{"id":1065058,"date":"2015-01-08T00:04:34","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T10:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.civilbeat.org\/?p=1065058"},"modified":"2015-01-07T18:01:24","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T04:01:24","slug":"life-on-lanai-still-a-good-place-to-just-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.civilbeat.org\/2015\/01\/life-on-lanai-still-a-good-place-to-just-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Life on Lanai: Still a Good Place to ‘Just Be’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of our friends wonder what we do over here on Lanai, a place where they think\u00a0\u201cthere\u2019s nothing to do.\u201d This misses the point, because here we don\u2019t do \u201cthings,\u201d we do\u00a0people.<\/p>\n

8 a.m. Wednesday:<\/strong> I\u2019m cleaning up my banana patch. My single rubbish can is already\u00a0overflowing. My neighbor, who lives on the mainland, has a yard man who sees this, and\u00a0offers to back up his truck to my garage so I can dump my green waste in it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to\u00a0the dump anyway; just drop your stuff over here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

I thank him with a few chocolate\u00a0chip cookies, and he drives away.<\/p>\n

8:30 a.m.:\u00a0<\/strong>One of my oldest friends stops by on his way back from the beach. He\u2019s having\u00a0some legal trouble, and we\u2019ve asked a Honolulu friend to represent him in court. So we sit\u00a0on my porch and talk about the specifics of the incident, but we also talk about his small\u00a0farm, a new well that was just dug, and how his new hearing aides are finally working.<\/p>\n

9:00 a.m.:<\/strong> He leaves as the phone rings. \u201cRobin. Are you home?\u201d<\/p>\n

A fisherman friend, who I\u00a0recently helped with some computer issues, stops by with a hot tray of sweet & sour\u00a0kavakava. He tells me that he hasn\u2019t been catching any large fish, so he made this dish with\u00a0the smaller ones. He\u2019s a good fisherman (and a good cook); this is his ono thank you.<\/p>\n

\"Lanai<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lanai Post Office is a central gathering place on the small island.<\/p>\n

Robin Kaye<\/p><\/div>\n

10:00 a.m.:<\/strong> I walk to the Post Office, one block from my house. There is no mail delivery on\u00a0Lanai, all our mail has to be picked up here, making it a hotbed of local gossip and\u00a0information exchange.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d gone over the day before to put some fresh chocolate chip cookies\u00a0in my P.O. box and called in to the staff to \u201cenjoy!\u201d The lines inside are long (six people);\u00a0this is no time to go inside. I give up any \u201cnews\u201d I might have learned.<\/p>\n

10:15 a.m.:<\/strong> I walk home and hear \u201cRobin. You home?\u201d being called from the back of my\u00a0house. It\u2019s my gardening buddy, delivering five bags of soil additives. We unload the pallet,\u00a0shipped over on our weekly barge from Honolulu, and then talk gardening. We exchange\u00a0seeds and bemoan the challenges of growing certain vegetables that don\u2019t like our cool\u00a0climate (it\u2019s 58 degrees as I write this).<\/p>\n

5 p.m.:<\/strong> I\u2019m sitting on my porch when I hear the front gate open. It\u2019s my friend\u2019s three\u00a0daughters, all home for the holidays. One is in college on Maui, one in college and working\u00a0in Honolulu, and the third is working two jobs in Honolulu (or \u201ctown\u201d as we refer to it here.) I learn a little bit about their lives and they deliver presents from their family to my wife and\u00a0me.<\/p>\n

Before they leave, I give them a bag of chocolate chip cookies. We arrange to have a\u00a0pizza night soon at their house, where they are caring for their aging tutu.<\/p>\n

6 p.m.:<\/strong> The phone rings, \u201cRobin. You home?\u201d<\/p>\n

Another fishing buddy delivers opakapaka.\u00a0It\u2019s very fresh; caught maybe three hours earlier. We sit and drink a glass of wine, talk story\u00a0about fishing and travel. He leaves to have dinner with his fishing buddies.<\/p>\n

6:30 p.m.:<\/strong> The phone rings again. \u201cRobin. You home?\u201d This time it\u2019s one of our oldest\u00a0friends. His wife passed away several years ago, but his daughter is home for the holidays\u00a0and she\u2019s made his wife\u2019s most delicious carrot cake \u2014 which she knows I love. He comes\u00a0by to drop off this gift.<\/p>\n

6:45 p.m.:<\/strong> Our 11-year-old dog goes crazy. She hears the diesel sound of the FedEx\u00a0truck and demands to be outside. Patrick, the FedEx driver has arrived to deliver Amazon\u00a0packages. But more important to our dog, Patrick (who has become a family friend) delivers\u00a0a doggie treat to Dobby. This is a gift she anticipates every day around this time; from 5\u00a0p.m. on, you can find here glued to the kitchen window, watching the front gate.<\/p>\n

\"Lanai<\/a><\/p>\n

A rainbow graces Lanai.<\/p>\n

Robin Kaye<\/p><\/div>\n

When I first came to Lanai in 1974, it was to document a very challenged lifestyle. A spinoff\u00a0of Dole Co., Oceanic Properties, had announced plans to add 10,000 more residents\u00a0with second homes, hotels and other resort developments. (That plan didn\u2019t materialize then,\u00a0but my six-month project resulted in seven years on Lanai and eventually, my photodocumentary,
\n“Lanai Folks.” But that\u2019s another story.)<\/p>\n

Some of these plans have recently\u00a0been revisited, revised and are likely to be slowly implemented by Dole\u2019s latest successor,
\nLarry Ellison.<\/p>\n

Back in the \u201870s, I said this in “Lanai Folks:”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe daily generosity, the small but important\u00a0waving between drivers on the roads, the kokua to friends and strangers, the sense of place,\u00a0of belonging, the inherent goodness and lack of guile in many of the older Hawaiians \u2014\u00a0these, and, always for me, the beauty, depth and intensity of the land make it a good place to\u00a0raise a family, or just to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now 40 years later, and you know what? Not much has changed. It\u2019s still a good place\u00a0to \u201cjust be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of our friends wonder what we do over here on Lanai, a place where they think\u00a0\u201cthere\u2019s nothing to do.\u201d This misses the point, because here we don\u2019t do \u201cthings,\u201d we do\u00a0people. 8 a.m. Wednesday: I\u2019m cleaning up my banana patch. My single rubbish can is already\u00a0overflowing. My neighbor, who lives on the mainland, has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6197,"featured_media":1065351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"post_format":[],"project":[],"coauthors":[30567],"class_list":["post-1065058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-voice"],"slp_mobile_featured_image":{"id":1065351,"href":"https:\/\/www.civilbeat.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1065351","image_path":"https:\/\/d1l18ops95qbzp.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/2015\/01\/unnamed-1.jpg","caption":"A rainbow graces Lanai."},"acf":[],"slp_coauthors":[{"display_name":"Robin Kaye","user_nicename":"robin-kaye","author_link":"https:\/\/www.civilbeat.org\/author\/robin-kaye\/"}],"slp_acf":{"cb_article_type":"community","cb_article_footnotes":"","cb_excerpt_type":"standard","cb_author_contributor_type":"internal","cb_article_sidebar":""},"slp_primary_category":null,"apple_news_notices":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"Life on Lanai: Still a Good Place to ‘Just Be’","url":"http:\/\/www.civilbeat.org\/2015\/01\/life-on-lanai-still-a-good-place-to-just-be\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.civilbeat.org\/2015\/01\/life-on-lanai-still-a-good-place-to-just-be\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/d1l18ops95qbzp.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/2015\/01\/unnamed-1-150x150.jpg","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/d1l18ops95qbzp.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/2015\/01\/unnamed-1.jpg"},"articleSection":"Community Voice","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Robin Kaye"}],"creator":["Robin Kaye"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"天美视频","logo":""},"keywords":[],"dateCreated":"2015-01-08T10:04:34Z","datePublished":"2015-01-08T10:04:34Z","dateModified":"2015-01-08T10:04:34Z"},"rendered":"