i L i n d . n e t

The rain finally hit Kaaawa over night. It’s been raining on and off since somewhere just after midnight. Power went out briefly just before 2 a.m., resetting most of our clocks. The clocks confused us, the rain has confused the cats, who have been enjoying unusually dry weather for a while now.

Pacific Business News followed up yesterday with a brief entry about the closing of Hawaii Island Journal. According to PBN:

Journal editor Peter Serafin told PBN that Carlson called him Monday about the paper’s closure but gave no reason for the shutdown.

“It came as a complete surprise,” Serafin said.

A phone call from the owner with the bad news? Wouldn’t that have at least warranted a flight to Hilo to break the news in person, despite the unpleasant circumstances? I’m sorry. At least Rupert Phillips showed up in the Star-Bulletin newsroom to announce his 1999 plan to close the paper. A phone call? Bad form.

The Star-Bulletin reports this morning that the Advertiser has been hit with a federal lawsuit alleging racial discrimination.

Pati Poblete, in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday against Gannett Publishing LLC, alleges that Advertiser Editorial and Opinion Page Editor Jeanne Mariani-Belding discriminated against her soon after she was hired as deputy editorial page editor on Sept. 12, 2006, until she resigned Nov. 6.

Advertiser Editor Mark Platte called the charges of racial discrimination, retaliation and emotional distress “baseless” and said the newspaper would fight the case.

Among other things, according to the S-B, Mariani-Belding:

…allegedly asserted that Honolulu Councilman Nestor Garcia has “a brain the size of a pea” and that state Rep. Rida Cabanilla-Arakawa, also of Filipino ancestry, is “dumber than a doorknob.”

Mariani-Belding is a former Star-Bulletin reporter who came back to the Advertiser from the San Jose Mercury News.

I’ll post the complaint later today when I have a chance to download it. Check back.

And news of Gannett’s big asset write down and pension freeze are still reverberating. Jim Romenesko printed a memo sent to Gannett employees by company CEO Craig Dubow. And comments have been piling up at the Gannett Blog concerning the pension freeze.

There’s another recent Gannett Blog entry which comments on the changing perspective of Gannett management towards this independent blog by a former USA Today editor from cautiously welcoming to apparently hostile. It’s quite interesting to see the different perspectives expressed in the comments. As one who also deals with issues involving a former employer, this mini debate is most informative.

Did you read about the woman who has been living on the Queen Elizabeth 2 on continual cruises since 1999? Now that the ship is being retired, she has to find a new cruise ship to call home.

Muller began sailing on the QE2 full time after her husband died (during a cruise on the ship; the couple already had become regulars). She told The Times her cabin costs about $7,000 a month, which compares favorably to the cost of a retirement home in Florida. But “it’s far more pleasant,” she told the paper. “They don’t organize you like senior citizens’ homes must do.”

The thing that caught my eye is that she says the cost is about $7,000 per month. By my calculation, that’s just about what you would have to pay on a $1 million mortgage. Given the number of million-dollar homes in play, even after the housing slump, perhaps this isn’t such an unrealistic solution after all.

I found and scanned a few more old photos this week. These were taken in 1966 and 1967, this one by the old Queen’s Surf and others around the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor.

Lots of building has gone on during the intervening 40 years, that’s for sure.

Just click on this photo for the new gallery.