Thankfulness As Promised

This list was made without forethought for order or importance. Just a thankfulness list off the top of my head in a stream of consciousness thinking.  I am thankful for:

1. As a student I used to savor the few minutes I might have each day for pleasure reading, and now I have the luxury of reading close to fifty books a year.
2. I can usually stay in my pajamas until noon if I want. Actually, on some days I can stay in my pajamas all day.
3. I can afford good coffee.
4. I love taking photographs and I can make time to do what I love.
5. I have a husband who puts up with my lack of patience.
6. While I make every effort to look good, I am thankful that it no longer bothers me how old I now look.
7. I have had the opportunity to meet so many interesting people around the world in my long life.
8. My health is stable these days.
9. My husband's health is stable these days.
10. I have grown close to my trees and birds and they tolerate me.
11. I can have clean sheets as often as I am willing to change the bedding.
12. Science
13. Chocolate
14. The wisdom of good leaders.
15. My children in my life when they have time.
16. I am thankful for blog readers and even more so for commenters.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

It Is What It Is

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the United States and like many holidays, is being viewed with less rosy eyes by its citizens.  Some see it as a time when Colonists and Native Americans came together to share the bounty of the season.  Others see it as a glorification of a false time where Europeans were at the beginning of erasing an indigenous people.

I usually see it as a day where I can make a long list of thankfulness and eat a big plate of caloric food.

I was reading one of the bloggers who wrote that she used to get "pity-invitations" on Thanksgiving after her husband passed, but she no longer gets invited on this holiday.  She usually eats alone.

Hubby and I will be doing nothing on that day. That is what I wrote. We will not be cooking turkey. We will not be traveling to a house where turkey is being cooked. We will not eat out at a restaurant where turkey is on the buffet.  I think I have some chicken thighs thawing in the fridge or if we get energetic and it is not too cold, we will harvest a few oysters.

Every other Thanksgiving our children go to their respective in-laws hours away and celebrate and this year is the other Thanksgiving.  Like many in America, they will be traveling well into the night tonight.

Hubby and I have often gone to a local Irish pub/restaurant which serves the best buffet Thanksgiving, but this year we did not get our reservations in on time!  So, we will be doing nothing special.  Maybe I will post my thankfulness list...?  Certainly, I will eat.  

I am hoping that those of you who celebrate will have good food and good conversation and some spiritual uplifting.  For all the rest of you, stay safe.

The Other Hawaiians

Some of these animals are not native and even invasive and others were once endangered but are now fairly common due to federal regulations.  There are many, many exotic birds in Hawaii that have been introduced and if I were birding on this trip I would have gone looking for them.  But I only photographed those I stumbled across in my rush to keep up with the younger adults.  All the animals were interesting.

Everyone is an art critic...found when I went for the plasticware at a lunch counter.

Gold dust day gecko (Phelsuma laticauda) native to Madagascar.  So lovely!

Perhaps a shama?

An immature shorebird of some kind or a dove?

A common Brazilian Cardinal

Asian Mongoose introduced to get rid of the rats in the sugar plantations and now a nuisance.

Monk Seal, once rarely seen on Oahu.  The small Hawaiian (French Frigate Shoals area) island that recently was washed away after the hurricane was home to over 90% of these!

Feral cats fed by misled people (unless they also are wise enough  to catch and sterilize.)

Green Turtles sunning and protected from disturbance by law...love these guys.

Nene (Branta sandvicensis) that used to be endangered and is now everywhere!

I had fun and left out the goats which I had posted in a prior blog and my photos of the wild pigs were pretty blurry.

The Other Side of the Vacation

I may have mentioned that there is racial and cultural prejudice in Aloha land. I saw it slightly when I lived there as a grad student decades ago. I was poor and young and probably missed most of it because of that and because most of my time was studying or working, not beaching or shopping. But native Hawaiians like our American Indians got bypassed in much of the money and development arena of Hawaii. Today they have a much stronger voice in halting development if they think a burial area has been disturbed.  They do have an island (generous of the white man) set aside for blood Hawaiians.

There is also poverty like anywhere else.  The authorities attempt to control the beaches from squatters and homeless, but it is an ongoing battle. Hawaii does provide shelters through churches and public venues, but like the rest of the world, there are more homeless as poverty grows. The public parks closed down for a while in an effort to move homeless elsewhere, although they claimed it was for maintenance. It does seem there are fewer homeless veterans. The State is considering establishing "safe zones" where homeless can set up and be free of being forced to move elsewhere. According to one article, the islands have over 7,000 homeless people, the highest per capita in the US and most of these on Oahu.  'Lack of affordable housing, an epidemic in the use of synthetic drugs, insufficient support for the mentally and physically ill, prisoners discharged without any safety net and people coming to Hawaii with misconceptions about opportunities and then running out of money." are the reasons for the increase in homelessness.  Still, it appears that tolerance for the homeless has lessened overall.

My kids exploring a banyan tree in downtown Honolulu.

When we walked around the tree and looked up...!

The ingeniousness of sleeping and making a home in a banyan tree must mean some marketable skills!

I do not think the woman in the photo below is necessarily homeless.  She may live in on of the houses across the road, but the photo shows how difficult it is to track tents and homeless in such a moderate climate.

Many Polynesians who are not homeless are still angry that their land has been taken from them.  They become politically active and let their arguments be known.

Taken at South Point, the southernmost tip of the United States.  The sign says "Kingdom of Hawaii is still here we never left."

We wanted to see the Captain Cook monument on the Big Island which is easily accessible by boat and not so accessible by hiking down a trail.  In case you missed your history Captain Cook was so loved by the Hawaiians, they killed him.  We naively thought we would hike the 1.8 miles each way to the sheltered cove.  Do not believe the tourist articles about this hike.  Parking is a nightmare just off the highway and room for only a half dozen cars.   The trail is NOT cleared but disappears for half a mile into 7 foot dense, tall grasses that cut the arms and legs.  Wild pigs hide and protect their young in these grasses and grunt if you come near, so make noise!  If you make it through the grasses and do not get attacked by wild pigs, you come onto open terrain and the rest of the hike is in the boiling hot sun.  Bring a few gallons of water!  Clearly, the locals could care less if you go to this monument.  We actually did not complete the hike as it just got way too hot and we were low on water!  We made it a mile and a half down and rested and headed back.  There was another family that had sent someone back up (all that way) for water!  People have been rescued from this hike.

This looks like a clear trail, but it disappears as you descend with those grasses on either side closing in over you.

I do not regret attempting the hike but opted out on another strenuous hike at the end of the trip as I had done it on my honeymoon.  ;-)

Pictures in Black

I was hot- a- lot of the time in Hawaii! I do not know why it seemed that way to me because I came from the Mid-Atlantic at the end of our hot summer and this should not have been such a change. I do not remember Hawaii being that hot when I lived there. I remember hating the cold air-conditioned stores and looking forward to being outside. But maybe my blood was warmer then as I was decades younger.  It was also more humid.

The volcano had stopped its bleeding before we arrived. There was no place day or night to be able to see glowing molten lava flowing to the sea. Decades ago we had hiked at night across an old lava flow using stone cairns and a flashlight over a mile to guide our way over an older lava flow to see the glowing fire in the distance.  But this time Pele had spent her energies and anger and retreated once again into sleep letting her long black hair flow across the land as the only remaining evidence of her power and passion.  We drove up to Volcano National Park to get close to the steaming crater.

The Southern end of the island is streaked with ancient and newer lava flows in most places.  Rock that is smooth like a river (pahoehoe) or coarse (aa) like broken glass can be seen when driving down the roads.  The reminder that all is temporary on this island is ever present.

Later in the day we hiked across the uneven lava and through "tangatanga" which is a common name for an invasive close growing shrub (cannot find the link); we startled herds of wild goats; and we almost became lost a few times before we found one of the larger fields of open lava where Hawaiians had carved many petroglyphs.  While standing in the hot sun on the open black rock, the thought that someone spent hours rubbing away the lava to create a pictograph of their life or a prayer for their life is humbling.

The small "pukas" or holes are where umbilical cords of newborn children were placed as an offering for long life.

This is the old Hawaii, far from the maddening crowd, but not too far from a few maddening tourists.