the Power of Words

Click on photos to enlarge! "Whoever has the most birthdays wins!" Eddie Sherman

"Doing the right thing will always make everything balance."

Ah Quon McElrath, Social Worker/Social Activist, impatiently to a legislator "explaining" the balancing of priorities to her.

"The dog was created especially for children. He is the god of frolic."
Henry Ward Beecher

"A dog owns nothing, yet is seldom dissatisfied."
Irish Proverb

Japanese researcher Dr. Emoto spent years studying the crystallization properties of water. Water with different characteristics, he found, produces very different crystal structures.

Dr. E. photographs these for documentation.

Polluted water produces brown, ugly structures. Clean water from pristine mountain streams blossoms into brilliantly bright structures of ethereal beauty.

Dr. Emoto got the idea to talk to water.

"Thank you," he said to a batch of water before crystallizing it.

The resulting crystals were as beautiful as angels.

"I hate you," he said to the next batch.

The crystal formed was dark, misshapen and ugly.

Dr. E tried writing the word

"Beauty" on a piece of paper, which he then taped to the next batch of experimental water.

The crystal structure formed was lovely.

Ancient people trusted in the magical power of words.

A prayer written on papyrus, then dissolved in water,

and drunk down,

had the power to bless and heal

they believed.

What other ancient magic have we discarded?

A L O H A, Cloudia

Pop Culture Refugee

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" How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?"
Satchel Paige

"Disillusion is the last illusion." Wallace Stevens

". . . But I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now."
The Byrds



As the years pass, we become refugees from our pop-culture era while it recedes along with our hairline.

All that made us hip, all that we shared: the music, clothes and slang, now mark us as passe'. We have become as irrelevant as grandpa's vinyl Big Band records.

Remaining interested in current youth culture exposes us to the charge of Peter Pan-ism, unless we can develop, retain, and nurture a genuineness which, like a magical lodestone, instantly transcends any temporal or cultural divide.

Then, a space exists for healthy sharing between generations, or even healthy mentor-ship.

Note: They told us that marijuana would harm our brains, but scientists now believe that it's active ingredient may reduce brain-damaging inflammation that accompanies Alzheimer's disease.

A L O H A, Cloudia

Waikiki Seasons

Shower Tree

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"The seasons in Hawaii can be so subtle that you can miss them. Hawaii calls upon your observation skills and your intuitive biorythmns, to say, my god, something feels different and I am seeing a bird I didn't see last week, or the water temperature is cooler." Maile Meyer

"When you notice the golden shower tree going off, brilliant yellow, in places you didn't notice them before, suddenly it stands out. There are all kinds of fun things and they are all related." Sam Gon III

"The textbooks have four seasons, and the teachers teach the four seasons. I had one teacher tell me they have to learn about it. I said, 'Why do they? They don't experience it.'"

"I also realized that the seasons in the place you grow up become a part of your memories and your identity. To deny your children the reality of their experience, and to teach them about someone else's experience, makes no sense." Stephanie Feeney, Author of: Sun and Rain, a book for children and their friends about Hawaii's seasons.

Stephanie is right. Your childhood place, it's sights, smells and changes, remains imprinted on your identity all of your life.

For a long-time east coast "transplant" in Hawaii like me this creates a dynamic tension that feeds my imagination and fuels my pleasure of daily life. Watching a movie that's set in New York City winter, with the shades drawn and the air conditioner blasting, makes me believe that snow covered streets and icy winds are just outside.

Imagine how amazing it feels, over and over again, to go outside and see the deepest blue sky, whitest clouds, brilliant sunshine, waving palms, and to feel and smell the trade winds tumbling by like a parade of happy acrobats. To feel the subtropical sun on my skin and to realize . . .

. . . that I am home for good.

A L O H A! Cloudia

Republicans Picking on Hawaii

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"Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns."

William Penn

“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”
John Stuart Mill

Let's go loco!












"There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings."
Dorothy Thompson

Shadow play

On Tuesday night, President Obama spoke to our assembled U.S. Congress about his administration's plans to fix the economic disaster that he inherited.

Rather than contribute meaningfully, Republicans Bobby Jindal and John McCain tried to find problems with the strategy. They were like young kids complaining about dad's driving as he swerves to avoid an accident they don't perceive.

Demonstrating both the depth of their partisanship, and the shallowness of their reasoning, both picked on Hawaii as an easy target. Who knows about Hawaii? Who cares about Hawaii? Not them, apparently!

First of all, Jindal opened his remarks by referring once again to the race of the President. Though he was ostensibly praising America's progress, what he was actually doing was demeaning us all. Get over it, Bobby. Barack is not inspiring because of an accident of birth. He is a brilliant and inspiring PERSON, not a lucky example of some under-group affirmative action! Stop denying the President's stature by implying that what inspires is MERELY his color!

After "railing" against a supposed rail link between Las Vegas and California that is NOT in the bill, Jindal turned his dismissive attention to volcano monitoring in HAWAII as if this is a boondoggle.

Mr. Jindal, perhaps you don't realize that volcanic activity is NOW occurring in our STATE. Hawaii is the best place in the country to study volcanoes, and also has a population in serious NEED of such monitoring and understanding. What should we spend on? Is flood control in your State of Louisiana as "ridiculous?"

Mr. McCain lambasted astronomy in Hawaii as another obvious waste. Just because Mauna Kea is a WORLD CLASS scientific village of telescopes and instruments producing cutting-edge knowledge and providing educational opportunities as well as many skilled jobs - does that make it ridiculous and wasteful to you - or is it just reflexive disdain for our State? You did meet your wife in Waikiki, and you should know better!

Our loyal, strategic, unique State only adds immeasurably to the social and cultural fabric of this country. Oh, plus our community mid-wifed and raised our President Obama.

If these are your "considered" problems with the plan to rescue our economy, then I must conclude that you are lazy thinkers and unworthy to lead.

Why not contribute something to our nation and world besides spin and foot dragging. Or do you want the President, and all of us, to fail?

They used to call that treason. . .

A L O H A! Cloudia

Hau Tree Lanai

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The New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel is a sweet little boutique place in Kapiolani Park right on the beach. It was a favorite of fashion designer Geoffrey Beene, and has a cool restaurant by the sand: the Hau Tree Lanai. Beautiful koi set the tone as you enter.


















A large, airy room awaits!

"Bailing out the banks and Wall Street looks like giving insurance money to the arsonist." Chris Mathews

As we are seated under the huge hau tree, I instinctively look up the beach just beyond the balustrade.

Kona Coffee!

"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected."

Oscar Wilde

"He that does good for good's sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end."

William Penn

Then back to real life. . . but beauty is everywhere!

"We will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s."
President Barack Obama

A L O H A! Cloudia

Malassada Day!

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"Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers." William Penn


"Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it." William Penn

Carnaval Tonight in Honolulu!

Leonard's! Malassadas!

We got parking under the banner. . .
No line yesterday. . .

Almost our turn. . .

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




Special Note:

"I want all the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."

Mahatma Gandhi

Congratulations to the great people of Mumbai, and ALL of INDIA for World's BEST PICTURE: Slumdog Millionaire!!! Well done!!!!

Well deserved!!




Aloha and Happy Malassada Day!
Wait - what's a malassada, you ask?
It only a warm, chewy, sweet, little ball of heaven, that's all!
On the day before Ash Wednesday and the long days of Lent, the devoutly Catholic Portuguese (who had been coming from the Azores to work on Hawaii's plantations since 1878) used up all their lard and sugar in one last blow out - no Portugee sweet bread (pao doce) till Easter! And so the Malassada was born. We still love them today. . .

Egg-sized balls of yeasty golden dough are deep-fried in oil then dusted generously with granulated sugar. No hole, no filling, NO PROBLEM!

Today few of us mortify the flesh in the traditional way, and malassadas are regularly available here in Hawaii. Even so, there will be lines today at the high church of malassadas: Leonards Bakery.

Damien Memorial High School will also be selling the pleasure bomb-lets, freshly fried from the cafeteria, in their parking lot from 6:30 to 11 am this morning: .70 cents a piece, $4 for 6, and 12 malassadas for $6.

The Pope set a date for Father Damien's canonization just days ago, so the spirit on campus is very high. However, rumors that this year's malassadas have a caloric dispensation from on high, or that they heal a number of minor physical ailments is probably just clever marketing.

Father Damian gave his life to serve the Hansen's disease (leprosy) patients incarcerated on the Molokai peninsula of Kalaupapa, ultimately contracting the disease himself. Now that IS a saint!

So treat yourself to a sugary indulgence today if you dare. Then burn off calories by doing something positive, whatever that may be for you. . .

A L O H A Cloudia

My Town Monday

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"O Lord, help me not to despise or oppose what I do not understand."
William Penn


"Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more."
Oscar Wilde

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience."
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Honolulu Hale (hah-lay, a polynesian "house.")

I love walking around my town of Honolulu. We have cool one-of-a kind restaurants like Helena’s Hawaiian Food on North School Street. Chef Helen Kwock Chock passed on last year, but her family maintains the recipes at her wonderful little ‘hole in the wall’ restaurant that was a favorite of gourmand James Beard. He ate there at every opportunity, presenting Helen with a respected “Beard Award,” and inviting the unassuming grandma to New York City to prepare a meal for the world’s great foodies. Nuff said? Eat at Helena’s!

So what’s with the lines of hungry people in front of chain restaurants here in Waikiki? You can eat that stuff back home, or anywhere! Why not try wonderful food with warm service at my favorite Bombay Indian Restaurant (Ala Moana by Hobron Lane)? Besides Helena’s and Bombay, there are so many other little culinary gems in our town, like the singular shrimp tempura at Hifumi in chinatown. After a recent concert, blues man Taj Mahal eschewed fine dining for the comfort food at tiny Liliha Bakery Coffee Shop (Kuakini off Liliha street-open all night). . . When you are here, eat somewhere local and unique, you!

Like Seinfeld’s George, I’ve always wanted to pretend to be an architect. I had a wonderful opportunity to do just that recently as I strolled along on a downtown architectural walking tour offered by the Honolulu Chapter, American Institute of Architects. Who knew that our city hall, Honolulu Hale, is a sort of Italian castle? Check out the fortified elements in this beloved Douglas Fairbanks of a building the next time you’re there. We walk by historical riches every day here in Honolulu town, though the surpassing beauty of green mountain, eloquent sky & seas oft upstages them. And don’t forget US! Everyone is beautiful here. Just look around at us!

The US Census reports that Hawaii leads in ethnic diversity, with “minorities” around 75% of our human treasure. “Minorities,” what does that even mean when there is no overwhelming “majority?” Whatever you call us- it (mostly) works. . . "Imagine" having a president who grew up in such a place. . .

Were those night marchers a while back in Kaneohe? Even today, distant drumbeats and chanting are sometimes heard in certain districts after midnight. The chiefs of old still inspecting “their” lands. But no, this time it was modern warriors, OUR folks, Kaneohe Marines training in the dark before going into a war zone. Out of respect for the public, cadences were not called so quiet was maintained. Nonetheless, many local residents paid their respects from front yards, and were frankly awed by the Mana surrounding these citizen soldiers. However you may feel about this war, or that police action, we all admire and appreciate those so young who make such a commitment to serve. . .

Sitting by my computer as I write this, a ripe mango tempts me. I picked it up off the grounds of the Mission Houses Museum from trees that real Queens admired long ago. History, beauty, sustenance, aloha, all offer themselves freely under isle skies. You see, in Hawaii living a rich life is less about money than it is in most other places. Sure, our visitors and we can find here all the things that money can buy (in abundance!) but Honolulu’s real treasure is found in our environment, and in each other; it’s about attitude, engagement and down-home enjoyment of all the cultures that make up our unique chop-suey island. . . the sorts of things you discover. . . when you’re walking in Waikiki. Aloha!