Mountains and Islands

Home. I learned on the way from the airport yesterday that Ron has endeared himself to the new neighbor by firing off shotgun blasts.  His objective in making such a racket was not to kill anything (although if the neighbor insists on being pissy, that could change).  It was instead to scare off the pig family that has chosen a spot near our water tank to nest, or burrow, or whatever pigs do to set up house.  Apparently, new neighbor guy likes to sleep during the day. He told Ron that shooting to scare them would do no good.  He insisted, and we've heard this before, that you have to kill them to get rid of them. Well, they're gone, probably to someplace quieter.  We were told we couldn't grow zucchini here too, but that was hogwash, pun intended.   Speaking of noise, we have a new critter, another interloper that Ron has named and feeds and calls, "good boy."  Charlie the chicken.  More specifically, Charlie the rooster.  He's pretty, but annoying.  His favor...

No cookies were tossed this afternoon, by me or anyone else on board.  No turkey on sourdough with tomato, mayo, mustard and onion, either.  Star of the Northwest was spared, as was the plankton rich, puffin pocked sea. It's a miracle of modern medicine (bonine) and a testament to the tranquility of Reserection Bay.  The mellow ride held fast until we hit the open ocean, where the swell was met with a storm that rolled in.  I stayed on deck for most of the trip, pelted with cold rain and a brisk, chilly wind that helped keep the queasiness away.  Gail hung with me for shorter stretches, then went inside for beers and warmth.  Thank goodness I had on my Gorton's Fishstick-guy hat.   We saw eagles, stellar sea lions (on the rock in the middle of this photo), mountain goats, dahl porpoise, jelly fish, pink salmon and puffins.  The Kenai Fjords are grand, beautiful steep faces, craggy, rugged, stubbled with evergreens from timberline to the sea. Yesterday, we spent some time at the...

I know that writers are lousy but enthusiastic dancers.  They are great huggers.  Some are good singers.  A few play guitars.  One, I hear, plays the oboe.  I play the ukulele.  Badly. Badly is an adverb and adverbs are for sissies.  Where was I?  Oh yes.  Writers.  They are adventurers and homebodies.  They are flirts and back-patters.  And huggers.  Did I mention that? It's true, especially at the end of a two week intensive residency.  They stand in awe of their colleagues' eloquence, wit, lyrical prowess and overall, kick ass wordsmithin.'  Writers are sensitive - especially poets.  They ache to tell stories. They tell them in verse. They tell them with prose.  It's what writers do. Besides dance badly, that is.  Shit.  Am I a sissy or what? Writers drink. Boy howdy can they drink.   Howdy!  Writers need encouragement.  We are fragile.  If you don't understand us, you'd do well to support us.  We do not need encouragement to drink, however, nor is prodding r...

Last night, propped up, sleep deprived and feeling a little out of my element, I was about to bow out early from a party with my fellow writers here in the dorm.  It was fun, and I enjoyed chatting with individuals throughout the evening.  Truth be told however, I'm a little shy in certain situations.  Yeah, you read that right.  (Give me a break, all you knuckleheads who know me!)  Literary conversations with smart, well-read people slam home the fact that I should have spent less time watching Gilligan's Island re-runs or riding my bike or whacking fuzzy yellow balls or careening down mountainsides and more time as a thoughtful grown up with my schnoz poked into the pages of the classics.    I was poised to muster a graceful exit, to rise from my seat and bid everyone goodnight, when someone told a joke.  A joke.  They might as well have started passing around the coke tray.  All the world's a stage for a joke junkie.  I stayed, of course.  And all that stuff about bein...

You wanna be where you can see, troubles are all the same, You wanna go where everybody knows your name.    (Theme from Cheers) I was driving through the mountains today, gawking at the 14ers along highway 285, feeling fine, soaking in the scenery, pondering how I might figure a way back to this place.  The radio faded, so I hit 'seek.'  The numbers fluttered, then landed on the first notes of Man in the Mirror .  I started snapping my fingers, singing along.   Gonna make a change, for once in my life... I got to ... It's gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference ... and burst into tears.  Shit! Did I mention that I had a lovely dinner with the Cress family at my/their house?  A steak as big as a tractor tire, but much tastier.  Of course, I've never eaten a tire, so I'm just assuming... On Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Gloria Beim delivered the stellar news: I have no arthritis in my hip.  None.  Nada.  Zippola.  Did I mention this already?  I ran out of ginko a while...

As I sit here typing and refusing to pay for a wifi connection, I wonder if this kooky font will transfer via cut and past from my word processor to the blog. No matter. I’ll write it now in this whimsical way and hope for the best. It was a fun packed, whirlwind weekend in L.A. La la la la la la..... I caught up with some old friends at a part Friday night, some I haven’t seen in way too long. Good food, chilly libations and lively conversation were had and enjoyed by all. There was a nice beach bike ride on a congested fourth of July.  It was so crowded, there were spots along the way where we had to walk our bikes, wedging through the throngs that had spread from party houses out over the path. My only mishap was a dribble of beer on my hand made my a staggering young delinquent shouting, “USA, USA!” Cops were everywhere - on foot, on bikes, on horses - as were revelers and weirdos. What’s not to like about L.A? Stretches of sand were completely covered by towels and shelters and ...

To kill time yesterday while my car was being inspected, I walked to town for a nice lunch at Aloha Luigi, then down to the bayfront to pick up some mints at the candy store strong enough to kill the garlic from my ceasar wrap. Back at Midas, I was told I needed new back break shoes. Mine were cracked. I saw the cracks for myself. So while they fitted the Focus for those, I strolled over to Starbucks, right next door. There I sat reading my classmates' manuscripts and enjoying a slightly sweetened iced coffee when the woman sitting next to me leaned over, tapped me on the arm and asked, "Excuse me. How do you spell heritage?" Really? Is this years-long Hawaii experiment just one big cosmic joke, a bad dream from which I will never awaken and during which I will be asked to spell simple, everyday words wherever I seek solace? I spelled the word. Thankfully, this lady turned out to be different from the man at the library (please refer to a previous blog for that stor...

I broke my own person treadmill record yesterday, jogging four miles in 45:30.  That's pretty slow by most standards, but it's Speedy Gonzales for me.  I ran to Michael Jackson as my version of a tribute, so maybe that's why the feet flew so fast.  I defy anyone to listen to Jam and not move.   What a day; Michael, Farrah and the incessant rain. Farrah Faucet lived life on her own terms.  She was beautiful and smart.  When faced with a terminal disease, she fought the good fight.   Cheers to you, Farrah. I remember where I was when Elvis died.  I had seen him in concert (with my parents, no less) just a month earlier.  I can also picture the exact moment when I heard the news about John Lennon.  My friend and soon-to-be-housemate Lori and I were moving a mattress on the top of my Volkswagon Beetle to our new digs.  We were holding onto the plastic handles through open windows in a futile attempt to keep the thing from catching air as we crept along.  The two of us gasped w...

Not much has happened worth writing about the past week.  It's been a mixture of rain and sun, enough rain to make it squishy and enough sun to encourage the grass to grow and the blossoms to pop on the coffee trees.  There a bunch of fat apple bananas hanging from the rafters of the front lanai, waiting to ripen.  It's pretty much poured all day today, making the kitties stir crazy, wrestling on the couch, toppling the recycling bin full of soda cans on the back lanai.  The dogs are bored silly, lying around with forlorn expressions, their chins resting on the floor between their front paws.  I could have taken them for walks today in the torrent, but opted to stay dry for once.  Dry- er anyway. This morning I ventured to Kea'au, where I shot this photo of the giant lychee tree in the parking lot.  You can just make out the ripe, red fruits.  The lychee on the bottom of the tree always gets picked, but the trees grow so tall that most of the ripe juicy beauties at the top ...

They love each other like typical siblings.  One minute they're all cuddly, like this.  The next, their initiating body slams and chomping on each others' jugulars.  I had a bit of a start the other day.  It happened in the laundry room.  I say this like it's some far-away wing of my vast mansion.  It's a small offshoot from the kitchen.  Stooped over the edge of my top loader, I gripped and tugged at wet sheets that were wrung tight and smashed against the sidewalls inside the washer's basin, listening to Jack Johnson in the background, wondering, "Where'd all the good people go?" just like Jack, relishing the mindlessness of my chore.  Once the wad was free, I hurled it into the open dryer, slammed the door, set the timer and pushed the button.  At first tumble, I heard a loud thud and wondered if the dryer, like all my other appliances, was about to expire.  A few more bumps had me worried.  You can see where this is going, right?  I opened the door...

There's a joke here on Hawaii Island that the the primary way locals dispose of their rubbish is to load it all into the back of a pickup truck, then drive around until it's all gone.  On strolls up my narrow, one-lane jungle road,  it seems it's not really a joke at all, but a statement of fact.  Lately, I've noticed an odd assortment of trash strewn along the edge of the roadway.  There's the usual stuff, like McDonald's bags and Kentucky Fried chicken boxes and soda cups and beer bottles.  I even see the occasional Starbucks Frappuchino with whipped cream plastic tumbler, which just goes to show you that a person willing to spend six buck on a cup of coffee isn't necessarily enlightened or evolved.  That said, it's the other stuff that's got me perplexed; yogurt containers, egg cartons, tampon applicators, vaccuum cleaner bags.  These are not items a person just has in their hand and flings out the window.  (I don't even want to think about th...

It was a beautiful day today.  Perfect.  One in a million.  Literally.  So I jumped into the convertible for a joyride.  OK the convertible is a tractor and the joyride is mowing the lawn, but still, it was a fantastic day.  There I was, cutting around the old tangerine tree,  hitting old, moldy fruits that had fallen to the ground, hearing the thud as the blades whacked the dense blobs hiding in the grass.  Fuzzy and nasty as they are, they smell great when you whir over them.  So great, it inspired me to sing, and of course, what else would I croon but that age old masterpiece from the 60s, Hey Mister Tangerine Man.   "Hey mister tangerine man, make some juice for me.  I'm not normal and, there ain't no place I'm going to (except the assylum).... Hey mister tangerine man, splat some fruit for me, in the jingle jangle morning I'll be co-mitted soon."  Yes, it's a classic.   So there I was, mowing away, cutting grass, grinding up sticks and anything in my ...

My abs are becoming rock solid, if I don't say so myself.  Of course, they are covered in a thick, great-if-you're-an-arctic-walrus-but-not-so-attractive-in-Hawaii layer of flab, so you really can't tell.  I would love to attribute this to all the sit-ups and crunches and planks I do in the gym, but that would be misleading.  My core strength can only be fairly credited to the kitties. Yes, it is they who have me clenching my rectus abdominis with great fervor each morning as they jump without warning up from the floor to land square in the middle of my gut.  No clench, and my internal organs are toast.  They do this when I am sound asleep, dead to the world, out like a light, snoozing soundly, so I am forced to wake up, realize what is happening and react, all in a nanosecond.  It's got to be good training for something, though I'm not exactly sure what.   I now rue the day when I learned to sleep on my back.  All I can say is, "Ugh!" But my core thank...

I must have one of those benign faces, an approachable demeanor, an aura that screams friendly.  It's as though the word  sucker is emblazoned on my forehead, or across my back, advertising my niceness.  Being nice is a curse, let me tell you.  I went to the Hilo library yesterday to write.  My plan was to sit there for three productive and uninterrupted hours of quiet, with no barking dogs or, "Can you help me with this" husbands.  I found a spot near the courtyard and got quickly to work, eyeballs trained intently upon my laptop screen, tick, tick ticking the keyboard.  A man arrived to sit in my area at an adjacent table.  I didn't notice him at first.  I was busy.   Engrossed.  But the neon of my niceness must have flashed, "Bug me.  Irritate me. I won't get mad.  I'm NICE!"   "Excuse me," he said.  "Excuse me."  I looked over to see him sitting there with papers strewn about on the table in front of him.  He was a small,...

A few of our trees were bursting with coffee cherry yesterday, so I impulsively began to pick them until the bottom of my t-shirt resembled a kangaroo pouch.  I pulped them by hand, a sticky, messy task, then soaked them over night to ferment them.  The soaking removed what's called the mucilage, the  slimy goo that remains around the seed, otherwise known as the coffee bean.  In a few hours I'll take them out of the water and dry them by spreading them out on a cookie sheet and putting them in Ron's office with the dehumidifier cranked.  I can finish the drying tomorrow morning in the oven, set on a low warm temp.  Eventually we'll get a dehydrator.  We'll need one, since we live in a climate too damp for air or sun drying.  For now, however, it's low tech all the way.  Once dry, I'll rub the parchment off the beans, then roast 'em, also in the oven since I don't have roaster.  I predict I'll have enough for just a pot or two of coffee, but it...

I picked up a few items at the Hilo Farmers' Market this morning.  The place was bustling, but the merchants were complaining to one another about how slow it was.  There were lots of lookers and few buyers.  Everyone, however, was happy to see the sunshine, so despite the heat and mugginess, nobody was complaining.  "At least it's not raining," said one man, a merchant powering down an enormous cheeseburger like he hadn't eaten in a week.  "I hear that," I said. "One think about Hilo though," he said.  "When it rains, it's a warm rain, you know?  So it's really nice for just walking around.  Really comfortable." "True," I said.  "Especially if you have one of those giant, Hilo umbrellas."  He liked that, smiled and nodded. I wanted to add that 72 degrees, dry and sunny are also nice conditions for walking around too and don't require an umbrella, but I didn't want to burst the guy's bubb...

Ah Cinco de Mayo.  Viva la Mexico!  Thinking of that yesterday reminded me of the U2 song Vertigo, which was featured in the planetarium show I saw Friday night with my neighbor, Kathy.  I haven't heard that song in awhile.  There was Bono , shouting, " Uno , dos, tres , catorce !"   Hmmmm ... All I can say is, let that be a lesson to you kids out there.  Stay in school!  If you drop out, you two (U2?) could become a bajillionaire rock star who cannot count to four in Spanish.  One, two, three fourteen?  Hello, hello....  Really, could nobody tell the guy?  Is he that cool? Speaking of the planetarium show, I'm proud to say I didn't get dizzy or queasy 'til the third to last song.  Maybe it was Vertigo .  I don't remember.  I just know it took about an hour after I got home for the fuzziness in my head to clear.   Anyway, back to Cinco de Mayo.  It will be a memorable day for me.  I was laid off.  Got an official letter telling me how great I am and ...

On Wednesday, I schlepped a coffee can full of coins to the bank for deposit. I'm guessing it was worth between $200 and $300.  The first time I did this, I was surprised to learn that the deposit didn't go into my account the same day, but the next.  Rather than dump the coins straight into the counting machine, they transferred them from my can into a bag, put a slip of paper inside with my hand-written account number scratched in ball-point ink and sent me away empty handed.  I was less than comfortable with this procedure, but when the money showed up the next day in my account, I decided I'd trust them again.  It's a system.  A lousy system, but a system none-the-less.  So this week, I did the same thing and again walked away with nothing, forced to trust that money would eventually land in my account.  It's now been two days and I've received no deposit.  So I called, only to be told that it can take up to five business days for coin deposits, because, ...

Ron tried to tell me the other night that, because we live on this island, we should be safe from swine flu.  Right.  I passed this jewel of wisdom onto my mom, who added, "And it's not like you have any pigs there."  I laughed so hard I almost soiled myself.  That mom.  When she's on, she's on. Speaking of pigs, I saw a woman on the side of the road the other day, almost to Hilo .  She was leaning against the door of her car, photographing three young, black pigs as they browsed through the foliage that grows thick and lush along the meridian between the north and southbound directions of the highway.  I've seen these little guys several times.  They won't stay little for long.  Anyway, this gal had one bodacious lens.  It was wildlife photography, Hawaiian style. I ventured up into the vog to the gym today, unsure of how much energy I might have after my recent bout with whatever it's been.  Not bad.  Half and hour on the elliptical , half an hour o...

Last night, Ron was kind enough to make a quick run to the market to pick up some more ginger ale.  Ours was nearly gone and what we had left in the big bottle had lost its bubbles.  Flat ginger ale just doesn't cut it.  It was about eight minutes 'til six, so he busted on down to Hirano Store, near the end of our road,  plenty of time to make it before they close at 6:00 p.m.  He got there.  No ginger ale.  In fact, when he asked, they looked at him like he'd just sprouted a horn in the middle of his forehead.  Guess there's not much call for ginger ale here.  So, he headed on down the road, not to the next store at Mt. View (their prices are extortion) but the next, J. Hara .  Again, he couldn't find it, so he asked.   "Just a second," said the clerk, who disappeared behind the beverage storage door for a moment.  A different clerk appeared.  "I can help you," she said.  "Right over here." She proceeds to lead him to the freezer se...