Rome is Burning

Rome in this case is Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. The burning refers to civil unrest due to a rivalry between the city's mayor and the country's president. It's too soon to know if this will affect my group's departure. Read more on the Peace Corps' website.

Personally I don't worry about things like this having lived in New York during the Rodney King era. But obviously things could get worse. For everyone's sake, most particularly the Malagasy, let's hope not.

Best of Hawai'i

Best Outing With Friends: Sand Bar kayak picnic

Best Aerobic Expenditure: Hiking the pali behind Dillingham Airfield

Best Nature Moment: Floating with green sea turtle in Hanauma Bay

Best Food: Octapus poke on the Sand Bar (forgive me Sky - made worse by a really enjoyable snorkel moment with an octapus)

Best Meal: Auntie Yumiko's New Years feast (sorry Kay and Scott, but I know you understand)

Best Movie: The Photograph, a dramatic film from Indonesia, and Man on Wire, documentary

Best View: Arizona Memorial from Bob's house

Defining Moment: Getting paid to write

Best Expected Cultural Moment: Hawai'ian New Year

Best Unexpected Cultural Moment: Finnish Folk Songs at a poetry reading at Coffee Talk

Best Brunch: Honolulu Academy of the Arts Cafe (sadly, no competition)

Navy's Best Home Port: Pearl Harbor Navy Base (self-proclaimed, but you'll get no argument from me)

Best Beach for Non-Surfers in Winter: Hanauma Bay

Best Reason to Leave Hawai'i: Mine's the only good excuse I can think of (oops, gotta go to Madagascar!) Otherwise, it's paradise. Ten weeks and the bloom is still on.

Addendum
Best Weather Forecast: "A high of just 71 yesterday, going up to 73 today. So bundle up. You might just want to stay home with a blanket." Really, as I've said before, you can't make this stuff up.

The whales are pretty cool too. Yes, I snapped this today of a beautiful humpback.Famous Amos reads the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., on the occasion of the eponymous holiday.

Steely Dan

Last evening, in the midst of suffering from a cold, I ventured out to the Sack ‘n Save to buy…cold medicine? No, ice cream and ginger ale. Steely Dan was on the radio, and it occurred to me that for the next two years plus there will be no Cuervo Gold, no fine Columbian. Well I don’t drink, I don’t snort, and I’ve never even owned any Steely Dan. But that didn’t stop me from being seized by the reality that the clock is ticking down to my departure and the life is about to be very, very different. No ice cream, no ginger ale, no new LOST episodes, no Jon Stewart, no French bistro, no movie theaters. It’s dawning on me how this little adventure may actually feel like service.

What Does It All Mean?

Yesterday I watched Pete Seeger sing “This Land is Your Land” at the Lincoln Memorial. Thursday I watched an incomprehensible display of professional excellence and cooperation on the Hudson. Tomorrow I will watch, with teary millions, the inauguration of Barack Obama.

In the middle of this, of course, I am still in Hawai’i doing Hawai’ian things. Imagine, if you will, my yesterday afternoon, Hawai’ian clear blue sky, curiously and sparklingly missing its normal humidity – so that layer after layer of pali cliffs are visible in rugged green splendor. Push those arm muscles kayaking with friends out into the ocean, water smooth and protected by an outer reef. After crossing deep green water, run around on a sand bar. Watch children off small boats run around in the low tide shallows, far from shore. It’s like Brigadoon, but the offshore sand bar appears twice a day.

Poet Mary Oliver asks, “What does it mean, that it is all so beautiful?” I am asking myself this question right now – how is everything so good? And how do I always remember – when the bad times roll around again, as they do? My life seems like it has lost its balance as the pendulum swings to this wild, euphoric place. Today, when the dream is so alive.

So what I’m doing right now is getting ready to go to Madagascar. It’s less than a month away now; in ten days I leave Hawai'i. I have been doing language training, putting together a presentation to give at my school in California, and stocking up on batteries and underwear. If I have a fear in going to Madagascar, it is not the parasites or the food or the loneliness. My fear is that I will not live up to the expectations of my community. No, that’s not quite right, because I don’t know what they expect. I fear that I will not live up to what they deserve from me. But today, in the park after the MLK parade, a vendor was selling beautiful wall hangings with quotes. One had a section of a speech by Nelson Mandela (who was actually quoting Marianne Williamson):
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

I hope that the new day dawning in America will inspire all Americans to ask ourselves this question. What if all of us believed that we could display professional excellence and cooperation? What if all of us believed that this land was made for you and me? What if when the pendulum swung the other way, everyone could experience the grace and blessings I have been given?

I am so overwhelmed today and SO grateful for my time in Hawai’i and my rewarding experience with the National Park Service. And most of all, I am unbelievably excited about serving with all my heart and my abilities in the Peace Corps. Thank you all my family and friends who support me so generously, and artists and activists who inspire so enduringly. I have referred before to this quote from Isaac Newton, but it is especially poignant today on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.

Fuzzy Zippy Hoodie

Is it crass to write an elegy to clothing? Clothing is about to become very important to me as I make each article do the work of five. I’ve never done long backpacking trips or solo kayak adventures down the inside passage, so I’ve never really had to put my clothing to the ultimate test. And truthfully, I can buy clothes in Madagascar so I’m probably going through this preparation for nothing. However, I am particularly pleased with my old Keen wonder shoes, my new REI pants, and a new piece of outerwear that is, in fact, a fuzzy zippy hoodie.

Let me take you back a few years to a trip I made to the Grand Canyon for training purposes. For two weeks I got to know Elissa, friend of Holly, who was in my training class. She and I hiked down to the Colorado River one day. We named all of our layers, including the aforementioned fuzzies, zippies, hoodies, as well as woolly, wicky, and puffy. Understand this is the same entertaining woman (Elissa) who described her four food groups as crunchy, salty, fizzy, and sweet. Contemplating, I listed mine as beanie, greenie, grainy, and moo. Take a minute, this is a fun one…

That day was an absolute success of beautiful sunrise, arduous exercise, lunch with mules, and my first ever bighorn sheep sighting. I am happy to remember this day and our fun weekend adventures as I’m snuggling into the new fuzzy zippy hoodie.

In Hawai’I, you may ask? In two words – movie theaters. And evidently in some areas of Madagascar, when the mercury dips drastically down to 80, I’m going to want some snuggly outerwear. Ergo, fuzzy zippy hoodie.

Read More Now

Visit the following website to read stories by other Mad PCV's (Madagascar Peace Corps Volunteers). I especially like one guy's story about ants. Enjoy, and yes they make me feel old. (That's not a bad thing...)
http://www.peacecorpsjournals.com/ma.html

Park Brochure Request

A second request for you parkies. In addition to family/friend photographs, I would also like to be armed with lots of National Park Service brochures. I should have thought of this earlier, but I used to have a whole bucket bursting with brochures and maps. Alas, again, the mudflood. So if you work at a national park or visit a national park, would you grab me a glossy and pop it in the mail? Again, the address is listed to the right. It will ensure you a postcard back from Madagascar. Thank you so much. I think my new friends and neighbors will enjoy seeing some of our scenery and learning our stories. Historic sites count too!

Photo Request

Now the blog becomes interactive and I will ask you for a favor. I have been asked to bring photographs of friends and family on my little trip. Great idea! Alas, so much of our photography is now sent electronically. And I lost some photos in the mudflood, such as my wonder Nashville photos from last year. So could I make a request? Would everyone please send me a photo of themselves to my new Madagascar address, listed to the right on this page? This will also be a good way to test out the mail system and ensure that I have your address. You can send it now and it will probably arrive just as I am. I would greatly appreciate it, and it will make my arrival that much sweeter. Thank you in advance.

The Year of Being 40

And naturally, I know a lot of other people turning 40 these days. Alisa, Mel,and Laurel did it a while back. Tom and Amy got us going last year. Very recently Chiemi and Mike hit the landmark and Holly's is just around the corner. Happiness to all. I gotta say, I love it. I liked turning 30 too. That one seemed to signify that it was time to get down to business and stop dinkin' around. Ironically or not, when I stopped dinkin' around it actually led to doing stuff that I really love. Now at 40 I feel like it's the age to be at peace and fall in love with the perfection that already is. I've let go of a lot of ambition. And ironically or not, I'm actually accomplishing things. I also have this other idea about 40, which I did not expect. I feel now, having been given 40 years, that the world/universe/God doesn't owe me anything else. As Melody and I say, with our genes we could reasonably expect to live to be 100 - and I certainly plod along accordingly. But I wouldn't feel cheated if I got on the bus tomorrow. So I guess, in a word, 40 is liberating.

I've Heard the Mermaids Singing

and it sounds just like the Flower duet from Lakme by Delibes that you’ve heard in cool arty films. Last weekend I saw humpback whales from a coastal hike (Merry Christmas to me!) but not from a whale watching cruise. This weekend, well, this post could also be called, “Ode to the Humble Snorkel.” I started out by purchasing my own snorkel set at SuperK. Then ventured around the island looking for adventure. Surprisingly, my usually excellent guidebook let me down a couple of times so I ended back up on the North Shore at Shark Cove. A brilliant move as the fish viewing was spectacular.

Sunday I visited Hanauma Bay, a marine sanctuary renowned for its snorkelability. The bay is actually a sunken crater with great reefs to explore. Alas the wave action was such to decrease visibility. Disappointing snorkeling but excellent beaching and bobbing around in the water. I’ll go back to Hanauma Bay regardless of overcrowding and fees – just to immerse myself in the ocean in relative safety. Plus if the man selling coconut ice cream in the parking lot is to be trusted, snorkeling will be vastly improved another day.

OK, for those of you who snorkel and dive regularly, please forgive my noviceness. But snorkeling is absolutely an astonishing wilderness adventure. Yeah, so my snorkeling experience is akin to hiking to Nevada Falls in Yosemite and thinking you’ve discovered wilderness. But, hey, it’s a start. Once I grew accustomed to my Darth Vader breathing, I was in heaven. In the reef/rocks of Sharks Cove I saw sea urchins and hermit crabs in the nooks. Some frog-fish , butterflyfish, damselfish, parrotfish, big fish, small fish, ugly fish, pretty fish – you get it. Then at one point I looked up and realized I was surrounded by needlefish which are, hmm, long and thin. My book says they swim in schools at the surface. Yup. Dazzling.

I could pretty much stop hiking right now and spend the rest of my free time face down in the water. Who knew? (Oh, OK, probably everybody but me!!)

my new fish bookfishianados must check out artist Ray Troll who gets it oh so right

Hawai'ian New Year

It was a heck of a year so it's only fitting that I sent it out with a pretty impressive bang. Call me lucky. I got to spend the eve and the day with Shelley's family in Honolulu. Eve was spent at Auntie Blanche and Uncle Wendell's house. We had delicious pupu/appetizers including salami rounds topped with rice and other fusion (confusin') asian/Hawai'i snacks, which were absolutely delicious. Then we played games, including a homemade reflection. We each wrote on a card one thing we learned in 2008. I wrote, "Being 40 is even better than being 30." This was a challenging assignment for me since, as regular readers will remember, this has been rather a big year full of all kinds of worthwhile lessons. Then we divided into teams and guessed who wrote which lesson. The funniest lesson was, "A college degree does not equal a job." Ha ha ha. Right there with you, Sean. Then as if food and games weren't enough, we then all went out to the street and spent over an hour blowing things up and setting things on fire. Yowza! that was good! I had been warned by coworkers that Hawai'ians do fireworks right and I was not disappointed. Neither, though, did any of us lose fingers. And the smoke cleared after midnight so that I could get home. Let's just say that another bar has been raised, this time on New Years celebrations. It didn't hurt that at midnight we all hugged each other and shared good wishes.

New Years Day was another gift of family sharing as Shelley's aunt from Japan cooked a traditional Japanese feast for us. All of the kids of the family read about the traditional foods for the benefit of the hakujin guests. Then we enjoyed our mochi soup, black beans, gobo, and many other delicious and meaningful foods. Later in the afternoon, Yumiko treated us to a beautiful tea ceremony. All of this took place in Auntie Yumiko and Uncle Mike's house up on a hill overlooking Diamond Head. The back yard had touches of Japanese garden and abutted a bamboo forest. There are a number of you who will be jealous of my day. Don't worry, I enjoyed it deeply and took not a moment for granted. And yes, I ate the ahi sashimi and drank a cup of sake. Uncle Wendell doesn't drink either so we were both modest but respectful in our sake consumption.

Thank you to all of the members of this warm family for making me feel like one of the gang. And look, we still have all of our fingers.

Stalker

You'd think I'd have better things to do in Hawai'i than follow Obama's every move. And evidently I do because I did not click the pic. My step-bro J.J.'s wife is from Hawai'i. He calls me up Tuesday saying he just met Barack who was playing b-ball at the Punahou school. "Dude, I've been stalking the man for a week. You got in town 12 hours ago and you're fist-bumping with the Pres?" Turns out the in-laws not only work at Punahou, have all graduated from Punahou, etc, but also made up holiday shirts saying "Obama Ohana" which translates to Obama Family (they made me one!). Giving credit where credit is due, these people love their native son. Rock on, you beautiful Hawai'ians. And rock on all people of color; we're getting there. And I do hope that the Obamas enjoyed a relaxing vacation. With the year they've got coming up, they'll need it.