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One of the original Carnegie Libraries, the Hawaii State Library was built about a hundred years ago, and in downtown Honolulu its gracious proportions complement the cheerfully vulgar Iolani Palace next door. There's no need to romanticize the time when kings and queens ruled Hawaii and Andrew Carnegie's steelworkers paid with their lives for Andrew Carnegie's benefactions, but as of 2010 the State Library is a good.
However, the economics of the America outside the library's door still look pre-2010. The State Library's large lawn is now one of Honolulu's many Hoovervilles, and some of the homeless men who live there (they are mostly men) climb the library's steps and walk in the door of the lobby. Here, perhaps, was one.
The music was Mozart's clarinet quintet. It was singing to the man in the audience, and he was conducting. Under the flags of Hawaii and the United States, a part of him had reached home.
The concert ended and I returned to my own home. As I passed, under brilliant sunlight, through one of Honolulu's prosperous neighborhoods, my eye was caught by a flash of moving color. It was a large American flag, waving in the tradewind from a white van parked in a driveway.
The van was covered with writing. I didn't stop to read it all, but I could take in two of the largest words:
NO MOSQUE.
Behind closed doors with Mozart, appearances were deceiving. Actually, in America at large it is 2010, and the era of the Carnegie Libraries will soon be over.
I hope the old white man in his dashiki doesn't suffer much.
