HERstory vs HIStory

Maybe they did get it wrong. The men who told the stories that went down as recorded historical fact. The conquering hordes that erased our true history. The prevalent thought of those times that perpetuated their brand of bullshit. 

". . . .focus on her-story as opposed to the traditional his-tory - the thousands of years of recopying and retelling the stories from the male viewpoint. And that these assumptions are based on no original sources, such as the ancient Roman Jewish female epitaphs inscribed in ancient Greek with symbols of authority - just opinion and self-preservation of a patriarchal dominated society." ~ Bernadette Brooten 

singing in the rain - bird on a wire & a restive Mt. Kanla-on

 
An age-old unoriginal propaganda for many a tyrant and demagogue - yet it never grows old and too many are still sipping their Kool-Aid. 

400 years of women's frustrations

In conversation today we wondered and meandered over human dynamics and how they have come to be. Especially within families - how we perceive and are in turn perceived, what bonds and binds us, what stories are told, embellished, and retold? 

some women diarists featured in the new anthology

Sarah Gristwood's Secret Voices: A Year of Women’s Diaries, is a captivating anthology of women's dominant emotion in the past 400 years - a recurring theme in their journals written between 1599 and 2015. 

This book is a collection of extracts from women’s diaries, looking back over four centuries to discover how women’s experience has changed over the years and how it hasn’t.

Organized around the calendar year with several selections for each day - this book is a fascinating record of how women were thinking, feeling and reacting to historical events.

Stauney, Sadie, and Sarah discuss the book

The variety of entries, the process of women writing in diaries and how they were preserved, the importance of daily records, how it's changing in the digital age, and what Sarah hopes people will take away from her latest release.

This book is an enthralling retrospective of well-known diarists and more obscure ones. The rich mix of incredibly voices often echoing down the centuries sound eerily familiar today. 

wonder | wander | world thoroughly recommend this fun and fabulous read. Read it! Read it! Read it! 

a return to feminine power

As we strive to connect with the universe to unlock its secrets and our innate potential - the divine feminine has been a potent concept in human history.

Goddess Maat, Egyptian, date unknown
via the British Museum

The manifestation of feminine energy in the universe is the energy inside everyone associated with creativity, fertility, and intuitive thinking. It is a sacred power source that is both integral to the nature of the universe and inherent in ourselves.

Goddess Tellus relief, Ara Pacis, circa 13- 9 BCE

All through history the divine feminine is revered and deified as the foundation of all creation. In many cultures - then and now - the Mother Goddess is a matriarchal archetype represented frequently in art and found in various mythologies around the world.

lost women of science

This week's pick on wonder | wander | world is the Lost Women of Science. It tells the remarkable stories of groundbreaking women who never got the full recognition they deserved – until now. How many other unknown women scientists are out there - hidden and forgotten?

website art

The Lost Women of Science Initiative is a non-profit educational organization with the overarching goal of inspiring girls and young women -- especially those from communities chronically underrepresented in the STEM professions -- to embark on careers in STEM. 

The Initiative’s flagship is its Lost Women of Science podcast. As a full, mission-driven organization, the Lost Women of Science Initiative plans to digitize and archive our research efforts and make all primary source material available to students, educators, and historians of science. 

The Lost Women of Science podcast series is an exemplar of top-notch journalism, training a lens on forgotten but heroic women of science. Each multi-episode season will focus on a different female scientist and will be told as a deeply reported, scripted, and scored audio narrative. 

Please give a listen to the podcast series, Lost Women of Science which features a diverse group of women, scientific fields, and historical periods. 

new books for 2023

wonder | wander | world shout out this week is for this trilogy of books, soon to be released - "Sine Tala: Essays on Philippine Cinema". compiled by Nick Deocampo. 

Three books to enrich our knowledge of Philippine cinema. The three volumes contain thematic essays with forewords by a new generation of the country’s leading film and media scholars. Volume One, "Philippine Cinema and History," with foreword by Patrick Campos. Volume Two, "Philippine Cinema and Culture," foreword written by Rolando Tolentino. Volume Three, "Philippine Cinema and Literacy," foreword written by Fernando Paragas. 

book covers & case concept art 

Paintings of DengCoy Miel grace the covers of the new books plus their bookcase. His works are full of iconographic images that speak of Philippine history and its imaginings. Deocampo calls what he does "historical semiotics." 

The expressive use of images as semiological signs that visually articulate historical events and allegorize, oftentimes satirize, the hidden trauma behind historical events. Thanks to Patrick Flores for brokering the deal to have DengCoy Miel to paint the book covers.

The graphic design is by Matt Sudario - a young, talented, book designer who has created several prizewinning publications in the past. Adding massive appeal to both students and the general public. 

These books contain historical, theoretical, critical, and pedagogical essays essential to a holistic study of Philippine cinema - immersing readers in the culture and society that gave birth to their story and style.

The book series will be published by the 2020 Publisher of the Year Awardee - Ateneo de Manila University Press, thanks to Karina Bolasco. Made possible by a grant from the Film Development Council of the Philippines - thanks to Liza Dino-Seguerra, then the FDCP chair.

We are looking forward to this publication in eager anticipation. 

the cost of independence

When it comes to American sovereignty, freedom has never been free. Freedom in the United States of America has come at great cost. We live in a society where things are made so much harsher than they need to be. All because of our divisiveness and intolerance.

It is unfortunate that that too many lives have been lost defining freedom and independence. How does its corruption alter the way we view the magnificence and miracle of July 4th?

iStock image

Focusing in on a system of hierarchy that was enshrined in this country, going back to the 17th century, that created a hierarchy that put primarily British people at the very top.

Anyone who looked like them at the top and at the very bottom were people who were brought in to be enslaved and indentured to build this country for free. A programmed hierarchy that continues to this day.

slight of hand

As we celebrate Memorial Day weekend here in the US wonder | wonder | world reels from the barrage of bad news around the globe. 

Whether it is stolen elections in some banana republic that puts a long-gone dictator's son and his dominion in power, or the killing of innocents in yet another school massacre here in the US - our faith in governments is at an all-time low. 

final footsteps

Celebrating the Feast of the Ascension yesterday made us think about the footprints that mark our lives or those we leave behind before we croak. 

colonialism | civilization, christianity, commerce

From George Washington to Barrack Obama, we tend to idealize our president. We put them on a pedestal, raise them above the rest. We conveniently paint wide swaths of praise, washing off any stain or whiff of wrongdoing or misstep they may have committed. 

United [?] $tates of America

The United States of America is adept at whitewashing its history and covering up crimes and horrors committed throughout its short lifetime. Indulging in egocentric praise for the nation's forefathers - the same group of men who ruined the land and its people through their avarice and mandate. 

The road to hell is paved with the intentions for these evangelists spreading their word with their forked tongues and personal agendas. Blatantly using the power vested on them by their office and the folks who elected them. Then and now government officials are tainted by the system they operate in. 

How do we fix and correct our information infrastructures? So facts are accurately reported rather than distorted or embellished or even fictionalized? So historical events are recorded across the board and not just by the winners? 

Even more complicated and daunting is the road we take to retrieve our lost histories - recovery, repair and reparations - to move us forward. Otherwise, we risk wallowing in and perpetuating the mistakes and crimes of our past. 

The choices we stand by today are the paving stones of our future. May we have better cause to celebrate future Presidents Days. 

JMW Turner: fire and water

John Mallord William Turner is now considered a leader of the British art canon and an essential painter in Western art history, but his work startled critics and the public when he first presented it. In an age of carefully finished detail laid with invisible brushstrokes, Turner's adventurous colours and bold gestural painting shocked his audience...and would delight future generations.

The Fighting Temeraire, 1839

flores de Mayo

May Day is here and wonder | wander | world is reminded of our Flores de Mayo  and Santa Cruzan celebrations back home. 

Santacruzan de Mayo provincial parade, Iloilo

A parade of the town’s loveliest ladies dressed in their dazzling best reenact the search and discovery of Christ’s Cross by Queen Helena and Emperor Constantine in an evening procession that culminates in the town plaza in front of the main cathedral.

vintage photo of the Bacolod Plaza, 1923

The towns all along the coast of Negros Island take their turn dressing up their fairest and hosting fiestas to celebrate the occasion in their own distinct style.

Kazakhstan art & beauty

One talented young woman's dedication to her native music and culture is admirable and inspiring. If you have no idea where Kazakhstan is - much less what their national instrument or cultural dress is - you are in for a treat. 

Marzhan Kapsamat

Marzhan Kapsamat of Nursultan, Kazakhstan, is bringing a vibrant snapshot of ancient Kazakhstan to the modern world of Instagram. 

A dombra performance by Marzhan Kapsamat

“I want to show the world our country and our instrument. My dream and goal is to film with the dombra in different countries, [w]hen I am playing the dombra, I am proud and free.”

Read more about Marzhan and her dreams in this Vogue feature. 

the hidden world of women modernists

Here at wonder | wander | world we love visiting museums of modern art. But as Filipino artists we notice that the museums present us with a stable of artists who are mostly white men, with a tiny smattering of white women. Frida Kahlo boldly waves her native colours against the whitewashed background, but there are others who were as bold and influential, but not as universally known.

Baya Mahieddine, Femmes et Oiseaux, 1975.

ancient civilizations | truth & myth

History truly is written by the winners which in most cases meant the invading hordes and conquerors. Digging up treasures from ancient civilizations testify to this fact.

Egyptian Thoth & Isis

Oftentimes the stories we hear retold countless times are the ones often believed as the most true. Until we dig up something fresh and discover how different things actually were then than how we believe them to have been.

tiny genies: Chinese snuff bottles at the Met

In the first translation of the 1001 Nights, Aladdin and his magical genie actually came from 'a city of cities in China'. Our family's collection of snuff bottles, made of porcelain and red lacquer, seemed like just the kind of vessel that might contain a pocket-sized version of the wish-granting jinn.

Red lacquer bottle showing children at play
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Osman Hamdi Bey: Ottoman Orientalist

When we first studied Orientalism, we immediately loved the work of Osman Hamdi Bey, the first Islamic master of Western Orientalist painting.

Osman Hamdi Bey, portrait photograph

conquering corrupt colonized minds

The diaspora of the Filipino started long ago and continues today. The tragic tale of a people's love-hate tug of war for their beloved country. Even through all its violent and constant chaotic upheavals - natural and man made.

In the premiere episode of ATIN: Stories from the Collection, the question raised is who and where is the Filipino? Launched on Philippine Independence Day or Day of Freedom - June 12.

La Liga Pilipina

The Philippines and its Filipinos are a complex, complicated amalgam of too many moving parts in perennial movement and morphing - sleek and slithering, in ebb and flow, evolving and devolving.

Even before Western influence and colonial rule, the archipelago was inhabited by different polities. A melting pot of ancient Asian cultures and trade. Defined by diversity and transit where nothing is black or white - literally and figuratively.

Farcical Philippine Politics &
Senate Shenanigans of corrupt officials

ATIN is an original production that tells the story of the Filipino through images and videos of Ayala Museum's archaeological, ethnographic, fine arts, historical, and numismatic collections and Filipinas Heritage Library's archival and documentary holdings.

Philippine trials & tribulations

Given the recent spate of bad news coming from our homeland, wonder | wander | world proudly presents this week's pick.

6 books that will help make sense of the Philippines now

by Nash Tysmans

"If there’s one thing Trevor Noah and I agree on, it’s that we now live in a world where nuance is in short supply. The economy of ideas that runs on a currency of likes and shares forces us to make quick calls on issues, and the social nature of our networks can sometimes feel like quiet contemplation is tantamount to apathy."

These are places to start when you want to learn more about the Philippines and the issues the country currently faces:

1. “Bakwit: The Power of the Displaced” by Jose Jowel Canuday (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2009)
2. “Tradition and Transformation: Studies on Cordillera Indigenous Culture” by June Prill-Brett, edited by Delfin Tolentino, Jr. (Cordillera Studies Center, 2015)
3. “Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self” by Alex Tizon (First Mariner Books, 2018)
4. The Embarrassment of Slavery: Controversies Over Bondage and Nationalism in the American Colonial Philippines” by Michael Salman (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2001)
5. “Barangay” by William Henry Scott (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994)
6. “Puki-Usap” by Liv Strömquist, translated to Filipino by Beverly W. Siy (Pride Press, Anvil Publishing, 2018)

More recommended reading from Nash: 6 books to help you understand Mindanao better.

collaborative art

wonder | wander | world is currently working on a project close to our hearts and our homeland roots - the long lost mystical babaylans of Negros Island. 

Mahala's Art

wonder | wander | women are collaborating on a joint project we are thrilled to be venturing into. Issa is writing the story and Mahala is illustrating it.

Seasons Greetings!

On December 18, the newly renovated local museum in our hometown of Bacolod City on Negros Island in the Philippines was host to "Talamdan."

A home grown exhibit of the National Archives of the Philippines that documents and records the Spanish occupation and birth of the sugar industry on the island.

The Negros Museum was was built in 1925 by Juan Arellano. Originally part of the Provincial Capitol, it was known as the Provincial Agriculture Building.

American Epic

An extraordinary story of the trailblazing era when country-wide, the music of ordinary Americans was first recorded.

American Epic documents when America heard itself for the very first time. The three-part historical documentary and feature-length film showcases contemporary artists in rural recording sessions.