Moving on

Ah, no blogging for awhile: we've been moving our little store over by the Wax Museum. It's worse than changing houses, I'd no idea so much stuff had settled onto the shelves.

On the plus side, mindless labor gives you plenty of time to think, and I've been noticing two approaches to the minimum wage tsunami warning. One group seems to be wringing its hands and wailing and... that's it. On the other hand, other businesses seem more proactive; I see a huge amount of painting and general tidying-up. Hmm, any bets on who has the best odds of surviving? Most textbooks could give you a clue, it's generally agreed that you deal with challenges by being aggressive. Things like promotions, advertising, employee training or even sloshing a coat of paint over everything.

And I'm waiting for the visitor numbers; there really do seem to be a lot of tourists on the streets.

Circus Minimus Just checked one of my newsfeeds, and Washington is as screwy as ever. This story claims that the minimum wage was folded into the Iraq funding bill so the House and Senate could work out their differences on tax breaks.

According to the story, Congressman Rahm Emanuel says Memorial Day could be considered a deadline because "It's a promise to the American people and we're going to get that done." I get all tingly when they get noble like that.

No respect The Marianas Variety's breaking news about a "Covenant consultant" is a little disappointing. Since they're talking about the old National Group contract they must mean our pal William Oldaker. Deja View all over again: I blogged about that three weeks ago.

I did have a nagging thought that the name was familiar so I looked up the CNMI's old lobbying and sure enough Oldaker consulted on "Minimum Wage Legislation" in 2002 while affiliated with the National Group. This is a good opportunity to share that link.

Al dente

Just a greeting to my incantevole visitor from Parasacco. I noticed you dropped by again and thanks for the kind words. I'm sure the Blogger and the Writer would say the same thing.

Scurrilous rumor

Scurrilous? I think so. A Carolinian friend came in tonight and claimed the Carolinian Utt in Garapan was being sold to Japanese investors. He said it was in the newspaper. Well, I try to follow the news and told him it hadn't popped up yet. So he said it was going to be in the newspaper, but Carolinians had already been warned that it's coming.

He proceeded to go off on the Governor and the Tan family, which is developing a piece of property south of the Utt (I don't know the purpose of the development, or even the ownership definitely, other than that at one time it was their theater and then their barracks.)

Several things come to mind immediately. The main one being that the Covenants are trying to split the Republicans and they're both trying to split the Democrats and everybody wants to split any other party that might pop up this time. It goes without saying that the Covenant Party is a target also. So it's just a rumor.

Of course, the principle reason it's likely to be folderol is that there are only a few ways for a Carolinian Governor to alienate his base, and that's probably number one.

And again, the Constitution states that MPLC (or whatever it's called this year) "may prohibit the erection of any permanent structure, in public lands located within one hundred fifty feet of the high water mark of a sandy beach, except that the corporation may authorize construction of facilities for public purposes." So the property is too narrow, except for those squiggle words: "may" and "public purposes". There's a lot of room there; just look at any existing hotel. Tennis Court? No problem. Swimming Pool? Public porpoise. A bar? Not permanent.

Just by luck, my next customer worked at Public Lands, and he told me he had certainly heard nothing about any such deal. Probably just a rumor, we agreed.

And yet... that's what makes rumors so attractive. It's prime real estate and there aren't any new beaches being built. Nah, that's just too hard to believe; I'm glad I never listen to rumors.

Down in the dump

Once I started thinking about Saipan's old Puerto Rico dump, the memories kept coming back. Imagine being nostalgic about that blemish. On the lagoon, of course, with a great view of the hotels. I had a great telephoto picture of the Hyatt and a smouldering pile of something, it would be featured here if I hadn't had an unfortunate habit of storing my negatives with my photos...under a tin roof.

Dropping your own trash was risky at best; there should have been a tire repair shop at the entrance. Nails, glass, ragged ends of rebar all sticking out of the 'roads' that bulldozers ploughed on top of the 'covered' garbage.

The poor Public Works guys were always asking for hazardous pay, with good reason. The flies, the stench, the occasional fires. Some claimed they were set on purpose so there was less garbage to cover. It was even more hazardous for 'can pickers': one man had his head taken off by a shell. Scavengers were promptly banned, for their own safety. That lasted for about a month, I believe.

Those fires. Quite attractive actually, if you were on a dinner cruise. All of the tourists would crowd the rails, pointing and chattering. That's where I first announced Mt. Puerto Rico's eruptions.

The inevitable 'why that's a perfectly good' guys who came in with a full pickup and left with it half-full. The dump was almost invisible from the road, behind a stately line of tangan-tangan. Until the garment industry came in big time, that is. There was actually some benefit from that, because the reeking pile grew so large it could no longer be treated like an embarrassing relative and the new dump had to be developed.

Hidden treasures But most of all, I remember the incredible folk tales connected with the dump. One man maintained there was another atomic bomb and since it wasn't needed it just got buried. He claimed to have proof, just not with him.

An entrepreneur bragged about documents showing at least 100 tanks were buried there, waiting to be salvaged. Of course he couldn't show them to just anyone, only his trusted investors.

And, since we're in the Twiflight Zone, the inevitable assurance that Amelia Earhart's plane was at the bottom. There actually have been allegations that a white couple was held at the Japanese Jail at about that time. I tried to track the rumors for several years as a hobby. It was always a friend of a friend or an auntie, and Tun Maria would say 'oh, yes, I heard about it from a friend's cousin'.

This should not be confused with the man who claimed to have found an Electra while diving off of Saipan. Now, he couldn't give assurances that it was her plane, but with more resources, he could...

En Vog

Well, that's the group I think the Arts Council should bring in if this vog (volcanic-plus-Asian smog) keeps up.

This time it's Southeast Asia, I guess. I thought I'd read about Drought, caused by little rainfall during the dry season.*

It makes me snarly. I got a headache last night and was circling the building to see which neighbor was burning. Just being safe. A whiff of that old latrine smell on the second trip outside and I knew it was Anatahan. (I don't want to hear about sulfurous emissions from the legislature)

Actually, our neighbor to the north isn't that bad. Maybe you've already forgotten about the periodic eruptions of Mt. Puerto Rico** we used to endure. Now that was nasty, especially when the foul-smelling plume chased squadrons of flies toward the Garapan hotels. It did have the makings of a grade-b horror movie.

Not so good for the tourists, though my business did fine, thank you. By the luck of the draw, our old bar was just outside of the stanky area so the happy hour crowd was huge... and they all had stories to tell.

It's actually nice outside now, but I'm not fooled. I still have that headache and my voice is something like a voghorn. The NWS says one more day.

* If you're paying attention, I cheated. Couldn't find the story about farmers burning forests to prepare for rainy season, so I pulled this one out of an old shoebox of bookmarks.
** For our off-island friends, the WWII era dump which has since been closed was located in Puerto Rico.

Minimum wage (the remix)

From their website: "Today the House Appropriations Committee approved the Emergency Wartime Supplemental. Floor consideration is expected next week."

That's beltway-speak for a closed 'mark-up session' on THE SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS AND VETERANS’ HEALTH CARE ACT (pdf).

I have no clue how this will play in Washington. Evidently the bill includes extra funding for Iraq and Afghanistan but adds a shopping/wish list of Democratic proposals. So it's needed, but another title could be 'How many ways can we piss off the President?'

Tucked way in the bottom, under "OTHER ITEMS" is this:

Minimum Wage: Includes the increase to the minimum wage and related small business tax cuts passed by the House earlier this year.

It looks like we've all got the weekend plus the time difference to figure out what that means.

A few hours later... Radio New Zealand International is reporting that the new legislation includes American Samoa. That can't be good for the chances of a wage board here.

Congressman Faleomavaega Eni Hunkin reportedly says "the House Committee on Education and Labor and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP, still have control, or jurisdiction, over the minimum wage portion of the Emergency Supplemental Bill."

Tailor-made cut

What took you so long? As expected, both houses of the Legislature now agree on cutting the garment user fee. The analysis of the cut's effect will be released any day now, it's probably in the Committee Report.

Meanwhile "The downsizing of the garment industry employees and the closure of numerous garment factories have impacted a large number of nonresident workers and some local resident workers." I'm glad we got that straight.

Not to worry, it's just temporary: "The bill would be effective until Headnote 3(a) of the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule is amended by the U.S. Congress." Or until the cows come home, whichever comes first.

Passport please It's not just a Saipan problem, the State Department is being swamped with passport requests. They say they are getting more than a million per month.

Tarred with the same baby OK, nothing much to do with Saipan, but exactly how is the term 'tar baby' considered by some a racial epithet? It's a cute Uncle Remus story, told in what is purported to be a nineteenth-century dialect (the experts would have to weigh in on whether that's true, I couldn't find any examples on You Tube). Very useful for describing a bad situation that keeps getting worse and people immediately know what you're saying.

For me it's Iraq, for McCain it was federal involvement in custody cases. This is just a character in a story. If you want to chew on McCain call him a weathervane, start swift-boating him like some wackos in his own party or just (gasp) concentrate on the issues.

Bananas taste like blood That was the title of a flyer that was stuffed into my hand almost forty years ago. Nothing special, I always felt like Robert Stack fighting his way past the panhandlers in the movie Airplane when I tried to get a cup of coffee at the Student Union. Most of the "literature" was forgotten by the time I finished reading it, but that one stuck in my mind. It was about The United Fruit Company in Guatemala.

I'm glad to say they've changed their ways. Now Chiquita (nee United Fruit) isn't just on the side of oppressive governments, evidently they can work with thugs of all political persuasions. Here's Chiquita's side of the story.

Wet pet food recall The Food and Drug Administration monitors pet food? It just never occurred to me, until this story popped up. Now that's a wealthy country. I always talk about dry food, but never really thought about what to call the stuff in the can. Still, I refuse to have a 'wet food' section in my store.

The Menu Foods website was down when I tried to check, but

The company said it manufacturers for 17 of the top 20 North American retailers. It is also a contract manufacturer for the top branded pet food companies, including Procter & Gamble Co.

P&G announced Friday the recall of specific 3 oz., 5.5 oz., 6 oz. and 13.2 oz. canned and 3 oz. and 5.3 oz. foil pouch cat and dog wet food products made by Menu Foods but sold under the Iams and Eukanuba brands. The recalled products bear the code dates of 6339 through 7073 followed by the plant code 4197, P&G said.

Burned Meat flavored biscuits are available, though. The saleslady says it's barbecue, but something got changed in the translation from Chinese. Actually, they're pretty tasty, and strangely familiar.