We have met the enemy...

Cartoonist Walt Kelly's most famous quote.

Have you ever had a thought rattling around in the back of your mind, an idea that is hard to articulate, but it seems to be something you ought to grab a hold of?

That’s happening to me right now. I’ve been reading a book titled Choosing Easy World by Julia Rogers Hamrick. At first the book seemed so simplistic, I pushed it aside. Then it called me back. When Hamrick began talking about “Difficult World,” I perked up.

There appears to be a Difficult Dictator that yammers in our heads, that feeds on difficulty, that tells us we aren’t good enough, we will never make it, others do, of course, but not us, that we are too old, too stupid, too disconnected to be successful in our endeavors.  Why old Difficult Dictator does that I don’t know, he appears to feed on worry, stress, and making things hard. Most of us have had times when can we decide to choose the easy way and this old dictator grabs us by the throat. Some call him the Ego. Why though does the ego want difficulty for us?

It could be conditioning. It could be that working, striving, pushing against have been drummed into us for so long it has penetrated our beings.

Now, this is not to say that a challenge is not rewarding. Think of music, the arts, athletics, solving a mathematical proof, a law proof, when we arise triumphant it is a giant hit. What I am saying is that there is a pervasive difficulty regarding life that is not necessary, is not healthy, and does not support the magnificent beings that we are.

And this is where that rattling thought in the back of my mind comes in. We hear about how the media is conditioning us, about the “Shadow” government, the government behind the government that pulls the strings.  We hear that the “Grays” control us, the “aliens,” are out to get us, and the Illuminati have been lurking in the shadows controlling world affairs for millennia.  And I wondered, could be as Pogo said long ago. We have met the enemy, and it is us?’

Perhaps, it is not “out there.  It is in here.”

I am touching my chest.

A heartfelt thanks to you wonderful people who have followed me. Words cannot express my gratitude...a picture maybe?

Mount of Refuge

Our (used to be) "Green Trail of Bliss" that was our driveway. And there is good ole Bear lying in the middle of it.

On January 1, 2015 Railroad Road, also known as Puua Kapoho Road, where our house sat at the end of the road, was made into a through-a-fare. Well maybe I exaggerate about the through-a-fare, but giant bulldozers have opened that road as an escape route for the people of Pahoa, Hawaii. So our house (now someone else’s) is no longer at the end of the road.

Barry, the caretaker who lived on our property before us, called our place, "The most beautiful spot on earth," and the name given to it by its owner was Pu'u Honoa, meaning  "Mount of Refuge."

Perhaps it will be that for the people who travel Railroad Road.

And now I wonder if while widening Railroad Road the caterpillar crew found our cement cow.

Oh, you don’t know about the cement cow? Guess you will have to read the book. The Island.


P.S.  Hawaii Lava update.

For the past few months lava oozed its way through the jungle, burning a swath aiming for the town of Pahoa. The prediction was that it would go straight through the market place, thus the grocery store, Malala Market, closed, and other stores in that complex closed as well, the tire shop, the hardware store, the propane supply store, Island Crazy, the Urgent Care facility and FED X where we Faxed so many documents we became friends with the beautiful clerk. The Subway Sandwich shop is there, and the bakery where they made the best butter mocha’s in the world.

Scientists predict that if the lava will eventually cross the highway and cut off the route to the rest of the island, Hilo. Kona, Volcano, Black Sand’s Beach, all that and more. The front stalled 550 yards before reaching the market place and has widened out and changed directions threatening they say the Police and Fire Station. 

Hey, what about those other buildings sitting in the path?

The Great Chicken Mystery

This post also appears on my book site http://www.joycedavisbooks.blogspot.com

No sense going there, it is just a landing site for anyone who searches for my name and my book. Do you think I landed in the wrong place?

And now onto the mystery...It began on the Day after Thanksgiving. 

Both my wonderful pet hens mysteriously died. Same day. They were alive in the morning, dead in the evening. What are the chances of that unless it was something they ate? My tame hens, one would sit on my lap, the other was more stand-off-ish. Both laid the most delicious, beautiful eggs, egg yolks orange as a six-year-old's sun drawing. Gone. Rats.

I had given the chickens vegetable scraps the day before. Being Thanksgiving I thought I was giving them a treat. After finding them dead, I researched and found that potato skins can be toxic to chickens. Only the green-skinned potatoes they said.  My potato skins weren’t green, but the chickens were dead, and I suspected the potatoes were the culprits. How many people had fed potato peelings to chickens? Tons I bet. Still mine were dead.

Three months later:

This pertains really: On Jan 26 I decided to query an agent. I found Elizabeth Krach of Kimberly Cameron and Associates who said “I wish I had my own Jon Krakauer.”

Who in the heck is Jon Krakauer?

Oh, he was the author of Into the Wild, the story about Chris McCandless, who gave away his money, burned his wallet and went to the wilds of Alaska where he lived off the land and journaled his findings, including the food he ate. On July 30, 1992 he wrote, “Extremely weak. Fault of potato seed. Much trouble just to stand up. Starving. Great jeopardy.”

Before this entry, there's nothing to suggest he was in trouble. After that, there were other signs in his journal that he was in big trouble. And then a little over three weeks later, on August 18, he crawled in the back of the bus and died."

Krahauer, wanted to know if the ending of his book was accurate. Was it in fact the wild potato seeds that did in McCandless? He took wild potato seeds to a chemist.

"These are not poisonous," said the chemist.

Hum. What now? 

Enter a reader:

After reading Into the Wild, Rod Hamilton had an Ah Ha moment. He knew that Jews in concentration camps were fed the seed of the chick pea, eaten for centuries, but known to contain a substance called ODAP which under certain conditions, is toxic. 

Wild potato seeds also contain ODAP.  In a mal-nourished body the seeds containing ODAP cause paralysis and death. My chickens were molting and thin, obviously struggling to keep fit as winter was coming on.

The fault, I believe, lies in the potato skins...and skinny chickens. (I kept their feeder full.) No chicken of mine will ever be fed potato skins, and now I wonder about anyone eating them.