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Serpents in Eden


Serpents in Eden


Here in Serpents in Eden, a look at the evils that assail us. (This site being about us and for us, I feature these clips in the hope of fostering understanding and finding solutions.) At the top of anyone’s list hereabouts is homelessness. This has become a cancer on the soul of our community, and it causes us to look through and around the ugliness without engaging the human beings within. But having a roof over one’s head is problematic for most of us here, as is the onerous cost of living, the chump-change wages, the dismal jobs and manini economy. We vote with our feet, and we have seen off more than 100,000 of our own to the Ninth Island, and more than half our college graduates leave for the mainland. All the same, we are overrun. There are more than 300,000 military personnel here (bless their hearts) attached to 14 major installations that occupy large amounts of our best land and contribute little to a healthy economy or community. (Until recently, this included bombing the island of Kaho’olawe for the U.S. Navy’s target practice.) And, we are overrun by a kinder and gentler calamity, as our “hospitality industry” brings on a flood tide of visitors, more than 10 million a year before the pandemic shut the place down. (Remember how nice, driving round the island and seeing nobody on the road, empty beaches, fish coming back?) But I digress. These days, there are just too many people here, and fewer and fewer of them are us. There are answers, but these require evolution, not revolution. A new manufacturing economy is flourishing, as our community’s astonishing creativity takes Hawaii’s home-made stuff to a welcoming world. Beyond that, building a knowledge-based economy holds promise as a way to stem the exodus of our best and brightest, and give us the wealth to put right all that has gone wrong here (see Our Future).


serpents in Eden

Umi ia inui ke aho. – “Press Hard and Take a Long Breath.”


Index


The HomelessExtreme HospitalityThe MilitaryDevelopmentCost of LivingThe Iceman ComethHawaiians Agonize


the homeless


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Hawaiian diaspora



extreme hospitality


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the military



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development



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cost of living


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The iceman cometh



crime



other



Untold treasures await you in The Great Hawaiian Bazaar!


If you have a taste for history, we invite you to WisdomMaps: The Future of the Past!

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serpents in Eden