The other night I was driving from the brewery in Hilo to Keith’s house in Kailua-Kona.
I got a late start. I felt sure I’d miss the moment the sun set into the ocean.
Sometimes, when the schedule goes awry, you end up with an even better outcome. That night I witnessed the most spectacularly chicken-skin-inducing sunset I’ve ever seen. The moment was downright spooky!
Cresting the Saddle Road, the setting sun took the form of two spectral eyes. Looking at something like this, it’s easy to see why the Ancient Hawaiians believed the spirits of their ancestors manifested themselves in the natural world as deities called ‘aumakua.
I’m a 21st century woman of the world, all grown up (or so I claim), but this sight shook me.
In front of what seemed to be two spectral glowing eyes, I felt very small.
Suddenly the Big Island seemed much more than a dot in the Pacific Ocean. It felt like its own alternate universe.
Ah, the lights of civilization!
I was very glad to get down the mountain toward the lights of Waimea and, beyond it, Kailua-Kona.
I’ve noticed that I can’t stick to the topic, sunset moment. I tend to digress from peaceful thoughts that relax, rechange and re-energize. Those of you who know me in real life will recognize the tendency to digress.
Instead of focusing on peaceful sunset moments, I sometimes want to talk about bad things. In the post about Geronimo, I digressed onto injustice. In the post about the economy, I digressed onto the role of the pricing system as the only signal in our economy, which systematically overlooks that which is truly priceless in life.
Ironically, these two posts are the most viewed of everything I’ve written.
This tells me it’s right, not wrong, to digress. And today, looking at photographs of sunset moments from around the world, I figured out why.
Stopping to look at nature takes us out of ourselves. It erases that familiar, self-centered focus. It makes us think of how we are all connected here on this fragile Spaceship Earth. These feelings make me want to reach out, beyond the struggle for the daily bread, out find ways to repair the fabric that connects us all.
Sometimes, when I struggle to explain what I’ve learned from Hawaii, I turn to the words of an American clergyman from 19th century Boston.
No, not a missionary.
As a Unitarian, William Henry Channing (May 25, 1810 – December 23, 1884) would not have shared the theology of the missionaries to Hawai’i.
Nor did he ever set foot in the Hawaiian Kingdom. When William Henry Channing finally left the mainland for an island lifestyle, he headed east across the Atlantic to the Very, Very Big Island and settled in London.
Here is his best-known writing, a recipe for a life well lived. It reminds me of my friends on the Big Island.
This Is My Symphony
“To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich;
to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart;
“For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.”
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When Europeans established a permanent settlement in America, they did so in Massachusetts. With the Boston Tea Party and the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, Massachusetts was the first focus of colonial rebellion. Massachusetts sent the whaling fleets out to the far Pacific Islands, and exported its brand of worship as far as Hawai’i. If you’ve seen the churches in Lahaina, you’ve seen the churches in Nantucket.
My mainland base state is very much in the news this week, for several reasons.
The statue of Paul Revere in the Boston Public Garden is illuminated by the setting sun
First and foremost, Massachusetts is in the news because it’s election day — the special election to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Edward Kennedy’s death last August.
The state’s Attorney General was supposed to have been a shoe-in, but the Republicans are putting up a fight to the death, hoping to break the Democratic 60-vote working majority in the senate. Among other things, Republican Scott Brown says the national health care overhaul can benefit from lessons learned in the Republican-led Massachusetts health care reform.
The BBC news has called this election a referendum on President Obama’s first year in office. NPR sees seven issues at stake in the Massachusetts special election, including another opportunity for the anti-tax Tea Party to upset Obama’s apple cart.
Second, Obama himself was in Boston on Monday — Martin Luther King Day — to stump for Democrat Martha Coakley. The president doesn’t like to make race an issue, but the local press could not resist. They dug up a new twist, the singular status of Newton, Massachusetts. When Setti Warren was sworn in as mayor earlier this month, Newton became the only city in America to have a black mayor as well as a black governor, Deval Patrick, and black president. Amid the self congratulations flying around the state, no one thought to contact the original citizens of Massachusetts, the Wampanoag, for commentary.
Third, the People’s Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts is fulminating over the Copenhagen Climate Conference, which Cantabrigians have deemed a cop-out. Cambridge City Councilor Henriette Davis participated as an envoy to COP15, the “environmental Woodstock of this generation.” Because more than half the world’s populations lives in cities, local governments can play a key role in encouraging energy conservation. Cambridge, MA is holding itself to high account. The city has convened the first session of the Cambridge Emergency Climate Congress. Why the emergency? Back in 2002, Cambridge adopted a Climate Protection Plan to reduce its carbon footprint 20% below the 1990 level by 2010 (a goal in line with the Kyoto Protocol). However, as stated in the CECC materials, the city’s greenhouse emissions were 27% higher than those in 1990. Oops!
Last but not least, there is a fresh chapter in the Turn-On/Tune-In/Drop-Out story. Don Lattin has a new book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club, that chronicles how four Boston men invented a new American age with magic mushrooms and LSD. As reported in the Boston Phoenix (online next week) reported:
Though it imported most of its principles and philosophies from such Eastern cultures as those in India and Tibet, as well as from south of the border in Mexico, the revolutionary mind/body/spirit movement that has so transformed American and Western society actually got its start in uptight 1960s Greater Boston.
It was here, in buttoned-down Cambridge and in suburban Newton (again!) that four men — Timothy Leary, a Harvard research psychologist; Richard Alpert (better known as Ram Dass, the persona he adopted after an enlightening trip to India), a Harvard psychology professor; Huston Smith, an MIT philosophy professor; and Andrew Weil (now blessed by Oprah), then a Harvard medical-school student — launched what eventually became the counterculture movement.
Through their trailblazing experimentation, with (and proselytizing of) hallucinogenic drugs, this “Harvard Psychedelic Club” influenced everything from the music, films and literature of the Western canon, to the rise of the Silicon Valley technology sector, to what we eat, to how we exercise and how we make love, and to the very psychological perceptions of ourselves.
Thought you’d like to know!
Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, a great place to watch the sun set and to see the municipal light show
My mother believed in Animal Spirits. Not the kind that animate the financial markets from time to time, but the kind that many people in Hawai’i would recognize as ‘aumakua.
Yesterday I was in the city for an important and difficult business negotiation. I was not feeling particularly confident until this sparrow hawk flew into the tree in the back yard.
I recalled that the Hawaiian ‘io is a very powerful ‘aumakua, so I wondered how to interpret this extremely unusual event.
Was the hawk a form of ancestral guidance, an omen, or some kind of signal from the universe to pay attention. I rushed upstairs to look into this online.
When I sat down at my desk, there on my 22-inch screen were six panes of Excel, comparing the details of different financial scenarios. Before I could get back into the browser to Google, there was a sharp sizzling noise. My my large monitor shorted out. and I was left with the small lap-top screen.
I felt an overwhelming sense of panic. There was no way I could finish preparing for the meeting without my big screen.
As I counted to ten to calm down, I had a eureka moment where intuition took over. I realized that win-win principles and the overall structure of a transaction are more important than any one detail.
Then, I realized something else. It doesn’t matter whether a hawk in the back garden is an ‘aumakua or not. A hawk sighting, a beautiful sunset, or any kind of natural moment is priceless — if it makes you stop for a moment and get in touch with your intuition.
There is no way to happiness,
happiness is the way.
You should be happy right in the here and now.
There is no way to enlightenment.
Enlightenment should be right here and right now.
The moment when you come back to yourself, mind and body together,
fully present, fully alive, that is already enlightenment.
You are no longer a sleepwalker.
You are no longer in a dream.
You are fully alive.
You are awake.
Enlightenment is there.
And if you continue each moment like that,
enlightenment becomes deeper.
More powerful.
There is no way to enlightenment,
enlightenment is the way.
vietnamese zen buddhist monk – thich nhat hanh – 2007
Canadians love the white stuff. I remember this limerick from my childhood on the Island of Montreal:
There was a young girl from Quebec
Buried in snow to her neck
When asked, “Are you friz?”
She replied, “Yes I is,
But we don’t call this cold in Quebec.”
Mahalo to my dear friends Mike and Marianne, hosts of a Canadian New Year celebration on Vancouver Island in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.
Skiing, Vancouver Island style, is available on Mount Washington, one of the snowiest places in Canada. Locals are still talking about the winter of 1995, when Mt. Washington had the most snow of any ski area in the world.
I particularly enjoy skiing Mount Washington because it offers some wonderful sunset moments from the mountain access road. Because of obstructed sight lines, it is often difficult to find a place to see the sun set in the mountains.
Vancouver Island is temperate at sea level
Five thousand feet up the mountain, the weather is totally different. It is fun, though a little scary, to ski in white-out conditions.
Mountain weather can change quickly. The sun came out, then disappeared again behind snow clouds.
A sunset moment captured on the road down the mountain after a day on the slopes.
December 25 fell right between two storm systems in Vermont.
Christmas day dawned clear and bright, with a dusting of snow on the conifers and a rime of frost on the trees.
We woke up to the sound of blue jays fighting over berries clinging to the tree by the kitchen window.
Deer had meandered across the lawn.
Soon we were out of the house and into the winter wonderland.
With my sister, brother-in-law and nephews to provide encouragement, I enjoyed the first day on the slopes since breaking my leg skiing in February. I had such a moment of gratitude, just to be alive! We stayed on the mountain till the sun was low in the sky, then drove home in the winter sunset.
Deer track on the front lawn
Back on skis for the first time since breaking my leg in February
Sunset moment on the slopes...time for the last run
Heading back from Starbucks shortly before sunset, a cup of hot cocoa in my hand, I caught something fishy out of the corner of my eye.
What is that white stuff on the tree branches? Is it snow?
An unseasonably warm December has the flowering trees breaking into bloom in Boston
No, that white stuff isn’t snow. The unseasonably warm weather has caused the flowering trees on Beacon Hill and in the Boston Common to mistake their moment of awakening. With the first day of winter less than two weeks away, the trees are breaking dormancy and beginning to flower. That means tender new shoots will be exposed to the killing frost, and we’ll have no flowers next spring.
California weather was funereal this weekend, cold and rainy. And, something I haven’t seen this in 25 years of regular travel to California, there was even a dusting of snow on top of the Santa Cruz Mountains, slowing traffic on CA Route 17 from Silicon Valley to the ocean.
I took a morning constitutional around the HP Campus yesterday. The sun rose and, in a single moment, turned the sky from purple to blue. I saw a work crew sweeping up golden Ginko leaves, scattered like so many coins on the sidewalks. It’s hard to growl about non-native species when they move your to commit spontaneous acts of poetry:
Tidying the streets
City workers sweep fall leaves
Robbing nature’s gold
In Los Gatos, the city has planted equally inappropriate sugar maples. These never fail to bring a smile to my face, remind me as they do of my small kid days on the island of Montreal. This time I had my camera handy.
Incandescent foliage of the northern sugar maple lights up the streets of Los Gatos, CA
And of course this brings my thoughts to one of most spectacularly inappropriate sites of all, pointsettias the size of tool-sheds in East Hawai’i.
Whenever I wish all non-native species were back where they belong, I never imagine a Hawai’i where all the pointsettias are back in Mexico.
Poinsettias seen en route to Hilo on the Big Island of Hawai’i
Why does a desk-bound 62-year old lawyer go diving for abalone?
Brian Dinday answered this question in his last Perspective on San Francisco’s KQED Public Radio.
By stepping away from the desk and into the blue, Brian renewed his zest for life. “The views alone renew me as the road snakes along the coast,” he said. “The moment we plunge into the glowing turquoise waters, it feels like coming home.”
Brian explained it this way: “It’s just so beautiful down there, so full of life, so peaceful…rocked quietly by the liquid wind.”
As a husband, father, defender, pillar of the community and abalone diver, Brian lived richly and generously.
In what the poet Longfellow called the “bivouac of life,” Brian lived heroically. Even in death, doing what he loved, Brian Dinday is an example of of all a man could be.
We are pausing for a moment at sunset today to remember and celebrate Brian Dinday.
To my all my friends who love the Pacific: Next time you’re rocked by the liquid wind, next time you’re watching the sun set into the ocean, take a moment to remember one of us. Aloha.
A Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
‘Life that shall send A challenge to its end, And when it comes, say, ‘Welcome, friend.”
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST
I
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
II
Life is real—life is earnest—
And the grave is not its goal:
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
III
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destin’d end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
IV
Art is long, and time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
V
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
VI
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act—act in the glorious Present!
Heart within, and God o’er head!
VII
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
VIII
Footprints, that, perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwreck’d brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
IX
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Sometimes just one moment is enough to wipe the emotional slate clean. Catching a glimpse of a magnificent view can wipe out mundane thoughts, replace worry with wonder.
Imagine driving home from work and coming around the corner just as the sun sets? And there’s no traffic behind you to prevent you from pulling over suddenly to capture the sunset moment with the camera? Perfect.
Returning from Hilo to Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawai'i, I was descending the western slop of Mauna Kea just at the right time. This sunset, captured from the Saddle Road, made the day perfect.
Some days it’s hard to imagine anything one would miss about the mainland.
But then there are the trees.
I’m filled with gratitude when I see the magnolias in spring, the white birches in summer, the sugar maple’s blaze of autumnal gold, or the bare branches of an elm tree silhouetted against a winter sunset. These are moments of wonder.
Papery bark on a birch, one of my favorite trees
* * *
May all I say and all I think
be in harmony with Thee,
God within me, God beyond me,
Maker of the Trees
In 1970, an Aquinnah Wampanoag Elder named Wamsutta Frank James was invited to speak in Boston at a state dinner celebrating the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim landing.
Reviewing a draft of his remarks, Massachusetts officials made drastic cuts. James had planned a candid accounting of the Wampanoag point of view. His draft was censored beyond recognition.
James never delivered the censored version. Instead, he gathered Native Americans from around the country the statue of Massasoit on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth hear his unedited remarks. He said:
“This is a time of celebration for you–celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back–of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back on what happened to my people…
Massasoit welcomed and befriended the settlers of the Plimoth Plantation. This action by Massasoit was perhaps our biggest mistake. We the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the withe man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.”
James declared Thanksgiving 1979 as the first National Day of Mourning. At noon on Thanksgiving Day 2009, the United American Indians of New England (UAINE) held their 30th Annual National Day of Mourning, followed by a protest march through Plymouth.
But what about those of us with blood on both sides?
We can take inspiration from Mashpee Wampanoag tribeswoman Paula Peters. Peters has two daughters who are both Wampanoags and Mayflower Descendents.
Paula Peters serves as director of public relations for Plimoth Plantation, a bicultural museum offers that powerful personal encounters with history built on thorough research about the Wampanoag People and the Colonial English community in the 1600s.
In her keynote address Peters acknowledged that the hands of time cannot be turned back. She challenged the gathering to be “responsible for the future.”
In particular, she referred to the planning process for the town of Plymouth’s 400th anniversary in 2020:
This time you can be sure that the Wampanoag story will not be neglected, or censored and will instead told with dignity. I can actually envision a day when a “National Day of Mourning” will no longer be necessary as acknowledgement of our history from a balanced perspective will bring closure to old wounds.
Acknowledging the contribution of every group enriches us all, Peters pointed out, saying:
We live in a nation where people have flocked from around the world for freedom and opportunity and dispersed into a melting pot of cultural diffusion but for some stubborn crystals of true matter. We are, each of us, people who refuse to relinquish the significance of our ancestry and instead cherish the preservation of the legacy of those who went before us.
Mahalo to Paula Peters for an inspiring idea: Every one of us carries ancestry of significance, and can bring “true matter” forward into the future. Amen to that!
We can also take inspiration from Peter Gomes, a nationally-recognized Baptist preacher and a Harvard Divinity School professor. Gomes breaks the mold. He’s an African-American who grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts. This self described Black Yankee is a member of the Pilgrim Society and the Old Colony Club. He’s a Republican and gay.
He’s also a guy with a sense of humor.
On Thanksgiving Day, Robin Young of NPR’s Here and Now spoke with Professor Gomes about his connection to the Pilgrims of Plymouth. To Gomes, the Puritans set an example in the bravery required to find one’s own truth.
He spoke some very interesting words about the power of choice:
Don’t deprive yourself of this great inheritance, which belongs to us all…
I didn’t feel this great divide (between Anglo Saxons and African Americans). I felt that these Pilgrims were the first citizens of the town I live in, and I felt an obligation to find out as much about them as I could.
I claimed them as my heritage… I may not have belonged to them, but they belonged to me.”
Gomes encourages us to seek out, understand and adopt the best parts of our shared heritage. I believe he’s referring to what Paula Peters called the “true matter”.
The BBC Natural History Unit Film, Hawai’i: Message in the Waves, shows how Native values can be adopted. As the filmmakers’ site says:
Although the documentary is from a Hawaiian perspective it is really a global film. Because of their size, location and social history, the Hawaiian Islands represent a microcosm of the planet and are in a unique position to tell all of us where we are going wrong and what we can do to help put things right.
In the film, Hawaiian teacher and Captain, Charles Moore, talks about the marine debris that litters the Pacific ocean and the dangers it poses to the albatross. In a particularly poignant scene, one of his young students examines the albatross on Midway Island.
This is very difficult to watch. But it makes me hopeful that young people can learn from the wisdom of older cultures.
As the saying goes in Hawai’i, we must learn to live like we’re in a canoe. An idea or an action by one affects us all. Today, Thanksgiving, is a good day to meditate on this idea in a sunset moment.
What is your favorite place to photograph the sunset?
I’ve said many times that a magical sunset moment can occur anywhere, even in a big city in the winter, and I’ll reaffirm that now. But my very favorite place in the whole world to watch the sun set is on the Big Island of Hawai’i.
Challenging myself to name just one spot on Hawaii’s Big Island as the number one sunset moment photography venue, my mind went blank.
I’ve photographed memorable sunsets in many places on the Big Island. Atop Mauna Kea. From the lanai of Glenn the Astronomer’s house in Waikoloa. From the brewery’s auxiliary conference room, a/k/a my business partner Keith’s lanai in Kailua-Kona. From Hapuna Beach. From Kawaihae. From the Honokohau Marina and Small Boat Harbor.
To assuage my curiousity, I went back and looked through my photographs. Over and over there appeared photos from the side of the Kohala Mountain Road, Route 250, just after it forks outside Waimea.
One reason I stop to take photos here is sheer frequency. I’m often passing this intersection returning from the brewery in Hilo to visit friends in Waimea or Waikoloa. But that doesn’t explain it fully.
My friends know how often I succumb to the magnetic pull of sunset in that spot. More often than not, I turn northwest, away from the waiting pau hana drinks and pupus, toward the setting sun.
What captivates me is the uniquely soft quality of the sunset in this particular spot on the Big Island of Hawai’i. The sunset is subtle, but it takes up the entire color wheel, plus silver and gold. To me, it’s heaven on earth, just for a moment or two every day.
I would be very interested in your comments on the best places you have found for photographing those sunset moments. Mahalo
I first learned about the Cloud Appreciation Society through a story in The Financial Times. According to founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney. “Contemplating clouds,” he said, “is the perfect antidote to the stresses of modern-day life.” I agree. Cloud contemplation is like taking a sunset moment in the middle of the day. Both enable one to relax, recharge and reconnect.
Cloud contemplation is very similar to taking a sunset moment in another respect. “One of the good things about clouds is that you don’t have to be somewhere special – they’re there for everyone,” he says. “You just have to have a view on the sky. It doesn’t have to be somewhere spectacular – it could be a tower block in the middle of London.” Right on! The John Hancock building in Boston (pictured above) is locally famous for reflecting and blending in with the clouds.
Mahalo to Gavin Pretor-Pinney for his wonderful (and wonderfully small and portable) book, The Cloud Identification Handbook. It is such fun to know more about what you’re looking at up in the sky, imagining how the earth might look from space, meditating or just daydreaming. One of these days I’ll figure out which kinds of afternoon clouds augur for the most spectacular sunsets.
My favorite cloud image was captured on Block Island, Rhode Island. But what kind of cloud is it?
Pretor-Pinney and the team have done a great job with the Cloud Appreciation Society web site.
To tempt you to take a look, here is the The Manifesto of the Cloud Appreciation Organization:
WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.
We think that they are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.
We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.
We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of a person’s countenance.
Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked.
They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.
Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save on psychoanalysis bills.
And so we say to all who’ll listen:
Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!
Amen!
Here’s an idea from one of the forums on that site. A member of the society, brainstorming subject matter for a short film, plans “to make huge signs saying “LOOK UP” and put them round London to get people to stop being so self absorbed with their own train of thought and lift their heads to see the bigger picture!”
My friend Keith photographed these clouds above Mauna Loa from the Saddle Road on the Big Island of Hawai'i
I was in the right place at the right moment to enjoy a moonrise this month, and with a camera in my hands at that! Last month, I missed seeing the full moon rise.
I knew the moon was due to rise very soon after sunset, and I turned my attention back to my work “just for a moment. ” Aaargh! Multitasking in between email, Twitter and Powerpoint, I missed the once-a-month spectacle.
The harvest moon Harvest moon bright in the dark cloudy skies
Ironically, I had been working on a presentation for a client. The topic: social media. My conclusion: it’s human issues, like organizational inertia, that constrain adoption by marketing departments in large organizations. Moreover, at an individual level, not everyone thrives in a continuous mode of interruptions. Certainly not me, at least not without getting outside, even for a few moments, for a break at sunset or moonrise. Engaging in an online social dialog seems to demand a balancing activity that’s grounding, rooted in the natural physical world.
Next month, maybe I’ll get my act together to be out there with a tripod, and try some of readers’ photography suggestions.
Yesterday the mainland “fell back” to daylight savings time, giving us an extra hour of sleep in the morning. Now Hawai’i is only 5 hours behind the East Coast, not 6 hours.
New England has had a particularly beautiful fall foliage season thanks to the abundant rain this summer. Some say it’s the best in living memory. You can’t take a bad photo even with an iPhone.
I wanted to take a moment to show my friends on the Big Island a little bit of the reason why I like to be back here for a few weeks in the fall. It’s so beautiful!
The trees blaze with color even as summer flowers like geraniums and roses continue to bloom. We’re still wearing shorts and slippahs. The cats chase falling leaves till the sun sets.
For now, life is like a dream. But not for long, I fear, as the cold is coming on…
The Baker Library at Harvard
Who says you can't take a good photo with an iPhone?
The pond in the Boston Public Garden
Poliahu chases leaves till her head spins... and my head spins!
Anyone with who owns a black cat is entitled to a little craziness on Halloween. This post is off topic, not about a sunset moment at all. But October is, after all, the season of trick or treat.
Last year around this time I adopted a black cat. The folks at the shelter gave me the hard sell, explaining that a black cat is only 50% as likely to be adopted as a cat of any other color.
Among his many virtues, my Khensu is a dead ringer for Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things. Seen from different angles, he resembles several of the mythical beasts.
A Wild Thing at Rest
Moishe (L) and Bernard the Bull (R), two of the original Wild Things, from the book by Maurice Sendak, Where The Wild Things Are
..
Amazingly, despite his resemblance to the round-headed Moishe, Khensu is also able to pose as Bernard the Bull, the Thing on the right.
A Wild Thing in Action
The book has been made into a rather dark movie directed by Spike Jonze.
Director Spike Jonz interpreted the Wild Things for the big screen
In his rebellious moments, Khensu resembles a Carol, the Hollywood-kine Wild Thing.
Khensu as stunt double for a Hollywood Wild Thing
Thank heavens, the resemblance is only skin deep. Underneath that black fur, Khensu is a ray of sunshine.
Barak Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize has met with cheers and jeers around the world. Most people don’t believe he deserves the accolade. With only the Beer Summit on his peace resume, it may have been a mistake to have accepted the award.
Admittedly, I’m not the coolest head. Personally, I haven’t forgiven Obama for the political expedient of dissing the Dalai Lama in order to placate China.
Tibetan protesters in retreat in New York City. Obama reduced these grown men to tears.
But, as the furore has died down, poets have been making sense of the big questions, “Why Obama? Why Now?”
Their insights have opened my heart to seeing things a different way. I encourage you to take a moment to think through their insights.
To the ‘09 Nobel Peace Prize Committee
Your recent Peace Prize selection
Has been met with a great many jeers
And suggestions that you, the Committee,
Had put away too many beers
But I feel quite sure that my mother,
Who’s been dead for a number of years,
Would approve of your decision, thinking
Maybe you really are seers,
And, glancing skyward, say in Yiddish,
“From your mouths to God’s ears.”
-Appeared in Myles’ Musings on The Beacon Hill Times editorial page on October 27, 2009
These two poems capture the aspirational quality of the award. As expressed in the press release describing its justification, the Committee selected Obama for creating a new climate in international relations.
America’s Suite Heart
The President’s suite
An oval office of peace
Commander and Chief
Kathy Paysen’s poem in particular makes me think that the Nobel Peace Prize award will matter in the end, however “ill deserved” it is in 2009.
In a world where, as the Nobel Committee reminds us, “dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts,” it may well be impossible to discuss winning a war in quite the same way in the Oval Office. I’d like to think the discussion will more and more often focus on catalyzing a peace.
This reminds me of another poem — an old favorite, not one of the new ones written as a reaction to the Peace Prize.
Of History and Hope
We have memorized America,
how it was born and who we have been and where.
In ceremonies and silence we say the words,
telling the stories, singing the old songs.
We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
Williams’ poem made me think of Obama’s Peace Prize as a kind of a dare from the rest of the world. Not just to Obama, but to all Americans.
What kind of country are we, and how do we want to be remembered? Then I went back and read the press release again. There it is in black and white: “The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that ‘Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges’.” Finally, I can see what’s been there all along.
The other night I was driving from the brewery in Hilo to Keith’s house in Kailua-Kona.
I first learned about the Cloud Appreciation Society through a story in 
