Read.Eat.Listen: Island State

Read:  Though I was hard pressed to wander to far from the beach on my visit, there's a more to Hawaii beyond the sand and teaming tourists. Written in 1866 (!), nearly a century before it became a state,  "Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands: Hawaii in the 1860s by Mark Twain captures Hawaii when it was still a kingdom yet in the process of getting colonized ...and all the complexity inherent in a collisions of cultures the state still exhibits: "Nearby is an interesting ruin--the meager remains of an ancient temple--a place where human sacrifices were offered up in those old bygone days...long, long before the missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and make [the natives] permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there; and showed the poor native how dreary a place perdition is and what unnecessarily liberal facilities there are for going to it; showed him how, in his ignorance, he had gone and fooled away all his kinsfolk to no purpose; showed him what rapture it is to work all day long for fifty cents to buy food for next day with, as compared with fishing for a pastime and lolling in the shade through eternal summer, and eating of the bounty that nobody labored to provide but Nature. How sad it is to think of the multitudes who have gone to their gaves in this beautiful island and never knew there was a hell." — Mark Twain
Eat: Acai berries are native to Trinidad,  and Acai bowls originated in Brazil, but given how omnipresent the latter are on Hawaii breakfast menus, you'd think the antioxidant packed berry was an Aloha original. I'm not complained about having eaten so many acai bowls — which combines the best aspects of superfruit smoothie, fresh fruit and crunch —  last week. I became partial to those layered with raw granola and topped with local honey. Ascension Kitchen offers a good guide to composing one at home.

Listen: I've been playing Jenny's Lewis's The Voyager (produced by Ryan Adams) nonstop. This song encapsulated her fresh, rocking sound and humor ...as well as what it's like travel in popular vacation destinations: