Hawaii

I am in Paradise...

I arrived in Honolulu late Thursday night... found my hotel at Waikiki amid the tiki torches and checked in...

Yesterday I got up early and braved the traffic on the H-1 highway headed north to Ewa and the Hawaiian Railway Society museum... and spent the day with parlor car 64... she is in pretty good shape for 110 years. Surprisingly good shape... She is a pretty car with really nice wood work...

I spent my time underneath poking a pocket knife into wooden beams, checking iron rods and generally getting dirty. Had a beer and dinner with my hosts them made my way back to Waikiki and my hotel... so as of last night I had been in Waikiki for 24 hours and hadn't seen the beach or ocean... This am I got up early, and based upon yesterday's inspection started the preservation report... then I took a walk on the beach... Its now about 9:00 and I will once again head west away from Waikiki to Ewa, and the railroad project...

Next trip looming

Two days from now I fly away… to Hawaii… It is not just a pleasure trip (but it will be a pleasure) but instead, a working trip… I will be doing a preservation study for a railroad car, a Hawaiian railroad car.

I will be studying a single car, making suggestions on how she should be preserved… It is a process that I am comfortable with…

But the car (the railroad car) is owned, preserved, operated by a group, a preservation group who I don’t know… Preservation groups, particularly volunteer based groups have thoughts, directions, and ideas… and those ideas and such must be taken into account…

Of course, while there I will be tourist… a searcher… a visitor… This is my second trip to the Islands... the first time I flew into Honolulu, then flew to Kauai to explore. Explore the Grove Farm and Missionary houses at Princeville, Boone’s railroad, and whatever I found interesting… Several days later I flew back, then joined my son on his destroyer, for a tiger cruise back to Everett. I spent a night in ships berthing at dock in Pearl, visited the Arizona the next day, then we sailed west. This time I will explore Honolulu and Oahu.

In preparation, I have been scanning slides… slides of restoration work… for a presentation while in Hawaii. It is tedious… it takes 3-4 minutes for each slide… I need to scan a little over 200 slides… so over 10 hours… I probably will use less than 30 in my presentation… I just don’t know which 30 slides… The scanning comes as I find myself abandoning slides, slide projectors and silver as a photographic method. I am not the only one… Only last month the last Kodachrome processing machine was turned off… Instead of Kodachome we have jpg’s… instead of a carousel we have a laptop… the world moves on.

The upside to the scanning process is the memories I am finding as I look through the slides.

National Hat Day

Apparently, today, January 15^th is “National Hat Day”….

As a blog which who’s name includes a reference to headwear, written by someone who frequently wears a hat, (I have a bunch) it seems that it is appropriate to acknowledge the day… For we are all about the headwear… Members of my Rotary Club using me as an example have started a “bring back the hat” movement…

But the blog isn’t really about hats…

When it started, and I had to chose a name, I choose “Too Many Hats” as a reference to too much work, too many responsibilities… It wasn’t really about the hat… the hat was an accessory… At the moment I started the blog, among my other job duties I had to attend a 3 day conference on recreation programs… (a really good conference, if ill-timed) while decorating the house… the house museum for Christmas events… many of the seminars I attended were about E-communication… Blogs, E-newsletters, social network sites… too many hats was about too many job responsibilities…

The blog (about Hats… remember, there is a blog about hats… or at least the name includes hats…) has morphed as I find my muse… mostly my muse has been travel… not hats, although hats appear often…

Christmas and family also inspire posts… particularly Christmas….

But today we talk about hats… After all, its National Hat Day

My current daily hat is an oil cloth fedora… I bought it at the San Gregorio General store during a Houston Jones concert… It was a replacement for a wool felt fedora purchased in Pisac Peru in March 2007… I left that hat in a cab in Buenos Aries a year ago… I miss that hat, but the new hat has grown on me… it has become the hat… except at work, where I ether wear a brown wool Peruvian bowler, a straw boater, or a black bowler…

For non work use, there is also a cheap white woven plastic cowboy hat… part of my uniform when volunteering for the San Jose Grand Prix… It has become my hat of choice on hikes and other hot days in the sun…

Maybe it is about hats…

A Christmas night, with fire

It is Christmas evening… a cold night (at least for us in the land of no snow and orange trees) There will be frost on the roof tops tomorrow… I will leave the Christmas lights in the orange tree on tonight (big C-9 bulbs… inefficient heat generating bulbs… my anti freezing plan)

The others have gone to bed…

There is a fire burning on the hearth… It has been burning for the last 4 days… dying back overnight… but with more wood, and maybe a bit of kindling it will burst back into flame again each morning… It will burn all night… I will add more wood tomorrow morning… If Tina and I were home tomorrow night I would stoke it again, and it would continue to burn… in the past I have kept the fire alive for as long as 3 weeks at a time…

It creates warmth… not just a higher temperature as measured by a thermometer… but it makes the home warmer… The fire is alive… it glows…

Some years ago in spring, or maybe early summer, a friend, from Maine told me his mother, still in Maine… “Had let the fire go out…” I realize that this wasn’t an unintentional result of lack of maintenance… but a statement… A deliberate act… winter was over… and she could choose to let the fire die…

Now fires, fires in a fire place… real wood fires (gas logs don’t count…) are uncommon and occasionally illegal… At least in urban northern California… they contribute to air pollution… A maker of “fire place logs” aka fake wood, pressed wood, (they don’t count either) has commercials about limiting pollution from fires… and instead, when fires are legal, we should use their pressed wood imitation fire wood… a log wrapped on paper… traditional wood fires are under siege…

We “did” a program for 3 year olds at the farm earlier this month… I built a fire in the wood stove in the granary… our public space… to heat the space… to make it warm for 3 year olds and parents… Many of the three year olds were awe struck… a parent said… “He has never seen a real fire…” I believe that it was a revelation for her… But, we are fast losing the relationship between fire and warmth…

One local TV station offers a Yule Log program… tune (tuning a TV or radio is probably a forgotten idea as well) in to the picture of the burning log… Christmas songs playing… It’s almost as good as a fire… or not.

A well maintained wood fire in a masonry fireplace (not the tin things that house gas logs) while not efficient can warm… beyond the light, the smell and the bit of heat… they warm the heavy masonry mass… a giant heat battery.

There is more to it… the gathering and splitting of fire wood… the storing of the wood… staging it for the fire place… This is more than a thermostat… it requires one to think about how one could heat his house… how to maintain the fire…

I am not a Luddite… I really heat my home with a “modern” gas heater… but I still know how to heat with wood… and occasionally do… I know that fire is not always dangerous and can be a friend… I sit here blogging, on my laptop, by the fire… A fire I value.

In our modern world we are far removed from the need for fire to heat our house… But fire, elemental, visceral can still warm us in many ways… Its Abbey’s beer can again.

Solstice

Yesterday was Solstice… winter solstice… The shortest day of the year… the moment in time when the blue planet we call home changes directions and we move from the days getting darker, to getting lighter…

For those who worship Earth as a god it is possibly the most significant holiday of the year… significant enough for the Romans to usurp it for their Christmas celebration… So the Christians have taken over the Wiccan’s, the witch’s holiday… even if sloppy and missing the day by a bit…

In celebration, I scanned some old slides… Taken as Stonehenge, on Salisbury plain, many, many years ago… August 1973. I was on a trip to Europe to celebrate graduation from high school… a grand circle trip… At the time, visitors were allowed to walk among the stones… to explore… by 1977 the stones were roped off… I generally don’t believe it the supernatural, in ghosts, in haunting… but on a couple of occasions I felt the power of place… Stonehenge was one of those places…

My background… mostly… back nearly 400 years, is English… there is some Dutch and German maybe a bit of Native American… but mostly English, and if English probably Druid… all long forgotten…

In celebration, I lift a glass of mead to the Druids… May their world survive… Merry Solstice.

Our Christmas…

It is the second wave… our Christmas… not the public Patterson House Christmas… not the Google parties… not the City parties… but our family Christmas…

The tree is up… the lights are up outside… the street, our neighborhood is decorated for Christmas… a neighborhood Christmas… a c community Christmas… a Christmas… a celebration.

Five days before the day… there is a fire lit… We have dined… we (at least the ladies) are decorating the tree… the tree which has resided in the house for the last week… We (I) put up lights immediately… we put up beads, the garland soon after… then we stopped… waiting for the decorations…

I had brought down the boxes of decorations… but had missed a box… THE box… the box of glass balls… reflective balls… Christmas balls… We retreated to the attic… to the storage place… and found the missing box containing the Christmas balls… All is good… for it is Christmas and Christmas balls are important…

Earlier, this day, I braved the crowds to purchase the roast… the Christmas roast… Almost 16 lbs of Christmas roast… a standing rib roast… aka a “Prime rib”… our Christmas evening dinner… the center of our Christmas eve dinner… served with Yorkshire pudding… a true English Christmas dinner… my families tradition, a family separated from England, the Christmas homeland for something close to 400 years… The butcher, if he is called that… the meat purveyor at the local mega mart wanted to sell me a trimmed roast… but I need the roast… with the fat… to make the pudding, the Yorkshire pudding… I prevailed… I got the full fatty roast. Fat equals flavor… fat renders for the York… the Yorkshire pudding… Fat is important…

The Ladies continue to decorate the tree… There are conflicts… I am hiding, writing the blog… Apparently there are still “globs of empty space” on the tree… They continue their efforts.

The menu is developing… Hollandaise, asparagus to go with the meat… and pudding… There is a salad involved… this is dinner, our Christmas dinner…

Apparently my wife does not know the Pickle story… so says my daughter….I continue to write the blog… They call me over to hang ornaments… I resist.

The tree is decorated… it is done… Christmas is here… more Christmas will follow… a dinner… a good dinner… with a fire and food and lights… most importantly with family and friends… too all, and too all a goodnight...

Christmas is fast becoming Christmas…

It has been an interesting couple of weeks… too much to do, too little time… not really thinking, just reacting… Until a couple of days ago I did not enjoy Christmas… I was providing other people’s Christmas, ignoring or too tired to attend to my own, our own Christmas. Dealing with issues… computer issues… house issues… too busy… then, imperceptibly, things started to turn… to change…

Scene one… Butterflies lots of butterflies… Saturday, I was at work, at the historic house at the historic farm… Volunteers were giving tours… there was a fire burning… two long time volunteers were on the poach, making lace… Someone mentioned butterflies… the lace makers didn’t know we had butterflies at Ardenwood… we walk out… to the butterfly grove… the butterflies take flight… silhouetted against the sky… flashed of orange… magic…

Scene two… Parties… a story in three or four parts…

Saturday Night We were invited to a "private" Christmas party… someone from Tina’s workplace... at a private home... snow on lawn... valet parking... a temporary ice rink with its own Zamboni in the backyard... 3 bars... and a coffee bar… lots of food, really good food… really good wine… a cookie decorating area… Lots of people… Movies and a desert bar downstairs… and Gavin Newsom and Joe Montana (what, you don’t party with Gavin Newsom?!). The hostess drove the Zamboni… she said she would… not just a lap around, she really groomed the ice… All in all an over the top, too much party, really nice party… fun… could fun be possible? Apparently Yes...

Wednesday, we had a party at work, Turkey and ham, and lots of potluck dishes… People I work with but never sit down with… people who’s name I know, or who I might pass in the hall… all sitting down together, eating, laughing… We were lacking a Zamboni, but three people showed up driving street sweepers…

Thursday… lunch… another work gathering… before a couple of co-workers visit the house… the farm… It is the first time one has visited… we have fun walking around… its nice to see the place through another’s eyes… then we meet again at a Japanese theatrical restaurant nearby for the department lunch… everyone from department made it… lots of laughs… relaxed… fun… not really Christmas, but really the holidays…

Friday… Good news… lots of good news… Steph received the acceptance letter from the first of many colleges… Tina got a big raise (not unexpected, but much bigger than expected….) and I am now off for two full weeks, and finished up the arraignments for a job… a side job… consulting for a group in Hawaii… in January… a trip to Hawaii… a working trip… but Hawaii… and a job I love… To celebrate, the three of us do dinner… a nice dinner… we celebrate privately in a public place…

Tomorrow, Saturday… the next party… the railroad museum’s annual dinner… a nice time at the farm… a nice dinner… with friends… I will enjoy…

Next Friday… Christmas Eve… my families traditional Christmas celebration… we have invited many, and all seem to be coming… family, Friends, Friend’s family… co-workers… a full house… a full table… for Roast Beef, Yorkshire pudding… Asparagus and Hollandaise… there will be shrimp before… Rice pudding afterwards… I can only hope that someone shows up at our house riding a really nice lawnmower… It would make Christmas… at least our Christmas.

Scene Three… the setting… outside, the Christmas lights are on… ours and our neighbors… many neighbors… there is a wreath on the door… Inside… the tree is up… it has lights but not yet decorations… The hearth is ready for a fire… Pans and pots and stuff to cook Christmas dinner are being found, being readied… we are preparing for the big dinner…

I think Christmas has arrived…