Here?s Asinech Hellan Pangelinan at work as an optometrist in Phoenix and at home with her young child. She made the move to the US when she finished high school in Chuuk and remained there ever since. She may have left, but a good part of her remains in the islands, as you?ll see from the charity work she does and the songs she sings. Read More
Tom Raffapiy, born on Satawal, left for the US in his youth. He spent many years in the US Army, serving in Iraq and eventually earning the highest enlisted rank in the service. But that was only the beginning for Tom. He began a second career as businessman in a contracting firm, even as he designed his own house, complete with taro patch outside. Read More
Micronesian migrants are in the news again. No surprise at all, I suppose. They?re always in the news. And they are also very much on my mind.
In mid-January I paid a visit to the Chuukese community living in Milan, Minnesota (a town of 350), whose migrant population has grown from 140 at my visit a year ago to 180 now. After our Sunday mass and baptism, they arranged a little get-together with the obligatory basketball followed by songs, dances and food. But the gathering had to be scheduled early enough so that many of them could make their graveyard work-shift at the local turkey processing plant beginning at 8 PM.
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Just three days after Christmas, three travelers from the east (at least if you think of Spain as lying to the east) brought to Guam a gift?the skull of a Jesuit priest who had been killed on the island 330 years earlier. The priest, Fr. Manuel Solorzano, was one of the twelve Jesuits who lost their lives in what have come to be known as the ?Spanish-Chamorro Wars.?
The skull was a reminder of the worst of times, some would say. People died in unprecedented numbers from disease and violence, the culture was radically transformed, and for the first time islanders lived under a foreign flag. Read More
Here we are in Palau, an island group with a per capita income four times higher than that of the rest of Micronesia. “The Land of Gold Chains and Fancy Watches” is what one of our Jesuit volunteer teachers used to call it some years ago. It?s a place that is on the map?-Darryl Hannah and JFK Jr. vacationed here 20 years ago, and the Survivor TV series was filmed here ten years ago. The country has been self-governing for only 35 years, but it has had two presidents who died violent deaths?-one who was assassinated and another who shot himself. It?s never exactly been Dullsville here in Palau. Where else, a friend once asked, could you strike up a serious conversation on current political affairs with a total stranger? Read More
Korea may seem an unlikely spot for mounting a crusade aimed at cultural preservation in the Pacific, but the UNESCO Center for the Asia Pacific Region happens to be located there. So it was that a handful of us from the Pacific met there in the traditional southern town of Jeonju. Did I say town? Jeonju is really a city with beautifully designed glass and steel buildings and a population bigger than my hometown (Buffalo). But it also is the home of a traditional Korean village, the palace of the emperors of the Chosun dynasty (who first came to power in the 14th century), and the burial place of the first Christian martyr in Korea. Read More
We just missed it, but I was in the mountains in upstate New York with my ?extended family? of 60+ relatives at the time. July 31 was the feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. So, even if this comes a bit late, let me exercise my bragging rights and share with you a reflection or two on the religious order that I have belonged to for the past 58 years. Read More
Milan… a three hour drive west from Minneapolis across the prairie… mile after mile of flat farmland with a train station and population center every now and then. Milan is a town of 300 people that runs perhaps four blocks in each direction. The current Chuukese population is 140, nearly all of them from the single island of Romanum. Read More