what the heck?!?

Do you have dictionaries for sale here?

This is the common question I hear being asked of salesclerks during my book hunts/haunts in used book shops.

I first heard this question on board MV Logos, sister ship of MV Doulos, when it docked in Makar Wharf in Gensan in the late 80s. Unlike MV Doulos, MV Logos had a greater variety of books for sale. I had a grand time piling up hardbound business books (at P100 per) on my aching arms. Not to mention sweating like a pig! (the ship was swarming with people of all ages and sizes).

It was only after I heard the same question being asked over and over again that I took time to examine it.

>Who is asking?

- mothers with elementary kids in tow. Good start! parents who want to provide their kids with a basic tool to learn English.
- high school teeners. A bit late! But never late than never.
- college students. Waaaaay too late! They're like old people asking if there's an available copy of Norman Vincent Peale's How to Win Friends & Influence People.

Having a dictionary/ies at home is a must. I'll be very happy to see a Filipino home with at least two dictionaries (English & Filipino) on prominent display than sets upon of encyclopedia untouched/unbrowsed on carved wooden cabinets.

>Where is it asked?

While a handful of used book shops carry secondhand dictionaries and thesauri, these come in trickles and are usually sold within a week. I can understand people wanting to buy used copies of bestsellers of years past, but people wanting to buy used dictionaries? Jeeze!

Used and old dictionaries, like old sets of encyclopedia, contain old words and information. A living language is dynamic and words change meaning as the world progresses. You only need to see how gay changed meaning from happy to queer. Not to mention salvage, among other words.

When I visit National Bookstore or Goodwill Bookstore, I make it a point to browse through the self containing dictionaries to update my collection. With P200, one can buy a good updated English dictionary. Filipino dictionaries are a different story though. The newest ones are priced beyond an ordinary Filipino's pocketbook. Even the newsprint editions are more than P500 each. The cheap ones are usually thin editions which hardly contain the burgeoning words that has been added to Filipino.

The ultimate dream English dictionary of any bookworm is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a 20-volume definitive collection. If and when I retire, i intend to spend part of my retirement pay on buying this set. I can already see myself on a rocking chair reading it from volume 1 . . . or may be I'll buy the cd-rom version and read it volume by volume on my laptop!

knowrish (know/cherish) part 2

As a pupil of Dadiangas Philippine Chinese School (now Junior Cultural Academy), i discovered the library at the faculty room. The books were all contained in one medium sized cabinet! I was able to borrow and read the books in it in one year (because we were allowed to borrow only one book at a time). But i discovered at Grade Five that a Grade Six pupil was a fellow bookworm. So from her I was able to borrow the Wizard of Oz book series and others (Enid Blyton & Bobbsey Twins).

We were lucky to have the Philippine Readers series written by Camilo Osias and illustrated by Fernando Amorsolo for our English classes from Grades 1 to 6. The series contained an exciting mix of myths, legends, classics, prose and poetry. The poem Abou Ben Adhem by James Leigh Hunt stands out in my memory because of the line may his tribe increase! In Filipino class, we had our fill of Mga Kuwentong Griyego (Greek Myths) and were further entranced by Edith Hamilton's Greek Mythology in high school.

Aunt Evelyn initiated me to book hunts/haunts. She would bring me to Pauline's which sold magazines and occasional books. She once gifted me an issue of Jack and Jill magazine and boy! did she ever regret that. The magazine was ideal reading for young bookworms like me. It had stories galore and colorful illustrations, but what kept me occupied was the centerfold. It was a cutout-pop up project of castles, seascapes, underwater scenes. So with scissors in hand and glue in another, i would proceed to cut and paste portions that should be joined. The finished product I would further paste in a clean coupon bond creased in half and then I would request the labandera (washerwoman) to iron it for me. After that first issue, i was hooked on Jack and Jill and would pester Aunt Evelyn to buy me the monthly issue on display. Eventually she would go by herself to Pauline's on the sly. When I get a place in the periodical top ten in class, i would ask my parents to buy me an issue of Jack and Jill as a reward.

When Aunt Evelyn pursued her education degree at Notre Dame University in Cotabato City, she would bring me along during the summer session for a brief vacation there. And again we would hunt/haunt the few bookstores there. While there, she would have a coterie of college boys escorting her and the official chaperon (me!). I would eavesdrop while she discussed books with her coed friends and male admirers. Her book choices veered towards the Catholic church-approved ones like those written by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. I remember asking her innocently what Sheen's book It Takes Three to Get Married when only the groom and bride do so (at my age love triangles and orgies were still far from my pristine mind.) She said the priest that officiates the wedding represents Christ as the third person in it. Every summer, she would bring home the books she was able to buy during the school year. These books would be kept in the glass covered bookcase in Lola's house. The top shelf would be locked and and the books like Sheen's were off-limits to me because of their adult content. The second shelf contained Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's School Days and other "safe for kids" books. The lower two shelves was stacked with Reader's Digests and other magazines. I would spend many a summer afternoon reading on a sofa. Lola or one of my aunts would find me asleep on it during siesta hour clutching a book or magazine to my chest.

On my own, I started my book hunt/haunt in Dadiangas (old municipal name of Gensan). Aside from Pauline's, there were a handful of bookstores cum school and office supplies stores. There was one next to the Talion building in Magsaysay Avenue which sold religious books and other novelty items. Uncharacteristically, i was more drawn to the novelty items. Once I asked money from Lola, Mama, aunts and uncles so i could buy the small carton cylinder on a string which made bird sounds when twirled overhead.

In high school, there was Crown Bookstore owned by the Napalas and City Bookstore. I would scrimped my weekly allowance so I could buy books I'd like to read. The very first book I bought was the science fiction Those Who Watch by Robert Silverberg (book cover shown in this page). It was about three aliens who came to earth and assumed the features of an old man, a young man and a pretty woman.

A resident alien and Ram's Bombay Bazar owner, Mr. Jethanand Balani, once showed me his collection of books on India, Gandhi and others. Unfortunately, these were written in Hindi. I remember visiting classmates' homes and seeing their 30+ volume encyclopedia sets displayed prominently in their living rooms. In the 70s, encyclopedias seemed to be the status symbol of the local middle class. I would needle my classmates why they had to copy homework from me when they had encyclopedias within their reach while I had to do research in the high school library. They would answer back that their mothers never allowed them to handle the volumes for fear that these might fall apart and get torn. An encyclopedia salesman almost closed a deal with my parents. At only P300 a month, they could get the whole set plus bonus sets of science volumes, etc. But they balked at the last minute. Later as a teacher, when I was able to buy a desktop computer set, the first cd-roms I bought were the Encarta and Britannica encyclopedia.

In college, I widened my book hunt/haunt to Davao City where Notre Dame of Dadiangas College had its school publication, The Vox, printed. As its editor in chief in second year college, I went through scrutiny by the Media Board based in Davao City. It was the Martial Law way of censoring college school papers and each article went through a fine-toothed comb by its director, Gil Abarico. The Vox, to my recollection, was the only college school paper in Gensan allowed for publication in 1973-74. While there, Deciderius Erasmus' "When I get a little money, I buy books. And if there is any left over, I buy food" became my guiding principle and with it, I was able to buy my first hardcover book Roots by Alex Haley. While it is fiction, Haley's epic novel drove home to me how slavery changed the course of the lives and history of black people. It shamed me because before reading Roots, everything I knew about blacks were based on s/explotation books written by Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner.

knowrish (know/cherish) pt.1

Reading came easy to me; i had lots of help. There's Lola, who, although she finished elementary, was a school teacher in the second decade of the 1900s. Then there were my two aunts, Evangeline and Evelyn, who finished college and eventually became teachers like Lola. And of course, Mama, who gave up high school for her three younger sisters.

At Lola's home, there was always something i could pick up to browse through and read: textbooks, classic novels, newspapers, magazines, Reader's Digests. Aunts Evangeline and Evelyn were bookworms who always seemed to be reading at all hours except when entertaining friends by playing 78/45 rpms and long playing records on the Victrola phonograph and singing along or dancing to the tunes of Cliff Richard, Pat Boone, Patty Page, Sylvia Latorre, Diomedes Maturan.

I remember learning to read at age 3. Lola subscribed yearly to Reader's Digest and when the monthly issue was delivered by the postman, she would call me to sit by her side. She would point out to me the words she was reading. My aunts would do the same when their turns came to read it. (Years later, she would give me a Reader's Digest book on health and medicine for my high school graduation. She knew I wanted to become a medical doctor.)

While reading, I would often run to Lola, Aunt Evangeline or Evelyn, or Mama to find out what a word means as I was too young to consult the voluminous dictionary in Lola's home. Remember, I was reading adult reading fare, not children's books.

In downtown Pioneer Avenue, my playmates and I had a good laugh when one girl read the sign: ICE CREAM FOR SALE as e-see creeyam for sa-le. Upon hearing sa-le, we pointed to a playmate named Sally and she would blush a deep red.

I don't remember my playmates and I reading any children's books before starting school. But we had an abundance of English comics - Classics Illustrated, Disney, Action, and DC. We would pore over these comics under the shade of dapdap (fire) trees lining Pioneer Avenue, or on the staircase leading to the Dentist's clinic, or in the cozy bahay kubo (nipa hut) playhouse of the Odal sisters.

I was always a pest whenever I see someone reading or writing. I was curious what they were reading or writing about. I developed the ability to read words upside down from eavesdropping on an aunt while she wrote letters or took notes of lessons for her classes. I would lean forward in front of her writing on a small desk until our heads bang each other. When I see someone reading the papers I would try to figure out the words they're reading, not by reading over his/her shoulder but by looking at the words as they showed through the page held against the light. (Later in life, a co-teacher, while reading his mail by the faculty room window, was amazed as I recited the entire letter while he was facing me. He jokingly accused me of opening his mail and memorizing its contents before I gave it to him.) The only person immuned to this annoying habit of mine was Papa and simply because he read Chinese papers and magazines.

Papa regaled us with how he learned to read and write. He only finished Grade One because his parents were so poor to send them to school. As a teenager, he left the Visayas and stowed away in a Compania Maritima ship bound for Manila. Later, he found work in a Carriedo grocery owned by a Chinese businessman who hired him on the spot upon learning that he was part-Chinese. The boss taught him how to read in Fookien and write in Chinese characters. His co-workers taught him the ABCs/Abakada using the brands found on labels of the grocery items they sold. When it came time for them to teach him the letter C, they showed him a Coca Cola bottle and told him to copy the capital C with a long tail (Coke calls this the dynamic ribbon, I think) on it.

At our sari sari (mixed merchandise) store which was named after me because I was then the only child when it was put up, we would wrap the purchased goods with old newspapers. Mama used to scold me for taking a long time wrapping up the customer's purchases specially when there was some interesting old news item that caught my attention. So to avoid this, during lull periods in the store, I would sit down on my small rattan chair and go through the bundles of newspapers. When we started using brown paper bags, the bundles eventually dwindled and I had to content myself by reading the labels of the goods on display.