NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Here is Sumahi performing "Dandan i Panderetas" at her Christmas concernt for her daycare. The lyrics are below if you would like to learn to sing this traditional Chamorro Christmas song too. Lyrics: Dandan i panderetas, na'fampalangpang Todu i profesia, esta munhayan Popble i patgon-ta, gi liyang Bilen Ngasan i asson-na, kulan ga'ga' gui' Dandan i panderetas, na'fampalangpang Todu i profesia, esta munhayan Popble i patgon-ta, nina'fotgon gui' Nu i lago' nana-na, sa' tinangse gui' Dandan i panderetas, na'fampalangpang Todu i profesia, esta munhayan

This month or next I'll be finishing off an art project I've been working on for more than a year with my brother Jack and  i nananfamagu'on-hu Jessica Chan. To be truthful, while I have been working on it for more than a year, the hardwork is actually being done by these artists, I'm doing more of the conceptualizing of it. The project is titled The Untold Story of the Chamurai: How Chamorro and Samurai Warriors Fought off the Spanish in Guam in 1616. I will provide the description below for you to read to get a better idea of what I'm intending, and you should be interested after reading such a weird title. I received a Guam CAHA grant for this project and so the excerpt below is from my grant proposal. The artwork will be displayed in an exhibit sometime this fall. I'm not sure where. I might have a small exhibit in a few months of the just the artwork, perhaps at I.P. Coffee or a similar place. Then later around December I might have a more serious show

This weekend I took twenty people on a Heritage Hike down to Haputo which is on a Navy base in the Northwestern part of Guam. The spot is a favorite of those with military base access and a spot which many who don't pine for the chance to visit. The hike down takes less than 10 minutes, and you are greeted with a secluded, shallow water beach, which is great for fishing, sunbathing and just relaxing. Haputo was once an ancient Chamorro village and the area above the beach to the base of the cliffs is full of artifacts. Some of the most beautiful latte that I've every seen on Guam we found there during our hike. For those who don't know, while the iconography of latte has them looming tall in the sky, most latte were small and stature, especially on Guam. That is why, when you find latte which are six feet tall, and still standing, haligi and tasa intact, it is truly a treat for the historical mind. The past few months of my life have been full of latte. I've written a

I have a feeling that when Calvo's Insurance on Guam named their health care program "Select Care" they were envisioning that it would convey images of this being a "choice" health care program, and something only a select few could have the privilege of having. But after some drastic changes were made to their health plan for GovGuam employees this year, I see the "Select" in "Select Care" more in the way it is sometimes used to name generic sodas or products. The way the name mocks you for not getting a "real" brand name soda, but instead trying to save a couple cents, and because we have all been so conditioned to see branded goods as value or trustworthy goods, you cannot help but wonder if this Select Doctor Rocket soda is actually soda. With the new changes to Calvo's made in response to the passage of Health Reform earlier this year, I regularly get that feeling of having health care but not really having health care.