Can anyone think of a caption to this cartoon?

The last movie theater in Kailua closed on Sunday, tired and worn, unable to compete with the fancy megaplexes and their plush stadium seating.

Keolu Center Cinemas in Enchanted Lake was once the shiny new theater in a town that used to have lots of them: Kailua Drive-In, Aikahi Theaters, Kailua Theaters, Enchanted Lake Cinemas.

But on Sunday afternoon, the walls were stripped of their posters, the cardboard movie displays and video games gone, the concession stand — a better source of income than the $1 ticket price — nearly out of inventory. The crowd that nearly filled the theater to see the 4 p.m. showing of “Fool’s Gold” — well worth $1 — left quietly as a young theater worker, now out of a job, watched them go from a seat in the lobby.

For those who love both Kailua and going to a real movie theater, it was a little sad to see. For nearly a generation, it was possible to see a movie without leaving Kailua (and even then, you could glimpse of the latest releases up on the giant Kailua Drive-In screen, glowing in the dark as you drove past on Kalanianaole Highway).

Now Kailuans must drive as far away as Kaneohe (with its big-city ways) or heaven forbid, over the Pali, just to see a movie as it should be seen, on a big screen in a dark theater, with expensive popcorn and too many previews.

As Kailua continues to develop, with a new Whole Foods going up next to the new Pier One, which sits in front of the new Long’s and its new parking structure, the question will surely arise again: Wouldn’t a new theater — a fancy megaplex, with plush stadium seating — fit right in?

For those who want to keep Kailua a quiet residential community — without a lot of outsiders driving in to see a movie — the answer isn’t necessarily yes.

I originally drew this as an illustration for a wine column we used to run.  The wine expert usually responded favorably to my work. But no response this time. Then the bartender at Roy’s who knew the wine expert told me  he was very unhappy with my illustration. Unhappy? Why? I thought it perfectly illustrated the joy  of wine making. That wasn’t the problem. It seems the lady I drew tripping through the vineyard looked exactly like his wife. Actually too much like her. What was I trying to say? Sure, my editorial cartoons always have a message. But none was intended here but an anonymous lady celebrating the joie de vivre in a Napa Valley winery. Besides, I never met his wife. He was not convinced and never wrote another column for us. A regular customer at Roy’s asked if I’d make a copy of the picture for him to hang in his den. I was flattered that he liked it. He  said it reminded him of his ex-wife.

My mother used to say that Honolulu is a city that behaves like a small town. Mainly she was talking about the oddity of a city pushing the million mark in population where people still ask each other where they went to high school and whether they were related to Auntie So-and-So.

But I think it also applies to the issue of rail transit. A lot of people who oppose the project have a visceral reaction to the idea, partly based on concern about how unattractive the thing might look.

Beyond the aesthetics, though, there’s the sheer aversion to commuter trains as one of the trappings of full-scale urban life, that constructing such a thing means Honolulu will have crossed some kind of big-city threshhold.

We couldn’t be at that point, could we?

At the press conference called to launch the Stop Rail Now petition drive, I ran into a friend with whom I usually agree on environmental issues. She is dead-set against the rail and believes the city hasn’t done enough to market and improve the transit system it now has: the bus.

I do wish this city could get by with improving its buses. But I see Honolulu pressing ahead with big subdivisions out where sugar once grew, the growth of the “second city,” Kapolei. So many more people trying to get from Point A to Point B, many of them people who need the maximum in speed and convenience to coax them out of their cars.

I just don’t believe the bus system can cope with all that.

This city is changing, radically and forever. That can be sad.

But if my mom were still here, she’d respond with one of her other expressions: “Never go back. Always go forward.”

So I’m trying to channel her sunny outlook, and hope that Honolulu can still hold on to a little of its old charm, somehow.

— Vicki Viotti 

As Earth Day comes to a close for another year, it’s clear that, like climate change, public opinion is turning inexorably, and in a singular direction.

No one’s asking if Honolulu will expand its recycling efforts, but when and where. Not if Hawaii will aggressively adopt non-oil forms of energy — solar, wind, geothermal, OTEC, wave — but when and how. Not if Oahu will adopt an alternative to commuting by cars on a freeway, but what that alternative will be. Not if climate change is an important issue, but whether it’s the most important one we’ve ever faced.

Reaching consensus on our common environmental problems is a battle that’s been won. The hard part is still to come: making the monumental changes necessary to achieve victory.  Comparatively speaking, building a train from Kapolei to Ala Moana won’t be that hard. Imagine a Hawai’i in which every home generates more renewable energy than it needs. Or cars that generate zero emissions. Or consumers who generate zero waste. Imagine a life without gasoline.

All these things may have sounded fanciful not too long ago, but not anymore. Because the last one, the end of gasoline: That’s pretty much a sure thing.