Give Mother’s Day a personal touch

Mother’s Day tributes should be small and carry the personal touch, as far as Anna Marie Jarvis is concerned. And her opinion should count: Jarvis was the founder of the holiday in the United States.

Jarvis never married or had children. But her own mom had established several "Mother’s Day Work Clubs" to do service projects. That inspired daughter Anna, who in 1907 launched a campaign to make Mother’s Day a national holiday.

She succeeded, in 1914, but her feelings of triumph soon soured when the holiday commercialized. She railed against that, and against impersonal greeting cards.

"A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world," she once wrote. "And candy! You take a box to Mother — and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment."

So get busy with that handwritten note. And lay off her chocolates.

Singing the marketplace eviction blues

There will be music, and hearts may be feeling lighter now, during the Hale‘iwa Farmers’ Market, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sunday. Popular entertainers — Jack Johnson, Paula Fuga, Awana Salazar and Makana among them — will be supporting vendors on what was to have been the market’s last day at this particular site for a while. But relief and reprieve came Friday in the form of an extension — until May 27.

The search is on for a new site, because of a law precluding such events along a highway, even remnant bits like the one that borders the market location.

It’s supposed to take about a year to change the status of the abandoned road segment. Let’s hope that’s under way, so the market can return.