Tag: Brooke Blogs

August 24, 2018

The real-life version of the “Labor Day Race”

In The Cursed Canoe, Professor Molly Barda’s best friend Emma Nakamura practices with her crew for the “Labor Day Race.”

Emma’s big race was Saturday morning. I wasn’t actually planning to attend in person. If I wanted to catch Emma and her crew before they left, I’d have to be down at the water before dawn. The dark beach would be packed with team supporters and tourists, and, of course, plenty of little kids careening through the crowd. There would be a live Jawaiian band, or a noisy DJ setup. After their registration and last-minute checks, the paddlers would pile into their various canoes and stroke out to sea. Emma’s canoe and dozens of others like it would disappear over the horizon before the sun was even up.
The women’s crews would leave the bay, paddle the tough eighteen miles down the coast, and disembark. The women would get out and the men’s teams would climb into the same canoes and paddle back up the coast, where they would arrive at the starting point many grueling hours later. A spectator on the beach wouldn’t see anything after the canoes sped off. I’d be staring out at the empty blue water.

The Labor Day Race is a big deal—so much so, that all seven women on Emma’s crew want to participate. (Unfortunately, the canoe has only six seats…)

Man in Outrigger, Hawaii by Charles Bartlett 1923-27 Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Labor Day Race is inspired by a real event: The Queen Lili’uokalani Canoe Race, which takes place every Labor Day weekend in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. Started in 1972 by the Kai Opua Canoe Club, and named in honor of the last queen of Hawaii, the Lili’uokalani Canoe Race now welcomes over 2,500 paddlers from all over the world. The big day is Saturday, when the teams paddle 18 miles between Kailua and Honaunau. The women’s teams start first, racing the canoes from Kailua south to Honaunau.

Saturday's canoe race on the west coast of the Big Island. Source: qlcanoerace.com — Saturday’s canoe race on the west coast of the Big Island. Source: qlcanoerace.com

The men’s teams meet the women in Honaunau and race the canoes back up to Kailua. Tiny Kailua’s hotels (the town’s population is less than 12,000) are packed with paddlers the entire weekend.
Even if you’re not a canoe paddler, or much of an outdoorsy person at all, the Queen Lili’uokalani Canoe Race is worth a trip. Canoe paddlers are easygoing, hard-partying, and fun to be around. And the Big Island is a world away from the more touristy parts of Hawaii. Check out the schedule for the upcoming Labor Day weekend here!
Featured image oil painting by Arman Manookian, c. 1929.
Originally published on Brooke Blogs

August 10, 2018

Truth is Boring

One question that I get is,
“Am I in your book?”
I can see why people might ask this. The setting is a public university in Hawaii, similar in some ways to my own workplace. The main character is Molly Barda, who teaches in the Mahina State University College of Commerce. I teach at a university, in Hawaii, in the business school.
But I must insist: I am making most of it up.
In my author bio, I try to make this clear:

Like Molly Barda, Frankie Bow teaches at a public university. Unlike her protagonist, she is blessed with delightful students, sane colleagues, a loving family, and a perfectly nice office chair. She believes if life isn’t fair, at least it can be entertaining.

I have sacrificed Truth on the altar of Art.
Why? Because Truth is boring.
If I were really writing about myself and the people I know, my stories would feature kind, capable people doing their jobs competently and without incident. Snore.
So I punch it up a little: Ruinous budget cuts. Reckless, showboating legislators. A powerful and well-funded Student Retention Office staffed by self-assured dimwits.
Molly, my protagonist and narrator, is neurotic and socially awkward. Her bottom-line-obsessed dean won’t let her report cheaters, because he refuses to scare off paying customers. Her next-door colleague is the reason she’s not allowed to close the door when she has a student in her office (it’s called the “Rodge Cowper Rule”). Her students don’t know what “plutocracy” means, but they’re pretty sure it has something to do with planets.
So no, you are (probably) not in my book. I promise. Now go read and enjoy!
Originally posted on Brooke Blogs

July 6, 2018

Where everyone has a green thumb

I really did have a lot to learn about gardening. I was not one of those persons gifted with a green thumb. In fact, I seemed to have the opposite of a green thumb, whatever that would be. A red thumb? That didn’t sound right, although green and red opposed each other on the color wheel. A brown thumb? A black thumb? Was that racist? Maybe a skeleton thumb, like the Grim Reaper.
—The Black Thumb, a Professor Molly Mystery
I have the proverbial black thumb. I am the worst gardener in the world. I’m not simply incapable of coaxing a living thing out of the ground; I’ve had actual cactus perish in my care.
I am death, destroyer of flora.
Or so I thought, before I moved from Southern California to the rainy side of one of the Hawaiian Islands.
It turns out that I am not the plant kingdom’s answer to the Grim Reaper. In fact, now that I’m here, I’m surrounded by thriving, vigorous verdure. How do I do it?
Simple: sun plus rain. Hawaii generally has the highest ultraviolet index in the United States (13.2 today, on a scale I’d always assumed only went up to 10). And the eastern, or windward, sides of the Hawaiian islands get soaked, with up to 10,271 mm or over 400 inches of rainfall per year. Notoriously damp Seattle, by comparison, gets barely 50 inches.

Mean Annual Rainfall Hawaii — Source: University of Hawaii

I live in one of the soggy blue spots on the map. Here the default landscape is jungle. Gardening mostly involves beating back nature with gallons of herbicide and powerful weed torches (basically flamethrowers for your garden).
A brief visual comparison:

So now you know my gardening secret: Year round sunshine + buckets of rain + neglect gets you a lush, green landscape every time.
Just don’t forget the mosquito repellent.
First published for The Black Thumb release at Brooke Blogs

September 9, 2016