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The indictments of Honolulu Liquor Commission inspectors is surprising, but not really a shock to anyone who's spent time digging in commission files. I was always surprised at the way complaints were often handled. Here are notes of a telephone complaint to the commission regarding illegal activity at one popular club several years ago:Complaint re selling liquor to minors, drug traffic. Female caller. Used to work there. Says that on Friday and Saturday, 12 am- 4 am, service to minors."C(omplainant) also stated there is a black man who is a pimp who owns the club and they have three back offices. One is used for drugs, the other two are locked."
On back of complaint, follow-up notes: "Investigator went to club and spoke with manager... who said that it must have been a former female general manager who made this claim."
Spoke to manager. No problem, he says. Investigation closed. It was a typical pattern of either going through the motions of enforcement, or of being too overwhelmed to take any effective action.
I finally managed to get a kitten update, for those of you following Cybelle's saga. The photos were all taken yesterday. What fun! Just click on the photo, or on the "Cybelle & kittens" banner at the top of the page.
Click on photo for the latest update
It turns out to have been one of those meaningful coincidences to which Carl Jung assigned the term "syncronicity". Or so it seems after the fact.
Kamehameha Schools (formerly Bishop Estate) in North Carolina? Not something that we expected to find, especially by chance.
We told the travel agent handling the conference Meda attended at Duke University that we wanted to stay over for two days in Raleigh, the capitol. To walk around and get a feel of the place, as we often do. She booked us into the Velvet Cloak Inn, a moderate-priced motel on the main drag, a block from the campus of North Carolina State University, a couple of blocks from Cameron Center, a suburban shopping mall, and about a mile from the state capitol with its excess of statues commemorating the exploits of the Army of the Confederacy.
The Velvet Cloak looks charming in its advertising photos, but it's gotten a bit shabby around the edges. The carpets in the tower, where our room was located, were a number of years past their pull date, giving the rooms and hallways a threadbare appearance.
The Velvet Cloak Inn, Raleigh, VA
But the staff were real nice, the rooms had nice soap, they offered a free shuttle to and from the airport, and the restaurant served up very good food, despite a limited menu. Without a car, and unfamiliar with the area, we ate in there the first night. It was almost empty. In fact we were the only customers through most of our meal. We were talking with the waiter, who said he was from El Salvador. He was excited to tell us that the owners of the hotel are also Hawaiians, as he put it. Names? He didn't know, but he said they were visiting and we might see them at breakfast.After dinner we checked with the front desk. No, they didn't know the owners' names either.
We never did run into the visiting Hawaiians, although we checked at breakfast and in the lobby several times. As it turned out, I should have devoted a bit more effort to locating them. But we did learn a bit more about the hotel. Apparently it is frequented by legislators, lawyers, and lobbyists, as well as visitors to the campus, university groups, and such. At one time, we were told, it's restaurant was the place to eat, but as other restaurants have appeared it has fallen from favor.
We both wondered who the owner might be, and up bubbled the image of Bishop Estate. How unlikely. We kept asking, but no one knew. But as soon as I got home, a quick check of North Carolina corporation records, available online, made the link. First, an expired corporate registration for the Velvet Cloak Inn listed a principal mailing address of 2201 Kalakaua Avenue A500. Turns out that's the administrative office of the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, a Kamehameha Schools subsidiary. Bingo. A further check shows that the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, Inc. is registered to do business in North Carolina at the address of the Velvet Cloak.
So this is one of those mainland investments made by Bishop Estate in the heydays of the former trustees. Given it's political clientele, I wonder if it was part of a subtle lobbying effort, a place to wine and dine key Southern politicians, or plant favors with food and lodging.
Whatever the case, we can now boast of staying in this bit of Hawaii away from home.
I'm told that the Advertiser's labor contracts expire June 9, and that Gannett negotiators are taking a hard line against extending the current contract. One source says they're asking for 11 percent across the board pay cut, blaming the union for supporting the Star-Bulletin in its battle for survival and thus causing the current competitive situation.Burl Burlingame's account of the Honolulu newspaper war says Gannett is demanding concessions by June 9, or else. Burl also has the full text of Mike Fisch's internal memo. Pop over to Burl's page and check it out.
I'm getting reactions to the profile of the Weinberg Foundation which appears in this week's Honolulu Weekly. It's available on the street now, and online next week.
I'm very sorry to report that we lost one of Cybelle's kittens yesterday, apparently to a background infection that didn't present symptoms until it was too late. He died in the early evening. We walked out onto the deck, trying to process the whole situation, and found that the reflections of the setting sun were painting our sky wonderful colors, perhaps welcoming this little cat that hadn't even earned a name yet.
No photos yet because we were dealing with this emergency situation.
When we got home Tuesday night, we noticed that one kitten was less active and having a harder time competing for a working nipple. It was the same kitten with the earlier eye infection. David said all the kittens were nursing while we were gone, and the little guy didn't appear to have any unusual problem. You're always wondering whether you're just being paranoid and hyper sensitive, but by yesterday morning we noticed the kitten's eyes looked funny and he wasn't eating, so we canceled other appointments and headed back to the vet. She saw some things we had missed, diagnosed a background respiratory infection which hadn't been zapped by the earlier antibiotic. Medicating a tiny kitten is apparently a very delicate balance and difficult to do right. She said the kitten would have to be fed by hand and mostly separated from the two other kittens. We returned home with a new supply of milk substitute, prepared to do our best.But things quickly went downhill. He refused all our attempts at feeding. By late afternoon, he was making little wheezing sounds, and this all to quickly became very labored breathing. Not much later, he died. I dug a hole in the yard among some heliconia, and we said good-bye. This was very hard to do.
On the positive side, the survivors, one male and one female, weighed in at 13 ounces or a bit more, and appear to be thriving.
It was a long day, but despite close connections and some new security measures, we made it back to Honolulu just about on schedule last night. On one flight, the captain announced that passengers could not stand in line for the lavatories in the front of the aircraft near the cockpit door due to a security measure "in place today". I'm not sure if that was to be taken literally, but we hadn't seen heard this particular one before. They also announced that the usual curtains used to block the first class section would not be drawn closed, apparently to maintain visibility throughout the aircraft.A bit more information is hitting the rumor mill from Gannett negotiations over at the Advertiser.
Advertiser publisher Mike Fisch sent out a companywide email late Monday telling employees they have to accept wage and benefit rollbacks, citing three factors.
-- The 1990s was a decade of lowered overall earnings because of the recession in Hawaii.-- The past year has been a year of lowered earnings due to discounted ad rates.
-- The advertiser must remain competitive with the Star-Bulletin.
It's Gannett's standard opening move in negotiations, similar to what's been seen here before, but intimidating nonetheless. But staffers with experience in contract negotiations feel they've got the strongest bargaining position in years, with direct competition from the Star-Bulletin raising the potential costs of any sort of work stoppage and therefore undercutting management's incentive to provoke a strike. The Star-Bulletin, of course, is poised to eagerly take advantage of any opportunities created if bargaining goes badly.
If I'm not mistaken, the Advertiser contract expires next month.
I'll be in transit from North Carolina to Honolulu. Sorry, no update until Wednesday morning, when I'll be back in Kaaawa.
Ed Case's gubernatorial campaign tripped at the starting line this weekend with a long unsolicited email. Spam, as it's called. Poor protocol, and a significant political error that probably cost a few votes. Here's one reaction I received:I got this spam from Ed Case tonight; a lot of my friends at UH got it, too. I guess his "fresh approach" includes spamming citizens who never signed-up to receive his campaign literature. I guess he's either desperate or unfamiliar wit netiquette.I wonder if his ISP, LavaNet, will shutdown his account...
Anyway, one strike against Case for Governor...
If you really want to read more about Case, the campaign can be found at www.edcase.com.
I stand corrected (yes, it does happen). Despite what you read here over the weekend, a Libertarian-leaning friend points out that John Fund has reappeared in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, his recent troubles aside.
Sunday was about a perfect day. Record low temperatures, putting the day under 70 degrees. A huge flea market at the Raleigh fair grounds, complete with an area set aside for puppies and kittens, allowing us a vicarious kitten fix 5,000 miles from our own menagerie. A bag of South Carolina peaches, first of the season (or so they said), cost just $3, and turned out to be incredibly sweet and juicy. Maybe the best I've ever eaten. Then several hours at the Raleigh Museum of Art, including lunch and the opening of a special show, and free entry via a reciprocal deal with our membership in the Honolulu Contemporary Museum. All facilitated by a woman we had known 30 years ago, Naomi Quinn, now a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University, who took the day off to run around with us. What a deal!
Raleigh flea market kittens
Oops. I notice a few problems in uploading files from my iBook. Some links to photos may be broken. I might not fix these until I get home in a couple of days. Sorry for the inconvenience.There are rumblings on the grapevine about contract negotiations with Gannett over at the Advertiser. Every round of bargaining starts with generalized posturing, posing demands that obviously can't be met, but Gannett's really laying down the gauntlet this time.
It's rumored Gannett is asking for a 6 percent pay cut in the newsroom and 11 percent everywhere else. They want employees to pay a higher share of the health insurance. They want to designate some or all newsroom employees as professionals, which would make them ineligible for overtime pay. Gannett wants to do away with the no-layoffs provision in the current contract, and also the so-called "evergreen" clause which says if the various parties cannot agree on a new pact by the time the old one expires, the old one will remain in effect.
Letterman did a Top 10 ways to know your cat wants to kill you, inspired by the report out of Nova Scotia of a family routed by their Siamese cat. It's definitely worth a chuckle.
In case you've wondered where we've been, here's a clue. This was one stop on our early morning walk today. A bit different than the view we're accustomed to, but interesting nonetheless.
Lots of statues and signs commemorating people and events of the Confederacy.
I guess it really is the South.
But we're due home soon.
A block from the capitol
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