Via hapa hale: “la-based photographer gray malin started the new year by booking a helicopter to fly over poipu beach where he captured aerial shots of the island’s turquoise blue waters dotted with happy beachgoers.”
"(To be a tourist) is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing."
—
David Foster Wallace in the essay Consider the Lobster (via Treehugger). I’m still processing the book I read on the moralization of tourism (eco! sustainable! community!) but the truth is tourists do confront in “transaction after transaction” the bald naked fact that we are walking wallets. That is our desired role by nearly all the people we meet. The rush to sign up for community-supported tourism is the desire to mediate this market exchange with the signs & signifiers of friendship and moral value.
Does anyone think Hawaii is better or realer because of tourism? Or is tourism just the source of the dollars to make Hawaii better and realer?
Children’s Literature Hawaii Book Sale http://bit.ly/Kf5Xhk
Help support the CLH Biennial Conference with this book sale at UH Manoa!
Patsy Mink, Author of Title IX, Hawaii state elected official.
A woman who makes me proud to be a woman, proud to be from Hawaii, and proud of my heritage.
(via newwavefeminism)
Visible from space: Hawaiian vog from Kilauea which has been erupting continuously since 1983. This image, taken by the crew of Space Shuttle Atlantis (after completing the capture of the Hubble Space Telescope), shows the volcanic plumes from Kilauea rising up from Halemau Crater and along the coastline from lava flows entering the ocean from the East rift zone. (Image Courtesy NASA)
Trade is King
From the refinery project:
“the refinery project is stoked to introduce a program we dubbed “trade is king”. for our upcoming workshop sessions, if you have a trade or cash+trade combination, just email me at lan@dancewithlions.com. i’ll notify you within 48 hours of request if i think it seems reasonable. it can be anything from a massage session, auto repair, haircut, piece of art, or even a poem… it’s up to you!
coming up, i will be hosting two “dinner with photoshop” sessions. join me for a night of dinner, fun, and learning all-in-one! i’ll cook you up a nice organic meal paired with a glass of wine or beer (by donation & we will be checking id), and just sit back while i show you some secrets of the trade. i have been employed by adobe systems, the creator of photoshop, for close to 6 years as a project lead, quality engineer, and user interface designer. i’ve also taught many different digital imaging classes for colleges and non-profits.”
Fun. Barter & photoshop & food. Now for the Honolulu folks to be inspired to join the barter economy. My skills are… uh, I read real fast? I also clean-up nicely and can accompany you to Korean restaurants and order all the non-mainstream menu items for you in Korean in a convincing fashion.
Hawaii’s Food Situation
From the August 10, 1942 issue of the Far Eastern Survey:
For example, in the period 1935-39 the Territory imported nearly three-fourths of its food calories. Practically all cereals, cooking fats, butter and evaporated milk were imported, and from one-half to two-thirds of the fruits and nuts, fish, meat and cheese, and eggs. Local production of vegetables about equalled imports. Local output substantially exceeded imports only in the case of sugars and syrups and fresh milk. Actually, dependence upon imports was heavier than these figures suggest, for local production of some meat and much or most of the eggs and fresh milk depended upon imported feed.
After mid-March, shortages of important staples began to be felt. Many housewives in Honolulu were unable to purchase fresh or frozen beef, poultry or lamb, and very little pork was available. Retail stores lacked butter or margarine; there was hardly a fish to be seen in the former great markets. There were no mainland eggs, no peanut butter, no packaged cheese, no baking soda, no onions-worst of all, perhaps, no chewing gum or candy. There were no imported fruits or vegetables. Yet there was no general food shortage; canned meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables were freely available, and there were plentiful supplies of rice and bread, and of local potatoes, bananas, papayas, and avocados. Lack of fresh meat and of butter was the most disturbing aspect of the situation.
Naked Cow Dairy is Oahu’s only on-island source of butter and cheese.
I just reread Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things and was struck by how the interviewee above, like many people, is attached to seemingly useless junk as a way of external memory storage. Her collection of movie theater soda cups is her memory of films shared and seen with her husband. The fear of forgetting or erasure is powerful, imbuing even the most insignificant scraps of paper with meaning. (Don’t ask me about my cardboard boxes full of college lecture notes!)
Hawaii friends say that hoarding tendencies are amplified here by memories of the 3-month-long shipping strike in the 1970s and general ambient Asian/local Japanese thriftiness (see Kam Swap Meet and the popularity of church rummage sales).
