by Tom Conger

Henry Richmond and I originally met in third grade and had passed through elementary and middle school as best friends, sharing our offbeat sense of humor. In high school, in those innocent days shortly after the end of World War II, we played prep football. Prep football – played both ways (offense & defense), with limited substitution, and face-masks not introduced until partway into our senior year – was a sure way to engender the now disfavored phenomenon of male bonding. We bonded.

In intermediate school a gang of classmates roamed the streets from Waialae CC to the piedmont of Diamond Head on fat-tire bikes. (Henry, unlike the rest of us, pedaled a snazzy green “English” bike with skinny wheels and hand-brakes). We called ourselves the Kahala Blahlahs.  Woe be it to the HRT bus driver who stopped, just after dark on a Friday eve, for a coupla freckle-faced haole: the vanguard of the water-balloon brigade crouched behind the nearby hedge. Although we usually managed to outrun the dripping victim, we all shoulda been sent directly to Koolau Boys’ Home (reform school).

I didn’t have a car at Punahou, but, once Henry hit fifteen and got his license, his dad scored a deal on a ’51 Chrysler fluid-drive coupe, which they souped up so it wasn’t so “square.” Every morning until we graduated, we rode to school together—Henry and his girlfriend Jerry in the ample front seat, and me in back with his li’l sister and Jer’s really li’l brother.

The bonds continued into college days. Although Henry and I went to different schools, they were both in New England, all male, and in remote rural confines. Jerry completed a Honolulu triumverate as Skidmore, where she enrolled for college, was about the most accessible women’s college to Hanover, NH—a straight dash across Vermont and down the Hudson to Saratoga-town. I didn’t have a girlfriend at Skidmore, but I loved reconnecting with Henry & Jerry—plus the restaurants served pizza: not to be found in Hanover (nor Honolulu) back in the ‘50s!

               l to r, back: Mike Irwin, Evan White, Henry Richmond, Tom Conger; front center, Jerry Conley

Henry and I both played rugby in college, though not in the same circuits; so Henry (the Williams lads called him “Hank”) and I booked a fixture in the spring of 1961. As Hanover was even more remote than Williamstown back in those pre-Interstate Highway days, we Injuns drove down on the back roads of northwestern Massachusetts. Results of the match may have been lost in the apocrypha, but the tilt for the keg was clearly a draw.

After college, Henry latched up with The Asia Foundation, and he and Jerry lived in San Francisco, happily reunited with Hawaii’s first-ever major league sports franchise, the SF Forty-niners. Many were the tales of junkets to Kezar Stadium for ten-buck end zone seats where the young Richmonds loudly and copiously cajoled the [then] hapless Garnet & Gold, often inciting near riots in the surrounding confines. In more recent times, they were able to fly in from Honolulu for Niner home games with their son James, and they never saw a playoff loss.

Henry descended from stout missionary stock, as did Jerry, and did his part to set an example for today’s keiki o ka aina. He paddled well into his elder years for Healani and Outrigger canoe clubs, and ran many marathons—Honolulu, Boston, and others—with zeal and determination, eventually logging his best time of 2:39.

Late in life infirmities restricted his exertions to bicycle circuits (later prohibited) then avid walking tours—you no doubt saw him treading around campus, balance enhanced by his trekking poles or cane. About a year ago I noted in the Punahou Bulletin that Henry & Jerry had joined us at RVM, observing: “Such a lovely way to end our days.” Then he got hit by a car while in a crosswalk on campus and, although the injuries appeared insignificant at first, Henry later passed on with full family in attendance. We never foresaw that his days would end so abruptly, but the memories linger on.

Funny Books and Librarian Jokes

by Anne Newins

September can be one of those months that try your patience.  Is the heat  ever going to end?  When will fire season be over?  Plants are starting to look wilted.  So, this is the time to read a funny book that can make you laugh, or at least smile.

It is hard to choose a joke, much less a book, that everyone will agree is funny.  A search of the library’s online system yielded some good options, but when in doubt, consult your friends.  Below are some favorite authors and their book titles:

David Sedaris:  Holidays on Ice
Fanny Flagg:  The Whole Town’s Talking
Carl Hiaasen:  Squeeze Me
Erma Bombeck:  When You Look Like Your Passport, It’s Time to Go Home
Dave Barry:  I’m Not Taking This Sitting Down 
Garrison Keillor:  Lake Woebegone USA 
John Sanford:  Virgil Flowers series

Several of the books above are available as audio CDs.

On to the jokes!  Residents may remember a request a few months ago for “librarians go into a bar” jokes, which resulted in a whopping two responses.  But they are funny, so keep reading.

Bartender Jan Hines regales Jordan Mo and Bonny Turner

1.  Two librarians walk into a bar.  The third ducks. (Submitted by Bonnie Tollefson
2. A librarian is in a bar chatting with the bartender.  She hears a tiny voice saying, “Your parents raised you well.”  A minute later she hears, “Nice earrings.”  Again, no sign of the speaker.  Then, “The drinks are good.”  In frustration, she asks the bartender, “Who is talking?  I can’t see anyone.”  The bartender replies, “The nuts are complimentary here.” (Submitted by Bob Buddemeier)

Here’s a toast to light hearted reading!

RVM  September – October 2022  ENTERTAINMENT  & EVENTS 

Performances are live in the Manor Auditorium 7-8 p.m 

They will NOT be broadcast on Channel 900  

AUDIENCE INVITED

Thursday         09/08      Michal Palzewicz: cello

Thursday         09/15      Rev. Scott Tyrell: piano

Thursday         09/22      Verna Dodge & Robbie Dacosta: vocal, guitar

Thursday         09/29      Rogue Wind Quintet

Thursday          10/06       Tommy Graven:  Native Indian Flute

Thursday          10/13       COOLEY Show

Thursday          10/20       David Pinsky & Phil Newton:  Blues

Thursday          10/27       SOU Jazz Band

Thursday          11/03       YSSO Chamber Music Singers

by Connie Kent

Wright, Robert. The Evolution of God. Little, Brown, 2009.

Wright’s thesis is that the concept of the Abrahamic God – the God of the God of Jews, the God of Christians and the God of Muslims – has evolved along with civilization. He says, “Gods speak through their followers, so when prevailing interpretations of a god change, the very character of the god changes.” In this well researched tome (over 560 pages, including an extensive bibliography), he looks at scriptures related to the Abrahamic god through the lens of history: when they were written and the circumstances surrounding their creation. God’s character is a product of the way Muslims, Christians and Jews think of Him. To put it succinctly, from the perspective of our times, cultural evolution is what has given us modern corporations, modern government, and modern religion.

In studying Abrahamic scriptures, Wright finds that, contrary to the belief that Moses brought monotheism to the Middle East, ancient Israel (the home of Judaism and Christianity) was in fact polytheistic until after the Babylonian exile (5^th century BCE). He finds evidence in parts of the Bible, for example, “that aren’t much read by modern believers,” of not only polytheism but of belief in the mediation of shamans among early leaders like Israel’s first king, Saul, who consulted a medium to raise the prophet Samuel from the grave for policy input (I Samuel 28:3-15).

Wright examines the multiple gods of hunter-gatherers and later of chiefdoms and ancient city-states, pointing to their beliefs as being displaced not all at once, but over time, off and on, a process more evolutionary than revolutionary. In texts of the three major Abrahamic religions, the belief in multiple gods evolved through the polytheism of ancient Israel, to monolatry and finally to monotheism, featuring at times a belligerent and intolerant god (based on a need to punish infidels); a tolerant god (based on the need for peaceful co-existence, as in the books of Ruth and Jonah); and, eventually, belief in a single omnipotent god.

But the single god wasn’t always a god of love. Wright claims that Jesus didn’t say, “Love your enemies” or extol the Good Samaritan. These misquotes were inserted in scripture decades after the Crucifixion. Muhammad was neither a militant religious zealot nor a benign spiritual leader but a cool political pragmatist.

Wright sees the “growth” of the Abrahamic god as an indicator of the growth of the moral order underlying history: as the scope of a social organization grows from hunter-gatherers to modern civilization, God tends to eventually catch up, despite Christian holy wars and Islamic jihad, drawing a larger expanse of humanity under his protection or at least a larger expanse of humanity under his toleration. But the movement toward moral truth has been globally modest, at best.

Wright argues that “Today globalization has made the planet too small to peacefully accommodate large religions that are at odds. If the Abrahamic god doesn’t foster tolerance, then we’re all in trouble.” Again, late in the book: “Maybe it’s not too much to say that the salvation of the planet – the coherence and robustness of an emerging global social organization – depends on [moral progress] . . . . once everybody is in the same boat, either they learn how to get along, or very bad things happen. . . . If the Abrahamic religions don’t respond to this ultimatum adaptively, if they don’t expand their moral imaginations, there is a chance of chaos on an unprecedented scale.”

Wright’s afterword is titled, “By the Way, What is God?” providing a provocative discussion of our difficulty conceptualizing what is beyond our comprehension. His appendix is titled, “How Human Nature Gave Birth to Religion,” another fascinating discussion. All in all, this book provides interesting food for thought. It’s a heavy book, in its size and in its concepts.

Wikipedia lists Wright as a journalist and author who writes about science, history, politics, and religion. He has written five books. As of 2019, he is a Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, New York.