Think About It Hawaii

The votes are in, and the real winner locally was… “ainokea”. Yes, the “who cares?” attitude prevailed once again in our August primary election as about 60% of registered voters opted not to vote. And that number doesn’t include those who could have voted, but didn’t even bother to register. One can extrapolate that the actual number of those 18+ year-old voters eligible to vote who did actually vote might be in the 30-35% range.

Theories abound as to why people don’t vote, but it sure was easy this time. The election was on a Saturday, and most people could simply mail back completed ballots they’d received in the weeks preceding August 13.

While some remain unenthused about taking time out from hectic schedules to vote on November’s Tuesday general election day (hint to decision-makers: make all elections end on a Saturday), registering to vote and then not even scratching in some boxes on a ballot and putting it back your own mailbox is a head scratcher. 

Some may worry about possible voter fraud, notwithstanding the facts confirming no widespread fraud being found (again) during the 2020 election in state after state, precinct after precinct, blue, red and everywhere in between. This is apparently the latest price we pay in a post-truth democracy. Genuine, sincere indifference amid rampant mistrust.

Granted, some local races were not scintillating. Sometimes dinner’s not scintillating, yet eat we must. Democracy is messy and negative campaigns abound (as they have in America for 240 years), but civics has sadly become just an afterthought for far too many, alongside empathy and respectful, listening skills.

A more vigorous two-party system locally might encourage more interest, quality choices, and action, but if ballots delivered on a silver platter (or via a white, red, and blue USPS truck) isn’t enough to encourage registered voters to set aside 15-minutes, you wonder what it will take.

In 2020, 70% of registered voters here voted, partly due to the national election reality show (contrived, like all reality shows) that titillated even jaded, habitual non-voters. Some folks nowadays want to make voting easier; others, more difficult. Most foreign democracies trounce us regularly in voter turnout. There’s more information available on issues and candidates than ever before; some of it is actually factual. So how do we turn this disillusionment, muck, and apathy around? Or must “ainokea” continue to win handily?

Think about it…

Sometimes, you gotta wonder. “Incredible” shots of galaxies far, far away often look (to me) like bad MRI photos. Sometimes, the pictures are stunning, but other times, the untrained eye sees what looks like a smudge on a blurry picture that portends new stars, galaxies, lifeforms, Starbucks, et al.

And then there’s the orbiting James Webb Space Telescope, regularly peppering us with ostensibly stellar star stories. But we’ve been duped. Noted French physicist, Ètienne Klein, recently tweeted an alleged Webb picture he claimed was from a distant star, according to CNN. But upon further review, turns out it was a bunch of pork- and I don’t mean self-serving, political spending. The orb in the “picture” was actually a surreal, scarlet piece of chorizo- pork sausage.

Klein initially waxed poetic about the “level of detail” the picture provided, saying that Proxima Centauri was 4.2 light years away (almost 25-trillion miles). With our existing space/travel knowledge, it would take about 6,300 years to get there, so exercise, rest up, and stay hydrated if you’re planning a trek.

After numerous retweets among twinkling, twaddling twits, Klein acknowledged that the picture was actually just a slice of chorizo set against a black background. He then patronizingly warned people to be “wary of arguments from positions of authority…” Thanks, Yoda. Hey wait a minute! So the moon landing was faked?! The L.E.M. was really LEGO?!

Maybe we don’t need that TMT project. We can just sporadically send out pics of pizza toppings and claim… whatever. A new planet near Neptune? Er, that’s an onion. As Jimi would’ve said, “excuse me, while I kiss the sky”. The Large Hadron Collider, a Swiss particle accelerator (I prefer a blender for particle acceleration to make smoothies) is trying to prove Big Bang Theory postulates related to the Higgs Boson (aka “the God particle”) that, perhaps, seven people on the planet really understand.

It’s now hypothesized that water existed on Mars… two billion years ago. Hosanna, finally a solution for Red Hill! The list of amazing finds (or theories) always titillates, while we pedestrians still can’t figure out which direction to place the toilet paper on our toilet roll holders, and we’re still flinching from that dang “12:00” light flashing on our VCRs. I’m not a luddite, I’m hugely pro-science, -discovery, and -facts, but sometimes…

So it’s chorizo for chumps and the world keeps spinning.

Think about it…

First, we tended the soil. Well… my wife did; I simply watched. Then she fastened a simple, single vine against our retaining wall. Next, she had a trellis built to allow roaming vines to drape over and intertwine, as they’re wont to do. Bees, buds, and flowers were obviously great signs. Within months, voila, we had our own mini-lilikoi orchard. We (yes we) now pick up freshly fallen fruit every few days, slice it, gut it of its luscious pulp, and my wife concocts an amazing jelly/jam from the nectar. 

There is a lot of passion (and vermicast) that goes into the making of this delicacy. Hand-made (with on-going inspiration from Mother Nature) the passion fruit provides desserts, drinks, salads, jam, smoothies… the list goes on. Lilikoi acta as a soothing sedative for better sleep and possibly aids in relieving anxiety (now who could possibly have anxiety these days?).

A Conserve Energy Future post states that lilikoi: “improves the heart’s health, decreases the risk of cognitive decline, improves digestive health, promotes restful sleep, offers relief to asthma patients, improves insulin sensitivity, promotes skin and eye health, prevents osteoporosis and more.” Well, sign me up!

The point is (beyond obvious health benefits) that from such humble roots a productive hobby has evolved, a project that reaps intrinsic rewards through physical labor, a sense of tranquility in watching the continuous growth, and a joyous sense in allowing us to provide omiyage to people or simply gifts as a neighborly gesture. 

While crosswords, music, golf, and family fun take up much of my recreational chores, being even tangentially involved in this fruity pastime intrigues me as to what might be next. We’re growing chicos, papayas, avocados, and an assortment of fragrant and/or beautiful flowers… on the same property we’ve groomed (and/or ignored) for almost 40-years.

So yes, maybe you actually can teach an old dog new tricks, or at least make him/her appreciate what’s right in front of his/her nose. I credit my beloved wife for all of this produce productivity. I don’t have much of a green thumb nor a cultivational clue, but I can appreciate the planning, love, process, and results. 

Maybe you can find a new recreational pastime to ease your mind and/or body into. Maybe there’s something you don’t do that you could do, if only you would do. Perhaps it’s untapped, but out there… beckoning.

Think about it…

As the quagmire inevitably gets resolved about the new tourism marketing situation locally, I’m putting in a plug in to add director/actor/comedian Jordan Peele to the consultants’ list. After all, he’s had big hits with movies entitled “Get Out”, “Us, and now “Nope”, so (just by his titles alone) it seems like he might be a perfect ally to align with on future campaigns as they most assuredly will morph.

And speaking of tourism issues, we know that some early rhetoric has mentioned some plans for bolder moves to redirect or change the visitor experience and perception. Good timing, because they’ve already resorted to boulder moves streetside in Lanakai… 

Last week I needed to get something in quickly to a government office and they actually asked me to fax it. Really? I thought we were living in a post-fax world, which aligns with the sad reality that we’re also far too often living in a post-facts world… 

While I understand (and concur) with reminding people that COVID is still a hovering presence and a concern inside crowded buildings, I found it ironic to see a sign posted recently on the fence at a Hawai`i Public Housing Authority facility that read: “This property is CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC” and right below that it added “NO TRESPASSING”. Boy, if that doesn’t sum up our laissez faire attitude toward the housing situation and public needs in general…

It seems a bit pedestrian, obvious, and generic to see mundane, 2022 political ads that focus on how said candidate will “fight for the little guy”. As opposed to whom- multi-millionaires? You see some politico ads highlighting the concepts of “trust” and “future”. Shouldn’t trust and our future be a voting expectation and a basic given? As opposed to skepticism and looking backwards? Hmmm. 

We need real solutions to real problems in real time; like finalizing flood mitigation plans along the Ala Wai Canal. The Ala Wai Flood Management Project (that name alone might indicate a potentially serious issue) has been around for 23 years, but wasn’t officially authorized or funded until 2018. More talks will soon be held with necessary public interaction, and a supposed “final report” will come out next spring, at which point there’ll be more feedback, then probably more discussion, and invariably more studies. Let’s hope nature remains ambivalent and gives us time to get this one done right… some decade.

Think about it… 

It’s all spelled out in the article. An incredible opportunity for the state and the University of Hawai’i to become an integral part in the burgeoning world of semiconductors, optics, alternative energy, and computer science. A grand opportunity to plant our flag in development (alongside Silicon Valley and other choice locations) of a lucrative, clean, forward-looking, vital industry.

The article mentions Motorola, Intel, and others looking at UH labs for the best and brightest students along with sharing ideas from top scientists (a/k/a professors) at our world-class university up in the Mānoa hills. The article proffers that UH’s physical electronics labs are superior to those at Cal and Stanford. It sounds so grand, within reach, and real! So what happened? Good question. That article, by consultant/advisor/entrepreneur Ray Tsuchiyama (A Farrington HS graduate), appeared in the Hawaii High Tech Journal in the summer… of 1984.

Was there a lack of political will? A lack of financing or grant opportunities? Were we too fixated on tourism, agriculture, and the military as our big three economic pillars to push the incredible potential of these teaching visionaries and their students? Computer science was already a pretty big deal then, so where was our homegrown Big Brother in 1984 to nurture and push this alternative economic engine forward? Surely people realized the goal to keep our best and brightest home back then… I assume. As an aside, Arkansas is now a leading state in computer science, because it pushed.

Can we push harder to bring computer science further along at UH and in our high schools? Perhaps a public-private partnership? Equitably… pushing merit-based programs. Too much humbug? Robotics have become a big deal in Hawai`i in this century, true, and maybe the tech boat hasn’t sailed away on microchip design, lab work, electrical engineering as a trade, or Hawai`i in general as a computer sciences center.

It might not be worth much, but U.S. News & World Report ranks UH-Manoa tied at #135 among colleges/universities in the nation for computer science offerings. Again, this opportunity gone awry is much more complicated than any current numbers, missed opportunities, or even original hopes and realities expressed in a 1984 article. But it is a concrete example where we weren’t just hypothesizing, but were actually succeeding in an area that held great promise for economic diversity and providing well-paying jobs for our own, until it wasn’t.

Think about it…  

I grew up in Highland Park, Illinois. While the windward side of Oahu has been my home for many decades, I grew up in Highland Park, attended middle and high school there, and learned bucketloads of those important life lessons we’re supposed to learn during our formative years.

Thus, this 4^th of July took a wrenching twist for me. I’d planned a fun day ending with a family trek to watch Kailua Beach fireworks. As we hear over and over after “incidents” occur, no one would have thought that Highland Park, Illinois, would become simply one more tragic footnote along our vast American highway of mass shootings. Seven killed, dozens injured, thousands traumatized, millions upset. And we shrug.

Not every person who’s been marginalized, ignored, dumped on, or worse ends up taking out his or her aggressions by indiscriminately firing away. Not every paranoid person who writes bad things repeatedly on social media ends up shooting up a church, school, parade, concert, shopping mall, party, celebration, workplace, hospital, or home; but to let this continue with the minimal efforts we see in this nation to fix things in some way, well, that in and of itself just seems insane.

We don’t live in a world of black or white, but things do seem dark gray when incidents like this happen and we simply move on. Collateral damage? Good grief. We don’t live in world of blue and red, it’s various shades of purple nationwide, so get used to it. We don’t seem to be doing too well in basic civics these days (P.S.- teach it in school), as we hunker down in a world where we rationalize via ethics of convenience- whatever works for my world, even if it seems to contradict some basic rules of order. My world, my view, my needs, my tribe, my 401(k), my fears. My goodness…

New York Times columnist extraordinaire, Frank Bruni, recently wrote about current American politics and its wave of “moral elasticity”. So just how far are we willing to stretch? Pretty far, it seems, on far too many issues. As the pall lifts from COVID, we shift away (hopefully) from an airborne pandemic which caused understandable safety concerns and paranoia as we witness heartbreak in America, where hard-fought freedoms so valued by so many get tested on a weekly basis. And we shrug. 

I’m so sorry, Highland Park.

Think about it…

Lots of people are running for lots of offices locally. This is due, in part, to mandated redistricting which occurs every ten years after a national census has taken place. Every state senate seat here is up for grabs this year, whereas normally only half of those seats come up for election every couple of years, since local senators serve four-year terms and terms are traditionally staggered.

With so many choices and yet so many issues to confront, what’s a conscientious citizen to do? Well, #1 is vote! Since you have a couple of weeks before you’ll receive your ballot in the mail or opt to go to a voting site, now is the time to ask questions, dig deeper, probe. Because everyone running will happily and boldly tell you WHAT he or she wants to do and WHAT needs to get done, but the devil, as they say, is always in the details. The vital question to possibly ask to help you make your selection process simpler is to find out just HOW she or he will do what they say they plan or want to do.

Growing our economic base beyond tourism, increasing affordable housing, “the keiki are our future”, getting rail costs under control, decreasing homelessness and making sure others in need don’t fall through the cracks, improving our education system, dealing with an aging population, keeping younger generations from moving away, securing a greener future, indigenous rights, mitigating coastal erosion, encouraging entrepreneurship, finding one more use for duct tape… the list goes on and on. Just like two years ago, and two years before that. 

Pandemic be damned. Many issues have been tossed around like an overdone 4^th of July burger on the grill for years, or decades. If you’re happy with your voting choices, then your job is done. If you believe that change is good, OK… but just remember, change is good only if it’s good change. Change for change’s sake is an iffy proposition, at best.

So that brings us back to you, the voter, and your current opportunity to ask for or research details from candidates (or their websites) on how they, in 2022 and beyond, are going to make those hard, but necessary, decisions that will help to resolve issues which seem to have stacked up like rush hour traffic on H-1 heading leeward at 5p… every day.

Think about it…

Happy Independence Day! With so many emotional American issues under fire (pun intended), perhaps we can all use a brief respite from 21^st century realities that (to many) seem like either a fairy tale or a horror story…

A scared skunk was captured at Honolulu Harbor two weeks ago… what can you say about this incident beyond the fact that it just stinks? And how did the variegated varmint get here in the first place? It simply doesn’t make much scents. That’s six skunks captured on Oahu and Maui over the past four years. All have tested negative for rabies, and babies, thank goodness. 

This just in… with all of the head fakes, obfuscation, seeming solutions, rebuttals, estimated costs that evaporate weekly, demands from the aggrieved, and bureaucratic folderol, Red Hill will now sadly be known as Red Hell. And no, this is not simply (clean) water under the bridge.

Firefighters recently rescued a paraglider 200-feet up the face of an Oahu mountain, thus making the uninjured (stirred, but not shaken), un-airborne individual a para-sider, I guess. On the same weekend, firefighters stabilized and transported an injured hiker near Hawai`i Kai’s Lanai Lookout, which henceforth will be known as “Lanai… look out!”

Monkeypox is no joke to those who get it; nor is it funny in the simian world, which is rightfully upset at the reference to monkeys in its moniker. The disease first emanated from rodents, and was merely isolated and identified from a monkey- which led to the mis-naming of this “oh great, another one” ailment. Let’s not go ape over this indignity, but we should acknowledge that any tainting of monkeys is a slam on all of us, since humans originated from… oh, never mind, we’re avoiding controversy this week; my bad…

New funding ideas are being proposed for a nascent, East Kapolei High School, which has been proposed, discussed, committee-d, back-burnered, and revisited since 2014 as a possible solution for overcrowding at Campbell and Kapolei High Schools. Eight years just to figure out a possibly reasonable funding methodology? As we say here, that’s HART-less. Eh, what Ewa…

As we’ve recently learned that the incessant work on Oahu’s Highway Route 61 will continue for yet one more year, wary Windward-ers will continue to plod along past street-ripping machines. Pali want a cracker? Actually, we’d simply prefer smooth pavement by now.

Think about it…

So many great lines about the game of golf. It’s a four-letter word. It’s “flog” spelled backwards. Paul Harvey allegedly said, “Golf is a game in which you yell fore, shoot six, and write down five”. The list of great golf lines and anecdotes go on and on. 

And then there’s the hole-in-one. For weekend hackers, it’s golf’s holy grail, something to talk or brag about. So meet Daniel Young. He runs Young’s Fish Market, but nowadays he might be better known as that guy who’s made six holes-in-one over the past year. SIX… Most people never make one, and he’s done it six times in 12-months! Oh, and two aces were on par 4s at Oahu Country Club (#10 and #17)!!

Ask him to what he attributes these amazing feats, and he’ll tell you “mostly luck”. True dat. Like most golfers, Daniel picks his weapon of choice, takes into account the wind, slope, and his hole history, and elegantly strikes the ball, hoping that it lands on the green. As a one-handicap golfer, often his ball does land there, and every couple of months this past year, his tee shot has ended up in the hole.

The odds of a low handicap golfer scoring a hole-in-one is estimated at 5,000 to 1; it’s 12,500 to 1 for an average hacker. If you play 25 rounds annually for 40-years, you apparently have a 20% chance of acing a hole.

But back to Daniel. Tougher than a hole-in-one (it seems) for his family was simply keeping the family business going during COVID. Catering, which represented 30% of Young’s business, became “basically non-existent”. Even today, Daniel estimates that 20% of scheduled catering jobs get canceled due to last-minute COVID problems. But much like on the golf course, he focuses and perseveres. He took over this third generation family business eight years ago when his beloved proprietor father, Alan, passed away unexpectedly in Japan while on a rare vacation. 

Daniel and dad took up golf while Daniel was at Kailua H.S. He’s simply a recreational player, at work by 6am daily, who plays maybe three rounds weekly. Odds of getting six holes-in-one in one year? I looked it up, tried an abacus, and even spoke with the National Hole-In-One Registry; apparently such stats don’t exist. But this amazing feat shouldn’t go unnoticed or unmentioned. Daniel will be the fore-man fore-ver.

Think about it…  

Thank goodness she didn’t get into medical school (discrimination) and then couldn’t get hired as a lawyer post law-school (she was a mother, God forbid!). If not for these stupid stereotypes, Patsy Mink wouldn’t have gone into politics to represent Hawai`i, and thus never would have been the trailblazer who co-authored Title IX 50-years ago, the law mandating equal treatment for men and women involved in federally-funded education programs. Simple, fair, powerful.

This week, Mink joins other noted pioneers in the U.S. Capitol hallway as her portrait is raised there. The first woman of color in Congress (1965), and thus, also, the first Asian American woman ever elected to Congress, Mink took career-altering (-shattering?) frustration and morphed it into greatness. Mink’s early-career, deflating experiences made her more committed, passionate, and focused.

Recently, Oklahoma’s near-complete domination of the Women’s College World Series softball tournament showcased Campbell High School’s Jocelyn Alo leading her Sooner team. She toyed with pitchers throughout the post-season, as the home run superstar has done consistently during her record-setting college career. Daily coverage on national sports wires and prime time TV coverage reinforced just how far women’s collegiate sports have come in the half-century since Patsy Mink and others fought for what’s right.

Check out the wonderful, local documentary, “Rise of the Wahine” to learn how Patsy Mink (alongside former UH Women’s Athletics Director, Dr. Donnis Thompson) changed the entire landscape of college sports. In the early 1970s, there was little acknowledgment of most women’s college athletics. By the 1990s, KHNL and KFVE locally were showcasing UH by televising more women’s collegiate sports events than any other TV/cable entity in America- volleyball, softball, basketball, soccer, and water polo. It was exciting, and what local viewers craved… a perfect personification of Paia Patsy’s powerful pursuit coming to fruition!

Patsy Mink fought to ban discrimination in education; she pushed for affordable child care, child development and bilingual education issues, according to USA TODAY. Honoring Mink with a portrait (an “about time” moment) helps put into perspective just how far we’ve come since Mink first went to D.C., and yet also reminds us out how far we still need to go in many areas that witnessed watershed identity politics moments in the early 1970s. As Rod Stewart once succinctly sang: “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?” The magical Mink memento now hanging in Washington, D.C. sure does.

Think about it…