There was quite a party at the Elk’s Club yesterday afternoon in memory of our friend, Dane Miller, who died earlier this month. Dane would have enjoyed it.

Our friendship with Dane’s wife, Wilma Sur, goes back to our first year in graduate school at UH, where Wilma and I were teaching assistants in the fledgling Ethnic Studies Program. We clicked, and became good friends. Then she moved to the mainland, went to law school, met Dane, and so on. We reconnected years later, and met Dane, when they moved back to Hawaii from Los Angeles sometime in the early 1990s.

We used to gather regularly at the home of retired UH professor, Ann Keppel, who was a friend, colleague, and mentor to both Meda and Wilma. Lots of wine was consumed during those long evenings. After Ann’s death in 2002, the venue moved to Wilma and Dane’s home at the Diamond Head end of Waikiki.

The long and short of all this is that we’re really going to miss Dane and, despite the party atmosphere, we were both feeling feeling the loss as we started the long drive back to Kaaawa.

But on Pali Highway, we were greeted by an intense double rainbow that led the way up the valley towards the tunnels. I would like to think of it as a message from Dane, and it did change our mood.

Life goes on.

Oh, the iPhone photo is by Ms. Meda.