I guess I was jumping the gun on thinking the feeling was coming back to my fingertips. I guess I'd have to say there is no substantial change.

And the lack of control and tremors in my outboard fingertips seems to be getting worse. It's difficult to type and playing the guitar is completely beyond my ability.

Still, there is no snow predicted in the near future (nor in the distant future). We've had a lot of rain this season. The other day I was almost bitten by a mosquito! But December should bring us an end to the rainy season...

I've been trying to put my lesson plans together for Guam History. I am not good at seeing the themes of historical perspective I guess.A textbook makes it easier because someone has already done that for you and laid it out in the chapters. I am working from a people's history of Guam. I need to find those themes on my own.

And what makes it difficult is that I am teaching a culture that is not my own. There are subtleties I cannot see. In fact, when working on it I just get so angry at the self important white idiots who thought they knew better and who considered the island their own property to use as they pleased without consideration of the people to whom it belonged.

In 1898 the Navy "captured" the island from the Spanish in a series of events that would make a good comedy. They came, arrested the Spanish officers in the government, raised a flag then took it down, got on their ships and left. The island was left without a government for the first time since 1668.

And the USA didn't bother setting a government in place for the next 14 months. And then the guy they sent out here was a jumped up martinet who had no idea of what the place was like or what was needed to be done. He arrived, banned alcohol, ordered unmarried couples to marry, forbid the sale or transfer of land, kicked the priests off the island and then told the people they had freedom to worship as they pleased, and he forbid the fiestas that were the center of village life. He set up schools where they kids could learn English and get rid of the abominable language of their parents, he forbid the people from selling produce or alcohol (their only traditional sources of cash) to the ships that came to visit, and he set up a new tax system and began confiscating land if the people didn't pay their taxes.

Essentially the Naval governors did whatever struck them as needed doing. They issued orders and, because they were naval officers they expected them to be carried out.

In 230 years of Spanish government the local people were not as regulated as in the years of the naval governors. In an early petition to the US government asking for a civilian government they made the comment that they had been better off under the Spanish.

I'm just disgusted with my forebears.