THE LEFT LANE
Talk about hardships

Advertiser Staff and News Services

Ehrenreich's first-person reporting and self-deprecating humor shine a light on hardships and sacrifices made by the working poor. The New York Times book review praised her for "bringing us the news of America's working poor so clearly and directly, and conveying with it a deep moral outrage and a finely textured sense of lives as lived."

She's in Hawai'i as part of a seminar on growing inequity and poverty in the United States.

Prayer or idolatry?

Forget whether presidential candidates are using religion to get ahead ... what about "American Idol" contestants?

The bulletin board on the idolonfox.com Web site has been seeing flurries of posts asking theological questions about whether it's OK to pray for their favorites.

Plug in "prayer" in the search for postings, and 100 threads pop up, including a group of George Huff fans organizing a moment of group prayer for the avowed evangelist and putting him on pastors' prayer lists.

Others, too, are wearing their religion on their sheer and shimmering sleeves, such as gospel singer Fantasia Barrino. There's Hawai'i's own Jasmine Trias, who attends a Catholic school, Maryknoll. And the fallen finalist Jon Peter Lewis, who attended Brigham Young University-Idaho and was rumored to have stayed with his Latter-day Saints relatives in La'ie when he auditioned in Hawai'i.

Honoring hanai moms

Have a hanai family member you want to honor this Mother's Day?

We mean hanai in the sense of someone who is like a mother to you, even if she doesn't share your bloodline, and even if there's no binding agreement keeping you together.

Send us your essay about why the person deserves the honor, and we'll print a sampling of responses. Please include your neighborhood and daytime phone number. Photos are welcome. Send entries to relationships writer Tanya Bricking Leach at tbrick ing@honoluluadvertiser.com or at The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802.