PEARL AND I

My Fabulous Fall Fantasy was great, and the fact that I arrived home healthy was especially fabulous.  The most surprising outcome, though, was that all my plants survived my 18-day absence.  Basically, I placed them in tubs of water.  My lime tree, for example, bore fruit.

Before I left, I was selected to exhibit the upcoming photos from my Fabulous Fall Fantasy.  Unfortunately, I had to extend my trip an extra week, which meant that the 15 Craigside system could not accommodate my late return, for it takes a week to prepare the photos for display.  Thus, before departure, I instead submitted a tribute to my wife Pearl, who passed away eight years ago.

For those who know her, and want to view the photos, you can drop by the ground level just before we enter the Dining Room to see these photos.  Beginning next week, they all will be relocated to the basement exhibition area.

I'm getting tired of Donald Trump in this blog site, so today, Pearl and I:

First, her Hilo High School graduation photo:

Pearl at the age of 69 and 22:

That bronze plaque returns in the final photo below.  Thought I'd show you her Kamaka ukulele, which I've been threatening to play...for 47 years.

She was a nurse at the Kau Hospital in Pahala, we met in September of 1962, and got married in December of that year:

Here is our photo at her home in 1963:

That same year, we were re-assigned from the Hutchison Sugar Company to the Kilauea Sugar Company on Kauai.  The backyard of our trainee cottage was where South Pacific was filmed:

After the waterfall, to the right, is where Bloody Mary sang Happy Talk to France Nuyen and John Kerr.  France and Pearl were born in the same year and could well have been twins.  

While in Kilauea I had a bet with the agriculturist, Doug Felix, on who could grow the larger sunflower plant.  I won by about a factor of two.  I baked this whole, added some salt and had a fantastic natural pu-pu (appetizer) for receptions.  Sunflowers are especially nutritious.

We left Hawaii in 1979 for Baton Rouge, here in the bayous of Louisiana:

After gaining a PhD in biochemical engineering, we returned to Hawaii, where I joined the College of Engineering at the University of Hawaii.  In 1978 we had a trip planned to go around the world, but I got promoted to work in the Chancellor's Office, so I asked her to pick a two-week vacation anywhere she wished.  She selected a helicopter tour of Canada.  To the right, the Bugaboos.

The following year Senator Spark Matsunaga asked me to work for him in the U.S. Senate, so we purchased a car and drove across the country to DC, with one of our stops being Flagstaff, and a second, the Grand Canyon:

We did a lot of exploring, like at a zoo:

Tthe Jefferson Memorial:

A pumpkin/apple farm in Maryland and the Botanical Garden near the Capitol:

Two interesting details about the above photo. First, I had just purchased an Omega-B enlarger almost 40 years ago for a new darkroom, and my very first Cibachrome 16" x 24" enlargement from a slide was this one.  Also, more recently, I got a slide to digital device that resulted in the photo above.

Pearl at the Fountain of Rome, for Three Coins in the Fountain was among her favorite songs.  We had flown to Stockholm, picked up a car there and drove all the way down to Rome.  We also went to St. Peter's Square, for her connection to St. Francis Hospital almost made her a Catholic.

Here is Pearl with Senator Matsunaga and her parents.  For a decade she worked for him, and became campaign office manager in 1981 when he re-ran for his seat, including her time with Senator Dan Akaka.

Returning to the University of Hawaii in 1983, she bought me a Datsun 240-Z:

That same year, Pearl at the Volcano National Park:

I happened to go golfing at the Volcano Golf Course on January 3, 1983.  The ground shook. A short distance away, while we were on the back nine, suddenly, fountains of lava, which was when the current eruption started.  That haze yesterday is still bedeviling Honolulu, and this all began more that 34 years ago.  Here she is below at Foster Botanical Garden:

Two photos of Pearl, Lahaina at sunset and not sure where:

In 1986, with Daisy and Joyce, two of her nursing school classmates:

We then traveled to the Great Wall of China in 1992:

In 2003 we went to Paris, then Japan, with Pearl next to a model of the Atomic Bomb that fell over Nagasaki, the oldest Sakura tree in Kyoto and singing with a Geisha:

Our favorite spot, sunset from our lanai.

She passed away in 2009 and we had a Gold Tree ceremony for her at the Ala Wai Golf Course in 2015:

All three, Nasdaq Composite, S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average, broke their all time records today, the Dow up 23 to 23,539.  The latter two have had eight straight week of gains.

-

XI'S RISE, PUTIN'S REVENGE AND TRUMP'S SURVIVAL

Since I began my Fabulous Fall Fantasy trip exactly three weeks ago, here are the major international events worthy of some mention:

• President Trump has continued to dig deeper so that now, not only his coffin, but those of his close associates, can fit with room to spare.  Yesterday (scroll down to next posting) I focused on a facet of this unfolding eventuality.  At the end, today, I detail why this might be President Donald Trump's farewell tour of the Orient...or not.
• President Xi Jinping gave a 3.5 hour speech outlining the next five years of his presidency.  Since 1949 and Mao Zedong, Chinese leaders have tended to serve for ten years, the predecessors to Xi being Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.  The retirement age for government officials is 68, and Xi is now conveniently 64.  

• ALL of his new committee members are already too old to serve a decade.  Thus, Xi has consolidated power with no heir-apparent.  Hmmmmm.
• Donald Trump this month referred to Xi as King of China.
• The only daughter of Xi and Peng Liyuan (a famous folk singer) is Xi Mingze, who graduated from Harvard in 2014, returned to Beijing, is now 25, and keeps out of the spotlight.

• I arrived on the final day of joint U.S.-South Korea naval exercises, where Kim Jong-un kept up his bellicose rants about his obvious response to this looming invasion.  My fear was not nuclear annihilation during my Seoul visit, only 35 miles from the border with the North.  Kim has a super market (20 different types, including sarin, phosgene and sulfur mustard) of deployable chemical warfare agents.  There can be no defense to any surprise gas attack for the 10 million residents of Seoul.

• Now that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has a supermajority (following elections two weekends ago---when Super Typhoon Lan was rolling over Japan), he will be tampering with the Constitution, shifting from Pacifism to Imperialism.  This is the decisive Brexit equivalent which battered the UK.  My gut feeling, though, is that nothing much will happen.  Sanity, and the prevailing attitude of the public, will prevail, for why significantly expand war spending when the reason why Japan and Germany quickly recovered from the debacle of World War II was that they could apply defense funds to stimulate the economy.  One new factor, however, is Donald Trump, who wants countries like Japan to get their own nuclear bombs:  As far as Japan and other countries, we are being ripped off by everybody in the — we're defending other countries. We are spending a fortune doing it. They have the bargain of the century. All I said is, we have to renegotiate these agreements, because our country cannot afford to defend Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, South Korea and many other places. We cannot continue to afford — she took that as saying nuclear weapons. -- Presidential Debate, Oct. 19, 2016.  What a President.
• Tokyo is the top global power city in Asia, and #3 in the world, to London and New York.

• The day my trip began, President Donald Trump informed the United Nations that the U.S. would quit UNESCO, joined by Israel, the reason being that this culture and education body had an anti-Israel bias.  So what happened, the day following those notices, UNESCO elected its first ever Jewish director general, Audrey Azoulay, from France.  Not that this exit was oh so terrible and unprecedented, for President Ronald Reagan pulled out a third of a century ago, and we did not re-join until 2003.  We were paying too much with no influence, plus, this was one of Hillary Clinton pet organizations dealing with women's rights.  Our present President has an uncontrollable sense of vindictiveness regarding the past Administration.

• I did not go to Russia, but the compelling international development today is the role played by Vladimir Putin in the 2016 Presidential Elections.  The two-part Frontline PBS program on Putin's Revenge (which you can view on You Tube--Part 1 and Part 2), confirms the collusion argreement between Donald Trump's campaign crew and the Russians:

• Putin played a pivotal role in undercutting Hillary Clinton, mostly for revenge, and not necessarily with an intent to tamper with the democratic process.
• The Obama regime:
• Could not get key Republicans to participate in any bi-partisan announcement about Russian interference.
• Was reluctant to so purposely influence the election process, because it was felt that Hillary would win no matter what they did.
• Left it to the intelligence leadership to announce this Russian meddling matter.


• But the traditional late Friday announcement (to capture the news for the whole weekend) was overwhelmed, first, by the Billy Bush/Donald Trump pussy-gate recording, plus, Wikileaks (through Russian hacking) leaking news about the Democratic National Committee adventures with e-mails.
• Combined with the Mueller investigation, it is now clear that the link will be clearly established between Trump and Putin.

• The Russians worked with Trump's people only because that was the only American option.  Putin thought Trump couldn't possibly become president.  When Trump won, there was elation, and the expectation of huge windfalls, like elimination of sanctions for that Ukraine matter.  What they got was a useless president who made Putin look like a mastermind spy.  And, by the way, that to the right is what is known as a fake photo.
• However, was anything really illegal and prosecutorial?
• Can fake news be grounds for impeachment?
• What is collusion?
• This general pathway will gain momentum over the next month, but can all of this lead to the fall of Donald Trump?
• If it goes to the Supreme Court, then, maybe not.

Incredibly, with the Trump administration disintegrating, and our President escaping to the Orient, where I alerted all to the potential for chemical warfare, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit another all-time high, up 81 to 23,516.  Maybe investors know something I don't.

-

WILL PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP BE MAKING A FAREWELL TOUR OF THE ORIENT?

I've done my bit to prepare the Orient for President Donald Trump.  He will be in Honolulu, Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines from November 3-14.  Unless he gets indicted.

Trump begins in Hawaii, where his approval rating is 35%.  This is the state that has been irritating him on his immigration efforts.  We are a Democratic state that has been royally pissing off Trump, and we are thus in big trouble.

But we are not unique, for Pew found that only two countries of 37 gave Trump higher marks than President Barack Obama:  Russia and Israel.

Trump is largely distrusted in most of the Orient.  Only 24% of Japanese were confident that he was doing the right thing on the world stage, and 72% thought Trump's climate change withdrawal was dumb.  Only 15% felt he was qualified to be president.  However, he is going to Vietnam (58% favorable of Trump) and the Philippines (69%) for that obvious reason.

South Korea?  They're more afraid of Donald Trump than Kim Jong-un!!!  

Get this.  In the USA, China is more popular than Trump!  The latest Gallup poll shows that Trump's approval rating was the lowest for any modern president at a similar point in their terms.

Here is something from Fox News....Fox News, mind you:

Six months after his inauguration Americans already were split on whether Trump should be removed from office.  Today, after Robert Mueller's first move?  Got to be higher.  But 62%?

Just details, mind you, but the Senate needs a 67% majority to impeach any president.  The House requires a simple majority.  They have voted to impeach Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, but the Senate did not agree.  Nixon would have been impeached, but he chose to leave office first.  Thus, in the history of the U.S., no president has ever been impeached and removed from office.

-