As I write this, Hawaii is a prime viewing spot for a partial lunar eclipse which is going on right now. Unfortunately, at least in Kaaawa, the moon is hidden behind a pretty thick layer of clouds. Here’s what Bishop Museum had to say about the event:

On February 9 2009 there is a penumbral lunar eclipse. The moon will pass through the outer or penumbral shadow of the earth. This lunar eclipse is visible in Hawai‘i. While we probably won’t see the moon turn a deep copper color on February 9, as we often do during a full lunar eclipse, we should see a distinctive darkening on the northern half of the moon early on February 9. The darkening will start around 2:42 AM HST on February 9 (i.e., stay up late on the evening of February 8, and the eclipse will start in the wee small hours of February 9). The darkest moment of the lunar eclipse will occur around 4:30 AM HST and the eclipse will be over about 6:30 AM as dawn begins to break.

Oh, well, it’s like we’ve got a ringside seat but end up sitting behind a pole.

Union members at the Honolulu Advertiser voted overwhelmingly yesterday in favor of their new contract with includes 10% pay cuts and several other concessions. The most complete report on the vote was by the rival Star-Bulletin today.

“Better to have a job than no job,” said Don Kauleinamoku, a truck driver with the paper for 34 years who voted for the contract. “We got to give a little to survive.”

I guess that about sums it up.

Pretty graphic reporting on the wild fires around Melbourne, Australia. Using the Newseum summary of global newspaper front pages, I checked out the Melbourne Age this morning. There are some remarkable photographs. We have spent time in Melbourne on several occasions and love the area and the city. This is all quite devastating.

While reading The Age, I hit this story on alleged British cooperation with torture of a prisoner held by the U.S. The story concerns information that was blacked out of documents released during court proceedings. Here’s the disturbing part:

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel.

It featured other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, “is very far down the list of things they did”, the official said.

I don’t recall reading anything about this level of torture in any of the accounts in our newspapers, although I could be wrong about that.

I see that global news agencies and national newspapers are reporting a speech in Hawaii on Friday by the president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. It’s getting a lot of attention because it comes in the middle of the Congressional debate on the stimulus bill. But these events seem to fly over the heads of Hawaii media. Too bad. It will only get worse as the state’s biggest newspapers cut back on neighbor island coverage.

No real reason for this informal portrait, which I took yesterday afternoon at a small retirement party put on by our friend and former neighbor. Harold has been one of his employees on and off over a couple of decades. He worked on our house back nearly 20 years ago. The photo was taken with my new Canon G10, and I thought the pic shows off some of its capabilities, for those who are interested.

And so it goes on this Monday morning.