Adventures in Words

"Below ‘Ohe‘o Bridge" by Kit Gentry Kit Gentry is an artist who arrived on Maui in 1993, two years after we got here. He painted on the island for 16 years before moving to the Smoky Mountains. Kit often works in a photorealistic style, with spectacular results. His gauzy Wailea night sky over the Celestial Cinema screen was the signature image for Maui Film Festival in its early years. His panorama of the West Maui Mountains will take your breath away. We bought one of Kit's works, a preliminary study for a painting of Hana's ‘Ohe‘o Gulch. The spot is often misidentified in tourist brochures as the Seven Sacred Pools. When it rains, the stream running through the gulch may form more than seven. It is quite beautiful, especially from the bridge above the stream or from the path along its side. But it was also the scene of tragedy, when a rock fell from above, killing a little Hana girl on the path, who had been enjoying a picnic with her family. "Nature is beauti

Ciilian Murphy in “Oppenheimer.”  Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures via IMDB.com. Christopher Nolan's “Oppenheimer” is a tale of triumph and apocalypse, as haunting and haunted as the man whose story it tells. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the brilliant theoretical physicist chosen to lead America's World War II effort to build an atomic bomb before Adolph Hitler did. For many filmgoers, writer-director Nolan's three-hour thriller provides the introduction to this world-changing figure. He was dubbed “the father of the A-bomb” by a grateful, war-weary America, but a few years later fell victim to McCarthy Era character assassination for his left-leaning political views. For me, the movie is not only sweeping and magnificent – it's personal. Oppenheimer was a name I knew well, ever since boyhood. My father, Dr. Alfred Chatenever, was one of the scientists who worked on the top-secret program to develop the bomb, dubbed The Manhattan Project. The project eventually stretch