Mountains and Islands

My BFF Lisa ( Best Fairbanks Friend) challenged me in a recent email to use the word horticulture in a sentence. How's this: You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her appreciate it. Lisa also mentioned someone famous named Dorothy Parker . Famous to most people that is, but not to me, literary dilettante that I am. So I looked her up and now vow (brown cow) to read her stuff. She sounds funny, like someone I'd have liked to jaw with over a latte. Too bad she's already punted the pail as they say. Well, that's how I say it. The groggy doggy Doctor dog and I made our way to the vet for a clean bill of health yesterday without too much trauma. I may now be deaf in my right ear from his high decibel whining, but otherwise we're fine. He's eleven years old now and needs an extra oomph to jump onto the bed these days, not to mention a ramp to get into the truck. He's also still a Satan -possessed psycho mutt, but otherwise sweet and sprig...

It's a sad state of affairs in Hawaii. Here, in the birthplace of our president - a walking example of what a good education can do for you if you apply yourself - kids are being shortchanged big time. The teachers union has agreed and the legislature sanctioned something called furlough Fridays. Public schools in hawaii are now closed on Fridays and remain so for the next 12 weeks of school. It's unclear now whether the kids will attend the requisite number of days required for federal funding under No Child Left Behind. Many have asked why the teachers can't just take the pay cut they agreed to and still work those Fridays. That's what people who work for private industry are doing these days. (Those lucky enough to still be working anyway.) The teachers make an eloquent argument. You wouldn't ask a lawyer or doctor or accountant or other professional to work days for free, they say. We too are professionals, they argue, and should not be expected to d...

Yesterday, we borrowed a neighbor's expandable ladder and schlepped it across the road. I toted the front end - or at least walked in front, for who knew which end was really which - and Ron carried the back. We stretched and leaned it against the gutter. I ascended, the aluminum steps and rails stiff and unyielding under my feet and hands. I liked that. My pockets were stuffed with tools and my head with plans to take down the tilting antenna. It sagged at a precarious angle, ready to tumble. We decided it would be best to remove it before it fell and impaled someone. Like me, for example. Rusty, yes, but the bracket was still stronger than I or the screwdriver or wrench or hammer or whatever else I held in my wimpy little hands. I grunted. It was no use. "Shoots," as they say here in paradise. The bolts were fused with chunks rusted away, so I couldn't get a grip. We hoisted up the reciprocal saw fitted with a hack blade and I cut the thing into manag...

One of the best things about shopping at Costco is the samples. At the end of almost every aisle, you'll find a cheerful, apron-clad, white-hatted person - usually a woman - doling out some goodie or other; a new juice in tiny paper cups, a slice of some new smoked ham on a cracker, a bite-sized hunk of granola bar. Sadly, it was one of those very offerings yesterday, there within those hallowed warehouse halls, that sparked a pang of internal angst regarding the level of laziness to which we as a species have fallen. One of the women had placed pieces of something from a box into small, wavy-edged cupcake papers. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the something was wedges of hard boiled egg! These were prepackaged hard boiled eggs. Eggs already hard boiled FOR YOU. Each one is individually wrapped inside the box. I'm still reeling. It was good to get out of the rain for the day, eat a fresh malasada and some cheap-but-OK-for-the-price sushi. Other than the eggs and...

October 1 marks the start of the wet season here in Hawaii. Oh goodie. Here in beautiful Glenwood, mud capital of the Pacific, we received 107.46 inches by month's end August. Stats for September aren't in yet, but today's deluges (there were several), should put us well on our way to a fat, 200-inch year. Did you know that algae can grow on car paint? Mold too. Our cars don't get dirty in the traditional sense here. They just grow creeping, slimy plant and animal life. Ferns sprout from the house gutters. As I drove home from tutoring this afternoon, squinting through the water-logged windshield, I cranked the volume to hear the radio over the din of the fast, fwap fwap of the wiper blades. Some cheesy song played, lamenting the crooner's location somewhere on the cold, snowy mainland. She longed melodically for sunny Hawaii. I wanted to poke out the dial, to jab it with the point of my enormous, still dripping unbrella, but I was driving. To grasp the ...