NOT of OC and Quilly, but of this blog.  You lived with us as we adjusted to each other and you got to follow some of the sweet and some of the silly, but now it is time to close this window, at least for now.  OC has stopped blogging, but you can still keep up with us on my site.

I have no plans to take this blog down.  Enjoy the archives.

It’s been fun.

Quilly

On this date, the 26th of April in the year 2008 of the Common Era, as reckoned on the Hawai‘ian Islands, I received a great blessing. Besides Quilly, that is, who is a great blessing all the time.

My laptop computer, the one I had brought from Maine new just over a year ago, has passed away.

It cost a pretty penny, from a manufacturer I had deemed reputable. And now it is gone.

Gone with the rest of its class of machines, the durability, repairability, and upgradability of which are so pathetic as a function of their cost, I can only wonder why we bother.

Bother to the point of gifting its makers and supporters with fortunes larger than the annual gross domestic products of most of the nations on this planet. While millions go hungry. And millions more garner resentment. Hatred. Even hatred unto violence.

I have no plans to replace this computer. I am unwilling to continue feeding the monster. Which means that I will be departing the blogosphere. And therein lies the blessing.

The blessing of time. Time to pursue other things, things that need doing, things that want doing, that the pleasure of blogging has taken away.

I will not be completely absent. Quilly’s star is rising, she is making something of blogging that I will never achieve. I will be an amoeba oozing in her background.

And besides, I’m a scientist. Never is not in my vocabulary.

So, this is au revoir, not adieu. The future may bring many things. But for the foreseeable future, amoeba be silent.

Be well.

Those of you who have been following this blog for awhile might remember April 2007, when He had just a little bit of trouble with this celebration.

Firstly, he managed to get Quilly’s birthday proclaimed all over Doug’s site. One day too soon. Then, he announced it at his own place (this blog didn’t exist yet), likewise a day too soon, mainly because he knew he’d be spending the real day in planes, trains and automobiles. Only to cover the birthday post with another one a few hours later.

Yeah, He was pretty clueless. But surely you know that by now. He certainly does. She’s sitting beside him now, helping him remember. Frequently. Men!

He’s certainly not clueless enough to mention her age. But both He and She are fond of Bill Cosby, and are in the process of (re)collecting most of his recordings of standup comedy. Including the one with the big number on it.

[ducks]

He was going to say she’s a saint, what with her church work, and her daily efforts with the pre-K kids here on the less-than-well-to-do side of O‘ahu, and her blogging stuff, including all the camera work she’s been doing lately. Not to mention putting up with his errors of omission and commission. But that gives her no right to cannonize him! No, wait, that’s Canon-ize. Put that thing down!

Would you please help me wish beautiful Quilldancer a happy birthday, by leaving a comment here or on her site, or both?

Happy birthday, love.

She wakes happy and cheerful and bright and chattery.

He wakes yeowly and growly and snarling at all things joyful.

She chirps at him brightly.

He mumbles and growls.

She gets even more cheerful and bright and fills the room with silliness.

He mumbles, growls and gives her that look.

She calms him with a gentle touch, a kiss on the forehead and, finally, a hug. Then she points at the bed and says, “Would you please get back in there for a moment and then climb out on the other side?”

His brows draw together. Storm clouds gather. Then he looks into her sparkling, laughter-filled eyes and almost smiles. He gives her a gentle squeeze and kisses her cheek. After, his heavy footed silence continues, but the storm clouds over his head dissipate. Soon he will morph back into the charming Amoeba she loves.

Moments after joining him in the pizza joint, she said, “It misted here all day today. It didn’t really rain. The air just stayed thick and damp, but the ground never looked wet.”

He said, “You’re lucky. It poured in Manoa all day.”

She said, “No mud puddles formed here. In fact, nothing really looked wet. After work I headed for the parking lot and when I got to the bare patch in the field — the bright red clay — looked perfectly dry. I was walking along and then, splat!, I was sitting in the mud.”

He provided her with a lovely, scientific description of the mud’s composition and explained why it was red.

She said, “My shoes will never be white again. Luckily, I was wearing my black slacks.” He made sounds of agreement. She said, “I was walking along and my foot just slipped. There’s this two and a half foot long gouge in the field where I fell. It only took a second. My foot just shot forward, plowing clay in front of it like a bull dozer. There’s the gouge, and this little mound at the end of it. The mound would be bigger, but the clay piled up on the end of my toe. When my butt hit the ground, a big glob of the stuff shot into the air and came down on my right knee.

He snickered.

“Are you laughing at me?” She demanded.

He shook his head, tried to straighten his face, and said, “Of course not.”

“Because not even Jane, the janitor, laughed when I showed up with both my hands covered in mud. Jane just asked if I wanted her to unlock the bathroom. That’s when I turned around and showed her my backside and said I thought a hose might be a better idea.”

He had a squeaky little coughing fit and covered his face in his hands. She stared at him suspiciously and demanded, “Are you sure you’re not laughing at me?”

He said, “Darling, I am just happy you weren’t injured.”

She said, “Jane took me to the fenced lanai behind the kitchen. There was hot and cold running water — looked like a set up for a washing machine — coming out of the wall about waist-high. I went ahead and showered in that. I figured soaking wet clothes were better than muddy clothes.”

He made more choking noises. She frowned at him. He took a gulp of soda and blamed the pizza. Then he changed the subject. “You say the ground never looked wet?”

“It looked just the same as it always does, red and powdery, but underneath it was slippery as snot!”

He queried, “How wet? How far down did the water go? Did it look wet underneath?”

She said, “I really don’t know. It wasn’t like I sat down to investigate the mud, you know, and I don’t have eyes on my butt.”

He made some warbling noises and stuffed a chicken wing into his mouth. She frowned and accused, “You are laughing at me! You aren’t in the least bit concerned!”

He said tried valiantly to assure Her that he was indeed concerned, but there wasn’t enough pizza on the table to stifle his laughter.

It’s been over a year since O’Ceallaigh first showed up at my door with his heart in his hand. There’s been a few changes since then. For instance, nowadays when he shows up at the door, his hands are usually full of musical equipment and he needs help turning the knob. Of course, that is a minor change. His first visit also featured the trumpet. From the beginning it has been my rival for his affections. We have learned to tolerate each other.

Lately there has been another, more subtle change. We still sit on the couch side-by-side. We still hold hands. We still exchange kisses and soft touches as we pass by each other, but –

I asked him if he was ready for his nightly ice cream. He said he was, then he ordered a cup of tea as well. Occasionally, when I tell him what the dinner menu is, he requests substitutions. At such times I often suggest he call a waitress. Other times I tell him we are calling a waitress because I don’t feel like cooking.

We also make decisions for each other. I have been known to critique his apparel and send him to change. He has done the same to me. He tells me when to carry an umbrella and scolds me for forgetting my (fill-in-the-blank). He has learned to tolerate my camera. I’ve (mostly) gotten used to his thinking out loud.

We know when to talk and when to shut up. We know when a hug is needed more than words. We know when to help and when to back off. We know when to say, “I’m sorry.”

We know we are loved.

If A is a singular article, and couple is a  plural noun, then a couple must be a singular plural.

Happy Birthday, Hon. I love you.

I wrote an earlier version of this four years ago, when a member of Martin Luther King’s team paid a call to our little congregational church in Maine. I hope you’ll forgive me for dragging it out and dusting it up a bit on this, the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination.

*           *           *           *           

call me martin

in the white church on the hill
of the winter white town,
the white student of the black king
revives the rainbow legend.

the student is a long way from memphis,

but he speaks and the icon is human,
an apostle without the pose;
call me martin.

on this memphis april,
doc martin has jetlag and the flu;
still the people line the hall when he passes,
touching the messiah’s robe
as they touched lincoln’s in richmond a century before.

and a few days later they shot them both.

we did.

the live recall is passing away,
leaving the videotapes,
and the curriculum vitae,
open to the whittling embrace
of the interpretors of history.

but explanations move no mountains;
dissertations break no chains.

it is the man,
he said call me martin,
the unassuming dignity,
the reflection of the holy,
who drives humanity to surpass itself.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2004, 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Hey dude!”

“What do I look like, dude? A paniolo?

“A paniwhat?“

“A paniolo. A Hawai‘ian cowboy, you haole. Who might possibly have some interest in hay.”

“Dude, I’d love it if you had some interest in hay. Like maybe making some? So I wouldn’t have to be howling at you every month when the rent’s due?”

“Very funny, dude. Next thing I know, you’ll want me to be hawking T-shirts online or something.”

“Well, if it’s good enough for OC and Quilly, it oughta be good enough for you.”

“What?? They sold out?!?“

“I don’t think so, dude. Their store’s only been open for a couple of hours. I hardly think they’re sold out of anything yet.”

“Oh fer … what brought this on?”

“Well, you know Quilly’s been taking all these photos of like Hawai‘ian flowers and turtles and birds and things?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, she figured if they were good enough for this Aussie journalist guy, they were good enough to stick on mugs and calendars and aprons, stuff like that.”

“You think anybody will buy this stuff?”

“What? You dissin’ Quilly’s pictures?”

“And risk OC’s delete key?? No way, dude! Besides, that Aussie dude’s right. They are great pictures. And nobody’s payin’ me to say that.”

“Damn.”

“Damn what, dude?”

“I sure wish someone would pay you to do somethin’.”

“Hey! I can stand on the surfboard now, dude! Sometimes …”

“Riiiight. Here. Read this.”

“‘Click on by OC ‘n’ Quilly’s Cafepress Store for all sorts of knick-knacks, keepsakes, and mementos from Hawai‘i and the OC and Quilly blogs. C’mon. You know you want to.’ Dude? Did I just read a commercial?!?“

“You did a great job, too, Daddy-O. A lot better than you ride that board.”

“I can’t believe this. I’m turning into a capitalist!“

“Does that mean you have money for the rent, dude?”

“I said capitalist, dude! Not philanthropist!“

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

But seriously, folks. Check out the store. Buy stuff and save Quilly from pre-K.

Better yet, if you see something of Quilly’s that you think would look good on a mug (not my mug, of course, that would be fatal), let us know. We’ll see what we can do.

Cheers, The Amoeba

He was walking along reading. He said, “According to the brochure, there should be green sea turtles sunning on this beach up here.”

She said, “Yeah, well according to my eyes, there are rocks sunning on that beach. One of them looks a little turtle shaped, but …”

If you wish to read Quilly’s honu thoughts, click here: Honu Heaven

If you wish to read O’Ceallaigh’s honu thioughts, click here: While Turtles Safely Graze

She came home from work one day, looking rather disgruntled. He, wondering what he’d screwed up this time, asked (somewhat nervously), “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t understand people ’round here”, She lamented. “Some of them don’t have two coins to bless themselves with, but God help you get their attention, never mind their respect, if your blouse or your bag doesn’t have that label on it!”

OK, dear readers, hands up. How many of you expect the next line to be, “And when am I going to get a bag with that label on it?”

Nope. Didn’t happen. Sorry to disappoint you. But if you’ve been here awhile, you should oughta know what a remarkable person She is by now. And just to reinforce the point, there’s the story (and maybe one day She’ll tell it better) of when some of her Las Vegas fifth-graders showed up in class wearing a particularly worrisome set of T-shirts with labels on them.

“What’ve you got those on for?”, She asked.

“Because they’re cool, Ms. A.” was the reply.

“So”, She continued, “you’re telling me that you don’t have any cool of your own, so you had to go out and buy someone else’s?”

Silence.

Well, hey. Think about the last time you walked down a street in these Untied States of America with any number of people on it, or across a school yard or college campus or (shudder) shopping mall. Don’t all those people look like this?

OK, there’s a difference. Today, the advertisements for beer or fashion designers or tractors or whatever are printed on hats and shirts and purses and backpacks instead of on some funny-looking sign.

Make that two differences.

Once upon a time, advertisers paid the guys and gals in the sandwich boards to carry those ridiculous things around.

Today?

We pay the advertisers for the privilege of doing their selling!

Hello?!?

Just to set the record straight. He has no objection to having things with this label or that on it.

Any time those labels are prepared to pay up for the privilege of touting their wares.

- O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

She tried to open the door and enter the house. The entryway rug had other ideas. It bunched up behind the door and refused to move. She struggled, opening and closing the door, working her way in inch-by-inch, until she could get her foot through and kick the offending piece of carpet aside.

She did not do this in silence. In fact, she is quite surprised that the carpet didn’t disintegrate in the inferno of invectives she threw at it. Finally, with a kick, a shove and one final oath, the door opened completely.

He, coming up the stairs and entering the condo behind her, said, “Everything okay, Hon? It’s really not like you to make so many derugatory remarks.”

*  *  *  *

That door has seen other struggles. Mostly, when He’s tried to get through it carrying all the paraphernalia for his trumpet gigs. “And to think”, He grumbled under the pile of bags and music stands, “that I chose to play trumpet because all I’d need to carry was one itty-bitty little case“.

“Well”, She said helpfully, “now you look like a pack mule. Do you really need all of this? Surely there’s a happy medium somewhere.”

“I’m sure there is”, He shot back, “but I’m not traipsing all over India looking for him.”

He cuts his own hair — and does so well enough that he doesn’t come out looking like he’s suffering mange. However, She has discovered there is an inexplicable correlation between her cleaning the bathroom and his hair cuts.

She cleaned the bathroom the other day. She scrubbed the walls from top to bottom, cleaned the air vent and the ceiling fan, then did all the other standard bathroom cleaning things. Well, she did have some small difficulty cleaning the mirror, but that was an unusual occurrence.

He came home from work. He went into her sparkling clean bathroom — and stayed.

And stayed.

And stayed.

She didn’t ask. Somethings deserve a measure of privacy. [ ] Finally, He emerged from the bathroom.

She — having waited so long — rushed right in and discovered her shiny glass and chrome had sprouted hair! What th –! Immediately she exited the bathroom and went in search of him. She found him in the kitchen innocently getting a drink of water. She gave him that look. He froze. “Wha –?” He queried all innocent like.

“What is it,” she asked, pointing toward the hall, “about a clean bathroom that makes it imperative you cut your hair?”

Still frozen like a mouse being scrutinized by a cat, he answered, “I, uh, well, uhm, — it’s just coincidence!”

Ha! She doesn’t believe that and she knows He doesn’t either. It has happened enough times that there is a definite cause-and-effect relationship. Maybe she should get a scientist in to study the phenomenon?

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

          - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, book I, chapter 2

Those of you who follow Quilly’s blog know that, as of today (15 March 2008), she has two weeks off from tending her pre-K students.

Two blessed weeks.

Might be just enough time to get the bandages off the less severe wounds.

Say what, Amoeba?!?

Ah. But you, fellow blogger, get to read Quilly’s Art Linkletter stories. Kids Say (and Do) The Darndest Things and all that. Laugh, kookaburra, laugh.

You do not get to read about the poverty, parental/guardian (ahem) misfortune, and institutional incompetence that put these already-challenged children behind the eight-ball way before they have a chance to learn what an eight-ball is.

You do not get to read about classroom resources that fall well short of what Federal law requires, because the Federal and State governments are bickering over which of these two bankrupt institutions is going to come up with the money to allow the school to obey the law. And because the State bureaucracy is so efficient, that if by some miracle it actually should receive the money for those resources this coming Monday, the school might see half of it in time for the start of the school year. The 2010 school year.

The commenter who asked Quilly “is there any time here in Hawai‘i that is NOT Spring Break?” is invited to spend a few minutes with the Hawai‘i Department of Education, and a few days trying to pay for the double-the-cost-of-the-mainland roof over your head with what the HDoE pays its employees, and learn the error of his ways.

You do not get to read about the warehouse-filling dossiers that the staff need to assemble in order to document circumstances that threaten a child’s education - nay, the child’s life - so that the staff may present the data to the Authorities, the Official Representatives of We The People, and be told …

… that they can do nothing.

Bill Simmons, over at ESPN, posted a story about a funeral he attended recently. A funeral for an athlete who died young in Los Angeles. Of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw Jr., who, despite his modest means, did just about everything right. Except, stand on the wrong streetcorner and get gunned down by a gang member fresh out of jail, who mistook Shaw for a rival on the mean streets.

Simmons described, in full profit-mongering detail (or at least as full as ESPN’s word count rule allowed) the circumstances of Jamiel Shaw Jr.’s life and death. Including, among those circumstances, a public school system so debilitated that competition for places in private schools, and the few reputable private schools, begins in pre-K.

The overarching message of Simmons’s piece?

It’s too bad. But nothing can be done. There will always be gangs …

I asked why it was that people involved with pre-K education on the leeward side of O‘ahu put up with conditions that, from the outside looking in, look intolerable, if not illegal. And I got my answer.

“Um … the rent?”

Translation: “The ship’s sinking, but if I tell the Captain that, I’ll get fired!“

It’s a message with which We the People are very familiar. Have been for a long time. And, the other day, no less a public figure than Dr. Seuss told me just how long.

Yes. Dr. Seuss. That Dr. Seuss. The Cat In The Hat and all that.

Turns out that, long before Thing One and Thing Two, Seuss (which is supposed to be pronounced “zoice”, rhymes with “voice”, and yes, the good Doctor said so himself) worked both in advertising and as a political cartoonist. The Mandeville Library of the University of California, San Diego has posted the complete collection of Dr. Seuss’s political cartoons from 1941 to 1943 (in early 1943, he joined the U. S. Army and drew cartoons for them).

The cartoons of 1941 were particularly pointed when they dealt with Americans who considered the world situation and chose to do nothing.

Kinda like parents whose response to the education situation in today’s America is to make sure their 3-year-old is lined up to go to private school.

When, at the end of 1941, war did come, Americans responded by cutting back on personal standards of living and volunteering money to the Government. Though, it must be admitted, it didn’t happen without a certain amount of cajoling.

Wonder what would happen if any of our current candidates for President of these Untied States were to proclaim a new War on Poverty? Poverty that condemns most of the iPod-less of our children to the perdition of the minimum-wage economy. Or the gangs. Or both. From pre-K.

And if those candidates were to ask for 10% of each of Our incomes in savings bonds and stamps to fund that war?

Actually, no, I don’t wonder. Don’t bother looking for that candidate’s political corpse. There wouldn’t be any pieces big enough to find.

We the People would rather do nothing.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2008 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

She told him he was very well-rounded.

He said: “It’s because you feed me too much.”

~***~

She said: “I adore you.”

He said: “So that’s why my nose is sore. I thought it looked flatter than usual.”

She said: “Damn. I was hoping to knock some sense into you. Didn’t work.”

~***~

He said, “I didn’t sleep a bit last night.”

She said, “Oh, did your snoring keep you awake, too?”

~***~

They were on their way to the airport. He was leaving for a three day business trip on a nearby island. She said: “Couldn’t you just fly home every night and sleep here?”

He said: “I seriously considered it. The cost is about the same as staying, but the meeting schedule conflicts with the flight times.”

She was content just knowing he’d rather be home.

She said:  “Ice cream?”

He said: “Yes, but I want you to serve me half as much as you have.”

She queried:  “You want half as much ice cream as I serve myself?”

He said:  “No, I want less ice cream than you’ve been serving me.  Scoop less.”

She queried:  “Scoopless?  What, you want me to use a fork?”

He heaved a heavy sigh, shook his head, no, then said, “Yes!”

She said:  “Talking to you is very confusing!”

He repeated: “Talking to me is confusing?!”

She said, “I’m glad you agree.”