HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY
Kopa’a: Sugar
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY
“Nothing can sweeten it.”  (Nothing can change a bad situation into a good one.)

September 23, 1878: Two hundred men work furiously to complete the A&B ditch before the close of the month. Earlier in the year, the San Francisco sugar baron Claus Spreckels made a request to King Kalakaua, that he be allowed to dig a ditch to feed sugar cane. Kalakaua had a governing cabinet, and at the time, this cabinet rejected Spreckels’ request. (Rumor had it that A&B fed them well.) Kalakaua didn’t like this decision, fired the cabinet, created a new one, and that cabinet gave Spreckels the rights he wanted. The agreement shows a loan from Spreckels to Kalakaua of $4,000 (about $80,000 in todays money).

So, why the backbreaking pace for A&B? Because the Kalakaua-Spreckels agreement also said that if A&B didn’t complete its Hamakua ditch by September 30 then the company would lose the ditch and the water rights to Spreckels. After 23 months of work, the company barely made the deadline, at a cost of $80,000 ($1.6 million today). At the time, it moved a then unheard of 40 million gallons of water a day.

For the next 20 years, the sugar soap opera struggle between A&B and Spreckels would continue, shenanigans worthy of a TV show. And, this year, the televisions powers that be agree. It’s on CBS, it’s called Cane, and it’s about a sugar cane baron who lives in…Palm Beach.

 AEROSTAR CANCELS CONCERT  - If you have paper tickets, return them to the MACC box office for a refund.