Grateful for . . .

waking up to chickens in the yard,

hearing chickens STILL at 2pm in the afternoon,

the neighbor's band pracice,

when the people down the street have a party and/or wash the car and blast the Chamoru music,

the 15-minute drive to Tumon Beach,

86 degrees year-round,

this precious double life I get to live, outside/insider, local/not local, the watched/the watchee,

rainy season under a tin roof,

drinking beer under the canopy in a friend's yard on a Saturday night,

waving to neighbors,

stars,

my zori tan,

kåntan Chamoru gi i rediu,

a loving family, and

generous people.

Goobernatorial elections

Voting options irritated me in Sanlågu. Like, sure, eight years of Dubya was a travesty in the federal/global sense, but in general you're far enough removed from D.C. that you simply don't meet the guy at your local grocery store. If there's any upside to the stateside political ruling class/elites, it's that those guys are probably not gonna shop where you do, among the unwashed proles.

Not so in Guåhan. It's been at least THREE times where I've been at a coffee shop and a certain World of Warcraft-playing Level 70 Dwarf-Priest lieutenant governor candidate made me shake his hand in spite of my looking fully engaged with my blank screen.

These are dire times. One goobernatorial candidate's family essentially runs corporate empire (health insurance, grocery stores, real estate, Budweiser/Pepsi) on this island, and the best thing one of the other candidate's more fervent supporters could say to me was, "Well, none of those federal charges stuck!"

So what caused me mere irritation in Sanlågu is giving me straight-up hives here in Guåhan. There isn't enough sunscreen in the world to keep my skin from somehow getting scorched if I vote Sunshine/Democrat. And as for the Republican slate, the campaign motto of "All About You" might as well end with "because, in the end, I need to ensure you get paid so i familia gets paid via your health insurance deductibles, weekly grocery bill, and that six-pack you so desperately needed when voting was all said and done."

And for parting words . . . I imagine that there were liberties taken with the translation, but I can only turn to Plato: "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being ruled by those who are dumber."