NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The issue of lockdowns, checkpoints, roadblocks, civil liberties and rights has been prominent lately in Guam (and in other places as well). I was looking at my bookshelf for different books and discussions on this sort of issue, wanting to just put some structure to the ways that people were talking about stricter measures to save lives, but others trying forcefully to argue that their rights wer e more important than the public health concerns. There were alot of ways to approach something like this, since it brings in philosophy, political science/theory, sociology, legal theory, etc. As I was scanning my bookshelf though, I saw a book I hadn't read in a while, but has one passage which I thought of as being relevant in the sort of "looking awry" way I like my critical analysis, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" by Mark Twain. In it, there is the passage on the two "Reigns of Terror."  "There were two "Reigns of Terror"

For my CM 102 class or Beginners Chamorro Language 2, I've been experimenting with different assignments. I heard last year about a Navajo Star Wars, or the project to translate Star Wars into the Navajo language. For me, somehow who thinks that everything should be translated into Chamorro and is hoping to create a lexicon for playing 'Magic: The Gathering" in Chamorro, taking such an iconic nerdy movie and translating it into a native language is the height of awesome. I decided to incorporate something on a much smaller scale into my class.    Each student had to pick five minutes from a different movie and translate that portion into Chamorro. I told them to make sure that the segment wouldn't be too difficult for them to translate, because certain genres like sci-fi for example, might be a bit difficult for a lowly 102 student to translate effectively. They had to then record themselves or others reading the scene in Chamorro and then dub it into the film i

In the film The Matrix, the Agent Smith played by Hugo Weaving holds a short, but memorable philosophical session with his captive, resistance fighter Morpheus. He tells him about the first versions of the Matrix that were created in order to keep the imprisoned human population occupied while their energies were siphoned from them like batteries. In the early versions of the Matrix everything was perfect. It was like paradise, free of conflict and problems. It was a perfect world. That perfection is what made it impossible for humans to accept, and so when confronted with this perfect world humans rejected it wholesale and so those early versions of the Matrix were total failures. So instead of having the Matrix make people happy and give them a perfect world, the machines decided to give them a world similar to what they already knew. Imperfect, full of struggle, pain, loneliness, doubt and rejection. People accepted this and the Matrix continued to functi

“Tåya’ Båtson San Jose” Michael Lujan Bevacqua The Marianas Variety 3/7/12 In the writing of my Masters Thesis in Micronesian Studies I conducted over a hundred interviews with Chamorros who were born in the prewar Naval colonial era of Guam history and also endured the trauma of I Tiempon Chapones, the period of Japanese colonialism in World War II. These interviews were conducted more than a decade ago, over the course of several years. Since then, so many of those I spent an afternoon with in their outside kitchen or a morning sipping coffee at Hagatña McDonald’s have passed away. One of the most interesting memories I have from that period is my attempt to figure out the meaning of an old Chamorro fina’kuentos, empe’ finayi, or in English “saying” that one of my interview subjects had used. While speaking to an elderly man in Inarajan about the work of Father Jesus Baza Duenas in World War II and the changes of life in his village, he invoked the saying “tåya’ Båston San Jo

I've been meaning for sometime to write some of my thoughts on the resistance to militarization taking place in the small village of Gangjeong on the island of Jeju in South Korea. I put up a couple of posts llast week about the most recent round of protests. I traveled there for two days last summer in order to learn about the struggle going on there against plans to build a joint Naval facility for US and South Korean forces. The facility would be used for Aegis Destroyers and would displace many farmers an end up destroying some very beautiful and unique coral off the coast. I was struck by the tenacity of the villagers when I was there. They knew that things were against them, that much of the rest of the island and the rest of South Korea didn't care what happened in their quaint village, and that better something like this be put in a tiny village then in the backyards of some larger community. Such is the logic that has meant that Okinawa which is 0.6% of the total la

Nigapna, umakuentusi ham yan i ga'chong-hu put i sinienten-mami put i activism-mami, ya lana taimanu sesso duru yan fihu kalang machaleghua ham, put i minakkat-na hafa in tingo', yan hafa in tingo' na debi di u macho'gue. Mana'hasso gui' i ga'chong-hu put i kachido (mubi) Matrix , yan i dos na pitduras (pills) ni' Si Morpheous umofresi Si Neo. Unu na pill pau fina'nu'i hao i minagahet put i eriya-mu, i otro pau nina'bense hao ta'lo na todu maolek, ya pua laknos i chinatsaga-mu (yan i inebra-mu lokkue). Gi i che'chon-mami, fihu in siente na debi di mampos annok manu debi di un ayek. Unu para u binabayi hao ni' atadok-mu, i otro para u nina'maya' ha' ta'lo i inatan-mu. Lao sa' hafa i meggaina na taotao Guahan, manma'a'nao nu i pitduras minagahet, ya ga'o'-niha i pitduras binachet? Yanggen un atan i isla-ta pa'go, ti mappot para un sodda' un repuestas para este finaisen-ku. Para i pitdura

Sigh, there is so much going on right now, that could possibly dictate the future of Guam in terms of the military buildup. I should be out organizing right now, or working with other like minded people who are either trying to halt, stall or re-negotiate this buildup. I should at least be paying very close attention to what's going on so I can help disseminate the information which the media on Guam is ignoring or which the military doesn't want people to know or think very much about. Sadly, I am not doing much of that right now, since I have a stack of papers to grade. Puede ha' ti taiguihi para todu i lina'la'-hu gi kolehu. Puede ha', para bai hu espiha empenu put taimanu sina hu na'dana' maolek i lina'la' i fafana'gue yan i lina'la' activist. Debi di bei hasso na este i fine'nina na semester giya UOG, yan siempre lumafa'set este gi tiempo. But regardless, here are some current events in Guam that both myself and all

After watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last week, and just a little over a year until my 30th birthday, I eventually ended up finding a creative way of taking stock of the long road that I've traveled to this point, and how the mythology of Transformers has followed me there. As I walked out of the film I said to my sleeping daughter Sumåhi, "Gof suette yu', kao un tungo' sa' hafa? Sa' gi este lina'la'-hu, "privileged" yu' na hu egga' na mapuno' Si Optimus Prime dos biahi, ya hu egga' na mana'la'la' ta'lo dos biahi." For those who don't speak Chamorro my message was "I'm so lucky and do you know why? Because in my life, I've been privileged enough to watch Optimus Prime die twice and come back to life twice." And for those of you who don't speak the language of Transformers, Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots, the good half of the Transformers world, with the