July 2, 2005 - Saturday

Just a week ago, Honolulu Magazine editor John Heckathorn appeared to be riding high. He served as co-emcee of the presentation of awards in the annual Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism competition, and watched his magazine dominate in its own category and claim several first place awards in the "open print" category against all comers, including one for his own "Dining" column, which judges described as "Funny, witty, sharp".

But in a surprising turn of events yesterday, it was announced that Heckathorn has resigned at the request of top officials of PacificBasin Communications, supposedly because there is an as yet unannounced "new vision" for the publication.

I'm told most of the company employees were devastated to hear the news, and some were moved to tears.

It will be quite interesting to hear the more of the story behind this move.

Regarding the flap over the botched rail tax veto message, I'm told the main reason legislators are looking at legal technicalities is that they don't believe they have the votes in the house to override a veto.

One senator provided this assessment:

FYI.  the transit bill HB1309 appears to not have enough votes in the house to override a veto.  Eleven democrats voted no (Berg, Carroll, Chong, Green, Hiraki, Luke, Nishimoto, Saiki, Tanaka, Wakai, Waters) along with eight republicans (Finnegan, Halford, Marumoto, Meyer, Moses, Pine, Stonebraker, Thielen). If you count the other two republicans as voting against an override (Fox and Ching), plus add Takai who cannot vote, there would be a total of 22 votes. That’s 4 more than is needed to block an override (18 is needed to block, since 34 is 2/3rds of of 51).

For proponents of the measure, that's sobering math. However, pushing a multi-billion dollar and somewhat controversial project forward on the basis of technicalities seems to me to be a mistake. Again, I do appreciate Mayor Hannemann's approach on this--we need it, people deserve it, Lingle says she supports it, work it out. The Governor has to worry about a backlash from her own supporters if she kills the bill--and any realistic hopes of a rail transit system--by pushing an unworkable county collection plan.

We've made friends with a couple of "new" dogs in the past week or two, and that's prompted another round of "morning dogs" photos. Just click on the happy duo for more.

July 1, 2005 - Friday

Washington's Supreme Court ruled yesterday in favor of the Seattle Times, a move widely seen as potentially determining the fate of the city's newspapers. A story in today's Los Angeles Times adds the context of Hearst's takeover of similar JOAs in San Francisco and San Antonio.

A reader passed on this interesting page from the Newseum, which gives a quick look at the front pages of newspapers around the world. Today it offers up 403 front pages from 44 countries.

All the bickering over whether or not Gov. Lingle's transit tax veto notice is legal seems silly and trivializes the underlying transit issue. It seems to me that the legislature has to assume that it is legal and proceed accordingly. If she exercises her veto, they should consider an override, and quit debating the ultimate legal meaning of the now much publicized typo. Don't quibble about the small stuff, deal with the issue. At this point, I agree that a rail system would make Honolulu a more livable city in the long run even if its not a magic bullet against traffic congestion, and will benefit us on the windward side indirectly by concentrating growth along its leeward route. So I'm afraid that I'm with Mayor Mufi again. Let's get on with it.

I did manage to get update Kaaawa News again this week. You can check out the latest at www.kaaawa.net.

That's Ms. Wally in my lap, and she's wilder than she looks. She's determined to hold her ground, with claw and tooth if necessary. My one-handed camera fiddling was not appreciated, but I did manage to at least get this shot of the occasion. Click for a larger version.

June 30, 2005 - Thursday

Contract negotiations at the San Francisco Chronicle are expected to continue past tonight's expiration of the existing labor pact, according to a story this morning. Both sides say that despite projected cutbacks and job losses, no strike is expected.

And in Seattle, the future of the city's two newspapers could be decided by a state Supreme Court ruling expected to be issued today, according to a story in today's Post-Intelligencer.

Stories about the debate over attendance at the National Association of Counties meeting in Honolulu continue to appear in local newspapers across the country, such as these from Florida and Arkansas. At this point, what is most surprising to me is the lack of any visible public relations response from Hawaii convention or tournism officialdom, which I would have expected to be aggressively providing cover for the beleagered county officials. Instead, Hawaii's viewpoint is largely absent from the debate. Not good for the long-term convention business, I would think.

Imagine my surprise when I finally got around to picking up a scrap of paper that had been blowing around our garage in Kaaawa, only to discover it was a historic document--an original ticket to the University High School graduation ceremony on June 5, 1965! No, that's not a typo. 1965. I'd been sorting through boxes of old stuff, and apparently this one dropped out unnoticed. Lucky it didn't just blow away.

But the find then send me digging for an accompanying photo, which I found among randomly scattered bits and pieces of the past. That's my mother greeting me after the graduation ceremony which was 40 years ago this month. As usual, just click for larger versions of the photos.

June 29, 2005 - Wednesday

Sorry for today's tardiness. I was unable to connect to the site before our early walk, so here it is, 6:59 and one sunrise later, and I'm trying again.

I've got to give faculty union leader and lobbyist, John Radcliffe, credit for coming up with this most appropriate cap to the discussions of Sears.

In honor of your paean to Sears---This dialog from Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? where UEM wanted a distributor cap and some pomade---

Pomade Vendor: I can get the part from Bristol. It'll take two weeks, here's your pomade.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Two weeks? That don't do me no good.
Pomade Vendor: Nearest Ford auto man's Bristol.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Hold on, I don't want this pomade. I want Dapper Dan.
Pomade Vendor: I don't carry Dapper Dan, I carry Fop.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, I don't want Fop, goddamn it! I'm a Dapper Dan man!
Pomade Vendor: Watch your language, young feller, this is a public market. Now if you want Dapper Dan, I can order it for you, have it in a couple of weeks.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!

Yup, and according to Sears at Windward Mall, Pearl City is two weeks away. Geographical oddity is right.

Friends of Marty and Wendy McClain gathered last night for a blessing of the new quarters for McClain Auctions, in the downtown space formerly occupied by the Liberty House Penthouse. They're moving the whole operation to the One North King Street location from their present site on Halekauwila as soon as renovations are complete.

June 28, 2005 - Tuesday

My initial effort yesterday to "fix" this page just made matters worse, coaxing this observaton from one reader:

The picture loads to the left shifting all your writing to the right (irony too).

Hopefully I managed to take care of that rightward tilt in short order.

Don't miss the story by Kristen Consillio in this weeks Pacific Business News which reports on the university's failure to deliver on the fundraising promises of former president Evan Dobelle for the new medical school. Dobelle, you'll recall, repeatedly promised legislators that if they funded the first $150 million of construction for the medical school, UH would then match that with outside funding to complete the project. Now university administrators say nothing has been done, no money has been raised, such promises were simply pulled "out of thin air", and the UH Foundation was never even asked to seek funds for this purpose, Consillio reports.

You've got to wonder whether there's any personal liability here on the part of the guy who propelled the state into such a huge financial commitment based on fantasy fundraising projections covered by apparent lies.

These are staggering admissions, and PBN gets credit for digging and beating the dailies to the important details. It seems that Jim Kelly is doing a good job of motivating staff over there at the business weekly.

Yesterday's story of our experience in Sears brought a couple of other consumer tales:

We had a battery problem in one of our cars, and so we stopped at WW Sears to get a new one. We wandered around the mall while they replaced it. When we returned, the Sears automotive guy puished us for an extended service contract on the battery they had installed -- no thanks -- and then he said they had done an extensive diagnostic on the car's electrical system, and he said there was something seriously wrong with it, that we might have trouble starting the car thanks to the electrical problem.

The car started up, but the next morning, it was dead. Imagine my surprise when I opened the hood to jump it and discovered that the old battery was still in place.

Stewaming, I dropped it off at Sears Ala Moana, showed them the receipt from the night before, explained that we had been hoodwinked by the WW store. Chagrined, they did the work in record time -- discovering no electrical problems, BTW -- and when I picked it up, the head mechanic walked me ocver to the car, opened the hood and showed me the new battery.

Calls to the WW Sears store to complain were even more unsatisfying. Apparently no one is in charge over there. So, caveat emptor.

The weird thing is that my receipt from WW Sears contained a long checklist of tests supposedly performed on my car -- or somebody's car!

I was more pissed at the lack of response from Sears management than from the fraud in Automotive, which have been simple stupidity.

Now that sounds like a more serious problem than bad service or poor inventory control.

State records show Sears paid a $3,500 fine and $361 in restitution in 2002 for failure to make proper automotive repairs and several other violations. Back more than a decade ago, Sears settled national charges of consumer fraud, and charges of fraud by Sears automotive departments continue to be aired on the mainland. So there could be more to this story...too bad that consumer reporting is considering biting the hand that feeds the daily papers.

Another consumer story, not as radical but still of interest, came from another reader:

My experiences at Sears have been similar at the Ala Moana store.

I found minimal interest in my needs when I aksed for a lower end TV. A few weeks after I bought it and had a question about something I could not find in the manual, I went back to the store to ask the same sales clerk who sold it to me.

He barely looked at me and said "check the manual."
They really don't care there.

Best place for sales assistance and followups is Circuit City. I find all of the sales clerks there very interested in my needs, and they will lead you to the most appropriate item, whether it's higher or lower end.

I avoid CompuUSA because of the attitude of the sales staff. Large selection of computers but just a very strong inidcation that the customer is merely a target for a sale. Also the long, slow checkout lines are exasperating.

And yes the emphasis on extended warranty drives you nuts, doesn't it? Sears and CompUSA overdo it on this point.

Enough for now. Time to get ready for the sunrise.

June 27, 2005 - Monday

[Technical note: I think I fixed the "previous week" link which has been stuck back on June 11 for a while. The "archive" of prior entries is also up to date, or should be. And please let me know if the top of the page summer season photo has still gone walkabout. My first attempt to "fix" this one resulted in a major screw-up of the page. Hopefully the next effort will do the trick. Sorry for the inconvenience.]

We walked into Sears at Windward Mall yesterday, a brightly redesigned store filled with displayed merchandise of all kinds. A facade, we discovered. We were in search of a smallish television to replace the one in our bedroom which has suddenly made a transition to black and white, and were too lazy to head for Costco or into town.

In Sears, you can see the television section from across the store because of the behemoths that appear about the size of an old drive-in movie screen. Of course, we walked right past most of them without pausing, past the $5,000 models, and the $2,000 models, and beyond the $1,000 models, past the plasma screens and thin screens and projection models and finally found the row with the simple 19 and 20 inch televisions, just about the time that a young salesman caught up with us. We explained our minimal needs. He pointed in a desultory fashion to a few models starting at $109 on the low end and up to around $250 on the high end. Hard to get excited by these "dry toast-no butter" offerings.

He recommended an extended warranty. "These (sweeping hand refers to the small televisions we've been asking about) don't last very long."

But don't they some with a warranty? Well, yes, parts and labor, but, he adds, "it doesn't cover shipping and other costs." Shipping?

Then Meda asks the critical question: "Do you have any of these in stock?" She points to three different models across the low price range, figuring they might not all be available.

He retreats, returns with a clipboard. "Uh, no..(still looking down the list)...no...no, we don't have any of those." None. Nada.

But he suggested there might be one available "at the warehouse, if you happen to be in Pearl City." Can't you have one delivered here, we ask. "Yes, but that will take two weeks," he replies, by now kissing off all hopes of a sale.

We were already laughing our way to the door talking over this little lesson in life. Lots of glamour and the illusion of choice, but really, when you get down to it, there's just not all that much available if you won't participate in the spectacle.

So it goes.

It took crucial seconds to recognize the photo opportunity in the kitchen the other night, additional time to lay hands on a camera, and then it had the wrong lens, but you can still get an idea of the craziness of feeding nine cats in the resulting photo. Okay, it only caught six of the nine. But you get the idea. So just click on the photo for this week's batch of Kaaawa cats.

evening meal-click for more

June 26, 2005 - Sunday

Good writing is always a joy, and today's Washington Post features a fine bit of writing by David Montgomery, a sensitive look at the life of a 625-pound man. Don't miss it.

Speaking of writing, the SPJ Excellence in Journalism Awards were presented on Friday evening by SPJ's Hawaii chapter, with judging by journalists in Oregon and Cincinnati. The Star-Bulletin did well, as did PBN, Honolulu Magazine, and Environment Hawaii, a monthly newsletter. S-B photography F.L. Morris took two firsts.

One surprise--no sign of Advertiser investigative reporter Jim Dooley in the mix this year. Another surprise: In the "Television" category, there were no awards for government or business reporting, and no first place awarded for general news/enterprise reporting.

In any case, congratulations to all.

And the New York Times has an interesting piece today about the local newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas, and what lessons it might teach about the future of news delivery.

I'm usually looking up and out when we're walking at dawn, but the other morning I happened to look down instead. The sand contained a record of those who had passed, human and canine. Sort of a temporary hieroglyphic telling its tale until the tide, or a wave, washed the sands clean again.

click for larger photo

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