Kahala to Valhalla

Kevin was home today and trying to write a narrative poem assignment while I was trying to work. The whining, the gnashing of teeth! I could not have been in a more fiery hell.

So I wrote a limerick to break the tension:

There once was a man from Kahala
Who dreamed of attaining Valhalla
He strapped on some wings
A horned helmet and things
But bought the cheap bungee - one dollar.

He was all suited up to go flying
On gossamer wings he was trying
to shoot himself POOF!
off a neighborhood roof
Now his aunties in mumus are crying.

Have to admit the imagery was lifted from a recent episode of CSI:New York. It featured snapped necks and bungee sabotage; an episode I was watching when Kevin's voice drifted in from the bedroom, "Mom, why do you watch that stuff??"...

Indeed...but hey, I got a cheesy limerick out of it anyway. :)

Hale'iwa...Remember When...

According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Hale'iwa is in for some major development that will forever change the face of at least one landmark, the quaint old Matsumoto Grocery, known for its long lines for yummy shave ice.

Kamehameha Schools, a huge trust that owns large parcels of property at North Shore is set to implement a plan that has been in the works for some time.

Here are the main points of the plan over the next five years:

• Up to 470 residential units on three sites in and near Haleiwa.
• A plantation-style Town Center for new businesses.
• Matsumoto store site redevelopment, estimated to cost between $3 million and $6 million. (Starting in 2009 with estimated completion by 2011.)
• Alternative Energy Developments, including 40- to 70-megawatt wind system, as well as solar and hydropower, feasibility tests estimated at more than $250,000. (Issued request for proposals for wind system on Tuesday.)
• Improvements to Waialua's 100-year-old agricultural water system to provide a more reliable water supply for diversified agricultural crops, budgeted at $4.5 million. (Started six months ago.)
• Securing long-term agricultural leases with existing and new tenants.
• Loko Ea Fishpond Restoration of roughly five to seven acres, estimated to cost more than $300,000.
• Creation of an Archaeology Field School in partnership with the University of Hawaii. Longer-term projects include restoring Ukoa Marsh for eventual educational use.
• Creation of a Sustainability Institute to innovate, educate and research and demonstrate sustainability on Kamehameha-owned lands statewide.

To the trust's credit, it consulted with the North Shore business community for two years in order to develop a plan that would solve the problems wrought by increasing - to put it mildly - tourism upon an infrastructure that is a century old. The plan is supposed to revitalize the community while retaining its rural character.

Personally, I'm torn. I love the old buildings and the funky little shops that will now undoubtedly become newer bigger buildings with more up-scale touristy shops. However, having lived in Sonoma for twenty-four years and seen that go through a long-term redevelopment, I'm hoping the same will happen here. Sonoma went from the very same type of small town with funky little old-time shops to a well-planned revitalization of the Plaza into a true community gathering place that completely retained and celebrated the character of the town and the historic buildings while making the most of tourist dollars, so I know it can be done well.

Also, the issues of the century old infrastructure and affordable housing are extremely important and need to be addressed. And it looks to me like the bulk of the plan is taking care of these issues in order to sustain the surrounding farming community up there.

The loss of Matsumoto's original building is sad, and I very much understand keeping country country, but from my perspective, being a recent arrival here, Hale'iwa is already no longer country. Hale'iwa is a quaint charming little tourist mecca; an overrun and horribly crowded tourist mecca in major need of some well-planned solutions to inevitable growth.

One question...will they change Aoki's Shave Ice down the street, too? That's my favorite...it's the ice cream. :)

Please keep Hale'iwa in your thoughts for successful growth with community and charm intact, particularly let's hope they have a grip on fostering local community and preserving the historic character and integrity of the old architecture.

Aloha pumehana...

Jerry's Society

Here's a very cool clip from Jerry Hannan, an SF Bay Area songwriter who has been one of my favorites for years. His amazing song 'Society' is included on the soundtrack to 'Into the Wild'.

In his own words...

"Just made this video of a live recording out at Ft. Cronkite at 5am on March 24. I was alone - in my van - with 3 Cybershot cameras and my recording gear and a generator to make it work. My friend Dave Shendel put the clips on his computer and mixed it..."

Patience

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

A month or two after we arrived here on O'ahu, I brought in a bare stalk of plumeria and put it in a glass of water. I changed the water every day or two and hoped. After several weeks, it started to weep at the top and grow a lighter green with just a hint that something might be stirring inside.

So I put it in a great big container full of rich fertile potting soil on the lanai by the front door; a bare green stalk in a big white pot. I watered it every day or two and hoped...for at least four months.

This morning I went to water it, and my face lit up and my heart lifted. A gift of beautiful precious fragrant yellow blossoms; two! with a whole cluster of buds yet to bloom.

Patience disguises itself as passivity, but there's nothing passive about it, is there? Quiet, steadfast, nurturing, attentive, committed, unfaltering, grateful...wholly active; just at a different pace.

Update 4/15 - Mulling this over some more, seems to me patience is sustained incremental acts of faith over time...er...sumpn' like that...maybe not faith, maybe hope, maybe...oh, I dunno...flowers sure are purty, though...

WoW! -Synchronistic Coinkydink #43

When I was preggers with Kevin back in 1996, I had a couple of extremely vivid dreams that I will never forget. Wonderfully weird; an example of why I've never done any drugs...I simply don't need them...heh.

As I'm certain I've shared with some of you, in one of them, I was driving along at night in my ocean colored Honda (I loved that car) wearing a blue dress and suddenly the whole car and the road flipped upside down; I was flipped under the surface of the earth, subterranean. And there I was in a vast watery blue forest of giant mushrooms with purple spots and lighted undersides of the caps, with an elusive gnomish figure here and there, although I felt these more than saw them. It was beautiful and dreamy, with rivers and everything in lovely deep shades of blue into greens and purples; an incredibly vivid image that I've carried in my mind ever since.

This morning I saw that exact image on my son's computer screen, in a land called Zangarmarsh that's part of the online game World of Warcraft. A land where you can pick up shroom things called "Fertile Spores". I swear on my precious tub of M&M-ers, this is *exactly* what was in my dream back in 1996.

Here it is...

Weirdest part...Dutch word for preggers is zwanger, so now I call it Zwangermarsh.

Either I've come full circle with Kevin in some way and we're meant to be exactly where and who we are right now, OR my dream was some sort of archetypal imagery that's entirely unorginal and downright prosaic.

I like the first explanation, even if the second is probably more accurate. ..

Camp Mokule'ia and Ka'ena Point

Last weekend was spent blissfully disconnected from all electronic devices up at Camp Mokule'ia, a retreat center and campground on O'ahu's North Shore. We went with a group from the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, where Kevin and I have been participating in some of the various youth groups and services. As most of you know, I grew up Unitarian Universalist, so it's nice to have a place to go that feels familiar. With UUs, that invariably means an incredibly diverse group of intelligent interesting people, where you never know what you're going to get...it's like the physical manifestation of evolving non sequitor.

Anywhooooo, it was a wonderfully relaxing little getaway. After arriving Friday night in an absolutely foul mood - I was beyond crabby, just ask Kevin - we awoke Saturday morning to the sound of the ocean and the sunrise from our window right over the beach. Yes, we got a room with a view, and I'm SO glad we did. It was blustery and quite chilly at night. A tent would've been less than relaxing, and I very much needed to wind down.

Without further ado, here are some photos (click for larger view), with a little...ahem...okay lots of...commentary:

Out and around the grounds...

The light playing on the beach to the west...

I love this spot...

Yes, the water is really that color...

Aaaand if you needed a change from the beach, you could go to the other side of the camp and watch people fall from the sky. The camp is right across from Dillingham Airfield, where you can skydive and take glider rides. It really was a bit disconcerting to see people drop out of the sky one after another with no planes in sight, but very cool nonetheless.

Okay, on we go to other beings dropping out of the sky. Saturday, we decided to hike out to Ka'ena Point, which juts out proudly at the very northwest tip of O'ahu, and is the only place left on the island that is accessible only by foot, no paved roads. The point is blocked completely to vehicles - and dogs - not only to preserve one last remote outpost of unspoiled ecosystem, but because it is a wildlife sanctuary, particularly, although not exclusively, for the Laysan albatross, with a nesting ground here.

We were walking along watching these magnificent birds soaring above in the distance. They have a wingspan of 11-13 feet and fly in incredibly beautiful arcs of grace. They looked for all the world like they were soaring for fun.

So I'm walking along with a friend just in front, Kevin has run along way ahead, and all of a sudden the friend turns to say something and her eyes bulged big and she pointed upward and told me there was a bird right over my head. I turned as it swooped around and hovered above us maybe ten feet from my face. The bird and I looked each other dead in the eye, then it tilted vertically with its enormous wings and whooshed off into the blue. Amazing encounter I will never forget.

Of course, I fumbled for the camera, but this is the best I got, and let me tell you, it does NOT accurately convey this creature's size.

Once out at the point, I trudged down the last dune and was confronted with this:

Those white rocks against the blues of water and sky, and the clarity of the water in the tidepools was breathtaking. Again, my photos don't do it justice:

Back up on the dunes, the view is gorgeous as well. You can see they've marked trails out here to keep people away from the nests...

Back at camp, we ate BBQ, Kevin played with the other kids and enjoyed a campfire service out in the woods put on by the youth group. It was very dark out there and at one point I had the good fortune to look up. Astonishment. The stars were brighter than I've ever seen. I'm afraid I quite lost the thread of the service while staring at the stars.

Sunday morning sunrise, wandering around in my jammies snapping away:

These last two were taken after the wind blew so much salty moisture onto my lens that they came out softened, as if I'd used a filter:

We left all relaxed and calm and full of energy...we'll see how long that lasts...heh.

Okay, that's it...phew, this is long!

Hope you enjoy this little glimpse of northwest O'ahu...

Aloha pumehana

Twist'Ems

Just back from a wonderful weekend up at North Shore peacefully disconnected from all electronica. More on that later once I've gone through the hundreds of photos I took to find one or two that came out okay...heh.

As a tide-over, here's an interesting word-play mull-over. How many words do you use on a regular basis that are actually twistings or corruptions of the real word? For instance, jammies for pajamas, lappy for laptop, etc. A friend sent me a link to another blog post that mentioned this phenomenon, and my speech is full of these.

Some have been pilfered and assimilated from others including my family and friends, and some of them are used by lots of people, but here's a partial list of the ones I use on a regular basis:

anywho (anyhow)
banky (blanket)
tanky (thank you)
y'all (you all)
sammitch (sandwich, sometimes sammy)
cheesy (piece of cheese)
lipstickle (lipstick)
glossy (lipgloss)
lithp (lisp)
pitty (pretty)
putty (pussycat)
GAW-geous (gorgeous)
prolly (probably)
balls of meat (meatballs)
turkey balls (turkey meatballs)
toasties (toast)
sketty (spaghetti)
turkey-lurkey (turkey)
taters (potatos)
beaners (beans)
chi-HOO-a-HOO-a (chihuahua)
Shitz-poo (Shih-Tzu)
hatemail (html)
M&M-ers (M&Ms)
coinkydink (coincidence)
cow-orker (co-worker)
eye-cream (ice cream)
nnnNAH-ledge (knowledge)
gar-BAHj (garbage)
boid (bird)
noid (nerd)
sistern (sister, blend of cistern and sister)
seizures (see ya)
SO-dee (soda-pop)
flied lice (fried rice)
slippies (slippers)
shouw-shouw-whoosh-whoosh (shower)
jammies (pajamas)
Shee-NAY-zuh (Elongation of Dutch pronunciation of Chinese, for Chinese food)
piddow (pillow)
go seepy nigh-nighs (sleepy night-nights, means "go to sleep" from toddler-talk)
go seepies
poon (spoon)
pitchers (pictures)
tootsies (toes)
tiss-you (tissue)
iss-you (issue)
GEE-tar (guitar)
breaky-poo (break, as in take a little breaky-poo)
drinky-poo (a drink)
Dovey bars (Dove Ice Cream bars on a stick)
fambly (family)
libarry (library)
critter (creature)
aminal (animal)
maroon (moron, What a maroon!, this from Bugs Bunny)
Smurphy's (Murphy's Pub in Sonoma)
fleecy (fleece jacket)
mental (WoW, elemental)
globe thingy (WoW, any globe of teleportation)
cling-whip (WoW, wing clip)
stone home (WoW, use hearthstone)
sacred wipes (baby wipes)
whinage (whining)
spewage (vomit, literal or figurative)
spritz (spray air freshener)
manly soap (men's shower gel)
chingers (fingers)
okie-dokie artychokies (Okay, and variations thereon)

...it's endless, really...

Just curious...do y'all have any clever and/or humorous ones to add??

Obama Baby!

Um...on a lighter note...lol...not sure why or what this says about my frame of mind lately, but this made me laugh so hard I almost peeed my pants. 0o




Thanks for the chuckles, Kelley!

World Autism Day

Today is World Autism Day.

If you've been paying any attention to the news lately, you'll know that autism is being diagnosed in the world's children at an alarmingly increasing rate since the 1980s. This is disturbing, no? Even accounting for an increase in diagnoses due to greater awareness and clearer criteria, the numbers are growing.

According to virtually every article available, the conventional wisdom is that there is a genetic predisposition which, when combined with some as yet unknown trigger(s), results in autism. There has been lots of speculation and scientific study concerning a link between vaccines containing Thimerosal, which some are convinced is "the" trigger. But if that's true, then why is the case number still growing when Thimerosal and other known teratogenic agents were already removed from vaccines years ago?

I know nothing. I have no experience in this field. I am not qualified to make any pronouncements or judgements, BUT, I am a mom and hopefully have some modicum of common sense. If Occam's Razor still applies, and usually it does, then it stands to reason that the trigger is something simple that humans have been exposed to in growing amounts since the 1980s.

Seems to me one source of teratogenic agents that absolutely pervades our lives now, and specifically those of babies is...plastics. Plastics contain phthalates, which are very nasty chemicals known to cause birth defects. The phthalates are not chemically bound to the plastic, so when chewed or sucked on, they leach out.

Working with environmental scientists, it's been pointed out to me on numerous occasions that, among literally thousands of other items, those bottles we suck on to drink our fashionably unregulated bottled water, are full of phthalates. What are women told to do during pregnancy?...drink lots of water. Not to mention that virtually everything you buy for a baby these days is made of phthalate containing plastics. What do babies do?...suck and chew on plastic teething toys.

Phthalates are also in all sorts of baby care products such as lotions, shampoos, powders, etc.; and lots of general household items such as shower curtains, beauty products, iPhones, iPods, personal computers, insect repellants, solvents and adhesives, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

There are studies being conducted regarding the possible role of phthalates in various adverse health conditions as I write this. California took a bold step in banning phthalates from childrens' toys in 2007. And here's a LINK to a study published just this February regarding phthalates in baby care products.

As I said, I know nothing, and make no causal assumptions, but it sure makes sense to me that it's something more simple and pervasive than three or four compounds already removed from vaccines.

Food for thought anyway. And for truly fascinating insights into a life lived with autism, check out Temple Grandin's books, if you haven't already.

Apologies for the length of this, and bless you if you've actually read the whole thing, but this phenomenon worries me greatly.

Let's hope that science cracks this mystery very soon...

Mokoli'i

Here are some photos of us goofing around at Kualoa Park. The island offshore is called Mokoli'i (Little Lizard), more commonly known as Chinaman's Hat. Apologies that these photos really don't do it justice. This is a gorgeous area and we love to drive up the Windward Coast and stop along the way for the views and the beaches and to...well...goof around in parks. :)

Here's a view of the island with others in the distance...

...one of Kevin doing the Kung Fu schtick from Dumb and Dumber...

...one from the shore to the right...

...aaaand a little farther around to the right with the mountains in the background...

...and just because I love this one of my boy...

We miss you all...

Aloha pumehana!