Overview
Did you ever dream of living in Hawaii? Hives in Paradise is the story of a doctor and his family moving from bustling Hollywood, California to Hilo, Hawaii, as told by his wife, Midge. Midge is a story-teller, first and foremost. Her media are her action-filled life, the people whose lives she has touched, her paintings, and most recently this collection of stories from “Old Hawai‘i” --- the mystic, volcanic and newest “Big Island” of the Hawaiian chain. Midge sharpened her story-telling in the pre-TV ambiance of southern Pennsylvania farm winters. Later it never dawned on this free spirit that University of Pennsylvania co-eds were an embarrassment to that traditional, male-dominated somewhere in the annals of the “Mask & Wig” will be found a record of her directing that proud company, along with her dramatic contributions to the Pennsylvania Players, a whirlwind of campus activities and direction of the Women’s Student Union. Midge’s stories moved west through Texas and California during years in the United States Air Force, and then on to the beaches of California and the hills of Hollywood. A glamorous “Fashionette” of Los Angeles, she continued telling her stories around California campfires. Admirers’ of Midge’s paintings, her florals and her abstracts, will look for her unique blending of these views of life in her stories of modern day “Old Hawai‘i” --- a changing and evolving Kaleidoscope of peoples --- an unresolved collision of life styles and values swirling in late 20th Century Polynesia. Hawai‘i’s treasure is its aloha, that evanescent catalyst of human relationships which is the core of “Hives in Paradise.” Midge didn’t set about building her collection of stories around this idea --- she simply wouldn’t be able to tell it any other way . . . . .