Spring Weekend

Aloha & 

               Welcome To Honolulu

"Ah"

"If you've never been thrilled
 to the very edges of your soul
 by a flower in spring bloom,
 maybe your soul has never been in bloom."

~Terri Guillemets

She WAS in a champagne glass once...

                                                             Venerable 'Club Hubba Hubba'

"I've always felt that a person's intelligence

is directly reflected
 by the number of conflicting points of view

he can entertain simultaneously
 on the same topic. "

 
Abigail Adams

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift 

and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
 We have created a society 

that honors the servant

and has forgotten the gift."

 Albert Einstein

Urban Camper

"Praise and blame, 

gain and loss,

pleasure and sorrow

come and go like the wind.
  To be happy,

rest like a giant tree,

in the midst of them all."

The Buddha

\&&&/ 

Scooter Singing

As soon as I roll on the throttle

and lean into that first turn

I am sixteen

riding my first motorcycle

again.

Nothing renders me

so reliably

happy.

 

Folks who know nothing

about motorcycles

always ask

"How many CC's?"

But if they rode

they would know:

It's not the size of the engine

but the gearing;

It's not the age of the rider,

but the feeling.

What magic thing

makes

YOU

feel happy

& free?

          warmly, cloudia

Nature Box

Aloha,
                                  Friend!

When we live in the city, 

(less so, perhaps, here in Honolulu)

nature is in the places we leave 

- or create - 

for her.

Do YOU have a terrarium,

vivarium, 

or fish tank?

Spirals Smirals

We like to bring flowers home,

or raise them in a pot:

"Prison Plants."

Nature was once 

everywhere rampant-

and we were in the box.

Papaya in da Sky-a !

"Look deep into nature, 

and then you will understand 

everything better.
 

Joy in looking

and comprehending

is nature's most beautiful

gift.


Our task must be

to free ourselves

by widening our circle of compassion

to embrace all

living creatures

and the whole of nature

and its beauty.

We still do not know 

one thousandth of one percent

of what nature

has revealed to us."

Einstein 

Smiling Sky-

                                               Smiling at YOU!

Now Quick! 

Go to "Comments" 

and write the first thing 

                          that comes into your mind!  cloudia

High Low

Aloha, Friend!

Welcome back to

      Honolulu :-)

"What we may be witnessing

is not just the end of the Cold War, 

or the passing of a particular period

of postwar history,

but the end of history as such..."

Francis Fukuyama

"It is easier to visit friends

than to live with them."

 

Chinese proverb

"A facility for quotation

covers the absence 

of original thought."

Lord Peter Wimsey

 

 "Oh my!"

Cloudia

 ><}}(°>

The giant beast called

"Now"

that we ride-

the zeitgeist is his soul-

Swimming history's currents

to big to control

or comprehend;

We hold on

we people of today

History (we thought)

had been vanquished

by our genius,

economy,

and committees.

The beast laughs:

TSUNAMI !

Thousands of lives

ended.

We live

in interesting

times.

Hold on!

          fondly, cloudia

Do YOU wish we lived in more boring times?

New & Improved

A L O H A !

"With happiness 

comes intelligence

to the heart."

- Chinese proverb

 

 Which is bigger:

This Scooter-

Or this tiny (smart) car?

"Blame yourself 

if you have no branches or leaves; 

don't accuse the sun of partiality.

Be not afraid of growing slowly,

be afraid only of standing still."

- Chinese proverb

Don't stand still in this intersection!

\VVV/

 

 

Now with Music!

Hotel Rooms!

&

My Book!

Have you noticed?

Right under your pictures:

"Visit Honolulu"

You can click a link

and listen

to Traditional Hawaiian Music,

Book a Honolulu Hotel Room,

or view my book's

Amazon page.

click away!

I'll make more. . . 

    fondly, cloudia

 

Hawaii's Plantation Village

A l o h a !

I have said it before:

Hawaii is more than beaches.

“Don't grow up too quickly,

lest you forget how much

you love the beach.” 

 Michelle Held

We are more than amazing skies

"You can't put your feet on the ground

until you've touched the sky. "

Paul Auster

Our history still lingers, IF you know where to look

The past is our definition.

  We may strive, with good reason, to escape it,

or to escape what is bad in it,

but we will escape it only

by adding something better to it."

Wendell Berry

 ><}}(°>

 

 

On Saturday

I visited Hawaii's Plantation Village,

an outdoor history museum

that tells some of the stories 

of life on Hawaii's Sugar Plantations

(c. 1850-1950).

The Village includes restored buildings

and replicas of plantation structures,

buildings like the plantation store,

community center, 

and the humble homes

of the workers

who built our Hawaii.

The story that emerges

speaks of Hawaii's various cultures:

Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Puerto Rican,

Japanese, Okinawan, Korean,

and Filipino.

There are the people that came to work,

and then stayed to shape

and to share our uniqueness.

The lives of those people breathe in the setting,

and in the veins of locals

who come to see where grandma, grandpa

came from. 

Waipahu

was one of O'ahu's last plantation towns,

and its sugar mill operated until 1995.

I remember the emotion

as the last 'cane trucks' sounded their horns,

carrying the last crop to the mill.

  A way of life was passing.

But the smokestack still stands proudly

above the Waipahu town

that it built,

  reminding us to be grateful

to those workers,

and

for all

that has been accomplished 

Listen to the song,

While you watch the slide show:

Hawaii Standard Time

A  l  o  h  a !

 Open Skies?

"Go forth under the open sky,

and listen To Nature's teachings."

William C. Bryant

 Nice beach day!

“The only reason for time

is so that everything doesn't happen

at once.”

 

Einstein

walking out for the day. . . 

"Hope is like a road in the country;

there was never a road,

but when many people walk on it,

the road comes into existence. "

                                             Lin Yutang



 

. . . Returning home again

"This melancholy London -

I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost 

are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually.

One feels them passing

like a whiff of air. "

                                 William Butler Yeats

><}}(°>

HST? What's that?

Hawaiian Standard Time.

We live 10 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time

(GMT-10)

This time of year,

when most of the continental USA is on

Daylight Saving Time,

we are 6 hours behind New York,

3 hours behind San Francisco

(PST-3)

By the time we begin our workday,

it is afternoon back east.

So much for beating the competition!

In Hawaii we tend to rise early,

and go to bed early;

but when visiting New York

our internal clock

makes us night owls!

Midnight?

Feels like noon to me!

This wrinkle in time

has taken much stress out of watching

"live" events since 9-11.

By the time I see it

we know there has been no terrorism.

Mondays during football season

a lot of Honolulu fans slip out of the office

to watch the Monday Night Game

in real-time (afternoon) at a sports bar.

On occasion, one of us gets a call

from a clueless person far away.

Because it is 10am where they are

they never realize that it is only

4am here!

Till we inform them,

and go back to sleep!

          Do YOU know what time it is? (LOL) cloudia

Believe in Astrology?

Aloha               你好

"A book is like a garden

carried in the pocket."

 Chinese proverb

The palest ink

is better than the best memory.

 Chinese proverb

"Married couples who love each other

tell each other a thousand things

without talking."

 Chinese proverb 

<>

Do you believe in astrology?

If 'believe' means that the stars rule us,

no matter what we do;

Then no, I don't believe that.

But I'm always interested to look into

the collected wisdom of generations,

confident of finding

some useful 'intel' 

therein.

Few useless things

hang around for very long.

(No mother-in-law jokes here please!)

In fact,

learning a bit about lunar

(Chinese) astrology

has been helpful

if only

in reminding me

that we live amidst a constellation

of ever shifting influences,

wherever they come from.

It has been helpful by

reminding me that:

while we may feel a certain way

right now-

it is never a permanent condition.

To often we think of ourselves as "fixed'

in who we are;

But we are actually becoming

every minute.

As long as there is life,

there is choice.

And fixed thinking

does not well serve us

     on our merry way. . .

Tomorrow we will look at things

with new and different eyes.

Thank you for sharing my lazy spirals!

          Comment? (please) cloudia