SOMETIME in October of 2009, I was acerbic the concrete pine tree atop Baguio’s busiest thoroughfare withstood the test of ridicule in my column piece, “Apathy and Session Road’s Concrete Pine Tree.”
I stand to be corrected on two things.
First, I should’ve described the monument as “concrete that looked like a tree” instead of being swept by torrents of public opinion referring to it as “concrete pine,” which it remotely resembled (the way I saw it, that is).
Secondly, I erred in mortifying self-professed nature lovers likening their voices and published estimations to a fart fading out in the end.
Last week, I was proven impatient, proven wrong as the concrete that looked like a tree was torn down by the City Government after more than a decade’s prodding from them self-styled anti-concrete, pro-nature pressure groups.
Sadly, them voices and published estimations remained… now, like a lingering fart. This time around, some who used to raucously declare the erstwhile monument horrendous say its replacement should’ve been real pine.
Others on the other hand prefer to stay the moronic reminder that concrete is susceptible of cultivation.
Still, others wanted something else.
Pine, fine, opine.
Morosely, gullible me unfortunately was one of ‘em saying it should have been a shrine of Ibaloi hero Mateo Carino (blame on my Ivadoi Day tapuey hungover).
The replacement, unveiled Monday, was instead a “surprise’ installation art made of boulders.
But unlike other installation arts which meaning is left for pundits to decipher, the monument’s import was revealed by its contributors who represent merely a crumb of the Baguio community.
The monument, they say, represents members of the Second Philippine Commission – a legislative body which declared Baguio the Summer Capital and which sessions is where Session Road got its name.
Still, others looked at it and said it was crude copy of the prehistoric Stonehenge monument in the English county of Wiltshire.
Simply, from “apathy”, the varying opinions have led us all to a linguistic cacophony. Despite that, I submit the leveling of the concrete that looked like pine was noble and that the contributors of the new marker were merely empowering themselves – admitting empowerment is not the task of government but of the governed who preferred to “do” more than “talk”.
I submit too, the work of art of Ifugao stone carver Gilbert Gano Alberto placed in the heart of the Central Business District highlights Cordilleran ingenuity, a realization of what g-string loving artists have been clamoring for so long.
However, may I ask: would it have hurt asking the people of Baguio what they truly wanted as substitute to the once ghastly monument worth millions now millions of rubble and twisted steel?