My grandson, Ben Jose, who lives and works in San Francisco, has created this blog for me to write on.
All these years, I have been writing my thoughts by hand, in notebooks. But Ben said I am now in the 21st century and he wants to hear my voice in the online world.
So I will use this blog as my new journal. A record not so much of my mundane activities, but of the many hindsights I can share with Ben and my other readers.
This is not a summing up of a life examined. It is a kind of connection that I would like to make with people younger than I, especially Filipinos, for whom there is so much to learn about our country, our history and our neighbors.
As an island nation, we are often self-centered with limited vision. The ongoing diaspora has widened that vision but it can always be blurred by biases induced by ignorance, ethnicities, and most of all, by apathy.
I also hope this blog will be a forum for exchange, like the Solidaridad Bookshop, which my wife, Tessie, and I have kept alive since 1965.
There is a lot left to learn -- even for this old man -- and to change.