Time to strap on
the coconut braThis week CNN breathlessly reported that "Honolulu was a nice place to live, but now there's a volcano about to explode there." That's their spin on the possible eruption of Mauna Loa on the Big Island.
Earlier, I was awakened at 4 a.m. by someone calling from the "Indiana state Republican Party," urging me to vote Republican in the upcoming election. I'm afraid I was rude while informing them what time it was in Hawaii, and I'm sorry to say that the caller thought Hawaii was on West Coast time.
Much earlier, when I attended college in the midwest, when the registrar discovered that I was from Hawaii (and born in Alaska), she asked me to produce an American passport to prove I was a citizen of the United States.
When I married a girl from Illinois, some of her relatives wondered if we used American money in Hawaii.
When a senator from New Jersey drops out of a race, it's big news on the East Coast, but when a history-making representative from Hawaii dies mid-race and hopelessly snarls an election, it's given the same East Coast newsspace as a Third World bus crash.
Ever get the feeling we're not the center of the universe? Well, that's their problem.
Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.com