Plenty to choose from in Council’s 6th District

Already, the Nov. 6 special election for the City Council seat vacated by Tulsi Gabbard has attracted twice the number of candidates than for any other Council race this year. And there’s still one more day to go before Friday’s 4:30 p.m. filing deadline.

In the primary, the highest number of Council candidates — five — came out for the 1st District of Leeward Oahu. So far, the 10 hopefuls who have filed to run in the 6th District (Makiki, Ala Moana and Punchbowl) are a mixed bag of mostly political neophytes among a couple of veterans: Charles Amsterdam, James Brewer, Carol Fukunaga, Ryan Kapuniai, Steven Miller, Inam Rahman, Christopher "Nova" Smith, Robert Vieira, Jon Yoshimura and Arvid Youngquist.

Gold star for being well-informed if you can pick out the two former lawmakers among the bunch.

That volcano may be worth more than a quarter

The U.S. Mint is entering its third year of stamping out quarters featuring national parks and monuments in each of the 50 states and more, and Hawaii’s volcanoes are among the five scheduled for this year. They will be among quarter designs being produced until at least 2021.

Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park spokeswoman Jessica Ferracane says the islands’ quarters "may inspire people to visit the island of Hawaii" and visit the park. The secretary of Treasury chose the sites after consulting with the governor of each jurisdiction, plus heads of the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

The question is whether they will be so popular and widely connected that they could be hard to find. If so, a provision of the legislation allows new designs to be knocked out every 10 weeks for the next two decades.