My first Blogad ... Hawaii.

One of my blogging specialties has always been, as my subtitle above says, "the way things look from Madison, Wisconsin." Now, I seem to be all about Hawaii! Well, what a pretty little ad. Welcome, sponsor.

Myself, I've never been to Hawaii, but, to continue the theme of my previous post--me in 1960 at the age of nine: like a lot of people, I loved Hawaii, back then, when it was getting so much attention for becoming a state. I had a distorted perception of the United States, back then when Alaska and Hawaii entered the union. For one thing, a few years before Hawaii became a state, I heard someone talking about prospective statehood say, "I hear Hawaii is coming in." I thought the islands were literally moving toward the west coast and would attach themselves to the mainland! I added this knowledge to my unreliable knowledge bank. And I contemplated the knowledge and analyzed things, I came up with the notion that year by year, new places would become states. Every place, I assumed, was lining up to join the United States. One year, Alaska, next year, Hawaii. I thought it was too bad it would take so long, what with only one new state per year. Why, it would take fifty years to add fifty more states. Too bad we couldn't go faster.

In third grade, I had a teacher we all adored, Mrs. Lynam, and she had recently taught school in Hawaii. So she was always talking about Hawaii, having us make Kleenex into flowers to string into leis, teaching us the hula, and generally giving us the impression that fulfillment in life had to do with getting to Hawaii. Yet, after all these years, I remain unfulfilled. Nevertheless, I'm gratified to get such a pleasing image for the first ad.