June 25, 2005 - Saturday

This observation comes from retired Star-Bulletin editor Chuck Frankel:

If some people doubt the wisdom of having two competing dailies in Honolulu, just look at Friday's morning Advertiser and afternoon Star-Bulletin.

The Advertiser relegated Gov. Lingle's signing the important Land Legacy Act (House Bill 1308) to an inside page of the B section, with four paragraphs. The Star-Bulletin made it the day's major news story on Page One, explaining its significance in 18 paragraphs.

I did not see a story  in the Advertiser (although I could have missed it) on Kyle Kajihiro's suit against the Turtle Bay Resort, on what he says was a physical attack on him for exercising his First Amendment rights in supporting hotel workers in their fight for a decent contract. Kajihiro is program director of the American Friends Service Committee in Hawaii. The Star-Bulletin played the story on the first page of its business section.

(My conflicts of interest include: I am a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party of Hawaii; I am a retired Star-Bulletin employee and an owner of some Gannett stock; and I make annual donations to AFSC.)

Yes, we do need competing dailies in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, the joint operating agreement in Cincinnati expires at the end of 2007, and the Cincinnati and Kentucky Post is offering a buyout to staffers interested in leaving now rather than waiting to see whether the paper will continue publishing after the JOA ends.

I ran into this interview from a few years ago in which KITV reporter Dick Allgire talks about his involvement in the "Hawaii Remote Viewers' Guild". Understandably, there's quite a bit of controversy over the claims made about RV, a few of which are discussed in this Wikipedia entry, but Allgire isn't shy about it, even listing remote viewing in his "official" online bio.

I was just reading a bit about the annual "Take Your Dog to Work Day" and trying to imagine the chaos that would ensue from a comparable "Take Your Cat(s) to Work Day". Most of us would be exhausted after surviving just the drive to work with unhappy and usually yowling or panting cat. And then you're supposed to give them the run of the work space? Oh, my.

I was so impressed by Ernest Murphy's pizza essay, which he offered up earlier this month, that I added a permanent link--check it out over to the right, just below the mornin' dogs.

June 24, 2005 - Friday

The counter hit 600,000 around 4:30 a.m. Hawaii time or 10:30 a.m. Eastern daylight time, but so far no one has stepped forward to stake their claim.

Could Gannett end up taking over the Emmis duopoly (KHON and KGMB) in Honolulu along with its other television stations? Gannett's outgoing CEO, Doug McCorkindale, acknowledged the publishing giant is taking a hard look at the deal and intends to proceed if it makes economic sense. The FCC had voted to change its prior rules to allow a corporation to own both a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market, but as I recall that's one of the changes on hold due to a court ruling. But a "flexible" FCC, which has allowed a temporary waiver for the joint KHON-KGMB ownership by Emmis to continue indefinitely, might conceivably also waive its rules to allow a Gannett takeover. We'll see.

Editor & Publisher reports that three competing free daily newspapers now being distributed in Vancouver, B.C. (including one partly owned by S-B owner David Black), have created enough litter to trigger automated safety systems and shut down the city's trains.

It's funny what a visual cue can trigger. We were pulling out of the driveway yesterday morning and both immediately noticed the pickup truck belonging to our new neighbor. It was loaded with yard waste, apparently ready for a trip to the dump, but the item thrown on top of the load made us both gasp in unison. Our chair! Well, my chair. More precisely, the old La-Z-Boy recliner that I spent many years in back when we lived in Kaimuki, then Kahala, and hauled out here when we moved to Kaaawa, eventually offering it to Eric Herter, our former neighbor, where it lived yet another useful life.

We inherited the already well-used chair from a friend back perhaps in the late 1970's after it had been broken and fixed, along with a second solid arm chair that had originally belonged to John and Aiko Reinecke, been given to Jim and Shelley Douglass, and then passed on to us. Those two chairs anchored our living room for years. We had them both recovered by a shop on Kahuhipa Street in Kaneohe. I usually sat in the La-Z-Boy, Meda in the arm chair. But yesterday we immediately went to the memory of the many times those same chairs were claimed by a previous generation of cats. Windfola, our first cat, took my spot and Emma, cat #2, got Meda's. I'm sure I can dredge up a photo later today of one of those feline moments.

All of that history flowed past as a long mental image while I put the car in gear and we slowly drove past, then turned onto Olohu Road and lost sight of the truck with its once-treasured load, although the past lingered and reverberated between us during much of the drive into town.

June 23, 2005 - Thursday

The main counter at the top of the page is poised to record the 600,000th visitor to this page, probably late today.

This morning's Advertiser reports useful details of Police Chief Boisse Correa's budget presentation to the city council. Bottom line: we're short on cops and what they need to do their job. Correa said existing beats are only 80 percent staffed, but that's apparently an average figure. Out here in our part of the island, the figure is 60 percent. On most days we've only got three police officers patrolling an area from Kualoa to Turtle Bay. That's very thin coverage along our long coast.

Yesterday's announcement that UH Manoa Chancellor Peter Englert would not be reappointed did not come as a complete shock after Wednesday's "no comments" from all involved. What did shock me was the Star-Bulletin's report on Englert's golden parachute, a salary of $165,000 and a hefty three year research budget after he returns to the faculty. The secret key to a very high paying faculty position seems to be this--first get appointed to a top administrative position, then fail at it. Next stop, a salary out of reach of most faculty. There are going to be a lot of full professors, who have devoted much of their adult lives to the Manoa campus, reading this story and wondering why they're working off of a very different and much less generous salary scale. Most of them, by the way, have to compete for their own research funding. "Upstairs-Downstairs" might be the appropriate imagery.

Here's a good source of Iraq news from the perspective of the Christian Peacemaker Teams via a Yahoo news group. Register as a member, link to the RSS feed, or just check back every week for facts and insights you won't get from reporters confined to the Green Zone.

June 22, 2005 - Wednesday

There's been more reporting on the housing bubble-no bubble argument, including continuing analysis by the Wall Street Journal and The Economist, not normally a "the sky is falling!" bunch. The WSJ reported this week that the concentration of value in the most rapidly rising housing markets would give localized declines a broader national economic impact. Local reporting (and I don't mean just here in Honolulu) seems to favor the "what bubble?" perspective, though.

Arizona's so-called "clean elections" law, one of the models for a bill being pushed by a coalition of local groups, is facing a legal challenge by a successful candidate accused of spending $6,000 more than budgeted to win his seat. This will quickly lead into complex issues of constitutional law, and may eventually take the issue to the Supreme Court.

Former Hawaii gal Karen Waygood dropped a note from Atlanta in response to yesterday's entry about Annie:

"... bearing the bloody patches of feline honor."

Wow. This brings a tear to my one good eye!

I thank you. Annie thanks you.

And I spent a few minutes yesterday grabbing several black and white photos in response to a "challenge" from folks who participate in the online "Digipets" group. I especially like this shot of Ms. Harriet, along with a second close-up of Leo's paws. Both are posted in the Digipets B&W gallery along with lots of other interesting work.

Ms. Harriet (a.k.a. Harry) Black and White in B&W

June 21, 2005 - Tuesday

It's the summer solstice. Celebrate in your chosen way.

Right now, though, it's 4:30 a.m. and there's something out there in the dark besides the solstice morning. The cats, all rounded up and inside overnight, gathered alertly to look out the bedroom window a few minutes ago, prompting me to get up and look as well. I couldn't see anything.

But by the time I got down the hall to the kitchen and living room, dogs were barking down the street, then loudly and excitedly from the next street up the hill. It could just have been contagious barking, but it could also have been something like a wild pig making its way back up into the mountains.

UH is touting its new authority to issue revenue bonds for construction of student housing. But the thing that caught my attention in the KHON story last night was the date of opening the last new UH dorm--back almost 30 years ago. So what in the world prompted campus officials to essentially ignore their housing responsibilities for nearly three decades? Did the Board of Regents during those decades ask about dorm conditions? Where were the folks in student services? Asleep at the wheel? Was it simply a lack of money? Lack of housing expertise? Too many political appointees filling administrative ranks who didn't know the first thing about campus life? None (or all) of the above? That's the story I want to read.

Speaking of buildings, another state employee added this comment about the tax department:

I've had to work in the Keekilolani Building, home to the tax and labor departments....It always struck me what an insult the architecture was to Princess Ruth Keelikolani, the granddaughter of King Kamehameha. It is a quintessential example to the brutalist architecture of the 50’s and 60’s characterized by sharp edges and bare concrete with extremely small windows.

Brutalist? Sure enough, a quick look turned out a description of this once influential modern architectural form, now thankfully out of style. Hawaii, with it's public building boom of the 1960's and 70's, has more than its fair share of these awful buildings.

And a Honolulu sales pro offered up this critical view of Turtle Bay:

I’m not sure a PR manager would do Turtle Bay any good. Their incredible lack of service from the main desk is most certainly a reflection of upper management’s philosophy.

They neglected to tell us on checking in that our conference ended AFTER their check-out time, and that there was no possibility of late check-out. When I called for late check-out they were abrupt and even rude in giving me this news. They adopted the same approach when I was locked out of a friend’s room. She’d given us her key so we could have a place to stay after checking out, and twice the hotel, citing “security” refused to even send a manager or security to this person’s room so I could retrieve my purse and other belongings.

They told me to ‘go look for her because she’s the only person who can access that room on this property’. They have 433 rooms and who knows how many acres.

My letter to the general manager, suggesting that the same messages could have been delivered a lot more diplomatically, remains unacknowledged. This occurred in May. I should add that the valet and food service folks were awesome.

So, that’s why I say that a PR manager can only go so far with an overriding philosophy that serves to alienate customers. That’s disappointing because they’re creating an impression with visitors that is irreflective of the other thousands of efforts in our state to create Aloha for our guests.

Back here in Kaaawa, little Ms. Annie came in over the weekend with a raw patch under her neck about the size of a dime. By yesterday another matching spot was noticeable on the side of her neck. It looks like she was in a fight and the other cat got her by the throat, leaving marks a mouthfull apart. In a household with five large male cats, why is it Annie, the smallest of all the cats, who goes out and defends the turf?

Ms. Annie (click for larger photo)

June 20, 2005 - Monday

It was threatening to rain yesterday morning, and the rain came just a bit later in the day. It rained through much of the night as well, and on and off so far early this a.m. But the very low tide and dark clouds added to the morning's beauty.

Reader Denny McPhee recently complained to the governor's office that it took the state tax department eight weeks to cash his income tax check.

"How hard is it to deposit checks? If you work for the state, very, I guess."

This is the reply McPhee received:

Aloha Mr. McPhee:

Please be advised that your email was forwarded to me for proper handling.

Thank you for your 6/9/05 email, which raised your concern that your April 14th check hasn't been cashed as of June 8th.

Due to our tremendous volume of returns and payments that we receive on a daily basis, the normal processing time for individual income tax returns filed near or after the April filing deadline is approximately 8 to 10 weeks, (unless the return was electronically filed.). This would include returns requesting refunds or returns with payments. As such, checks that are sent in with returns during that time frame would also take 8 to 10 weeks to process.

As we have already started projects to automate more of our document processing activities, it is my sincere hope that you'll experience a faster turnaround time in the near future. Again, mahalo for taking the time to voice your concerns.

Mahalo nui loa,

Joan M. Bolte
Taxation Services Administrator

This sent me to our bank records, which show our check made out to the IRS and mailed to the mainland was cashed within about a week, while the state tax check sent to downtown Honolulu took some seven weeks to be processed. And, obviously, the money is available for use if the checks haven't been cashed. McPhee's point is that this bottleneck should be a priority issue. Good point.

June 19, 2005 - Sunday

I noticed last week that the folks out at the Turtle Bay are searching for a new public relations manager. With the battering they've been taking in the media during this long union battle, it shouldn't be any surprise.

Speaking of union battles, the Star-Bulletin has apparently hired McGuire & Associates to deal with the upcoming contract negotiations with the Newspaper Guild. The firm had previously represented the S-B in dealing with the unionized pressmen. I don't know much of anything about this company, so any info on their reputation would be appreciated.

Here's another for the "boy, that makes me feel old" category--Kodak is ending it's production of black and white photo paper. This was the bread and butter of the photo world. I know the world is going digital, but I guess I didn't expect the old world to end so abruptly.

So while moping around about the demise of B&W paper, I ran across two remarkable bits of photography, one a Fathers Day photo essay with a painful twist and the other a retelling of a historic moment captured in a familiar photo. Both worth viewing.

It's been a week since management and union at the San Francisco Chronicle were scheduled to go into round the clock negotiations, but so far there seems to be no news about progress.

If you haven't check in for several days, don't miss the latest batch of Kaaawa photos, these taken back in May but just posted. Click on this Swanzy Beach Park sunrise to see them all.

Previous week • Other