Columnist Alex Magno sketched a glowing portrait of Juan Ponce Enrile in his latest  commentary “Weathered”. He analyzed factors that dumped the senate presidency again on the 84-year old Cagayan lawmaker’s lap.

Magno has an eye honed by academic discipline.  This often enabled his “First Person” column to sift truth from garbage. Striving for balance remains the ‘grail” of our shared craft.

(The Inquirer headline read:  Hapag Ng Pagsa artist dies of  kidney cancer, 43.”  My eyes flicked from the  obituary to our dining room dominated by a Hapagprint.. Painter Joey Velasco sent that framed print after he read  “This Far Away Look:, our comment” on his painting. Here is that column.  In memoriam. –JLM. )

It began to speak back to me, Painter Joselito Velasco recalls. He meant the oil painting: ”Table of Hope” or Hapag ng Pagasa.

The oil depicts the Master, breaking bread, on a slum home table of broken wooden slats.  He is surrounded, not by the 12 apostles of traditional art but by12 street kids. Velasco picked and photographed them at random.