PAAMIUT, GREENLAND

Hurricane Lala passed over south Big Island, but the eye apparently did not make landfall.  Lala was at that time a hurricane at 80 MPH.  Some quotes:

Hurricane Lala began pulling away from the Big Island late Saturday night, but damaging winds and torrential rain continued to pose a serious threat, with a flash flood emergency in effect for Naalehu after two homes were reportedly swept away by floodwaters.

Lala remained a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph as of 11 p.m. Saturday, according to the National Weather Service. The storm was located about 65 miles west of Kailua-Kona and 130 miles south-southeast of Honolulu and was moving northwest at 15 mph.

Additional rainfall of 4 to 8 inches is expected across the Big Island and windward Maui, with storm totals potentially reaching 30 to 35 inches over the windward Big Island. Elsewhere in the island chain, 4 to 6 inches of rain is expected, with maximum amounts of up to 8 inches.

Gov. Josh Green said in a social media video at about 5 p.m. that the storm knocked out power to about 60,000 people across the state, blown off at least 19 roofs, and led to the postponement or cancellation of about 190 flights. Green also said there was a fatality in a car crash on the southern end of the Big Island, but it was unclear if weather was the cause.

Hakalau, located just north of Hilo, had a 24-hour total rainfall of 15 inches.  Still raining on the Big Island, and areas could see figures exceeding 30 inches by the time Lala totally leaves.

Tropical storm-force winds go out to a radius of 175 miles, which means that Honolulu will feel these winds when the eye goes past south of the city.  And of course, a lot of rain.

I should mention that Hurricane Lala will continue to move west, become a tropical storm, then begin to turn northwest, again becoming a hurricane on August 20.  Should the journey continue past the International Dateline, 2400 miles west of Hawaii, the name will change to Typhoon Lala.

Yesterday I mentioned that I lived in Naalehu for six years more than half a century ago.  I recall in 1962 living in a home next to a river, and awakened at night to vacate.  Watch this video.

Well, our cruise continues.  We are today in Paamiut:

• Has a population of 1205, and is the tenth-largest town in Greenland  Declining, for there were 1883 25 years ago.
• It was a munipality in 2008, but was incorporated into the new Sermersooq municipality.
• Some say first settled in 985, but more likely around 1500 BC.  Officially founded in 1742 as a Danish trading post known as Frederikshab, after Crown Prince Frederick.

• 
  Paamiut translates to those who reside by the mouth of the fjord.
• No roads leading out, but is a port of call for the Arctic Umiaq ferry service.  There is also an airport with service to Nuuk and Narsarsuaq served by Air Greenland STOL aircraft.

• 
  Hotspot of eagle and whale watching.
• Most significant structure is the Church of Peace, built in 1909.
• Stunning scenery and known for soapstone carvings.

• 
  The Danish Crown Princely family visited the town in the summer of 2014.
• As is the case for the towns of western Greenland, the sea is free of ice during the winter, so seal hunting is popular.
• Temperature gets as high as 47.8 F in July, but the record high is 70.2 F.  The lowest is -21.3 F in February.
• Rains a total of 34.6 inches over 120 rainy days, and there are 87 snowy days/year.

Tours cost $109 to walk or $239 to ride a boat for an hour and a half.  We will pass.  But I can provide an 11-minute video  of the walk if you're interested.

• Lookout Tower.

• 
  Salvation Church.  Also called Church of Peace.
• Paamiut Museum Park.
• Turf House.

Well, we still dine and drink and get entertained on board the Azamara Journey.  We cruised by several glaciers.  Here is one.

Speaker on Greenland, Andrew Gregson.

We had dinner at one of their specialty restaurants, this one Italian, Aqualina.  An appetizer of cheese over watermelon.

The only Italian wines they had came with an added cost, so I had a French Bordeaux instead.

Salad and Spaghetti Bolognese.  Added a Chardonnay,

Chocolate-type dessert.

And more Bordeaux.

Night ended with karaoke.

The internet continues to be woeful in Greenland, so if the following videos don't show, come back in two weeks when I am at location that is up to date.  But this first one is only about a minute long.

The band again played my requested Anak.  But this one was 4 minutes long and will probably miss the publication deadline...on the other hand, this one made it!!!  Hooray.

Why Anak?

• Here are details about Anak, as sung by Freddie Aguilar, who wrote this Tagalog song in 1978.
• Video explaining the global popularity of this song.
• Aguilar's later cover song in 1986, Bayan Ko, became the unofficial soundtrack for the anti-regime resistance that forced President Ferdinand Marcos to flee the country.  He ended up living the rest of his life in Honolulu.

• 
  A long time ago my older brother videod family members at a karaoke session, and included the song I sang for this occasion, Anak.  He then converted the presentations in a holiday CD.  I have one somewhere in my apartment.
• I don't know Filipino, and lyrics roll by so quickly that I merely mumble what I see on the screen.  
• Interestingly enough, I have a karaoke system at home, and one day I sang it, did really poorly, but the system gave me a 99% rating.  Now one of my favorites.

-

THE CRUISE TO THE TOTAL ECLIPSE CONTINUES

Nothing much has changed since my reportage yesterday of the Iran, Ukraine and Gaza Strip Wars, the uncontrolled wildfire in British Columbia and weather.

To continue our Azamara Journey cruise, I last stopped after lunch on Day 1. The good news is that all is well on this ship.  Dinner was okay, late night dancing fine and I had a terrific night of great sleep.

Dinner was at the Windows Cafe buffet, and we coincidentally sat at the same table as lunch.  A whole section of sushi, with a Heineken and chardonnay.

Went for after dinner drinks in The Den, where Jose was on the keys,  Then onto the show for the evening in the Cabaret Lounge, where Vinyl Records was the feature.

The time was around 11PM, and the only place open was the Living Room for late night dancing.  Shore Thing, a band from the Philippines played loud and fine.  Like the music.  Did some dancing.

Chatted with leader, and they promised to play Anak tomorrow night.  I featured this song in one of my postings a few years ago.

My song #4 is Freddie Aguilar's Anak.  Aguilar was studying to be an electrical engineer when he left home at the age of 18 to pursue an entertainment career.  After five years of gambling and travails, in 1978 he wrote his first song, Anak (a more recent version) in remorse and apology to his parents.  It is the best selling Filipino song in history and reached #1 in Japan.  Billboard reported that the song was the #2 hit for the world in the 1980's.  

In 2013, when he was 60, his third wife was 16 year old  Jovie Gatdula Albao.  He passed away last year at the age of 72.

-

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BLUE REVOLUTION

   From Worldometer (new deaths yesterday):

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9     1093     4732        1185        246        82

July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120      572

Aug    12     1504     6556        1242       835       130

Sept     9     1208     6222        1136      1168        82

Oct     21     1225     6849          571       703        85

Nov    11     1479     10178        564       550        60

           25     2304    12025         620       518      118

Dec       1     2611    11891         697       500      109

             9     3265    12342         848       337      142

           10     3107    12932         769       487      173

           11     3031    12401         652       440      205

           14     2976    12635         909       384      210

           16     3538    13535         968       357      166

           17     3387    12968       1054       342      184

           22     3376    13180         963       331      339

Summary:  Bad, will get better, but fear the first two weeks of January.  People are not listening to the CDC and are prioritizing family over health.  After nine months of this pandemic, perhaps understandable.  I would wait until taking both vaccine shots.

My Blue Revolution path began in the mid' 70's when I had a project involving a raceway to grow microalgae for the purpose of remediating global warming.  In time, the effort to produce a biofuel became more important with the energy crises.  The driving mantra was that most calculations those days showed that you could produce from two to ten times more biofuel from microalgae than fermenting corn into ethanol or gasifying biomass for catalysis into methanol.  While that initial calculation holds today, the COST of converting algae into a usable fuel remains the hurdle to overcome.  The price of gasoline today is also a factor.  Someday.  To the left is a more advanced system that Oscar Zaborsky built at our Look Lab.

Then in 1979 I was asked to work for U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga, and the first assignment I had after Lockheed succeeded with Mini-OTEC at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii / Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology Park was to work with the Energy and Natural Resources Committee to draft the original ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) bill.  The legislation passed and was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter.  We indicated that 10,000 MW of OTEC power was expected by the Year 2000.  Well, it is 2020 and there is very close to zero MW of OTEC power being generated.

When I returned to the University of Hawaii in 1982, the new dean of engineering Paul Yuen and I created what we thought was lacking in the transition from research to commercialization, a technology transfer bridge.  Thus was invented the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research.  As vice president for development, from various sources, including Japan, we secured $37 million to build and operate an open-cycle OTEC facility at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority.  A whole book can be written on just how this came to be, but a short story can found here.  We succeeded.

Throughout this period I was involved with a wide variety of 
conferences, summits and workshops:

• Potential for OTEC Plantships to Prevent Hurricane Formation (1993)
• Next Generation Fisheries (1997)
• International Ocean Alliance Floating Platform Summit (1998)

In fact, we led the way for the following gatherings just on artificial upwelling:

• First National Science Foundation Workshop on Engineering Solutions for Utilization of Exclusive Economic Zone Resources (Hawaii, October 1986)--after this gathering I joked that if Texas and Hawaii counted our EEZ space, Hawaii was twice the size of Texas--which happens to be true
• 
  
• EPA/NOAA Planning Workshop on Mitigation of Global Climate Change (Hawaii, March 1989)

• NSF and Republic of China National Science Council International Workshop on Artificial Upwelling and Mixing in Coastal Waters (Taiwan, June 1989)
• NSF and Japan Science and Technology Agency Workshop on Artificial Upwelling (Hawaii, March 1990)
• NSF First International Workshop on Engineering Research Needs for Off-Shore Mariculture Systems (Hawaii, September 1991)
• NSF Franco-American Program Development Workshop on Ocean Engineering, Marine Biotechnology and Mariculture (Maryland, October 1991)

Several events were pivotal:

• In 1991, Hawaii State Senator Richard Matsuura and I presented a keynote address on the Blue Revolution to the First Very Large Floating Structures Conference held in Honolulu.  Our talk introduced the concept of the Blue Revolution.  Matsuura had a PhD in agriculture and worked on the Green Revolution for Norman Borlaug.
• In 1992 I was asked to draft a paper for U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, which he published in SEA Technology as The American Blue Revolution.

• 
  That year, Joe Vadus, who was then NOAA's Ocean Technologist, and I co-chaired a workshop to develop the fundamentals for the Blue Revolution.  Our conclusion was that a 100,000 square foot (one hectare) floating platform could be built for $500 million, half the cost of a B-2 bomber, with a target date of 2000.  The driving financial motivation was that the Cold War was over and there was supposed to be a shifting of funds from war to peace.
• In 1998 the National Science Foundation provided $12 million to the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute to establish the national Marine Byproducts Engineering Center.

• 
  In 1999 we published The Ultimate Ocean Ranch in SEA TECHNOLOGY.
• In 2003 I was asked to present the case for the Blue Revolution at a gathering of UNICEF in Paris.  Interest was overwhelming.
• In 2006 we chaired a fisheries summit in Bergen, Norway, and produced the Bergen Declaration for Next Generation Fisheries.

• 
  In 2010 Guy Toyama and I met over lunch in Kona to establish Blue Revolution Hawaii.  Unfortunately, within a three-day period in 2012, both Guy and Paul Yuen passed away.  More recently, Leighton Chong and Benny Ron have been taking leading roles with this organization.

I more recently wrote several articles for the Huffington Post:

• The Dawn of the Blue Revolution
• The Ultimate Ocean Ranch
• Blue Revolution
• The Blue Revolution is the Optimal Solution for Japan
• The Ultimate Ocean Ranch
• Biofuels from Microalgae (Part 1)

Watch a 20-minute presentation I made to the Seasteading Institute in San Francisco.  Here is a posting on the birth of the Blue Revolution.  I endowed my apartment to the University of Hawaii to initiate the Blue Revolution.  There are three simple stages:

1. 
   Obtain cost matching from a billionaire of $100,000 to host a summit of specialists and other billionaires to produce a blueprint for the effort.
2. Hopefully, this plan would result in a sum of $150 million to by 2030 build an offshore technology transfer floating platform called the Pacific International Ocean Station offshore of Oahu.
3. Finally, $150 billion to build the first floating city to host the 2050 World's Fair.  This effort would be supported by a consortium of companies as the first step for an armada of platforms to circle the globe near the equator.  In time, many of these would become independent nations, something the Seasteading Institute would appreciate.

My song #4 is Freddie Aguilar's Anak.  Aguilar was studying to be an electrical engineer when he left home at the age of 18 to pursue an entertainment career.  After five years of gambling and travails, in 1978 he wrote his first song, Anak (a more recent version) in remorse and apology to his parents.  It is the best selling Filipino song in history and reached #1 in Japan.  Billboard reported that the song was the #2 hit for the world in the 1980's.  

In my travels through the Orient in the eighties and nineties there was always a group from the Philippines entertaining in the hotel bar.  I many times asked them to sing this song, and I immediately became their friend.  I now and then sing Anak  (means child) in a karaoke bar...in Filipino.  Of course I mumble through the words because I have no idea what I'm doing.   My older brother once recorded my performance and put it on his Christmas CD for gifts.  If you have one of those, burn it immediately.  

A film called Anak was released in 2000, where the lyrics of the song served as the script.  Rotten Tomatoes audiences gave it a 96% rating.  I see it is on Amazon Prime, for a charge.

In his peripatetic swings, he became especially famous leading crowds in a patriotic song, Bayan Ko--written by General Jose Alexandrino during the Philippine-American War around 1900--leading to the escape of then President Ferdinand Marcos for Hawaii in 1986.  

But Freddie is Freddie, and in 2013, at the age of 60, converted to Islam to marry his 16 year-old girlfriend.  Now known as Abdul Farid.  He is current President Rodrigo Duerte's favorite singer.

-

MY ALL-TIME TOP TEN SONGS

When I woke up this morning I wondered what were my top ten songs.  While I don't have a prepared list and a year from now I will adjust this posting, for now, here goes.  I pondered about having this in three parts, but, it's Sunday, and someone out there might have ten hours or more to spare.  To begin with,  I have a rather eclectic set of genres, which I indicated earlier this month:

• Baroque (1600-1750)
• Broadway shows
• Popular music of the early '50's
• Post World War II Japanese music with a Hawaii connection

While one's favorite song is usually linked to some past memory, let me begin with compilations of what others consider as the very best:

• Baroque Top Ten (click on to listen to all ten):  Bach's Tocata and Fugue for Organ is #1, Pachelbel's Canon in D is #2 and Bach's Air on the G String is #3.  Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (yup, all 2:22 hours worth of the three) and Vivaldi's Four Seasons (that was the 42 minute set, but if you want more, here is an 8-hour version to put you to sleep...but watch those kaleidoscopic colors, wow) are prominent.  Bach, right, was dominant, but he did not make my top ten list.

• Let me combine broadway and films.  Here is a list of top 100 show tunes, with Tonight from West Side Story as #1.  That was the 1961 movie version.  Wikipedia has a compilation of compilations, and Judy Garland's Over the Rainbow seemed to be the most impressive of the lot.

• Billboard's Top 100 for the 1950's has Elvis Presley with Don't Be Cruel / Hound Dog as #1, Bill Haley and the Comets' Rock Around the Clock as #2 and Roger Williams' Autumn Leaves as #3, but the only early 50's song was Tommy Edwards' All in the Game at #31, which did not become popular until the later 50's.  This song almost made the top ten as it reminded me of a lost love.  #1 by year from Billboard:

• 1946:  Prisoner of Love, Perry Como
• 1947:  Near You, Francis Craig
• 1948:  12th Street Rag, Pee Wee Hunt
• 1949:  Riders in the Sky, Vaughn Monroe
• 1950:  Goodnight Irene, Gordon Jenkins and the Weavers
• 1951:  Too Young, Nat King Cole
• 1952:  Blue Tango, Leroy Anderson
• 1953:  Song from Moulin Rouge, Percy Faith
• 1954:  Little Things Mean a Lot, Kitty Kallen (also almost made the final list)

• Post World War II Japanese music with a Hawaii connection was covered in my posting earlier this month.

So sifting through the above  plus what's in my memory, here are my Top Ten:

• #10  While the baroque period of classical music is dominated by Johann Sebastian Bach, my top song of this era is by another Johann, Pachelbel, with his Canon in D.  Click on it to spend an hour of your Sunday afternoon with Pachelbel.

• #9  Tommy Dorsey's I'm Getting Sentimental Over You is haunting and meaningful, but, I don't know why.  The song was recorded about 80 years ago, and Frank Sinatra sang this song when with Dorsey, but it is Tommy's trombone that makes this rendition memorable.

• #8  Judy Garland's Over the Rainbow deserves to be in this list, if nothing else because Wizard of Oz, which came out in 1939, was such a great film.  Rotten Tomatoes rated this at #1, with Citizen Kane as #2 and The Godfather at #3.

• #7  It was just about 60 years ago that a paunchy Billy Haley, already 30, with his Comets, started it all with Rock Around the Clock, from the movie Blackboard Jungle.

• #6  The Vietnam War was beginning, so to avoid the draft I joined the heralded 442 Regimental Combat Team Army Reserve, and in 1963 entered basic training, without doubt the most physically difficult 16 weeks of my life (I volunteered for advanced infantry training).  The Chiffons had two hits during my ordeal, One Fine Day and He's So Fine .  One remembers difficult periods.  The songs reminded me that I was A-Okay.  Interestingly enough, in 1971 the corporation that published these songs sued George Harrison and his hit, My Sweet Lord, for plagiarizing the second one.  The solution?  Harrison bought the company for $587,000 and is on record as being guilty of subconscious plagiarism.

• #5  Freddie Aguilar's Anak is an interesting entry into my list of favorites.  Aguilar left home in the Philippines without completing school.  After five years of gambling and worse, he wrote Anak (this is the modern version with London electropop band Ooberfuse) forty years ago as a song of remorse and apology to his parents.  It is the best selling Filipino song in history.  In my travels through the Orient in the eighties and nineties there was always a group from the Philippines entertaining in the bar.  I many times asked them to sing this song, and I immediately became their friend.  I now and then sing Anak  (English version) in a karaoke bar...in Filipino.  My older brother once recorded my doing this and put it on his Christmas CD for gifts.  If you have one of those, burn it immediately.  But Freddie is Freddie, and last year, at the age of 60, converted to Islam to marry his 16 year-old girlfriend.  He is now known as Abdul Farid.

• #4  Honolulu City Lights by Keola and Kapono Beamer was Pearl's favorite and is the view I have had now for 32 years at night, until my apartment sells, perhaps two weeks from now.  At one time the color was blue (mercury vapor lamps),  now orange (sodium vapor), but still ethereally relaxing.

• #3  Ezio Pinza's broadway version of Some Enchanted Evening has given me hope since my youth.  Of course, South Pacific, the movie, is my all-time favorite, for it was filmed in my backyard...literally.  Here are Pearl and Pepper at the Slippery Falls on Kauai where we lived.  Note the resemblance between Pearl and France Nuyen.

• #2  Ghost Riders in the Sky by Vaughn Monroe is just a fill-in for now.  The next time I adjust this list, something else might be here.  For example, there was a song from China that became popular in Japan soon after World War II, but I can't remember the title.  It would be in this slot for a very special reason I'll explain when I find it. However, for now, Monroe's recording of this cowboy song in 1949 is here.  Since then there have been hundreds of other versions. Why #2?  At virtually every sunset, this song returns to my mind.  Something fearful, anticipatory...

• #1  I copy here my posting of 3September2014:

#1  Wakare No Isochidori is the only song of this genre that was first popular in Hawaii, then gained fame in Japan.  The singer here is Sparky Iwamoto, from Club Nisei.  The composer was Francis Zanami, and he either unfortunately died of a heart attack in 1949 at the age of 44, or at the age of 34 from kidney failure.  The latter seems more probable.  He was the leader of the Hawaii Shochiku Orchestra.  He is third from the right in the top row below, with then Doris Taketa to the extreme right:

Four years ago I reported on this song while I was traveling through Japan.  I noticed now that all the links of the song to You Tube have been deleted because of copyright infringements.  According to Rev. Hoshu Matsubayashi:

One of the eight kinds of suffering in Buddhist teaching is: "separation from a loved one." The sentiment of this suffering was expressed in a Japanese popular song, "Wakare no Isochidori (Departure of Beach Plovers)." The song is about separation from a loved one in Hawaii. A line from the song is "Although I know the meeting is the beginning of the separation, the memory remains cherished in my heart..."

I did not know the title had to do with beach plovers.  Anyway, if you did not earlier click to hear Wakare No Isochidori, you can do it now.  It is a sad song, evoking a long journey, homesickness and hope.  It still brings tears to my eyes, and I don't know why.

-