We kept a travel diary on this trip, as we always do, but it now competes for input with Kate’s blog
http://knittatpug.blogspot.com/
and mine https://theory-practice.sydney.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/
Not to be out done, Julie also blogged their part of the excursion
http://julie.stuffworld.info
When I look back over the handwritten travel diary a few things stand out. Some good, some not.
First, the good: Though we have been to Oahu many times before (since 1989), so many times that we have lost count, there are still things we have not done, or done enough of. In the latter category is lolling and lazing, and, in Kate’s case – swimming.
In the former category is Shangri-La. It was open the last time we were in Honolulu but we did not get organized quickly enough to get there. This time it was a priority from the start. It was the high point of the trip for me. A fabulous place and a compelling story behind it, starting with that name – Shangri-La. Think of James Hilton and Lost Horizon. I did. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Horizon
To make sure it got done, I put Julie on the job of organizing it.
The instructions on the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts web page may be intimidating, but Julie booked us in and we did it.
http://www.shangrilahawaii.org/
The Fates were not on our side the day. We were going to drive and park, but we could not get out of the garage because the door was closed for repairs. Yikes! So we asked Mark at the front desk to call us a cab. I feared we would miss starting time (see those intimidating instructions I mentioned) but we made it with time to spare for the plumbing. Thereafter, it was a short ride in a mini-bus, about 40 of us in all. At the property we divided into two groups for the guided tour. With a group of twenty there was plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion, and I had a few, as did some others.
The tour guide was patient and informative. The place is special. Behind the bland facade lies another world.
Originally, the description of the collection of Islamic Art inspired my interest. Having found the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in Athens eye-opening a few years ago, to read that there was a private collection of Islamic art in Honolulu at Shangri-La aroused my curiosity. I have been to private museums before. One was confused piles of junk (Harold Warp’s Pioneer Museum, for those who must know) and the Jan Six Collection in Amsterdam (which has since been integrated into the Rikjs Museum). So I thought I knew what to expect: displays just like in a museum but done to reflect the personality of the collector, e.g., magpie Harold Warp, or fitted into a private home, e.g., Jan Six. Nope.
The distinctive thing about Duke is that everything is integrated into the house. Some is displayed, true, as one might display a piece in one’s own home, but most of the tiles and fabrics were built into the house, as they would have been, of course, in Iran, Syria, Morocco, and so on. She lived with and among it.
Though she apparently had no interest in the spiritual side of Islam, she treasured in the cultural artifacts of the Arab world, nearly very waking moment, once she discovered it in her early twenties travelling around the world on her honeymoon.
Doris Duke inherited a gigantic fortune as an early age and went around the world on that honeymoon. She stopped in Hawaii on the way back to the States, and decided to stay … forever. Compare with Jack Lord of Hawaii Five-0 of whom legend says, he stayed in Hawaii when the television series ended, retiring to a mountain top. I like that legend. (Possessed of a fortune, she must have been a target for every kind of schemer and she dealt with that first by marriage, then escaping by travel, and then building a hide-away. By the way, the story is that the name was coined by the workers building the place because they had seen the film version of ‘Lost Horizon.’ (The 1937 version is far superior to the 1973 one, even though no complete print is available.) And somehow that stuck, though I saw nowhere that name on the property itself. Nor does it seem consistent with Duke’s personality to accept a name given in jest, if though well-meant. But the name stuck.
There is plenty of detail about Doris Duke on web sites. Have a look.
We enjoyed studying the guide book from the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts.
Shangri-La will put many in mind of William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon, but the approach and scale differ. Shangri-La has none of the towering egotism of Hearst. See ‘Citizen Kane’ for details. When all is said and done, Shangri-La was for one very private person, Doris Duke. The sitting room might accommodate ten at the most.
Another high point, of a different kind, was the visit to the Pacific Aviation Museum.
This one I organized for Julie, Martin, and me; Kate had better things to do (read: swim). The Museum is just starting but what it has is excellent and our guide brought it to life. The tower and the hanger still have the bullet holes to prove they were there. I had been disappointed when the guide appeared, because he seemed like a schoolboy, Grant, but he was full of enthusiasm and interest in the subject so off we went. It was great fun. I was once again stuck by the daring and ingenuity and courage of the Doolittle Raid. 
http://www.pacificaviationmuseum.org/
For the bourgeois within me the high point, which does not figure in the guide books we had, was the Waikele Premium Outlets. 
Nor had we come across it before in our many visits to Oahu and our several drive-arounds of the island. http://www.premiumoutlets.com/outlets/outlet.asp?id=29
I bought three suits at knock down prices. More slides, and still more. The lesson we learned was to shop there first, before making a pilgrimage to Big Al (Ala Moana to some). I noticed a newspaper account of these Outlets in a travel piece in a local rag two years ago and kept the cutting, such is my filing.
I got little out of Food-TV this time. Most of its programming seemed to be squeal and humiliation (contrived competitions) in about equal parts. The only variation were truly awful, like Paula who shouts at the camera when not stuffing her face. Occasionally, she combines the two.
Indeed much of the television programming was AWFUL. If channel surfing is a window on contemporary American life, then it is execrable. It puts me in mind of accounts of the last days of the Brezhnev regime when it was everyman for himself now! “Get what you can get right now, because there is no tomorrow.” Last Days. Self-indulgent, trivial, transitory, ego-centric, superficial, childish, immature, … I could go on. If the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are to protect the American way of life … is this it? Yes, there were a host of God-botherers on other channels who made no more sense than the squealing Look-at-me’s.
In a lesser key, but equally distasteful is the continued propensity of baseball players to spit. I saw far too many close ups of just that activity. Why is it, I have wondered before, that baseball players have to spit, and so frequently. It must be learned behavior. I cannot believe they are all chewing tobacco. But those who chew tobacco and it is easy to see that is a chaw some have, required read about Bill Tuttle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Tuttle Bill had chunks of his jaw and face cut away and finally died from chewing tobacco while playing center field. I am not the only who wonders about this: See http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_and_what_do_baseball_player_spit I tried to expiate my ire at this practice of spitting in an earlier travel diary but I don’t think I elaborated nearly enough on it in a previous post. I cannot find such a previous post, so I will have to do it sometime. Norbert Elias on manners will be the text. Be ready, Bleaders!
We also visited the Bishop Museum http://www.bishopmuseum.org/ again, this time to see the restored Hawaiian Hall which is very much an improvement. It is now much more clearly focussed on Hawaii and Hawaiians. The Bishop Museum is a great place. Been there before many times, and look forward to going again. We also spend quite a time in the Foster Botanic Gardens, and had the place to ourselves. It was cool and there was some light rain, but that is preferable to boiling.
There are blank pages in the travel diary and gaps on the blogs because … we slipped into Hawaiian time and drifted. That was why we came. The trip was in part on the occasion of my retirement. I brought along no work, well a manuscript review for a journal which I did on the first day to get it done.
We ate fish: marlin, tuna, nairgi, and shrimp poke. The mango and pineapples were special. The sugar bananas were disappointing this time. We ate out in Waikiki. Martin barbecued meat. Julie made salads. Kate did everything. We have been there enough to have sufficient local knowledge for shopping. The time was not right for the SPAM festival. (Intriguing? http://www.spamjamhawaii.com/ )
We searched without reward for glow-in-the-dark flashlights like those Mark and Ann have. We even ventured to Wal-Mart behind the Ala Moana Center to find them. Nope. I say ‘ventured’ because the Wal-Mart is so vast, shoppers have been lost in it.
The only thing I do not like about Hawaii is something I have in common with Mark Twain, and that is leaving. But leave we did, but we are already talking about Next Time.
