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April 26, 2003 - Saturday
I've got to wonder what bozo was working behind the scenes on the proposed new University of Hawaii logo. The finalists in the design selection process were released this week. The Star-Bulletin's Dave Donnelly had the right of it, in my view. Donnelly wrote yesterday that "those new university logos look like H".
One logo looks like "the second" as in "Richard II" with a squiggly line through it, and the other like twin fetuses held up by two tubas on end
Dave's got a way with words.
The Advertiser's Bev Creamer got a good sense of the typical reactions on campus in her story yesterday.
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These are the two designed proposed by the mainland design firm.
They look silly. The university's logo should be weighty, conveying the depth of the intellectual and educational endeavors. These are both lightweight, empty. No history, no character, no depth.
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| The selected design would, as I understand it, push the university's traditional logos, like this one, either into the background or into the trash bin.
There's still time to back away from this bad idea, and I hope the UH administration is able to recover their collective senses and do just that.
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By the way, the spell checker just flagged the word "Donnelly" and suggested a correction to "Downhill", but I didn't take it seriously.
And so it goes.
Apri 25, 2003 - Friday
Winners in the annual competition sponsored by the Hawaii Publishers Association were announced yesterday, and I appreciate the Advertiser's full listing of winners published this morning.
In a first pass through, it looks like awards for news reporting were split between several papers, while the Star-Bulletin was dominant in design and graphics. The Star-Bulletin actually won a few more awards than the Advertiser overall, despite its relative lack of resources, which should provide more encouragement to keep this a two newspaper city.
The Advertiser swept the investigative reporting category. Give Dooley a raise! And congratuations to the Maui News for taking first place in spot news in direct competition with the Honolulu dailies!
In any case, I'm looking for a list of the awards with a full description of the winning stories or projects. That should be even more interesting.
A reader had this response to yesterday's comment on dueling headlines:
"... and the paper that had the 'smooth sailing' headline depicts 'grilling' in its front-page cartoon. corky reads the other paper..."
April 24, 2003 - Thursday
Dueling story headlines in the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin yesterday left readers wondering what really happened at the confirmation hearing for the new UH regents.
The Advertiser reported: "UH board nominees face tough scrutiny"
But the Star-Bulletin said: "6 regent picks find smooth sailing"
Does that count as editorial diversity?
The S-B's Betty Shimabukuro's story about the dinner at Leeward Community College with Michel Martin appeared yesterday, and it includes a nice photo of Michel and my dad, although right now the photo captions are mixed up. Hopefully those will get squared away later this morning.
Here's an interesting take on the toppling of the Saddam statue in Bagdad from Indy Media, with a photo showing the whole area was sealed off by U.S. tanks and troops and there were only a handful of people there. Certainly not the popular uprising portrayed in the dramatic reporting of the event.
I wandered there via the Asia-Pacific Network, which offers up a useful set of links, many on Pacific issues.
And, finally, a tale of the two sides of online success.
April 23, 2003 - Wednesday
The East-West Center's Pacific Islands Report, edited by fellow Star-Bulletin survivor Peter Wagner, managed to get my cover story from this last week's Honolulu Weekly online a day or two before the Weekly itself. So if you weren't able to pick up the Weekly from a rack this week, here's your link to the saga: "How Hawaii Cut A Secret Deal With AOL/Time Warner And Oceanic Cable And Imperiled The Future Of Public Access TV"
Here's an interesting little slice of island political history--Hawaii's People's Party, 1974-77. Thanks to Charles Smith, formerly known as Chuck Bollingmo, for calling this to my attention. One of the party's founders was Jeff Blair, brother of former state senator and judge Russell Blair.
Life of the Land Executive Director Henry Curtis says he is "appalled" at the lack of sunshine at the Public Utilities Commission and its backlog of as-yet undisclosed decisions.
"The last eighty days worth of PUC intermediate and final decisions are not available for public review," Curtis said Monday in an email alert. "This is illegal. The PUC has not updated their decision log since January."
The PUC has 152 decisions available online which were issued between June and August 2002. The last decision available online is dated August 30, 2002.
Life of the Land is asking the Attorney General to remedy the situation.
April 22, 2003 - Tuesday
It is not a moment of victory or triumph, and certainly not a time for "alleluias."
That was the assessment of a Good Friday column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Anthony B. Robinson, senior minister at Plymouth Congregational Church in Seattle. It's a gentle reflection and worth reading.
A crime wave in Kaaawa? There have been a string of burglaries in the last several months, and we heard neighborhood gossip over the weekend that suspicion is focused on the same person we believe ripped us off late last year. Police are said to be closing in, but that could be wishful thinking.
Burl Burlingame replied to yesteday's entry with this background on his group and the photo:
The phrase "blue devils" is one of those antiquated terms that has passed into history, and now we just use the generic term "the blues" -- which is an interesting switch from the outer person to the inner.
It's a way of paying homage to our roots in the music. Plus, we like our little Blue Devil logo.
Despite this background, we've had a number of people wondering if the band was made up of satanists because of the name. OH PLEASE! But that got me thinking -- why not play on religious symbolism in a secular way? What if hard-core Stalinist propagandists were toiling away at big-church iconography?
So I told the guys in the band, cross your hands over your heart, but while making fists (to symbolize inner torment) but also stare into the light in a beatific way.
That's all there is to that image of the band.
You can hear one of our original tunes here. See if you can remember the incident the song is about. This wasn't so much songwriting as reporting!
At Kapono's the other night after our set, we were signed on the spot to play a blues fest this summer.
Ask and you shall learn, I guess.
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I had to stay home yesterday to await the cable guy. We've been missing several channels for weeks, and our Roadrunner connection has been erratic. Of course, he didn't arrive until nearly 4 p.m. so while waiting I processed another dual round of dog and cat photos. Click on the photo of your choice to reach the appropriate collection. |
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April 21, 2003 - Monday
The sun will rise today at 6:07 a.m. here in Kaaawa, which means that even though we leave the house around 6 a.m., the sun is already up by the time we walk down to the beach. So I've shifted to the Spring photo at the top of the page, and will move to the bright Summer version shortly.
Honolulu Advertiser "reader representative" Anne Harpham's column yesterday announced changes in the newspaper's handling of corrections and attempts to improve their track record for accuracy.
The Maui News announced last week that reporter Brian Perry has been appointed to the newly created position of assistant city editor.
Perry, 41, is a University of Hawaii graduate who was raised in Honolulu. He joined The Maui News in 1990 as a reporter covering mostly county government and politics. He previously worked as a reporter at the Pacific Daily News on Guam.
Congrats to Brian.
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Here's a recent publicity photo of the Honolulu Blue Devils, with Star-Bulletin writer and media blogger Burl Burlingame, 2nd from the left, the one with the facial hair. On the far left is our friend, former neighbor, drummer, and contractor to the stars, Chris Emerson.
No, it really is their photo, you can't make this kind of stuff up. What is it, beam me up time? Hey, Burl, what's with the strange pose?
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Honolulu Blue Devils, 2003 |
Here's an interesting column from the Toronto Star, which raises questions about one of the most frequently cited justifications for why we invaded Iraq.
April 20, 2003 - Sunday
Well, isn't this fun. I get to do today's entry again after Adobe GoLive crashed and sent the last half-hour's effort into never-never land. So it goes on Easter morning.
Some of it may be in bad taste, but I did get several good early morning chuckles out of Whitehouse.org.
And Stanley Fish has an interesting column in the Chronicle of Higher Education on university administrator's challenge of money vs. education that rings some chords. Of course, Fish blames the Chicago Tribune's reporting for his campus' money woes, so it will be interesting to track down those stories for a different perspective.
| We just heard the news from our friend Ruth in Kaaawa that one of her dogs, Koa, died suddenly last weekend.
She found him wandering along the highway in Kaaawa and had the good fortune to live with him for three years.
Ruth put her thoughts on paper, and I'm taking the liberty of sharing them. Just click on Koa's photo.
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Koa |
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