NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

Right now I'm writing up my final thoughts on my trip in August to the Democratic National Convention and will be posting them soon. While writing, I had a chance to go back through my photos and see all the pictures I took of famous people while I was there. For those who want to radically increase the amount of people that they can claim to have been in the same room or within five feet from them, I highly reccomend going to a a Democratic National Convention (or even a Republican one). My list of famous movie, media and political celebrities that I can claim to have bumped into or been pushed aside by their secret service entourage shot up to well over two dozen. Here are some pictures of the famous people I saw at the DNC (naturally if we were to change this to list of people that I actually had the chance to talk to at the DNC, it would be much much shorter): The formating for the blog makes it tough to write the names of each famous person underneath their pictures, so I...

Last month I had the honor of presenting twice at the Tetset Konfrensian Chamorro in Saipan. I wrote about my presentation on a panel on militarization and political status in the Marianas Islands in my post " Shiro, Sakman yan Fino' Chamoru: Pa'go Giya Guahan." My other presentation was a solo one, where I was put in charge of a session on "national identity" and Chamorros. The description (which I didn't write) was as follows: Identifikan Nasionat: Komu i tinituhon i ManChamorro sina ha' un rastreha mas ki kuatro mit anos tatte sigun i estoria i ManChamorro komu un grupu ha' manparehu na lenguahi, para na kustumbre yan parehu na rasa. Gi kinlamten-ta mo'na obligasion-ta para u ta susteni i hinengge-mu put Hagu mismo. There were a number of different directions that I could have taken this discussion. But given the importance of issues of preserving and sustaining Chamorro culture to the conference, I decided to intervene at that point. In m...

Un empe' finayi ginnen i kachido Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence : "Life and Death are both marrionettes wandering the same table. Cut their strings and they are easily ignored." Annai fine'nina humalom yu' gi iyo-ku Ph.D. program giya San Diego, hu kilili este guatu lokkue' gi i hinasso-ku. Sina na "estupido" este na sinangan, lao ti para Guahu. Este na sinangan yan otro na research na hu cho'gue, mana'dana' gi i hinasso-ku, ya chine'leghua iyo-ku idea siha put decolonization. Meggai giya Guahan, yan meggai na Chamoru gi lagu, ti ya-niha kumuentos pat humungok put decolonization, ya fihu ma na'chechetton gi iyo-niha resistance, chatguinife put mina'a'nao, minatai yan i madestrosa-na Guahan. Gi este na hinasso, achapiligro decolonization yan pinino' maisa ( suicide). I dipotsi na hiniyong este na kuentos, "mungga madecolonization, sa' siempre pon na'fattoigue hao ni' minatai yan dinestrosa para u tokto...

Ginnen i atungo'-hu Ahimsa: Dear friends, loved ones, and colleagues, I am writing this email to straight allied and queer people of color to economically and democratically stand in anti-racist solidarity with marriage equality and family equality movements in the U.S., as our rights as brown folk in this country are under attack. As many of you know, this November's election is very important. For the first time, I have donated massively to political campaigns. I earn less than $13,000 a year and this year, over a series of months, I have donated $500 to the Obama campaign. His presidency, to me and to many of us, represents hope for significant positive change in the economy, civil rights, the environment, and the ending of war. I hope we can continue to actively and economically support his candidacy and engage in an electoral turnaround on the Congressional and more local fronts. I am writing today because, as some of you know, there are amendments in three states -- Calif...

I was completely drenched, estaba sen sohgon yu' in American Presidential politics, for all summer and most of the spring. My blog was grateful for the attention, as plenty of times I was writing on it about Obama being smeared by Republicans or Race and Gender in the campaign , when I should have been working on my dissertation. I remember several times writing on my blog that I wouldn't be posting for a week or so, and then ending up posting about Palin or something else which had just pissed me off. This obsession reached its climax in August when I attended the Democratic National Convention in Denver and for almost two weeks, I thought of nothing else but Presidential politics, race, militarism, colonialism and US territorial - Federal relations. Now that I'm Guam, my intense link to the race is weakening, the need to constantly write about it, follow it and so on is dumidide dumidide muma'pos. Its slowly fading away. There are several reasons for this. 1. I...

I watched Shiro's Head: The Legend last week and one of the stupid jokes that I made with people, is that you can't really be sure it was filmed on Guam. As a film which is billed as the first Guam/local major motion picture this might seem stupid, but the joke is that for all the landscape they showed of Guam, there were no political signs! For those of you who don't know why this is an issue, every two or four years (for some races) the roadsides of Guam become crowded with signs for Guam's legislative, mayoral, congressional and gubernatorial races. For most people on Guam, unless they have had the opportunity to meet a candidate at a funeral, party or other public event, these signs are the main way of "getting to know" the candidates. For some the candidate's face is most prominent, making what they are wearing, how their hair looks, or what kind of facial expression they are making crucial in determining whether people feel that they can trust/like...

Plenty of things going on this coming weekend and so I thought I'd post info on all of them. Even if you're not on Guam its still important to keep up to date with what's happening on the island. Although when I was younger I would always hear that there's nothing happening or nothing to do on Guam , this is absolutely not the case anymore. Right now, there is, at some points, too much going on! ************************************************ OCT. 24 - "Puengen Spondylus" The Guam Gallery of Art and the Chamorro Artists Association present their fourth Orange Night, Spondylus Night, from 6 to 10 p.m. on Oct. 24 at The Guam Gallery of Art at the Chamorro Village in Hagåtña, during Arts and Humanities Month, in celebration of the Chamorro culture and in remembrance of their ancestors. There will be a special presentation by Christine Choe, an association member, who was selected to represent Guam at the recent ninth China Changchun International Sculpture Sympo...