My Cardboard Balcony

Mahalo by Belinda Roddie We heard it on the plane, and in the airport, and at the restaurant where we binged on tangy ahi poke and mango guacamole. That simple word of gratitude you sometimes hear over a Mai Tai or two. A custom that holds warmth in its vowels similar to the way that the heat is cradled in the island breeze. We heard it when we got our rented car, when we checked in to our hotel room. We sure as Hell didn't hear it when a rooster refused to step off the road - this was his domain! And yet I felt the only way I could say anything back was with the simple phrase I had practiced all my life: Thank you. Perhaps, during this honeymoon, that will be appropriate, and charming, enough.

There were going to be changes to the city plan, the mayor told the crowd via Facebook Live that day. Changes that no one wanted, but everyone needed. Changes that involved taxes and spending cuts, deficits and surpluses, and all that economic jingle-jangle that the mayor did not expect the citizenry to fully understand. Leslie Sherwood certainly understood, though. As a world-renowned economics professor who had grown up in this city, she was incensed by what she deemed "inane witchcraft and wizardry."