Columnists

BC’s Tales of the Pacific | How to lose a toe in Chuuk

MY brother, Jim, and I were cruising through the Federated States of Micronesia in Adaline a few years back when I decided to stop in and see Bob, an old friend who ran a scuba shop.  I won’t mention the island in order to protect the innocent, but it should be enough to know that it was near Chuuk…
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Variations | Ruinous social engineering

IN a recent National Review cover story, Mario Loyola, who is Puerto Rican, noted that the once-bustling neighborhood where his grandparents lived now “sits eerily abandoned, a common sight in Puerto Rico.” According to Loyola, “The island has lost more than 15 percent of its population since the s…
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BC’s Tales of the Pacific | Issues of an aging population

THERE is an inescapable fact affecting communities in the Pacific, and until now we have not spent much time talking about it.  Soon will come a time, however, when we have no choice but to face it.  The population is getting older. Around 70 years ago, the largest group of children ever born came …
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Variations | The crisis is real, again

WITHOUT ARPA funds, the CNMI is back to where it was in March 2020, when the tourism-based economy had to shut down because of global pandemic restrictions. In April of that year, the CNMI government, with the assistance of Graduate School USA, held a virtual Fiscal Response Summit. The participant…
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BC’s Tales of the Pacific | Will Mariner’s Tongan Islands

WHEN still a boy, William Mariner left England in 1804 on the ship Port-au-Prince for a whaling expedition to the Pacific.  After two years on the high seas, the ship anchored at Lifuka, one of the islands of Tonga, to rest and refit.  By that time, the crew was as ragged as the sails. Possibly bec…
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Variations | Over a quarter of a century ago

TWENTY-EIGHT years ago, the two biggest news items on island were the “federal takeover” bill introduced in the U.S. Congress by the new Republican leadership; and (drum roll please) the medical referral deficit amounting to $14.5 million — worth $27.8 million today. The then-Department of Public H…
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BC’s Tales of the Pacific | Old-fashioned

I HAVE been described as old-fashioned.  Honestly, I do not know what to make of that. In my experience, that can be a good thing or bad.  See what I mean. Growing up, when my father said my music was just noise, I said he was old-fashioned.  That was a strange thing for me to say because I listen …
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Variations | Back to a coconut economy

JAPAN created a vibrant economy in the NMI and the rest of the Micronesian islands that were formerly under the German flag (the Marshalls, Palau, the present-day FSM). “At first,” says historian Francis X. Hezel, SJ, “the Japanese Imperial Treasury supplied almost the entire administrative costs f…
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