Yesterday started out dark, cloudy, and threatening.

But then it turned into this…

It sure beats the ice and snow covering much of the mainland today!

Instead of ice and show, we have plastic. Most mornings, we take along a couple of bags to pick up trash off the beach. Some is stuff left by thoughtless fishermen, the coffee cups and empty cans, but most is just colorful plastic bits of diverse origin that are washed by the wind and waves. It’s worse when it is windy, as it has been for several days. We might fill our bags two or three times, dumping the contents in the trash cans along the highway before repeating the process. It’s never ending. And, according to this story, it’s just a tiny hint of what’s out there beyond the horizon, estimated at some “3.5 million tons” of floating garbage. But we do what we can every morning, hoping that in the long run it makes some difference. Perhaps a fantasy. Perhaps not.

Okay, it’s Sunday and I can claim justification for feeling a bit lazy. So I’m dipping back into my ancient history file for a few more photos from a moment in the Spring of 1966. I was a freshman at Whitman College and a new member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, home to several island students. It was so long ago that it was “Before Beard”. And the moment was the Delts’ unexpected victory in the college’s annual choral contest.

I wasn’t the only Hawaii kid in the performing group. Others were Dale Bonar, now director of the Maui Coastal Land Trust, and Bob Crowell, now an executive v.p. and investment honcho for Bank of Hawaii, but at that time a veteran of the Kamehameha song contest, and a key player.

Click for a larger version and a couple of additional photos. And apologies to those who tried earlier and got one of those irritating “that page can’t be found” messages.