In 1932, a Filipino woman named Cecilia Villano Navarro, the wife of an ailing Filipino farmworker, was buried alive by some members of her Northern California Filipino community. Her alleged crime: adultery, although the details are murky at best. What followed next was a sensational court trial that pitted Filipinos against Filipinos, Filipinos vis a vis the US system of justice, and whispered tales of supernatural appearances. On July 29 (July 30 in the Philippines), a Positively Filipino webinar titled "A Murder Most Foul" deconstructs this lurid tragedy, taking off from the documentary film "The Celine Archive" by Celine Parrenas Shimizu. Please see details in the e-flyer below, as well as the link to register for the event.

In 1960, a young American woman sailed to the Philippines on a freighter from New York to begin a new life as a wife and mother. Patricia Kearney Encarnacion, a first-timer to Asia, was alternately filled with wide-eyed wonder and shock at what she saw and experienced in her first months in a country so different from her own. She wrote detailed letters to her family vividly describing how it was to see carabaos outside her window, riding a bus to Quiapo and eating at least five meals a day.

In 1980, a London- and US-educated Filipina debuted as director of a Filipino movie, one of a few women able to pierce the then-male dominated Philippine movie industry. In the decades that followed until her death in 2012, Marilou Diaz-Abaya made some monumental movies that will forever be remembered. This year, she was posthumously named National Artist for Cinema. Her friend Pablo A. Tariman pays her tribute.

This year, our country and the world are confronted with challenges to collective memory as powerful forces connive to revise history. CoverStory.ph editor Rosario A. Garcellano quotes sociologist/columnist Randy David's words ("The battle for memory never ceases") as she correlates the past Marcos administration with the present, so we will not forget.

Here's something to make you smile: A Filipina nurse in the UK risked her marathon record to help a runner reach the finish line. It was all in a day's work for Harrieth Kay Amores.

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