Everybody has to complain about something. Here in Boston, the hot topic of the day is gas prices. The gas station next door is currently at $3.39 for regular. I can only imagine what it’s up to at home - $4.28? The local petroleum processors in Hawaii ought to be ashamed of themselves for raping the local wallet. But then, they have no conscience.

Several articles back home have talked about the impending Whole Foods store on Maui, to the point where Down to Earth on Dairy Road was circulating a petition regarding the new store (I don’t remember why). I visited the brand new Whole Foods Shop near Symphony Hall and after three trips I have to say Down to Earth and Mana Foods have little to worry about as far as I can tell.

To begin with, the Whole Foods prices are ridiculous. My reaction nearly everywhere on the mainland is, “Wow, look at how cheap this is,” whatever ‘this’might refer to. Not at Whole Foods - the prices were HIGHER than those on Maui, if you can believe it. $8 for a 2 oz. organic chocolate bar? Who do they think they’re kidding? And if you want Kashi cereal, shop at Costco becuase Whole Foods charges more for their small box on the mainland than Costco does for the large one on Maui.

And the way they tout how they recycle - appears more words than action. Yes, they don’t use plastic bags, but they double bag their “special” paper bags, a thick, nearly cardboard sack that has to cost a lot of trees.

Their selection was nothing to write home about either. I could find neither of the non-dairy milks I buy at Mana any day I need them.

In short, I can’t see how they are going to transport product to Maui and lower the price they charge on the Mainland. But, time will tell.

Finally, what we DO need on Maui is a Trader Joe’s. Good, cheap, often organic foods, lots of choices, and smiling faces. Shopping Joe’s is a happy time. It sure beats the pathetic excuse of a Safeway Store in Kahului.

– Maui Curmudgeon, somewhere in Boston

From a distance of nearly 6,000 miles, Maui seems a dream of sorts, not unlike it did before I moved here more than a decade ago. Returning to the east coast I remember some of the reasons why I moved. In no particular order:

Nosebleeds - the air is so dry here for winter (yes, it’s nearly May but the trees are still bare and the wind still icy off the Boston Harbor) that nasal passages crack. The air wicks moisture away from your skin within minutes. You walk around itching.

Noise - Above ground subway cars, traffic, pneumonic drills, construction, the city is forever repairing itself, growing, changing and all that is a tumultuous enterprise.

Traffic - Yes, it’s terrible that it can take two hours to get from Kahului to Lahaina now. And, to be fair, Boston traffic, for all its noise and numbers, moves more quickly than that. You see, unlike the idiots running Maui (indeed Hawaii) roads, the east coast uses things like sequenced lights to move cars quickly, and traffic triggers that actually work to change lights when appropriate. But what I have never liked here is attitude, something which has yet to bleed to Maui. It’s a toss-up whether Boston drivers more often use their steering wheels or their horns. And here is the home of the statement which summarizes abusive driving at its finest: putting on your turn signal is giving information to the enemy.

There is also a sense of history here that is simply not present on Maui. Sure lots of it is tacky - Paul Revere Transportation is a taxi company. But to walk into the first church in America, where Ralph Waldo Emerson was minister, or to Quincy Market where our Forefathers stood, lends an excitement that is simply missing from piles of stone in Heaus. Sorry, but true.

Like perhaps no other American Place, Boston is sharply divided ethnically. Southie of course is Irish, and even today, in the 21st Century, the Irish rule Boston. They are everywhere, from the civil serivce jobs and bars, to the sporting arenas and construction companies. The North End is Italian, and between North and South, never the twain shall meet, and not clash. West and central is a polyglot, but dominated by blacks and increasingly orientals, particularly Koreans.

They all seem to get along. Unti they don’t. Local papers report on the upward mobility of Koreans, who own many businesses in the poorer neighborhoods, and have made money where Blacks, despite having a decades-long edge, have failed to accomplish. So, Black and Korean gangs frequently fight. Koreans seem abusive to the Blacks, Blacks seem “uppity” to the Koreans.

Still, in a city of such a size, with all its problems, there are signs that perhaps, just maybe, Armageddon is not quite upon us: a skin head, huge, covered in tattoos, and a nose ring, with heavy metal blasting out of earpods, rises and gives his seat to an elderly black woman on the subway, and she gratefully accepts. A woman in line at a coffee shop pays for the customer behind her, without that customer’s knowledge, the owner of a used bookshop gives a book to a teenager who is $2 short, saying “I’m just glad you read, honey.” A boy reads Sophicles to his girlfriend on the bus.

Regardless of location, weather or bent, the one lesson humans have never learned is that in the end, we are each other. Sartre was right - we can be each other’s hell. But Shakespeare was right too. Love will find a way. My mind is invariably with Sartre. Today, in this cold, sunny, weathered town, my heart goes with the Bard.

– Maui Curmudgeon, somewhere in Boston

John Muir Day Day 112 of 2008 254 days left in this year

PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY—  Gutpela: Good
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY

WEB SURF SPOT OF THE WEEK — “The Green Issue” - NYT Magazine
WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK — National Geographic
PODCAST OF THE WEEK — Earth News
BLOG OF THE WEEK — The Environmental Blog

At the age of 29, Muir suffered a blinding eye injury and when he regained his sight a month later, he  began his years of wanderlust. He walked a thousand miles from Indianapolis to the Gulf of Mexico. He sailed to Cuba , and later to Panama, where he crossed the Isthmus and sailed up the West Coast, landing in San Francisco in March, 1868.

He explored the high country of the Sierra Nevada, making California his life-long home. He also traveled widely in Alaska and throughout the American West, writing numerous books and articles describing natural wonders and arguing for the need to preserve wilderness.

In 1892, Muir and a number of his supporters founded the Sierra Club to “do something for wildness and make the mountains glad.” He served as the Club’s president until his death.

In 1901, Muir published Our National Parks, which brought him to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1903, Roosevelt visited Muir in Yosemite.where  together, they laid the foundation of Roosevelt’s conservation programs, responsble for the creation of many national parks and monuments.

John Muir’s home in Martinez, California, where he lived from 1890 until his death in 1914, is  today John Muir National Historic Site.

It’s a perfect day to run the Boston Marathon, cool and sunny, and the normal (and at this time of year, chilly, wind) that blows off the ocean is rarely to be felt. The wheelchair races are done, as are the shorter races (5K, 10K and 15K) and the actual marathon has begun.

Today is a state holiday in Massachusetts - Patriots Day. Everything is closed, and that makes sense - most of the main roads, especially Mass Ave. are blocked for runners, making traffic (and public transportation above ground) a nightmare.

It is at this time that Boston and Maui share some characteristics. One is a cry I heard Saturday night near a restaurant: “I want my town back!” The place is overrun with tourists, clogging avenues, restaurants, and public transportation. A group of us waited an hour and 40 minutes at a restaurant on Sunday morning for our breakfast, and then left - we still hadn’t been served what we had ordered.

There’s not a hotel room to be had in the city or nearby. The marathon suffers from a tremendous increase in visitors this year - Boston is the site of the American Olympic Marathon trials. 25,000 runners, and nearly 500 Olympic hopefuls, running in skimpy shorts and paper-thin T-shirts, in 46-degree weather. Most runners have private support teams (many teams of just one person). And for them the course is a test of logistics.

While the city provides basic services to runners (standby medical services, etc.), the additional services (extra shoes in case, extra clothes in case, personal needs like towels and water sprays in the face and so forth) come from friends and family members who station themselves at key places for their runners.

It’s an option: the runner may choose to keep going, and run by her team. Or, stop, for a new shirt, a spray in the face, whatever. Then, she is off again, and the team scrambles to the nearest subway stop, down the stairs, to the cars, and the next location. (The city puts on triple the number of subway cars during the race to handle the additional capacity. Subway cars are packed with people with portable coolers, damp towels thrown carelessly over their shoulders, and a tired look on their faces.) Typically, a team will do this four or five times during the race (which, for those of you uninitiated, covers 26 miles and 385 yards).

I like that the race ends smack in front of the main, downtown library. Stands build for the occasion sit in front of the main door, mixing the athletic with the cerebral.

The men’s and women’s races are in the final stage now - a hill all runners know as Heartbreak hill, more than 6 miles up. The inclines seems not a problem when you walk it, but it wears on you. It comes late in the race, and pumps lead into your legs and fire into your lungs. The current leader as I write - Cheruiyot - is just 20 seconds ahead of Kwambai - and losing ground. For the women - Biktimirova and Tune run side by side, each, one supposes, waiting for the other to try to make a break for it. Word on the street is this could be one of the most exciting finishes in the race’s history.

To give you an idea of how fast things change in this race, just in the time it has taken for me to write the last paragraph, Kwambai is suddenly fourth and losing ground uphill, and Cheruiyot is pulling away. His projected finishing time is 2 hours and about 6 minutes - to run more than 26 miles, much of it uphill. My my.

Minute by minute, stride by stride play can be read at http://www.bostonmarathon.org as well as all race results.

– Maui Curmudgeon, somewhere in Boston
 

1st Day of Passover Day 111 of 2008 255 days left in this year

PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY—  Mobeta: If would be better if …
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY

WEB SURF SPOT OF THE WEEK — “The Green Issue” - NYT Magazine
WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK — National Geographic
PODCAST OF THE WEEK — Earth News
BLOG OF THE WEEK — The Environmental Blog

April 20th, 2008: Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho, both of Honolulu, have made the news by filing suit in their hometown against the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). Their problem: they think that once the brand new particle accelerator CERN is putting together on the Swiss-French border is operational, it’s going to cause a black hole that will swallow up the earth.

The U.S. lawsuit can’t stop CERN from firing the thing up this summer, but the plaintiffs hope that it will stop American companies from helping CERN.

For the record, it IS a possibility that a black hole will form. Any black hole which did would indeed crush in microseconds everything here into nonexistence. However, to calculate the possibility requires a computer, because it is so small that it is outrageously more likely that aliens would appear on Diamond Head tomorrow than a black hole appear — ever.

We’ll report from Diamond Head tomorrow….

This economy reminds me of my toothless grandfather who cut the edges of sliced white bread. As long as you ignore the millions of Americans who are perishing economically at the margins, everything is fine and will be fine. Simply cut away from concern and consciousness the margins of society, and the white center–the crustless Wonder Bread–becomes uniformly appealing.

As long as power, influence and privilege remain insulated from the reality of the lower classes, and the lower classes continue to remain aloof from voting, and apparently unaware of how they are manipulated to vote against their own interests, change will not be beneficial.

There are times when crimes and sins lose their taint. As soon as the suffering classes realize this and stop supporting demagogues, Elmer Gantrys, Ellsworth Tooeys and tin men, things may begin to change for the better. In the meantime, I’m betting on power retaining itself.

– Raphael O’Suna,   Haiku

Nat’l Garlic Day Day 110 of 2008 256 days left in this year

PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Pilta: Filter
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY

WEB SURF SPOT OF THE WEEK — Draft of Maui County General Plan
WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK — JibJab.com
PODCAST OF THE WEEK — The Ethicist, NYT
BLOG OF THE WEEK — TheRoot.com

April 19th, 2008: To be honest, we had a trifecta lined up, but we just don’t have the heart. Republican Strategist Kevin Phillips, U.S.Banker Charles Morris and former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack have all come out with books in the past few months and all have the same message: run, as fast as you can, for cover. The U.S. Financial system is not fixable, they say. It’s going to crash. Mack calls it the “Greater Depression.” Morris calls it “The Trillion-dollar Meltdown.” Phillips just says its “Bad Money.” Buy land that can grow food and learn how to shoot a gun, is the advice, in a nutshell. We’re all used to the fringe elements, the survivalists, the right-wing nutjobs, and their gloom. But it is damned depressing to hear that the unstable were right all along, to hear the really bad news from the suits in the oak-panelled offices who have enjoyed the benefits of good wine and high living. It didn’t help us that the Hawaiian language apparently has a word for pessimist (see above) but none for optimist. We’re going to the beach, right after we go here:

Int’l Jugglers’ Day Day 109 of 2008 257 days left in this year

PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Longlong: Stupid
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY

WEB SURF SPOT OF THE WEEK — Draft of Maui County General Plan
WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK — JibJab.com
PODCAST OF THE WEEK — The Ethicist, NYT
BLOG OF THE WEEK — TheRoot.com

April 18th, 1993: Twelve Hawaiians are among the 86 people who burn to death in the Waco, TX compound of the cult of the Branch Davidians. We can’t discover if that is the largest group of people from location, though the number seems high, and makes us wonder: what was so enticing about that sick cult that 12 Hawaiians decided to join?

Which reminds us of other child-abusing religious cults currently in the news: 

The Catholic Pope, head of the largest child-sex-abusing organization in the world, is visiting the U.S and conducting mass in athletic stadiums on the East Coast.

Convicted felon Warren Jeffs’ polygamist cult near Eldorado, TX — at what age did these women who are denying sexual abuse in the compound of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints first “marry”? (They refuse to answer when questioned directly.) And where are all the male children of the sect? The fathers? The husbands?

From here it looks like a 19th century vagina factory for Mormon pedophiles.

– Maui Curmudgeon

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — April 18th

• 1775: Paul Revere, Samuel Prescott and William Dawes ride to alert that “The British are coming!”      
• 1838: The Wilkes’ expedition sets sail to the South Pole 
• 1853: The first train in Asia begins operating (Bombay to Tanna, 36 km) 
• 1861: Colonel Robert E Lee turns down an offer to command Union armies 
• 1906: 700 (confirmed) people die, 4,000 are injured, and $350 million in damages occur in the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire (“The Big One,” which hit at 5:12am, has since been estimated to be 8.3 on the Richter Scale) 
• 1907: The Fairmont Hotel opens in San Francisco 
• 1942: James H Doolittle bombs Tokyo & other Japanese cities 
• 1955: Physicist Albert Einstein dies in Princeton NJ 
• 1983: A lone suicide bomber kills 62 people (including 17 American citizns) at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut Lebanon 
• 1989: Thousands of Chinese students demanding democracy attempt to storm Communist Party headquarters in Beijing 
• 1994: Former President Richard Milhaus Nixon suffers a stroke at his home in Park Ridge NJ (he dies in four days at a New York hospital) 
• 2007: Four large bombs exploded in mainly Shiite locations of Baghdad, killing at least 183 people.

BORN ON THIS DAY — April 18th

• 1480: Lucretia Borgia, Italian Duchess/murderess 
• 1857: Clarence Darrow, defense attorney  
• 1882: Leopold Stokowski, conductor
• 1924: Henry J Hyde, (Rep-R-IL)
• 1946: Hayley Mills,  actress  
• 1947: James Woods,  actor  
• 1953: Rick Moranis, actor
• 1956: Eric Roberts, actor  
• 1963: Conan O’Brien,  talk show host/comedian 
• 1968: Christian Slater, actor
• 1984: America Ferrera, actress
• 1989: Alia Shawkat, actress
  

National Cheeseball Day Day 108 of 2008 258 days left in this year

PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Bulsitman: Con man
HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY

WEB SURF SPOT OF THE WEEK — Draft of Maui County General Plan
WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK — JibJab.com
PODCAST OF THE WEEK — The Ethicist, NYT
BLOG OF THE WEEK — TheRoot.com

However, UNTIL the administration agrees to these resolutions, we strongly urge readers not to speed, illegally park, drink too much or kill anyone. And if you are one of those whining crybabies who have for years gotten away with running an illegal vacation rental business in your otherwise peaceful residential neighborhood, shut up, close your doors and wait for your permit.

– Maui Curmudgeon

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY — April 17th

• 1492: Christopher Columbus signs a contract with Spain commissioning him to find a westward ocean passage to the Indies (Asia)
• 1521: Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church
• 1790: American statesman Benjamin Franklin dies in Philadelphia at age 84
• 1900: Seven high chiefs of American Samoa sign the Instrument of Cession
• 1947: Jackie Robinson bunts for his first major league hit
• 1969: Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F Kennedy
• 1993: A federal jury in Los Angeles convicts two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King
• 1998: Photographer Linda McCartney, wife of rock legend Paul McCartney, dies in Tucson Arizona at age 56
• 2004: Israel assassinated Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi with a missile strike on his car.

BORN ON THIS DAY — April 17th

• 1837: John Pierpont Morgan, banker/CEO
• 1845: Isabel Barrows, editor/penologist
• 1885: Isak Dinesen, Danish writer
• 1894: Nikita S Khrushchev, Soviet leader
• 1897: Thornton Wilder,novelist/playwright
• 1899: Vincent Wigglesworth, entomologist
• 1923: Harry Reasoner, newscaster
• 1934: Don Kirshner, rock & roll producer
• 1941: Bill Fury, vocalist/guitarist
• 1943: Terry Reim, Writer, Techie and splendid raconteur
  
• 1949: John Oates, guitarist/vocalist
• 1956: “Sugar” Ray Charles Leonard, boxer
• 1961: Boomer Esiason, NFL QB
• 1973: Craig Anderson, country musician
• 1974: Victoria Beckham, singer (Spice Girls)