Waiting for a tsunami to arrive.

How refreshing.
I was driving in Kea‘au, stopped at a light, when three middle school-age kids in their dark green school t-shirts, two boys and a girl, walked across the street in front of me.
They’d obviously just come out of McDonald’s because they held McDonald’s bags and cups. As they got to the other side of the street, laughing and talking, they tossed their trash to the ground.
Oh, the thoughts that raced through my head: “What is the matter with them?” “WHO RAISED THEM?” “Why doesn’t one of those kids call the …

Every morning I drive my daughter to school, and every morning we deal with the road work on Hwy. 11 as we motor up the hill toward Kea‘au. It’s been going on at least since before her July summer program at the school.
To the construction company’s credit, they have been keeping the road open (at least during the morning rush hour; I don’t know about the rest of the day), though it does slow and narrow to one lane at places. It could be worse.
But it’s never fun to drive …

I wrote about vog recently and the article is out in the current (August 2009) Honolulu magazine.
Here’s how it starts:
It comes on the Kona winds—the dreaded yellow-brown haze of vog that makes eyes burn and lungs protest. On the Big Island, of course, it has done far more damage. How bad could it get? And what do we really know about vog and its effects?
Three-thousand, eight-hundred people lived on Miyakejima, a small island off Tokyo, until one day in September 2000, when the Japanese government ordered the island evacuated because …

Local excursion #2 of our Summer of Exploration was a slow, winding drive down the four mile, scenic route that diverts from the highway and runs along the coast, more or less, between Pāpa‘ikou and Pepe‘ekeo.
This used to be the main road, I told my 5-year-old. This is the way people used to go to get to Hilo town a long time ago, I said, and we talked about how the road is smaller and much more winding, and how they must have driven much slower than we do now.
I …

For our first official “exploration” of the summer, my mom and I took my 5-year-old daughter into Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park the other day.
First we sat on the grass on our green and blue blanket, watched and talked about the birds (as they watched and talked about us) and ate crab sushi that we brought with us.
Then we looked around in the Volcano Art Center, especially at a kids’ juried art exhibit. That was pretty neat and we discussed that maybe my daughter will want to enter it next year.
We talked …

We live on the Hamakua coast, a little ways outside of Hilo, and almost every time I drive into town I think about my grandmother, my Tutu, telling me offhandedly once that her great-grandfather had known every twist and turn of that road.
Even when he was in his 80s and 90s and fully blind, she told me, he knew where he was by the turns and feel of the road, and he would call out the name of every small bit of land as they drove by.

In the old times from …

Between everybody being sick recently, and lots of working and starting school and such, there hasn’t been enough playing around here lately.

We have not been taking advantage of living on this beautiful island, and so I hereby declare this The Summer of Exploration.
My 5-year-old told me the other day, “Let’s just go driving and look around and see new things.” If there’s a better attitude toward life than that, or one I’d rather foster in a young child, I truly don’t know what it is.
So even if some are just …

Macario will teach a continuing Beginning ‘Ukulele class at the East Hawai‘i Cultural Center starting Saturday, June 6.
The series of 1.5 hour classes, which will meet on five consecutive Saturdays at 10 a.m., cost only $25 total for the public and $20 for EHCC members.

“You don’t have to know anything about the ‘ukulele,” says Macario, who played music professionally in Honolulu and on the mainland for 16 years. “You need to have your own ‘ukulele and bring a pen or pencil, and that’s it.”
He says he will teach some basic theory and chord …

I just received this press release and am very interested to read this book. What an important story, and what a brilliant idea to put all these people’s accounts of it together in one place. Can’t wait to read it.
Full disclosure: I have written a couple books for Watermark Publishing. But I’d have been interested in this book if it was published on the moon:
Watermark Publishing announces the release of Wayfinding through the Storm: Speaking Truth to Power at Kamehameha Schools 1993 – 1999, offering a new perspective on the Bishop …