By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR.

FROM the balcony of the vintage landmark that is the Vicar Hotel building, I and several spectators watched the Festivals of the North street dancing parade pass by Saturday afternoon.

While there is no question the young participants and their drum and bugle corps gave everyone great thrill with their colorful costumes and choreographed dances (at some point, some of the groups performed breath-taking stunts, you wonder who’d foot the hospital bills if they took one miscalculation, one misstep and hurt themselves somehow – okay, am referring to the gay ‘stunt’ artist of the Sugpo Festival street dancers who’s hoisted up on two bamboo poles before swinging down and breaking into a sudden “split” on the hot pavement, ouch! ) still your heart goes out to the girls and boys literally baking under the sun to give everyone enjoyment.

We hear the Bangus festival committee under Chair and Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez later had to double the original championship prize of 150,000 after the rains made it much more difficult for the remaining dancers to show their stuff over at the city plaza for the final judging. Thus, one champion was declared for the “Dry Category” and another for the “Wet Category” (you guessed it, these ones performed despite the rain, wet pavement and all!).

What the committee under Ms. Fernandez did was only fair and just. When the rains fell last Saturday late afternoon after the fourth or fifth group had performed, the competition scenario drastically changed to become, in a way, a challenging proposition straight out of the “Survivor” TV series.

Everyone though, locals and guests from other provinces, performed creditably well. We salute each and every group of the street dancers!

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Local farmers are surprised at all these talk of rice shortage. They did the harvesting themselves and from experience, they know there’s enough rice to go around, in Pangasinan at least, for the next several months till the next harvest season.

“What’s all the fuss?”, some farmers our PIA team talked to had this expression written all over their faces, when asked for comment on the national ”crisis” scenario. They’ve asked around from their own farmer-relatives in other towns and said no one’s complaining, much less, seeing anything out of the ordinary in the rice supply.

One farmer in Dagupan, (yup, not exactly an agricultural area, I know) was quick to dismiss the whole trouble as “artificial”, the handiwork of greedy rice traders who have capitalized on the “bad news” spread by media to begin hoarding the staple and thus raise prices, he says with certainty.

Anggan nabalang bilang so belas, akin agtayo sirin nabilay ed kamote, kasaba anggan ulnos na kamote o saluyot labat?, (Even if rice were to disappear, why, can’t we live on root crops and even vegetable leaves?), he spewed the challenge to no one in particular.

The way one really looks at it, it is not the poor of the provinces who are fretting over runaway prices of rice or the supposed shortage of the staple.

It is the middle-class (who may have never tilled the soil ever in their dreamy lives) and the urban poor (who insist on living in the Big Cities supposedly to find their own place in the sun there despite the odds) who are worried about the rice crisis and keep their ears glued to media reports on the situation like it were the End of Days they were awaiting.

Blessed are the countryside poor; in a tight crunch, it is they who will survive.

* * * *
Colleague Jessie Perez of USATV cable TV, for all the brickbats and suspicions he’s been getting of late from some sectors after that controversial Panelo radio station-hopping some weeks back, is not letting the intrigues get into his system, it seems.

Many times, he’s been seen meeting with his Pangasinan Press and Radio Club (PPRC) group at the Gardenia Restaurant to map out club projects one after the other and almost always, he’s got a board quorum going – a far cry from the old times of the club when getting a good club meeting attendance was like getting a stubborn donkey to move its ass.

Jess, pot-bellied though he may have grown these days, is as active as can be. Critics who derisively say he’s become haughty and unreachable (‘di na maabot), may begrudge him for his foibles and faults (including the TV lights that make him look macabre while delivering the Pangasinan news on cam) but one thing you can’t take away from him – he’s action-oriented.

If Patrima, the other press club led by (on holdover basis) Butch Velasco, were to move now, it’d have a lot of catching up to do to win the nod of media members. That is, if it ever has any plans of catching up at all — no thanks to the majority of the officers’ insatiable preoccupation with the Numbers Game.

* * * *
Observed some of the fresh, young reporters of the two giant networks, GMA and ABS-CBN, in action lately during coverages of the current festival season in Dagupan and Lingayen and sure, we can give them an “E’ for effort and “G” for guts.

I’d rather not name anyone of these bright-eyed recruits but I have this gut feel, they’ll be bringing in some fresh changes in the local media reporting field soon once they really get the hang of it. If the veterans (not necessarily oldies) in this trade and craft don’t watch out, they’ll become irrelevant sooner than they guess. Or, at the very least, be settling for second or third best.

I can only wish and pray that the present creeping corruption in the ranks of the veteran media practitioners do not quickly reach the backyards of these fresh media hopes.

The network managers and supervisors may just need to regularly check these younger set for any sign of “infection.”

Meantime, here’s to a happy, lively, comprehensive media coverage of this beautiful piece of earth called Pangasinan, Kapamilya and Kapuso both!