 Goodness, it's three o'clock rock. I'm Jay Fiedel here on Community Matters on ThinkTech. Our show today is called The Hawaii History Through Amazing Pictures. We're going to talk about that plus much more. There are so many images out there. There are so many things to be educated about Hawaii's past. And for this discussion, we have Jeffrey Bingham Mead, who used to be at HPU. No, no. Where were you before? I was at University of Phoenix and I was at Hawaii Tokai International College and at KCC with the Honda International Center. All those places? Yes. And now he's on the mainland but he's still doing all those places. I still go back and forth. Okay. Wow, we've got to hear about this. Oh, okay. This is like a rendezvous of reminiscence and what have you. Yes. So Jeffrey has been sending, the background is Jeffrey has been sending me these fabulous pictures. I don't know where he gets them. They are beautiful pictures of the history of Hawaii. Yes. And I want to talk about how you get those kinds of pictures and why you're sending them and what you're doing in terms of education about Hawaii's history and other things that you do. Thank you. So tell us, catch us up, will you Jeffrey? Okay. Let's see. Well, I'll tell you. I am the president and the co-founder of History Education Hawaii Incorporated. It was co-founded with, I think, a couple of good friends of yours. One would be John Carroll. And the other one is the retired Brigadier General Francis Ubalani Mosman. Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we are allied with the National Council for History Education and it's been a really, really fantastic ride. The current incarnation of that organization is called History Education Hawaii Incorporated and you can go on the web and you can see that at historyeducationhawaii.org. And so you can take a look at that and see the website, which by the way, we have a lot of people updating us. So you're a media maven. You've got the website of History Education Hawaii. And you've got a radio show. Radio show and Facebook. And Facebook. Well, Facebook is in my blood now. Yeah. Yeah. So, yes, and I do have the radio show that I'm doing. It's a separate thing from the History Education Hawaii organization. It's a radio show that is quite fascinating and quite unique. It's called Marvels of China, Pathways to the Pacific Rim. It is broadcast on AM 1490 WGCH in Greenwich, Connecticut and WGCH.com. So we have audio streaming for that. If you go to podcasts.com, we have an archive site where all of the shows have been archived rather and we are now in our second year. This is a partnership between me and, oh yes, there I am, between me and the Chinese government, principally the Consul General's office in New York City and also with a wonderful title sponsor by the name of Beijing Ambridge International Culture Development Limited. We also work with the Ministry of Culture as well. By the way, it's almost all totally English language. And one of the few broadcasts of its kind that is like that. We're now in the second year and having a great time. So talking about history, we just had Attorney General Douglas Chen. Yeah, you mentioned. Yes. That's quite sensitive. He's a very important person right now. He sure is. But one of the things that we were looking for from him and others that we've had on the show is kind of that human side of the experience. Here's somebody whose parents fled the mainland with communism. He was born in Taiwan, went to the Pacific Northwest, came here to Hawaii. He has a fascinating personal history and I found him to be probably one of the most warm and engaging people that I've met in a long time. So wherever you are, Doug, thank you very, very much. Thank you. It was really good. I think we're running in parallel places, actually, Jeffrey. You're a media maven. You've got all these media going on. I want to step through them one by one and we have a lot of things going on. Okay, fabulous. You must be overlapping. Like in Douglas Chen, for example. Absolutely, yes. There's a lot of overlap in all of this. Yes. It makes it interesting and it keeps me out of everything except work. Yes. Well, I mean, I should reframe my question. What don't you do? People ask me usually, when do I sleep? That's usually the popular question that I get. And I said, when I can. Well, no, I'll tell you, in all honesty, the only time I ever go to the movies is when I'm 40,000 feet up in the sky. Absolutely. So that's when I see all the movies and it's always nice. So what's the mission? Putting all these things together, what do you want to do here? Okay. History Education Hawaii Incorporated, we initially founded that. The earlier incarnation was founded in 2006. And the one that we have now that I just mentioned was founded about, what, four years ago. And what we are trying to do is to promote history education here in Hawaii, but also the rest of the Pacific Rim. So we're not just isolated here to the Hawaiian islands. I think that because of the culture dynamic here, it makes it very, very unique. So one of the things that we like to do is to do a lot of technological outrage or using the technology, I should say, to reach out to people. So for example, if you go on Facebook, go on Facebook, look up History Education Hawaii Incorporated, we now have about 200 members of the group. And it spans people of all different backgrounds, all different affiliations, whatever the case may be, everybody is welcomed. And one of the things that I do is that I am constantly searching the World Wide Web, or I look at my newsfeed on Facebook and I find all sorts of interesting stories that are going on about Hawaii, about other areas of the world, and some of the new historical discoveries and things that are going on. Yeah, it strikes me that there's a lot of talk about Hawaiian history and culture these days. I mean, it seems to be permeating our world in Hawaii, sometimes accurately and sometimes not accurately. And there should be different interpretations. It's very rich panoply of things that have happened here in the last couple of hundred years. But one thing strikes me is that we haven't finished researching that. We haven't finished exploring it. We haven't finished finding meaning in it. A friend of mine is a stamp collector. He collects Hawaiian covers, which are actually one of the most valuable objects you could collect in the world. They really go for big bucks and they go all over the world. We don't realize it here. We don't think of that. But the fact is that Hawaii has this kind of cache everywhere, and people collect things from Hawaii. And to get further, learning about these Hawaiian covers, my friend learned about the history of Hawaii and wound up writing a multiple volume set on the history of Hawaii, which it takes two people to carry around. I'll bet it does. It's huge. There's so much information. Fact is we do have the information. We just need to analyze it and examine it and disseminate it as you are. So is part of your study here Hawaiian history per se, or has it come through the graphics? What's the connection? Well, actually, it's all of those things. It's everything. One of the things I will tell you is that there are people and museums here in Hawaii that are really doing a fantastic job about using the technologies that are available to disseminate history. It may not be totally in depth or anything, but it's enough to get people to really be interested. We have a lot of people on the Facebook group that say, oh, wow, that's interesting. I forgot about that. Or, oh, my uncle or my auntie turned around and was there for that and this, that and the other. So really amazing things that happen. When we go to the screen there. Oh, okay. Yeah, this is the, let's see. That's the Facebook page. And by the way, what you see there at the bottom, you see somebody in Chinese opera costume. There is a special that is going on tonight. It's called The Story of China. Go to PBS, everybody. This starts tonight. It is a really fantastic show. And I am very, very excited about this. My friends in China all over the place are going to try to tune in. You will be able to watch online if you can. So it's a history of China. History of China. Multiple segments. Multiple segments. Absolutely. And what else do we have here? We have some, you know, sky. Let's see. I can't quite see what that is, but that's okay. Oh, yes. And we have baseball teams and things like that. So one of the things that we do is that we try to get all sorts of different histories. You know, we have a very, very diverse audience. That's one of the wonderful things. It's also one of the challenges as well. So we have all sorts of things. We have members of the royal family and all who went off to the mainland to do their own part in history. You know, we have people who have posted things online. I happen to try to subscribe to as many as humanly possible that is out there. What we have up here right now is the website. Very nice. History Education Hawaii. Very, very much. The person who designed that for me is, her name is Heather Wimberley. She just retired from her web work and everything. But this is one of her creations. She lives in Manoa Valley. Her father was the founder of the Wimberley Allison Gu. Yes. That was her father. Oh, she is a web architect, if you will, by nature. And a truly gifted artist. I mean, she has been an absolute godsend. We've been doing business together since the mid-1990s. That's very nice. Thank you. Going back to another one of my recollections, my firm represented a fellow one time who acquired a library of Hawaiian history graphics. Kind of like the ones you send around, the ones on your page. And it was a huge amount of material. And I believe that he wasn't the only one who owned such a collection. And he first analyzed it. He had an old office where all the stuff was hanging off the ceiling. I know those offices. I think it was the original location of the collection. I wouldn't be surprised. And it was overwhelming how much material there was. And I said to myself, this is not something that you can go and find, for example, on the web so easily. These collections are hard to come by and they're so valuable. Not necessarily in money, although I would ask you that. But in allowing you a fuller understanding of the way it was in Hawaii. Yes, it does. You mentioned about finding original images and documents and things like that. One of the things that's fabulous about the technology is that, I mean, let's face it, we're here in downtown Honolulu. We're surrounded by offices and the schools and everything. Everybody is terribly busy right now. Not everybody has the time to go down to an archive like at the State Archives or at Hawaiian Mission Houses or Iolani Palace or anywhere else, for example. So we really are kind of duty bound to take that history, use the technology tools that we have available and to bring that to the people to better educate them about that. That's really a big part of all of this. How do you do that? I believe in push more than websites. I believe that you have to deliver it in some way. Now you deliver it with me. I mean, for years I've been getting these fabulous graphics from you and it's just really fabulous what you send around and it opens my mind to take a look at it. Well, thank you. It's all the time. It's Facebook, I think. Facebook, yes. Our blog site has a little bit been dormant. We do maintain a blog site, historyeducationhawaii.blogspot.com. We are reviving that in order to get more of the news about events and things that are going on. So using the technology to deliver maybe what's going on at the Hawaii Judiciary History Center, there happen to be favorites. We've done a show on that. Yes. And they're wonderful people over there. They really are. I've even brought international students there to do some of the mock trials. Oni versus Meek, that is usually the favorite that we have and the staff over there. Matt Matisse and his team over there are really fabulous people. They really, really are. So we're kind of duty bound to bring everything to them. So you're reaching out with it? Absolutely. I mean, you're conducting tours, obviously the Hawaii Judicial History Center? Well, no, they do that. But you're putting them in touch with them? Absolutely, yes. We put teachers and tour groups and anybody. We're not restricted to the schools per se. Even though we're history education Hawaii, we don't restrict ourselves to the schools. We're actually trying to reach out to the general population as much as we can. How? Because, well, through the technology, any way that we can, through email, through the Facebook, through the blog site, through the website, if I happen to see them walking up and down Fort Street, I'll say, oh, did you happen to see this? And things like that. So any way possible that we can, we do. What's the business model on this, Jeffrey? Sounds elusive. We kind of make it up as we go along. That's the business model. Because the technology is actually in many ways being made up as we go along. If you had said to me, oh, 10 years, like 10 years ago, we would be sitting here, we would be talking about these wonderful images that we have online and the stories that go behind them. I would have said, well, it sounds like really very interesting science fiction. Thank you very, very much. But now here we are. And who knows where we're going to be even a couple of years from now? Who knows? But it's exciting. That's the thing that's interesting about all of this is the excitement about the different directions that technology can go to, the way that it can be used to enrich people's lives, which is part of what it is that we are doing. So it's great. That was Kauai Howe Church a minute ago? No, that one was the, I think that was the Foreign Mission School in, that's the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut. That was based on, I think, a lithograph. Yes. By the way, I got a Peter Young. I'll tell you. Sure. You used your DLNR. Oh, yes. I have to tell you. Peter is fabulous. He really, really is. Because he writes these incredible stories, pairs them up with the images, which is a really good educational tool to do, by the way. And Peter's been doing this for many, many years. So I happen to be on his list. And when I receive everything he does is, I believe almost daily. I post it on the History Education Hawaii Facebook page. People get to see that. And so that's one example of how it is, that there is one individual out there here in Hawaii. There are others as well that do the same thing. And we disseminate that. So you're looking for exchange. You're looking for comments and contact. You're looking for remarks and feedback. Oh, absolutely. Sure. But just an appreciation of what it is that is out there. Especially, again, the fact that we have all such busy lives, and not all of us have the time that we wish that we had to go and visit the museums or the libraries, especially during working hours. It's kind of a tough thing to do. So let's take a short break. Come back. I want to talk about your radio show and how this all works in your radio show. Sure. OK. OK. We'll be right back. That's Jeffrey Bingham Mead. We'll be right back. We all play a role in keeping our community safe. Every day, we move in and out of each other's busy lives. It's easy to take for granted all the little moments that make up our every day. Some are good, others not so much. But that's life. It's when something doesn't seem quite right that it's time to pay attention. Because only you know what's not supposed to be in your every day. So protect your every day. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. Aloha. My name is Raya Salter. And I'm the host of Power Up Hawaii, which you can see live from 1 to 130 every Tuesday at thinktechhawaii.com and then later on YouTube. I am an energy attorney, clean energy advocate, and community outreach specialist. And on Power Up Hawaii, we come together to talk about how can Hawaii walk towards a clean, renewable, and just energy future? To do that, we talk to stakeholders all over the spectrum from clean energy technology folks to community groups to politicians to regulators to the utility. So please join us Tuesdays at 1 o'clock for Power Up. OK. We're back. I told you we'd come back. Yep. Jeffrey Bingham-Made, he's a history Hawaii. Yeah. What is it? I'm going to get the right one. History education Hawaii. Yeah, that's OK. Which is very important. I mean, you know, because it's not just the history. It's trying to propagate the history and get people to think about it. Everything under the sun, yeah. So I was going to ask you about the radio show. OK. Because I'm always interested in radio shows. Yes. It's a great medium. What are you doing on it? The title of it is Marbles of China Pathways to the Pacific Rim. We are now in our second year. We broadcast out of 8 AM 1490 WGCH in Greenwich, Connecticut, which happens to be my ancestral hometown. It's born and raised. And I still, you know, have a home there and, you know, and all that. It's very interesting what happened with this. It was an outgrowth. If you see the picture right there, that is me in Beijing. And what happened was that I was invited almost two years ago by the government of China to be there as an honored guest for the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. So if you remember seeing the news, it was a big military parade in Beijing. I was there for that. And I was there with, you know, some of the remaining members of the Flying Tigers. Oh, really? And this, my father was one of the China Marines, one of the last of them. And after surviving Okinawa, he was transferred from the 4th Marine Division to the 1st Marine, sent to Tianjin, and was there for the surrender. And was stationed in Tianjin and Beijing for about maybe six or seven months. And then left in, I believe, it was April of 1946. You say the surrender happened in Tianjin? Tianjin, yes. It did. Isn't that a big tech city? Yes, it is. Yes, yes. But back in those days, it was, of course, it ruins and in terrible, terrible shape. My father brought back a lot of pictures that he took. He died seven and a half years ago. And one of the last wishes that he had for me, I really like you to put this into some kind of a book form and publish it, which I am working on right now. Well, there were some stories that were done about me by a worldjournal.com, China Press. And suddenly, I got an email from the Vice Consul of the Chinese Consulate in New York City, a lot of flowing language and all. And said, we would like to honor you by inviting you as our guest. That's very nice. Well, I gotta tell you, I sent it to all my Chinese friends in New York and elsewhere. And I said, is this for real? And one of them who is a very, very, very close friend of mine, he says, you have a tendency to overanalyze things. He says, just say yes and go. And I said, oh, I wrote back and I said yes. What advice? Yeah, I was. And I've kept that since, by the way. So lesson learned, right? So I went and after I got back, I was there for about 10 days. It was one of these truly transformational experiences. It was my first time to China. Always is. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, and I didn't want to come back. I'll be honest with you. I read my father said the same thing. He said, you know, I didn't want to leave. And I said, OK, so we have that in common. So after I got back, I was a guest on one of the daytime radio shows at 1490 WGCH. The host and the president of the company invited me into the office and they said, you're really good. You have a radio voice. And I said, well, that's very nice. Thank you very, very much. And they said, we would like to give you a half hour time slot. And you can do it on anything. You're kind of different from everybody because they said, you're from here. Your family's been here for almost 400 years, but you've also got this connection to Hawaii and Asia and the Pacific Rim. And they said, it's a unique chemistry. And I said, OK, so I went to my Chinese friends. We created the show. We were going around trying to find title sponsors. We have a fabulous one with Beijing Ambridge International Culture Development Limited, which is a communications and PR firm. And they are fabulous people to work with. I have been given virtual all a complete control of the content of the show. It is almost all English language. We are now in our second year. And it has been a fabulous, fabulous ride. I have had so much fun. There is a lot of history that we involve. We mostly dwell on culture to give you an idea of the history part of this. I don't know if the name Roy Rowan means anything to you or not. All right, Roy Rowan was the founder of the Time Life Bureau in Hong Kong. He found it right after the, I believe after the communist took over in 1949. He was one of two Americans who covered the Chinese Civil War. And lo and behold, Roy Rowan lived about maybe three or four miles from me in my hometown in Connecticut. So we were paired up with a mutual friend. He was 96 years old at the time that I interviewed him. I actually went to my home and I brought a friend of my Mr. Li Mingguan of China Press. As it turns out, we were the last two people to interview him before he died. But Roy has written a book called Chasing the Dragon. You have to look for this book. It is incredible. He was there for everything. He knew everybody and he had stories and he was telling us these stories as if he was reliving them in his living room down on Steamboat Road in Greenwich. And it was a mesmerizing experience. So we have had people like him. So it's a study of China, history and culture of China. History and culture of China, about what he went through about interviewing Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai and the Song sisters. Everybody, everybody. And so that is just one example of history and culture that we have had. But we've had many others. We've had guests from China also here in the United States and even beyond. I'm going to be having somebody by the name of Jim Lindsay. His mother was an insurgent during the Chinese Civil War period. And he now lives in Australia. She passed away. But he edited the book called Bold Plum and he's going to be on in about two weeks. I can feel your excitement about this. You reach out to the whole world. Yes, we have a global audience. And you connect on, I guess, some kind of telephone line or maybe a digital line. Well, WGCH has a place where you can click it and you can listen to everything streaming audio. So we do the live broadcast, which is on Saturday mornings at 10.30 a.m. Eastern time, which means here you've got to get up at 4.30 in the morning. But that's okay. I have everything uploaded there, all of the broadcasts. So you can listen to those at your leisure. If you're on the email list, I can send you the link to that. And you can also listen to it at your leisure as well. Well, I get the idea that the underlying the common denominator here is history. Yes. And that fascinates you. And indeed, can you achieve mindful awareness in this world without an appreciation of historical context? Yes. I'm talking about my idea that we don't have enough historical context. That's one of the reasons this country is having so much trouble with government. People are disassociated with government and possibly that is because they don't understand the government is theirs and they are the government. Okay. Unless you understand the formation of the country in the first place, you know the circumstances around its organization and its constitution, because that is the connecting document. And I wonder if that drives you. I wonder how you feel about that issue. I wonder if that's what makes it so interesting to you, so exciting as you as you framed it in both radio and in your online activities. It's gotten to the point where it's actually taken on a life of its own. It's all remote control and also actually you pose an excellent question. One of the things that I will tell you that should be of concern, I think, to many people is that we do send out and we do employ in the government and elsewhere, policy makers, right? And in order for them to make good policy, I believe there's a logical train of thought that says, well, they should have a good background in the historical context of things. The Chinese are very, very good at this. I discovered that especially when I was over in Beijing for the 70th anniversary at the end of World War II. They probably know more about America than we do about China and they are very, very well schooled in this. They're extremely intelligent people and we have a very, very close affinity with each other I think as a result in many ways. But yes, I think that in order for us to truly understand what is going on is that taking things in terms of a historical context is very, very important. The one thing, of course, is that we are also discovering new things all the time. There is new literature. New things about old events. About old events. They say everything old becomes new again when it goes again and again. And that also makes it very, very interesting. And so they're always finding things. I mean, dovetail a little bit. There was one thing I put on Facebook where they found I guess they were able to do DNA research on some of the mummification remains of the pharaoh royal families in Egypt and they found out that they were not necessarily from Africa. They were actually people that came, I believe, from maybe southern Europe or something like that. Maybe Greco-Roman or Turkish or whatever. And so they were not necessarily the indigenous people but they were a ruling class based on being Interesting. So the sweep went north then came back south. Yes. It was very, very interesting to find out things of that nature. So archives are being opened all of the time. I had a guest on my show who was able to do research on a book that he wrote on newly opened archives in Russia as well as in Korea, China, all over the place and we're finding new things all the time. What's your future? Where is this going to go? You know, you're running it 100 miles an hour now. Yeah, it will go for 120. Yeah, or 50 or whatever. What does it take you? I mean, I can't imagine how this is going to evolve. Can you imagine how it will evolve? No, I can't and I'm sorry to say that but it's true. I don't know where this is going to go. You know, part of the thing, the dynamic rather that is going on is that the technology, the new discoveries, the evolution and the re-evolution of culture and the global relationships that we have with the different peoples and things like that is being reinvented all the time and it makes it a fascinating time to be alive, if you will. It really does. So, I don't know the one thing I will tell you that because of this the radio show as well as what we're doing at History Education in Hawaii and other things that I'm involved in right now, I'm meeting some of the most truly extraordinary people. Really, really extraordinary people and so there are a lot of people like us out there who we have in common that are trying to do the same thing as we are so in a sense we are a rather disparate global community and we are staying in touch with each other. Thank goodness for the technology to be able to do this and we'll see what happens. Jeffrey Bingham Meade, he's happy to be alive, he's mindfully aware and the amazing thing is that when he grew up, he was a shy child. You know what, that's true. No, it's true. I was actually a very, very shy child I really was. Sounds like he got over it. I got it at grad school. All right, I'll continue to behave myself as best I can and this was fun. This was really a lot of fun. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you Jeffrey.