To find out what's happening on Maui join e-mail list here or
 e-mail haikuhelen@hawaiiantel.net

Judging from the releases that had been coming to the paper, I was expecting a sophisticated computer setup but the only clue to Helen's work was an unobtrusive lap- top on a table next to the couch. A Balinese angel hung from the ceiling and colored mini-lights strung a cheerful glow in the corner of the small room.

"My whole life has been go with the flow," she said when asked how she got into computers.

  "I love science."  Her fascination with computers began when her brother-in-law bought one for her niece and nephew and she began working on it.  "I fell in love with it," she said. "So I decided I should become a programmer and, at 40, I went back to school."   But Helen is not only interested in science; she's also an Psychic-palm reader.  "I think the two should go together," she went on. "I love to understand things."

 After finishing her two-year course to become a programmer, Helen, who was living in New York City at the time, saw a newspaper ad for a creative person needed at the early computer game giant Atari, which was opening a laboratory in the city. With no experience, but armed with enthusiasm and a Rastafarian marionette she had created, she went to the interview. The interview was conducted with the marionette on the desk. It worked.

 "He hired me," she laughed. "I wasn't one of those square programmers."
 Helen found herself in the midst of a group of brilliant young people, like the one who had developed his own TV camera at the age of 7, programming games. The work was very intense but "it was totally great," she said, to be surrounded by all these "22-year-old PhDs from Harvard."

Before the company was taken over by even bigger giants, Atari provided perks like taking the staff to Disney World, where youth won out and Helen joined in food fights with her colleagues who weren't too far away from the frat house. She also remembers endless games of Trivial Pursuit along with a lot of long hours and hard work.

After that Helen spent some time helping to set up computers in Nicaragua. She worked with the computers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx but ended up moving to Maui "because I felt it would be a good place to raise my son."

Many also believe Maui is a potent place for spiritual and physical healing and, once here, Helen began working with a woman named Zara, whom she described as an "incredible networker for healthy Hawaii, promoting Maui as a place for healing."  When Zara left the island, she gave Helen her e-mail list of some 300* people, all interested in events, workshops and other experiences relating to personal growth. ( *now over 3000)

 "I said 'I don't know what I'm going to do with this, but I'm gonna see what it evolves to be," Helen said.  What it evolved into was a business combining e-mail promotion and computer consulting. 
"Some people don't get newspapers or watch TV," she continued. "I saw this as a way to make contact, do some good, get a message and pass it on. That's my role in life." 

 With a photo, a graphic and some information, Helen creates an attractive package to send out to her e-mail base which includes most island publications. She tries to design the page in such a way that it can be printed and used for a poster as well.
 "I want it to be affordable," she said, so charges a flat fee and often gives advice on how to present the information. "I want to be a service to the community."

 So far, Helen's business is young and personal but she is finding a niche in Maui's ever-expanding "new age" and personal enlightenment market.
 "Maui is one of the few places in the U.S. where there is such a great opportunity for small, individual entrepreneurship," she said. "People here can make a living without being dependent on large corporations. My e-mail blasts help support this."

 While e-mail is the technological end of communication, palmistry is the personal end. She reads regularly at  her home and in cafes around the Island and also at parties at various hotels. She came to the practice through her mother, Gertrude Wellikof, who also influenced her daughter's feminism. 

 Helen was often with her mother as she read palms. "I watched her hold their hands. There was such an aura of intimacy and warmth." The left is the "soul" hand and the right the "actual" hand, the conscious and unconscious, Helen explained. "I can see if a person is on track, going the right way. I can inspire them to not be afraid to move on into other areas." All that business about life lines and gloom and doom isn't true, she said. "I feel a very empathetic connection to the soul," she said. "A reading is always inspirational." There is a psychic aspect to each reading. Helen also does Telephone consultations, You can reach her at (808)-573-6343

 Helen sees no dichotomy between science and spirit, mathematics and intuition, laptops and palmistry. They're all ways of understanding and "getting a message and passing it on."  According to Helen, this connection can be read by looking at palms. "Artists and scientists have different kinds of hands."