Snow-mageddon in Seattle

The record snowfall here in Seattle is all over the news, partially because it's just so weird.  Snow is squeal-inducing for kids who get out of school and can spend the whole day making snowmen, sledding hills and sipping hot chocolate, but not so much fun for adults required to get from here to there, either slipping on icy pathways or skidding in circles on streets and freeways.

Our family has endured a nearly comical series of weather-related events that inspire gratitude for the normalities of life.

A few days ago, we learned that our main water line from the meter to our home had sprung a massive leak. In the process of digging a trench for the replacement pipe, a worker clipped our phone line.  Then the snows came.

At first we marveled at the winter wonderland, confectioner's sugar dusting the firs and piling on our patio furniture. But soon it became serious, as five, six inches of snow caused the closing of schools, canceling of classes, curtailing hours at businesses and the gym. Our temporary water pipe was subject to freezing. I could no longer navigate my non-four-wheel-drive Mom-car up the hill to get out; as temperatures cooled and re-froze, dangerous ice accumulated on the ground.

Our son, ticketed for a visit home on his college break, spent five hours in the airport due to plane cancellations into Seattle. My husband, due at an important business meeting near LA, found his 6 am flight cancelled as he drove--five miles per hour--to the airport; I spent 40 minutes on hold with the airline (on my cell phone--our land lines were cut, remember), which never did get to me.

Then, the power went out.  The house chilled colder by the minute with no furnace. I prayed my cell phone would retain enough juice.  But it's almost relaxing to be stuck, even if bundled in many layers of down--can't use the computer (no router)--a good excuse to catch up on reading. Until 4:30, when it gets dark.

When things go wrong, you get grateful for what's right. While without water for days, brushing teeth and cooking meant sparing sips and drips from bottles only. Flushing a toilet was suddenly a wonderful luxury; washing hands afterward, an issue.  Taking a shower was something done at somebody else's house.

No power in freezing weather means wearing enough to mimic the Michelin Man. You put  refrigerator contents outside, where they'll stay cold. Days later you find splotches of wax on counters and floor from the candles you've carried from room to room. You wonder how civilizations managed until the 20th century.

We were very fortunate and, thank God, safe. My husband never went to his meeting, but somehow his boss and colleagues got along without him.  We were able to ride in an all-wheel-drive vehicle to friends who had electricity. Our son's flight eventually made it, and after several hours, our power returned. The yard is decorated by a snowman, and about seven inches of crunchy snow have collected on our driveway.  School's off again tomorrow, and we have a week to remember.

Why Childhood Obesity-Fighting Programs Fail, and What they Should Do

A front-page story in today's New York Times business section laments the lack of effective obesity-fighting programs for children. Many such programs have sprung up, in true entrepreneurial style, since the Obama health care law mandates reimbursement for obesity screening and counseling for children.  The trouble is, these conventional-wisdom Kool-aid-slurping approaches are going about it the wrong way.

Calories in equal calories out?  Family awareness about "good" versus "bad" foods? Encouragement to exercise?  These have comprised kids' school health programs since the 1960s.  Weigh-ins and group therapy? The article is accompanied by an adult peering over the shoulder of a chubby pre-teen to read the numbers on a scale.  Does this warm-hearted and well-meaning supervision inspire a lean life?

There's no data supporting long-term positive outcomes for any of these programs, and indeed, for any of the thriving diet industry offerings for either adults or children.  Knowledge doesn't bring long-term skinniness, even if will-power and "simple adjustments" slice off a few pounds. "If this were easy, if there were clear outcomes for success, we would be investing in these," confesses Dr. Samuel R. Nussbaum, chief medical officer for a huge health insurer.

You can bet more and more of these anti-fat education programs will proliferate, as long as big butts bring big bucks. But from the research I've been conducting for a book on the topic, they'll add to the national deficit, perhaps bring some short-term shape shrinkage, but won't return our population to slimness levels of past decades.

That's for two reasons. First, the shape of Americans has changed, and shoehorning Americans back into their sizes of yesteryear will be akin to putting toothpaste back in the tube.  Average height has enlarged from 5-foot-six, which was the mean for men at the turn of this century, (a figure that fluctuated since 1700 reflecting disease as well as nutrition) to  5-foot-ten among Americans born here in 1970. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 2006, the average height for all American males (including immigrants) was 69.2 inches, a little over five-foot-nine. It's a major body expansion, but nobody is campaigning to reverse growth in that direction.

At the same time, bodies have ballooned outward. A CDC study found that between 1960 and 2002 the average weight of a man aged 20-74 rose from 166 lbs. to a more portly 191 lbs. Women similarly enlarged, from 140 lbs. to 164.  In those same 42 years, life expectancy rose from age 66 for men and 73 for women (1960) to 75 for men and 80 women today (2010).  Hmmmm. We're getting taller, fatter and living longer. Correlation does not imply causation.

And we're adjusting to our increased proportions. An article in the NY Times discussed "the New Calculus of Broader Backsides," as Transit Authorities replace their subway and train cars.  Perhaps in honor of its governor, New Jersey Transit, the piece noted, has increased its seat width from 17.55 inches to a comfortable 19.75 inches. Connecticut Metro-North Rail Commuter Council chair Jim Cameron was most pithy in his approving self-interest: "Why subject my girth to other people?"

Yes, we all want to protect our girth, which is exactly why all these lauded weight-reduction programs are doomed to failure. Everybody's fat, including our icons like Oprah and Rush Limbaugh, and with a fourth of the nation (35% of blacks) self-reporting themselves obese (perhaps underestimating a bit?) "fitting in" means to a size 14 average for women--and those sizes have themselves become more, uh, roomy.

The second, and more crucial reason for the failure of these earnest efforts to stem childhood obesity (which in the past three years has leveled off, by the way) is that their tactics are wrong.  Most big programs, like WellPoint, involve dietitians who instruct on creating healthy low-calorie meals, limiting portions and choosing wisely. Does this sound enticing? Exciting?

How about the programs where participants weigh in in front of an authority? Just what kids want to do. Weight Watchers tried a web-based course for youth that they scuttled "after discovering children were regaining their weight after a year, with some even gaining more than they might have had they not participated."

There's an elephant in the room, and it's not just the collective tonnage of overweight children.  It's the fact that we don't truly know what makes people obese, and we haven't found any way--other than obsessive, life-long restriction and vigilance--to keep people thin once they lose weight. It's not a simple equation of calories in, energy out, as Tara Parker Pope wrote quite eloquently in a New York Times Magazine cover story a couple of weeks ago called "The Fat Trap." You see, there are a raft of hereditary and biological forces that not only conspire to bulk us up but to maintain fat on human bodies. She disclosed that exercising and eating properly haven't allowed her to lose the 60 extra pounds on her frame. Her research revealed that they're apparently programmed to stay there.

Telling that to pudgy kids and their families won't inspire much hope, however, and won't get them leaping onto the "Let's Move!" bandwagon. Instead, institutions and companies eager for Obamacare dollars mislead audiences into thinking their diets and measurements can solve the problem. "What we're learning about treating childhood obesity is that there is no magic bullet in dropping weight in kids," admits Roanoke, Virginia pediatrician Dr. Colleen Kraft, who's affiliated with the WellPoint program that tried.

We know that about 19% of children aged 6-18 are obese, but it's tougher to find the percentage that are morbidly obese, of whom Randy Seeley, associate director of the Obesity Research Center at the University of Cincinnati Medical School says in Time Magazine, "zero percent will grow up to be normal-weight adults."  Googling "morbidly obese children" only yields hundreds of articles discussing the merits of snatching these kids out of their biological parents' homes into foster care--for their own good, of course.

If taxpayer-paid programs can't reverse childhood obesity despite financial incentives, what can we do? That desperate question underlies a progressive value that assumes intervention--anything--is required for every problem. Given that science has yet to understand whether it's DNA, stress, or even an adenovirus that has spiked rates of obesity over the past 20 years in both children and adults, it's naive to assume more instruction that repeats mandatory school health lessons about square, uh, pyramidal, uh plate-shaped diets combined with exercise, will work.

What will work is dropping all the federal funding in this squeezed economy for spongy, feel-good programs with no basis or track-record. Scale back on the school breakfasts and lunches, even the ones with the salad and apples designed to model healthy meals (that end up in the trash). Keep the health courses that offer basic nutritional information but focus not on some mythical ideal dinner plate but instead on learning what real hunger and satiation feel like, and why listening to those physical (and associated mental) cues--rather than emotional needs and ubiquitous come-ons of fast food and supermarket munchies--is the way people stay naturally healthy and in sync with their bodies.

At this point, until science catches up with some definitive information, we also need to discuss and to some extent embrace the reality that overweight (not obesity) is actually the most healthy status. Paul Campos, in his book The Obesity Myth documents that greatest longevity accrues to those in the "overweight" BMI category. In an interview in The Atlantic, Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says "There is literally not a shred of evidence that turning fat people into thin people improves their health. And the reason there's no evidence is that there's no way to do it."

Do we want healthy Americans, or do we want fashionably thin ones? With Michelle Obama's chisled biceps as models, used as she gracefully shovels dirt for the White House vegetable garden, it seems the latter.  There's no harm in recognizing healthy foods and activities, but insisting that over-riding our own intuitive means to know what's healthy for us individually, and what's satisfying to us physiologically, eliminates the most time-tested and simple means to stay our personal best weights, whatever the number on the scale.

Denying a Hershey's Kiss to live longer

"How much of what you're denying yourself is because you think you're increasing your life expectancy?" asked Rush Limbaugh on his radio show today.

He was discussing the fact that Prof. Chris Semsarian, a cardiologist in Sydney, Australia warned that energy drinks can trigger dire effects when consumed by young people who may not be aware of an underlying heart problem, or when followed by "a trip to they gym." The actual message of the doctor was prudent, but Rush was pointing out how news media ran with the story, headlining that "energy drinks 'can trigger heart attacks'" to satisfy reader/viewer hunger for anything that can prolong your life.

This story comes at the same time that the research "showing" that reservatrol, found in grapes and wine and touted to help the heart and slow aging, was found to be largely based on faked data. A 60,000 page report documents 145 "counts" of fraudulent data in the work of Dipak K. Das of the University of Connecticut's Cardiovascular Research Center, much published in peer-reviewed journals and the basis of the marketing of dozens of supplements.

People will latch onto anything "experts" say increases longevity or helps avoid serious illness.  Whether it's adequately proven or not.  At one time, I took 400 international units of Vitamin E every night, because the consensus was that this antioxidant could prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and heart problems--a consensus that has since been discredited. Before that was the Linus Pauling Vitamin C craze to prevent colds, since abandoned.  Now Vitamin D is the big fad, once again as a preventative to a raft of dreaded diseases, most notably cancer. The National Institutes of Health's exhaustive review, however, summarized, "Taken together, however, studies to date do not support a role for vitamin D, with or without calcium, in reducing the risk of cancer."

There are certainly some things that will enhance risk of death. Smoking, for example, though thousands of people have smoked like chimneys and had no ill effects, and some have even suggested that seeing our President--who earlier this year announced he'd finally quit--taking a drag might humanize his image.  Evel Knieval's jumping a motorcycle over lines of 20 cars might be considered a risky, "death-defying" habit, though he died from diabetes and a lung condition.

Mothers all over the world have admonished children fleeing the house sweaterless that they'd catch their death of cold, even if they'd taken enough Vitamin C to impress Linus Pauling.  The list of risks is limitless; might even be a pretty funny book.

But back to the quote I heard on the radio today that rang so true: How much of what you're denying yourself is because you think you're increasing your life expectancy?  In other words, how much do you deprive yourself of simple joys, or even more complex ones, out of fear induced by some "health" news story? I know someone who won't savor a Hershey's kiss because she's sworn off sugar, considering it "toxic."  I don't buy that one, and now, thankfully, the "experts" are saying the flavanols in dark chocolate provide anti-oxidants that validate my daily fix.

Since I'm immersed in writing a book whose underlying point is "to thine own self be true," regarding what your body tells you, I embrace the notion that our lives are too short and precious to over-ride its personal messages and pleasures.  If we just tune in to the activities and tastes that make us feel strong and satisfied, we're likely to be pursuing our individual best paths to health.

I asked my Aunt Bo, 105 years old and living in sin with her 104-year-old boyfriend, Frank, the secret to their longevity.  They replied in unison, "Keep breathing!" They both used to smoke, when it was popular. They both enjoyed their highball cocktails. They have great stories to tell...but they never took Vitamin C or D or went to the gym.

We don't really know much about what prolongs life best, or avoids this or the other disease, but if every day contains some pleasure, some discovery, some joy in this awesome world, it's a day of gain.  Certainly some effort and discomfort can pay off in health benefits, but at the same time, chronic deprivation, especially when it feels like a sacrifice, won't bring the quality of life that is more important than its mere quantity.

Solving Unemployment, or, "The Value of Babysitting"

Here in Hawaii, where I'm basking in the delicious warmth of a winter working vacation, hundreds of nurses and others were confronted with the Yuletide news that they were losing their jobs. It may be paradise, but when you get your layoff notice on Christmas eve--part of the thousand-person cuts that two bankrupt hospital closures are forcing--it's tough to look forward to the New Year.

The nation still suffers from high unemployment (8.6% overall; California 11.3% according to latest DOL stats) and with weary job-seekers running out of government payments despite extensions, many settle for lesser positions or leave the job market entirely. Well, I've got a suggestion: babysitting.

Babysitting has skyrocketed in value over the years, more than any position I can think of.  Admitting my age, I'll tell you that I earned 50 cents per hour in high school babysitting, and it didn't matter how many kids there were in the family.

Now the going rate is $15 per hour, at least, and parents pay more per child.  In many areas, $20 an hour is de rigeur. In New York City, it's more like $25 per hour.  Since I was a kid, the amount of annual income considered a good living has escalated about five times over.  In that same time, the wage of babysitters has increased thirty-fold.

Many people who spent big bucks on a college education may think themselves above this plebeian occupation. You don't need academic skills to soothe a crying baby, and the status of babysitting isn't up there with professors or physicians.  Still, if you're looking for something to sustain you, would you turn down work that pays $15 an hour? You don't even need to go to barista school.

Babysitting does have its qualifications, and these would probably exclude a lot of people.  You need the patience of a saint, a tolerance for bodily excretions, incredible flexibility both in planning and posing, and clever, if not devious psychological skills. It helps if you can stand to read Goodnight Moon sixteen times over (Adam Mansback's Go the F--k to Sleep is generally not permissible).

On my first non-family babysitting job, the two-year-old, who was supposed to be sleeping so I could do my homework, got repetitive projectile stomach flu. This was before cell phones. I immediately decided to scuttle babysitting and get a job using the shorthand class I was taking (anyone remember when girls learned Gregg shorthand in school?).  My ability to take dictation at 120 words per minute earned me $1.65 an hour.

My point is that every mom I know grouses about the lack of babysitters, despite their willingness to pay so well.  So, if you're up for a little down time, as in crawling around on the floor, or enjoy listening to happy tunes on the road chauffeuring children to lessons and tutors, there's likely an opportunity for you.  And if my observations about salaries hold, and kids keep doing what they do, it's sure to be a growth industry.

Searching for Bright Light on Chanukah in Hawaii

In the Northwest, it's common to hear complaints at this time of year about SAD. That's not only the emotion spurred by the lack of winter sunlight, but an actual psychological malady, Seasonal Affective Disorder, where depression interferes with sleep, performance and energy.

Those who work indoors in Seattle drive to their 8 am jobs in the dark and emerge at 5 to the same nighttime.  No wonder sun-simulators are so popular. I've got a light-box on my desk.

My search for bright light was happily rewarded this year when my husband and I were able to take a working-vacation to Hawaii, where the winter sunrise is at 7 and night comes at 6:30. Those extra 2 1/2 hours of sun make a huge difference.  So does aqua surf and temperatures around the clock between 70 and 80 degrees.

But seeking light has a deeper meaning tonight as the 8-day Jewish holiday of Chanuka begins.  Just as the winter equinox closes in, we begin an expansive celebration of light, specifically the menorah, which was a 7-flame oil candelabra that illuminated the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.

Yes, the "chanukiah," the candle holder for the holiday, has eight branches, one for each day of the holiday, plus a separate holder for the "helper" or shamus, that lights the others.  But the eight days of the holiday recall the miraculous amount of time that a small pot of undefiled oil kept the menorah going before new oil could arrive, once the Temple was re-dedicated, after banishing Greek gods and culture. The Temple having its special continuous light was so crucial that the menorah's ongoing glow is central to the holiday--and is the ultimate symbol of God's presence. It is because of this that the menorah is the emblem of the State of Israel.

But God's "enlightenment" is something we seek throughout the year.  Jews conclude our most central thrice-daily prayer by asking God to "bless us, our Father, all of us as one, with the light of your countenance, for with the light of your countenance you gave us, our God, the Torah of life, and a love of kindness, righteousness, blessing, compassion, life and peace."

That always strikes me--God gave us everything good that's non-material with the light of His countenance. Not with his words, though that's how He created the world. Not with his thinking, or waving some figurative arm, or sending some angel.  Not even by the look on His countenance--no, there's something special about light, in Hebrew, "ohr."

In the first Holy Temple, the seven-light, six-branched gold menorah was in a shape God dictated to Moses in Exodus 25: 31-40, with almond and knob decorations, and the branches turned toward the middle. The windows of the Temple, it's said, were backward, in that the spiritual light came from within and radiated outward, as opposed to normal windows, which let outdoor sunshine in.

So it is tonight, when we ignite the first of our Chanuka lights, allowing the brightness to emanate from within our homes to overcome the SAD of these darkest days. It's considered a gift that God tilted the earth to create seasons, to let us move from the dark months into the light, beginning with Chanuka, when, using "chinuch," education (the root of the word "Chanuka"), we improve ourselves as each subsequent day brings greater and greater daylight.

I'm searching for bright light here in Hawaii, and we'll attend a public menorah-lighting with others who understand that the holiday represents the triumph of insight over ignorance, and independent dedication to true principles over the ubiquitous and convenient messages of our feel-good culture.

Today the weather in paradise is blustery and rainy, so I'll appreciate all the more the clear sunshine when it reappears, and bask in the brilliance of this message of illumination--both the kind that can give me a tan and the kind that lights up a winter's night and a seeking soul.

College Education...and Hula

Just returned from an hour-long free hula lesson at a Waikiki shopping center to hear my Fave Radio Host interviewing Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University on the worthlessness of going to college. Here's a professor--ie guy who makes his living from a college Economic department--questioning states' subsidies of anthropology, sociology and psychology and presumably, his own discipline, too.  Fave Host agreed, asking why high school kids prefer institutions of higher learning to just plunging into the workworld and making money, when in the end, they do the same thing 4 years later with a mountain of debt.

 Answer: with the sheepskin, they at least get an interview. Without it, they're unemployed.

I happen to be a fan of college education. But I'm also one of those blessed with the kind of skills that allow me to succeed there (57% of college students are women).The anti-college argument is that for the many--perhaps majority--of the populace not so blessed, college becomes simply a hurdle to be jumped, and neither prepares students for a career nor adds to their becoming more "well-rounded" and thus higher-quality citizens.

Sounds logical, but there's no getting around that we can't go back to the 1940s and 50s, when a college education was the exception rather than the rule.  Nowadays, the extension of adolescence has made a baccalaureate the equivalent of the high school diploma, a symbol that the graduate has tenacity and can take a test and write a paper.  It assures that the student has taken certain courses, and within those, completed required assignments.  People who earn a college degree are more likely punctual, literate and comprehending. Too bad a high school diploma no longer guarantees such basics.

Fave Radio Host thinks the educational establishment ought to turn that around, fueled by an end to government subsidies.  But even if all the fed and state money funding colleges were to dry up, the academic-industrial complex would raise the funds to continue (likely happier for any elimination of competition).  Which would be just fine.

College seems to be more necessary than ever, as all sorts of careers increasingly erect gate-keeping barriers, adding educational requirements.  It's tough to get a job as a community college instructor nowadays without a Ph.D.  Why? Because professors, to perpetuate and justify their existence, funnel their students into graduate programs, creating a glut of Ph.D.s with nothing else to do. Colleges now choose from plenty of Ph.Ds eager for work, so the MA has become meaningless in most social sciences.

Why couldn't there be more apprenticeships and skills-based certificate programs?  You don't need four years of liberal arts to run a small business or repair pipes or make excellent beer. You just need to know how to do it.  Years ago, when earning a high school counselor credential, I was impressed by a program in southern California that trained teens in specific careers, like chef, hotel manager, office worker, computer programmer, car repairperson.  The kids got on-the-job experience by opening to the public or internships in real-life situations.  They were prepared to earn money and be professional, but truthfully, they'll never have the prestige of advanced academic degrees, something our culture venerates.  Honest, competent, dedicated work should be just as honored. But it's not.

I have a friend who makes her living helping college applicants get accepted to their preferred schools.  It's big business to prepare students for the SAT, to help them choose institutions, and then to create applications that put the teen in the best light.  A lot rests on attending the right college, including the self-esteem of high school kids, their parents and their counselors.  High schools rate their own successes on the number of grads who go on to college, boasting when figures are high.

There's no denying that half of all students are below average (okay--below median).  But politicians, Pres. Obama included, keep insisting that every student should have the opportunity to attend college, even if taxpayers have to subsidize it.  There's a certain American spirit in offering even those with lower IQ the chance to succeed via extra-hard work. But does pushing non-collegiate students toward college just set them up for failure?

Many matriculate, and many drop out. You could argue that the failure is destructive; it doesn't feel good, and it doesn't encourage dropouts into trying other pursuits. But at least on their Facebook pages, they can forevermore write in the name of a school, ("attended So-and-So") which, in most circles, confers a modicum of status for recognizing the importance of post-high school study.  This universal esteem for college not only bumps its desirability but feeds the academic-industrial complex.  College is now another entitlement, and like the rest of them, legislators can't easily yank it away and stay in office.

Which brings us to hula.  My lesson, with a group of about fifty mostly-Japanese classmates, was for me an hour of body workout, enlightenment, intense embarrassment and fun.  We learned a dance called "On the slopes of Mauna Kea," with Hawaiian words and even a context of Island life.  Imagine living where land boundaries are so close and imminent. Where ranches and paniolos and a frontier of sorts is replacing a culture without written language, whose religion centers on four main nature gods.  In just an hour, I learned many movements and a unique way of relating to words and music.

I have to say, that free class was as useful as many of the courses I took in college, at great expense and with significantly more angst attached.  It wasn't rocket science, of course, and for the rocket scientists in our midst, college will always be a necessity.  But for the rest of us, perhaps we can adjust our attitudes about the need for taxpayers to fund non-technical learning, and grant a little more prestige to the wisdom that is freely and generously available all around us.

Pearl Harbor Parade...Surprising

Our first day of our Hawaiian paradise working vacation happened to be Pearl Harbor Day, the 70th anniversary of the bombing of the Honolulu bay that housed the major military protection for the United States on the cusp of World War II.

So, true to custom, Honolulans threw a parade.

Several times a month, streets are cordoned off and marching bands, truck-floats and civic groups prance down Kalakaua Street.  It's a clever way to entertain tourists in Waikiki, as well as gain the business of the many high school and college bands happy to fly to paradise to participate.  Last night, the Pearl Harbor lineup included bands from Virginia, Maine, Washington state, Indiana and California--as well as a Canadian troupe of marching bagpipers.

An hour before the parade, spectators waited curbside, some with folding chairs.  A half-clothed, long-haired very tanned guy got applause blowing a conch shell, the traditional Hawaiian blast (that, for the Jews reading this, caused my husband to respond, "Ta-keee-AH!")  And finally, we could hear the first marching band, playing "God Bless America," closer and louder.

The surprise? That the parade, naturally headed by the Colors, aroused such palpable patriotism.  The crowd immediately jumped to its feet, applauding our flag, audible appreciation that increased as the Corvette Club slowly carried about 25 Pearl Harbor vets in their decorated convertibles.  Each elderly soldier, and you know they had to be at least 90 years old, was loudly and separately applauded.  When military units or Young Marines filed by, they received similar cheers.  The holiday-lit firetrucks and police also earned energetic clapping, with spectators standing to show their respect and enthusiasm.

It's true that Oahu hosts more than one military base, and that the presence of the armed services is deeply entrenched with the development of the island.  It's true that the attack on Pearl Harbor--an event one would think would be somberly remembered as a moment of weakness for our nation--has become a major tourist draw, with the memorial perhaps the most-visited site for groups (as well as a significant money-maker for the National Parks Service).  Still, I expected that the parade would be a few regiments, a couple marching bands, and lots of cars carrying local politicians.

Yet it was much different. The air was festive, and at least half of the parade participants were Polynesian or represented ethnic groups.  The bands and flag-twirlers from around the country, and many Samoan-tattooed, sarong'd marchers, made this a grander celebration.  The strange combo of military patriotism and local organizations conveyed a dual message: We were attacked but we survived, and retain our local dignity--combined with--We are the United States, and yet, we are something more, an amalgam of Island traditions that don't really melt into the pot.

And yet even the Polynesians and Samoans and Fiji Islanders who marched in this parade chose to salute our military and the elderly men riding in vintage Corvette convertibles.  As we awaited the parade, my history-loving husband regaled us with the circumstances that led to the surprise attack--including the pacts made after "The War to End all Wars" for nations never to lift swords again.  As a result of this, the major military powers at the time, Britain, France and the US, destroyed many of their warships. Japan, a country we in the US considered distant, was aggressive and seized Asian neighbors, including China. As war was assembling and commencing in Europe, the US had ceased selling oil to Japan that July, and considered the possibility of attack in the Pacific--but on forces in the Philippines, not Hawaii.  So, on a relaxed Sunday morning, the buzz of aircraft and submarine attacks caught our military by surprise, and resulted in the loss of 2,400.

The attack on Pearl Harbor and 9-11 have some eerie similarities.  Both were unexpected, and both used aircraft to cause the most devastation. The USS Arizona sank along with 1,177 aboard when bombed, finished by a single lucky strike down its smokestack.  In both cases, there were mounting signs of hostility--from Japan over the previous year, and from Muslim extremists via actual attacks on US targets, and a failed Trade Center attempt, over a period of years.

I can't fathom the mood on the cusp of World War II, but I clearly remember being shocked and puzzled about the 9-11 attacks--what had we done to deserve this? But the response of others was stronger: we must protect ourselves; we must react.

I think it's this show of strength that inspired a parade on the anniversary of so much loss. Spectators proudly sang along with marching bands' "God Bless America" and "This is My Country." They rose and applauded and hooted approval when uniformed warriors stepped by.  Seventy years may have passed, but we are not defeated, and in fact, still lead the world.  President Franklin Roosevelt dubbed Dec. 7, 1941 "a day which will live in infamy," but amid cheers of parade-goers, it was not infamy or loss that lived on, but the valor and perseverence of the national heroes that prevailed .