out the window

Well, Honolulu to Holliston is quite a change, but I made a soft landing. The plane was completely packed, since Hawaii instituted a strict two-week quarantine the day I left, basically kicking out all tourists. The woman I sat next to was fully and professionally masked, and was wiping down her seat area with a chlorox sheet. She asked me if  wanted one, and I said sure. Then she asked me if I was sick. I didn't think to ask was she.
  But when we parted ways  said, "Is this where we exchange phone numbers in case one of us gets sick?"
  "No," she said!
There were loud teenagers en route home from their semester in Australia and a screaming baby who the father walked up and down the aisles with his butt hanging out. The father, not the baby. He was a prince, though. The father.The baby was a princess.

My seatmate's selfie

My selfie

goodbye to all this

 I have been able to check in on line for my flight tomorrow, so now I am trying to clean up and put my little house back the way my hostess left it. Sorry to flee, but everyone seems to think I will be better off on the continent. And I was just remembering my pidgen  da kine. Aloha oy.

nowhere to run, baby

Well, like I said yesterday, the folk on Block Island don't want me. I doubt those in Missouri do either, especially since I'm from New York. I remember the cowboy who said, "The city people are gonna come down here and take our food." My plumbers in Missouri agreed to turn on my water "since no one has been in the house" and my friends in Thomasville said gas was cheap and to bring my own drinking water and food. Last year they would have offered me water from their well. Frank and Dianne are holed up too.
  On the brighter side, Black Horizon. Well, the name isn't bright, but the fact of its composition is. My granddaughter Camilla has composed a piece that she hopes others will contribute to and share. She has worked on it for quite a while—see in-progress video—and in this time of quarantine has finished and put it out there. Please share the Black Horizon link with any musicians you know. She would be so very happy.

nodistance v distance

Hanging with friends for St. Pat's

Jimmy got in one last luau before the river flooded.

Two nights ago I was celebrating St. Patrick's Day at Wranglers with a group of friends. Last night I got a message that Kauai was instituting a curfew from 9 pm to 5 am in the likely vain hope that they can get people here to stay out of trouble. The mayor also asked that no tourists arrive and that all nonessential flights be cancelled. I got a message from Hawaiian Airlines that my flight times had been changed (for the same day in April). They asked that I not call or go to the airport for three days if I wanted to change those reservations. Then I saw the "y'all better get home" message from the President. I'm not sure if he knows that Hawaii is part of the U.S.

Davy, who remembers me from childhood (his).

Jun. I just liked his beard.

 Hanging out with new friends and old despite floods and incipient famine and disease and lack of toilet paper seemed fine until I couldn't be sure I could get home. But what home? The folks on Block Island don't want me, I am sure. I don't want to go to New York right now, nor do I want to endanger my family members. Perhaps the best thing would be to fly into Boston, get into my truck without nodding to my sister and drive directly to Missouri, where I can hermit until known to be safe.
   Thank you for helping me think that through. I am flying to Boston on Sunday.
   Oy and aloha.

A neighbor's yard.

locusts soon?

The thoughtful bucket

A steady torrential rain yesterday filled my landlady's house with ankle deep water. Lakes formed in yards, streets were swamped. And that was just rain. The river flooded too. We were protected by a levee, but upstream was bad. The dome where I stayed last year is on stilts and became an island. The Cassels were flooded up to their doorsteps. Jimmy fortunately got the horses and mules to high ground before the worst of it. The river has subsided now, but it's supposed to rain again today. The mountain it springs from is, after all, one of the ten wettest places on earth.
   My landlady seemed more concerned that I wouldn't be able to get to the toilet without getting drenched. She thoughtfully provided me with a pink plastic raincoat and a bucket, just in case.
  Check out Rosetta Tharpe's Didn't It Rain.

The pathway to the toilet. Norma's son-in-law later trenched to get water away from the house.

the bifurcated life

Vaccination

I am torn. In a way, I long for New York, to be with my peeps as the planet culls. But I have peeps everywhere. Today I talked to Chien-Chi, stuck in Austria and suffering even more racism than usual. I talked to Donna, stuck in New York City but rather enjoying a forced timeout for creative work. I emailed with Jed, trying to make it through customs from Mexico in Houston. Shared black humor with friends in the Ozarks and Sausalito. Texted with Hannah, for whom life has utterly changed, with school cancelled and business disrupted—and of course the background that we're all dealing with: the threat of death sooner rather than later. Then I texted with friends here on Kauai, for whom the reality of two cases on-island has not sunk in. At all.
  What do I do? I will take the advice I gave Hannah earlier: Stay light on your feet, do your best, and be ready to change plans.
  

This site is always up on my computer.

hermetically sealed

A picturesque traffic jam.

 It's a very odd feeling. I spend most of my time alone in my electronic cottage, getting reports from all over. Schools closed, Broadway closed, Everest closed, sports closed, flights closed. It's a good time to be a writer or a nerd. But what if the servers failed (of both types)? Anyway, I felt the need to get out and see what Kauai was doing.

My fave section at Walmart.

Walmart (the only one on the island) was packed. People were wiping their hands with the Purell sheets at the door, and toilet paper was almost sold out. That was not uncommon in Kauai 50 years ago when I was here—it is an island, after all—along with rice. I did not check the rice section at Walmart, but they still had at Big Save in Waimea. OTC medications seemed to be going fast.
   But oh man, the cars were not. There are so many cars on this island that you can't get anywhere. I ventured toward the north side of the island, but when I saw the stop and go traffic I turned around and headed back to the "unpopulated" side. It took me an hour to get a couple miles (hence the top picture). Friends tell me that it is even worse at rush hour. Most of these cars belong to people who live here, though there are plenty of tourists from the mainland USA as well. And it is the politest traffic jam you can imagine. Ever other car lets someone turn ahead of them. After all, there's only one main road. . .
   I was very happy to get back to hermiting in my little electronic cottage and to see the myna birds roosting  at Cassel's Castle, at the end of the road.

The view from Cassels'

polihale

 The road to Polihale is long and bumpy, as is only appropriate for the road that leads to the House of Death. Hawaiians used to be buried here in the dunes. They must have thought they had died and gone to heaven. No, wait, they already lived in heaven. Anyway Polihale is the closest to heaven I've been, the the waves deserve the the House of death title. Enter at your own risk. I used to, 50 years ago, but can't even make it across the expanse of soft sand without destroying my knee, never mind into the water.
   My stepson, Adam, seems to me making headway as the defense to an accused Russian hacker. Here is the latest. And some background.

It's a very wide beach. I lived on it with Laura and two gay guys for several months.

papaya king

 AJ brought me a couple more papayas from their tree. I had to reject them because of the wealth I already had, gifts of my friend Owen and his brothers. Besides the three by the microwave , there are two in the fridge and a couple in the car. It better not be papaya I'm allergic to!

Owen recovering from a mean flu. But not The Mean Flu.

in solitary

Keia (not sure of spelling) has special needs. "She can't talk yet," her brother explains. But she can sign and she sure can use an iPhone.

 It's an interesting kind of solitude to be alone in the middle of a big family. The grandkids have been told not to bother "Auntie." And since I busted out in an allergic rash a few days ago, that probably goes double for fear of contagion. (Let's hope it's not mango flowers I'm allergic to.)  But they garden and sweep around me, hang out laundry, come home from school and work, listen to Elvis, watch TV and talk quietly to each other while I sit at my computer reading about dire disease and stock market crash. And putting aloe vera and coconut oil on my rash, wondering whether salt water and sun is good or bad for it and stalling.  Still haven't begun writing, which is why I've been blogging so consistently. A foretaste of quarantine.

It was hard to get A.J to stand still for a second. Also Keia before the phone was introduced. He's a bright kid, and he has to chase after his sister.

Keia instructed me to pose for her, including telling me to make the shaka sign. She wanted to take a lot more pictures, but I asked her not to. "Uses up the memory," AJ explained.

magical or mundane

So this post is about cropping pictures. I skidded to a stop on my way up the canyon to a fab wok cookout at Cassells' place when I saw the rainbow. This may be rainbowland, but on the dry side of the island, not so much. I was in the middle of the road, and the thing was fading, so I didn't really take my time making the snap. I took three pix, and the rainbow was strongest in this frame. When I got back to the shack, I cropped out the road and the levee and the car and the trailers, to leave only the rainbow and the canyon. But you know what? I kind of like the full frame that marries the magical with the mundane. That's how life is. What do you think?

scenery

Kikiaola Boat Harbor

 Posting up some beauty shots here, in case you think I never leave the shack. The woman who was living with her son in her BMW SUV at Kikiaola Boat Harbor is still there from a year ago. The car is looking more beat. Haven't seen the woman yet, I forget her name, but she already looked pretty beat.

Kekaha, second ditch beach

the facilities

 At The House Under the Mango Tree, you have to go outside, put on your slippers, and walk across the yard to the bathrooms.

 It troubles me that they appear to be furbished up and not used by the people of the household while I'm here. I will have to talk to the lady of the house about that. Also she won't accept my money. I will take my sister's suggestion and enclose it in a thank you card. It seems to me she's spent far more on fitting the place out than I'm paying her.

under the mango tree

There have been requests for pictures of the shack, as I have been calling it. But I will have to choose  a new name, because it's a beautifully built (by my friend Jimmy) new structure.

Mind you, it isn't large, but it has most of the mod cons  crammed into the space: sink, fridge, microwave, rice cooker, toaster, etc. All of it clearly bought new, advertised by tags carefully left on.

My landlady, Norma, clearly cares about decor as much as I do. Birds and Elvis are repeated motifs. And doilies. She works nights in the kitchen at the local grocery store where I buy all my poke and papaya. She loves plants, too.  That's the outdoor shower attached to her house she's standing in front of, next to the steps from the—Bird House? The myna birds are certainly loud enough. And the roosters.

Norma is from the Philippines originally. She lives in her house with her daughter and son-in-law and their two kids. She apologizes profusely for her English, which is quite good. And she apologizes even more for the fact that the (flush) toilet is not in the shack, but in its own separate room with a  moon.

 So here I am, rght here, right now blogging in the house under the mango tree—Bird House? Please feel free to suggest alternative names.

the most beautiful place in the world

It was raining when I landed in Kauai, and then it was dark. And I couldn't figure out how to turn on the lights in my rental truck, and then I couldn't figure out how to turn it off or start it up. keyless. In fact I could barely remember how to work my phone. And my duffel bag went to Maui instead of Kauai, and I couldn't put on my flip flops (slipper, here) or aloha shirt or like anything.
  But Jimmy met me, and I went to bed, and then I woke up and looked out at the sun and a papaya tree.

en route

black history

 In honor of Black History Month—and Flip's last Black History Month at the American Program Bureau, where he has represented Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela and many others for many years (and btw why is Black History Month the shortest month?)—I present the work of my grandchildren on the subject. Isaac drew pictures of a bus pre and post segregation. In the post, he is the kid in the back of the bus. Camilla chose to do a project about Queen Nanny, a leader of the Maroons in Jamaica. I assume she was drawn to the topic having spent some time in Jamaica herself. And she waxed quite irate about the lack of info about the leader. I am just proud to be Mimi's Nini, possibly named for the First Mother.

getting the party started

Man of the hour author Adam Cohen and Hope arrived after the chairs.

 I got a call from Barb on the street. I shouted, "Yes! Yes!" Before she could even ask if I had gotten the pictures. She had found some chairs on the street she thought I might want for the Goose, and she was so very right. She is my street-find curator, and the only one from whom I will accept "projects." They are always worth it. She was only a block away, and Ed had just gotten here, so we ran down as she guarded the hoard. Yes, I'm gonna have to recover the seats, but hell yeah!

dress appropriately

My clothing is going to a place it will feel at home, the land of aloha. Looks like I need to pare down the stack to pack, though.

i smell a rat

Fortunately, the Rat was not outside my building or any of my usual haunts. Presumably it struck fear into whoever it was ratting out.
   Meanwhile, a couple things.
Hannah's fame continues to increase as part of FedEx's promo.
Barrett's childhood home, Weir Farm, gets its own quarter from the US Mint, featuring a painter with palette. You can go to the launch and get your own quarter on April 7.
   I am engaging in the usual spate of last-minute entertainments and tasks before leaving for warmer shores on Monday. Please encourage me to work when i get there! I don't have a problem with the playing part.

two-headed monster

It's interesting being in someone else's mind for any period of time. Editing is like that—you're channeling someone else's sensibility. So for the past week, Donna and have been side-by-side editing captions to pictures that comprise her life's work. Being in her head is challenging. Donna's world is violent, unsafe, oppressive, futuristic, fatalistic, polyamorous, patriarchal and relentlessly political. Except when it isn't—which really keeps you on your toes. Because I don't know if you've noticed, but people aren't consistent or logical. Particularly photographers, who are primarily visual thinkers.  Or maybe just Geminis. Anyway, ask me what Donna thinks about anything, and can I tell you: Both what she thinks and the opposite that she thinks a few minutes later. Now I have to remember what I think!