Greetings from Japan. I'm now sitting at Narita airport in Tokyo, in desperate need of a cup of coffee, but resisting the urge because although the sun says -- 'Hi! It's 4:00 pm, have a late afternoon coffee' my body says, it's 3:00 am, what the hell are you doing awake
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it is raining for the second straight day in chicago, and is forcast to rain for the next two.
I now officially hate you.
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i love hearing your stories on the road! and safe travels to guam. i hope everybody is fascinating and that they have yummy indulgent fruity cocktails.
-sk
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Gonna soak up this tropical weather while I can!
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(just thought i'd share this marginally relevant story - i began my ""academic" "career"" in third grade with a "state" report on.... guam. i missed the day when the class got to pick which of the 50 states they'd be writing a report on, and all the good states were gone. so i picked guam. it wasn't a state, but the teacher thought it would be OK. i've been making a contrarian ass out of myself at every opportunity since. but at least one important thing stuck with me from that report - guam's anthem is: Stand Ye Guamanians. i thought that was pretty much the greatest thing i'd ever heard in third grade.)
RY
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I'm here doing some training for the Guam Humanities Coucil. They'd like to have a series of conversations over the next year, increasingly integrated between villagers and military personnel, discussing the impact of the upcoming doubling of the presence of American troops on the island (the troops stationed in Okinawa are going to be relocated in the next three years). As you can imagine, this has enormous implications on everything from culture to politics to infrastructure. Islanders don't feel like their being heard and the military is slow to realize there needs to be a conversation with the civilian residents of the island at all -- given their whole command culture. But they're coming around. Mostly because of the infrastructural headaches. There's only so much land here and some of it is controlled by the native Chammoro population who are not rolling over for the needs of the US Military, this time through.
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