Cariño: Baguio Connections 45

THIS week, we are at how a Baguio shutdown could help us all.

First off, a closure a la Boracay would give government -- nay, coerce it to take - the time and space to identify exactly how Baguio should be managed.

A lucid look at carrying capacity will determine the actual number of people that can safely be in the city at any one given time. A la Boracay, the number can then and should be used to determine just how many tourists can be allowed into the city on a given day, week, month, year.

Unlike now, where the population is at a willy-nilly number. There is "daytime" population and "night time" population. There is "seasonal" versus "permanent." There is "with migrants included" and not...

Also, watersheds and other government reservations have to revert back to being exactly that: watersheds and reservations. And camping in Burnham Park?

Parks in any city the world over are referred to as the lungs of these cities. There's a reason they are called lungs, and it's obvious. So who wants tents and trash and offal in your lungs? Nobody. We want trees and health and space in our parks. And yes, they should be very tightly regulated as to the commerce of man.

Besides clearing public parks, watersheds, and reservations, Baguio's endless number of springs have to be protected (the Baguio Water District identified where they are decades ago), secured, and with clean and current technology, made to work for the public good. You only need to research the many innovations immediately doable.

There are ways by which to deal with a Baguio shutdown, rehab, and re-entry into the world.

Only President Duterte has shown this country the steel hand such a rehab requires. And we truly wish that hand would clamp down on these mountains as I say yeeeeeeet again, Shut. Us. Down.

Let me give space to other ranters next week, as they can be infinitely more coherent than I'd like to be on the subject of working to solve Baguio's problems.

For now, allow this column to digress, as we bid adieu to an old friend and colleague. Jonathan Selga Borromeo passed on November 4, 2018. By then, our friendship was some 20 years old.

I first met Jon in the late 1990s when he showed up at the house with the latest batch of articles that needed editing and layouting for the Baguio Country Club Herald. He nicely introduced himself as taking over from his predecessor liaison between the club and me, whom they contracted for quite a long time to deliver their newsletter.

Our work made us friends, too. Right now, I'm thinking of the sheer number of printing presses we went through in the years we literally put that newsletter to bed. There was Danny Chan's Allied Press, and there was Unique, and the one in Camp 8 whose name escapes me just now. For a time, we used a Manila-based press through a layout artist who got some sort of deal to deal with that press. There might have been a couple more.

Memories of 20 years of friendship flash through my mind now, as I say to Jonathan, as I did when he first gave me his email -- j_bo_phil@yahoo.com -- anech, may fantasya kang ikaw si JLO?

God speed, Jon.

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