An Unconventinal 4th

4th of July.  Commonly, a day of parades, picnics, fireworks, and gathering with friends.

Our significant event of the day was a small boost for the American economy.  We went to the Apple Store.

Let it be said up front that, without any effort on her part whatsoever, my mother raised two children who cannot live without computers.  Ian has always used Apple products.  I have been a PC user.  Then I got an iPhone.  Next came the Mac.  Now I'm trying to figure out if an iPad is a toy or a tool.  

But our mother has been resistant.  When our father was alive, she said she would not get a computer because HE would expect her to do all his secretarial work.  I don't know why she thought it would be any different than her daily use of a typewriter, at least on our father's expectation for her to provide secretarial support, but that's what she said.  Then she said she didn't want to bother with learning something new.

On Monday, Ian dropped by.   They were talking about a split in one of their stocks, and he picked up his iPad to find out if it had actually recorded.  Then he check on the number of shares she owns -- of a different stock.  He did a couple of other things on the iPad before she asked, "What's that?"  Ian told her.  Then, "What does it do?"   He explained that it is a little, light-weight computer.

The telling question:  "Can I use it for genealogy?"  Ian asked what sort of genealogy tasks she wanted to do.  "I want to find for myself some of the things that Bonnie finds for me on the computer."  Ian, who is NOT a genealogist, looked at me.  I figure that if you can search the Internet on a computer, you can probably search the Internet on an iPad.    "Yes," I told her, "you can use it for genealogy."

We were not expecting the next question.  "How much?"  Ian and I both went scrambling for price checks.  iPad 2 or 3?  New or refurbished?  When it became clear even to our mother that we were considering online purchase, she added, "I want to look around before I buy one."  Patiently, Ian explained the avantages of buying from the Apple Store only a half-mile away.

So itt was that our 98-year-old mother made her first trip EVER into an Apple Store on the 4th of July, and came home with a brand new iPad 3.

The folk at the Apple Store were superb.  They allowed her to avoid the long (it is long if you depend on a walker and find a trip through Safeway a week's worth of exercise) walk through the mall and actually come in through the sacrosanct back door.  Noah, her salesperson was friendly, knowledgeable, and dealt gracefully with the three-way discussion (our mother, Ian and myself) as we tried to explain what Black vs. White means in the context of iPad body color, who was going to actually make the purchase, and who would get the system up and running for her.

She spent the afternoon searching.  There was only marginal success on the search front, but she is certainly getting the hang of the new gadget.   Which right now is still very much a toy.

Give thanks for 98-year-old brains that are still excited about learning new skills.  Don't forget to pray ....

A Child Remembered

You are never more than a step from love, no matter where you go.  No distance can separate you from the touch of grace, no depth conceal you from the care of the One who made you.  You walk in light.  Go then to the places that need you.  Step over thresholds of hurt for the sake of others.  Dare to be the truth, share the work of justice.  Even if to save a few you lost it all, you would not count the cost.  

Steven Charleston, "Hope as Old as Fire"

I am a genealogist.  Therefore, I am a reader of obituaries   This week I found an obituary for a 15-year-old boy, the son of a casual friend from Groveland.  The friend and his wife had been through some traumatic health issues in their lives before this child was born.  He was their only child, his father's constant companion at least through the early years of his life.  Now he is gone.  

A remark made by a friend on a memorial page said, "If only you had someone close to talk to ...."   Someone else said, "If only you knew how many people cared."  Would he still be with us if he had heard the message of which Bishop Charleston reminds us?  If one person has stepped over the thresholds of his hurt to share a message of love?  

Don't blame the parents.  15-year-olds don't often hear their parents.  If they did, Ray and I wouldn't have had so many 14 to 17 year olds as crisis intervention foster kids.  But those same teens listen to their friends, their schoolmates, their scout leaders, their teachers.  They listen to strangers, to recording artists.  

Dare to be the truth.  Dare to share the work of justice.  Dare to share the love.  Step over the threshold.  

Don't forget to pray....

* * * * *

An Old Habit Reawakened

Some of us who have lived for any period in an area prone to wildfires learn to dig out information on the Internet.  I haven't  polished those particular hunting skills for awhile, but they came out with in a hurry this week when I heard about "a fire near Colorado Springs".  That was Sunday morning.  I was on my way to church.  Had to stop in the parking lot, haul out the smart phone, and check just how near to Colorado Springs this fire was.

Since Ray's passing I have kept in close contact with a cousin who lives on the west side of Colorado Springs.  He's been a volunteer fire fighter in a rural fire department, did some fire investigation work for said department.  His beloved mountain cabin was one of 133 homes lost in the 138,000+ acre Hayman Fire in 2002.  We've been out of daily contact for the last year as he's had health issues that have had him in and out of hospitals and care facilities, but he's home now with the help of a part-time care taker.  I called to ask about the fire.

"I'm calm."  he said.  "I'm OK."  This man is a master of understatement.  Turns out he was watching the fire from his front door.  "Last night you could see the fire move along the ground, then suddenly it would be in the top of a tree and the tree would explode.  It was moving that fast and that hot."  The ridge line he was watching was about 5 miles away.  A fast-moving wildfire can cover 5 miles in less time that it would take you to throw essentials into a bag, throw the bag in the car, and pull out of your driveway.

Me?  Been there, done that.  I've learned that after you've done it once (as in almost every critical or tense situation), you are less likely to panic when confronted with a similar situation.  But I'm still checking the National Fire Information Center website, the Pike National Forest website, InciWeb and their links to Google Earth, all the Denver and Colorado springs news sites, watching the direction the fire is moving (away from him, but towards his daughter's home north of the Air Force Academy).   And I am not directly threatened.

There are many good information links and lots of photos.  Here's one.  Imagine these scenes from your front door.

Don't forget to pray.  Pray for the weather.  Pray for the firefighters.  Pray for those who have lost property, for those who must shelter in evacuation centers or with friends, and for all those whose lives are directly impacted during an active fire.

* * * * *

Dr. Steven Charleston

Dr. Charleston is a PhD and a Bishop in the Episcopal Church.  He is also a citizen of the Choctaw Nation and an activist for ministry to Indigenous Peoples -- those of us sometimes called "Natives".  Bishop Charleston came to Hawai'i from Oklahoma for a weekend specifically to lead a retreat in Christian Renewal at the church I regularly attend.  

"It's out of character for Episcopalians, he said, preaching with a bible in his hand, "but sometimes I sound like an old Baptist preacher.  It comes from growing up in rural Oklahoma."

"Episcopalians don't always agree on what we believe," Charleston reminded us.  "But the Holy Spirit is the energy that charges our faith and our life."  On that we can agree.




He found a quiet place in a garden to sign his books.  










He laughed with us.  I love this image that catches him in a mischievous  moment.

Charleston brought with him his new book, Hope as Old as Fire, a collection of brief daily meditations.
For May 19 he wrote:  

God bless the church, our traveleing tribe, our motley crew,
caravan of the conflicted and courageous, stumbling toward paradise,
the hurt and the hopeful, wounded healers, singing along the way.
Life within her tents is never easy,
but life without her would be darkness beyond our imagining.
Bless the church, dear God,
your quarreling brood, your stubborn flock,
your love living for love,
your dream of what might be.  

Thank you, Dr. Charleston. 

Don't forget to pray ....   

A Photo Challenge

An interesting challenge for photographers trying to improve their visualizing and composition skills is to carry a camera at all times, taking photos every day.  Then select one photo each day that pleases you.

These images are a bit fuzzy.  I was using a fixed lens camera with telephoto lens at close to max power.  Not great resolution with a subject a half-mile or so away.

Today I went for an outdoor walk (as opposed to mall walking), camera in hand.   Down Kealaolu to the neighborhood beach park.  On Sunday afternoon, it was a busy place -- lots of cars, several family groups.  From the road I saw what looked like a  colorful assemblage of small tents.  I needed more than one image to tell the whole story.

 "Ah," I thought.  "Boy Scouts. "

Not Boy Scouts.  Not even tents.  

Grown men.  Lots of harness.

Lots of rope cables

 Kite surfing.
Kind of like water skiing,
but using wind power instead of a boat.  

You can tell the speed involved by
the wake behind the surfer's board

I love watching these athletes skimming the water.
Such concentration.  Such grace.  Such joy.  

Give thanks for clear skies, clear water, and sufficient wind.
Don't forget to pray!

Remembering Prince Kuhio

Today is a Hawaii State holiday, honoring Prince Jonah Kalaniana'ole Kuhio (1871-1922).  Visitors to Hawaii will recognize his name in Kalaniana'ole highway,  the route to Hanauma Bay, Sandy Beach and Makapu'u.  They may even recognize that a portion of Waikiki Beach is properly called Kuhio Beach.  Prince Kuhio was an member of the US Congress from Hawaii.  Wikipedia reminds us that he was the first native Hawaiian and the only member of a royal family ever to serve there.

My mother, who remembers things Hawaiian even when she misses holidays like Presidents' Day and sometimes the 4th of July, smiled softly and said, "I think the man who smiled and kissed my hand was Prince Kuhio."  Then she told the rest of the story.

"We lived in the country, and when my mother would come to town for shopping or other business, she would leave us with Auntie Alice.  When we were there Auntie Alice would walk us down to the beach, where we used the ocean-front lanai at Prince Kuhio's home as our base.  One day a man came out, on his way to somewhere else.   I remember his mustache.  I remember that he was very nice, smiled, kissed my hand.  I was about 4 or 5 years old."

That would have been 1918-1820.  Auntie Alice Lane was a schoolmate of my grandmother's and a lifelong  close friend.  Her husband, John C Lane,  had served as a member of the Queen's Guard during the overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy in 1893,  was a staunch Royalist, a supporter and personal friend of Prince Kuhio.  Using the Prince's lanai was a perfectly natural thing for Auntie Alice.  So it became a natural thing for my mother and her sister.

Persistence Pays: a Myth Uncovered

Kalaupapa in 1890,  about the time my family lived there.
(photo from http://superpupsays.typepad.com/
superpup_says/2010/10/castaways.html
Oct 2010)

A long-held story in my mother's family is that her great-grandmother died a Kalaupapa, the leper colony on the island of Moloka'i where  St. Damien, then Fr. Damien, served as priest.  There are a variety of ancillary stories -- how she really didn't have leprosy, how there was some jealousy in the community over her reputed beauty, how her husband and two sons went with her as kokua (care-givers), how she was actually sent to the colony but refused to leave when it was determined she was not a leper because she could not take her trunk of beautiful dresses (holoku) with her back to Maui.

PROBLEM:  There are no records of Hele'ualani at Kalaupapa.  No record of diagnosis.  No record of admission as a patient.   No record of housing.  No census entry.  Nothing.  There are multiple records for her husband and two sons -- admission as patients at the Kalihi Detention Center in Honolulu, transfer to Kalaupapa, church records in Kalaupapa, and records of their deaths in the register of the colony residents.  A cousin and I began to wonder if she ever was there.  We looked further.

This morning I found a computerized entry for a woman named Heleualani among a collection of Hawaiian Deaths and Burials.  This woman was born about 1846, and died at Kaaluloa (sic) on 6 Apr 1886.  She fits the expected profile, more or less, for my great-great-grandmother.  The computerized version of this record does not tell which island Kaaluloa is on, nor does it tell whether Hele'ualani is buried on private land or in a cemetery.  The gazetteers were useless.  The place may no longer exist.  It may be too small to count.  It may be misspelled. It just doesn't appear.  Anywhere.

The online transcription does not tell us anything else about Heleualani to help identify her as our ancestor.  I gave a copy of the print-out to my cousin to mull over.

A couple of hours later he called back.  "Could that place be Kaululoa?" he asked.  I'll know on Saturday when I can get down to the local LDS facility and read the microfilm.

"Read the land records you already have  Hele'ualani and Kaho'oilimoku sold just under 6 acres of land to Dennis Toomey in 1885.  Where was it?"  Toomey had fathered two of this couple's grandchildren, and was then living with their daughter.  I found the deed he mentioned.  The parcel was identified as being in Kaululoa, Kawaipapa, Hana.  Where we know Hele'ualani and her husband Kaho'oilimoku lived.

The source for the burial record is a register of burials from the Kingdom of Hawaii.  If this particular register is from the Hana district of Maui, we have found what happened to our great-great-grandmother.  She may or may not have had leprosy.   My guess is that she did, since her husband and two youngest children were known leprosy patients.  But she died, at home, in Hana, before she could be sent to Moloka'i.

Another myth created in family tradition may be shattered.  A transcription error may be overcome.  It helps to have someone with whom to bounce around ideas.  Thank you, Tim, for being that person.