Friday Skies

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"Life is something that everyone should try at least once."
Henry J. Tillman

Sunblock by the truckload!

"Life is a zoo in a jungle."
Peter De Vries

"Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on."
Samuel Butler


Visitors

Aloha and thank you for visiting today! Cloudia

Window Ways

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"A beautiful soul has no other merit than its own existence."

Schiller




"Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few."
Berkeley

Koko Head Crater

"He lei poina 'ole ke keiki."

"A lei never forgotten is the beloved child."

Hawaiian Wisdom

A window is a lens, a frame. It focuses attention nicely. The entirety of sky, sea and mountains can overwhelm the reduced senses of us modern "screen dwellers." But the clouds above still move at their own glandular pace. Or as today, several layers of cloud traffic play a stately tableau in corps de ballet and chorus lines. . .

If a window is a framing device, then the port hole above my key board is an even better, for the eye ever loves a plump and pleasing roundness. Especially one bringing light, like the oculis concave-crowning the Pantheon and other such ancient magnificenses (magnificent edifices - preferable?).

Like the tiny muses resident in my own head, I peer out of the port-hole eyes of the skull which is my boat; or retreating deeper within it I cook up the next lettered souffle` to serve to all y`all. Like Santa-nibbled cookies on Christmas morning, you leave me comments like a profusion of gifts! The isolated, bookworm kid is thrilled to have such jolly friends! And just like Father Christmas, I know all your profiles and blogs. Who's naughty (Akelamalu, Bubble Wench, Daryl) who's nice (Ralph Neckman, Junosmom, English Girl, River Poet, Gran, and about a thousand others) and who is simply a singular gem, a joy, a pal (Chris "your scribe" of Cuneiform Scratchings) or a writing coach, a teacher, a treasure (Travis, Charles Gramlich, Brother T, Dave King, Barbara M, Carmi, Gemma, Braja, Magic Eye, Abraham Lincoln). . .

Seems I've gotten off track - and left out some of the best - my apologies if you are one of them - it's my melted brain, and this profusion of webby butterflies that befuddles me. But back to windows. . . .

A prisoner, or a writer chained to a lap top, who has but a piece of a view possesses a magic carpet on which imagination may take it's cliche`d (but no less true) flight. The scribbled notes brought back might contain gibberish - or literature (small "l"). But aren't those flights always worth taking?

I have sat in the wild, the woods; quietly in a single spot for ages - or ten minutes. And only at length noticed a glittering treasure (stick, stone, or creature) near enough to touch. . . .

Like that deer, years ago - but present in my memory - closer than I realized, who suddenly stamped and snorted a mighty blast of visible breath. . . before disappearing through the darkening glade. And so home to dinner. It was a school day tomorrow.

Thank you for coming! I shall have recovered my reason by tomorrow (more's the pity) So enjoy the view through your window, your eyes. It is always changing. So capture the deer in your living room against the day when it may be but a memory.
A L O H A! Cloudia

Your Appearance

Click on photos to enlarge! "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when the do it from religious conviction." Blaise Pascal

"Our own pulse beats in every stranger's throat." Barbara Deming

"We are, all of us , ordinary people. Liberation begins when we know that."

K.D. Singh

When I worked with adolescents they were, of course, obsessed with their appearance. That is their job after all: to display their feathers, to show their skills and their fitness in dancing. This is how young humans choose partners, at least it is until we learn to look beneath & beyond appearances.

"There will always be someone cuter than you, and there will always be somebody less attractive," I told them, "but when you meet someone who touches your heart, you see so much more than their 'looks.' They are beautiful to you because they are special to you. Looks only go so far - other qualities become much more important."

Also, I have learned that people don't even look at us they way we scrutinize ourselves in the mirror. While we focus on our hair, features, or perceived "blemishes" the world takes us all in at once. Mere appearance actually is secondary, I believe, to the behavioral cues and energetic emanations which we all carry around. Remember the conventionally pretty girl who couldn't get a date, or the "plain" Jane who was always popular? Clearly there is more at play than appearances.

Yes, I have learned that 90% of our appearance is determined by posture, our facial expression, and most importantly our attitudes. When we enter a room others see a movie start. And they hear our unmistakable overture begin to play. . .

A L O H A, Cloudia

Bird's View

Click on photos to enlarge! Koko Head crater, East Oahu

"Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind." Henry James

"There's never been a statue erected to a critic." Les Brown

Duke Kahanamoku, pure Hawaiian, Olympic champion, father of modern surfing, ambassador of aloha. When he died in 1968 a wailing went up for days across the islands as local people mourned.

"To be proud and inaccessible is to be timid and weak."

Jean Baptiste Massilon


"Debriefing the Bird"

Based on a true incident

"It was the worst day of my life.

I love my neighborhood, the wild patch behind the businesses on Kahu street. Me, I'm a human watcher. All their activities are fascinating to observe, and I love their pretty colors. Anyway, it was a beautiful dawn, lots of grubs. Then the cat came out of nowhere! Claw in my head, broken wing, a messed up leg. Funny how one second can change your whole life. But I don't believe in giving up - especially not to some cat! And damned if I didn't get away!

Just then, as I was hopping about in a rage, the early guy at the Harley shop came in; and the fool actually wanted to play! Eventually I hobbled under his truck where he couldn't reach me, so he got bored and went away.

Later his human friend came with a long branch and they put me into a nice, quiet square. Now I'm at the "Bird Hale" at someplace called the ASPCA. It's not that bad. This lady here speaks a little bird, and all the cats are safely locked up. (Throw away the key!) Some sparrow on the cell block told me that when I can fly and my leg mends that I can go home. So tell all the feathered folk over by Kahu Street to save some grubs for me.

And you know, I'd like to drop a blessing on that early guy at the Harley shop. Seems like he did me a good turn after all. I'll make sure to really thank him; not on his windshield, not on his hat, but right in his curly fur to let him know who grateful I am!

I love watching the humans. It's almost as if you can here them actually thinking!

A L O H A! Cloudia

True Hero Ah Quon

Ted Trimmer photo: Surfer's view. Click to enlarge

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Dec/13/ln/hawaii812130336.html

March 1, 2009

Honolulu Advertiser

McElrath's legacy lives on; Social activist's friends and family celebrate her long life, many accomplishments

By Michael Tsai, Advertiser Staff Writer

More than 400 family, friends, colleagues and admirers turned out yesterday to celebrate the life of Ah Quon McElrath, the social activist and former ILWU social worker whose lifelong crusade for social justice helped shape Hawai'i's social, political and economic landscape.
McElrath died Dec. 11. She was 92.

The crowd included representation from the various communities touched by McElrath's work, including union leaders, longshoremen, educators, artists, hospital administrators, social workers and students.
The gathering at the ILWU headquarters on Atkinson Drive followed a simple and appropriate dictate — "Don't mourn, organize" — and speakers shared both personal remembrances and urgent calls to take up McElrath's work.
"Her love for people informed her politics," said close friend Claire Shimabukuro, executive director for Meals on Wheels, "and her politics informed her love of people."

In a nod to McElrath's love of music, the celebration also included several musical performances, none more stirring than the one by McElrath's 91-year-old "kid brother" Ah Nee Leong, who sang an a cappella rendition of "The Impossible Dream," its message of unabashed idealism and fortitude drawing appreciative nods from the crowd.
"I think she would have been secretly happy to hear all these people say how wonderful she was," said Gail Long, McElrath's eldest daughter.

McElrath was the second-youngest of seven children born ( in 1915, Cloudia) to Chinese immigrants. Her father died when she was 5, and McElrath and her siblings supplemented the meager family income by picking kiawe beans and bone to sell to fertilizer companies.

McElrath's drive to educate herself and her strident commitment to social justice were formulated early — often during pivotal moments in contemporary Hawaiian history.
As Shimabukuro recounted, McElrath became interested in Shakespeare because of a fellow McKinley student, Myles Fukunaga, whose execution for the kidnap and murder of the son of a Hawaiian Trust Co. executive remains one of the most controversial decisions in local memory.
Later, as McElrath once told The Advertiser, she would read accounts of the Massie affair, an even more sensational case involving the murder of a local rape suspect that drew sharp divisions between locals, the military and Mainlanders, to her plantation neighbors under lamplight, seething at what she saw as unequal applications of justice.

McElrath's evolving political views were sharpened by her association with union leader Jack Hall and ILWU information director Bob McElrath, whom she married in 1941.
Ah Quon McElrath began her career as a social worker, and organized an industrial association that won raises for professional and clerical work. With her husband, she later helped to establish the ILWU in Hawai'i, uniting sugar and dock workers of different ethnicities in an effort to leverage higher wages and better working conditions.

Focused on justice
McElrath's socialist beliefs and willingness to challenge the local power structure made her and her associates easy targets in the post-World War II anti-communist hysteria, but McElrath could not be swayed from her convictions, said Leong, her brother.
"She went through a period where there was a lot of animosity, but she withstood all of it," he said.

McElrath's pursuit of social justice would lead her to champion a variety of causes over the next half-century, from racial equality (she left a graduate program at the University of Michigan to join the civil rights movement in the South), to physician-assisted suicide, to universal healthcare.

As yesterday's speakers emphasized, McElrath's influence was equally widespread.

She helped pave the way for health maintenance organizations like Kaiser Permanente to enter the local market, lobbied in support of the landmark Pre-Paid Health Care Act of 1974, and fought for dental benefits for children of longshore workers, leading to the establishment of the Hawai'i Dental Service.

McElrath also served eight years as a University of Hawai'i regent, earning a reputation as a strong advocate for faculty and students.
Kaiser Permanente President Janet Leong recalled meeting the fiery McElrath shortly after she arrived in Hawai'i.
"It probably took her two minutes to take me down," she said, laughing. "I felt like a 6-year-old with my Chinese grandma lecturing my on how to be an honorable person."
Janet Leong said she quickly came to appreciate McElrath as "a pioneer, visionary, truth-teller and friend."

Retired ILWU President Eddie Lapa recalled McElrath as a deceptively good athlete — they swam together three times a week — and a fearless leader who once got a disgruntled plantation worker wielding a machete to "be cool" and go back to work.
"AQ is my idol," he said.

'most radical person'

The Rev. Cloudia Charters was working to educate at-risk communities about HIV infection when she and McElrath first met.
"(McElrath) understood stigma and exclusion," Charters said. "When she spoke up or spoke out, it was not about her own anger or her own issues, she was speaking for a deep place that was very pono. And she was always the most radical person in the room."

Like many of yesterday's speakers, fellow activist Jory Watland encouraged those in the crowd to work together to fill the void left by McElrath, and to help make her goal of universal healthcare in Hawai'i — a cause she continued to advocate in her final days — a reality.
Watland worked closely with McElrath in many social justice initiatives over the past four decades, as founding members of Health Care for All Hawai'i, a grassroots organization that supports universal healthcare.
Yesterday, Watland urged audience members to lend their support to Senate Bill 424, which would ensure healthcare for all Hawai'i residents. The bill is scheduled for public hearing on Wednesday.
"She was one of the brightest, most committed, most focused people I've ever known," Watland said. "She never talked about 'I.' I don't think she even knew there was a first pronoun of 'I.' It was always what 'we' were going to do."

The formal program ended, appropriately enough, with a video of McElrath herself, taken at a Hawai'i Peoples Fund dinner a month before her death. In it, she calls for the assembled crowd to reach out to one other person and recruit them to work for social justice.

"In order that we celebrate all of our lives, next year, the following year, the years after that, we must work together," McElrath said on the video, her voice still clear and forceful. "Divided, we will fall. United, we can move ahead."

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