Filed under: Hawaii, Kids, Politics | Tags: education, fail, furlough fridays, Hawaii, jack johnson, lingle
It’s been over a month now since the state government, the education bureaucrats and the teachers union reached an agreement that will no doubt go down in the record books as one of the most wrong-headed decisions the state has ever made, an agreement of Swiftian proportions: Furlough Fridays.
A lawsuit, a scathing open letter from the Secretary of Education, a NY Times op-ed, a parent protest on the capitol steps – not one of these has made much of an impact on a governing body indifferent to the plight of 130,000 public school children in a state that ranks near the bottom of the nation in education.
We were there at the protest, which turned out to be an impromptu Jack Johnson concert masquerading as a protest. Jack deigns the South Shore with a few hits from the catalog, steps off stage, and what do you think happens? That’s right. The hundreds of “outraged citizens” dwindle to a handful. 130,000 affected students, and yet the organizers are only able to collect a couple thousand signatories for the petition. In spite of this, the mothers who organized the event deserve some kind of Nobel Prize for their efforts.
And now, in a new and strange twist, the Advertiser is reporting that Lingle has actually had the money to put a stop to the furloughs all along. Much like Dorothy and her ruby slippers. Will wonders never cease!
On a more positive note, our son Taiyo received a “Mindful Student” Award for the first quarter of classes, the highest award given at Waikiki Elementary. Although it is comforting that he seems to be doing well, it’s all relative to the more alarming fact that he seems to be off from school more often than in the classroom.
Filed under: Events, Random | Tags: chris jordan, ecolounge, indigo, junk, plastic
Over a month ago sheer curiosity led me to Honuguide’s Ecolounge event at Indigo. Man am I glad I went. Not so much for the “event”, but for the presentation I witnessed.
Joel Paschal used to work in Hawaii for a government funded organization. They received grants to sail into the Hawaiian Leeward Islands – a small, scattered chain stretching out northwest of the main Hawaiian archipelago – and clean the reefs and atolls. He showed us pictures of beaches humans have rarely if ever set foot on that are completely covered in garbage – the handiwork of sea dumping and the currents. Baby albatross, such as the one pictured above, are fed bits of refuse floating in the ocean by their parents, who skim it from the surface along with organic matter. Their stomachs can handle the organic matter, but not plastic. (The photo above was taken by a phenomenal photographer and activist named Chris Jordan.)
Joel shared with us some of the measurements they had taken of the units of plastic per square meter of ocean. I now forget the precise number, but they already greatly outnumber units of organic matter. When the government shut down his program, he was forced to return to California, where he conceived of the idea of building a raft made from junk and sailing it to Hawaii to raise awareness of what we are doing to our oceans. His journey is chronicled here.
There’s a real world out there we’re destroying. We need to start living smarter.
Filed under: Dining, Hawaii, Honolulu | Tags: character, hawaii nui, kakaako, kona, kua aina, liquor collection
Several weekends ago I found myself in need of a beer to accompany a Kua Aina burger. Being in Kaka’ako, I knew the Liquor Collection, with its formidable selection of world beers, would provide. What could be a more appropriate fit to a Hawaiian burger than a brewed-in-Hawaii ale? I decided to acquaint myself with Hawaii Nui’s Golden Ale and was far from disappointed. Nice and crisp with a fine, upstanding character. Lacking the refinement of the Kona beers with which I am much better acquainted, but definitely worth repeat explorations.
Filed under: Film, Sport, Surf | Tags: elvis, endless summer, laird hamilton, monster waves, riding giants
I’m not sure if it is possible to make a bad surf movie, given the subject matter. By surf movie, I am, of course, not referring to the ones from the 50s intermittently starring Elvis, though they had their charms. Those were beach movies. I’m talking about the genre of rambling surf documentaries initiated by Endless Summer.
Among its class, Riding Giants is above average. Given the subject matter – monster wave riding – the action is killer. I appreciated it for the well-executed history of surfing through to what the film presents as its natural end: the continued search for a bigger wave. Maybe a bit too much focus on Laird Hamilton, with no disrespect intended to what he’s accomplished.
For a while now, for years, I think, I had been wondering when brandchannel, Interbrand’s branding news site would get with the times. Their time to press, article selection and overall design and layout never seemed quite worthy of a global branding leader. And it certainly didn’t seem to gel with the contemporary blogosphere landscape.
Fortunately, a couple months ago brandchannel upped their game with a fresh look and daily content updates. At first, it didn’t seem like they had the content to populate the site on a daily basis, and some of the writing was a bit patchy, but recently they seem to have hit their stride. Still, I wonder if this is the right strategy for the site. The weekly content was more in-depth, and tended to spark more dialog in the peanut gallery. Has brandchannel become just another marketing blog?
One point of relief: my old brandchannel articles are still tucked safely away in the archives.
Filed under: Family | Tags: joel edward williamson, obituary, washington post
My father passed away on September 24. We held a funeral service for him on September 30, and he was cremated a couple days later. His remains will be laid to rest on December 4. The wait is due to the backlog of dead soldiers waiting for spaces to clear at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Washington Post refused to publish his obituary because according to their criteria he was not a “long-term resident”. According to the Post, five years as a youth plus the last 13 – a total of 18 – does not qualify one as a member of the DC area community. Nor does the fact that he had bought a house (which he was sadly in the process of remodeling), was active in his local church and other organizations, and had held several military and civilian posts of considerable responsibility factor into the equation. Never mind that he gave 30 years of distinguished service to his country, during which he was virtually without a hometown.
As you can see, I am still a little bitter.
Since the Post has refused to publish my father’s obituary, and he really belongs to no other community, I am going to post it here:
Joel Edward Williamson
Colonel U. S. Army (retired)Joel Edward Williamson, 60, who served in the U. S. Army for 30 years and worked with the military as a civilian following his retirement, died suddenly at the Virginia Hospital Center on September 24.
Joel was born in Brookings, SD, and moved to Alexandria, VA, at age 13. He graduated from Francis C. Hammond High School and attended the College of William and Mary, participating in the ROTC program during his four years there. In the space of one month in 1971, Joel graduated from college, married Nancye Beth Caskey, his high school sweetheart, and entered the Army.
Over the course of his distinguished career as an infantry officer, Joel served as a platoon leader, company commander and twice as an aide-de-camp. He commanded a training battalion at Fort Benning, GA. He was a military assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and served as the garrison commander of Fort Drum, NY. He returned to the Washington, DC area in 1996, settling in Vienna, VA, and finished his career at the Pentagon in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and CSA.
Following his retirement, Joel worked as a contractor and then returned to the Pentagon in 2006 as Director, Administration and Resources in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/4/7, Department of the Army, a position he held until his death. He was posthumously awarded the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service, which is the highest commendation that can be conferred upon a civilian by the Army.
He was an active member of Emmanuel Lutheran Church of Vienna and the Optimist Club of Greater Vienna, VA. Joel’s interests included travel, reading, and sports. He will be remembered by those who knew him best as a devoted family man who enjoyed nothing more than spending time with his family.
He is survived by his wife of 38 years, Nancye; son Patrick of Honolulu, HI; son Daniel of Washington, DC; daughter Joellen of New York, NY; father Edward Williamson; sister Theanne Peterson of Brookings, SD; sister Kristin O’Meara of Rochester, MN; and two grandchildren.
Filed under: Film | Tags: darren aronofsky, gritty, mickey rourke, the wrestler
The Wrestler. A powerful, gritty film full of truth about the human condition. You can see how a slick but empty film like Slumdog Millionaire would trump a film like this in this grand ol’ America. We like our dreams glossy, our bodies pumped, and our mortgages subprime. But we’re going to pay for it much like Randy the Ram has to pay for it. The best we can hope for is to go out in a blaze of glory. This is a movie of consequence, about consequence. It has an astute eye for detail that brings you up close and personal with the characters. If the film is built out of archetypes and motifs that are tired and cliched (the down and out sports hero, the hooker with the heart of gold), it doesn’t matter. The art is in the execution, and Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) is one of the genius directors of our generation. And yes, Mickey Rourke is every bit as good as they say.
Max Headroom is a precursor of the vlog – quirky, opinionated, schizophrenic, disembodied.
I think Ze Frank’s body of work, for example, bears signs of the Max Headroom influence. (Side note: I really wanted to embed this video rather than link it, but the bastard just wouldn’t embed.)
Guilty pleasure confessional time. A bit of an ironic counterpoint to my previous post on the human race being “entertained to extinction”. Although I am very clearly not in the target demographic of Dan Deacon (see above picture for evidence), I find his hyperactive brand of sugary synth pop electro both addictive and mesmerizing. Yes, it is unabashed empty party music for degenerate teenage post-hipsters. But it’s got a compelling voice and energy, which is more than I can say for most of the post-everything watered down sounds of today posing as music. Here’s a guy just going for it, full on, all the way. The way they used to. Look at his live show footage. He’s a Jesus Christ Superstar. Messianic.
I came across this fantastic short essay by an evolutionary psychologist named Geoffrey Miller that summed up something that’s been on my mind (and probably the minds of many) for years. His (vaguely tongue-in-cheek) thesis is that maybe the reason that we have not yet been contacted by alien life is that they, like us, began to direct their technological resources toward entertainment instead of exploration. Rather than using technology for overtly self-destructive purposes via machines of war, he posits a more subliminal, sinister fate of our alien kin:
Basically, I think the aliens don’t blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don’t need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today.
Miller’s essay reminds me of how Pixar’s 3D imaging technology was originally marketed to government agencies and the medical industry. In the end they accidentally discovered that the real arena of profitability was in animated movies. When I look at the phenomenal amounts of creativity and money going into entertainment, I sometimes can’t help wondering what those resources could accomplish if they were directed at something more mundane, like solving world hunger.
