THE LEFT LANE
Hawai'i Woman

Advertiser Staff and News Services

The premiere issue features Miss Hawai'i 2001 Billie Takaki on life "Beyond the Crown." Also profiled: entrepreneur Mamo Howell, educator Betty White and the late artist Helen Gilbert.

Ward revisited

There are big changes at Victoria Ward Centers if you haven't stopped by lately. Among the new stores: In-Specs at Ward Warehouse, where you can make a pair of standard prescription glasses in 30 minutes. The store stocks more than 250 frames.

The Boardroom is gone and Quiksilver Youth has expanded into the space at the Ward Entertainment Center. They've added new clothing lines and by the end of the month will complete a surf and skate section featuring skate decks, bearings, wheels and other hardware as well as child-sized surfboards.

Cold Stone Creamery — the folks who blend fresh ice cream, yogurt and Italian sorbet with lots of mix-ins — is open at Ward Entertainment Center. And Snak-a-licious, in Ward Warehouse, will carry local munchies such as seeds, candies, cookies and nuts.

PBS will turn its time machine on again next season. The latest installment of what the public broadcaster calls "hands-on history" programming will be "Colonial House," in which families live in a small settlement just as early American colonists did.

As in the "1900 House" and "Frontier House" series, participants will give up their 21st-century lives to live as people did in the past. That means no cars, electricity or plumbing. The families in the settlement will live by laws that they will write, after consulting with experts on colonial history. "The settlers wore bright clothing, they often drank heavily, believed in witches, had pre-marital sex and adulterous affairs, and committed both petty and serious crimes against their neighbors," said executive producer Beth Hoppe. "We believe that the 21st-century participants will have much more in common with their 17th-century counterparts than they imagined."