
starting this week
If we compare health and endurance, well-being, security, general attitudes, family and community ties and values, we would conclude that it is we who are impoverished.
We're taking care of my 92-year old mother-in-law here at home. She has the usual aches and pains and infirmities of advanced age but her mind and memory are still sharp. Her memories of her childhood are like a time capsule from the 1930s.
My mom-in-law has always lived in the same general community here in Hawaii. She's never lived more than about 10 miles from the house where she was born (long since torn down) in 1931. Listening to her memories (and asking for more details) is to be transported back to the 1930s, an era of widespread poverty unrelated to the Great Depression. Many people were poor before the Depression. They were working hard but their incomes were low.
Prior to the tourist boom initiated by statehood and affordable airfare, Hawaii's economy was classically colonial: large plantations owned by a handful of wealthy families and/or corporations (known as The Big Five) employed thousands of laborers to raise and harvest sugar cane and pineapple. Pearl Harbor, Hickam air base and Schofield Barracks were large military bases on Oahu. Travel between islands was expensive (ferries) and each island was largely self-sufficient.

(Bloomberg) -- Some of the largest U.S. food distributors are reporting difficulties in fulfilling orders as a lack of workers weighs on the supply chain.
Sysco Corp., North America’s largest wholesale food distributor, is
Sometimes it’s important to step away from a problem in order to better understand it. I recently went on a trip across the Pacific Northwest to revisit some old stomping grounds and to take a break from the often disconcerting developments of today’s world, at least for a little while. We all need a vacation from the information war at times, and though I was happy for the rest, I am also happy to be back. After traveling on the road across four states I was able to gauge the general condition of the US in terms of the social and economic effects of the pandemic mandates and covid propaganda. I have some good news, and some bad news…
The good news is that the propaganda has not been all that effective in most places. The overall picture looks something like this:
In the majority of rural and semi-rural areas, as well as cities in red counties regardless of the state, the majority of people were NOT wearing masks and the bulk of businesses were not demanding that people wear them. The vaccine ads and propaganda were also at a minimum. This includes Washington State and Oregon, which have been notorious lately for their draconian restrictions. While Washington