Hinshaw headwear shows the right spirit

You might have seen UH-Manoa Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw on TV when it was announced that the Warrior football team was joining the Mountain West Conference.

Hinshaw, a strong supporter of UH athletics, has been making regular fashion statements at Aloha Stadium and the Stan Sheriff Center since she was hired in 2007.

At the same time, she’s been more than hat, having helped guide UH through the firing of Herman Frazier, the departure of June Jones and the hirings of Greg McMackin and Jim Donovan.

So even if the Rainbowtique isn’t stocking Hinshaw headwear, her enthusiasm and commitment — to say nothing of style chutzpah — will always be in vogue.

Our president’s mother gets some recognition

An obscure anthropologist writing about the metalworking industries in a Javanese village might not expect to have her dissertation published as a book. Or to have an endowed chair at a major university named after her.

But motherhood — and a solid record of scholarship — have their privileges. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the late Stanley Ann Dunham, mother of the current president and author of "Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia," will be honored with a chair at the University of Hawaii’s Department of Anthropology.

Her son, Barack, should be proud.