NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

When relationships end, people may fight over pets, fight over furniture, collections, kids. One thing that has always struck me, for certain, but not all relationship apocalypses is songs. Music where affection and attachment were forged and welded together with tunes and lyrics from particular artists. It provides the rhythm to togetherness, to grooves of the “us.” When a relationship ends, the rhythm of togetherness sometimes sours, turns grimly bitter. What once caused joy, now feels like it creates bone cancer. Songs or artists that I shared with someone and used to make me smile, now make me retch, make the skies insidiously darken in the space between beats. The muscles remember, even what the mind or heart wishes it could forget. For one particularly tough relationship, the music of Tegan and Sara was part of the soundtrack of us. For years I enjoyed it alongside her. For my girlfriend at the time, she was a twin and adored the duo, and introduced me to their music

A special presentation by Chamorro Studies student at UOG as part of the 2019 MARC Seminar Series. Sen gefpågo este na dinanña'. Ya-hu taiguihi na fina'pos, sa' ta na'fåmta' i lengguahi ya ta na'gof oppan gui' lokkue'! It featured presentations by students at the CM102, 202 and 302 levels. It also featured some very special presentations by my CM340 of Chamoru Culture students. One of whom Joe "Dågu" Babauta is included below in a video with his original song that he shared.

Ti siguru yu' hafa maolek na pinila' gi Fino' Chamoru para i palabara "avalanche." Sina un deskribi gui' gi Fino' Chamoru komo un nåpu pat un pakyo'. Sina un usa palabra siha ni' para u ma deskribi i kinalamten-ña pat i fuetså-ña, pat i piligro kada mana'fanhuyong. Ti siguru yu' hafa i mas propiu na pinila'. Manhahasso yu' put este sa' unu na kanta ni' gof ya-hu (ya hu e'ekungok gui' pa'go ha' na momento) i na'an-ña "Avalancha" ginen un inetnon danderu ginen España "Heroes del Silencio." Anai i fine'nina hu hungok i palabra, ti hu komprende hafa ilelek-ña i taotao, lao gof ya-hu i bos-na yan i tunada. Ya kada mafåtto i koru ya ma essalao "Avalancha!" malago' yu' tumachu yan umessalao lokkue'. Kada hu hungok ya na påtte, hu imahihina na ma'u'u'dai yu' un kabayu gi hilo' un nåpu niebes ni' pumopoddong ginen un takhilo' na okso. M

I participated in a round table discussion earlier this week on education in Guam and its relationship to Chamorro language and culture. We were asked to share our viewpoints on different aspects of this issue, ranging from what we might feel public school education on Guam is doing right and what we feel it is doing poorly. The Chamorro language program in DOE is a very curious institutional animal in terms of analysis. Students are mandated to take Chamorro language in both elementary and middle school and can take it as an elective in high school. Compared to other indigenous groups that are trying to revive and institutionalize their languages this is very impressive and Chamorros can be considered to have a real advantage. But the Chamorro language program in Guam's public schools is impressive in the abstract but in practice it is incredibly ineffective. I polled my students this week about their experiences in Chamorro language classes in DOE. Most focused on the fun act

Today in class will be learning about the Wars Against Spain in the early 19th century. It is a period where Spain loses all of its colonies in Latin American (except for the Caribbean) in less than 30 years. In order to understand the roots of those anti-colonial wars we need to understand the indigenous forms of resistance that continued for centuries even after Spain had colonized, converted and enslaved most of Latin America. We'll be learning today about Tupac Amaru II who led an uprising against the Spanish in 1780. Below is a song written by Alejandro Romualdo that I sometimes share with my students. And hunggan, kumayu Si Tupac Amaru yan Si Tupac Shakur. Tupac Shakur was named after Tupac Amaru.  A CHORAL SONG FOR TUPAC AMARU By Alejandro Romualdo Valle Lo harán volar con dinamita. En masa, lo cargarán, lo arrastrarán. A golpes le llenarán de pólvora la boca. Lo volarán: ¡Y no podrán matarlo! They will blow him with dynamite. As on

I just finished watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I had worried that the film would drag on due to the fact that they were taking a relatively short book and transforming it into 3 films, totaling as much as 9 hours of screen time. The book Breaking Dawn was not worthy of two films, and this was blisteringly apparent when both Part 1 and Part 2 seemed to drag on forever during certain sections. I was worried about a similar fate for the first Hobbit film. While I did cringe during certain parts, I did have to admire the way they extended the film, but still kept it entertaining. I recently reread the Hobbit and found that so much of the richness of it was in my head. The writing is very sparse and not very detailed. Even fact it seems that Tolkien's true passion was writing songs, since the books are littered with ballads from every race in Middle Earth. But this is one of the hallmarks of fantasy writing. The writing itself may not be the most lyrical or

Translating songs from English to Chamorro has been a favorite hobby of mine for a while. When I was first learning to speak Chamorro this was a fun necessity. It helped me, albeit in small fragments, practice the structure of making short sentences in Chamorro. One of the first songs that I translated was a favorite of mine at the time, "Yellow" by the band Coldplay. The lyrics, like many of that sort of generic, but somehow epic pop songs are incomprehensible. They are meant to be so fehman, but don't really make sense. They feel as if they make some sort of higher sense, but when taking in a literal and direct way, you might wonder how bulachu or bileng the songwriter was when he was penning these lines. Needless to say, after so many years "Yellow" remains one of my favorite songs to sing in both English and in Chamorro. I often sing along in Chamorro as its droning tune and repetitive lyrics wind their way to their conclusion. Note that the translatio

My brother Kuri recently graduated from UOG and one of the last classes that he took was a philosophy of religion class. I’ve always enjoyed it when Kuri takes philosophy classes because he’ll talk to me about his readings and I’ll share my ideas with him. Although I would probably never be hired into a philosophy department, my social scientific training was primarily philosophical. Philosophers created the foundations of all social sciences. When I was in Ethnic Studies, it was frustrating having to read so many long dead white Europeans pontificate about the world, but later on I realized that such is the power of knowledge. Their ideas became part of the regimes of knowledge we know today. They moved from being the rantings of a particular person into the universal ways in which we are supposed to see the world. One discussion we had recently was over the issue of Pascal’s Wager. Here is the gist of what Blaise Pascal proposes: 1.      There either is a God, or t

As I already mentioned in an earlier post on the second to the last day of my trip to Okinawa our hosts held a small party in our honor. The meeting was held in a cafe which will soon be open owned by Midori Teruya. Midori was kind enough to escort Ed Alvarez and myself around Naha and Ginowan on our last day in Okinawa, and took us to several locations including a mall for some last minute shopping, an independent movie theater to watch the film Standing Army, and the Sakima Art Museum . Over our ten days in Okinawa we spent alot of time at Midori's Cafe and the Okinawan language school on the floor above. The school is free for the public and is just getting started. I took some pictures, video and notes while I sat through one of their sessions and will hopefully we writing about it later. As the Chamorro and Okinawan language are in similar not too healthy states, that was something that I had constantly discussed with people. While we were sitting at the cafe sampling

Este na videos siha ginnen i Dinana' Christmas para i sagan famagu'on para i dos famagu'on-hu. Todu i famagu'on dipotsi mangahulo' guatu gi me'nan todu i manaina, ya mambaila yan manganta. Egga' na'ya este na video siha. Annok na mungga siha i dos famagu'on-hu.

A reception was held on the first day of the conference to welcome the activists from Okinawa and Japan and also celebrate the presence of the overseas delegates from the Pacific. As part of this reception, there was food, music, and gifts were exchanged. During one particularly touching exchange, we all received beautiful Article 9 folders. The gift came from the daughter of a very famous communist community leader in Okinawa. He had been the Naha city mayor in the 1950's and later a member of the Diet. He was imprisoned for two years prior to becoming a politician for hiding two suspected communists who were supposed to leave Okinawa. He came to prominence at a time when the island was part of Japan, but governed by the US military after World War II. He had been instrumental in getting the island returned to Japanese control in 1972. I apologize for not posting an image of the folder now, I'll be sure to take one later. After receiving these gifts we all joined hands and

My summer ends tomorrow. It wasn't much of a summer because I had to teach the entire time and took on several other projects in order to get by, but it was nice not teaching 5 or 6 classes a week for two months. I want to celebrate the end of the summer by watching some senseless movie tonight. I was thinking of Final Destination 5 . I've always been a fan of horror and suspense movies. When I say fan I don't mean that I particularly enjoy watching them, since a lot of the time I'm watching with my glasses off or watching events out of the corner of my eye. But I am always a fan of the simple plots and narratives that horror movies employ. Like any genre there are conventions and there are attempts to break those conventions. There are ways of citing older films, attempting to break into new territories. Alot of times horror and suspense films are simply taking an experience everyone is already used to and moving it into a new location where you can do the same thing

Hu sen guaiya dandan Chamoru. Whenever I'm asked what kind of music I enjoy, I can't really name many artists or styles that I really actually like that much, with the exception of Chamorro music. It doesn't really matter what kind of Chamorro music, so long as it uses the Chamorro language I always give it a chance. For instance I tend not to like country music, but I really enjoy Chamorro country music. One of the saddest things about the direction of the Chamorro  language is that since it is declining in use and basically ceasing to be a living language, that means that its chances at adapting and taking of new life are limited. For example, there are Chamorro musicians out there making every type of possible music. But as they branch out and expand their interests and abilities, chances are very slim that they know the language and even slimmer that they have any interest in using the Chamorro language in the new styles that they are playing or composing in. Th

Esta mas ki un simana desde hu li'e' i lahi-hu. Sumasaga' ham yan i che'lu-na na'ya giya Kalifotna, ya gagaige ha' gui' giya Guahan. Antes di humanao yu', pine'lo-ku na ti para bai hu mahalangi gui'. Mas mafnot ham yan i che'lu-na, Si Sumahi. Ya achokka' hu guaiya i lahi-hu, kalang ti gos mafnot ham. Hunggan bunito na paton gui', sen kinute lokkue', lao put i mampos pumapatgon gui', tataya' ha' substansia. Kalang un mampos kinute na taya' gui'. Ti ya-hu umoppan este na hinasso, lao este i minagahet. Esta ki sina kumuentos gui', ti siguru yu' hayi gui'. Ti siguru na ha hulat kumomprende yu'. Annai hu atalaki i mata-na, kao ha tungo' hayi yu'? Siempre u matulaika este, lao para pa'go, i siente-ku na kalang hu nanangga i lahi-hu, ya ti apmam siempre u fatto. Lao mahalang yu' sinembatgo para i gof kinute yan gof "clueless" na mata-na. Nina'atdet este na siniente

I’m feeling depressed this month. Tinemba yu’ gi este na mes. I spent the last year trying to get a permanent job at UOG and got nothing despite applying for several positions. Right now I’m teaching part time at UOG this month to get by, but come August, I won’t have a full-time job but will still have two kids to support, credit card debt to appease and a mountain of student loan debt that is always mahalang for my salape’. I’m spending the month of July trying to line up some full-time work for decent pay, but haven’t found anything certain yet. This is especially so when I’m watching a movie and some fantastic, but old pop or rock song comes on, and I’m tempted to start singing along with the soundtrack of the movie. I used to do that, but movies have a way of chopping up or rearranging a song to make it fit and so its really really embarrassing when you are the only person in a theater yelling along to a song and it cuts out, but you keep belting it out for a few embarrassing se

The dreaded DEIS public comment period is finally over. I made the blog banner above (at the top of the page) to help highlight the importance of the past three months. For those of you who can't tell, the image is a drawing of Sumahi, while she is struggling to read through the many volumes of the DEIS, and sitting next to her is a timebomb, whose clock indicates that the amount of time left during which Sumahi has to defuse to bomb is simply "not enough." Annok na ti magof i mata-na, ya gi este na halacha na tiempo, dipotsi todu i manmata-ta (giya Guahan) taiguihi. The past few weeks and months have been crazy, literally too many things happening for me to keep up. As I've been writing about in my " Buildup/Breakdown " posts, the island has changed significantly since last November. The urgency of the deadlines for DEIS comments, generic fears over what sort of negative impacts the buildup would bring to Guam, and the everyday sentiments of colonial fr