Christmas 2017
If only I could wish you a merry Christmas in person! But this letter, in which I try to capture some of what has happened over the past year, will have to do for now.
Peace on Earth? Not the Other Night at Hemlani
A couple of nights ago I attended a wake for a Pohnpeian youth who had been stabbed to death two days earlier. It happened in a drunken fight here on Guam outside the Hemlani Apartments?a low-end unit situated right next to what looks like might be the island dump. The Hemlani Apartments have made the front page of the local newspaper quite a few times over the past year, usually because of some minor crime or drunken brawl.
Christmas 2016
Old age and Christmas season are a tough combination. The old Yuletide favorites?with their ?silver bells? and ?sleigh bells? and ?jingle bells,? their wistful ?I?ll be home for Christmas,? not to mention the familiar melodies themselves?are dripping with nostalgia. As if an old-timer like me, head packed with fond memories, needed any more reminders of happy days past and marvelous holiday seasons!
Christmas 2015
?Peace on earth, good will to men? are the words of the old Christmas song echoing the hymn of the angels. Isn?t this everyone?s wish as we again celebrate the event that was said to have ushered in?the New Age?
Christmas, 2014
Christmas greetings from the Bronx campus of Fordham University, where I have made my home for the past year. But my time here has always been with computer on and bags packed for forays to other places. Most of the trips have been to where the coconut tree grows and waves lap on warm shores. With five trips to Hawaii and beyond, as well as a recent spurt of trips to the islands for a total of ten weeks since September, my air travel was enough to win me platinum on United Airlines? mileage program?a status I never achieved in all my years living in Micronesia! Read More
Catching Up with the Veterans
Dr. Joe Flear?s visit to New York for a couple of days seemed to trigger a series of reunions. Joe (standing second from the left in the photo) worked in Yap for several years during the 1980s before he moved to Pohnpei to teach at the medical school there. Since 2000 he has been teaching and doing clinical instruction at the Fiji School of Medicine.The evening of his arrival, he joined a couple of us for dinner Read More
Christmas 2013
It?s home for the holidays for me?again for the third time in four years. But where is home? Where I was born and raised? Or where I spent two-thirds of my life? Or is home anywhere I happen to be assigned as a Jesuit? Read More
A Micronesian Monastery in Cow Country
If you?re looking for the presence of a Micronesian religious community in the US, you?ll have to go to the Midwest to find it. But if you visit during December, be prepared for temperatures hovering around zero. When I woke up this morning, the thermometer registered five degrees, but everyone says it?s even colder at night. This place makes New York City seem like Miami Beach. Read More