Closing Out 2025 with a Final Plan

No, no... I'm not being morbid with this post.

I guess in my younger days, I would have considered it morbid. But now, it's putting my mind at peace.

It all started when a couple of months ago, my brother and I talked about making sure we knew what to do when our mom's time came to leave us. Mom has talked to us about what the Japanese consider the "golden death." 

When their mom passed away in Japan many years ago, my mom and her two sisters returned to Sendai for the funeral. My grandmother who we called Aachan (short for obaachan) was living with my aunt and her family. She'd been quite healthy and was taking her laundry to the washing machine when she collapsed and passed away. Mom says she was amazed that at the funeral, people were happy for Aachan because she'd had the "golden death."

And then a few years ago, my Auntie Grace had a headache that was lasting quite a long time and she knew something was wrong. She called us because her son was at the airport about to board a flight. I was able to reach him with my cellphone and he asked me to call the ambulance. 

Auntie Grace passed away on the way to the hospital. (The doctor just told us that we should come to the hospital but to drive safely. That was rather cryptic.) We got mom ready and rushed to the hospital. Mom was absolutely devastated to discover her sister had passed away, but now she says she's envious of the "golden death" that her mom and Auntie Grace had. 

So... anyway... I'm digressing.

I made an appointment for us to talk to a representative at Mililani Mortuary where mom had bought a funeral plan in 2004. We met Marinda who went over mom's plan and was amazed at how "cheap" it was back then. She said mom bought the deluxe plan and we had nothing to worry about. Marinda then explained what we should do when mom's time came.

All this got Art and me thinking. He'd already arranged with the military cemetery a while ago to make sure everything was in order for us to be interred there. 

We made an appointment with Marinda for us to discuss what kind of plan we wanted. She did say prices would be going up in the new year. 

And so we went through everything carefully, made a lot of decisions and bought plans we each wanted so our children wouldn't be burdened with trying to figure anything out when we knew they would be having to deal with a lot of sorrow. 

I guess this is a weird post to end the year with, but finalizing this aspect of our lives really gave us a wonderful peace of mind to take with us into 2026.

Happy New Year, everybody!

French vs. US

I use glass containers to hold lemonade and coffee. The reason for the coffee is Art prepares a lot of fresh morning coffee which he enjoys and then stores the rest of it in the glass container for me to use the following mornings for my mocha. My mocha is just really cold coffee with a little chocolate milk. 😊

I can't remember where I bought our first glass container which we have used for coffee and worked great. However, I then bought 2 more when I started making lemonade.

However, at our belated Thanksgiving party with our extended family, I had Art make extra DEcaffeinated coffee for my nephews and wives who like having my mocha also. I didn't want caffeine to keep them up that night. He prepared the decaf coffee early and put them in my newer glass container.

Anyway, that evening... while pouring the coffee, the coffee kept spilling over which made a bit of a mess. I couldn't believe it. I had to pour the coffee over the sink so I wouldn't spill it over the counter.

The following morning, I checked the container to figure out what went wrong. The old container is on the left.

I have used the newer container for lemonade, but I must have been more careful since I was just pouring for myself. I was rushing more at the party since I was making five drinks.

I looked at the bottom of the container to see if they were both from the US since I've been burned before with Pyrex that was made in China instead of the US.

I couldn't believe it! 

The old water container was from France! 

The two new ones I bought were made in the US by Anchor.

You can see the spouts a little better here to see why the French water container is better for pouring liquids.

Ah well... I shall just have to remember to pour the US. container over the sink from now on.

Remarkable Round Rainbow

We get rainbows here in Hawaii all the time. You'd think I'd tire of seeing them but it's such a wondrous thing that you can't help but love seeing them and staring in awe.

My cousin sent me a photo which I posted a while ago of a rainbow hugging the horizon.

What a surprise when my good friend, Kay (Yup. Another Kay) sent me this photo that her son sent her from his high rise condo in Kakaako.

Because of the buildings in the area, I didn't realize it was an almost completely circular rainbow.

Absolutely incredible!

What a great way to look into the new year!

A Special Holiday Gift of Long Ago

Many years ago, after we moved to Illinois, my grade, high school and forever friend, Mavis in Hawaii would send us amazing works of fabric and woven art each holiday season.

Mavis has always been incredibly talented in every way. She was one of the smartest, most thoughtful kids in high school and then a super talented designer of all manner of clothing, quilts, you name it, she created it. Some of the adorable items she created for my children and grandchildren are framed on my wall or passed down to our grandchildren. 

And when Art retired from the U.S.E.P.A. I asked her if she could use Art's many old ties for any of her projects. She said she could. So I happily sent them to her and promptly forgot about it. 

What a surprise when she sent this retirement quilt to us to commemorate Art's work at EPA!

It’s now proudly hanging in Art’s office here in Hawaii. 😁

Mavis knew about our cold Chicago weather and surprised me one year with this incredible fleece cardigan. I was astounded to think of the time it took her to crochet all those snowflake like doilies to add to the cardigan. 

I used to enjoy wearing Mavis' cardigan to my Illinois classroom because my 1st grade students had fun seeing it. I imagine they were trying to count how many snowflakes were attached to me, or maybe the colorful buttons.

I  didn't bring much cold weather clothing with me when we moved back to Hawaii, but I had to bring this. 

Anyway, I've always hated going into that super cold refrigerated room at Sam's Club here in Hawaii to pick up our salad, blueberries, grapes, milk or whatever.  

One morning, I wondered if  it would be a good idea to wear Mavis' fleece cardigan into that freeeezing ❅ room. 

And yes, it was perfect. I was probably the only warm person in that room and could take my time finding which salad had the longest expiration date. 

When all my friends and I got to a certain age, we have taken pity on each other and are not sending gifts anymore. However, whenever I look at Mavis' creations, I have to smile. And that's the best gift of all. The memories.

The Grinch Before Christmas

Sigh...

And the Grinch was me.

Having been dealing with vertigo and just a lot of stuff taking up my time and energy, I was not excited about the advent of the holiday season.

There were newsletters to prepare and send out by snail mail or email, shopping for gifts, wrapping them, finding gifts for neighbors, getting our flu and COVID shots, getting the house ready for our daughter and family to come, baking fruitcakes for lots of people, getting monetary gifts ready for day care helpers for mom, etc. I just didn't know where to even start!

Therefore when Art suggested getting our holiday tree out, I smiled but made no moves to start. I just didn't want to think about it.

Well, one morning he suggested we do it now. 

Sigh...

But then he set up our smaller artificial tree. 

I got out our box of holiday materials.

As I held each ornament that our kids, grandkids or long ago students had made for us, I started to feel a spark of memory that lightened my spirit.

I then held hangings sent by relatives in Japan and many close friends. 

And then I saw this little angel that our neighbor's family in Chicago had given us when their parents died. It was rather a large bag filled with these little angels. Our daughter kept some for her tree in Illinois and our son takes some with him wherever they move to.

When Keola was still living with us, he'd hang these angels around the house and we'd forget where he hung them. It became kind of a joke so he'd always hide at least one so we'd forget to put it away.

I guess I wasn't feeling quite so grinchy now. I was filled with the memories of holiday fun. Our good friend, Myra then suggested making a list of the things that needed to be done. 

I did and every time I checked something off, my spirit lightened. The list put some order into my feeling of mayhem.

OK... now I need to get fruitcakes baked so I shall have to end this post wishing you a stressless holiday season.

Christian Aid Mailing List

In the last couple of months, we have been constantly inundated with charity requests from Christian groups. I've written to all of them asking them to not waste valuable resources by sending these mailings to us. We have our own charity causes that we contribute to. I've gotten some very kind replies from several of them and they promised to take our name off their list. But the religious mailings still come.

I've told them that we want to OPT OUT of their mailing list and to add us to their SUPPRESSION list so they don't sell our name or send us more mail if some other organization should give them our name. I've even told them we are Buddhist and asked for their help in taking us off some sort of Christian mailing list that must be in operation.

Here are some of the mailings we've gotten so far. And the list keeps growing.

Bethany Christian Services

Catholic Medical Mission Board

Catholic Relief Services

Christian Appalachian Project

Companions of St. Anthony

Covenant House

Dominican Friars 

Franciscan Missions

Lutheran World Relief

Mercy Corps

Mercy Ships

Missionaries of Africa

Priests of the Sacred Heart

Sacred Heart Southern Missions

Salesian Missions

Sisters of St. Benedict, Monastery Immaculate Conception

Society of the Little Flower

St. Bonaventure Indian Mission & School

Support Our Aging Religious

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul

The Marist Brothers

Can you imagine all the nickels that might be going into the landfill? 

As for the nickels we receive, they go into our charity jar that Art keeps to put in any money he finds on his jogs so he can give them to a charity of his choice.

Hana Okolele

I've written before that I grew up on a Japanese immigrant sugar plantation camp here on Oahu. We had food to eat, a rental home, a plantation provided health clinic and clothes to sew and wear. As a young child, I figured just about everybody lived like we did (except people on TV or really rich people). I didn't know we were poor. 

Our language was pidgin English. I've written before that we often referred to our long ago childhood days as hanabata days. Hana is Japanese for nose. Bata is butter. So hanabata just means nose snot. Local people all know what it means.

A lot of the Hawaiian language is also part of our pidgin English. We all said pauhana for the end of work or after work. We said "Pio the light" for "Turn off the light." 

(We almost never said, "Aloha" or "Mahalo" which has become more popular now.)

Uh oh... I just checked my blog posts and see that I've written a lot about Hawaiian pidgin English on my post Hawaiian Words of My Youth in 2021.

Anyway, the other day... out of nowhere, I remembered saying, "Ohana okolele, you bust your okolele." I grew up on Oahu. Art grew up on the Big Island. He said he remembered it as "Hana kokolele." We used it as children to say, "You're in big trouble." 

I asked several friends if they remembered saying this. One friend said "you bust your okolele" meant you'd probably get a spanking since okole means your butt. Another friend said they'd heard, "Hana kokolele" also. 

You know you can look up anything on the web and get some kind of answer, right?

Would you believe there's even a company called Hanabata Days who sells these t-shirts for kids?

OK.

So I asked my baby brother who remembers everything about our childhood if he'd heard this term and he said, "Nope. Never heard it."

Is he trying to tell me I'm the only one who got in trouble?

Today's Reality

 One of my very fun classmates sent us all some fun reality cartoons.

Granted, I do a blog now instead of writing in my journal. You can make more friends this way.

Actually, I use my VERY old Fitbit which isn't all that costly.

Ummm... Actually... What High Income? And yes, we know our neighbors quite well, thank you.

I'm happy to say we do have a number of best friends. Unfortunately, we are sadly losing too many of them. It's a sad fact of aging, I'm afraid.

And no... I'm trying to gain weight now. I can't snack easily because of my Invisalign so it's hard to accumulate calories.

I do look back on the fun days of growing up on a poor sugar cane plantation camp where we didn't know we were poor, but I'm grateful for the life I've been given since.

Homes That I Remember...

Do you remember the Beatles song In My Life?

"There are places I remember...All my life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better. Some have gone and some remain..."

Whenever our kids and grandkids come to Hawaii, we often take them to the Big Island where Art  grew up. They get to see the home where he spent his childhood and then the home they moved into next which was behind the mom and pop restaurant/soda fountain that his parents operated. It's a very special feeling to return to the places that will always bring him fond memories.

Someone asked me recently if the grandkids had seen where I grew up. No, they haven't because it's all gone.

It's rather disconcerting to think I can't even figure out where those places were.. once upon a time.

I spent the first 5 or 6 years of my life in an isolated large sugar plantation home in the middle of a sugar cane field in Kunia, Oahu, Hawaii. That's my grandfather on the porch. My father and mother are on the right of that family grouping. My grandmother (father's side) is the other lady. The two young girls are my older cousins. I don't think I was born yet. 

I know the home was demolished but I don't know when and I don't know where it was actually located. It's totally gone. My nephew said he was in what he thinks was the general area and saw some debris that might indicate where the house once stood.

Because the house was so far from school, my parents moved to another smaller plantation home, with a few neighbors... this time at what was called Camp 56. (I don't even know a town name to identify with that home.) That's me. I must have been about 7 years old.

I've asked my brother with the better memory, but he's not sure either. I think I remember getting chicken pox when we lived there... or was it measles? Hmmm....

From AI: 

"The historical location of Camp 56, one of the many plantation camps associated with the Oahu Sugar Company, is no longer a distinct, named area on modern maps. The original plantation camps have largely been redeveloped into contemporary residential and commercial areas within Waipahu...."

Whatever the case, it's completely, totally, forever gone too. 

Eventually, even that house was too far from school requiring a long bus ride so we moved to an actual town called Waipahu. It was another sugar plantation village.

I think I must have been about in the 2nd or 3rd grade by then. I think. We had LOTS of neighbors then and LOTS of friends to play with. My brother and I could even walk to school. I always told people it was about 5 miles to school, uphill both ways, but discovered later it was more like a mile. 😏

I lived there until I left for college and moved to the dorm and then to an apartment near campus. After Art and I married, we moved to Illinois. My brother sent me these bottom photos showing the aftermath of a fire. I don't know if it was purposely set by the plantation so the area could be used for as an industrial area. I don't know. The bottom left photo with my nephews is where our house once stood. The other photo is the neighborhood that we knew so well at one time.

And now it's all gone and nothing remains. 

It's a feeling of sadness of a time I can still remember.

Papaya or the Baby?

We were having a snack at a mall with good friends when Art mentioned how he'd once made a catch that could have been a drop...a catastrophic drop.

This was something that happened 15 years ago. I'd forgotten about it, but it must have been traumatic for Art. 

We used to have a tall papaya tree with the sweetest papayas we've ever had. Eventually, the birds discovered it and got to the papayas before we could pick it. There were times they'd make a small hole and then actually clean out the entire papaya leaving only the skin and dropping the seeds on the ground.

Anyway, Tiffany and KC were in Hawaii for a visit and loved having the papayas for breakfast. KC wanted to pick the papayas so of course, Grandpa was always willing to grant his favorite granddaughter her every wish. He got the chair and hoisted her up to pick the ripe papayas. She was loving it all.

Well, unfortunately, she lost her grip on one of the papayas and it fell out of her hands. Incredibly, Art held on to KC, kept his balance and was able to reach out to catch the papaya.

We could not believe it! Tiffany was taking photos and managed to catch that rather shocking episode. 

And no, Art never did it again.

Lovebirds?

And this is just another post just to show you this photo that I've had for several months.

Art and I were on our evening walk when I came across this sweet little tête-à-tête. As we walked past, they were so intent on each other that they didn't even budge. 

They sort of moved side to side but always facing each other and never more than a few inches apart. I'm glad a car didn't come by.

I'm not a fan of pigeons, but so long as they stay off our roof I'm OK with them. 

What do you think they're doing? 

SPAM Comments

I've gotten tons of spam comments on my blog through the years and thought that if I just marked them as Spam and kept them in the Spam Comments File, it would teach the computer to never let them get published.

It didn't appear to work. 

One day I was looking through years of Spam that I've gotten and saw that there were a whole bunch of comments that were one or two word comments. I didn't know back then to click the comments that I knew were safe and to publish them.

I discovered later that you can click on Comments which would give you the options to go to the Published or Spam file. 

If something Published is a person you know is Spam you can indicate that and the comment would be moved to your Spam file.

This was from Dylan Brandon in my Spam File. If I knew for certain it was not Spam, I could click on those three dots that would then show me that trash can or that check mark which I could click to move him to the Published file.

So then I'm wondering if I should keep all my Spams to help the computer or Blogspot AI remember who the Spams where.

So I looked it up and this is what AI said:

So OK. I'll mark any Spam I find in my Published file first, and then go to the Spam file later and kill it there too. I'll give it a little time to make sure the AI brain is remembering this in order to make sure I don't see it again.

POSTSCRIPT:

It's been a couple of months now and so far, so good. I haven't gotten any more Spam. I just got that one Spam from Dylan which I kept just so I could show it for this post.

Fingers crossed 🤞 this continues to work.

Bambucha Blueberries

Just to show how bad my memory has gotten I decided to go ahead with this post.

Arrrghhhh!

I was so shocked with the size of the blueberries we got from Sam's Club a while ago that we took photos of them.

I titled it Bambucha (Hawaiian pidgin English for huge) Blueberries. 

So here I was ready to post this and I thought I'd check to see if I'd mentioned the word Bambucha before.

Arrrgghhhh!

https://travelerswife.blogspot.com/2022/10/bambucha-blueberries.html#comment-form

I can't believe it.

Not only did I write a post about it, I even titled it Bambucha Blueberries.

Arrrggghhh!

I told you that my memory is faltering and my daughter has told me several times, "You've already told me that, mom."

In my defense I've now written over 4,250 posts so it's hard to remember what I've written about. That's my excuse and I'm going to stand by it. 😕

Dang Blasted Roosters

OK...

I've written before how I've lost my sense of smell and most of my sense of taste. But I have very good hearing. That's why Art and I are such great partners. He can't hear well but he's got an acute sense of smell and taste. He's also near sighted, whereas I'm farsighted.

All this is just to introduce an irritation of mine.

Crowing roosters. Arrrrghhhh!

We have to wake up by 5:30 every weekday morning to get mom ready for her ride to the day care that she loves going to. She's always been an early riser from her working days so we have to get up to make sure she can safely have her breakfast and doesn't try to prepare it on her own. She has accelerating dementia so it's not safe to have her preparing any kind of food.

Therefore, it's especially annoying for me to be awakened at 3:30 in the morning. Problem is, we 

have lots and lots of feral chickens everywhere. 

However, there are also neighbors who keep chickens and lots of roosters in their yard. We've passed this brood of roosters and chickens on one our walks. 

Thing is I can hear one rooster starting his crowing and then another one will seem to answer from another direction and then even farther away another one. Then there's some silence and I might doze, but arrrgghhh! The first rooster will start again. 

And Art? Sleeping like a baby through this whole thing. 

Well, I thought I'd look up what the ordinance was about roosters and found this on the Humane Society website.

And yet... with all the feral chickens scampering about you could never prove exactly which operatic rooster is the one waking me up. 

Hmmm... I wonder why we have so many feral chickens. You'd think our feral cat problem would prevent the feral chickens from getting out of hand.

Hmmm...

Always Thankful

At this holiday time of Thanksgiving, I have much to be thankful for in my life. I won't start a list. And don't worry. Although I don't mention Art here, I do always count my lucky stars that he would come into my life and make it as happy as he has. When I told mom we were engaged, she was so happy she could hardly contain herself. She still lets him know how grateful she is for him even as her memory has been declining. 

Anyway... 

One of the things I'm so happy that Art and I were able to do for mom was to take mom and her sister, my Auntie Grace to Eiheiji. This is from the Eiheiji website:

Eiheiji, "The Temple of Eternal Peace", is one of the two head temples of Soto Zen. It is located deep in the mountains, near the northwest coast of Japan, not far from Fukui City...

This was in April, 2010. I think my grandfather was there sometime in the 1940s.

Mom and Auntie Grace's father was a zen priest who was trained there.

When I researched the temple, I learned that only relatives of zen priests who had been there would be allowed to spend a night at the temple. 

That's a photo of my grandfather at the Eiheiji Temple. 

Mom and Auntie Grace had a wonderful time with two priests-in-training who took care of us during the stay. There was a ceremony and we were all named. Not sure what they said, but mom and Auntie were thrilled.

I am so happy we were able to do this for them before Auntie Grace passed away. It did take a lot of planning on Art's part.

And here's mom absolutely ecstatic for her 96th birthday a month ago with one of her favorite grandsons. 

And another thing I'm thankful for is my brother.

He's always been my favorite brother. OK, he's my only sibling, but he'd still be my favorite.

Since we started our lives living in a plantation home in the middle of a cane field with no other neighbors for miles around until I was in 1st grade, we had only each other for playmates.

When we were in college Dennis roomed with Art and me for a couple of years. 

He and Art were and are best buddies and even did a "Round-the-Island" bike race together.

When Art and I left for Illinois, Dennis came with us for a road trip from California to Chicago. 

After arriving in Chicago, Dennis flew home to Hawaii. I remember feeling like an arm was torn off.

And now, here we are back in Hawaii again and I know he's always there to help whenever we need it.

Art also has just one sibling; his sister, Kay and they are also very close. Yes, her name is Kay too.

And now... what really makes us happy.

We have two children. Tiffany and Keola.

I'm sure I've written about this before but I just have to repeat it.

When we first brought Keola home, Tiffany was very happy.

But one night I heard her crying and went up to her room.

"I change my mind," she said. "I want a dog instead. You love him more than me."

I told her that Keola didn't belong to just Art and me, but he was also hers to protect and teach.  

And she took it to heart...seriously took it to heart. 

When Tiffany left for college, he wrote a beautiful letter telling her he'd miss her and asking who was now going to help him choose his clothes. "Certainly not mom and dad," he joked. I think he joked.

And now, if I'm frustrated because Keola hadn't written in a while or whatever, Tif would still defend him saying he's got two boys now... etc.

And yes.. friends. I'm thankful for all our friends and relatives. You know who you are. We have lifelong friends and relatives on the mainland and here in Hawaii and blogland. 

Yes, there is so much to be thankful for even though sometimes, the political climate looks bleak, there are always lots to make us happy. 

So I'm going to keep that thought with me as we travel into the holiday season.

Terrible, Horrible, Super Awful Vertigo!

I took mom out to the Handi-Van the other morning and the driver said, “How come you no stay long time? Your husband when bring your mom out for the last few days.”

I just love hearing Hawaiian pidgin. I grew up speaking it but my brother says I lost it when we moved to the mainland.

Anyway, I told the Handi-Van driver that I’ve been dealing with vertigo and it’s supposed to last 3 or more months.

It was a surprise to hear him say,  “YOU TOO? My wife get um too. Lots of times. Have to do the exercise. She need help to get up, yeah.” 

Good grief! Every time I turn around, there are so many people (mostly women) who have had this and unless you’ve been through it, you cannot know how horrible it is.

At my appointment last week, Dr. Payne said the MRI done two years ago showed I did not have a tumor growing in my brain. Dr. Payne had sent me to see the ENT doctor who deals with vertigo at Tripler. At that time, Dr. Chen diagnosed what I had as PPPD (Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness). 

Dr. Payne disagreed with that diagnosis.

And now that I’ve done more research, I think Dr. Payne is right. It said that with PPPD, you don’t have the world spinning (apparently the world goes side to side?) and you don’t get nauseous to the point of vomiting. 

So nope. That’s not me. The world definitely spins and I do get sick to my stomach horribly.

I’ll be waiting to see what the new diagnosis will be. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Payne warned me about scrolling on the computer. 😳

And he’s right. If I scroll through items on the computer, it does make me dizzy.

I already have a bunch of blog posts scheduled for several weeks so I guess I’ll be more careful about being on the computer for a while until this episode passes.

Meanwhile, have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everybody!!! ❤

MORE Phishing Scam

This is just a warning.

My daughter and son-in-law are constantly warning us to be careful.

But sometimes, the email you get looks really legitimate.

I got this one last month. 😲 Outlook is my Microsoft E-mailbox. Well... this was a shock! I'm supposed to click there to update it? But which email? I have several. And I'm losing all my data? 

But then I saw that message saying do not reply to that message. Hmmm...

OK I didn't reply, but I thought I'd forward it to my techie son-in-law to ask him about it. 

But when I did...😠 Look who it's from! It's a (scammer)deeboyle@comcast!

This is so annoying and a little warning to everyone. There's a lot of evil people out there.

Is the Sky the Limit for the Skyline Budget?!?

Our friends, Dave and Diane proposed a trip on Hawaii's sort-of-new light rail system called the Skyline.

According to Wikipedia: 

"The final cost has grown from preliminary projections of $4 billion in 2006 to as much as $12.4 billion by 2021."

I did see another early projection cost of $5.1 billion.  Ahh well... what's a billion here and there? 😕 In 2025, it's still projected to be over $12 billion.

In 2025 the Star Advertiser called it:

"The world's priciest light-rail project per capita..."

Much of the problem now is that because the rail is so costly, it may not be able to go as far as proposed initially. They've also cut out most of the parking lots at the stations and uuummm...  NO bathrooms. 😬 

OK, going back to Dave and Diane. They suggested driving to Kapolei to the start of the Skyline and riding it to the end in Kalihi. Then we could ride it back to Kapolei and grab lunch there.

They've been on the rail once before. We've never been on the Skyline, so it would be an adventure. Our daughter laughed when I told her about it since we used the subway system while living in Chicago for 35 years and have also been on the Shinkansen bullet train many times in Japan.

But this is Hawaii!

We went to one of the few Park and Ride stations in Kapolei. We'd purchased a HOLO card several years ago in anticipation of riding the rail and never used it. Holo is Hawaiian for to go or to ride.

You'll notice Diane and Art climbing up those stairs? 😆 I followed them on the escalator.

We were there around 9:00 in the morning and didn't see many people riding at all.

It was fun to see a bird's eye view of the landscape. 

We passed through Waipahu where I grew up on a sugar plantation camp. 

The smoke stack was part of the sugar mill. When I was growing up, there used to be 2 smoke stacks. The sugar mill is gone now.

We could see battleships that were out of commission and the Arizona Memorial as well.

That big pink building on the hill is the Tripler Army Medical Center where Art and I go for our health care.

After about a half hour we arrived at the Kalihi Transit Center.

We got off the train but then realized we should have just stayed on since it was going to go right back to Kapolei where we got on.

It didn't matter. The next train came in 10 minutes and we got on.

Dave (the professional photographer) suggested that we go to the front (back?) of the train so we could have the big window to look out of.

This was loads of fun!

One of the things we wanted to check on was how far the station was from the International Airport.

We could see that if you weren't loaded down with too many suitcases, it's about a 15 minute walk from the station to the entrance of the airport.

This would be promising in an emergency.

At this point, it looks like they have funds to get to the Ka'akaukukui Civic Center stop. Their original plan was to build the rail to Ala Moana. This would allow tourists to board the train at the airport, ride to the Ala Moana Center and then take a bus into Waikiki. 

We'll see if that ever happens and if the cost goes up to $15 billion. 😮

Once we got back to Kapolei, Dave and Diane drove us to the Island Vintage restaurant.

That was also loads of fun and I especially enjoyed their Pure Mango Smoothie. 

It had been a wonderful expedition and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

When Dave and Diane dropped us off, Dave called out, "What do you think about trying the zipline 😲 next?" 

Hmmm....

Northern Lights in Hawaii?

My cousin, Ellen texted this photo to us and I asked her if I could post it here. She said she and her husband were driving through Waipahu (here on the island of Oahu) and saw this amazing spectacle. She wished everybody could see it.

She asked her husband to stop the car so she could take the photo.

And no, I did not photoshop this at all. 

Ellen said this is her Hawaii version of the Northern Lights.

And you know what? After all these years of seeing and taking photos of rainbows here in Hawaii, I never tire of seeing them. And I don't think I've seen anything quite as beautiful as this.... yet.

Times Change... Or Have They?

Quite a while ago, I saw this Pearls Before Swine comic strip in the Star Advertiser but didn't have a story to post it with.

So now I have something to post about.

We were having our weekly Starbucks drink after finishing our mall walk with friends one morning. 

The Dodgers had won their 2nd World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays. Art was very happy the Dodgers won even though he had to send his $1.00 bet to our son overseas. 

They have a $1 bet over most of the major sports games.

I forget when Keola lost the bet and sent this foreign currency to Art. 

Anyway, there we were with our friend, Dave (who is not Japanese) who smiled and said, "Isn't it pretty amazing that Japanese-Americans were once put in Internment camps and now 3 Japanese players are World Series winners?" 

In fact Yoshinobu Yamamoto was even given the MVP title. 

Yup... Pretty amazing.

Dave went on to say, "Did you know that baseball was big in the Internment camps? In fact, they all had baseball leagues competing against each other?" 

No, I didn't know. I do know some friends and relatives who were incarcerated in Internment camps on the mainland. We even had an Internment camp here on Oahu called Honouliuli. 

I looked it up online and found this book.

I guess baseball was big in the camps and helped to keep spirits up at a time when it felt the country was against them even though they were Americans.

I saw this on a website called Baseball in American Concentration Camps: History, Photos, and Reading Recommendations.

I was surprised they called it a Concentration Camp. The correct term is Internment. Whatever the case. It was a terrible time. A couple of my uncles joined the 442nd Infantry Regiment. Another uncle's father and older brother were sent to an Internment camp on the mainland merely because they were reporters for a Japanese language newspaper. It was 83 years ago in 1942. Armed military came to their house and took them away... and this was in Hawaii!

But now we are happily celebrating the triumphs of 3 Japanese players who helped the Dodgers win the World Series.

We're thrilled, of course. But wow! Isn't it amazing? 

But then we're hearing from our daughter in Chicago about ICE raids. She sent us this photo taken safely (she reassured me) on her way to work.