Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Vistas
Okay, so I'm sleepy, and in about seven hours I need to leave for the airport, cuz in the morning I'm flying to Kauai, reportedly the most beautiful of these Hawaiian islands and I'm not packed or nothing, but I just wanted to say that I bought a bike; okay it's a girl's bike, so what? And that the place I live is real pretty, even if I'm not taking pictures all the time to prove it. Here's a couple. When I get back from Kauai, I'll probably have a bunch more gorgeous photos to make all y'all jealous, or possibly my camera will be rendered unusable by the rainiest spot on the globe. In preparation for my unorganized attempts to camp and hike through the island's pretty spots, I dumped my brewpot full of water on my tent, and it held up pretty well, I'm glad to say. Also glad to say that the fermenter is bubbling away, so in a couple of weeks we'll be drinking homebrew! All is well.
This is a flower on the bird of paradise bush that grows in my front yard.
This is the sun setting over the Waianae mountains as seen from said front yard.
Okay. Nighty night, lovely people. I'll write more next week sometime.
This is a flower on the bird of paradise bush that grows in my front yard.
This is the sun setting over the Waianae mountains as seen from said front yard.
Okay. Nighty night, lovely people. I'll write more next week sometime.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Pockets Full Of Mangoes
Came home this morning to find this little guy licking up the remnants of whatever tasty beverage I had last night. Lizards like beer residue? Wonders never cease.
One of the most amazing things for me here has been to have a substantial number of my calories in the day come from produce that grows in my yard (I've been eating 3 mangoes a day) or in the neighborhood. In addition to the availability of locally caught fish, it's been providing me with an amazing sense of where I am. For example, I came home the other day with a breadfruit that I found on the street. Traditionally a large part of the Hawaiian diet, breadfruit is an odd looking thing, a lumpy green mass which exudes a white sticky sap (which can be used to caulk boats, strangely enough). Not to be content with just the one fruit, my gracious host drove us up the Likelike Highway (pronounced lee-kay lee-kay, although I prefer Likey-likey) into a nearby lush rainforest valley, where he knew of some more breadfruit trees by the side of the road. When I plucked the fruit off the tree (not an easy feat), it began to gush this white latex like a hemorraghing alien. I tell you, it's not easy to get this stuff off the cutting board. We sliced up the under-ripe breadfruit and made pretty decent fries out of it. The over-ripe one I put into a pudding concoction with my leftovers from my second, mildly toxic experiment in local ingredients.
While most greens are a bit pricier at the supermarket here than they are at home (actually, they're probably the same as the are at Whole Foods or Fairway, but they're not as good), taro leaves are very reasonably priced. I figured they would be similar to collard greens or kale. I found a Samoan recipe to make a little coconut/onion/lemon mixture, wrap it in the taro leaf, and steam it in little pockets. While washing these enormous leaves (also known as elephant ears) we wondered if they were edible raw. Ever the scientific experimenter, I tore off a small piece, chewed it up and swallowed. "It's okay", I said. "A little bitter." Moments later, a painful burning sensation roiled across my tongue, the insides of my cheeks and my throat. It was painful to swallow. A little research uncovered that the taro leaf deposits sharp calcium crystals to deter herbivore predation; cooking denatures the crystals so they are edible. Painful to humans, toxic to birds and reptiles (so in the long run, it's a good thing I didn't sign up to have that chameleon DNA inserted in my blastocyst, though I still think it would be awesome...). Oh, local flora: why do you mock me?
Still, last night cooked up a killer dinner based entirely on wares from the Chinatown market (like Asia, but cleaner) and our front yard (beloved mango tree), straight from the Zack Stein cookbook: Poached Salmon with Mango Salsa, served with Green Beans sauteed in olive oil, lemon & garlic. It came out fantastic; my host said it was the best meal he can remember eating on his porch. So keep that in mind when considering letting me sleep on your couch for weeks on end -- I'll buy groceries and cook for you!
I've been a bit lax about bringing my camera everywhere with me, but it's true. Although I live in a city, it's beautiful pretty much everywhere you go. Just to clarify, the first two pictures in the post below are views from near my house: the first is the view of downtown and the ocean from my street, the second is a view of the Pali valley (right outside my window) taken from the top of the Punchbowl crater that we are on the side of (formerly a depository for human sacrifices, it's now a military cemetery. The more things change...).Here's a picture from (an unusually
flat portion of) my bike ride
between home and campus.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Movement
Larchmont, NY -> West Warwick, RI -> West Dover, VT -> Carlisle, MA -> Bar Harbor, ME -> Albany, NY -> Larchmont, NY
1301 miles
Hike out from East Lake to Road’s End, Kings Canyon National Park
13.8 miles
Distance from Brooklyn, NY to Honolulu, HI
app. 4200 miles
Bike ride from my new home (!) to UH campus
3.3 miles
Like the thunderstorm, these past few weeks have harbored short periods of great beauty and excitement interspersed with longer periods of great anticipation, a certain electricity in the air heightening the wonder of us mortals regarding the intentions of the gods. I sit in the early morning on the slope of an ancient volcanic crater overlooking a rainy jungle valley beset with high-rise condos, completely awash in the overpowering perfume of ripening mangoes, which we've collected from the front lawn and heaped on the tiny counters of this little cottage.
Indeed, I am in my new home; rather, I am currently staying with the most gracious of hosts, a friend from my Hamilton daze, sleeping on his lanai (covered porch) until the end of the month when the cottage next door opens. These cottages (ohana), I was told, were traditionally built for the grandparents when the Hawaiian family grew too large for everyone to live in the main house. Due to the housing bubble and huge rent increases, it's increasingly common for families to rent out the ohana to low-income tenants (like grad students). So, if everything works out, in a couple of weeks, I'll have a nice two bedroom cottage next door to my friend with great views of the city and the mountains. Also, I can not fully explain how delicious are the mangoes from the tree out front -- clearly the sweetest and creamiest I've ever enjoyed -- and we just scoop them up from off the lawn. You could say that life is good.
But let me back it up a couple of weeks. As you might remember, my family took a trip to Acadia, the Northeast's only National Park, renowned for its granite cliffs dropping into foggy bays, its islands covered in spruce forests, their trees' dark branches draped in old man's beard. The geology of the area is stunning, and I went on an excellent day hike up the shoreline from Sandy Beach to Thunder Hole and Otter Cliffs, up Goreham Mountain and the Beehive (a series of cliffs made climbable without technical gear by iron railings set into the steep granite walls), down to a picturesque pond and finally up to the summit of Champlain Mountain, where I came closer to a golden eagle than I ever have before, close enough to see the curve of his beak and the claws of his talons -- a chilling experience. To cut the chill, my family ate and drank very well this week -- it's an interesting National Park experience to get your wilderness fix during the day and, that very afternoon or evening, patronize excellent restaurants serving locally-brewed beers. I recommend it.After an evening of being wined and dined in Albany, where I congratulated my dear friends Lou & Tiffany on their recent engagement (what a ring!), I returned to Larchmont, my childhood home, to sort through my earthly possessions, put all cool-weather clothing in the attic, double-stack the bookshelves with the bulk of my extensive library, and bear continual abuse from my parents about the sheer quantity of things that I am storing at their house (thanks Mom & Dad!). A last night of carousal with Brooklyn friends at The Gate, my beloved beer-geek destination with biker bartenders, and, with two bags stuffed to the gills, I boarded a plane to San Francisco, where one of my closest friends was to meet me for a long drive into the mountains where another friend awaited us at Road's End, a trailhead. Unfortunately, due to weather conditions and the unhelpful customer service of AirTran, I ended up sleeping that night in the Atlanta airport. Please, never fly AirTran -- it's worth the extra fifty bucks...
The tedium of delay notwithstanding, our four days in the tremendous beauty of Kings Canyon National Park were unsullied by the airline's incompetance -- sure, we had to hike in to our first campsite after sunset, but I personally enjoy the experience of navigating an unfamiliar wood in the gloaming by alpenglow and starlight. We hiked up Bubbs Creek, among the ferns and giant redwoods that grew on the floor of this stunning granite canyon, whose peaks formed stately grey domes and spires and whose walls, thousands of feet high, were painted with the drips of minerals leached out from the mountains' interiors. We camped for two nights at East Lake, one of the most peaceful and beautiful spots I've had the pleasure of staying in this life, and we had a grand time climbing about the talus and fallen logs, broken memories of cataclysms past, scattered with sub-alpine forests and meadows. 
We saw a whole lot of wildlife -- Zach came face-to-face with a mature black bear; later we all saw a yearling cub who was scavenging in the site we'd chosen for lunch. Another lunch spot was invaded by a rattlesnake; a second rattler found a home under Jesse's pack while we'd stopped for water. We saw a mule deer with her spotted fawn (when I first saw the doe's head, poked out from the tall grass with her long, pointed ears, I thought, "My lord! That's the biggest rabbit I've ever seen!"), as well as numerous and varied lizards, rodents, and birds. It was a great backpacking trip all around.
We saw a whole lot of wildlife -- Zach came face-to-face with a mature black bear; later we all saw a yearling cub who was scavenging in the site we'd chosen for lunch. Another lunch spot was invaded by a rattlesnake; a second rattler found a home under Jesse's pack while we'd stopped for water. We saw a mule deer with her spotted fawn (when I first saw the doe's head, poked out from the tall grass with her long, pointed ears, I thought, "My lord! That's the biggest rabbit I've ever seen!"), as well as numerous and varied lizards, rodents, and birds. It was a great backpacking trip all around.
After a couple of nights in San Francisco, including an authentic home-cooked Indian meal (thanks for the leftovers Ms. Sitaraman!) and a stint at Toronado, a bar in the Lower Haight somewhat like The Gate, Zach drove me to the airport to begin my new Hawaiian life. I sat next to a very interesting character, a man in his seventies, afflicted by Parkinson's, who's worked in Recreation his whole life, summers at a camp in Yosemite, the rest of the year in the SF Parks Department. The connections he still has with kids that he's watched grow up year after year are enviable, and he continues to mentor youth through the YMCA, though his affliction keeps him from snowboarding with them as he'd like to. An incredibly interesting, inspirational man, he assured me to do something that I enjoy. I hope I can spend the next couple of years following that advice. Anyhow, to return to my island vacation that will somehow transition to my return to academia, I'm supposed to go attend a hula festival, so I must awaken my host. Later today we have plans to hike to the Manoa Falls, and then up a mountain from which we can view them. It's been raining all morning, so I assume they'll be fairly stunning. Pictures coming soon, but you can see what I've got so far from the link to my flickr page on the left side of the top of this page.
Monday, July 02, 2007
O, where have the days of June gone?
Sun-drenched storerooms of memories,
Floods of pints of ale, green leaves, from
Field trips through firefly evenings…
Indeed, the blue moon that hung above the dirty motel of my last posting has waned, and another, the color of dusty roads, has waxed and now wanes in kind before I have had a few free minutes to recount the innumerable pleasures and pains that have, like the moon, presented themselves this past month, once shining brilliantly, yet slowly fade from the mind’s eye. As I sit and reflect on all that has passed, the wonderful times I’ve shared with family and friends, collegues and students, dart like minnows; some are entrapped, entering my narrative of my final month in Brooklyn; others dart through the clenching fingers of consciousness, to reappear in my dreams through the shadowy glass of the unconscious.
For want of space, and out of concern for alienating my already-limited readership, below I simply set forth the highlights of the last five weeks in a rough chronological order:
- A beautiful wedding on my friend’s land in Gettysberg, PA; the ceremony took place in a circle of trees behind their house, the happy couple literally surrounded by friends and family with tasty microbrews in hand, followed up the makeshift aisle by their two dogs.
- Giving the finger to the Presidential convoy on their way to Arlington National Cemetery from the lawn of the Lincoln Memorial on Memorial Day.
- Wrapping up our after-school program by sending each gleeful student home with an aquarium that he or she constructed, complete with guppies and aquatic plants.
- Going to Pittsburgh to see my friend’s absolutely gorgeous glass sculpture (pictures will be posted when I get them). Also, ripping open the back of my undewear going down a nearby « natural water slide » (great fun).
- Attending jaw-dropping ballet performances with my parents and sister (despite sleeping through a few of them).
- My new favorite ad on the subway (« Over 50 ? Get a colonoscopy – NOW ! ») and imagining how impractical it would be to follow that advice literally.
- Field trips, even though we got kicked out of the Museum of Natural History.
- Camping with an old friend beside the beach in North Carolina’s Outer Banks beneath an incredibly starry summer sky in the midst of the most fantastic swarm of fireflies I have ever seen.
- Dancing bhangra to Wilco late-night in a posh TriBeCa wine bar.
- Being caught in a thunderstorm in Prospect Park and ending up back at these girls’ apartment playing Balderdash.
- Surprise going-away parties thrown for me by my roommate and by the other teachers on my team, as well as the astounding pop-up going-away cards my students made me out of construction paper and Scotch tape.
- The awesome going-away party that I threw myself with growlers of delicious local beers, during which my apartment was improbably full of highly attractive women.
- Finishing that horrid Earth Science class and heading straight to the Mermaid Parade and a fun birthday barbecue.
- Running into a student from my first year who, despite the trauma of having been in that class, is doing excellently in high school, academically and athletically, and is the very vision of a strong, beautiful, young black woman.
- An incredible meal at San Dominico in honor of my sister’s birthday – yolk-filled ravioli in black truffle butter, stuffed rabbit saddle with fennel marmelade, excellent Italian wine, and a homemade chocolate truffle cake to knock your socks off.
- Showing ET to the students during the last week of school and realizing, at the very moment where Eliott calls his brother « penis-breath » at the dinner table, that I was involved in a very important cultural transmission.
- Dancing my ass off at the end-of-term party, where I was told by a PTA organizer that I was "smokin" and by a Carribean assistant principal that I "had the calypso feeling".
All in all, a hell of a month, even without all of the random nights spent carousing, the insanity that is being a middle-school teacher in June, the moments wherein I am overwhelmed by the beauty of Brooklyn, its architecture, its parks and tree-lined sidewalks, its diversity leading to unique communities and interactions. I was thankful for having been too busy to mope these past few weeks, because my block will decidedly not be the same if and when I return, who knows who will still be around in light of the massive construction that will be going on.
The night I packed my apartment, a massive thunderstorm raged on. Forks of lightning illuminated the block, spread clearly through the clouded skies above the row of buildings across the avenue. Rolling cracks of thunder resounded at such volumes that the first one made me cry out and my roommate thought that a bookcase had fallen over. As one of the eight trigrams used in Chinese divination, Thunder, the eldest son of the marriage between Heaven and Earth, represents movement and change. Though the University of Hawaii has an ethnically diverse student body and Honolulu has some of the decrepit urban charm for which I am a sucker, there are undoubtably great changes at work in my little world.
But I am currently on vacation from such concerns, as I am in the midst of nine days celebrating New England and the people I love here. I just attended a wedding in Rhode Island between two friends from Hamilton whom I have not seen in years and years – an event that brought many fellow alumni to a very beautiful setting to spend quality time with some very beautiful people. I am currently in Vermont with my family, where from we will head to spend the Fourth with our cousins in Mass., before heading up to Maine where we will experience some of the East Coast’s most reknowed rugged landscapes in Arcadia National Park. Following our return to New York, I have a couple of days to organize my belongings and say some goodbyes before I fly to California for a camping trip in King’s Canyon en route to my new home in the Hawaiian Islands. So forgive me if I take another couple of weeks to post again. I’m in transition.
Sun-drenched storerooms of memories,
Floods of pints of ale, green leaves, from
Field trips through firefly evenings…
Indeed, the blue moon that hung above the dirty motel of my last posting has waned, and another, the color of dusty roads, has waxed and now wanes in kind before I have had a few free minutes to recount the innumerable pleasures and pains that have, like the moon, presented themselves this past month, once shining brilliantly, yet slowly fade from the mind’s eye. As I sit and reflect on all that has passed, the wonderful times I’ve shared with family and friends, collegues and students, dart like minnows; some are entrapped, entering my narrative of my final month in Brooklyn; others dart through the clenching fingers of consciousness, to reappear in my dreams through the shadowy glass of the unconscious.
For want of space, and out of concern for alienating my already-limited readership, below I simply set forth the highlights of the last five weeks in a rough chronological order:
- A beautiful wedding on my friend’s land in Gettysberg, PA; the ceremony took place in a circle of trees behind their house, the happy couple literally surrounded by friends and family with tasty microbrews in hand, followed up the makeshift aisle by their two dogs.
- Giving the finger to the Presidential convoy on their way to Arlington National Cemetery from the lawn of the Lincoln Memorial on Memorial Day.
- Wrapping up our after-school program by sending each gleeful student home with an aquarium that he or she constructed, complete with guppies and aquatic plants.
- Going to Pittsburgh to see my friend’s absolutely gorgeous glass sculpture (pictures will be posted when I get them). Also, ripping open the back of my undewear going down a nearby « natural water slide » (great fun).
- Attending jaw-dropping ballet performances with my parents and sister (despite sleeping through a few of them).
- My new favorite ad on the subway (« Over 50 ? Get a colonoscopy – NOW ! ») and imagining how impractical it would be to follow that advice literally.
- Field trips, even though we got kicked out of the Museum of Natural History.
- Camping with an old friend beside the beach in North Carolina’s Outer Banks beneath an incredibly starry summer sky in the midst of the most fantastic swarm of fireflies I have ever seen.
- Dancing bhangra to Wilco late-night in a posh TriBeCa wine bar.
- Being caught in a thunderstorm in Prospect Park and ending up back at these girls’ apartment playing Balderdash.
- Surprise going-away parties thrown for me by my roommate and by the other teachers on my team, as well as the astounding pop-up going-away cards my students made me out of construction paper and Scotch tape.
- The awesome going-away party that I threw myself with growlers of delicious local beers, during which my apartment was improbably full of highly attractive women.
- Finishing that horrid Earth Science class and heading straight to the Mermaid Parade and a fun birthday barbecue.
- Running into a student from my first year who, despite the trauma of having been in that class, is doing excellently in high school, academically and athletically, and is the very vision of a strong, beautiful, young black woman.
- An incredible meal at San Dominico in honor of my sister’s birthday – yolk-filled ravioli in black truffle butter, stuffed rabbit saddle with fennel marmelade, excellent Italian wine, and a homemade chocolate truffle cake to knock your socks off.
- Showing ET to the students during the last week of school and realizing, at the very moment where Eliott calls his brother « penis-breath » at the dinner table, that I was involved in a very important cultural transmission.
- Dancing my ass off at the end-of-term party, where I was told by a PTA organizer that I was "smokin" and by a Carribean assistant principal that I "had the calypso feeling".
All in all, a hell of a month, even without all of the random nights spent carousing, the insanity that is being a middle-school teacher in June, the moments wherein I am overwhelmed by the beauty of Brooklyn, its architecture, its parks and tree-lined sidewalks, its diversity leading to unique communities and interactions. I was thankful for having been too busy to mope these past few weeks, because my block will decidedly not be the same if and when I return, who knows who will still be around in light of the massive construction that will be going on.
The night I packed my apartment, a massive thunderstorm raged on. Forks of lightning illuminated the block, spread clearly through the clouded skies above the row of buildings across the avenue. Rolling cracks of thunder resounded at such volumes that the first one made me cry out and my roommate thought that a bookcase had fallen over. As one of the eight trigrams used in Chinese divination, Thunder, the eldest son of the marriage between Heaven and Earth, represents movement and change. Though the University of Hawaii has an ethnically diverse student body and Honolulu has some of the decrepit urban charm for which I am a sucker, there are undoubtably great changes at work in my little world.
But I am currently on vacation from such concerns, as I am in the midst of nine days celebrating New England and the people I love here. I just attended a wedding in Rhode Island between two friends from Hamilton whom I have not seen in years and years – an event that brought many fellow alumni to a very beautiful setting to spend quality time with some very beautiful people. I am currently in Vermont with my family, where from we will head to spend the Fourth with our cousins in Mass., before heading up to Maine where we will experience some of the East Coast’s most reknowed rugged landscapes in Arcadia National Park. Following our return to New York, I have a couple of days to organize my belongings and say some goodbyes before I fly to California for a camping trip in King’s Canyon en route to my new home in the Hawaiian Islands. So forgive me if I take another couple of weeks to post again. I’m in transition.
