Freelance Writing & Kukui Nut Trees

For lunch today, I had a picnic with my husband and little girl in the shade of our big old kukui nut tree. We brought along my daughter’s Bob (learning to read) books, and decided we will call it “The Reading Tree” and sit there sometimes to practice reading. She loved that.
After we ate and read [...]

Read Full Post »

Happiness is a Warm Pond

Another place I sent my mom and her friend recently, while they were here touring the Big Island, was Ahalanui Park. It’s next to the ocean down in Pahoa and has a lovely, thermally heated pond.

The pond used to be part of someone’s estate down there in volcano country. Long ago owners enclosed the ocean [...]

Read Full Post »

Hamakua Springs: The Blog

One of my jobs these days is to blog for Hamakua Springs Country Farms, a 600-acre, progressive hydroponic farm here on the Big Island.
We started that blog more than two years ago. That’s when the farm’s owner, Richard Ha, hired me to create a website, and then a blog, for Hamakua Springs. My husband Macario, [...]

Read Full Post »

The “Intended Effort” Phenomenon

One of the aims of this blog, beyond writing about what I love, is to market my writing business.
Now, what I’m about to tell you has happened before, and it’s happening again right now. I find it so interesting.
The minute I decided to start this blog — but before I’d actually done anything about it [...]

Read Full Post »

Hilo Rated a “Dream Town”

It’s official, though we here in Hilo already knew it. 
Hilo is one of the country’s “Dream Towns.”
Bizjournals.com just reviewed 140 “micropolitan areas” in the country (From Bizjournals.com: “A micro consists of a central community with 10,000 to 50,000 residents, along with the surrounding countryside. It is, in effect, a small-scale version of a metropolitan area.”)
Hilo came in #41.
This [...]

Read Full Post »

Do You Use Google Alerts?

 

I have a Google alert set up, which is how I knew that the L.A. Times just published an article on Mauna Kea, and that it mentions the book I co-authored with David Byrne (the one who is not of the Talking Heads).
Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know about Mauna Kea — One of the [...]

Read Full Post »

Health Insurance for Hawaii’s Self-Employed

My eyes almost fell out of my head when I read a June 27, 2008 article in Pacific Business News with the headline: For Solo Operators, Insurance Deals Grow.
It was about medical insurance — which, of course, is tricky business when you are self-employed.
From the Pacific Business News article by Linda Chiem: 
Hawaii’s major health insurers, [...]

Read Full Post »

Hilo Travel Guide, That’s Me!

My mom, who lives in California, is spending a month up at Volcano, housesitting for a friend. She is loving the cool, crisp weather and the absolutely beautiful rainforest location.
This week she has a friend visiting her and they are having fun touring the Big Island.
And because my mom has never lived here (it’s my father’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Let Me Introduce Myself

Here in Hawai’i, we introduce ourselves when we meet by telling who our family is and where we’re from; we put ourselves into a context, and try to establish some sort of a connection to each other. It’s traditional among Hawaiians. So let me tell you who I am.
My name is Leslie Lang and I [...]

Read Full Post »