Columnists

The following essay won second prize in the Northern Marianas Humanities Council’s 2024 My Marianas Writing Contest. “HERE you can try it on, just this once.” Mom smiles; carefully she places the tedious necklace around my neck, across my shoulders. I feel the warm beads pressing against my skin. T…

Pinakbet The following essay won first prize in the Northern Marianas Humanities Council’s 2024 My Marianas Writing Contest. BORN and raised in La Union, Philippines, in the early 70s, my mother’s childhood was marked by the rhythms of agrarian life on a rice farm. She toiled the fields planti…

IRIS Chang’s monumental work, “The Rape of Nanking,” energized the academic world, sent seismic shocks through the countries of East Asia, and motivated me deeply to research the relationship between China and Japan, a topic I still pursue with earnest.  You may know of the book, which spent ten we…

Edward Camacho THE TRUTH of the matter is I’ve decided to lead by example, as I’ve been waiting to give Locals/Politicians a chance to THANK Lt. Col. Edward C. Camacho for his 43 years of Service first, as I just wrote an Op ed about the need for us to say THANKS more.  Lt. Col. Camacho is a REAL “…

When an army officer asked President Lincoln if he could write an article defending the administration against attacks that were being made by the Committee on the Conduct of the War Lincoln replied: “If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be…

Ambrose M. Bennett THE TRUTH of the matter is the CNMI is lagging far behind when it comes to monuments and truly recognizing those who have gone before paving the way for a BETTER America and a BETTER way-of-life in the CNMI. Starting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who may have had MORE to do wit…

ON this day 80 years ago, July 9, 1944, Lt. General Holland Smith, USMC, speaking from his headquarters in Chalan Kanoa, declared that the island of Saipan was secure.  That did not mean all the Japanese soldiers and sailors had been killed or captured, but rather that the they would not be able to…

Ambrose M. Bennett FOR True, it seems the Republican-led Supreme Court has turned into a Kangaroo Court freeing up Trump just like our Senate Republican Kangaroo Court did in our CNMI freeing up then Governor Ralph Torres after he was impeached to create the “BOOST Giveaway Program,” in which he ga…

BC Cook YOU may recall the story of the Pacific War involving Chile, Bolivia and Peru.  This is a totally forgotten (until now) episode of that conflict that ties together international intrigue, maritime law, scandal, adultery and bird poo. During the Pacific War a Scottish ship delivered goods to…

ELECTION-YEAR politics could be summed up by the following statement made by a prominent Democrat-leaning liberal: He would rather vote for President Joe Biden’s “head in a jar of blue liquid” over backing Donald Trump in November. I’m sure Republican-leaning conservatives said the same thing about…