Clipping Service - Shore about that?

Never mind the palm trees, sandy beaches and all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. It would be work. At least that's what I kept telling my wife when I found out I'd be going to Hawai'i.

"Oh, come on," she said. "Nobody works in Hawai'i."

After checking with a friend of mine who used to live in Honolulu, it turned out my wife might have been right. People in Hawai'i don't work, he told me, or, if they do, they make sure to leave plenty of time for all the things Hawai'i is famous for, like having fun.

I'd never been to Hawai'i, though I had thought about it. Who hasn't? So when I was asked to moderate a Defense Department conference at a hotel on Waikiki Beach, it was obvious the time had come. The two-day conference would be like hundreds of others that go on all the time in Washing-ton, except this one was on O'ahu, which is about as far outside the Beltway as you can go and still be in the United States.

In getting ready for the trip, I was advised to prepare myself for a completely different reality. "Hawai'i is just the opposite of Washington," said the friend who had lived there. "No one cares what you do or where you come from as long as your heart's in the right place."

In Hawai'i, he explained, "the right place" usually means the beach.