacrifice in America:

• The Public Library in New London and Yale University which fed my intellectual interest and exploration

• The freedom of moving around and looking and finding opportunities in this wonderful country, from Connecticut to Massachusetts to Idaho and to Washington state

• Loving in the form of action and not of mere words

• Seriousness of duty and responsibility and deep and intense devotion for spouses and children

* * *

My father was not a literary minded person but because of his sacrifice, his second son was able to indulge in such impractical vices as studying art, reading poetry and literature.

Here’s my final impractical gift to a practical man: a pearl from literature that captured him and other immigrant fathers.

Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American wrote the short story “Third and Final Continent” about a Bengali man who goes from India to England to America, experiencing the wonders and surprises of a transient life. This is his message to his son:

In my son’s eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world…
Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

A Tonic for the New Year

Just because it made my day…

Commemorating an Asian Nationalist

Dr. Jose Rizal was executed on this day in 1896.  He was only 35 years old. The day has since been commemorated in the Philippines as “Rizal Day” or “National Heroes Day.”

“Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all. ” – Rizal 1884

“The tyranny of some is possible only through the cowardice of others.” – Rizal 1889

My early childhood in the Philippines was filled with stories of Rizal’s intellectual achievements and his eventual martyrdom for the cause of the anti-colonial revolt against Spain’s 300 year domination of the Philippines. Over the years, Rizal’s reputation has waxed and waned, subjected to extreme idolization or critical re-evaluation of  his heroic role in the revolution that helped end Spanish colonization of the Philippines.

But Rizal’s work endures and his writings are a rich source of inspiration, even in this age of Manny Pacquiao. I rediscovered Rizal as an adult when I actually read his novels (Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo), not just the comic-book simplifications I grew up reading as a child. I discovered his still-fresh sense of humor, the sharp  satiric descriptions that accompanied his dramatic narrative of late 19th century colonial life.

Rizal’s writings need to be read and re-read, especially by this lapsed Filipino who gets a thrill visiting Seattle’s Jose Rizal Park and driving over and under its green Jose Rizal bridge.

“Never for money, always for love”

Just discovered this version of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be The Place,” an old favorite from almost a million years ago. Something about the spare arrangement and the soulful singing by the PS22 Chorus transformed this song and its sentiments for me today.

Dedicating this to Nancy on her special day…

Home is where I want to be
But I guess I’m already there
I come home, she lifted up her wings
I guess that this must be the place

Full lyrics by David Byrne
About the song

iPhone Rock Band

The band Atomic Tom did a live version of their song ‘Take Me Home” in a NYC subway…with iPhones. Impressive performance which also displays some musical magic in Apple’s mobile device. The first video shows the iPhone-mediated performance, the second the standard rock instrumentation.

August 28, 1963: “I Have A Dream” by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963.
Source: Martin Luther King, Jr: The Peaceful Warrior, Pocket Books, NY 1968

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

From the Museum of Broadcast Communications

On Hope and Political Change

A historical view of the rate of Obama’s promised changes:

From Andrew Sullivan’s The Benefits Of The Slow Struggle: “And no real change has come to America without slowness and resistance and division – as its constitution requires. … If you backed Obama and want to see real change continue, now is not the time to give up because it’s not as easy as you thought it would be. Now is the time to oppose the passionate intensity of his opponents with the reasoned conviction that elected him.”

Gradual Change We Can Believe In

It’s easy to get lost in the 24/7 news cycle and in the political blogs of many ideological stripes that are loaded with persistent hyperbole. It is a challenge to sort through the tsunami of opinions and find good insights and well-reasoned positions.

How to assess Obama and his presidency at this point in the midst of this online chaos? As a long-time supporter of the President, how much do I give him the benefit of the doubt and when does it seem like he’s on the wrong track? When do his critics start making sense and start requiring closer consideration?

Jon Stewart and Andrew Sullivan, in their own ways, offer me the least insane options to help think about these nagging questions. I found Stewart’s recent critique of the President’s policies worth mulling over after the discomforting laughter from his comedic take.

Sullivan’s blog posting today takes the longer view and raises the conversation above the despair of Obama’s liberal critics and the insistent nihilism of his far-right opposition.

I share Sullivan’s take on the President:

… Obama’s incrementalism, his refusal to pose as a presidential magician, and his resistance to taking the bait of the fetid right (he’s president – not a cable news host) seems to me to show not weakness, but a lethal and patient strength. And a resilient ambition.

Ray Allen’s NBA Finals Record for 3-pointers

From Connecticut to Seattle to Boston, I’ve followed Ray Allen’s amazing basketball career. Tonight’s 3-point exhibition, which enabled Boston to tie the Finals against LA, was just one of many highlights from this modest but inspiring player.

Wall Street Journal guest blogger on tonight’s game modestly reported:

Ray Allen has flames coming out of his hands.

Science and Service: New Massachusetts Medical Society President Alice Coombes

Massachusetts Medical Society, the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine and Journal Watch, recently elected its new president, Alice A. Coombs MD. In her acceptance speech, Dr. Coombs talks about a just balance between science and service in the field of medicine.

Dr. Coombs, whose motto is “From whom much is given, much is required.”, will serve as one point of inspiration for my work at MassMed.