Mountains and Islands

Saturday was a great day! My co-worker/friend Robin and I toured Kailua Chocolate Factory and The Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory cacao plantation. Too cool. This, after a Thursday night class teaching us the finer points of tasting chocolate. I will never look at a Hershey bar the same way again. I think, in fact, I shall become even more of a chocolate snob than I am a wine snob. This photo (left) shows a cacao pod, from which the elixir of life that is chocolate eventually flows. The second photo depicts the contents of a pod spilled out onto the table. The seeds or beans are coated in white, fruity, sticky stuff. If you pop one of these slimy white segments into your mouth, it tastes like sweet citrus. As you can see, the gecko likes it, too. The white stuff is fermented off, leaving the seed, which is dark purple, brown or even brown with a white center. The beans are dried, their parchment or husk removed. The inside of the bean is ground into either a paste or ...

The other day, a man walked into the winery. I had never met him, yet I felt I somehow knew him. He wore a white stetson and a shirt with snaps instead of buttons. The man looked to be in his sixties, with a slightly weathered face, a warm smile and sparkly blue eyes. When he approached the bar with his party, I made some sort of joke to which he responded, "Yer kind of a smart alec , aren't ya?" "Yep," I smiled. He winked and grinned back at me. We'd never met before and yet, I knew him. He was a rancher from Montana, but he might just as well have been from Wyoming or Utah or Nevada or Colorado. This man was an honest to goodness cowboy. Not the George Bush variety, mind you, but the real deal. Here was an honorable, chivalrous, hardworking cattleman. The Code of the West is real. These guys live it. It was nice to hang with the fellow and his family for while. It was a little like being home. I also enjoyed a couple that came in yesterday. ...

If you hail from New York, you are a New Yorker. In my life I've been an Oregonian, a Coloradoan and a Californian. That's because I've lived in those states. I live in Hawaii now, but I can never be Hawaiian. To be Hawaiian, you must have Hawaiian blood. A Hawaiian can be a Californian or a Nevadan, a Washingtonian or a Vermonter, but a haole mainlander of European descent can never be a Hawaiian. Here in Hawaii, I am a Hawaii resident. No less, but no more. According to my state I.D., I am kama'aina , insofar as my ability to receive an occasional local discount on stuffs l'dat . Technically, however, kama'aina means native born. Hawaiians born in the islands are both Hawaiian and kama'aina . A Hawaiian born in California is still Hawaiian, though not kama'aina . Third, fourth or fifth generation descendants of missionaries or plantation workers who were born in Hawaii are kama'aina , but not Hawaiian. I am officially a malihini ...

Adventure schmenture . I think I shall now make it my goal to one day live someplace where I don't have to rely on a pump, a well or a tank for my water supply. At least, those items won't be in my own yard and won't be my responsibility. Instead, I'd like to tap into some municipal water supply. It would be great. I could just turn on the kitchen spigot and viola! Water would come out, like magic. I could also drink said water. It would be officially potable. Oh sure, I'd still be willing to conserve with low flow toilets and shower heads, water-stingy washer, odd-even day lawn watering in the summer. I'd even be willing to continue with the mantra, "If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown flush it down." That's a bit of what we've been doing lately, since it hasn't rained in a little over two weeks. Check that. It hadn't rained. It's raining now. Ron noticed, however, that despite the precipitation, no ...