Servant and Steward: Hawaii

During my last pilgrimage to Manoppello after concluding my studies in Rome and before returning to the United States of America, Paul Badde and Father Carmine Cucinelli, O.F.M. Cap, rector of the Shrine of the Holy Face, both referred to me as "an apostle of the Holy Face" because of my collaboration with them in researching the history of the Volto Santo and my desire to make the Face of Jesus more well known. I do not think I am worthy of such a title, but I am happy to do my part in spreading this beautiful devotion.

With Ellen and Paul Badde and Antonio Bini

With Father Carmine

Since my return to Illinois, I have had the opportunity to talk about the Holy Face with the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George and soon I will have the pleasure of talking about the Volto Santo with the Fisher's of Men in Honolulu at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 25 at the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace.

If you are on one of the Hawaiian islands, I hope you'll be able to join us for the breakfast and talk and humbly ask that you help spread the word. Mahalo e aloha!

14 April 2016

Did his visit to Hawaii launch Mark Twain's career?

Growing up on the banks of the Mississippi River, we Quincyans heard a lot in grade school about Mr. Samuel Clemens who grew up just a few miles down the Muddy River from us. Mr. Clemens, of course, is better known to the world as Mark Twain.

We even took several field trips to Hannibal to learn about Huckleberry Finn and Mr. Clemens. Two things stand out in my mind about these fields above all else: standing in the pitch blackness of the Mark Twain Caves - which I never liked - and the delicious fudge that could be bought in downtown Hannibal. Though we learned much about Mr. Clemens, there is one thing - among many others, I'm sure - that we never learned about him: his great love of what he knew as the Sandwich Islands and we know as the Hawaiian Islands.

I've written a few times on these pages about his love of Hawaii (here, here, here, and here about books), a love that I share with him. I bring him up again today because of an interesting article in Honolulu Magazine titled, "The Adventures of Mark Twain: How He Launched a Literary Career in Hawaii" in honor of the 150th anniversary of his visit to the islands.

In the article, Kim Steutermann Rogers suggests "it’s not just what happened to Twain while he was in Hawai‘i that gave the place its favorable sheen. Throughout his life, Hawai‘i trailed Twain like a favorite cat." She continues:

Within two months of returning to San Francisco, Twain rented Maguire’s Academy of Music for $50. He printed handbills and ran advertisements in local newspapers for his first-ever lecture, titled, “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands.”

At the time, there was a long tradition of the lecture circuit happening on the Mainland. “It was the MTV and radio and movies rolled together,” says James Caron, professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i. He is the author of a book on Twain’s early career, Mark Twain: Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter.

And Twain killed it. He detailed how the cats in Hawai‘i have no tails. The snakes have no teeth. How the women wear simple dresses. The men wear nothing at all. He called the language of the Islands a “Sunday” one. Good for the Sabbath but no good for the rest of the week, because there were no words for swearing.

Newspaper reviews the next day hailed his performance a “brilliant success,” and Twain immediately decided to take his show on the road. “In October, 1866, I broke out as a lecturer,” Twain said, “and from that day to this I have always been able to gain my living without doing any work” [more].

If you're interested in Mark Twain and/or Hawaii, be sure to give the article a read. You should also read his Letters from Hawaii to see what started it all.

13 February 2016

Distracting walking?

The advent of smart phones has, in many ways, inaugurated the steady decline of civil society as many people now are more absorbed in their phones as they walk about merrily texting away as they walk into people, buildings, and poles (I've seen it all).

Several cities have chosen to accommodate this new form of oblivious walking - and so to encourage it - by creating "text walking lanes," thus removing the "hazards" in the way of these inattentive walkers. Washington, D.C., Chongquin, China, and Antwerp, Belgium, are among the cities to have done so. One legislator in Honolulu, however, doesn't want to follow suit.

Representative Sharon Har (D) has introduced instead a "distracted walking" bill that would fine people who text and walk at the same time:

The penalty would be a $250 fine that would go to the state Highway Fund.

"It just is another measure to ensure the safety of our pedestrians," Har said, adding that Hawaii has the 13th-highest rate of pedestrian deaths in the nation.

The fine is a bit steep, but in principle I think legislation like this might be helpful in getting people to begin paying attention to people around them again, though I think there are likely better ways to do so.

The proposed legislation is facing some difficulties in garnering the support of her fellow legislators because of its imprecision:

One major hang-up for the bill: Enforcement. As currently written, the bill defines “use” or “using” as “utilizing any of the functions of a mobile electronic device." That means someone could be fined for using headphones while listening to music or using a Bluetooth function to connect to a wireless headset [more].

It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

13 September 2015

On Leaving Hawaii: No other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me

I have spent the last four weeks where my heart is happiest and most joyful. I am writing this brief post in the Honolulu International Airport as I wait for my flight back to mainland to join the priests of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois for our annual convocation.

As I think back on these recent days of rest in the Land of Aloha, I cannot help but recall that this is been the hottest and the wettest I have ever known Oahu to be. Even the locals do not seem to remember something quite like it, a result of four tropical storms/hurricanes in the Pacific Ocean in the relative vicinity to the archipelago at the same time. Still, the frequent, heavy rains have also made Oahu the greenest I have ever seen it, no small feat, that!

As usual at this moment of the year, my heart is heavy; each time I leave Hawaii is harder than the last. I do not quite have the words to describe the sentiments in my heart, but Mark Twain does (he visited the islands in 1866):

No alien [Hawaii was not yet part of the U.S.A.] land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but that one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of the surfbeat is in my ear; I can see its gnarled crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud wrack; I can feel the spirit of the woodland solitudes, I can hear the plash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.

I have only been visiting Hawaii for nine years now, but I know Twain's words to be true.

About

04 December 2018

Islamic State Ongoing Updates - December 2018

11 August 2018

Ongoing Islamic State Updates - August 2018

06 July 2017

Islamic State Ongoing Updates - July 2017

13 February 2017

Bringing the Holy Face to Honolulu