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November 1, 2003 - Saturday
What a rellief to be back within RoadRunner range. I was able to quickly fix yesterday's photo link, which several people had reported. All the cats reported in relatively quickly after we got home yesterday afternoon, and as far as we can tell there were no disasters for the cat sitters to deal with. I supposed that we'll hear details today.
UH Pres Evan Dobelle got a long writeup in National Crosstalk, a publication of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education ("False Prophet?"). It circulates primarily among university administrators and legislators.
After the arrests of several people here on tresspass charges for trying to attend a public hearing sponsored by the Army, it's interesting to look at obscure laws being used by the Justice Department to attack political protest.
| Can you tell that Ms. Wally is top cat in this household?
In any case, the flight back gave me some time to finish up this latest set of photos of the Kaaawa cats. Just click on Wally for the full batch.
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Ms. Wally |
October 31, 2003 - Friday
Did you see the story about the Microsoft employee who just joined the ranks of those of us zapped by employers as a result of personal blogs? It's a club few set out to intentionally join, I can say speaking from personal experience.
| Downtown San Francisco is a strange study in contrasts. Large numbers of panhandlers and homeless literally alongside stores selling luxury goods and the consumer dream. This place must be a nightmare for folks trying to chart the appropriate social policy. Luckily, we're winging our way back to Honolulu on Friday morning, which explains why this is being posted early--actually, it's hopefully going up on Thursday p.m., although after today's experience I can't be too sure of that. |
Streets of San Francisco.
Click for a larger version. |
Thursday has been a rough day for this online addict. Despite my best efforts, technology foiled my best efforts to get online while traveling. At home, I'm used to high speed broadband access at home and office, and points in-between using several public and private wireless networks I've stumbled across.
But Thursday in San Francisco was endlessly frustrating. First there was the problem with my traveling dial-up numbers, which just wouldn't hold a connection long enough for me to check email and then post the daily update. Perhaps they were just overloaded, or maybe the phone line was bad, who knows.
Then I tried to compensate for what might have been a bad phone line by slowing down the modem speed. A simple task in the past, but I just couldn't figure out how to do it in this version of the Mac operating system (OS 10.2.8).
So then I turned to my final standby--a slow dial-up connection via my cell phone, but even that low tech avenue failed me for some unfathomable reason. Perhaps I should blame this week's solar storm.
October 30, 2003 - Thursday
Am I embarrassed or what?? First technical problems that have delayed this entry. Then, to make it worse, I didn't remember until late yesterday afternoon that it was the first anniversary of Mr. Toby's rescue and adoption. Acquisition Day, we usually say. We had heard a tiny cry for several days during our early morning walk, and on my second attempt in the heavy underbrush I located this tiny orange kitten and brought him home. At that point we realized that we had no kitten milk substitute anywhere in the house, and had to endure his now quite loud cries until we stopped at the vet for a supply of milk, and then got to my office and started the feeding.
| He survived that rough start and has grown into the sweetest cat! The weeks of hand feeding left an additional bond with us. I don't know how I failed to have his anniversary date in my brain when I did yesterday's update. |
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| I feel doubly bad because I can't even give Mr. Toby a special anniversary treat because we're in San Francisco for another 24 hours. Yup, Meda's testifying at a hearing at City Hall late Wednesday while I'm writing this. |
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It's a quick turnaround trip for her invited appearance at a hearing on girls before the SF Commission on the Status of Women. I'm along because United had a deal for a free "companion" ticket, so it cost very little to be the treveling companion.
By the way, San Francisco may be a city no larger than Honolulu, but they've got a heck of a City Hall, as impressive inside as out. Honolulu Hale is incredibly modest by comparison. How do they afford this thing?
October 29, 2003 - Wednesday
A regular reader offered this comment after checking the web sites of Honolulu's two daily newspapers yesterday afternoon:
You'd like to think it must be a pretty slow day when both Honolulu daily [newspaper] Web sites report in their "breaking news" section that a popular radio morning show team has selected a new spot for their Saturday morning breakfast shows.
Right up there with Prince cancelling his planned concerts here, and Hilton announcing time share sales in its Kalia Tower.
Maybe they ought to rename the section "news updates" or somesuch?
He's got a point, although the newspaper folks will probably feel like they're just getting picked on.
Bye Bye Ben. I couldn't help but notice Honolulu Magazine's enthusiastic "review" of what must be Honolulu's priciest new restaurant, The Bistro at Century Center. In one of the highlighted quotes, Bistro owner Cliff Laughton proclaims: "The only person in town who could pull it off was Ben Wong." Unfortunately, Laughton may have spoken too soon. The print on the story was barely dry when Wong gave notice and departed from the restaurant early this month.
Ms. Annie, the most recent kitten, has developed a new affectation. It starts somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m. when she climbs up onto the bed after spending time in some hidden place, crawls up between Meda and I, and then takes up a strategic position between our heads. It's just a double bed, and there are usually at least two other cats already on the bed, so Annie has to rely on stealth until she gets into place. Then the purring starts in earnest, and that's the signal for her to purr first towards one person, then towards the other. The purring might be accentuated by a dainty lick on the nose. That's a cat lick on a person's nose, just to be clear. It usually isn't too clear at 4 a.m., more than a little foggy, in fact. We should probably get mad, but she's just too cute to sanction, so we've just got to go with the flow. In time this will get "old". For now, it's still endearing.
October 28, 2003 - Tuesday
The Star-Bulletin had a tough Monday morning. "Homeless on Maui left with no refuge," said the headline on a story about a county policy of rousting homeless campers from public parks. The story included a photo with a caption identifying Bryan Baptiste as Maui's mayor. Unfortunately, the story was actually about Kauai County, and Mayor Baptiste is there on Kauai, not Maui.
One Big Island reader quipped, "Maybe they outsourced headline writing to a company in Boise."
In response to comments here a few days ago, Ed McNulty, v-p for programming/content at PBS Hawaii, says the local interview program, "One on One with Paul Costello" is rebroadcast at 6:30 on the Saturday evening following the initial Thurdsday telecast.
Reuters reported yesterday on the group of London school boys who took Viagra at lunch on a dare. According to the story: ' The Sun newspaper quoted a source at the school as saying: "By the time the afternoon lessons began, there was no hiding what they had done." '
I'm sure that you couldn't make this stuff up.
My sister got back to her home in Groveland, California, last week following a road trip that eventually got down to Tombstone, Arizona, where our great grandfather, James Yonge, operated a pharmacy during the 1880's. My grandfather, Duke Yonge, was born in 1877 and spent critical years growing up in Tombstone.
She knows the family had already reached Tombstone by time of the famed "gunfight at the OK Corral" in late 1881, based on references in old letters from Jame Yonge's uncle, Arthur, in England to another uncle in New Zealand. Bonnie spent several days nosing around for bits of this history. She found James Yonge and his partner, E.F. Hudson, listed in a Businessman's Directory during that period, with a residential address listed. She found the street address, although the old houses are long gone.
A search of old newspapers on microfilm, with the assistance of one of the park rangers, turned up numerous small advertisements for various elixirs or other products like sea salt ("curative powers of the ocean") that were available at Yonge's Pharmacy. She found a birth notice for my grandfather's younger sister, and an advertisement for the July 4th "Fireman's Ball" in 1889 that listed James Yonge among the organizing committee. Later, at the Tombstone museum, she turned up a prescription written by a local doctor on a printed form that announces "J. Yonge, Druggist and Pharmacist".
She found a brochure with historical photographs that included a picture of the kids in the Tombstone school in 1890, and she's sure that she recognizes our grandfather and his sister.
Yonge knew Morse code and served as local telegrapher in the small towns where they had lived. She hoped to find some record of what family lore says was a telegraph line strung from his pharmacy to the local doctor's office, but failed to find anything during this visit.
As you can imagine, I'm eagerly looking forward to a full report on her detective work.
October 27, 2003 - Monday
A set of emails liberated from Diebold Inc. regarding anomolies in the 2000 Florida vote count have been getting growing attention. This has created a battle over access to the Internet by those who say their disclosure of the documents is an act of traditional civil disobedience. Diebold has been threatening legal action against companies, organizations or individuals providing hosting services for web sites displaying the Diebold email. This could turn out to be a significant moment for the Internet as a tool of investigative journalism and political communication.
| The sun barely poked through a thick cloud layer on the horizon yesterday morning, and by evening the clouds blanked out our view of the horizon, but still none of the predicted rain. I wonder what it's going to be like this morning? |
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October 26, 2003 - Sunday
Sorry to be a bit late this morning. I decided to do the morning in reverse--walk, coffee, breakfast, and then update the page. It's Sunday, after all.
| I finally managed to work my way through the old photographs of the 1974 protest against the Dept. of Hawaiian Home Lands by Sonny Kaniho and have added them to the online old kine pics. I haven't been able to come up with names of everyone in the pictures, but welcome additional information if you recognize other folks. Just click on this photo of Sonny to head back in time to May 1974. |
Sonny Kaniho
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The story on truancy in today's Honolulu Advertiser reminds me how thankful I am that I went to school back in the dark ages before police and courts started devoting such a ridiculous amount of public resources worrying about every kid who skips school. There's truancy and there's truancy, in my book. Some serious, some not. After all, some of my best days in high school were spent surfing in Waikiki. My absences were officially noted, but didn't trigger the whole apparatus of societal crime control.
I still remember one particular day when the truancy cops made one of their infrequent visits to the beach. A friend and I hopped down onto the sand and made our way down the beach in the direction of the Royal Hawaiian, but we looked back to see a couple of guys in black shoes and aloha shirts looking our way and hurrying along in the same direction.
Our situation must have been obvious, because suddenly there was "Steamboat" pushing an outrigger canoe into the water and calling for us to hop in. We did, of course, and spent a while out beyond the surf while waiting for the official pair on shore to move on to other duties.
Today's situation is even stranger, since many people are aware of the shortcomings of our public schools, yet we insist on criminalizing the behavior of kids who, at least in part, are rebelling against those same shortcomings. Go figure.
K.L., now living in Chicago, writes that her mother grew up in Kaaawa and wonders if I've collected any "old timer" stories of living out here in the "country".
"Perhaps about the great tidal wave, life before the Pali and Likelike Tunnels were built, or the like? I would love to hear them," she writes.
Actually, that sounds like an interesting project. I'll have to work on it.
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