NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I completely neglected this during the past year, even though I would remember it every once in a while. 2014 was the ten-year anniversary of the starting of this blog, "No Rest for the Awake - Minagahet Chamorro." I first began it in 2004, while I was preparing for graduate school in San Diego, California. At that time I was running several websites with the help of a few other people, some of whom I haven't been in contact with for close to ten years. It was a place for me to vent thoughts, share ideas, get the word out about things. It has been by now something that countless high school, middle school and college students use for their research papers. It is something that even other scholars have used on occasion for theoretical points. I have posted on this blog 2121 times and it has been visited over 900,000 times. Over the course of this blog's life I have had two children, finished a Ph.D., lost both my grandmothers, testified at the United Nation

In 2008 I was able to attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver because of something called "The State Blogger Corps." This was a grassroots effort by the party to bring to the convention local blogs and progressive groups from all 50 states and even the territories to join the conversation and get access that they would surely not be able to get otherwise. With my press credentials from the State Blogger Corps, I was basically a member of Guam's delegation and also a member of the press. I got to go almost anywhere, even in places that normal member of the press weren't allowed to. I want to attend the 2012 convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. I don't see any mention of the State Blogger Corps this time around on the Democratic Convention website. I don't know if I just can't find it, or if they aren't offering it this time around. The 2008 campaign appropriated alot of grassroots elements in order to symbolize that Obama was riding a

I just noticed that I passed a pretty big milestone yesterday. As you can see from the image to the left, I recently passed 300,000 hits on this blog. This means that according to Statcounter, pages on this blog have been loaded 300,000 times, and it does not necessarily mean that 300,000 people have read my blog ( olaha mohon na taiguihi). What's weird is that if I follow the internal counter that Blogger uses, then I've had 300,000 hits for quite a while, since Blogger's counter always counts twice as much as Statcounter. Needless to say, this is an exciting day for me and my blog. I started this blog in August 2004, and this post is my 1,431th. I meant to commemorate the 7th year of this blog last month, lao maleffa yu'. In 2004, my blog posts were brutally short. Sometimes one or two sentences, sometimes a paragraph. Sometimes I would post several tiny posts in a day. Although I only had this blog for 4 months in 2004, I still posted 120 times, meaning at least

I've been reading a lot of 9/11 retrospectives lately, primarily because of the fact that for a week it seemed like that was all anyone could write or talk about. I even ended up writing one of my own for my Marianas Variety column this week, which I will post later about Guam's own 9/11, which is not 9.11.2001, and not even 12.8.1941, but rather 9.11.1671, the day of the first large scale open battle between Chamorros and recently arrived Spanish missionaries. It was a profoundly important day in Chamorro history, and the key moment in the story of Guam's third most famous Maga'lahi, Maga'lahi Hurao. In case you're wondering the two most famous are Kepuha and Mata'pang. By far though  my favorite restrospective had to be from The Command Post . This blog disappeared for a while, but several years back it had some very insightful commentary on militarism, imperialism, and even made some very interesting connections between Guam and Iraq . I was happy to

I've been wanting for several years to create a blog for my artwork. I've produced hundreds of pieces over the years the majority of which I don't have any photographic record of, but were sold off at fairs, exhibits or just to people interested in my artwork. Although my work is pretty worthless and will most likely remain worthless even if were to die young from some stereotypical drug overdose or suicide, I still feel proud that my pieces are traveled over the world. People from places such as The Virgin Islands, Hong Kong, Japan, the US, France, Russia, Australia, Mexico, Canada, Germany and India have bought my work over the years. For the first year I was an artist I attempted to keep the contact information of people who had purchased my paintings so I could notify them about shows and other events in my "rise" as an artist, but the rise never really happened. It's hard to make money on Guam as an artist, and as I got more involved in academics and acti

Do you know how ridiculous the United States is when one of its most dominant voices in political discourse today is someone who is too scared to do interviews with human beings who might not worship her, who embodies almost perfectly the Stephen Colbert truthism that truth comes from the gut and the hip and not the mind, and whose interventions boil down to mindless little posts on Facebook and Twitter, but are reported as something far more meaningful and powerful? Gof o'sun yu' nu Si Sarah Palin yan i bida-na. Taihinasso gui', lao sa' hafa meggai na taotao guihi gi lagu muna'fofotte i fino'-na? ********************************* Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury Michael Joseph Gross Vanity Fair October 10, 2010 Backstage in the arena, a little girl in Mary Janes pushes her brother in a baby carriage, stopping a few yards shy of a heavy, 100-foot-long black curtain. The curtain splits the arena in two, shielding the children from an audience of 4,000 p

Gof ya-hu i website Crooks and Liars . Ayu nai sina hu sakke' i kachidon i Daily Show siha dibatde. Manmanggaogaogao salape pa'go para i mamaila na sakkan. Yanggen sina hao, lismona ha' didide', pi'ot anggen liberal hao. Olaha mohon na un diha sina manhatsa yu' website taiguini. ******************* C&L's Donation Drive '09: Please help save blogs before we're overrun by the corporate media DAY 1: We're reaching out to our readers and asking for your help so that the MSM and Corporate media do not overrun the blogosphere with Villagers. They are funneling in millions of dollars to compete with and ultimately drive away independent bloggers so that they can rule the Internet. And the kind of cash they are pouring in is staggering. It's hard to compete with that since the economy is way down, and I think what we've accomplished is in jeopardy if the Internet doesn't step up to help us all, including other blogs that you like.

Leo Babauta and his blog Zen Habits have made a big splash this year. Babauta published his first book this year The Power of Less , and it is already a best seller. His blog is a huge success, and he is actually living a blogger's dream by being able to live off the revenue that Zen Habits makes. It was even named last year as one of Time Magazine's 25 best blogs of the year. Bai hu admite yan kalang hosguan yu' nu i gof matungo'-na! Zen Habits is a nice website, with alot of harmless, self-helpful, inspirational/motivational life reorganizing content. Reading through some of Babauta's posts on that site however creates a strange contrast for me. I know that Babauta's been a writer for many years, and it was actually through some of his writing from almost a decade ago that I know him best. But compared to the Babauta of today, these pieces seem as if they are from another universe. The show/group Malafunkshun had a website made in 2000, and at that time