The Greatest Isinay Book Ever Published (3)

NOT SO LONG ago, after sensing that I would never get personal hold of a volume of ISINAY TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS, I tried to apply the "Control A + Control C" technique of getting copies of books for free via the Internet.

You see, I applied that downloading technique earlier -- with satisfactory results -- to two books that I was willing to shell out part of my allowance for blood-pressure maintenance tablets, had they been available at National Book Store. One was a beautifully written book on biology by a scientist who certainly knew how to inspire lay people or non-technical readers. The other was probably the best reference on writing for scientific publications I ever encountered.

I needed the books so much, not only to nurture my self-imposed mission as a forester writer but also to stay fully armed, as occasional lecturer at DENR and as Editor-in-Chief of the Ecosystems & Development Journal, with the latest “5 wives + 1 super husband” of science writing and technical editing.

But in the case of ISINAY TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS, even as I wanted to peruse it so much I was thinking to go take digital photos of even only a few pages in the copy said to be available at the museum of the St. Mary's University in Bayombong, the Ctrl A + Ctrl C magic didn't work.

Indeed, I was only able to reach the foot of the hill insofar as going to the pages that I wanted to read in full or to closely inspect. Except for a few discordant lines that would appear on my laptop's screen, there was not much I could extract from the book even with the combined forces of Google and Yahoo.

When I say it hit me like it was the end of the world, you better believe it.

Like staring and salivating at a smiling, fragrant and seductive lechon enclosed in a restaurant's display counter, I thought I would content myself with being able to catch only an Isinay word here -- like teyantah (riverbank) and sinewah-sewah (searched and searched)... and a couple more there -- like sinungop (entered the house) and pingsanean (after, once).

But just as I was beginning to forget about the book and the thought was starting to gel in my subconscious that there was nothing much to it (meaning, no need to salivate for it), an angel came down from Heaven, as it were, to come to the rescue.

Her name was Dr. Analyn V. Salvador-Amores, a social anthropology professor of UP Baguio.I met her through my daughter Leia.

How I came into the picture was not clear. It could be that Leia (who also teaches in UP Baguio) mentioned something about her Isinay roots or my doing an Isinay dictionary, or that Dr. Amores (Ikin for short) sounded off her plan to do research on the Isinays.

Or whatever.

Ikin and I met one afternoon last April. It came out that she's interested in a kinuttiyan cloth that is said to be made by Isinay weavers and is called uwes pinutuan.

Yes, she said, she heard of the Isinay dictionary I was working on and we could probably do a joint research project.

Of course, how could I say no? I could not contain my excitement at having a Ph.D. graduate from the prestigious University of Oxford conduct research on Isinay culture, and in Dupax at that.

But equally exciting was her words that she has a copy of Dr. Constantino's book.

And so, I forgot most of what we were discussing. But I do recall Ikin mentioning something like she found the Isinay book lying in one library at Oxford (probably gathering dust and awaiting a trip to the trash bin) and she just picked it up.

So that was it. She gave me a folder containing Celina Marie Cruz's "Revitalization Challenge for Small Languages: The Case of Isinai" and The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project small grants information pack.

And a day or so later, Leia came home with a paper-bound photocopy of the book.

[DIOY TAY SI ATUPTUPNA]