GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

I drove over to Jean’s house to help her gather up all of the guns John had spent decades collecting.  I walked inside and saw that she had already put out more than twenty rifles, pistols and gun cases on the furniture in the living room.  The vast majority of the collection was made up of airguns and this had caught the attention of a collector in Texas who specialized in this niche.  Jean was going to have to build a catalogue of sorts before any negotiating took place so she asked Larry, an old friend and air gun aficionado, to help her sort through the arsenal and determine its value. Jean took me into the back bedroom where most of the guns were stored including forty rifles leaning up against one wall, eight in the closet and a half dozen in cases strewn about the room.  We found a dozen rifles in a cupboard in the hallway, another ten rifles on top of a dresser in another bedroom and lots more in the garage.  We wanted the guns to be easy for La...

Needing to kill an hour the other day, I wandered into the Eagle Rock Plaza for the first time in twenty five years and was transported to downtown Manila .  The term “Plaza” having been obviously drawn from the large public squares typically adjacent to a cathedral and common to Central and South American cities as well as throughout Europe .  Many of these traditional plazas are vast in size and all are spaces open to the heavens above as opposed to the Eagle Rock Plaza which is completely enclosed and can be entered only from the north side.   The City of Manila has eight major plazas, five of which are referred to as “freedom parks” where no permits are required for demonstrations and protests.  Perhaps the name “Plaza” had something to do with the Eagle Rock Plaza evolving over the years into a place where all things Filipino abound including merchants, customers, merchandise, food, stores and even the muzak. The Plaza opened in Octo...