Tuesday, May 20, 2008 Cariño: Burnham Park is finally an upgrade! By Linda Grace Cariño Paradigm Shift
IT IS good to note that the present batch of City Hall occupants seems to have managed to get serious about finally doing something about Burnham Park. We hear of a major upgrade in the works that includes changing the ancient swings, seesaws, slide, etc... in the kiddie playground section. And of a part of it being developed especially for teeners -- to include some sort of a graffiti wall on which they can vent the vaunted teenage angst. While I disagree with that one, it's probably a necessary evil. Still, there's more of the good stuff. Plus we're told the park has been a Wifi zone for some time now.
While the upgrade buzz spreads, might I suggest that the parks management people remember that lighting up the park at night should be a MAJOR, not incidental concern. A well-let area, park or otherwise, deters the occurrence of crime and other undesirable events. The present lighting scheme, though "pretty," does little to actually light up the park -- stagewise, it's just mood lighting. Stagewise, lighting has to first make everything VISIBLE. My take, for a central city park, HIGHLY VISIBLE. Can we finally see a new, upgraded, well-lit Burnham Park resuscitated a la former Manila Mayor Lito Atienza's Baywalk success? I'm praying, yes please.
Pre-Baguio, in Kafagway of yore, what is now the Burnham Park was cattle grazing ground. Yes, my paternal great-grandparents -- Mateo and Bayosa. It was actually the latter who inherited Kafagway from her parents. The present day lake was then a Minak Creek where the cattle the big Ibaloi families owned, which outnumbered the people in Kafagway as they likewise outnumbered people in the rest of what is now called Benguet Province, watered. For the curious, "Benget" was the name of the place now called La Trinidad.
2009 will be the year that Baguio celebrates its centennial as a chartered city. Daniel Burnham and the rest of the American barkada fell in love with the place years before that. The family Cariño-Carantes-Camdas-Molintas-Suello-atbp was in town for centuries before them.
A thought: I wonder what landmark "-tennial" (bicentennial, tricentennial, quadricentennial) THAT barkada should actually be celebrating.
