Honolulu Contrasts

A L O H A!

You are welcome, Friend!

click on photos for all the usual reasons Yes, Honolulu is still growing.

It's a great place, Honolulu. We're certainly lifting its face for it. Give us another year and we'll make it look like Pittsburgh."

J P Marquand

But steps away from where I took the top photo,

this bunch of bananas is growing. . .

"Nothing had prepared me for Honolulu ... It is a typical western city ... It is the meeting place of East and West, the very new rubs shoulders with the immeasurably old. And if you have not found the romance you expected, you have come upon something singularly intriguing. All these strange people live close to each other, with different languages and different thoughts; they believe in different god and they have different values; two passions alone they share, love and hunger. And somehow as you watch them, you have an impression of extraordinary vitality."

W. Somerset Maugham in 1921

. . . in this tiny garden surrounding a dumpster

at Ala Moana Shopping Center's parking lot.

"The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. Every step revealed a new contrast - disclosed something I was unaccustomed to. . . I breathed the balmy fragrance of jessamine, oleander, and the Pride of India ... I moved in the midst of a summer calms as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden . . ."

Mark Twain on Honolulu

Of course, there are always different ways

to perceive the same realty.


"It was an ancient rule of Hawaiians that no one should hurt another bodily, or through theft of goods, or through injury to feelings. These were the only sins."

Max Freedom Long

Is that ethos OUR reality?

A L O H A! Cloudia