National Hugging Day Day 21 of 2008 345 days left in this year

PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Nait: Night
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY

TODAY - Martin Luther King, Jr.  holiday
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968), was one of the main leaders of the American civil rights movement. He was a Baptist minister and became a civil rights activist early in his career. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. 

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — January 21st

• 1789: The first American novel, W.H. Brown’s “The Power of Sympathy,” is published 
• 1793: France’s King Louis XVI, convicted of treason, is beheaded by the guillotine
• 1799: Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccination is introduced 
• 1887: The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) forms 
• 1935: The Wilderness Society is founded 
• 1977: President Jimmy Carter pardons Vietnam War draft evaders 
• 1997: Speaker Newt Gingrich is fined as the House votes for first time in history to discipline its leader for ethical misconduct 
• 1998: Actor Jack Lord, of “Hawaii Five-O” fame, dies in Honolulu at age 77 
• 2001: Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist convicted three decades after the fact for assassinating civil rights leader Medgar Evers, dies in Jackson Mississippi at age 80 
• 2003: The U.S. Census Bureau announce that Hispanics had surpassed blacks as America’s largest minority group.

BORN ON THIS DAY — January 21st

1st  Day of Aquarius Day 20 of 2008 346 days left in this year

PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Lait: Light
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY

January 20, 2007: After six years of debate (we kid you not), the Maui County Council finally approves standards for outdoor lights in both private and public venues. The regulations, which followed very closely the ones in effect on the Big Island for years, were passed 9 - 0.

This was a environmental issue, which in part explains the ridiculous time it took to decide the matter: the council never passes anything favorable to the environment unless its collective feet are held to the lava. In this case, arguments included a possible increase in technical jobs at the summit of Haleakala. The observatories there had complained for years that the increasing development of the island was making it harder to work nights up there. Light pollution obscured the heavens.

The bill has a loophole you could drive a quasar through, though: there is no agency or county department charged with overseeing that developers follow the new regulations.

Even here on Maui, the numbers of stars we have to wish upon is dwindling.

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — January 20th

• 1265: The first English Parliament is called into session by the Earl of Leicester 
• 1783: Hostilities cease in the Revolutionary War 
• 1801: John Marshall is appointed U.S. chief justice 
• 1809: The first U.S. geology book is published by William Maclure 
• 1841: China cedes Hong Kong to the British 
• 1887: Pearl Harbor is obtained by the U.S. from Hawaii for use as a naval base 
• 1929: The first feature-length talking motion picture taken outdoors, “In Old Arizona,” is released 
• 1981: Iran releases the 52 American prisoners it has held when it took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran (they had been held for 444 days)   

BORN ON THIS DAY — January 20th

We are a self-absorbed, indulgent and disrespectful society. One that is being propped up by a monetary policy which simultaneously devalues our personal assets. Our national managers are trying to buy our way out of a crisis, which was caused by unrestrained credit and spending. We continue to want to pay our debts with credit. The whole country is involved in a Great Ponzi Scheme.

Smart money moved to commodities, but no asset or investment will be protected from the societal dislocations which must inevitably follow a corrupt, ignorant and uneducated Federal Administration. Skeletons and ghosts try to reassure us that there is plenty of fat to go around. But there isn’t.

We need a day of National Recollection. A day in which everyone pauses for reflection. What are the motives of our actions? Why are we doing what we are doing? Do we understand that we are consuming resources for inessentials?

Do we not see that the accumulation of money drives us to evil? And there are no limits to this evil. And no end to the rationalizations and falsifications offered in defense of evil. Everyone of us must get his house in order. Everyone of us must realize that the party is over. We are living in a Red Zone at a Red Time.

If we do not develop a New Materialism, the Red will liquify before our eyes.

– Raphael O’Suna, Haiku

National Popcorn Day Day 19 of 2008 347 days left in this year

PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Winim kot: Acquitted
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY

On January 20, 1881, King Kalakaua named Princess Liliuokalani as the Hawaiian Regent in his absence, as he boarded a boat to travel the world. No one knew, of course, that he would never return, as he died in San Francisco exactly 10 years later, January 20, 1891. No one in Hawaii knew the King had died until his body arrived by boat on January 28. One wonders if the illegal overthrown of the monarchy just two years later would have succeeded if the King was still around.On this date in 1898, the Pali Road connecting Honolulu with Windward Oahu was finished.

Also on this date in 1900, the fire set in Chinatown to rid Oahu of Bubonic plague (reported earlier in the Maui Almanac) finally burns itself out, with nearly all of Chinatown destroyed.  The plague returned to Hawaii in three years anyway.

On January 19, 1938, the U.S. War Department decided to move lots of shps to Pearl Harbor over the next 16 months, to beef-up security. Those ships did move, and most were destroyed two years later in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

And in the closing of a famous trial — that of the Hawaii 7,  seven men who advocated the overthrow of the U.S. Government in Hawaii — the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned their convictions for treasons, and set them free on this date.

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — January 19th

• 1825: Ezra Daggett and his nephew, Thomas Kensett, are granted a patent for food storage in tin cans 
• 1919: A “tidal wave” of molasses, 15 meters high x 25 meters wide, kills dozens of workers (Boston) 
• 1937: Millionaire Howard Hughes sets the transcontinental air record
• 1966: Indira Gandhi is elected to be India’s 3rd prime minister 
• 1977: President Ford pardons Iva Toguri D’Aquino (Tokyo Rose) 
• 1988: The Beatles are inaugurated into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 
• 1989: President Reagan pardons George Steinbrenner for donating illegal funds to Nixon 
• 2001: President Clinton acknowledges, for the first time, making false statements under oath

BORN ON THIS DAY — January 19th

Hawaii “Discovery” Day Day 18 of 2008 348 days left in this year

Kaunana: Discover

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — January 18th

•  1644: The first UFO sighting is made in America by perplexed pilgrims in Boston 
• 1671: Pirate Henry Morgan defeats Spanish defenders and captures Panama 
• 1733: The first polar bear is exhibited in America (Boston) 
• 1777: The city of San Jose, CA is founded 
• 1778: Captain James Cook accidentally discovers the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands 
• 1788: English settlers arrive in Australia’s Botany Bay to setup the famous penal colony 
• 1862: The Confederate Territory of Arizona is formed 
• 1896: The first demonstration in the U.S. is made of an x-ray machine (NYC) 
• 1964: Plans for the World Trade Center are announced (NYC) 
• 1993: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is observed in all 50 states for the first time  

BORN ON THIS DAY — January 18th

Judgement Day Day 17 of 2008 349 days left in this year

Mokulele: Airplane

 

January 17th , 1929: Molokai and Lanai join the 20th century world of air travel as the first scheduled planes visit the islands. Inter-Island Airways Ltd. will now serve the islands with flights between Oahu and Lanai and Molokai by including the islands as stops on the plane’s way to Maui or the Big Island. Any plane could land at either small island on any day: you merely had to pay for a ticket. If no one had requested the stop, the planes didn’t land. The airline used the Sikorsky sea plane, for neither island had any airport or landing strips.

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — January 17th

• 1773: Captain James Cook becomes the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle (66° 33′ S) 
• 1775: Nine women are burnt as witches for causing bad harvests (Kalisk Poland) 
• 1861: Thomas Crapper is granted a patent for the flush toilet 
• 1899: U.S. takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific 
• 1904: Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” opens at the Moscow Art Theater 
• 1905: Charles Brewer & C.G. Scannell, both of Chicago, are granted a patent for punchboards 
• 1945: Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of persons of the Jewish faith from the Nazis, disappears in Hungary 
• 1955: Submarine USS Nautilus begins its first nuclear-powered test voyage 
• 1987: President Reagan signs the secret order permitting the covert sale of arms to Iran 
• 1994: A magnitude 6.7 earthquake hits Southern California, killing at least 61 people and causing $20 billion worth of damage 
• 2001: Faced with an Enron-price fixing electricity crisis, California used rolling blackouts to cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people.
•  2006: The Supreme Court protected Oregon’s assisted-suicide law, ruling that doctors there who helped terminally ill patients die could not be arrested under federal drug laws.

BORN ON THIS DAY — January 17th

National Nothing Day Day 16 of 2008 351 days left in this year

Apiki: Treachery

January 16, 1893: U.S. troops - under civilian control, no less,  depose Queen Lili’uokalani. The man who stands to gain most monetarily from the overthrow — Sanford Dole — is named head of the “provisional government of Hawaii,” which has been described in several postings on other days in the Maui Almanac.A country, a way of life, a whole culture, starts to be erased, all for pineapples and the almighty American buck.

Invading countries for financial gain — something right-wing supporters of the current regime in Washington, DC vigorously deny this country doing — has a long and strong presence in U.S. history, most recently with Iraq and oil. It seems Americans will never learn, or perhaps never accept, the darker aspects of their country, nor will other countries ever quite learn not to trust the U.S. to leave things be.

Somewhat ironically, Sanford Dole was president of the board of trustees of the Queen Lili-uokalani Medical Center.

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — January 16th

• 1547: Ivan the Terrible was crowned Czar of Russia.
• 1908: Pinnacles National Monument is established in California 
• 1920: Prohibition began as the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect
• 1979: Iranian revolution overthrows Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi 

BORN ON THIS DAY — January 16th

• 1757: Samuel McIntire, woodcarver/architect  
• 1874: Robert Service, Canadian poet 
• 1908: Ethel Merman, stage & screen actress
• 1911: Dizzy Dean, musician (97 years ago) 
• 1929: Allard Lowenstein, radical 
• 1930: Norman Podhoretz, author/editor 
• 1935: A J Foyt, auto race driver 
• 1937: Bob Bogle, rock bassist/guitarist
• 1944: Ronnie Milsap, country singer 
• 1948: John Carpenter, director
• 1951: Richard Thompson, rocker

Humanitarian Day Day 15 of 2008 351 days left in this year

Kupa’a: Loyalty

January 15, 1893: Officially, this is the last day of the Monarchy for all of Hawaii. Thousands of supporters of Queen Lili’uokalani gather in Palace Square to hear Hawaiian leaders plead with them to remain loyal to the queen. Just a few blocks away, however, foreigners — that would be Americans — are gathering and planning their overthrow. With trouble brewing, U.S. troops were sent ashore from the USS Boston to help prevent any riots, but except for a  few scuffles, no one is hurt and the groups do not clash.

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — January 15th

• 1535: Henry VIII declares himself head of the English Church 
• 1559: England’s Queen Elizabeth I was crowned in Westminster Abbey. 
• 1759: The British Museum opens 
• 1778: Nootka Sound is discovered by Captain Cook 
• 1863: The first U.S. newspaper is printed on wood-pulp paper (the Boston Morning Journal) 
• 1870: The donkey is first used as the symbol of Democratic Party (in Harper’s Weekly) 
• 1907: 3-element vacuum tube is patented by Dr Lee de Forest 
• 1922: The Irish Free State forms 
• 1948: The world’s largest office building, the Pentagon, is completed 
• 1973: Four Watergate burglars plead guilty in Federal court 
• 1974: An expert panel reports that there is an 18½-minute gap in the Watergate tape, comprised of five separate erasure
• 2005:” Mahmoud Abbas was sworn in as Palestinian president.s  
  

BORN ON THIS DAY — January 15th

• 1622: Moliere, France, dramatist  
• 1845: Ella Flagg Young, first female president of the National Educational Association
• 1906: Aristotle Onassis, Greece, rich shipping magnate 
• 1908: Edward Teller, physicist, father of H-bomb  
• 1909: Gene Krupa, drummer
• 1913: Lloyd Bridges, actor
• 1918: Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt
• 1926: Chuck Berry, singer 
• 1926: Maria Schell, actress 
• 1929: Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,  assassinated Civil Rights leader
• 1937: Margaret O’Brien,  actress
• 1941: Captain Beefheart, (Don Van Vilet), rocker
• 1947: Pete Waterman, rock musician 
• 1951: Charo,  actress/singer
• 1957: Mario Van Peebles
• 1968: Chad Lowe, actor
• 1978: Eddie Cahill, actor
  

Organize Your Home Day Day 14 of 2008 352 days left in this year

Paikaloa‘a: Capitalism

January 14th, 1942: The statewide repeal of the law prohibiting businesses from transacting business on Sundays goes into effect, thus allowing stores to open seven days a week. The repeal was part of a negotiation between the state government and local businesses, which had lost considerable trade because nighttime business was shut down due to the war. Blackouts (fearing further Japanese attacks) prevented anyone doing much of anything except by candlelight and behind covered windows.

After the war, the old prohibition was permanently removed from the law books, and business as usual resumed.

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — January 14th

• 1690: The clarinet is invented (Nurnberg Germany)
• 1699: Massachusetts holds a day of fasting for wrongly persecuting “witches”
• 1784: The Continental Congress ratifies the Paris peace treaty ending the Revolutionary War
• 1794: The first successful Caesarean section performed in the U.S.
• 1914: Henry Ford introduces the “assembly line” for his cars
• 1952: NBC’s “Today” show premiers
• 1954: Marilyn Monroe marries baseball star Joe DiMaggio
• 1967: 20,000 attend the 1st Human Be-In (San Francisco)
  

BORN ON THIS DAY — January 14th

• 1875: Albert Schweitzer
• 1886: Hugh Lofting, English/American writer & illustrator
• 1892: Hal Roach, early film director/producer
• 1896: John dos Passos, novelist
• 1906: William Bendix, actor
• 1913: Tillie Olsen, American writer
• 1920: Andy Rooney, commentator
• 1926: Thomas Tryon, actor/novelist
• 1935: Loretta Lynn, singer
• 1938: Allen Toussaint, musician (Wild Sign of New Orleans)
• 1940: Julian Bond, (D-Ga) civil rights leader
• 1941: Faye Dunaway, actress
• 1944: Nina Totenberg, braodcast jourmalist
• 1949: Lawrence Kasdan, screenwriter/director
• 1952: Maureen Dowd, columnist
• 1965: Vanity, (Dee Dee Williams), singer/actress
• 1963: Steven Soderbergh, director
• 1967: Emily Watson, actress
• 1968: LL Cool J (James Todd Smith), actor/rapper
• 1969: Jason Bateman, actor