Building Individuals Building Institutions
Building A Country Called The Philippines

The History Place (historyplace.com) gives me a good list of what happened or who died or who was born who was important in the month of December throughout recorded time, but it misses on the most patriotic date celebrated in my country, the Philippines: 1896 December 30, in the early morning of which the frightened Spanish conquistadores executed Dr Jose Rizal, a man of peace whose very personality reminded his enemies the greatness his race was capable of.

I call Rizal’s execution The Spanish Mistake, since that act angered the Filipinos so much they rose in arms against the Spaniards and toppled an empire. Both The History Place and The Spanish Mistake remind me that when you make a mistake in history, someone is bound to take notice.

Thanks to the incomplete list of The History Place, I have had the insight that I have to jot down my own December List and record my own December Meanings. I forgot that in life any month of the year, only you can make your own lists and make your own meanings in the first place. Unless of course now you’re tired of making a list (and checking it twice), or now life has no meaning at all to you. Still, Phyxius says, ‘The fact that life has no meaning *is* the reason to live’ (phyxius.livejournal.com). Find your meaning!

I’m 67 going on 68 and life has more meaning to me now than when I was 30, 40, or 50. The years don’t necessarily add meaning to your life; rather, your life adds meaning to your years.

I realize today, December 12 in Manila, that December is a most meaningful month in the history of science in my country. I’m referring to making men out of boys and building institutions out of muddy ricefields. You make your own fun.

As a science writer and editor, not to mention desktop publisher and photographer, two institutions I worked with in the last millennium have December written all over them: the Forest Research Institute (FORI) in 1975 and the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) in 1995. Starting 2003, I worked for the Crop Science Society of the Philippines (CSSP) and its December meaning has something to do with a world record.

It was on 1974 December 18 when the Presidential Decree creating FORI was signed by President Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippine philosophical, scholarly, benevolent dictator. I was the chief information officer of FORI from 1975-1981. I founded all FORI’s regular publications: the monthly Canopy, the quarterly Sylvatrop, The Philippine Journal of Forestry, and the quarterly color magazine Habitat whose format and style I copied from National Geographic. With my hardheaded, idealistic creative authorship, I wrote, edited and photographed for that magazine. I read voraciously (I always do) on the art & science of forestry and its intermingling with agriculture, and wrote original think pieces trying to elevate people’s minds about Philippine forests and the treasures they had for everyone. I also rewrote all those technical reports into readable pieces and ghostwrote editorials in the name of FORI Director Filiberto S Pollisco. Largely because of its publications, in a few months, from unknown, FORI became an internationally respected name. Years later, a good friend and sometime mentor Jeremias A Canonizado (JAC) said to me even if I wasn’t asking: ‘You know, there were only two people who made FORI, Pete Bueno and Frank Hilario.’ JAC said that, not me. (Pete was my division chief who was very supportive – he left me to my own devices and lifted me up when I was down for the count.)

Thanks to the power of words.

In December 2006, PhilRice was certified as Integrated Management Systems (IMS) compliant with an ISO 14001 (environmental management systems), ISO 9001 (quality management systems), and OHSAS (occupational health and safety) (Wikipedia). That was under Executive Director Leocadio S Sebastian (LSS), who in 2000 succeeded Santiago R Obien (SRO), who had laid the excellent groundwork. In 1995, I worked directly under SRO as a Research Fellow in the field of information. At that time, no thanks to me, PhilRice had already attained world-class status, thanks to SRO’s bullheaded, productive, visionary leadership. PhilRice’s SRO was an interesting study in management – you couldn’t pin him down to one style. Before PhilRice, he fathered the Philippine Tobacco Research & Training Center (PTRTC) and discovered quite a few secrets to successful extension. After PTRTC, he became President of the Mariano Marcos State University in Batac, Ilocos Norte; there, he trimmed down the bureaucracy and made it ‘a systematic and functional organization’ – from his autobiography written with Virginia A Duldulao, SRO: Dare To Build (2004, Muñoz, Nueva Ecija: PhilRice, 324 pages). In his book, SRO did not try to classify himself in the universe of management except to say what he did was ‘in the art of institution building’ – which I think is downgrading what he actually accomplished: he built individuals who together built the institution called PhilRice (see also my essay ‘The Wizard of Rice who cultivated minds,’ 2006 July 31, americanchronicle.com). Management is building people, not building buildings. Building people and buildings is building a country.

Thanks to the power of leadership.

Like I said earlier, December 2006 is meaningful to me in another field, that of science publishing. Starting January 2003, as Editor in Chief of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science (PJCS), which is published by the CSSP, and as the journal was effectively 3 years late, I had to work triple time. If I couldn’t do it, nobody could. With the help of 3 different successive yearly Board of Directors of the CSSP, I achieved the impossible: I finished the 2006 December issue of the journal in 2006 May 6, or 12 months before the next issue of April 2007 was to be published. That May, I could (and did) boast on the Internet: ‘We are the most advanced knowledge base in crops in the whole science world’ (cropsciencephilippines.blogspot.com). I was a one-man-band I didn’t know I could be. I was doing all the editing and desktop publishing myself. I also took to heart Robert Frost’s message, ‘The Road Not Taken,’ and chose not PageMaker but Bill Gates’ Microsoft Word XP. Now I’m using Word 2003, which is even better for high-end desktop publishing. (And Word 2007? A stranger to me – I don’t talk to strangers. Read also my 2007 May 31 essay, ‘Maxing Microsoft Word 2003,’ americanchronicle.com).

Thanks to the power of initiative.

In honor of our national hero, I would like to end this essay with a pertinent quote from his 1893 December 20 letter to his nephew Alfredo Hidalgo, his sister Saturnina’s son, who was now 11 years old, congratulating him on his excellent school grades:

Go ahead then; study, study, and meditate well what you study. Life is a very serious thing and only those with intelligence and heart go through it worthily. To live is to be among men and to be among men is to struggle. But this struggle is not a brutal and material struggle with men alone; it is a struggle with errors and preoccupations. It is an eternal struggle with a smile on the lips and tears in the heart. On this battlefield man has no better weapons than his intelligence, no other force but his heart. Sharpen, perfect, polish then your mind and fortify and educate your heart.

Thanks to the power of inspiration.

December always reminds me there is only one Heaven and there is only one King. Even if this year I don’t see Christmas lights in the street where we live – I blame the dampened spirit on Those Who Would Be King in What Would Be Heaven to them – December is still the most festive of all months in the Philippines. If we could sharpen, perfect, polish our minds and fortify and educate our hearts for others, any month of the year would be the most festive of all for all.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 12:26 pm and is filed under creative photography, creative thinking, creative writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.