Settling In Gently

Considering Winter

2011-12-15T22:31:00.000-08:00

I can feel the winter season in my bones like wind through a flute. The air is crisper, stiller-- something smells cold. I sing Christmas carols to the kids in their bubble bath and I cry about Jesus and the Maccabees and Demeter and Persephone.

Pomegranates are in season. We eat three at a time and giggle. So are persimmons, and our starfruit tree is an embarrassment of riches-- gold, frankincense and stars. The tangerines have just come on and they are a morality tale. The bright orange lovelies with the gentle peel and alluring sweet smell may be sour enough to chap your cheeks. And the warty green ones with the scabby gray mold may be pillows of sweet citrus love. You just can't judge a tangerine by its cover.

The chickens have overcome their phobias and hysterics and our fridge is filling up with recycled cartons of compact brown eggs. I cracked the last of the store-bought eggs into the same skillet as the fresh ones. The store ones were flaccid with blond yolks. The fresh ones were red-orange hearts in the frying pan.

I am considering how the glass is already broken. How good things and bad things and all things change and end. I am considering this while packing a heavy suitcase, scouring through the closets for winter jackets and socks.

We are heading into the cold of winter-- just for a little while, a few months. But long enough to make me consider the act of moving, changing. The snow will be cold. The sky will be gray. We will be strangers and outsiders again, in an empty apartment. But it feels like something I need-- to retreat for a while into a deep cave, under the earth, let everything on the surface get cold and brittle, pull in to the heart and let the extremities go numb for a little while.

Maybe there's something punitive about going into the dead of winter after 5 or 6 years without-- my Danish ancestors scolding me with gray-sky eyes for my tropical life-- but I feel like a plant that has gotten too much sun and water-- I'm sprawling and coming apart. A good pruning, a little winter austerity, a chance to send all that photosynthesis into my roots, seems like just the thing. A couple of months thinking dark thoughts and eating stew, in a new place with only as much as we can carry on and check out from the library-- I need a hibernation.

2011-10-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a really wonderful book called the Darwinian Tourist, and it has made me blink dumbly in the bright distance of time.

The Universe is 13.7 billion years old, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, life is 3.5 billion years old, Mammals first appeared 200 million years ago, the first Hominids 6 million years ago. Modern Humans have only been on the planet 200,000 years ago. 50,000 years ago humans first left Africa, and only 12,000 years ago did our closest human relatives, the Hobbits or Homo Floresiensis, die out.

Here's that timeline retold as if it were just one year. Here it is in toilet paper.

In that context, Kure and Midway were formed 40 million years ago, where Hawaii is now, and Kauai was formed 6 million years ago.

People came to Hawaii only 1500 years ago.

All of this fills me with awe.

An Open Letter to the Librarians of Kauai

2011-10-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

Dear Librarians of Kauai,

Your job is tough. You are shepherds of books in a place where books have many natural enemies. This is an island so humid that books curl damply on my bookshelf. Mold powders every spine, pickles every page with white dust or black spots. Sand works itself into the glue, causing pages to faint listlessly out of binding. Rain falls into daily puddles can easily appear where a safe dry book spot was. Bugs swarm and devour: silverfish and termites, those little dusty small aphids and tiny spiders that infest floury cookbooks. The hot sun bleach-bakes paper, salt air rusts paper, red dirt dyes paper. Books age prematurely, battered by the unmitigated elements. In the face of this constant battle, you librarians must be tired, worn down, exhausted--- trying to keep your books safe.

Patrons come into the library. Patrons complicate matters-- they scramble the books, misplace them, expose them to earth wind and fire. In their eagerness they might pull 15 books off the shelf-- and put them back askew, or carry them to the desk, deliberate, reject. They touch the books. They splay them open, creasing their spine. They fold the corners down, they drop salty tears onto the ink. They carry them around, dusting them with car detritus, airplane debris, coffee shop splashback, lunchtime grime.

Dear librarians. I realize that, if it weren't for the unruly patrons, all of those books would stay crisp and white and fresh. Their spines would remain straight and even, their pages unyellowed. DVDs would never be scratched, witches' staring faces would never be stabbed with frightened crayons, how-tos would remain un-glued and un-glittered. And would that be a triumph?

But are you a librarian to protect and defend the materials? Is that job-- simply keeping your books clean and fresh and bound-- your purpose? Are you the great defenders of those physical artifacts called books, or cds, or dvds? Or are you the defenders of their contents?

If the wild hordes of visigothic patrons have their way, they will bring in carts to lug away their books-- passions flame and 45 dinosaur books fill the wagon. The books will get dropped, jabbed at with greasy fingers, slept with, lost under the bed, and eventually, grudgingly returned. Shabbier, dustier, closer to the recycling bin. But dear. Humans, rapt, entranced, beguiled by Smilodons and wooly mammoths and giant sloths and astrelopithecus. Or by a parade of Cinderellas-- Korean, Chinese, Navajo, German. Or by a cascade of philosophy, poetry-- thoughts enormous and mundane.

The books would suffer. They would be splayed and splashed and tattered and tarnished. But the people-- those aggravating patrons-- would be transformed from empty to full vessels. The artifacts will be internalized, swallowed up, and the books left empty, and the precious contents sent walking around to the beach and through the store. They will dream of supernovas and diplodoci, and let the pages wilt and be devoured.

Human Evolution, the Learning Brain, and Mac and Cheese.

2011-09-04T22:48:00.000-07:00

Barbara Kingsolver has a great gardening analogy: feeding a garden only a steady diet of NPK fertilizer is like aliens trying to raise human children on a diet of only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I laughed when I read that, but also squirmed a bit. I can dump a ton of woodchips on my garden, import handfulls of whippy worms and turn in lovely half-rotted leaf mulch and the garden won't protest.

What do you do with a kid who won't eat anything but peanut butter and jelly? Or, in my case, Mac and Cheese, quesadillas, or milk?

Years ago I read about a lovely study done in 1939 by Dr. Clara Davis (this page and this article give a tidy summary) about giving a group of orphans free food choice and tranforming them into healthy little specimens. The take home message is: give kids a wide range of healthy choices, and they will select the foods most necessary for their particular little bodies, at that time. I found it a wonderfully comforting guiding principle. So I've always let my kids just mush things around on their plates, announce for themselves when they're done, and refuse whatever they want.

Until this week.

My four year old got so hungry and dehydrated that she got a splitting headache and spent the night throwing up. The proper maternal reaction is probably supposed to be pity and compassion, but I was furious. What about my faith in her ability to regulate her own food? What about free choice? How could she betray my parental philosphy! This was an article of faith with my parenting-- no "two more bites!" or "finish your vegetables," just "ask your stomach if you are full, dear sweet darling. No? Then run free, little angel!"

So I've spent the week thinking deeply about all these transecting issues and ideas: food, nutrition, control, discipline. In the course of the week I've sounded like every evil sadistic food-psycho parent you've ever said 'Eek!' at : "you're not leaving until you clear your plate! Turn around! Sit up straight! I'LL decide how much is enough! Chew faster! That doesn't count as one bite! Your plate better be clear when the timer goes off!" Not pretty. But I was desperate-- she had made herself sick, she obviously couldn't be trusted to be in charge of her own food choices.

Two or three days of this hair-pulling power-struggle gagging negotiating weeping threatening, and suddenly, I had a sheepish little epiphany.

Here it is: kids learn stuff.

They learn to put their toys away when they're done-- you may have to sing the same little chant every time, but they learn it. They learn to sit on the potty. They learn to say sorry when they hit. They learn to get buckled in the car. They learn to write their letters left to right. I offer a bit of resistance-- a wall for them to lean up against, to learn against. Some age-appropriate parameters, some routines, some guidelines. And kids feel proud of themselves when they master stuff.

Why would food be different?

We think it should be because, well, isn't there an instinct for health? A wolf pup certainly isn't going to refuse rabbit or a baby whale krill, right? And don't humans have instincts? And of course we do-- but our instincts are uniquely human. We don't have the kind of indefatigable homing instinct that would allow us to swim upriver to the spot of our conception, or build a chrysalis. If there were such human instincts then we would all look and act the same, all over the globe.

We don't because the universal human instincts don't lead to one destination. What we have are instincts to learn a culture. Our instincts are to watch our parents, to imitate their language, their life patterns. To adapt to the specific unique location where we happen to be born. Without that, the impossibly fast and wide human migration out of Africa would have been impossible. In the course of a couple of generations, humans can move from arid deserts to arctic tundra and survive in both places because of our ability to adapt. And babies are born with a blank enough slate to learn to eat enough kudu or walrus to keep them alive.

So can I trust my kid to eat what she needs to keep herself healthy? Yes, and no. As long as I have taught her to eat all of those things that are, in my culture, appropriate. If I haven't, if I've never offered any resistance, any nudge to try some unfamiliar thing, then why would she be able to choose from things she has never been taught are actually food?

So we made a nutrition wheel out of construction paper-- three colored circles spliced into each other that can rotate to show different relative amounts of starch, protein, and vegetables. It is tacked above the dinner table, with goofy little drawings of cows, bok choy, and noodles. And I am resolved: I won't force her to eat, just like I won't force her to practice her ABCs. But I will show her what is correct, and encourage her to, next time, try again, and finish your vegetables. Or your fermented seal blubber, whichever you prefer.

The County Fair Comes But Once a Year.

2011-09-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

Hip hop tots in spandex and kiawe smoked chicken, teenagers screaming, wilting baked goods on the prize table, cankled hogs in the 4-h tent, hello kitty themed quilts and prize winning jackfruit... it can only be the county fair.

The county fair turns familiar Kauai into a stranger, like drag queen make up and stage lighting. Throngs of people who are otherwise in different orbits-- middle schoolers and fashionable 20 years old parents-- show up to pat the duckies and piglets and ride the ferris wheel and buy Hawaiian T-shirts with bleeding skulls and shark teeth logos.

Old ladies coddle their fussy little orchids and arrange them behind miniature white picket fences snuggled with dusty teddy bears, uncles bring in their pampered roma tomatoes and gawping achiote pods, kids haul out their mini-lego worlds. The 4-h kids feed their steers and hogs and shear their lambs and spritz their goats, tuck in their shirts behind their gleaming metal belt buckles and carefully batton their hair into french braids to get ready for the livestock show.

The county fair is exciting. Dusty, hot, loud, chaotic, thronged, pricey.

I brought my kids to see the fun and meet up with Daddy in the livestock tent where he was patiently guiding the 4-h program to a bloodless conclusion. For the humans, at least. RJ petitioned mightily for some rides on the fairground-- I prepped her for the scariness and danger and thought she would want me or daddy with her, but she measured herself against the "you must be this tall" arrow, said, "I'm big enough!" and went all by herself. She seemed miniature, 2 feet tall next to all those big kids and noisy machines. I waved and cheered as she came into view and chewed my nails when her little car or helicopter whiplashed her out of sight. It's a landmark-- her first county fair as a-person-who-goes-on-rides. In a minute she'll be showing her own steer, or putting on her own experimentally dramatic eye makeup, meeting up with her own friends to tempt gravity. Another county fair!

Re-settling

2011-09-02T01:57:00.000-07:00

It's September. This morning I I flipped the page on the calendar over and shouted to my four year old, "hey! It's a new month! It's September!" This seemed important enough to interrupt her drawing time (detailed vignettes of fancy girls in triangular dresses, backdropped by loop-dee-loop clouds). "Summer is over, now it's Fall." She gasped: "Oh no! So we can't go anywhere?!" I was puzzled. She broke it down for me: "Because it will be cold now?" She ran to the door to look for a library book scene of corn-stalks and pumpkins and scarecrows and maple leaves.

Nope, not cold. Light green kukui nut leaves, pale yellow cascades of starfruit like pinatas, hard green mini grapefruits on the trees, bittermelon vines choking the compost bins. But still, Fall. The beginning of the new school year -- that rhythm that pulses throughout a post-school (or pre-school) life. The storing away of summer, reporting on my summer vacation, considering the change in grade numbers, in ages.

We went on a summer vacation-- our annual pilgrimage to the mainland. We don't crawl to holy caves on our knees for a fortnight, but we flew overnight to the east coast with two small kids. Which should count for something in the penance department. Leaving Hawaii snaps you into another world: white people and black people sitting on plastic airport chairs, hustle and bustle, a sense of competition and connectedness and time whipping past importantly.

I observed slack-jawed. I enjoyed feeling like a country mouse-- oohing and ahhing at gourmet food trucks and lebanese restaurants and live music and independent book stores. I grinned my way through little crafty cool shops and art supplies stores-- Etsy, writ large! And I swooned at the sheer overwhelming quantity and quality of choice-- every kind of food, every kind of shop, every kind of scene. The kind of coolness that would have bent me double with jealousy as a teenager now is fun and interesting, but I have no delusions of coolness for myself. So I can make inappropriate fashion choices and sing unjaded praises through mouthfuls of, say, inked pasta with scallops or amaretto gelato.

City living must make you smart. Crazy, maybe, but for sure smart. To get from A to B on Kauai, you either go to the left or the right, and then stop when you get there. To get from A to B in, say, Boston? There are an infinite number of choice points along an exponentially branching choice continuum. I pictured the mathematical loveliness and complexity of digitally rendered trees, fractals splaying eternally splitting choices in every direction. Walk or bus or train or drive? highways, tunnels, toll roads, side streets? what time is it, what's running, which food place is still open, and how late are the busses going and what's the neighborhood like after 11 and if it rains or if the venue changes or should we can it all and stay home and watch a movie?

In Maine I took photos: loving close ups of queen ann's lace and black-eyed susans and acorns, and chipped buoys and tattered lobster nets and white picket fences and screened porches. I set out, with determination and courage, to gorge on lobsters and haddock and clams blueberries and raspberries and raw milk and fresh summer sausage. And I really enjoyed it-- the flowers, the scenery, the food. But I didn't bring home any real estate rags, or even any cookbooks. Just one lump of summer sausage. As wonderful as it was to be there, I don't need to own it, carve it up and make it mine for ever.

And now we're back, one more trip under our belts, one more set of family memories we'll have to keep re-inventing for the kids for years until they believe they remember the fox in the raspberry bushes or the seal by the boat, too. Reinventing ourselves for the year, limping into new routines, testing out the snugness of old ones, rediscovering favorite things and pausing to notice the acerbic ribbed surinam cherries, and considering what fall means, here.

Stand Up Next To Me

2011-06-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

Somehow, a "Freedom Isn't Free" T-shirt
on an 80 year old Japanese man in his brick-lined garden
takes my breath away.

How to Know What to Eat

2011-06-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

I have a recurring moment of crisis in the milk aisle. I waver between the ultra-pasteurized organic skim milk, 1.5 gallons for $10-- or rBST-free conventional whole milk, regular-pasteurized, 1 gallon for $5. Skim milk, organic or otherwise, is usually reconstituted from easily-oxidized milk powder. Ultra-pasteurization makes the calcium and vitamin D inaccessible for our bodies. And ultra-pasteurization wrecks the protein structure of milk, so cheeses and yogurts don't set. Skim milk lacks the fats essential to metabolize vitamin D. But whole milk is high calorie, full of dangerous but delicious saturated fats. Organic milk is produced without pesticides but still generally raised on grain. but without growth hormones and excessive antibiotics. Conventional milk is generally raised on grain and sometimes the animals are overdosed with antibiotics and hormones. And then there's the cost! And the taste! There are too many variables-- the pro and cons list is too long and too confusing. What's worse, trace antibiotics or oxidization? What's better, absorbable vitamins or supporting an environmentally friendly company?

Ever since last year, when Matt did a presentation on food for a mom's group, I've been thinking about how to choose what to eat. Us moms had just watched Food Inc and we were in a high state of food-related flutter. Matt, as the county livestock extension agent, was asked to explain the difference between organic livestock and conventional livestock. We sat down together and mulled. It's a obviously more complicated than organic=good and conventional=evil.

What we came up with was not about the relative dangers or merits of trace antibiotics or pastured eggs. It is values. When you are choosing what food to eat and buy, identify your food values. We all have them, we rarely articulate them. If you can rank these values in order of personal importance, food choices become much more clear. Here are some examples.

Nutritional value. You want to eat your 5 fruits and veg a day, you want all your vitamins and plenty of protein and whole grain carbohydrates.
environmental soundness. You want food produced sustainably on the land, with no pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
Carbon footprint. You want food produced with low-carbon-emitting methods, like no-till farming and polyculture, with limited big-footprint nitrogen fertilizer. You are concerned about food miles.
tradition and culture. You want your grandma's enchiladas and your grandpa's miso soup. You want ham for Christmas and porridge for breakfast, just like mom made. You believe that food connects you to your family and your heritage.
seasonality. You want the freshest, most bountiful food, in the natural rhythm of the year. Tomatoes and watermelon in summer, acorn squash and applesauce in winter, sweet peas in spring.
support of local economies. You want to keep local farmers farming and enjoy the "terroir" of wherever you are.
equitable working conditions. You want to make sure that all of the people involved in getting your food to you are treated fairly-- well compensated and safe.
cost. You need to budget and get plenty of food for your buck.
cuisine and taste. It needs to be delicious, whatever it is. The very best flavors, sweetest fruits, strongest spices.
Human history. You want to eat the foods that shaped the human animal-- paleolithic foods that formed our teeth and brains and unlikely upright stature.
Moral choices. You believe that some foods are morally better than others--that animals should be treated humanely or not used for food at all, for example, or that alcohol or caffeine is morally out of the question.

Resist the temptation to check YES to all of the above. They are very interrelated-- your moral food choices can also be tasty, and your historical food can also be affordable. But choose the one or two food values that you feel the strongest about. And if you hold that value in your mind, like the north star, as you are shopping, you can slough off all of the stress about the confounding factors.

If you force me to choose, I will clench my teeth and say that local food is the most important to me. It keeps pastures green and undeveloped, it is unique to this place, and as a bonus you can know the producers and exactly how they treat their animals and farms. And as a second runner up.... I have a tie. Shoot! But human history and cuisine are neck and neck. I want to eat the whole simple traditional foods that allowed us to become human: fish and fruit and veg and meat and reeky cheeses and pickled vegetables. And whatever I put in my mouth better be delicious.

So back to the milk aisle. I am thinking Local, Historical, Delicious. Hm, no local options for milk on this island. Historical--Yes! There was no such thing as skim milk 10,000 years ago! So that's a point for the the conventional whole milk. And cuisine-- I'm going to turn half the milk into yogurt or kefir, which ultrapasteurization won't allow. So we're in: a decision is made.

Hope it's helpful!

Why Partisan Politics is Dumb

2011-06-24T01:52:00.000-07:00

Last year I had a booth at a Lihue craft fair. It was just before the holidays and the little veteran's hall was full of beaded earrings, hand-made pet outfits, quilted aloha-print purses, sand-based accessories and hula angels made out of coconut husks. Every 4'5" grandma on the island turned out to get ideas for what to make for her grandkids. And apparently it caught somebody's eye as a prime spot for shakin' hands and kissin' babies.

We were visited by a throng of polished people in starched aloha shirts and dewy leis, handing out glossy brochures. First a polite and carefully coiffed Councilwoman Yukimura shook our hands and said hello. I hoped she was going to buy a T-shirt. I didn't realize she was politicking until she handed me a "Vote Yukimura!" pamphlet. I lamely gave her my card anyway. Then I noticed a particularly striking couple-- Adam and Eve, Mr. and Mrs. Jesus-- bronze skin, in elegant cream-colored Filipino folk costumes, both a head taller than the rest of the room. Duke Aiona (R) and his wife. They flowed through the room, brushing fingertips with the tiny grandmothers, ducking under offered leis, trailed by a flustered assistant and a swat team of top supporters and People of Import.

He was the favorite for the State Governorship here on Kauai-- Hawaiian descent, Christian family man, he struck a good (slack open G) chord. His supporters lined the road with signs and enthusiastically stared down passing cars.

When he lost to Abercrombie (D), a friend was beside herself. She said, "I can't believe our new governor is a TROLL!"

I have been remembering that moment-- her heat and fear and anger that the "Wrong" team had won. I didn't (and, I hate to admit, still don't) know enough about Abercrombie to counter or confirm the "troll" accusation. But I recognize that reaction. I was in Berkeley when George W. Bush was re-elected. It was a dark, dark time. There was rending of sackcloth, plentiful ashes, wailing, gnashing of teeth.

I watched some funny/angry partisan videos last night but started feeling a bit uneasy. Like the jerk saying bad words to the nerdy kid to make him put his fingers in his ears (sorry Fred, Miss. Shuey's class, 7th grade). The rhetoric of the blue vs. the red, the democrats vs. the republicans, liberals vs. conservatives-- it's all very exciting. Conspiracy theories about Big Evil Government or Big Evil Corporations-- that's compelling copy. And defining ourselves as different from the other team-- setting up all their dumb ideas as a foil to all our good ideas-- is classic strawmanning: a great rhetorical trick to look right. And I'm sure all that partisan mudslinging makes a lot of money for both sides. But the partisan message isn't benign. We don't watch a clip of Fox news and think "gosh, there are a lot of ways to approach these problems, depending on your priorities and philosophies!" The message is, this is a battle of opposites, of fundamental differences, of a line drawn in the sand, good and evil. Luke vs. Darth, Frodo vs. Sauron. We, ourselves are always Frodo-- the earnest hard-working Hobbit, about to be crushed by the monolith of Mordor.

The rhetoric of difference destroys trust. If I vote democrat and the republican wins, I can't trust a word out of the winner-- now my elected official's--mouth. After all, we're on different teams, right? Wrong. While that makes for exciting neck-and-neck news coverage, heated debates, and hilarious comedy, it also leads to violence and bigotry. It leads to blind faith in a partisan dogma rather than a general faith in humanity. A politics defined by fundamental differences leads to xenophobia.

I went to BYU and UC Berkeley, I grew up in blue Maryland and red Utah, I was raised in a politically conservative religion but in a politically liberal family. The boundaries between parties and platforms have always seemed liquid and ephemeral to me-- and I understand how culture can get confused with politics, and how politics can get confused with Truth.

It would be boring but much more productive if we brought a little faith into politics. Not, "Heehaw, Jesus take the wheel!" faith, but faith in hokey unsexy things like political process, checks and balances, rule of law, and the constitution. I mean faith that our government, not our party, is really pretty impressive. I go to the post office, put a stamp on my letter, and IT GETS THERE. That's really amazing! I turn on my tap, there is CLEAN POTABLE WATER almost all of the time! Incredible! We should believe-- or at least desire to believe-- that our country works, that it CAN work, that we don't need to disengage and stockpile weapons for the coming apocalypse, even if the current party's philosophy is not totally our own.

It may be ungainly, it may galumph along rather than hum, but believing that our country is basically good and capable can only help us become better. Slicing ourselves in half and watching the bleed-out might be more interesting, but I would prefer politics to be much less interesting and much more effective.

What To Eat or Not to Eat

2011-05-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

Lately I've gotten all caught up in a culture war. Liberal vs. conservative? Life vs. choice? Religion vs. science? No. The controversy I'm all abuzz with is much bigger than that. Each of us confronts it-- not once in our lives, but every morning, noon, and night. And whenever else we're peckish. The issue? Killer carbs vs. deadly protein.

I spent the bulk of my teenage years as a vegetarian. Then I came to appreciate the beauty of grass-fed and free-range meat, not to mention fresh whole milk, ripe cheese, yellow cream. I tasted butter once at the Berkeley farmer's market that was so profoundly delicious, I cried. And buffalo steaks, and steak that tastes like BEEF and chicken that tastes like CHICKEN. Now I'm a big fan of meat, even though I am not blase about the death that is necessary for me to enjoy it. I killed my own chickens once, and it was humbling.

Since that's my point of view, I've happily read such fun fact-filled books as, Nourishing Traditions, Omnivore's Dilemma, and Real Food, that spell out all the ways that a wholesome diet of old-timey foods like fruits and veggies and whole grains, topped with coconut oil, butter, poultry, and red meat, is the surest way to robust, red-cheeked, farm-girl health. These books all promote meat and fat as essential for human health, culturally important, and as our anthropological heritage as a human animal with those nice sharp meat-tearing canines (not just for hickies anymore!)

They blame the decline in human health since the industrial revolution on those evil white twins, refined grains and sugar. Diabetes, cancer, arthritis, depression, infertility, poor spelling skills? Cut out the low-fat frozen yogurt and have a steak.

But I've been reading The China Study. This book is thorough, and is a beautiful mast-head for the fleet of anti-meat, anti-dairy scientists and philosophers. It's in tiny print, full of graphs, with hundreds of citations and percentages and footnotes. It has heft. If you are a confirmed vegan, if you feel you OUGHT to be a confirmed vegan, then this book is for you. You will stun all of your bloody-handed meat-eating acquaintances into an abashed silence with your terrifying statistical knowledge. Eat lots of meat and dairy? Cancer! Diabetes! Heart disease! MS! Lupus! Arthritis! Bone, kidney, eye and brain diseases! In short, 100% of people who have ever eaten meat or dairy, WILL DIE!!

That terrifying list guides the structure of The China Study. The authors, the Drs. Campbell, describe these "diseases of affluence" and show how they exists exclusively in civilized areas of the world, with diets high in animal protein. Oh, and refined carbohydrates. But, PROTEIN! Protein is the problem! They detail the endless body of research that has been done showing the way that casein (milk protein) turns cancer on, and causes type-1 diabetes in small children, and how it correlates with all of those scary diseases that kill our parents and grandparents. It's not made up, it's good, if slightly paranoid and ranty, science.

And I'm realizing something. Both sides of this low-carb vs. low-protein debate have some things in common. Por esemplo.
1. The status quo re: our food, is BAD. Whatever it is we (as Westerners) are eating, is killing us. Either the burger or the coke, though, that's the sticking point.
2. The truth has been repressed by the establishment. Big Government telling us to eat the wrong stuff, (they both curse the American Heart Association and the USDA) and Big Corporations (Big Corn or Big Beef, respectively) with too much to lose are keeping The Truth under wraps for their own nefarious purposes.
3. Proponents for the Truth are a repressed minority, voices crying in the wilderness for a return to sanity with our food choices.

But there are some major differences, beyond the obvious "meat is good" vs. "meat is evil." I feel the real schizm between the two is metaphorical. What is the purpose of food and of eating? Is it to neatly sustain us for years and years and years? Is it to make us big and strong and fertile? In order to reproduce, you should have some pounds to spare, and eat plenty of protein in easily-accessible (i.e. animal product) forms, lots of semen and brain-building fats like DHA from grass-fed beef and fish, along with all of your leafy greens. You will make lots of milk when your body trusts you to feed it lots of high "quality" stuff. (And I'm not saying this is impossible with a vegetarian diet-- it just takes a lot more work to get those vitamin B12s, B6s, and Omega 3 and 6 fats, and DHA to build babies). And here's where one definition of healthy (fertile!) clashes with the other (long-living!).Your successful pregnancy doesn't depend on your ability to live forever. The recipe for bets-hedged healthy baby-making is not the same as the recipe for life eternal. The reason seems simple to me: evolutionarily speaking, food has always been the means to an end: reproduction. Evolution doesn't particularly care what happens to us once we've passed on our genes, beyond a bit of grandmotherly nurturing to help make sure our grandkids survive. It's only now, thanks to the work of the Ornishes and the Campbells of the world, that we can understand how to use food differently to extend our useful lives far beyond our reproductive usefulness. Luckily for us, too! I'd like to be a spry creative 80 year old, meat be damned!

Once I realized that the purpose of health in these two world views was different, I was able to rest my mind a bit. To be a healthy reproducing human, it's best to hedge your bets with lots of nutrient-dense, traditional, get-it-while-you can animal protein and fat. Yes, you risk over-feeding yourself and in effect feeding cancer and heart disease. But once you're done with the risky work of human-making, you can get to work on the whole "living forever" program with a strict no-cancer, no-heart-disease, no-arthritis vegan diet (but still minus the sugar, that stuff is satan, no matter which side you're on).

And what is a good life? A vital life, enjoying cream-topped fish and simmered beef, or a virtuous and careful life, avoiding all that dangerous stuff but secure in the knowledge of your own health? The Drs Campbell's evidence is very convincing. No doubt that western diets, with too much protein, too much fat, and way too much refined carbohydrates are the cause of all those nasty diseases of affluence.

It's not likely that I'd change my mind about a limited amount of sanely-raised meat being healthy and delicious. But it's good to learn that food can be seen in many ways: as a cultural marker or a moral vice, as distinct fragments of nutrients or as an incorporated foodway. And it's a good reminder that often these big angry conflicts are more about dissonant metaphors than about Truth and Facts.

Parenting in Paradise: a How-to

2011-05-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of parenting books. Lacking a compound of extended family and helpful aunties, bossy how-to books fill in the gaps. They are great-- I especially like Playful Parenting, How to Talk so Kids will Listen, Parenting with Love and Logic, and Simplicity Parenting. But there are some things about Hawaii that make parenting here unique. My friend H. and I call it "Beach Parenting." It comes naturally on this island but would not be difficult to apply anyplace else, if you just "think beach." So, as an experiment in how-to parenting writing, here you go. Your own guide to parenting in paradise.

1. Sand.
Get kids dirty. Sand is a miraculous substance-- take a little, it's light. Load a bucket-ful, it's heavy. It can be wet and cold to pour out into gloppy towers, or it can be crisp and hot enough to blister your feet. Put an irate bored child in the sand, and watch her relax. She will get into the zone, time will hold still as she grinds fistfuls through her fingers, digs deep wet trenches, kicks over her towers and experimentally tastes a mouthful or two. She is the master of her sand universe-- the creator and destroyer. That zone-- that elemental focus-- is more nourishing for her brain than any other play, and as restful as sleep. Even a kid in a sandbox, a garden-patch, or a rockpile can make mountains out of molehills. Sand play can give a kid a sense of power, develop motor skills and help, oddly enough, with food aversions and potty training. Let them get dirty and enjoy it. There's always a hose to spray them off with. Speaking of...

2. Water.
Get kids wet. Wade out into it, it's chilly. Count to three, be brave, and go under-- come up shouting with cold. Two minutes later it's as warm as your skin. Bodies are heavier in the water-- slower moving-- and lighter too. You take moon bounce steps to jump slowly with the waves. Handfuls of underwater sand spill out in a slow flow like ink. Kids and babies watch their bodies change shape and color under water, watch rigid things bend at the surface, catch camouflaged darts of ocean-colored fishes. They put their faces under-- even my one year old puts her mouth under, tastes salt, blows bubbles. Water pulls you down (better learn to float!) but you can turn around with your hand for a paddle and send up a soaking wall in a semi circle around you. That makes you the queen of the splash game. And the bigger kids bravely test their eyes and notice the way the sea clears to them after a week of daily dives. Kids remember clearly their aquatic ape-kid roots. Water play is soothing. And physically exhausting. Just right for before naptime.

3. Avocados and Papayas
Feed kids good things. We always bring snacks to the beach. Our favorite snack-pickup-spot is the little Japanese family grocery store Sueoka's. We were at Sueoka's last year and noticed mangoes from the Philippines on the shelf for 4 dollars a pound. But in the Sueoka's parking lot was a mango tree, dropping golden-red beauts on the cars, turning to mango wine underfoot! We are blind to the food all around us. Why waste time with anemic tomatoes and well-traveled waxy apples when the trees around us produce more goodness than we could ever eat.

Two such fruits even come in their own bowls! Take a papaya or an avocado, cut it in half. Scoop the seeds out of the papaya, and thwack a knife into the avocado pit to twist it out. Sprinkle on some salt or some lemon juice onto the flesh, hand it and a spoon to your kid. Voila! Delicious and nutritious-- papayas full of enzymes to ease digestion, avocado full of fat to feed your brain.

Need food that comes in a wrapper? Apple bananas! Thumb-thick, my kids can eat about 20 in a sitting.

Other food too is bountiful and delicious, simple and healthy: breadfruit and taro-leaves, grass-fed beef and --if you dare-- wild free-range chicken. Guavas are a delicious weed, and Passionfruit choke powerlines. Bittermelon and calamungai -- Filipino staples--grow disguised as roadside weeds. There is a bounty of good whole food out there, wherever you are.

4.Chop Suey
Let kids experience diversity. At St. Micheal's playgroup we had a potluck. Green-papaya stew, authentic Japanese sushi, salsa, fresh bread and cheese, Hawaiian-style chinese chicken long rice, saimin, breadfruit fries, salty nori packets, cookies, and chicken mcnuggits. It's a cliche that Hawaii is ethnically diverse. But a cliche worth restating! Kids growing up here eat all kinds of food as daily fare. They learn pidgin words from the many languages that have found a home with the people here. They call a rainbow of people "auntie" or "uncle." A potluck can be "chop suey"-- an ethnic mishmash-- and so can a family and a kid. Kids who have made peace with the tetchy subject that is American race can base their friendships on more important things. Like, what do you like on your pizza?

5. The Village
Let kids have lots of role models. This is (still) a small island, and if you meet someone once, you will probably meet them again. There's no throwing friendships out and hoping Jacob Marley is gone for good. And as a kid that means wherever you go, whatever you do, somebody who know your maddah stay watching you! Kids learn quickly that friends of mom and dad are "auntie and uncle." Wherever you are, enlarging your family support system is a good thing. Invite people into your life and your kids' lives, extend yourself into others' lives. Kids raised that way, where there are lots of people looking out for them, can have healthy relationships with a range of people. Also, let kids be role models. Kids here have a place in the village themselves. Big kids look after small kids. Small kids get to think they are watching after babies.

6. High Cost of Living
Let kids scrimp and scrape. Stuff here is expensive. So I have never bought my kids new toys. There is a bounty of yard sales and thrift shops and especially friends with older kids, passing good things along. And houses are small-- much smaller than the average house in, say, Utah. But I don't mind the small spaces and second hand toys. Get the kids outside, into the sand and water, chasing the cats around, picking bouquets.

So there are some scatteshot thoughts about Beach Parenting. What do YOU think?

Mortifying Moments: folk songs, technology, the masses.

2011-04-30T03:02:00.000-07:00

I was washing dishes the other day and I was suddenly overwhelmed, at the sink, up to wrists in a soapy quart jar, with a vivid mortifying recall. I can't be the only one to get these: sudden attacks of deeply stupid things you said or did years ago. Also a quixotic need to right the ancient wrongs!

Here, to exorcise it forever, is this kitchen-sink mortifying moment.

I was at the Atlanta American Folklore Society meeting. I presented a paper about Hawaiian Slack-key guitar and the vagaries of teaching a traditional artform using modern media, and felt a little like an academic poseur. I took a tour-- a packed tourbus full of American folklorists-- graduate students and professors-- to several Deep South potter's workshops-- saw the giant sieves to press the rough red clay and pull out the hand-shredding glass shards, the huge infernal wood-fired kilns with the godly white-hot pots transmogrifying inside. We got shown around and fed collards and pie by shirtless, overall wearing folks carving bible verses on the bottoms of their intentionally ugly folk-art pottery.

The last place we stopped was a ramshackle long shed, with a couple of kilns, stacks of pots, long rough tables, stacks of salvaged construction supplies. The potter, the last in a long family line, announced to the group that-- "as of today, this is it. These are the last pots I'm ever firing." His dad had recently died, and here, the last of Daddy's ashes were being baked onto the pots to steam iridescent glazes onto the clay bodies, and then the legacy was over. There wasn't any money in it-- he was going into construction full-time. He was tired, he was bitter. He was baking his father into clay and selling him, piece by piece.

And from the group of noted anthropologists and folklorists? Uproarious laughter.

The guy talked like a bumpkin-- a sitcom slapstick joke. So they thought he was hilarious. It was surreal-- folklorists-- academics supposedly attuned to the merit of overlooked histories, crafts, lifeways-- laughing their heads off at this guy's deep south accent. They just couldn't hear what he was saying through the drawl. That was awful. But that wasn't the mortifying moment I set out to purge.

Every night of the conference, after listening to brilliant talks and sampling local cuisine (chicken and waffles at Gladys Knight's own restaurant, a high-stakes hot dog place where they ignore you unless you shout the order in code) there were two music sessions in the basement of the conference hotel. One was instrumental-- mostly pumped-up adrenaline-junky fiddlers trying to out-obscure each other. "Hah, Oneils number 740? How cliche! I only play unpublished Strasthpeys from Badenoch!"

The other session was much quieter-- a group of polite singers, sitting in a big circle across the hall from the rowdy fiddling. Singers volunteered, one at a time, to introduce and perform a favorite song. A tall bearded man sang long polyversed ballads in a high tenor-- endless verses of may mornings and woeful shores. A sardonic American taught everyone a campfire song about chicken fricasse. An angelic Scottish woman performed a call and response hymn. A mountain white girl slipped in, sang a spooky Appalachian lullabye, and dissolved again. And I froze. I couldn't think of any tunes I knew-- it was my turn and all I could come up with was a favorite from my Fiddlesticks days. Ooh, you can even hear me sing it right here. So I introduce myself and say, "this is a tune my mom taught me, and that her dad taught her. My Young Love, or She Moved through the Fair."

And this, friends, is the moment of mortification. As soon as I said the name, every folklorist and singer in the room rolled their eyes so hard, I could hear it. All those eyeballs, grinding around in their sockets. I might as well have said it was a tune I learned on my grandpappy's knee called, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." According to wikipedia, this darn song has been recorded almost 40 times, by such famous folks as Sinead O'Connor, the Chieftans, Riverdance, Sarah Brightman, Loreena McKennitt, Van Morrison and Moire Brennan.

This song comes close to such worn-out overdone folktune beauties as "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" or "Goodnight Irene." But, gall-darn-it, the story is true! I really did learn it from my mom-- she sang it with her odd Celtic-Klezmer band. And she really did learn it from her dad, along with some other musical gems such as "She's a One-Ton Tomato" and "On Ilkley Moore Bah tat." Of course, he probably got it from the Johnny Carson show or some hoaky Irish record from the 40s.

But my nice authenticating claim, that this was an authentic piece of musical family folklore, lovingly handed down through the generations, seemed farcical. A popular song-- a well-known song-- couldn't possibly be traditional! But here, years later, I'd like to stamp my foot and say-- no.

Technology can't invalidate art. Popularity doesn't diminish excellence. Everybody liking The Lord of the Rings doesn't make it less wonderful. Recording a song doesn't remove it from the person-to-person folk music repertoire. If you say that only undiscovered, unrecorded, secret and long-lost art forms are authentic folk art then you dehumanize-- un-folk-- all of the stuff that the masses love. So, eh-hem, yes this ole family favorite is overdone and isn't some obscure Hebridean Witching Chanty, but gole-durn-it, it's still a good song.

So take a listen to Burt Jansch's version and purge the mortifying moment with me.

A Mormon Aside: 90's alternative and urban legends

2011-04-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

Listening to Pandora, an angry 90's girl mix, Sheryl Crow is singing, "if it makes you happy it can't be that bad. If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad." I realize that my inner teenage mormon-girl is sadly shaking her head-- if you are unhappy it MUST be bad! Although as an adult I believe that happy lives can look very different from each other, that being good can be miserable, and that breaking the rules can be right, I still sometimes get pings from my inner zealot.

But I suddenly realize that Mormonism, our values of abstinence, cleanliness, and self-improvement aren't special. This is a shock: we are the peculiar people! We are the exclusive heirs of the restored truth-- whatever else is good in the world is incomplete if it doesn't include Mormon temples, Mormon priesthood. When we present our ideas to other people, we must speak slowly and carefully because "the World" just won't have ears to hear our special language. Unless. We. Speak. Very. Slowly.

But maybe I was the one who didn't have ears to hear? What if Mormonism isn't listening to "The World"? Listening to Sheryl Crow's existential anxiety I realize that Mormonism is an outcropping of the American mountain-- not a different kind of rock. Our commandments are explicit renderings of sometimes obfuscated cultural anxieties, prejudices and standards.

Just look at urban legends to reveal the subconscious of the wider American culture. In the internet we finally have Jung's collective unconscious made manifest! Snopes is a latter day library of parables and morality tales. Girls go to parties alone? They get slipped roofies and get raped! You have a one-night stand? You wake up in a bathtub full of ice, organs missing and a note: "call 911." Don't even try making out in a car-- hook-handed felons and dead hitchhikers are watching!

Sex is not the only thing that urban legends honk warnings about: technology, hubris, consumerism, selfishness are all brutally punished by the undead, the serial killers and the drug addicts-- the seamy hand of God.

So Mormonism is not the last bastion of conservative values-- when just made them conscious, organized them into nice clear youth pamphlets. And that's what I learned from listening to Sheryl Crow.

You're a Natural!

2011-04-09T04:19:00.000-07:00

I recently took the girls for their annual checkups-- the usual peering in ears, screaming at shots, gnawing on stethescopes. Plus the usual-for-maybe-just-my-kids stuff: hiding from the doctor under the exam table, being dragged out by the hind leg, barricading the exam room door with a step ladder, jarring the biohazard waste bin open --bam!~bam!-- with that appealing little foot pedal, befriending an autistic teenager in the lobby and rolling a rubber ball back and forth across the waiting room with him, chatting up an aging swami, petitioning the nurse for repeated trips to the Treasure Box, and then sending up a crescendoing keen of impatience and aggravation.

The visit was entering its second hour, the girls and I were all shot up and bandaged and heading exit-wards, the receptionist was re-swiping my card, the teenage buddy was pointing out the varieties of tropical fish in the fish tank, the baby was pulling my shirt off of my shoulders and yowling, and RJ was crawling under my legs like a tunnel in her new princess rings, chasing her new rubber ball.

At this moment, the doctor comes out again and says, "wow, you women are just amazing. You all handle this chaos so gracefully! I just couldn't do it!" And he ducks back into his office. Before, say, a potted plant flew at his head.

And it's less than friendly of me to say anything besides, "thank you!" so that's what I said. He was extending a compliment, which is a nice gesture, and he's a wonderful doctor. But I felt slightly-- but persistently-- irritated. And I have been puzzling over why his comment has been buzzing around my head, getting up my nose, ever since.

A brief timewarp: I was 13 years old, and possessed the usual suite of teenage charm: rude, demanding, sarcastic, mean... One day I was watching my parents converse politely and it struck me: they are making the choice to behave nicely. It's not any more natural for them than it is for me! Adults behave like adults because they are choosing their words, editing their impulses. There are things that they are not expressing! And those things? Should not be expressed! It was a life-changing realization. Not that I put it in practice right away, but still. I knew that I COULD.

That is how I feel about parenting. Granted, I have some biological equipment that allows me to gestate, birth, and feed my babies. And possibly some hardwired gender-based bonuses with peripheral vision, attention to detail and interpersonal intelligence-- stuff that would have given me a real advantage picking berries and fending off the saber-toothed tigers when Thuggy was off on the mastadon hunt. But modern-day mastadon-free parenting? Shopping cart or waiting room parenting?

It's a choice. You can choose your attitude, you can choose to edit your bad impulses and cultivate your good ones. You can decide to be a good parent or a crummy one. And the more you practice, the more you learn, the better you will get.

Saying that someone or some type of person is a "natural" diminishes their choices and work, but it also makes room for laziness in folks who, like that doctor, feel like they haven't got the instinct-- the gift. Oh well, I'm not a female, so I can retreat to my haven and let the womenfolk deal with the children. Oh well, I'm not a musician, so I'm not going to practice. I'm not smart, I won't read; I'm not friendly, I won't make small talk. All of us can make choices to do difficult things. You can sculpt your own strengths.

A Massage of two Minds

2011-02-22T22:02:00.000-08:00

I had an experience the other day that reminded me how malleable reality is. Matt got me a special Ayurvedic Massage for Valentines day. I went into the little north-shore plantation cottage with an open mind. Beautiful solid-wood furniture, lavishly illustrated coffee table books about Hindu art and the basics of Ayurveda, heavy brain-softening incense smoking on burners in every corner. Two sundamaged white ladies showed me the massage table, the sauna box, the shower, then handed me a paper loin cloth with a hemp string and said, "meet us at the massage table, wearing only that." The table was like a butcher block: solid wood, slick with oil and fragrant, with a gutter all around. The need for the gutter became apparent.

The ladies had me lie on my back, and they did a little pre-massage yogic warm-up. And here is where I felt a mental switch get flipped. The inner cynic smirked. I squinted at these two aging hippies saluting the sun and bowing to each other. But then, switch, I like ritual beginnings to things. Humans universally stop to say, "we are making this event special, from this moment on."

They import milk-and-spice infused oils from India, and heat a gallon of the reeking stuff in a little crockpot on the window sill. They took measuring cup-fulls of almost-too-hot oil and poured it in swoops on my back and stomach and feet and legs and scalp. Then, for half an hour or so, they did a four-hand synchronized massage. Drizzling cup after cup of hot oils, flipping me over and over on a wooden slab. In my paper loincloth, I couldn't mentally settle. I felt like like something that should be dipped in cornmeal and deep-fried. But the hot oils and the ministering-angel attention were lovely. Was it absurd or pleasureable? Pleasurably absurd or absurdly pleasurable? Switch, switch, switch, like watching a movie where, according to my attitude, the lighting and the soundtrack flip from "shampoo commercial" to "slasher film."

The last step was a 15 deep steaming in a wooden sauna box. One of the ladies (I noted her smeared mascara and felt mean) had me lie down on a rolling wooden platform, and closed me into the dark hot box. All the oils are deep-soaked into your skin in this hot box. I thought, "oh, this is lovely, oh no get me out, I'm going to suffocate, this is heaven." For fifteen minutes. An egg timer rang, she pulled me out of the box, I showered off, drank two tall glasses of water from the sink. My skin radiated tomato-paste and oregano. For three days every room I walked through smelled like a restaurant. And the whole thing left me puzzled. Was it insane, to submit myself to a gallon of oil and two new-age strangers and their hot-box? Or was it a restorative indulgence? And the massage wasn't really the message-- I left smelling like a vindaloo pizza but pondering the noisy interference of my mind.

Religion, ethnicity and ... homeschool?

2011-02-07T01:30:00.000-08:00

My brilliant grandmother, the gifted crossword puzzler, rejoices in novel words-- never-before heard verbal oddities and anachronisms, junked slang and clique-ish codespeak--and the way new words travel in flocks. Hear a new word today? You'll see it three times tomorrow. Try it: skeeve! Ossify! Putrefaction!

I think sensitive topics run in packs, too. Some hot-button theme gets all stirred up in the ether, and all of my conversations get pulled towards its gravitational weight. That must mean that there's a mystery-- a missing puzzle piece, some ambiguity or anxiety-- some friction that I carry around with me, buzzing like a hive-- that forces itself into every interaction until the beast is appeased, the topic exhausted, the lines drawn.

The last couple of weeks it's been school. And religion. And race. And their mangled and unholy intersection. My kid is almost four and not in preschool. This comes out of my profound denial more than a particular choice in the pro-school/anti-school discussion. When she was two, she was too small, and then I was pregnant, and now suddenly she's four and the non-choice has become its own choice. And this choice or non-choice segues into a hot and toasty topic.

When another parent asks about my kid's preschool situation I list excuses: we just moved, preschool's too expensive, I haven't found a preschool that I love, maybe we'll homeschool...

And that's the hotbutton: homeschool. The "H" word is like a Rorschorch test for parents. Eyebrows raise, fists are pumped, arms cross. Everyone has a strong opinion one way or the other. I have strong opinions about homeschool--many of them contradictory. I was homeschooled briefly in high school, and thrived. It was just what I needed at that time and place. Homeschooling books inspire the vision of ruddily healthy children building motors, writing novels, designing experiments, sculpting china dolls, speaking French, sailing to atolls and installing solar panels in a spirit of peaceful engagement. So in general I think that homeschooling is a wonderful option. A great chance for a whole family to roll up sleeves together, and gain inner peace, perspective and self-respect through a life of honest proletariat effort! I love and frequently envision a homeschool co-op, different families lending their various strengths to a village effort at kid-raising. And I know parents who homeschool this way, and their kids are beautiful, kind, gentle, and wise.

But my interest in homeschooling, and the realization that my kid is getting older and sooner or later we'll have to make a choice, have been spurring me into conversations with lots of other parents who homeschool. Some of these conversations are punching pukas in my previously quiet beehive. An 8th grade white homeschooler told me the reason her parents pulled her out of school was because of all the anti-white racism at the school. "Don't these Local kids realize that if they were at MY school on the mainland, they'd be the ones we were racist to?"

This statement deeply unsettled me. Her attitude, that the natural order was horribly upended in Hawaii schools (the whites are the outsider minorities??), is being reinforced by homeschooling. Other parents have told me the same thing-- they don't feel safe with their white kids in public schools. So homeschooling can be a form of white flight from a very brown public school system. It can be a way to seal your kids off from people and information that make you uncomfortable.

That's not necessarily a terrible thing-- I was homeschooled because my level of discomfort with my overcrowded high-pressure public school became excruciation. And if it is my kid being bullied or harassed at school, white-flight be damned, I'm taking her out!

But it seems like fear is a terrible reason for doing things. Fear of the unknown, fear of difference, fear of entropy, fear of change, fear of helplessnes-- I am afraid of those things, too. Some of those fears might be keeping my kid out of preschool. But if we decide to homeschool our kids, or send them to public schools or charter schools or wherever-- I want to approach the choice with an eye on the opportunities my kid will have, not the bogie-men I'm running from.

No Island is an Island. Oh wait.

2010-12-01T23:30:00.000-08:00

This morning I was surveying my jumbled bedroom--tattery quilts, improvised window coverings, listing shelving-- and thought: I just need to get rid of all of my stuff.
I then immediately thought: and then I can get all new, better stuff, that I will keep nice and take care of forever!
Then I laughed out loud and my husband thought, probably, "she's a loonie."

So today I've been thinking about stuff. I have a ton of it and I don't like to throw any of it away, but if you sat me in an empty room with a notebook and forced me to write down everything I own I probably would draw a complete blank: uhhh, lots of books?

There's something in the socio-cultural air right at this moment-- a post-recession urge to purge. Our voracious appetite for cheap credit for cheap crap got us into this economic mess-- maybe craftmanship, quality and austerity can pull us from the mire. Can you live in a smaller house? Get rid of your car? Quit your job? Have no-impact? Quick, hold your breath, no carbon emissions!

The simplifying dogma is so appealing-- so monkish and holistic. Eat simply, speak simply, go about your daily chores (plucking herbs in the garden, baking bread) in a state of quiet contentment. Free yourself from attachment to all that Stuff, and soar!

We're gorged with garbage. But how do you unstuck the bottleneck without being completely wasteful? My competing impulses battled just a minute ago: I bought (suddenly embarrassed to admit it) two bottles of agave nectar at Costco. They were yoked together with a neat little collar with "pry tabs." (I pondered the "pry tabs." Someone with a poetic bent gets to name bits of packaging.)

But the neat little collar is not recyclable. So do I embrace simplicity and tidiness and chuck it in the garbage? Sounds good! Except, we live on a tiny island and our dump is full. Everything I put in my garbage can will languish in our over-full island dump for the rest of eternity. I can't cope with that guilt!

Or do I keep it? I held it up to my eyes. Add some feathers, some glue...It could be a cool little owlish mask. A potential craft activity? I start feeling a little crazy, debating with myself in front of the garbage can. The thing is now sitting in my "deal with this" pile, which also includes a handful of sprouting potatoes (plant them!) a cork (make a corkboard!) reciepts (enter them!), a plastic pie cover (christmas wreath!) and about 34 wooden laundry clips.

ESP, baby, 123.

2010-11-21T23:40:00.000-08:00

*So I published this post last night, as is, and today it was bothering me-- and I realized that I need to contextualize it a little better. I haven't read the comments yet, just so you know.*

Morning-After-Contextualization:

I have been reading and thinking a lot about human evolution. I find the vision of an ancestral environment very moving-- up until 10,000 years ago or so when humans developed culture, language, institutions, religion. I'm intrigued especially by the traits that we usually wouldn't call biological- the cultural, the religious, the familial. Recently I've read a really stupid book --Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters-- that completely ignores culture as an impetus for behavior-- and a really wonderful book --A Natural History of Parenting-- that will inspire you and blow your mind. Both illuminate the surprising evolutionary roots of common human stuff. Trends, choices, behaviors can be seen through that lens in a fascinating way. Re-seeing aspects of your life is, to me, a good project. So I feel it is a useful question to ask of my experiences: how could this or that be adaptive?

I want to clarify that I'm not trying to ignore God, or culture, or explain away religion or belief. I'm also not saying that my late-night mutterings are Capital T True. I'm just interested in seeing things through evolution-colored-glasses.

*End Contextualization, begin original post*:

The other night I was vegging out in front of hulu, the kids were both asleep in bed, and I was enjoying a moment of late-night mindlessness. Suddenly I felt an interior slam of urgency: Check on the baby!

I ran down the hall and saw that the baby had somehow tucked the blanket over her face, tight on both sides, down to her chin. I pulled the blanket off and sat on the edge of the bed for a while, watching the two sleeping bodies, easy breathing, my little charges. Charges like lightning strikes...

I am wary of magical thinking. Mother's intuition? Does that mean subconscious awareness of things like almost-silent changes in breath and movement sounds? Does it mean that statistically, I check on the baby often enough that one of these times she's bound to be in some danger?

Maybe there is intuition-- a precognitive, reptilian, instinctual way of knowing when our kids' lives are in danger. If there was such a thing, even just a teensy bit of a hint of knowing beyond logic, it would surely be adaptive. And mothers who could "tune in" to that primal panic would raise more babies who would pass the ability along... Intuition could easily evolve; generations of women could use an alogical way of acting that would allow them to preempt disaster...

In the dark, watching my babies' mouths move in their dreams, I am grateful for any slim help I can get in keeping them alive. Generations of sensitive women watching their babies-- they can be my angels.

Stuff I see on my run

2010-11-17T23:39:00.000-08:00

I try to get out of the door by 7-- leaving the wailing baby and grumpy toddler behind with my long-suffering mate. It's not exactly cold in the morning, not yet, but the air is wet, fresh. My body feels ill-jointed, like a marionette, and I take my first few arthritic steps out of the garage and onto the dirt road. The neighbor's giant wood-chipper truck is already on and warming up, puffing out diesel fumes, and four guys pull up in their pimped trucks, in their orange shirts. They leave their cars, pile together into the chipper, and go to work. I am shy to jog by them, so I say good morning and walk until I'm out of sight.

Things smell rich-- the flower-smell from the white ginger, the toxic burnt-plastic smell from the rubbish burning pit, the cut grass, the everygreen cat smell, the grassy horses.

I start to run -- stomp, stomp, stomp-- and remind myself that not to fight each jarring step but relax into it, let the movement massage my muscles and bones.

Running feels like having an extra 20 minutes to dream in the morning-- a buffer between rest and work. And life outside of my life has a chance to push into my consciousness. There is a world-- grass growing, animals living and dying, old people raking their yards, young poor people and old rich people warming up their cars, tying up their dogs-- that carries on without me. Out in the neighborhood I feel both like a part of a larger ecosystem and also wonderfully anonymous.

I jog along the road and notice the tricksy gravel underfoot and also the gold-lit cow on the other side of the fence, white-faced, wide-hefted and sun-orange, with a bright egret on her back. She promenades along the fenceline, facing the dawnlight.

Toads die in the night. They do not flinch in the headlights and they are flattened where they sat in the rain. They gesture horribly in the morning-- guts coughed out.

This morning I ran all the way to the old cemetery-- it looked like a study in Halloween decor. Time-corroded stones, worn down to nameless leaning lumps. Moulding, mossy, staggering into the underbrush. A man-height marble celtic cross blackened and obliterated, presiding over four sides of fallen cast-iron fence. Turned the corner and I looked-- and looked again. A cow? A hunched form? I got closer-- the hide of a wild pig, slung over the cemetery barbed wire. Another disintegrating monument, a nameless place-marker: Something was alive in this place, and now it isn't.

Feet on the ground, air in the lungs, shoulders, arms, trunk moving. In the mornings, running, I feel corporeal.

Save the whales! Screw the people!

2010-10-25T21:47:00.001-07:00

It's a tiny island, and people feel strongly about things. The place is so beautiful, so fruitful, so productive-- the history is fraught with racial blow-ups and slow simmers but ribboned with intermarriages and cross-cultural pot-melting-- and there is nowhere on earth like it. People born here either want to stay here forever, or run for the hills of the mainland. People on the mainland fantasize about the crashing waves and tropical breezes and long to move here finally. And then do, and find it provincial, stubborn and unaccommodating. But no denying the shocking fertility of the earth, with our passionfruit vines coiling up the electrical wires, and the unique-- sacred-- diversity of the reefs. There was even a shark in the baby pond recently, along with the usual endangered seals, endangered turtles, rare octopuses, leaping black crabs, revolting sea slugs, and las vegas show-girl lobsters.

So today at playgroup Skyla said, "did you hear they're trying to turn all of Kauai and Niihau into a whale sanctuary? No more beaches, no more fishing, no more people in the water at all!"
This I had to google.
http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2010/07/expand-hawaii-whale-sanctuary.html
is what came up.

Diana "for Mayor" Labedz with the Surfrider Foundation present these recommendations for the extant Whale Sanctuary to adopt:
The stated aims: expand the whale sanctuary to include, according to the little map on the site, everything north of Kekaha on the west side, enforce sanctuary speed limits, establish noise limits, ensure whale sanctuary involvement in issuing pollution permits, close "Designated areas of the Hawaiian Humpback Whale Sanctuary... to commercial or recreational fishing." Also, limit fishing nets, establish a whale rehab center, have a transparent budget, have the sanctuary board be representative of the island's population, and ensure enforcement support.

Most of that sounds fantastic-- sure! Build a humane society for whales! Yes, ban ear-drum blasting sonar! Sure, make people responsible for their equipment. If money grew on brain coral, go for it! But recreational fishing limitations?

Why would you, Ms. Diana-for-Mayor, antagonize the local populations in that way? Local fishermen want the ocean to be healthy, and they could be your strongest supporters if you were able to bring them into the effort rather than alienate them. What incentive do they have to help this process if you are hoping to restrict their right to fish for subsistence? Isn't there a middle road-- for example, requiring fishing licenses to limit takes rather than a flat-out ban?

Haole transplant projects like this-- blowing up the superferry, booting out the GMOs, blockading bike paths-- are so divisive in the community. Yes, the superferry needed to go through the proper environmental impact check-ups. Yes Monsanto planted vast swaths of non-food monoculture-- it's not that the issues are completely imaginary. But loud angry people with lots of disposable income and free time approach the problem solving so abrasively and with such disregard for local culture, history and values that little differences like race and income become enormous political hurdles.

Church on the Beach

2010-10-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

It’s a beautiful hot and clear morning. We decided to head to the beach with RJ’s big foam noodle and a slick boogie board to crash in the waves. I set up camp in the shade of a palm tree with baby while Matt took RJ to the water. I noticed some music—the un-chick, un-chick of inexpert ukuleles—from a nearby pavilion. I pointed my toes along with the beat—the singing was loud and earnest. I was feeling a bit antsy and lonely and thought—what the heck. What’s the purpose of music, anyway? To create a little community, to participate in something. So I picked up baby and walked over to listen.

It wasn’t a sing-along. It was church-on-the-beach.

I’ve seen the signs along the road, “Come Worship With Us!” It reminds me of the Simpsons joke about the godless showiness of nature. I’m sure it cuts down on A/C bills.

The pastor looked like a model in a catalogue—Carribean black skin, with a goldenrod silk short-sleeved shirt and brown pants, leather sandals. He shook my hand and invited me into the pavilion--and I bounced around with baby, harmonized to a couple of hymns with repetitive choruses about mountains and valleys. Then he invited us to pray—and began to preach.

John 3:16 never sounded to rich and resonant, the palm trees swaying, the surf crashing, Pastor Jedidiah’s rolled Rs and emphatic gesticulations. He quoted Socrates, Calvin and the Apocrypha, he shouted and shook his fists, he hobbled and lisped. He named each person in the congregation (numbered 8, including me) and asked challenging questions in the Voice of God: “Where were you, Sister Cordelia when I found you! You were DEAD in your SINS!” And answered the questions without pausing.

I’ve been reading about human evolutionary psychology—about how our brains and bodies haven’t had a chance to evolve for 10,000 years, since the invention of agriculture. Our environments have been so unstable, changing drastically and quickly, that what is adaptively advantageous for one generation is useless for the next. We need environmental stability in order to adapt. And I’ve been reading Karen Armstrong’s “A Case For God” – about the purpose of ritual to create belief, and the special symbolic thinking that feeds an instinctual (adaptive?) belief in God.

So sitting in that breezy pavilion in my flip-flops, rocking my baby who was gumming the puka-shell lei the pastor draped over my hat when I came in, I was thinking about our cave-man brains, evolving to act, to wonder, to experience transcendence.

Pastor Jedediah riffed about sin. “The young! The old! The free! The black! The white! The Hawaiian! The rich! The poor! We! Are! Sinners! Sinners, one and all!” He turned and faced the sun-bathers and the white-painted tourists: “But GOD LOVES us, Sinners all!”

I imagined the Neolithic shamans on their trance-flights, locating prey to hunt on the tundras, honoring the sacred source of the antelopes’ lives, and blurring the distinction between hunting man and sacrificial animal. And easing the necessary pain of the kill.

I don’t know what Pastor Jedediah would think of the comparison, but there is something ancient and powerful when people gather together and ponder the mysteries of life. How can we kill animals when we ARE animals? Does God value our lives—and how? And the mystery—the moment of silence when words fail, and we recognize the limits of our ability to understand ourselves, our lives, and our higher natures.

mommy happenings: parenting as performance art

2010-08-06T01:50:00.000-07:00

This morning was a particularly chaotic preschool co-op: it was pouring and blustery when we got to the park, so all the kids sat shivering on the broken picnic bench under the pavilion (this time the nails were facing DOWN again, as they should be, not up waiting to shish-kabob a toddler).

The project was potato stamps: the moms fussed, the paint dribbled and soaked through the paper, the kids--an unusually young group today-- poked stubby fingers into greasy paint mounds, moms swatted painted hands away from fussy tops and tiny jeans. Knives and potato halves abounded, and the kids broke rank relatively quickly, barricading each other into the tube slide and brandishing twigs.

I've noticed an inverse correlation with Parental Fussiness and Kid Engagement with these projects.

After I rolled up the printed paper with all the potato halves and paint smears inside and mashed the scroll into the garbage (art is transient, kids,) I was chatting with some of the other moms. The topic was sleeping arrangements, but really it was about personal space and boundaries in parenting. It got me thinking about the no-man's-land (another word for shared territory?) of selfhood vs. selfishness.

I want to be an artist-- a creator, a thinker, a contributer to the world; a part of a dialogue-- at least cognizant of the Big Dialogues going on in the larger cultural sphere. And being a full-time mommy-- fussing over booger crust and hand-washing habits, night-time waking, and disgraceful sinkfuls of dishes-- seems like the antithesis of all the bountiful, building, creative sorts of things I want to do When I Grow Up, in My Real Life. I imagine a vision of My Self-- accomplishing things, creating things, orchestrating things. And the life that I actually live every day seems to be a deferment of My Real Life. I imagine myself, an old lady, grayed and beaten into formlessness, trying to reclaim some spark of self-hood, after leaching all my life force into my children. A dismal vision!

So that's the self, the selfishness. And on the other hand is the self-lessness-- the corrosive giving of parenting with its deeply moving and important and fulfilling work. Becoming a parent has made me into an adult-- into a human. I'm a much happier, more secure and joyful person than I was before kids. I am free to be my silliest self (which is pretty severely silly). I enjoy reading every parenting book on the library shelf and learning about the growing brain and discipline and batiks. I am awed by the seriousness of my responsibility to my kids: how can I keep them alive and safe in this dangerous world full of speeding cars and wild boars?? I want to give my kids every possible blessing, every imaginable Good thing. Not "things"-- but true enduring things: lasting friendships with parents and siblings, patience, humor, curiosity, openness, imagination.

Driving between our house and swim lessons (with 1/8th tank gas, so no A/C, and saying: RJ, don't kick the baby's chair. Tapping with your foot is still kicking. Don't scream for fun.) some barrier between these two camps dissolved.

I can be an artist-- in my life as it is.
I can be creative and delicate and careful-- in the role that I am in. I can expand my mommy job rather than allowing it to contract me. I can allow the impossibly and transcendent job of parenting as well as the burdensome job of housekeeping to become artistic acts-- daily Happenings-- performance art.

I can claim the space that I am in, and shape it, rather than tapping my foot, waiting for the day when I have a room of my own. I can make my life my own.

Whole Foods

2010-07-31T02:09:00.000-07:00

There is a whole foods on Maui.

Living on Kauai, I spend a lot of my transplant small-talk time keening with people over retail that exists elsewhere and not here. Most frequently mentioned: Target, Ross, Old Navy and especially Trader Joe's. A close runner up? Whole Foods.
Well, I went to the beloved Whole Foods on Maui. I warned my kid that she was going to have to be so patient because this shopping trip was going to take FOREVER.

And it did. I savored every second of it. I walked up and down every aisle, looked at every thing on the shelves, admired the bulk bins and the saintly edenic cosmetics and the gourmet prepared food (take something fancy. Stuff it with something else fancy. Voila.)

I found about 6 things I wanted to lug home with me (for one, sunscreen decorated with cute Eric Carle drawings and with big reassuring letters: "Contains No Bad Stuff." Just like The Hitchhiker's Guide: "don't panic.") And spent $100 on my wee basket-full. Hah! reminded me of the Simpson's clip when they go shopping at "Wellness Foods" and spend $9000 on a week's worth of food, which all shrivels on the counter because it's organic and lacks preservatives. hehe.
But look at this glistening olive bar... The olive-eating lifestyle this suggests! Worldly friends, expensive Tapenades and Hummus.

There was also a deli counter with actual rounds of imported cheeses and cured meats, and rows and rows of fussy beers with artsy labels and wine with small-print descriptions and great logos. I got a canvas bag so I can be the envy of all the other transplant mommies-- the one in the inner circle of food snobs.

I was reading the Hawaiian Airlines magazine on the way home and laughed out loud when I saw the full-page Whole Foods ad:
"Love at Second Bite"
"You came in once, come back again!"

They pegged it. I went once, and I feel no need to ever go back. I got my canvas bag and my caterpillar-endorsed sunscreen. Now I'll go back to Costco, or even worse, WALMART, where I belong.

Thugs

2010-07-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

I was at the beach yesterday, sitting out my kid's nap in the car, reading my novel. Two muscle-bound guys sat on the guard rail in front of me in the shade, smoking and drinking 6-packs and talking colorful story.

"And then I had trow the barstool, it wen ricochet lie dat off his head!"

"He had hit me but I buss him up, I say to him 'ho, das the end of your boxing career!'"

One guy was in a longsleeved neon orange shirt with a pencil line beard around his jawline and sleek sunglasses. The other guy was shirtless. And that guy-- there was something funny about him. For one, he was obviously the beta dog. He kissed up: "you see, das why we friends! Cuz we nice guys, but you nevah mess wid us! We the same!" And during one of his swashbuckling adventure stories ("Deze guys had come corner me in da batroom an den...!") the other guy lowered his glasses and ogled a passing 16 year old Filipina in a thong, without even a pretense of paying attention.

And the kicker: he was faking it. The beta guy was-- for sure-- from LA. His pidgin was totally forced, the accent off, the emphasis stilted, and he threw in clunky mainland slang.

In short-- he was a thug transplant. A malihini pirate.

Eavesdropper me, I felt for the guy.

Austerity Measures

2010-06-10T00:19:00.000-07:00

I worked for a couple of years as a bookkeeper for a small company. I loved the way the numbers lined up, decimals all in a tidy line down my screen. I loved balancing the ebb-and-flow accounts down to the cent and the zen-like tranquility that came from reconciling a statement perfectly. So, even though now I just manage our family's money, I still am quite meticulous about keeping track of everything. And I've always preened a bit about our perfect credit scores and debt-free lifestyle.

But recently, to my embarrassment, I realized that we are --ever so slightly-- living beyond our means. Not extravagantly, not obviously. Just enough to make me feel financially arthritic-- joints dangerously creaking on themselves rather than swinging easily along.

Eating just a couple of hundred extra calories a day gets you 10 pounds heavier at the end of the year, but who has the self control to cut back just a little? Nobody. Similarly, a financial crash diet is in order. A money-habit purge to reset our behavior.

For the last three weeks, I've only allowed myself to spend $10 a week. Groceries, household stuff, miscellaneous impulse purchases and costco hotdogs. It's turned into an interesting mental and -- is it ridiculous to say?-- emotional challenge.

Not buying anything, I feel rich. I have kitchen cupboards full of several kinds of rice, flour, sugar, beans, mushrooms, tomatoes, spices, oil, vinegar, cocoa, honey, dried fruits, mushrooms, seaweed, tea. Years' worth of accumulated grocery detritus: thai green chili paste and tamarind extract, instant white miso soup and cream of rice. Also, from the garden: eggs, papayas, mangoes, passionfruit, collards, beans, okra, cherry tomatoes, hot peppers, basil, thyme, lemongrass, sweet potatoes, taro, and coconuts. And a zillion wild roosters and pigs and pheasants if we get hungry enough. I have the leisure-- the 1st world priviledge-- of DECIDING not to buy any food.

On the other hand, it has been uncomfortably constricting. RJ's swimmingsuits, already second hand, are getting blue-bleached from the pool, and my beach chair just rusted through its hinges. We are running low on bread flour and we're out of pasta. We have been cutting fresh milk with powdered milk and feeding the cats leftovers. It was painful to go to the store and put the pasta and the cheerios back on the shelf. I figured we have rice and oatmeal. Same difference, right?

Also, today the scraped-up rice cooker and waffle iron went to the thrift shop. That's seems like part of a financial diet too-- cut down on stuff coming in, and make sure there's stuff going out. Streamline. Lean up. Pray.

Hanging laundry on the line, picking okra, making simple meals. Austerity feels religious-- as if going without is good for you. Maybe it is, but I'm not sure it's fun.

Cloth or plastic?

2010-05-30T09:45:00.001-07:00

So in a little while, Kauai will be banning plastic grocery bags because they are pointless litter and choke sea creatures and befoul our lovely island, littering highways and beaches and clogging our already maxed-out dump and reveal our moral decrepitude and innate slovenliness. Every store offers righteous little reusable cloth ones to replace the plastic ones. The cloth grocery bags offer a new vision of the future-- where we'll all recycle, shop at farmer's markets, apply sunscreen, and pay our bills on time.

The other day I was driving down the main highway and I saw something tangled in the guard on the right. It was a cloth grocery bag.

Old chucking-bags-out-of-vehicles habits must be hard to break.

A bunch of Hui

2010-05-26T03:36:00.000-07:00

Mahalo, Ola, Pono, Aina, Ono, Piko, Pau....I hear Hawaiian words all the time. And mostly from non-Hawaiians. But I only hear the same handful of words over and over--the Hawaiian-word pool that we can pick from is limited.

There are some Hawaiian words that Haole imposters, like myself, always feel free to bandy about.
Aloha is one of those words we've beaten into submission-- especially pronounced, "Hello-hah." Because it is un-American to pronounce a word from a non-English language correctly, "Hello-hah" lets you make a limp-wristed effort but without having to fully commit to a non-English word. Win-win.

Malama is another one we say a lot-- and we use it to suggest, like finger-wagging school marms, that others could be taking better care of things. Malama Aina, Malama Kai, Malama Pono, Malama ola-- don't forget to pick up after your doggies, people. Don't mess up the ocean, be righteous and eat more vegetables! And Kokua-- you better cooperate!

Advanced Haoles throw in cultural references to doozies like kaona --hidden poetic meaning-- or hooponopono -- a meeting to hammer out nastiness, in a loving constructive and mediated way. I don't dare throw in these big guns in a casual conversation-- but I do nod enthusiastically if I hear someone else say it, eager to show I've got the inside scoop, too.

And once you've heard one haole say it, we all start in on it. We're linguistic lemmings. Once a word has been colonized by our lumbering American accents, it's free game.

But why do we bother to expand our mainland vocabulary to include these Polynesian punctuations? Maybe we hope the words help us in establishing Local cred without venturing too deeply into the complex shades of the Hawaiian language. We want to show our efforts at "blending in", and maybe showing we're in on the local culture...

I'm guilty of this-- especially this week. I'm starting a preschool co-op, but rather than call it a co-op, I've co-opted the Hawaiian word "Hui." Our preschool won't be about Hawaii or Hawaiian culture specifically-- but splicing in the Hawaiian word pins us to the map. It's a fraught little nod to the "host culture" of the islands.

Transplants feel racially at odds with actual Hawaiians and modern day Hawaiian culture (charmless Jawaiian music, anyone?) but also nostalgic for a romantic image of Gauguin's island paradise.

There's something typically colonial about this word-stealing: Americans taking just the good-bits version of the Hawaiian language--- the easy, the poetic, the quotable-- and leaving out the complexity of meaning, the functionality--the coherent grammar that makes Hawaiian a living language. Without the grammar, without the daily-life-use, we just extract emotions, impressions, post-card perfect dreams from the language. We do the same thing to the landscape-- give us beaches, palm trees, hula shows and baby luaus. Leave out the schools, the potholes, and the politics.

BYO Mexican

2010-05-09T00:40:00.000-07:00

I took my kids to the May Day concert at Island school the other day. The school is private, expensive, lofty. The auditorium was bright and clean, and all the parents were in their aloha best-- matching aloha print shirts and dresses for the whole family, and lots of folks yoked with leis in mounds on their shoulders. May day is lei day in Hawaii, after all.

I was curious about the crowd-- who sends their kids to this school? Rich or frightened parents, I suppose-- jittery overpaid transplants, anxious underpaid locals, everybody gnawing their nails about our state's 3.5 day school week and shelling out more than I paid for graduate school from preschool onward.

We got there half an hour early and the bleachers were already full of proud parents and grandparents-- we found a spot on the last row in the far corner. Soon after we sat down and started our I-spy game, two Mexican ladies walked over. Real, genuine Mexicanas, with that rich accent, and wide Indian cheekbones! Yes, Hawaii is diverse: Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Samoan, Tongan, Micronesian, but nary a Spanish-speaker to be found. I was a bit star struck. They were the real deal, too-- dressed like foreigners. Formless t-shirts and oversized baseball hats, cinched in the back. I scooched over and beamed gringa goodwill. They came and sat down by us and I smiled and tried to eavesdrop on those lovely rrrroling syllables.

Then a tall woman walked up, with a long white-blond ponytail and leading a big white-blond dog on a pink leather leash. When she got close she said, "she needs to outside. Take her for a walk." And she tossed the leash to the Mexican ladies and walked away. They climbed down from the bleachers and took the dog outside. When they came back they were holding a sour-faced blond toddler and feeding her mashed spinach, bouncing her on their hips and talking her through the hula show.

So, what? It just isn't home without the Mexicanas to keep the children and animals tended and out of sight? So when moving to Hawaii, where they are hard to come by, bring your own Mexicans! And who has servants-- who issues imperious commands? Who brings fussy incontinent dogs to hula performances?

Somebody overmoneyed and afraid, I guess.

Years

2010-04-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

I just realized that it's been four years this month since I moved to Hawaii. And-- notice the long silence since my last post?

There's a couple of reasons (excuses) for that.
Life is busy-- I just had a new baby, my older kid stopped napping, and my full-time gig as a kid-chaser has become more brain consuming. Maybe I just don't have time.

But there's another reason why I don't have much to say on this blog. I started it up as a way to salve the growing pains I experienced from transplanting here. My hackles were up-- listening for slurs against me and against my new home. And I had that clear-eyed view of things that tourists and newcomers have: this compared with that, home vs. away. I laugh to see the line of tourist cars pulled helter skelter off the road, taking pictures of weedy flowers and branchy trees-- stuff that they have at home but that they never SEE. When you're traveling, touring, or transplanting-- the strangeness and beauty of things come into sharp focus.

I've settled into a life here-- I have my small and permeable circle of friends. I have my routines-- where I shop, where I take my kid to the beach, where we go for ice cream. And the periphery is getting comfortably blurred. Are there issues swirling? Yes-- enormous construction projects are left like empty eye-sockets, I-beams exposed and tarps flapping over the expensively manicured grounds. Reinstated Hawaiian government license plates are proliferating. Long-time haole residents say shockingly ignorant things, Micronesians live invisibly, trimming, bussing, tending, supporting. People marry on the beach with sandy rose-petals or in the church gym with baby-bump flattering dresses. The Buddhists congregate, sing hymns, share green tea. The Lutherans meet, sing hymns and share coffee.

The whole island is full of communities and micro communities, dissolving, colliding, recombining like galaxies. But I'm caught up in my own little stellar swirl-- planning dinners, dumping leftovers, wiping noses.

But I'm going to try and keep my eyes open-- notice the world around me, poke my head out of my doughy shell a bit.

I'll be back.

Small Town Death

2009-11-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

Today I was driving through our little town, and my 2 year old in the back seat starting keening: "The ice cream store! It's GONE!!!"

She's right. It is. Windows blacked out, fresh-cone-smell gone.

So is the little video store-- run by 90 pound Filipina Auntie Chris, talking 100 miles an hour, and Angelica her daughter-clone, giggling over her homework next to the paper-pile counter. My kid's favorite thing was rearranging all the faded video-cases on the shelves, lining them up into "snakes" across the floor.

The big planned development on the main road has been put on permanent hold. The vacant lot is surrounded by 20 foot high plywood and black-netting wall. The tall grass is growing out from under the fence and the wind tattered the black sheets-- it's very Halloween scarecrow. And that's the view from the otherwise very quaint and charming main drag-- sit on the old-west style porch and gaze at... a wall of black rags. Hmm.

Things are not looking so good for this town. It's a slow death-- a year ago the first jobs got slashed and the already-overextended shops went belly-up. Now it's the steady local-friendly shops that are pulling out.

Makes me want to wail, too!

Salads and Saving the Earth?

2009-10-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

Recently Kauai announced its plans to get on the no-more-plastic-bags bandwagon. Starting next year, we'll all have to remember our reusable bags. Or what? Maybe pay a nickel for one of the biodegradable ones, or a couple dollars for a canvas one. Three cheers! Every time we go to the beach seems like we're chasing people's plastic bags as they blow across the water to go choke a honu or ensnare a seal.

Most of the stores around have started selling little reusable polyester bags, to get us all into practice. I have a little collection: Sueoka's, Long's, Big Save, even a Costco and an imported Trader Joes, from grandma. A friend was telling me that Home Depot's are the best-- super double reinforced, ribbed, double buckled, made in the USA, and infused with man-pheremones.

I mentioned that I loved how the stores give you a discount when you bring your own bag. My friend looked at me blankly.
--Where.
Yes! I insisted-- everywhere does. Sueokas, Big Save, five or ten cents off!
--I never get a discount.
She gave me a look.--It's because you haole.
me: What?!?
--No! It's true! You go in there, they think, oh good job. I go in there, they say oh you finally remember for bring your bag. They think we no can save the earth! Ha-- like if we go to a restaurant. You like order salad for dinner, they never say notting. I order one salad, they say What-- you on one diet?? What else you like get?
Me: I'm putting this conversation on my blog.

Token Haole Friend

2009-10-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

"Haole to you, too" T-shirt

S-----, one of the local ladies who runs the playgroups I take my kid to, jokingly grills newcomers on their level of haole-ness. One mom-- the one who missed last time because she was getting some furniture and some Royal palm trees delivered to her house-- she's the ultimate haole. S---- introduces her to everybody as "my haole friend!" And then S---- gives every white mom there an impromptu "haole" rating. And her first question is "do you cook rice in a rice cooker?" If yes, it's a mark in your favor-- you might be less haole than you think!

Me she points to and says, "you-- you're not haole. You're too country to be haole." My friend -- no rice pot, cooks the stuff on the stove, will never eat canned meat-- gets a "uh oh! You're pretty haole."

It's a funny display-- embarassing to some transplants who would rather ignore all the racial tensions that dent and ding their lives here. For others it's a big release to be able to joke about it-- lots of these white girls have never examined their own race before. (Why not? Because this is America! White people don't have to think about race-- that's everybody else's problem!)

As S---- laughs and exclaims "Haole!" or "See, you not so haole!" at the attentive pale-faces, her playgroup racial rubric becomes clearer.

You camp, hunt, or farm livestock? Ride rodeo or spear fish? Eat spam, speak pidgin? Not so haole.

You wear big glasses, spend big money on your landscaping? let other people light the fire or set up the tarps when you camp? You squeamish about saying "da kine"? The local guys in their neon construction shirts taking their lunch break at the park make you nervous? You so haole.

It's a funny little ritual-- S---- makes everybody feel like they too can be in the Local in-group. It's just a matter of picking up some new skills, a couple new vocab words. This pollyanna version of race in Hawaii might be comforting to new transplants. For others, it's a big joke, playing down the seriousness and depth of the racial and cultural divisions. Because really, no matter how fluent your pidgin, how prodigious your pig hunting and SPAM musubi consumption, you get white skin? Mean you haole, bra.

Miss Aloha Nui

2009-09-30T18:16:00.001-07:00

Way back when I first moved to the Big Island, I was walking past a storefront when a flier for the Miss Aloha Nui pageant caught my eye. It was a call for entries in a beauty pageant, with a photo of an enormous and lovely beauty queen, waving, her arms tapering to small graceful fingers.

The flier listed the qualifications for entrants:
- Must be female
- Must weigh at least 200 pounds
- Must be at least 18 years of age
- Must be a current resident of Hawaii

A few days after the contest, the winner rides in the Aloha Week parade on the main street of Waimea, with the hula halaus dancing on flatbed trucks and highstepping all-haole marching bands. The first year we watched the parade, the winner laughed and cooed "Aloha! Aloha!" to all of us sitting on the curb-- her subjects. She was fantastic-- she filled the whole car and blew kisses and her friends and admirers ran up to her and gave her kisses as she went.

The next year the winner was a quietly dignified queen, staring proudly straight ahead, her bright yellow satin gown spilling over the convertible in acres.

I've thought about these elegant and dignified supersized beauties often.

Now that I've lived here for a little while, I see big bodies differently than I did on the mainland. Maybe it's my perspective that has changed-- maybe I've grown up and out of those cricket-skinny fashion-magazine beauty ideals. Or maybe the culture here is so dismissive of those bony models that I've been converted to a healthier, chubbier way of seeing the world. What could Local culture possibly have in common with the angsty, self-conscious worls of fashion? Why adopt those ideals? Skinny people belong at the resorts, not picnicking at a breezy beach pavilion.

Huge teenage girls spill out of microscopic neon bikinis at the beach, their bodies tattooed with sunshine and tribal designs. Hot young mommas with shiny eye shadow and gleaming hoops in their ears and up their arms squeeze into tube tops and micro shorts, showing off mounds of smooth wide flesh.

I had a tourist mom come up to me at the beach and say with surprise, "look at all these moms in bikinis!" She covered her trim body from chin to thigh in a neo-victorian LandsEnd bathing suit, and said that if she dared to show her stomach at the beach back home, she'd be stared out of the water. And here are moms of all races with their stretch marks blue and shining, bellybutton rings glinting in the sun, babies grabbing at boobs and clinging to bikini ties.

I admit I won't squeeze myself into a tube top-- and I wear a t-shirt to the beach. But it's a relief to have that pressure lifted, to enjoy big healthy bodies-- my own and others'.

Signs of the Times

2009-09-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

The other day I drove past a "We Buy Gold and Silver" place, just as a woman was walking out.

She was crying, pulling herself together, wiping her eyes on her naked wrists.

Us 'n Them

2009-09-25T19:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like my relationships are racially nuetral.
And then sometimes I'm reminded that there's probably no such thing.

The other day a playgroup mom, Kahea, brought a whole mountain of hand-crafted goodie bags for the kids-- left over from her daughter's one-year luau. These were amazing-- filled with handmade chinese pretzels-- cripsy litle whisps of deep fried goodness, in intricate many-petaled flower shapes. She laughed and said it took her and her sister and mom hours standing over the hot oil with special pretzel irons to finish the hundreds for the party and the gift bags.

I said, "Wow, I can't believe you guys did all that by hand!"

Another mom, Bee, said, "Well, we don't have anything better to do!"

I was confused. Is Bee related to Kahea? Did she help with the luau too? Then I realized. She was speaking as a Local person to a non-Local person. When I said, "you guys" I meant Kahea and her family. What Bee heard was, "All Ya'll Local People."

I felt a bit dizzy-- the nuetral conversation suddenly had fragmented the group into Ins and Outs, Usses and Thems. Not like it came to screeching halt-- it just was a reminder-- even if I forget for a minute that there are racial differences augmenting and impeding our relationships, those differences are still there, ebbing and flowing in importance.

Secret Places

2009-09-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that where the Big Island was all walls and barriers, Kauai is open corridors and accessible guideposts. Our favorite spots on the Big Island were unvisited, practically inaccessible, and we only learned about them after years of quiet and humble observation. But here, nearly every beach is clearly identified in ubiquitous guidebooks, and the vast swaths of public land are crisscrossed with neatly marked trails.

It's pleasant-- I feel like less of an intruder. I don't have to work so hard to go someplace new. It's also sad-- where the Big Island is still keeping her secrets, Kauai has been thoroughly colonized and marked by the outsider's use. Who else would need all that interpretation of the landscape?

But there are still mysteries. And there is something urgently itchy about the unexplored territories on the island-- people's favorite fishing spots and family-secret hunting trails-- plain on a map but unnoticed unless you know what you're looking for exactly. I guess it's my own colonizing drive-- solve all the mysteries, categorize the unknown, describe and taxonomize the world I'm in.

A few days ago we went exploring down a rutted track along the campus of the 7th day Adventist School. At the office a smiling family gave us a map and directions to a trailhead. Past several ominous "NO TRESSPASSING, DO NO ENTER" signs, which, the family reassured us, we could ignore, we spotted the knee-high cement wall that marked the trail. We parked in the grass and started out through a brambly, hot and mosquito buzzy tangle of wild guava. The trees are so scrawny and growing so densely that they trap the fat hot air without making any shade.

The trail began to widen and lean up a steep hill, and the guava thinned out into a shady stand of planted norfolk pine trees. There were huge bald boulders and the ground was covered in the crisp long-fingered needles-- many-jointed like centipedes. There was a gully on one side of the hill and a view of a jungly ridge. Water sloshed and dropped somewhere nearby.

We had our picnic and noticed that the illusion of wildness disappeared if you lined up with the trees. Then the entire scene became geometrical-- all the trees columns in equidistant lines. Shift perspective again and tree-ish chaos was restored.

We told scary Taily Po stories and then made our way back down (hikes are always shorter on the way back) and went home, a tiny mystery discovered.

Grilled

2009-09-11T08:28:00.001-07:00

I ran into an aqcuaintance in the Costco eatery the other day (finest 1$ dining on island!) and she invited me to come learn a hula with her church group for their upcoming luau. I really want to learn hula-- those slow-moving women of all sizes, eyes following their hands, the steady rocking rhythm, back and forth. But I've been too shy to just call a halau and sign up. So I was eager to give it a try last night.

On the way there I had the weirdest sensation that I should just turn around and go home. But I felt obligated-- I had told this girl I was coming, she'd asked me several times. I didn't have anywhere else to be-- no legitimate excuse for turning around. So obligation and guilt won out over my intuition.

Will I never learn?

I got there and a large group of people were preparing food. I saw my aqcuaintance--Meghan-- she seemed to be in the middle of high-level negotiations about the state of the chopped onions for the lomi lomi salmon. I sauntered up to one chopping station and offered to help, but the girl there shrugged me away, with a gesture of, "I don't know what's going on any more than you!"

So I shadowed Meghan into another room where she was battling with Auntie Nani, the hula teacher, about who was going to make the ti leaf leis and how. I helped fold up the chairs and said hello to Auntie Nani when Meghan had to run to another crisis. I gave her a hug and kiss and complimented her Ipu playing-- I had heard her once before.

"So Becky, what's your daughter's name?" I tell her, wincing at "Becky" a bit.
"That's a Hawaiian name. Is your husband Hawaiian?" Eyeing my blond girl doubtfully. I try to be blythe. "Well, he's a local boy."

(This may or may not be technically true, depending on your definitions and the shaded gradations of a life story. Growing up on the mainland, the child of a Hawaii-born parent who was more than happy to run from backwater island provincial ways, certainly never inculcated with Local culture, returning as an adult to investigate a nostalgic connection to his family... I've met plenty of "local boys" with similar stories, but usually with a more definite self-definition than my man, who is at equilibrium being a bit in this world, a bit in that one. His equilibrium can translate into others' distress when they can't peg him in one category or another.)

"Oh really?" eyebrows up. "What's his name." I tell her. "That's not a Hawaiian name." A crowd has gathered, the other aunties twitter. I'm feeling a bit grilled now.
"He's haole." A death sentence.
"Hapa." I correct, in a little rabbit voice.
"Then what. is. his. Hawaiian. name."
me: "He doesn't have one."

End of interview.

Maybe she really did want his life history. A tallying of all the competing forces and events that would lead a person without a Hawaiian name to give one to their kid. But I don't think I can deliver a summary like that on demand, to demonstrate my legitimacy. I'm not sure I would recognize a soundbyte version of my husband, anyway.

Luckily my carefully named toddler dashed for the door-- she HAD to go see a group of big 8 year old boys hooting and playing soccer in the hall. When we made it back to the rehearsal room, a group of dancers had gathered. I kicked off my slippers and joined in, watching the girls next to me and trying to think lovely thoughts and parse the Hawaiian words:

Aloha kaua’i

Aloha Kaua'i by Maiki Aiu

Aloha mokihana, pua o Kaua'i

Wili 'ia me ka maile lau li'ili'i

Maile li'ili'i

He u'I, onaona, he aloha wau ia 'oe

Me a'u, me 'oe I ka pu'uwai

Aloha no o Kaua'i

Luana ho'okipa malihini

Puana kaulana, ka inoa o Kaua'i

Ha'aheo he nani, hiwahiwa

Aloha no o Kaua'i

Luana ho'okipa malihini

Puana kaulana, ka inoa o Kaua'i

Ha'aheo he nani, hiwahiwa

Kaua'i he nani no 'oe

Aloha kaua’iBeloved is the Mokihana, flower of Kaua'i
Entwined with the small-leaf maile
Beauty and subtle fragrance, my love
You are ever in my heart.
Great is my affection for Kaua'i

Luana, a home where hospitality awaits the Visitor
My songs ends with praise and honor for you, o Kaua’i
Proud of your precious beauty.

After one run-through, my kid has had enough, and bolts again. I pick up my slippers and sneak out. This is not the loose learning session I thought it would be-- the other girls are serious and they know the dance already-- staring straight ahead, or watching their gestures: aloha from the heart, fragrant maile leis tumbling over one shoulder then another. I follow my kid out, we find the stars on the way to the car, and we go home.

88 Shrines

2009-08-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

This morning we took a short trek up to Lawai to visit the International Peace Center's openhouse. It was so clear and bright that all the heavy cloud leis were gone from the mountains, and we could see their green rumpled skirts all around us. It's easy to forget to see them-- everything was bright today.

The center is back in a little residential neighborhood. A flock of pretty goats graze the grass out front, and a cheerful greeter in a straw hat and designer sandals showed us to some lawn chairs with a serene view and gave us some jasmine tea and Manju--Japanese pastries. We joked under our breath that the red dot on top was the mind altering drugs. Our greeter said to sit and enjoy the peaceful surroundings for a moment while the previous tour finished up the orientation.

The view from our lawnchairs was lovely--a long grassy mound in front of an imposing rock wall. Matt wondered, "oh no, the site of a heiau?" Sure enough, yes. A particularly powerful one, in the shape of an enormous turtle. Above the heiau wall there is a grassy bench and a winding path up a bare-rock cliff. Orchids and banyan trees with draped white roots descend the face, which is dabbed with small cement shrines. We drank our tea, watching the jasmine leaves unfurl in the cup, said hello to the goats, and walked around the shady lawn. After a little while we were shown into a little tent and shown this video about the history of the place.

Lawai valley has always been a pilgrimage site for Hawaiians-- the stream is said to have healing properties. And when the Japanese immigrants came in, they built these 88 small shrines on the site of the heiau, each representing 100 shrines in Shikoku, Japan. The camp was right there where we sipped our tea, with three buddhist temples, a sumo arena and an O-Bon dance ground. The place fell into disrepair over the years-- WW2 encouraged Japanese immigrants to integrate into the greater cultural context, and disassociate themselves from suspicious Japanese insularity. In the 60s, the Lawai cannery closed and the last few people moved away from the site. The landowner tried to sell the place for condos.

But skip a bit, and now it's been restored, bought with the proceeds of thousands of malasadas and 100s of jars of pickled mango sold at the county fair. Plus a couple of enormous private donations.

Once we've been oriented, and are sufficiently impressed with the cultural and spiritual importance of the place, our greeter takes us to the entrance: a low and narrow cave ribbed with banyan roots like living bones. We duck down and squeeze through and greet the first shrine semi prostrate in the dim womblike cave: two red kanji are painted on the side: ichi-ban. Then we come out into the light and we're on a narrow path that zigzags across the face of the cliff. We stop at each of the shrines and my two year old shouts, "look, there's a BUDDHA!" The little statues are all handmade by plantation workers-- some are eroded, some are carved of wood and painted, some are in shallow relief with such simple features they look like Tikis. Some of the Buddhas are sitting on lotuses, a few are baby Buddhas, standing up and pointing at earth and heaven. We even saw a pair of grumpy Buddhas-- cartoony downward frowns on their faces, and a sword in one hand, a blunt club in the other. Those, she announces, are her favorite.

Many of the shrines appeared empty. The empty platforms where the Buddhas once sat now held small offerings-- stones, a flower, a few beads. When Rosie asked, "Where's the Buddha?" Matt said, "All of the little houses have Buddhas inside. He just looks different. That's just like us!"

It was a beautiful place. From the top of the cliff we could see out over Lawai valley, in the clear air we could see the mountains and the valleys, the houses. The shrines were so moving-- those good natured little Buddhas in there, and the generations of care and faith that had created and maintained them.

50 Years

2009-08-22T23:05:00.000-07:00

So as a basically uninformed observer, Happy 50 years of Statehood, Hawaii!

You were a chain of connected sisters in the family of Polynesia, and then you were discovered by the West, and everything changed almost instantly. Chiefs got gun-powder weapons, fought brutal battles. You became your own Kingdom-- you were a hub of the Pacific, with sudden wealth from whalers and traders and sudden death and misery from disease and consumer culture. Your people struggled and changed-- newcomers poured in to work, to live, to make gobs of money, to punish you for your sins, to learn your ways. Whalers got Hawaiian tattoos, Hawaiians wore missionary clothes and toppled their gods. Old taboos were discarded, new ones were stamped on your faces.

Hawaiians poured away from the islands and scattered across the world-- marrying Indians in the Northwest, educating freed slaves in the East, and criss-crossing the continents on whalers. Most changed, learned new languages, never came home, and left traces of the islands in their overlooked "colored" children's blood.

The citizens of the Kingdom changed, too. New races poured in to work, others poured into powerful positions in the government-- the monarchy were astute observers of Western monarchies and welcomed the foreign advice and money-- perhaps at the expense of the long-term well being of the Hawaiian citizens. The Mahele happened-- banks, monarchs, big investors carved up the islands in the name of free enterprise, and effectively removed all of the land from the working native Hawaiians. This great tragic loss still reverberates in the islands-- disenfranchised families are still fighting for their lost lands-- some with yellowing official writs from the Kingdom, some only with outrage and oral history.

King David Kalakaua struggled to live the high life while celebrating and revitalizing the slipping Hawaiian culture-- he is remembered as both a cultural hero, responsible for keeping Hula alive, and as an irresponsible drunk-- depending on which story is being told. The monarchs were leaders and artists-- I hear Queen Liliuokalani's songs on the radio everyday.

And here history narrows to a razor's edge: a drastic sudden change with unforseeable and inalterable effects. In 1893 a group of American marines stormed the Palace and imprisoned the queen-- the US government ignored this coup. And the Kingdom was lost to rich, politically influential Americans. The US annexed the island in 1898-- it's plumb spot in the middle of the Pacific made it a strategic gem-- and those vast stretching plantations, powered by cheap immigrant labor, were too tempting to not pluck. American and European business interests were more than happy to be a territory-- native Hawaiians mourned for their Kingdom, which showed less likelihood of being restored as America took more interest in Hawaii's resources, and less interest in her illegal overthrow.

The plantations bred their own cultures: company stores, company schools, company sports, company housing, company doctors-- no votes, no unions, and institutionalized racism. The children of the plantations worked hard for expansion of their rights as a new group of Hawaii-born people-- no longer defining themselves strictly as Japanese or Portuguese or Filipino. They created a new identity that incorporated elements of Hawaiian culture and language with their parents' cultures: they played in marching bands and changed religions, they intermarried and swapped recipes.

In 1941, Hawaii was bombed by the Japanese. Suddenly distant-seeming Hawaii became the American homefront. And those plantation children fought for the right to unionize and died in America's wars. In 1959 the territory voted to become a state-- the dream of restoring the kingdom slipped further away for the Hawaiian minority, even while investment and infrastructure and democracy poured in. The iron grip of the republican plantation oligarchy changed and morphed-- power shifted, things changed.

So here we are, a state-- a mixed blessing. A lost kingdom, a romanticized past of Hawaiian independence that probably looked pretty different up close. A diverse state with a Janus identity-- dependent on tourism and on the US, but with its own language and culture and history.

We are heavy with cliches-- swaying palms, mysterious green gorges and low-key picnics with mountains of ono grinds, baby luaus and racial harmony-- and ribboned with anger. Lost kingdom, blame, dismal education, racial prejudice and misinformed resentment, shoddy infrastructure, hemmoraging costs and crippling dependence on subsidized imports.

So, Hawaii suffers from the same problem of history as anywhere else-- What If? The changes that slammed the islands happened by a hair's breadth-- things could have been different. Unimaginably different. But we are where we are-- the question --and adventure-- is where to go from here.

One nodda ting about mainlanders....

2009-07-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

So, what does your husband do? Really? What kind of degree do you need for that? How much does he make? Wow? Can you live on that? And how much is rent? Seriously, for THIS PLACE? How much would it cost to buy? How many bedrooms? Kids, did you hear that?! That's how much our house is worth! And how much do you spend on groceries? Wow. You guys have a car? Two? How much did you pay for that truck? Amazing. Wow, good thing we live in Idaho, eh honey?

Well, nice to meet you!

Tourists.

2009-07-24T06:41:00.001-07:00

Can't stand 'em, but Hawaii can't live without 'em. They harass monk seals, they drive erratically while trying to take pictures out of their car windows, they drive up costs and walk around in public places with nothing but their sunburns.

But I have to admit, I kind of like 'em.

As individuals, that is.

I love chatting with the relaxed tourist parents at the beach park as our sandy toddlers chase or ignore each other-- like the grandpa from Minnesota with his grandson-- or the hip and happening parents from Seattle with their adopted Chinese daughter and expensive camera (and no doubt highly frequented blog).

But my favorite thing-- and this is a confession-- is being helpful. My pulse quickens when a goofy red chevy convertible with four adults in hats and sunglasses slows down next to me on my walk and rolls down the window. Yes, I can tell you exactly how to get to the airport!

The other day I was walking home from the grocery store and overheard a young sunburned couple puzzling over where Shipwreck Beach could possibly be. I "eh-hemmed" and wondered if they would like some help. They had spent an hour on their rented scooters trying to find it-- I reoriented their map and told them some landmarks, and then said, like a woman possessed, "and if you go a bit farther, down the long the dirt road, you get to the REALLY beautiful beaches." They thanked me and scootered off, and I got to feel smug and helpful and in-the-know.

Maybe that's what it's about-- I like the couple of seconds where the tourists are allowed to fulfill their Lonely Planet duty and "befriend a local." I like the --albeit lame-- thrill of having the inside scoop, of knowing where to go and how to get there. Here, where still so much of the time I'm super-aware of my outsider, malihini, decontextualized, out-of-the-loop status, it's a brief rush to be a bit "local-er than thou."

So yes, tourism in Hawaii is an environmental and cultural plague and as sustainable as a heroin addiction. But as long as tourists keep asking me for directions and advice, I'm not sure I can quit it.

Speaking of food...

2009-07-09T18:35:00.000-07:00

Uncle Ron is retired and now works dawn to dusk every day driving his little CAT up and down our dirt road. He has colonized the wild hillside with ti plants and tropical flowers for a friend who does flower arrangements for the hotels. He has planted dozens of papaya trees up and down the road-- and tiny hot hawaiian chili pepper plants, and enormously bushy basils.

He has buckets of eggplants, green onions, a huge asperagus patch, and a wall of bitter melon behind his house. His cousin catches wild chickens, fattens them up for a couple of weeks in pens, and then eats 'em. Ron even carved a path up the steep hillside and built a pen for his geese and ducks where they honk and hiss and lay huge eggs. Sweet potato carpets all around the pen, and the greenest longbeans you've ever seen climb all the way over it. His longan, mango, avocado, coconut, noni, guava and lychee trees are all fruiting, and the lovely bunches of bananas are all narrow and green. In the winter he had clementines and oranges and limes and pomelos.

He swats away my impressed noises. He told me they used to produce tons more food-- now they're retired, he's toned it down. Too tired for all that work. This he mutters while manhandling a wheelbarrow full of cement to repave the side of his house. Which he built.

This is all on scavenged land, with scavenged materials, and an incredible amount of work. And he makes more food than his whole household (three generations, plus cousins and a daycare) can eat. He tells me-- take whatever basil I want, whatever peppers-- there's so much it's almost an irritation to have all that food to cope with.

Food, Form and Substance

2009-06-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

I noticed a brightly painted sign on the side of the road: Mana Ohana, community owned, community grown. Vivid papayas, cheery pinapples and luscious mangoes crowded out the cheerful text: local produce, locally grown, organic!

I was intrigued, so I followed the signs to a huge old restaurant space. As soon as we walked in a haole woman jumped up and shook our hands, and launched into an energetic monologue about the virtues of the fruit stand, of vegetarian, GMO free lifestyle, her many community projects, and how we too could become a part of the coop for only $500, or equivalent labor!

As she talked she filled up the back of a name card with a list of all of her projects:
Malama kauai
Kohala Center
saveourseed
gmofreekauai
activatekauai
iwikupuna.com
KKCR 90.9
Wed 7-9 9-11
11-8
Kauaiworld.com
kane i ono uma
islandbreath.org

Her blue eyes were shining as she talked about her triumphs with protecting Hawaiian gravesites from developers and sending a charter for indigenous rights to the UN, and writing grants, and getting rid of Monsanto, and working with everybody, absolutely EVERYBODY on the island. And it is going to be this space, this ACTIVE space! An open space! A community, and with potlucks, everyweek, and we will open another one on the other side of the island, and incorporate art and music! She pumped my hand and punctuated her talk with fist-pounds, and gave me a stack of business cards to pass around, and a mango.

I have been furious about this all week.

Why?

The store was empty.

There was a low bucket of cracked and spotted mangoes. There was a bag of spidery Rosemary. And some bruised basil. There were a couple of coconuts, and several small jars of honey for $10. Some tiny pipinala and some wilted lettuce.

All those ideas, ideals, plans. All that purpose and zeal and excitement.

And no food. No actual local, organic, delicious produce. No actual ability to DO anything besides fill up the air with talk.

We need more local food, more enthusiasm for local production. But you have to have something to SHOW for it! Something worth buying! Ideals are great! But all that activism is just noise if you cant produce anything.

Settling In Again

2009-06-21T19:53:00.000-07:00

We went on an adventure-- traveling across continents (N America and Europe) and oceans (Pacific and Atlantic). I took my toddler to Big Important European cities and also to no-name American rural Edens. In the course of 6 weeks of traveling we saw important sites, heard a hundred different languages, used dozens of public bathrooms, and crossed paths with thousands of people with lives and worldviews all radically from us.

Rosie learned how to say, Bonjour, Au Revoir, Merci, Pardon Moi, WC, and "I live in Hawaii." And now we're home.

Getting off the airplane the passengers underwent a transformation: they turned from a group of tired strangers into a mob of giddy tourists. We transformed too-- we shed our traveler skin and became-- just ourselves again. At home.

Coming back, I noticed the vividness of the shiny dark green leaves, the bright reds and pinks and rainbow oranges of the flowers along the freeway, the dense golden light.

And somehow my malihini-meter has been reset to Zero-- everything feels as unfamiliar and novel and foreign as when I first moved here, 3 years-plus ago.

Gradually, I'm regaining my at-home footing, while trying to remember the traveler's broad perspective of this enormous world-- enjoying mangoes from the neighbors tree, but still savoring the last few inches of our Dutch smoked gouda, while the flavor and memory lasts.

ROY'S

2009-04-27T12:06:00.000-07:00

It was our 6th anniversary last night and we indulged ourselves. For the first time in Rosie's 25 months of life, we left her with a babysitter and went out to dinner.
It was sort of, totally, SPECTACULAR.
Roy's Prix Fix tasting and Hawaiian menus.
I can't really describe it, so here's my tone-poem, free-association, modern dance interpretation of the evening's partakings:
snappy limu seeweed gelatinous sprigs, caramel sauce on meaty ravioli, crispy wontons with ponzu, flaky fish , sesame oil and chili edamame, filet mignon melting onto wasabi mashed potatoes, crisp fried lotus root salad, misoyaki butterfish, asperagus and mac nut crusted white fish, chocolate lava souffle and four delicate little scoops of tropical sorbets with tiny fruit cubes on top, all sworled with elegant dabs of flavorful reductions and sauces on wide plates, low lighting and the sharp awareness of a rare event combined to make a singularly ROMANTIC evening. Roymantic? Har har.
I found myself feeling geriatric next to the waitress who talked like this:
"I just graduated from high school? And I got accepted to UH? And um, the, um, apple turnover? Is baked in puff pastry? And served with a caramel, um, crust?"
We got to watch the commotion in the kitchen through a huge window. Reminded me slightly of the lemur cage at the zoo. But it was inspiring, and absolutely DIVOON.
Happy anniversary, honey! Let's do it again next year!

The nail that sticks out, or something.

2009-04-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the beach with the playground to wear Rosie out a little bit (sun, slides, sand and surf, dude. It'll wipe anybody out.) We've only lived here since October-- that's, what, 7 months? We ran into four separate families that we know. And as the months go by, the island is only going to get smaller.

Living here is my first experience with having to make a community work. Knowing that we're going to be here for a long time, with these same people, in these same situations, over and over-- makes me approach problems slightly differently than I've needed to before.

My first example: the librarian is an SOB. He's notorious. Every parent on the island knows of him, and stays away from his library because he is so rude and HATES children. Every time we go to the library (every Friday, 11:30) he tells Rosie to "be quiet or get out!" This is especially annoying when she's saying things like, "Rosie! Loves! Libwawy!" I'm sorry, is his heart three sizes too small? You'd think an elementary school librarian would be thrilled to have a kid squeal, "yaaaaay, books!!"

But anyway. The first time he kicked us out, I was so angry I thought-- I hate that guy, I'm never coming back.

But then I had the first creeping feelings of community-mindedness. "waaaait. I live here. The library is within walking distance. It has everything I need in a library. I'm not going anywhere. That's MY library. I refuse to let his issues offend me so much that I disappear. I'd be the one losing out."

I donno if I am explaining it properly, but it was sort of a revelation. I can risk continued encounters with this nasty person, just because this is my community and I want to work it out! And I can't let myself get too offended because-- what good will that do?
Maybe it's the kind of lesson you're supposed to learn in 4th grade, but. You know. Maybe I'm a little slow.

I can see this kind of community mindedness in the way that long-time locals interact. You can't really afford to have any kind of intensity in relationships. No big blow-ups or involved dramas-- because in 15 years you're still going to be running into these same 300 people at the beach every weekend. So people are very even, very laidback-- in a way recalcitrant-- with their interactions. Which isn't to say Kauai is some magical Utopia-- there is drama. But it's like family drama-- you may get into a big fight on thursday, but of course you're coming to the BBQ on sunday. And of course your kids still go camping next weekend. Who knows, you could be grandparents to the same baby someday-- best not to make any bad blood.

So wave to everybody as they go by, be polite in traffic, watch out for all the kids at the playground. Even if you haven't met each other yet, you will, and soon.

A Letter to the Editor

2009-04-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

This letter was published in The Garden Island Newspaper on April 8, 2009:

Color blindness is wonderful

When someone asks, “Are you haole?” I respond, “Why what I did?”

When someone says, “What comes after two?” I respond, “Tree.”

I now say “da” instead of “the” and always great people with a friendly “howzit.”

I legally changed my name from James to “Kimo.”

President Obama says there is not a White American or an Asian American or a Black America, there is only the United States of America.

Color blindness sure is a wonderful thing, or should I say “ting?”

James “Kimo” Rosen, Kapa’a

Any guesses-- is this tongue in cheek? Is this a joke? It couldn't be-- could it-- for REAL?
If it is... how is saying "ting" and "da" colorblindness? And what's the opposite of color blindness anyway-- colorseeingness?
And since when is blindness of any sort a virtue? How about color-seeing-but-it-doesn't-adversely-effect-my-behavior-or-thoughts-ness?

Happy Buddha-mas!

2009-04-07T17:04:00.001-07:00

Sunday morning, the choir stood in front of the congregation. The organ started up a four part hymn, and we sang along in four part harmony, reading out of our programs:

Softly Blew the Breezes
By Paul Carus and R.B. Bode

Softly blew the breezes
On that glorious morn
In Lumbini's Garden
Where the Lord was born.

From the earth sprang flowers
Birds in warbles sang
While through earth and heaven
Strains of music rang.

Gods and men and angels
All for worship came
Glory to Lord Buddha
Glory to his name.

Organs and hymn harmony, folded chairs, and meandering talks by aged ministers are not the sole providence of protestant Christianity. At least in Hawaii, the sects of Buddhism that were imported with the Japanese plantation workers have morphed into something with plenty in common with the Baptist or Episcopalean churches down the road. George Tanabe gives a wonderful description of this Hawaiian Buddhism in his article, "Shaka Buddha."
Sunday was Hanamatsuri, Buddha's birthday, and was officially declared "Buddha Day" by the mayor. We followed a family in Sunday best as they filed into the Veteran's hall. They paused in front of a lei-decked fountain with a carved canopy and poured a small dipper of sweet tea over a glistening little statue of a lean standing Hotoke-sama, or Buddha. Then they bowed with their juzu beads between their hands.
I love ritual, but I'm a wimp, and just gave the little Buddha a shrug and a nod as I went past. Which is more disrespectful-- skipping the ritual, or aping it without understanding what it is or how to do it? I'm not sure, but my bashfulness won out, and I went, unshriven to my chair. Rosie recognized Sari-chan from playgroup and the two pudgy toddlers chased each other around the hall.
In the program, the Kambutsu-e, or the rite of "bathing the body of the Buddha" is explained.

A flower shrine known as a hanamido is set up in front of the main altar as a symbol of Lumbini Garden. In this shrine is placed a statuette of the infant Buddha, pointing his right hand toward the heavens and his left hand toward the earth. The sangha offers flowers and pour sweet tea of the image... This simplified reenactment of the Buddha's birth signifies glory and joy that filled the worl at this event.

The choir sang, the ministers of the various sects and missions on the island entered in a procession, most of them in starchy black robes and stiff silk collars. They each offered flowers and tea, and lit insence before a large alter on the stand. The Jodo missions, the Hongwanjis, the Shingon mission all seemed to be cut of the same cloth-- their ministers are mostly young men from Japan, with their clean and attentive young families bowing and smiling to their congregants, greeting them in heavily accented English and answered in heavily accented nisei Japanese.
The one notable exception was the Tibetan buddhist minister-- a middle aged white guy with a fluffy ponytail, white slack and sandals, and his congregation of two tall and floral-dressed blonds. Afterwards they stood in a knot by the muffin table while the room full of nisei and sansei sworled around, greeting each other ("Oh Mrs. Nakamoto!" "Mrs. Ishisawa. How are you?")
Some things reminded me of the smidgeons of Buddhism I saw in Japan: Sari-chan's daddy chanted the Sutra "Kan Moku Ge" in a high intense tone, a bell chiming, the insence filling the air. Then some things seemed straight from sunday school: awkward teenagers passed around koa collection bowls, and an aging minister gave a slightly rambling account of Siddharta's birth and early life, with snippets of buddhist wisdom sprinkled in.
I was mostly chasing my toddler, but one Dharma or teaching caught my ear: "Be your own light." If you are hungry, does your friend offer to eat for you? If you need to go to the bathroom, does your friend go for you? of course not. So if you are seeking enlightenment, you have to get it for yourself. Life is the cataclysm-- be here and now and don't worry too much about the mysteries of the past and the future.
With my Christian background, Matthew 6:34 echoed in my mind: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Punana Leo

2009-03-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

We went to the Punana Leo Preschool fundraiser today-- I had seen the signs for it flapping around town. They are handpainted in bright primary colors, on squares of white fabric, inviting one and all for a full day of music and talk story. I've been thinking that the Hawaiian immersion preschool would be a good choice for my kid next year, and so I wanted to come and get a feel for the school community.
We got there and realized we drove the wrong vehicle. The parking lot of the war memorial hall was full of trucks-- and foolish us, we came in our dusty little sedan. But no matter. In we go, retrieve our kalua pig and cabbage bowls, and peer around at the crowd. It made me nostalgic for our life on the Big Island-- big uncles and grandpas cuddling sleeping babies and swatting at hyper toddlers, skinny portuguese grandmas with gold necklaces and their sensuous micronesian granddaughters in bright haltertops.
The lights flicked on and off and we moved into a beautiful theater. The little preschool kids were lead out and positioned on bleachers. They were all in matching aloha print dresses and shirts, with black kukui nut leis, and their hair all neatly braided or slicked back. Their teachers came out with a huge upright bass and two ukuleles, and the kids started in on their performance.
The uncle leading the songs called out, "Mākaukau?" The tiny kids held very still and anwered, "Ae!" They belted those songs out! They knew all of the Hawaiian words, and some of the songs had actions, and they knew all of those too. It was fun for us to try and follow along with our limited Hawaiian-- catching the numbers and some animals and pointing out the mimed actions to Rosie-- like the Popoki's ears (meow!). As the program went on, they started fidgeting. Kukui leis slithered off of necks and onto the ground, fancy dress collars were chewed on, and some girls on the back row began jostling and pushing at each other.
So cute. I would love to have Rosie go to school there, even if all of the reclaimist talk of "carrying on the traditions of our ancestors" doesn't apply. We live in Hawaii, it was its own country, and has its own language. Why not allow ourselves to become familiar with that language and culture, and participate in a positive way with its continuation?

Pulling to Center

2009-03-16T23:48:00.001-07:00

I recently took a pottery class-- once a week for five weeks I got to spend an hour or so thwacking cold wet clay down onto a plaster slab, kneading it into a cyclone, and thumping it down onto a wheel. Elbow cocked to hip, setting it spinning, and then praying, bracing, holding the slick hard lumpy mound. It spins and throbs and pushes against my hands, but I have to hold still-- bracing against the hard mass of clay-- without shoving or jerking-- just holding. Try to find true north, try to float above the pull of gravity-- that's holding still against this thing. One hand pulls up slowly, one hand pushes down and out and after a few lip-biting climbs and descents-- suddenly the thing is centered.
Then I put one finger on the still piko of the mound-- and push down into that navel. The lump opens suddenly into a pot. And then draw the walls up, flare them out, pull them in. It becomes recognizable as a Thing. Every time is like a miracle. Even if they are all tiny and off-kilter!
All day today I was thinking about that struggle of centering the clay-- the moment of the clay suddenly pulling itself in, sucking all the irregularities out of orbit and becoming a unified form.
I've been spinning out wide lately-- keeping endless lists that I lose, buying things I don't need-- wanting and wishing, scilia flailing.
Today I wanted to pull to center. So instead of driving to Costco, I pushed the stroller to the farmers market. I bought longan and breadfruit and dill and asperagus and cherimoya and ginger and bananas and bok choy. On the way home I stopped at grungy little Sueokas for two gallons of milk (on sale at $5 each! Much better than the usual $10)-- one to drink and one to make yogurt.
After that walk (and boiling the breadfruit to a starchy buttery mash, like artichoke hearts crossed with potato) Rosie and I stayed home-- we played with our chicks (getting ugly now, with their teenage feathers growing where no feathers were before), transplanted the onions and trout-back lettuce into the new little garden beds. I took the rake to the orange tree to brush away all of the crab-spider webs (dense and extending from powerlines, porch, trees) and tried to pop those few choice ripe oranges down from the top without getting a shelob in the neck.
I washed laundry and hung it up to dry in the garage. Rosie defoliated my young papaya tree but successfully disrobed and peed in the grass-- a little nitrogen rich snack for the plants.
When it got dark we came inside and I thought-- who am I-- a woman who hangs laundry and washes chicken shit off her hands at the end of the day? Hah!
We took a hot shower and Rosie had me write "R for Rosio Jo!" on the glass, smoothing out the droplets into a letter for a second.

Hui Alu Shinenkai, 2009!

2009-02-22T22:37:00.000-08:00

We got to the Kauai Veteran's Hall at 11:00, and peeked in at the crowded dining hall. The round tables, decorated with giant pomelos and mini snickers bars, were already mostly filled up. The band was doing sound checks on a low stage, and a group of ladies were taking registration fees and doing the sign-in by the door.
We hovered and hesitated outside the door. Matt looked for a familiar face, and hemmed and hawed-- should we go in? Should we pay $20 a piece for a buffet lunch? Or should we join the society?
I handed him the checkbook and took Rosie to run around outside, and left Matt to decide whether he wanted to go to this Hawaii United Okinawa Association annual New Years Meeting.
He's a quarter Okinawan, Rosie's an eighth. I'm none Okinawan. I figured I'd leave it up to him to define his ethnicity as he pleases.
When an acquaintance of Matt's from work drove up, we were finally swept in. I had to laugh-- in a room with 200 people in it, all were Okinawan Japanese. Matt was the only mixed person, and I was the only white person. And as I walked past the tables with my blazingly blond toddler, I recieved several frank open-mouthed stares.
Matt's work friend led us to his table-- right at the front. In order for the 200 venerable Ryukyuans in the room to see the shamisen and taiko performance, they had to look through my blond head. I tried to shrink down in my chair. The other couple at the table leaned to me and said, "Are you, um, visiting?"
The drummers started-- 5 teenagers in colorful head scarves twirling heavy drums and dancing to Okinawan folk songs. Rosie was alarmed, so I had to stand up, excuse my way through the crowd. Then when the next band started, playing Okinawan and Hawaiian songs with a disco twist.
Rosie is a dancing queen. Rosie ran to the front of the stage and danced. She was very cute and funny, shaking her butt and striking poses.
We ateKalua pig and Oden and shoyu chicken, listened to the music, Rosie endured a microsecond of honoring the issei kupunas, and I clambered over everyone again and let her run around on the sidewalk outside and hunt ladybugs. A grandkid came out and played ukulele for us-- he won third place yesterday at the Waimea Days with a splashy Ohta-San piece. Rosie sang, "My dog has fleas!" for him.
When it ended, everybody said how cute and funny Rosie's dancing was. One aunty laughed and said, "aren't you worried she's going to go back to Okinawa?? HAHAHA!!!" I didn't get the joke.

On my face

2009-02-22T22:09:00.000-08:00

So local people who make an effort to enunciate carefully and speak "standard English" are accused by of being "haolefied." In other words, acting like a haole. In other words, acting stuck up. Their poetic pidgin-speaking friends roll their eyes and resent or pity them.
And being a mainland haole I naturally have a standard dull TV announcer accent. The way that I talk, without thinking, all the time, even when I'm mad or half-asleep, or jabbering to an infant, sounds like I'm putting on airs.
It's a quandary. I sound pompous if I just talk like myself. But I don't want to be condescending or ridiculous with an affected pidgin accent.
Last week after playgroup I walked with one of the other moms over to the library. Our cute kids gamboled around each other, darted into the street in front of speeding rental convertibles, got hissed at by the irate vampire librarian. We chatted about local elementary schools, about potty training, about baby talk-- all the usual getting-to-know-another-parent back and forth. But it was a frustratingly stilted conversation. I suddenly realized why when she made a comment about making sure her son learns "correct" English. She explained: she grew up speaking pidgin, but went to college on the mainland, and was terrified to open her mouth for fear of sounding different.
I realized: She was working really hard to talk to me. She was carefully calibrating her intonation and choosing each word. Like when I'm trying to speak polite Japanese, with the fancified verb forms and honorific forms of address.
I wanted to slap my forehead.
"Oh, I think pidgin is wonderful!" I enthused. "It's so expressive, and besides kids are so smart with languages. They can learn to be comfortable in both! Sure he needs to learn standard English, but there's nothing wrong with knowing pidgin, too..." I started trying to authenticate myself-- locate myself in the constellation of local-ness, blathering about "Oh my husband's grandparents spoke the most wonderful pidgin! And I've been lucky that he's been there to translate so much of the unfamiliar stuff for me! And, um, yeah! I think it's great! I read a great book in pidgin! I never dare speak it, but I love trying to write it down!"
She was unconvinced, and the conversation remained overly formal, distant and headachy.
It's been nagging at me since.
Was language really the source of the discomfort? Was it race? Was she ill at ease with me because of my skin color? Was I subconsciously ill at ease with her?
I guess all I can do is just be honest-- really shut up and listen to other people and to the teeny calm voice within myself. Not blather on or overexplain. Then hopefully that honesty will overcome my accent.

Manna from heaven

2009-02-02T00:47:00.000-08:00

Can you see it?

How about now? Under the Samoan coconut tree?

Lookathat! Like Easter or something!

I found 4 wild chicken eggs under the tree-- I'm thrilled! I haven't quite eaten them yet. I'm trying to think of something suitable. I'm hoping there won't be any little bones or feathers inside, but if there are, that will be a new culinary experience.
Thanks for the bounty, nature! Who needs grocery stores? Now I just need some gallons of milk to come tumbling from the clouds.
This is one of those rare posts that is relevant to each of my scattered blogs, so if you are disappointed to see the same one thrice, sorry!

Milton Murayama's "Plantation Boy"

2009-01-31T11:12:00.000-08:00

Plantation Boy by Milton Murayama

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Tosh, the number one son of the Oyama family, is the hard-head, short tempered plantation boy-- who terrorized Kiyo in the first book and butts heads with his mother Sawa in the second of this series. Here we get into Tosh's head-- and to my surprise, his storytelling was the most compelling.

Murayama creates complete voices-- full psyches and internal worlds-- so subtly that you don't notice how cleverly he's done it. The narrators are so natural that the novels seem like simple autobiographies. I realized with a jolt half-way through that the whole book is in the present tense. That gives the storytelling an immediacy and compelling urgency, even when the content is as detached as laundry lists: who is getting married, who has died.

Tosh is all reports-- all political headlines, boxing scores, transcribed letters and major life events like a bulleted list. He gives no thought to the interior lives of the people around him, barely mentioning his wife or kids, parents, brothers or sisters, never introspective or reflective. He lives completely in the moment, from fight to fight.

He's all fight. His fights include the mistreatment of Japanese on the plantation, the debt and stupidity (as he sees it) of his issei parents, the chasm between the nisei world and the isseis, as well as between the niseis and everyone else. He struggles to gain a skill and get off of the plantation, to build a house, to build a job, to fix his daughter's club foot-- one battle after another.

I feel like this book has given me an entirely new perspective on Hawaii, and the real long-reaching effects of the plantations, the unions, and the long history of racial discord. Haole-only banks, anti Japanese protests, race based communist accusations (one senator from the south objecting to Hawaii's statehood with, "Can you imagine sitting next to a Senator Yamamoto?"), and the long shadow of the fuedal plantation system pitting old time wealthy white families against everybody else.

It's easy for me as a newcomer haole to feel surprised and hurt by the level of mistrust and dislike that I encounter here just based on my race. But reading this-- no wonder people are angry!

The most moving moment was when Matt, who is reading this at the same time as I am, suddenly found his great uncle's death in Italy mentioned. It dawned on us-- all these other deaths, all these other struggles-- they're all real, too. Tosh may be fictional...but only in the specifics.

View all my reviews.

Honi

2009-01-29T11:46:00.001-08:00

I love-- and loathe a tiny bit-- the Local tradition of hugging and kissing. You hug and kiss people when you're introduced to them, people you see everyday, when you say hello and when you say goodbye... On one hand, it's comforting.

At a wedding, I ran into Aunty Ulu who I had met once briefly at church. She wrapped me in her arms and kissed me soundly on the cheek. I felt so comforted-- suddenly grounded in the strange setting of a fancified wedding with 100s of people I don't know, clinking their champagne glasses and balancing on high heels. And I loved the time consuming tradition of kissing everybody at church before the service started-- it would be unspeakably rude to just walk past all the kupunas and go to your pew. You have to stop and stoop to brush every dry soft cheek with your lips. Kissing down the line of tutus in their bright flowered muumuus made me feel warm and included-- part of the congregation, part of the family.

Kissing can also make me feel like a hopeless outsider. When local people I meet scrutinize me and then hesitate before leaning in to kiss me, or decide to simply shake my hand instead. Or when my kissing etiquette is off-- hugging and then kissing, or kissing and then hugging-- slightly mis-timing the approach or mis-aiming and kissing loudly onto an auntie's powdered ear.
And then what do you do with other malihini? We had dinner at a malihini couple's house, and afterwards, gave stilted and awkward hugs and kisses all around. Leaning up to kiss his cheek, I suddenly felt weird kissing my friend's husband. We've skipped it at every meeting since, to my relief.

It's one of those things that reminds me of my outsider malihini status. It's a local etiquette that I don't perform naturally and that people don't do naturally with me. The kiss is only comfortable when it comes from a real spirit of someone reaching out to me, to intentionally include me, and possibly even educate me, in the tradition of the honi. When that happens, it's intensely moving.

Here's from my journal-- my first experience with honi:

June 23, 2006

Well, the chant instructor. Kuuleialoha. He is like a sonic boom of mana. He just told us about honi, and then we shared one. I’m shaken. Like he said, it is so vulnerable and nurturing. I feel the need to retreat and weep after being so close and painful with someone. You surrender your vision, your breath, and share what comes out of you. It’s hard for me to divide the intimate and the sexual—all of my close, breathy, still contact with other people has been sexual. That’s too bad. I hope that I’m very kissy and lovey with my kids, so that they can be used to feeling physically close and safe with other people, and not have it be confused with sexuality.

Still grateful...

2009-01-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

This economic downturn thing has been reminding me of a loose t-rex. At first you only hear rumors that it's out there, and then a few newspaper articles confirm the rumors, and then friends of friends have actually seen it, and then an acquaintance, and then it finally reaches the inner circle-- your own friends and family start coming home with puffy T-rex bites. A high school aqcuaintance had his house foreclosed on, friends are getting downsized, and now immediate family members are trying to change jobs, or suddenly experiencing long stretches of unwelcome leisure.
The landscape reconfigures itself-- it's now a place inhabited by monsters. You can feel the distant footsteps, see the water shaking in the glass.
In the last week, I've talked to four people who are being downsized. Two families who moved here this year for construction projects are having the projects shut down under them. One man had his hours on a road crew reduced by 30 percent. Another family was told on the day before Christmas to take two weeks off and whoever came back would get a 20% pay cut. It's getting ugly.
My friend with three little kids told me that after her husband's paycut, they now qualify for foodstamps. "What happened?" she said. "We both have college degrees! We both work! How did we get to this?"
The state is slashing the budget for education, among other things-- cutting the head start program because, as one play group coordinator put it, "you can't prove prevention." In ten years the state will wonder what went wrong. Even my husbands cozy and firmly unionized state job is seeming a tiny bit more liquid and he's eyeing his annual review with trepidation.
So, I'm still glad that the beach is free and that sunshine is free-- and so are the pigs in the mountains and the fish in the sea.

Rodeo Whales

2009-01-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

Skyla announced at playgroup on Friday that her son, Kalani, would be riding in the high school rodeo this weekend, and that everyone should come down and watch.
I like rodeos-- I like the girls dressed up in their ribbed plaid shirts and pink alligator boots, and the boys in their silver-spangled hats and shiny belt-buckles. I like the little brothers and sisters roping each other behind the stands, and the parents screaming and cheering, and the terrible food stalls.
I don't know anything about rodeos-- I know enough to correct myself from "Baby cow" to "calf" but don't ask me what event is on or who is up or what a good running time is.
The rodeo is a cultural experience for me-- like being a tourist in Athens. I can appreciate the aesthetics and excitment of the moment without really understanding what's going on.
When I asked Skyla where the arena is, she said, "at the end of the road. Just go to the end of the road, and it's right there."
Huh? Which road? What end?
This is the problem I always have with asking directions in Hawaii. The answer is always a vague wave of the hand and "right over there. You can't miss it." Well, I can miss it.
"Where exactly is it?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes. "Hunter, you tell her." So her 6 year old explained it to me.
"So you go past the Hyatt, down by the golf courses, and through the big gate where the road ends. Go on the dirt road. If you get to the ocean, you went too far. Find a sign for the stables."
Sufficiently humbled that a 6 year old had to give me directions, I wrote the directions down.
The next morning, we made our way by Hunter's directions, and found the arena and the stables. Skyla was standing on the arena gate, and jumped down when she saw us. She gave us hugs and kisses, and pointed up in the direction of her canopy over the bleachers, and ran back to open the gate for the next competitor.
There were hardly any audience members-- just participants and moms who drifted between the bleachers and the arena and the trailers. I felt a little out of place in my shorts and sandals, and admired everyone else's tight embroidered jeans, fancy hats, and well oiled boots.
The kids were great-- charging in on their horses, knocking over and tying up goats and big strong calfs, racing around poles. Even when a storm blew in and whipped all the canopies over and soaked the arena, they went full speed and came back to the bleachers mud splattered and proud.
We huddled on the bleachers in the shelter of Skyla's canopy and I got to eavesdrop on the fast-paced familiar chatter of these women and moms and teenagers who had spent their whole lives working and playing together, intermarrying, organizing, and rodeoing. I suddenly felt very alone and separate and different-- disconnected from the long strong history these families shared.
It was a beautiful setting-- the dominant face of Kipukai and the green mountains to the left, the horses and trailers and storm clouds to the right, and straight ahead, just beyond the arena, the open ocean. We even saw whales surfacing and spouting just beyond the kids on the horses.

Infidelities: or Things I Miss About the Big Island

2008-12-12T14:58:00.000-08:00

We've been on Kauai for almost 3 months now. The first three months someplace are usually the hardest-- no friends, no routines-- unfamiliar roads and disorienting landscape, not to mention a mountain of unpacked boxes. But not this time.
This time, I think I'm in love. Everywhere I go-- out to the dry and stunning Waimea Canyon or to rainy and dreamlike Hanalei Valley-- I'm awed. Even riding my bike every day on our little muddy road and through the pastures I sigh and giggle. It's just all so beautiful!
And the food! There is good food in every nook and cranny, in every little lean-to town--the ramshackle little place serving steaming bowls of rich brothy Pho with spicy basil and cool lemon grass on mismatched tables and wobbly chairs, or the cafe with the ugly ripped booths and flourescent lights serving buttery apple turnovers crusted with sugar. And my favorite, genki sushi-- where the sushi comes around on a conveyer belt and you can pluck it off like gleaming little fishy fruits from a tree.
So I'm smitten with Kauai. It's easy to live here: the beach is close, I can walk to the grocery store, folks are friendly. And all of this has me feeling... like a traitor. Almost three long years I hammered away at the Big Island-- I lived in mist and rain for one cold year, and on a lonely windy horse ranch, and, then on a little farm in Hawaiian Homes. I worked hard at living there.
So what I really need to say is,
Sorry Big Island, I loved you too, I really did. It's just that it was so hard to love you! You were beautiful, in your own unique way, with the wide open plains and scrubby forests, and the fearsome power of the active volcano. And your beaches were beautiful in their own harsh, geologically young way, with the heaps of black rocks and the course little strips of sand between the thorny kiawe trees. You were a challenge-- a closed book. You confronted my fears and expectations at every turn-- you rubbed me raw. You were alive with ghosts and heavy with walking gods and goddesses-- sometimes marching. Kauai is like a sleeping goddess-- she is humming to herself, rocking in her hammock. Not raging like you, Big Island.
So for your sake, here's what I miss about the Big Island.
The eerie emptiness on the plains of Mauna Kea
The Hawaiinness of everything-- the puu, the waa, the living presence of Madame Pele.
The nice libraries who didn't hiss and shush at me and kick my baby out of the library
The Wana crackling and shedding spikes on the black rocks at the beach
The surprising petroglyphs hidden in plain sight
Everything that made you difficult also made you beautiful. I struggled to find the beaches, to break through the barriers and make connections. But each labor made the reward sweeter.
So, thank you Big Island. You are beautiful and difficult. Kauai is easier, but I miss you.

The Playground

2008-12-11T21:45:00.000-08:00

Today Rosie and I went to our favorite beach. I buckled her in, drove less than a mile from our house through wide open pastures in the shadow of green cliffs, through a tunnel of Rainbow Shower Trees (their real name), and voila, we're at the beach: blue skies, shading palm trees, golden sand and pounding surf on a hot December afternoon.
There was a huge storm last night-- the rain whipped our metal roof and the lightening lit the room. Our dirt road washed away by morning, and some new rocks are poking up through, jostling the car as I drive over them. And the ocean was still frenzied-- 10 and 15 foot waves breaking right on top of each other, pushing up over the lava rocks, and hiss-foaming long up the beach.
Even the little protected baby lagoon water was wobbling with the heavy waves pounding over the break-- round little waveletts rolling quickly up the sand.
We played on the playground. There were triplet boys, about 7, in matching khaki hats and long-sleeved rash guards (the tourist kid uniform), climbing backwards up the slide, hooting and screaming. One said, "Ew, a BABY!!!!" as he shoved past Rosie on the slide. And there was one lanky 10 year old American Indian boy with a deep voice, who shepherded the boys around and climbed quietly over the outside of the set, and exchanged a wry glance with me when the triplets' mom shouted at them. If I was 10 years old, I'd have been smitten.
The playground is a good place to scope out tattoos. Today I saw a full-back First Nations Eagle totem, a full-back World of Warcraft dwarf, a wolf-eagle-feather arm dreamcatcher, and the usual assortment of spikey butterflies on backs, and polynesian patterns stamped around calves and coiling over shoulders and chests. A little girl asked her daddy for a goldfish tattoo. He said, "maybe in Tahiti..." and patted her head.
One heavily tattooed daddy was running across the field with his two little girls, and suddenly stood on his head. Rosie was stunned: Daddy! Stand! Head!!! She watched him until he stood up, balanced his 2 year old on his shoulders, and then flipped her down and did an impressive one-armed bridge and breakdancing spin. He laughed when he saw her staring slack jawed.
I love seeing the tenderness of these young tough daddies, and the gentle sweetness of the hip mommies, rolling their babies down the slides and chasing them around corners.
Tourists make the playground into a giddy sunburnt club. We were there once when the sun went down, and the tourist parents got so lively having tall and wealthy-young-professional conversations (I can't even forge them-- what on earth do they talk about?) that they passed around name brand alcohols and exchanged business cards. When one of them asked me, "So what do YOU do? Or, um, your husband?" I had nothing coherent to say, and stuttered something shrill about maybe agriculture? or um, education? or something? I didn't get anybody's cards and I snuck back to our barbeque.
Today I pried Rosie away from the park by promising that OUR daddy would stand on his head, too. As soon as she was in the carseat, she was asleep, sweaty blond head hanging onto her chest.

Why I'm Grateful to be in Hawaii during the Economic Crisis

2008-11-07T18:53:00.000-08:00

1. The beach is free.

2. The Queen Emalani Hula festival in Kokee Park (also free) was free. It's also bizarre-- a woman portraying the queen rides in on her horse with her ladies in waiting, sits in a royal tent, and then many hula halaus perform for her, to proxy performing for Queen Emalani. If you came to see some hula, too bad for you. The event seems like a ritual for the dancers-- it's certainly not a performance for the public. It was quite moving to see her ride in and all the halaus run out across the field to meet her.

3. Farmers markets where you can get a small mountain of sweet potato greens, or a bag of big juicy okra, or fresh yellow peppers, or a heap of apple bananas-- for a dollar

4. High energy costs means that we've never used our dryer and instead always can hang out laundry up to get nice and stiff and crispy in the sun.

5. Neighbors are generous: we gave our neighbors a bag of oranges, they came over later with a bag of baby snacks.

6. Wild chickens and pigs are plentiful! Jus go catch 'em!

7. I have an excuse to make all my food from scratch: $2 worth of potatoes makes $15 worth of homemade potato chips! And $4 worth of cream makes $10 worth of The World's Best Ice Cream.

8. It's already so expensive, we don't notice the difference! Really, who's going to quibble when milk goes from 8.99 a gallon to 9.99?

9. Gas is no longer $5 a gallon, but it's still high enough to motivate me to ride my bike everywhere and to make that second car look pretty impossible.

10. Yaay Obama! Our very own Hawaii-born President! I'm not sure how directly that's related, but it sure makes me feel all happy to be in America, in Hawaii.

Long absence, New Island, Inn at the End of the World

2008-10-24T18:32:00.001-07:00

Kauai is the oldest of the inhabited Hawaiian islands-- she is rutted and raked down the middle-- deeply pitted and eroded with soft jungled mountains and dizzying cliffs.
And here we find ourselves, strangers in a strange land, yet again! It is a little bit vertiginous to be on an island and know absolutely nobody.
We got off the plane in Lihue, picked up our rental car, and drove to Kalaheo to an odd little rabbit-warren of a hotel/shelter/historic plantation mansion/apartment building. We stayed in a tiny room with just a bed, a shower, a sink, a mini fridge and a hot plate for two weeks and got to know our fellow inmates. I mean guests.
In the mornings two big boys-- 9 and 11-- came galloping like bison down the stairs over our heads, with their edgy alert dog Penny in tow. They loved showing us around the grounds-- "This is where James kills the roosters! This is where I caught a lizard and accidentally pulled off his tail! This is sleeper grass!" You can poke your finger into the grass and it snaps up around you, folds all of its leaves in half. We all sat together on the steps and thumbed through a big glossy "ripley's believe it or not" book, eewing and oohing. Their parents were reticent and incommunicado-- I only caught glimpses of them-- polishing a motorcycle or chatting lowly on the cellphone.
R and J were also upstairs-- R came out on the porch to smoke cigarettes apolagetically. She said, "the mosquitos don't bite me-- I smoke. One bite of me and they'd DIE!" She piled her curly brown hear on top of her head and wore only white baby-doll dresses, every day a different one. She baby talked to her big black cats, kissed them and scolded them. Her partner, J, was a much older man-- thin chested and starting to slouch-- soft spoken and with a thoughtful face and british accent. When R talked to him, she affected his accent, and made fanciful little gestures with her wrists.
The proprietor was a libertarian, grumbling about annoyances like "building codes" and "safety regulations." I looked a long time at the jumble of extention chords in our room after that. And his wife was an invisible Japanese woman-- I caught sight of her once while admiring her lounging cat in the window--she snatched the cat and snapped down the shade.
The night before we left, baby was napping and I was reading on the bed. I heard a little step outside, and then a very quiet, "sprits, sprits, sprits" and again. "Sprits, sprits, sprits." I got up and poked my head out-- there was nobody there-- just our new bottle of "all natural" mosquito repellant, made of grapefruit oil and noni juice. And a note taped to the door, "Checkout is 11:00." She tried our mosquito repellant!
The most mysterious guest was our immediate neighbor. He was there for our whole long 2 week stay. Every night, his phone would ring and he would get up and have loud jaunty conversations with friends in Jersey city. Long, personal, angry, explicit conversations-- hours and hours long, talking on the phone until we get up, and then when we leave for the day's errands. But the phone conversations were a relief: when he wasn't on the phone, he was watching loud political TV and shouting at the talking heads. He never left his room. Come all the way to Kauai from Jersey City and watch TV all day?
After our Kalaheo tenure was up, we packed up our things, waved goodbye to the cats and the chicks and the lizards and the kids and R and J and moved into our own place.

Malihini 101

2008-09-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

If I ever have the chance, I want to have a community education class for recent transplants to the island, whether they're from Oahu or Oakland or Oklahoma. It would introduce them to basics about the island, culture, daily life, and history-- and hopefully make them better able to integrate themselves into the community with as little friction as possible. I'd get long-time locals and successfully-integrated malihini to come and teach each session, and have lots of discussion. And food. Plenny food.

How about this for some topics:

History of the island: pre-contact, Hawaiian Kingdom, plantation, annexation, ww2, statehood, Hawaiian Renaissance and the present
Local ghost stories (Obake stories!)
State of the island: an overview of local politics-- introducing politicians and major issues and summarizing all (hah) points of view.
Language: Intro to pidgin (what it's okay for Malihini to say, like pau, piko, howzit, and what it's not okay: cuz! Brah! Imua!!! When in doubt, don't try it out. Brah.) And Hawaiian phrases in common use. And for heaven's sake, how to pronounce the state: HA-VAI-I.
Local cooking: bentos, luau food, mochi, haupia.
Arts: okinawan dance, hula, slack key guitar
ettiquette: taking off shoes, bringing gifts, island time, small talk dos and don'ts! (don't ask, so what does YOUR husband do?)
Race in Hawaii: is "haole" a racial slur? (my opinion: no. It's a descriptor. If you acting like one @#$hole know-it-all from the mainland kine haole, then maybe. But you probably deserve it. Shoulda come to the ettiquette class! Besides if you Japanee or Pake you get the same ting. "Eh, you get Pake or what, cuz, you so tight wit your money!")

Wouldn't that be useful? One big (legitimate) complaint against malihini is their inability or unwillingness to blend in with the community-- to sit back and try and understand how things work here. But frankly, it's hard to learn. It takes lots of time and you make lots of mistakes. My theoretical class could help. Why not give people a hand up-- make life easier for everybody. Haole is a slur because so many haoles really do behave in unacceptable ways. Maybe education can save them! Poor tings, dem.

Two creepy things:

2008-09-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

Number one:
Riding my bike down one of the back roads in Hawaiian homes one afternoon, I smell an overwhelming stink. I keep riding and it gets worse and worse. Then I notice a skull-- then another skull-- then a ribcage scaffolding out of the dirt-- and I realize that all up and down the roadside are goat carcasses. Some of them have been pulled out of black trash bags, some are just pearly white bones. The jaws have pulled open, and the mouths gape in impossible yawns. And it really, really reeks.

Number two:
I stopped to fill up my gas in Hilo (for some reason 20 cents cheaper over there). I unscrewed the cap on the gas tank, and went to put the nozzle in when I noticed hundreds of tiny yellow spiders pouring out of the tank, all over the side of the car. They were so small and slow it was almost like watching dust move in your eye-- but, blink, blink-- they don't disappear.

Creepy times in paradise!

The Good, the Bad, and the Gorgeous

2008-09-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

North of Kona, lava rock stretches like a crumpled black cloth for 60 miles. It's so open and endless it's dizzying-- like the long empty drive through Nevada or the Salt Flats. Acacia trees, thorny kiawe scrub, and patches of yellow grass grow crackling and dry on the older lava flows.
Interrupting the black savannah, down by the beach, the resorts gleam in smooth green golf-grass oases.

Are they good or bad?

On the good side, sure, lots of locals work there-- I have friends who go down there, watering and trimming the lawns, distributing the towels, printing the paychecks, vacuuming, patrolling the grounds, clearing the buffet plates, watching the pool. Tourists come to the island to stay at these places and be spoiled and entertained and tanned and soothed-- and along the way they rent cars, eat dinner, buy souvenirs from other places where other local people work. So the tourist economy is doing a little trickling: tourists come, spend money, your boss makes money, so you get paid.

Also they play host to really wonderful public events. Last night there was a falsetto contest and a poke contest ($15 admission for all the salty raw fish you ever wanted). The Taste of the Range showcases Hawaii island chefs using Hawaii grown fruits, vegetables and meat.

But then there's the question of the beachfront sewage injection system. And the shocking amount of chemical pesticides and fertilizers required to green up all those nice golf courses. And the fact that the resorts import mainlanders for all of the white-collar jobs.

So can I bang my malihini gavel and judge?

More to come!

A Fond Fareweel, or The Best of the Big Island!

2008-09-04T16:43:00.000-07:00

Well, we're leaving the Big Island for a job on Kaua'i in less than a month.
It's very exciting and very sad.
But the good part is we have one month to go do all of our favorite BI stuffs one "last" time.
So here's my list for my Best of Waimea:

Hiking up behind the Mormon church, past the reservoirs, through Parker Ranch, over the Puus and up all the way to the top of misty lush Waipio Valley.
The Farmer's market on Saturdays (the Haole fishbowl as Uncle Rudy called it) with herb stands and crepes and popsicles and fresh strawberries and mushrooms and beautiful spinach and lettuce...
The Aloha festival parade with the chanters followed immediately and completely drowned out by the loudest marching band ever.
The Christmas mac truck big rig parade
the rodeos-- cowboys and cowgirls in aloha-print western shirts and dense haku-leis on their cowboy hats, and singing Hawaii Ponoi with the national anthem and that "stand up next to me" song.
Island Style Cafe: pancakes the size of hubcaps, and chicken fried steaks for breakfast.
Aka Sushi by KTA-- actually just a corner of counter in the supremely greasy and depressing Kamuela Deli. Run by the most lovely Japanese couple-- young and hip escapees from a bankrupt 5 star restaurant-- the most perfect little sushi you'll ever see, delivered with grace and style to your greasy formica table.
Kanu o ka aina-- the charter school that teaches kids how to sail canoes, build sustainable homesteads, grow their own food, design websites, dance hula, speak hawaiian, and produce movies. All without an actual campus-- just some tents and lean tos and a borrowed warehouse at an ag research station. Every kanu person I've met is just wonderful, and the kids! They are so cool. Everyone at the school knows my baby by name-- all the time random tough-looking teenagers will come up to us and call her by name and coochicoo at her.
KTA! I can't say enough good stuff about my favorite grocery store. Their mountain apple brand is all Hawaii-island made-- portuguese sausage and cuts of local grass fed beef, hormone free kohala milk, plus portuguese sweet bread, haupia malasadas, laulau, poi, tofu, and pickles veg. And KTA is also the place of convergence-- I run into everybody i know at KTA.
The wide open windy plains between the green puus and Mauna Kea-- so eerie and lovely.

Disneyland on Lava Rocks

2008-08-27T16:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was up for an adventure-- something new. I flipped through my handy-dandy Lonely Planet Big Island Guide book for inspiration and found an enticing-sounding entry about A-bay at the Waikoloa resort. Showers, white sands, mellow surf, the opportunity to trespass at the fancy hotels? Sounds good. So I packed baby in the car (she chanted, "Beach! Beach!" the whole way) and made for the coast.
We get to Waikoloa and I'm driving along-- past the King's shops and the Queen's shops, past golf courses and over-watered manicured golf lawns. I try squinting at the microscopic map in the Lonely Planet book but it's no help pointing me which windy road to follow to get to A-bay. Finally I'm nearly at the Hilton (think indoor canals, trains, massive marble statuary) and I see a tiny sign "Public Shoreline Access Parking."
The law in Hawaii guarantees that all beaches are public access. So private landowners have to provide some kind of access corridor to whatever splendid beaches they butt against. Some of these access corridors are pleasant and welcoming. Some are not.
I parked at the construction site, loaded the child into her stroller, donned my hat and sun screen and set off. "Public Shoreline Access: Remain on the Path!" I followed the signs. Across the road. Over a swampy lava field (maybe a drainage problem? Greasy rainbow streaks in the water), through a parking lot. And then the paving ended. But another sign appeared: "Public shoreline access" and sent me down a long narrow gravel path between acres of parking lot and an overgrown hedge. It stretched to the edge of vision. I was not daunted. I pushed the stroller through the gravel all the way to the end, where the path switched back. Another hopelessly long narrow corridor-- bushes and a tall wall (I peeked through and could see the green golf course on the other side.) I'm starting to sweat-- I get to the end of the wall, and there's one more sharp turn-- this time I'm ducking through brush and trees. It was like waiting in line at Disneyland-- they hide the full length of the line so you don't lose your mind with impatience. Here it seemed deliberately obfuscatory. If it's possible to obfuscate a shoreline.
When--finally! --we got to the ocean, it became obvious that this was not A-bay. It was a steep rocky stretch of shore-- huge black boulders and strewn white coral. We abandoned the stroller (wouldn't stroll through the sand and rock anyway) and hiked for a bit till I found a sandy spot. Baby knows what to do-- she jumped in the water, pulling my hand. We were the only people there-- seemed like the only people who had ever been there.
Two dead sea urchins washed against the rocks by us. Baby saw them and shouted "Bug, Bug!" They were shedding their needles into the surf-- I scooped some up and inspected them. They are hollow and striped and a translucent deep blue color. A huge crab-- the biggest I've ever seen-- was digging a trench in the sand by us. We went to look and he ran-- sideways sashe-ing-- and jumped into the ocean. We peeked in his pit and saw another huge crab, dead on its back.

After we had played and splashed in the water, dug in the sand, chased the crabs, watched the tiny fish in the tidepools and we were getting ready to go-- I noticed a huge heavy boulder with a flat surface facing the ocean. Deeply etched into it was a beautiful petroglyph-- a broad-shouldered man hefting an oar over his head. I was lucky to have seen it-- blessed. What inspired the artist to carve that triumphant image in the rock? It was beautiful-- such a surprise. (This is an image I poached from Google image search. The one we saw was wave-wash and on the porous black lava.)

I was ready to leave, and grateful. I carried my sleepy girl back to where I had abandoned the stroller on the path. I noticed a stairway-- it seemed like it went to a patio. I could see lounge chairs up against a railing and electricians leading heavy coils of wire. Hm, what the heck. I'll go check it out.
We climbed the stairs-- there was a little restaurant at the top. And next to it a little garden. Rows of lounge chairs, Japanese tourist families sitting and white women in bikinis with oversized hats walking together. And then the view opened up: two 40 foot man made waterfalls crashing over a cave into a pool. A rope and plank suspension bridge. An immensely long pool with a section bottomed with sand. Giant Chinese-inspired statues presided, planted poolside and on the lawn-- giant sandstone turtles planted themselves in the baby pool. Roiling hot tubs. 2 story waterslides. And then around the corner, a massive man-made lagoon, full of Dolphins coyly nosing the air. Dolphins!
What can I say? It was bizarre. The real ocean pounding away 10 feet away, out of sight and completely deserted, and here were hundreds of people, swimming in a pool with fake sand on the bottom!
But I know a good thing when I see it. Who am I to pass up such an opportunity? We availed ourselves of the baby pool and the hot tubs and I even --guiltily--dared to use one of the nicely folded hotel towels that were stacked around the pools. I just picked it up, toweled off the baby with it, and flung it down again on the chair, like it wasn't impossibly soft and thick, and left it like all the other discarded towels around the pool.
Surely I looked like an imposter-- with a backpack, a floppy canvas hat, an excessively modest bathing suit and a nappy-head toddler? Plus, the tell-tale sand on my feet? I'm sure I didn't "pass" as an actual $300 a night hotel guest. But nobody bodily evicted us.
On the way back out-- cross the bridge, wave bye to the dolphins, back down the stairs-- I noticed a little sign in English and Japanese warning anybody leaving the hotel pool area and entering the shoreline: Dangerous Currents! Sharp Rocks! Beware of Wildlife! Swimming not Recommended! No Lifeguard on duty!
Something about that made me chuckle. Good. Leave the crabs and the sea urchins and the petroglyphs for me and my toddler to tackle.

Conundrum conclusion

2008-08-23T22:06:00.000-07:00

I spent two weeks on the mainland and came to a startling conclusion.
I didn't understand a word anybody said. Even if understood the individual words I couldn't parse the sense behind the words. Everything seemed baffling. Drivers were insane. Food was strange. Small talk was indecipherable. The dress code was all pitfalls for me.
Maybe, just maybe...
It's not just Hawaii. Maybe I'm a malihini everywhere I go!

Monkey

2008-07-29T16:32:00.001-07:00

Last night Sister Terukina and Sister Drummondo came "hallooing" at the door. They are two very tidy gray and efficient Hawaiian ladies, the last two surviving of their ten siblings.
Sister Drummondo handed me a print-out and tapped it: "This month's topic is We are Created in the Image of God, and Certainly Not in the Image of Monkeys!"
"Oh, I donno." I said, folding the hand-out, "I'm pretty monkey-like myself."
They laughed politely.
An idea struck sister Drummondo: "Do you know about Tutu and Me? At the Imiola Church? The preschool? Oh, you would LOVE it!" She patted my arm conspiratorially. "It's all haole ladies!"
I must have reacted in some unexpected way. She explained.
"Well, you know, everybody else is too busy working!"

Thinking about Nightmarchers

2008-07-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

On my bike ride this morning through the misty windy backroads I got to thinking about nightmarchers. They are warrior-spirits-- hungry ghosts who carry their ghost-lights through Waipio valley, along the Puna coastline, on the plains below Mauna Kea (where I was riding my bike-- safely in the daytime.) I know people who have seen them. Which is dangerous. I don't want to meet them. Because they eat you.

I've heard that if you lie on your face as they pass, you'll be safe. But the best protection is to have one of them speak for you--usually an ancestor.
So isn't that reassuring? You're safe, as long as you're blood-related to the vampiric night warriors.
Actually, there's on exception. If one of them knows you, or for whatever reason speaks on your behalf, you'll be safe. Then I guess you're introduced all around, given a night-beer, and sent on your way.

Today on my bike ride this idea was stressing me out. Not because I'm really worried that I'm going to stumble into nighttime monsters in my waking life, but because I have the same problem in my daily interactions with people who live here.

If you don't have an introduction, you are invisible. If you come into a town meeting or a school event or a church group and you don't know anyone there, prepare to be eaten alive.
No one will talk to you. No one will see you. You will want to die. You will leave early, go home, eat chocolate, and blog your woes away. They will talk about you after you leave. If you listen by the door, you can hear the audible sigh of relief that you've gone away and the explosive-- "who WAS that??" whispered all around.

Our first visit to the voyaging canoes was like that-- our friends who invited us to come down and help out weren't there when we arrived. We said hello to the supervising aunties, the college student crew members, the security guards, and waited in the shadows in the warehouse. They all stepped around and over us-- no eye contact, no response. It was eerie. And it went on for hours-- we wandered around the canoes and the warehouse and the dock, trying to stay out of the way, trying not to be demanding or nosy, trying to radiate quiet peaceful friendliness-- but in the end when our friends didn't come back, we scurried away.

But if, however, you have been brought or recognized by someone, you will be clapped on the back, introduced all around, hugged and kissed and questioned, drawn here and there, shown off, plied with victuals and leave rosy and full 12 hours later.

But is that unique to Hawaii? I doubt it. Probably anywhere you go as a stranger people won't know how to talk to you. I've probably stared at Different people in the grocery store, and not known how to introduce myself to a neighbor without seeming condescending or forward-- I've probably been the unwelcoming in-group in Maryland, California, Utah, Japan...

But in Hawaii though they have the good sense to warn you through legend: you better have a friend wherever you go, or you just might get eaten.

Wind

2008-07-28T17:07:00.001-07:00

This morning I put baby in the envirobuggy pod (Thanks Karen!) on the bike of the bike and set out on an adventure. We biked through Hawaiian Homelands, raced some hunting dogs, stopped and fed grass to some sheep (they bleated and baby signed, "SHEEP SCARY!!!" and hid). We peeked into the W.O.W Organic tomato farm's green houses (they send all their lovely red orbs to Costco, and we can't get any at the store in town) and saw the tall plants climbing up their supports and the little wee ones just coming into little bushes.
It was windy. The Trade winds from Hilo to the west bring cold rain and fog and whipping winds, and the Kona winds from the East bring hot dry air and scorched dust. It's been hot enough to send all my vegetables into bloom-- even the fennel and parsley have bolted. So the cool weather is a relief.
I pedaled standing up to the top of the hill, but on the downhill side we just stood still, held up by the wind-- I had to stand up to push down to the bottom of the hill. The wind in the ironwood trees roars and moans. All the horses and cattle stand still against it. When I turned around and headed home with the wind at my back, we were whipped along at the same speed of the clouds. The hills in the distanced looked like they were flying backwards as we and the clouds held still above them.

Camping... LOCAL STYLE! Part Two

2008-07-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning of the "Pioneers of the Pacific" Campout we woke up early-- before the sun was up over the mountain. The ocean, just two sturdy paces from our tent, was so still it was completely silent.Matt went out to the end of the levy and I sat on a little pier with my sketchbook listening for baby's waking up noises and look for sharks in the water.

All around from the 3 bedroom tent-suites, the semi-automatic folding inflatable couches, the climate controlled, card-table-included-two story tent-suites the aunties and uncles emerged and set out their breakfasts: hibachi grills came out, rice was boiled: sausage, pancakes, eggs, and all laid out to share in the main pavilion. I surrendered my chocolate chip rice crispy treats.

I watched the kids play like wild water-things on the rocks, flirting with jumping off the pier, bragging and daring each other.
"You gonna jump off the pylons?"
"If I ask my grandma."
"I can do a front flip."
"But don't go off the third one. My dad got attacked."
"By eels?"
"By a shark!"

A five year old's phone rang. It was his mom. I heard, "Hi mom. Dem no need nutting bye." Click.

A pair of kids found some little jelly wormy baits knotted under the pier stairs and pushed and pulled together and finally got them out, and connected them lovingly to a found hook, line and float, and chucked it into the ocean. A new kid joined them.
"look, we got bait!"
"That's not bait. That's just a fish, to catch the fish, to eat!"

The manly men-- the older teenage boys, the young dads, the sun-burnt bachelors-- went off together to go diving with their spears in the glassy-smooth early morning water. Matt caught some fish, saw an Moray Eel, and a school wide grinning sharks. One family paddled their kayak, another family got our their outrigger canoe. Other families drifted off to go swimming or fishing closer to the harbor.

And I got a humbling lesson in Hawaiian time. In the emailed schedule, there is a sense of a series of planned, consecutive and overseen activities.

(6:30 – 8:00 Pule/Breakfast/clean-up
8:00 – 8:15 Morning Spiritual Message
8:15 – 8:25 Briefing on Day’s Activities
8:25 – 12:00pm Makali’i Activity
ETC.)

What actually happened was almost everyone drifted away.

The organizer-- Aunty Val-- did not seem disturbed by this at all. When someone asked at about 7:30 am, "when are we going to go on the canoe?" she answered, "when everyone is here."
And that seems to be the organizing principal behind Things Taking Place.

When do we eat? When we want to eat. Nobody claps their hands and says, "well, dig in!" or, "Oh, it's noon, time for lunch." The consensus moves wordlessly through the crowd, and then it begins. Things unfold organically. Parties last all night, a day trip to the beach can last for a weekend. So you better be prepared! Bring your tent, bring clothes, bring enough food for your family, for all day, and for all of your friends, in case you see them (you will), and bring a tent (it will be hot, you need shade! Maybe take a nap!) and some cots (why not spend the night?), plus the crib of course, and a radio, and your ukulele, and a full cooler (drinks!) and an empty cooler (why not catch some fish!), and a grill (for cook da fish!).
That is why everyone has a truck. So you can go anywhere or do anything. So you don't have to be constrained by things like schedule or agendas or trunk space. Just in case!

And sure enough, a willing audience materialized, wordlessly, at about the same moment.
Pomai got out her voyaging canoe equipment and showed us how to wear the harnesses, and how you pack 4 months worth of personal possessions into a 40 lb cooler. Honu and Mele performed a hula about the canoe as Pomai sang and played ukulele.

And eventually the time was ripe (about 5 hours later) and we got to go onto the canoe itself-- the Makalii (the eyes of the chief)-- a beautifully crafted double hulled voyaging canoe, that Chadd and Pomai and their crew sailed to Tahiti, to New Zealand, to Washington State, using only the stars and currents for navigation. I lack the vocabulary to describe it-- to my ignorant landlubber eyes it looks more like an intricate piece of modern art-- a balanced woven mobile. Ropes, polished logs, shaded canvas cubbies, double hulled. No nails, only tight coils of lashed ropes. It's beautiful. We sat in the shady cubby, talked to the crew, heard stories about storms and trusting the tradition and the boat.

It lives up to its name-- the canoe gazes out on the ocean with the cool clear eyes of the chief. It is a symbol of the mastery and the wisdom of a people.

Matt asked Chadd if he had ever been lost or made a mistake at sea as a celestial navigator. He answered in his enormously warm and generous way: No, because if he runs into trouble-- foul weather-- he just stops and waits. Just be patient. Everything that is created is good-- even if it's bad weather, it's good. So just wait. Be patient. Don't fight it.

The conversations petered out on the canoe. We waited. I showed baby the schools of tiny silver fish in the water. The crew watched a coast guard ship and cracked good hearted jokes -- watching 8 guys standing around on deck while one ran up and down and did all the work. "Oh, government on sea is the same as government on land!" And, "oh, they never left yet, captain never finished his lunch!"
Another lesson in Hawaiian time. Waiting, waiting. The boat rocking. Baby fell asleep in my arms. And then like a breath moving through the group, we were mobilized, ferried to the pier, thanks all around.

Camping... LOCAL STYLE! Part One

2008-07-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

The announcement said, Church Overnighter at Halau Kukui. Bring Food for breakfast and lunch. The theme was Pioneers of the Pacific-- a churchification of the unbelievably long-distance and delicate settling of Polynesia.
Friday I spent the afternoon cleaning the kitchen and then making a huge mess: I made potato bread and salmon croquette sandwiches with chard, and scrambled tofu and boiled eggs and chocolate chip rice crispy squares-- I used every bowl and cutting board and knife in the kitchen. Why couldn't I just pack PB and J? Who knows.
Baby and I jumped in the shower and realized to my horror that I haven't shaved my armpits for-- I donno-- maybe 12 years. And even though I go to the beach all the time and fasten my ponytail and hang my towel with nary a thought of my festooned pits -- suddenly-- at the thought of going to the beach with people I KNOW-- I was ashamed. And so with five minutes to spare, I found a mostly rust-free razor and a very rusty can of shaving cream made my best bloody assault.
At 6:34pm we were in the car-- baby, from her car-seat throne, patted the overstuffed bags of blankets, sleeping bags, tent, tarp, fancified food stuffs, towels, swimsuits. We picked up Matt from Aikido, and made it down to the harbor when it was still light. Through two guard-huts, three barbed-wire topped chainlink fences, across a pitted semi-paved road and across a gravel mine, past the "HAZARD do not enter!" signs, (I'm not making any of this up) a sharp turn at the levy, SLOWLY over the rutted dune road, and finally to the "pavillion." It's a plain-wood platform mid Keawe trees and on the rocky shore. They had lamps invitingly set up around a spread of rice, iceberg salad and chili (mostly meat, no beans, no red, just the way Matt likes it), and the world's best banana cream pie. All the more adventurous of the old church aunties and uncles and young church families and a smattering of their less churchy friends and relatives milled around, kissing hello, recommending the cream pie to each other. Teenagers eyed teenagers, assessed everyone's relative coolness, formed knots, and got out their ukuleles and playing cards. The stars came out-- the milky way gauzy, venus throbbing bright. The Hawaiian constallations guide the navigators-- like Chadd Paishon and his wife Pomai Bertelmann, and her parents. They each spoke a bit-- and Auntie Lani, born in Kawaihae when it was still a community and not just a gravel pit, told us that the correct name for the place was Kukui Hee Nalu-- the place were Alii came to surf. And that if anybody tells you different, just look at her birth certificate, and see what it says. Born in Kawaihae!
We set up our tent a respectful distance from the leaning graffitied sheds and Matson containers, and about 5 feet away from the ocean. Falling asleep I imagined tsunamis and centipedes and B-52 cockroaches. In the middle of the night a horrible growling and screeching woke us up-- we both sat straight up, grabbing at each other and the baby-- making sure whatever nightmare-beast wasn't actually in our tent. Mongoose and feral cats ripping past? I was awake after that, and watched the moon rise and the stars fade.
Just for fun, and to give you sweet dreams:

Banana Pie
Submitted by: Residential Services Division
Organization: Hawaiian Electric Company

Ingredients:

     6 cups                   sliced bananas
   3/4 cup                  pineapple juice
                            pastry for 2 crust pie
   3/4 cup                  sugar
   1 tablespoon             flour
   1 1/2 teaspoons          cinnamon
   1 tablespoon             butter or margarine

Procedure
Soak bananas in pineapple juice for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a 9 inch pie plate with pastry. Drain bananas, saving 3 tablespoons of the juice. Place bananas in pie shell. Combine sugar, flour and cinnamon; sprinkle over bananas. Sprinkle with the 3 tablespoons of pineapple junice. Dot with butter, cover with top crust. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes or until crust is browned. Makes 8 servings.

Linking around

2008-07-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

Check out these two great communities:

Hawaii Threads
For conversation about all things Hawaiian and Hawaii-- from living away to moving here, eating, reminiscing about the good ole days... good stuff.

Also:
Our Kuleana Calls

Hawaii Activism at its nicest: make commitments on an individual level that will help keep Hawaii clean and beautiful and friendly.

Kohala Adventure Day

2008-07-17T01:46:00.000-07:00

So what is there to do in Kohala, the little nubby tip of the Big Island?
First, drive up the mountain road listening to the Lilo and Stitch Soundtrack-- Kamehameha Children's chorus and Elvis, baby. Admire the burly cattle in the green pastures, the moth-eaten cactuses, the spindly iron-wood trees, and the odd over-wrought houses with stone lions in the driveways next to the ramshackle lean-tos.
Drive down the hill to Hawi, past all the old plantation houses. They could be anywhere-- Waikapu, Maui, or Lihue, Kauai-- tight orderly little gardens of Ti leaves and potted orchids, Japanese-influence high sloping roof, latticed crawlspaces. I can imagine the interiors by conjuring up my husband's grandma's house: the memorial Japanese dolls, the hand-quilted pillows and light quilts, the ironing board draped in ti leaves to weave into leis or wrap around rice balls for a beach picnic.
Drive further into Hawi: pass scruffy dusty hippy hang-outs: canvas houses and outdoor kitchens-- shirtless guys with long blond ponytails and naked babies, dusty greenhouses with opaque walls, rumpled gardens with taro, tomatoes, and corn, undocked lambs in the shade of self-consciously planted koa trees shading yurts.
In Kapa'au walk past the galleries and book shop and stop for lunch at the miniscule Pico's-- a steamy, sweet and savory lamb gyro with a chunky greek salad: giant greek olives, feta cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers. The two tanktopped baristas/chefs pulled an oozing tray of cheese pastries out of the convection oven while I waited. Trudge up the short driveway behind the patio to Kenji's House-- the 12 year old boy docent gushes about Kenji free diving for rocks and shells. He wrote when, where and with whom each rock was collected on tiny rolls of paper and wedged them into the rocks' nooks. He used the shells to decorate things: busted cooler lids because the blank canvas for a mirror-image sea horse parade. He sharpened tools for the ranch, collected shells, glued them to things, and never married. His house and all of his things (art, tools, coke bottles full of sand, and two soft aloha shirts) are now a one-man museum. In the future will we all have our own museums in addition to our fifteen minutes of fame?
Drive back down the coast road with an orangina from Picos-- say hello to the friendly ghosts at the serene Lapakahi Historic Park. Hike out onto one finger of lava and find the carved Hawaiian chess game facing the ocean, taste the salt in the salt-drying platters ground out of the rock, crack open a coconut and watch the bright yellow fish in the dark water over the dark rocks, avoid the wasp nests in the reconstructed lauhala huts.
Keep driving south. Veer off for Kohala's mac nut factory "Free Samples": a warehouse cheerfully self-titled "nuthouse." It reeks of new varnish and fresh paint-- the offgassy taste impregnates the samples of wasabi macnuts and chocolate coated coffee beans and coats your mouth and sinuses for hours. But you can watch the cheerful machinery chugging out cans and cans of salted, plain, honey roasted and jalapeno mac nuts and buy horribly expensive boxes and cans of nuts to take home to Japan with you.
Drive on to Kawaihae and stop for Shave ice ($2.50 for three flavors, including my favorites Li Hing, Lychee, POG, lilikoi and Melona, and another .50 for a snow cap-- a drizzle of sweetened condensed milk on top) and for some tako (octopus) poke at the fish market. I bought 1 lb of dense red ahi, ruby-translucent, and watched as a fisherman unloaded a coffin-like cooler full of shiny big catches into the shop. Drive past the harbor, watch the giant cranes unloading the matson containers of stuff that has traveled thousands of miles from China to California to Honolulu to Kawaihae before being carted on to the Walmarts in Kona and Hilo. Stop at Spencer Beach and swim with the babies in the murky water above the now-submerged Shark Heiau. Admire the micronesian barbecues- the girls and women swimming modestly in their long shapeless dresses-- the men and boys in gangsta clothes and dark tattoos, smoking cigarettes and sitting on the picnic table. Admire the preparation necessary for a local day at the beach: full canopy tent, drink coolers, food coolers, chairs, radio, hibachi grill, mats, mattress, towels, clothes, floaters, fishing pole, spears, snorkel gear, ice and cooler for the fish! Drive back up out of the sun and into the fat raindrops, wave to the horses and donkeys at the dump, and then go home to eat your ahi and wasabi macs.

Pick a Peck of Pickled Poke

2008-06-30T17:01:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we braved the $4.75 a gallon gas and drove to Hilo for the day. First stop, the farmers market. For ten dollars I got three bags of sweet smelling and sap-sticky tropical fruit and vegetables: papayas, 5 for a dollar, sweet potatoes, apples bananas as long as your finger and sweet and tender. I asked one farmer for a couple of the thick blunt plantains he had on his table. No, no! He said. Those are for cooking. I know! I insisted. I want them! I'm going to go home and fry them up. He reluctantly handed them over, shaking his head. Crazy lady. The micronesian grandmas push the gawking haoles out of the way and bargain in a shout with all the micronesian farmers. I also got a bunch of narrow light purple Japanese eggplants, and some zucchinis. I was tempted by the tiny light-yellow mangoes and the ice cold "organi" coconuts, and bought some authentic Japanese fish-shaped pancakes, stuffed with Adzuki beans and cream cheese.
We went to the zoo and enjoyed the thick sweet tropical day-- so heavy you feel as if you should be able to able to see the currents and eddies as your hand moves through the air. The bony hipped tiger blearily eyed us and marked us with his spray through the chainlink (near miss! Alarming for the neighborhood cats!) and the peacocks stalked us. Baby girl loved the monkeys who climbed right to front of their cages and looked at her with their intent old-man faces. When she was tired out, we made our way back into town, down to the venerable Suisan fish market, right on the Hilo Bay.
Fish. Fish is so beautiful. Exotic Japan-flag fish, jeweled red menpachi, and huge silver ulua lie whole and minutes-dead under the glass on their ice beds. Live crabs and oysters and lobsters and clams click and breathe in buckets. And best of all-- a long butchers' counter of poke. Poke-- marinated raw sea food-- like firm red jewels. Dark in shoyu, vivid red in ikura eggs and wasabi, flecked with black sea weed and kukui nut oil, whole tiny octopuses, pink winged shellfish, dried and smoked ahi-- rows of cold savory variation.
We bought a half pound each of wasabi ahi and shoyu ahi, (sounds like a lot but each 8 dollar container was surprisingly small) and I nicked two toothpicks from the counter. We sat in the car and oohed and ahhed. Nothing fishy, nothing wilted sashimi-esque. Only saltiness, firmness, fleshiness. The colors were vivid, the flavors dense. Each mouthful was a morsel of cold savory goodness.

This recipe can only be an approximation!

Local Style Ahi Poke

Recipe courtesy Tidepools, Koloa, HI

INGREDIENTS

8 ounces tuna sashimi block, small dice
1/8 teaspoon Hawaiian salt
1/8 teaspoon kukui nut
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
Pinch chili flakes
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon green onion, chopped
1 tablespoon onion, chopped
1 teaspoon garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon Furukake spice
1 tablespoon sesame oil

PREPARATION

Combine all ingredients in a stainless steel bowl and gently mix.
Make this on the day of use.

From About.com

Envirobuggy

2008-06-27T18:12:00.001-07:00

This is my lovely friend Karen from envirobuggy.blogspot.com .
Her 4 year old boy Shawn is in his pod back there.
This ambitious pair are planning a marathon bike ride through the mountains, hills, rain and snow of the Big Island. Well, hopefully more sandy beaches than snow, and complimentary resort hotel rooms than grungy campgrounds.
Good luck Karen on your adventure! May all your wildest dreams come true!

Auntie Bertha

2008-06-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ran into Auntie Bertha outside of the senior center. She was excited to tell me, as she cinched up her black oversized raincoat, that they give free food-- even milk!--to seniors every lunch, so she gets on the bus and comes over every day. Why not?
She's hip.
She's so hip, she doesn't care that she's hip. She's almost 80 years old. She wears knee-length batik printed skirts to church and heavy bright jewelry. She waves off compliments-- "Oh, my daughter in law gave it to me."
She came to the Halloween party in soft yellow leather with fringes and squash blossom jewelry, and chunky turquoise and silver rings on her bony hands, with her long gray hair in braids. She was stunning-- small and compact and content sitting in the metal folding chairs while her great, and great-great children ran around her in costume. "I'm part Indian" she explained. A half-Indian sailor came to Hawaii and stayed, married into her Hawaiian family tree.
I run into her almost every week at the farmer's market. She is usually sitting in state in her son's tent where he sells Hawaiian medicinal plants and spices-- huge bright orange bags of turmeric (Olena). Sometimes she is banging kapa-- smashing the sinews and fibers with a wooden mallet over an wet anvil, and layering them until they form a supple thick cloth.
Once in choir she sat next to me and I noticed a flash of vivid tattoo on the back of her calves. Just a few years ago she got the second one-- a swirling fiery face: the Goddess Pele. Auntie Bertha's Hawaiian namesake. But we all call her Auntie Bertha. It seems safer.
Yesterday in the rain she told me about going to Tahiti to visit her cousins when the Hokulea sailed across the ocean using traditional Polynesian navigation. She said canoes from all over Polynesia came pouring onto the beaches, and the people all went down to the beaches to sing and play drums and greet them. And one day as she was driving around the island, she saw a group of Ki`i, arranged in a clump, just like the navigational heiau here along the Kohala coast.
She brought the car to a halt -- she just had to find out what it was. So she went and asked the people around there, and sure enough, it was for navigating. The Ki`i all pointed right back to their sisters on the Hawaiian coast. The navigators memorize their placement, and their connection to the stars that pass overhead, then they set out into the deep with that arrangement burned into their minds.
I told her that we went to the opening ceremony for the canoes last year, when they set out for Micronesia with the Alingano Maisu for Papa Mau. A big crowd came-- walked a mile from the road down a scruffy path, with reporters and friends and the crew. As the kumu chanted, a double rainbow appeared over the crowd. The kumu led the sailors and navigators up the mountain to the heiau. We could see his white draped back all the way up the cliff.
Auntie Bertha said, "do you know what they do up there?" I didn't.
"They turn the people into fish."
That way the ocean, the waves, the wind, the fish-- it will all work together with them. They become creatures of the sea.

Wen Buss one GUT!

2008-06-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to Maui for the 38th annual Farm and Ag fair. We saw lots of handsome pigs and cows raised up by and auctioned off for the 4-H kids, and enjoyed such culinary marvels as cold greasy pork and peas, and watery cold curry with blackening baby corn in asthma-inducing cumin goop. But those were nicely balanced by delicious crunchy sweet Banana lumpia (think friend spring roll with a banana inside) and awe-(and diabetes)-inspiring friend ice cream, served in a wad as big as a softball.
There were acts on the main stage on and off: Uncle Richard, a brilliant Falsetto singer with white mutton-chops, a girl with a guitar covering Sarah Mclaughlan and country hits, and the "Amazing Stupor-Man!", the absolute worst magic act I've ever had the misfortune to endure. The amazing rope-cutting trick ended with a hopeless tangle, the card the kid picked was never found again, the card-repair "hospital" frame fell apart and had to be reassembled, the false bottom on the disappearing dice trick slipped and all the dice fell out...and all the while the magician's wife/assistant is narrating non-sequiters into the microphone, "Oh, usually this trick doesn't take this long. What was your name again? Kuulei? Oh like Kool-aid? Hahaha! Oh well, hey, kids, wouldn't you hate to be burned alive? Ha! Well, that's marriage for you!"
They were so bad I went to their 2nd show, just to see if it was as bad as I thought. It was.
They also had a Wild West show with lasso and gun-slinging tricks, and then local commedians Timmy and Auggie T!
I can't hope to recreate the mass hysteria they caused with their classic jokes (themes: ice addicts , retards, fat people, Portuguese, Filipinos, old people) but here are some highlights:
Timmy: My wife is so haole, she gets slow service at Zippy's! (crowd's uproarious laughter)
Timmy: My wife is polish, which is like Portugee, but RETARDED!
Timmy: You know Waianae? That's like the Ghetto, but with nice sunsets.
Auggie T: I'm half Filipino and half Portugee, which means in Hawaii I'm Mexican!
Auggie T: The other day I saw a MIDGET... in high-water pants. A MIDGET in HIGH-WATER PANTS!!!
Auggie T: In Hawaii, we all know what each other are. On the mainland, we all ASIAN!! (Pointing at members of the audience) You Pilipina, you Micronesian, you Korean, you Mexican. What, you not Mexican? Don't make that face at me, LEOPARD LADY! REEEOW!!!

Secret Byways

2008-06-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the lovely and strange places I've stumbed across lately.

A strangely impaled 1.5" beetle on the barbed wire fence. This Hawaiian homestead farm is along the road I walk along. The day I went in and said hello, they were weeding beets, harvasting kale, and planting onions, arugula, and lettuces.
This beach (I'm not telling where) and hike were so odd and lovely-- completely empty rocky beach and clear blue water over black sand and rocks... "Take care of the land..."
An odd eerie horse holding perfectly still along the side of the road.

Different Islands

2008-06-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend we hopped on a plane and went to visit Kauai for a couple of days. Yes, the airfare was outrageous--I bought a roundtrip from SF to NYC for less a couple of years ago-- but it was an adventure. And besides, it was the patriotic thing to do-- spending a bit of our economic stimulus money on a mini vacation (which doubled as a chance for a job interview).

And after four days on the Garden Isle, I went home with this profound impression:

All of the Islands are different from each other.

The Big Island is big. Kauai, Oahu, and Maui are small.

We have vog, they have clear blue skies.

They are green and verdant jungles, we are yellow rangeland plains.

They have a lot of good food, we have a little bit of good food, spread few and far across the island.

And maybe I'm nuts, but everyone was very friendly on Kauai. I kept nudging my husband and saying, "am I nuts or is everybody friendly on Kauai?" The museum lady let us in for free, the shopkeeper pinched baby's cheeks, the rental car lady called everybody "sweetheart."

There seemed to be lots more plantation influence-- more Japanese culture, with the Native Hawaiian culture segregated away onto seperate (but, um, equal?) Hawaiian Homelands.

They are developed with paved sidewalks, parkbenches, bike paths, and nice restrooms at the beach. You have to hack your way through a thorny jungle to get to the state beach park on the Big Island.

Not that one is better than the other-- just different. The way that Boston is different from Charleston which is different from San Diego-- as if the islands are seperated by vast open spaces and disparate histories. Which, thanks to high airfare and a long native legacy, they are.

I like the Big Islands stubbornness-- its closed-circuit, one-road-on-the-island feel. It's sort of tantalizing and mysterious to think there's all this open space, all this coast, all these mountains and jungles-- and none of it open to you. The allure of the forbidden I suppose. But I also loved being able to go for a hike every day we were on Kauai, and finding easy, beautiful, plentiful beaches everywhere we went.

Indigenous People Humor

2008-05-24T19:44:00.000-07:00

"Wow," said Auntie Val Hanohano, looking around as the Hula performance ended and all the parents and friends got up to push their way out of the theater, "the natives are getting restless! Ha ha ha!"

Points of View

2008-05-21T17:54:00.001-07:00

I was browsing through the webiverse yesterday and stumbled across some very lovely talk-story accounts of the history, culture, and spiritual importance of Kawaihae .

As I read it one thing stuck in my throat a bit-- the people interviewed sadly mention the vast influx of extremely wealthy mainland people into the community. They say the populations of local people are shrinking and vanishing as the haole come in, buy everything up, and then lock themselves in their million-dollar gated communities.

Here's one bit:

“Back in the old times, we had a really strong sense of community,” Pua remarks.
“Now it’s separated. Everybody has their own thing. Everybody wants this and
everybody wants that and nobody wants to come together, and make it work. ‘I
want this, I want a park,’ somebody else wants this and everybody want, want,
want, but nobody wants to do what it takes to make it happen. So, I say, that
during my time of growing up, we were as one community and one family. Not
today. Today, it’s divided."

“That’s because of the new people coming in. Because you get new people come in with new ideas. They will not accept your ideas, although you’ve been here a long time, and you know what works and what doesn’t. Because they have such strong minds and they want to do what they think is righ, we go head on, we lock horns. We try to make everything workable so that everybody is agreeable, but it doesn’t happen that way."
“As far as I’m concerned the only community I know is my auntie next door, me, my
cousin up the road and this one up here,” Ku‘ulei points out. “That’s my community to me, because that’s all that exists of what I knew as a community. Everybody else that’s here now, they’re new people—with new problems and new issues. We’ve been here for centuries, and we can’t even resolve our problems. We’re fighting just to stay here every day."

The Hawaiian people I know tend to share that view-- that the haole people are coming in, buying everything up, and wrecking it all.

Of course, that's true. There are several sterile gated communities all along the Kohala coast-- I have friends employed cleaning those places--flushing the toilets and dusting all of their genuine Hawaiian art twice a week.

But to me it doesn't seem like the malevolent tsunami of influx the way it was described on this site-- that the haole are coming in to wreck it all on purpose. It's seems more like a steady dribble coming in rather than a vast wave.

Like the woman at the community planning meeting said, I think most malihini recognize the tender issues of place and belonging and displacement and think, "I don't want to be a part of the problem."

But is it hopeless? Just by being here and being haole (by which I'm of course including all other mainlanders, regardless of race) are you the problem?

Mainlanders earnestly shopping at the farmers markets, fighting for the Puu preservation plans and for better schools, taking hula classes, and competing with each other ("oh you've been here 2 years? I've been here 6 years!")-- certainly don't see themselves as wrecking it all. Rather they (we) see themselves as wanting to be a part of all of the wonderful stuff that Hawaii has to offer.

I'm glad that I've got this weird, sometimes dysfunctional, church family. It is a wonderful equalizer-- I have friends I love whose families have been here for 1 year, 20 years, 50 years, and thousands of years. Within that community we hopefully see each other less as "haole invaders" or "resentful natives" but as bossy Sister So-and-so or gentle Brother-Such-and-such. Not that it's perfect-- I have been referred to as "the other haole" and the ecclestical leader still cannot pronounce anyone's names (including his own daughter's Hawaiian name) for all his 20 years in the islands, and one woman shoo-ed my half-Japanese husband away to tell me in conspiratorial tones, "it's SO good to see a little blond baby."

It's cliche but the only way to overcome the barriers of race and resentment is through face to face honest interaction-- work. If communities continue to isolate themselves in gated developments or family bubbles, of course we will never understand each other. There are bossy, gentle, selfish, helpful, wise, and insightful people in every side of the fence.

Mana Road

2008-05-20T15:09:00.000-07:00

I love walking on the back roads. The wind, the green fields, the vast riveted mountain iced with snow-- it's unabashedly picturesque. I love the ramshackle corrugated roof houses with tarp sheds and the delux garages-as-living space, complete with couches and flat screen tvs, and stacks of industrial size coolers. Yesterday I walked out through the Hawaiian home pasture land roads to a farm that I always admired. Kale, onions, red and green lettuce, cabbage, collards, beets, mizuna, arugula, chard in neat long rows over about 5 acres. There were two people weeding in the field-- I gathered my courage and pushed my stroller in and waved hello. Anna, the farm manager, said sure I could look around and told me all about how they use only organic pest control,(so let the baby out of the stroller!) and that she's worked there since her babies were born, and now they're off to college. She laughed at her dry muddy hands-- no gloves for me she said, and attacked the weedy overgrown chiogga beets. Like a man's hands! she joked, and said her husband is a manager at a restaurant and has beautiful hands. The beets with ugly tops she flung aside with the rest of the weeds, and told me to take them home to boil up. Ray, a tall ex-con looking white guy sat on an upturned bucket weeding the onions. He quietly told me they plant everything from seed, even the onions.

On the way home we stopped and said hello to the sheep who aggressively bleat and rip the dandelion tops we offer through the fence, and hello to the jackson chamelion jigging its tightrope routine along a barbedwire fence. Uncle Drummundo pulled up next to me in his rusted out stationwagon and said-- "Eh I though it was you, Sister!" He is the sometimes ribald usher at church. Last year when he noticed my pregnant belly he shouted, "Ha! I know what you DID!!!!" His wife is the prim stout church librarian-- she is mortified by his antics, and becomes more stiff and proper the wilder and louder he gets. "My husband is not a good man," she said seriously once in Sunday School, "but he is a righteous man."

His 3 year old granddaughter is peering grumpily out of the front window as he drives up and down the road, trying to get her to fall asleep. "Good to show the baby the sheep, the pigs, the dogs, the chickens. This is the last place that's country. No more country in Honolulu, it's all gone now. We need young people's voices to keep it country."

A Rich Day

2008-05-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning we went to the beach-- a sort of secluded one in a patch of burnt keawe forest and down a broken old trail. It's shallow with a white sandy bottom and plenty of thorny trees to drape your towels on. My little half-fish one-year old charged out into the waves, signing "fishie" and "water" and "wet" and screaming with happiness. She didn't even mind the unusally rough waves-- strong enough to knock me over a couple of times while she stayed safely perched on her daddy. We swam and splashed around-- two giant honu floated right past us, sticking their noses out of the water to take audible sucks of air. When their heads emerge you can see the lenalena yellow ring around their eyes and the green and amber scales on their wise faces. The big exciting waves knocked us all around a bit, we played on the beach (I enjoy writing things like "permanence" and "eternity" in the sand, and watching them get washed away, ha ha ha.) Baby buried herself up to her piko (belly button) in a puddle, splashing and screaming and singing until the waves starting rising.

Then after we were all tired out from the hot sun and the salt water and the waves, we went to a MAJOR baby luau. This was the kind of one year baby luau people imagine—hundreds of guests, a giant pavilion on the beach reserved for the day, and most of all, the FOOD. They had all the usual luau fare (potato salad, tuna poke--raw fish salad, poi, rice, kalua pig, chicken long rice, luau), but REALLY DELICIOUS. The best poke I’ve ever, ever had. Usually I start to feel a little queasy if I eat too much raw fish. Not this stuff—I could live off of it. Salty and fresh and sea-weedy with flecks of kukui nut oil and red alae sea-salt… Auntie Ann, who lives around the corner from us (baby Kameya's great-aunt) proudly told me that her two fat backyard pigs had gone into the imu to make the Kalua pig. I told her you could taste the love! And most amazingly of all, they had trays of Opihi—a kind of sea creature that lives on the black volcani rocks in the roughest waves—like a daredevil night-migrating clam. I’ve never had it before because it’s really hard to find, gather and prepare, I think it's illegal to sell and in any case it’s horribly expensive to buy. WOW, it was amazing. Like tight juicy little packets of muscley sea-protein.

We sat with the honored baby Kameya's great grandmother, Auntie Bertha, and were introduced to some of the sons, cousins, distant relatives and well-wishers all around us. My sleepy sandy-necked baby and overstimulated and under-napped baby Kameya exchanged long weary one-year-old looks.

I loved the bustle of all of the people coming and going-- the dad's family from Waimea, the mom's family from Hilo, with the rainbow of Hawaiian diversity on full display: relatives included obvious haole, Portuguese, Hawaiian, and Japanese. A live band (an ukulele, a guitar, and a wash-bin bass) played nationalistic Iz Kamakawiwoole covers alternating with old Tin Pan Alley hapa-haole songs, and the baby's grandmother handed around glass baby-food jars full of party favors. Other friends came and we hugged and kissed them all, and got to witness how they are all interconnected with both sides of the family by whom they hug and kiss. After second helpings of fresh poi, beloved kalua pig, and lilikoi cake, we made our way home to nap.

In the evening we set out again-- down to the Kahilu theatre for the annual Kanu O Ka Aina Hula drama-- the final "ho'ike"-- graduation performance and recital-- for the Hawaiian charter school. We were an hour early but the line was out the door and around the building.

We found a spot near the front, next to Aunti Val who is one of the media coordinator's for Kanu. She snapped pictures all through and lent baby camera caps and miscellany to distract her.

A hundred kids or so from kindergarten to 12th grade put on a two hour show of ancient hula and modern hula in the traditional style-- telling the stories and legends and natural history of this place. The kindergarteners all became sea creatures and described the Kole, the opihi, the hee, the mano, the manini. The high schoolers performed a chant and dance about the whales coming-- they were all shrouded in minutely woven stiff lauhala cloth. Another group of high schoolers created their own knee drums-- symbols of connection to heaven and earth and of sacrifice-- which they played and whipped around and tied to their knees all in perfect unison. I was amazed how professional and serious this group of kids could be! Even the tiny kindergarteners knew all the Hawaiian words to long, repetitive chants, and didn't wave to mommy or fidget for the entire time. The goofy slouching teenagers become tall proud performers—even the thick-middled wormy boys walked un-self-consciously onto the stage to dance and chant in their malo--loin cloths. The dances moved me—seeing how hard the kids had worked to do it, how much they cared about making it beautiful—the kids even made their own costumes—sewing and even dyeing and carving stamps and hand-printing the material. It was lovely.

Prince Caspian

2008-05-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I hosted my monthly book group-- ostensibly an excuse to get together and gossip and eat snacks (last night it was homemade bread with homemade cream cheese and homemade pickles!)
Kehau picked "Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis to present. She began describing the story and the setting-- it's been thousands of years since the white witch, and a group from outside of Narnia has moved in and taken over. All of the true Narnians have been forced into hiding while the imposters rule. And the official schools don't teach about the true history of the place-- just a sanitized and superstitious version of things. The woods and the rivers are seen as dangerous places full of maleveolent forces. And young Prince Caspian is the rightful heir of... the Narnian conquerors. But he begins learning the true story of the place-- the magic, Aslan, the talking beasts-- from a half-Narnian tutor who evidently can "pass" as human. Eventually Caspian escapes from his cruel Uncle, and sets off into the woods, even though he's one of the invaders, to find the true Narnians. When three Narnians discover him, one dwarf suggests they get rid of him-- after all, he is one of their enemy. Then, for some reason, the Narnians not only leave him alive but they make him their ruler!
And with that she was basically finished with her summary. I was riveted. What an amazing Hawaiian re-reading of the story. Public schools forbade Hawaiian language, and with it the transmission of Hawaiian culture, skills and values. The Hawaiian jungles and valleys are reputedly full of nightwalkers-- magical powerful ancient spirit-warriors who will eat you if you can't declare your lineage. But since Hawaii isn't a children's story, you will not be politely coronated king.

Parking Lot

2008-05-03T14:24:00.000-07:00

Just now I was coming out of the KTA parking lot and witnessed a scene. A shiny blue rental car --some kind of boxy Chevy--pulled out in front of a battered mini-van with a big "In Memory Of..." decal across the back. The driver of the van leaped out of the car. He's wearing an "Eddie Would Go" tanktop in red, green and yellow. He runs and jams his face into the window and starts screaming at the driver. I turn down the radio to eavesdrop and catch some choice phrases: Why the **** you gotta drve like that, What the **** is wrong with you, Yes we have an ****ing problem, etc. etc.
I can't see or hear the driver. He evidently decides he's had enough of this and starts to drive away. "Eddie" shouts after him, finally, answering my unasked question, "****ing haole!!"

City Planning Meeting

2008-05-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

We have a little problem in our city. Actually, not just our city. Across the whole island.
We have no city councils. We have no city mayors. We, in short, have taxation without representation.
What we do have is a sprawling, unfocused, wobbly top-heavy, obtuse and immovable county government.
What we also have is rapid and uncontrolled expansion, erratic and flimsy zoning, and a terrifying traffic problem.
A few weeks back while I was standing in line at the theater, somebody was walking up and down with fliers that announce:

"Community Meeting! Review of Planning Process to date, information stations.
Learn what is happening, ask questions, tell us what you think! Next Steps! FREE
FOOD!!!"

I decided to go see what a community meeting is like.
Sure enough, there was food and it was free. The little room at the civic center was packed with about 50 people. Every wall surface was draped with elaborate maps detailing bypass roads, farm zoning, historical preserves, Hawaiian homelands, bike paths, green ways, road widths and tsunami escape plans, waste disposal (including frightening waste injection wells from the resorts) and irrigation ditches. Along with the maps were huge blank pieces of paper, and as people moved around the room, they wrote up their comments and concerns and questions on the paper, assisted by smiling volunteers with nametags.
The waimea plan bulleted:

A: Sense of place. Hawaiianness and agriculture. Puu protection plan.
B: transportation and circulation improvements. Scenic bypass road.
C: slow growth-- long term planning and infrastructure. Committee required for zoning change, no longer 1-signature sign off for development.

The ideas scrawled on the papers on the wall in bright colors meandered from the insightful to the bizarre: "identify GMOs in farm lots; start carpool incentive programs at schools; minimize light pollution along bypass road, self-sustainable water by harnessing landowner's water in gulches; zoning approved at local level; opposition to the connector road..."

I asked some of the nametagged people how all of this came about. Bruce Tsushida of Township Inc, was nametagged "facilitator" and explained:

It began with volunteer focus groups for each area of concern. So now there are traffic focus groups, zoning focus groups, and so on. These volunteers then developed the maps which were filtered through professional planners with technical knowledge.
Along with those groups, there are two groups and a South Kohala steering committee, of eleven members. Initially they were volunteers. Then a screening committee made recommendations to the Hawaii County Mayor, who chose the eleven members, and submitted the names to the county council. Now they meet once a month, and work with the focus groups.
So can all of these wonderful ideas (bike paths, slowed growth, smarter zoning) actually happen? Allen Salavea of the county planning department told me, "implementation of the Community Development Plan is discussed" (I lost track of by who exactly) and that "Hilo is in the implementations stage. So now they want more and diverse people to view the documents, the literature and the spatial maps." They are waiting for "a green light from the community to move into the planning stage."
"Now," he said, "is the time to get into it."
It was an interesting mix of people. Mostly old-time haole and Japanese, a smattering of Hawaiians. My goddess-like Hawaiian friend Pomai came into the meeting halfway through. A twitter moved through the crowd-- "it's Pomai, it's Pomai!" She commanded herself regally, nodded demurely to my "howdy!" and mingling in a stately and commanding manner. The scrawny gray-haired vegetarians wilted before her. She represents the voice of The Hawaiian People at these meetings. She told me later that she's a member of several of the focus groups, and that she is involved to keep the town Hawaiian.

While I was standing in front of one of the papers, a woman next to me told a nametagged person, "I'm a newcomer here, and I don't want to be a part of the problem."

There was a tremendous sense of forward motion and consensus with all of this. But I felt it was Democracy without legs or teeth. It's all excitement and input. Can anything actually happen or will ll the enthusiasm be used up and nothing change?

Hawaiian Culture Camp

2008-04-21T15:21:00.001-07:00

For ten years, George Kahumoku Jr. has been hosting a Hawaiian music camp on Maui. He invites famous slack key and ukulele players to teach a group of enamored haole mainlanders to play (and make leis and chant and sing in Hawaiian), while feeding them gussied up Hawaiian fare at the open aired Mauian hotel in Napili. For a week they get to be immersed in Aloha, Ohana, Mana, and Kaukau, playing Hawaiian music by starlight while the waves crash on the beach. It's overwhelmingly picturesque.
I got to go a while ago because of a gracious research grant. So while everyone else were cultural tourists, I felt like an observer, on a mission to parse this odd experience.

On the first day of the camp I drove up through the windy cliff-roads to George Kahumoku’s beautiful big house and great garden and taro-patch. George opened the gate and set us all to work.

He’s a big Hawaiian guy- very busy all day—and his wife is a skinny haole lady, Nancy. She was the ticking clock that kept everybody and everything in forward motion. George tended to linger, swim, float, chat, ponder.

We did some light garden work—cutting some Pele leaves (to replace the luau leaves in laulau), and ti leaves for wrapping the laulau in… my highlight was I got to extract 2 dozen fresh eggs from the hen house. They are harder than store-bought, and they’re warm. And, of course, covered in chicken shit.
After the day's toiling, a short lunch break and a kani ka pila (little jam session) in George's air conditioned living room, the group packed up a mountain of coolers and costco boxes and set out down the cliffs to the hotel where the rest of the week would be spent.
I followed George's squealy red Volkswagon van all the way to Napili. It’s horrendously far. I helped make the dinner in a little outdoor grotto kitchen: asparagus, purple onion and tomato salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil; fish (salmon or halibut, with some onions and shiitake mushrooms, drizzled with coconut milk, wrapped in Pele leaves, a ti leaf, and tin foil, and steamed.)
Once we were at the hotel I had a chance to gauge the people. My fellow attendees were interesting. All alternatingly smiley or stiff, wearing flowing clothing, all white, mostly in their comfortable 40s and up. The standard man is either big and fat with a long pony tail (think comic book guy) or skinny with a receding hairline. The women are nearly all gray-haired divorcees, like the woman I overheard saying, “so by that time I realized the marriage would never support another child, so we rethought our whole arrangement. I’m deathly allergic to anything in the night shade family. What was your name again dear?” About 70 people came to attend.

Before each meal we were gathered into a circle, holding hands—and George said a pule on the food (Akua, we thank you for this food), and we all mumbled along with the Hawaiian Doxology—to the tune of “oh god from whom all blessings flow”.

Every meal was a fantastic spread-- George and his helpers had an amazing outdoor kitchen rigged in a little grotto of ti plants, plumeria and ferns. He wrangled a hundred of pounds of fresh taro and steamed it and mashed it into dense lovely poi, and another hundred pounds each of fresh fish and smoked pork. His passion was clearly in the kitchen.

George Kahumoku is a spectacular person-- a real genius. He is a sculptor, an author, a chef, a philosopher and a grammy winning musician. But he shrugs it all off and giggles squeakily. Slack key, he tells me patiently, is only 1% of Hawaiian life. This-- the food, the stories, the farming-- that's all part of it to. The camp contextualizes the music-- ties it to a people, to a landscape.

One of those landscapes was the glitzy stage of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where we all went en masse to the weekly slack key concert. The teachers let loose and performed for us: George sweet and mellow, Bob Brozman wired and leaping. He’s so small and wiry I’m sure he uses all of his physical resources on his music. And, he kept alluding, on his new, young wife, who spent the entire week in her bikini, sipping classy alcoholic beverages. Daniel Ho was mooney eyed and ridiculous ("an ugly Chinese boy like me!")

Keoki Kahumoku played hapa-haole songs—including “My Little Grass Shack” with a warbly imitation of the 40’s style voice on the original record, to the thunderous applause of the audience. He chopped his fingers off a few weeks ago, skinning a wild pig—so now he can only play with his thumb and pinky, and vaguely strum with his three stiff (reattached) middle fingers, that are sort of bent at an odd angle.

The audience of campers was enthralled-- screaming, shouting, guffawing, calling out requests.
This whole camp was really like a summer camp for grown-ups. Little friendships sprouted—Promise you’ll keep in touch!—and special outfits became trendy, camp songs took on lives of their own (it was Keoki’s “Where’s that black dog” song). Only this camp has a geriatric bent: everyone comparing surgical scars and joint ailments.

The camp culminated in the Slack Key festival, where the campers, in our matching Molokai green t-shirts, shared the stage with all of the slack key greats we could imagine: Cyril Pahinui, Dennis Kamakahi, Led Kaapana, Ozzie Kotani, Kevin Brown, and our own beloved uncle George.
The shock of the experience for me was that the camp really did deliver the sort of authentic connection that it promised. George Kahumoku, his son Keoki, and the other teachers, really were open with their skills and knowledge. The atmosphere was warm and welcoming, and everyone really did feel the sense of Ohana, as promised on the T-shirt (Ohana Camp). My favorite part was working in the outdoor kitchen with George-- wrapping laulau, cutting hundreds of tomatoes in a rush (and being chastized by George for wasting the tops and recutting the scraps) pounding poi.
Something about it seems slightly unfair though-- the only way to really have a beautiful Hawaiian experience is to pay through the nose for it? The only way to connect with other adults with similar interests is to travel thousands of miles at great expense?

Tourists at Iao Needle

2008-04-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Tourists are interesting to observe. A great deal of time is spent posing and negotiating pictures—I half observed one struggle—a family with several kids posed for the grandpa’s camera- the 8 year old boy’s shirt was rumpled. The grandmother said, bafflinglingly, “the orange stripe is crooked! Do you want everyone to see you like that Andrew? Do you want me to tell everyone?” So then he had his arm over his face for the rest of the poses, with mother saying his name like a sneeze over and over, grandfather growling, grandmother whining and threatening.
Poor kid, what’s the point of taking pictures? To preserve the joys of childhood?
Tourists, on the whole, seem pretty friendly. Three year old boys must throw rocks over cliffs, their mothers must scold them. They are cheerful and trusting with each other—swapping cameras, flirting with each other’s children.
They are gruff and overly buoyant with the locals—crazy young shirtless brown guys jumping off of the bridge into a rocky river 30 feet below—who are in turn glassy-eyed with the tourists, and step on the gas pedal when you step into the intersection.
I feel the need to declare my status. Can I get a t-shirt or bumper sticker printed that announces: married to semi-local, lives in Hawaii, somewhat informed about Hawaiian culture, history, and customs! So I’m not local, but I’m not a total haole, right? And to similarily peg tourists, like the ones I hear guffawing as they sounded out their map: Wai-lu-ku?? Wai-ka-pu? Whatever! Incredulously—with “total haole” signs. Every time I heard someone attempt the name Iao it was a different improbable interpretation: Eeyaye (like old Macdonald), Ayo, yoyo…

Paradise

2008-04-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

I've had several conversations lately with other malihini.
The consensus seems to be that it is hard to live in Paradise.
Is that extraordinarily odd?
We have all made painful sacrifices to move here--leaving family and friends and familiarity back on the mainland. It's expensive to ship your car and all of your stuff. It's hard to find a job that can keep up with inflated rents and $7 a gallon milk (as expensive as Manhattan on a quarter of the income!)
I know heaps of people who are desperate to move here-- who fantasize about their lives as they would be, surely, in Hawaii. The haole mainlander Hawaiian music officianados I met through slack-key camp are positively fervent about Hawaiian culture-- weeping openly about the fate of King Kalakaua and about the beauty of Aloha. People feel compelled to come here, to fulfill their dreams. People come to become cocoa farmers, to thaw out, to relax, to restart their lives.
And then they get disillusioned, and according to a Hawaii Public Radio report, leave again. Last year more people left the state than moved into it.
Moving here, living here and leaving is all so loaded with hopes and disappointments and expectations. Malihini come here, chanting to themseleves, "If I only lived in Hawaii, I could open that little shop, I could grow my own food, I could get away from my past, I could connect with the earth, I could live a good life."
Does it actually make sense, that given everything your heart desires (perfect weather year round, beautiful pristine beaches, roadside lei stands and blooming aloha everywhere you look) the real grain of your desires shows through, and you realize that what you really desire actually has nothing to do with weather?
If everything you want was sure to be in paradise, but you're still unhappy once you've got your toes in the sand in the palm tree shade, the question is, if not this, then what?
What do you want?

It's dangerous to tamper with the illusion of paradise: it's much safer to wish for it from a distance. Nose to nose with want you want you might discover you have nothing left to wish for. Metaphors for happiness evaporate with a resounding hiss and you're left with either a profound emptiness or a sort of zen completeness-- a satisfaction in the loss of desire.

Some people recreate home in the image of paradise: ah, the mountains, the wide open spaces, the bustling city. Paradise sloughs its palm trees and dons pines and ski slopes, or high rises and cafes.

The sun and the ocean and the green rolling hills: Does happiness not actually have anything to do with where I am, but some other quality of self? Something deeper than my sunburn?
Is it a fisher king problem, that given everything we would desire, we turn away from it, only to spend the rest of our lives limpingly looking for the thing we once might have had, but lost?

Just Don't Try

2008-04-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

I was standing in line at the grocery store. The ponytailed local guy in front of me was paying for a stack of clothespins and some rope. A fat white guy followed me in line, checked out the big dark guy and his items on the counter and shouted amiably, "Hey Braddah! You Get Plenty Clothespins For Hang Choke Laundry!"
"Oh," the local guy answered, "yes. They're actually for the printing master class I'm teaching."

Hey, Who Put Jesus Into Easter?

2008-03-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, the day before Easter, we got up and went over to the school gymnasium for the much advertised Community Easter Egg Hunt.
When we got there, the place was pretty packed-- parents in the bleachers, and an impressive table of prizes: tall pink plastic wrapped easter egg baskets, heaps of pastel chocolates, and even a pair of new bikes. We registered at the front-- filling out a form that asked for our phone, our address, our full names, birthdays, and which church we go to, and how often. I was suddenly dubious that this really is a nondenominational community event.
In exchange for all of our personal information, baby got a little green wrist band that let her into the 0-3 egg hunt at 9:00. It was still 8:30 and the place was filling up.
A woman stood up in the front by the prizes and shouted into a wireless karaoke mic, "Hey everybody, ready to celebrate Easter??? Come on kids, come up to the front! Let's celebrate Jesus!" All the kids shuffled out to the floor in front of her. She put on a DVD of rowdy kid's rock and roll, with a loud screaming and cheering track-- it suddenly seems much livelier in the gym. The pounding music starts up: "J-E-S-U-S!!!!" The kids jump around and watch the tie-dye graphics undulate on the huge screen under pump-you-up Christian lyrics like, "I think I'm gonna throw up, I think I'm gonna throw up, I think I'm gonna throw up-- my hands and praise the Lord!"
9:00 arrives and the throng is getting restless. We're following baby through the crowd, greeting people from work and church and our birth class, and recognizing the nice grocery store clerk and Diane the copy store owner, and the cheery barista at the corner coffee shop, who is sitting pensively with a cigarette.
The music is losing some of its power (in spite of catchy ditties like, "who's the king of the jungle? Hoo Hoo! Who's the king of the sea? Glub Glub! Jesus is the King of the universe and Jesus is the king of me, Yee-haw!!!!")
At last he DVD goes off and a kid with a mic is climbing a ladder. The MC says, "Hey, what are you doing????" The kid hams, "I'm trying to climb to heaven!" "What??? you can't climb into heaven!" Then the kid pulls out a dollar bill and waves it at her: "well, can I buy my way into heaven?" "No! The only way to go to heaven is to believe in Jesus!" Here she turns to the audience and blats into the mic-- "who here believes in Jesus, raise your hands!!" A smattering of kids raise their hands, and their neighbors watch them and tentatively join in. A couple of little girls in pigtails raise their hands, and their mom gently pulled their hands back in their laps, shaking her head at them.
"The only way to go to heaven," the MC says, "is to ABC! A-- Admit you are a sinner, then B, Believe in Christ, and C, Confess Christ is your savior. So who wants to go to heaven? Repeat after me!!!! I am a sinner!" she sing-songs. The kids echo her. "I believe in Jesus! I accept Jesus into my heart!"
So then the whole gymnasium was saved, and the doors were opened and the antsy (but redeemed) throng was herded to a flat open field, marked with neon orange plastic tape, and scattered with plastic eggs. The pastor came out (in a black t-shirt with a gothic cross on) and blew an air horn, and the children descended onto the eggs.
Phew, finally down to the real business of Easter! Plastic eggs and cheap candy.

Lotus Cafe

2008-03-23T10:37:00.000-07:00

Costco hulks in a vast squat industrial park in a lava field outside of Kona. It is sentried by furniture outlets, T-shirt printers, and, curiously, The Most Delicious South East Asisan Food I Have Ever Ever Had.
The other day after a grueling trip to Costco, baby and I were tired and hungry and I saw a "Now Open" sign flapping in an industrial strip right above the Big Box Behemoth. I pulled up into the driveway and wedged into a parking spot between cement mixers and asphalt pounders, stacks of broken down crates, and dusty pieces of furniture, and made my way to the entrance of Lotus Cafe.
Inside all the chaos disappears: you are first greeted by a man-sized stone slab running melodiously with water, then you enter a cozy breezy cafe, constructed ingeniously in a cavernous warehouse with draped tents and whirring fans.
The laminated menus introduce the philosophy of the place: "Hawaii's only Asian Style Natural Foods Cafe: Serving organic food and beverages, prepared from only the finest local, natural and organic ingredients." The cafe is entirely solar powered, and all of the ingredients are either grown on the owners' farm or bought from local growers. The spice mixes and seasonings are all ground and mixed fresh, never store bought. That said, I still wasn't prepared for the intensity and playfulness of the spices and flavors.
I got the Taster's Special "3 different taster portions & rice for 13.95"
The cute waitress brought out the three small dishes on a large plate, and baby and I proceeded to dig in:
Burmese Ikan fish curry with tender cubes of mahimahi in a slow-burning black pepper broth,
Singapore style coconut marinated chicken katsu, marinated in with mango salsa on a bed of cabbage and carrots
and
Creamy massaman curry with shrimp-- sweet with the deep rich sugar cane flavor, laced with bias-cut whole green chiles, and intensely spicy in that subtle, slow-burning way.
For dessert I had a tiny cup of their home-made coconut gelato-- which tasted a bit too soy-based and vegan-righteous, but was still refreshing for the long hot drive home.
Every day since eating there I've been fantasizing about going back-- the flavors are still alive in my memory, especially that fresh sugar-cane sweetness, and that delicate burn.

The Hawaiian Nation

2008-03-08T22:56:00.000-08:00

Upside-down Hawaiian flags, imposing painted signs, flapping tents. A couple of weekends a month we drive by an intimidating encampment on the church row lawn: The Hawaiian Nation Reinstated.

Up to this morning, my impression of the Hawaiian Sovereignty and National movements came from reading Haunani-Kay Trask's From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii. The book is a sometimes diamond-clear description of the disparity in Hawaiian colonialism, but is studded with off-putting gems like this: “without doubt, Euro-Americans and the Japanese see Islanders as racially and culturally inferior. To these predators, the Pacific is vast and far away from the centers of 'civilization,' rendering it most suitable for dangerous projects” like nuclear experimentation (Trask 55). I guessed that I would be unwelcome at best, and met with hostility at worst.

Luckily I was wrong. It's a family event-- adult sisters and sister-in-law sit with their mom, near the kids (who romp in the tent with a puppy, climb trees, and throw frisbees), and pass out paper plates piled with spam, rice, portuguese sausage, eggs, and grilled cheese sandwiches from the bed of a truck. Cousins, aunts and uncles come and go. There are paper signs taped onto the metal tent frame: "Kalua Pig, donation $5" and when I got there, sister Jade tells me it's on its way-- in the meantime I chatted with her about the family and The Nation while her sisters and mother ignored me-- like cats do-- tense and observing, withholding judgement. She referred me to the website: Hawaiian Kingdom Government and tells me that really I should wait for Charles, her brother-- he's a Representative of the Kingdom of Hawaii Government-- clearly the one to talk to, and he's on the way with the pig. She introduces her mom as one of the few 100% Hawaiian people around-- but as we talk more, and the alert observation relaxes, she confesses her last name is England, from her father's slave-trading ancestor who married a Navajo woman and ended up, somehow, in Hawaii. You get to choose what part of your ancestry you identify with, we decided-- the Polynesian, the Navajo, the English, the slave-trader or the Hawaiian National.

Chuck arrives in a van and everyone flurries around, kissing each other hello and unloading the heavy coolers full of smoky kalua pig. Uncle Sam gets out of the van with him-- an imposing figure with a long white ponytail, a sleeveless T-shirt, shorts and gum-boots. My baby immediately falls in love with him and they chase each other around while I chat with Chuck, and he educates me about the Nation. Only later looking at the website do I realize that Sam is another representative of the Hawaiian government, as is his father, who is listed as a Noble.

Chuck tells me how he became involved in the government: In 2002 he saw a group of folks (he said "KanACKS" --a racial slur for Hawaiian--from kanaka maoli. I wondered if he used it for my benefit-- would I call myself a "cracker" if I was talking to someone I assumed used that term?) in tents with signs, went in and was asked, "did you repatriate back to your country yet?" He said, "I know I'm Hawaiian, I know I belong to whatever is Hawaiian." So he researched the movement, read the constitution and the resolutions, and once he felt that everything was pono (good and righteous) he became involved, and was eventually elected to a representative position for the Big Island.

Each island has their own districts with elected representatives. They all hold roadside vigils, like this one, to educate the public and raise money for the Hawaiian government.
The government issues IDs, birth and marriage certificates, and license plates, and you can register as a citizen through their application and naturalization process. Citizens can vote for their representatives and run for offices. Henry Noa is the prime minister elect of the pro-tem Hawaiian government. The sisters told me that Noa was visiting the UN where the Kingdom of Hawaii has a vacant seat, and is planning another trip to South America as well.

Chuck explained that the Hawaiian Nation was never dissolved, and the people never relinquished their rights. "We have a continuous government, a continuous constitution" as it was set out by the Kamehamehas. "We need to respect the kupunas." He clarifies that it is not a sovereignty movement-- it is the original government as it was with the Kamehamehas and Queen Liluokalani.

I asked Chuck what the goal is-- he said simply: "to end the illegal occupation of our land. Hawaii sat in the family of Nations, and can do it again."

Cars honk as they drive past and flash the Shaka sign. Kids and adults come in a say hello, buy bags of the pig (Chuck made 600 pounds last night) and we talk disjointedly through helloes and goodbyes. I overhear Chuck's auntie telling him, "you should hold one family meeting to educate the ohana about this." I bought two bags of the pig to support this lovely family and the vision of the Hawaiian Nation, kissed everyone goodbye, and went home and put my Hawaii-born baby to bed. Maybe in her lifetime she will have the chance to choose Hawaiian citizenship.

Sad losses for Hawaiian Music

2008-03-08T21:52:00.000-08:00

It was a sad week for Hawaiian music. Auntie Genoa Leilani Adolpho Keawe-Aiko died on February 25th. Her voice epitomized the high flexible Hawaiian soprano falsetto-- lyrical, easily, light. Then a few days later, Uncle Raymond Kaleoalohapoinaoleohelemanu Kane, the master slack key guitarist, died at 82 on February 27th. I loved his gravelly voice, and his boisterous but controlled slack key. His signature song is "Wai O Ke Ani Ani." He was a mentor to many young slack key artists. It is so sad to see the passing of the older generation of Hawaiian musicians. Luckily they are honored and remembered, and younger musicians like Keoki Kahumoku are carrying on their traditions. In honor of these kupunas, we went to the 7th annual Ukulele festival in Waikoloa-- a mixed crowd of local people and tourists, kids with ukuleles and grandma's in low chairs on the lawn. Parents cheered for the jangly middle-school ukulele band playing "The Entertainer." Gabby Pahinui's nephew performed a soaring version of "Hiilawe" -- recognizably traditional, with cascading arpeggios, but still unique-- his own. Keoki Kahumoku came and crooned in his grandmother's stained floppy hat. The last time I heard him play, he had just nearly cut off three of his fingers on his right hand, while killing one of his pig. But severed digits notwithstanding, he played with all his playful dexterity, hopping through hapa-haole songs and tripping easily through fast Hawaiian song like the lightning-speed "Laupahoehoe Hula." He learned from all the uncles, and brings his own spirit to the art as well. And, as Ray Kane said, "that's Slack-Key!"

Kahilu Theater Daytime Concerts

2008-03-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

Almost every day I walk or drive past the Kahilu Theater marquee, next to the bank. The programs are diverse, and tend towards the stuffy: jazz dance troupes, a capella singers, classical trios-- the only unifying element is the extraordinary cost of the shows. Although there have been shows that I would have like to see (Slack Key Masters and The Brothers Kazimero) I could never consider paying the ticket prices.

Until.

Last week I discovered that the theater has "school" shows during the day, and the nice ticket lady said I could get tickets as a "homeschooler." I am a little uncomfortable claiming to be "homeschooling" my 11 month old baby, but not uncomfortable enough to say no to these great shows for 3 to 6 dollars!

So far I've been to two of these raucous daytime cultural events with my homeschooled child. The first was Huun Huur Tu-- a group of Tuvan throat singers. I was nervous: an hour of didgeridoo-like chanting didn't sound too promising. The musicians came out in their brighly colored silk jackets, with delicately carved horse-headed instruments, and began making music that was haunting and substantial at the same time. It was stunning. My baby was captivated and then fell asleep. The galloping rhythms, the flute-like high tones, the rumbling bass notes-- every squirmy, twitchy kid in the audience sat still and listened a solid hour.

And then, the very next day, we went back for Altan! My favorite Irish band-- I couldn't believe my luck. The house was packed and it was a wild concert: the well-behaved Hawaiian kids from Kanu O Ka Aina, the group-think white kids from from Parker School (who all began waving their hands, rock-concert style, in the air), the fidgety homeschoolers with their moms, and a group of very old grandmas and grandpas, all clapping along.

My baby loved it so much that she continued singing even during the breaks between songs, which made the performers laugh and imitate her! They introduced their instruments and answered questions, and did a rollicking sing-along in a complex time signature, and fun was had by all of the women, children, and elderly of Waimea.

Baptisms and Branding

2008-02-21T10:19:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we got to participate in a branding up on Mauna Kea. Our landlords' grandpa, Grandpa Bolo, works one of the beautiful 300 acre Hawaiian Homes lots up in the green plains up towards the mountain. The whole family comes. Horses, dogs, kids, cowboys and cowgirls, uncles and aunties setting out tray after tray after tray of food. Korean fried chicken, Luau, smoke pork, sweet potato, poi, salad (that's mac or potato), fried fish and steamed fish: Kole, yellow, and Moe, bbq ribs, and more.
The cowboys and cowgirls gather in the herd with their horses while the rest of us sit silently and watch by the corral. Then they "cut" the cows away from their calves one by one-- it only takes them half an hour to sort the entire herd. The horses and dogs are a seamless part of the team. Then once they're sorted, everyone jumps in to help with the main project: one by one, the calves are roped, pulled into working corral, mugged (knocked over and sat upon, with one hoof twisted and held up on the sitter's arms, like an Aikido move), then ear notched, innoculated, castrated, branded (twice), cauterized and released. It's a bloody but efficient business. The dogs carry off the ball-sacks and later we fry up the Oysters. The calves don't seem too shaken by the experience, but it is hard to watch: their white faces turn pink with the blood from their notched ear, and the smoke from the brand and the smell of burning hair lingers in the food tent.
After all the work is done, we all sat down to eat and talk story. I eavesdropped on the three youngest cowboys-- 12 and 13-- grandsons and great grandsons to the powerful and solid grandpa Bolo (a real paniolo, fluent in Hawaiian which is the working language of the Hawaiian ranches). They discussed machine parts and ranching like adults. One of them noticed that their cousin Kaika had brought two guests-- young haole guys.
--Eh, who's those guys.
--isn't it the ones who wear the suits and ride the bikes all the time?
--oh yeah, they come over to my neighbor's house all the time, to get him baptized.
--Oh, I been baptized. They do it with some water on your forehead.
--oh at my church, every 4 or 5 months, the pastor ask everyone So who will be baptized? And then you get baptized. I did it twice already.
--Oh which church you go?
--New Hope. Who's your church pastor?
Then the conversation moved on.
I discussed religion with friends as a teenager. It was an exercise in either rolling my eyes about my parents' dumb church or self-righteously pontificating about the relative merits of my particular sect. These boys didn't have any of that grumbling self-conscious show-offiness that teenagers emit, especially at family functions. I couldn't tell who their parents were, no one was hovering or checking in on them. But they were surrounded on all sides by aunties, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins, nieces and nephews--all different religions, different educations and careers, but all connected by their common ancestry, and the land. Maybe that's the secret.

Ocean Sushi in Hilo

2008-02-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

It's Presidents Day and the place is packed-- a weary fan looks this way and that next to the door. There's a family of seven lined up sweatily by the counter, waiting to catch the waitress's eye. She's wearing belligerent thick black eyeliner, and a tight t-shirt with a picture of a bowl of soup, and the caption "Miso Hot." She shrugs us over to a sticky table, in a maze of mismatched chairs.

There's a pair of Hawaiian aunties right next to us, and I eavesdrop and peer at their food before I order. And it's lovely-- thin little strips of yaki-something, and sweet little rolls like gems. They strike up a conversation with a family at the table kitty-corner from us.

--Oh-- you folks from Honokaa! You never go work with my brother them?

--Oh yeah, over there at the kine. My husband work with your brother Jon Gomes?

--No the other Gomes. Milton Gomes. I get a brother Milton and Jack. Not the Ahualoa Gomes.

Honokaa. I'm a honokaa girl.

--Oh! Me too!

--Oh this my granddaughter. She make one already. So cute yeah? The mother's 19, the father's no good, yeah? They broke up already. Try make up work but broke up already. You know them Fukunaga guys? That's the grandparents.

--Oh over, Laupahoehoe? He the guy work with the kine, yeah? the electrician?

--Yeah, they never help with nothing. I had to make one baby shower for help my daughter, she never had nothing. So now I get the baby, ever since she was a newborn. I'm old already, had my kids at 34. My other daughter she 24 already but she never get any kids yet. She see what her sister went through and says not yet. She just live with the boyfriend, that's all.

--What the baby get, small kine Asian already yeah?

--Yeah the dad folks they Japanese that's why. Oh you went retire already?

--Oh yeah it's hard but, make do yeah?

Then our food comes: I ordered the Chirashi-zushi supreme. For a mere 10 dollars, I got a heap of beautifully scattered soft plump fresh fish on a deep bowl of sweet vinegared sushi rice: saba (mackerel), salmon, maguro (tuna), ikura (roe), tobiko (more roe), tako (octopus), shrimp, and various other items of raw deep-sea goodness. A small white bunch of fresh pickled ginger (not that neon pink stuff, thank you), a dab of wasabi, and some crunchy yelow pickled daikon slices garnished the side.

The auntie next to me incredulously watched the waitress lower it onto my table, and said,

--What, you know how to eat that!

--Oh, yeah, I lived in Japan for a couple of years. I love Japanese food.

--Ooh, is it nice over there? not too expensive though?

I assured them that yes, Japan is beautiful, and expensive, but probably no more expensive than here.

--Oh, then no need go! Ha!

The aunties and their neighbors turned to my husband and eyed him--

--oh but you one Hawaiian boy?

--Oh well, sort of, my mom's from Maui, but I grew up on the mainland...

While they quizzed him on his ancestry and connections, I stole a bite of firm lemony grilled ahi from his bento special. So flavorful and delicious-- fishful, but not fishy. Seasoned but not overwhelmed. In the Beginning, there was fish, and this is how it was meant to taste.

So if you go to Hilo, find Ocean Sushi. Yes, the floor is gummy and it's hot, but the food is divine and the company wonderful.

The Last Egg Farm

2008-02-15T12:11:00.000-08:00

Last week I went down Kawaihae Road to buy some eggs. Half way down the hill is the sign: Organa Grown, Hawaiian Fresh Egg Farm, home of Mountain Apple Brand Eggs, and a turn off over a narrow bridge onto a lane shadowed by palm trees. Follow the dirt track around the bend and turn into a nondescript open lot between large warehouse-style buildings. Park and say hello into the open doorway, beside the whiteboad of egg prices and a faded copy of the ten commandments, and you'll be greeted by a member of the family: David Davenport in spattered jeans, his wife or two bright eyed teengaged daughters.
David has run this egg farm for 21 years. He took it over from his grandfather. It's still a family affair-- his family works with him producing thousands of eggs for the Big Island brand, Mountain Apple. They also sell flats of eggs directly from their warehouse, which is how I came to be standing in their doorway.
But in the next 6 months to a year, they will close down. When I asked David why, he said that he has a God-given vision to improve the life of the soil. They have already started their operation producing rich compost. His new composting businesses will be on the same 13 acre Kawaihae parcel where the egg farm exists, and they will produce composts and mulch. I have bought two huge sacks of the sweet smelling black stuff and raked it into my garden beds.

They are the last of the outer island egg farms. And as the news of their immindent closure has spread, David says that they have had more support in the last year than in all of the previous years combined. Now they have new customers come everyweek, as many as 30 to 40 a day coming in to buy flats of gold-centered pearls. But David says, "the time to be concerned is not when you're the last one." The time, he says, was as recently as two years ago when there were egg farms in Kona and Kohala, and on Maui.
As the slow food and local food movements have grown, public support of local agriculture has translated-- slowly-- into economic support of Big Island eggs, milk, meat and produce. But not quickly enough for this farm.
But as David says, "You need to be fulfilled in life, and do the things that you're called to do."
I wonder if it is possible for us in the islands to reverse our dependency on mainland-produced food. We are a microcosm of the problems of globalization-- and our failures and successes can be a model for the rest of the nation. I hope that we won't have to confront catastrophe in order to realize what we have lost in losing our local food supply.

100 Years of Waimea Cowboys

2008-02-12T06:18:00.000-08:00

100 years ago, three young Hawaiian cowboys made the long trek to Wyoming to compete in the World Roping Championship. They spoke Hawaiian, had peculiar Hawaiian-style saddles, and wore bright hakulei on their hats-- Old West Cheyenne didn't know what to do with these foreign oddities on borrowed horses. They certainly didn't expect much from them. And then the young "children of Waimea" showed their stuff-- they not only held their own in the competition, Ikua Purdy won the whole thing outright. His victory is still sweet. It is immortalized in song: "Rough Riders" and "Waiomina" and many more.

Paniolo Preservation Society

Last Wednesday was the opening event for a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of that triumph. We gathered with the crowd in the cold needly kipuupuu rain outside Kahilu theatre waiting for the doors to open and admit 500 of us to the free exhibit, lecture and concert. When the doors finally opened, we pressed into the foyer where Kanu O Ka Aina middle schoolers passed out plates of smoke meat and steamed sweet potato from green woven trays. The walls were hung with hundred of pictures of Waimea cowboys and their ranching descendants: lean grim-faced Ikua stares out from his picture like a sentinel. His descendants, still in Waimea, perch on their horses, and lean seriously on their saddle horns.

Next to the Purdies on the wall are the Lindseys, our landlords and the Bertelmanns-- our friend Pomai as a little girl, sitting with her daddy on a horse, and then her handsome nephews in the pasture and her willowy 13 year old niece pinning a calf to the ground. Across the room, a young Uncle Duke Kapuniai slouches on one of his prize-winning horses in a coral full of beef-bodies. His daughter sits on her horse above him like a dancer--back completely straight, like her mother the organist. A beautiful young Aunty Val, sweaty, dusty and with a black eye, beams at the camera after a rodeo event, with her two little boys on her lap.

The photo exhibit was organized by the Kanu O Ka Aina kids, who dug up their family photos to display. Aunty Val, the Kanu photography maven, said how impressive the family histories are-- nearly all of the students have family links to the Waimea cowboy heritage. Many of them help run ranches still.

The show started with hula performances from little Kanu kids in neckerchiefs, and then segued into the Real Deal—a beautiful chant, accompanied by hula, about the origin and history of Waimea. I wish I had a photographic memory-- the story was so moving and important, and I was wrestling with my baby, so my memory is sketchy, but this is what I can recall:
There is a virgins’ heiau here in the puu (hills) above Waimea (and that is why it is called Red Water). A young goddess (Wao?) met the young god from Kahiki on this spot and they fell instantly in love. Later she came back to have her babies here. Her helpers would roll a stone down the mountain to see the spot where she would give birth, and her helpers were stones.Women and girls trained here to heal and be midwives at the heiau.

No wonder this is a wonderful place to give birth, in the kipuupuu rains.

Later I found this additional information about this story:

Haleino Heiau:
“The only heiau ever founded, dedicated and consecrated by a woman, the High
Chiefess Hoopiliahae, an ancestor of the Sovereigns of Hawaii and the ruling High
Chiefs of Waimea” (5) “noted for the red rain and vivid rainbow symbols of the
sacredness of this locality, was exclusively for girls of the age of purity who
performed the duties of dedicating and participating in the different ceremonies, in
which the spirit of love, purity of body and mind was imbued; also the science of
healing was taught, thus consecrating their lives for the betterment of others.”
(2)

Hōkū’ula, lit., red star (8), also, hill of the red planet (2)Residence of the akua (god) Makuakuamana, who came with Paao the High Priest from Kahiki, and his wife, High Chiefess (also, beautiful goddess) Wao.
From Waimea Place Names

About 30 women and girls from the community did some beautiful kahiko hula and chant about Waimea—my baby was entranced—I don’t think she blinked the whole time. I love Kahiko hula—I love the dissonant harmonies of the chanting, the strong brassy voices and the
beautiful movements—all those strong bodies in unison, and folded up in the
yards of cloth. Gorgeous. I love watching pur friend Pomai dance especially—she is
like a goddess herself—6 feet tall and all fierce power and grace.
The hula consecrated the evening-- the last line they chanted was, "Victorious are the children of Waimea!" and they shot their arms out in front of them like Ikua's leather lariate lassoo, and roped the audience's attention and power. That energy remained taut the whole night.

Dr. Billy Bergin took over the podium and talked about the history of Waimea, and the 52 Hawaiian families who were awarded the Hawaiian Homes parcels here 50 years ago. Parker Ranch gave up the best pasture, and even donated the labor and fenced each parcel off with the longlasting ohia posts. Those families make Waimea what it is-- braided together with common histories and intermarriage, their grandkids put the photos on the walls.

Dr. Bergin said, "A thousand years ago, Waimea was Hawaiian. It is Hawaiian today, and in a thousand years, it will still be Hawaiian." The crowd cheered for a long time.
After his talk, the musicians came up to the stage and played all of the Big Island songs, the Waimea songs, the Paniolo songs. It was perfect: the improvised paani (solos), the bright ukulele, the slack key guitar. The lead guitarist retuned partway through and summarized succinctly: "The mexicans come over playing their guitars, the Hawaiians sit there and playing with the keys, that's why it's slack key, yee-haw!"