Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai, SS.CC. or Saint Damien De Veuster, born Jozef De Veuster, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a missionary religious institute. He was recognized for his ministry, which he led from 1873 until his death in 1889, in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi to people with leprosy, who lived in government-mandated medical quarantine in a settlement on the Kalaupapa Peninsula of Molokaʻi.
Malibu ( MAL-ih-boo, is a beach city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, about 30 miles west of Downtown Los Angeles. It is known for its Mediterranean climate, its strip of beaches stretching 21 miles along the Pacific Ocean coast, and for its longtime status as the home of numerous affluent Hollywood celebrities and executives. Although a high proportion of its residents are entertainment industry figures with million-dollar mansions, Malibu also features several middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods. The Pacific Coast Highway traverses the city and has led most residents to settle anywhere from half a mile to within a few hundred yards of it, with some residents living up to one mile away from the beach in areas featuring narrow canyons. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 10,654.
The Colorado River is one of the principal rivers in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The 1,450-mile-long (2,330 km) river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. states and two Mexican states. The name Colorado derives from the Spanish language for "colored reddish" due to its heavy silt load. Starting in the central Rocky Mountains of Colorado, it flows generally southwest across the Colorado Plateau and through the Grand Canyon before reaching Lake Mead on the Arizona–Nevada border, where it turns south toward the international border. After entering Mexico, the Colorado approaches the mostly dry Colorado River Delta at the tip of the Gulf of California between Baja California and Sonora.
Molokai is the fifth most populated of the eight major islands that make up the Hawaiian Islands archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is 38 by 10 miles at its greatest length and width with a usable land area of 260 sq mi (673.40 km2), making it the fifth-largest in size of the main Hawaiian Islands and the 27th largest island in the United States. It lies southeast of Oʻahu across the 25 mi (40 km) wide Kaʻiwi Channel and north of Lānaʻi, separated from it by the Kalohi Channel.
The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who became the first president as well as the longest-serving president, at approximately 20 years in this leadership position. The Sierra Club operates only in the United States and holds the legal status of 501(c)(4) nonprofit social welfare organization. Sierra Club Canada is a separate entity.
William Tanner Vollmann is an American novelist, journalist, war correspondent, short story writer, and essayist. He won the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction with the novel Europe Central.
Barbara Eden is an American actress best known for her starring role as Jeannie in the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970). Her other notable roles include Roslyn Pierce opposite Elvis Presley in Flaming Star (1960), Lieutenant jg Cathy Connors in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), and a single widowed mother, Stella Johnson, in the film Harper Valley PTA (1978). Due to the success of the film, Eden reprised her role as Stella Johnson in a two-season television series, Harper Valley PTA.
KCRW is a National Public Radio member station broadcasting from the campus of Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, where the station is licensed. KCRW airs original news and music programming in addition to programming from NPR and other affiliates. A network of repeaters and broadcast translators, as well as internet radio, allows the station to serve the Greater Los Angeles area and other communities in Southern California. The station's main transmitter is located in Los Angeles's Laurel Canyon district and broadcasts in the HD radio format. It is one of two full NPR members in the Los Angeles area; Pasadena-based KPCC is the other.
Jorie Graham is an American poet. The Poetry Foundation called Graham "one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation." She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1996) for The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994 and was chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1997 to 2003. She won the 2013 International Nonino Prize in Italy.
Katie Lee was an American folk singer, actress, writer, photographer and environmental activist.
Gavan Daws is an American writer, historian and filmmaker residing in Honolulu, Hawaii. He writes about Hawaii, the Pacific, and Asia. He is a retired professor of history at University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Kirby Michael Wright is an American writer best known for his 2005 coming-of-age island novel Punahou Blues and the epic novel Moloka'i Nui Ahina, which is based on the life and times of Wright's paniolo grandmother. Both novels deal with the racial tensions between haoles (whites) and the indigenous Hawaiians, and illustrate the challenge for characters who, as the product of mixed-race marriages, must try to bridge the two cultures and overcome prejudice from both camps. Wright has ventured into the genre of creative nonfiction in 2019 with The Queen of Moloka'i, which explores the teenage years of his part-Hawaiian grandmother and documents the Wright family saga in the islands.
Jonathan Wilson is a producer, songwriter and musician based in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Mark Klett is an American photographer. His work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Rebecca Solnit is an American writer. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art.
The Colorado River Storage Project is a United States Bureau of Reclamation project designed to oversee the development of the upper basin of the Colorado River. The project provides hydroelectric power, flood control and water storage for participating states along the upper portion of the Colorado River and its major tributaries.
Nathaniel Austin Brown is an American singer-songwriter and record producer.
Levi Haʻalelea was a high chief and member of the Hawaiian nobility during the Hawaiian Kingdom. He initially served as a kahu and konohiki for High Chief Leleiohoku, one of the grandsons of Kamehameha I. He later became aa Hulumanu in the royal court of Kamehameha III and eventually served as Chamberlain for the court. He married Kekauʻōnohi, the granddaughter of Kamehameha I. These connections to the ruling dynasty gave him access to vast landholding during the land division of the Great Mahele in 1848. Active in politics, he was a member of the Privy Council of State and served in the House of Nobles. In later life, he helped the early Mormon missionaries to the islands by leasing them land and eventually converted to that faith.
Showcase Mall is a shopping center on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. It is known for its landmark facade, featuring a 100-foot (30 m) tall Coca-Cola bottle and a colossal bag of M&M's.
R. Rex Parris is an American attorney and the current mayor of Lancaster, California.
