The Honoka'a Trip

This happened two weeks ago already, so I'm a little fuzzy on the detail. No matter, if I get tripped up on something, I'll just add ninjas.

It was a two day trip that began at Really Friggin' Early O'Clock on a Friday morning. I had anticipated not getting much sleep that Thursday night, since I typically don't sleep well before trips. So I focused on getting sleep the night before the night before the trip. And that worked out well.

A med student I'll be living with this summer named Erin picked me up so I didn't have to bus it, and that was nice. Our entire team were on the same flight, one of Aloha Airline's last, it would turn out. A social work student I'll be living with named Deana decided mid-flight (knowing that I'm afraid of flying--she was sitting next to me and had witnessed first hand my anxious response to the take-off, in case she hadn't believed me when I just told her) that it would be a good time to tell me the story of how an Aloha Airline plane ripped apart mid-flight, and how her old high school friend was a flight attendant on the flight and how she took care of everyone until they managed to land. It was a great story, depicted in a TV movie called Miracle Landing. You can read more about it at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243

Ah, wikipedia. Anyway, I was really happy to hear that story as we flew over the ocean on the same airline that had produced that story. To Deana's credit, though,she rubbed my shoulder and said soothing things when we hit turbulence on the descent and I gasped and went all white-knuckled grip on the armrests. Descent is my second least favorite part of flying, just after ascent. Third on the list is "the middle part."

Also, I got to see snow from my window up on the highest bits of the Big Island.

We had breakfast at some ninja diner place. I gave in to temptation and ordered eggs and sausage with hashbrowns and gravy, expecting the hashbrowns to be Waffle House-ish (but they were McDonald's-ish) and expecting the gravy to be sawmill-ish (but it was... I dunno, just brown gravy). But still, tasty enough. And the coffee was good.

We drove in to Honoka'a, which is a... ninja-length drive from Hilo where we landed. We got this picture as we came in:



The joke is that one of last summer's team broke the H off the sign by stepping on it. The town members had joked they would change the town's name to Onoka'a. Anyway, that's my team: Me (Kati), Erin, Kristina, and Deana.

Honoka'a is at a fairly high altitude. It's on the edge of the island, but is so high up that even though the land's horizon will be quite close, the ocean is still quite far away. Like so:



The land slopes up off the ocean so that the wind doesn't break before it hits the town. There is always, always, a breeze. And it's cooler anyway than Honolulu because of the high altitude. It's really nice. Here's the town:



I realize, living in Honolulu, that it's easy to forget sometimes that I also live in Hawai'i. Honolulu is among the ugliest cities in terms of design that I have ever been in. Don't get me wrong, I love it. It's got charm that I haven't quite figured out how to describe. But outside of Honolulu, there are things like Waipi'o Point:



And Akaka Falls:



That's a one thousand foot waterfall. And that's Kristina with me. Ron (our faculty advisor) is taking the picture. After we saw Akaka Falls, we walked around the area a bit and wandered onto a taro and pineapple farm:



From bottom to top you see brambles, pineapple, taro, background foilage, ocean, and sky. Yes, those green spiky things sticking up out of the ground are pineapples, which grow in the ground like that. Anyway, just after taking this picture, a man came up to us and told us all about this farm. It's part of the ceded lands for Native Hawaiians. These two guys took control of like 300 acres last year. They're both farmers and have the land open to any Native Hawaiian who wants to learn how to farm. Basically, you just go to them and say, hey, can I have some of that land for farming? And they give you some. Also, they'll teach you anything you want to know and help you set up. The only stipulation for using the land is that you use the land. If you just let it sit, they'll hand it on to someone else.

Other things that I saw and didn't take pictures of included Waimea Community Hospital, which, in addition to doctors and nurses, has prayer blankets and skylights and patient gardens and healing touch therapists. I also toured the Health Center in Honokaa where I'll be shadowing the mental health professionals. And I got to walk around early in the morning and talk to early morning coffee drinkers and sellers. I learned about the history of coffee growing in Hawai'i, which is a pretty interesting history. And plus there were ninjas.

All in all, I'm really looking forward to this summer. I still can't fathom spending six weeks away from Michael. I just... I really don't like that idea. My plan is to stay as busy as possible so that the time passes quickly while I get the most out of my trip. Gah. But otherwise, it'll be great. Honokaa is a groovy little town, and I think I'll have a good time there.

The Thing About Plastic

I'll write about my trip to Honoka'a this weekend. I've been buried in resolutions at the Capitol this week and have been researching my butt off for plastic and styrofoam information that is applicable to the resolutions that are currently up. This won't quite go into my work this semester, but I have to share it. I heard about this awhile ago, and this more than anything has gotten me in my move away from the use of plastic. (I'm sorry John, except after you read this I effectively take back that apology, and you'll understand then why I'm not really that sorry that I think plastic is a pretty bad problem in our world right now.)

Please, please, please read this and start thinking about the implications of the things you use in your daily life. I know my readership is, like, twelve people, but read this and then tell others. This issue isn't far away from us. This is in our water, in our food. This is our future.

This article is from The Independent. You can read the original and see the graph at: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html

"The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan"

By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel Howden

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.


The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.

The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.

Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.

He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"

Mr Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade.

Professor David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, said more research was needed to establish the size and nature of the plastic soup but that there was "no reason to doubt" Algalita's findings.

"After all, the plastic trash is going somewhere and it is about time we get a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems."

Professor Karl is co-ordinating an expedition with Algalita in search of the garbage patch later this year and believes the expanse of junk actually represents a new habitat. Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half-a-century old have been found in the north Pacific dump. "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," said Tony Andrady, a chemist with the US-based Research Triangle Institute.

Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said.

According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.

Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic,

Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen.

KATI AGAIN: Also, here's a link to a short, low-res video about plastics in our oceans. http://www.macdonaldproductions.com/plastics_preview.html I got this link from the Fake Plastic Fish Blog that I have a link to on your left. This video is small, it's low-res, it's still worth watching. peace.

The Shampoo-Free Experiment

After getting involved in state legislation regarding banning plastic bags and styrofoam take-out containers on the islands, I started looking around and learnin' up on a variety of plastic-related issues. I found a number of blogs and websites and products and articles that all have to do with reducing the plasticized nature of our modern day life.

Some tips are easy and obvious. (use canvas bags for grocery shopping) (and by the way, plastic bags will still come into your home that you can use to scoop up poop and what not-- newspaper bags, bread bags, cereal bags, frozen veggie bags, fresh fruit bags. Dropping plastic grocery bags from your life is not the end-all solution to getting that 300 million ton glob of plastic out of our ocean, but it is a step within a series of steps that I think people should be willing to take.)

Some tips are less easy and less obvious. (making your own toothpaste, soymilk, fruitjuice, canning your own vegetables because modern metal cans have a thin plastic coating on them-- these are all things I don't do, and probably won't do. But if you're into, hey. Bully for you, because that's awesome.)

Some tips are downright absurd. (Stop using shampoo and conditioner.)

Which leads me into my latest reduce-the-plastic-content-in-my-life-somewhat experiment, in which I stop shampooing and conditioning my hair for at least a week, and longer if it turns out well. And I figured that this is the week to do it, because it's spring break, so if it goes badly I won't get the reputation around the department of being Bad Hygiene Girl. Hmm... now that's a supervillian toady name if ever I heard one. Hmmm....

My week is not yet up, but as I'll be going away for the weekend, and will have other things to talk about after I come back, I decided to go ahead with an explanation of my experiment and some preliminary findings.

I read a couple of blogs from women who had tried dropping shampoo and conditioner from their lives, and substituted baking soda rinses and vinegar rinses, respectively. This switch has the potential to be less expensive, and because vinegar can be bought in a glass bottle, it has the potential to reduce household plastic consumption by a pretty good bit.

"My hair looks great!" they said, "Better than ever!"

"It doesn't smell like vinegar!" they said, "Not even a bit!"

"I've streamlined the rinse-making process," they said, "So it's really easy and quick to set up for showertime."

How fantastic, I thought. I'd best give this a go. Except, I didn't have any baking soda on hand. No worries, though. I started out that first day with shampoo and vinegar, and this is what I found:

Recipe: 3parts hot water, 1part vinegar, rosemary for scent.

The rosemary did not affect the scent at all. It just smelled like vinegar (though others swear rosemary works great). I washed my hair as normal, and then poured my vinegar concoction over my hair. It felt like I was just pouring water over my head. My hair did not become smooth or light or tangle free. I thought, well, that's a wash. (sorry) But then, the moment I went to rinse it out of my hair, the moment I stepped back under the showerhead, my hair went smooth and sleek and really felt as though I had conditioned it. And the vinegar smell washed down the drain as well. It was great. Brushing it out after the shower, it was slightly more tangled than normal, but still well within manageable range.

When Michael came home, I asked him to smell my hair. He buried his nose deep in my hair, deliberated with deep breaths, and declared, "It smells like mayonaise." What? "It smells like mayonaise." A lot? "No, not a lot." He said he wouldn't even notice it except that I had requested he put his face inside my hair and go searching for scents. So... not completely smell free as some others have claimed.

The next day, we went shopping and I got some baking soda so I could go all out with this experiment.

Recipe: 1tsp to 1tbsp ish baking soda, 1 cup ish of shower water (mixed in a jar in the shower; leftover rosemary vinergar solution, smelling now even less like rosemary and more like vinegar.

I poured the baking soda solution over my hair and rubbed it in. Obviously, it doesn't suds like shampoo, but still I could feel it rinsing oils and whatnot out of my hair. Then I poured the vinegar solution over, as the day before.

There were no tangles when I brushed my hair out afteward. None. At no other time in my life, when my hair has been longer than quiteshort, have I had no tangles when I brushed out my hair after a shower. But here now, there was no effort to it. The brush went right through. And when my hair dried it was... well, normal. There was no change from it's typical texture, cleanliness, etc. It looked like always.

Three times now I've washed my hair with baking soda, and four times conditioned with vinegar. My hair is just as clean as ever. On the day when I used more baking soda than others, the volume of my hair nearly doubled. Not a huge frizzy mess, just... big. My hair is still curly, still soft. I don't smell like vinegar, although when Michael goes searching for any smell, he still holds there is a faint hint of mayonaise. I'm also trying out different scents than rosemary. Currently I'm using a rinse made with pumpkin spice tea and vinegar. I can get a faint whiff of pumpkin spice every now and again, no vinegar. Next I'm going to try clove. Maybe cinnamon, maybe nutmeg, maybe... who knows?

I'm going to keep with this, I think. Less plastic, less expensive, same hair. And it is quick and easy to do, with actually less scrubbing and rinsing and brushing effort than when I use shampoo and conditioner. I can dig that. I'll update later on if it continues going well, or if it stops going well. But short term results are promising.

NEXT: My next blog entry will almost certainly regard my upcoming trip to the Big Island. On Friday and Saturday I'm going to a site visit for my summer program. I'll get to see where I'll be living and working, meet the folks, poke around, organize some stuff. Very exciting.

Comprende?

I still dream in Spanish. Not every night, and some weeks more than others, but I'll have these dreams where I'm talking to people and the Spanish will come out. Sometimes I'll be introduced to a Spanish-speaker who barely speaks English and I'll tell them that Spanish is fine and we'll converse that way. Sometimes they'll start of saying something in English, but just run out of words.

Sometimes I'll describe what I did in Chicago. I'll tell them that most of my Spanish sucks, but if they want to talk about eligibility for foodstamps, I've got all sorts of vocabulary for conversation. They usually think that's pretty funny. It is my experience in real life that when you speak to someone in their native language, they are mighty forgiving of mistakes and limitations. Of course, this doesn't really hold true for Americans because we seem to think that everyone on Earth should be able to speak perfect English, but we're not talking about us, are we?

Last night in my dream, I was talking with this lady who only spoke Spanish, and while I could understand everything she said (and she used much better grammar than I typically do), I just couldn't get my own Spanish up and going so well. In my dream, I thought, "This is it. Six months away from Spanish speakers, and there goes my language ability."

I know the words are in my head. The grammar is in my head. The fact that my dream characters speak so well is proof of that. Years ago when we went to Guatemala, I thought I could barely speak Spanish at all-- right up until it turned out I was one of the best Spanish-speakers on the trip. I became one of the translators, and I found myself saying things that I hadn't realized I knew how to say until the words were coming out of my mouth. They say necessity is the mother of invention. Well, she's also the mother of language memory, it turns out.

Last time I lost my fluency (my easy-to-access-non-necessity fluency), my dreams in Spanish stopped almost as soon as I stopped speaking it on a daily basis. It surprises me that they continue still this time around. Unless maybe the language is now wired in my brain as part of that feeling of home, and Spanish dreams are a manifestation of homesickness. After all, I still dream of Memphis even though I've not lived there in... god, ten years now.

In other news, I have a job interview this afternoon, and Cliff has submitted my CV to another potential employer. I'll talk about that more when there's more to talk about. My GA-ship for this year runs out in a couple months, and I'll need to get paid again after that's done. Working on that.

I think I have finished the "reading" portion of this next paper I'm working on, which means all I have left is the "writing" part. Piece of cake, yeah?

Novel editing is coming along slowly, now that I'm so concerned with making it "good."

I intend to interview business leaders in Honolulu next week in order to find out what they really think of the now defeated plastic bag ban. Hopefully by the time I've finished all that, I'll have finished my current paper and will be ready to start writing a new one.

I have made a vow to go on a long walk on days in which I would otherwise not have left my desk. "Vow" is perhaps a strong word. It is perhaps, even, a lie. But I do mean to start taking walks, because some days I just don't leave my living room. And that, my friends, is no way to live.

Woof

Jeremie, this brilliant gay friend of mine that has been my point of reference and sunshine for the last five years whom I couldn't possibly do without, suggested I be a little more specific about who I'm talking about when I mention him in my blog posts. (How was that, J?)

Anyway, the neverending supply of roadside garbage has come through yet again. On Thursday I found a speakerbox, huge and heavy and perfect (after a few minor alterations) to house my future vermicomposting project. It took Michael and I both to carry it home. But. It was worth it because while it's not the exact size and shape I would have built had I built my vermicomposting box from scrap wood, it is still an acceptable size and shape. And it's neat. So we carried it home and I set about the minor alterations.

On Friday I took all the electronics out, clipping wires, salvaging screws, and generally getting freaked out by the insulation inside. I hate the way cotton feels when it pulls apart. I have no excuse. It's one of my weird things. Pulling the insulation out promised to be annoying. I put it off until Saturday. I did decide to keep the woofer (or maybe subwoofer? I don't really know the difference) because it looks cool. I may use it as a lid to my bucket-o-browns -- not because it's practical but because it looks cool. Also it's heavy; it would definitely keep my dry leaves and stuff from blowing away, so I guess it's a little practical. Plus it looks cool. I've never really played with stereos or other electronics, so these pieces are all very interesting to me.

On Saturday I set about pulling out the insulation, but not before sawing open the front casing of the box. I love, I love, I love, taking things apart. I also love putting things back together, although I won't be doing that in this case. This is so much fun. Except for pulling out the insulation. That wasn't very much fun at all.

For the box to be complete, I need to create a lid to keep birds out. I can't have the tropical birds eating up my Waimanalo Blues. Also, I need to create a catch basin for any potential drippings. I'm keeping my eye out for something useful in the neverending supply of roadside garbage. Something will come up, I'm sure. I have ever-growing faith in the neverending supply of roadside garbage. People, it turns out, have a lot of stuff. And they throw a lot of it away. And some of it isn't junk. Or at least if it is junk, some of the pieces are still useful for other things.

The moral of this story is that I am slowly and surely on my way to getting some pet worms.

Riting Kan Bee Fun

It seems all I do is write anymore. Don't get me wrong. I am not complaining. As it turns out, I really enjoy writing. I even enjoy writing academic type things, which is good because there is much to be done in that arena.

I took a couple weeks off from fiction writing in February because I just couldn't get any of my stories together. It was really getting me down too. After managing nanowrimo and then a couple more month-long novels after that, I thought I had lost my touch. I was quite pleased with the video we made for Showdown in Chinatown this month. I had a lot of fun writing it with Tony, and actually, I think that was the first time I actually sat down with another person and wrote something together. Great fun.

So now, on to my next project. It's nanoedmo, which means it is time to edit that month-long novel that I slammed out without any regards to structure or content. I looked at it this week for the first time in months. I read through the whole thing. And... it's actually not that bad. It's actually pretty durned entertaining. I actually think there's a publish-worthy novel in there. And no, Jeremie, you may not read it yet, even if it's not as bad as I feared.

Because first, it needs a whole hell of a lot of work. But I'm pleased with it, and so I'm working on structure and content. I'll get a readable first draft and then I'll send it around to whoever wants to read and review (and beta, in J's case).

Problem is, April is Script Frenzy. Yup, write a 100 page script in a month. Woohoo! I have an idea that I think will be fun to explore, so I'm gonna go with that. Fun times ahead.

In the meantime, it turns out that I'm still in grad school. I have a pretty big paper I'm working on right now, and after that I'll have a couple more pretty big papers to work on. It'll be great. I'm still hopeful that I can propose my Masters research this semester, but I will have to work quite hard to get to that point. And so, I will work quite hard. I've already made a couple of contacts for people to interview, and it seems as though my research is on the right track in the communities' eyes. That is nice.

I also have a couple of job possibilities coming my way for next school year. I'll let you know as that develops, because it promises to be interesting.

Eh, sorry. Guess I'm all writed out. No great cleverness at ol' 82andsunny today.

The Most Romantic Love Scene EVER

Fair warning: This video is NOT work safe. And what are you doing reading my blog while you're at work? Huh?

So, G.P.E.C.W.A.O.S.H. participated in Showdown in Chinatown once again this month. Typically, you have one week in which to create a short film about a topic. Well, we goofed and didn't get this month's topic (Dating) until we had only 48 hours left. So we slammed this puppy together, deciding to rely heavily on our writing and less so on our barely mediocre technical skills. We are writers after all. The result is below. No, we didn't win anything. The films are judged on technical stuff. But we were an audience favorite. Nay, we were THE audience favorite. They closed the night with our film, to great applause by all. Fantastic. I'm well pleased.