Fickle, Felicitous, Felicia

A L O H A !

Waikiki is STILL here ;-)

click on photos to visit

Due to Hurricane Felicia's approach, changeable weather

characterized Monday. Sun, clouds, some rain,

and the smell of WET skies accompanied

'ear popping' falling atmospheric pressure.

“I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”
Ronald Reagan

I paddled my kayak out before dusk, stopping at the Hawaii Yacht Club ramp & hose

to scrape the feisty accumulata off of my hull.

It was like climbing through the garbage outside the world's

worst sea food restaurant.

“Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.”
Sir Robert Baden-Powell

Visitors and locals alike took advantage of beach time before Felicia (a Hurricane, then tropical storm, soon a tropical depression) comes any closer. See the guy's shoulder tattoo?

I paddled home, pulled my kayak out of the water, and fastened it well on the dock beside my boat. Loose objects have been made fast as well, and every concievable nook or gap on the deck of my boat has been attended to. Tropic storm rains, like the sea, will find ANY means of entering when they blow sideways with the force of a fire-hose.

“It takes a real storm in the average person's life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls.”
Bruce Barton

After Hurricane Iniki, Hawaii takes approaching hurricanes with admirable preparation. Civil Defense gears up from their protected warren inside Diamond Head, the Red Cross prepares to open shelters, and island residents gas up their vehicles and go to City Mill to buy water, tarps, tape, batteries & etc. et al......

The Hurricane hunters fly out here from Mississippi, temporarily base themselves at Hickam, and commence daily flights through the storm - hurricane wall and all. Drop sonds are dropped into the winds to gather data.

Imagine the days before forecasting, when massive storms just 'showed up' without warning!

Felicia was a big, scary storm aimed directly at us. Her projected path kept changing, each new path more threatening than the last.

Downgraded to a tropical storm, the storm will affect Maui today, and us here on Oahu later this afternoon and over night. Winds of 45 mph are not insignificant (especially for live-aboards) and flood watch is in effect as equipment and sand bags are pre-positioned. Clogged drains have been opened, and stream mouths have all been bulldozed of debris.

Well we islanders know the effects of torrential rain. Many of us live near steep mountains, and gentle streams can become raging white-water without notice. High waves may over-lap the coastal highway in rural districts - cutting off residents from the outside world.

Power can go out here. (Sorry HECO). With no nearby States to share power, an earthquake, or other phenomena, can begin a sequence of events that trips off one power plant after another, even shutting down the whole island. Then the power can remain off over night as they bring it back on line. This doesn't happen with much regularity - but it does occur.

Darkened stores allow in one customer at a time and accompany them with flash lights (torches, to our Brit friends ;-) as people seek food, booze, and treats.

Waikiki Hotels give out bottled water to their guests, and our visitors stroll darkened Kalakaua Avenue buzzing with the excitement of "something different."

I wonder why the nuclear submarines (and sometimes aircraft carriers) at Pearl Harbor don't 'plug into' our grid and supply emergency power?

None of the preparations are in vain.

Hurricane season runs till November first.

It feels good to be ship-shape and ready.

Out here, help can be days away!

We expect dramatic wind, rain, and high surf later today, and while I enjoy the frisson of the emergency, I am not disappointed to miss a major hurricane.

The islands are holding their breath. Appointments are re-scheduled as folks "shelter in place."

SNOW DAY!

With the recent Typhoons and Earthquakes in Asia, I'm counting my blessings. Though there are El Nino conditions in the Pacific (warmer water = stronger storms) and new storms are forming off of Mexico, each contending to be the next hurricane and take off west-ward, it is my policy to postpone worry about those until they approach our waters in perhaps a week or so. There is lots of water, time, distance, and variables before then.

Today I'll remain "vigilant" which means snacks and visiting YOUR blogs. Quite a lovely snow day, really.

Thanks for your good wishes! They doubtless helped to tame Felicia. NewsFlash: she is now a tropical depression with winds up to 45 and lots of rain.

A L O H A! Cloudia

My Waikiki in a Song

Aloha!

Come for a walk through Waikiki

to the sounds of a great old song.

But first, here's a cool map of hurricane Felicia's wind speeds when it reaches us:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_ep3+shtml/144113.shtml?tswindloop?#contents

And now, back to our show ;-)

Aloha my friends!

Cloudia

Memory, Storm, and Song

A L O H A!!

click on photos to enlarge your creative virility Waikiki Skies Welcome You

"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today."

Mark Twain

Hawaiian Hall - Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

"Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds

on the heel that has crushed it."

Mark Twain

Hawaiian Hall - Interior

"The very ink with which history is written

is merely fluid prejudice."

Mark Twain

Traditional "Little Grass Shack"

Pili Hale (Pili-Grass House)

(Note the guarding spirals surrounding it.)

"Whether they live in an igloo or a grass shack or a mud hut, people around the world all want the same thing:

a better house."
Jack Handey

I still remember my first night in Hawaii.

I had given my winter coat to the friend who drove me to Newark Airport, said goodbye forever to my past, and endured a 12 hour non-stop flight.

The air at Honolulu Int'l Airport smelled sweet as we stepped into it for the first time. It is always sweet, but especially when returning from somewhere far away.

The first time: it is a revelation. Especially to an immigrant.

That first lei I received was fragrant and invisible.

Riding along the darkened freeway (H-1) I could see the fascinating building in the second picture.

"I wanna check that out."

Newbie Newcomer Malihini (me) said.

Little did I know then what an important roll Hawaiian people and culture would come to play in my life. And I had never heard of the Bishop Museum, the world headquarters for Polynesian studies.

This institution is responsible for much of what has been saved; both artifacts and information.

Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop bequeathed her royal fortune to the Kamehameha Schools in order to help her people thrive in a modern world.

Her Beloved husband, Charles Reed Bishop, had come here from Boston as a young man of vision. He was very handsome, impressed everyone in our Honolulu (including the royals) and started our first real bank, Bishops Bank which is today our First Hawaiian Bank. Honolulu's main street through the downtown business district is Bishop Street and well deserved.

When Pauahi was a child princess, her home was consumed by fire (ahi) but the flames mysteriously died before touching the girl. Hence her name: Pau (finished) Ahi.

When she passed, Charles Reed used considerable funds to construct and endow this seminal cultural institution in his wife's name.

This weekend, Hawaii Hall re-opened after extensive refurbishment.

The Pili Hale, which was the last such structures in the islands was dismantled from it's Kauai site around 1909 and brought to the museum where generations of scholars and school children have cherished it.

It has now been re-woven of fresh pili grass on it's original wooden framework, in part by high school students from the Hawaiian Academy of Farrington High School (where I facilitated an after-school group for a couple of amazing years). Farrington is a hard knocks school in an urban (for Honolulu) setting with a large number of immigrants (Samoan, Micronesian, Filipino, et al). It meant a lot to these kids to touch their own cultural greatness, and to contribute to a society that often sees only gangs and poverty when it thinks of them at all.

On that first night in the taxi I didn't know what a powerful role this magical place would ultimately play in my life. I was "fresh off the jet" with only fantasies, hopes and dreams about Hawaii.

After telling me: "That's the Bishop Museum," the taxi driver also told me that rain is a blessing in Hawaii. A light rain was cleansing us as we drove through the late Honolulu night.

It took some time on the neighbor island first, but I ended up irresistibly drawn back to this great town. I drove my own Honolulu night taxi for a while, and even wrote my little novel "Aloha Where You Like Go?" about it.

That driver was right. Rain in Hawaii IS a blessing. I was baptized into a whole other life here.

I hope Hurricane Felicia is a mere (!) tropical storm before coming into our waters on Monday night, or that she fizzles to a tropical depression or even less.

Too much tropic fire-hose rain is too like a full immersion baptism into an angry nature religion!

Below you will find yet another little video gem: Bruddah Iz (Israel Kamakawio`ole) singing a classic!

Warm Aloha my Friends!

Cloudia

My Hawaii

Aloha!

Welcome to Saturday in

W A I K I K I

click on photos to magically enter them

A Beautiful, Unsuspecting Beach Day.

See the girls taking a surfing lesson?

"Surfing expresses ... a pure yearning for visceral, physical contact with the natural world."
MATT WARSHAW

Innocent Looking Sky with Fluffy, Naive Clouds

"Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace

which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately."

Saul Bellow

"Cynicism is full of naive disappointments."

Mason Cooley

Thursday was the anniversary of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing.

The Shinto shrine above hosted a little league team from Japan, as well as other Japanese visitors and local residents, for the ringing of a "Peace Bell" gifted from the people of Hiroshima to her sister city of Honolulu. The bell has a long, resonant tone that seems to linger. . .

Well, hurricane Felicia seems to be weakening in the cooler waters she is crossing to approach our islands. Due to favorable Trade Wind conditions, hurricanes rarely strike Hawaii - but they DO strike.

Spetember 11th is the anniversary of Hurricane Iniki that seemed headed directly for Waikiki, but then spun off and struck the isle of Kauai causing much damage and trauma to the land, people, infrastructure, and economy of the "Garden Isle."

We had moved ourselves and all our worldly goods onto the boat a few short days before Iniki - just my luck - and so had an exciting time as the sky grew biblical and the wind made howling, shrieking sounds that I will never forget (and never care to hear again).

Fish swam in flooded streets, sea water surged over the harbor moles, and the palms waved frantically sideways, bowing in abject submission before wind-as-conqueror. Kitty hid below decks, and we fool humans stood by with sharp knives to cut away our lines if the floating dock broke free.

I had an image in my mind of our boat laying on it's side, in the middle of a road, a mile inland with all of my possessions strewn everywhere.

That was close enough for me.

So it is with much relief that I peruse the weather radar (meteorology was my college lab science) and see the predicted weakening of this dangerous category 4 hurricane as it continues to approach our neighborhood of the Pacific.

(Newsflash: it is now a cat 3)

Though it promises to be a tropical storm or depression as it comes ashore on the Big Island (Hawaii) on Sunday, it is still expected to bring torrential rains throughout the isles - including here on Oahu. Flood preparations are underway, and prudent home owners are stocking up on necessities. It is very pleasant to think of my boat/home merely raising with the tide - less so to reflect on the homeless local families who reside in tents on the beach.

Yes, there are homeless Hawaiians in Hawaii.

Monday and Tuesday should be exciting days of wind and rain - but no hurricane.

"Whew!"

If you continue below, you will find a video of one of my favorite songs, always guaranteed to make me cry as it celebrates places and things dear to my heart.

I hope it brings a tear to your dear eye as well!

A L O H A! Cloudia

Shadow Play

Aloha!

So Glad You've Come Today ;-)

click on photos to enlarge your sense of pleasure

I Love the 3 Dimensional Effect

in the Little Row of White Clouds.

"I've always been passionate about geometry and the study of three-dimensional forms."

Erno Rubik

Pink Shadow

“When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.”
Henry David Thoreau

“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.”
Carl Sandburg

Memorial to Hawaii's WWI Dead:

The "Natatorium."

“Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.





“Men are the dreams of a shadow.”
Pindar

.<+>.

I used to tread water

in the North Atlantic.

Tough wavelets slapped me

upside the face.

Briny fingers

cork screwing my sinuses

with sting;

And I gagged

vainly trying to keep my nose above water

olive green,

concealing monsters,

and cold.

*

Today I float on my back

'neath a softly scented

azure Summer sky,

lazily alert to delight and

resting a cold libation

on the breast bone beneath

my swells;

I float in joy,

and gratitude.

Same ocean - different me

more like most myself,

it seems,

I have abandoned struggle

for abandon.

Place Your Last Line Here.

A L O H A! Cloudia

Kitty Jumps Ship

Aloha!

Another Beautiful Day in Waikiki

click on photos to enlarge!Sit and Watch the Sun Go Down

"Well I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island. . . (Chorus:)

And watch the sun go down (sit and watch the sun go down)

Hear the sea roll in (listen to the sea roll in)

But I'll be thinking of you (yes, and I'll be thinking of you)

And how it might have been (thinking how it might have been)

Hear the night birds cry (listen to the night birds cry)

Watch the sunset die (sit and watch the sunset die)

Well I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island. . . "

Leon Russel

Why look; it's Old Spiral Nose!

Who's this?

"An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth."

Bonnie Friedman

It's the Worlds GREATEST Jumper!!





Here are some videos of Bon Dancing here in Hawaii:

Bon Dancing

Arrigato Aloha!

Welcome to MultiCultural Hawaii

click on photos to enlarge

Summer Time is Bon Dancing Time in Hawaii. . .

Some Buddhist temple somewhere on the Islands is hosting their annual event most every night of the season. This ancient Japanese custom invites the ancestors to come join us in the dance under the lanterns & moonlit sky.

I wanted to hear the traditional music and experience it all for the first time (!) so we drove into Manoa Valley (Behind Waikiki) last Saturday night. A tower (above) is constructed for the musicians, and everyone dances around it. Gay lanterns and finger food make it anything but a solemn experience. I knew that here in Hawaii everyone is welcome to dance; But still I was glad to see that we didn't stand out in the large varied & happy crowd. It was more like a fair than a ceremony. We saw the mayor dancing in a kimono (He's a tall ethnic Samoan but had the moves down ;-). Neighbors of every age and ethnicity danced in kimono and street clothes. Some just watched and swayed. Everyone was smiling and EATING. My kind of crowd!

Though there was drumming (including some amazing TAIKO drumming) the music was mostly recorded. This musician had time to look down and enjoy the pleasure of the crowd. Everyone may not have been local Japanese, or a member of the temple, but being there meant that we were all Hawaii people sharing one of the special things that make us so unique.

Many of the dance moves were thousands of years old. I thought I recognized hoeing and other gestures. "Towel Dances" perhaps recall the joy of the FURO bath. Then, a Line Dance was announced, and everyone danced to the country classic "Elvira" in perfect Texas Two-Step!!

Only in Hawaii!!

Some say that the ancestors actually dance with us, that they are sometimes momentarily glimpsed across the happy crowds. When you are a kid, ancestors are ancient history, possibly including a grandparent you knew, but they are all old. As you pile up the Summers, there probably are more and more of your friends and family who have gone to join the ancestors. There is some comfort, and more than a tint of immortality, in dancing with them. Maybe they will catch our eye momentarily in the frenzy. Maybe it's just some resemblance or living memory that we see in the colored light - maybe not. . .

As we left the temple and walked up the gravel driveway, we said good night to the special duty police officers outside.

The night was quiet and perfect as we walked past big old houses and a few unfortunate Mc Mansions lining one of Honolulu's oldest and stateliest residential streets. The fairy music from the temple wafted sweetly in the scented air.

Suddenly a very old Local-Japanese man with white hair and an old fashioned Aloha Shirt was walking the same direction with us. We greeted him. He seemed friendly but in his own thoughts. We exchanged a few aloha words and walked along the quiet, empty street.

When we neared my parked car I offered to drive him home. He just walked on and said that he didn't have far to go, just a "few cars down" and thanked us. I said that I would watch him safely up his driveway but lost sight of him beyond the streetlight.

Perhaps this local man was once a Manoa resident, many many years ago, and on this one night every year he walks her beloved Summer sidewalks again, enjoying his memories. I hadn't see him at the dance. . . perhaps he'll walk Oahu Avenue again next year, when the moon is high, and ancient music echoes from the dance at the temple. . . . I wish him well on his walk. . .

PS: Driving past the President's Punahou School at the mouth of the valley I could see the Night Blooming Cereus glowing on the old rock wall.