Christmas Break

This will probably be shorter than my unannounced breaks, but this time I won’t feel guilty about not posting. I’ll be spending the holidays with my family on the mainland and won’t be near a computer, hopefully. So Happy Holidays wherever you are and enjoy the following pictures of light displays on Kauai from this year and last.

First, some government buildings get lights, including the County Building that I never manage to photograph very well.

Inside the county building, there are Hawaiian themed Christmas displays crafted by a local woman.

Then, there’s a light parade in Lihue early in December, which I like to call “generators on parade,” but it is really fun for the children.

Finally, some people set up very nice lights on their house, from understated to over-the-top.

ZIP Codes

More administrative trivia that can prove useful: Kauai ZIP (postal) codes. As far as I can tell, they are assigned alphabetically throughout the state of Hawaii.

* Kaumakani, Makaweli, and Kealia are all tiny post offices with PO boxes and no window services that I know of. They serve the plantation camp housing that remains nearby.The first two are in between Hanapepe and Waimea on the West side; Kealia is just north of Kapaa. I may be mistaken, but I believe the Kaumakani PO boxes also serve the inhabitants of Ni’ihau, the private island with around 300 Hawaiian-descended inhabitants..

+ Princeville is also a private community, and I’m not sure they have mail delivery, so when it grew large enough the postal service added a substation with PO boxes only, hence the non-alphabetical numbering.

While we’re on the topic, congratulations go to Mark Gowan, Lihu’e and de facto Kaua’i postmaster, who was named Hawaii’s postmaster of the year. We’ve never experienced any problems sending or receiving mail on our island, and post office service has always been top-notch with a smile, so he deserves it, along with credit to all the postal employees. Mahalo (thank you).

Telephone Prefixes

A telephone prefix in the US is the first three digits of a local telephone number, and it generally corresponds to a locality. On Kauai, each prefix is about the size of a town, so knowing the prefix can tell you where you are calling. This information is often buried in the phone book, and access is limited on the web, so I thought I’d publish it here for reference. I have also added the cell phone networks that I know of and sorted the table by prefix to make it easier to scan.

Of course, now that numbers can be kept when changing between landline and cell phone operators, these geographical assignments will slowly become inaccurate.

Update: The August 19, 2007, edition of the Garden Island newspaper had a guest article that gives some history of the the telephone system on Kauai, back when they had operators connecting manual switches. In the 1950’s, a call from Koloa to Lihue (15 miles, 24 km) was a 15-cent long distance charge, calls to Oahu used one of the first AM radio links in the world, and communication with Niihau was by carrier pigeon. I found a 1963 article that says the pigeons were supplemented, but not replaced, with a radio-telephone, but I suppose they’re gone today. That article also says that Niihau was the only precinct to vote against statehood in 1959, a story I wish I had found in time for Statehood day, a state holiday last Friday.