THE reason why history seems to be no better than tsismis to many Filipinos is because before most of us were able to write, our society told relevant stories to each other, not the memorization of dates, names, places and what have you. That is why the historian Zeus A. Salazar said that the term in our language for history is 'kasaysayan,' from the word 'saysay' (story, relevance and importance).

But the writing of history for the most part is a known territory of the social scientist and the academic. Unfortunately, most of their works do not reach the ordinary folk who should be the ones to find history relevant. Yet there are people who use the mass media to spread such narratives to help shape public opinion not only about the past, but also about the present. People like Carmen Maria Aurora Vicenta Guerrero y Francisco vda. de Cruz y vda. de Nakpil, or simply Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, or Chitang for short, whose 100th birthday falls today, July 19, 2022.