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Are Island Economies Viable?
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Football as Religion
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Cultural Collisions
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Crime and Punishment
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Why Hang ’em High?
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Christmas Eve, 2011
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Christmas Preparations in Oceanside
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Christmas 2011

Are Island Economies Viable?

We all know that the Micronesian island nations are having problems building their economies.? Palau might be doing better then FSM and the Marshalls, but they all seem to be heavily dependant on Compact funds from the US.? Are the US-related island nations north of the equator doing worse than the rest of the Pacific Island nations?? Perhaps because?they’ve?become fat and lazy due to the Compact funds?

Last year, working with two Fordham graduate students, I gathered as much economic data about the island nations as possible so that we could compare the Micronesian nations with the rest.? When looked at this way, Read More

Football as Religion

Many times over football has been declared America?s religion.? Maybe it is.? When I was saying mass last Sunday, the day that the New York Giants was to play the San Francisco 49ers for the NFC spot in the SuperBowl, there were lots of heavy jackets bearing the Giants? logo.? There were also plenty of remarks after the mass about where people expected to be when the game started at 6:30 that evening.? The two religions?the one I?m supposed to represent and the one symbolized by those jackets?were meshing very nicely that morning. Read More

Cultural Collisions

The other night I asked one of the men here if he wanted to go with me to see a move that he had mentioned approvingly the week before.? He replied that he didn?t feel in the mood to see a movie tonight. His favorite TV program was on that evening, he was feeling a little tired, and he wasn?t sure that he even wanted to see the movie in the first place.

?Listening to you makes me yearn to be back in the islands,? I told him.? ?At least in the islands a person I was inviting to a movie would save face all the way around by making Read More

Crime and Punishment

Let?s take a look at the ?crime and punishment? issue from a different point of view.? In an island society–or in backwoods hill country US–it is important to keep the peace.? Otherwise, the Hatfields start taking shots at the McCoys, or the people of one village begin slinging spears at those of another, for some real or imagined damage sustained.? To heal this rupture in the society, there has to be some compensation or pay-back for damage done.? Chuukese, and people from other islands also, sometimes adopted the young man who had killed their own son.? The killer was the payback to the offended family.? At first I found this hard to believe, but then it began to make sense. ? Read More

Why Hang ’em High?

If casual conversation is any gauge, Americans seem to want their justice system to do one thing, and only one thing: punish wrong-doers harshly enough to teach them and everyone else a lesson.? ?Crime?doesn’t?pay? is presumably the lesson.

Two 13-year olds toss a shopping cart off a bridge and badly injure a woman?? Put them away for 20 years.? A drug dealer is caught making a deal across from a public high school?? He should get the maximum sentence for threatening young people.? Barry Bonds is convicted of perjury over steroid use?something that may be unfair but is no threat to others?? Teach him a lesson and put him away in jail.

I found myself arguing with a woman Read More

Christmas Eve, 2011

Christmas Eve here in Oceanside.? A half hour of confessions in the early afternoon-?a nothing assignment compared with the hours we used to spend in the box in Chuuk and the afternoons of penance services on Pohnpei.? Mass at 4 PM in a crowded church, with Christmas mass celebrated in two other locations at the same time.? Here as everywhere there are crowds who haven?t seen the inside of a church in months, but people who seem to cherish even these occasional ties with the parish.? The traditional Christmas hymns, a homily that tries to speak to our lives on the day after Christmas as much as on the day itself, and communions that seem to go on forever.

Right after mass a visit to the hospital here in town to see a woman with one leg amputated and another Read More

Christmas Preparations in Oceanside

While I was in the gym working out the other day, I heard a voice coming from the other side of the alcove.? ?Hey, Tony, whatsamaddah wichya?? You can?t even do one push-up?? Dere?s a guy 93 yeahs old doin pushups.? Whatsamaddah wichya??

At that I stopped my 20 push-up routine and looked around the gym to see who this 93-year-old wonder might be.? I scanned the gym before I realized that there was no one doing push-ups but me.? (Gulp!)


The face of suburban poverty is becoming real here in Oceanside.? Read More

Christmas 2011

As you may know, I?ve been in New York for the past year?working for several months at our Jesuit weekly magazine, America, before moving to Long Island to begin a stint of pastoral work in our parish at Oceanside. The parishioners here are warm and welcoming?and so made my transition much easier. But they?re also transplants from Brooklyn and rather old. So we often chat about the old Brooklyn Dodgers and the traumatic day the decision was announced that the team would move to LA. You have to love the people here. The other day one of the parishioners brought me a pair of lined winter boots, thus capping off a large winter wardrobe provided over the past year by family and friends. Another man, a warm and gregarious Italian, looked me in the eye and told me not to worry. ?You have a family here, Father,? he said. ?You belong to us now.?

Still, you won?t be surprised to hear that every morning I wake up with thoughts of Micronesia, and it?s the last thing I think about before falling asleep. Read More