Friendlies

I hope there are some out there both here and elsewhere. Let me bring you up to date, new readers and responders who don’t live in Hawaii or on Kauai. First of all I am a former Editor and columnist, a homegrown actress-pretty good one, too-an addictive writer to the Forum, the letter writing page in the Garden Island newspaper , a secular humanist, a boat rocker, a tail tweaker  and a galloping octogenarian gadfly. You can go in your search in the Garden Island, which is a pretty neat little hometown rag, with some pretty fine writers and editors. Find the opinion button, read the letters, then punch discussion site and tune into the ‘soul’ of Kauai.

The very lively, sometimes fierce and nasty, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, posts are truly the soul of this island and its people. Hawaii is a blue state, at least sometimes I think so. Economically we’re falling off the end of the world. We’ve lost those waving fields of tall green grass, tourism is down the drain, as is the construction industry. Our largest employer is the military. Many Hawaiians think, quite truthfully, that we are an occupied territory and, of course, Hawaii was-literally-stolen by the missionaries with the help of the US marines and the big time sugar barons who gobbled up the land; but that was a long time ago. My husband used to say, “Yeah? Well I didn’t steal any land and I really do not see Uncle giving it back to the natives.” ‘Course he had the military mindset, but I agree.

I’ll tell you this, though, we’ve sure made a mess of it. Still, it’s the most delightful chain of islands lying at anchor in anybody’s deep blue sea. And what I can do is share with you this beautiful place, and its people, the good and the bad and the ugly. I can get you a ring- side seat to the best black and white fights on the written page, even some spicey commentaries. I can get you to places you may love to be, into places you would rather not be. But that’s entirely up to you. Scroll round and round, go up and down, go sideways, back to front. Have fun.

To start though, you might like to check out Mark Twain. Find and read Mark Twain on Hawaii. A Paradise for all Sorts, and About the Natives. Still pretty true, except the natives today dress just like the rest of us. And, on Kauai, a curious faction, as you might have read in NUDITY,  are having cat fits about the naked body.

Many of the columns address letter to the Forum. Others respond to minds in the discussion bin, if I often seem off base and off the wall, check out letters to the Forum and minds going at it bare buckle knuckle in the loony.

But, truthfully, I think we are a center of sanity and reason in the messed up nation. We CAN be a beacon of light, we are a microcosm. I look at all the red on the map and shudder. We’re still blue. We speak out and talk back. We’re sassy and stupid and silly.

Hope you have a page like this wherever you are.We are great in our diversity and, most of us, anyhow, especially the young, extremely proud of our man in the White House. He really was born in Hawaii, you know.

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