NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I will be on Guam again very soon.

There are reasons that this visit will be incredibly exciting and stressful, lao I'm still not ready to discuss them on my blog just yet.

Anai hoben yu’, kada na bai hanao yan gupu åpmam, bei fama’tinas tep ni’ manmapo’lo todu i mas ya-hu na kanta siha. Gof ñateng este na fina’tinas, lao sen gaibali. På’go achokka; mas dongkålu iyo-ku “library gi kanta” mas chaddek para fuma’tinas tep mesklao, sa’ CDs siha tumatahgue i tep siha. Matulailaika i tiempo yan i technology, lao ti i kistumbre-ku. Kada na bei travel chago’, bai hu fa’tinåsi yu’ fine’ñina un tep mesklao.

I'm spending a week with my family in Atascadero before I fly out from LA right after Christmas and so before starting the six hour drive from San Diego, I decided to make myself a CD. Given that I'll soon be spending more than half a day riding various Continental Airlines aircraft in order to get home, what better theme for a CD then "kantan i islå-ku siha" or songs of m…

Published on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 by the Huffington Post
On Receiving the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award
by Sean Penn

Sean Penn received The 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award from The Creative Coalition on December 18, 2006, in New York City, where he delivered the following speech.

The Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award. For the purposes of tonight and my own personal enjoyment, I'm going to yield to the notion that I deserve this. And in the spirit of that, tell you that I am very honored to receive it. And for this I thank the Creative Coalition and my friend Charlie Rose. It does seem appropriate to take this opportunity to exercise the right that honors us all - freedom of speech.

Note for later:

The original title for the Louis XVI comedy called "Start The Revolution Without Me" was one of my favorites. That original title was "Louis, There's a Crowd Downstairs." But I'll come back to that...

Words may be our most civ…

I'm thinking about turning the posting of this article into a yearly thing for me. It was the first piece that I ever published in Minagahet Zinein 2003 and represented a huge shift in both my thinking and my ability to represent myself and my ideas publicly.

At the time I was in the states living with my then girlfriend Rita, writing my master's thesis in Micronesian Studies and also applying to graduate schools. I hadn't really been that active on Guam. I had done alot of research, alot of talking and listening, spent time with different activist groups and learning from them what was being done, what had been done and of course, what was still left to be done.

Coming to the states however, I found myself with so much information, stories and pain, most of which never seemed to find its way into public discussions in Guam. Disconnected, lonely, feeling malingu didide', I did what most people in this situation do, I started spending too much time on the internet, lookin…

Came across this while I was googling my name. While the first article below was very exciting, especially since it has circulated the internet on other leftist or alternative news websites, the second article which is the same article except in German, was mind-blowing!

Taitai, yanggen taotao Guahan hao gof impottante este sa' put i mamailan i isla-mu, yanggen taotao Lagu impottante lokkue, sa' injustice este na debi di un na'suha.

POLITICS:
Natives of Guam Decry U.S. Expansion Plan
Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Dec 12 (IPS) - A Pentagon plan for a massive military build-up on the Pacific island of Guam is meeting with resistance by ethnic Chamorros who live there and the Chamorro diaspora in the United States.

According the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, the Pentagon has already moved attack submarines and cruise missiles to Guam, where it is forming a strike force of six bombers and 48 fighters that have been deployed from bases in the continental U.…

A sixth Chamorro has died in Iraq, US Army Segeant Jesse Castro. His death comes hauntingly close to two other tragedies in recent Chamorro history.

The first was just three years ago, at almost this exact time, when Christopher Rivera Wesley became the first Chamorro solider to die in this most recent Iraq War. His death came within days of December 8th, which has the dubious honor of being one of the holiest days in Catholic Guam as it is the celebration of the island's Patron Saint Santa Maria Kamalen, yet it also marks the day that Guam was bombed by Japan in 1941, setting the stage for their invasion, occupation and eventually the American re-invasion in 1944. When I first started the zine Minagahetin 2003, the first article I published there was one of mine titled "Happy US Imperialism Day: Rethinking the Chamorro Place in the American Empire!"

It was a piece about the true tragedy behind the Japanese Occupation on Guam in World War II, namely how the sins of the Uni…

Over the summer, my family had a dongkalu na gupot giya Guahan for my grandparents, Elizbeth De Leon Flores Lujan (familian Kabesa/Kotla/Badu) and Joaquin Flores Lujan (familian Bittot/Katson).The rationale behind the gathering was to celebrate their 56th Wedding Anniversary.

The event was huge and so much fun. More than 300 people attended and dozens of family from offisland flew in. The Cruz Family played, the Westin Hotel in Tumon provided the food and the venue. Me and my cousins and my siblings provided the entertainment. Si Grandma yan Si Grandpa ma chule' halom i mas bunitu na rason para ta fandana.

On ocassions such as this it is customary for some sort of singing to take place by family members, and hopefully those who are doing the singing are somewhat skilled. Those of us who were responsible for the entertainment however could best be defined by those "who couldn't pay or plan" and therefore had to sing. All of us with the exception of i prima-hu Hope were…

I noticed several weeks ago that the Pacific Daily News on its website had started to add a comment posting option for its news articles.
At that point, few people were using the feature and so most articles were still blank, tataya' ha' sinangan guihi. Lao achokka' taya' comments, esta hu tungo' na ti apmam siempre u tuhuhon i kuentos O.O.G.

If you put a comment function on news articles about Guam, it is only a matter of time before you are flooded with people from all shapes and sizes, saying the most braindead things imaginable and punctuating their vapid conversation additions with the expression "Only on Guam" or O.O.G.

The phrase "Only on Guam" is generally attributed to the cruel genius of former editor of The Pacific Daily News Joe Murphy. Murphy has been a fixture on Guam since he arrived there in the late 1960's to work for the then Guam Daily News. His early columns are occasionally silly occasionally racist, bordering on insane.

Fo…