Tag: Hawaii

Maui wildfire

Like many people in the United States and around the world, I have been watching the devastating news of the wildfires in Hawai’i, especially on Maui, with sorrow and horror. The confirmed death toll is currently 93 but hundreds of people are still missing, so that total is expected to rise. Eighty per cent of the buildings in Lahaina have been destroyed, along with the livelihoods of most of the residents.

If you are able to contribute to relief efforts, please consider contributing to the Maui Strong Fund, under the auspices of the Hawai’i Community Foundation, which is able to put donations to use immediately on the ground.

One of the difficult things about this tragedy is knowing that it was made worse by human intervention. Climate change is implicated both in the drought conditions in Hawai’i and the strong hurricane, that, while well south of landfall, combined with a high pressure area to send winds up to 80 mph (128 kph) onto the islands that quickly spread the wildfires, knocking out communication infrastructure and trapping many people.

The colonization of the Islands also played a role in the fires, as the landscape and plants have been altered from the species that evolved on Pacific islands. My daughter T, who holds a master’s degree in conservation biology of plants, told me that African grasses that were brought to Hawai’i evolved with fire as part of their lifecycle, burning quickly but than sprouting again soon after. These grasses were implicated in the dangerous speed with which the wildfires spread.

My family has several connections to Hawai’i. B and I visited Kauai for our tenth wedding anniversary and were drawn to the beauty of Hawai’i and the welcoming nature of the people. Our daughter E lived in Honolulu for several years, while studying at the University of Hawai’i – Manoa. She met her spouse L there and they married at their local parish.

Daughter T, while an undergrad at Cornell, spent a Sustainability semester in Hawai’i. They were in residence most of the time on the island of Hawai’i. (There were significant wildfires there as well, but the destruction was not as widespread because of the areas affected.) They also participated in conservation projects on other islands, including Maui. In 2014, B and I went to Hawai’i with T, three years after her semester there. You can read a series of posts about that visit starting here. That visit also led to this poem.

Hawai’i is one of the most remote places on earth, being far away from any of the large continents. Its isolation, though, does not exempt it from the increasing tide of disasters turbocharged by the climate crisis. These tragic wildfires are another reminder that we all need to do what we can to transition to lives that don’t pollute our atmosphere with even more carbon.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is convening a Climate Ambition Summit next month to help speed these efforts. There will be a large March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City on September 17. We need world governments to act NOW. It’s too late for all those lost on Maui and other climate-change influenced disasters around the world. We need to save as many people and other beings as we can in the future.

Poem on Silver Birch Press

I’m pleased to share that my poem Kaʻūpūlehu has been included as part of the ONE GOOD MEMORY series from Silver Birch Press. Many thanks to Melanie and the team at Silver Birch Press for including my poem in this series.

I especially appreciate that Silver Birch Press includes an author’s note with each piece. It gave me the opportunity to spread the word about the Kaʻūpūlehu dryland forest of Hawai’i.

This poem began as a response to a Binghamton Poetry Project prompt in spring of this year. You can read a bit about the writing of this poem in my blog post here.

As Silver Birch’s call for submissions states, “The past few years have been the most difficult that most of us have lived through. It’s a challenge on many days to stay positive. At times like this, it’s heartening to remember good experiences. Sharing each other’s good memories can help us remain hopeful during these challenging times.”

I’m honored to have this poem featured among dozens upon dozens of other good memories as part of this series. I invite you to explore these uplifting poems and to reflect on your own good memories. We can all use an extra measure of hope in our day.

As always, comments are welcome – here on Top of JC’s Mind, at Silver Birch Press, on Facebook, twitter, ello, and Post. Your choice!

BPP Spring 2022 Anthology

I’m pleased to share the Binghamton Poetry Project Spring 2022 Anthology. The Binghamton Poetry Project is a grant-supported outreach program in which graduate students in poetry and creative writing from Binghamton University offer free community workshops, offering children, youth, and adults the chance to learn more about and write poetry. BPP moved online during the pandemic, although we are hopeful that an in-person workshop will be possible again this summer.

This spring, I attended two workshops. My poem “Aubade with Birds” was written in response to a prompt in Suzanne Richardson’s workshop, Fresh Images and Form. This was my first attempt at writing an aubade, which the Poetry Foundation defines as “a love poem or song welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn.” I seldom write love poems and this one is definitely more on the lament side.

The other two poems were written during Shannon Hearn’s FIELDING TENDER: Nature Writing for the Apocalypse. “Kaʻūpūlehu” is based on a visit to the dryland forest preserve by that name on the Big Island of Hawai’i where daughter T interned during a semester spent in the Islands while she was a student at Cornell University. B and I were not able to visit during that semester but made a trip there several years later with her. Kaʻūpūlehu is an amazing place; you can see some videos and photos and learn more about it here.

The haiku in the anthology is one of five I wrote during a fun session with Shannon in which we wrote haiku in response to an image and a randomly generated word. (There is a note with the information on the word and image included on the page with the poem.) There was quite a bit of laughter that evening as some of the images and words led to pretty fantastical literary leaps, but I thought this particular haiku managed to make sense apart from its origin in the exercise.

Thank you for visiting the Binghamton Poetry Project anthology. Please check out the other poets while you are there. Some of the past anthologies are also available through the drop-down menu.

SoCS: waterfalls

I don’t live near a waterfall, but I like to visit them.

One that is not too far from home is Taughannock Falls in Ithaca. I especially like to walk on the trail to its base. There are a lot of waterfalls in the Finger Lakes region, due to, well, geology…

Of course, these are small falls compared to Niagara Falls, which I saw first as a child and have visited several times as an adult. I love to look at the power of the water and see the mist and occasional rainbows. I also wonder how loud it must have been when it was having its natural flow. For decades now, some of the water has been diverted to harness the hydropower. I admit to having a particular interest in hydropower because I grew up around it. My father worked for many years for New England Power, including lots of years as superintendent of the Upper Deerfield. We often visited the network of dams and hydro stations, including Bear Swamp, a pump storage project that was constructed when I was a child. Some of the dams were designed to spill when the water was too high, looking somewhat like waterfalls. Usually, though, you tried not to spill excess water, as you wanted to store it for generation later.

Some of the most beautiful waterfalls I have seen were in Hawai’i. Because all the islands are volcanoes, the sides are quite steep, giving lots of opportunities for waterfalls to develop. Often, the peaks have hundreds of inches of rain a year, which flows down to meet the surrounding ocean. Often, too, it isn’t raining where the waterfalls are, so there are often rainbows as the sun shines through the mist caused by the falling water. Of course, the beauty of the Hawaiian waterfalls is enhanced by the lush vegetation nearby, watered by the rain falling on the heights of the volcano. Now that E no longer lives in Hawai’i, we haven’t visited recently, but I hope to get back there someday.

Do you have a favorite waterfall?
*****
This week, Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday was to ask someone for a prompt! I asked my daughter T who gave me the prompt “waterfalls.” Join us! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2018/12/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-29-18/

Moana

Today, I went to see the newest Disney film, Moana. I have been looking forward to it and was not disappointed.

Moana is a Polynesian girl who is the daughter of a chief. Although the island where Moana lives is fictional, her story draws on the cultural heritage of various Polynesian islands.

I don’t want to give away the story, but it resonated with me. Both of my daughters have lived in Hawai’i and respect the native cultural traditions. Daughter T, with whom I saw the film, is especially close to the plants of the islands and was happy to see many she recognized. I could relate to the epic voyage of the heroic wayfarer and the special relationship between a wise grandmother and her questioning granddaughter. I appreciated the feminine energy and the ethic of care of and for the community.

The animation was beautiful. I especially enjoyed the ocean, which is its own character in a way. There were also a lot of great moments involving hair, which is particularly difficult to render well in animation.

As often happens, there is a bonus scene at the very end of the credits, so try to stay.

 

mochi ice cream!

When I visited with daughter E in Honolulu for five weeks last year, one of our favorite treats was mochi ice cream, a Japanese-style bon bon made of pounded sticky rice wrapped around ice cream. The shops in Honolulu had many different flavors, a number of them tropical fruits.

When I returned home, I tried to find mochi ice cream. I finally found some green tea ones at Wegman’s, but my body doesn’t react well to tea, so I did’t buy them.

Yesterday, I happened to walk by the case and there were vanilla and strawberry mochi ice cream available.

I bought a box of strawberry and ate one after dinner last night.

It was delicious, but the memories of eating them with E made it all the sweeter.
*****
This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join us! First here first:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/25/just-jot-it-january-25th-prestidigitation/

JJJ 2016

To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today.

poet-tree

my poem on the poet-tree

When I was visiting Beth in Honolulu this summer, we would walk up the hill in Kaimuki to go to the big Saturday morning farmers’ market at Kapi’olani Community College. There is always a huge array of fruits, vegetables, baked goods, jams, pickles, etc., as well as lots of prepared foods and beverages to enjoy there.  (Also, lots and lots of people, as it is listed in the tour guides and some of the bus tours bring people there.)

We would walk home through campus and pass by their poet-tree, which is a world community poetry project. Visitors are invited to write a poem and leave it in a jar. Then, the poems are sorted into geographic regions, sealed in plastic, and affixed to the poet-tree, which has pegs for different countries or regions.

On the last weekend of my visit, I brought a poem to contribute to the project. E sent me this photo over the weekend, showing it on display! The poem itself is one I wrote several years ago. and, as often happens, there is a bit of poetic license. I realize it is a hard to read in the photo, so here it is:

Two Trees

A pair of gum trees
Reaching tall in the courtyard
Bark flashing streaks:
       grey, red-brown, green, vibrant orange
A paint-by-number from childhood come to life.
Transplanted into Hawaiian soil
You grow at a prodigious rate
As do my own daughters
Also transplanted there.

(Note:  The trees are rainbow eucalyptus.)

back home

I’m sorry, dear readers, for being absent for the past week. I flew home from Hawai’i Tuesday, arriving home on Wednesday afternoon without having slept. Since then I have been in a bit of a fog.

OK – more than a bit.

I am notoriously bad at changing time zones. It takes me about a week twice a year when we go on and off daylight savings time to adjust my sleep schedule, so the six-hour time change from Hawai’i Standard to Eastern Daylight Time has been a struggle. I am alternating between nights where I get little to no sleep and ones where I am so exhausted that I sleep eight or nine hours. I have been trying to catch up on the most important things that I missed being away from home for five weeks, such as visiting the elders and our younger daughter and some re-scheduled appointments, but I haven’t had much brain power to put together posts.

LOL – Not that this post is that profound!

I can at least let you know that there will be some more Hawai’i posts coming as I get access to some more photos. There will also be some commentary on recent events and potentially a squealing, excited post if any of the poetry submissions I did while in Honolulu result in acceptances. I am sparing you any disappointing posts when I get rejections (but will tell you that I have already received several rejections. It’s an advantage of putting in a bunch of submissions in a short time that the rejections aren’t as daunting because you still have some submissions under consideration.)

I had been trying to keep up on reading and commenting, but even that fell apart over the weekend. I’ll be trying to catch up with that – and sorting through the 800+ email messages in my inbox – this week.

Stay tuned and thanks for your patience!

JC

SoCS: Is it really almost over?

Is it really almost over?

I have been AWOL from One-Liner Wednesday and Stream of Consciousness Saturday for the last several weeks as I have been visiting my daughter in Honolulu. Her husband has been away doing research for his PhD dissertation in London, as well as visiting his family there.

My husband came out with me for the first two weeks, during which time we stayed in a hotel. Then, he had to return to go on a business trip. I moved to my daughter’s apartment and have been staying with her for almost three weeks.

It is less like vacationing and more like living here, which is cool! I have been blogging about it, such as this post about settling into the Kaimuki neighborhood where she lives, but there are others to check out at Top of JC’s Mind, if you are interested. (Shameless plug!)

I fly out on Tuesday, but I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it. Just a few more days and I’ll be back – and six-hours-of-time-change jet-lagged – in upstate New York. Back to the stuff that is filling up my calendar back home – appointments and meetings – and the catching up on mail and errands and visits.

I’m not sure I’m ready – but it is what it is.
*****

Linda’s prompt for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “is” Please join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-415/

socs-badge

Food – leeward – food

Yesterday, E started a four-day holiday weekend, so we decided to go on an excursion to avoid the crowds that are sure to be huge over the holiday.

We started with breakfast at Town, one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants. E had polenta, greens, and egg and I had baked French toast.

Fortified, we set out on the H1 for the leeward (west) side of O’ahu. I had never been to that side but E and L had a short honeymoon getaway there and sometimes go there to visit the beaches. As I have mentioned, driving in Hawai’i is an adventure for me, but we made it through the day safely, despite some slowdowns. The weirdest thing on the road was passing my former rental car. Earlier this week, some warning lights came on in the Honda Fit, so it got swapped for a Toyota Corolla. E spotted the license plate of the Fit as I passed it on the highway. I’d say small world, but small island is more applicable in this case.

As we got away from Honolulu and its suburbs, we drove through terrain that reminded me of part of the Big Island – red soils, exposed rock, sparse and dry vegetation. In Hawai’i, the leeward sides of the islands tend to be dry. It’s common to see cactus and other plants that don’t need much water. The higher elevations as you go inland tend to be wet, some with annual rainfall of 400 inches (1,000 cm) or more. The highest peaks in the younger islands even get snowfall during the winter.

We parked close to the series of lagoons and beaches that the hotels that populate the leeward coast in Ko Olina had built.  We walked along the path behind the lagoons, enjoying the breeze and the views. Then, we went to get a smoothie and an acai bowl for lunch to cool off.

We headed back to E’s apartment before the traffic got too bad and to make sure we were here for our dinner reservation. The executive chef/owner of Town has recently opened a new restaurant kitty corner across the intersection from Town. It is named Mud Hen Water, which is the literal translation of Waialae, the avenue on which it is located.

Mud Hen Water specializes in small plates that fuse local ingredients and cuisine with more modern food trends. E and I shared:
*  pa’i’ai, which is taro pounded and fried, in a seaweed wrap so you can pick it up to eat
*  a beet salad, which was prepared similarly to poke. E was happy because she wanted me to experience poke style, but I don’t eat raw fish, so doing it with beets, which I love, was a great alternative.
*  A mutligrain risotto with peanuts and greens
*  lawalu, which was opah (a fish) wrapped in green banana leaves and cooked buried in coals, served with various grilled vegetables
*  a upside-down pineapple polenta cake, served warm with vanilla gelato
*  butterscotch-miso rice pudding with lacy ginger wafers
Everything was super delicious! We will have to go again the next time we visit. I’m sure we’ll go to Town also. We love to support the local businesses of Kaimuki!