 Welcome to Think Tech on OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and Hawaii. I'm Jay Fiedel. And I'm Elise Anderson. In our show this week, we'll take you to the 2017 Hawaii Book and Music Festival behind City Hall. It was a community coming together in celebration of books, music and artistic expression for a better quality of life for the people of Hawaii. As in earlier years, the Book and Music Festival was held on the Frank Fosse civic grounds around City Hall, this year on Saturday and Sunday, May 6th and 7th. As before, it was open and free to the public. The festival is a unique event in Hawaii, celebrating books, storytelling and music for people of all ages, backgrounds and tastes, striving to introduce Hawaii Books and Music to the world, honoring our culture, exploring topics of community interests, and highlighting the joy of lifelong literacy for our people. This was the 12th year of the festival, bigger and better than ever before, a full weekend jam-packed with live hula, music, cooking demonstrations by national chefs, interviews with authors, panel discussions on community issues, and much more. A few weeks ago, Think Tech interviewed Roger Jelenick, biocupational literary agent and founder of the festival on how it had come about, how it has developed and what was in store for this year. Until the beginning, you realize that a book is an extremely efficient way of delivering a story. You can reread, you can go back and forth, you can end out. And so, for a while, independent bookstores were losing ground, in fact, a lot of them just went bankrupt, they're coming back. Not only that, but the younger demographic, which you would assume doesn't read that much, are actually crowding into bookstores again, into the independent stores, not the big key reasons for that. I think there's an overdose on digital, I think, but a great thought. I'm waiting for that. It's a good thing. As I said, it's a really efficient way of delivering a story, a very pleasurable way. So how do you play that out at the Book and Music Festival? We program books that have been published in the last year, so I have a kind of like a really made program in a sense. We have, we specialize particularly in Hawaiian culture. We've done that from the beginning. And it just happens that with the immersion programs in schools, you now have a steady stream of kids who go through school, through UH, and some of them become scholars and actually get to publish their MAs and PhDs, not only at UH Press, but at a handful of other houses. So they produce books, and their professional books are not that readable for you and me, but I surround them with panels with people who are articulate. And the panel helps. Yeah, and then there's something else has happened, which is the rediscovery of Hawaiian language newspapers and other Hawaiian language sources, which has completely transformed Hawaiian studies and the perception of the culture. Yeah. As a result, many people showed up even more than in prior years. The festival was well attended by local people and their families and Kiki. This is a great example of the value of well-used public spaces in our city. It is likewise a good example of the kind of event that enriches the daily life of our citizens. Day number one was just fabulous. Like today, it was about 75, 80 degrees, light breeze blew all day. We had, I would say, the record number that we've ever had, probably 20, 30 percent more than last year. It was all the venues were full all day. It was just a fabulous day. Everybody really had a wonderful time. We have this year, we have three more venues than last year. We had a new cookbook venue, which drew a lot of attention. We had a new remade Kiki reading pavilion that was spearheaded by Christie Yamaguchi. And we had two new venues, one on health and wellness and one on disrupt aging. We had also a new storytelling pavilion that was full all day with professional storytellers. So the program was very, very rich. We were a little bit concerned that we were simply spreading our audience thinner with more venues, but quite the opposite. They were all full. Probably the biggest highlight was on the main stage, where we had the overall winner of the Mary Monarch Festival. That's the Haye Haye Halau. Kumahula Tracy Lopez and Keawe Lopez. Got Jeff Peterson, Barry Flanagan. So that on the music side was extremely strong. Over on the Kiki stage, Mr. Steve came back for the sixth year and proved his worth. Another new venue we had was the Food and Cookbook pavilion, a really interesting original piece of programming by the Pilly Group with some just remarkable ways of looking at food, local food. This is not high-end food and wine festival, $300 a plate deal. This was what we all eat, from ethnic foods to Hawaiian food to what you can buy if you know where to look. The book swap was, as always, hugely popular. People line up for an hour before to get in there, and it's for all day. You can exchange five, gently used books for five new ones, and people love it. There's one thing about book culture, people love bargains to the anguish of the publishers. We had author signings all day, major authors. All the national authors are serviced by a big Banzanobu that's right in the middle of the whole festival. The storytellers, we had a dozen professional storytellers. This is a new pavilion. They had an hour each, and they totally held the audience. I thought I'd made a real mistake in programming Moses Goods, a Hawaiian storyteller, across from the winning, Mary Monot winning Halau, and I thought that was pretty dumb. But in fact, they were both full, so I can't complain. And Moses Goods was just fabulous. Today, I can't say more of the same because it's all different. And that's by design. Like yesterday, we have two pavilions, seven panels each, from local authors, poets, playwrights, novelists, some panels. There's a panel on Alternative Truth, which is a panel on how a journalist, a biographer, and a narrative non-fiction writer would approach the same story. Bamboo Ridge is here in full force. They have two sessions today, and we have the literary awards, the Eliot Cage literary awards for the best books of the year. We have some extraordinary speakers in the Mission Memorial Auditorium. We have Hyman Suman, a Buddhist monk, whose current book sold three million copies in Korea, and we flew him in from Korea. He's a very impressive monk. One of the most interesting speakers we have in the Mission Auditorium today is Dr. Joel Salinas. Joel Salinas has written a memoir of what it's like to have synesthesia. His former synesthesia means he literally feels his patient's pain. So when you go to him with a complaining about a particular pain in your knee or your head or wherever, he feels it exactly the way you do, which is a hell of a life. And he's a very good writer, and he evokes it beautifully. Just to give you an example in his introduction, he describes the first patient he attended as a resident who was dying, and he had exactly the same symptoms that the patient did right down to the end. And he had to almost sort of will himself back to life again. So it's a little spooky, but it's a real phenomenon, and he writes about it very eloquently, and he's here speaking about it. We have John Pomfret, who's an ex-Washington Post journalist, prize-winning journalist, who's written what is considered the best book on the relationship between the U.S. and China for the last 200 years. And so he's a catch for us, and obviously a lot of interest in that subject nationally, but particularly locally. We have some fine novelists in the mission auditorium. Jay Chang, who's written a very amusing Wai book about a Chinese family, an immigrant family, and it's various crises. And then Kauri Hart-Hemmings, a local celebrity author, whose book, The Descendence, was made into a movie. So she'll be in the mission auditorium. Yesterday was terrific. We were just so busy in the morning. I thought I was going to run out of inventory, and they slowed down a little bit, but really very copacetic. God bless us with great weather this year. Yeah, so, you know, I'm not figuring after church, it'll probably pick up again. But I was real happy, and I ran into a lot of people who bought the books. They're only going to buy one. But yeah, it was a good day. So we enjoyed it. And you got me on a panel in about 15 minutes, so I'm going to go ahead and join that. It's our first time here. We came to see some friends perform in a little bit, and we brought some of our own books that we've read and are done with, and are doing a little swap. Oh, do you swap as many as five? Yes. My three children each contributed a bunch. So we're trying to find some, yeah, some books to take home. Well, it's been wonderful to be at the book festival. I was on a panel of speakers on mindfulness yesterday. It was very interesting to hear some. Do you speak your mind? Oh, of course. I always do. It was nice to hear some different perspectives. I come from the realm of yoga and alternative therapies, and we had a neurologist on the panel. So it was a nice mix of perspectives on the practice of mindfulness. Do you have the Buddhist show up? No. His plane was late. His plane was late. Yeah. Well, you are probably our Buddhist. No, no, I'm no practicing particular religion, but just yoga. True yoga. True yoga. Yep, here it is. We'll get it on camera. True yoga. Thanks so much. Thank you. I'd like to thank the organizers for putting together such a successful book and music festival. I think it's a great opportunity for our community to come down, learn about reading, learn about what's there in music, books, and ways to learn more. And I'd like to promote the Hawaii State Library. I have a library card. I encourage everyone to get one because you have a remarkable collection of books, magazines, and different periodicals that they can have access to. And a phenomenal website. Phenomenal website, and it's all free. So go out there to your public library. Thank you. We've been here every year from the beginning, and it's really grown. And this year, Roger's been very ambitious. You know, we had a big crowd yesterday. Good. A lot of activity going on. What was the highlight yesterday? What's told the best? Oh, was the David Forbes book, book on the letters and ours of Queen Emma. I'm Dr. Billy Bergen. We'll be speaking this afternoon. And also, Owen, who flew in from Berkeley, and she's here for a week. She's doing a reading at a Pune Place on Saturday. And then Rodney Morales' new novel here. So they're all speaking and signing this afternoon. Hi, my name's Sophie, and I'm with Hawaii Literacy. We're here at the Book of Music Festival. And what we're doing here is that we are receiving some of the money that is being generated by this amazing event. We were fortunate enough to have some of the storytellers that are here featured today come out to Cahuillo Park Terrace, one of our family libraries. And all the kids were able to benefit from their amazing abilities. And it's a great event. We're happy to be here. Aloha. This is Linh Wai Hei with Read To Me International. And we're a nonprofit organization that promotes reading aloud to children. So we will talk to parents or teachers, educators, librarians, anybody we can get a hold of to tell them why it's so critical for them to be reading aloud to children. We have a prison project. We also have where the inmates record stories onto CDs. And they read the book aloud and they write a little message to their child. And we send the tape, the CD, and the book home to the child. We also have a conference every year. One year is for two whole days. And the other day is just for a day. We're so grateful to be part of the Hawaii Book and Music Festival. We're one of two beneficiaries, Hawaii Literacy being the other. And this gives us a wonderful opportunity to meet with the parents and the children and have them do some activities. And then we can talk to the parents about reading aloud to their children. So this is a great event. And we're happy to be part of it. Well, I think this is a great, great festival. And I think I would hope that more people would come and join us in disrupt aging process. We have all afternoon we have some workshop in those areas. And we welcome anyone who's interested to come. So thank you very much for your effort in getting us to kind of notify people that we are out here all the time and helping the elderly. AARP Hawaii is here at the at the festival to talk about disrupting aging and every facet of your life, the way you do your job, the way you live at home, the way you approach your life decisions. And it's all because we can see that longevity is going to increase. And so what we need to make sure is that people have choices and are able to live their best lives. So with technology happening, we know that the things that used to tie us up now technology will be able to provide some solutions. And just remember the first person who is going to live to be 150 years old is already born. And 10 year old today has a 5050 chance of living to be 104. And so what you have to plan for is a long life. And so AARP is here to make sure that we're with you every step of the way. So it's the best possible life you can lead. Hi, I'm Jesse. I'm the Community Engagement Lead with HMSA. HMSA and Blue Zones Project are out here today to promote health and well-being. So we're doing some exercise activities, giving some sweatbands out to just again to promote exercise and and healthiness. So come on out and see us. So Jared Leong from the University of Hawaii College of Education. We're part of the curriculum research and development group. And we're here for the Book Fair because we're kind of like a book publisher, more of a boutique book publisher. And we have books that we do for the Department of Education and we do for private schools and other schools. And we do have trade books as well. Right now we're featuring actually our History of Hawaii textbook. And we just had a book panel for that. And we're kind of celebrating it. We're having a book launch and we're having our book signing for that as well. Hi, I'm Mara Mulruni. I'm here with Bishop Museum Press. We're really enjoying being here at the festival with all of the publishers of Hawaii. And we have a great book sale going on today. It's great. It's a great event every year. This is its 12th year, of course. And we haven't been here for a couple years. So we're really excited to be back. And you know, the only tricky thing about this fair is that we don't have time to check everything out. This is the Hawaii State Public Library's booths. So we're promoting a whole bunch of our resources today. This part of the table is for our summer reading program that's going to start in June and run through July. So we have a different program this year in that we have mobile sign up. So we have some flyers with information. You can now participate by visiting in person. But if you can't, you can also just log on to the mobile app and go online and just keep track of your things digitally. So you don't have to come and visit, but we love to have you. Also in the booth, we have our Nene awards ceremonies, the program. So they have the reading list for next year as well as some of the titles from this year. And then around the corner, we have our library for the blind and physically handicapped. They're making little bookmarks for people in Braille. So if you'd like to have your name made in Braille, just stop by the tent. And the last part of our tent is sharing our digital resources. So that's the one that's going to tell you how to log on to the HSPLS mobile app, as well as to some of our ebooks and our Zineo, which is our online digital magazines and press reader, which is also online newspapers. So come by and visit us. Well, we started in 2011 on the anniversary of the Massey Kahavai case, which had, at that time, its 80th anniversary. And we worked on it from 2011 and on through 2012. And we stopped for a while because it was kind of emotionally exhausting. And so we weren't really planning to publish it. And then last year or year before all of the racial tensions started rising on the mainland and Black Lives Matter. And then we said, we have our own story. Not that we wanted to promote more racial tensions, but we were thinking that maybe in Hawaii there is some way to deal with this if we can remember and also change. And so that's what we're trying to do. We don't want to put fuel on the fire, but try to find some kind of solution to the way that we look at these tensions. Hi, my name's Bridget. And I'm with Friends of the Library of Hawaii. And we're here at the Bank of Hawaii Book and Music Festival. And we're here selling books in support of Hawaii's 50 public libraries. So come check us out on our big sales July 15th at McKinley. Hi there. I'm Jill Nordby with HoloHolo General Store and Red Barn Farm Stand, based out of Haleiva, North Shore. We're here today at the Wonderful Book and Music Festival. We were invited to be here with the Peely Group. They're friends of ours and fellow members of the community that are really all about helping to make Hawaii more sustainable. So we have been yesterday while we're set up today with our farmers market. And yesterday we were here as well with the farmers market. And also I was doing a cakey cooking demo over at the cookbook, at Food and Cookbook stage. So we had a great turnout with the cakey. We did a recipe called the Cowboy Caviar. So we talked to the children about the importance of eating closest to the source and had the participants come up. And basically they took over the recipe and made the entire thing themselves. So it was a recipe. It's kind of like a salsa, but there's no tomatoes, different various bell peppers, local nazawa corn from cuckoo that went into the recipe. So it turns out very colorful. And the kids love it. And we shared the recipe with their families for them to take home and hopefully make again at home. But if anyone wants to come out and see us, we're located in Haliva right on the main strip there across from the marketplace. And we're North Shore's first community farm stand. We feature all our partner farms produce that we aggregate for our community-supported agriculture bags of produce that we deliver into town to 300 subscribers. But you can come out to the red barn and sit, enjoy the view and sit on our picnic tables and enjoy our wonderful menu of all our farm fresh foods. One of the presenting authors was award-winning writer John Pomfret, who wrote The Beautiful Country in the Middle Kingdom, a narrative history of America's relationship with China. And there were many other important community programs, including Alana Hawaiian Culture, Disrupt Aging, Wellness in Hawaii, Food and Cooking, and lots of programs for the Keiki. The CEO of AARP, Joanne Jenkins, was there to talk about Disrupt Aging. There was also a panel discussion on the subject. This is an important issue for Hawaii, with our long-standing interest in wellness, longevity, quality of life, and aging in place. And as you would certainly expect, there was food. What would any festival in Hawaii do without food? Thanks to Roger Jelenick and the people who have helped him undertake and perpetuate this great festival every year now for 12 years. And thanks to all the volunteers who help him make it happen. There were also many institutional sponsors and three notable beneficiaries of the event. The Hawaii State Public Library System, Read To Me, and Hawaii Literacy, reminding us of the origin and central purpose of the festival, Literacy in Hawaii. Want to know more about the Hawaii Book and Music Festival? Check it out at HawaiiBookandMusicFestival.com. And if you didn't get there this year, yes, make a note to attend the one next year for sure. And now let's take a look at our ThinkTech calendar of events going forward. There's so much happening in Hawaii. 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Be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern, and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech family, and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy diversification, and global awareness and literacy in Hawaii. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Jay Fiedel. And I'm Elise Anderson. Aloha, everyone.