Let me first assure you that I have no plans for an early death… the title was meant to be an attention-grabber. But even so, I?m 76 years old and the clock is winding down. So let me share with you a few of my own dreams that I hope may become a reality before the angels come to take me away.
Tosiwo Nakayama…Tom Remengesau…Darlene Keju…Charlie Gibbons…Kimiuo Aisek. ?What do they share?? Well, they are all islanders, for one thing. They are also subjects of biographies that will soon be coming out.? There are books on the history of the islands (I?ve done a couple of those myself!), but now we have stories on the lives of islanders. Read More
This is a shortened version of a talk I gave at Yap Homecoming Day on June 15. The theme of the event was the link that binds Yap and Palau.
Yap and Palau, at the extreme western end of Micronesia, have always had an air of mystery around them–at least to us Westerners.
For one thing, their languages are so different from the rest of Micronesia–Palau the Polish of Oceania with all its consonants, and Yap with its closest relative being a Guatemalan language, a linguist friend tells me. Read More
Fr. Diego Luis San Vitores, a Jesuit like the pope (and myself), has become something of a fascination here on Guam these days. His claim to fame is that he first brought the faith to the Marianas in the late 1600s. In fact, he was the first missionary to reach any of the Pacific islands. Nowadays little cards with a portrait of the man and a prayer for his canonization can be found everywhere on the island. There are relics on the altar that people venerate after mass, and even an old black habit that was said to have once belonged to him among the museum holdings. Read More
Yap may be a small island , but there is a lot going on there these days.? ?The Island of Stone Money,? as the place is sometimes called, seems caught up these days in the other kind of money?the green stuff bearing portraits of US presidents.? All week long there have been budget hearings to deal with projected cuts in funding. Read More
Did you say the ?Century of the Pacific??? What century was that?
Was it perhaps the sixteenth, when Spanish caravels discovered the sea route to Asia and its fabled wealth?? When their navigators began naming the little specks of land they happened upon along the way and sprinkling them on the European maps of that great watery void for the first time?
Or was it the seventeenth, when Read More