NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I've been lost in Power Point presentations for the past few days. I'll be teaching for the next month at Kobe University in Japan. My course is an accelerated one and so I'm teaching a month-long course in just a week. I don't normally prepare Power Points for any of my lectures in Guam, but since my students here in Japan will be primarily those who did not learn English as a first language, the visuals and potential outline skeleton it provides will help keep them engaged. My course focuses on US militarization in the Asia-Pacific Region, and it will link together US strategic interests from Okinawa, to the Philippines, to Guam, to the Marshall Islands and Hawai'i, while also linking together the popular movements for demilitarization or decolonization against those bases. For me, este kalang un guinife-hu mumagahet. I am been working on this issue as an activist and an academic for many years. In 2011 I published my article "The Gift of Imagination: Sol

Gefpago i tano'-ta yan i tasi-ta giya Guahan. Mansuette hit ni' manasaga' guini. I taotao sanhiyong sina mangguife put este na klasin langhet. Lao i taotao guini, sina ma li'e' este na langhet kada diha. Taiprisu este.

When I read the short story, "The Sun, The Moon, the Stars" by Junot Diaz, he had several lovely passages, and on the advice of my male' Victoria Leon Guerrero I used to use it when I would teach composition at the University of Guam. There is one moment towards the end where the narrator talks about when one reaches the end of one relationship it brings you back to the beginning. You see the first moments in a color that was more vivid than when you actually experienced them. That is the sign that a relationship is coming to an end, like when the brain starts to shut down and it is gasping for life, the another moment after the next and it fills the abyss of your mind with a maelstrom of desperate exploding stars. There is an obvious poetry and symmetry to this, but I haven't really felt it to be true. Each time I have come to the end of a relationship, or even like I do now, where I can see the end ahead like a depressing oasis impervious to this r

Sesso mangguife yu' put North Korea. Ti parehu este na klasin guinife yan i guinife-hu siha put i otro tano' taiguhi iya Okinawa yan iya Pagan. Para ayu na tano' siha yan ayu na guinife siha, hu guiguife siha put i ginefpago yan taimanu na debi di ta prutehi ayu na lugat kontra fina'militat. Gi i guinife-hu siha hu keketachuyi pat ayuda i taotao guihi gi un mimo ni chumilong yan iyo-ku pat iyo-ta guini giya Guahan. Lao sahnge i guinife-hu put North Korea. Gi i guinife-hu siha kalang puma'ya'ya gi hilo' i tano'. Hu ripapara todu gi oriya-hu, lao ti hu gogof komprende hafa hu li'e'e'. Tano' estrana este. Na'aburidu este na tano', ya gi guinife-hu siha ti hu hulat muna'klaru hafa este na lugat. Sumasaga' yu' giya Guahan. Fihu hiningok-hu put North Korea, lao sesso nina'manman yu' ni taimanu to gof chumilong i tiningo'-hu put Guiya yan i hiningok-hu put Guiya. Kada simana, kalang kada diha hu hungok

More on Pagan. Hopefully one of these days I'll be writing on this blog about how I am gonna make a trip up there.  **************************** Beautiful Pagan paradise PUBLISHED ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 02, 2013 00:00 BY JENNY SANTOS - FOR VARIETY WHEN I was growing up I always wondered what it was like 5,000 years before I was born. My parents were raised on an island with vegetables, fruits of different sorts, local produce and wild animals. There were few worries and they had everything including food from the sea and birds, fruit bats not to mention giant coconut crabs. I was 16 when I first went to Alamagan and it was an experience that I never could have imagined. A long and breath-taking boat trip from Saipan, passing three other islands before reaching, the island of Alamagan was worth every hour it took. Along the way I saw dolphins riding the blue waves and surfacing alongside the boat as we sailed up to the Northern Islands

Mangguaiya yu' ta'lo. Gof kinenne' yu' as Guiya. Ti apmam para bei in ali'e' gi guinife-hu. Este un betsu para Guiya. ********************* Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.) God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan's men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.) I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my

Barack Obama's re-election campaign has officially begun, with the release of a video through his website . Here is the video below, which features people from around the United States getting geared up to help re-elect the President. Ti siguru yu' hafa siniente-ku put este. Ya-hu Si Barack Obama. Ya-hu gui' desde i fine'nina na humuyong gui' gi i 2004 na DNC giya Boston. Ga'o-ku gui' kinu Si Bush yan kinu todu i otro ni' sina manmalalagu para i ofisina gi 2012. Hunggan desganao yu' na ti gof "liberal" gui'. Ya ha na'desganao yu' meggai gi i ma'pos na dos na sakkan annai ti ha tachuyi hit kontra i manriku yan i Manrepublicans. Gof lalalu yu' na ti ha huchom GTMO. Ayu i mas fa'set na prublema. Huchom ha'. Sotta todu i mampinengle guihi. Manmapopongle todu kontra i lai internationale. Pues sotta ha' todu. Hunggan, sina na gigon manmasotta siha, ma hatme i US, lao maolekna ennao kinu i gagaige ha' i &quo;

I need to get used to the fact that I am both unemployed and underemployed now. I don't have a full time job right now, and the job I do have is just as an adjunct professor at UOG with no benefits and very little money. For most people who know me, but don't really know me, they assumed that the moment I returned to Guam I immediately got a job at UOG being a professor. It always comes to a shock when they hear that I might have any trouble finding a job there. Its not a matter that I hate these sorts of assumptions, gi minagahet, I wish they were true and I wish that universities did work like that, especially the university here. But even though I know these assumptions to be false, sometimes they help sustain my own fantasy of myself. For instance, this past year has basically made clear to me that if my wish is to stay on Guam, then I might not be able to support myself here by being an academic, at least not as my job. The climate at the University of Guam is such that I

"One" ginnen U2 Is it getting better Or do you feel the same Will it make it easier on you now You got someone to blame You say... One love One life When it's one need In the night One love We get to share it Leaves you baby if you Don't care for it Did I disappoint you Or leave a bad taste in your mouth You act like you never had love And you want me to go without Well it's... Too late Tonight To drag the past out into the light We're one, but we're not the same We get to Carry each other Carry each other One... Have you come here for forgiveness Have you come to raise the dead Have you come here to play Jesus To the lepers in your head Did I ask too much More than a lot You gave me nothing Now it's all I got We're one But we're not the same Well we Hurt each other Then we do it again You say Love is a temple Love a higher law Love is a temple Love the higher law You ask me to enter But then you make me crawl And I can't be holding

If you asked me right now who my favorite fictional character is, I wouldn't say Kakashi from Naruto, Spock from Star Trek, or even Jacob Black from Twilight. If you asked me right now I would have to answer the antiwar Barack Obama. He is the coolest. He's interested in shrinking the military budget, he's for peace and not war, is not interested in establishing more permanent US bases around the world, and is willing to admit that America is sometimes wrong and is not perfect. He's like the president from a great movie or tv show, one who completely changes the country, who takes a massive risk and decides to turn the most powerful country in the world into a radical new direction. In my favorite episode of the Antiwar Obama show, he tracks Dick Cheney to his secret underground lair, where he hordes away all the billions of dollars lost by war profiteering in Iraq and Afghanistan. There, Antiwar Obama fights off hundreds of Halliburton and Blackwater employees who ar

A series of storms are currently surrounding Guam. When I was younger, I would pray for typhoons, since it would mean no school (although no power and cable too). As a professor at the University of Guam, I pray for typhoons since, there would be no classes to teach, no power (internet, video games) to distract me and then I can finally catch up on my grading. I dreamed all day of coming home and finding that classes at UOG were cancelled tomorrow, but after logging on to the UOG website this evening, I found that there were indeed classes tomorrow. Lana, I just went back to the website to see if anything had changed in the past hour, but it hadn't. I guess that means I'll need to stay up a few more hours finishing my prep for my four classes tomorrow. Nina'hasso yu' ni' i mubin Equilibrium. Gi ayu na mubi, un petsona ilek-ña este: Manmahafye i guinife-hu gi sanpappa’ i patås-mu. Adahi månu un pokkat, sa’ hu gagacha i guinife-hu siha. Dalai UOG. Sa' hafa t

Fihu gof hosguan yu’ nu Si Stephen Colbert. Guahan iyo-ña programman telebishon, ya kontat ki na’chalek i fina’tinas-ña, Guiya la’mon hafa pau na’fanhuyong. Maseha hafa na gof "silly" na hinasso, siña ma na'magåhet gi i show. Gof suette este na klasin taotao, sa' este na inebra i guinife todu. Desde ha tutuhun i show-ña, meggai na’chalek na bidå-ña. Gi i ma’pos na sakkan, ha kesaonao i botashon Amerikånu pare Presidente. Matakpånge un patten i Space Station para Guiya. Ya gaige un to’lai giya Hungary, ya dipotsi matakpange para Guiya lokkue’. I mas na’chalek na patten i show-ña, annai mama’mumumu Si Colbert yan un otro sesso “random” na taotao. Mama’mumu Si Colbert yan Si Sean Penn, Si Barry Manilow, Si Kongresa Eleanor Holmes-Norton (ginnen Washington D.C.) yan Si Willy Nelson. Gi este na ti mismo na yinaoyao, Si Colbert ha chanda i otro taotao, ha fa’enimigu gui’, ya sångan meggai båba put Guiya gi i show-ña. Ya pues ma kombida ayu na ti magåhet na kontrariu halo