Sedentary this week, I hacked a bit. The usual caveat: curious, you are welcome; not, meet you at the bend!
Jaime
June 8
Bianwen, Farrell and Tinian
The name Kamehameha is well known in Hawaii, officially remembered this week for leading the alii aimuko rule the islands for three centuries bearing the name, until Kalakaua replaced them. US Marines put an end to the royalty as the US Navy determined that Pearl Harbor would make for an excellent coaling station, and imperial America salivated for real estate under Pacific coconuts and points beyond.
Among the Austronesians in Palau to the Micronesians across the Equator north and the Polynesians-Melanesians south, to Chile’s Easter Island, stratified society prevailed. Slaves and servants were at the bottom, an educated force was in the middle, and a royal family at the head; the upper class Chamorrii were over the Matao and the Atcha’ot of the middle, and the lower matachang class served the Marianas. US republican and democratic ways were historically not friendly to royal bloodlines, thus, the kneejerk American response to ending Liliuokalani’s rule in Hawaii.
On the mainland by Pacific west, Zhongwen dynasties lasted for three millennia, terminating with the Qing that emerged from the Manchus but confronted by the democratic impulse of the 20th century, eventually ending the dynastic rule of those who thought of themselves as mandated by heaven.
Blood identity was not strict since DNA tests were not yet in place. A childless, or male-deficient, ruling family sometimes adopted one from outside the direct bloodline to wield the royal scepter, for the continuity of the clan name was more important than bloodline purity and integrity even if external blood line managed to seep into the flow.
But early in the development of the Chinese literary tradition, combined text for story telling and pictorial representation in a vernacular style rather than the royal Mandarin of the court, came in vogue. The Dunhuang bianwen manuscript was an early example of this vernacular tradition though the form died out by the Song dynasty. The form translated and transmitted Buddhist doctrines from revered Sanskrit Sutras to popular literature.
Bianwen with the pictorial representation of the bianxiang popularized beliefs and doctrine as the form related to oral and visual public performances. The stories were preserved in written form, and the ways in which they were told influenced secular storytelling for a long time.
This is a long intro to Don Farrell’s record (check out Micronesian Productions) on historiography. We used his tomé on NMI History in our PSS Social Studies class circa 2003-2008 and had found it to be full, more than enough for two-semester sitting. Farrell went on to revise the authoritative volume with Part I from Ancient times through the Spanish Era, and Part II to start with the journey of the NMI since the 20th Century to the present.
Meanwhile, we were feted with a brief History of Tinian when we attended a Tinian symposium Farrell organized in 2010, graced by various scholars and other academicians.
Farrell’s books are meant to instruct, not to decorate shelves in inertia, and since most of our learning is 80 percent by sight, he is pedagogically astute to liberally sprinkle lots of pictorial representations and photos on his text, reminiscent of China’s transformative texts of the bianwen style.
The Tinian, A Brief History, 2012 edition, is an example of photos complementing text, from the cover of latte stones to the detailed island map at the back, and the subject that covers the history of Japanese occupation of the island when sugar temporarily deposed German technology that included the wrenching clash of the Banzai warriors opposing invading grunts in 1944. The pictures are graphically instructive along with the texts translated into Nihon’s Kanji script.
In literary traditions, texts are abstracted into words and numbers utilized by the left side of the brain, but graphic form dominates the right side. A simplistic division of cerebral savvy distinguishes between the analytic and synthesizing functions of the brain, and academe often has bias on words over the practical power of graphics.
Farrell’s Tinian enlarges our familiarity of the island more than just the abstract reputation of where Paul Tibbets and his crew on Enola Gay picked up the load delivered over Hiroshima. We visited with the historian one Monday in 2010 in his “two dug hole” on the ground by Able Park on the north end of the island. The prolific writer, in his elements, was a bearded presence.
We actually might have crossed paths in Guam when I served the Community United Methodist Church where the late Marcia Hartsock of the 17th Legislature and Jose Dizon, Carl Gutierrez first running mate for the Governor’s office, were members. Don was aide to Gutierrez 1982-86, and my sojourn in Guam was 1983-84. We did not cross paths then, but now we have through his books on the Marianas.
Bianwen, the text and pictorial representation of China was what got us to this reflection on Farrell and his book, Tinian. Pick up Farrell’s brief histories of Saipan, Guam, and Rota, and one meets a learned but approachable mataoon his islands!
June 9 Editorial
The Chamolinian divide
The divide is deeper than the Marianas Trench. There is historic animosity in some quarters, restrained and inclusive in others, as indigenes are now the minority in the Marianas. Guam is overwhelmed by the US military after the isle became a Navy coaling station, and descendants of Pinoy and Latino “criminals” in Spain’s penal colony decided to remain, while the NMI is inundated by foreign CWs employed after the garment industries of the 90s.
With the excavations in Garapan of burial grounds, the Chamorro and Carolinian divide has emerged again.
Chamorros once claimed that betel-nut-stained bones are of Carolinian descent; Chamorros did not chew the nut, it was booted, a silent put down on the sea-faring navigators who were known to sharpen their senses with the nut chewing so they can concentrate on their journey in the open seas.
Let us clarify “betel nut”. It is actually areca seed abundant in the tropics chewed with tobacco and lime wrapped in a leaf of the betel vine. The resulting taste is bitter and spicy, sweet and salty, pungent and astringent. It is consumed to expel wind, kill worms, subdue bad odors, colorize the mouth, remove phlegm, induce intestinal purification, and kindle passion. Alkaloid Arecoline is a product of betel chewing that causes alertness, increases stamina, salivates the mouth, stimulates appetite, aids digestion, and induces a sense of euphoria. Its stimulating effect on the central nervous system is similar to caffeine and nicotine.
Europeans thought chewing betel nut was just an unaesthetic habit of the indigenes and the Chamorros allegedly denied being engaged in the habit to measure up to the image of the civilized citizen. Bones getting found in the Garapan casino site include stained ones, and suddenly, the claim of Chamorro bones, to the exclusion of betel nut chewing Carolinians, is being lauded.
On the practice of chewing today, there are Chamorros who engage in betel nut masticating too, some in responsible governmental positions that are cognizant of the health and aesthetic implications of the habit. The one-up-man-ship that once defined the Chamolinian divide using betel nut chewing to inaccurately measure social status is, at best, chauvinistic. The excavation brings the cultural prejudice out in the open.
Addiction to anything that affects the central nervous system is a human scourge known since the dawn of human civilization. Opium, ganja, ginseng, tea, coffee, and other natural stimulants have been used and abused. Chemical and electric stimulants are now intentionally being produced in laboratories and studios. The addiction to arcades has no corner on anyone and methamphetamines consumption is a global scourge, the NMI sharing a higher percentage than most.
There is the Chamorro/Carolinian divide for which the term “Chamolinian” was coined to unify. We celebrate vive le difference in all its splendor. In the sanctity of ancestral grounds, a field of cooperation and union rather than contention and conflict is called for, to be honored at all cost. Let's chew on that!
June 11
Behind the eight ball
Ed Stephens of this page sometime ago brought out a list of 8 verbs. I wondered how he got to 8 rather than lucky 7, 9, or 11. He is not even Chinese though he wrestles the Hanzi down whose word for 8 is ba, a homonym for "happiness and prosperity", explaining to the curious the preponderance of 8 in choices of P. O. Box numbers and vehicular tags in Sinosphere and Saipan.
We count by base-10, the decimal system. Base-2, binary count using 0 and 1 is reliable but cumbersome; photo editing uses base-16, hexidecimal, that has digits 0 to 9 followed by the letter A to F for the first sixteen, then, 10 to 19 followed by 1A to 1F plus 20, for the next 16. We shy away from those exact languages and stick to rugged human discourse, imprecise as that is.
Tardigrada or Waterbear, the creature in the Language Studios of Shenyang and Saipan I am associated with, is an eight-legged microorganism. Spiders have the same number of legs. Society also keeps 8-counts and 8-shapes close to its chest. The lady at the beach is a figure 8, horizontal 8 is "infinity", and a reclining 8 takes minds to jaded shadows!
Base-8 is a system of counting that uses an eight-digit system, 0 to 7. Numbers "8" and "9" do not exist, digits are as follows: 0 to 7 are the first eight, the next is base doubled (8.8=64), and the next is cubed (8.8.8=512), then, to the fourth (8.8.8.8=4096), fifth, sixth, and however far one's calculating machine can take it. This is a way of thinking that a computer game programmer utilizes, though if you ask me how it works, we move swiftly on to the next topic.
The late William Buckley, the Rapier Wit of the Right, TV host, prodigious writer who founded one of America's conservative rags, had 8 verboten phrases for political journalists. I lived within D.C.'s beltway before he died, and though I was sympathetic to his way of thinking because he encouraged individuals to work out their own thoughts and be accountable for their deeds, we differed on the consequences of our resolves.
Buckley chose 8 for the number of no-no words; he could have conveniently chosen 10. His conservatively held resolves were culturally conditioned rather than a consequence of clear thinking, IMHO! His choice of 8 rather than the decimal 10, however, revealed to me a mind whose leanings was towards poetry more than the strictures of objective science, my kind of thinker.
His rants against government stems from a distrust of group-think shown by the elitist institutions in his neighborhood, Yale and Harvard, thus, abandoning any effort to join it. Conversely, I relished being in groupthink to influence and often subvert it, with wild logic and wayward deeds.
Even Kalihi-bred former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hanneman of German-Samoan descent who just began writing for ST's opinion page "as Marianas matters" notes in his bio that he was Harvard-educated, though I was more impressed that he was a Kiwi in NZ at Wellington University.
We welcome the Honolulu Mayor into the ST table! (My driver's license address is Ewa Beach so Mufi was once my Mayor!) We, too, think the Marianas matters. We write to effect paradigm shifts and change models. As Buckminster Fuller said: You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Back to "eight", the street word for 3.5 grams of forbidden crystals, costly at the incarceration front and overdose end. Buckley once suggested that if drugs were cost at real market rate, it would be 90 times cheaper than as priced at the black market. Not supportive of the use of drugs, he favored unrestricted markets for its sale!
Eightball is a humorous comic book by Daniel Clowes who illustrates against the mainstream, made into an Academy Award-nominated film in the 90s. Eight is also one of the magic numbers in nuclear physics but not science-literate, I shan't lead you there.
Being "behind the eight ball" is finding oneself in a difficult situation not usually desired. "In a difficult situation" is a plus to Muslim friends that calls them to return to Allah's side. (BTW Mufi is not a Mufti.) Ayatul Kursi reminds one that to "remember Allah is to know that Allah will remember you". The Arabic word for "a clear sign of Allah" is "ayat" from where the word "Ayatollah" (who loves Allah) comes from. Ayat is also "love" in my Ilocano dialect!
The metaphor "behind the eight ball" derives from billiards where the black solid splits the table into 1-7 and 9-15 numbered balls. Contestants pocket assigned balls before aiming for the 8. To be behind the eight ball before clearing the table of one's numbers is “being in a difficult place”.
I am currently behind the eighth ball ("shame on you", a dear one quickly says, "that is private information") but given the open-book nature of my existence, it hardly matters. I am not enamored by "eight". It has not brought me closer to Allah, blessed be the name! But it has enabled this reflection on my situation and I decided I am happy and prosperous. Kapeesh?
June 12 Editorial
Pea Eye Day
The use of “Pea eye” is not meant to be inconsequential, only to be casual. “P. I.” is a discarded title used during the American occupation over an archipelago of islands named after a Spanish sovereign who presided over the height of the Spanish Empire, Philipp II, who later married Elizabeth and became England’s King, among a few kingdoms.
Historical account is not our task at the moment, nor about the mathematical pi (pronounced pai) that resembles the acronym. It is about a group tracing their genetic descent in a group of Malayan islands, all 90 million of them at home, and 11 million in diaspora in every nook and cranny of the known world, and a force in Saipan by accident of history.
Today’s celebration has to do with a declaration of independence from Spain in 1898 by General Emilio Aguinaldo. This is different from the July 4 granting of independence by the United States after WWII in 1946 when a people caught in the ministrations of American and Japanese military forces survived with more pride than common sense in a semblance of democracy, turning its status since 1935 as a Commonwealth of the United States into one of the first independent former colonies after WWII.
To speak of the Philippines as if it was a homogenous group is to mimic imposed imperial homogeneity over a diverse people. There is nothing common between a native of Aparri and one in Tawi-Tawi, nor a maginoo in Surigao to the Ilocano in Curimao. They gathered under the same political umbrella of a sovereign that the Moro’s kris of Mindanao and the G-strings of Montañosa did not acknowledge.
Yet, the colorful batiks of Lanao and the brass gongs of Cotabato are sold in the public market of San Fernando; the Muezzin call is not limited to the area of Zamboanga to Isabela, even as Hiligaynon, Cebuano, Waray of Bisaya are sounds heard in the multi-glut shops of Pagadian to Tagum via Davao echoing tongues of traders from Naga to Claveria who wag in distant tones.
The 11 million Filipinos in diaspora are all over the world, with a handful in the Northern Mariana Islands that saw a 400 percent growth from 17,000 folks in 1980 to about 66,000 in 1998. The growth came in labor pools in the economic growth by a marketing advantage of Made-in-USA labels in garments stitched by imported Asian labor.
In 1995, the CNMI's ethnic profile was a third Pinoy (34 out of a 100), Chamorro at 29, Chinese at almost 12, 8 of other Pacific Islanders, Carolinians at over 5, Koreans at 4, Caucasians at less than 4, Japanese at about 2 and the remaining for all others. Local were clearly outnumbered in the same way it is in Guam where Filipinos are a third of the populace.
Precisely because they are not a homogenous social group, Filipinos are hardly a dominant group, or as money-crazed and ever-frenzied workalics like their hard to satisfy Sinosphere cousins. They send half of their earnings home and spend the rest having a good time on wholesale price. Like unscrewing the Tanduay today.
Ah, the Pinoys of Pea Eye, may their street-smart resiliency, world-wise industry, rub off to other groups this day.
j'aime la vie
yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate! in all, celebrate!
