Retail Merchant Association Check-in; Martin Luther King Jr. Day; Council On Revenues;Woodblock Printing Workshop
Retail Merchant Association Check-in: Sheri Sakamoto
Retail holiday sales picked up the closer Christmas came and according to MasterCard Spending Pulse, grew 7.9% year over year. While that’s good news, how people are spending and when continues to change. Black Friday is no longer the big spending day it once was. The big ticket electronic items are also reflecting consumer spending changes... but what about in Hawaii where we are always urged to buy local? Sheri Sakamoto is the president of Retail Merchants of Hawaii and she says accurate retail sales data is tough to corral... and she’d like the state to do a better job of it, especially as the retails industry is the single largest generator of excise tax.
- Intro Music: Immortals by John-Michel Jarre and F**k Buttons
- Outro Music: Blumenwiese Neben Autobahn by Ulrich Schnauss
Martin Luther King Jr. Day: Marsha Joyner
Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior was shot and killed with a .30-06 hunting rifle in April of 1968. He was 39 years old. Today his legacy is taught in schools, statues honor him, streets are named after him, and he has his own national holiday. While no one would deny that progress has been made since his death, there’s much to trouble us in the country today and maybe that makes his holiday- and his memory - more important than ever. Marsha Joyner is one of the coordinators of next week’s observance of Dr. King’s birthday, and she joined The Conversation in our studios to talk about King’s legacy.
- Intro Music: The American Dream Speech by Martin Luther King Jr.
- Outro Music: Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder
Council On Revenues: Chris Grandy
There was good news at yesterday's Council on Revenues meeting and it’s a good bet that the upwardly revised 2016 forecast has a lot of people thinking about ways the state might spend that money in the coming legislative session. As for the years beyond... well, that’s another story. Council on Revenues member Chris Grandy joined the show to share his view.
- Intro Music: From To by B. Fleischmann
- Outro Music: Losing You by Joey Fehrenbach
Woodblock Printing Workshop: Glenn Yamanoha
So many of the techniques in the fine artist’s toolbox have been streamlined in the computer age, but for all the ideas the new efficiency has opened up, we can’t help wonder if something hasn’t been lost from the days when artists were expected to spend years immersed in their craft. Glenn Yamanoha is a Hawaii Island Painter and Printmaker who spent years in Japan learning Mokuhanga - Traditional Japanese Woodblock Printmaking. He’s about to teach a workshop in its painstaking techniques on the next five Thursday afternoons at Volcano Art Center’s Niaulani Campus. Classes are two hours in length.
- Intro Music: Carnivores Unite by Blockhead
- Outro Music: The Prettiest Sea Slug by Blockhead
