Let’s start with a prayer for healing: “Loving God, I pray that You will comfort me in my suffering, lend skill to the hands of my healers, and bless the means used for my cure. Give me such confidence in the power of Your grace, that even when I am afraid, I may put my whole trust in You; through our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”
What is Paris without the Eiffel Tower? What is New York without the Statue of Liberty? What is China without cheap products, oops, I mean the Great Wall? And finally, what is Baguio without its pine trees since it is known as the “City of Pines”?
This near-sighted Ibaloy writer joins local citizens and netizens in asking this due to recent events involving the cutting of pine trees by a powerful developer with the go-signal by a government agency that is supposed to protect the environment. Enough said.
Baguio Rep. Mark Go has filed a bill that will safeguard trees in the city through a moratorium on tree cutting, except for dead trees that pose danger to lives and properties and may infect other live trees.
Go said that once this is implemented, big corporations, private property owners, and government lands will need to take the existence of trees into consideration and should create designs that will build around them.
The measure will complement his two earlier bills, House Bill 6930 mandating parents to plant two trees for every child born to them, and HB 6931 requiring senior high and college students to plant two trees as a requirement of their graduation, both approved on second reading in the Lower House. With these bills, approximately seven million trees will be planted annually, Go said.
Winners of the first Baguio survival garden contest will be presented and awarded their prizes on July 20, 8 a.m. during flag-raising rites at City Hall.
The contest was spearheaded by the City Veterinary and Agricultural Office under Dr. Brigit Piok in coordination with the Department of Agriculture, offices of Councilors Philian Weygan-Allan and Joel Alangsab of the city’s council’s committee on agriculture, and the Liga ng mga Barangay chaired by Councilor Michael Lawana.
It was anchored on a city council resolution authored by Lawana who is an avid urban gardener himself. Cheers!
Here’s “Last Dawn” by Octavio Paz: “Your hair is lost in the forest,/ your feet touching mine./ Asleep you are bigger than the night,/ but your dream fits within this room./ How much we are/ who are so little!/ Outside a taxi passes/ with its load of ghosts./ The river that runs by/ is always/ running back./ Will tomorrow be another day?”
