Hawaii Log (Part 3)

In the past two installments about Hawaii, I focused on our first two days there, one for me on Kaua’i, the second with my wife and grandson in Honolulu. This third installment will round out the story.

First, the catamaran trip: Since all work and no fun in Hawaii makes even the most diligent planner a dull boy, I wasted no time following suit when my colleague Carolyn Harshman indicated that she intended to spend Sunday afternoon sailing with Maitai Catamaran, her favorite voyaging firm in the islands. She had already spent some time out on the west end of the island at a beach in far better shape than Waikiki where, as she noted, the reef is “pretty beat up” because of overuse and the impact of tourism. Still, this was not a snorkeling voyage. I signed us up before we ever left Chicago, got tickets on the same trip, and we all set sail on Sunday afternoon from a beach near the heart of Waikiki. For 90 minutes, we sailed out toward Diamond Head, took in the sights and the Honolulu skyline, and enjoyed the splash of sea water amid only moderately choppy wave

View of Diamond Head from the Maitai Catamaran.

View of Diamond Head from the Maitai Catamaran.

And what is more fun than sailing on a sunny day?

And what is more fun than sailing on a sunny day?

Small surprise, the crew offers maitais on board, along with other beverages, and my wife and I both imbibed. As the captain noted, “If you drink more, you see more,” which is undoubtedly true for at least some passengers. Midway through the voyage, I chided the young lady who served them for making them “too salty.” “Me?” she exclaimed with mock annoyance. “The waves!” Had I been drinking my maitai with some serious effort instead of merely nursing it, the waves at the midpoint of our excursion might not have had a chance to splash so much sea water into my glass. The taste of what remained gradually evolved to a saltier expression, but it was not entirely bad. Given that I was on the water for a mere 90 minutes and not dependent on such beverages for days, whatever additional thirst the drink engendered could be handled once I was landward again. Once we were, however, Carolyn proceeded to lend her snorkeling goggles to Angel and took him out in the shallow surf to learn to view the world below the surface, which he did with gusto while Jean and I merely rinsed the sand from our feet and enjoyed watching him have fun.I was aware from our schedule—and from the hotel’s shuttle driver—that we would be walking back to the hotel about the same time that the Honolulu Festival parade was making its way down Kalakaua Blvd. Sure enough, we found it within a few blocks of our catamaran site, wave after wave of marchers coming down the street in the late afternoon sun. We found a corner that seemed to be dominated by a long green dragon waiting to be deployed while various other squads made their way eastward.

The green dragon bides his time.

The green dragon bides his time.

Watching a parade in Honolulu is very different in one major respect from watching one anywhere else in the United States. My wife and I had the privilege two years ago of being in Honolulu at the time of the annual Kamehameha Day parade, which celebrates the legacy of the Hawaiian king who, early in the 19th century, became the first to unite the islands into a single nation. Kamehameha, who actually hailed from the “Big Island,” Hawaii, made the decision, after conquering Oahu, to locate his capital where it is today. He started a significant legacy of nation building in the face of European colonialism that, for better or worse, succumbed to U.S. annexation by the end of the same century. By then, he was long gone. What remains is a deeply changed Polynesian culture that nonetheless retains essential elements of its heritage even as it has become a minority in its own land.

Part of the 2012 Kamehameha Day celebration

Part of the 2012 Kamehameha Day celebration

The parade is, for starters, the least Euro-centric of any you will see in the U.S. Hawaii is a deeply polyglot, multicultural society today, and the Honolulu Festival featured units of Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Korean, and Filipino heritage, as well as Hawaiians, with at most a modicum of European presence. Each group contributes a colorful chapter to the state’s history and culture. Hawaii is today the only state represented by a female Hindu in the U.S. House of Representatives, and virtually no one cares. Hawaii today takes the notion of the great American melting pot to a whole new level. Each parade is a colorful expression of that state of affairs, although the Kamehameha Day parade rightfully emphasizes a great deal more of native Hawaiian heritage, with the royalty of each island having the chance to be recognized as such as they move down the street on horseback.

Another element of the 2012 Kamehameha parade.

Another element of the 2012 Kamehameha parade.

Monday was less exciting for me, except for a small mistake that woke me up far too early. I had agreed to meet my two colleagues in the lobby of the hotel at 6:45 a.m. to walk to the Hawaii Convention Center several blocks away. For some reason I woke before 5 a.m. to use the bathroom. When I returned, I saw what I thought was 5:59 on the hotel clock, and I turned off the alarm on my cell phone and began to get ready, feeling there was no need to let it ring at 6 a.m. and awake my two roommates if I was already up. By what I thought was 6:45, I got off the elevator, looked around the lobby, saw no one, and concluded that I was a little bit late and they had left without me. I began to head in the direction of the convention center but got confused at a T-section at the end of Hobron St., so I called Carolyn, thinking she might already be there, but no answer. I called Gregg, who did answer but said he did not understand why I was asking, as he himself had not even left his house yet. Shocked, I asked, “What time is it?”

Barely 6:00, I learned. I had fooled myself into getting up an hour early. Humbled by my own foolishness, I walked back to the corner of Hobron and Ala Moana Blvd., dragged my gear into the McDonald’s, and ordered an early breakfast before coming back to the hotel, where I met Gavin and Carolyn at the appointed hour. Meanwhile, Carolyn had gotten my message and tried to call back, puzzled by the whole affair until I explained it in person.

I used my standard excuse for such early morning follies. I had not yet had my first cup of coffee. After all, I got that at McDonald’s.

The three of us spent our day at the Hawaii Convention Center, presenting a demonstration version of a planned training workshop at the Pacific Risk Management Ohana (PRiMO) conference, getting feedback, and seeing how things might work. I won’t pursue that here, but one regret is that the convention center, with all the urban setting of Honolulu lying beyond its admittedly gorgeous windows, lacks much in the way of lunchtime attractions for its visitors. Across the street are one Japanese and one Korean restaurant, but the average visitor would be hard pressed to find time for sit-down operations during a convention lunch hour. The alternative is a Subway, which is okay, but hardly unique. As for myself, by the time I was done spending 20 minutes speaking with a consultant who wished to consult me, my time for grabbing anything before we had to commence again was less than 40 minutes. A sandwich from Subway was the only option.

A volunteer team from Manoa explains its preparations for disaster at the PRiMO conference.

A volunteer team from Manoa explains its preparations for disaster at the PRiMO conference.

Perhaps for that reason, after it was over, I insisted on walking our family trio back east down Ala Moana to a place I had noticed earlier, Cheeseburger Waikiki. With a name like that, I can only imagine what some readers may be thinking, and it certainly has some conventional elements, but it is also open air, dimly lit, with a charming semitropical ambience. The menu features some options I might not find in Chicago—like an island cheeseburger, consisting, of course, of a burger topped with Colby Jack cheese, but cooked in barbecue sauce and topped with a succulent fresh layer of pineapple, with, of course, tomato and lettuce as options to top it off or eat separately. No need for catsup on this one, though we could put that on the basket of onion rings we all shared. Frankly, without breaking the bank, this was one of the best cheeseburgers I have had in some time. At the end, we let Angel choose a dessert, which was an ice cream brownie of some sort, and we all shared before we waddled our way back to the hotel for the evening and watched television before falling asleep. After settling for McDonald’s for breakfast and Subway at noon, I was satisfied that I had finally gotten a decent meal for the day. And I was tired.

I set aside all of Tuesday as family time before we left Hawaii on Wednesday. We got a second opportunity to satisfy my culinary curiosity, this time going out for breakfast at an upstairs hole in the wall called Goofy, right on Ala Moana just a few blocks east of the hotel. Apparently a favorite of surfers, it features locally grown food, and the online menu shows a map of the islands and what ingredients come from where. It is not terribly expensive; you can eat breakfast for about $10 to $12 and get the highest quality in the bargain. I chose the salmon and spinach eggs benedict, which include fresh kale and Okinawan purple potatoes, and your choice of wheat or taro muffin. Going extra-local, I chose the taro muffin, made from the starchy root vegetable popular in Hawaii that is also the source of poi. The resulting purple-colored muffins are quite tasty, but so are the purple potatoes, which seem like a cross between regular potatoes and sweet potatoes, both in texture and taste. While the menu does not sport calorie and vitamin counts, my guess is that my $14 choice was pretty high on the nutrition scale in addition to being one of the more interesting I have had in some time, topped off with more than one coffee refill. I should note that Hawaiian coffee, in my experience, is much smoother and less acidic than many other varieties. I brought home a bag of both Kona and Hanalei Roasters, the latter acquired during the Friday trip to Kaua’i.

Jean had wanted to schedule a snorkeling tour and found one for Tuesday that left from behind the Sheraton Waikiki, which sports a rather gorgeous open-air hallway to the beach, which we traversed, although, having not had sense to shop elsewhere earlier, I raced back to acquire an overpriced cap to protect my head from the sun aboard the boat. Out we pranced, when the hour came, through the hot sand to the boat to hop aboard another catamaran, this time with the express purpose of climbing out on the open water. We were told to expect to sightings of sea turtles, and we were not disappointed, although it took a while. Our snorkeling site was over what we were told was a turtle “cleansing station,” but frankly, I am not sure what was down there other than water. If there was a reef, it was truly too beaten up, as Carolyn suggested, to be visible. If there were turtles, I didn’t see them.

The skyline of Honolulu from our catamaran.

The skyline of Honolulu from our catamaran.

I admit to a major handicap in this respect. Those who have read my inaugural blog posting from two years ago know that I am highly dependent on my glasses for sight. There are places that sell or rent “prescription goggles,” meaning those that fit over eyeglasses, but this boat was not so equipped. I could only leave my glasses off in the pockets of my shorts, don my goggles with no visual aids, and dive to see what I could. While I enjoyed the swim, if there was something to see, I did not see it. In the summer of 2002, however, I had done the same thing in the Caribbean off the coast of the Dominican Republic and saw an unmistakably colorful reef, so I have my doubts. Moreover, neither Jean nor Angel raved about any colorful reefs from their own swimming, though they were somewhat less adventurous than I, even with our floating “noodles” in place, in joining the larger crowd from the boat on the open water. I wonder.

Angel and Jean aboard for snorkeling on our last full day in Hawaii.

Angel and Jean aboard for snorkeling on our last full day in Hawaii.

Eventually, after about half an hour of flotation in the open sea, we all climbed back aboard the boat for more sightseeing. Several times we were pointed to whales popping out of the ocean—I don’t believe any were actually breaching—and turned our heads in one direction or another to see them. Periodically, turtles surfaced as well. Because of restrictions that require tour boats to maintain safe distances from these species, the view was always from some distance, which is entirely appropriate. The whales are well aware we are there, and vice versa, and zoom lenses were invented for a purpose. In due course, we concluded our trip, came ashore, and walked back to our hotel for the final time before enjoying dinner around the corner at a convenient Red Lobster.

Ahoy! A whale in the distance.

Ahoy! A whale in the distance.

But not before taking an unplanned detour into the free-admission U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii, which sits on Kalia Road along the beach in a building saved from the wrecking ball. Its exhibits, in an aging but sturdy facility, begin with the military history of native Hawaii, through the period of Kamehameha as he adapted European weapons for his conquest of other islands to unify Hawaii, through annexation and the Spanish-American conflict, which involved some major action in the Pacific by which America acquired the Philippines and Guam, into World War I, and finally to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the conflict with Japan that followed. While I would have preferred to see much more substance concerning the politically touchy subject of just how the U.S. came to acquire Hawaii, something I addressed briefly last June in my discussion of the legacy of Ray Bradbury, I nonetheless appreciated much of the rest of the effort to display the more recent history.

The U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii

The U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii

Hawaii was clearly a strategic location in World War II, and suffered for it. What my wife and I found particularly moving, however, was a video tribute to the Nisei soldiers, those second-generation Japanese-American young men born in the U.S., who fought in that war in Europe. The video details the saga of the “404” regiment that liberated not only Bruyeres in France but the concentration camp at Dachau. The interviews, especially those of Holocaust survivors who encountered these remarkable soldiers, brought tears to my eyes. One Jewish lady interviewed for the film, a teenager at the time the camp was freed, remembers one of these soldiers simply saying to her, “From my God to your God, you’re liberated.”  This liberation of Dachau by the Nisei troops was a new piece of history for me, something of which I had been previously blissfully unaware. It reminded us of just how much American history remains hidden from most of us, but for such documentary efforts.

At that point, we were satisfied with our visit, and our dinner was almost anticlimactic. We retired early for our departure the next morning on a 6:25 a.m. flight from Honolulu International Airport, eventually arriving on a delayed flight from San Francisco at Chicago’s O’Hare at midnight—in a city still lightly covered with snow.

Jim Schwab

 

Hawaii Log (Part 2)

Beyond the Friday day trip to Kaua’i, which I summarily described in Part 1 of this Hawaii log, there is not much point in detailing the work I was doing on this trip. For one thing, it is premature. We were simply working on a training course that is still in development and previewed some of it at a day-long workshop at Pacific Risk Management Ohana (PRiMO) conference at the Hawaii Convention Center. The rest will become apparent when it reaches completion and NDPTC is prepared to unveil it. In the meantime, we are figuring out what works and why. Suffice it to say our trio of consultants spent Saturday morning shaping our presentations, and I spent my Sunday morning refining mine. Meanwhile, my wife and grandson were entertaining themselves at the nearby Ala Moana Mall, Hawaii’s largest. It contains, among numerous other stores, a Barnes & Noble, where they bought Angel some books to read on the trip home. Being ten, he chose a mixture of Goosebumps and Wimpy Kid, if I recall correctly.

While I worked on Sunday morning in our room on the 29th floor, Jean and Angel went swimming. They're down there in the middle.

While I worked on Sunday morning in our room on the 29th floor, Jean and Angel went swimming. They’re down there in the middle.

For those few elitist adults who may groan and grimace at those selections, I would note that he (a) reads books and (b) enjoys them. I cannot say that my choices were any more sophisticated at that age, and I doubt many of them can, either, if they are honest. The first step in developing a reading habit is to enjoy it. I might also mention that he has been reading Tom Sawyer lately, though a version adapted to his age level. But he at least knows about Mark Twain.I can thank our colleague Gavin Smith for recommending Saturday’s lunch, once we had completed our collective work. The four of us headed to Nico’s at Pier 38, just off the Nimitz Freeway along the waterfront. Nico’s has both a sandwich operation as well as poke, or raw fish, which I admit is not my thing, so I picked up a cooked ahi tuna sandwich and provided the beers. Hawaii, like most states these days, has its own brewery, Kona, on the big island, which produces a couple of brands including Longboard. I tend to favor local microbreweries when I can, and while I have not checked on whether Kona is actually “micro,” I will say it is not a bad beer (which is Midwestern for saying it is quite good). It is smooth, not too hoppy, with a mellow taste, worth a try. I found myself trying it again throughout the trip when it was available. Nico’s has the added benefit of outdoor seating and an open air atmosphere that lets you feel that you really are enjoying your Saturday afternoon yet away from the tourist traps. Not that we avoided all the tourist traps.

In fact, that evening I effectively insisted on finding one. On a previous trip to Oahu, I had learned about Duke’s, a restaurant named after Duke Kahanamoku, who in Hawaii was an almost legendary athlete, the godfather of surfing, and an Olympic swimmer who competed for the U.S. in the 1920s with Johnny Weismuller and won gold medals in 1912 and 1920. Duke was a great ambassador for Hawaii who effectively taught modern surfing to the Australians. Duke’s is a sufficiently popular outpost along Kalakaua Blvd. in Waikiki that our party of three had to wait about an hour for seating. That gave us time to browse the gift shops in the hotel hallway that leads to the restaurant, which backs out onto the beach. It also gave me time to show Angel the nearby statue of Duke in the park just to the west, where his beveled image faces the city amid sand and palms. It was installed in 1990 on the centennial of his birth.

Next time, we have to take a better photo of Duke's statue. Twilight is not the best time.
Next time, we have to take a better photo of Duke’s statue. Twilight is not the best time.

Surfing had been a favored sport of Hawaiians long before Captain Cook stumbled into the place, followed by numerous other Europeans and Americans in the 19th century. The newcomers heavily discouraged surfing, and it waned among the natives, as did hula, also discouraged by colonizers and missionaries. Duke led the resurgence for surfing; hula has also revived, which is fortunate for world culture because it is a uniquely Hawaiian art form that is in fact a form of storytelling. And surfing has become a worldwide water sports phenomenon, a Hawaiian gift to the world.

Dinner on the beach at Duke's after dusk. (From a previous visit in 2012)

Dinner on the beach at Duke’s after dusk. (From a previous visit in 2012)

Eventually our hour approached, and we got seated. Duke’s has a very good salad bar, for starters, with a number of options, but it is the seafood that draws me back. I ordered their opah, Hawaiian moonfish, grilled in garlic and lemon butter, accompanied by asparagus and rice. I think it is remarkably delicious, soft and flaky but flavorful. The asparagus was nearly perfect, juicy but also crisp. I no longer recall what my wife and grandson ordered, but I do know that no one complained, even about our 20-minute walk back to the hotel on a beautiful night.

In the next part of this log, I will discuss our two outings on the ocean and other diversions.

 

Jim Schwab

Hawaii Log (Part 1)

Early in 2008, after I learned that I would be offered a three-week visiting fellowship by the Centre for Advanced Engineering in New Zealand (CAENZ), colleagues and friends had a tendency to ask why that country was so interested in my expertise in planning for natural hazards. I was bemused by the question every time. “Have you watched Lord of the Rings?” I would ask. Because the movie trilogy was so popular, the answer was “yes” about 95 percent of the time. I would then follow by asking, “You realize those movies were filmed in New Zealand?” Most of the time, people were well aware of this. “Think about that landscape in the movies,” I would advise. “The logic will come to you.”

Those mountains, the volcanic craters, the rugged hills—they had the makings of many natural hazards, including landslides, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and avalanches, to say nothing of New Zealand’s flash floods and ocean storms, including the occasional cyclone. Throw in a few orcs and dark riders, and you have a hell of a script.

People have asked fewer questions about my three trips in the last four years to Hawaii, perhaps because it is more familiar as part of the U.S. They are aware of its volcanoes, may have read about tsunamis, but still . . . . it is paradise, isn’t it? Well, in a sense, but that is what I thought of New Zealand, as well. I couldn’t believe someone was paying me to come there, even though I was very much aware of doing some very real work: seven lectures and seminars in three weeks, as well as attending other events and producing a white paper for CAENZ before I left. It would have been less of a paradise if I had been in Christchurch during the 2010-11 earthquakes. Just as Hawaii was less of a paradise during Hurricane Iniki in 1992.

My most recent visit to Hawaii ended just a week ago, on March 12. I was there as one of three subcontractors working on developing a new training course for the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center (NDPTC) at the University of Hawaii (UH), the only one of seven such centers in the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium specifically devoted to natural hazards rather than terrorism and other human-caused events. The center has recently added disaster recovery to a previous focus on disaster response. Two years ago in June, I taught a three-hour seminar for the UH planning program’s Summer Disaster Institute, focusing on the theory of disaster recovery. The center is led by an urban planning professor, Karl Kim, who is himself a whirlwind of activity and the person who initially created the center. Over the last two to three years, Karl and I have built a significant working relationship between NDPTC and the American Planning Association, where I manage the Hazards Planning Research Center. This is different from the New Zealand relationship in one important way: NDPTC aims to provide training throughout the United States, whereas CAENZ was specifically interested in applying my expertise to hazards policy in New Zealand.

This article has no central purpose. I kept trying to think of one, but decided it would be more fun just to detail the trip itself, in part because my wife tagged along, and she brought with us our 10-year-old grandson, Angel, who skipped a few days of school with the blessing of a principal who was wisely convinced that he might learn more on the trip than he ordinarily would in school. Angel is a very inquisitive kid. He has read most of the I Survived books, in which characters somehow survive harrowing events in world history, like the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, Hurricane Katrina, the bombing of the World Trade Center, and, yes, Pearl Harbor. Now Pearl Harbor, at least, could become a real place, with a real story to tell, and become more than historical fiction.

Thus, we had a family trio making a trip that for me was largely work-oriented, but learning- and play-oriented for my wife and grandson. We all woke early on March 6, trudging through the curbside snow into a waiting taxi at 3:45 a.m., to go to O’Hare International Airport, catch a flight to San Francisco, get a quick lunch between flights, then catch a second flight to Honolulu, landing at about 3 p.m. with our bodies feeling like 7 p.m. (That difference would grow to five hours over the weekend, as most of the U.S. switched to Daylight Savings Time, but not Hawaii.) By 5 p.m., after getting baggage and a rental car, we were at our hotel, checking in and unpacking. An hour later, we were looking for an early dinner so that I could rise again at 5 a.m. for a flight to Kaua’i. Within the same block that housed the Hawaii Prince Hotel Waikiki, we quickly found Outback. Good enough, no need to search farther, I said. Outback, a chain, is what it is, but for a chain, it serves pretty respectable food. I was satisfied with my sirloin and lobster combo, and by 9 p.m. (1 a.m. where we started the day), we were all sound asleep.

Early Friday morning, the three of us working with NDPTC—myself, Gavin Smith of the University of North Carolina’s Coastal Hazards Center, and Carolyn Harshman, a San Diego consultant and president of Emergency Planning Consultants—drove in a rental car back to Honolulu International Airport for a half-hour flight on Hawaiian Airlines to Lihu’e, on Kaua’i, the farthest west of the main islands. Kaua’i was the target of Hurricane Iniki in 1992, and I had read some after-action reports of the relief operations on the flights from Chicago.

We had a full day ahead of us. First, the only significant roads in Kauai circle the perimeter of most of the island, with the interior dominated by lush mountains. All the towns are squeezed into a narrow coastline, making traffic a slow-moving nightmare, even though much of the coastal scenery is drop-dead gorgeous. Second, I immediately noticed that one thing I had been told was true: the island has a large number of feral chickens. They were wandering the parking lot of the county administration building when we arrived. Before Iniki, they were farm chickens in coops, but the hurricane sprung their cages, and there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. My wife, when I told her of this on the way to Hawaii, asked why people did not go out and recapture them. One may as well ask why no one has trapped all the snakes in the Everglades. One look at the scenery would dissuade anyone from such a mad scheme, aside from the fact that the return of value on the effort involved would be pitifully small. The chickens are now wild for all time, just like the nutria that escaped into the Louisiana bayou country nearly a century ago.

What? You thought I was kidding?

What? You thought I was kidding?

But my wife has not seen Kaua’i. She can be excused for an innocent question.

Well, no, I wasn't.

Well, no, I wasn’t.

Our trip to the North Shore of Kaua’i put us in touch with a remarkably articulate advocate for community involvement in disaster recovery. Maka’ala Ka’aumoana speaks to the value of long-term residents who understand the imperatives of survival in a shoreline community that can be imperiled by storms such as Hurricane Iniki, and she has seen the slow erosion of such knowledge and skills as Hanalei has become an increasingly transitory, visitor-oriented community. Still, she argues forcefully for “community as the convener” when all the county, state, and federal agencies show up to help after a disaster. Community is tricky business in Hawaii, which does not have the kind of decentralized small town governance of most mainland states. There are only four counties, each of which encompasses one major island and sometimes nearby smaller islands. A mayor is mayor of the entire island, not just of, say, Hilo or Honolulu. And so, even at the level of a village like Hanalei, the official governance mechanisms still reside with the county. Whether that is good or bad, or how it came about, is beside the point here. The reality for Maka’ala is that governing authority resides elsewhere, but the moral and civic authority of the community still resides with the people in Hanalei. They have plans, and they want them honored. At the same time, she gently challenges the values of some newcomers and visitors who seem to want all the amenities they left behind somewhere else. “If you did not come here to slow down,” she says she asks them, “why did you come here at all?” Hanalei, after all, has the look and feel of a town at the end of the road, which it almost is. Look closely at a map of Kaua’i, and you will notice that Route 56 goes only a few miles further west along the coast before ending at Ha’ena. The coast gets pretty rugged after that.

The view from in back of Maka'ala's office. In case I didn't mention it, "Jurassic Park" was filmed on Kaua'i, as was some of "Gilligan's Island."
The view from in back of Maka’ala’s office. In case I didn’t mention it, “Jurassic Park” was filmed on Kaua’i, as was some of “Gilligan’s Island.”

It is hard to imagine how one evacuates people on Kaua’i amid the traffic congestion that dominates the main roads on a daily basis, let alone in a crisis. We returned to Lihu’e, and it took nearly half the afternoon to do it. Volcanic islands tend to produce gorgeous but challenging terrain. We had the opportunity to hear from utility executives, county emergency management officials, and other citizens about the issues connected with protecting such a vulnerable population. Unlike the mainland, there is no larger grid, for instance, to provide backup power. That calls for a different kind of resilience than the rest of us are used to. There is a great deal to learn in a place like Kaua’i, but one must be prepared to listen. By the time we flew back to Honolulu in the evening, I think we all had learned a great deal indeed, and owed a debt of gratitude to some of the county officials who had arranged these conversations for us.

Meanwhile, my wife had taken our grandson to Pearl Harbor, where he saw the U.S.S. Arizona memorial and toured the U.S.S. Missouri, which hosted the signing ceremony for the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II. My next posting will discuss our time on Oahu.

 

Jim Schwab