As I compose this posting, Lala early this morning was still a tropical storm heading westward for the eye making landfall over the southern portion of the Big Island of Hawaii. However, all signs point towards a strengthening into a hurricane.   A Category 1 means sustained winds of from 74-95 MPH . If this projected path is maintained, Kona will be seriously impacted, but Hilo might not. My first job after graduating from college was at the Hutchinson Sugar Company in Naalehu, the southernmost city in the USA.  This part of Kau County could well be very severely damaged by this hurricane. The media have mostly indicated that official historical records don't show a hurricane has ever made landfall over the Big Island.  However, Google AI indicates: On August 9, 1871 , a powerful Category 3 hurricane struck the islands of Hawaiʻi (the Big Island) and Maui , causing severe, tornado-like destruction and widespread property damage from Hilo to Lahaina. [ 1 , 2 , ...

Sundays are sometimes spiritual and occasionally reflective.  So today I'll look at my 84 years of life in that manner because it took 42 years of development to allow for the latter 42 years of progress. To begin; I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and was a little more than a year old when my mother held me in her arms and pointed to the smoke emanating from Pearl Harbor on 7December1941.  Of course I don't remember any of that, and not much about World War II either. Growing up in the "fishing village" of Kakaako, which is now at the edge of the expanding Ward complex of high rises, life was easy. After graduating from McKinley High School, I went to Stanford University, departing in 1962 with a degree in chemical engineering, to work for C. Brewer as a sugar trainee at the Hutchinson Sugar Company.   I made this "sacrifice" because most of my close friends chose to join the first year of the Peace Corps.  They went off to places in Africa and the South Pacif...