I thought it was a good time to go on a sabbatical. More importantly, it was the wedding of my daughter Lesley on March 24th. The wedding was set in a sylvan setting in Mill Valley outside Oakland in California. My daughter married Pablo Taccioli, an American of Italian-Argentine descent. Born and raised in New York, and educated in Boston, she lives in California.
It was a simple, beautiful ceremony performed at dusk with no more than a hundred close relatives and friends in attendance. As the father of the bride, I walked her down the aisle. At the dinner reception, I gave a short speech. In such a situation, a father in most cases is at a loss for words, I had to fall back on such clichés as “not losing a daughter, but gaining a son.”
At the time, I was suffering from a diabetic attack which affected my heart. But walk and talk I still did. This, despite my doctor’s advice I should check into a hospital. But I was determined to walk my daughter down the aisle I didn’t go on a journey of thousands of miles to miss this momentous event. The trip to Manila-New York—San Francisco–Manila totaled almost 40 hours. It didn’t dawn on me I had suffered a near-death experience. Although I didn’t see my whole life flash in front of me as a I lay on the hotel bed for four days, my chest felt heavy—like someone was stepping on it. I’m not being melodramatic about it. Dr. Jim Savage, warned my condition was serious.
To make a long story short, I survived and managed to make the trip back to Manila. I am back to my comfort zone.
A month of madness
March was a month of madness. It started March 4 when former Soviet spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent known to be manufactured by Russia. Skripal suffered instant death but his daughter survived.
Britain could only suspect the Russians did it as they had done several years ago when another former Kremlin spy was fatally poisoned in England. In this recent case of Russian transgression, British response was swift and severe. London expelled 23 Russian diplomats. The United States and other western allies also loaded Russian diplomats on several planes and shipped them out to Moscow.
In Washington, US President Donald Trump went on a firing binge as he sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He also appointed former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, a hard-nosed negotiator who could give China and North Korea a tough time. Along with Trump’s policy of economic sanctions and heavy tariffs on Chinese products, there is room to expect the easing up of escalating global tension.
A march by millions of young Americans nationwide carried a strong message against gun violence. The protests were triggered by the fatal shooting of students in Parkland, Florida. Some will dismiss this mass action as nothing but an emotional outburst of young people that will dissipate as soon as the furor dies down. But here are observers who believe this mass action will translate into votes in the next US election. The US National Rifle Association has been entrenched so long that its time for reckoning has come. Politicians who receive campaign funds from the NRA now have to rethink where they stand on the issue of gun control.