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May 3, 2003 - Saturday
| Dozens of Kaaawa residents held anti-drug signs in several spots along Kamehameha Highway yesterday afternoon, part of a larger protest involving people of all ages that stretched along this entire segment of the windward coast, from Kahaluu though the smaller communities of Waikane, Kaaawa, Punaluu, Hauula, then out to Laie and Kahuku, and around to the North Shore. There were folks with signs in a least three spots in Kaaawa alone. It was a major community event. |
Click here for photos of the Kaaawa portion of this extended demonstration. |
It's the front page headline in today's Honolulu Advertiser, but it doesn't appear to have even merited a mention in the Star-Bulletin, a major mistake, in my view. Folks in the Advertiser newsroom must be gloating this morning.
And demonstrations here in the country are a bit different. I was with a small group on one end of Kaaawa when a car pulled up and the passenger handed out orchid leis for everyone. A while later, a truck stopped a few feet away, a man hopped out and shared small plates of food, courtesy of the Queen Liliuokalani Children's Center up the coast in Punaluu. Country style.
Here's a recent Attorney General opinion concluding that the Legislative Auditor has the authority to audit the PEG access providers set up to administer public, education, and government programming pursuant to the franchise agreements with the state's cable television companies (now a monopoly with a single cable company). Although the access organizations are set up as nonprofit groups, the AG, following an earlier opinion by the Office of Information Practices, concludes that they were established by the state and use public funds, and are therefore fair game for the auditor.
It's another opinion that could impact other quasi-public organizations such as the University of Hawaii Foundation, which will eventually have to open its books for public inspection.
Finally, a little housekeeping: As promised earlier in the week, here's a link to the little item about the demise of Common Cause/Hawaii from the current Honolulu Weekly.
May 2, 2003 - Friday
UH's Paul Costello sent this reply to his mention in yesterday's entry:
My comment about chicken feed was not in the context of $82,000 for the logo.
My comment pertained to the vast amount of money that our competitors spend on marketing and advertising. I said that our budget is chicken feed compared to what others spend to promote their universities. For instance, HPU spends $1.2 million in Hawaii alone on advertising. I can't even imagine what they spend on the mainland and internationally but I assume their total marketing budget is nearly $3 or $4 million and they have 8,000 students and one campus.
That's the context of my remark.
He's right about marketing, as it is frustrating to watch HPU depicted as "The University" in videos shown on all United Airlines flights to Hawaii.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian provided this description of last weekend's hearing on the FCC's proposed rules changes that would allow further concentration of media ownership.
I just spent some time visiting the Campaign Finance Institute's web site, which features a link to a recent NPR interview focusing on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act and the court challenge to it.
Pet lovers, proceed with caution. This story from the Straits Times was forwarded to me yesterday by Colin Lind in New Zealand. It describes China's approach to containing SARS: "In Beijing, police are seizing pets from the homes of Sars patients and killing the furry beasts to prevent them from spreading the flu- like Sars virus to humans."
We were watching television Wednesday evening when a mouse or small rat emerged from behind the television and tried to find an escape route. It retreated after seeing us. Apparently it was carried in by one of the cats and managed to escape, and is hiding back among the cables or something. So far, we haven't seen it again, and haven't seen cats hunting back there. So we'll just have to wait and see. It's just one of the joys of in-and-out cats. They are always bringing gifts.
May 1, 2003 - Thursday
UH administrators cut their losses yesterday by withdrawing the two proposed new logos and heading back to the drawing boards.
One comment by UH VP Paul Costello has faculty choking. Speaking in defense of the $82,000 cost of the design process, Costello was quoted as saying: "We're talking about chicken feed here."
But according to the latest AAUP faculty salary survey, published earlier this year, most faculty in the UH system, even at the flagship Manoa campus, apparently work for less than chicken feed since they earn well below $82,000.
Don't miss the flap over KHON anchor Joe Moore's current stage production, as recounted in yesterday's Advertiser.
Did you notice the AP story in yesterday's Star-Bulletin about former Hawaii prep football player Tamotu "Junior" Tagoai being suspended from his starting position at Nebraska?
He made headlines at St. Louis high school several years ago for his off-the-field behavior as well. Sports writer Pat Bigold followed the controversy, producing a series of excellent stories. But Pat caught hell for criticizing the St. Louis football program and eventually had to leave a lot unpublished. Interestingly, the S-B carried yesterday's AP story without any reference to Tagoai's earlier problems or the Bulletin's own coverage.
April 30, 2003 - Wednesday
| It's Duke's first birthday! Happy Birthday, Mr. Duke.
Click on his picture for a visual recap of his transition from a white kitten to a handsome blue-eyed cat.
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Yesterday wasn't a particularly good day. I was swept up in the fog of morning and duly reported that my sister and cousin live in the shadow of Yellowstone, although after a cup of coffee I would have known the obvious--it's the other Y place, Yosemite.
My sister, Bonnie, gently pointed out my error:
I was just thinking about our 1961 visits to Yosemite and Yellowstone. Yosemite is where Mother made a fuss at the desk because she had ordered a cabin in the woods and got instead a room in the lodge with a real bathroom. Yellowstone is where we tried to burn down our cabin in the woods, and where it snowed!
Then this whole site went down for hours when the server at HostRocket.com required emergency surgery.
I've got a brief story in today's Honolulu Weekly on the demise of Common Cause/Hawaii. It seems the local chapter was decertified by the national organization two years ago, but continued to act without authorization until late last year. It's a sad situation for what has been one of the state's premier public interest lobbying groups. I'll provide a link as soon as I can.
And here's more on FCC chairman Michael Powell's move to allow newspapers to own television stations, as reported by the Seattle Times. As one local observer notes: "The irony being that our effort to get Emmis to divest one of the stations will make it easier for one or both of the daily newspapers to acquire one or more of the top four Hawaii TV stations! Emmis will make out with big profits and we'll have a different kind of media consolidation..."
April 29, 2003 - Tuesday
In a lecture Monday, USA Today's Washington bureau chief Susan Page called the Bush White House the "most closed of any Presidency I've covered," and noted Bush has held fewer press conferences of any modern president.
Editor & Publisher tells of a reporter at the Hartford Courant ordered to shut down a private web log, www.denishorgan.com. Sounds familiar, I'm afraid.
Star-Bulletin columnist Dave Donnellly added this postcript to his comments on the proposed new UH logo:
I also got an email from Paul Costello, re my comment one design should be named for him and the other for someone named Abbott. He wrote, "I prefer 'Elvis.'"
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Do take a minute to check out marknouillan.com, which describes itself as the official web site of fine-art landscape photographer Mark Nouillan.
Nouillan is a photographer from Scotland, and a couple of years ago he and his wife sold their home in Glasgow and moved to California to be near Yosemite, one of the places for landscape photography.
Oh, he's married to one of my Scottish cousins, and they've moved in to Groveland, the tiny town where my sister lives.
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photo by Mark Nouillan
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April 28, 2003 - Monday
It looks like the Seattle Joint Operation Agreement between the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer is heading to court. The P-I reports today that it will be filing a lawsuit to block the Times from ending the JOA. Echoes of the Star-Bulletin's survival struggle.
There's at least one online petition circulating that calls on the UH Board of Regents to reject the proposed new system logo. It states, in part:
"It is with a sense of duty that we hereby request a rejection of the new proposed logos and return to the old logo which is well-loved and has served us with dignity and distinction. "
Nearly 400 people had signed it when I checked it out a few minutes ago.
This nice note came in from sunny B.C. from the sister of an occasional correspondent:
hello from Summerland in British Columbia,,, I am the sister of Anna from Edmonton,, my name is Carollyne, and Anna is here visiting and she just told me of your site and I had to read it. so enjoyed the story of Cybill, so sorry she is gone, been there a few times myself, as I also love the feline species.... Will check your site on occasion for more news. Nice to "meet" other kitty-lovers,,,,bye for now
Carollyne R.
April 27, 2003 - Sunday
Honolulu writer Alex Salkever, who usually focuses on technology issues, had a story on Hawaiian reparations in the Christian Science Monitor a few days ago.
The head of BBC has blasted "gung-ho" American news coverage of the war in Iraq and warned against increased U.S. corporate ownership of British media.
I'm not sure what kind of recruitment effort was done up there in Manoa, but the finalists for the position of UH President Dobelle's "chief of staff" have been announced. They are Sam Callejo, who was former Gov. Ben Cayetano's chief of staff, and Lynn Anzai, a corporate attorney and wife of Cayetano's Attorney General and long-time political associate, Earl Anzai.
And do we really need this newly created position of presidential chief of staff, another of Dobelle's richly salaried administrative posts?
The University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, the faculty union, questioned the newly created position in comments on Dobelle's administrative "reorganization" last year:
The authority of the Chief of Staff has been unclear, since the office was created; under the proposed reorganization this position will have no line authority or delegated responsibilities for any of the functions found under the other Vice Presidents. We understand your need to have just ³two points of contact,² and we suggest that the Vice-Presidents for Academic Affairs and Administration [Footnote :As we pointed out at our meeting, we believe that the Director of Capital Improvements should be under the Vice President for Administration, even if you decide to give that person direct access to you for the time being .] could serve in this capacity.
Of course, the director of capital improvements referred to in this comment was none other than Sam Callejo. Small world.
Thanks to Pat Bigold for passing along this Jimmy Breslin Newsday column on John Ashcroft's continuing madness.
| We unfolded the sofa in my office and slept in town on Friday night after a late evening with friends, then were up early Saturday for a walk over to Ala Moana Park.
I'm continually impressed by the art deco architecture throughout the park, a continuing tribute to Honolulu's earlier park planners. Wouldn't it be nice if we still built public projects to these high aesthetic standards?
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