NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

 I have been spending quite a bit of 2020 reflecting back on past relationships, especially ones where I was in situations with people who up until today still perplex me, still confuse me, still frustrate me, when thinking about to the time I spent with them. Sometimes there is anger in these reflections, especially when I recall some who entered into a relationship with me, not being honest about what they wanted or who they were, even if I had tried my best to be honest with them.  Someday I might want to write a book or something, since so many of them were interesting in their own, ridiculous ways.  I was recalling today one past relationship, that sometimes I smirkingly refer to as "the chosen one." She strongly felt that she had a great destiny. That she was smart and strong and that she was gonna change this island. She was gonna save the Chamoru people. She was drawn to me because of my activism and wanting to talk about revolutionary change, about what the Chamoru p

Despite the social distancing lockdown and remote work for my office over the past month, it has been difficult to find the mental brain space needed to write regularly. I mean this in terms of creative writing, but also political writing. So much of my brain space has been taken up by worrying about so many different things, I've found it hard at times to focus or give myself the space to take on the many other writing projects I have waiting for me. Thankfully I have been able to work through some of the thoughts I have on the COVID-19 pandemic and Guam's political status in my weekly column for the  Pacific Daily News. This hasn't gotten me many new fans, in fact the columns that I published for three weeks at the start of the lockdown phase have been some of my most hated since I started writing for the newspaper a few years ago. I won't get into way people seem to take particularly gleeful hate in my columns lately, but I felt compelled to share them here. Afte

Below is an account of the death of Ferdinand Magellan, on the island of Mactan in 1521. I've been reading different historians and their interpretation of the events and where they situate his death in the context of his personality and his behavior. At the conference that I was at in Madrid last month, there was quite a bit of myth-making around Magellan. Some of it is deserved, as he did guide a voyage that was into water unknown to Europeans. But the success of his mission has a tendency to lead historians to make generalizations of greatness. Many historians take the flaws in Magellan's character and then argue that they were actually strengths because of the time that he lived in and because of the obstacles, both geographic and human that he faced. For example, Magellan's tactics in dealing with the concerns or the fears of his men, is argued to be a strength since he was dealing with medieval and pre-modern superstitions about the world that he refused to let ru