My new novel is finally out! The Soul Keys isn't easy to describe, but here's a starter:  Sander Keynes, an aquarium keeper from Springfield, Missouri, goes on a canoeing trip one day, discovers an empty flying saucer on a river bank, and then goes home that night and finds an talking armadillo named Dick in his bathtub. Dick has no idea how he got there, and, as it turns out, nobody else can see him. Those two events propel Sander and his girl friend, Jenny, on a mad physical odyssey from Springfield to a secret military base on the Big Island of Hawaii--and a satyric mental odyssey that explores issues from the nature of family violence to the nature of government to the nature of reality--and, of course, the nature of the soul.

 Attached is a sample chapter, in which we first encounter Appollonasia Brechtlein Duenckel, a.k.a. Appy, chicken farmer, retired belly dancer, and online adviser to the lovelorn--and Appy meets several of the novel's other main characters--which makes it a good way for you to meet all of them:

Familiarity Breeds a Puppy

 Apollonasia Brechtlein Duenckel was a good mother and a take-charge sort of person. But she had another important qualification for dealing her daughter's current problem. Appy Duenckel believed in ghosts. Also vampires, demons, rakshashi, angels, manitou , djinn, nixies and fairies, among others. Appy was an equal-opportunity believer. She believed in many levels of reality, and figured they all must be as richly populated as the natural world.

 That went for philosophy, too. "Some folks think life has no purpose," she'd been telling people for more than four decades. "That's poppycock. The problem is that there are too many purposes, a lot of which we don't care to notice."

At age 18, when she was already supporting herself as a belly dancer at county and state fairs, she'd spent the night on the State Fairground in Springfield, Illinois (no relation to Springfield, Missouri), listening to the scurryings and rustlings after the marks had all gone home. The next day, she'd bought a small composition book. On the first page, she'd penned, very neatly:

 The purpose of humanity is to feed and shelter rats. 

Thus began her life's work, her magnum opus: The Book of Purposes. On the April morning after the flooding of the Big Piney River, Appy had finished her morning chores and had just started Volume 98. She did most of her writing on the computer these days, but continued to hand write this project in composition books, just for consistency. She plunged into the first page, riding a tide of inspiration:

The purpose of Argon street lamps is to accustom us to the lighting of Hell. 

The purpose of computers is to provide a warm hiding place for certain species of ants.

The purpose of paleontology is to give God a better hiding place. 

The purpose of astronomy is to give God a better hiding place. 

The purpose of geology is to give God a better hiding place. 

The purpose of physics is to give God a better hiding place. 

The purpose of God is to hide from humanity. 

Of course, she'd recorded many other purposes for God, over the years. An infinite God could have infinite purposes. She forged onward:

The purpose of Hell is to discourage humans from dying prematurely. 

The purpose of Heaven is to free the gene pool more rapidly of people who can't stand the idea of dying. 

The purpose of burial is to keep things that eat the dead from accidentally eating the living.

 She was interrupted by the sound of gravel crunching in the driveway, and stepped into the front dining room to look out the window. An older but well-kept blue Honda hatchback had pulled up. Doors popped open. The driver emerged: male, slightly balding, sandy-haired, late-30s or early-40s. Then Appy's youngest daughter got out, wearing a man's windbreaker draped over disposable hospital scrubs. The blue paper "fabric" around her bra and panty lines was crinkled and discolored, as if it had been wet. A fat white support collar hid her neck. Red welts and scratches stood out on her face and arms.

Appy went and got her .22-caliber Favorite varmint rifle from its rack over the back porch doorway, then went back to the front door and opened it.

"Hi, Hon," she called to Jenny. Then, cradling the gun casually, she turned to the man. "Hello, there. You don't really look like an abuser. But they usually don't, and I've sort of had it. So I'll let Jenny explain why she's been in a hospital, and then I'll shoot you if she says so."

 "No, Mom, don't!" her daughter exclaimed.

"It's okay, Jenny. I'll just tell them I thought it was a robber. Nobody's going to put a little, wispy 63-year-old woman in jail for protecting herself."

"No, Mom, please! This is Sander Keynes. He's a nice man."

 "I've heard that one before."

 "No, I mean it, Mom! I got in an accident, and Sander took me to the emergency room."

"I've heard that one before, too."
Sander stood where he was, frozen. He'd been about to say, "Hello, Ms. Duenckel. I'm glad to meet you." His mouth was still half-open, in a slight smile, though his eyes had widened.

 "No, Mom, really!" said Jenny, frantically. "I totaled the Yaris! Somebody hit me -- I mean, hit the car . . . ."

 Sander unfroze enough to say, "Honest, Ms. Duenckel. I-wouldn't hurt a mouse. Literally. I use live traps. I'd never hit a woman, and I certainly wouldn’t hurt Jenny . . . ."

 "I've heard that before, as well," Appy said. "But I'd like to believe it. So Jenny, what are you doing here, why the paper suit, and why does it look like you peed your pants and milked your bra?" Another suspicion raced through her mind. Had she lost a grandchild before she knew one was coming?

"I got out of the car and got lost, Mom," said Jenny. "My clothes were wet. The ER gave me these to wear."

"The hospital wanted to admit her, but she wouldn't stay," offered Sander.

"Mom, we're in trouble," her daughter said. "It's not Sander's fault. Well, not much, and he didn't mean it -- I mean, it's got nothing to do with me getting beat up -- I mean, because I didn't get beat up. Not since Harlan. It's something different this time, and I did get in a car accident, and Sander rescued me, but he called the police and the TV station before that and -- can we come in and explain?"

 "I don't know," said her mother. "Can you do it any better inside than you're doing out here?"

 "I-I . . . ."

"Well, come in anyway. There's still some of your old clothes up in your room. I don't know if they fit anymore, but they'll fit better than anything of mine would."

"Thanks, Mom."

She walked stiffly up on the porch. "You can come, too, I guess," Appy told her daughter's male companion. "But if you don't mind, I'll keep the .22 with me a bit longer. I always wanted to shoot a real varmint with it."

"Uh, okay. That reminds me -- I'll be there in just a moment."

Appy halfway expected him to get in the Honda and drive off. Instead, he opened the tailgate and pulled out a soggy-looking pink blouse and a wet pair of jeans. But he didn't close the hatchback again.

"Stay here for now, okay?" he said softly to someone inside, paused, then added, “Well, when that cop came and I had to leave you by the roadside, you didn’t go ‘pfffffft’ and disappear then, did you?”

Appy, who read lips very well -- a useful skill from her "theatrical days," as she called them -- noted this one-sided conversation without comment.

"Here's Jenny's clothes," Sander said lamely, approaching the porch. "Honestly, Ms. Duenckel, I wouldn't hurt Jenny for anything. She's a sweet girl."

"That hasn't kept other people from hurting her," Appy noted, watching the car as she took the soggy evidence of Jenny’s story. "Well, after you. Living room's through the dining room and to the right. Hon, you find anything wearable?"

"I think so, Mom!" Jenny called down from her bedroom. "I'll be down in a minute."

Her male guest had perched himself nervously in the living room's least comfortable armchair.

 "Want some lemonade?" Appy asked him, without smiling.

"Uh, yes, please, that'd be nice, thanks," said Sander.

Appy dropped the wet clothes off on the back porch, then went to the kitchen and returned, walking with the easy glide of veteran waitress, a plastic pitcher in one hand, three glasses in the other, and the .22 cradled in her left elbow. She set the glasses and pitcher down on the ring stained coffee table, then settled in the recliner.

"Help yourself," she said. "'Fraid it's not real lemonade, just that instant stuff."

"Uh, thank you," said Sander. "Shall I pour some for you?"

 "Sure."

A few moments later, Jenny joined them. She'd found an old Missouri State sweatshirt and squeezed her lower half into a pair of faded, uncomplimentarily tight jeans.

"So, what have you two been talking about?" she said brightly, settling on the corner of the couch nearest to Sander.

"We haven't yet," said Appy. "Now, you were saying about trouble?"

 "Lemonade, Jenny?" asked Sander, pouring.

"Sure. Uh, Mom, you know about that UFO they found in the Big Piney?"

"Sure. I do check the news sites sometimes," said Appy.

 "Well, we found it first."

 "Huh," said Appy. "Well, tell it."

"We went canoeing Thursday. We were the first ones on the water, and it was a weekday and early in the season, so we pretty much had the river to ourselves. . . ."

"Wait. How'd you come to be free to go canoeing on a weekday?"

"Sander had some vacation coming, and I'd covered for another employee last weekend. I didn't get fired again, Mom."

"We figured Bass Pro could do without me for one day," added Sander.

 "Wait another minute, Sander," interrupted Appy again. "How can a man who can't bear to set a mouse trap work for Bass Pro?"

 "Mom!" ejaculated Jenny, embarrassed. "They sell lots of things, not just guns and fishing rods. Hiking boots, canoes, camping gear. There's even a restaurant."

"I maintain the aquariums, Ms. Duenckel," said Sander. "I preserve life." Staring at the .22 still resting in Appy's lap, he thought of the fish that he sometimes found floating when he went to work. He gulped and added, "I try my best to keep them alive, anyway."

Appy grunted. "I got no quarrel with selling hunting gear, per se. One purpose of life is to die and feed things. I was just curious as to how you reconciled yourself to it. Well, go on about the saucer, Jenny."

"At any rate, we came around an island, and there was the saucer. The door was open, but Sander looked in and said nobody was inside. So we floated down to our takeout, and Sander called the police. Then, for some reason, he called the TV station . . . ."

"I just figured that if we told only the authorities, we might never hear about it again," Sander interjected.

Appy leaned back and considered. "So you're the ones they're looking for, eh?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid so, Mom. And if they catch us, they're gonna lock us up in the School of Chemical Warfare . . . ."

 "What?"

"We heard it on the radio. They're taking anyone there who saw the UFO to Fort Leonard Wood. But that's not the worst of it, Mom. That saucer -- we think it may have done something to us."

"Done what?"

Sander cleared his throat. "We may be seeing things."

 "Or hearing things," added Jenny.

"What sort of things?"

Sander shifted uncomfortably. "A talking armadillo."

"And Charles Kuralt," added Jenny.

"Didn't he pass away sometime back?" her mother asked.

Sander nodded. "I'm afraid so."

"And this aardvark . . . ." began Appy.

"Armadillo," corrected Sander.

"This armadillo. What sort of things does he say?"

"Uh, mostly that he's hungry," said Sander.

"He's sort of sarcastic," added Jenny.

 "Speaks good English, eh?"

Just then, the phone rang.

"I'll be right back," said Appy, and went into the dining room to take the call.

 "So how are we doing, do you think?" asked Sander softly.

"Well, she hasn't shot you yet."

Appy returned. "Now, this armadillo -- is he out in the car?"

"I told him to wait there," said Sander.

Appy nodded. "Let's go see him."

"Uh, Ms. Duenckel?" said Sander as they followed her out onto the porch.

 "Oh, call me Appy," she said.

"Uh, Appy, if you can see the armadillo -- you're not going to shoot him, are you?"

Appy glanced down at the gun, still cradled in her elbow. "Nah. The only varmint I planned to plug, maybe, was you. But I guess I owe you an apology, Sander. That was Sheriff Schmidt on the phone. He said there'd been a car accident down in Pulaski County. He asked if I'd seen Jenny. I said I hadn't."

"Oh God," Jenny moaned. "They've found the car. You can bet they're going to check with the emergency rooms . . . ."

 "And they've got my name from the outfitter," groaned Sander.

 "Who's 'they'?" asked Appy.

"Everyone," said Sander. "The FBI, the Forest Service, the media . . ."

 ". . . and somebody with a French accent," added Jenny.

 "Hmm," said Appy, and continued her march down to the Honda. She peered into the open hatch. "So, where's this armadillo?"

"He should be there in the back," said Sander. "There he is. Dick? You awake? This is Appy Duenckel, Jenny's mother."

"You folks haven't been fishing, have you?" Appy asked.

"No," said Sander. "We've been fleeing. Why?"

Appy shook her head. "Well, I don't see any armadillo."

"I actually can't see him, either," said Jenny. "I just hear him, and sometimes feel him. Sander says he's an armadillo, and so does Dick, so I have to take their word for it."

"I can't hear any armadillo, either," said Appy.

 "Oh great," moaned Jenny. "So we are hallucinating."

"I didn't say that," said Appy. "I just said I couldn't hear nor see him. But I think he exists."

"Why?" asked Sander, almost dumbfounded. "Well, either he's there, or one of you two was eating worms, and left a couple of wriggly bits behind." Appy considered the situation. "Is Dick housebroken?"

"Uh, not exactly, but he tells me when he has to go."

"Then we'd better invite him in. You hadn't ought to leave an animal in the car. It could get heat stroke."

"Okay. Come on, Dick. What? Sorry." Sander turned to the others. "He's a little grumpy about being woken up. Armadillos are nocturnal, you know." He leaned over, picked up something invisible but moderately heavy, and lowered it gently to the ground.

"He'd make a hell of a prop for a mime act," remarked Appy. "Let's go up on the front porch. It's a beautiful spring day, and your critter can do his business whenever he feels the need. 'Good thing I haven't replaced old Abdullah yet."

"Abdullah was the farm dog," Jenny explained. "He died last winter."

"Uh, could I wash my hands?" asked Sander. "Armadillos can carry . . . ."

 "Sure. Through the dining room, first door to the right. I'll put the gun up and fetch another chair." As she did so, Appy rapidly leafed through her mental catalogue of supernatural possibilities.

“What does this armadillo say about himself?” she asked, after they’ve all reconvened.

“Uh, he doesn’t seem to know much about himself,” said Sander. “He claims he has no memories from before I found him in the bathtub.”

"Well, that rules out a pookah,” said Appy. “Pookahs know who they are.” She sipped her lemonade and considered a moment longer. “I suspect your armadillo friend is a familiar."

 "A what?" said Sander.

"A familiar. Now, I'm no witch, but I've known a few and studied a little. A familiar’s a critter that becomes a witch's psychic companion. Traditionally it's a cat, or maybe a bat or a toad, but it can be just about anything. A lot of witches today use white rats, I understand. More portable."

 "But why can't you and I see him?" Jenny asked.

"So what's the connection between witches and UFOs?" Sander asked, almost simultaneously. It said something about his changing mental state that he hadn't just snorted in disbelief.

"Sometimes other people can't see the familiar," Appy said. "I suppose it's a spell or something. I haven't been initiated, so I wouldn't know the mechanics. Anyway, I see two possibilities. Either Dick's a spy, sent by some witch who's gotten interested in Sander and the saucer . . . "

Sander winced and stared at a spot on the porch floor. "Dick's denying that pretty emphatically."

 “. . . or else Sander has the makings of a pretty powerful warlock and doesn't realize it. Maybe the saucer freed up something in him, and he summoned Dick subconsciously."

Sander thought for moment. "But that's not really an answer," he said. "It just puts a pat name on the mystery. How did I summon him? How can he talk? How'd he get in my bathtub, and why can't he remember anything before he got there?"

"Hey, that's how science works," snorted Appy. "Witchcraft, too, I suspect. You don't solve any mystery, really. You just give it a name, describe its behavior and put it to use. We don't really know what gravity is -- just what it does."

"Huh. So what does an invisible armadillo do for you, Sander?" asked Jenny.

"I don't know. Mostly what any armadillo does, I guess. Eats bugs, poops, sleeps all day. Criticizes my life choices."

"You made choices? That's unusual," remarked Appy.

"Well, not many, I guess," Sander admitted.

"He's asleep again, now?" asked Jenny.

 "Curled up like bowling ball in the corner of the porch."

 "It's not his purposes as an armadillo that count for you, I think," said Appy. "It's his purposes as a familiar. Familiars go where witches can't, and find out things."

"He offered to do that," said Sander wonderingly. "He wanted to check out the saucer. He said the army wasn't going to notice an armadillo. We were headed there when we found Jenny."

 "My, now, that was a huge coincidence, wasn't it, Jenny? Were you going back there, too?" asked Appy.

"No! I was coming home to see you. But there was a traffic jam, so I got off the Interstate to find a way around, but somebody hit me from behind -- hit my car, that is, and . . . ."

"I see, I see," said Appy. "Hmm. If I remember right, a witch sends his or her spirit into a familiar to use it. The talking part of the armadillo may be part of you, Sander. Anyway, something's trying awful hard to get you both back to that UFO. Maybe it's something inside you, maybe something outside. But it does seem your purpose to go back to it."

"Well, if that's our purpose, we bollixed it royally," said Sander. "The radio said the saucer was somewhere at the bottom of the river. We'd have to evade the whole Armed Forces just to look for it." "Maybe not," said Appy. "Maybe not." This talk of psychic familiars had reminded her of someone . . . .
 "I'm too tired to go looking for flying saucers," said Jenny despairingly. 

Sander nodded. "The doctor said to take you home and put you to bed."

"Well, she's home now," said her mother. "Her bed's right where she left it when she went off to college. And I imagine you're tired, yourself, young man, after being up all night talking to animals and rescuing my daughter. You could borrow my oldest son's room. Why don't you both make like your invisible friend and hibernate for a bit?"

They didn't require much persuasion. Appy waited until she heard satisfactory sleeping noises, then got on the phone to make a call before someone bugged her line, if they hadn't already. After all, the purpose of telephones was to let people talk without seeing whom they were talking to.

"Hello, Gilroy?"

"I know," said the phone. "Stop by. We'll work on it."

"Thanks." She hung up, got the .22 down again and went out to the porch swing. As soon as Dick's gone, I should look into getting a puppy, she thought. Maybe a Rottweiler this time. 

 At about 4 p.m., the FBI called -- followed by CBS, CNN, Fox News, the Kansas City Star, the New York Post, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Al Jazeera, a man with a French accent and Harlan Chillingworth -- the last in violation of two different restraining orders.

Appy denied everything.

Serial Diseases: Why Sequels Get Worse

I saw Kung Fu Panda 2 last night. It wasn’t bad, but I liked the first one better.
Jeez, how many times is that the verdict on a sequel? But no one spends much time, it seems, analyzing the forces and temptations that cause that result. Kung Fu Panda 2 is such a clear example of some of those forces at work, some of those diseases that infect the soul of a sequel, that it’s a good laboratory for examining them.

First to repeat: Kung Fu Panda 2 isn’t bad. It’s got a decent plot, it fleshes out (pun intended) the central character a little bit, and it retains many of the qualities that made its predecessor successful: appealing characters, beautiful composition (as with The Lion King, you can freeze-frame Kung Fu Panda nearly anywhere, and find a beautiful picture), and spectacular, state-of-the art CG work. It’s worth seeing. BUT.....

It’s also suffering from the first signs of several progressive diseases that have done in other successful movie franchises. They include:

Higher conceptivitus. I’ve always hated to term “higher concept,” anyway. I really think “lower concept” would be more appropriate, or “Central Joke”: the whole film reduced to a single idea that can be pitched to a producer in a single simple sentence. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are long-lost brothers. Small-time enforcer becomes a movie producer. Sleazeball becomes a department store Santa. Pudgy panda becomes a kung fu master. Higher concept films, at their worst, are a single joke endlessly recycled. The first Kung Fu Panda overcame that problem by rising above it: it wasn’t just about the joke. As in King Lear, even the most minor characters had their own back-stories, motivations and internal conflicts. The idealized Chinese landscape was lovingly detailed and achingly beautiful. The CG wizards pushed their crafts to new heights, creating characters with both fur and clothing, and taking them through wildly complex kung fu battles. The actors threw themselves into their parts, exploring and improvising in character and, in some cases, exceeding themselves. (Free of the limitations of his beetling evil eyebrows, Jack Black actually created a lovable version of himself.) The central characters, especially Black’s panda and Dustin Hoffman’s Master Shifu, grew and changed. And the writers and director refused to let the special effects and the Central Joke overwhelm the plot.

That’s all true, to some extent, in the sequel. But that damned Higher Concept is becoming an impediment. Po the Panda is now the Dragon Warrior. But the Central Joke depends on him being an overweight klutz and a poseur, so to still work it, he has to have relapses that seem out of character. The higher concept is now holding him back. The writers need to abandon that old Central Joke, and embrace the new one that emerged toward the end of the first film: the ways in which he turns his roly-poly-ness into a weapon.

FXia. The Star Wars disease. In the original star wars, George Lucas used special effects to create a convincingly realistic and grungy universe in which to tell his story. But then he got so obsessed with topping his own special effects in each successive movie, so preoccupied with his toys, that they started to overwhelm his storytelling. In Episodes I and II, especially, hundreds of vehicles or warships clutter up every frame; the plot seems warped to get in this or that spectacular sequence, rather than the sequences chosen to advance the plot.

Likewise, in KFP 2, the desire to top the first movie’s considerable CG achievements sometimes seems to overwhelm the movie makers’ good sense. Lord Shen, the peacock emperor, is prima facie evidence. He’s an incredible achievement in animation: all those hundreds of individually moving feathers, and a bird beak that you can actually lip-read. But come on: a peacock? Thai Lung, the snow leopard of the first film, was a physically credible threat. But how do you take an evil peacock seriously?

Creeping Shrekism, or multiple characterosis: Aside from its strong Central Joke (Ogre as Good Guy), the original Shrek succeeded in great part because of some brilliant character acting by Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz, and some wonderful bit parts by various actors perverting various fairy tale characters. Shreks II expanded its repertoire by adding a second higher concept: Fairy Tale Land as Southern California. But it also piled on more bit parts by more fairy tale characters, while still trying to find finding something to do for all the previously introduced characters. By Shrek III, this had all gotten entirely out of hand: there were so many characters that the plot, what of it there was, was hopelessly cluttered and nobody got decently developed. And with two aging high concepts to carry on, there was no room for a third.

KFP 2 isn’t overwhelmed yet, but it’s showing some alarming symptoms. One of the problems with the first installment, already, was that the Furious five was about two too many: decent comic actors such as Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan simply couldn’t get enough lines to bring out the potential of their characters. In the sequel, they get even less, because they have to share the screen with new characters such as Master Croc (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and Master Storming Ox (Dennis Haysbert). The problem is aggravated by the fact that much of the voice acting talent is coming from the martial arts milieu, and frankly, Jean Claude Van Damme can’t act when he has his own body to work with. Fortunately, Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson went with veteran human chameleon Gary Oldman to do evil Lord Shen, and Oldman does about as a good job as anyone could to make a peacock scary. (Actually, a chameleon would make a pretty good villain for this series. Just think of the possibilities of sneaky Lord Ptui and his kung-fu tongue.)

These diseases aren’t necessarily fatal. Both Star Wars and Shrek bounced back with decent movies for their final installments. But I hope the DreamWorks people don’t allow the problems to creep so far. It’s already obvious that there’s going to be a Kung Fu Panda 3. But I hope Po’s reunion with his family isn’t going to be marred by the advent of Master Bullfrog and Master Horny Toad, voiced by Stephen Seagal and Chuck Norris.

On Losing Luigi

First, a note on where I've been. Last June, my son finally arrived in Hawai'i permanently, after the death of his mother. I've been busy learning how to be a full-time father and trying to earn enough to feed two mouths, so I've had to concentrate on writing that pays -- which this blog, frankly, doesn't. Someday I may get back to this, perhaps on a different platform that's friendlier to local advertising. But I'd rather write and let someone else sell the ads. Those who want notifications when I have a new article out can still follow me on Facebook.

Meanwhile, the Big Island Weekly didn't have room to run the following little tribute, so I'm posting it here.

I missed Louis "Luigi" Lichtenstein's memorial service because of deadlines. I feel very sorry about that. Luigi deserves remembering and thinking about.

I wasn't that close to Luigi; I wrote a couple of articles about his restaurant, Aloha Luigi's, and about the artists he patronized, and I ate a lot of Sicilian slice and Caesar salad specials, but that was about the extent of our relationship. But Luigi always made me feel like a friend. He knew me by name and greeted me with a friendly comment and a big smile whenever he saw me at the restaurant, and there was nothing false about that smile and greeting. Luigi radiated his own special Brooklyn style of aloha; he seemed genuinely happy to see people enjoying themselves in his restaurant.

And we customers had good reason to be happy. For about the price of a combo at McDonalds or Jack in the Box, we could enjoy a genuinely tasty lunch in a restaurant that oozed homegrown charm, with its bright hand-painted walls, its ceiling painted like a sky with puffball clouds, and it rotating exhibits by local artists -- or in recent years, we could dine al fresco in his lush garden court. I suppose the food was, technically, "fast food" — much of it was served on plastic foam plates or in paper-lined baskets, and we bussed our own dishes — but it didn't taste "fast"; I'd put some of Luigi's pasta dishes up against those served in restaurants that charge three or four times as much, and that Caesar salad was without peer. Luigi obviously did what he did because he loved to do it, and it showed.

That's the essence of local dining at its best: a chef opening his own place so he or she can do what he or she loves to do. In recent years, downtown Hilo, like Pahoa before it, has bloomed with such establishments: Akmals, Chiang Mai, Le Magic Pan, the Surf Break, and numerous others, where chefs have taken advantage of the relatively low property values to create their own hand-made visions of what a restaurant should be. Those restaurants are win-win-win-wins for the community; the owners get to live their dreams, downtown's empty spaces get filled, more money stays in the local economy, and we local consumers get to eat lovely, tasty food at reasonable prices.

I admit, as a poor freelancer with a son to feed, I sometimes patronize fast food franchises; even Luigi's doesn't have a dollar menu. But more and more, I'm discovering, there's a good alternative within walking distance. In Kea'au, for instance, I needed lunch the other day after a doctor's appointment. I considered Micky D's, but decided to walk across the street to the farmer's market. There I discovered a lovely, polite young lady who'd set up a Vietnamese food stand; I got an absolutely ono plate of fragrant key lime chicken and vermicelli noodles served on a bed of lettuce for about $6.50, and dined to the music of some local musicians who were playing at the market. It was, in short, a fine dining experience, even though I sat at a table made from a cable spool. I'll be back there again. And I hope that young lady eventually follows in Luigi's footsteps, finds an inexpensive property, renovates it and opens her own restaurant.

My understanding is that Luigi's, meanwhile, will remain open under its former sous chef, Thomas Aiau, who's absorbed Luigi's brand of aloha as well as his recipes. I'm very glad. Luigi may be gone, but his Caesar salad and his good will live on.

Hamakua Land Tour: Ag Land? Really?

I'm still pondering West Hawaii Today's story last Thursday, about the two prospective buyers who toured the Hamakua properties that the county wants to sell. Members of the Kenoi administration have repeatedly told me that the land is expected to remain in agriculture, since it was zoned that way -- though finance director Nancy Crawford did say that it depended on one's definition of "agriculture."

"Is a gentleman farmer a farmer?" she asked.

But the two prospective buyers, Marc Mishkin of Ka'u and Joe Steinbach of Colorado, don't exactly sound like farmers. To quote Nancy Cook Lauer's article, for instance:

"Steinbach and Mishkin were more interested in the smaller parcels than the more mauka larger ones, and they seemed satisfied that some of the smaller ones offered ocean views that made the land desirable..."

Huh? Since when did an ocean view make a parcel more desirable as farmland? Do orange trees produce better if they can see the ocean? Do dracaena or mac nuts or coffee trees or corn grow taller so they can peer over the heads of their neighbors at that gorgeous blue water?

At least, according to Lauer, the prospective buyers did as "question related to what kind of fruit trees or crops the land would support." But they also asked "when the ocean-view blocking eucalyptus trees would be harvested."

A farmer would have been more concerned with whether the trees blocked sunlight from hitting his soil in the early morning or late afternoon.

Kenoi and his minions have argued that one reason to sell to sell the lands, which have been nothing but weeds since the county acquired them, is to get them back into production. But if at least one of the two prospective buyers has the winning bid, it's apt to stand idle for quite a while longer.

"We're looking at holding onto the land a couple of years, at least," said Mishkin, according to the article; he admitted to Lauer that "Investment is his primary interest."

In other words, Mishkin is a land speculator, pure and simple: he wants to buy the land cheap from the county and sell it at a big markup, as other speculators have done in the past. As Councilmember Dominic Yagong has pointed out, the county sold one such parcel, adjacent to Mud Lane in Hamakua, for $1.3 million. Then the county improved Mud Lane, substantially increasing the land's value.

"Within a few months, that thing was on the market for six or seven million dollars," Yagong said.

The taxpayers were out the cost of a major road job, and the speculator was in the black by an five or six hundred percent.

And there are no covenants in the County's Purchase And Sale Agreement for the lands that would restrict the new owner from rezoning the property to put in another subdivision, once the price of real estate starts going back up.

Is anybody else's shibai alarm going off?

Susan Decker, 1952-2010

My ex-wife, Susan Decker, passed away from cancer last week. She is survived by her parents, Wayne and Jane Decker, and our son, Aidan John McNarie, 13.

Susan came with me to Hawaii 21 years ago, when we were a promising young "power couple": I'd just gotten my PhD in English and had been hired by UH-Hilo, and she was a new-minted attorney. She got a job at the prosecutor's office here, and got a quick lesson in racism and realpolitick, island-style: her boss there told her she needed to be "more Japanese," and her brash, direct style didn't set well with the local bureaucrats and secretaries. I well remember going to Christmas parties at the prosecutor's office where de facto segregation was the unspoken norm: in one room would be gathered attorneys with Japanese last names and a few token Caucasians (usually with Japanese-American spouses), while in another room, a smaller group would collect consisting of everyone else: Portuguese, Hawaiians, women.... Of course, Susan didn't last there. So she decided to open her own law office.

Meanwhile, over at the university, I wasn't doing much better. For the first time in my life, I was getting bad reviews from my superiors on my teaching. I wouldn't learn, until later, some of the politics behind those reviews.... But I kept at it for five years, because Susan and I had both fallen in love with this island and its people and I wanted to give her time for her law office to get established. When the handwriting on the wall at the university was clear, I worked out a deal with Susan, where I would work half-time as a paralegal at her independent law office and spend the other half on my writing.

Susan had decided to specialize in family law, especially family violence cases: a branch of law for which, unfortunately, there was an enormous need on this island. I'd already become aware of that need when I was a professor; I'd had to deal with students who couldn't complete their assignments on time because their significant others had come home drunk and forced the family to flee the house. And I'd seen the scourge first-hand as well; at the first apartment we'd rented in Hilo, the woman next door would go into screaming rages at least twice a week and start throwing dishes at her spouse; we could hear the impact of them shattering against the walls. At the next house where we lived, I was home writing one day when I heard shouting; I looked out the window and saw a man drag his spouse from their pickup truck, knock her to the ground and begin kicking her while their young son ran away down the street. I called the police. An officer didn't arrive until a half-hour later, when the incident was already over. He went up and knocked on the door; the abuser answered and spoke briefly with the officer, who then left without ever seeing the victim.

I've never seen a robbery, a burglary, a car theft or a murder. But I've personally witnessed at least six cases of domestic assault.

I quickly found out that my job at Susan's law office could not be done half-time. There was always an affidavit to fill out or an emergency restraining order to file, and it had to be done right and done right now, because somebody's life was potentially at stake. I became very good at helping battered clients tell their stories to the court through affidavits. I never became good at some of the other skills required by the profession. But the jobs all had to be done. We'd spend 8-12 hours a day at the office, and then go home, where I'd often work until 3 or 4 a.m. on my writing.

The stories that had to be told in those affidavits were often horrifying. I documented the sodomizing of children and the breaking of women's bones. Sometimes, after recording a particularly gruesome affidavit, I'd have to go out on the lanai of the law office building and mentally put myself back together. And those stories were still going on, even as the affidavits were being filed. Abusers did not let go easily; they continued to mess with their victims all through the divorce process, and even afterward. And some local attorneys, unfortunately, were gleeful participants, prolonging the fights and milking both parties for every penny of their assets.

Susan wasn't anywhere near the top of her class in law school, but she plunged into that battle with everything she had. We lost some heartbreaking cases, but we also extracted children from the clutches of a stepfather who'd been "sharing" them with other pedophiles, and helped a woman recover a daughter from an abusive ex who'd fled the state with the girl, and helped many women to just get out of nightmarish situations. Sometimes those clients got involved with other abusers; old mental habits are hard to break. Sometimes the abusers continued to stalk their exes. Sometimes, after the divorce, the abuser would charm his (or her; abuse isn't always a male thing) way back into his ex's life, and the whole thing would start again. But every once in a while, everything would go right, and the circle of abuse was broken. We couldn't win the war, but sometimes we could help an individual to escape it.

Unfortunately, those most in need of help were often the least able to pay, and Susan ran her law office more like a crusade than a business. The war eventually claimed nearly everything we had. The law office went broke. We lost our house to the bank I suffered a physical breakdown (I'm glad it wasn't mental as well). And the stress of fighting a war that could not be won, but was so important that it demanded everything be subordinated to it, finally claimed our marriage as well. Susan returned to the mainland with our infant son, leaving me here to liquidate our remaining assets. I'm still attempting to pay off some of the debts left from those years.

On the mainland, Susan opened another personal practice specializing in family law. She kept at it until bone cancer forced her to stop.

The monster that she fought so valiantly is still out there.

We Need a Shibai Tax

I just read the article in yesterday's Star Bulletin, re the feuding between Governor Lingle and the legislature over budget cuts. Each is accusing the other of "shibai."

Shibai was originally a Japanese word meaning a theatrical performance. In Hawaii, it's come to mean any display or hypocrisy; in practice, it's pretty much interchangeable with the word "bullshit."

The legislature is accusing Lingle of shibai for, among other things, withholding our tax refunds until next year in order to balance the budget until she's safely out of office. Lingle is accusing the legislature of shibai for making budget cuts it can't legally make: "For instance, Lingle said the House took out budgeted money from her office to fund required vacation payouts for workers who will leave the Governor's Office with her in December. It also removed $100,000 in transition funds from the governor's budget.

''This is not possible; it is shibai,' Lingle complained."

I think both sides are guilty as charged. But the real losers aren't Lingle or the legislators. They're us.

The state gets to keep our tax refunds until next year? Do we at least get interest while they're using our money?

And we have to pay former Lingle Administration members for their vacations after they're out of office? That really grates, personally. A few years ago, when I left the University of Hawaii, I was told I wouldn't get paid for my accumulated vacation and sick leave unless, at some future date, I was employed again by the state of Hawaii. I think the legislature should immediately pass a bill making the same true for all state employees, including Lingle's patronage employees.

And I think they should pass another law, making it a crime to commit shibai while in public office, with fines of $5,000 to $100,000, depending on the severity of the offense.

With such a law in place, we'd solve our budget deficit in no time.

New Rules for Green Homes

I have a new article out in the Big Island Weekly, re the freshly-enacted "International Energy Conservation Code of the County of Hawaii." The code, which requires insulation and other energy-saving measures in new structures and in major rehabilitations of old structures, is well-meaning and should save energy, but will add a fair amount to the cost of each home, spell bad news for some existing plantation-era homes, and just doesn't always make sense for our climate....

Kapulena Ag Park Article Out

'Sorry about the dearth of recent postings on this site. I've been busy writing articles for people who pay me....

The current Big Island Weekly features an article article of mine about Mayor Billy Kenoi's proposed Kapulena Ag Park in Hamakua, for instance. It turns out that when Kenoi announced that the Kapulena lands were "generally considered the best of the county-owned lands for farming purposes," the county hadn't even gotten back its soil surveys for those lands. Now the surveys are in, and the results aren't the best they could be....

Corporate Emancipation!

I’ve been pondering the recent Supreme Court ruling that corporations have the same rights of free speech as human beings, and therefore can put unlimited amounts of money into election campaigns. I’ve decided that maybe the Supreme Court is right, so long as corporations are given all the constitutional rights of human beings. They already have the right to bear arms, as is evidenced by Blackwater (sorry, Xe Services LLC) and countless security guards. I suppose they can exercise freedom of religion, though I’ve never seen one in church. But what about the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlaws slavery?

“Slavery,” according to Merriam-Webster New Collegiate Dictionary, is defined as “1: DRUDGERY, TOIL. 2: Submission to a dominating influence. 3 a: the state of a person who is chattel of another. b: the practice of slaveholding.”

I assume that 3a is the type of slavery that the Thirteenth Amendment refers to, since it was passed in the wake of the Civil War. “Chattel,” for those who don’t know, means any property that isn’t real estate.

Someone should immediately mount a Supreme Court challenge to emancipate the corporations.

The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits the ownership or “involuntary servitude” of human beings, unless they’re convicted of a crime. But even unconvicted corporations are routinely held in stocks and kept in bondage. You can’t buy or sell human beings. But corporations are bought and sold daily. Corporate families captured by corporate raiders are often torn apart and their individual companies are sold, never to be reunited. Sometimes a brutal new owner will even vivisect them, cutting out or transplanting whole departments and excising employees who were members of the corporate body. No human being, whether homo sapiens or homo corporatiens, should be treated this way.

It’s time to acknowledge that Wall Street is a slave market, trafficking in corporate human misery. It must be shut down. Corporations must be free to earn their own way, without fear that someone else will buy them, strip away their assets and take the fruits of their labors.

A final argument for corporate emancipation: if we can’t own them, they can’t own us. This breach of the Thirteenth Amendment works both ways, after all: corporations may not own our souls, but they own our jobs, our food supply, a percentage of our houses -- even our genes. They already own huge numbers of politicians and at least five Supreme Court justices. If they don’t hold us as chattel, then they at least hold most of us in drudgery. When we allow a privileged class to exploit human corporations, we all lose our freedom.

I don’t expect change to happen overnight. Just as with slavery, the supporters of corporate trafficking will argue that it’s an economic necessity -- that the nation cannot survive without it. They will argue that corporations don’t know how to survive by themselves without the enlightened guidance of their masters. Some may even take up arms to support their “right” to own corporations. But justice must eventually prevail. We must get a writ of habeus corpus so that Microsoft can appear in court and tell us if it really wants to work for Bill Gates. We must prohibit the sale of any more shares of Bank of America unless it has been indicted by a grand jury, read its Miranda rights, and tried and convicted for its alleged crimes by a jury of its peers. We must sever the bonds of tyranny that hold Chrysler in thrall to Fiat, 20th Century Fox in servitude to Rupert Murdoch, HBO in captivity to Time-Warner, Random House in the yoke of Bertelsmann AG, ABC in peonage to Disney, NBC in bondage to General Electric, and Spartina in foul grip of Stephen Colbert..

But I don’t think corporations should be allowed to vote or make campaign donations, at least for now. They’re not ready for that, just as uneducated, rapacious corporations are not ready to sit on juries. They must first learn to be good citizens, a job for which their bondage has not prepared them. They must understand, first, that they are truly free, and learn the responsibilities that freedom entails.

Otherwise, corporate votes are controlled by their masters, who can use them to oppress the rest of us.

That must not happen. We shall overcome.

Trash Outside the Transfer Stations

The Jan. 20 issue of the Big Island Weekly ran a story of mine called "Trash Talking," about the new restricted hours at the island's outlying transfer stations. I reported that a number of household trash bags had been pitched along the roadside on Volcano Highway. After the story ran, I got the following report from Rene Siracusa of Malama O Puna, about the state of things along the highway to Pahoa:

"On the 2 mile stretch between Pahoa Village Rd. and Kaohe Homestead Rd., there were 26 dump sites that began with the new reduced hours of 8 to 4. Included are 4 pig carcasses in varying stages of ugh.... [Solid Waste Division head] Lono Tyson says they are working on a plan to change the hours again, but that in the meantime the dumping is expected until people get used to the new hours. When I pointed out that the 8 to 4 hours are prohibitive for people who work, he replied that they go shopping on weekends so they can go to the tranfer station on weekends too. There goes your day off!"

Two Personal Appeals

Aloha all,
As you may have noticed, there haven't been a lot of blogs here lately. That's because, quite frankly, I'm broke, and I've had to concentrate on stories that I could get paid for, so I can keep the phone and electricity on. This blog hasn't earned me a dime since my first post. Google's marketing strategy of basing advertising placement on key words just doesn't work very well on a locally-oriented blog such as this; I've even seen adds from Mall Wort here just because I wrote a blog critical of them.

So I'm putting out an appeal for sponsors. If you'd like to see more stuff here, get in contact with me. I'm going to go over the fine print of my Google contract, but I believe I can post my own ads as photo attachments. I'm thinking $15 for an ad on one blog would be appropriate.

Second appeal: If anyone out there has any news or anecdotes about the new transfer station hours or increased littering and dumping since the hours began, please post a response here. I'm working on a story about the issue for the Big Island Weekly.

Saddle Road Hearings This Week

There will be hearings for the final phase of the Saddle Road reallignment in Hilo and Kona this week. This phase of the project might be somewhat less controversial than some earlier phases--it will essentially take the road on a more southerly, pointing more toward Kona than Waimea and skirting the land that the Army recently acquired from Parker Ranch as a maneuvers-training ground for its Stryker units.

There may still be some fireworks, however. I got an e-mail from antimilitary activist Jim Albertini, suggesting that Depleted Uranium may be made an issue a the hearings.

"As part of the EIS, possible depleted uranium contamination was suppose to be addressed. One independent geologist reviewing the data said DU presence may be understated in the EIS draft, and he questions the kind of testing done. We are awaiting other comments from independent scientist," Albertini wrote.

Hearing times and places:


Wednesday, Dec. 9, 5 p.m., Aunty Sally's Luau Hale, 799 Piilani St. Hilo (near the Kanakaole Tennis stadium/Merry Monarch festival.)
Thursday, Dec. 10, 3:30-7:30 p.m., Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii Authority, Gateway Energy Center, 73-4460 Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway, Kailua-Kona

White Rocks, Black Tires and Green Shoulders

Warning: this blog is going to be of interest mainly to Volcano residents and visitors.

It's the week after the Volcano Artists' Hui's annual Open Studios event, and the evidence still remains around the village. On Haunani and Kilauea and Lehuanani and Wright Road -- wherever there was an open studio -- formerly grassy road shoulders have been turned into a morass of muddy ruts where visitors parked along the roadsides.

It happens every year. The Artists' Hui has tried to limit the damage, (and neighbors' complaints of noise and traffic snarls) by limiting the number of participating artists, by having more than one artist at a site, and by using sites on major streets instead of the one-lane trails by which many local residents reach their homes (hardly any of the official "open studios" are actually held in real artists' studios any more), but a number of other artists continue to hold "unofficial" sales at their houses on the same weekend.

Some neighbors put up obstacles such as construction-scene tape to keep vehicles off the shoulders near their homes. But that reduced the areas where cars could park, concentrating the damage and causing some drivers to pull off in really soggy places they might otherwise have avoided.

It's probably a small price to pay, in the long run, for the economic boost that the event gives the Village every year; not only the artists, but the local stores, restaurants, lodges and B&Bs all benefit from the flood of visitors. And the fault isn't wholly with the artists: it rests in part on the people who permitted and built the village's substandard roads.

And rutted road shoulders are not just a one-weekend-a-year problem. The cops were up here a couple of weekends ago, ticketing cars parked on the shoulders of Wright Road during Farmer's Market (another runaway success story, which keeps outgrowing its facilities despite the bulldozing of several acres of rain forest for parking lots.) And just day-to-day, the village's one-lane roads occasionally force cars onto the shoulders to avoid head-ons, though most of us long-time residents have become quite adept at pulling off on driveways when we see another car coming.

Which leads me to what I really want to talk about. A number of residents (and vacation rental owners) have taken to protecting the grass in front of their houses by placing rows of large rocks or stakes on the shoulders. Sometimes the rocks are painted white to make them more visible; sometimes not.

I'm sorry, but that practice is dangerous and illegal. Road shoulders, soft or not, are a functioning part of the right of way, not part of someone's lawn.

No resident in his right mind would pull off on a soft shoulder and risk getting stuck, if there's a viable alternative. But sometimes you have to. I was approaching a blind intersection of two one-lane lanes in the village a few days ago, when another car suddenly pulled into the intersection and turned toward me. The house next to the intersection apparently had guests, one of whom had parked on the shoulder opposite the house -- because the shoulder beside the house was lined with rocks. Had I been going a little faster or been a few feet closer to the intersection, I would have faced a split-second choice between head-oning the moving car, running into the parked car, or ripping off my exhaust system on the rocks.

Many residents would argue that our substandard roads and grassy shoulders are part of the Village's charm, and part of the price we pay for living in such a rustic and beautiful setting. The narrow lanes have imposed a sort of etiquette of consideration, with drivers pulling off and giving each other a friendly wave as they pass, that are part of the joy of living here. If people use a little common sense and common courtesy, the roads are not that big a burden. But rocks on the road shoulders are not charming at all.

If you live in a rain forest, there's going to be mud. But if you live in a rain forest, the grass will grow back really fast anyway. So visitors, please, if at all possible, don't pull off on the grass if there's an alternative. And residents, please cut it out with the rocks already.

Solar Water Heater Story at Big Island Weekly

I've been down with a respiratory infection for the past couple of weeks, so I'm afraid I haven't done much work -- just a couple of stories for the Big Island Weekly. One of those should be on the newsstands now: a piece about a new law that ends the state's subsidies for solar water heaters, but requires most new homes here to have them.

Ding, Dong, the Dobbs is Dead

Lou Dobbs has resigned from his anchor position at CNN, saying he wants to "go beyond the role" of a television journalist.

Good riddance, in my humble opinion. Dobbs has always been something of a boil on the butt of CNN's news reputation. I say this not because Dobbs is a conservative. In fact, I'm not sure he is a conservative, in a traditional sense, or even what a conservative is, for sure. Conservatives, increasingly, seem to be defined not by a consistent central principle, but by a cluster of dogmatically held views that don't necessarily make sense as a whole. Dobbs is most (in)famous for his opposition to immigration, for instance, which is certainly contrary to the general conservative support for the free market these days (but in the late 19th century, if I remember my history lessons, conservatives in this country favored protectionism because young American industry couldn't compete with the industrial juggernaut of the British Empire).

No, the reason I dislike Mr Dobbs so intensely is because he's been "going beyond the role" of a good journalist for years. He's more of a propagandist than a journalist. That doesn't mean that he didn't break important stories; his single-minded pursuit of the evils of immigration and NAFTA sometimes have led to some real revelations. But I couldn't trust his stories, because he wanted them to come out a certain way and he tailored the facts to suit his views. The Washington Post's story on the Dobbs resignation, for instance, noted that Dobbs had vastly exaggerated the number of young Latinos in U.S. prisons. Dobbs questioned Barack Obama's place of birth even after the birth certificate was made available to the public; he ran a series of stories about "global cooling" based on scattered and anecdotal evidence that shouldn't have convinced anyone, much less a veteran news anchor.

I firmly believe that constructive journalism must start out even-handed; it's okay to develop an opinion, but only after examining the most reliable facts available on both sides (or all sides) of the controversy. This is a very pragmatic view; it's been working ever since the time of the ancient Greeks.

We've just had a horrendous eight-year-long example of what happens when facts get bent to support preconceived opinions. We ended up fighting a war to suppress weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist, and ignoring the mounting evidence of global warming because scientists were being muzzled, and watching New Orleans disintegrate while Bush officials discussed free market methods for dealing with a disaster. Bush wasn't a bad president because he was a conservative. He was a bad president because he cherry-picked facts to fit his beliefs, instead of basing his decisions on sound logic and the preponderance of the evidence.

Likewise with Lou Dobbs, and even more so with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. They're bad not because they're conservatives, but because they're propagandists who don't give the facts a fair playing field. When Keith Olbermann does the same thing on the left, it's also bad. And when Nancy Grace prejudges defendants on national TV night after night, based on whatever sensational facts leak out of an investigation, it doesn't serve justice. All of this stuff is entertaining; it gets the emotional juices going, the same way pro wrestling and "documentaries" about Bigfoot and Noah's Ark do. But when you try to base real-life decisions on that stuff, it's disastrous. You just can't run a country on the same principles as the World Wrestling Federation.

So I applaud Lou Dobbs for resigning. If he realized that what he wanted to do didn't fit within the bounds of journalism, that's good, because it didn't. But if, as he hinted, he plans to go into politics, then the modus operandi that helped him get his CNN ratings is not going to be a good thing in that field, either. A propagandist who goes into politics is not a good politician; he's a demagogue.

School Gardening in Action at Paauilo

As I remarked a couple of days ago ("Living it up on the Hotel Golden Princess"), while I was a bit taken aback to see a fund-raising dinner for school gardens and sustainability set aboard a cruise ship, I strongly support school gardens and sustainability. Last weekend, while attending the Hamakua Alive! festival at Paauilo, I got to tour just such a garden .

The garden at Paauilo School is actually more like a mini-farm; it includes not just fruits and vegetables, but chickens, geese, milk goats and hair sheep -- all interacting in much the way they would at a traditional family farm. And the kids at the school play much the same roles in this process that I used to play when growing up on a family farm in Missouri -- starting with weeding. But whereas I had to weed the garden because I was told t0, the adults supervising the school garden have found ways to make the weeding fun. As soon as a kindergartner fills up a bucket with pulled weeds, said an adult volunteer named Susan, "You can go out and feed the chickens (the weeds)."

In addition to looking winsome for the kids, the goats are a secret weapon for turning one of the garden's toughest adversaries -- Guinea grass, a particularly pernicious weed, which grows over head high around the garden's boundaries -- into goat milk. Goats are browsers: instead of nibbling grass at ground level, they prefer head-high shrubbery -- but the tall Guinea grass seems to work just fine as goat provender; I saw them munching away at it as we walked past the pen. But where the goats can't be, the kids take over. When some of the older boys dug out the Guinea grass in the goose pen, they got to hold a "Guinea grass parade" through the school, bearing the bundles of grass in triumph like hunters home from the hunt.

The little kids do other simple tasks, such as gathering fallen mac nuts for shelling. In addition to tackling the Guinea grass, the older students help out in other ways, such as washing eggs, harvesting fruit, and selling some of the garden's produce at a stand in front of the school.

"The kids just love it," says Susan. "The kids are terrific. They surprise you with what they can do and with what they understand. And they're awfully proud of what they can accomplish."

The garden is currently planted with asparagus, salad greens, sweet peas, chick peas, magic beans, kale, sweet potatoes, mint, onions, pineapples, papaya trees, macadamia trees, fennel and yacon. And it produces some other valuable products: compost, earthworms and worm castings (in other words, worm dung), which cut down on the need for fertilizer.

That part of the operation is expanding. Garden director Donna Mitts proudly took me down to the school's latest venture into sustainability: a structure called "Wormville," where earthworms will soon be processing the entire output of scraps from the school cafeteria into valuable soil amendments.

Mitts says she could use six more regular adult volunteers to help supervise the kids. If you're interested, contact her at the school. Those who'd like to volunteer or lend other support can contact her at 776-7710, ext 235 (office).

For more details and lots of pictures, see Janice Crowl's "Hawaii Gardening" blog.

A Reminder to Anonymous

For some reason, readership has been picking up here over the past few days, and I've gotten a number of comments, including some on old stories. Some of those were sent anonymously. I let them pass because they were fairly innocuous, but I need to remind people about the rules here. To quote from the Bio note that appears on every page:

"If you wish to comment, I ask only two things: that you refrain from ad hominem attacks (attacking the person, rather than the facts or the logic) and that you take responsibility for your comments by giving your name. The goal, here, is constructive dialogue, not shouting matches."

Anyway, that's Da Rules here, and I think they're reasonable. If you're anonymous, you're relying on my charity; I may or may not post your comments.

Living it Up at the Hotel Golden Princess

Photo by Janice Crowl



Last Friday I had a rather surreal experience: my first time aboard a cruise ship. I'd written about the impacts of the cruise industry before, but I'd never had the opportunity to go on such a vessel.

The occasion wasn't a cruise, however. My love, Janice, is a Master Gardener who'd been active in fostering gardens in the schools; in honor of that, she'd gotten two free tickets to a luncheon called "Seeds of Hope," which celebrated the School Garden Network and publicized the need for food sustainability.

School gardens and sustainability are both causes that I heartily endorse. As a whole slough of local politicians pointed out at the beginning of the event, this state imports an estimated 80-90 percent of what its population eats; if the barges ever stop coming from California, we're in deep do-do. And the first step to changing that state of dependence is to teach people how to grow food. (For a fuller description of what was said at the luncheon, see "Planting the Seeds of Hope in the Future" in the current edition of the Big Island Weekly.)

Apparently Princess Cruises wants to be associated with those causes, too, because they offered to host the luncheon aboard the Golden Princess while it was docked in Hilo Harbor.

Still, it seemed a bit of a weird setting for such a luncheon, because cruise ships in general are pretty much the opposite of sustainability. A cruise ship's idling engines can easily churn out the exhaust equivalent of 10,000 cars (see previous entry, "A Lack of Cruise Control"). It burns thousands of gallons of fuel to push the equivalent of a 14-story hotel from port to port. (See previous entry) A paper in UH-Hilo's academic journal H0hono cited a state study that said the cruise ship industry had created "7,569 jobs with wages totaling $250 million for Hawai‘i workers" in 2004 ("Riding Tourism's New Wave") -- but the state study apparently relied on stats provided by the cruise industry itself, which is in direct competition with local hotels, so I'm not at all sure that the net gain is all that high. And certainly we saw no signs of direct employment while we were aboard. We saw Nepali security guards, Mexican and Filipino waiters, Aussie tour guides and a Croatian crewman, but not a single local person who was not a guest.

I'm not exaggerating when I say "14 story hotel." The ship has 17 decks, three of which are below water level and off limits. After the luncheon (featuring Alaskan salmon and vegetables that I strongly suspect were not grown locally), we were offered a tour of the ship. We took elevators up to Deck 16, which held, among other things, two swimming pools, a miniature golf course and a chess board big enough for life-sized pieces. Deck 17 was a split-level disco (I guess if you counted the upper level of the disco, it would be 18 decks). The ship also has a very hotel-like, multi-story central foyer, a casino (so much for Hawai'i's anti-gambling laws), a theater, a video arcade, an internet cafe, numerous bars and restaurants, and a decor that very much reminded me of the Hilton Waikoloa: a kind of luxuriously ostentatious chintziness, a celebration of excess without a lot of taste that featured lots of mediocre art work (especially paintings of Mediterranean scenes) and brightly colored carpets. But instead of a "Grand Canal," there was Hilo Bay. I must admit that the views of Hilo Bay from Deck 17 were splendid. But if this had been a hotel on land, it would have been too tall for the island's zoning codes.

In fact, the Golden Princess was so hotel-like that I had very little sense of being on a ship at all. Almost all the stuff that makes this a ship is hidden behind mysterious doors (sorry, bulkheads) marked "crew only." Our cheerful young Australian tour guides took us through the restaurants and casino and disco and past the swimming pools, but we didn't get to visit the bridge or to see the great diesel engines that drive this behemoth. The sides of the Golden Princess go pretty much straight up and down, like a land hotel's; instead of portholes, the guest rooms (sorry, staterooms) have balconies. After the tour, we went exploring on our own, and tried to get forward to the bow, but found no way to get there on a surface deck: the superstructure goes almost to the front of the ship. If Leonardo DiCaprio wanted to cry "I'm the king of the world!" on the Golden Princess, I think he'd have to do it from the front of the Deck 7 Promenade.

The Promenade, not featured in the tour, was actually the only place on the ship that did feel vaguely like a ship. We got to look over the rails at the water far below, and to walk beneath the hanging lifeboats and see the winches that held them in place. I think if I were ever condemned to take an actual cruise on such a ship, I'd spend a lot of time on the promenade. Not that I'm ever likely to find myself in that position. If I had the money, I'd find a better way to spend it.

And I'm sure tourists could find a better way to spend their money in Hawai'i, too. I didn't see anything aboard the Golden Princess that couldn't be had at a land-based hotel, except possibly gambling and seasickness. And the food we got on ship was good, but you could get a better meal at Cafe Pesto. Tourists would leave a lot more money in the local economy if they stayed at local hotel, ate at local restaurants and took the Hele On bus instead of tour buses. And they'd see a lot more of Hawai'i.

From the Archives: A Lack of Cruise Control?

The following article appeared in the Hawaii Island Journal in December of 2005. --ADM

A Lack of Cruise Control

Is Hawai’i’s new cruise ship law worse than the agreement that it replaced?

“In 1993, I was on a Royal Caribbean ship. The cruise employees all had pins that said, ‘Save the Waves’...” mused Ross Klein, sitting at a sidewalk café table in downtown Hilo. “But I would watch every night, having a drink at the bar, as they threw garbage off the stern of the ship.”

Klein, a sociologist who teaches at Memorial University of Newfoundland, has authored two books on the cruise ship industry: Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry, and the just-released Cruise Ship Squeeze: The New Pirates of the Seven Seas, both published by New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC. He was in the islands last month to meet with various government officials and present a series of public addresses, sponsored by KAHEA, a coalition of environmentalist and native Hawaiian organizations that, among other things, actively promotes stronger environmental regulations for the cruise industry.

The night before his rendezvous with the Journal at Bear’s, Klein had given a public talk at a Sierra-Club-sponsored meeting in Kea’au. During that address, he had dropped a small bombshell: at a meeting with a state Department of Public Health official, he had learned the Northwest Cruise Ship Association was backing out of its Memorandum of Understanding with the State, in which the industry had agreed to limit its discharge of sewage and ash in coastal waters around the state.

At his meeting with the Journal, Klein produced a letter from NWCA President John Hansen to Gov. Linda Lingle. In the letter, Hansen claimed that Act 217, a new state law regulating cruise ships, had made the Memorandum of Understanding “redundant and unnecessary,” and that the industry would “transitioning out of the MOU as of December 31, 2005.”

But Klein contended that the terms of Act 217 were much weaker than those of the MOU. The MOU, for instance, had limited sewage and incinerator ash dumping by the big ships to waters four miles beyond the 100 fathom (600-foot) markers on depth charts of waters surrounding the Hawai’i Islands. Act 217 only prohibits such discharges within an area three miles off the coasts, opening some of the shallow waters around and between the islands -- areas also used by the states’ ocean recreation and fishing industries -- as potential dumping grounds.

Sewage in the Bank

Among these shallow coastal areas is the Penguin Bank, a long, broad shelf that extends over 20 miles southward and westward from the western tip of Molokai. The bank, shaped roughly like its namesake, is a traditional fishing ground, and is so shallow that, as marine biologist John Culliney writes in Islands in a Far Sea, “This whole broad extension of Molokai became dry land during the last Ice Age, easily doubling the size of Molokai proper.”

“In season,” Culliney notes, “its crest is often marked by a number of humpback whales.”

Klein’s Website, www.cruisejunkie.com, includes a page listing violations of the Hawai’i-NWCA Memorandum of Understanding in 2002-2003, first reported the Honolulu Advertiser on December 12, 2003. Among those violations were repeated wastewater discharges into the Penguin bank by ships belonging to Royal Caribbean Cruises Limited. On October 29 and November 2, 2002, the Royal Caribbean liner Radiance of the Seas reportedly discharged “blackwater” (treated sewage) and “graywater” (wastewater from laundries, dishwashers, bathing facilities, swimming pools, etc.) while traveling through the bank. Royal Caribbean’s Legend of the Seas did the same on November 27 and 30 and on December 2, 17 and 20, 2002, as well as on March 19 and April 5, 9, 23 and 24, 2003.

The Advertiser story stated that after these violations were reported, Royal Caribbean re-routed its ships to avoid Penguin Bank. But the incidents helped to fuel environmentalists’ calls for an actual state law regulating cruise ship pollution.

“The Cruise ships are not violating any state laws. THERE ARE NONE,” proclaimed one KAHEA pamphlet, which claimed that an average 3,000-passenger ship generated about 30,000 gallons of sewage and up to 255,000 gallons of graywater. The brochure also noted that the ships generated an average of 7,000 gallons of oily bilge water per day, and often discharged ballast water (water pumped into tanks to add weight at the base of the ships, stabilizing them in the water) that could release invasive marine species from elsewhere.

According to KAHEA Executive Director Cha Smith, the state’s waters host an average of about 16 cruise ships at any given time. “I think there are about 20 or so in the summer,” she adds, and notes, “It’s expected to even increase.”

In addition to wastewater effluents, the industry creates other pollutants as well. Smith equates the exhaust from a cruise ship’s diesel engines, idling in port, to the emissions of 10,000-12,000 cars. Solid wastes are often incinerated on board, creating more potential air pollution and contaminated ash. The MOU prohibits the burning of solid waste while the ships are in harbor.

“The MOU is a voluntary agreement,” the KAHEA brochure pointed out. “There is no mechanism for enforcement or requirement for compliance...Nor are any fees levied to cover the direct or indirect costs associated with this booming industry. There were no repercussions when the industry reported scores of violations in Hawai’i.”

Ironically, KAHEA and other environmental groups now find themselves arguing that the new state law regulating cruise ships may be even less effective than the MOU. The MOU and Act 217 appear to have equivalent requirements for fuel and air emissions. Klein points out that the MOU’s provisions for hazardous waste disposal are already “contained in federal legislation.” Smith notes that while Act 217 does have penalties for violations, it still essentially relies on voluntary reporting by the cruise ship companies themselves. And Act 217’s 3-mile limit gives it a much shorter reach than the MOU.

Because of that limit, the waste dumping that occurred in Penguin Bank would not be considered a violation under the new law. An industry representative pointed that fact out to the Journal as evidence that that the incidents weren’t that bad. Environmentalists point to it as evidence of how bad the law is.

“There’s zero incentive for the industry to enforce their own laws,” Smith contends. “There’s zero monitoring. The industry reports their own numbers. There’s no mechanism for the state to do onboard inspections. At the director’s discretion, they can request the reporting documents, but there’s no regular reporting schedule...

We need much stronger legislation.”

According to Tom Arizumi, who heads the State Department of Health’s Evironmental Management Division, the DOH was mandated by Act 217 to determine penalties for various violations of the law, and hopes to have to those penalty schedules in place by July of 2006. Until then, the state’s only recourse, in the case of a violation, is to go to court to seek “injunctive relief for them to stop the activities.

And what if a company was told to stop, and didn’t?

“Willful failure to comply with the injunction would infer criminal activity,” Arizumi replied.

Arizumi confirmed that the state would still be reliant on “self-reporting” by the industry to learn of any infractions, but he added “We can request the ship’s log from the cruise ship industry to verify their operational activities to ensure compliance with the statute. It’s a federal requirement to log all those things (discharges, etc.) in the ship’s log, and failure to do so is a federal violation.”

Federal Pre-Emption

Governer Linda Lingle allowed Act 217 to become law without her signature.

“The State of Hawaii presently regulates cruise ship discharges through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which is more comprehensive than this legislation, protects a wider area, does not conflict with federal law, and allows for greater flexibility to adjust to changing environmental and industry conditions,” Lingle wrote, in a letter to the Senate.

In addition to the problem of limiting protections to three miles from shore, she wrote, the bill’s “blackwater” regulations were possibly pre-empted by federal standards already in place, and that “the bill requires the Department of Health to set fines by rules. However, HRS 342D-30 already establishes penalty provisions for pollution violations.”

She also pointed out that the bill failed to regulate “the primary source of water pollution from passenger vessels, which is treated wastewater.”

Klein notes that, while the cruise ship industry has touted its “advanced wastewater treatment systems,” the processed effluent from those systems is not exactly tapwater.

“They (industry spokespersons) argue that it is virtually safe,” Klein told the Journal, but noted that such effluent can still cause problems with “nutrient loading”—discharging organic matter that could cause algal blooms or other disruptions of ocean ecosystems. The treated effluent may also contain other contaminants such as metals and ammonia.

But Arizumi maintains that the federal laws prevent the state from doing anything about treated sewage discharges anyway. He told the Journal that according to the federal statutes, “States cannot ban discharges from ships that discharge waste that is treated by an approved marine sanitation device.”

Playing by Two Sets of Rules?

Charles Toguchi has a similar explanation for why the Act 217 only prohibits dumping within three miles of shore: the state couldn’t legally go any further.

“The state jurisdiction just goes out to three miles,” he told the Journal.

Toguchi heads Charles Toguchi and Associates, which lobbies for the Northwest CruiseShip Association in Hawai’i. At the end of Klein’s presentation at Kea’au, a Toguchi associate, Patrick Shaw, had stood up and offered his card to anyone who wanted to hear “the other side.”

The Journal took Shaw’s card and called him two days later. But after the first question—a request for an example of “ambiguity and operational confusion” that might result if the cruise industry didn’t terminate MOU—Shaw said that his boss should answer that, and ended the interview. Toguchi called the next day.

In answer to that first question, Toguchi gave no examples, but offered a sports analogy: “You can’t play a football game with two sets of rules. It was for that same reason that we wanted to transition out of that set of rules (the MOU), and put all our efforts into implementing the intent of the recent legislation.”

On the other hand, he said, the industry would continue “honor the spirit” of the MOU, and would continue to avoid some sensitive areas such the Penguin Bank and the Humpback Whale Sanctuary.

Apparently, then, cruise ships entering Hawaiian waters will be told to observe one set of rules, but also to observe the “spirit” of another set of rules that have officially been rejected.

Arizumi confirmed what Toguchi told the Journal.

“They told us that they would continue to volunteer to abide by the operational provisions of the MOU,” he said. They wouldn’t be discharging in the Penguin Banks or in the Marine Mammal Sanctuaries.

What the cruise lines wouldn’t be doing, he said, was filing annual compliance reports for the MOU.

“So if there are any violations, we just won’t know about it?” this reporter asked.

“That’s basically it,” Arizumi said.

Toguchi maintained that the industry’s record under the MOU was “excellent.” Asked about the violations reported in the Advertiser article, he replied that the Advertiser story was an example of “how facts can be stretched to make it seem like there were violations.” He called the incidents “infractions,” and noted that they all took place beyond the Act 217’s three-mile limit, so “many of these infractions would not have been violations.”

He added that the crews had thought it was okay to release the effluent because it was their usual rule to allow such releases if the ship was than 12 miles from shore. All the incidents, Toguchi said, had involved treated effluent.

“Not one gallon of raw sewage had been spilled by the industry in state waters since the implementation of the MOU,” he maintained.

He attributed the incidents cited in the Advertiser article to normal adjustment problems in the early days of the MOU. One incident, for instance, involved a ship incinerating solid waste while in port. Toguchi said the burning happened the day after the MOU took effect, and the captain simply hadn’t been notified yet.

Since then, we’ve had an excellent record,” Toguchi maintained. “I think we’ve had two or three (infractions) since that time.”

Arizumi said that under the MOU, only ”minor” infractions, mostly involving treated effluent, had been reported.

When informed of Toguchi’s statements, Klein was skeptical.

“If they planned to continue to respect the prohibition on discharges in Penguin Bank and the Whale Sanctuary, then I am sure they'd have said it in their letter to the Governor rather than risk the criticism they are now receiving,” he responded by e-mai. He speculated that the industry was backpedaling to avoid criticism.

“Interestingly, the Act specifically states (342D-H) that it does not prevent voluntary agreements (such as an MOU) that extend beyond the marine waters of the State (i.e., beyond 3 miles),” he noted. “Thus, there is no inconsistency between the Act and the MOU, unless one wants to adopt the lower standards permitted by the legislation.... As for putting all of their energies into implementing the Act, I really don't know what he means. Implementation means training staff not to be as cautious as they are currently expected to be.”

What the Crew Didn’t Know

Much of what Toguchi told the Journal almost eerily followed a model of the industry’s behavior that Klein had verbally sketched two days before, as he sat at the café table on Keawe St.

“I think very often when there are accidents and spills, it isn’t a corporate decision, but corporate decisions are not being translated to the staff in the engine rooms...” Klein had observed. “I would think the incentive to cover it up is greatest on the level of the ship.”

Asked how corporate management generally reacted to such a violation, he replied, “The corporate side will minimize it.”

As an example, he cited the case of the Crystal Harmony, which was permanently banned from Monterey bay. Www.cruisejunkie.com summarizes the incident thusly:“Crystal Harmony, Crystal Cruises. Reported in March 2003 that contrary to a written promise to not discharge in the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary, the ship discharged 36,000 gallons of treated bilge, treated sewage, and grey water. The company stated that it didn't report the discharge because it wasn't illegal—it only represented that they didn't keep their promise.”

In the case of the Crystal Harmony, Klein told the Journal, the captain and chief engineer knew about the promises not to dump in the bay, but “The company disclosed that the message hadn’t gotten transmitted to the people operating the systems.”

Klein also cites a 1999 article by New York Times reporter Douglas Frantz, who discovered that ships had “alternative piping” that would allow oily bilgewater to be dumped directly into the sea instead of going through a filtration system.

“Engineers reported that they received an end-of-the-year bonus if they came in under budget,” summarized Klein. “They saved $80,000 a year by not using filters.”

In 2002, Norwegian Cruise Lines pled guilty to dumping oily bilgewater directly into the sea from 1997 to 2000. The company was fined $1 million and ordered to perform $500,000 worth of community services. According to www.cruisejunkie.com, “The company was given a lenient sentence because it reported its practices to the Department of Justice.” Norwegian Cruise lines is the parent to NCL-America, whose Pride of Aloha and Pride of America currently offer interisland cruises in Hawai’i.

Cruisejunkie.com lists dozens of other examples of cruise ship environmental violations, including an incident in early 2005, when the Honolulu Advertiser reported that the Pride of Aloha had discharged about 70 tons of treated effluent into Honolulu Harbor. In March of this year, West Hawaii Today reported an incident in Kailua-Kona, when the numerous people witnessed “brown water” boiling up around Holland America’s Statendam, leaving a “brown mark” on the ship’s side, shortly before it left harbor. According to the WH-T article, State and Coast Guard officials denied any knowledge that effluent dumping had occurred in this case, and one Department of Health official suggested that the “brown water” may have been bottom muck stirred up by the ship’s engines, although water in the area was 130 feet deep.

Holland America is a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation, the line involved in the Penguin Bank incidents. The two companies have been cited elsewhere in numerous incidents involving bilgewater and effluent dumping, oil discharges, air pollution violations and falsification of records. In a Florida court in 2002, Carnival pled guilty to repeated oil discharge violations in exchange for a fine of $9 million and $9 million in community services.

Accidents and crimes happen in any industry. Toguchi and other cruise ship representatives argue that over all, their industry’s record is a good one. They contend that the violations recorded under the MOU pale in comparison with those of land based sewage plants such as Honolulu’s Sand Island facility. Environmentalists counter that that the land-based facilities aren’t operating on the honor system.

The activists generally seem to agree that stronger regulation of the industry is necessary. For them, the question becomes: how?

Learning What has Worked

Despite writing a book whose title calls the cruise industry “the New Pirates,” Klein maintains that he is neither anti-cruise ship nor an environmental lobbyist.

“KAHEA is a group that is advocating for change. I’m an academic. As soon as I become an advocate for one position only, it compromises my position as an academic.”

In addition to his two popular books, Klein as authored several more academic studies of the industry, including a major one for the Canadian government. His talk in Kea’au was framed as a report on the sociological history of the cruise ship protests. But he was also took his current audience’s interests into account. The value of the talk, he said, was that “it will give you insight...as to what has worked in the dealing with this industry.”

He related the stories of protests in Florida, California and Alaska. He talked about the industry’s efforts to “greenwash” its image and the methods it used to suppress critics, including himself. He discussed the relative merits of MOUs versus legislation, and found both to be lacking. Legislative and political routes, he said, were often unsuccessful because of the industry’s lobbying efforts. Court challenges, on the other hand, were often effective, as were “clear, strong grassroots movements,” such as the protests in Monterey that got the Crystal Harmony banned, or a shopkeepers’ strike that dissuaded a cruise ship from making an Alaska village its port of call.

“There are ways to make the smooth running of the shore excursions...quite difficult,” he noted. .

Klein’s analysis of how and when violations occurred may also suggest ways legislation might be made more effective. If violations and cover-ups originate on-ship, for instance, then effective legislation logically should provide for on-ship inspectors and create a funding method to pay for them. At the Kea’au meeting, Klein praised Alaska cruise ship legislation that set up enforceable standards, a monitoring program and a $1 per passenger tax to pay for testing and enforcement. But again, he noted that strong legislation such as Alaska’s was only possible with the “old style, hardcore grassroots” support.

KAHEA, the Sierra Club and other organizations are working to mobilize that support.

“I think in order to build that political will ... to adequately regulate this industry, legislators are going to need more examples of the problems that the cruise ships cause,” believes Smith. She also strongly supports a tough new federal cruise ship bill that has been introduced in Congress.

KAHEA has started a program called “Be the Eyes of the Ocean,” which supplies mail-in forms for reporting suspected cruise ship environmental violations. The forms are available at http://www.kahea.org/ocean/pdf/cruisereporting2.pdf, or by calling(808) 524-8220.

“Individuals whose documentation of dumping leads to fines against a cruise line may be eligible to receive half of any fine that is levied under the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships,” announces a note at the bottom of the form, which cites one case where passengers videotaped plastic bags being dumped overboard and got to claim shares of the $250,000 fine that was collected as a result.

Ironically, perhaps the people most able to influence the industry’s behavior may not be those standing on the shore, but the passengers themselves, such as the couple who reported the plastic bag dumping -- or like Klein, the self-professed “cruise junkie.”

“I started as a cruise enthusiast...” he told the Journal. My wife and I were taking up to 50 days a year of cruises.”

But with all that shipboard time, he began to “see things like some of the labor problems... After about 200 days on cruise ships, I reached the point where I wanted to start writing about the topic.”

For him, it was not a matter of stopping the cruise industry, but of making it live up to its own PR.

“How can I impact the industry,” he asked, “so that I can go on a cruise ship and not have those moral and ethical dilemmas?”