Spring in Tucson

It is, of course beautiful and sunny. The bad news is that there is a really serious drought. The desert doesn't look good. really thirsty and not many flowers.

In town, where people water, it is a different story, naturally. here are some shots of my host's patio:

Tomstone Rose.

Nancy's  hedge, overgrowing her south fence. The Lady Banksia, originally from Scotland, proves very adaptable, flourishing in the desert. The largest rose bush in the world is of this variety, in Tombstone, hence the nickname. [Enlarge this to get the full effect.]

Ka'u & Kona Coffee

St. Jude's Guatemalan neighbor has a small roasting operation. He showed it to me today. he biuts most oof his beans from growers all over the island then roasts and packages them to order for vendors here and on the mainland. He paclaged up two ro three pounds each of Kona, Ka'u naturalmente (a rought version, with lots of black ones that have to be removed before roasting), and Hawai'ian Blend, which is very clean, prepared for mainland sale. he added a pound of fine Ka'u peaberry and then refused any hint of payment. (At retail prices this would be well over $200 worth!)

I let him do this because arguing is indecent, people know how to treat clergy in his culture, and he is actually doing quite well. His shop is pretty extensive, he sells all over the world, and his house, though modest, looks quite comfortable, and he appears to have a swimming pool for his three boys! He has been here in Ocean View for the past twelve years.

Mahina

If you ever find yourself in Captain Cook, HI (just south of Kona on the Big Island), don’t miss the Mahina Café, and be sure to try the Hawai’ian Plate – a tasting menu of indigenous foods – mostly pork, cooked in various ways that taste really distinct. Mahina means “moon”, as our server explained. Rachel is a native Hawai’ian, who is very well-informed about the state’s history. The indigenous people have a lunar calendar, much like the plains Indians, in which each moon has a name. Together with the stars, especially the Pleiades, the moons guide the agricultural life. (We are now in the Harvest Moon.)

                Rachel explained that pigs came to the islands (along with dogs, taro, and bananas) with the very first settlers, whose origin is unknown – somewhere in Polynesia, around 1500 years ago.

Replica of ancient Polynesian ship

The various dishes in the sampling plate are traditional to the luau, and traditionally cooked underground.

Upper right: shredded pork and beef (laulau), wrapped first in taro leaf and then in ti leaf for underground cooking.

Lower-left, shredded pork. White cube, taro-root flan.

One of them is smoked with the wood of a Hawai’an tree similar to mesquite. It produces prickly thorns, however, and the native joke is that the Europeaans brought it not just to feed the cattle with its beans, but to force the Hawai’ians not to go barefoot!

                I told Rachel about Bishop Whipple and our devotion to Queen Emma. She seemed happy to hear it. She observed that the conquest of Hawai’i followed immediately upon the subjugation of the plains Indians, and the history (deracination, linguistic suppression, deportation, and boarding schools) was similar. She also pointed out that by the end of the 19^th century, there were only about 40,000 Hawai’ians left. Since most of the were eope of some meansa, there are plenty of pretenders, nowadays, to chiefdom (ai’i) and royalty. Most well-known is Prince Quentin Kawananakoa,

Vesture is royal, rather than academic, I think (see below).

Also heir to one of the largest mainlander planters (James Campbell), Prince Kawananakoa was a member of the State Legislature and erstwhile minority leader. He has never been elected to national office, perhaps because he is a Republican, which seems a little odd for a royal pretender!

                Possibly because of this kind of anomaly, a cousin of Kamehameha the Great, five times removed, Prince Noa Kalokuokamile  (Kalokuokamile  III) is supported by some. .

Coffee Roasting and Witness Protection

So  it does rain here. Technically a desert, this part of the island got plenty of rain in the last couple of days - cold and grey, too. Anyway, it's still beautiful.

My friend, Sharif, went to visit friends at the north end and came back with the news (rumor) that Ocean View has a lot of Witness Protection Program clients. I wonder, if it's so well known, whether it's really that safe for them! OceanView also has a reputation of being armed to the teeth!

Who knew?

We roasted some green Ka'u peaberries today - really good.

It has been at least 20 years since I roasted my own coffee During that time, I acquired a perfect roasting-pan - a heavy aluminum, camp-style, folding omlette pan, with the wooden-insulated handles extending "from the diameter, not the radius" as the late Don Lohr (our coffee guru) used to say.



These are somewhat hard to come by nowadays. This was the first time I had used the pan, which my friend Virginia Howell got for me at the Berkeley Ashby Bart Saturday flea-market many years ago. It works like a dream. McKinnie Place has an outdoor, gas BBQ which was also perfect.

Only a week t go here in Ocean View, and then I will spend a few days looking around Hawai'i before returning to Tucson. then I plan to go to Berkeley for a couple of weeks.

Showers

St Jude's offers free showers for all comers on Saturday mornings, complete with a complimentary soup lunch. Lots of takers, because many people live here without running water. There are many Marshal Islanders, who are among the most destitute.



These kids look just like our patrons.

Ka Lae

South Point is the imaginatively named southernmost point in the United States. At latitude N. 18.9111, which places it roughly parallel to northern Yemen and Taiwan. It is also a place where poor crazy people jump off the cliff. The park service considerately provides a ladder for them to climb back up,

Prescinding from these delights, I contented myself with admiring the incredible blue of the Pacific here a short way from the house at St. Jude's.

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Later, I listened to Amy Goodman online, to learn about the kick-off of The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald's new online journal in collaboration with Jeff Scahill, Laura Poitras, and the E-bay magnate. Everyone should follow it. Or listen to or watch the Democracy Now interview with them (scroll down to third video).

Drove up the east coast to a black-sand beach (below). Beautiful day. Typical view, above.

As you can see, the sand is pulverized lava. Nice little waves - not much surf for the real aficionados, but great for children.

Kilaulea

Kilaulea is a volcano in its own right, erupting out of the side of Mauna Loa near the sea. It doesn't look like this right now, although it is permanently belching brimstone into the air in huge quantities. I tasted the Vog (yes, tasted) yesterday when I drove up to Hilo to pick up my friend Sharif at the airport. On the way back, we stopped in at Volcanoes National Park, where a nice ranger directed us to the caldera of the active volcano, which now looks like this:

At night it is supposed to be pretty red - reflecting the magma below. From time to time it spills over and they have to evacuate a town. 

But now there is nothing much between it and the ocean.

HI Rt. 11 (the Kamehameha Highway, which circles the island) runs north of it, just up the mountainside. 

There are plenty of chthonic spectacles everywhere, including dozens of steam vents that make the landscape look pretty infernal - like Yellowstone only more so - steam rising out of the ground everywhere you look.

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I had my first "bible study" today, with the men's group. Very interesting people. It was a privilege to hear their spiritual journeys. We didn't pore over text so much, but talked about our own experience and convictions, with occasional reference to the Holy Scripture. 

Hula

Among many bad things done by the American missionaries was the banning of Hula. I suppose it was because of its pagan connotations, praising gods and telling epics and legends. Maybe also because the women were topless, except for leis, and the swaying hips were thought lascivious by the puritanical Yankees. Anyway, I remember the latter idea from my youth, when people would wink and scoff at the notion that “it’s all in the hands.” The idea that there was something venereal about Hula probably persisted in the minds of the young sailors, who saw it when it was revived.

But it is anything but an erotic dance. The local parish Hula troupe danced at Mass last Sunday. It was really uplifting, the story enacted was our Lord’s encounter with the rich young man. Every gesture of hand and foot and hip has a sign-language meaning, interpreting the words of the song that is being sung (in this case a record). It is hard to convey how gentle, beautiful, and gracious it is. A great many hymns and Biblical passages are now choreographed this way.

The Parish Hula group is exclusively Kapuna (seniors over 60). Both sexes.The eldest is a lovely Japanese lady of 85. All of them sway like palm-trees in the breeze and make the complicated, flowing gestures together. St. Jude’s troupe is getting ready to dance for the Bishop, when he visits on my last Sunday here. They also compete regularly in Hilo and elsewhere. It is a very big deal here.

Hula is more strenuous than it appears. I went to practice and joined in. I had to sit out after the first dance, though – winded and tired already. One of the women said it was “much better than yoga.” She also claimed that it had great spiritual benefit, which I can believe. In any case, I can’t imagine anything more reverent or dignified.

There are secular Hulas, too – songs about love and fishing and travelling and history. But in church, it’s all religious.  Check out this link. They sing first and then start dancing. 

Here's another one, in the traditional style, chanted without musical instruments. It was composed to cheer up Anglican Queen Emma, after the death of her child and husband.

Finally a secular Hula, with typical yodeling song and instruments.

St. Jude's Ocean View

St. Jude’s has exceeded my expectations in every way. A congregation of about 40 – which seems huge to me – fills up the small church. Very lively and friendly. I got my SECOND real-orchid lei just before the procession today. As I walked into the church earlier, I almost wept when I saw them practicing for their offertory dance – a hula that tells the story of the Rich Young Man. The music was heart-breakingly beautiful – that female slow yodel, sliding between registers. I felt like I was going to heaven. They blow a conch, in place of the sacristy bell, to indicate the beginnign of the procession. Every Sunday, after the Prayers of the People and before the Confession, they also sing a hymn entirely in Hawai’ian, written by the late Queen Lili’uokalani.

Your loving mercy and your truth so perfect.
I live imprisoned in sorrow; you are my Light;
   you Glory my support.
Behold not with malevolence the sins of humankind,
   but forgive and cleanse.
And so, O Lord, beneath your wings protect us,
   and let peace be our portion now and forever more.

The prison to which Her Majesty refers is her own Iolani Palace, now the State Capitol, to which she was confined after her conviction for conspiring against the American jjunta taht caleld itself the Republic of Hawai'i. If you haven’t had your daily outrage, google her and the links that tell of her overthrow, denounced as a betrayal of our values by no less than the sitting President, Grover Cleveland! She abdicated in order to prevent bloodshed. She and all other loyal Hawai’ians wore mourning black and shuttered their houses the day we annexed Hawai’i as a Territory.

Queen Lili'uokalani also wrote the very famous Aloha 'oe, the signature song of Hawai'ian music. The whole royal family seems to have been quite poetic and musical.

The congregation is diverse and committed to social justice. There were some Marshallese boys, who had come to the free shower the church provides on Saturdays. These are the poorest of the poor, made so by:

Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, March 1, 1954                                                  

1.       Their deportation here when we used their home islands to test the H-bomb. This made their homeland the most contaminated place on earth.  The old story: 

•       We taught the newcomers English and those who could learn left for Honolulu. 
•       The weaker stayed here to work on the cane plantations.  Sugar went out of business because of globalization, and now these people have nothing. 
•       Many of the Marshallese live in abandoned vehicles and their only water is what falls out of the sky.

      In the United States of America.  (Although that's pretty much true of everyone here, but there is an elaborate system of cisterns for those with houses.) This district of the County of Hawai’i (each island is a county) is the poorest in the whole USA.

Anyway, there are old hippies and wanderers from all over in the congregation, including the C lerkof the Bishop’s Committee, who made sure to inform me that her daughter lived with her husband and two wives and celebrated their “polyamorous” anniversary recently. This is, after all, still Polynesia,

Refreshing, somehow.

The only trouble in paradise so far is Halemaumau, a small volcano nearby that emits something called vog. It is volcanic effluent that produces a haze as far as Honolulu. Some are deathly allergic to it. So it is not always clear skies around here. But the temperature is perfect. Blanket weather at night and in the high ‘70s in the daytime. At this altitude. Like AZ, altitude makes a big difference, and the church is at about 2500 feet4. Warmer down by the ocean, I guess. And in the dry season (our summer months), when it gets pretty toasty and humid. But anyway, there is no furnace! Just a little electric space heater, if needed.

Oh yeah - there ARE mosquitos - very small and polite by MN standards. And not very many - not much standing water, after all.

The house is up on stilts, surrounded on three sides by a lanai (verandah). The house itself is uncannily like the one in Bayfield, except a little fancier, with French doors out to the lanai and a private bathroom off the master bedroom. There is a nice little shopping mall a couple of miles away, where the big super market has everything – at slightly elevated prices, since everything is imported. EXCEPT the grass-fed beef, which is way cheap. Much better price than at home. And pork is better yet. Fortunately there is a nice big outdoor grill down in what would have been the garage, on ground level. They have turned it into an inviting, open-air ramada with nice lawn furniture, washing machines, and grill. There is also a garden in the amended lava, including fruiting tomatoes. Quite a treat.

The next-door neighbor is a coffee-farmer, who also roasts right there, so there is nice aroma all the time. I expect to get some green Ka’u beans from him. That subset of Kona coffee regularly wins “best-of” awards at international competitions.

So now it is also the rainy season, and it is raining today. Good. Fill up them cisetrns!

So enough for now. To my Sunday afternoon nap, cradled by the strains fo the Assembly if God congregation that meets in St. Jude's in the afternoon, singing a slack-key, Hawai'ian version of the old country-gospel, slow waltz hymn, Further Along.