Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

I read a book on decorating, of all things. This was years ago, when we had just moved to Koloa, and Rosie was just a toddler. We had been living in other people's homes for years in Waimea-- an attached garage at Auntie Queen's and Uncle Jamie's on Mana Road horse ranch, and an Ohana unit at the Lindsey's, looking out over Parker ranch, and just down the road from Church Row. Our Koloa house was our first stand alone house. We bought a truck, we bought a couch! Microfiber sectionals and a car payment--like real adults. And I checked out this book from the library about home decor. Years and years later, one idea stuck with me. Your space should reflect your values. The colors, the designs, the way the space connects to itself, the way bodies can move through it-- it needs to be a true reflection of who you are and what you love. If not, it doesn't matter how chic or trendy or clean or impressive it is, you'll be miserable in it. It sounds simple. Obviou...

There's this cute little children's books that circulates among the local preschools and libraries. Mele the Crab is an uppity young crustacean. She's the biggest and the fastest and mocks the slower, lower crabs as she scrambles over them. One day, a beach goer captures Mele and a pile of other crabs in a bucket. Mele is such a good climber, she can easily get free, but the other crabs drag her down: if we can't get out, you can't either! She has a change of heart, and decides to lift the others first, and they are all able to escape. This is a cute story-- cute illustrations, a charmingly askew rhyme scheme, and peppered with local terminology. But it's more than that, too. It's a pretty incisive description of two competing local cultural norms, and the way that they rub against each other and spark. The story also describes neatly the culturally appropriate solution to the contradiction in normative behavior. Mele at first is a perfect negative exa...

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, con...

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 T...

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...