Kate Elliott's Blog, page 47

More On Sustainability

Following up on my post on solar panels, I came across this video about changes to New York City's traffic patterns and bike/bus/pedestrian/car use as part of a plan to downplay cars and increase alternative transport methods in the city.

I don't live in NYC (and have only visited it a couple of times) so I don't know what residents think of the video, which is obviously meant to play up positive aspects, but I found the video tremendously exciting and even heartening in terms of sustainability and thinking for the future. A New Yorker, of course, might have a different take on things.

Honolulu, alas, does not have this kind of thing going on at the moment, even though as a finite system (island), rail or a better and more comprehensive bus system could cover much of the island, and of course if only we had a comprehensive bike network people could get around by bicycle 365 days a year. This year's elections will get us a new governor, and we now have a brand new mayor, so we'll see if the landscape for sustainability changes here in terms of transportation.





Ten years ago, we lived for a semester in Copenhagen where they had an exceptional network of off traffic bike paths, not to mention a typical European city train/bus network that allowed us to easily live there without a car.

What's up in your part of the world? Are you seeing transportation changes in your city or region?

Good News!

This good news is a few weeks old, but I don't think good news ever really gets "old."

Writer Kari Sperring has been awarded the Sydney J Bounds Award for Best Newcomer, a juried award administered by the British Fantasy Society.

Her debut novel, Living With Ghosts was published in March 2009. Sperring writes with close attention to atmosphere and detail; her world lives and breathes with vitality and emotion, and her characters -- wow, it's been probably over 18 months since I read it -- are vivid enough that I can still close my eyes and image a sense of who each of the main characters are.

A huge congrats to Kari.

If you want to see a photo of the award next to her fabulously photogenic cat, click through here.

Do you have good news you want to share? This is the place.

sun . . . sun . . . sun

We now have 18 photovoltaic panels on our roof, sucking in the sunlight. We started this project last year and have now completed it (that is, filling in the space we have on our south facing roof).

We do not power our own electricity; we "reverse" our meter by giving the power back into the local/state system and getting credit for it, as it were. Not a perfect set up, but I'll stick with it for now since it is what is on offer.

In the absolute sense it will take years to have the cost of the panels pay off in saved electricity costs (although we have already seen a huge drop in our bill -- it's half what it was, and with the new panels, it should drop to almost nothing).

However, when we knew we had money to invest in green technology, we chose PV in part for the electricity savings, sure, but mostly because -- given that we could afford it -- we wanted to help drive the market for solar technology insofar as we personally could.

Solar -- both the solar panel heated water heater and technologies like PV -- are, obviously, increasingly popular here in Hawaii, where there is plenty of sun year round (even if it seems to be raining here in Mauka every day) and where the state desperately needs to be weaning itself off its heavy dependence on oil given the other sources of energy to draw from.

Plus, it is kind of cool to watch the electric meter run backwards . . .

Ignorance is Bliss

I have just discovered that the Ka'iwi Channel, the channel that separates the islands of Molokai and Oahu and which I, with an awesomely fabulous crew, paddled in the Na Wahine O Ke Kai outrigger canoe paddling race a week ago, is at its deepest 2300 feet (700 + meters).

No wonder the water had that strangely intense blue color.

I think I am glad I did not know how deep it was when I was out there. Otherwise I might have been, say, intimidated or something by flinging myself out of a vessel into the open ocean, as I did a number of times while making changes (switching personnel) in the canoe.

Is there something you're glad you didn't know at the time, that you learned later?

There are two kinds of people . . .

It's morning, but it's raining, so I can't walk the dog yet.

I am most productive within a schedule, which reminds me of that book whose title and author I have forgotten and which I am too lazy to google about the two types of human mentality--

(and can I just make an aside here about HOW MUCH I love all those ideas about dividing all peoples into two kinds of peoples, including the jokes about it, my great love for "there are only two kinds of people" being based not on my belief in the equation but by my love for the way the human mind feels a need to make patterns wherever it looks?)

--those being, for the purposes of this particular book which undertakes to re-examine the condition we these days call ADHD and generally perceive as a problem but which the author of the book wishes to re-imagine and rehabilitate as a functional mode, the Hunter-Gatherer and the Farmer Mentality.

Naturally, given the book's context, the Hunter-Gatherer Mentality is the fabulous sexy one in the way it is presented and the Farmer Mentality, while useful and meaningful and necessary, is kind of plodding and dull. You see, HGs need to have the ability to shift attention at the drop of a Paleolithic hat, with bright, inquisitive minds able to take in new information instantly and act on it, while the Farmers need to be boring enough to maintain routine and do the same old same old on down the round of dreary years.

So guess where I fit?

YES! Plodding and dull, that is me.

Has it stopped raining yet? No.

You see, normally, on work days, I awaken (not too early), check my email and a few other places online, walk the dog, eat my breakfast, go to the gym and/OR get my chai, and then write, which may be broken in the late afternoon by paddling. I absolutely HATE IT when I have to go to an appointment, although occasionally I may go to a lunch date (not often). I tend to make my blog posts in my evening. The rain is why I am writing this now: because my routine has been interrupted.

I am a creature of habit. I like habit. It helps me write productively. Habit comforts me and by its existence in most parts of my life gives me the mental space to do things like paddle across the open ocean in a six person outrigger canoe.

Now, one of the things I liked about that Hunting/Gathering ADHD reboot book is that it made some interesting points that helped me sort out my spouse's way of doing things. That man could not establish a routine if his life or even his cherished collection of YES albums depended on it. It's just not his mode of being. And it is good for me to come to grips with that, and even to see the charm or the benefit in it. Not to mention it being far more fabulous and sexy--that's good for me!

So what about you? Are you a plodding, dull Farmer Mentality? Or a wild and exciting Hunter-Gatherer? Or are you one of the two types of people who don't believe in two types of people?

And Pharaoh's Heart Hardened

I have never told this story to anyone except my father. I may have told my spouse at the time it happened, but I don't recall. My children were there, they were the reason it happened, but I doubt they remember.

In the mid 90s my spouse was attending graduate school at The Pennsylvania State University, in State College, Pennsylvania. He and I and our three then-small children lived in graduate student housing, on campus, in an old World War II era duplex of 625 square feet. It got a bit close at times, to say the least, and in addition I worked at home writing, so I made every effort to get the kids out to do something, anything, when I had the chance and the activity was age appropriate for small children.

A traveling photo exhibit came to the student union. I noted the photographer's name first because early in his career he had worked at the local newspaper in the area where I grew up [it completely escapes me now]. He had since expanded his journalistic photography; this exhibit contained a series of portraits of African-American women, specifically women who had contributed to the nation as artists, writers, activists, community organizers, business women, singers, what have you.

That looked promising!

One afternoon we walked over, me and the spawn. I suspect that my daughter was seven and the twins were five.

The photos were all I could have hoped for, beautifully shot, large and imposing, opening a tiny window onto these magnificent women of strength and purpose. Many of the women were, at the time the photographs were taken, elders; maybe most were. They were a testament to the power and importance of age as a weight that anchors and balances a society when storm winds batter it, yet you could also see in their faces the hard work they had done when they were young.

Some I had heard of; some were names I'd seen although I knew little enough of them; some I had never heard of. The children were as patient as children can be at that age and I knew better than to drag out our little expedition beyond their ability to enjoy the outing and the novelty. We didn't linger over any of the portraits until we came to Rosa Parks.

Like so many, I have a soft spot for Rosa Parks.

I thought it worthwhile to give my children an early lesson in citizenship.

I had to choose my words to work for the level at which they could understand, overly simplified and yet truthful. I said something like this (reconstructed from faulty memory):

"This is Rosa Parks. She is a great American hero. When she was younger, there was a law in some parts of the country that people who have black skin, as you can see she does, had to sit in the backs of public buses. People who had white skin, as you can see we do, could sit in the front. Isn't that a strange law? Just because people's skins are different colors? Of course, it was wrong to have a law like that. And she knew that, so she with the help of some other people decided to protest the law. She got on the bus one day after work and refused to sit in the back of the bus, and then she was arrested, but then many more people began to say that that law was wrong, and then the government got rid of that law. So she is a hero. She is hero for the people who could now sit wherever they wanted on the bus. But she is also a hero for all America, because a law like that hurts all Americans because a bad law like that hurts the spirit and heart of America."

They listened attentively, perhaps drawn by the fact that I got a bit of a tear in my voice, but by this time it was clear we had reached the limit of our visit to the exhibit, so I steered them toward the exit door.

As I herded them forward, a woman, also exiting, had paused at the door and turned back to look at me. She was an African American woman about my age, maybe a bit older.

She caught my gaze, and she said, "I want to thank you for what you said to your children."

My first reaction was surprise, succeeded almost immediately by embarrassment. I said something in reply; I have no recollection what. She went on her way; we went on ours, and my embarrassment subsided to be replaced by a sudden and very sweeping sense of shame.

Not at myself. I try to live a decent life (as do most people, I truly believe).

It is difficult for me to express how deep the chasm is, this exposure of the pervasive racism that afflicts the USA.

My father taught American history. He taught his children that "if you grow up in a racist society, you are a racist" by which he meant not that you burn crosses on lawns but that you have absorbed unexamined assumptions about the way things are and that it is therefore incumbent upon you (I am using the generic "you" here, as he was) to honestly reflect and examine where you stand and what is going on around you as often as you can.

The presence of racism is not news to me, therefore. But I am white, and while I have intersectionally dealt with forms of prejudice directed at me personally or family members or friends or as part of the body politic, for someone like me it can still take a moment like this one to really expose that particular chasm, however briefly, in its full and terrible darkness.

*She* thanked *me*.

I have no idea what prejudice that woman had faced in her life, what moments of anger, hatred, denial, insult, grief, rudeness, and perhaps outright physical danger she might have experienced because she was black. That made her--the one afflicted by racism--take notice of a solitary woman and her three children, *and thank me* for such a small act. I felt shame, among so many other reasons, that what I said to my children was even worthy of comment. Because in a better world it shouldn't be. It should be ordinary. It should be unremarkable.

Never think this story is about me, because even though I naturally tell it from my perspective, it is a story about the way in which racism and prejudice harm our country in the most deep seated ways imaginable.

Think instead that it might be the story of Pharaoh hardening his heart each time Moses asks him to "let my people go." He hardens his heart (or God hardens it for him, but that's another layer to a story that has many layers of meaning) in order to bring himself to say "NO."

To harden our heart means to turn away from our connection to others, to deny compassion, to refuse to change. Psychologist Erich Fromm says that "every evil act tends to harden man's heart, to deaden it. Every good act tends to soften it, to make it more alive."

Every time Pharaoh hardens his heart, he makes it easier to harden his heart again, the next time. Surely this is true for all of us. Every time we turn away from our connection to others, we imprison ourselves a little more. In the end we can so accustom ourselves to this condition that we cease to notice it is going on.

The question of the systemic racism threaded through American history, as well as the question of the extermination of so many of the original indigenous inhabitants of this continent as the destiny and dream of a mighty empire (for that is what we are, speaking in the context of history) was being established, cannot be dealt with in a brief piece of writing like this one. So I won't try.

This is what I will say:

Prejudice is a form of hardening the heart. Prejudice, as we unfortunately know, comes in many forms. Just as human beings show a propensity to be tolerant and inclusive so also, often at the same time, and sometimes in the same person, they show a propensity to be intolerant and exclusive. Human beings are such forces for good, and yet such forces for bad, and sometimes in the same person. The contradiction makes one dizzy. I am not immune.

Prejudice harms and hardens each of us as individuals. It also harms and hardens that thing which those of us who are Americans like to call "America," which is a dream and an ideal and, in some ways and at some times, a reality.

For those of you who are not Americans (USAians, to be precise), if you are still reading (and frankly, were I not American, I am sure I would get sick and tired of all the maundering Americans do about the Dream of America), I do not apologize but simply explain that this is specifically written from the perspective of an American speaking of America.

The USA has always had a contentious love affair with immigration, which may be inevitable in a country founded on the three legged stool of genocide, slavery, and liberty.

In the 19th century those dirty Jewish immigrants were considered, as a group, ineducable; in the 20th century, some universities (more than I care to think about) maintained quotas for how many persons of Jewish background they would admit, because so many (i.e. "too many") qualified. Similarly, plantation workers brought in from different countries and regions of Asia in the 19th century to settle here in Hawaii were considered not smart enough to succeed in Western-style schools. Of course this makes me laugh now--in a sardonic way, I suppose, the joke being on those self-righteous missionaries--given that perhaps three quarters of the students in my sons' high school honors classes were, of course, girls of Japanese-American ancestry.

In World War II, as I need not remind you, citizens of Japanese ancestry were forced into internment camps on the Mainland because they were considered threats, people who would "by nature" feel more loyalty to the place of their parents' or grandparents' birth than the place those same forebears had chosen to immigrate to, to make a new life, presumably because they sought greater opportunity here than what was available to them there. They were considered threats even though this was the country most of them had been born in and identified with.

My father's grandparents came to this country because it offered them more than the old country did. My mother, an immigrant, did the same, I believe. Why should I not assume that others came likewise when I see the evidence all around me that it is so?

Now, of course, Japanese Americans are seen a "model minority." These days if a child goes after school to, say, "Mandarin school" (as my father, back in the day, went to "Dane school" or my children attended "Hebrew school") to learn the language of his/her grandparents and the culture of her/his heritage or the religion of their ancestors, then we call that a fine thing. Or many of us do anyway. Or some of us, at any rate.

For the whole point of the USA is not that it is homogenous but that it is a greater whole woven from diverse strands. It has never been truly homogenous; the social fabric has always been influenced and altered by each latest wave of incoming immigrants. For me it is a truism that immigration is what makes this country strong, and that specifically the diversity of immigration that does so.

When I grew up, we were taught that the USA was built from those who had the courage to leave the safety of the known to build a better life elsewhere. Taking into account, of course, those who had no choice but to come, shackled by the slave trade, and those who were already here, although of course the original peoples who colonized the Americas were also people courageous enough to seek a new land, a new home. In other words, part of the mythology of America is that the brave and the bold and the desperate and the ambitious come here to make a better life because America is the land of opportunity.

And yet a cycle repeats itself. Every generation seems to fixate on some "new" immigrant group as a threat that can't or won't assimilate itself properly, that is stubborn or ineducable or secretly under the thrall of the Pope or or or. You can fill in the blanks. It happens over and over again as meanwhile people who want to build a good life for themselves and their children, and their children who can conceive of nothing other than being Americans because, well, that is what they are--they are Americans just as I am, or you over there, or you, or you--get on with living a decent life . . . if they can, if they aren't locked into internment camps or having their places of worship burned because they are this decade's or this generation's Threat to Our Way of Life.

But that's the thing. Our way of life is predicated on change. Change is embedded in the Constitution, in that codicil called the Bill of Rights. Change is embedded in life itself. Judaism survived as a religion because it changed from a religion based around a single temple to one based on--well--community centers, although we call them synagogues. Societies that do not change will ossify and die. I guarantee it.

So is that not the beauty of the USA? That our institution, our mode of citizenship, creates the constant possibility of change? That change is not just a possibility but a necessity? Not often radical change but usually incremental change driven in part by reversals and resurgences?

Somewhere out there in the USA today a citizen of Indonesian-American descent who happens to also be Muslim is going about the ordinary business of life. So are you. So am I.

This should be unremarkable.

We do not become stronger through prejudice. We become weaker. Those against whom the prejudice is directed are hurt most, of course, but in the end, we all lose.

The Molokai

Here's where the modern incarnation starts, taken from the Molokai Hoe web site:

On October 12, 1952, three Koa outrigger canoes launch through the surf at Kawakiu Bay on Molokai's west side. Powered by six paddlers, each of the canoes was bound for Oahu across 38+ miles of open ocean in the Ka'iwi Channel. Eight hours and 55 minutes later, the Molokai canoe, Kukui O Lanikaula landed on the beach at Waikiki in front of the Moana Hotel. Thus began the world's most prestigious outrigger canoe race, the Molokai Hoe.

The Molokai Hoe has become one of the longest running annual team sporting events in Hawaii, second only to football. The Moloka'i Hoe perpetuates one of Hawaii's and Polynesia's most important and historic cultural traditions, while honoring outrigger canoe paddlers around the world. The Molokai Hoe tests the limits of physical and mental strength and endurance, courage determination and teamwork, and paddlers must also battle nature's most extreme elements.

Each year over 1000+ paddlers from around the world compete in the Molokai Hoe, the men's world championship in outrigger canoe racing. This year marks the Molokai Hoe's 58th crossing of the treacherous Ka'iwi Channel.

In case you didn't notice, this refers to a men's race. With changes in the course's starting and ending points, the race is now 41 + miles (the + depends on what line you take as you cross the channel, and how conditions increase your travel distance depending on swells, winds, currents, and tides).

But what about women, you may ask?

The dream began in 1954, two years after the first men's Molokai-to-Oahu Canoe Race took place. Waikiki Surf Club's Senior Women's crew proposed for consideration a race for the women also. Coaches and officials insisted the women couldn't handle the treacherous channel. It took years of patience and persistence to convince everyone that it was possible for women to paddle across the Kaiwi Channel. In October of 1975, the first unofficial crossing was made by two crews of 18 women each. One crew was incorporated from four canoe clubs: Kailua, Outrigger, Lanikai and Waikiki Surf Club and was spearheaded by Donna Coelho-Woffe. They named themselves "Onipaa". The other was from Healani Canoe Club, coached by Babe Bell. They proved that women could paddle across the Kaiwi Channel. Part of the dream had come true. Hannie Anderson and the late Leinani Faria, another colleague who shared the dream, officiated this first crossing.

The women's Molokai to Oahu Canoe Race, which is organized and conducted by race director Hannie Anderson and the Na Wahine O Ke Kai Association - Shelly Gilman, Haunani Campos-Olds, Carleen Ornellas, Sig Tannehill and Rosie Lum - was founded in February of 1979. At the '79 election meeting, Puna Dawson christened this event Na Wahine O Ke Kai (Women of the Sea) which took on a new meaning on October 15, 1979, the date of the first women's Molokai to Oahu Canoe Race. [history quoted from the web site of the Na Wahine O Ke Kai]


This year, in 2010, 82 canoes completed the Na Wahine O Ke Kai, which took place yesterday, Sunday 26 September, starting from Hale o Lono Harbor on Molokai and ending in front of the beach at the Hilton Hawaiian on Waikiki, with an announcer calling out the name of the club, the names of all the crew, and the name of the canoe (I think), as each canoe finishes.

I paddled this race, unofficially known as the "world championship" of outrigger canoe paddling, for the first time this year. I went with a Senior Masters Crew (50+) of the most fabulous women imaginable ranging in age from 52 (the youngest -- that was me) to the eldest at 64, plus a great, calm, and extremely experienced coach who kept us on the best line possible as we crossed the channel, departing Molokai at 7:30 am and keeping our eyes on the iconic Diamond Head as our point of reference.

41+ miles through open ocean.



Here's how it works:

Clubs put together crews. Open and Masters (40+) crews get 10 paddlers each, 6 in the canoe and 4 in the escort boat waiting to swap out at intervals (called changes). Senior Masters (50+) crews get 12 paddlers. Grand (55+) and Platinum (60+) Masters crews are not officially recognized for this particular race) but there was at least one 60+ crew that made the crossing.

Our crew was put together by Oahu canoe club Ka Mamalahoe from women from 3 different islands and the Mainland. We had not all paddled together before the race. Nevertheless, all but one of us arrived on Molokai on Thursday and had two days (Friday and Saturday) to get to know each other before race day. We cooked wonderful meals that had been planned and shopped for by our wonderful crew captain and head steersman; we cleaned up; we rigged our canoe and went out for a short test run; we went to the beach or went shopping; we laughed and talked story and had a few beers.

Then we drove over a rutted dirt road down to Hale O Lono harbor for the start of the race, leaving our rental house at 5:30 am on Sunday morning down to the rocky sand bar where 82 or 84 canoes and their crews were waiting to go together with the escort boats and official boats gathered to accompany us. There was also a helicopter. And the first webcast of the race ever.

You know, I love seeing the young women headed out on this race. They are so strong, and so unselfconscious about being athletes, and so focused and powerful and beautiful. And they *are* beautiful, these paddlers; they are stunning.

I also love seeing the older women make ready to go, because they are so strong, and focused and if not as physically powerful as they once were, they have the experience to be tough and calm. And they, too, are beautiful. They are magnificent.

When I look at those two quoted histories above, I reflect that when I was a girl, I couldn't even have hoped to paddle in such a race; it wasn't allowed nor was it thought appropriate. But women made it happen; they made it happen for themselves and they made it happen for their daughters and grand daughters and those to come.

They made it possible for us, our 12, to head out early on Sunday morning and switch crews and paddle a grueling race with determination and joy and camaraderie and pride. We were not the youngest, obviously, and we were not the fastest (not even among the 9 Senior Masters crews entered in the race). But we got there and frankly, we were awesome.

Conditions made it a slow race this year. The course record for women's crews is something like 5 hours and 24 minutes. This year the winning time was 5 hours and 54 minutes. We completed the course 75th out of 82 who completed (sometimes a crew will be disqualified for rules violations or will have to turn back for other reasons), in a time of 7 hours and 38 minutes. Paddling the whole way, switching off crews every half an hour (half an hour in, half an hour out).

The ocean is an amazing place; deadly as it can be, it is also a healing place.

When you make a chance, if you are paddling, you jump out of the canoe as another person hauls themselves in to the seat you just vacated. Then you float in the ocean as the escort boat comes up to pick you up. After your rest, you jump off the escort boat, which by this time has swung around in front of your canoe, and you float in the ocean with a hand raised, and the steersman brings the canoe right up alongside you. You pull yourself in as the person you're relieving jumps out the other side, and you start paddling all over again. All the way from Molokai to Oahu.

Yes, it is hard and exhausting, but when you have a fabulous crew, as we did, none of that matters.

Truly, one of the most amazing things I have ever done. Even if I am a bit stiff and sore physically as well as mentally exhausted today. Will I do it again next year? I just might.


Here is the Honolulu Star-Advertiser article, focusing, naturally, on the top teams.

To KarenS, KarenW, Julie, Robyn, Lynn, Suzanne, Jeannie, Lorna, Puanani, Cherie, Kim, and coach Mike: you guys are the best. We crossed in the canoe Papa'i.

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kateelliott @ 2010-09-18T09:42:00

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