Grabbing the Harry Potter train to power our nation’s progress

ABOARD THE "HOGWARTS EXPRESS" in Mallig, Scotland – Yes, Virginia, there is a Harry Potter train – the very same one they filmed in both hit movies, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets.

Yep, they also filmed Prisoner of Azkaban in this same magical glen of Scotland.

We boarded Harry’s "The Jacobite Steam Train" at Fort William, where its engine puffs up for a climb up the foothills of Britain’s highest mountain, the Ben Nevis. Fifteen minutes out of this pretty station – nope, we didn’t have to walk through a solid brick wall to get on – (although I had been tempted to consult magician-illusionist David Copperfield on how he managed to walk through the Great Wall of China). We simply bought tickets for a half-way ride, costing about 20 British pounds, steep for this Scotsman-Ilocano. But what the heck. Harry Potter, although he had the magic flying broom and that air-borne blue car of his freckled Buddy, didn’t hesitate to board the legendary Express to Hogwarts, his school of Magic.

As we chugged along, it was clear why that lovable character by J.K. Rawling preferred the train – the 84-mile round trip to Mallig takes you on a joy-ride that passes close by the deepest freshwater lake in the United Kingdom (Loch Morar), the shortest river, the River Morar which flows only 300 yards, past a devoutly Catholic town named "Blessed Morar," and finally grinds to a halt near the deepest seawater lake in Europe (Loch Nevis).

The scene in the movies of the Hogwarts Express tra-velling across a viaduct with a blue Ford Anglia car "flying" and hovering around the train was filmed by Warner Brothers on the Glenfinnan Viaduct, over which the steam-engine train passes with a smoky huffing and puffing.

Copyright lawyers forbid the operators of this Jacobite Steam train from calling it either the Hogwarts or the Harry Potter Express. But every child, or adult, gets the message. This train puffs its way, lickery-clack, through an enchanted landscape – the landscape of children’s hopes and dreams, capturing their fervor and their hearts everywhere, setting them ablaze with a hunger for adventure and fulfillment through the "power" of knowledge.

The children of this planet have rediscovered the joy of reading, thanks to a persistent woman with stars in her eyes, who swam through a sea of rejection slips to bring her hero Harry into the focus of humanity everywhere.

After Rawling was rebuffed by so many haughty publishers, a small firm named Bloomsbury took a chance on her first volume. It zoomed to the top of the charts, and children from 12 to 16 are still snapping more copies up. (And adults, too, who can now buy special leather-bound editions.) What’s Rawling’s secret? Would you believe, even Madonna, the often barebosomed sultry singer, has clambered aboard? She published her own first children’s book in September last year. Her publisher published her book, The English Roses, simultaneously in more than 100 countries and in 30 languages.

Packed by a marketing blitz, Madonna’s opus sold more than one million copies in bookshops, and went on to become the fast-growing children’s book of all time. What’s important that Madonna had decreed all its proceeds should go to charity.

Madonna’s second book for children, Mr. Peabody’s Apples, appeared on the shelves last November, and her third, Yakoy and the Seven Thieves will be published this week. Madonna is already completing the manuscript of her fourth, The Adventures of Abdi. Don’t cry for her, Argentina. Evita is lighting up when she talks to the rapt children who devour her book.

Far from abdicating, Rawling is growing from strength to strength. Harry Potter sales constitute 16 percent of all children’s volumes worldwide. The figures are inspiring and awesome. The fifth in her series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix sold 1.7 million copies in its first 24 hours, or an average of 220 copies per minute . . . in Tesco supermarkets here in the UK alone. Amazon Online reports that novel broke all Internet records, with more than 1.3 million advance order around the planet.

Bloomsbury is now in the clover, planning 15 new edition of the Phoenix book, including versions in ancient Greek (move over, Homer and "Achilles" Brad Pitt) and Irish Gaelic translations. A sixth book is in the works, while Bloomsbury’s children’s division, the star of the firm, has brought that book firm to a 38 percent upward swoosh in profits, about 15.4 million pounds last year.

In short, Rawling has taught children how to read again, abandoning their computer games and other electronic diversions.

The children of the world are taking to book reading again.

What about our country? Shameful. Instead, resentful parents, busybody critics, and arrogant know-it-all media practitioners have been assailing DepEd Secretary Edilberto de Jesus on his "Bridge Program". De Jesus, after seeing – to our horror, too – so many grade schoolers bound for high school flunking the qualifying tests so dismally, is wisely requiring one more year of remedial study so those kids can overcome their shortcomings and qualify, even if feebly, for High School. Give him a chance. The "Bridge Program" is not a whimsical project – it is absolutely necessary if we are not going to produce a nation of morons.

As for this pilgrim, friends of mine in London were amused when I told them I was flying to Edinburgh (55 minutes by British Airways Airbus away), then hiring a driver to speed me to Fort William to catch the "Harry Potter" train.

With your nation in anarchy and election disappointment," they chorused, "why on earth are you in search of Harry Potter?"

This is because Harry is the hope of children everywhere. His zest, his idealism, his quest for knowledge, his belief in magic is what will move mountains for us – lifting the blindfold from our people’s ignorance, and the heavy weight of the despair from our hearts.

This is why I took the Harry Potter train: To a mythical Hogwarts where eager children, although assailed by malice and the dark forces, learn the alchemy that will transform their lives forever.

* * *

It’s now all systems go for the re-coronation of La Emperadora.

La Presidenta GMA is not missing a trick. She will go on with her original plan to be sworn in and hold her inaugural vin d’honneur for friends and Ambassadors in Cebu City. This will be in the afternoon and evening on June 30.

On the other hand, she’s not leaving anything to chance, or neglecting any loose ends to be tied up later. In the morning, speaking formally from the Quirino Grandstand in the Luneta (Rizal Park) GMA will deliver her Inaugural Address. That’s known as putting in the p’s and crossing the t’s. In sum, her rival FPJ won’t get a chance that day to use the Luneta as his forum of complaint, or try to mount a colorum "Presidential Inauguration" of his own.

Now that La Gloria has been given her own six-year term "without re-election", we expect her to perform ruthlessly, remorselessly – and without fear or favor.

Bite the bullet, Madam President! Tackle the hard things first.

* * *

In Edinburgh, I wasn’t just in search of Harry Potter. Most people don’t realize, it seems, how much Scotland has given to the world.

We know Scotland through warlike and heroic movies like Mel Gibson’s BraveHeart about the warrior-hero Wallace, or Rob Roy, or the innumerable battles in which kilted Highlanders marched into the maw of death, their kilts aswirl, their bagpipes fiercely skirling the most courageous fight-music in the world.

Scotland the Brave is the martial tune that says it all. Amazing Grace, too, is the touching hymn the Scots offered from their souls.

It was not all battles – from Bannockburn to Flodden, to Culloden that gave the Scots their special place in history.

Here, in this land of mists and greenery, and strange emerald mountains ringed by languid Lochs, emerged the writers of my own boyhood.

The Scots’ bard, Robert Burns. Sir Walter Scott who wrote Ivanhoe, the book of chivalry "when knighthood was in flower", which my late dad compelled me to read – to my own delight. Scott wrote romantic poems, too, and the Waverly novels.

Then there was Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Treasure Island, so endearing to generations of young boys. A Scotsman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, conceived Sherlock Holmes, the detective from Paker Street – but he himself hailed from Kirrienuir.

You can see that cute Peter Pan monument in London’s Hyde Park, but a Scotsman, J.M. Barrie, was the man who conjured up Peter Pan – the boy who never grew old.

There are many more writers – including J.K. Rowling.

The Scots invented the lawnmower, the Fax machine, anaesthetic in midwifery, linoleum, color photography, the pneumatic car and truck tire, the thermos flask, and even television, developed by John Logie Faird (1888-1946). Alexander Fleming discovered "penicillin", the ultimate antibiotics.

John McAdam (1756-1836) gave us the McAdam or asphalt road, experimenting with crushed stones and tar.

The inventor Bowman Lindsay perfected the "continuous electric light, the light bulb". Joseph Bister was the father of "antiseptic surgery". Sir Robert Watson —Watt invented Radar, first calling it "Radio Detection and Ranging". Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell (1888-1946) invented the telephone. Charles Mackintosh gave his own name to the rubberized waterproof material he developed in 1823. Stephen Salter, in 1973, devised a system of "wave energy", to develop energy from the waves of the sea.

The Scots further claim that a young blacksmith named Kirkpatrick Macmillan built the first bicycle in 1840. Another Scot, John Napier, devised the Logarithm Tables we use today.

And – when all is said and done – all over the world, men, women and children link hands and sing that poignant Scotch song of remembrance and farewell to the old Year – "Should auld acquaintance be forgot" – for never forgotten are those days of "auld lang syne".

Scotland forever, I say!

Bring out the bagpipes, Pipe Major. Oh yes, break out also the sweet whisky, too. Those whiskys and malts are also Scotland’s sweet legacy to the brave.

Just a little drop of sunlight on your tongue to brighten the night! By the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.