Hawaii: Where peacemakers and scholars hang out

This year alone, Hawaii has hosted at least three winners of the esteemed Nobel Prize: spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in April, economist Joseph Stiglitz in May, and now Desmond Tutu, archbishop emeritus of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and a prominent force in bringing down South Africa’s racist apartheid system.

Tutu, awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1984, appears in four public events this week at the Cathedral of Saint Andrew in downtown Honolulu — three that are free and one that requires the purchase of tickets, with the proceeds to endow the Desmond Tutu Outreach Fund for community benefit ministries in Hawaii.

For more information, go to www.tutuatthecathedralofstandrew.org.

WIsdom from the past gets a new lease on life

Kudos to all who helped in the eight-month effort to transcribe old Hawaiian-language newspapers into a format that will make it easier to have them translated.

Sponsor Awaiaulu Inc. said only about a third of the 60,000 pages — taken from 100 newspapers published between 1834 and 1948 — were transcribed, but it was enough to get started on translating them into English. "What folks need to realize is that these papers hold information not found in textbooks, no matter where you went to school," said Puakea Nogelmeier, Awaiaulu’s executive director.