George Eastman, who invented the modern camera in 1854 and founded Eastman Kodak, and Steve Sasson, who developed the digital camera in 1975, should be considered as two of the greatest heroes of humanity.
Can you imagine a world without pictures and images to remind us of the past and to relive happy moments in our lives?
Without the camera, how could we have recorded the first steps of our children as they learned how to walk?
Without the camera, how could we have documented the beautiful events in the history of mankind like man’s first walk on the moon?
Without the camera, how could we have recorded the brutality of man to his fellow man like the sufferings of the victims of the Holocaust?
Thank God for Eastman and Sasson and the magical instrument called the camera.
With the camera clicked by my wife, we were able to record this happy moment that I had with my children as we caught fish in our fishpond in our farm in Paco, Kidapawan City.
Many years from now, when I will be too old and weak to even walk around and all that I could do is to rock the rocking chair, I will look at this picture once again and relive this happy moment that I had with my life’s greatest joy – my family.
Thank God for the Camera.
December 29 2012
COUNTING THE BLESSINGS IN 2012…
As the year comes of an end, I look back to the past 12 months of my life and see what I lost and what I gained.
I believe I gained more than what I lost during the year.
I may have lost my political protest before the COMELEC but I am relieved by the fact that while the case was lost on mere technicality, we were able to uncover proofs of computer manipulation, including the discovering of the election results from Colombia, South America which surfaced in one precinct in the town of Pikit when the CF card was decrypted.
I lost the chance of producing North Cotabato’s first world boxing champion when junior bantamweight Edrin Dapudong was cheated of a clearly won fight against Gideon Buthelezi in Johannesburg, South Africa.
But before the year ended, another Braveheart boxer, Ryan Rey Ponteras, scored a spectacular win in Bangkok, Thailand Dec. 26 when he knocked out the Thai champion to win the IBF flyweight Pan Pacific title.
I and my family gained great blessings when my eldest daughter, Maria Krista, successfully passed the medical board examinations becoming the family’s first doctor.
More blessings were received when she married her childhood boyfriend, Chito Solis, thus increasing the number of our family members.
Hopefully by next year, there will be a baby crawling around the house.
But what I really regret losing during the year were my favorite goats most of which were sold to my friend, Maguindanao Governor Toto Mangudadatu.
I had about 500 heads at one time but the herd has been reduced to about 50 now.
I had to let them go to address financial concerns which were still carry over problems from the electoral loss in 2010 and also to prepare for the new political battle come 2013.
I miss my goats and it pained me to see most of them go but I have to do what Mao Zedong once said during the rough and rainy years of the Chinese Revolution: “One step backward, two steps forward.”
I thank God for the blessings He showered on me and my family during the year, most especially giving us one more year with our dear Nanay who is seriously ill with dementia.
I may have lost some, but 2012 will still be a year of great blessings for me and my family.
It is always relieving to count the blessings rather than the losses.
(This picture shows some of my beautiful goats including this great milk producer Alexa who once gave me 3.5 liters of milk in one day. My son, Imman, loved her very much but she died this year.)
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