I had been away from the islands for years, physically and in thought.
As with many a young adult, new adventures had loosened birthplace ties, but through East Coast-West Coast sojourns, Hawaii still counted as home.
When I returned, I found that the state had adopted a new bird, the construction crane that could lift steel beams and bundles of drywall high into the sky.
Emblematic of its dominance was a broad glass condo that replaced a half-dozen wooden cottages that were rented cheap, mostly to UH students.
Porches and grassy yards that were hangouts for friends disappeared in the wild crunch and grind of a building boom.
Though the changes were striking, the air was assuringly the same, velvety as warm, moist trades brushed across the skin.
Fragrances of pakalana and fern spores still distinguished neighborhoods as did the soft manner and manners of their residents.
For a time, hard economic times slowed the pace of construction. Sweeping housing and commercial developments were put on hold, though land-use changes crept through incrementally.
The pace today is different, fully enveloping the island in a building whirlwind.
Accelerating on investors’ desire for profit, a built-up Laie is closer to reality than vision.
Once-sleepy Kailua will soon be roused and transformed into another center for the tourism industry.
The fertile open rises of Central Oahu will be ticky-tacked with uniform suburban houses with the dubious curb appeal of the two-car garages up front to hold the all-important vehicles their dwellers will need to inch their way to work.
Invitations to boost population and tax revenues come wrapped in gilded structures of ultra-luxury urban palaces where an excess of ultra-luxury goods and services can be easily delivered to the doorstep from the ultra-luxury shopping mall further inland.
A rail system that — depending on whom you believe — will carry more or fewer passengers on two-car or four-car sets of trains that may or may not cost taxpayers extra millions will track across the skyline from West Oahu to town.
Someday.
When it does, it will drag more building along its path, for better or worse.
Meanwhile, the divide between the wealthy and struggling widens as Hawaii abandons the values that made living here rich with things money can’t buy.
Among these are a sense of community that blossomed when disparate immigrants understood that they needed one another for opportunities to thrive.
In forgetting or ignoring the hardship and drudgery of plantation life that earlier generations overcame, the decision-makers and political power brokers, dazzled by the moneyed elite, have burrowed deep into a consumer and service economy that could send Hawaii back to a plantation structure of aristocracy and attendants.
Resistance, such as happens on Kauai and Oahu’s North Shore, is unfairly disparaged as either a bunch of indiscriminate naysayers who want to return to the old ways, or haves who don’t want others to have.
Both are decent, reasonable positions.
Old days and old ways mean a thoughtfulness for others.
Haves want to make room for others who recognize and honor a sense of belonging.
Both still savor the sweet air and atmosphere that enriched life in these islands.
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A note: This column is my last. Thank you for reading all these years. Goodbye.
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Cynthia Oi can be reached at coi@staradvertiser.com.
