Aloha no. Just a bit about me: I am a self-diagnosed islomane, but love rainforest and desert as much as reef and sea. I also mean to say that I am more than just a geographically-inclined islomane, for I have so earnestly tried earlier in life to disprove, in every sense, John Donne's axiom that "No man is an island unto himself". Having failed at that, I am very much a man among many, interconnected and interdependent. Today, I embrace that reality. As a committed student of both anthropology and Buddhism, I am much keener on reading the entire passage from John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions":

"Perchance he for whom this Bell tolls, may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; And perchance I may think my self so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The Church is Catholic, universal, so are all her Actions; All that she does, belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me ... who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No Man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a Promontory were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends, or of thine own were; Any Man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

Let that stand as my introduction for the moment.

Shaun J. Campbell

Honolulu, Hawai‘i