Honolulu Lite
They say when a butterfly beats its wings in Mississippi, a typhoon develops in Japan. But how is it that Karen Zacharias, a Beaver who wrote about Oregon squirrels for a small Washington state newspaper, suddenly caused a hurricane of anger in Hawaii after terrorists from the Middle East hijacked planes from Boston and crashed them into buildings in New York City? At least she didn’t
write stink about
our mongoosesThat's a lot of connectivity, brah. But let's figure it out. The butterfly thing, you know. The butterfly's wings in Mississippi cause a slight breeze that affects other slight breezes that somehow travel across the Western United States, link up with El Nino and blow across the Pacific until the disturbed air develops into a typhoon that blows the roof off some little house in Nagoya.
The Karen Zacharias Effect is a little more complicated. Zacharias graduated from Oregon State University, so she's a Beaver. I know, because I graduated from OSU and I'm a Beaver, too. She ended up working for the Tri-City Herald in Kennewick, Wash.
Kennewick's near the Washington/Oregon border and Zacharias actually works out of Northern Oregon in a little place on the Umatilla River called Hermiston. I've been up that way. It's beautiful, rugged country, with the emphasis on country.
All kinds of wildlife, like squirrels, are there. So if you're a journalist working up that way, you might find yourself writing about squirrels, which is exactly what Zacharias did just a few months ago. You can go on the Internet and read her story about how a bunch of squirrels threatened a big wind power project. Squirrels might not be a big deal in Hawaii or even Portland. But in the town of Helix, which is smaller than Hermiston, which is smaller than Kennewick, which is way smaller than Seattle, squirrels are big news. She's also done her fair share of covering auto accidents, forest fires, county commission meetings and all the stuff you cover when you work out of a rural news bureau in Oregon cowboy country.
IN OTHER WORDS, she's no foreign correspondent. She doesn't write about the Middle East, or Hawaii, for that matter. Which turned out to be a problem.
Zacharias was vacationing in Hawaii when terror struck the United States. Airplanes were grounded and Zacharias found herself stuck in paradise. She found no sympathy when she got home. In Umatilla County, Hawaii's considered a pretty exotic place. She apparently took some ribbing and so felt the need to set her friends straight about Hawaii. Among other things, she wrote in a column, we aren't very patriotic here. At least from what she saw in the concrete jungle of Waikiki and the deserted airport where she was stuck for hours. She even wrote she was "relieved to back in mainland America."
Well, that hurt a lot of feelings here because we know we are patriotic, and part of America, to boot. Many actually got mad at Zacharias and called her some pretty ugly names.
Come on, folks. We're should be above name-calling. We need to show aloha, not anger. Consider the source of the hurtful statements. This wasn't Diane Sawyer. If New York can survive terrorist attacks, I think Hawaii can survive a few uninformed comments of a frustrated, small-town squirrel reporter.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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