For lunch today, I had a picnic with my husband and little girl in the shade of our big old kukui nut tree. We brought along my daughter’s Bob (learning to read) books, and decided we will call it “The Reading Tree” and sit there sometimes to practice reading. She loved that.
After we ate and read and played some little kid horseshoes, I lay back on the green- and blue-striped picnic blanket and watched a white, cottony cloud barrel across the perfect blue sky. After awhile, my daughter and husband wandered …

Another place I sent my mom and her friend recently, while they were here touring the Big Island, was Ahalanui Park. It’s next to the ocean down in Pahoa and has a lovely, thermally heated pond.

The pond used to be part of someone’s estate down there in volcano country. Long ago owners enclosed the ocean end of the natural pond with rocks. They left a channel between the rocks, so the tide still moves in and out throughout the day. Now the pond is part of a county park.
The water …

One of my jobs these days is to blog for Hamakua Springs Country Farms, a 600-acre, progressive hydroponic farm here on the Big Island.
We started that blog more than two years ago. That’s when the farm’s owner, Richard Ha, hired me to create a website, and then a blog, for Hamakua Springs. My husband Macario, a photographer, did all that website’s photography, and that’s how he and I got to know Richard and June.
The blog is called “Ha Ha Ha!,” which is meant to represent the three generations of the …

One of the aims of this blog, beyond writing about what I love, is to market my writing business.
Now, what I’m about to tell you has happened before, and it’s happening again right now. I find it so interesting.
The minute I decided to start this blog — but before I’d actually done anything about it — my phone started ringing, much more than usual, with offers of work. 
My phone does regularly ring (or, perhaps more accurately, the email “bings”). I do have steady work. 
But it’s almost funny to me how …

It’s official, though we here in Hilo already knew it. 
Hilo is one of the country’s “Dream Towns.”
Bizjournals.com just reviewed 140 “micropolitan areas” in the country (From Bizjournals.com: “A micro consists of a central community with 10,000 to 50,000 residents, along with the surrounding countryside. It is, in effect, a small-scale version of a metropolitan area.”)
Hilo came in #41.
This really isn’t a surprise to most of us who live here. It truly is a wonderful place to live. The town is fronted by a beautiful crescent bay lined with coconut trees. Unlikely as it …

I have a Google alert set up, which is how I knew that the L.A. Times just published an article on Mauna Kea, and that it mentions the book I co-authored with David Byrne (the one who is not of the Talking Heads).
Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know about Mauna Kea — One of the best books on Mauna Kea, written by Onizuka Visitor Information Station manager David Byrne and Big Island writer Leslie Lang, is Mauna Kea: A Guide to Hawaii’s Sacred Mountain, published by Watermark Publishing (tel. 866/900-BOOK; …

My eyes almost fell out of my head when I read a June 27, 2008 article in Pacific Business News with the headline: For Solo Operators, Insurance Deals Grow.
It was about medical insurance — which, of course, is tricky business when you are self-employed.
From the Pacific Business News article by Linda Chiem: 
Hawaii’s major health insurers, pushed by health-care advocates and solo business owners, are expected to launch a pilot program that would give sole proprietors and the self-employed the chance to buy health insurance coverage at a group rate traditionally …

My mom, who lives in California, is spending a month up at Volcano, housesitting for a friend. She is loving the cool, crisp weather and the absolutely beautiful rainforest location.
This week she has a friend visiting her and they are having fun touring the Big Island.
And because my mom has never lived here (it’s my father’s family that’s from here), she’s been calling me and asking for ideas. I am enjoying thinking about fun things for them to do.
Last night the question was, “Where should we go to eat some good …

Here in Hawai’i, we introduce ourselves when we meet by telling who our family is and where we’re from; we put ourselves into a context, and try to establish some sort of a connection to each other. It’s traditional among Hawaiians. So let me tell you who I am.
My name is Leslie Lang and I am a freelance writer living near Hilo, Hawai’i. That’s on what we call the Big Island of Hawai’i, on the east (windward; rainier; lush) side of the island.
My father’s family is from this island. Some …