RAGE - BY ALFREDO ROCES

Alfredo "Ding Roces, a fellow Atenean and a fine artist and writer has just launched his book RAGE in Manila. A highly productive blogger, Ding who now lives in Australia, manages to capture in still photographs and paintings beautiful images of life that many professionals would certainly envy.

Belonging to the Roces clan of Filipino-Spanish writers, intellectuals, and journalists, and established ilustrados of Filipino society, Ding certainly has proven by his record artistic production that there certainly the artist in him and in his genes, considering that his family was among the Filipino pioneers in newspaper publishing as established by their pre world war II newspaper TVT [Manila Times, La Vanguardia, and Taliba].

Although Ding and I never became close friends during our prewar days as students at the Ateneo Grade School in Intramuros, and later as fellow professor at the Far Eastern University, Ding and I have maintained that quality of mutual respect and admiration between our families since Uncle Nick Joaquin , our Philippine National Artist knew him quite well during his life time. Moreoever, Ding dedicated a heart rending blog entry on the death of Nick. It must be said that Anding, Rafael [Liling] Roces, his older brother had also set a high standard in column writing by his track record writing for their prewar THE MANILA TIMES newspaper "Roses and Thorns". After the war Alejandro [Anding] Roces picked up the broken thread of three and a half years during the Japanese Occupation and wrote "Rose and Thorns" in the 50's. Ding wrote "Light and Shadow" from 1960-1972.

While I am at it, here is another blog entry from Ding's blogsite for your delectation.

Bravo Ding!