What Have I been Up to Lately?

Like most of you I am rather surprised to have survived much longer than ever I expected to, except in my teenage years when I no doubt thought I would be immortal.  But these intimations of mortality have lead me to consider what I would like to do in my remaining years, health permitting.   Being a 60's kind of guy, I still get most of my current thinking from television.   Hawaii Five-Ohs shots of the beautiful scenery in the background put a trip to Hawaii first in my bucket list.  For some reason it became a trip of a lifetime on the heirloom boutique cruise ship, the Pacific Princess, from Vancouver to a bunch of stops in the Hawaiian islands.   After poor little Ottawa, a walk around Vancouver's West End for the first time in decades, is pretty amazing.   And fun.  The ship was interesting and the multi-national, mult-racial  (mostly non-white) staff were too.   A week on the high seas with a bunch of rich, old  (older than me), stiff fellow passengers (very white) from about equally, the US,  western Canada, and remnants of the British Empire, are not to be highly recommended.  Definitely not the time to brag about our province's interesting political history. 

The ship kept stopping in major harbors around Hawaii, travelling at night, with optional bus tours during the day.  On the ship we had begun to run into Hawaiian pop culture, music, language, hula dancing, ukulele lessons, etc.  It turns out Hawaii is, in addition to being beautiful is interesting.  Basically, there is no industry and past big agriculture (sugar cane, big ranching, etc) is failing, with the exception of some genetically highly tailored corporately controlled crops targetting tourists (macadamia nuts, kona coffee) which employ little labour.  The obvious industries are tourism and the military.  There is surprisingly little American flag-waving ansd a great deal of Hawaiian chest-thumping by the local chamber of commerce which has somehow incorporated native (like Native American) culture, music, laid back attitudes, which is very much linked in its own quiet way to our Red Power expierences back in the early 1970's  ( it's all documented at the very excellent major Bishop's Museum and planetarium in Honululu).  Somehow it does not feel like it is part of the US,  far too peaceful, with a wonderful mixing of an incredible variety of races apparently sharing a good thing.  And of course the exotic plants, the volcanoes around you and  under your feet, the dangerous, beautiful ocean, the surfing and beaches, the climate that changes on every island and on every side of every island,  the highest IT telescopes on earth,  the beautiful women,  the soil--often thin on volcanic rock--which ultimately would compare badly in fertility to that of Saskatchewan, the small amount of commercial fishing, and the unexpectedly disappointing farmers markets and sustainable food movements compared to plain old Eastern Ontario.   Anyway,  Hawaii is probably a glimpse of the future not only for the US and Canadian West Coasts,  but for both of our societies.   Not  so bad,  if my sociological reasoning is not too far off the mark  (and yes, like the old man, I really do have a Ph.D. in Sociology, in my case from York in Toronto,  a city where groups definitely do not get along like they do in Honululu.).   I'll attach a picture taken in front of the the biggest mountain on earth, Mona Loa, undoubtedly volcanic.   It is the second biggest in the solar system to one on Mars, Mons Olympus.  Oloha.---Dick