from the Archives

Lady Rizo - If I Was Your Woman

Things I have seen #2

The Tower of London and Tower Bridge                         

Things I miss in Indianapolis

Reforesting update

Here are the latest additions to our reforestation project.  These
 native Hawaiian Palapalai ferns(center) are used  to make lei for Hula dancers.

Peaks of Otter Lodge

41 years ago Sharon and I were married at this wonderful place in Virginia

Postcards #1

Lets start a new series. This time it is cut out postcards from the book
Hawaii The Big Island : Land of Fire and Ice photographs by Franco Salmoiraghi
# 1 Eruption of Pu'u O' o (1983)

Beautiful Downtown Hilo

Things I have seen # 1

Number one in my new series of " Things I have seen " The Vatican.

Some of the pleasant memories that remain after many trips to Britain
are that of Pub visits. Although it has been a few years since my last trip
I have recently come up with a way to simulate that experience
For a number of years I have been a member of CAMRA . This is a
consumer group (100,000 strong) that is in essence a watch dog
that tries to maintain the integrity of the brewing business and the
institution of the British Pub(Public House) Of the many activities of the group
one is to publish the Good Beer Guide with descriptions of thousands of Pubs
In the Country.
Over the past few months I have discovered that sitting down and reading the
descriptions while having a beer is a substitute for not being there in person.
It may not be perfect but It is as close as I get until I return. Cheers!

Freefall

The way it feels sometimes

Coltrane Fix for today

# 58

From Esquire magazines Feature 79 things we can all agree on .
# 58 Most people really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a handgun.

British County/Town/ Pub name #8

Well. the reading vacation is over . Now that I have finished the most enjoyable Travels with Charley I am returning to my usual fare. This time a world History book so large I had to return to weight training so I could lift it. I don't know why I torture myself like this. Hopefully I can finish this (probably sometime next year at my speed) before I forget where It began. If not , remind later that it was it was Mesopotamia .

The joy of good writing

I went into a state of flight ,running to get away from the
unearthly landscape. And then the late afternoon changed everything. As the sun angled,the buttes and coulees,the cliffs and sculptured hills and ravines lost there burned and dreadful look and glowed
with yellow and rich browns and a hundred variations of red and silver gray, all picked out by streaks of coal black.

Reforestation continues

Even though I haven't mentioned it in a while our reforestation project continues. Many years of
weeding, planting ,pruning, replacing etc, etc are slowly progressing. I suppose because it is a living thing it is never really done. Here is a view of the latest segment we are working on. The area to the left is cleared and the right is not completed.

To make my reading time more complicated (making things more complicated is my strong point)
I try to keep up with these 8 magazine subscriptions. Good thing some of them are quarterly publications or I would surely fail miserably.

Book report

Coltrane required listing = Better World

So True!

7th British County/Town/ Pub names

7 down and only 76 left! Keep thinking I should expand this to include more info but I am lucky to have gotten this far with these basic elements!. Probably shouldn't press it any farther!

Groucho!

The way time seems to speed by these days I am reminded of a theory I heard many years ago. As you get older time seems to speed up. This appears to happen because each year added to your life becomes less of a percentage of a total life experience. One year is one half of a two year old child's life. By the time they reach 20 one year is reduced to 1/20th of the experience making it appear to go faster.
This has always made sense to me!

As it was recently Friday the 13th I thought about my dad. He loved that day. He was always telling me that 13 was his lucky number. This is probably because he was born in 1913. Although he did not seem to have much luck in the last few years of his life ( he died 27 years ago) Hopefully there was lots of it in previous years, none the less. If you are lucky enough to have parents among the living give them a hug.
Because you fight and think you can't get along, then they are gone and you miss them!

explains a lot!

Without ethics, politics has no limits. America broke the rules of living systems, and lost its balance. All the oxygen flowed to a smaller and smaller section of the body politic. The history is brief and unquestionable: close to toppling, the society momentarily pulled itself upright, and then became even less ethical, less balanced, more endangered than ever as a lawless financial system came back from death, and like a foolish patient after a heart bypass operation, continued in its old ways. With no ethical component to national politics, President Obama could deliver his 2011 State of the Union speech without ever mentioning the word “poverty,” although one in every five American children lived in poverty. Without a commitment to Hutcheson’s idea of the greatest good, which is at the core of the original American philosophy in Jefferson’s drafting of the Declaration of Independence, this may no longer be the brilliant experiment. If happiness is for the few and it produces unemployment approaching that of the Great Depression, then the shadow of evening is here.

- Earl Shorris

Excerpted from “American Vespers: The Ebbing of the Body Politic”, by Earl Shorris, as appeared in Harper’s Magazine, December 2011

Walkies anyone?

Far out new year

Cat Parade

41 Christmas together

I have tended to remember the Christmas of my childhood as being the most prevalent . All of the sudden this year that all changed. The change came when it dawned on me that Sharon and I have now been together for 41 of them. That number far surpasses the years of "family " Christmas. Remarkable!

far out Christmsa

Amazes

It still amazes me that stuff like this happens about 20 miles from our house

Bah Humbug!

Something is not right about this scene. It seems to me that some spirit is missing from these flattened decorations. Either keep them on full time or don't bother!

Over the years my wife Sharon and I have had many pleasant stays at Portmeirion.
During one of the first few we met a couple of fellow Prisoner enthusiast who have become life long friends. The four of us have returned many times and created wonderful Village moments.Each time during our stay we would always venture out at night and usually got up to some fun mischief. The idea was to enjoy the special mood the quiet, lighted atmosphere created .Well, maybe the dinner and several pints at the Golden Fleece Pub near by had something to do with the mood but I digress.
This night we ended up sitting on one of the benches(one of our many squigging opportunities) in the piazza and everything seemed perfect. Almost everything that is,because the fountain was not on. As luck would have it I had seen a gardener turn it on that morning so was appointed to do so too .Feeling a bit like a burglar ,I crept to the pump, concealed in a box near the bench .After removing the top and fumbling around inside the box's darkness there was a whirring sound and the water shot up in the air. I hurried back to the bench and we all laughed hysterically. Then we started babbling about Mrs Cartwright ( the rather stern hotel manager at the time) and all this talk about being banished . At the height of our laughing hysteria a voice
boomed out of the darkness saying NO ONE WILL BE BANISHED ,HAVE A NICE EVENING! It was an odd, slightly sobering moment. Our very own magical Prisonerish experience in the Portmeirion Village! It is one of my favorite Village moments .

Side yard palm

Astounding

What an evening it was. Saturday Sharon and I had a wild evening. It began with a wonderful crazy flaming red sunset upon arrival at the volcano National park. It is at the 4,000 foot level of Mauna Loa(14,000ft) The mountain looked as if giant piece of the sky had been cut out and all around it there were scarlet clouds. We were up there to see the the Brothers Cazimero. They have been singing Hawaiian music for many years and are truly great showmen. Their long careers include 36 albums and performances at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood bowl . Just seeing them would have been enough but there is more. Because the venue was in the Volcano National park, after the show we took a detour to one of the two active volcano vents to see the glowing lava lake. This would have been awesome enough(it was 9 pm and about 48degrees ) but there is still more. This weekend there were wind advisories here on the Island and it was blowing so hard (50 mph) that we had trouble keeping our balance. Buffeting there in the dark , gawking at this swirling,steamy orange glow ,while freezing and trying to avoid being blown off this cliff was quite challenging. Astounding what a diverse place Hawaii island is!

Happy evacuation day!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Happy Evacuation Day
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Christmas must be coming coming! Once again I have found Christmas Beer! I have to start looking a little earlier and harder here in Hawaii but I am persistent. So persistent that I learned that this island was only going to receive 7 cases of the Anchor ale and I managed to get one of them. The Anchor"special" Ale in my left hand is really special. as this the 37th year it has been produced. It seems reasonable that Anchor Brewing http://www.anchorbrewing.com/ was selling it before some of the others (like the Deschutes http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/ Jubleale ) in my other hand was even in business. Anyway we are off to a good start!

amazing

I put this on my ipod and have been listening 3 times a week for months now wile exercising.It just keeps getting better! Seeing as it was recorded so long ago its vitality is amazing!

U.K County-village-pub name #6

The 6th in my series of interesting British county/town/and pub names.

Item from Harper's

Having the last name of Niceley(in case you hadn't noticed) I find this funny!

From the archives 1980s

Subject: Beware of Happy Hour!

advise re a friends email

I did not know this.....

When you drink Vodka over ice, it can give you kidney failure,

When you drink Rum over ice, it can give you liver failure,

When you drink whiskey over ice, it can give you heart problems,

When you drink Gin over ice, it can give you brain problems.

Apparently, ice is really bad for you.

Warn all your friends

British Town/pub names #5

The fifth in my presentation of interesting British town names and pubs located there.At this rate it will take a while.

I normally would not do this but I have put down the Last book I was reading to start something else. Already halfway through Double play and enjoying it. This is the story behind the double assanations we lived through in San Francisco during the 1970s. That horrible event was something the city did not recover from for a long time if ever.
Although it was a sad event it is interesting to see all of the elements(that we knew nothing about at the time) which led to the shootings.

Hard to believe we have lived here almost 10 years. During that time the view of the ocean from our Lanai had slowly disappeared. Recently we worked out a tree trimming deal with the owner of the house across the street (including cutting some on t he front of our lot) and as you can see the view has returned. You would think that seeing the ocean would loose its attraction living on and island but after all these years of having it nearby it is still something special.