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July 31, 2004 - Saturday
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Mr. George
1997-2004
George is gone. We got the terrible news when we got home Friday afternoon. He somehow jumped down off the wall separating his house from the park next door, then apparently wandered onto the road and was hit. It happened soon after we had stopped to say hello and go through the biscuit ritual with both Lucy & George. He really was a wonderful little dog and this is a very sad morning.
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July 30, 2004 - Friday
Okay, okay. I admit it. This reader's comment is absolutely correct:
Ian, unless you're a vegetarian, you're displaying a kind of hypocrisy about food. Where do you think the stuff on your dinner table comes from? Hauling a fish out of the water is more humane than a slaughterhouse. (Bad sentence structure, I just woke up.) So is cockfighting, for that matter!
Guilty as charged. But I still don't like the fish torture, especially when for "fun" or "sport". And perhaps cockfighting is "more humane than a slaughterhouse", as the reader suggests, but to make it a sport demeans the human participants in a significant way, in my view at least.
So. The Dems' convention is over. It turned me off, the saluting and militarist posturing and praise of war, all packaged as a spectacle with all the shock and awe value that modern entertainment technology can deliver. It was obviously seen as politically necessary, both to capture those last wavering voters and to capitalize on the defection of a big chunk of the military leadership who are openly and pretty boldly opposing the neo-con camp. But the tone of much of the convention was remarkably counter to the broad sentiment of today's Democrats, which I would judge as "anti-militarism" although perhaps not anti-military. I imagine it effectively drove a lot of younger voters to Ralph Nader's campaign. If I weren't so firmly in the "Uproot Bush" camp I'd be past Nader and over to the anarchist "don't vote, it only encourages them."
Paul Krugman's column in today's New York Times makes some interesting observations on campaign reporting.
The Dobelle settlement is on the record. He got less than his contract would have paid, although he still walks off a millionaire. But he gives up his claim to tenure, loses the teaching position and the "incentive fund". The Regents withdraw the "for cause" label and Dobelle drops any claims that they acted improperly. And details of his administration remain secret, for now at least. But what's this "research" thing that we'll pay him for over the next two years? It's not like he's ever had an active research or publishing agenda. And what happened to his professed love of teaching? I'm with the UHPA--this bargaining with faculty positions is one of the more troubling aspects of the deal.
July 29, 2004 - Thursday
| Appearances can be deceiving. This looks like a calm morning on the beach in Kaaawa, but just a minute before it was the scene of a rescue. As we were walking down the beach yesterday morning, a fisherman was just starting to reel in a catch. |
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Frankly, we try to avoid these death scenes so started to just try to slip past, but then I noticed it wasn't a fish. It was a turtle, and every few seconds a flipper would splash and a turtle head appear as it tried to break free. The fisherman was trying to pull it in gently, and slowly hauled it near the shore. As Meda continued down the beach, I stopped to help, quickly taking off my shoes and wading in to grab Mr. Turtle. He was moderate size, with a shell perhaps 18-20 inches long, and he was not happy. But he was extremely lucky, as the hook had just snagged a bit of the surface of the very thick skin under the left front flipper and wasn't down into muscle, but the skin was so tough that it was hard to get to hook out. While I knelt in the water holding the turtle, the guy ran for a pair of pliers and, very quickly, the hook was out and Mr. Turtle was swimming away as fast as he could.
My panic moment was realizing that my camera was shoved into the pocket of my shorts, but luckily it hadn't been submerged. It was, though, too late for a photo of the rescued turtle. So I settled for the misleading photo of a calm Kaaawa summer dawn.
July 28, 2004 - Wednesday
I've been waiting for a follow-up to Curtis Lum's story in the Advertiser (July 10) about the lawsuit by a condominium owners association against a company owned by attorney and former judge Richard Lee. Lee has also run unsuccessfully for a City Council seat and for trustee of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
The lawsuit featured in Lum's story was filed in an attempt to block nightclub-type activities on the top floors of Century Center, a mixed residential-commercial condominium located on the corner of Kalakaua and Kapiolani, across from the convention center and Hard Rock Cafe.
Nu-u Corporation, in which Lee is the sole registered officer, bought one of the penthouse apartments late last year, and has an as yet undisclosed agreement with mainland owners to make use of the other. Although restricted by the condominium declaration to residential or office use, Lee's company began offering entertainment and drinks in a nightclub atmosphere early this year, causing ongoing headaches for the rest of the building.
The nightclub offerings have drawn flak not only from inside Century Center but from the surrounding neighborhood. Police have received complaints about noise from the rooftop parties from residents several blocks away, who have now taken their concerns to the McCully Neighborhood Board and to city officials.
I'm watching the case closely because I've got a personal interest...I'm currently the president of the Century Center owners association. And I've been waiting for reporting on the rest of the story.
For example, Lum reported that the Liquor Commission had turned down Lee's last request for a one-night "special" liquor license. But he didn't report that two days after the Liquor Commission's action, cases of wine and beer were carried upstairs to Lee's penthouse units and served during an evening event in which young people were observed leaving the penthouse with drinks.
While this legal case grinds forward, Lee is facing other serious financial problems. His company, Nu-u Corp., has failed to pay condo maintenance fees and faces a separate foreclosure suit by Century Center. Bank of Hawaii recently filed another foreclosure action on a separate Lee-owned property, and yet another lawsuit seeks to collect some $30,000 owed by Lee for yellow pages advertising for his law office. Meanwhile, attorneys who won a large malpractice judgement against Lee last year are still trying to collect, and won a court order blocking Lee or Nu-u Corp from transferring any assets to avoid the collection process.
Meanwhile, we're hearing as yet unconfirmed rumors of confidential proceedings by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel related to Lee's law practice.
The Star-Bulletin's coverage, by the way, has been limited to a glowing feature story on Lee's activities that ran back in March. Ouch.
July 27, 2004 - Tuesday
I was surprised to see a note from Big Island resident on the HawaiiThreads media forum indicating that the Star-Bulletin won't even be available via mail. Can this be true? No more mail subscriptions to the mainland or neighbor islands? Can anyone confirm or deny?
Thanks to Ryan Ozawa, webmaster of HawaiiNews.com, for pointing me to The Northwest Voice, an experiment in "open source journalism" in Bakersfield, of all places. The project was launched by the Bakersfield Californian, an independent family-owned newspaper. It's sort of public access cable gone print, but with packaging by professionals. An interview with the editor of Northwest Voice offers additional background.
I'm feeling a bit brain dead this morning. We're several days into the demolition phase of a home remodeling project, which involves transforming the open garage under our house into useable space, and then adding a new garage. Before building comes destruction, and that's where we are right now. The only saving grace is that the inside of our current living space should be untouched, but everything outside is already torn up, either directly or indirectly.
No, this is not do-it-yourself. My extent of familiarity with tools ends with the screwdrivers in my handy computer fix-it kit. The work is being done by a crew under the direction of our friend and contractor Chris Emerson of The Renovators.
It's been a shock for the cats. The majority of them now disappear into the bushes when the crew arrives at 7 a.m., then quickly reappear when the noise stops mid-afternoon. It's only been a few days, but the cats are both nervous and energized. Their innate curiosity makes all the daily changes interesting. They spend hours each night processing the changes. I can't tell if they are searching for familiar smells or creating new mental maps of the changing homescape. I'm sure the process so far has been harder on us than on the cats, despite the moments of panic when their territory was first invaded without suitable warning to them.
Hopefully I'll soon find myself adjusting as well as the cats have.
July 26, 2004 - Monday
| Jim Albertini sent along a this photo of a few of about 50 people who protested the display of Army Stryker vehicles at Hilo Airport yesterday. The demonstrators included Hawaiian sovereignty and environmental activists, peace workers like Albertini, and a few political candidates. |
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I notice that the Advertiser has a profile of KITV reporter Denby Fawcett, although their broadcast "partner" is NBC affiliate KHNL, so at least the relationship didn't impact a news choice this time around.
If you haven't been there for a while, stop by the "media patrol" at Cursur.org for a wide range of nuggets you'll be sure to appreciate.
And I still haven't seen much attention to the issue of children imprisoned by the U.S. in Iraq, which was discussed by European media earlier this month.
I've had virtually no response to my cover story in this week's Honolulu Weekly which assesses the push for publicly funded elections during the last legislative session. Zip. Much more silence than normal. Perhaps it's true that no one is interested in elections or the legislature, or maybe Weekly readers want more rhetoric and less analysis. Or maybe it's just summer and hot and no one's into reading. Or...The story won't be available online until later this week, for folks without access to the Weekly.
July 25, 2004 - Sunday
I caught the 6 p.m. news on KGMB last night, and was struck that the story on an Army public relations event which displayed the new Stryker combat vehicles in Waimea failed to even mention the active protest movement against their deployment, which has cited environmental, cultural, and political concerns. Some of these were noted in a press release distributed last week. This context deserved at least a mention.
Barron's Online took a very sobering look at the drift from reading newspapers to using the Internet, predicting a continuing decline in the print media. A "long goodbye" for the newspaper industry?
Hawaii was not among the top "most digitally advanced" state governments identified by the Center for Digital Government. Leading the pack was Michigan which is developing innovative online services.
| We're gaining a bit of time in the morning as the sun is now rising after 6 a.m., giving us a few more minutes to reach the beach. But it's been hot and humid, even in the early morning, with nearly three months of hot weather still ahead. |
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