One Year Done, More to Come….

Yes friends, Romans, countrymen/women, and family units of various sources…..

I have indeed completed the first year of my ‘new’ life and not only survived, but thrived. Can you believe it? I knew it would go quickly, but not even I predicted it would be this quick. From my arrival on August 7 to today, the whirlwind of a major move to Hawaii and to Hilo specifically has been ongoing with no obvious slowdown in sight until now. It has been many things…. The usual ‘exciting’ ‘enlightening’ ‘educational’ and other such adjectives clearly apply. But more importantly to me it has been liberating, rejuvenating, and restorative in both body and spirit. These and other benefits were the bonus outcomes from this impetuous move, and several people, including my sister, have told me I needed these bonus results more than I had realized. Who said I had become a grouch? OK, Donna, the sister who tells me what I don’t want to hear, did. As I mulled over her comments and others by family and friends, it occurred to me that they were right! It was hard to admit that my usually delightfully wacky personality had taken a severe turn south and was not present in my day to day encounters as much as I thought. However, looking back at the last couple of years in Austin, it is with humility and apologies to any and all that I encountered that I ask you to forgive me for my impatience and bullheadedness. I can only claim ‘burnout’ and a serious need for new beginnings.

They speak of the “Hawaiian Way” here as being laid back, relaxed, unhurried, and kind. The “Aloha Spirit” is the guiding force, and it is incumbent upon islanders to spread that spirit to all they encounter. I truly believe that God knew what He was doing when He set up this opportunity for me. As I have said in my earlier blogs, the path was clear and the necessary steps were placed in front of me. All I had to do was continue putting one foot in front of the other along this, dare I say preordained, pathway. I didn’t question it when it was happening, but I only now realize why and how much I needed to follow that path.

Friends were left in the Austin area. No doubt about it, I miss them all dearly. But thankfully the online technology and cell phone eras are here and working pretty well. So I am able to keep in touch with almost everyone on a reasonably frequent basis. I got to see wedding pictures of a couple who met in my clinical group two years ago. I would have been at the wedding, but the pictures were almost as good, and she was a beautiful bride with a very handsome groom. I have seen my hanai family of Pam and David (no longer my ‘pseudo-children’ but my hanai children) begin raising their son and daughter respectively with gentleness and patience gained from watching Diane and Wayne in their parental roles. A new great niece has also grown before my eyes through texts and online pictures. I have used Skype to stay in touch with Alisa and Kathleen. Some of those Skype visits were the basis for timely contacts and the ability to participate in decisions and follow-ups of activities discussed over the Skype system. My only regret is that it didn’t come while Kirke was alive to enjoy seeing family in distant places. While I’m not addicted to Facebook as some are, it has also been a way of staying ‘in the know’ about past students and family. Pictures posted there also help me to feel a part of life in Austin or Texas.

But I have also made new friends here. One of the joys of teaching adults in the community college setting and in my world of nursing that I love is that it’s easy to have former students become new friends and colleagues after they finish my courses. It was true in Austin, and it’s again true here. What a lucky woman I am that students enjoy my teaching style and recognize the rigueur of the disciplined clinical work I expect from them. They seem to appreciate it and some actually thrive within it. I’ve already shared getting a sunburn at the Merrie Monarch Festival Parade with two students and family members, and watched the Festival international Hula competition on TV live from down town Hilo with about 6 students who brought dinner and I put out the paper napkins!! So going into the summer, I have many invitations from students (and faculty) to occasionally meet for lunch, spend a day on a car trip out of Hilo, to sit and visit at the beach, to watch them surf, or to even meet for a weekend in Kona and get a personally guided tour of that west side of the island. I do love what I do as a ‘job’ and it seems that the enjoyment is apparent to the students. For that I am thankful.

Faculty have also become friends and colleagues and even mentors. Who would have thought that I needed a mentor at this stage of my teaching life? But it turns out that old dogs can learn new tricks, and believe me I am learning from the best. The level coordinator for this year and next is Sharon, and I have been so very impressed with her insights and standards and relaxed teaching style. She has shown me how to be more creative, and has listened to my ideas with respect and openness. We have built on some of the ideas and she has helped me to see even better ways of doing things. The student – faculty interactions here are totally different in the classroom and lab than they were at ACC. And as a result, I have broadened my teaching skills and enjoyed class much more.

Laura is the third Musketeer here in Hilo, and she has become a dear friend who listens and shares and supports and helps me reframe Ideas and reactions to more realistic perspectives. We have tried to eat dinner or lunch together almost weekly (well, at least about 3 times a month) and those evening visits have also helped ground me here and facilitated my becoming a member of the community and state. The other day, I wore a new pair of seersucker blue and white striped capris pants and a collage like print top with blues, browns, and some white. I asked her if she thought they went together since there were some stripe areas in the collage top…..I barely finished the sentence when she firmly said ‘No’. I laughed and told her that she had just become the surrogate for Kathleen who would say to me “You are not leaving the house dressed like that!” But, that is what a friend does. I just wonder how hard she had to fight to stay mum on the mismatch until I actually asked about it late in the afternoon? Laura and Sharon live in Wimea, which is about an hour and 15 minutes west of Hilo. The drive is absolutely gorgeous as you spend most of the time skimming along the ocean on the Hammakua Coast Highway. So, the two of them head home each weekend if they don’t drive back and forth on a daily basis. Several faculty do that from Wimea. I just think of it as ‘rush hour’ drive from Eastview Campus to home, but less traffic and much better scenery. But new friends abound on the teaching team beyond just my own level faculty. I am lucky again in that regard.

Nooli has come into my life, and he is a great companion. He is still only 10 lbs, and has a darling expressive face. I continue to work on the house breaking. Those books that tell you to stop and take the puppy out every 30 minutes are nuts. But he is getting better at letting me know he wants to go out, and I’m more in tune to his communication style. But he only has me so he is close by all the time I’m home, or if I’m on the computer, he is either here in the study lying down quietly or he’s at the living room window sitting guard. No one, and I mean NO ONE, is sneaking up on this house when I’m here. But he is less aggressive when I let people come in, and he’s being less paranoid about being left alone when I go to work or out somewhere. He can not possibly get any cuter, and he snuggles beside me on the love seat at night if I’m watching TV.  He also will curl up with his back against my back at night when we go to sleep....my own little heating pad who wakes me by licking my eyes when he thinks I need to get up.

One last thing to let you know how well I am acclimating into my new paradise. I have taken some cooking classes on the Community College campus. They are taught by faculty in the Culinary Arts Program or chefs from the community. So, Korean cooking was one, and another was an island blend of cultures. There is an Eggplant here that is called a Japanese Eggplant. It’s purple on the outside like the ones you see in Texas, but it’s long and shaped similarly to a zucchini. It is less tart and much easier to cook with. We diagonally sliced and battered and coated it (Panko bread crumbs are the BEST), and then deep fried them. The last step was to layer them in a casserole with Marinara Sauce and lots of cheese between layers before baking. UMMMM!! GOOD! But I’ve also been introduced to foods I’ve never heard of but were delicious. We also fried whole fish at the last class I took. Me!! Cooking and eating a whole fish! Yep, I’m not in Texas any more.

Enough for now. I am sending my love to you along with my aloha spirit. But I’m also sending the message that I’m here for a while. The process to apply for Tenure has been started, and that is a 5 year process. I plan to be here at least that long. SO….WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR YOU??? IT MEANS YOU NEED TO COME VISIT ME OVER HERE!! Door is always open, and a guest room is waiting. The hall bath has two sinks, so bring a friend!

Take care, and have a great summer.

Aloha,
Janene

Janene's First Tsunami

It used to be tornados that I would worry about, and track on the weather channel, and scan the skies for during spring seasons in Texas. Last year I traded that concern for a new Force of Mother Nature concern…..TSUNAMI. When you live near or within the Pacific Ocean Ring of Fire, these sequelae of earthquakes are a given. Here on the Big Island, and particularly in Hilo, two specific Tsunami’s in the past 65 years are still spoken of and remembered in memorials and story. The April 1, 1946 ( No Joke!) did considerable damage to the Hilo area. A small town just north and west of here was hit particularly hard. That was Laupahoehoe (pronounced Lowp-a-hoy-hoy). I’ll clip in a section from an interesting web page devoted to this tsunami for you here, but check out the web page as it has some pictures of the point area and school grounds prior to the destruction done by the waves.

Laupahoehoe is infamous for April 1st, 1946 when three towering tidal waves roared over the peninsula at 7:00 AM killing many residents including 23 students and four teachers. The children happily gathered fish deposited from the huge, but not deadly, second wave on the school grounds while the teachers were in their cabin changing back into dry clothes when the final huge (some say 50 feet high) and deadly wave hit. No one had noticed all the water being sucked out of the bay until it was too late. Only two children and one teacher survived. They remained in the water 10 hours while people on the cliff could get a boat for rescue since all watercraft had been destroyed by the tidal wave.
http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/hi/laupahoehoe.html

My friend Beverly Moodie had three of her childhood cousins die in this Laupahoehoe tsunami, and her cousin that is the older brother of the three still lives in the town. He survived because his school was in another area. Today, there is a Pacific Tsunami Museum in downtown Hilo which has tremendous displays on this 1946 tsunami. I hope to volunteer there during the summer.

In 1960, another tsunami was triggered by an earthquake off of South America, rated at about 8.4 quake, and 15 hours later the waves hit Hawaii. Only Hilo Bay was hit the hardest with waves as high as 35 feet. Eight separate waves came into the bay area, and severely damaged or totally destroyed the buildings of old down town area and many residences in the path. After that tsunami, the city rebuilt but put into place a very wide swath of parkland, parking lots, and other non-essential structures between the bay edge and the beginning of businesses. This was intended so that less personal loss would take place if another tsunami hit as directly as the 1960 one did. Today, there are soccer fields, parks, a large gazebo and bus commuter parking lots as well as the bus station located in this area. The down town area was rebuilt and retains as many of the original buildings as possible.

So….that brings me to last Thursday night! For many reasons, including the December 2004 Thailand tsunami, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System has been upgraded, improved, and more emphasis has been placed on disaster preparedness. On the first Sat. of each month, they test the siren warning system…..thank goodness! As a result, I knew exactly what had brought me suddenly to a sitting upright position at 10pm on Thursday evening. It had been a long day, and Nooli and I hit the sack about 9pm after some TV and a bit of reading….OK, and a glass of wine! When the siren went off, I knew immediately what it was. What I didn’t know was when, where, or how it would hit here. My cable TV was on the fritz, so I hit the good ol’ computer. There I was able to learn of Japan’s massive quake, and that we had several hours here before expecting THE WAVE to hit…..specifically 2:59am. (Why to they always say “approximately 2:59” – why not just say approx. 3am???) Anyway, I also knew that I was high enough not to be concerned about my home, but it was pitch black outside so that meant that it would not be a wave landing that I would get to watch…..drat!

First thing to do? Go see what the neighbors were up to, right?  OK…front windows which look out over the cul-de-sac and straight down Ala Muku St. and then out over the Boys & Girls Clubhouse to the Bay. Great vantage point if it’s daytime. But I thought I would see activity on the street…logical, yes? Well, no….either they are immune to these things or just don’t do that southern thing of gathering in yards to talk. Whatever!! Not a porch light came on, no one got in the car for a quick run to the gas station or grocery store….nada, kaput, nothing! OK…. So, I’ll just stay calm too. Put Nooli on a leash so I had him with me at all times incase we had to leave suddenly….he was actually fine with this arrangement as I think the sirens upset his sensitive little ears. The streaming videos and news radio on my computer kept me well informed of the initial reports out of Japan, and of the preparations going on for the Big Island and Honolulu. Because of the preparedness drills and improvements to the system and plan over the past years, the island and the state were well in control from the beginning. The coast line homes were evacuated by 2am. No one was allowed to opt out of the evacuation. I have since talked to a second year student who was in that ‘Move or Else!’ group. They went to friends’ house so they could take the kids and dog. She said that police came down the street with bull horns and there was follow up with door to door canvassing. EMS and fire were mobilized, and I’m sure that Hilo Medical Center was put on alert too. We only have one hospital on the east side of the island, so I still wonder what would have happened had this really been another Big One.

The rest of the night was a waste. They rang(?), blared (?), set off (?) whatever…the siren every 30 minutes until 3am. That was tons of fun! It only rang, blared, or sounded for one minute each time, but 60 seconds is a LONG TIME when you are getting blasted by a siren tower that is 5 blocks away from your house…..take my word on that. The only time Nooli got agitated and clearly upset was during the siren sounding. Otherwise, he was fine because he was oblivious to the danger…..ah, the life of a dog!

Meanwhile phones were down and I could not get a call out to the girls in Texas or Colorado. It might be my generation or my age, but I just never even thought about Facebook….sorry all you FB fanatics. It wouldn’t have helped much anyway as both girls were asleep. I was able to reach Alisa at about 5:30 her time (which was 2:30 am my time) during a short break in the cell phone system. She in turn got in touch with Kathleen a bit later when K. was up and heading to work….I think that’s how it went down. But, I could get texts, and two students texted to ask if I was ok, and did I need a place to go. They were offering me a safe place if needed. I really appreciated that and it further confirmed that I have made a home here with people and students who care about me. Bev and I had much earlier in my time here talked about if I ever felt the need to get higher up from the bay, I could come to her house which is much further up hill. But I didn’t and she knew that I was very unlikely to get any damage where my house is now.

My one concern was that I had procrastinated…..surprize surprise! …..going to the grocery store so I didn’t have a lot of food in the house. Alisa told me later that all she could envision was the three bags of Chex Mix that I had bought for the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl Game Party that hadn’t been opened and were in the pantry. She figured if anything, I could survive on that, and just never eat Chex cereal in any form ever again. Thank goodness it didn’t come to that horrific ending.

The University of Hawaii closed all campuses on all islands for Friday, and the Community College here also closed on Friday. That gave us a free holiday! Yea!! But, on a side note, the clinical papers that were to be ready for me to pickup at 3pm on Friday didn’t get brought in. So, I’m going to have a lot of papers to grade next week. Oh well, when it’s all taken together, I would rather just have the delay of a weekend, than all the ramifications of a bad tsunami hitting here in the early hours of Friday morning. As it was, Hilo got some nice lapping waves of about 3 or 4 feet hight which would be good surfing waves if anyone was stupid enough to be out in the bay with a surfboard.  So, no damage occured here.  Kona on the West side of the island which faces Japan did get higher waves, and some flooding near the coast in the downtown shopping areas.  Some of the beaches along the main tourist trail (Ali'i Drive) were closed still yesterday due to debris that washed up on them.  But no loss of life here on the Big Island, coincidentally named Hawai'i. 

Thanks again to all of you who were concerned. I have tried to make light of a long night watching my computer screen and trying to get some naps between sirens…..but it is a serious issue. Japan needs our prayers and our help. The video feeds since the start of the disaster have been beyond my ability to comprehend. Entire towns / cities were wiped away in one swoop of water. The loss of life is staggering. And the current issue with the nuclear power plants facing meltdowns is even more mind-boggling. If there is a release of nuclear products into the air, Hawaii is in a fairly dangerous position.

Please keep me and those of us in this 50th state in your prayers as well.

That’s all for now. The weather today is absolutely gorgeous, and is part of why I love living here. Take care where ever you are, and I’ll stay in touch too.

Janene