ASD icon blue inverse lighter

ASD Staff

Hawai'i Skies

Today's Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Scott Dillon at Diamond Head Beach. "Start of another beautiful day in paradise. Ready for some time in the water."

To submit your Hawai'i Skies photo, visit us 

Scott Dillon

<title>Hawaiʻi Skies: Canʻt wait for time in the water</title>

Today's Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Scott Dillon at Diamond Head Beach.

Hawaiʻi Skies: Canʻt wait for time in the water

Today&#039;s Hawai‘i Skies was captured by Scott Dillon at Diamond Head Beach. &quot;Start of another beautiful day in paradise. Ready for some time in the water.&quot; To submit your Hawai&#039;i Skies photo, visit us online or email: general@alohastatedaily.com

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Guieb Cafe’s new downtown Honolulu location in Davies Pacific Center isn’t open to the public yet. However, there’s another downtown Honolulu space where customers can find the cafe’s popular ube mascarpone pancakes and pork adobo omelets.

 — operated by the Guieb Cafe team — opened this month in the cafeteria space of the Prince Kūhiō Federal Building in downtown Honolulu.

“We were presented with an opportunity to take over a federal building cafeteria — which was not something we are used to or even knew anything about,” general manager Precious Guieb remembers. “We checked it out and we were stunned by how big the space is.”

The cafeteria space — which is open to the public — had been vacant for a while, according to Guieb. She says she had returned from visiting the cafe’s Las Vegas location during the summer, and checked out the current Pīkake Cafe space in August.

“We got this up and running the whole month of September with inspections and such; our first day open was Oct. 1," Guieb says.

“Since we already do catering already, we thought, ‘Maybe it’ll work out,’ so we gave it a shot,” she adds. “We serve similar items to Guieb Cafe and similar dishes from our catering (menu), so it’s kind of a blend of both, while catering to the whole cafeteria vibe.”

Guieb says her dad is the chef and owner, and the cafe’s name was inspired by his favorite scent.

“My dad really likes the pīkake flower,” she says. “He felt like this was a good name for it; he was mentioning how he wanted to bring life here (in this space).”

Even though Pīkake Cafe is in a federal building, the cafeteria is open to the public, according to Guieb. Individuals need to pass through a security checkpoint, then catch the elevator to the fifth floor, where the cafeteria is located.

The cafe serves breakfast from 6 to 10 a.m.; options range from breakfast burritos ($12.48) and croissantwiches ($12.48) to ube mascarpone pancakes ($14.56) and ube waffles ($10.40).

“Everything is made to order,” Guieb says. “We brought our ube mascarpone pancakes (from Guieb Cafe) here; it’s a smaller portion. That, the ube waffles and pork adobo omelet have been a hit in the mornings.”

Breakfast burritos feature spinach wraps stuffed with sausage, eggs, cheese and potatoes, and they’re served with a potato medley. The cafe’s croissantwiches (croissant sandwiches) include sausage, eggs and cheese.

During lunch — served from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. — customers can opt for an all-you-can-load salad bar ($14.56) or go for one- or two-choice plate lunch-style entrees. The salad bar includes Romaine lettuce, grape tomatoes, artichokes, boiled eggs, bacon bits, fresh-cut seasonal fruits, creamy basil pesto rigatoni and more, according to Guieb.

“You can fill up (your plate) as much or as little as you want,” she says. “We’re getting great feedback on that.”

Entrees change daily for the plate lunches. For instance, Mondays feature shoyu chicken and chicken long rice, with roast pork and mushroom gravy ($15.60) as a special; on Fridays, customers can choose from Korean short ribs kalbi, hamburger steak, chicken adobo and kalua pig and cabbage. Plates usually come with potato mac salad or steamed veggies and rice.

Many specials feature popular options from Guieb Cafe or the business’s catering menu, according to Guieb.

“Our Korean short ribs is very popular on our catering menu,” she says. “We have hamburger steak and garlic shrimp (as entrees), which are popular from the Guieb Cafe menu.

“Yesterday, we had oxtail soup on special; next week, we’ll have chicken papaya soup and clam pasta,” she adds. “Things that we don’t normally get to do at Guieb Cafe, we’ll try to incorporate here.”

Guieb notes that, while parking can be limited at the federal building, it’s a short walk from Waterfront Plaza, where there’s ample parking.

“We get a lot of HPU students coming here for breakfast and lunch,” she says. “People are always like, ‘I’ve been wanting to visit (Guieb Cafe),’ so in a way, they get to try our flavors. We’re not sure what to expect, but we’re excited. We’re trying to give them (the state and federal workers) something to look forward to.”

300 Ala Moana Blvd. fifth floor, Honolulu

Open 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, closed all federal holidays

Pikake Cafe Precious Guieb 100526

<title>Pīkake Cafe offers local-style comfort food in downtown Honolulu</title>

The sister business of Guieb Cafe is located in the cafeteria space of the Prince Kūhiō Federal Building in downtown Honolulu. The cafeteria is open to the public — customers have to go through a security checkpoint — from Mondays to Fridays. Diners can expect some of the most popular dishes from Guieb Café, including ube mascarpone pancakes, pork adobo omelets and hamburger steak.

Pīkake Cafe offers local-style comfort food in downtown Honolulu

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Columnists

Hawai‘i History

Last week, I wrote about the Hawaiʻi Republican Party and its need to 

An identity is a way of seeing the world and moving through it. It tells you which problems are problems and which solutions are allowed. It is a sense of how one relates to other people, and to God. What is true of a man is true of a party, which stands for some things and against others.

The mistake is to imagine an identity can be built in a “secular” way, with the ultimate questions left politely at the door. But every identity rests on faith. The questions of politics are always second questions. The first ones are older: Who are we? Where did we come from? What must be done to make things right?

Last week, I noted that no party in Hawaiʻi speaks for the 6 in 10 adults here who are Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or Mormon. This is true of the Republican Party, too, though its platform runs under the banner of faith, family, freedom. A slogan is not a creed.

The core problem with the Hawaiʻi Republican Party is that it pays lip service to the God of Scripture, and lip service is a kind of service He has never accepted.

Few of the party’s leading figures can say how the faith shapes their decisions, and it shows in the platform, which is less a philosophy than a pile of them.

Brenton Awa, who is running against Jill Tokuda to represent Hawaiʻi in Congress, has a hyperlocal focus. He has tried twice to ban foreign ownership of land, which the U.S. Constitution will not allow. He has gone further and 

 for office: “If you’re not born and raised, you should not be leading because if you’re not born and raised you ain’t looking out for the people born and raised.”

Awa was raised in a Mormon community and now and then invokes God in a speech. Beyond that, the public record is silent on what he believes, and a voter is left to guess.

Lieutenant governor candidate Daniel Anthony goes further than Awa down the Hawaiʻi-for-Hawaiians road. A lifelong sovereignty activist, Anthony does not embrace his American citizenship. He has argued that the militaries of the world, 

 included, should bid for the rights to Pearl Harbor.

He holds the genealogy of Hawaiʻi’s old religion, in which man is the younger brother of Hāloa, the kalo plant. He has urged us to make a place for Hāloa in our homes, borrowing the language of Genesis to say we must be “

Meanwhile, others in the local party are still keeping house in the conservatism of William F. Buckley, the Yale man and Catholic who stitched together the postwar coalition. Traditionalists, libertarians, and anti-communists were held together by the Soviet Union, which had the decency to be an enemy everyone could agree on. Thirty-five years after the Cold War, the coalition has come apart, and some of its members have not yet heard.

Others have gone all in for the Trump realignment of the party, which owes much of its success to American evangelicals. But that realignment is held together by a personality, and personalities retire. It remains to be seen where the national party goes in 2028. Neither J.D. Vance nor Marco Rubio has yet gathered a coalition broad enough to lead it.

The Hawaiʻi-for-Hawaiians line cannot win in a state where Hawaiians are a minority. Worse, as Anthony shows, its logical end is animus toward the United States.

And beneath Anthony’s worldview is a cosmology hostile to the Christian account of creation. It is hard to see how a party hoping to represent the 6 in 10 can platform men who deny that faith’s first chapter.

It’s often remarked that politics is downstream of culture. But culture is downstream of worship. What we worship, and how, shapes everything we think about politics. There is no identity apart from worship; there is only an identity that has not yet admitted what it worships.

Gary Cordery, the Republican candidate for governor, began his run as the champion of conservative evangelicals. He went so far as to trumpet some of their fringe conspiracy theories. That was a ditch on one side of the road. Like Trump, he gave in to the temptation to feed the base its baser appetites.

Cordery has since moderated, tacking toward the middle. He has even made common cause with Anthony. And here he seems to have found the ditch on the other side, trading a conviction for a coalition.

The gap between the two men’s accounts of creation is not small.

Hawaiian tradition traces the origin of man to these events. Wākea (Sky Father) and Papahānaumoku (Earth Mother) bear the islands and a daughter, Hoʻohōkūkalani. Wākea desires his daughter. With his priest Komoawa he devises the kapu nights and the ʻaikapu, the sacred eating restrictions, as a religious pretext to separate himself from Papa and lie with Hoʻohōkūkalani.

Their first child is stillborn and buried; from the grave grows the kalo, Hāloanakalaukapalili. The second child, Hāloa, is the first human and the ancestor of all Hawaiians and their chiefs. Papa discovers the deception, curses Wākea, and takes another husband. Wākea then takes other wives.

So at the origin of man, in this telling, a husband deceives his wife, lies with his daughter, and then takes other wives. And the religious law is invented to serve his appetites. The kapu system governed everything from eating to sacrifice for centuries. The tradition remembers the kapu as born of a lie told to cover incestuous lust. Most myths flatter their makers. This one does not.

The Christian account is otherwise. Man and woman have dignity because they are made in the image of God.

Where does the dignity of man come from in the Hawaiian account?

Nowhere. The genealogy was used to justify the rule of a few chiefs over many commoners. The kapu system justified slavery, human sacrifice, and the ritual subjugation of women. It stood for centuries and fell in 1819, 40 years after Cook.

That is the distance between Cordery’s faith and Anthony’s. It is not a policy difference. It is a difference about what a man is.

Gary Cordery claims the title “statesman.” He might imitate the greatest statesman Hawaiʻi has had.

The greatest period of civic flourishing in Hawaiʻi’s history was led by a God-fearing man, Kauikeaouli, Kamehameha III.

He did not start that way. In his youth Kauikeaouli was a drunk. He kept Kaomi, a man, as his favorite companion and made him a kind of co-ruler. He carried on an affair with his own sister, Nahiʻenaʻena, and got her with child.

The child died within hours of its birth in 1836. Nahiʻenaʻena died a few months later.

After that, the king seems to have turned from his sins and toward Christ. Whatever one makes of the timing, the history is plain: something died in the man, and something better grew in its place.

Then came the Declaration of Rights of 1839 and the Constitution of 1840. Within a decade, Hawaiʻi was a modern nation. Nearly everyone could read, and the world took notice.

Kauikeaouli did not get there by softening his faith to please the room. He wrote it into the constitution: “no law shall be enacted which is at variance with the word of the Lord Jehovah, or at variance with the general spirit of His word.” And God blessed the Hawaiian kingdom.

Cordery would do well to follow Kauikeaouli. And Daniel Anthony should follow him, too. The greatest Hawaiian to rule these islands turned from idols to Christ. 

Civic renewal for Hawaiʻi will not come from a political party. It comes, as it always has, from God. But God will not bless a people that keeps its idols. He never has. He is, on the other hand, famously willing to bless the ones who put them down.

King Kam III

Government & Politics

Can my kids afford to stay? Who will care for my mother? ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why Hawaiʻi Republicans should start with the questions local families ask.

Parties

Hawaiʻi Republican Party should put Hawaiʻi first, not the national brand

House Republicans are one seat from a rule that lets them force floor votes. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why a tactic without a goal is a chainsaw without a tree.

Hawaii Republican Party logo 16x9

Hawaiʻi Republicans could force House floor votes. What are they for?

<title>The Hawaiʻi GOP’s real problem isn’t its platform</title>

Today, a party that runs on “faith, family, freedom” has a lieutenant governor candidate who traces mankind to the kalo plant. ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa on why civic renewal in Hawaiʻi starts with what we worship, and why the greatest Hawaiian statesman — Kamehameha III (Kauikeaouli) — is the proof.

The Hawaiʻi GOP’s real problem isn’t its platform

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Crime & Courts

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke has been indicted for bribery by a O‘ahu grand jury.

Luke’s bail was set at $80,000 Friday after being charged with bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery and falsifying her campaign spending report.

Four others were also indicted Friday in connection with the State Attorney General’s investigation into a purported paper bag full of $35,000 paid to an unknown, but “influential,” lawmaker referenced during a 2022 federal bribery investigation.

Those others included former State Rep. Ryan Yamane, lobbyist Tobi Solidum, former chair of the state Public Utilities Commission Leodoloff Asuncion Jr., and Ford Fuchigami, airports administrator for the state Department of Transportation.

According to the indictment, during Luke’s 2022 campaign for lieutenant governor, Solidum was seeking additional state money for Covid community testing centers. The indictment cites a conversation between Solidum and Ty Cullen — the former Hawai‘i Rep. who, at the time, had turned informant for the FBI — where Solidum was worried that the state DOH would cut funding for Covid testing centers soon.

During the conversation, Solidum reportedly told Cullen Luke was running for the lieutenant governor position, adding: “All I gotta do is give her more money.”

Solidum, Cullen and Luke all reportedly met on Jan. 20, 2022 at Morton’s The Steakhouse in Ala Moana, where Solidum’s stepdaughter Kristen Pae placed an envelope on the table containing two $5,000 checks, one from Solidum and one from Pae. Luke reportedly took the envelope.

Solidum then told Luke, “By next week we’ll have 35, so it will be halfway to our 70.”

Later during that meeting, Solidum asked Luke about the possibility of drawing upon federal funds to continue Covid testing, to which Luke agreed to follow up.

The two $5,000 checks were subsequently deposited into the Friends of Sylvia Luke bank account, the same day Luke arranged for a meeting to discuss emergency appropriations for additional Covid community testing. In February, Luke’s Finance Committee, which she chaired, passed 

, a bill approving more than $170 million in state funds for Covid mitigation measures for the next two fiscal years.

The indictment does not specifically mention an exact $35,000 transaction, let alone a paper bag, although the the transaction in Morton’s strongly resembles an event Luke described in February: she admitted accepting two $5,000 checks in a dinner involving Cullen, although she also claimed she never cashed the checks.

Asuncion’s presence in the indictment entirely stems from his role as Luke’s campaign treasurer, wherein he allegedly knowingly failed to disclose the donations by Solidum and Pae, and also his subsequent claims in March that the checks had been returned to those donors unspent. Asuncion reportedly claimed that those checks had never been deposited into the Friends of Sylvia Luke bank account, and therefore believed he didn’t need to report them.

Despite this, Deputy Attorney General David Van Acker said Friday that he believes Yamane to be the “most culpable” of the five named in the indictment.

According to the indictment, Solidum had sent money to Yamane in 2020 and 2021, and later asked about the status of health care measure 

, which failed to move forward through conference committees that year. Yamane texted Solidum “Sorry couldn’t deliver it.”

Solidum and Yamane continued to meet throughout 2021 and 2022, with Solidum repeatedly giving Yamane money. Solidum reportedly “texted Yamane in an effort to get a rival Covid testing company fined,” which Yamane assisted by forwarding Solidum’s claims about said company to the state Department of Health.

In early 2022, Yamane, Solidum and Fuchigami met frequently to discuss HB 2392. At one point, the text conversation between Yamane and Solidum turned to the federal charges against Cullen, leading Yamane to text Solidum “Might not be good to been [sic] seen with me.”

At the end of the 2022 legislative session, Yamane spoke effusively in support of HB 2392, and specifically named Luke in his thanks for getting the measure passed.

Fuchigami, for his part, received a $7,000 check from Solidum in Jan. 2022. Fuchigami, who worked for the Senate Ways and Means Committee at the time, was party to subsequent conversations with Solidum and Yamane regarding HB 2392.

Yamane was indicted for bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery; Solidum for three counts of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery; Fuchigami with use of false statements, conspiracy to commit bribery and obstruction of justice; and Asuncion with falsifying candidate committee reports, use of false statements and obstruction of justice.

“For years, people in Hawai‘i have wondered: ‘why can’t we investigate and prosecute our own public officials for corruption?’” Attorney General Anne Lopez said at a briefing Friday. “This is the reason why the Legislature created the Special Investigation and Prosecution Division [within the AG’s office] … We have a commitment to following the facts to where they lead, no matter how long it takes to get there.”

Nonetheless, Van Acker emphasized that Luke and the others in the indictment are still presumed innocent, and that the statements in the indictment remain only allegations. Van Acker and Lopez did not take questions Friday.

Luke took an indefinite leave of absence from the lieutenant governor position in April, which has continued to this day.

PXL 20260725 020059478 TS 000 16x9

<title>Luke indicted for bribery</title>

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke and four others have been charged in Attorney General corruption investigation

Luke indicted for bribery

Kalani Akana Cultural D opt

Kalani Akana

Viewpoints

Aloha Spirit

This is a sad story about those persecuted for their faith. This story is about Helio Koaʻeloa of Wailua, East Maui. He converted from Protestant Calvinism to Catholicism. Shortly after his conversion, he went to Honolulu to study his new religion. When he returned to Maui, he converted his younger brother, Peter Mahoe, before he could become a Protestant.

There were many Catholics living in Wailuku at the time. They were ordered by the government to build a Protestant church but they refused. Instead, they consented to fix the roads. When the government ordered them to send their children to the Protestant schools, however, they refused again. As a result, they were captured and bound and taken to Lāhaina.

The route was difficult and tiring in the hot sun. It was about 22 miles. They were only given bitter noni fruit and water to eat and drink. When they reached Lāhaina, Kauikeaouli, King Kamehameha III, happened to see the “prisoners” of Wailuku and released them. He would later issue an edict promoting religious tolerance. Due to this mistreatment, however, Catholics decided that when a member was persecuted for their faith they would join in.

At another time, the Protestant missionaries urged a judge by the name of Mahune to issue an order to arrest Catholics in Kahikinui. Therefore, sheriffs were sent to capture Helio and those who were converted by him. They began arresting Catholics in Kahikinui, two by two, bound unto a single rope.

They continued to Hāna, Koʻolau, Hāmākua and on to Wailuku some 90 miles away. The going was difficult and unsteady on the steep and unsteady roads. Because of the empathy of those along the way, the prisoners were fed and given water. To be truthful, many of these were family to those captured. Other sympathizers stepped forward to join the line and converted to Catholicism. Others volunteered to join the journey with the bound prisoners. They put on nice clothes and wore lei as if the procession of paʻakaula (as they were called) was a festivity.

Upon reaching Wailuku after a monthʻs time, the small group had swelled to nearly a hundred. The court could not imprison all of them. The judge was so overwhelmed that he released the paʻakaula without punishment. The missionaries wanted to stop Koaʻeloa’s evangelism but because of their accusations, the number of Catholics on Maui actually swelled. About 4,000 people entered into the Catholic faith because of Helio. Because of this, Helio was named the Apostle of Maui. The words of Jesus of Nazareth are written in Matthew 5:10, “Blessed are the persecuted for they shall see the kingdom of God.”

This article is reprinted with permission from 

OHA's Ka Wai Ola newspaper: "Bound by Ropes," in its May 2023 issue, Vol. 40 No. 5. Read more at 

Hana, Maui

<title>Community Voices: Bound by ropes</title>

In the mid-19th century, Hawaiian Catholics were frequently persecuted for their faith. One story recalls how Hawaiians in Kahikinui were rounded up by sheriffs, bound to one another in ropes, and marched along the Hāna coastline 90 miles to Wailuku.

Community Voices: Bound by ropes

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

Business & Tourism

Honolulu-based Alexander & Baldwin has been taken private in a $2.3 billion deal that closed last week.

A&B, which previously was the only publicly traded real estate investment trust focused solely on Hawai‘i commercial real estate, 

 it had entered into a “definitive merger agreement” wherein a joint venture group formed by MW Group, a privately held Honolulu-based, commercial real estate developer, with funding from Blackstone Real Estate and DivcoWest, would acquire all outstanding A&B common shares for $21.20 per share.

The transaction closed following approval by A&B shareholders at a special meeting March 9, a 

 noted. A&B's common stock is no longer being traded on the New York Stock Exchange and it is now a private company, the announcement says.

 that following the closure of the deal, A&B would keep its name, brand and 

, and continue to be led by a Hawai‘i-based team. That announcement also noted that the investor group plans to invest more than $100 million across the portfolio to “enhance the properties and reinforce their role in the communities they serve.”

According to the A&B website, the current leadership teams includes President and CEO 

; Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer 

; and six senior vice presidents. See the 

A&B got its start more than 150 years ago, when childhood friends Samuel Alexander and Henry Baldwin established a sugar-growing partnership on Maui in 1870. The company was one of the “

” companies that dominated Hawai‘i’s political and economic landscape in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. You can find more of the 

In recent years, though, the company pivoted its focus to Hawai‘i commercial real estate.

, one of the state’s largest asphalt paving contractors, materials and construction companies, to locally owned construction company Nan, Inc.

 and its sale marked the “culmination of A&B’s simplification strategy, allowing us to sharpen our focus on our core business a s the preeminent commercial real estate company in Hawai‘i,” Parker said in a statement 

Today, A&B owns and manages about 4 million square feet of commercial space in the Islands, including 21 retail centers, 14 industrial assets, four office properties and 146 acres of ground lease holdings.

As for the investor group, MW Group, Ltd. has led the acquisition, development and management of a $1 billion-plus commercial property portfolio that includes retail, industrial, office, self-storage facilities and senior assisted living communities.

Blackstone, meanwhile, is the largest owner of commercial real estate globally. 

DivcoWest is a real estate investment firm headquartered in San Francisco that, along with its predecessor, has acquired about 61 million square feet of commercial space, largely throughout the U.S., 

Alexander Baldwin Building 013125

<title>Alexander & Baldwin becomes private in $2.3B deal</title>

Previously a publicly traded real estate investment trust focused solely on Hawai‘i commercial real estate, A&B now is privately held through a joint venture formed by MW Group, Blackstone Real Estate and DivcoWest.

Alexander & Baldwin becomes private in $2.3B deal

Governor Josh Green sat in his office not long ago — state seal on the wall behind him, American flag at his side — and ripped open a Pokémon pack. Kamaka Dias, host of the 

, brought the cards. Green played along like a good sport. He pulled a card, looked at it, and asked the obvious question: “Kirlia. Is that a good card? Is it worth anything?”

It was, in its way, a perfectly pleasant moment.

Pokémon was part of many people’s childhoods, and there is genuine community in the hobby — the game, the art, the accumulated lore of it. Card shops are busy on weekends. A pack runs 10 dollars or so. You tear it open hoping to pull a "rare" — a card worth 10 times what you paid, or a 100 times, if fortune cooperates. Most packs don’t.

Pack ripping is, if we are being precise, a way of paying money in order to feel the possibility of winning money. You pay for the chance, knowing the odds are against you, and if you lose you are invited to try again. That is not “collecting” in the old sense. That is a slot machine. The packaging is more charming.

Pokémon is only the most whimsical costume this particular habit has worn. During the 

 era of 2020 and 2021, millions of regular people started “investing” in meme stocks. The ticker symbols  — GME, AMC —  changed. The feeling didn’t. It wasn’t really investing. Nobody was analyzing balance sheets. The app was designed to feel like a game. And many people lost real money chasing a feeling.

Sports betting — DraftKings, FanDuel — follows the same logic in a different jersey. The pitch is that you’re watching the game with “skin in it.” That your knowledge of the sport makes it skill-based. Maybe, a little. But the house still wins, and everyone who uses these apps long enough finds that out. Hawai‘i has kept sports betting illegal. Yet it continues.

What we are describing, in all three cases, is the selling of hope — at a small markup, on unfavorable terms.

If you would wince telling a friend you lost two hundred dollars at the slots, you already know what to think about this.

But “I dropped $200 ripping packs last weekend” sounds different. It sounds like a hobby.

The card stock doesn’t change the math. No value was created. Money moved, mostly toward whoever sold you the pack. The author of Proverbs observed, some time ago, that wealth chased in a hurry tends to vanish.

The Tenth Commandment forbids grasping and requires its opposite: contentment. Not the gritted-teeth variety. The real kind, which is rarer than we like to admit. Anyone who needs to open a pack to feel better about their Saturday has not yet acquired it.

The cards are not the problem. They are a symptom of a particular itch that most of us have, and would prefer not to examine too closely.

Contentment is not the same thing as giving up. It is not the resignation of a man who has stopped wanting things. It is the settled confidence that what he has meets his needs. The Apostle Paul says he learned contentment. That is worth taking seriously. It does not require a winning pull to arrive.

Green asked if the card was worth anything. It probably wasn’t. It was a bit of fun. The first pull often is.

I Stock 597663428

<title>The not-so-harmless fun of ripping Pokémon packs</title>

A gambling aspect has crept into even childhood diversions, writes ASD columnist Sterling Higa, as if nothing can be enjoyable if it doesn't contain a chance to win big.

Hawaiʻi Skies: Canʻt wait for time in the water

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Hawai'i Skies

Hawaiʻi Skies: Rain showers

Hawaiʻi Skies: Just a casual walk

Hawaiʻi Skies: Views from the airplane

Hawaiʻi Skies: Signs for whales

Most read

Hawaiʻi Skies: Canʻt wait for time in the water

Authors

ASD Staff

Reporter

More in Hawai'i Skies

Hawaiʻi Skies: Rain showers

Hawaiʻi Skies: Just a casual walk

Hawaiʻi Skies: Views from the airplane

Hawaiʻi Skies: Signs for whales

Most read