da Kine Rising Tide

HawaiiCaro visitors, welcome!! The website is under construction, so GoDaddy is sending any visitors seeking www.hawaiicaro.com to my blog, da Kine Rising Tide. Mahalo for your interest! HawaiiCaro is a small, home-based business offering handmade doll clothes for 18-inch-tall dolls. A hui hou! Caro Big Island of Hawai'i =======%%========

Mom's funeral will be held Feb. 23 I hope Heaven is like a ringside seat next to the ocean, smelling the salty tang, hearing the susurrus of the rolling surf while lolling in a lounger, dredging sand between one's toes. (This beach scene is Four Seasons Hualalai resort on the Kohala coast of the Big Island of Hawai'i. Photo by Carolyn Lee.) The Big Island has been home to the Kim clan for four generations, beginning with an intrepid 17-year-old girl from a poor fishing village on Nam Hae island, off the southern coast of Korea. Grandma took the ocean voyage on her own, journeying to the Big Island to marry a Korean sugar-plantation worker named Mr. Park. Tomorrow, at Dodo Mortuary in Hilo, two generations will attend Mom's funeral: Her four sisters and two brothers; her four children. May God's light ever be with you, my beloved Mom. Almighty Father, please surround Mom with Your everlasting love and grant her abiding peace. In Jesus' name, Ame...

HawaiiCaro visitors, welcome! HawaiiCaro is under construction. In the meantime, I am forwarding visitors to my blog, da Kine Rising Tide. If you like what you see, please let me know. . The image shows me in costume as Alma Hix, one of the "Pick-A-Little" Ladies, who are world-class town gossips and busybodies in Iowa City, Iowa, of the 1910s. I was tickled pink to be in the cast of "The Music Man," which was presented in Summer 2016 at the Kilauea Military Camp's Kilauea Theater, at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park in Volcano, Hawai'i. See ya later, or, in Hawaiian, A hui hou! Caro

I look tired, and I am, but also elated. At noon Monday, my uncle, Harry Kim, was installed for his third, nonconsecutive term as Hawai'i island Mayor! He served for two 4-year terms, then was not able to seek re-election due to term limits. Four years ago, the then-incumbent Mayor Billy Kenoi squeaked out a victory. They matched up again, in the Aug. 13, 2016, primary election, via Kenoi surrogate Wally Lau, my Uncle Harry and 11 other candidates (yeep, a field of 13), and my uncle swept to victory with 51% of the votes, winning the mayoral seat outright, without having to run in the Nov. 8 general election. Harry Kim is honest, hard-working, highly qualified, and passionate in his love for the people he serves.

For the longest time, "June Gloom" has been hanging over Newport Beach. UPDATE: It's way past June, and I live on the Big Island of Hawai'i, my home island, no longer Newport Beach in Southern California.

Unbelievable, it's been some 5 months since I blogged. That will change. I plan to post much more frequently! Until next time, here is a recent selfie. A hui hou! (Hawaiian for Laters).

(Photo by Carolyn Lee. The creature in the lower righthand corner is a gecko.) My mother was reminiscing about Fourth of July festivities in her childhood, in 1930s Hawai'i. Her family lived in a rural area of the Big Island, Ola'a, now called Kea'au. Families would drive to Hilo's Mooheau Park for a day of food, music and fun. At the park, watermelon, many kinds of ono kaukau (Hawaiian for delicious food), and dancers of various ethnic groups were on hand. Children got new shoes to wear for the holiday. Mom remembers large numbers of children sitting at curbside, resting their feet, aching from the new footwear. Happy Fourth of July!

On my flight back to Hawai'i over the Memorial Day weekend, I caught the flu. Nothing serious, I can handle it. It's just that now that I am sharing a household with my elderly parents, it's possible for them to catch whatever illness I have. As it turns out, my mother has caught a cold. Her symptoms are different from mine: A flu typically begins with a sore throat, headache, runny nose, fever chills, then aches, coughing, possibly the headaches might persist. Mom has been coughing and had a runny nose last night. From my own history with sickness, plus the clue that she can hear herself wheezing, I think Mom has bronchitis, possibly pneumonia. She is resting, drinking fluids, is amply supplied with tissue, and I will be getting some lemons, limes and honey to make soothing warm drinks for her. So far, Dad seems fine, is exhibiting his usual hearty appetite. I made boiled peanuts last night, and he loves them. They are very tender. My own flu should be passing into...

Mom at Alae Cemetery last weekend, in advance of Memorial Day, to pay respects to her older sister, Song-Ye, who died at age 6. Mom, nearly 2 years younger, recalls that she was a mischievous, rascal girl, unlike her big sister, who was a very good girl. Song-Ye, who had been in bed for several days with a sore throat, bade her sister to get their mother. No, I won't, Mom told the ailing sibling. But later Mom sought out her parent, who was busy. She told her second-oldest child that she would see Song-Ye after she was done feeding the pigs. Mom next remembers Grandma taking Song-Ye by bus to the doctor's office, carrying her daughter on her back. Then, Grandma spent many days, crying. Mom remembers that one day, she realized that Song-Ye wasn't with them. She asked her father. She went someplace very far, far away, he told her. Then Mom became the oldest child, because of Song-Ye's passing, and consequently assumed duties of caring and responsib...

My first pets in childhood didn't last long. A turtle escaped. A canary was eaten by a neighbor's cat, which slunk into the basement through a door left ajar inadvertently. There also were outdoor pets, such as chicks from the annual County Fair that grew up and were given away or eaten by others. Two or three rabbits lived in a hutch in the backyard. Then, one day, they and their hutch were gone. My father is allergic, which is why we owned no dogs, no cats. I am very allergic to cats. So it wasn't until last summer, when my brother's family acquired a baby Netherland Dwarf rabbit, that I began to understand how closely one can bond with a furry friend, like a bunny, a dog or a cat. Thumper, aka Thumpie or Thumps, is technically my nieces' pet, but since they are away at school except for a few weeks a year, my brother handles her care. His wife is allergic to Thumpie. When they are away, Thumpie stays at my place. The first time, I was nervous about ...

As I lie abed right now, I can hear the charming tweets and trills of birds outside my basement bedroom window. It is such a nice homecoming -- being back in my hometown, after decades away, basking in the tranquillity of living in a residential neighborhood that is genuinely peaceful through the night. Just prior to moving here in March 2015, I had lived for five years on O'ahu island. For my first three years of my Honolulu stint, I lived in the Kaimuki neighborhood, which is heavily residential in character. Then, for a year, I lived in Kane'ohe, on the top and second floor of a building whose ground, or first story, tenants were all commercial enterprises. One plus is that downstairs was an okazuya, a Japanese takeout shop, which opened from 6 am till 12 noon, Monday through Saturday. What a convenience -- getting breakfast took less than 10 minutes. But the downside of living upstairs from an eatery is that the owner/cook began food preparations at around 3 am! Yes, I ...

Just a play on "Ides of March," which wasn't a good time of the month for Caesar. According to the Urban Dictionary, mid-May, for high school seniors, is when they feel they can coast. The grades should've been turned in by now. For me, I still have a lot to do, although as a substitute teacher, no further job assignments are likely. Teachers need to be in their classrooms, winding down things with their students. The phone bank operated by the state Dept of Education, my employer, has been silent for the past several weeks. Even the private schools are similarly in no need of substitute teachers. I am using this time of unemployment to strategize ways to rev up my freelancing for national news outlets. In this connection, I want to attend the AAJA National Convention in August at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Once upon a time, I attended AAJA annual conventions regularly, but my last one was in August 2012, a UNITY Convention, at Mandalay Bay. I was granted a...

For any readers out there, apologies for the blog's dormancy. I will be posting more often. I have moved back to my home state, Hawai'i. I still remain hopeful that actions by an individual, though small, may accumulate and leverage into a stronger force, through the amplification enabled by the internet. I am convicted that we need to do what we can, every day, to conserve our planet's finite resources, aiming to build a better world for our families and our descendants. Ua mau ke ea o ka'aina ika pono, the Hawai'i state motto: The life of the land is preserved in righteousness.

Here's what my old friend and mentor, multiple prize-winning journalist K.W. Lee had to say about my blog posting on my grandmother: "(To the) Granddaughter of all our woman warriors ahead of their times and our times who drove the engine of the century-old passage to the New World, forging an underground sisterhood as well as an undercover matriarchy, by transforming the overwhelmingly patriarchal and hierarchical bachelors' colony (in Hawaii) into a family-centered, church-based community fighting for independence and freedom in the apartheid West in our Lonesome Journey. "You've done something good (remember: Korean men want to be somebody, while their women want to do something), and up in the big sky she would be so proud of her granddaughter. "Long live our subterranean First Lady! Peace and solace. Forever. "A humble tribute from "An Aging FOB (fresh-off-boat) in our Lonesome Journey" also known as K.W. Lee, written from Nort...

More than a hundred years ago, my grandmother, Lim Ya Mul (Lim, the family name, is stated first for Korean names) voyaged to the Big Island of Hawaii by herself, in search of a better economic life for herself and her loved ones back in Korea. Barely 17 years old, Ya Mul had agreed to become a "picture bride" and to marry the 40something man pictured in the grainy black-and-white photograph that was all she had of him. Hawaii, which became an American state the year my sisters were born here in 1957, was then known as the Kingdom of Hawaii, whose bustling sugar plantations were operated through the back-breaking labor of workers imported from Korea, Japan, China, the Philippines and Portugal. To this day, the Portuguese in Hawaii are not grouped with other Caucasians, but are considered non-Caucasian, because they, too, served under the Caucasian overlords of the sugar plantations. Several years earlier, Ya Mul's bridegroom-to-be, Mr. Park, had immigrated to Hawaii ...

When I open up my clothes closet, I see a well-filled chamber. What a change. When I moved to this place in February, I had nothing to hang in the closet because my belongings were in transit, crossing the Pacific Ocean by ship. I had brought two bulging suitcases on my flight from LAX to Honolulu, but they contained more than just clothes: my Eddie Bauer self-inflating air mattress, my Kamaka ukulele, some books, CDs and so on. It was a nerve-wracking, horrible experience to have to part with so much of my possessions. They got thrown out, given away or donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. When I asked myself: Is this item worth shipping at $10 per cubic foot, the brutal answer was usually, NO. But the downsizing was a good thing. One human being can get by with very little. My first night in my apartment, I slept on the floor. Well, OK, there is very thick carpeting, and it was no hardship. Still, it is hard to resist the lure of "retail therapy....

On this Thanksgiving Eve, may I offer heartfelt thanks for the many blessings I am enjoying. I am so happy to be back in Hawaii!!! Mom and Dad, who arrived this morning from another island, are with me at my apartment in Kaimuki. Mom says Grandma would have loved my place; it's so full of light and lots of breezes. One great feature of this second-floor apartment is that all four walls are the exterior walls for the building (originally a single-family, two-story dwelling), and each wall is loaded with windows. Most of the windows are opened. I have hung giant sarongs as makeshift curtains, for some of the windows. They are nearly transparent, letting the air flow unimpeded, but they have beautiful hues, which provide a soft wash of color. In honor of my parents' visit, the refrigerator is stocked with all kinds of Korean goodies -- four types of kim chee, for example. Sliced-up Korean "duk" -- mochi, in Japanese, or rice flour cakes in English -- to be added to...

The current AAJA Hawaii Chapter president, Kristen Wong, has just circulated the lineup of the new officers, effective Jan. 1, 2011, for the Honolulu-based chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association : President (1 year term) - Gene Park, reporter, Honolulu Star-Advertiser Vice President (1 year term) - Linda Dela Cruz, reporter/producer, Clear Channel Radio Treasurer (1 year term) - Stan Lee Secretary (1 year term) - Kristen Wong, photojournalist, Hawaii Marine Board Members (1 year term):  - Kelli Miura (communications specialist at Hawaii Energy)  - Lauren Kawana  - yours truly, Carolyn Lee (blogger and freelance writer)  - Sean Ibara (assignment editor/producer, Hawaii News Now), and  - Margot Seeto National Rep (will be in the second year of 2-year term) - Wes Nakama Student Representative (in office till she leaves school) - Lynn Nakagawa, UH senior, editor of the Ka Leo school newspaper Many thanks to a...

Sharon Prill, a former National Treasurer of the Asian American Journalists Association, is the new publisher of the Yakima Herald-Republic newspaper in Eastern Washington. Prill, who is part Filipino, has been general manager of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's website. Here's what the Yakima paper said about her promotion, effective Nov. 22: "Despite being a native of Hawaii, Prill said she’s now a veteran of Wisconsin’s notoriously frigid winter weather and isn’t worried about the four-season climate of Eastern Washington. " 'It gets to like minus 10 or minus 15 degrees here,' she said. 'Put it this way, the river freezes here ... I think I can handle the Yakima winter.' " Congratulations to Sharon Prill! Way to go, Sharon!

Seven months after moving to Hawaii, I have finally gotten my "out-of-state car-registration permit." This lawfully lets me drive around Oahu with California plates on my auto. Once they expire, in early 2011, I will then get Hawaii plates. I could've opted to get Hawaii plates, immediately, but then I would have had to pay the full price to get my car registered here, forfeiting the money I had already paid California for a year's worth of registration. I've noticed a number of cars on the streets here with out-of-state license plates. This means, of course, that the owners shipped the vehicles from the Mainland. The cars are put inside huge containers, during the ocean voyage. My shipping company told me that the fee is probably at its highest in the past several years. I paid $1,000 for my Toyota Corolla. When I had this same vehicle shipped by truck from Massachusetts to Southern California in Spring 2005, it cost slightly more than $1,000. I also had re...