 Hey, community matters, you know, think tech Hawaii was built around tech 20 years ago, and it was all about, you know, trying to find tech in our community, just as Jack Burns wanted to see in Georgia, Oshie, and everybody after them, everybody, every governor, every visionary leader, I thought, wanted to see tech in the state as an alternative to, in addition to tourism and all that, there was one of the legs of the stool, they said. And, you know, various efforts have been made, but if you look at us right now, snapshot, we have some talented people here, we have a lot of talented people who left here, but we don't have a tech sector, I'm sorry to say. Now, Holly Lindsey, full disclosure, has two very smart kids, both of whom are in tech, and am I wrong about that? I'm right about that. And, you know, she knows, because she was at Eolani school for a long time, teaching and her family teaches at Eolani school, so she's been observing, what do we call it, tech education at Eolani and in the universities here, too. She's been around, and she has followed this over the years. I thought we'd have a discussion today about the moment of transformation here in COVID, where everybody says, you know, let's really examine where we are so we can determine the new place we're going, because it can't be same old, it can't be same old, it won't be same old, it won't be pure tourism, we have to find a way to do the D word, and the D word, I don't have to ask you that, the D word is diversification. We've been talking about diversification like forever, since I was 12. And so the idea, and Holly was four at the time. So I want to talk to you, Holly, about diversification into science and technology. Where are we? Where should we go? And ultimately predicting, where will we go? Okay, so Holly, first your thoughts, where are we? Well, my first confession to you, Jay, is that I've been to teaching at many schools, and not only here in Hawaii, but I guess around the globe, I was actually raised in Germany. And although I took a certain music path on the German economy, I also was in a dependent school there and talk about diverse. In those days, I didn't realize that in back in the 70s, that the population I was actually going to school with and educated with, although on the music side, it was all white because it was on the German economy, on the government side, it was, we were all a mix. So even though I wasn't in Hawaii, it just seemed to me natural that we would have a diverse, you know, population. And I really didn't think about it too much until I traveled to Berlin. And I'll never forget that trip when I was 13 years old, we had to take the train, you couldn't stop, you go directly to West Berlin, then you look across, West Berlin is bustling with traffic and lots of people, you look across checkpoint Charlie, there is nobody except the East German soldiers with their guard dogs and their guns. Talk about not diverse, okay? So, you know, this is where I'm coming from that I just find it so strange after having raised my daughter in Charlottesville, Virginia. My son was born in Louisville, Kentucky. And dealing with all those racial issues, I mean, I remember sitting outside a church in Louisville, holding my daughter at Easter, we had matching dresses on. And two people came by and asked if I was her nanny. I have to confess, this was like 26 years ago. And I think things have actually gotten worse. I don't think they would even say, are you her nanny? They'd say her slave or something. I wish it was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and I'm not exactly blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but please. Did you tell her about your PhD? Oh, I have five useless degrees. Does this help in racist times to have that much education? No. I have to feel like I am a failure because we still have racism. We still have, you know, so many people who are poor, other people for no good reason except for, I don't know, because they won't leash their dog or something. I don't know what is going on. We're so, you know, if you're not black and you're not white, where do you go? Who do you, you don't dare say anything because you're going to offend somebody. But the whole thing is that this is not getting us anywhere. We need to use, we need to not be afraid of science and tech. We need to realize that every day, all of us, no matter how poor or how rich, we wouldn't have a cell phone without science. Without NASA, we wouldn't have cell phones. We wouldn't have GPS. We wouldn't have hand vacuum, whatever. We wouldn't have enhanced baby foods. We wouldn't have, what is, oh, the temperature things we have to take all the time now to enter anywhere. You know, you don't have to put the thermometer in your mouth or somewhere. So you brought up two kids who are completely dedicated to technology and science. Completely downcast. But they're also musicians. Also musicians. Well, that's the, that's from you, I think, you know, it is hereditary. Anyway, so you, in the course of that, you saw the way the schools were operating, how they were engaging with the schools. You're a very doting mother. I know that. And you wanted to get them into science. So you had, you know, interact with this science, educational institutions in our community. All right. And now they're both, you know, gone in doing science things on the mainland and other schools. Your son, we talked to your son last week, Christopher, he's, he's about to go to Yale in science. It's fabulous. But what about Hawaii? You know, you're in a position now where you can look clearly back down the road. You can look clearly where we are right now. You can appreciate the COVID, you know, the reality of COVID and how we have to make our choices. Where are we? Give us a snapshot, Holly. I have to say that I firmly believe the reason why my children are so passionate about both science and music are by what they didn't do in school. And that could be a shocker to many people. I know, but I really since when I look back at my own education too, it's not the things that I actually were taught to, you know, you have to slave and in school for that I actually ended up being the most interested in. It was the extracurricular things. It were, it was the field trips that my parents took me on. It was the extra interest and time we took outside of school. Schools have so much responsibility, not only reading, writing, arithmetic, whatever, but they can't learn everything there. And it's not fair to expect schools to do that. They have a limited amount of time, a limited amount of resources. And even if you go to the best private school possible, you cannot pay for an education. What you have to do as a parent, if your children are lucky enough to have parents is as a parent, you need to lead them that life is beyond school. And I think that's what people, especially in Hawaii, you know, I hear a lot, oh, if your kid doesn't get into bun or Yolani or mid pack or, you know, one of these fancy private schools that cost a lot, that there's no hope for your child. And that is so untrue. What there's hope for is that you can, as a parent, can nurture that curiosity and that ability to take the initiative to go and discover and explore. And I can't emphasize that enough. I mean, I know a lot of parents will be shocked to hear that I really do not feel like you can learn everything in school. In fact, I wouldn't depend on any school to do that. It's too much of a responsibility. That's an abdication of the parents, isn't it? I mean, in our day, I've included you in my generation, even though there's a big year spread there. Our parents were very interested in what we were learning. They wanted to know. They wanted a full report every day. And they were, it's not just looking at our report card, which they did look at, is, you know, what courses are you taking? Where do you want to go? What are your career plans? All that stuff. And they were part of the process. They were part of the incentivization process. Yes. One way or the other. And they had some specific option ideas they would advocate. And I remember all of that. And it helps you, if you're a kid, to have parents interested in you. You have to have somebody interested in you. Even if it's not a parent, if it's a grandparent, if it's a friend, somebody has to spark that enthusiasm. I, you know, what breaks my heart is I hear a lot of the parents now complaining that they have to homeschool their kid because there is no school. But at first I was very depressed about that. But now I think that they're actually praising teachers and appreciating them for everything they have to do during the school when they had regular school days. But also I think parents need to seize this opportunity. If your kid is trapped at home and you're trapped at home with them, it's a trap that can try out to be really an exciting opportunity. You know, for years I've been wondering, what is that moaning sound that I always hear at night? At first I thought it was baby's crying. But then I thought it was my dog crying or something like that. Do you know what it turns out to be? I just discovered that yesterday. I had time to look this up and investigate. It's the sheer water bird. It's like an albatross that flies and is trying to find its nest. And it moans like a human child. And it's on the endangered species, I think, because they're very clumsy on land. So when they land, they crash into things. And then they have this moaning while they're, while they're flying. Well, it's a matter of curiosity and introspection. And what I mentioned this phenomenon of deep thought, which you can get if you if you're left alone for a while. So the question is, aren't my perception is that we're missing that? And the federal government has not been all that smart about school support and nor has the state. And we need to do better. We need, we need to give schools that incentivize that should be incentivizing them all day long, trying to get them to, you know, be vital and be discoverers. So, okay, we haven't done that. I guess two things there. One is if we did it, how would that change Hawaii going forward? And then the second thing I'll ask you later is, how do we do it? So let's address the first question first. How would that change Hawaii post COVID, you know, beyond COVID? If we if we paid attention to that, and we reordered things, and we try to get our kids excited about science, really excited, really career wise excited about science. I think we just have to open our ears right now. What do we hear? We hear that we are too dependent on tourism. Okay, so what does that tell you if we're too, too dependent on tourism? What else can Hawaii offer? What can we offer that we could actually benefit from? Not only money wise or our economy, but also our children for careers for something that they might be invested in in the future that they will get excited about that they will want to pursue and they want to come back and do everything they can to stay here to nurture this. So let's assume we do that. Let's assume we do that. We'll go back to the steps of how later. But if we do that, how does that change the state? What is your vision of the state? If the state really embraces science and technology for kids and ultimately for research and ultimately for business? Oh, that's what I love to think about. What Hawaii could be this way? I think we could be the leaders in environmental science, number one. I think we could be the leaders, number one in astronomy. I think we could be the leaders in scientific research, climate change, how the oceans are affected, how our tides will, you know, the ocean rise will be affected. We are number one. We have the opportunities nowhere else in the world. Right here. There's little islands right here. We have the opportunity to do ocean research. We don't even know 95% about what is underneath the ocean surface. We don't. 95% after all this time we live on these islands. We don't know any more than 95%. That's pitiful. We can. If we could invest in technology here, we could have the best exploration technology that can explore the oceans, whether it's up at the surface, middle, you know, down below 800 meters. I don't know. We could do this. Let me see if I'm missing something. Number one is we would have more research activity at the university. Number one, you know, departments of the university deal with that. So that's grant money coming in. Number two is we could have businesses that would, for example, consult with other governments, other universities, other businesses elsewhere, sell the knowledge. Yeah. Number two is 1B. We would attract the top-notch researchers in the whole world instead of repel them by saying, we don't want you here because we don't want this. We don't want that. We don't want this. We need to welcome these people because we need this not only for our youth and our future. So you describe a picture where people around the world, well, we have highly trained people here, highly motivated people here, many of whom are our own kids, our own, you know, kids who come up here. And then there's people who would be attracted from elsewhere to come and join the parade here. And then there would be various institutions around that would attract grant money, various business around that would use this information, use this knowledge in order to make a buck somehow. And I guess the other part of my picture that I'm getting from you is that the people in Hawaii, everybody, everybody on the street, walk down the street in any neighborhood, they say, well, wow, Hawaii is number one in science and technology. We are the greatest. And we have to do everything possible. Tax me, man. Tax me. Tax me because I want the money to go to the development of science and technology in Hawaii. And I will make sacrifices. I will cause my friends and relatives to make sacrifices because I want a new model here. I want a model that's sustainable where 30,000 people per annum don't leave town. We have so many opportunities. I mean, look, what is second to tourism in Hawaii? It's the military. The military doesn't mean people with guns necessarily. The military does a lot of research. The military, you know, has a lot of money usually, maybe not after this, but you know, usually, that's the money that can be invested into research that will actually benefit people. It doesn't have to harm the environment. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that we could do research for exploring, you know, underwater cables under, I don't know, there's so many things I can think of that I can't even express myself, but, you know, the NOAA research that we could do on fish population. Did you just hear that what they thought were going to be, you know, very low numbers in certain species? They've discovered it's actually high numbers. And so they can, you know, open up the fishing more instead of, you know, just prevent everybody from doing it because we're afraid that it's all going to become extinct. I mean, the research opportunities in Hawaii are incredible. We have incredible scientists already. I don't mean to imply that we're not number one in anything, but I'm just saying that we could be the vision that the other 49 states and maybe the world would even look to because we're accessible here. We're not that far away in some areas. I mean, if you should take oceanography, oceanographic research, we're pretty, we're a world known. I don't know if we're number one. I can't say that. And if you take astronomy, we certainly could be number one, but we're not. And part of this, which is what you and I should discuss, it's not only our self-image about these areas of expertise and excellence. It's what we project out. You know, we don't see ourselves as expert, as excellent. We project out what you talked about a minute ago, this rejection thing. We are rejecting it. Don't come here. We don't want you here. We don't want a tech state. We really don't want a tech state. And if we have that, if we have that message going out, we'll never have a tech state. Sorry. Yeah. You know, for the past year, especially, I've always been really troubled seeing things either black or white, literally black or white, and also just figuratively black or white because our world is full of many colors. You know, it's full of many opportunities. You can't say that because you agree with one thing on the black side. You don't agree with one thing on the white side. You know, it's a mishmash. We have to learn and it's not compromising. We have to go forward and do it productively. And it's not going to satisfy everybody on both sides, but at least it will make a future for our young ones. And I am an old woman already. Thank you for your compliment that I looked like a teenager earlier, but not with the light shining on me. But you know what? I'm old. All I can hope for are my dogs. But you know, my future generations and it doesn't have to be my children. My children are doing fine by themselves. I'm not doing this for them. I'm thinking that I want Hawaiian kids who want to stay with their families to be able to have a really great career, whatever they want, in Hawaii without having to go to Vegas or California or wherever they're going to go because they can't, you know, live here. Why can't we have that? We're smart people, you know. We know we love our children maybe more than anybody on this island, right? Yeah, families are so important here. This is an, I mean, I say it's an ethnic community and it's a community where families are very important and they have a lot of love in the families and it's part of the Aloha thing. But let me go to the second question we have to address. That is, let's assume that you and I agree and that the right thinking people agree that at a time of COVID, we have to recognize that a mono economy and tourism and travel is really not going to sustain us over the long term. You know, what happened here? What could happen, you know, at 9-11 time? What could happen in H1N1, SARS? You know, we are so fragile. If you have only one sector in the economy, by definition you're fragile. We have to diversify if we want to be sustainable. We want to keep those kids here for a career and so many other things. So let's assume we agree that. So question then is which foot do you put out first? What step do you take in order to achieve this in a predictable, rational, systematic way? What do we do? When you look geographically at Hawaii on a map, what do you see? A speck. You see a speck in the middle that can reach to the east, to the west, any place. We are global. The situation is terrific. What do we need now? We cannot manufacture enough mass. Nobody has N95 anymore. We have a shortage of this. We have a shortage of that. We have 63 million doses too much of hydroxychloroquine. What do we need? We already have dexamethasone. We have enough of that and it's cheap. We have found remdesivir, only just shortens the time that you're spent in the hospital. It doesn't really have anything. But what about, I mean, this sounds crazy. Why can't we have medical products produced here locally? Have you ever thought about that? Why can't we? Because we could ship them in all directions. We ship everything in. 97% of our stuff is shipped in anyway. Why does China get it all? Why are they responsible? Because if we have what we have now, 37% of us are unemployed in Hawaii. Why can't we start this up? Is it that hard chemically? I don't think so. We have geniuses here living here. Who can work on this? I mean, it just takes somebody thinking maybe a little bit outside the box. Okay, maybe you had a restaurant. You wanted to cook, but now you don't have a restaurant. Hey, I would be looking into the medical production kind of thing. And yes, it's not easy. You have to get FDA approved. But in these times, it's time for far reaching people to think beyond the box. Look at all the fashion designers who are out of jobs, who are now making masks, and everybody wants them. And instead of making a homemade mask, like I made 76 of them for $1 each, they're selling over $20. It's time to sort of think outside the box. Look at all the beer producers who are making hand sanitizers. You know, why is Hawaii any different? We have local brew that, you know, wasn't brewed because nobody was buying it. Why can't we adjust our thinking a little bit? Maybe we need to think more outside of our comfort zone. And I know, you know, we love our tourists, but also weren't you sort of annoyed? You could never get a parking space. I haven't been to Waikiki unless I walk there in how many years. But now I can go anytime and not feel like my life is threatened anymore. I mean, maybe we need to rethink the way we've been doing things for forever because we were, you know, so complacent in our finances. We were so rich, we didn't really have to think about what we were doing. But look at what's happening to the beaches. We have turtles hatching on Bellows Beach. And all like remember Bellows Beach for is our class parties, right? Right about how the sunscreen is killing all the fish. And now we have turtles coming there. Of course, with the turtles come the sharks, but the sharks have a right to life too. But, you know, this is our time to sort of take a step back because we have no choice, right? But to think, what do we really want? Do we need that many tourists in Waikiki in order to keep our economy safe? Or why can't we depend on just, you know, when I grew up, it was just local people in Waikiki and very few tourists except at the Pink Hotel, right? That's how old I am. But what was wrong with that? And I know a lot of the hotel industry, they're all going to give me death threats now. But maybe we can rethink the way we are so dependent on others coming in. Maybe it's time to rejoice in those people when they finally do come back in. But what's wrong with, you know, thinking of sustainability within just people who have committed to live in Hawaii? Who's going to do it? We can't even agree on a concon. We go by consensus model. Nobody makes a decision. We write a plan that takes years to write the plan and then it goes on a shelf where it gathers dust and it never ever happens. So, you know, this needs a new approach, don't you think? It needs a new attitude. And I think a lot of people say, well, government will never do this, but we need government to do this. We need somebody to lead us out of the swamp. We need somebody to say, okay, we're going to get a group of people in a room. They're going to come up with some ideas. They are going to pick some choices for us to do. And then they're going to pave the way for us to do those choices. And this is the most important thing. They're not going to stand in our way. It's like you and your kids. You incentivize them. Can you read that? It says vote. What does it say? I have to write it backwards. It says vote. We've taken it for granted all this time. But we really have to do our research and who we are voting for. Because as you can see, it makes a big difference. I didn't know this until a couple of days ago. And I didn't believe it. So I actually did some research on this. But there were 415 officials in the Trump administration have either been fired or quit. 415? I didn't even know he had that many people. And there's been over 100 overturns of what the Obama administration tried to do for the EPA. Essentially, we have no EPA anymore. They have people who say they're working for the EPA. But what have we got? We've restricted all what should have been environmental protection because he who should not be named has said we don't need that anymore because it's too much interference by the government. But we have to be careful who we vote for. And I don't care who you, which side you're on. Just vote because we need to explore who we're voting for what we're voting for. And that's really our only hope because if we don't have governmental support, we have years of not achieving anything. And that's thrashing around. Yeah. So this means that this means that somebody has to run for office on the platform. That's right. Or what the Holly Lindsey platform. You know what? I don't care who's running, except I want to know what their issues are and not this hate kind of stuff. I don't, aren't you sick of it? I can't listen to this. What is the Holly Lindsey platform? My Holly. I'm not running for anything. That's not why I'm here. In fact, you know, I was the reluctant person, but you know, I have to say, first of all, comes what I feel is not even, I don't know what the word for it would be. It wouldn't be tolerance. It would be, I think love is the real, you know, agape mousse, that kind of thing. You know, aloha. I think we need to respect one another once again. I think that's number one. I don't see that in anybody. I just see hatred. I see these foul words. I mean, the minute certain words go into my ear, I just turn off. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm not a goody two shoes. I just want people to actually listen to each other and respect each. You don't have to agree. You have to respect it. And what happened to those days? I remember those days, you know, when I'd go to Germany and I'd listen to my friends saying that America was responsible for World War II because they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. I listened to it, but then I went down. Well, it just shows you there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there. That's the point. But that's what I'm saying is that we need to be responsible to guide our youngsters if they're still at that age where they have to explore things to find out the truth. And you can't blame CNN. You can't blame Fox News. You can't blame all this kind of stuff going around. You can find the truth if you search. That's what a scientist does. We are all scientists. We all have to appreciate that we have the ability to think rationally, to figure it out, to maybe experiment with it, and to ponder and use our own brains to come to a conclusion. Don't go by what your neighbor says or what you hear on television. Find it out for yourself. And it's an exciting thing when you have this empowerment inside your own brain. You have plenty of experience, Holly, in civic action, in community programs. I know I've seen you in many contexts, but how about now? I'm an unhorrible kid that I don't love, you know? And that's a strange thing for people to say. But you know my favorite kids, the ones that stick out after 40 years of teaching, are the ones that were the problems. Because they were actually thinking whether or not, you know, they could hate me. But they were actually thinking, oh, why do I hate this woman? And I've got these reasons why there's something in them that was actually provoked, which is better than just, you know. So what I'm saying is when your kids are giving you a hard time and you're stuck in doors with them, and you're, you know, I was stuck with this 21-year-old for two weeks in quarantine, I thought I'd kill him. But you know what? What I learned was he's really resourceful. And I would never have said that about him before he went to college, because he left early, and I was never resourceful. He was just whatever, you know, eat a fried chicken person. But now I found out something, even though he still drives me nuts, that he can, you know, the world's his oyster, man. I wish I was that young. I'm not afraid of taking a new Apple computer out of the box, and I can put everything on. I'm not paranoid about losing it. Science and technology, those are all what we have. Every single young person, no matter what social, economic scale they're on, we all live with it now, you know? I think, I'm really not a big fan of Zoom. Sorry, I know you are. But, you know, I could have used this 15 years ago and not have to drive my kids to the music teacher three hours away at Indiana University. If we had Zoom, we could have had lessons, you know, because we're practically in real time. Whereas in my day 15 years ago, we had this gap of like 10 seconds, you know, annoying it is to listen to somebody playing in a scarletty and you hear the music 15 seconds after you see the, you know. So this is wonderful times. Be happy you're home with your kids. This is your opportunity before they go away and you don't have any influence. Well, I think there's a lot of people, you know, who would resonate with that. And I think there's a lot of people who resonate with the notion of science and technology. What I would like to see is them coming together and sharing their thoughts and moving that to political action and voting and finding candidates who will adopt the whole notion, that vision of Hawaii as a platform point. And I hope we can do that. I hope you can do that now that you have all this time on your hands. It's my number one dream is not compromise. My number one dream is that we can all come to the same conclusion that we need each other and we need to take advantage of our opportunities. Okay, so then you should send a link of this video to a lot of your friends and see what kind of reaction you get. Who knows maybe you'll... Don't even live in America. I think I crossed my American friends. So if they do, oh, one thing that I have to put in and you can think I'm insane, but you know there are dogs who can smell COVID and they have a greater accuracy between 85 to 100% accuracy in smelling COVID than testing. Well, the scientific community ought to go into that and see how that works and maybe go somewhere with it. We can train dogs here. We have some of the best labradoodle trainers in the world here in Hawaii. We can train sniffer dogs. I'll volunteer one of my dogs, not this precious one, but the other one I'll volunteer in. Kali Rinzi, a science person, a great mom and a great community thinker and a visionary for the future of Hawaii. Thank you so much, Holly. It's been wonderful to talk to you.