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| Pele's flower: 'ohi'a lehua |
US Person visited the Kilauea volcano
[photo] while on the big island of Hawaii. A ranger at the Jagger Museum observation point said the volcano had been particularly active for the past week. A visitor could easily hear the rumbling of molten lava about 270 feet below the rim of the caldera, and as the daylight faded the orange red glow of molten rock reflected off the low clouds and surrounding rock walls of Halema'uma'u. On Sunday, one day after his visit to the Hawaii goddess of volcanoes, a vent collapsed at the Pu'u O'o crater in the eastern rift zone, sending lava spouts up 65 feet.
[Video]
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| uncovering the main dish |
A luau guest told
US Person that a visit to the
USS Arizona shrine at Pearl Harbor was not the experience she thought it would be. Prepared for a solemn and awe inspiring visit to the grave of hundreds of US sailors and marines killed on board the battleship during the Japanese attack on Pearl, she instead found disrespectful tourists, and a pervasive, sickening smell of bunker oil. As the sunken warship deteriorates over the years, more and more oil from its fully loaded fuel bunkers are leaking into the harbor, fouling the water and the air. The shrine is becoming an environmental hazard.
US Person fully realizes the memorial is sacred to many Americans, especially veterans of WWII, but there should be a way to mitigate the escape of more fuel oil from the bunkers into the water without unduly disturbing the remains entombed with the ship. Or is it somehow grotesquely appropriate that the men below rest in a pool of oil, the fuel that created the culture for which they gave their all?
