In Answer to my Question...

On the last blog I wondered if the Chiropractic office we frequented while living in Hawaii is still there. Well, here it is. 

As I write this the little town of Pahoa Hawaii is threatened by a river of molten lava. They expect it to bisect the town. 

 I've heard of fire walking, but come on...

P.S. One of these days I will complete my book of our experience in living on the Big Island. I heard yesterday that neither publishers nor agents look at anything during the months of November and December. Guess that gives me two months...

Pahoa Hawaii, the lava continues...

Could this have been our back yard?

I had never heard the word #Pahoa, or knew a town by that name existed until we moved into its vicinity. And now I am watching via Hawaii videos as a river of molten lava slowly creeps upon the quaint little town of Pahoa threatening homes and shops.  

Cemetery Road our passage to the Transfer Station, where we dumped all that extraneous stuff we found on our newly purchased property, has been cut off already.

I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Chiropractor are still there above the dress shop with their little balcony where Baby Darling and I stood and called out the colors of the cars that streamed below. Mr. Chiropractor wanted to move off the island, but Mrs. Chiropractor said it was the first time she had a house of her own. They had built a kiln for her there, and there she worked as an artist making tremendous ceramic wall hangings and tiles. Their office and home was a virtual art gallery.

Across the street there was a Cash and Carry store where Husband Dear and I stopped one day after a Chiropractic visit and while standing in line I casually commented that I forgot to tell the Chiropractor about my over-worked sore thumb. The big burly Hawaiian man at the counter said, “Do this.” And he placed his index finger and thumb together in a circle and pushed. “Hold it for a minute,” he said. I did, and the muscles in my thumb relaxed, and it felt much better. That was Aloha. Do good without expecting anything in return.

The pizza shop on the main street made great pizza, and across the street we often frequented the Mexican restaurant that made good food, but not so good guacamole—they use the wrong kind of avocados. The kind they grow on the island are round and buttery. Someone should introduce good Haas avocados  I sincerely want those shops to survive.

There was the used book store where the proprietor was wiping down the books with #Windex to combat mold. (Take books when you go to Hawaii.) And at the South end of town there exists Kalia’s Resturant. It doesn’t look like much on the outside, but the inside is exquisite. The interior is painted red and a beautiful bar extends down one side. Every time we frequented Kalia’s a huge bouquet of Star Gazer lilies graced the entrance, and their fragrance wafted past our nostrils reminding us that we were on a land some call paradise. Their food was so good one reviewer ate there four times in one week.  Daughter loved their ribs. I loved their fish.  On the weekends they featured live music.

Some call Pahoa an eatery town. If you are ever there, go to the shopping area by Malama Market and there in a little pastry shop (left side as you enter) buy butter mochas—my mouth waters at the thought. Their mochas are made with rice flour and copious amounts of butter. They are baked in a pan then cut into squares. Besides tasting exquisite, their unusual chewy texture makes them fun to eat. (Recipe anyone?)

Greg Kahele wrote this: “I am a retired special education teacher from Colorado. I am moving to the area when I retire. I chose Pahoa specifically because the people were so friendly and sharing. A friendly young man I met told me that this was the only place he could "live in his own fur" and I decided I wanted to come to the Puna district and live in my own fur as well. Only sales pitch I needed!

Call Ruth! 

She was a big Hawaiian lady flown in from Honolulu years ago, and is accredited with stopping a lava flow before it destroyed Hilo.

From the web:

Authorities aren’t going to try to divert the flow.

"No matter how you would turn it, you would direct it toward someone's property,"

Taking precautions

The Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency has rebuilt two gravel roads to give residents escape routes from the lava flow. Power company crews are installing 70-foot-tall poles with heat resistant protection to raise cables higher off the roads.

A lei in the path

Josiah Hunt who has farm in a part of Puna that is not immediately threatened, described smelling burning grass, feeling warmth from the lava and hearing “popping and sizzling and all the methane bursts that are happening in the distance … mixed with the birds chirping and the coqui frogs.”

Hunt watched last week as the lava crept toward Pahoa and saw a woman whose house is near its path put a lei at the front of the flow. “It helps a person come to grips with the reality of the situation,” he said. “I found it to be oddly comforting in a really strange way.”

A Happy Ending

Daughter dear listed this LEGO minifigure on eBay for about a year. Then a couple of days ago a woman from Australia found it and bought it for her husband. She met him while backpacking, and thought he would get a kick out of it. Please, she said, include the story.

.

The Picture and story below is as it was listed on eBay. He is now sold.

 Success! Old Surfer Dude Werewolf made it to Australia.

On his way to Australia to surf the big waves, Bobby Beach Bum camped out on the sands of a moonlit cove. Suddenly the light of the full moon transformed this poor unsuspecting surfer dude into a terrifying Werewolf!

Determined not to let his disability get in the way of his dreams, he continues to hitchhike across the country. Sadly, not too many people will stop and give him a ride. One look at his snarly teeth and hairy hairiness and wheels squeal off into the distance. Also, it's hard to hitchhike when you don't have any thumbs.

Please help this little guy get to Australia. Anyone living in Australia will receive FREE INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING! You say you don't live in Australia? You can still help by giving him a proper home with plenty of cream rinse and chew toys.

Hope for a Better Tomorrow

During the Second World War girls back home would write to their brothers, fathers, boyfriends, husbands, and they were given the suggestions to write something cheerful.

At home the girls and women were fighting the war as were the men. They worried constantly that they would get that fateful message that their soldier boy/man was killed or maimed. Newspapers constantly barraged them with war news. Girls tried to escape by going to the movies, and there they were shown Newsreels of war horrors. There was no escaping it. It was a terrible time for the World.

The girls rallied, going into the factories and proving that the little woman could build airplanes or run a factory as well as men. Others, even children pulling their little wagons, collected cooking pots that could be spared, tires, aluminum, and any steel that could be confiscated.  Girls gave up their nylon stockings for parachutes, ladies gave up their girdles for rubber. Gas was rationed as well as food. The family gave sugar coupons to my mother one Christmas so she could make candy. Most everybody had a “Victory Garden.” The girls and women tried to give their men hope.

I was reading about a Polish man who had escaped Poland to come to America with the dream of becoming a citizen, which he had. He married, began a business, built and ran a filling station, was successful, had a family, and upon hearing that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, he laid his head on the table and sobbed. “We cannot lose America. The world cannot lose America.”

War drives me nuts.

When I hear someone excited say, “Let’s bomb them back to the stone age. Or “Let’s kick their butts,” I cringe, knowing there was a time when most every able-bodied man reluctantly, sadly, leaving behind their families and facing death, enlisted for war service.

When I, with fear and in trepidation, visited Dachau, the former Concentration Camp in Germany I got their message, “Never Forget.”

It was a never forget experience, but a strange one too. People had poured so much love into that complex that it felt cleansed. There was a bank of flowers extending the length of the fence in honor of those who were interned there.  The grounds had been bulldozed clean except for one barrack. A church had been erected on the grounds, and on the step into the crematorium someone had carefully placed a single dandelion flower.

And now I will end with a good story, a true one. It came into my daughter’s email. It was from a man who, he said, had taken an Ocean Cruise 10 years ago when he was 13-years-old. During the cruise he used the rock-climbing wall, and as they were required to take off their shoes and put on special rock-climbing ones, he did that. Then he forgot to pick up his regular shoes. He had kept the climbing shoes all these years, and felt guilty. He was Jewish, he said, and as a 13-year old he was supposed to be at the age of reason, and to be responsible, he should have known better than to keep the shoes.  Now he was looking for an address in which to send the shoes back.

That’s my mind drippings for the day.

Joyce

Finding the Purposeful Good

While browsing through magazines at the Portland airport waiting for my daughter’s plane to arrive, I was attracted to a periodical on The Animal's Mind. Beautiful, I thought, as I thumbed through the pages. Good articles. Then as I reached the last of the magazine, I was hit with a picture so horrible I dropped to the floor in shock.

I sat on the floor waiting to recover.  How do I rid my mind of what I just saw? How do I change the way people treat animals? While sitting there I pulled another magazine from the shelf, Oprah’s.   In it I read an interview between Oprah and Paulo Coelho* (author of The Alchemist). This will help, I thought.

 It didn’t.

That night horror lifted me from sleep. That picture popped into my mind over and over again. I wanted to save all the animals of the world. I wanted that cruel man dead. I tried to think of something else. My new focus would work for a time, then the picture would come in again. I attempted to change the picture. I tried to create a happy ending.

This caused me to think: “What purposeful good can come of events such as these?” People want to see you happy, not sad. Don’t talk about it. I don’t want anyone else depressed. How, then, does one then rid their minds of horror?

I did write to someone. It was a wonderful friend who identified with me, who didn’t turn a deaf ear or a blind eye. Instead she offered help, identifying with me, telling me what she did in times such as the one I was experiencing.  She offered a link to Mira Kelley’s  past life regression tape.* Listening to Kelley’s soothing voice, I thought, I ought to create such an event that for my Grandson when he is overwrought and can’t go to sleep. Guide him to a beautiful place, allow him to create a helper, or another image of himself. Give him the tools to sooth himself and know that he has access to the beauty and wisdom of his own body.

This very morning Grandson had such an occurrence. He couldn’t go to sleep, He was over wrought. He wanted his Mommy to come home—she goes to work in the early morning hours. We sang, we counted sheep, eventually he quieted and slept, but next time—I hope there won’t be, but if there is—I will create a guided meditation.  

*The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Coelho coined the phrase “Personal Legend. “ One’s personal legend is  “What you have always wanted to accomplish.”

*Link to Mira Kelley’s meditation, Introduction by Wayne Dyer  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLzl0hdf8Os

Below photo just for fun

Please give a Look-See to http://www.motherslettersbyjoyce.blogspot.com

By popular demand!

Maybe, perhaps, possibility, a printed soft-cover version of Mother's Letters...and mine is coming.