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About The Asian reporter. (Portland, Or.) 1991-current | View Entire Issue (May 7, 2018)
OPINION Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER May 7, 2018 Volume 28 Number 9 May 7, 2018 ISSN: 1094-9453 The Asian Reporter is published on the first and third Monday each month. Please send all correspondence to: The Asian Reporter 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217 Phone: (503) 283-4440, Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com Advertising Department e-mail: ads@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com Website: www.asianreporter.com Please send reader feedback, Asian-related press releases, and community interest ideas/stories to the addresses listed above. Please include a contact phone number. Advertising information available upon request. Publisher Jaime Lim Contributing Editors Ronault L.S. Catalani (Polo), Jeff Wenger Correspondents Ian Blazina, Josephine Bridges, Pamela Ellgen, Maileen Hamto, Edward J. Han, A.P. Kryza, Marie Lo, Simeon Mamaril, Julie Stegeman, Toni Tabora-Roberts, Allison Voigts Illustrator Jonathan Hill News Service Associated Press/Newsfinder Copyright 2018. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication. Member Associated Press/Newsfinder Asian American Journalists Association Better Business Bureau Pacific Northwest Minority Publishers (PNMP) Philippine American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA n By Ronault LS Catalani & Caricia EC Catalani Veneziale Correspondence: The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. Please send all correspondence to: Mail: 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 ** Fax: (503) 283-4445 News Department e-mail: news@asianreporter.com General e-mail: info@asianreporter.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES (U.S. rates only) Individual subscription (sent bulk rate): q Half year: $14 q Full year: $24 q Two years: $40 Individual subscription (sent first class mail): q Half year: $24 q Full year: $40 q Two years: $72 Office subscription (5 copies to one address): q Half year: $40 q Full year: $75 q Two years: $145 Institutional subscription (25 copies to one address): q Half year: $100 q Full year: $180 q Two years: $280 NEW SUBSCRIBER / ADDRESS CORRECTION INFORMATION FORM: Subscriber’s name: Company name: Address: City, State, ZIP: Phone: Fax: E-mail: Mail with payment or Fax with credit card information to: The Asian Reporter, Attn: Subscription Dept., 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, OR 97217-2220 Phone: (503) 283-4440 * Fax: (503) 283-4445 q q q For VISA, Mastercard, or American Express payment only: Name (as it appears on the card): Type of card (circle): VISA Mastercard Card number: American Express Security code: Expiration date: Address of card: The last four issues of The Asian Reporter are available for pick up free at our office 24 hours a day at 922 N Killingsworth Street, Suite 2D, Portland, Oregon. Back issues of The Asian Reporter may be ordered by mail at the following rates: First copy: $1.50 Additional copies ordered at the same time: $1.00 each Send orders to: Asian Reporter Back Issues, 922 N. Killingsworth St., Portland, OR 97217-2220 The Asian Reporter welcomes reader response and participation. If you have a comment on a story we have printed, or have an Asian-related personal or community focus idea, please contact us. Please include a contact name, address, and phone number on all correspondence. Thank you. When I’m 64 recently turned 64. I used to think, when I was our daughter’s present age, that 64 is ancient. Un-im-maginable. So as my birthday neared, I began thinking about those 50 fast years that passed us since Sir Paul McCartney recorded “When I’m 64.” Since he tucked that rooty-tooty little number inside The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. “Will you still need me,” he sang sweetly, “will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four? Oooh.” Also back then, we were new to here. To Salem, Oregon. Back then, America’s boys and men were warring ferociously with our old neighborhood’s boys and men. Their moms and daughters too. In the Kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos, in the divided Viet Nam. During those chaotic ’60s, our Pop and us boys packed our couch to watch CBS News’ dead body counts — their losses versus ours. A dashboard of sorrows. All TV networks did this, every evening. Pero you know, even as a squirrely krotjong I knew, just inside these left-side ribs, that those ugly government numbers did not square with what’s true, with what our achy little earth was actually living. Though none of us, not our Pop, not his boys said so. Also during that dark decade, also in every living room, everyone watched America’s brightest politi- cal leaders and our bravest moral authorities, shot to death. We saw Mrs. Kennedy patting back into place, the top of her husband’s head; we witnessed her handsome brother-in-law Bobby bleed out on the Ambassador Hotel’s kitchen floor; we saw America’s fearless civil-rights elders and activists pointing at a running gunman as our beloved Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. breathed his last. Oh ampun’illaah. Oh God have mercy on us all. Those evenings I watched our pop’s polished teak eyes while he watched Mr. Cronkite’s. And I knew — inside the same humming bones every son and daughter knows the meaning of their father’s eyes, his brows, his lips corners — that our tough and tender pop was choking back what every good parent resists at times like this. Regret. Oh Lord, did I make a mistake? Bringing us here. Fifty furious years ago — years much-much better than our elders’ preceding 50 of grinding Dutch colonial self-loathing; dissolving into brutal imperial Japanese occupation; devolving into years of dirty warring among our nascent Indonesian I Antara Tempat (Places Between) By Caricia EC Catalani Veneziale To my Pop, on his birthday, Who, like many of you, has stood For most of these 64 years In places between places. Not here and not back there. Somewhere that might have become Nowhere. To my Pop, who had the heart To build a place for us In this place between places; Who shared his love with us Without any one place to anchor it, Ground to plant it, The rights to hold it. To my Pop, who shared the same boundary-less Spirit as many of you. The spirit that builds a community In places between places. Our community, made more beautiful By not belonging to here or there. Like Brindisi, like Istanbul, like Alexandria and Nairobi, Java. A place made more beautiful By being Us. nation’s major and minor ethnic communities; concluding with our familia’s expulsion from our mother’s home — like I was saying, five supersonic decades ago, The Beatles were hot, Carlos Santana was cool. The evening of my 64th birthday, 64 of my tried and truest kualarga (meaning “familia” in the traditional sense) representing four generations of transnational mechanicos, gathered to thank our Mom, our daughter and son, and their rajini-rajini (princessitas) for lending me to our newcomer communities. Since my birthday, I’ve thought and thought about how to thank you all, for so honoring our matriarch, her children and her children’s children. Al’hamdulillaah. But I could not, until I saw our daughter Caricia’s handwritten poem for my 64th birthday. Please read her poem above. Pero silahkan (but if you please) read aloud. She and me, write in Indo djatung style, in which tone and rhythm and volume mean as much as words. Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.
