Bounty Country Magazine, I Propose – Growing Lives, Glowing Loves!

Go, Grow, Glow! Lives to Grow: people, plants, animals. Loves to Glow: families, villages, islands, country.

Our reality: I have been reading about the business success of Chooks-To-Go oven-roasted chicken and the Good Samaritan ways of Ronald Mascariñas, President & General Manager of Bounty Agro Ventures Inc (BAVI), the knowledgeable producer of Chooks.

My fantasy: BAVI coming out with Bounty Country, a revolutionary monthly magazine.All-Digital – with me as all-virtual Editor in Chief. Selling point? No Agrochemicals Ever (NAE), 100% Organic Farming. Ultimate targets: 10 million Filipino farmers.

Above: My glowing photograph taken 03 December 2016 early evening, 06:18 PM, the Chooks-to-Go store fronting the plaza of my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan in Central Luzon, Philippines. It’s been there for 5 years already – we Asinganians know what’s healthy chicken for us!

With the almost-unbelievable financial success of Chooks-to-Go organic chickens, already Mr Chooks personally knows that organic farming is doubly healthy:

(1)   Healthy for bodies.

(2)   Healthy for bank accounts.

I call him Mr Chooks to remind us that it was he who grew The Chicken That Could where there was none before – clucking over all those chickens from Jollibee, McDonald, Magnolia, Mang Inasal, and above all the chicken that built a house: Max’s!

Success must build success. With its organic origin, Chooks can now more convincingly lead the Philippines in the widespread adoption of organic agriculture. And it will be sweet.

Mr Chooks says on Facebook, “We take pride as the only company in the country who is able to produce ‘No Antibiotics Ever’ (NAE) chicken on a commercial scale.” The other chickens are grown with antibiotics designed to make them grow faster than natural – so it’s mostly quantity, not quality!

On the inset image above, behind Mr Chooks, it says in Tagalog, “Sarap kahit walang sauce” (My free translation: “Saucy even without sauce.”) Mr Mascariñas describes the Chooks meat as “a bit sweet, like a sweet ham” (14 March 2013, Apisit Buranakanonda, “Philippines’ Chooks To Go Is A Bounty Success Story[1],” Poultry World, where the image comes from).

Mr Buranakanonda says, “After just five years in business, Chooks-to-Go has climbed to the number one spot in the Philippines’ roast chicken market.” I say it’s taste: sweeter than sweet, than the others; it’s fact: healthier than the others.

Ces Dimalanta says Mr Chooks says (24 April 2018, “On Healthier Choices: Bounty Agro Brings All-Natural Antibiotic-Free Chickens To The Market[2],” Manila Millennial):

As part of our commitment to nurture the health of the nation, we are continuously finding ways to innovate and offer only the safest chicken choices. The launch of NAE in the country is one of the steps that we are taking towards giving healthy and quality food choices at affordable prices to Filipinos.

About Frank A Hilario? UP Los Baños graduate, self-taught digital writer. Turned 81 Sept 17; since 2000, an unbelievable indefatigable blogger – here’s a short “About Me” – https://communicationfordevelopmentphcomdev.blogspot.com.

The Bounty Country Magazine slogan is: “Healthy Foods For Thought.” Yes Sir, Mr Chooks. My NAE is healthy food for your thoughts!@517

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[1]https://www.poultryworld.net/Home/General/2013/3/Philippines-Chooks-to-Go-is-a-Bounty-success-story-1195658W/

[2]https://manilamillennial.com/2018/04/24/bounty-agro/

The Oblation As The Symbol Of UP Is Correct – And It Is Wrong!

On Facebook, writer Jose Y Dalisay Jr has come out with “The Freedom Of Intelligence[1]” (published 3 years earlier, on 22 October 2018). Wikipediasays, “He has won numerous awards and prizes for fiction, poetry, drama, non-fiction and screenwriting, including 16 Palanca Awards[2].”) He was UP Vice President for Public Affairs when he delivered that piece at the “39th Anniversary of Health Sciences Center Autonomy and the 36th UP Manila Day.”

I’m very glad to be here in UP Manila, which I consider to be UP’s historic home, the cradle of its spirit, of its ideals and traditions. In keeping with that spirit, I’ll speak today about the freedom to think, to speak, to study, and to teach – things which we in UP tend to take for granted, but shouldn’t, and I’ll tell you why.

I am a UP graduate, BSA major in Ag Edu, 1965, weighted average 2.36 and yes, I can vouch that at UP, we have the freedom to think, to speak, to study and to teach.

It’s no big secret that rebellion and resistance are coded into UP’s DNA, because we have always encouraged critical thinking, which in turn encourages – at least for a while, until complacency sets in – an attitude of dissidence, of anti-authoritarianism, of rejection of the status quo. That’s how knowledge happens, that’s how it begins, as every scientist since Galileo has affirmed.

At UP, Mr Dalisay says, “We have always encouraged critical thinking.” That is correct – and that’s exactly what’s wrong with UP! My alma mater encourages mostly critical thinking – when it should be encouraging mostly creative thinking. The UP Oblation offers all of himself to critical thinking!

Galileo is nobody. UP has never learned from Einstein, critical mind plus creative genius. He did not argue himself into his Theory of Relativity, E=MC² – he intuited it first. You create first so that you have something to defend. Otherwise, you defend the status quo, and you will never get out of that rut.

In the sciences, education & law, UP does not teach creativity. At UP Los Baños, they teach scientific thinking, which is logical thinking, critical thinking. They do not teach how one may arrive at a scientific theory where there was none before – they do not teach the dual genius of Einstein.

I learned my creative thinking on my own, starting in high school at my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan, in the library of Rizal Junior College where I voraciously gobbled the Reader's Digest, among other digestible matters. In 1974, my Pacifica copywriter friend Orlino A Ochosa gifted me his copy of Mechanism Of Mind by Edward De Bono, published 1969 – that opened my mind to unbelievable creativity that, as the above inset text says, since 2000, I “have blogged neatly composed 7,000+ essays: 7M+ words.” Which explains my intellectual tease: “How about a Nobel Peace Prize for Non-Fiction Writer Online? Wake up, Digital Nobel!”

My unsolicited advice to my alma mater UP Los Baños: “Cultivate minds even as you cultivate soils!”@517

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[1]https://up.edu.ph/the-freedom-of-intelligence/?fbclid=IwAR1XO4CcQmTFd9G2GnuTefuMTg96TI8E7-1lXBowkAqJYk5XTeLxnZbuOoM

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Dalisay_Jr.

A View From The Side, By FAH: Tunnel Vision?

 

You don't know me as a photographer. Here, I want to highlight my photographic "tunnel vision" that I acquired from my readings and views of master painters some 50 years ago at the library of Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City.  

World Teachers’ Day – Digital Is The Best Way To Teach Today! Especially In SCUs?

 

A Filipino, I am a certified teacher – Civil Service Professional. I have taught in high school and college, public and private. And I have been disappointed: Teachers teach things, not thinking!

“We teach things, not thinking” – that has a double meaning. One: We teach without thinking. We are unmindful of what we are doing. Two: We do not teach thinking!

I am known to be a relentless blogger, as even today at 81 I blog every single day, thank God. Not known as a teacher, I have a BSA Agriculture degree, major in Ag Edu. I did teach at UP Los Baños and had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: 2 of my 1967 students later became well-known in their own rights, girl and boy. Classmates in Horticulture. Girl: At the UP College of Agriculture, now UP Los Baños, Candida “Ayds” Bernabe-Adalla became College Dean. Boy: Vic Ladlad became a New Peoples’ Army commander, probably encouraged by my teaching against science minding only collectible cents, ignoring common people.

Plus: From the College of Agriculture of Xavier University, from my 1968 lessons on organic agriculture, Nicanor “Nicky” Perlas graduated to biodynamic farming and later won the world-coveted alternative-Nobel Right Livelihood Award in 2003.

I did not learn such kind of thinking leading to such kind of teaching at UP Los Baños – I learned before college. The rich and open library of Rizal Junior College (High School Department) in my hometown Asingan, Pangasinan, led and encouraged me to be a creative writer – which requires that you be a creative thinker first.

What we do teach in school, from Grade 1 to Graduate School, is critical thinking (scientific). What we do not teach is creative thinking. So how can I celebrate today, Tuesday, 05 October 2021, “World Teachers’ Day” when the world’s teachers are teaching only the bitter half, not also the better half, of thinking?

My favorite example of creative thinking is from poet & wit Oscar Wilde:

Between the optimist and the pessimist,
the difference is droll.
The optimist sees the doughnut,
the pessimist the hole!

Be positive, not negative. Explore, not deplore.

Today, explore digital! Use the laptop to teach critical/creative thinking. Examples:
(laptop image[1] from YouTube)

Grade 1: On Microsoft Word, teach children to type their complete name, select the text, and store in memory with their initials as tag. Today, I type FAH and press F3 right after H, and out comes Frank A Hilario. The children will love the magic of it!

High School: Teach to read and memorize without consciously memorizing – For instance, let the students read the Reader's Digest and type the lines they like. That will help them learn to type well, plus learning from other minds will prove delightful.

College: Google! The Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein is a lesson in both critical and creative thinking. He came about relativity by intuition, later thinking E = mc² by logic.

State colleges & universities (SCUs) – SCUs have the best reason for teaching thinking: Agriculture is a dull subject!@517

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[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=F9G7KLcVjME

Web Trainings & Seminars – Too Much ICT In India & The Philippines!?

Morning, noon and evening, we have all kinds of information & communication technology (ICT) activities, seminars & trainings; this is all the exciting agricultural extension we need! Isn’t it?

Many and exciting, yes, but not anywhere the complete Extension we need in Agriculture – they are essentially come-ons, patikims (feed-ons), indicators of what people can learn if the extension of knowledge happened by training– necessarily with (a) subsequent refreshing and (b) augmenting the knowledge gained by experience.

After any training, you cannot expect Mastery! Graduating, we only have a novice, a beginner.

Yes, further training must happen after the initial training!
Training makes one somewhat knowledgeable, not fully.

There are several public and private training institutions (and individuals in groups) in agriculture, and they all behave like that – after every training, they act as if they are completely done. And look for other people to train.

No wonder that, for instance, we have extensive monocultures of rice – we train farmers to plant a new, high-yielding rice variety – and nothing more!

What about rice plus fish in the same farm? (Don’t tell me it will be expensive and take a long time: you can produce a training video and simply replay it in subsequent trainings. Or upload it.)

I’m reading the essay of Indian aggie extensionist A Suresh titled “Blog 158 – Streamlining Public Agricultural Extension In India: Indicators Beyond Revenue Expenditure Considerations[1]” (30 August 2021, Agricultural Extension in South Asia, Aesanetwork.org). Mr Suresh is worried that Indian extension is being reduced in personnel because of the very visible “penetration of modern information and communication technologies.”
(top image from Indian website)

India is complaining of too much ICT in agriculture!?

“Calls for reducing staff strength in public agricultural extension services (are) increasingly visible in policy circles, mainly due to revenue expenditure commitments and penetration of modern information and communication technologies.”

What kind of penetration? I am a Filipino extension man, teacher with a BS Agriculture major in Ag Edu from the #1 state college in the Philippines, UP Los Baños, a self-taught digital worker and warrior, now armed with his own theory of Communication for Development (ComDev). Web trainings and webinars are only the beginnings of extension; extension people must continue the actual distribution of bits & pieces of knowledge that a genuine Extension System with a proper Knowledge Bank would present to the public.

Among other things, Mr Suresh points to “the importance of a personal farm-specific advisory appropriate to the specific strengths and opportunities at the farm level.” That, I would say, summarizes the need of farmers for elementary and continuing extension. With ComDev.

(Mr Suresh mentions some regular duties of extension people: “supply of agricultural inputs including seeds and fertilizers, quality checking and certification, disbursal of subsidies and other financial support, crop loss estimates.”)

Webinars and trainings are available to all, but each one is only the beginning of extension, not the end of it! Otherwise, the effect will be the same if you simply distribute a farming manual in the local dialect!@517

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[1]https://www.aesanetwork.org/blog-158-streamlining-public-agricultural-extension-in-india-indicators-beyond-revenue-expenditure-considerations/?fbclid=IwAR2hBwOhgzu7LJwHlk13Au1ADrrG24Kpm0hoZb3gJwdX_Sd7as4BuaVjK4E

For Me, A September Birthday Gift From Microsoft – Why Not, Bill Gates!?

The above composite image is a surprise – I did not compose it; Microsoft’s Windows 10 did! Magically. This is my unbelievable story.

I have been using for 2 years Windows 10 along with Microsoft Word 2016for writing, editing, blogging, desktop publishing, including cropping images. And yes, I have blogged at least 5000 long essays and desktop published at least 20 books with earlier versions of Word since 2005!

Much earlier: On Innocents Day 36 years ago, 28 December 1985, I started learning word processing – a girl helped me with an IBM desktop PC at the Director’s office of the UP Los Baños’ Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute (FSSRI), with WordStar 1. She was grumpy – she told me, pointblank, “Mabuti ka pa, libre ang aral mo! Ako, nagbayad.” (Good for you! You’re learning free, while I had to pay.) I said nothing. I had requested the Director of FSSRI, my classmate Elpidio L Rosario, to tell her to teach me, and she had to follow orders. When she lent me the complete WordStar guidebook (I forgot how many pages), I began typing the instructions (I was already a fast typist at that time), and in a day or two I had my copy of the WordStar instruction manual – I returned the original with thanks. Thus I began to roam the digital world!

Around 1987, at the headquarters of the Madecor Group, also headed by Pids Rosario, I met a common friend, Jerry A Canonizado (JAC) and I bragged that WordStar 4 was the best word processor. Pointblank, JAC said, “How can you say that when you have not even tried Microsoft Word 4?” Shame on me.

Afterwards, I tried Word 4 – and I never left Microsoft!

Like I just told you, I’m now using Windows 10, and I have in my folders a collection of accidental Windows 10 collages, 445 “individual” images. I put the word “individual” in quotes because, like the image above, you can see composite images that I did not compose, my Windows 10 did!

Above is my LumixFZ100 digital camera’s image of my desktop laptop’s external ViewSonic monitor. Onscreen, it says, “03:13 Tuesday, 17 September.” My God! That’s my birthday! (year 2019, image number P2140619, jpeg).

It’s not the first such image I have with exact time and date – the first Windows 10 collage I have in my folder is dated 21 April 2018, some 18 months earlier.

I have googled for – “Windows 10” collage images –  and saw too-formal, nice-looking images of shapes and figures. But none exciting as the one you see above.

Of course, when I work for my own blog or my own book, I must be excited. Those Windows 10 collages I have, accidental as they are, have directly provided me more impetus – and more fun – working with Microsoft Word in my blogging. Accidents happen, and these collages are the kinds that even Microsoft Corporation should welcome!

Microsoft, doesn’t Frank A Hilario deserve a special award for dis/uncovering a special talent of Windows 10? Thanks!@517

Introducing – Frank A Hilario, “The Happy Blogger Who Talks Trass!”

September is my birth month; on the 17^th, Friday, I will be 81 – and I must not forget to thank God! I have been asking Him to let me live up to 120 – at least 100!

The above image states the date (in 2018) and suggests “1940” when I was born. I am beginning to celebrate with a new blog, where you are reading this: Tradition, Science & Sense (Trass), https://traditionsciencesense.blogspot.com. This is the first essay of The Happy Blogger Who Talks Trass! (See outline of face above?)

The Hilarios are Roman Catholics. As was required by the parish priest at that time, the name of a newborn came from the Roman Catholic calendar, that of the saint that birth day, and the 17^th of September is the Feast of the Stigmata of St Francis. Localized, the name “Francisco Hilario” was registered in the archives of the Roman Catholic Church of my hometown Asingan in eastern Pangasinan.

“Francisco” did not last very long because in Elementary, when I wrote my name “Francisco Hilario” on top of the Grade 1 paper, the designated line-space was too short! Solution? My father Lakay Disiong (Dionisio Hilario) requested Mrs Bautista to change my recorded name from “Francisco” (9 letters) to “Frank” (5 letters), and she consented. Problem solved. “Frank” was the name of an American soldier who became a family friend during World War 2.

2021. I have been writing essays more than half of my life. Based on the “Multiple Intelligences” theory of Howard Gardner, I have Linguistic Intelligence, which I would consider “idea smart” rather than “word smart” – an essay is not a list of words as in a dictionary but a string of ideas expressed in one’s own manner or style of language.

I will tell you now how I discovered my smart. I attended a private high school, the HS Dept of the Rizal Junior College (RJC), located in the town proper of our hometown. Asingan is mostly Ilocanos, migrants from the Ilocos Region. Even before Grade 1, I had already found that I loved reading the Ilocano monthly magazine Bannawag, but it was in the RJC Library that I discovered I loved more the English language. The RJC had the whole downstairs of a medium-sized house turned into a library, full of books and magazines, British and American classics, and the American magazines I liked: LOOK, TIME, Newsweek, and the Reader's Digest. I particularly enjoyed reading the classics and the Digest.

In 4^th Year High, our Tagalog teacher Ms Constancia E Cruz gave a writing contest to find out who should be the Tagalog Editor of the RJC Newsletter proposed, and I won – surprise! This Ilocano won over the pure and lovers of Tagalog! When I found I had won, I said to myself, more or less, this: “So this is where my talent lies. I will be the best writer I can be!”

At almost 81, after blogging at least 5 million words since 2005, I can tell you that I fulfilled that self promise.@517