AND THE GOOD NEWS August 23, 2015

On Saturday, September 5, 1992, I heard about Iniki that morning. It was a hustle and a half  ‘battening down the hatches’ and getting my zoo–three horses, one dog and four cats–to safe shelter.

Once again I stayed home with the animals. (I’d spent Ewa in the barn with two horses on property surrounding the house on the Alexander Dam Road.) “We’ll all go together when we go,” I said then. And now. We cuddled up in the barn as hurricane winds brought down branches and stripped every leaf off every tree as far as the eye could see.

A nude tree is a very strange sight to behold.

The next day was so beautiful–swept clean of dirt, dust and debris–it blossomed like an hibiscus  in the hearts of all survivors. Across the street cattle, that had gathered at the bottom of my green valley, rose to their feet and sauntered back up the hill to graze.

The rest of the island looked like a war had stormed through. Houses at the top of the hill appeared  perfectly normal, until you caught on their roofs were missing. A house without a roof is a strange sight, too.

We’d been hit, darkness dulled the light, and passed through the eye–sunny, cloudless and clear blue sky–and been hit again. I think everyone who went through that remembers the morning after. That glorious glorious day. The air smelled sweet. The sound of no traffic a welcome silence.

In front of my house hundred of birds had feathered down–an animal knows instinctively where to find haven–and they began singing at first light, their tweets and twitters and bird lyrics an ode to joy. A peahen in a bare tree screeched as only a peahen can screech and livened up the party.

I think most of us were unprepared for Iniki. We swallowed our fear, took a deep breath, and rode it through.

Times are different.

We watched Kilo form south of us. We know that El Nino has gone berserk and may continue its berserkness until April. I’ve heard that because of climate confusion–global warming, whatever you want to call it–to follow the path of our storms is unpredictable. They can go anywhere.

I’m happy we were forewarned. Those of us who had computers watched Kilo–a strange critter–strengthen and weaken and lolligag around like winds on LSD. It couldn’t make up its mind. Did it have a mind? A destination? Or was it just on a spree?

What I do think is: if this is the way it’ll go until April, we’ll all be nervous wrecks.

I hope we get honest reporting. Not headlines to sell papers or religion. Please Editors–newsmen, talking heads–don’t become little boys who cry wolf. We need to be prepared. You need to be prepared. But we don’t need Tom Foolery.

I think Kauai can show the world how well we can handle reason, truth and disaster.

 

 

 

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Sarah and Trump and Chattel September 6, 2014

 

Chattel. What a word. It does  do not roll trippingly off the tongue. There’s a sense of darkness about it.  It means possession of something. Cars, cattle, women…

…Today is a wonderful time for Western women. I wouldn’t care to be a Muslim woman in a long black robe–in which she can vote with a green thumb–if she can see through the slits. Sharia law?  Her hair must be covered and you shouldn’t see her feet, Allah commands.  What’s the guy got against hair and feet?

In America many women are speaking out. Seems to me they’re  more concerned about the future–the children, the environment, the health of the planet–than men.

Women on Kauai are  vocal in complaining about GMOs, air-borne toxins, over-crowded, wrongly sited milk factories,  more cars, more highways, more suburban sprawl, tourists, global warming and CO2.

I love articulate, intelligent, out-spoken women.  I love their involvement in the goings-on. “This world crisis came about without women having anything to do with it. If the women of the world had not been excluded from affairs, things today might have been different.” That’s  Alice Paul before the passage of the 19^th Amendment. I suggest you find the film Iron Jawed Angels.  Watch it. Share it. We owe so much to this courageous young woman. We  need more like her. If you must identify with a female figure, identify with Alice.

Today, of course, women often play important roles in politics and law. Think of Sarah Palin. An example of female evangelism gone wrong. Trying her hand at public office. She’s baaaccckkk.  Slithered in with Trump.  What a pair. Hope you watched her exorcism ritual on the tube. Bishop Thomas Muthee, Word of Faith Churches in Kenya. It’s an insult to human intelligence.

Which brings us back to chattel.

Biblical quotes  work here. Ecclesiasticus 25:18, 19 &33. “And a man will choose…any wickedness, but the wickedness of a woman…Sin began with a woman and thanks to her we all must die.”

Really?

The history of women as chattel is woven into many legal codes and cultures. In the Old and New Testament as well as the Quran. Women are property. There’s a world- wide dominion over women. In fundamental patriarchal religious societies that live by the word women are valued as objects. A husband owns his wife…

…and she better shut up and do as told.

A quote from Augustine Aquinas is enlightening: in Summa Theologica, he wrote, “As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex, while the production of a woman comes from the defect in the active power…”

Augustine  is a Catholic Saint so I assume he resides in a Catholic heaven. As a devout non believer, who does not believe in either heaven or hell, I  pen a brief note:

“Dear Auggie, to spend all eternity with you would be hell.”

What do you think?