Searching for lost history : the forgotten Mango Tree Camp

From Hawaii State Archives

When I set out to write my current project about a young boy living in a steampunk alternate history of Maui in the 1930's, my initial question had been, "What if the Hawaiian Monarchy had never fallen?" This was the question that drove my setting, and fueled my 9-year-old son's imaginative character building as he helped me cultivate the story.

I wanted a mango tree to be the anchor to the theme of the novel, a story about perseverance, self-assurance, and growth. And it was modeled after a tree that lived in my grandmother's back yard, next to a house built by my great grand-uncles in an old plantation town. And so, a mango tree was born in the pages of my outlined draft and it's branches encompassed the characters.

Communication and the fantasy world of video games

Screenshot from Final Fantasy Online

Last September I wrote about a conversation I had with my son about violence, video games, and choices. A few days ago, I came across a story from CNET about South Korea's debate on a Game Addiction law. Intrigued, I looked more into it.

Since its leap into the wired world, Korea has struggled with online gaming and its effect on society. In 2002, before the term "internet addiction" became a global problem, Korea opened the first internet addiction treatment center. It was a bad year for the country in 2005 when ten people died from video-game related causes. By 2010, nearly 10% of Korea's teenagers were considered addicted to gaming. To combat the growing problem of teenagers spending too much time playing video games, an internet gaming curfew was proposed that would make 19 games unavailable to children between midnight and 8am. It became law in 2011 but is still being challenged in court.