Lift Up Your Hearts!

No, this is not the next installment in the tale of our Hawaiian vacation, although it will help explain why that wasn't published yesterday.

Our refrigerator was well over 10 years old.  It was bought used in 2001, and I have no idea of its history.  It wasn’t in very great shape then, though somehow it worked quite well for us.  For years Porter would periodically grumble that it was an energy hog, reminding me that it couldn’t last forever, and wouldn’t it be better not to have to replace it on an emergency basis? 

During the Memorial Day Weekend sales, we finally took the plunge.

Actually, we had tried to do so once before, several years ago, picking out an exciting model with French doors, a bottom freezer, water filter, ice maker, and other attractive features.  The feature we didn’t expect was its inability to fit through the largest door in our house.  Since when did they start making appliances that don’t fit through standard-sized doors?  Crushed, we put off the purchase for another few years, although we did indulge in occasional peeks at what was available when we happened to be in a store that sold appliances.

Porter, as usual, was the one who made it happen.  He researched the models, and narrowed the possibilities down to a handful.  Then together we made the final decision:  a rather ordinary, Energy Star-compliant, General Electric refrigerator with a capacity of 21 cubic feet.  I’m happy with ordinary!  It’s about the same size as the one it replaced, and not as large as the refrigerator we had when the kids were living at home, but it certainly ought to do well for the two of us.  Complaints about size won’t go over well here, anyway, as Janet is sure to point out that it’s 5 to 7 times larger than the refrigerators she’s had in her last three homes.

Click this link to see what it looks like.  No, we didn’t pay the MSRP, but got a much better deal at Lowe’s.

On Monday, Lowe’s called to say that the refrigerator was in, and we arranged for delivery Tuesday between noon and 5 p.m.  Our neighbor came over and helped Porter move the existing fridge into the garage, where we had planned to keep it until July, when our church would take it for their rummage sale.  After all, it still worked, and really was a fine fridge, even if you did have to kick the door to make it close properly.  That quick kick was so much a habit that I often had to explain at other people’s homes why I was abusing their appliances.

All went well, until Porter went out the next morning to get his breakfast drink.  There was a small puddle of water underneath the fridge.  At some point during the night, the compressor had stopped working, and melting ice was dripping from the freezer.  (Glad I was that I had transferred most of the contents of the freezer to our chest freezer, to lighten the fridge for the move.)  The refrigerator compartment was still cool enough that I felt comfortable that the food was safe, so I filled it with jugs of ice, as if it were a giant picnic cooler.  You don’t have half a dozen frozen jugs of water available at a moment’s notice?  Then either you don’t have a handy chest freezer, or you don’t care that June 1 marks the beginning of hurricane season.

At about 8 a.m. the next day, the delivery men called:  Could they deliver the refrigerator in about half an hour?  The thought of grumbling, “What part of ‘between noon and five’ didn’t you understand?” was immediately quashed by the pleasant thought of having  a working refrigerator sooner rather than later.

It was sad to see the old refrigerator taken unceremoniously off for recycling, but if it was going to break, I’m glad it did so before sending it to the rummage sale, and not after.  Perhaps its time had just come, and Porter was better than he knew to insist on getting a new one now.  Perhaps the move, short and gentle as it was, merely jarred something loose.  Whatever the cause, we decided it wasn’t worth attempting a repair, given its age and condition.

Many mammal mothers lick their newborns clean after birth.  I’ve never done that myself, but the instinct must be there:  I can’t use a new appliance until I’ve cleaned it inside and out.  With one thing and another, it took me the rest of the day to get the refrigerator “on board.”  Porter would have cleaned the outside and the ice cube bin and had the food back in in under half an hour.

We’re still working on the best way to use the space.  I love all the extra room in the door shelves—they can hold gallon milk jugs!—and don’t mind that the main shelves are consequently shorter, since it’s hard to get at things in the back of the fridge, anyway.  But some reconsideration of our old habits of arrangement is in order.  But that will be a joyful chore, rather than an urgent one.

And guess what?  We’re heading into summer with an ice maker!

(Continued from Day 3 - Part 1, which was continued from Day 2, which was continued from Day 1.)

Leaving behind the Waipi`o Valley, we retraced our path and rejoined the Hawaii Belt Road (Route 19), continuing westward before turning south.

Click on the map for more detail.  You will be able to zoom in and out, and move around.

Laupahoehoe Point was a seaside village, but in 1946, twenty-one children and three adults died in a tsunami, and the town was moved to higher ground.

It is now a beautiful park, with a memorial and you-won’t-see-this-on-the-mainland warning signs.

Sugar once dominated Hawaii—and there’s a case to be made that it was as bad for Hawaii as it is for our teeth.^*  But the only signs remaining are ruins, and an occasional sugarcane plant left to grow wild.  We drove through some of this old sugar land on our way to ’Akaka Falls State Park for a nice hike and some good-looking water.

On our way back to Route 19, we stopped at the Woodshop Gallery and Café; the wood products were interesting, but not as interesting as the homemade ice cream.

Soon we deviated once again from the main road, on for a four-mile “scenic route.”  Trust me, it’s all scenic here, but this road also led to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden.

The story began in 1977, when fifty-six year old Dan Lutkenhouse looked at a dump—a property “so overgrown that a machete was needed to walk only a few feet through it, and filled with old cars, machinery, appliances and trash of all kinds” —and dreamed a garden for the world to enjoy.

We did, very much indeed.

Behive ginger

Mule's foot fern

Persian shield

I don't know what it is, but I love the two purples.

What's Hawaii without a warning sign?

Don't you think the cannonball tree is more deserving of a danger sign?

Perhaps we lingered overlong in the Garden.  We had no promises to keep, but miles to go before we could sleep.  Plan A had been to spend the night in Hilo, but we had not reckoned on the Merrie Monarch Festival, a popular hula celebration and contest.  Extremely popular.  There was not a hotel room to be had.

Plan B took us all the way to Volcano, and the Kilauea Lodge, which would give us a good start on the next day’s exploration of Volcanoes National Park.  Even there, the only “room” available was the Pi’i Mauna House, with capacity for six (or several more) and a price tag to match.  We had reservations, and therefore no worries about arriving late, but if you’re spending that kind of money, it’s nice to do more than crash into bed.

So we quickened our pace, driving through Hilo without stopping at any of the tempting museums.  There always has to be a reason to return, right?

Not that Hilo was without adventure.

Let me tell you something about the Hawaiian language.  It is expressed using a mere 12 letters (plus a left single quote, which represents a glottal stop).  This extreme efficiency plays havoc with my brain, especially while navigating.

Navigating through Hilo went fine until we found ourselves at an unclear intersection and guessed wrong.  The development went something like this:  I catch a glimpse of a street sign as we pass by, noting that it begins with K.  I look down at the map.  Great.  Half the streets in Hilo begin with K.  Porter calls out another name while I’m scanning the map, but his guess at the pronunciation doesn’t eliminate much.  I decide on a route to take, but by the time I’m done struggling through the syllables we’ve passed it.   Waianuenue, Komohana, Ponahawai, Punahele, Kapiolani, Kinoole, Kilauea, Kukuau, Hualalai, Panaewa, Kaiulani, Kekaulike, Wailuku ... under pressure, they all look alike.

We have friends who keep telling us we would be perfect contestants on The Amazing Race.  I say, we’ve been married for 36 years, and I’d like to keep it that way, thank you.

But we were soon safely on the way to Volcano, reluctantly sticking to Route 11 without diverting down 130 to Hawaii’s newest land, created as lava flows into the sea.  But we had seen that from the helicopter.  You might think that some compensation for having your home overcome by lava would be gaining acreage, but the State claims all new land.  I wonder how they write homeowner’s insurance policies in Hawaii.  What if your house is untouched, but cut off from the rest of the world?  See the roads to nowhere?

We checked into Pi’i Mauna House and set off to find Thai food for dinner (successful) and a view of the glowing lava flowing into the ocean (unsuccessful).  I’m not certain we were looking in exactly the right place, anyway, but apparently we were able to see lava flow in the crater because its path to the sea had been blocked.  You get one or the other, or neither, but not both.  Unless it's a massive eruption of the kind no one but someone whose home is safely elsewhere wants to see.

The obvious solution was to return to our house and enjoy the hot tub before retiring.

I know you're all—one or two of you, anyway—waiting with bated breath for the next installment of the Hawaiian Adventure.  I'm working on it.  But it's not going to happen tonight, so instead you get a quick story of today's enjoyable shopping trip.

Yes.  I did just use "enjoyable" and "shopping" in the same sentence.

Thirty-plus years ago we visited Brazil.  One of the delights of foreign travel is the opportunity to expand one's taste in food, and that trip introduced us to, among other treasures, jabuticaba jelly, Antarctica Guaraná, and suco de maracujá sem açúcar.  The last is passion fruit juice, without sugar, and was my staple breakfast drink every day I could get it.

It is hard to find passion fruit juice here, and when I do, it's always sweetened.  Our local Albertsons did start stocking plain, frozen passion fruit purée a few years ago, so when, in my new-found enthusiasm for smoothies, I decided that passion fruit flavor was just what I needed, I turned to them.

Alas, they no longer carry it.  But the willing-to-be-helpful clerk suggested we try a Bravo Supermarket.  We have several nearby food stores, but Bravo is not one of them.  Research, however, revealed one not far from our church, so this morning we ventured in.

Success!  We came home with not one but three different brands of passion fruit purée:  one from Colombia, one from Ecuador, and one from the Dominican Republic. Mmmm—smoothies tomorrow!

Finding a long-lost love is enough in itself to take the sting out of shopping, but Bravo did us one better by being such an interesting store.  Even if it were closer, it wouldn't do for everyday use, because it's a small store with not much general selection.  But it abounds in what I'd call, for lack of better information. Hispanic foods.  The produce section was amazing, with half a dozen different kinds of bananas, and dozens of fruits and vegetables I know not of.

I look forward to other after-church excursions in the future.

Our concierge had informed us of Waikoloa Village Market, where the locals buy groceries, so yesterday we picked up a few supplies, such as SPF50 sunscreen, a pineapple, a knife with which to cut the pineapple, and breakfast materials.  It was nice not to pay resort prices, but overall it must be admitted that Hawaii makes Swiss price tags seem reasonable.  Lower-48 Americans can stop complaining about the cost of a fill-up now: gasoline is about a dollar more per gallon in Hawaii.  We even paid more for the pineapple than we do at home in Florida.

We began our day with breakfast on the balcony:  Raspberry Ginger Clusters & Flakes.  It was good stuff, although the ginger overwhelmed the raspberry.  Obliterated, really.  Think of it as Blenheim-in-a-box.

The Hilton Waikoloa Village is a super resort.  You could have a bank-breaking fabulous vacation without ever leaving the property.  So, having spent but one night there, we left.  We kept the room, for we intended to return the next day.  (And we did.)  But what care we for super resorts?  We can have those for a lot less money without leaving Florida.  Beaches, swimming, and snorkeling?   Ditto.  But volcanoes?  Florida is remarkably short of that particular natural beauty.  So we hopped in our rental car, and hit the road.

If we’d been smart, we would have bought Hawaii: The Big Island Revealed (aka “the blue book”) before we left home and not paid island prices; even so, it was a great investment.  Along with the map our concierge had given us (more useful than the AAA map we had brought), this became our most important guide for the rest of the trip—even though I felt I was navigating standing on my head, since much of our journey went in the opposite direction from that described in the book.

When we had picked up the car, we had been asked if we wanted to upgrade the vehicle—to either a convertible or a Jeep.  “A Jeep?” I queried Porter in amazement, when he reported the option.  “I can see a convertible as an upgrade, but a Jeep?  No way.”  I was to learn my mistake later.  For this trip, however, we had no worries in our Ford Fusion.

Click on the map for more detail.  You will be able to zoom in and out, and move around.

We first returned to Waikoloa Village, the continued on Waikoloa Road to the Hawaii Belt Road (Route 190 at that point), and thence to the town of Waimea.

Does “Polynesian cow town” sound like an oxymoron?

Of all the images I had associated with Hawaii, “cattle country” was not one.  Yet the Parker Ranch—which traces its origins to a gift of longhorns given to King Kamehameha the Great in 1793—is one of the largest in the United States.  (Our helicopter pilot said it is the largest, but then you have to quibble about “contiguous” and “privately-owned” and other details; suffice it to say, the Parker Ranch is big.)

From Waimea, we continued on the Belt Road (now Route 19), deviating from it for a drive along the (even more) scenic Old Mamalahoa Highway.  This is the only time I wished we had had a GPS, because we were looking for a particular cave to explore, and the only instructions, besides a rough indication on the map, were latitude and longitude numbers.  We never found the bigger cave we were looking for, but settled for this small version, and went on.

Back on the main road, we made sure to stop at Honoka`a.  What’s in Honoka`a, you ask?  Nothing less than the Tex Drive In, famous for its malasadas (a type of doughnut introduced by the Portuguese).  Yum!  Er, make that Yum!  Yum!  We each had two. Not that they were really anything special as fried dough goes, but fried dough does go rather far in that direction.

That’s also where I took a pictures of this tree.

So far I’ve been unsuccessful in my efforts to learn its identity, but I doubt it’s true name is more evocative than Porter’s nickname:  “African-American hairdresser tree.”

Our next stop required a side trip, to the end of Route 240.  From there we looked out over the beautiful Waipi`o Valley.

Here is where having taken the helicopter ride saved us:  we knew there was no need to find a way down into the valley itself, as we would never get a view as good as yesterday's helicopter tour.  As the blue book says,

Don’t even think about driving a regular car down Waipi`o Valley Road.  The paved one-lane road down into the valley has a ridiculously steep 25% grade.  Vehicles with 4WD and low gears (so you don’t burn up your brakes) can make it down the 900-foot descent (in less than a mile).  Regular cars simply can’t.  (There is a wad of metal that was once a two-wheel drive truck below one of the turns left by someone who thought otherwise.  He miraculously survived by jumping from the vehicle just as it started tumbling down the almost vertical plunge.)

I was no longer laughing at the idea of a Jeep being a rental car upgrade.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves:  The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss (Gotham Books, New York, 2003)

Many thanks to DSTB for giving me this book, and thereby redeeming a past mistake on my part, made in response to a mistake on the part of our library.

I’d heard that Eats, Shoots & Leaves was a good book—though I knew little about it, as you will see—and so one day when I found it on tape at our library, I checked it out.  I obviously was not paying attention when I put the cassette in our player, because apparently the wrong tape had been returned to the Eats, Shoots & Leaves packaging.  What I heard was so uninteresting to me that I didn’t even finish the book, and don’t remember it now; it certainly wasn’t about punctuation.

“What?”  you ask.  “There’s something more boring than punctuation?”

Read Eats, Shoots & Leaves.  You’ll never call punctuation boring again.  You’ll laugh, and you’ll also learn.

One thing I learned is something I’ve suspected for a while now:  the rules change when you cross the Atlantic.  It’s not just the spelling (and pronunciation) of that metal out of which we make soda cans and “tin” foil.  Truss encourages us to be sticklers for proper punctuation (hear, hear!)—a difficult enough task when bad examples surround us—but also cautions that sometimes what looks incorrect may be merely a cultural difference.

Be that as it may, the only thing that annoyed me about this short and pleasant book—and only as much as fingernails on a blackboard—was this British author’s persistent use of the British way of combining punctuation and quotation marks.

Many words require hyphens to avoid ambiguity:  words such as “co-respondent”, “re-formed”, “re-mark”.

I would have called that plain wrong, but it turns out that putting the punctuation inside the quotation marks (<ahem> where it belongs!) is an Americanism.

Many words require hyphens to avoid ambiguity:  words such as “co-respondent,” “re-formed,” “re-mark.”

I see the logic of the British system, but it still grates.

I also learned that there’s a reason for another annoyance ; this one is found in my beloved collection of George MacDonald books : What ?  Colons, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points ! find themselves preceded as well as followed by spaces.  Truss provided the answer to my puzzlement:  these books are facsimile editions, and that now strange punctuation procedure was at one time the Way Things Are Done.

Are you confused by the Way Things Are (or Should Be) Done Now?  Check out Eats, Shoots & Leaves for some seriously amusing enlightenment.

A headline recently provided by my Google News feed illustrates the importance of correct punctuation.

Ratko Mladic arrested, Hillary Clinton in Pakistan

Imagine it now, without the comma:

Ratko Mladic arrested Hillary Clinton in Pakistan

Punctuation matters.  So read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest—and enjoy!

Providence, Rhode Island.

My college roommate was from Providence.  I drank an Awful Awful at the Newport Creamery on one visit, and worked for a day in a Brown University chemistry lab on another.  I have pleasant memories of visits with her family, and of driving there from Boston, years later, when my brother's job took him to Providence one day and we met at an Indian restaurant for dinner.  I've passed through T. F. Green airport countless times.

My allegiance to that New England city was cemented by the discovery that the founder of Providence, Roger Williams, is my tenth great-grandfather.  He's Porter's ninth great-grandfather as well.  So you might say Providence is in the family.

Thus I was thrilled to learn that the town charter of Providence, brought from England by Roger Williams himself in 1648, has been found, after some 140 years of "missing and presumed dead" status.

It was discovered by Paul R. Campbell, the city archivist, who "spends his days burrowing in the very attic of City Hall amid peeling paint, stacks of ponderous tomes and dusty boxes shielding secrets of the past, from the humdrum to the historic."

As he tells it, one recent Friday afternoon, a group came seeking certain records. As Campbell poked around material stored on a level above his office, he came across an open box. Inside sat a pocket folder from the 1960s, containing miscellaneous records of the now-defunct Providence Board of Aldermen.

But in the box there also reposed “a very old document, on vellum [animal skin],” he said. “I recognized right away the writing style of the 17th century — I did some research some years ago on 17th-century writing. It began to look like something more important than a deed. It was governmental in nature.”

The signature of “John Warner, Clerk of the Assembly,” caught his eye. It dawned on him that here might be something momentous.

“I figured this was the John Warner, one of the early arrivals. The document, in a nutshell, is from when Williams came back from England in 1643 after he had obtained a charter from the king for the Colony of Rhode Island. He needed to get a charter for the Town of Providence, so he went to the Colonial Legislature of 1647-48, and asked for a town charter. This document is the town charter issued in March 1648. This is the Town of Providence creation document.”

What's in your attic?

It had been a few years since our last visit to a concert of the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra, and I couldn't help thinking throughout that I wish this had been the orchestra of Janet's experience.  Orchestras, as well as people, can develop much in fifteen years!

After very creditable performances by the Overture Strings and Prelude Orchestras, the Philharmonia took the stage.  Back in Janet's day, students looked forward to graduating from the Phil to the top orchestra, the Symphonic, in order to play the "real" version of major orchestral works rather than reduced arrangements; now the Philharmonic plays the full versions, also.  They did a great job with Tchaikovsky's March Slave, Shostakovich's Festive Overture, and—my personal favorite of this concert—Carried Up in the Fields, by John Dupuis.  John is now the conductor of the Phil, but in our day he was one of the FSYO's best flute players, and played with Janet in their wind quintet, Quintessence.  (We knew him when....)

Best of all, though, John is a composer.  I knew that when he was still a teenager, and the FSYO premièred his Atlantis.  Universal Studios acknowledged the same by featuring an excerpt from Atlantis at the grand opening of their Islands of Adventure theme park.  Here's a link so that you can hear Atlantis for yourself.  The oboe solo always makes me tear up; you can guess who played it at the première.  If you like that, check out more of John's works on his site.

Shostakovich was featured heavily on this program.  After intermission, the Symphonic Orchestra took the stage, beginning with Concerto Competition winner Giancarlo Licitra, playing the first movement of the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1.  Their final piece was the fourth movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5.  In between they played another new work, LocoMotion by Stella Sung.  I 've almost always liked Dr. Sung's music, and this was no exception.

Both the Philharmonic and Symphonic orchestras played excellently, and Giancarlo Licitra superbly.

But back to John Dupuis.  After conducting, Carried Up in the Fields, John commented that even when he tries not to write movie music, it comes out sounding like movie music.  I don't know how true that really is, but I say,

Go for it, John!  Movie music is your destiny. 

Back in 1999, after hearing Atlantis for the first time, I wrote in my journal, "Move over, John Williams and James Horner.  (I don’t say Patrick Doyle yet, though!)"

Feel free to make me change my mind about Patrick Doyle.

I dislike shopping.  (Those who know me, also know how understated that is, but "loathe" seems too strong a word to use about something so trivial.)  On top of that, I have an aversion to adding "stuff" to our home.  Until proven otherwise, if it takes up space, it's as welcome as an undocumented worker in Arizona.

It only took me a couple of years of waffling before opening the door to this immigrant, but it immediately proved itself a trustworthy and productive citizen:  a Cuisenart hand blender.

Why buy a hand blender when you have a perfectly good regular blender already?  That nagging question also postoned this purchase, but the answer soon became obvious:  despite the similarity of their names, the two appliances serve different purposes, and the hand blender is far superior for making sauces, soups, and—our favorite—smoothies.

The blender itself takes up little space.  (The accessories take up a bit more, and I actually haven't used them yet.)  No more laborious transfer of hot sauce bit by bit from the pan to the blender:  in a few seconds the hand blender delivers a smooth sauce right in the cooking pot.  Throw some frozen berries, yoghurt, milk, orange juice concentrate, and almond flavoring (for example) into a quart measuring cup, whirl it around with the blender, and—voilá!—an easy, healthy smoothie.  Best of all, the hand blender is an absolute snap to clean.

Okay, so I'm lazy.  Is it that much trouble to use the regular blender for these things?  Maybe it shouldn't be, but with the hand blender I actually do them.  These days, I'm very much into arranging my life for success.  Glenn Doman's philosophy, "We arrange for the child to win," works for adults, too.  Our new hand blender has turned out to be an effective addition to that toolbox.

At last, an explanation of what Janet did in Basel before Joseph was born:

Early Music (H/T Andy B.),

and Barefoot Running (H/T Patti W.).  (Preview without grandkid viewers.)

I Am David (2003, PG)

Six years ago, my sister-in-law informed me that one of my favorite books, Anne Holm’s North to Freedom, had been made into a movie called I Am David.  Let this serve as an encouragement (?) to those who think I’ll never follow through on their recommendations:  Last week, we finally saw the movie.

Let me get the standard litany out of the way:  The movie isn’t nearly as good as the book.  It takes the plot, the setting, and the characters, but loses most of what makes the book sublime.  To be fair, translating David’s thoughts and transformations to film is probably impossible.  This may explain why I rarely find watching a movie to be an exalting experience.

That said, I Am David is very much a worthwhile movie to see.  It is the story of 12-year-old David’s escape from the only life he can remember:   the Communist prison camp in which he was raised, primarily by a man named Johannes.

(Johannes, incidentally, is from the Alsace region of France, and in consequence David’s journey takes him through Basel, a fact that escaped me on previous readings of the book, since at the time Basel had no particular significance for me.  That part is missing from the movie, however, so don’t be looking for shots of the Münster.  In fact, all of the movie—with scenes in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, and Denmark—was filmed in Bulgaria.)

Ben Tibber, who plays David, does a better job than many adult actors I’ve seen; his face got him the job, and he makes great use of it for wordless expression.  Jim Caviezel plays Johannes so movingly that I wasn’t in the least surprised to learn that he also played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.

The PG rating is because of some violent prison camp scenes, but the movie does a great job of suggesting the horror without being unnecessarily graphic.  My primary complaint, other than the loss of the most important parts of the book, is that several of the movie’s characters are less pleasant than in the book—the Italian sailor demanding a bribe, rather than simply helping David, for example.

Naturally, I strongly suggest reading North to Freedom rather than watching the movie, but if you’re not going to read the book, I Am David would be a great addition to your video experience.

Daniel May: The Tall and the Small
Sibelius: Symphony No. 1
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto

Christopher Wilkins, conductor
Joshua Bell, violin

The first work on the program was a tribute to Jonathan May, onetime director of the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra, who died unexpectedly last year.  The Tall and the Small was composed by May's brother, and his wife, Maureen, played the solo cello parts.  I was impressed that she was able to perform this without breaking down.  The most exciting aspect of the piece, however, was that it was composed for double string orchestra, the "Tall" orchestra being the OPO, and the "Small" orchestra made up of student musicians.  I'm sure that performing with the OPO was quite a thrill for them—not to mention sharing the program with Joshua Bell.  At the risk of making some of my readers feel old, I'll mention that they had auditioned for the job via YouTube!

I like Sibelius, so perhaps if I were more familiar with his first symphony I would have enjoyed it more.  As it was, I confess I found both pre-intermission works rather soporific.  Looking around, it was apparent I was not the only one.

But only a terminal narcoleptic could have slept during the second half.

I've spoken before of my concern about the superstar phenomenon that destroys the "middle class" in music, sports, and many other fields.  Yet there is no doubt that Bell's superstardom is deserved.  As is that of the Stradivarius he plays.  Never have I heard so many textures come from a single instrument.  And what high notes!  What harmonics!  Years ago, when I asked one of Janet's violin teachers how he knew where to place his finger when leaping to the far reaches of the fingerboard, he replied, "You stab and hope."  Bell stabs and knows.  What's more, despite his appearing to have put in his 10,000 hours on this concerto alone, the performance conveyed an almost playful delight.

As an encore, he began with what sounded like a reprise of the magical cadenza from the first movement, but which quickly turned into a fiery cadenza for Yankee Doodle.

The full-house audience was appreciative and enthusiastic, with many unable to restrain themselves from a premature standing ovation after the first movement of the Tchaikovsky.  I confess:  I applauded, too.  You just had to; it was that transcendent.  Joshua Bell made the news four years ago for being decidedly under appreciated when he played the part of a street musician in a Washington, D.C. Metro station.  As unobservant as I can be when focussed on the goal at hand, I like to think I could not have passed such music by without standing, transfixed and open-mouthed.  Then again, I've always had a soft spot for street musicians.

Whatever it cost the OPO to bring Bell to Orlando, I'm glad they did.  His performance of the Tchaikovsky was like a meal at the Cheval Blanc in Basel.

How can you take a book without one single battle scene and turn it into an action movie?

"How" is actually quite well answered by the makers of the most recent attempt to bring Narnia to Hollywood, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  But what I really meant by the question was, "Why would you want to do so, and where do you get the audacity?  If you want to tell a different story, why take someone else's character names and setting?"

But I've sung this same song a lot recently, most notably for The Lord of the Rings and the first two Narnia films, and it's getting wearisome.  If I'm tired of movies that rip the heart and beauty out of a book and try to pass their new creation off as the real thing, then others are surely tired of me whining about it.  Perhaps the action film, bratty teen, and self-esteem genres are the "heart language" of today, and the filmmakers should be commended for speaking to people in a language they can hear.  Maybe the door will open a crack for what I see as the true beauty and wonder of the books.

What I liked:

• Technically, the film is well done; I especially admire the way Reepicheep is animated. 
• Eustace, hardly one's favorite character in the book, is well played; the actor does a great job.
• The ending is reasonably depicted, despite passing over the wonders of the Last Sea, and eliminating the scene with the Lamb.

What I didn't like:

• The pervasive, dark creepiness.  For a story filled with sunshine and light, light so real that by the end of the book it is "drinkable," this is more than strange.  The center of the movie is not the bright goodness of the sun and the journey to Aslan's country, but a quest to conquer the evil of the Dark Island.  (In the book, Dark Island is but a short episode, and it's not conquered, but fled from, after Lord Rhoop is rescued.)
• As in the other movies, the children have lost their admirable innocence in favor of an egotistical self-centeredness.
• The re-taking of the Lone Islands, accomplished in the book by chivalry, loyalty, and intelligent action, without a drop of blood shed, is turned into a battle.  What's more, the point is completely missed that the evil of slavery is made possible by a collusion of profiteering and bureaucracy.
• As in Prince Caspian, Aslan comes across as a rather tame lion who drifts in and out of the story without affecting it much, rather than the point on which many of the episodes turn.
• The mysterious story in the magician's book, "about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill" is missing altogether, as is the point that Dark Island is "the land where dreams come true."  Also Ramandu, the retired star, being made younger by the fire-berries from the sun, and Caspian's battle with himself at the end of the world, along with many other stories that could easily have been fit in if so many battle scenes had not been added.
• The lesson Lucy learns from her struggles with the magician’s book has been changed from the perils of eavesdropping to the importance of self-esteem.
• The "un-dragoning" of Eustace occurs out of sequence, and is given short shrift.
• The significance of the Stone Knife at the table on Ramandu's Island is passed over completely, the enchantment of the lords being reduced to a punishment for fighting in a place where violence is not permitted.

The more I think of it, the odder the fighting in Dawn Treader appears.  Unlike Prince Caspian, in which battles are essential to much of the story—though even so I think the movie overdoes the point—Dawn Treader, the book, includes example after example of battles averted.  To name a few:

• Caspian is able to make the voyage because all Narnia is at peace.
• When approached by the slavers, Caspian insists on not being identified as the king, and resists Reepicheep’s suggestion of battle as being unwise in their disadvantageous position.
• The Lone Islands, as mentioned above, are retaken, and the slaves freed, with a show of (assumed) force and a strong will, but without a fight.
• Eustace, in dragon form, was indeed very useful to the others, but not as a fighter.  He explored the island, took his friends on rides, brought them a tree to replace the broken mast, and re-provisioned the ship by hunting wild goats and pigs.  “He was a very humane killer too, for he could dispatch a beast with one blow of his tail….”
• The sea serpent is not conquered by battle, but by cleverness.  “Others would have joined [in fighting] if at that moment Reepicheep had not called out, “Don’t fight!  Push!”
• The appearance of Aslan breaks the spell of Deathwater Island just as Caspian lays his hand on his sword to fight with Edmund.
• There is no battle with the Dufflepuds, although the Chief does once send his spear flying into a tree.  Reepicheep explains, “If we had any assurance of saving [Lucy] by battle, our duty would be very plain.  It appears to me that we have none.  And the service they ask of her is in no way contrary to her Majesty’s honour, but a noble and heroical act.”
• As mentioned earlier, after rescuing the Lord Rhoop, Caspian orders the ship to flee Dark Island with all speed, much to Reepicheep’s disappointment.
• The quarrel of the three lords at Ramandu’s Island is prevented from escalating to violence when one of them grabs the Knife of Stone, “a thing not right for him to touch,” sending them into the enchanted sleep.
• Reepicheep is distracted from answering the Sea King’s challenge to combat by his discovery that the water they are sailing in is no longer salty.
• As Reepicheep, the mighty warrior, heads off to Aslan’s country, he flings away his sword, saying, “I shall need it no more.”  (The inclusion of this scene is part of what makes the ending of the movie better than I had by that point come to expect.)

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie tells an interesting story, better than most these days, and if I did not know the book, I might have liked it.  I hope it is (has been?) successful enough to encourage the production of the rest of the Narnia series, even though I know I will continue to be disappointed.  I can’t recommend it to those who have higher hopes that their children will discover the glories of what C. S. Lewis wrote.  And yet …  I also can’t help thinking … hoping … that maybe the movies are a good thing for those whose alternative will not be the books, but something darker, more violent, and with less heroic goodness than these films have to offer.

We slept well until 4:30 a.m.  That sounds early, but it’s not unusual for us to start the day ony an hour later.  Not bad at all, considering Hawaiian clocks—in the summertime—are six hours skewed from Florida’s.

(My current approach to combatting jet lag is to sleep as much as possible on the plane, but not to make an effort to sleep.  Once upon a time I acted as if I could get a full night’s sleep on an overnight flight:  brushing my teeth, wearing eye covers, and settling down as much as is possible in a coach-class set, with a pillow and a blanket.  After several flights with marginal success at best, I decided to ignore my watch altogether.  After boarding, I settle down to enjoy myself, usually with a book or my World of Puzzles magazine.  I’m at the stage of life where it’s easy to doze—actually, I’ve been at that stage for at least 40 years—so when I feel sleepy, I set the book down and allow myself to snooze.  I rarely even bother to take off my glasses; I just lean back and sleep.  When I wake, I pick up where I left off and begin the cycle again.  I find this much more satisfactory, because I’m no longer annoyed by announcements, food  carts, or neighbors who must get out of their seats.  If they wake me up, they’ve only disturbed a short nap, not my “night’s rest.”  I no longer worry that I’m “supposed” to be sleeping.   I enjoy the flight more, and adjustment to the new time schedule comes more easily.)

We would have liked to make a faster start to the day, but had a morning appointment with our “personal concierge,” who would help us plan our week, including the mandatory timeshare presentation.  She was actually very helpful, with useful suggestions for places to stop on our around-the-island tour.  She was also able to reschedule our presentation, which had originally been placed in the middle of the day, a most annoying and wasteful time.

The first meeting accomplished, we headed out of the Hilton property to the shopping/restaurant area at the entrance to the resort.  (The resort is more than the Hilton sites, although they constitute a large part of it.)  There we made a breakfast of “Japanese Tempura Style Fish and Chips” (and shrimp).  Delicious!

Unless you consider fish & chips for breakfast a bit odd, there was nothing about its onset to indicate how incredible this day would be.

Other people may not have this problem, but I quail at the thought of spending more than $1000 on an activity that lasts only two hours.  Even grocery shopping isn’t that expensive.  The two of us can fly to Pittsburgh and back for half that.  Or one of us to Switzerland (though not back).  However….

If you’re going to go all the way to Hawaii, I recommend in the strongest terms that you invest in a Blue Hawaiian helicopter tour.  We decided to go all out, choosing the two-hour tour and the fancy Eco-Star helicopter, and are so glad we did.  What an amazing experience!

On the practical side, it was a fantastic introduction to the island, giving us a much better idea of what we wanted to do with the rest of our days there.  (I know, I know.  We should have had all that figured out ahead of time.  But we didn’t, and I don’t know how we could have done better than what transpired, no matter how much we had planned.  Hmm....  We might have saved a bit on the Volcano hotel; more on that later.  But that’s about it.)  We learned a lot about which treks were worth taking, and which were a lot of effort for a view much less interesting than the one we had from the air.

The view.  The views!  It would have been rewarding enough merely flying all over the island.  On the first leg of the trip we flew across to Hilo:  from the desert,

over ranch land,

to rain forest.

But that’s not what you’re waiting to see.

We flew right over the top of Kilauea!

At the arrow, the red-hot lava is pouring forth, turning grey as it cools but still flowing.  This is not the spectacular effect our grandkids were hoping to see, preferably with Grandma and Dad-o standing perilously close, but this is God’s creation, not Walt Disney’s, and not to be activated on demand.  We were lucky to see lava flow at all, as until recently it had been flowing through underground lava tubes rather than into the caldera.  And it was truly amazing to see Creation ongoing.

After the volcano tour, we stopped briefly in Hilo for refueling, and then it was on to the waterfalls!  The Waipi‘o Valley is best seen by helicopter, unless you have a four-wheel drive vehicle and a death wish.

Hawaii’s falls are not broad, but very tall and beautiful.

An expensive ride?  Yes.  Worth the cost?  Absolutely.

Did I mention that flying in a helicopter feels like flying?  Or what I imagine flying would be like, were I actually able to do so.

After a lunch/dinner of pulled pork—which is big in Hawaii as well as South Carolina—we went back to the room, intending to put on our swim suits and check out the resort’s saltwater lagoon and freshwater pools.  But I made the mistake of lying down, “just for a few minutes,” and quickly lost consciousness.  Porter spent the time reading our guidebooks, occasionally making a half-hearted, and thoroughly unsuccessful, attempt at awakening me.  Our early arising, bright sunshine—which always makes me sleepy—and exciting adventures had wiped me out … until 4:30 a.m. of the new day.

I'm still working on Hawaii, Day 2, so today you get to see the souvenir we brought home—for the worms.

It's billed as a compostable cup, and was of excellent quailty for drinking.  According the the manufacturer,

Please note that composting is required for biodegradation. These cups will biodegrade within 180 days in a commercial composting facility but can take up to a year or more to biodegrade in a home composting system.

We will see what the worms make of it.  I suspect it will take quite a while for them to have an impact on the cup:  they prefer their food in small pieces, preferably soft.  They will eat the mushier parts first, leaving harder pieces until bugs and microbes have degraded them somewhat—see the piece of corn cob to the right of the cup.

If a good neighbor is one who watches out for your home while you are gone, and a great neighbor takes care of your mail and pets (even if there are 10,000 of them), what can you say about a neighbor who will take you to the airport at 4:30 in the morning?  That was the first leg of our trip to Hawaii.  (Technically, “Hawai‘i,” with the left single quote, but I’m going with the simplified spelling.)

Hawaii?  What were we doing there?  That’s what I asked myself.

Ever since my class in elementary school debated the relative merits of our new states, Alaska and Hawaii, I’d preferred the former.  What a pernicious influence our early experiences can have!  My mind later realized that outside of the debate context, this is not a choice—one can, and should, like both—but my prejudices from that forced decision remained.

Thus I was not as excited as some might be when Porter announced that he had made a commitment to go to Hawaii.  I wasn’t upset; I knew he wanted to get there sometime, and I find vacations a lot more fun if someone else makes the arrangements.  Not upset, but surprised, because we usually debate such plans for months before acting.

As it turned out, he had debated for months, until he was worn down by a Hilton Vacation Club salesman at the hotel where he had stayed while working in New York City.  So our great deal came at the cost of a 2 ½-hour timeshare presentation.  (It was well worth the price, but more on that in a later post.)  The deal included three days at the Hilton Waikoloa Village resort on the Big Island, a rental car, a luau, and a $200 voucher to use sometime in the next six months at another Hilton property of our choice.  We added a fair amount of our own money to extend the stay to six days, but used frequent flier points for our plane tickets, so I guess Porter earned this dream trip in several ways!

We travelled relatively light—it’s easier when you don’t have friends and family on the other end—but still ended up with one checked bag and  three small carry-ons.  It didn’t seem as if we were bringing that much, but snorkelling equipment, a video camera, extra shoes, and clothes for both hot and cold weather do take up space.  Not to mention a computer, though we only brought one this time.

The flight from Orlando to Atlanta was fine, although we were disappointed to learn that apparently flying on points disqualifies you for upgrades, which we had been looking forward to thanks to Porter’s super-elite status.  Ah, well.  First class doesn’t get to the runway any sooner than coach.  Later, actually!

It was in Atlanta that things appeared to go wrong.  I missed the part where we had signed up for the Delta Fitness Plan, but the inevitable gate change didn’t surprise me.  We began to suspect more than a simple gate change when boarding time came and went.  Then we were told there was an equipment problem, but Maintenance was working on it.  And working on it.  “You don’t want to fly all the way to Los Angeles with non-functional bathrooms, do you?”  Given that we had a connection to make, I would have been willing to take my chances, but Delta wasn’t.

Finally, we decided to investigate other options, as the odds of making our Kona flight were diminishing rapidly.  As it happened, we were right at the entrance to the Delta Customer Service area when the cancellation of our Atlanta – L.A. flight was announced; thus we found ourselves at the head of what soon became a very. long. line.

Platinum status may not have gained us a first class upgrade, but it did shove us to the front of the next line, inside Customer Service itself.  There, the kind and very efficient agent booked us on a flight directly from Atlanta to Honolulu, and a puddle jumper thence to Kona.  Level II of the fitness program:  this gate change required racing to the most distant wing of the airport.  We made it—but if we had not been where we were when the cancellation was made, or if we had had to wait in the non-status line, we would have had plenty of time to use the generous $16 worth of food vouchers we had been given.

The new arrangements turned out to be much nicer than the originals.  We skipped L.A., added an additional island to our tour (albeit for less than an hour), and landed in Kona not much later than originally scheduled.  The hardest part was believing we were still in America after having flown so far.  Door-to-door travel time was about 19 hours; after all that, shouldn’t we have been in Switzerland?

The Kona airport is tiny.  About a dozen gates, and none of those enclosed jetways:  You walk down the stairs from the plane, and through the weather.  Fortunately, Kona is on the dry side of the island.

First impression:  Hawaii is bilingual.  Much as Florida’s signs are in English and Spanish, the signs at the airport, rental car agency, and resort are in English and Japanese.  Seventy years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invasion of Hawaii is going strong—in the form of tourists, dropping yen instead of bombs.  It was great to hear Japanese once again, and brush up on important skills, like recognizing the Japanese characters for “exit.”  (As it turns out, we saw more Hawaiian than Japanese once we left the resort area.  More on the Hawaiian language later.)

After check-in, we took an evening walk around the huge resort, and ate what turned out to be our one-and-only resort restaurant meal.  I had a moderately outrageously priced teriyaki chicken sandwich that was quite good, and Porter had a $25 “lobster burger” that was not.

The view from our window

The night was breezy and not too hot, the sunset-and-ocean view was soothing, and dolphins were playing in the nearby lagoon.  We were in Hawaii!

We were in Hawaii:  jet-lagged, and with a busy day scheduled for tomorrow.  Grateful for the day’s many blessings, we collapsed into bed.

Waikoloa sunset