NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Ti siguro yu' håyi tumuge' este, lao interesånte. Guaha meggai na hestoria put i Chamorro gi Islas Sangkattan gi este na ti gof anakko' na tinige'. Hu sodda' este na tinige' ginen i gasetan Saipan, annai manespipiha yu' infotmasion put Fino' Chamorro gi halom i kottre gi Islas Sangkattan. Ti meggai na infotmasion humuyong, lao hu fakcha'i este. Ti hu tungo' i kilisyanu na fulånu ni' tumuge', lao ya-hu i milalåk-ña i hinasso-ña siha. Frihon yan botlon. ************* The Death of Chamorro Language March 31, 1999 The Saipan Tribune For many years, we were active participants in the death of our local vernacular. It started with the golden days in grammar school when speaking your language lands you some corporal punishment, a fine of five cents, scribbling several pages of “I will not speak Chamorro”; picking up trash outside the classroom after school, among others. Well into high school, there’s the student monitors or J

Through my Facebook page and this blog,  I often share what I refer to as “Adventures in Chamorro.” Gof takhilo’ i lenguahi-ta gi lina’la’-hu . Much of my work is dedicated to the revitalization of the Chamorro language and for my two children, Sumåhi and Akli’e’, from the days they were born I have only spoken to them in Chamorro. As such, in both work and the home, my life is filed with lots of interesting and hysterical Chamorro language moments. These are what I refer to as our “Adventures in Chamorro,” named for the adventure we take every day trying to talk about the world around us in the Chamorro language. Every couple of months, I would also share some of them in my Guam Daily Post columns. Here are some that I shared in my column published on August 17, 2016. Adventures in Chamorro #266: The other day Isa (i nobia-hu), the kids and I were walking along the beach and looking up at the moon. It was a crescent moon, which many people translate to "sinahi&q;

"Donald Trump Has No Plan to Make America Great Again" by Derek Thompson The Atlantic June 7, 2017 It’s “Infrastructure Week” at the White House. Theoretically. On Monday, the administration announced a plan to spend $200 billion on infrastructure and overhaul U.S. air traffic control. There was a high-profile signing in the East Wing before dozens of cheering lawmakers and industry titans. It was supposed to be the beginning of a weeklong push to fix America’s roads, bridges, and airports. But in the next two days, Trump spent more energy burning metaphorical bridges than trying to build literal ones. He could have stayed on message for several hours, gathered Democrats and Republicans to discuss a bipartisan agreement, and announced a timeframe. Instead he quickly turned his attention to Twitter to accuse media companies of “Fake News” while undermining an alliance with Qatar based on what may be, fittingly, a fake news story . It’s a microco

This year's regional seminar for the UN Committee of 24 was different than the three previous ones that I attended in a handful of ways. There was always some debate and some rhetorical conflict at previous seminars, but this one extended to a level I had never seen before. Other participants who have been involved far longer than I have, also acknowledged the conflict and tension reached new heights in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I’ll be writing about this later, but the conflict created a lot of wasted time and also of waiting around for events to unfold or drama to be sorted out. This led to a lot of conversations that you wouldn’t normally take place, as people anxiously waited for the work of the seminar to move ahead. A lot of these conversations ended up being humorous as people sought ways to ease the tension and also pass the time. I heard a lot of funny stories from across Latin America, to the Caribbean, the Pacific. In this mix there were stories of parliamentary

Ti hu tungo' sa' håfa, lao gi halacha na tiempo, sigi ha' hu egga' este na video/ya hu ekungok este na kånta. Gof na'chalek i kanta, lao guaha tinahdong na hinasso lokkue', achokka' parody ha' na kånta. Buente, gof malago' yu' na bei egga' i "prequel" na mubi siha ta'lo ginen Geran Estreyas. Hekkua'. ************** "The Saga Begins" by Weird Al Yankovic A long, long time ago In a galaxy far away Naboo was under an attack And I thought me and Qui-Gon Jinn Could talk the federation into Maybe cutting them a little slack But their response, it didn't thrill us They locked the doors and tried to kill us We escaped from that gas Then met Jar Jar and Boss Nass We took a bongo from the scene And we went to Theed to see the Queen We all wound up on Tatooine That's where we found this boy... Oh my my this here Anakin guy May be Vader someday later - now he's just a small fry And he

Comedian Samantha Bee bid a fond "adios" to the campaign of Ted Cruz on her show Full Frontal last week. I said "fond" not because of her affecting for Cruz as a politician or what he stood for, but rather because Cruz had been such an incredible mine for political humor. As evidence of this, even in his departure, she was able to tweet at him and mock him in one of the most incisive ways I've ever seen in less than 144 characters. See the tweet below. Ai gof tahdong na tinekcha' enao. Ha botleleha i baba na hinengge-ña yan i gef annok na ti maguaiya gui' gi patidå-ña achagigu. As she said adios on her show, she rattled off a list of the gof na'chalek nicknames that she had given Cruz, which still make me laugh even after hearing them several times. Here is the list, with the video below: "Born Again Tyler Durden" "Princeton's Unwanted Fetus" "Fist-Faced Horse-Shit Salesman" "The World's On

Last month I spent an afternoon working with Sinot Louie Wabol, un ma'estron Chamoru giya Guahan and a major in the Chamorro Studies program at UOG. Over the Christmas break we worked on a project together titled "Ossitan Chamorro Marianas" and with the help of my TA Nathan Topasna, we recorded two hours of Chamorro jokes and humorous stories. ( I nobia-hu Isa provided hanom yan fina'mames na sinapotte). At first I tried my best to keep myself from cracking up after each joke, but eventually gave up as his performance d eserved a laugh track. In all he shared more than 50 jokes, some of which I'll be using in future research. For now, though I'm glad one joke that he included is the Juan Malimanga standard about public urination. (Juan Malimanga is peeing against the wall in an alley) Polisia: Hoi! Para! Kao un tungo' na kontra i lai enao i bidada-mu? Juan: Ahe', ti kontra i lai Sinot! Kontra i liga! *************** Esta mas ki 40 n

  Democracy for America, who was disseminating it on behalf of the Bernice Sanders campaign. I'm posting it here because I feel like I've been neglecting the Presidential campaign in the US lately because of research commitments, writing commitments, activist commitments and then my loves and my family. To be very honest, I've only been following the campaign(s) to the extent to which Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah or Seth Meyers are covering it. This makes it easier not to be horrified at the deadly organism that is the Republican campaign and Republican candidates, as it is presented to me as ridiculous, as just the fluff perfect for jokes, even if they are tragic ones. As a result, even if they are foretelling doom and destruction for America if someone like Donald Trump or Ben Carson is elected President, the humor is a cushion, making it easier to deal with, since while it may not provide much pleasure for the intellectual portions of my mind, it sure as hell feeds the p

I'm currently reading Harper Lee's new novel "Go Set a Watchman." I am reading it after reading several dozen articles about how much people are detesting the book, because of the way it doesn't stand up to the "timelessness" and "beauty" of Harper Lee's first book, the widely read and praised "To Kill A Mockingbird." Gi minagahet, all the hate towards the book just made me want to read it more. I didn't enjoy "To Kill A Mockingbird" when I read it in school. I didn't enjoy watching the movie either. This new book is supposed to delve more deeply into many of the issues of race and class that the first book barely rubbed up against. I am excited to see where Lee takes this, or rather where she initially took it in her writing, because this book was actually written before Mockingbird. I found myself not really identifying with the Finch family in the first book and found myself more interested in the supporting

30 Things We Learned from the ‘Fight Club’ Commentary Commentary Commentary By Rob Hunter on July 10, 2014  http://filmschoolrejects.com/features/things-learned-fight-club-commentary.php#6MhJMlVVAQOTblUy.99 David Fincher ‘s Fight Club  wowed audiences with his typical technical brilliance and sharp use of CGI, but it remains an amazing piece of work fifteen years later for its narrative, social commentary and fantastic black humor. Misunderstood and under-appreciated by many upon its release, the film has gone on to earn legions of fans over the years, and listening to the commentary track featuring Fincher, Edward Norton , Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter (one of four commentaries on the disc) opens up an even more detailed appreciation of the film. It’s actually one of the very first commentary tracks (or “auxiliary tracks” as Fincher calls them) I ever listened to many years ago, and the discovery that we had yet to cover it here made it well

Guam Mentions are always interesting. The random places that Guam will appear in the speech of military planners, world leaders, comedians and filmmakers is always so intriguing to me. Taking serious these mentions are sort of traces of the structure of American imperialism and colonialism was the main theoretical intervention of my dissertation. Moving away from seeing the random way that Guam gets mentioned sometimes whether it be by Bob Hope or David Letterman as actually possessing serious meaning and truth and not just being an accidental or random mention. For most the flexibility and labiality of meaning attached to Guam, the occasional invisibility that it is shouldered with or assumed is just a misrecognition, is something people say just because they don't know better or something you can just attribute to ignorance. But for me there is far more that just that. The colonial status of Guam and the ability to shift and produce meaning for it, the ability to

Gof na'chalek este. Ti hu tungo' hafa bei sangan, esta sen na'chalek sin commentary.    Hu na'chechetton magi un editorial put Si Kirby Delauter. Este muna'chalek yu' mas kinu todu i otro na editorials siha ni hu taitai gi lina'la'-hu.    Taitai mas, ya siempre para un komprende.    ***************  "Kirby Delauter, who didn't want his name in a news story, is now a story" Krishnadev Calamur  NPR.org 1/6/15 Update at 9:21 a.m. ET, Jan. 8 We reported Wednesday evening that Frederick County, Md., Council Member Kirby Delauter has apologized. You can find that story here . Our original post: Frederick County, Md., Council Member Kirby Delauter threatened a local reporter with a lawsuit for using his name in a story without permission. Delauter was mentioned exactly once in that article about parking issues. We could explain what he said in his Facebook post on Monday; instead we'll just point y

In July of this year, the Marianas said goodbye to Senådot Ben Pangelinan, a longtime champion of the Chamorro people, their language and their rights. In the context of Chamorro struggles today, Senådot Ben was taiachaigua especially in terms of our elected leaders. Senådot Ben was known for being an outspoken and highly principled person. One of the ways in which this manifested was through his and his office’s support for the decolonization of Guam and his work to help make possible a political status plebiscite. Senådot Ben was born in Saipan and traced his Chamorro lineage to Saipan. This made him ineligible to vote in a political status for Guam. This did not deter him from seeing decolonization as a critical issue and one he should take seriously in his life, as a matter of justice worth supporting and fighting for. Because of the efforts of his office, thousands of people were added to the decolonization registry, pushing it closer than it ever had been before to meetin