Observer

It’s the political season on Guam again and after decades of hanging out and observing pocket meetings and rallies on both Guam and in the CNMI, I have a burning question. What’s become of the beer, which used to be a primary draw at such gatherings?

Water, water all around and not a drop of beer to consume while taking in the political rhetoric. Seems to me it used to make those often familiar words from the aspiring politicia...

 Photo: Kia Feliciano
 

Some people in grade school were teacher’s pets. Not me. I was always the librarian’s pet. At my elementary school, the librarian made a practice of giving me first dibs on hot, new children’s books. I was a regular at the children’s book room at the local Carnegie library. At my insistence, the tiny, elderly queen of that establishment was a dinner guest Chez Lloyd on occasion.

Madison's Carnegie Free Li...

And with dimensions of about 20 feet by 10 feet, this inflatable pink monster was unavoidable if not immediately threatening to visitors to Guam’s Micronesian Mall’s Center Court on a recent Sunday morning.

As with other vital bodily organs, when things are going well in colon-land, this 4 to 5 foot critter folded up in your gut goes about its business in relative peace and quiet, absorbing water and separating out vital nutrie...

Post World War II America produced a huge crop of little baby boomers and there were lots of new products to buy, produced through research, chemical and otherwise during the war. Those of a certain age likely remember chasing the sprayers that doused parks and byways with oceans of DDT to kill those pesky mosquitoes.

It didn’t occur to lots of moms and dads that the stuff that killed the bugs couldn’t be very good for their li...

It began, most notably in November, as the Calvo administration stationed a sign-plastered, somewhat beat-up hearse on the street between the Guam Congress Building and the Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica in Hagatna.

It wasn’t subtle or tasteful, in the opinion of some, but as the posters made clear, it was a fairly transparent lobbying ploy, demanding that the Legislature hold a public hearing on the governor’s propos...

Voting was an unquestioned obligation in my family growing up, so it was deeply depressing to learn that my move to Guam in 1980 marked the end to my say in presidential elections, something I’d been exercising since 1968.

Then, in the run-up to the 2004 election, legal lights of my acquaintance on Saipan informed me that as a then CNMI resident, based on the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, I could...

Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) meets the bankers.

Both the first run movie The Post, preview here and George V. Higgins’ 1984 novel, A Choice of Enemies focus in on a decade that it seems in hindsight, has a lot of lessons for Americans living under the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

The Post vividly tells the story of how the Top Secret-classified Pentagon Papers chronicling 30 years of American policy blunders in Vietnam ca...

I’ve got vivid memories of my childhood bout with Chickenpox. I remember lying miserable in bed for days as I assume plenty of my fellow first graders were doing at the same time, given that the disease is highly contagious and spread by coughing and other contact. There’s a rash, that forms itchy blisters and fever, tiredness and headaches are the minimum of the misery for about a week. Complications can include pneumonia and...

It was one of those truly unforgettable days for those of us entangled in the history of American politics, as we watched the December 12 Alabama election unfold on local TV screens. The Democratic victor, Doug Jones, as we all know now, is on his way to the U.S. Senate after toppling the original odds-on favorite, Judge Roy Moore, accused molester of teenage girls and well known for his contempt of the basic contents of the U...

Over the years I have watched quite a few military flyovers. In the 1950s my mother—a World War II veteran—remarked that a formation of jets from nearby then Truax Air Force Base was putting out the ‘sound of freedom.’ In the 60s on Okinawa, I watched B52s and SR71s go about their business on a regular basis, though that was not for show.

Since then, I’ve watched the Blue Angels do their stuff and many flyovers for Liberation D...