Big Island Press Club

The Scholarship Dinner is beginning soon.

Rod Thompson, Peter Serafin, Tiffany Edwards Hunt, Baron Sekiya, Wayne Joseph and Daughter Jacylynn as well as Sherry Bracken are the “Early Birds”.

Tonight’s dinner begins soon. We hope everyone has a great time.

See you there!

    Mayor Billly Kenoi will be the featured speaker at the Big Island Press Club’s annual Scholarship Dinner coming soon on the last day of July. The event at Coconut Grill, in the Hilo Seaside Hotel next to “Ice Pond,” is open to everyone, club member or not. See the complete information listing below.

    Kenoi hasn’t said what his topic will be, but do we need to ask? The mayors of all counties, plus the governor, have been deeply involved in trying to figure out how to keep the state and county governments at least partly operational, while cutting back on government employee incomes in one manner or another. Some questioning from the audience may also be directed toward the mayor’s feelings about the recent County Council reorganization.

    The purpose of the Scholarship Dinner is, of course, to give scholarships. We can reveal this much: The selection committee felt so confident about its choices that it threw an extra $100 into the pot.

     Now for the begging and pleading.  The restaurant has to buy food to feed us, which means they have to know in advance how many are coming. Please decide soon that you will attend, and notify us at 982-6631 or bearinpuna@gmail.com.  State how many people are in your party. Leave a phone number and U.S. mail address if you are not a club member. The event will be on Friday, July 31, and we need to hear from you no later than Tuesday, July 28. “No later than” means today is better.

    As always we have to advise you, if you don’t show up, we still have to pay for you (the restaurant will have already bought the food for you), so you must pay even if you don’t show.

     Is all of this way too serious? Listen. The economy is still in a mess. But Billy Kenoi is a funny guy. Come.

Scholarship dinner in brief

Speaker: Mayor Billy Kenoi

Subject: Open, but sure to include the economy

Place: Coconut Grill at Hilo Seaside Hotel

Date: Friday, July 31

Times: Arrive 5:30, eat 6:15 pm

Cost: $28 at the door

Menu: Mahimahi, chicken, kalua

pork, lomi salmon, poi, rice, and cake.

Please: Call 982-6631 now or email bearinpuna@gmail.com

No-shows must pay anyway, so show!

July 2009, No. 7, 42^nd Year – HCR3, Box 10075, Keaau, HI 96749

By Rod Thompson

Who would have predicted that announcing BIPC’s July 31 annual Scholarship Dinner, with Mayor Billy Kenoi as speaker, would result in revelation of some of the club’s darkest secrets? Yet that‘s what happened when member Tiffany Edwards Hunt posted the Scholarship-Kenoi announcement on her bigislandchronicle.com July 15..

Without any particularly coherent train of thought leading up to the statement, counter-blogger Damon Tucker posted on Tiffany’s blog, “Our Press Club Controls the Politics of this Island.” ( http://www.bigislandchronicle.com/?p=6851#comments )

Gasp! Damon outed us!

Of course, Tiffany tried a quick “coverup.”

“That’s a ludicrous supposition on your part,” she told Tucker. “You’ve never even been to a BIPC board of directors meeting, or any BIPC function, really.”

But the floodgates were already open. Member Peter Sur confessed, “Yes, it’s true, and I engineered the council reorganization from the saddle of my unicorn.”

Member Dave Smith next revealed that he has a half-eagle,

half-lion pet called a griffin, and suggested he has a unicorn too.

Dave Smith's pet

Dave wrote, “Peter, where did you get your unicorn saddle? I

tried to adapt the one from my griffin but it was a lousy fit.”

These revelations (previously concealed from club members

by the inner cabal of the club) may be too heady for some

members to digest. But they are a roundabout reminder that

your last chance to sign up for the Scholarship Dinner is close at hand. Read the box.

—

BIPC Founders Meet, by Hugh Clark -

Three BIPC oldtimers, all charter members, met June 23 to reminisce in Eagle Rock, Calif., near Pasadena.      Bill Arballo, now 85, was the guy who unified the media in 1967 and served as president for some 16 months. He now lives in Del Mar near San Diego and still writes a news column weekly.

Don Miller is a former radio news reader and disc jockey at KIPA who treasures his membership. He never has failed to pay dues from wherever he was working from Saudi Arabia to Germany to Utah and Korea where he spent many years as a civilian education leader for the Army. He lives in LA’s Korea Town with his wife.

The meeting was tied to Hugh Clark’s extended mainland visit with his family. Hugh chose renewing old acquaintances over joining his wife and daughter at Disneyland.

During their gathering, the BIPC trio recalled the nuances of launching a press club that became more viable after Arballo convinced the Japanese language press and radio to sign on in a move many believe helped give the effort viability within the larger community.

Bill recalled his efforts at successfully revealing a surreptitious plan to shift the main airport from Hilo to Kona, a move denied for years when in reality it was well under way by Gov. John A. Burns’ administration.

All three expressed aloha and concern for BIPC honorary member Steve Christensen who has been dealing with serious health issues in Hilo and Honolulu for many weeks. Arballo and Miller remembered his free legal advice and court work that brought early-day triumphs on behalf of openness. (Latest: Steve coming home soon. – Editor.)

–

Seeking Right Fit, more by Hugh -

Hugh, wife Anne and daughter Sandhya spent 26 days in June and July looking over 15 colleges from Seattle to Los Angeles for Sandhya’s college studies that will start in the fall of 2010.      Sandhya is aiming for a career in medicine. A decision hasn’t been reached since she had one more place to visit after a 10-day national medical forum she attended in the Bay Area for high school students.

Her dad concludes colleges are expensive. After returning home to find she had earned straight A’s in her junior year at Hilo High, he hopes her diligence as a scholar may pay off with merit scholarships.

At Occidental College in Los Angeles, the Clarks found applications have multiplied several times. That might be because that’s where a former Punahou lad named Barack Obama spent his first two years before going on to Columbia and Harvard.

The Clarks also sandwiched in some family time, enjoying a gathering of cousins in Washington state; visiting Anne’s sister in Sacramento; and spending July 4^th weekend in Napa Valley wine country watching an old-fashioned small town parade and enjoying a barbecue put on by Hugh’s younger brother and sister at the family’s vineyard.  

Also traveling –

John Cole and wife Barbara Heavens celebrated John’s retirement traveling in Turkey and Greece.. They have since returned, but Barbara sent email dispatches during the trip, including this one.

“We drove to Istanbul from Athens. Took an hour at the border since they didn’t look for the customs stamp in the woman’s passport instead of in the man’s. Wonderful time. Cooler than last year. This is one great city. 2 mosques to go. Check out the Black Sea and back to Alexandropolis and to the Italian side, across the top of the Peloponnese. Got the tickets to Swan Lake at the Acropolis on July 6^th. Driving and roads very good. Did end up in the underground bus depot in Istanbul and they had to stop all the buses to get us out. No problem. Of course. (John explained locals never say,”yes.” It’s always, “Of course.” – Ed.)  The Ottomans did some plundering to get all the stuff in the Topkapi (museum). Staying between the Blue Mosque and Aya Sophia (mosque).”

Cole and Heavens also brought back a copy of the Athens News (in English). Top story: A new nationwide ban on workplace smoking. Also in the edition: Follow-up on Michael Jackson’s death, story mercifully buried on page 22.  

Thank Anita for Maury’s remembrance –

BIPC member Anita Politano-Steckel was one of the attendees at the June 19 showing of Creature from the Black Lagoon and other Maury Zimring movies. Anita met Maury in the 1960s when the two were staff for Peace Corps training on the Big Island.

It turns out she was the person who urged Maury’s son Frank to hold the remembrance following Maury’s death in 2005 at age 96. She said, “I thought it was a shame something hadn’t been done before or even when he lived to acknowledge what he had done or what he was.”

Sunshine violation –

The news media have given good coverage of the County Council members’ illegal use of “serial communications” (one private conversation after another) to set up the June 16 reorganization of the council. It’s useful to review the formal 2005 Opinion 05-015 of the state Office of Information Practices banning this procedure.

In 2005, the Honolulu Council asked the OIP if its members could hold a series of conversations to consider reorganization. The OIP answered, “While the Sunshine Law allows two council members to discuss council business between themselves, the statute does not permit ether of those council members to then discuss the same council business with any other council members outside of a properly noticed meeting.”

In greater detail, the OIP said, “Our statute’s very purpose is to protect the public’s right to be present during the Council’s discussion of council business…” Since council members can’t conduct business as a group out of public view, neither can they do it out of view in a series of individual meetings, OIP said. The agency quoted a comment on a Florida open meeting law, “It is elementary that officials cannot do indirectly what they are prevented from doing directly.”

See http://hawaii.gov/oip/opinionletters/opinion%2005-15.pdf

On the plus side –

Our web site administrator Wayne Joseph has compiled stories on the first use of the state’s new media-shield law.

See “Big Island Filmmaker…” at http://bigislandpressclub.org/

BIPC member list – Still coming. No one objected to publication. Needed update