Usually the first home game of the football season is something to celebrate.

Fans get decked out in home colors and face paint, stadium parking lots transform from oleaginous wastelands into social epicenters, and the air is invigorated with the smell of barbeque and the collective hope that this is the beginning of something good. It’s the kind of mindless fun that’s also an essential human experience.

This was the atmosphere at schools like Virginia Tech and the University of Wisconsin-Madison last weekend. Clips of packed stadiums at both campuses went viral, providing jarring contrasts to the University of Hawaii’s first home game of the season.

While thousands of Hokie fans in Lane Stadium erupted off to never-never land and a sea of Badger fans turned Camp Randall Stadium into a massive House of Pain, the Rainbow Warriors were cheered by artificial crowd noise at Ching Field in front of a few dozen media members…

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Jonathan Swanz’ attraction to glass blowing had little to do with the alluring glow of the furnace.

“There was an attraction to fire, don’t think there wasn’t,” the O‘ahu artist says. “But initially what was so seductive was that I wasn’t working with just my hands. The whole body is engaged.”

When you see Swanz in person, you might mistake him for a different kind of artist. His sinewy musculature and casual facial stubble suggest the aged experience and youthful energy of a lead guitarist in a rock band.

“People ask me if I’m a musician,” he admits, to which he playfully responds that he’s actually a dancer. Indeed, the manipulation of molten glass involves choreographed movements and patterns that resemble dance…

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