CAN!!!

May 16, 2007 Richard Ha 7 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

I was asked to give the commencement speech at the Hawai‘i Community College graduation last week. I immediately thought of stories my dad told me when I was growing up, and how they affected me all of my life.

Here’s a copy of my speech:

***

Good evening, graduating students, parents, teachers, Chancellor Freitas and visiting dignitaries. Thank you for inviting me to speak.

Tonight, instead of giving you a regular speech, I want to tell you stories of what I think helped influence me along the way. Hopefully it can help you as well.

I believe that: If you can imagine it, you can do it! And you can do it without sacrificing your core values along the way. Being street smart is the way to get there.

I flunked out of UH Manoa and was drafted into the Army. I applied to go to officer candidate school and volunteered to go to Vietnam. I was not the best student, but I had common sense.

After I left the service, I went back to school and got a degree in accounting. I kept all my core values and was able to reach several of my long-term goals, and am still working on many others. To me the most important things are:

1. Follow your dreams.

2. Look for several solutions to each potential problem, and then look for one more, just in case.

3. Do not sacrifice your core values for any reason.

At the dinner table, Dad would tell stories. He was a farmer then, but he did a lot of other things in his life. He would tell stories about taking on huge projects with large obstacles and unbeatable odds. He always figured out a way around the problems.

He would always say, “Not, no can!!” (pound the table) “Can!!!!” (pointing his finger in the air). And the dishes would bounce off the table.

He would go on to say, “There are a thousand reasons why ‘No can.’ I am only looking for one reason why ‘Can!’”

Those words, “Not, no can!!” (pound the table) “Can!!” stayed with me all my life.

Although “Not, no can! Can!” was the thing that stood out in my mind for many years, much later I realized that it was the way he taught me how to be a survivor that made it possible for me to make “Not, no can! Can!!” work.

It is easy to say it and it is dramatic. But how do you actually make it work? And how do you make it work without sacrificing your core values along the way?

These stories that Pop told helped me visualize solutions to problems before they occurred. He taught me how to be a survivor.

Some people call what he taught me “street smarts.” Others call it “common sense.” If you have to pay someone to teach you how to do this, it’s called “contingency planning.” Whatever it is called, I learned how to do that.

1. He told us kids about aholehole fishing at night with a couple of friends on the tip of a rocky point. It was at my tutu lady Meleana Kamahele’s place down Maku’u. There were no collapsible poles back then—they used long, two-inch-around real bamboo poles. They had lanterns shining on the water when he saw, in the darkness, white water coming! The wave came in and pounded on the rock where they were standing, and covered everything. He told me, “I climbed up the bamboo pole, hand over hand, and lifted my legs up and the wave passed right underneath.” His two friends ended up in the water and he helped get them out. It captured my imagination. What a story and what an impact on a young kid.

2. And he would say, “If an earthquake came that was so strong it would knock everybody down, what you going do? You jump in the air and do a turn. Hit the ground and immediately jump back up again.”

How come do a turn, I asked? “Because after a few jumps, you see everything,” he answered. I thought, “Yeah, that’s right!”

3. You are driving 55 miles per hour and a dog crosses the road in front of you. “What you going do? It’s going to happen so fast that you have to know ahead of time what to do.” You have no time to look in your rearview mirror; you can drift to the left as long as there is no car coming; you can drift to the right depending on the road shoulder. You can tap your brakes, but only so far before you start to risk the driver in the back. “What you going do?” Pop said.

“Press the gas and run ’em over.” I did not understand at the time. But he was saying, rather than risk human lives, you should press the gas and eliminate the chance of doing something wrong.

When I think about it now, he was saying: to avoid the chance of doing something stupid, run over the dog. Hard to do? Life is hard. Sometimes you gotta make the call. You don’t want to hesitate and hurt somebody else. He said it was okay if you kill yourself. But not okay to kill somebody else.

These were lessons in being prepared for emergencies and being prepared for life. And as a result it became second nature to me. And I would always go through “what-if” scenarios in my mind. So if a situation occurred, I always had several alternatives worked out in my mind. It became second nature with me.

I can remember two times when it might have made the ultimate difference. The first was in a rice paddy in Vietnam, when a sniper opened up on us. We ran and jumped into a small depression next to a thatched hut. When we hit the ground we realized there were three guys already hiding there.

I knew that this was not good; one grenade could get us all. So I grabbed my radio operator and told him, Let’s go. And we ran for cover a short distance away. Bullets flew all around us. As soon as we hit the ground we heard a loud whump! A grenade had been thrown right into the place we left. Street smart? Common sense? Whatever! It helped me do the right thing.

The second time was when I was in Texas, flying at 100 mph down a two-lane road, top down, in my 62 ’Vette. All of a sudden there was another car overtaking, and there were three of us on a road meant for two. “What you going do?”

I immediately flipped my blinker to the right and started to slide over, communicating nonverbally. I did not give him time to make the wrong move. Three of us flew past each other with inches to spare. I knew exactly what to do. I did not even get nervous. I just looked in the rearview mirror and nodded to myself: Yep. ’At’s how!

I did not realize until much later that this street smarts, common sense, contingency planning thing is what made it possible for me to implement: “Not, no can! Can!!” When you have long-term goals, you are faced with short-term decisions along the way. Making the wrong short-term decision will hurt you in the long run if it causes you to give up your core values. Sometimes, you just have to press the gas and run over the dog in order to keep your core values.

You can keep your core values and make the right short-term decisions if you have street smarts. When you are street smart you will figure out just how far you can go toward your long-term goals without causing yourself too much damage. You will know how much room you can give yourself so you don’t have to sacrifice your core values.

If you cannot find a solution that will allow you to keep your core values, no matter how tempting, don’t give up your core values. Remember: “Not, no can! Can!!” You can find that solution that will allow you to keep your core values.

But to balance things off, in case someone misinterpreted Pop’s generosity, he would lean forward and say, with a clenched fist and a mean face, to an imaginary person: “No Mistake my Kindness for Weakness!”

I can tell you right off that your core values are worth fighting for, and if you’re street smart you can figure out how to make the right decisions, even if there is a short-term disadvantage. In the long run, it is how you are able to keep your core values that will define you. It’s not money; it’s not fame.

Some of the important core values are:

1. Your family is most important.

2. Taking care of the keiki now, and a hundred years from now, is most important.

3. Your good friends are most important. I said good friends; I did not say bad friends.

4. Your word is most important.

5. Taking care of the most defenseless around you is most important.

6. Leaving no one behind is most important.

7. Taking care of your community is most important.

8. Taking care of the environment is most important.

If you’re street smart, you can figure out how you are going to reach your long-term goals without sacrificing your core values.

So when you see white water coming, climb up the fishing pole and lift up your legs. If the earthquake is strong, jump in the air and do a small turn. If you can remember these things you will know what I mean when I say: “NOT, NO CAN!” (pound the table) “CAN!!”

Thank you, and good luck, everyone.

***

I seemed to hit my target audience well. I could see the guys really engaged. Some of the girls were more interested in talking story, but a strong-looking Hawaiian girl was waving her fist and yelling, “Right on!”

At the end, when I said, “Not, no can! Can!” and pounded the table, they yelled with me, “CAN!!” It was fun.

At least 10 students coming through the line afterward commented and even thanked me for the speech. They had to shake hands with maybe 10 people, so it was hard to make comments. But some did. I was pleased.

Losing Weight

Plastic Nose and Bushy Eyebrows

May 14, 2007 Richard Ha 2 Comments

I gained a pound this week. The main thing that has changed is that I started going to the gym again. My appetite has increased because of it. I need to watch it.

I’ve been lifting weights off and on for 30 years or so. I generally lift religiously for several years, then get burned out and lay off for a few years and then go back again. My t-shirt says 3rd Annual Big Island Push Pull Championship. October 8, 2000. Hilo, Hawaii. Wow, six-and-a-half years ago.

When I was younger, I would sneak back to the gym at 5:30 in the morning after not going for awhile. My brother Kenneth would tease me by saying: “That was you, eh? With the plastic nose and bushy eyebrows, training in secret?”

We teased each other because sometimes he was out of shape and at other times it was me who was out of shape. I would train early in the morning until I got back in respectable form to lift with the strong guys in the evenings.

The guys in the evening would say, “Long time no see. Still strong, eh? You just started back?” “Oh yeah,” I would say. That was after maybe four months of sneaking into the gym and training early to get back in shape.

Now, at 62, I don’t have those issues of “attitude.” It’s humorous to think about now.

I’ve got a long way back. But I feel good and can’t think of any reason I can’t get all the way back. We’ll see what happens.

History, How It All Started, Our Story

Kapoho, Part Two: “That’s Why You’re Dangerous”

May 11, 2007 Richard Ha 2 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

When we were first getting started in bananas at Koa‘e back in the late 1970s, our farm was way out in the Wild West, where our close neighbors were the original “sustainable farmers.” Some people called them hippies. We just thought of them as fellow farmers making their own way.

Their houses were open, with mosquito netting to protect against flying insects. They had no electricity or running water.

They were on catchment water systems and we, and they, were concerned that our overspray did not hurt them. We were very conscious of their proximity and we took care to communicate closely with them. It made us very aware of how our operation could affect our neighbors, and helped us become the sustainable farmers we are today.

The neighbors occasionally had full moon parties and I went once. It was an experience walking around in the bright moonlight, in and out of the shadows of giant mango trees, running into people I’d never met before. I think the boys went to their parties frequently. I heard the people who lived closer to the ocean were clothing-optional, but I did not know that for sure. They were good neighbors and we got along very well.

The boys and I were very close. Jason and Bert danced and played music for Johnny Lum Ho, and they always won the Merrie Monarch competition. During the summers we all hung out around down the beach at Leleiwi, and when it got too cold we hung out at the Ponderosa; that was the name of my Uncle George and Aunty Agnes’s house on Chong Street in Kaumana.

Our farm grew to 55 acres in a short time and we all were very proud of what we were doing. Jerryl and I started to go to Hawai‘i Banana Industry Association annual meetings on O‘ahu, where people were very impressed we were coming up so quickly. We learned a lot by associating with the oldtimers and the University of Hawai‘i people.

On a farm tour of Kauai with some other Hawai‘i Banana Industry Association farmers once, we went to Waimea Canyon. We stood overlooking a cliff where there was a rope restraint you weren’t supposed to step beyond. One of the local guys, who was wearing brand new jogging shoes, stepped over it. We were considered large farmers and kind of leaders in the industry then, but he didn’t know us personally. I said, “I can have your shoes?” It meant: If you slip and fall, don’t waste your good, expensive shoes. Poho, give them to me before you go.

I wanted him to know we all came from the same place. You’d have to have come up the hard way to value shoes that were going over a cliff. It was so funny. His wife jerked, he jerked and then we all laughed knowingly. It was a good moment.

Jerryl’s truck could hold three people and my Opel station wagon could fit five. We had no problems with communication when everyone could fit in the two vehicles. But soon the farm and our number of employees grew too large for that, and after that we needed to make a special effort to keep everyone informed.

This was our first step into the world of big business. I realized then that it was not possible to be all things to all people. The best we could do was to be fair.

I lived in the condominiums above Hilo High School. I had a barbell set in an upstairs bedroom and that’s where I first started lifting weights. My next door neighbors and close friends were Ron and Penny Mau. Penny became a school principal and Ron is now a very, very well-known entomologist at the University of Hawai‘i College of Tropical Agriculture.

We were sending a steady amount of bananas to Oahu and our farm was growing. I had a degree in accounting, which I had studied to help me keep score. But I had no actual experience in the accounting field, and as much as I tried, I could not develop an effective bookkeeping system.

Finally I shoved all my records into a banana box and took them to an old veteran accountant. I told him I was looking to hire someone to keep the books.

I thought he might like to know that I had an accounting degree, expecting him to acknowledge that this was a good thing going forward. Instead, without looking up, he told me, “That’s why you’re dangerous.”

(To be continued….)

If you missed our story up to this point
Waiakea Uka: We first start growing bananas
Kapoho Days, Part One

Bananas, History, How It All Started, Our Story

How It All Started: The Kapoho Days (part one)

May 9, 2007 Richard Ha 1 Comment

Richard Ha writes:

After starting a banana farm at Waiakea Uka under the corporate name Ha Bros., Inc., I decided to start another farm as a separate entity, and I started looking for parcels. But land was scarce then. It was around 1978, and the sugar industry had most of the good land.

There was one 60-acre parcel available, which was owned by Elvin and Kay Kamoku together with Bill Kaina. Elvin was my Pop’s old diving buddy and at the time he was the Big Island fire chief. Bill Kaina was the pastor of Kaumakapili Church and later of Kawaihao Church. I leased the land from them.

The parcel was located at Koa’e, which is a 40-minute drive from Hilo. The Pahoa bypass hadn’t been built yet so we drove through the middle of Pahoa on the way to work. You went towards Kapoho, past Lava Tree State Park, past old Kapoho town, which was covered by lava, to the four stop sign corner and then back toward Hilo on Beach Road. You passed the Lyman cinder cones, and then the pavement ended and the road went under tall mango trees. The farm was about a hundred yards on the left.

The land had been planted in papayas and there was no soil at all. But a foot or more of cinder, from the 1960 eruption that destroyed Kapoho town, covered the entire parcel. The lava fountain had been more than 1000 feet high in 1960, and the prevailing wind blew the cinder onto the land.

We were kind of new to farming and we didn’t know we weren’t supposed to be able to grow bananas where there was no soil.

Fortunately, the papaya farmer before us had had a D9 bulldozer rip deep rows through the pahoehoe lava, and that’s where he planted his papayas. We didn’t have any money so we planted 45 acres of bananas in those papaya rows. Luckily for us, the ripped pahoehoe allowed the banana plant roots to go down far enough to reach moisture.

Mom, Pop and I planted the first bananas. Later we hired people to help us to plant and take care of the growing farm. Our original banana crew consisted of Miles Kotaki, Jerryl Mauhili, Jason, Jolan and Jocky Keahilihau, Puggy Nathaniel, Jolson Nakamura and Bert Naihe. Most of them came from Keaukaha and Panaewa. Jerryl was the farm manager.

We planted the bananas as deep down amidst the ripped slabs of pahoehoe as we could, then we covered them up with a mound of cinder. This was all done by hand using picks, shovels and o’o bars because we could not afford a tractor. We filled buckets and walked down the rows throwing fertilizer by hand.

As the bananas started bearing fruit, the guys would harvest the bunches, bring them to the closest road and lean them up against a banana plant. When the bunches were all harvested they would come by, cut the hands off and put them in two papaya bins we had on a flat bed trailer.

We were operating hand to mouth, and one day the two papaya bins were repossessed, so we had nothing to put the bananas in. Jerryl decided to just haul them on the trailer without any bins. So they put a bed of banana leaves down on the trailer and lined up banana hands, one inside the other, from one end to the other. They put a layer of banana leaves on top of the bananas and then a second level of banana hands, then a third and a fourth and on up until there were seven layers.

The first time they passed through Pahoa town like that, heads swiveled: “What was that?!”

We would drop off the trailer at the Waiakea Uka packing house after work, around 5 in the evening, and Mom would cut the bananas up and have them packed before 6:30 the following morning. It went on like that for several months—maybe a whole year. I don’t know how we would have done it without Mom’s help.

My brother-in-law Dennis Vierra is a guy who can do anything related to construction, and he helped us build a packing house. Until then we had no shelter, no toilet—just a lot of determination.

Dennis built a structure where we could hang the bunches and roll them on a rail to a place where we could cut off the hands and place them in a tank full of water. The hands were floated across the tank, where they were cut into clusters and packed into banana boxes. We thought we were in the big time.

It turned out that nobody really wanted our bananas on O‘ahu. We had more guts than brains at that time, so we sent several hundred boxes to someone we called Uncle Chow, though we were never sure that was his real name. He took them around Honolulu and sold them off his flatbed truck for ten cents a pound. He never sent us the money, and we wrote it off as marketing and promotion.

His efforts got the attention, though, of Stanley Unten, owner of Hawaiian Banana Company, who was the main banana distributor on O‘ahu. He called and we started shipping to him.

Next we bought a large cargo van. Mechanization was coming fast and furious for us. We bought a roller conveyor to aid in loading the cargo van, which we drove to the docks. We also used the roller conveyor to unload our banana boxes into a Young Brothers refrigerated container.

Then we really hit the big time—we bought a secondhand forklift for $100. The guys called it “Fred Flintstone.” It had hard rubber tires and would go “clunk” every time the part missing from the wheel hit the concrete. But it could move pallets of bananas, meaning each one didn’t have to be carried by hand. All the guys appreciated it very much.

To be continued

Losing Weight

Still solid, eh?

May 7, 2007 Richard Ha

Richard Ha writes:

Now that I’m no longer depending exclusively on exercising to lose weight, I’m enjoying the exercise much more. Read about my new way of eating here.

Instead of mostly aerobic exercise, now I’m combining it with weightlifting.

Four days per week, I do 10 minutes of warm-up on the elliptical trainer, followed by 10 light dumbbell warm-up reps for biceps, front and rear shoulder, side obliques and traps. In addition, I do 10 warm-up reps of cable pull downs and 25 reps of crunches. Then I do three more sets of these with a weight that I can just barely finish during the last rep.

So I end up doing 40 minutes of cardio on the elliptical and one warm-up set plus three working sets with the dumbbell. I like the idea that I do a total of 100 crunches in each session.

I’ve been doing some form of this routine for a while now. When I first started I could barely finish three sets. Now I can do four fairly routinely. I try to use a little more weight on one of the exercises each day, but not too much. It’s important not to hurt yourself by being overly enthusiastic. This is the most common reason people quit weightlifting.

I’m ready to include 30 minutes of elliptical workout on two additional days per week. This should be fairly easy to do. In a couple of weeks, I’ll train one day with heavier weights but fewer reps. My objective is to increase strength. I’ll describe that when I get into it.

I saw my friend Desmon Antone Haumea yesterday for the first time in several years, and he commented, “E Richard, you still solid, eh?” I hope to maintain that for the rest of my life.

My resting heart rate is 61 and my weight, 201. I’m going to eat a higher proportion of vegetables to meat for awhile.

Community

The Haps

May 4, 2007 Richard Ha 1 Comment

It was happening in downtown Hilo last Friday, when St. Joseph School held its “Hilo’s Happening” fundraiser to raise money for the school’s scholarship and tuition assistance program.

About 170 people attended the event held downtown at Restaurant Kaikodo. Hamakua Springs donated produce for the evening, which featured heavy pupus among other treats.

Beforehand, the farm’s Charlotte Romo took the restaurant’s head chef a sampler box, which included some of our experimental crops like eggplant and baby squash.

Charlotte, who has two daughters at St. Joseph’s, attended the event with her husband Rodrigo.

“The chef created some really nice pupus from our produce,” she said. “There were crisped eggplant slices topped with sautéed mushrooms; there was a pasta with eggplant, squash and tomatoes; he made a delicious crostini with the cocktail tomatoes that had a hint of spice; and there were cucumber caps filled with a rich, smoky, cheese filling.”

In addition to pupus, the evening included a wine tasting, live entertainment by Ted and Eric Young, a silent auction of art work donated by such artists as Henry Bianchini, Jane Chao, Macario, Ira Ono and others, and more.

Woodworker and bowl turner Syd Vierra brought some of his bowls in various stages of production. “There was a buzz around the bowls and the artist talked about how he makes them,” said Charlotte. “Some are colored; they are really gorgeous.”

Moms, teachers and some of the high school’s students participated in a fashion show, wearing fashions from local boutiques such as Hana Hou, Rainbow Jo, Diva’s Boutique, Love and Lace, Chi Chi La Fong and also Macy’s.

“Everyone looked very sharp,” said Charlotte, “and Mrs. Hoshide could easily be a supermodel instead of a first-grade teacher, but we’re glad she isn’t!”

Some St. Joseph’s high school students put on a trash fashion show, as well. Teresa Fuata, who has two children at St. Joe’s and is vice president of the school’s Parent-Teacher Guild—and who organized the event—described it. “They used recycled materials, creating, actually, stunning outfits,” she said. “One was coffee filters; there were old maps, plastic bags. It was a hit of the evening.”

Sharon Alapai of the Hilton Waikoloa prepared desserts, as did Penny Yu.

Charlotte called the elegant Restaurant Kaikodo the perfect setting. “Everyone was dressed Hilo style—from shorts and flip-flops to tuxedos. Also, St. Joseph’s is such a small school,” she said, “that it was fun to have a grown-up event and see everyone kick up their heels, including the sisters.”

Teresa Fuata says the event grossed nearly $10,000. “It was a very successful evening,” she said. “And it was very fun. People are already saying they’re looking forward to the second annual one.”

Community, Hawaiian Role Models, Science

Astrophysicist at Work

May 2, 2007 Richard Ha

Richard and June recently took their grandson Kapono and granddaughter Kimberly to ‘Imiloa. That’s Hilo’s state-of-the-art, primarily NASA-funded, $28-million, 40,000-square-foot exhibition and planetarium complex, which strives to present both science—the world-class astronomy being done atop Mauna Kea—and the mountain’s highly significant cultural importance to Hawaiians. Most in the community seem to agree it does a good job at both.

The Has and their grandchildren watched the planetarium show, and afterward went up to see who was controlling the computers. “It turned out to be this very nice, confident UHH student working part-time,” says Richard. “Her name was ‘Ahia Dye.”

Twenty-six year old ‘Ahia, who grew up in Kailua, O‘ahu, is graduating this semester from the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo with a bachelor’s degree in Astronomy and a minor in Physics. She is also studying Hawaiian Studies, and will continue on at UHH after graduation to complete her undergraduate degree in that field as well.

“The more I get into the professional field,” she says, “the more I realize the importance of knowing both your culture and the science together. It’s an important background to have. I’m finding it very very helpful, and fun too.”

I asked ‘Ahia how she became interested in the sciences, and she told me about her elder brother, a physicist, who always talked to her about their natural environment. “We would walk down to the beach and he would explain to me that the moon rises about an hour later every night,” she says, “and how the sun changes its position along the horizon as it rises throughout the year.”

‘Ahia’s job at ‘Imiloa is an internship she got through participating in UH Hilo’s Keaholoa STEM program, an NSF-funded program that supports Hawaiians in the sciences. Coincidentally, Richard is a new advisory board member of the program.

“There are about 20 interns now,” says ‘Ahia. “Besides going to school full time, they all participate in internships in their fields. That’s what kept me in astronomy, this internship, and given me an edge. Getting into the field is so different from studying the books. And being surrounded by so many Hawaiian kids; seeing all of us striving and moving forward in fields where we’re not so well-represented.”

Now that she’s graduating, she has been offered a position at ‘Imiloa.

Richard says, “I’m sure she doesn’t realize how important it is, what a role model she is, as a female native Hawaiian astrophysicist. It blows me away.”

‘Ahia is a role model in another way, too. She overcame a learning disability to get to where she is today. “I’m very dyslexic and I was failing out of 9th grade,” she says. “I was a good student, but I just wasn’t doing well.” Her parents enrolled her at Honolulu’s Assets School.

“They focus on what you can do there,” she says, “and push you in that way. They pushed technology and math and sciences. It was really fun. It’s different for every person, but what Assets did for me is they taught me how to interpret information and how to more quickly absorb it using different mediums.”

Richard was not the only one impressed with ‘Ahia; she also had a major impact on his grandson Kapono, who is 17. “He’s the kind of kid that has had no trouble with advanced math,” says Richard, “but he had not found his calling. Seeing ‘Ahia in action just blew him away. It gives me chicken skin to talk about it. Now he wants to volunteer to work at ‘Imiloa, and she said she would try to help him get in there.”

‘Ahia has only positive things to say about Kapono. “I think he’s going to be just outstanding,” she says. “He already has that mentality. He knows enough about computers, he’s going to learn a lot about astronomy, he already has the people skills, and he’s very nice and also motivated.

“My boss Shawn Laatsch, the planetarium manager, has been working in planetariums since high school,” she added. “I can see the same look in Kapono; the same ‘ano [nature] as Shawn. I think he’s going to be really great.” — posted by Leslie Lang

Losing Weight

On My Plate

April 30, 2007 Richard Ha

Richard Ha writes:

You may recall that two weeks ago I gave up trying to lose weight merely by exercising more than I ate. I realized that despite the fact I love to exercise, that wasn’t working for me. Several times I had read that exercising alone is not a successful strategy for losing weight. But I also knew, intuitively, that doing a whole lifestyle change was not going to be easy, and I was looking for an easier way.

My problem, and I suspect the problem of many, is that I have a lot going on and counting calories is at the bottom of my priority list. That’s not good or bad, it just is.

Two weeks ago I discovered what I was looking for—a way to adjust food intake without investing a lot of time. I wanted a technique that was practical and nonjudgmental. In other words, it had to be something I would actually do.

The answer turned out to be a method called The New American Plate, suggested by the American Institute of Cancer Research.

More than anything else, this method captured my attention because I knew I could do it within my present lifestyle. I know that the best chance of success requires changing one’s lifestyle. But, me change my whole lifestyle? Come on—get real. Who am I kidding!

This method says one should try for a plate of food that consists of 2/3 veggies and 1/3 meat-type proteins. I stretch that to mean that one should try to achieve that goal by the end of the day or the end of the week. And then I eat anything I like, though I keep in mind that I will need to end up with a 2/3 – 1/3 ratio. I can do that! It has the added benefit of helping to lower one’s risk of getting cancer and other chronic diseases.

This past week I felt like I needed to catch up, so when deciding where to go for lunch, I suggested One Plus One Cafe at the Prince Kuhio Plaza, where I ordered the House Special vegetarian plate. That wasn’t hard at all. Many restaurants have vegetarian plates.

After having visited Hamakua Springs, Abel Porter, president of the Sullivan Family of Companies, and Amber Isom invited June and me to attend a luncheon at Mealani Experimental Station in Waimea Saturday. They were meeting with area ranchers and processors.

Amber asked me to bring a salad. So I made the lettuce/diced-tomato salad Alan Wong taught me to make. Amber told me that Abel mentioned the salad was good three times. I’m glad I did Chef Alan’s recipe justice.

Since it was a meeting of area ranchers, they had a steak barbeque. I fixed myself a plate that was 2/3 veggies and 1/3 steak and sausage. I was doing good.

But then Abel said they had brought Cheesecake Factory products on line and that they had some for dessert.

Having been to New York City where I tried all the cheesecake I could, I needed to judge this cheesecake for myself. I just made a mental note that I would have to eat a little more veggies in the next couple of days and it would be okay.

Now this is my kind of eating plan. By the way, the cheesecake was exceptionally good. It was right up there with Junior’s.

I traded an unopened lettuce and tomato salad and dressing for tasty, grass-fed beef steaks and sausages. We both came away from the trade feeling we received something of value.

So today I owe. If I eat a little more than 2/3 to 1/3 veggies, I should be good.

I’m looking for ways to increase my veggie consumption. For example, I keep sliced Japanese cucumbers in a bowl as a standby snack, in case I open up the refrigerator. I set no limits on that and Hamakua Sweet tomatoes.

By the way, I am not gaining weight anymore. I lost half a pound this week.

Community, Tomatoes

Fire Engine Red

April 27, 2007 Richard Ha

Richard Ha writes:

We have a contingency plan in place in terms of who to give our excess tomatoes to when we have an unexpected spike in production. So when we did recently, we were ready. We had already decided that we would give extra tomatoes to teachers, public safety personnel and caregivers.

Recently I wrote about taking cocktail tomatoes to several elementary schools for them to distribute to their students, staff and teachers.

This week, for the first time, we were able to give to public safety personnel. We had enough cocktail tomatoes that we were able to give one container to every firefighter and EMT on the Big Island.

Paramedics Jesse and Wayne

Firefighter Okinaka

Medics Marvin and Grant

Dispatchers Dori and Penny with Captain Lum

They told us they were really grateful that someone from the community felt moved to so such a thing. I told them our workers are happy to work for a company that can do it. It’s a win-win situation for everybody.

We appreciate all that fire personnel do for our community. Mahalo from all of us at Hamakua Springs County Farms.

Books, Community

Exploring Historic Hilo

April 25, 2007 Richard Ha

Richard Ha writes:

This past Saturday, June and I went to a book signing at the Book Gallery in downtown Hilo. Leslie Lang was autographing her new book, Exploring Historic Hilo.

With the Hilo Farmers Market bustling with activity around the corner, parking was hard to find. We parked several blocks away, across from the East Hawai‘i Cultural Center at Kalakaua Park, and walked over.

It was appropriate that it was a busy day in small town Hilo. It lent excitement to this special event.

We had never been to a book signing before and it looked exactly as I imagined it would. People were chatting animatedly with Leslie, she was wearing a nice flower lei and her books were arranged on the table around her. She was the focus of attention. We bought a book and asked for her autograph, and then: “On second thought, can you also sign another one?” We chatted for a short while and then had to move on.

From the first time Leslie interviewed me for an article in the Hawaiian Airlines in-flight magazine Hana Hou, I knew she had a special talent. We sat down for a short time and she was all business. No wasting of time.

When I saw the story, I was floored. She got so much information out of me in such a short time and it was expressed accurately and in just the right tone. Just the right tone. That’s a luxury in many cases.

Since then, I asked her to develop a website for us. When it was done, I told her, “That’s the first time someone’s ever captured exactly what we are all about.”

Later I asked her to help me put together a blog. For almost a year now we’ve written three posts per week, every week. Sometimes she writes the post, and other times I do. When I write it, she edits and offers suggestions for additions or clarifications. But when she’s done with it, it is still me. She keeps my personality intact, warts and all. She also writes press releases and puts together various other written materials for the farm. I’ve told her before: “When it comes to writing, you are like a master wood carver and I am like a carpenter.”

So it was a thrill for me to stand in line and get her autograph. Exploring Historic Hilo is a pictorial history of Hilo, with archival photographs and captions that detail the town’s history. It’s a great book to give as a gift. We’re going to go to her next signing and get a few more.

You can read more about Leslie’s writing at her website. And if you would like to talk with her about writing for your company, I’m sure she’d be happy to talk with you. Email her at leslie@leslielang.com.

Leslie writes: Just as that post where Charlotte and I called Richard “ethical” made him uncomfortable, so, too, does it make me squirm a bit to post this. But I thank you, Richard, for all your very kind words. It is truly a delight to work with you.