One post card from 18 years ago explained it all
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The post card is undated, but I believe it was written in 2006 when the three of us joined Gillian's sister and mother in Hawaii for the first time.
It was one of those "trips of a lifetime" and we wanted to make sure we appreciated it. One of us suggested we each mail ourselves a postcard with a message about the experience. Maybe, a top 10 list of what we remembered.
After Gillian passed away, I found a postcard with a dazzling array of tropical fish addressed to Gillian - from Gillian.
She had kept the post card all these years.
"Dear Me! Aloha!" it began and then continued with this wise advice followed by her experience:
Remember when you are down, you just experienced:
1. The best sunsets in the world.
2. 2 great weeks with two of the most important people in your life.
3. Great beaches you can swim in and not just look at.
4. Snorkeling on the Fair Winds; lots of fishy.
5. You saw a turtle.
6. Warm temp with a breeze.
7. Best view from a hotel in Waikiki.
8. No work for 2 weeks.
9. Watching Joseph surf.
10. Mahalo!
That was 18 years ago and while there were not philosophical revelations on how to live life better, it showed a connection to place unlike any she had visited previously.
We recorded more than a half-dozen visits to Hawaii over the next 18 years with visits to the big Island, Maui, Kauai and Ohau, usually with her sister Jo joining us.
When Jo passed away suddenly in 2023, we were surprised to discover a provision in her last will and testament for her ashes to be spread in Hawaii. It was something her younger talked about, but Josephine put it in writing.
So a year ago this week, we returned to the Big Island and on a rainy December morning fulfilled our obligation. Five of us traveled halfway across the globe and aided by a local canoe club said goodbye with a moving ceremony in Keauhou Bay.
This past spring, I told Gillian I wanted to make a trip to California to see Ronald Reagan's presidential library and the Academy Award museum.
She was having a tough time getting around so she initially told me to go alone, then a few days later said, "Well, if you are going to go all the way to California, we might as well go to Hawaii too."
That was the allure these islands held for her.
It was the two us spending quiet time together in a special place. We didn't talk about it being the last time - we never did that - but maybe part of us knew.
I brought her back to Hawaii this week to join her sister.
People frequently ask me how I am doing these days. I know what they are asking and I tell them it is a process.
This trip was part of the process.
For the past three months, Gillian sat patiently in the dining room with colorful leis adorning her last link to the physical world.
A few weeks before leaving, I printed out a photo of Gillian and pasted it on the side of the rectangular plastic container just as we did with Josephine a year ago. I wanted the TSA guys to know this was someone's mother and wife.
Unlike a year ago when there was rare episode of rain here, Thursday dawned with brilliant sunshine and clear skies.
Two of the canoe club members who participated in Jo's journey were back to help us a second time.
There was just three of us this time - that's OK, Gillian didn't like crowds - and as we pushed out into the bay in our outrigger canoe, they signaled the traditional alert with a Conch shell.
Once out in the bay, we sang a Hawaiian song that ends with "Until we meet again."
We spread wildflowers in the water until we had completed a circle.
Then, I released Gillian for a final time into a spiritual world I cannot imagine.
It has been 100 days since she left us and I thought I was prepared.
But I didn't want to say goodbye.
I didn't want to release her into this paradise.
When I was done, we all then raised our oars to the heavens and proclaimed:
Aloha Gillian.
Aloha Gillian
Aloha Gillian.
We sat for a second out in the bay and one of the canoe club members said he could not remember a day that was more beautiful.
And we paddled back to shore to reluctantly begin our lives anew.
New editor
The Post-Star announced it had a new editor on Thursday. It only said that former editor, Steve Thurston, no longer worked for the company.
It is not unusual these days for a newspaper editor to leave.
It is not only a difficult job, but an impossible job with each person being asked to do more with less. I hope the corporate powers give the next editor more resources to work with, but considering the debt the company is carrying, that probably won't be the case.
Changing their tune
So what happened to all the voter fraud?
A Politico and the Morning Consult poll before the election found that 87 percent of Trump supporters believed that voter fraud would be an issue that could determine the outcome of the election.
Afterward, that number dropped to 24 percent.
Trump voters need to explain their change in attitude.
Disappearing stats
Brian Stelter, who writes a daily media column for CNN, coined the the phrase "The Trump Reaction" to recent events. He wrote this insightful description of the media world we live in today:
"Journalists will have a special challenge in the era of the Trump Reaction. We’re living in a world where facts instantly perish upon contact with human minds. Local news is disappearing, and a much-depleted national press can barely compete with the media platforms of billionaires who control users algorithmically, with an endless stream of conspiracy theories and deepfakes. The internet, which promised to give everyone information and a voice, has consolidated in just a few hands the power to destroy the very notion of objective truth. "So "instead of chasing phantoms on social media, journalists would make better use of our dwindling resources, and perhaps regain some of the public's trust, by doing what we've done in every age: expose the lies and graft of oligarchs and plutocrats, and tell the stories of people who can't speak for themselves."
How we get people to read those stories and believe them is an entirely different challenge.
Hunter's laptop
Over the years, I had a number of people point to Hunter Biden's laptop as the smoking gun to some vast Biden criminal enterprise.
Yet, Rep. James Comer spent two years investigating the contents of the laptop and came up with nothing. The gun charges that Hunter Biden were later convicted of had nothing to do with the laptop or its contents.
The recent documentary on Rudy Giuliani cohort Lev Parnas - From Russia with Lev - and their attempts to find dirt on the Bidens was especially revealing. Parnas publicly apologized to Hunter Biden in the documentary.
So on one hand as a father, I can sympathize with Biden's pardon of his son, on the other hand, it will add another layer of public mistrust to our leaders.
We have reached the point of politicization in our country where the presidential pardon should be eliminated. Originally intended to correct a miscarriage of justice, it has increasingly become just another political tool to be used to grant favors, not justice.
It should be rescinded.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
...I don't "sympathize" with President Biden's pardoning of his son: I applaud it. He should pardon everyone on trump's political "revenge and retribution" hit list...speaking of which list- what a dark and disturbing and self-serving, petty, pathetic, mean-spirited, juvenile, shallow, insipid, warped, and deplorable "vision," and impetus, for any incoming head of state: personal vendetta. / Concerning accusations that the president told a "lie" when he said that he would not pardon Hunter- just as probable, considering all of what has transpired since then, maybe he was compelled to reconsider, & changed his mind: how would we know?...
Beautiful tribute to your wife. Grieving certainly is a process, and not a fun one.
This probably isn’t a popular opinion, but I don’t fault President Biden for pardoning his son. Lord knows what t rump would do to him once he is in office, so the President is protecting his family. If all of t rump’s minions can justify all the crap he has done, they don’t have any reason to fault this pardon.