Coming home to Honolulu after a quarter century away, a local expat reflects on how forty-dollar price tags and mass-produced imports have transformed the sacred tradition of the lei—and the master artisans still keeping real craftsmanship alive.

Returning to Oahu means navigating rising glass towers and elevated train construction, but a simple container of classic ahi poke still holds the soul of the islands.

A Hawaiian name is never just a translation or a souvenir. It is a sacred thread connecting us to the land, the sea, and the ancient stories of the islands.

Coming home to Oahu means more than just escaping the fall Chicago chill. It means gathering over a piping hot bowl of plantation saimin and remembering the laborers whose survival forged a culture.

Standing before a historic Bible at the Bishop Museum stirs complex questions of faith, cultural loss, and the Presbyterian roots woven into Hawaii’s past.

Escaping family stress for a night at the museum turns into a deep dive through ancient gods, whaling ghosts, and the modern Honolulu skyline.

I have attached three book group discussion guides below. One is for a faith context. The other is secular. And the third is for an LGBTQ book group and HIV/AIDS-focused study.

The tradition of Lei Day started back in the late 1920s because of a guy named Don Blanding. He was a poet who wrote for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin daily newspaper and realized that while everyone else in the world was doing May Day with maypoles and ribbons, Hawaii had something much better to celebrate.

People have been asking me about an obscure song I often use to back my video posts. There’s a long story behind it.

Growing up, our dinner table was a rotation of local staples, but few things elicit the specific nostalgia that cold ginger chicken does.

The weather itself has been a poetic illustration of this internal state: an alternating mix of sunshine and rain, both falling simultaneously from a half-blue sky.

I find myself caught between admiration for human ingenuity and a profound melancholy for what is displaced in the name of progress.

As someone whose professional work involves defending Asian American Pacific Islanders, I found myself in the unexpected position of having to advocate for an African American patron against racist comments from staff.

The toy car rattled across the fake green marble of the vinyl tiles, its wheels whispering over seams that led from the living room into the waiting dark.

It is a simple map of white ethnic ancestry, but it holds a mirror to the broader story of America.

The longtime firebrand Honolulu mayor can best Chicago’s Richard J. Daley.

I took in the scene, and suddenly, I saw not just the present but the past.

This endorsement is personal and not in my capacity as an officer of any civic organizations, publisher and writer of any publications, director of a social service provider, elder of a Church.

Being born and raised in Hawaii, I couldn’t escape the fact that I was born in the waning shadows of a very American brand of apartheid.