A lot of time has passed since my last post, over a month! I can blame it on a bit of door bloggers’ block as I spent some time in Hawaii last December taking care of family matters but I have to admit that when you break the discipline of doing the blogs on a weekly basis it disrupts a rhythm making it difficult to start blogging again.
So this is what I’ve come up with for this door post. My search for places that I have not visited in years since I left the islands really didn’t include doors but the back story is what this is all about. With camera in hand I did find some beautiful locations that brought back happy memories of how beautiful the islands are; but the kindness of most of the local people who live there was the ingredient that made it special.
As I drove along the rural neighborhoods of the town of Waimanalo in search of a good setting to photograph the Koolau Mountain Range I found a place of hope. Hope for the future generations that come from at-risk situations but with good people trying to help these young people face their challenges and succeed.
This is a section of the Koolau Range that caught my eye and inspired me to find a better spot for a photo.

I found a place to shoot a better photo and asked the people if I could park on their property to get some better shots. Shannon Kala-Wilsey, a Counselor for the YouthBuild Waimanalo, kindly invited me onto their property and told me about what they were doing in their program. She and Gary Silva, Construction Trainer, were teaching the young men in their program how to build small structures (sheds) for a pilot program to house the homeless people in their neighborhood. The young men in this program were composed of high school dropouts, drug users and juvenile offenders.

The young men posed for a photo in front of the shed they just completed but I noticed there was no door on it yet.

The only door that I was able to photograph was their container office structure with Gary Silva at the door.

I gave these young men a thumbs up and encouraged them to not give up; getting the training and opportunity is the hope that can help them succeed and also help to solve some of their homeless problems all cities face.
And, below is the Koolau Range backyard setting for these young men in this program.

On Christmas day, my search took me to the small town of Kahalu’u. Again, I was trying to capture shots of the majestic Koolau Range and got this shot. But there were some people trying to repair a fence near me so I struck up a conversation with Emelita. She apparently owned the land below this mountain range and her teenage children were trying to repair the fence so their cattle would not get out or stolen; yes, there are cattle rustlers in Hawaii. After talking to Emelita, she invited me, a stranger, to come up to her house balcony to try to shoot some photos from there.

This is Emelita, she is trying to farm her property using the more natural and environmental farming techniques (I’m sorry but I forgot the farming terms she explained to me but I recall she was doing some aquaculture farming, too). She was also getting into the Airbnb business so visitors looking for a more rural experience this is a nice location.

This is the balcony overlooking the pasture below and a couple of doors for this blog.



From the balcony, I tried to shoot a photo of the Chinaman’s Hat island but it was too far away and the telephone poles interfered with the composition so I drove closer and got a shot of the island and also a shot of the Kualoa Ranch.

This ends my Thursday Doors post for this week. I must say it was an effort to do but perhaps this will get me to posting on Norm Frampton’s website more regularly again. Norm is the famous creator of Thursday Doors from Canada and I hope you had time to stop to admire his doors on his Thursday Doors website. Read about his featured doors and then push the blue frog doorbell button to enter his portal of doors bloggers from around the world.
Thank you for visiting my post and thanks again to Norm 2.0 for his creation of the Thursday Doors website that gives us bloggers an outlet to let our thoughts be put on paper or in this case, web space. For more posts and photos of doors by others please go to: Thursday Doors.