June 24, 2006 - Saturday

Advertiser editor Mark Platte filled in the story behind their current job opening for a "graphics journalist".

Our graphics editor, John Valles, has taken a job with the Houston Chronicle. John spent his whole life in Texas and while he loved it here, he needed to get back. Fortunately, we were able to promote the very capable Martha Hernandez to the top spot in graphics. Therefore, we have an opening for Martha's old job.

An email from West Hawaii Today announces their new "e-edition" by subscription only, with rates from $66 a year for those who also subscribe to the print addition, ranging up to $120 a year for non-subscribers. It must be those millionaires in Kona who they are aiming for with such a steep asking price for an edition with electronic delivery. I can't imagine there will be lots of other takers for this e-edition.

I may not be big on church history, but isn't Saint Francis the patron saint of animals? There's a story of how he braved a wolf that had been preying on a small village, eventually bringing the wolf and villagers together in a peace pact. The villagers agreed to feed the wolf, and the wolf agreed to stop attacking the village.

That doesn't seem to carry much weight with administrators at St. Francis School in Manoa.

They are apparently pursuing starvation instead of love as a strategy for dealing with animal problems. School officials allegedly pressed the arrest of a woman taking part in an 8-year program to trap, neuter and release feral cats living around the school, and they now stand accused of cruelty to animals. Here's the story forwarded by Cathy Goeggel of Animal Rights Hawaii:

A trial date of July 11, 2006 has been set for Honolulu Cat Caretaker, Cindy Newburg who was arrested on May 19th while attempting to feed a small group of feral cats at the St Francis ( of Assisi ) school in Manoa, Hawaii where a TNRM program has been in effect for over 8 years.

The school’s principal, Sister Joan of Ark Souza, implemented a campus wide feeding ban without any prior warning on May 9, 2006 in the hope that starving the cats would force them to leave the school’s property in search of food elsewhere.

Please e-mail Honolulu City Prosecutor, Peter Carlisle, and tell him that case # 1P106-09016 APA18 should not be prosecuted and to do so is a waste of tax payer money !!  

Please let him know that the abrupt termination of an 8 year feeding program - without the removal of a single cat - constitutes cruelty to animals. The cat caregiver volunteers were working to lure the cats over to a neighboring property when Cindy Newburg was arrested for criminal trespass.
pcarlisle@honolulu.gov

Also, please e-mail Sister Grace Ann Dillenschneider of Syracuse, New York and inform her that St Francis of Assisi - the Patron Saint of Animals - would support Trap/Neuter/Return/Maintain as a humane solution for feral cats and that St Francis of Assisi would have compassion for their plight and respect for their lives.

Tell her that feeding bans are not effective in eliminating feral cat colonies and only create unnecessary suffering for the cats. The action taken by the school toward the small. elderly group of cats - including one visually impaired one - is SHAMEFUL for an organization that prides itself on respect of God given life and kindness toward both people and animals.
gdillenschneider@osfsyr.org

Whew. That's quite a load for Saturday morning.

By the way, our cats still seem energized by the painting.

Meanwhile, a reader offered up her own tale of cats and painting:

Before I left Texas, I had some repair work done that included painting the window sills in the guest room. I got home that night and picked up cat #1 who, I noticed, had white paws. Ditto cat #2. I started scanning the hardwood floors for telltale prints, but, thankfully, there were none.

Painters told me the next day that they had just finished painting and were packing up for the day when the first cat jumped on the (freshly painted) window sill. While they were chasing him down, cat #2 hopped up. The painters spent quite awhile, I gather, chasing down cats and mopping up paw prints (not to mention washing said paws). They were not happy men.

Luckily, so far, no window sills here. Things could change next week.

June 23, 2006 - Friday

Today's entry is likely to be both late and short, but I've got an excuse. We're in the middle of interior painting at home, the first time in nearly a dozen years. It was overdue, but it means that furniture is piled away from the walls, there's scaffolding where our dining table usually sits, we'll lose access to the kitchen for a couple of days, and we're sleeping downstairs for the duration. The cats are displaced during the day, fleeing when the painters arrive and straggling back to reclaim the territory when they leave. It will be a relief when this is done and we can put everything back together again. You forget how comforting order and normalcy can be until facing wholesale disruption.

In any case, Colleen Hanabusa has been the most visible Democrat in the 2nd Congressional District race so far in terms of advertising, with a string of newspaper ads over the past week. This sent me to FEC records for some insight into her early backing. It looks like the folks at Ko Olina have returned the favor for her role in pushing their tax break through the legislature, and appear to have been extremely supportive during her initial fundraising.

Jeffry Stone, president of The Resort Group, and other company officers and employees gave at least 10,300 during the initial weeks of her candidacy. Those identified directly with The Resort Group are listed below, and a list of top individual contributors is available here. [Note--the links from names of individual contributors in the full llist do not work, and I didn't have time to remove them...apologies for the inelegance.]

Selected contributors to Colleen Hanabusa, 2006:

KIM, KENDALL C MR.	3/31/06	$1,100	THE RESORT GROUP/ACCOUNTANT
KIM, KENDALL C MR.	2/8/06	$1,000	THE RESORT GROUP/ACCOUNTANT
NAKAMURA, KENNETH K MR.	3/1/06	$2,100	THE RESORT GROUP/CONSULTANT
FUJIKI, RANDALL K MR.	2/6/06	$1,000	THE RESORT GROUP/CONSULTANT
HOSPODAR, RUMI J MS	3/3/06	$500	THE RESORT GROUP/CONSULTANT
TONER, JOHN J MR.	3/31/06	$1,100	THE RESORT GROUP/PROPERTY MANAGER
TONER, JOHN J MR.	2/8/06	$1,000	THE RESORT GROUP/PROPERTY MANAGER
STONE, JEFFREY R MR.	2/2/06	$1,000	THE RESORT GROUP/REAL ESTATE DEVEL
HOSPODAR, PAUL J MR.	2/8/06	$500	THE RESORT GROUP/SECURITY
HARRIS, RALPH F MR.	2/7/06	$1,000	THE RESORT GROUP/VP - REAL ESTATE

In some parts of the 2nd District, Hanabusa may also have to explain the support of James Pflueger, who also gave $2,100 to the campaign.

According to Hanabusa's latest financial disclosure on file with the State Ethics Commission, she represented Pflueger, Pflueger Properties, and Pila'a 400 LLC, a Pflueger company, in proceedings before the Board of Land and Natural Resources resulting from excess runoff that damaged the ocean environment in the Hanalei area.

And so it goes on this disrupted Friday morning.

June 22, 2006 - Thursday

Gannett posted a new job opening at the Honolulu Advertiser on their corporate web site last week:

Honolulu, HI: Graphics journalist. At least five years' experience required. Apply to Assistant Managing Editor Stephen Downes.

The reader who called it to my attention wondered whether it is a new position or if someone left the Advertiser staff. Perhaps someone else can answer that question.

The Maui News reported this week on a sunshine law controversy involving the Maui General Plan Advisory Committee.

State employees in Kentucky are blocked from accessing certain types of web sites, including pornographic sites, online casinos, sites maintained by hate groups, online auctions, and a recent addition, political blogs, according to a story in the Louisville Courier-Journal.

I wonder if anything like that type of control has been implemented here?

I added to the Galbraith Estate collection yesterday, with a list of beneficiaries as of August 1974 (which may be missing a page), and a court document tracing all the descendants of my great-grandfather, Robert William Cathcart.

It's clear that there are all sorts of issues to be ironed out by Hawaiian Trust. For example, I received this inquiry (slightly edited):

 I am a decendant of George Galbraith. My grandmother was Martha Galbraith, and her father was Sam Galbraith (brother of George). My grandmother lived with W.C. and had three children, one being my father who was also called W.C. I have been informed that because my father was illegitimate that we were not entitiled to any part of The George Galbraith Trust. I have been to a Lawyer here in Canada and she said if the law changed since the will was made that we could be still entitled. Could you please let me know if you have any information on this?

I could only respond that the Galbraith will names his brother, Samuel Galbraith, as a beneficiary. Beyond that, I can only point her to the documents and the trust company. But there are certainly going to be more of these questions arising over the next year.

I'm still trying to get my new Picture a Week project up to date by filling in photos selected from earlier this year. Here are a couple of the new additions. Just click for larger versions.

June 21, 2006 - Wednesday

The Summer Solstice is here. So get wild and crazy sometime today!

There's a lot of reporting from yesterday's hearing on the Kamehameha Schools case before 15 judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. But don't forget that you can download the full audio record and listen to the arguments by going to the court's web site. The Doe v. Kamehameha case is a featured audio file with a link at the top of the page.

I haven't had a chance to listen to the arguments yet, but Judge Alex Kozinski reportedly asked: "What's so great about having a school where everybody you meet is just like you?"

This again displays a failure to appreciate the facts "on the ground" at Kamehameha, where I would bet the student body is more diverse in terms of ancestry than in almost any school in the country. This isn't a case of deciding whether it's beneficial to divide black and white along color lines. This is a case of a student body that reflects the nearly two centuries of outmarriage between Hawaiians and Hawaii's array of immigrants, whether from the U.S. mainland or elsewhere.

Someone polling in the Akaka-Case race caught up with me yesterday afternoon. The woman could not pronounce "Akaka", and had just four questions. Are you likely to vote in the Democratic Primary? Are you likely to vote for Akaka, Case, or undecided? What are your two main issues in this election, the war in iraq, the patriot act, the need for Democrats to stand up to President Bush, or the cost of health care? And finally a question regarding ethnic background, and I don't remember all the categories on their forced choice list. I think that was it.

I got a "tsk tsk" from a reader last week over my comments about the 2nd Congressional District race. I had written:

> Women voters will be split among Hanabusa,
> Hirono. Menor and Garcia will be chasing the
> Filipino vote. Liberals, well, the Democrats are
> really all on the liberal end of the spectrum.

And the reader commented:

Tsk tsk. Generalizations/stereotyping. I'm sure women voters will be split among all the candidates, and surely some will go for Menor or Garcia. Also "all" is a dangerous word because you're guaranteed to be wrong. Especially about Democrats all being liberal. I wish. Sadly not true at all.

Stereotyping? No. Reality. Each of those candidates obviously hopes that, all other things being equal, they will be attractive to voters most like themselves. Obviously not all women are going to vote for a female candidate, but you can be very sure that females candidates will be making special pitches for the womens' vote. Similarly for those pitching to other demographic groups. There's no denying that ethnic voting is a reality although the extent of this influence has perhaps been diluted in most parts of the state, but it's still clearly a factor. And my point was that in a race between this many candidates, any relative advantage will represent a huge potential difference in the outcome.

And about those "liberal" Democrats? I'm looking at the list: Aipoalani, Garcia, Hanabusa, Hee, Hirono, Hooser, Matsunaga, Menor, Salling, Schatz, Zuker...definitely a slant in towards the liberal end of the scale, although perhaps not as far towards that end as some would prefer.

Happy Solstice.

June 20, 2006 - Tuesday

The deaccessioning continued yesterday, with help from Ms. Wally and the other cats. Some stacks have been moved out, while lots of other decisions remain to be made. Several people have inquired, and I'm trying to respond in the approximate order in which they replied.

Even my Treasure Craft collection came down yesterday and is being reviewed under rather strict standards. Anybody interested in some of these brightly colored gems?

The Star-Bulletin has a good story today on the importation of opihi from Ireland, something we just heard about when friends returned from a month-long visit. But the Irish opihi had a long write-up in the Maui News earlier this month, somewhat taking the edge off an otherwise very good S-B effort.

Meanwhile...Advertiser reporter Peter Boylan does a good job pressing for answers while chasing the question of whether police erred in failing to do a drug test on the bus driver following last week's fatal accident in Kahaluu. His story appears in today's Advertiser.

And a reader pointed to two Hawaii Supreme Court cases on drug testing of drivers which may at least indirectly shed some light on the question, State v. Anger (really) and State v. Entrekin. A summary order by the court in the case of former HPD officer Clyde Arakawa also deals with the issue.

June 19, 2006 - Monday

If you're looking for some good reading this morning, check out the list of winners of the 2006 AltWeekly Awards presented by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. The list includes links to the stories for online browsing.

The Maui News ran a good story yesterday by Ilima Loomis on the impact of the State Procurement Office decision to require public access providers to compete for the state's cable contracts.

I've started scanning my files on the Estate of George Galbraith, which is slated to terminate next year. The issue of how the trust's assets will be divided have not been publicly addressed, although they are certainly being debated privately by the trustee, Hawaiian Trust Co. The Galbraith Estate owns about 2,000 acres of land in Wahiawa, which until recently included the plantation camp at Poamoho. You can find my slowly growing list of documents at www.galbraith.ilind.net.

You may recall this photo of neighborhood boys making the best out of the heavy rains in early March. I converted it to B&W over the weekend, and the result is a much stronger photo. Just click for a larger version, or check the original color version here for comparison.

June 18, 2006 - Sunday

First, business. Is anyone out there interested in vintage collectible dishes? I'm talking Russel Wright, Vernon Kilns, etc? We're being forced to thin the herd and will be moving a lot of stuff out. If you're interested in any bits and pieces--we're talking free--please let me know right away.

Here's a reader comment from yesterday morning:

here's something to think about. the roberts bus driver who caused that fatal collision the other day was fired and lost his license after refusing to allow a drug/alcohol test after the crash. one of the tv news stations (ch. 2?) interviewed an attorney who said police can extract a blood sample without a suspect's consent if he refuses to allow it. the off-camera response from police was that "the law is not clear" about that point. but the reporter did not address the most obvious follow-up question: are such forced extractions ever done? if so, how common are they?

this was a fatality at the scene! surely this situation warranted such a forced extraction, if any does. the suspect was taken into custody at the scene, so police certainly had the opportunity to pursue this tactic if it is in fact allowed. did police bungle this one? it seems incredible that a suspect would not be tested after a fatal accident and a refusal to submit to testing.

what is the law in other states? needless to say, neither of the newspapers touched any of this. i guess there weren't enough bodies. maybe when a couple of cute little kids or punahou grads from lawyer families are killed by a drunk driver who refuses a test, this will become an issue for the media and lawmakers.

It didn't take long to find that the applicable statute is HRS 291E-21, titled "mandatory testing in the event of a collision resulting in injury or death".

Mandatory.

So it does appear that the failure to obtain the mandatory test is an issue. And it would be useful to know whether forced blood tests are ever carried out.

And I have to admit to a failure of the investigative imagination on another front. I've heard Meda talking about her Crocs, those funny looking shoes that look clunky but are apparently so comfortable that they've been wildly popular. I've also heard her talking about the fakes, the imitation Crocs that have shown up in Longs and other island stores. I have to admit that I failed to wonder whether these imitations were legal.

Then yesterday the Advertiser ran a short wire service story reporting on the settlement of a law suit filed by Crocs, Inc., in which two Hawaii companies were defendants. Both companies were importing fake Crocs manufactured in China, and were accused of violating several of the Crocs' patents.

Isn't this worth a bit of local follow-up? There's been interest. The Advertiser ran an L.A. Times story on the shoes a couple of months ago, and the Star-Bulletin featured them last summer. So what's the story on the knock-offs and the lawsuit?

The New York Times has another Hawaii story today, this time reporting on a project that has produced aerial photos of the entire Big Island coast, with the rest of the state planned to follow. Unfortunately, the link provided to the web site isn't working, at least not at this time. It looks like it will be worth checking back later.

And to give the week a good start, here's a batch of new photos of the Kaaawa morning dogs. This time there was something about dog tongues, which appear in half the photos. Anyway, just click on this handsome guy and you'll be whisked away into doggie land.