Massive volcano and quake hit Japan

(Stefan Burns)

(The Lustre Archive) The global civilization that was erased 12,000 years ago) Graham Hancock

First tattooed man in America was Irish

Carnet de voyage - James F. O’Connell, découvreur de Nan Madol (tahiti-infos.com)

They danced, so I'll dance an Irish jig for them.

James F. O’Connell, the “Tattooed Man,” arrived in New York City in 1835, causing much consternation. If a lady so much as glanced at him, her future children would be born just as hideously inked as he was — covered in thick, patterned black bands that curved down and around their hands, arms, legs, and backs. Or so the churchmen told their flocks.

O’Connell, an Irish sailor, acquired his full-body tattoo during a stint as a castaway in the South Pacific’s Caroline Islands during the late 1820s and early 1830s.

After their ship sunk, Irishman O’Connell and his shipmate, George Keenan, were taken in by inhabitants of the island of Pohnpei — who were not cannibals, O’Connell emphatically states in his memoir.

Within a few days, the two were bustled off to an isolated hut, where five or six women, “savage printers” armed with ink and thorns, set about providing the newcomers with the markings that would smooth their way into the community.

The resulting tattoo, called pelipel, made O’Connell “fully human” in the world of the South Pacific, writes Juniper Ellis in her book Tattooing the World (Columbia University Press, 2008), for which the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) provided research support. More: neh.gov

The Dharma Bum

There's something about the Irish, going from a tiny island under the thumb of a neighboring island, pushed out into the world as a diaspora that saw the sidhe, Tuatha de Danan, the wee people, the spirits, and creatures of the Emerald Isle spread out into all corners of the world and the public imagination. The neighboring island forced itself on everyone, like the last militant vestige of the Roman Empire (the remaining force in Rome slipping on a sheep's disguise in an exhibition of soft power that conquered the planet or plane more deeply than British weapons and forces.

U Dhammaloka (right) with Burmese monks

How did the Irish win their way into the hearts of all, particularly with so many redheads? One of the most prominent and important of the Irish was named O'Connell (Laurence), who became the first Westerner to ordain as a Theravada Buddhist monk, Ven. U Dhammaloka (pronounced \ooh-dah-mah-low-kuh\), the "U" being an Burmese honorific.

He traveled by boat to California then by ship to Asia, where he made a name for himself as a freethinker and Buddhist, opposing Christian missionaries, ended up all the way in Mandalay, Burma, in a Buddhist monastery.

Another O'Connell (James F.), not JFO, also made a splash in the Pacific among the people of Pohnpei among the Caroline Islands. He was a sailor on a boat that wrecked, landing him in Micronesia and this adventure.

• P.T. Barnum's incredible freak show oddity, the First Tattooed Man in America, Irishman James F. O’Connell (irishcentral.com)

How an Irishman's tattoo changed history

.

I was happy to be a Buddhist monk for freedom

(Rare Earth) James O'Connell, 18, survived a shipwreck along with seven others only to become the most famous Western man in Pohnpei. Ah, coming home after being enslaved since your late teens only to have your own society condemn you as Satanic for what they did to you and then be forced to headline a traveling circus freakshow until you died. No matter where you go, the tattoos always speak first. This is the (self-told, probably exaggerated for circus reasons) story of P.T. Barnum's original freak success story, "James O'Connell, America's first tattooed man."

Micronesia (with US Guam), Melanesia, Polynesia, Australasia (Oceania)

• The Life and Adventures of James F. O’Connell, the Tattooed Man (1845)

Support keeps Rare Earth going: rareearth and ko-fi.com/rareearth Follow Instagram: rareinsta. Follow twitter: evan_hadfield

• Evan Hadfield, Rare Earth, Nov. 25, 2023; Celtic Tattoos & Traditions; USA Kilts; Pulan Speaks (video); Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Another good tattoo idea?

Asian American Pacific Islander Month

I'm Asian from Near East, now in Afghanistan

What is an Asian? Asia is a big place with at least four very different regions: South Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and North Asia. These territories are so large with populations that are so massive, it is likely that most people on the planet today are Asian. Even the Native Americans, and therefore the Mexicans and Central and South Americans, might have Asian roots. This depends on whether one buys the theory that Siberians (North Asians) crossed the Bering Straits over a temporary land bridge that once existed. No doubt someone crossed over, but there's plenty of doubt if that's how all or most Indigenous people arrived that way. Much more likely are repeated waves of arrivals for millennia. People have been in the New World for more than 50,000 years according to Graham Hancock. And they were originally very dark-skinned Australian aborigines.

Of course, Pacific Islanders have been coming and going for even longer. There's an island where kava kava grows called Vanuatu. It's way out in the South Pacific. Using canoes there was a group who navigated from there to Easter Island to Guam and the 1,000 islands, islets, and atolls that comprise the massive state of Hawaii. We hear about four islands, but there are at least 996 more. Look at a detailed map. Most of them are off-limits and used for war. At least one is covered by a veil, cloaking it from the rest of the planet. A pilot who stumbled upon it and lived there during his absence after crash landing in the open ocean, wrote about it. A movie was supposed to come out about it, with its active volcano, strange, isolated culture, which aware of the outside world and wanting nothing to do with it, a princess, and a planned human sacrifice to appease the "god" of that volcano. We waited after his appearance on Coast to Coast and, thanks George, you disappointed us again. Formerly Buddhist Afghanistan, the birthplace of the Buddha (yes, not Nepal and not India, but an ancient place named Gandhara around the Indus Valley Civilization).

• Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (Wiki)
• CC Liu, Dhr. Seven, Crystal Q., Wisdom Quarterly

USA: “How to Hide an Empire” (video)

Democracy Now! March 5, 2019; Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

Daniel Immerwahr on the History of the Greater United States

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States is the title of a new book examining a part of the U.S. that is often overlooked: the nation’s overseas "territories" [possessions, protectorates, occupied lands, outposts, corporate slave colonies/"guano islands," 800 overseas military bases] from Puerto Rico to Guam, Hawaii to former territories like the Philippines, and its eight hundred military bases scattered over the planet. Democracy Now! speaks with the book’s author, Prof. Daniel Immerwahr, who writes, “At various times, the inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured, and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen.” Immerwahr is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University.

Catholic molestation and devastation in Guam

Associated Press via mail.com; Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

Guam, a far off US [colonial] territory from the country's earliest imperial adventures

Ahhh, no! (loveplayandlearn.com)

GUAM - Catholicism is woven deeply into the Spanish-influenced culture of this land of 165,000 people [in the Philippine Sea]. Families consider it a blessing to be closely associated with priests, and having a son grow up to be a priest or a daughter become a nun is a source of pride.

Church? Kids running (visitguam.com)

That's why allegations that the island's archbishop molested altar boys decades ago have divided churchgoers and put the governor in a difficult spot politically. When the Legislature unanimously sent him a bill eliminating the two-year statute of limitations for suing over sexual abuse, priests worked feverishly to stave it off, telling parishioners at Sunday Mass at the island's 26 churches that the measure would bankrupt the church. More