Mining Minagahet

I have been reading minagahet.blogspot.com lately. He is a good writer and covering a fascinating topic. He hasn't posted since my message to him, but as I said he seems terribly busy.

It would be hard to find a better candidate for the job. He is passionate about the politics of Guam, a good writer, very active on multiple sites, and travels offline to places like the UN when he has a chance to spread the word about his causes.

Alas, I haven't heard from him yet, so I will mine his bookmarks while hoping.

Guam Bloggers United has been dormant since January.

Tales of the Guambat is a nice personal blog, and has been running now for four years. I have a little trick I do to quickly test the political content of a blog. After I read the most recent couple of posts, I click on October or November 2006. This is from Guambat's blog on November 7th, 2006:

Generally, i believe in responsible voting; one should really take the time to figure out if the candidates know what the fuck they are doing. however, sometimes i just feel like all is futile and it wouldn't matter if i wrote in saaaaay, douglas moylan's name in every write-in space on the ballot (and so what if i did??). however, i have to admit i gave one vote to someone that i was on the fence about, and i mainly gave it to that person because the other day i was driving towards work and stuck near hafa adai exchange; i saw that there was someone doing one of the those drive and wave campaigning thingies at the itc intersection. i couldn't quite tell who it was, but when the candidate turned, i thought, "hey, that looks like [redacted]'s ass." and as i drove by, what do you know? it was [redacted]'s ass after all. wow, you could almost literally see [redacted]'s ass from a mile away. i sort of felt bad because the last time i saw this candidate, i had to think hard to remember who this person was; however, i would recognize this person's ass anywhere.

sooo...i felt a little bad about this and that was enough to tip a vote in that person's favour. sad, sad, sad.

Ok, so Guambat is not so political, but it looks like she is a great food blogger.
I have to try out some of the dishes she shows on her other blog Scent of Green Bananas.

Guampedia has a political section, but it is just an outline with mostly historical entries planned. In all of my searches so far, I still haven't found an official website of any political parties.

Ah, wait. It looks like 'Naison Chamoru' had a site with a slate of candidates up in 2006, and through that they link to the names of the primary candidates from all the parties. That will give me something to feed Google tomorrow.

Meanwhile, listen to Minagahet.blogspot's Guam Talk 5 and hear about the history of the suppression of the Chamorro language and culture, and his personal journey in rediscovering an identity within a language.

Sadly the bit he has posted thus far ends before we get a chance to hear him speaking Chamorro, but it looks like he will be bringing more forward soon.
It is a great recording by any measure, but it has an added dimension of poignancy for anyone engaged in the process of bringing 'new voices' into the political conversations around the Convention.