Musings' 1st Bloggiversary

You couldn't believe it either?

I'll wait while those of you in disbelief use the navigator to the right to check back to last year's blog entries for verification, but I figure most of you are more excited about the Flintstones clip below.

Go ahead, click on it!

Wasn't that cute?

It's also cute that the episode those clips were taken from includes characters from the Jack Benny radio program...Sheldon Kearns' 'racetrack tout' ("Psst. Hey Bud!") and the salesclerk ("That'll be fifteen hundred."), made famous (so famous even the Simpsons have used the character!) by Frank Nelson.

But back to the Philippines and my blogging (erratic though it sometimes is).

June 7th and 8th we were in Baguio.

The mountains.

Cool air...OK...chilly air!

Edson always said Ithaca, NY reminded him of Baguio.

Baguio reminds me of Ithaca. Go figure!

It also reminds me of Caracas (you know, in Venezuela)....more on that later.

Baguio was used by the Americans during colonial times (No, not the 13 colonies! That was pre-1776. When the US was the colonizer, just a hundred years ago!) as a summer capital. Anything to escape the oppressive heat of Manila.

See! No boring flatlands!

We went up there so Edson could work on a project. As many of you know, he's an architect. So here he is with some others checking out a traditional house.

And I know you all wanted to see the inside too!

It has everything you could ask for, provided the simplicity of a good roof and rat guards top your list...and said list isn't much longer!

No, we don't plan on moving to a place like this anytime soon. So, for those readers who have been planning to visit...relax! We have plumbing, air conditioning and internet in Makati.

Here's a brightly-colored house in an area where most buildings are just gray concrete:

Rural jeepneys are always more colorful than those in Manila:

These fern leaves are over twenty feet above my head and just a small part of a fern tree:

I don't know if fern tree is correct or not. I do know it is a fern. And I do know it is a tree. All the ferns I've ever seen fit in pots that hang nicely from porches in baskets during the summer months or cling to rocks in the gorges of Ithaca, NY. This is...well, almost pre-historic, no? That could explain the pterodactyls that were flying overhead...

This is the part where I said Baguio reminds me of Caracas:

This looks remarkably similar to the favelas squatters have built all over the hill and mountainsides surrounding Caracas.

In Baguio the squatters have taken to the hillsides as well. The city was designed to accommodate around thirty thousand inhabitants. There are more than a quarter-million now! Trying to squeeze all those people into that space in the mountains is undoubtedly daunting. And I've read about efforts to resettle people, as more population growth cannot be sustained.

We did enjoy the opportunity to breathe fresh air and see a bit of the natural world for a change!

And then it was time for the bumpy ride home!

For the next thirty-six hours I could feel the bouncing and swaying of the van as we sped down the hills and flatlands, on the highways and streets, towards home!