Tuesday at da Beach

Aloha!

It's August in Waikiki

click on photos to instantly voyage here

Camera & Ukulele Case grace the local attire.

"The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught."

Marqis de Vauvenargues

Youth

"What you fear to be, that you already are.

Only welcome it home to see it's disguised beauty."

Unknown

Pay Attention to THIS!

(Turn off the media for a moment or two)

"The path is not a symbol. It is a way to get somewhere."

Unknown

Sensuous Roots - or Sinister?

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation"

Herman Melville

Really?

Back in the water, ready to go, after

Hurricane Felicia fizzles. YAY!

When I return to the boat, I see Kitty's face watching me from the deck.

"Ahoy Matey!"

Aloha friends!

Thanks for coming by the beach to visit today.

These are the lazy days of Summer, and it is with some selfish delight that I see University of Hawaii students tying up traffic at the mouth of Manoa Valley as they move into their dorms, line up to register for the classes they need, and explore the sweet little neighborhood of Moiliili with their loving helicopter parents. (It must be nice to have that support.)

I say "selfish" because I still have dreams (nightmares?) about the bureaucracy and lines of my Alma Mater.

It feels REAL good to have that degree!

I earned it!

Last weekend I wrote about Woodstock days and the sense of "Revolution" in the air back then. I was so certain that the established order was passing, that the idea of sitting still long enough to get a college degree seemed quaint. Instead I learned to build things, Spackle dry wall, run a micro-business, face life without the confining structure of a "work week" and generally survive outside the "system." We read a lot, talked a lot, and played some live music.

Credentials seemed a dying concept back then. And I found lots of life to experience. It was my quaint idea that a writer was someone who experienced and thought about things and then wrote about them, so I felt "right on track."

I filled the pages of dozens and dozens of note books.

So imagine how I felt at age 39 entering an institution that seemed stuck in the 50? I have a lot in common, I think, with the Cultural Revolution generation of Chinese. Were they lost years? I think not.

Multiple choice tests, classrooms full of high school graduates who groaned collectively whenever someone (me) found something interesting enough to ask questions about, studying at my night job. . .

Fortunately, I am a master of note-taking and memorization so my transcript is 4 pages of "A's" with a "B" hiding among them....

And there are some great people up there at the University too.

I had a lot to prove with all my "lost" years. So

I was deeply proud to get my degree in Psychology (with distinction). And I have enjoyed the opportunities it brought me to experience the professional world: I've educated physicians, won grants, flown on "business trips" and published my own research. Maybe even saved or changed a life with my HIV Prevention and advocacy work.

(So there!)

But I also experienced whats wrong with non-profits, medicine, academia, and governance from a privileged vantage point.

So I appreciate this August day of no meetings, hearings, deadlines, jargon, funder reports, or career politics seasoned with piquant pettiness.

Ahhhhh! Thanks, Hubby. Thanks bloggy friends!

I'm very proud to be a college graduate, a writer, a blogger who gets read, a beach bum.

And I'm SO happy that you share it all with me. My daily visits to New York, England, Tennessee, Louisiana, Detroit, New England, Jerusalem, Mumbai, Netherlands, Paris, the terrain of YOUR journey - enrich my days.

WOW!

So thanks for paddling by today. Mahalo &

Warm A L O H A!