Palmer gets a brewery
"We moved in to this place in January, and it's taken us this long to get it open," laments June. "We've been planning it for years," she says. Indeed, it was as far back as January 19th when I first contacted the excited couple about their plans to open the first post-prohibition brewery in Palmer. Back then they anticipated a mid-summer opening. "We were told it would take about 90 days to get our brewing license. It took over six months," she says.
Steven takes it all in stride, and that helps with such an expensive venture and the consistent setbacks. "It's not about solving problems, it's about getting to the next one," he says of the challenge of opening a brewery these days. "That attitude keeps me sane, and I actually derive satisfaction from it." June echoes his sentiment and recalls consulting extensively with the boys over at Anchorage's newest Brewery, King Street Brewing Company that's just about to start pouring their own beer. "We talked a lot and I always had to remind them that it's a journey," she says.
Rare bird: Kauanakakai to declare special bond
Kaunakakai soon will have a bird of its own.
On Tuesday in a classroom of 4th-graders at Kaunakakai Elementary School where the whistles of the honored bird can be heard from the adjacent park, Mayor Alan Arakawa and County Council Chairman Danny Mateo of Molokai will sign a proclamation declaring the kioea, or bristle-thighed curlew, the official bird of Kaunakakai.
People from "all walks of life" - kids and kupuna, activists and nonactivists, businesspeople and ordinary residents - signed the kioea petition, said Arleone Dibben-Young, a wildlife biologist contractor who spearheaded the movement. In all, a thousand Molokai residents signed the petition.
"It's so visible in town," Dibben-Young, a self-admitted "birder," said. "It is the perfect symbol for the natural resources of Molokai. The people of Molokai love them."
Dibben-Young, who managed the Ohiapilo Pond Bird Sanctuary on Molokai for five years, first came up with the official bird idea after then-mayor of the City and County of Honolulu Mufi Hannemann proclaimed the manu-o-Ku, or white tern, the official bird of the city in 2007.
And without further adieu, the former Alaska governor and Vice Presidential candidate took the stage. If Palin was feeling any sting from Joe McGinniss' recent tell-all and her decision not to seek the Republican nomination, it was not evident from her
