11/11/11 ANOTHER RAINY DAY IN PARADISE

                11/11/11    A RAINY DAY IN PARADISE

As you know, East Hawaii gets a lot of rain and even the in drought of the last couple years Hilo’s per year totals have been in the 80’s.  Historically Hilo has reported an average of 127 inches of rain per year at the airport (34’ elevation) and a lot more on the upland portions of the city.  The photo above is Rainbow Falls on the Wailuku River in Hilo early this month.  The first week of the month has been very wet with over 8 inches here at our house and 6.28 in Hilo.  If it rained at that rate all year we’d have 416 inches annually in Hakalau yet the surprising thing is that it is still easy (at least for a retired guy) to find nice times to be outdoors. Another amazing thing is that there is very little flooding or erosion as there was during the sugar cane plantain days.  Most of the former cane field area is now forest, ornamentals for export, orchards, pastures or row crops of less than five acres.   I am also amazed that even when the Hakalau River does flood red-brown it is nearly clear again within less than two hours of the rain stopping and back to normal the next day.

What potential visitors always ask is which months to visit to avoid the rain.  The answer is if you want to avoid the rain drive to the leeward side (whichever side that is on that day) or just wait an hour.  June, May and January are the driest months on average but the deviation from 10”/month is not great.  March, November and December are the wettest months usually.  Temperature range each day only varies on average from 79-83 f. highs and 63-70 f. lows and for the last few years the annual monthly extremes have moved closer together .

Yesterday, a few days after starting this entry, and 10 days into this rainy month Myrna and I decided to get away from the rain and snorkel south of Kailua.  Hilo had .36” that day, twice that at Hakalau, but only a trace fell on the Konaside beach while the 1,000’ and up got measurable amounts.  Now the total for Hilo this month is 10” and here nearly double that.  When the storms come from the south instead of the usual southeast then Hilo may get more rain than Hakalau.  If we get storms from the west, as some winter storms are, then Kona will get more of the rain.

I expected to see a lot of mushrooms and fungus when we moved here but usually we don’t and I’ve only found one that was large enough to eat and that I was confident enough about.  That was an oyster mushroom.  I’ve not tried to identify the fungus in the attachments but the lizard with one of them is a metallic skink native to Australia.  Sinks are very fast and would normally require a telephoto lens around here.  This day they were unwilling to move from their nearly sunny spots because they needed to warm between showers.  Some lizards are even more sensitive to cold.  Three times I’ve seen dead Jacksons Chameleons on the ground under trees and each time it was on a morning in the 60’s.  Usually Jacksons are not seen because they live in the treetops.

Speaking of invasive lizards, I should mention that the Day Gecko pictured on top of our Subaru (below) had been on at least one trip on the car.  

When I get near him he dashes into a space between the hatch door and the roof to hide.  Once, last year, a different gecko emerged from under the windshield wiper when we were stopped at a traffic light.  It is easy to see how they get spread around and how since we have harnessed the power of fossil fuel the mixing of our planet's species has accelerated.

This gun powder tree stump is showing not the signs of rot but rather a termite colony that had hollowed out the center of a healthy growing tree.

In spite of the bad economy, the wild pig problem seems to be getting worse here again.  Most of the lower elevations are no hunting zones (no shooting within 300 yards of a residence).  All guns must be declared upon entry to the state, must be licensed with annual renewal and must be owned only by people who have passed a firearms safety course and paid a permit fee every year.  It is good that we don’t often hear shooting near our home that we need to worry about but pigs are smart enough to learn about live traps and snares are in-humane because the caught animals maybe suffering a long time.  So the pig problem is likely to always be with us and that includes the destruction of native plants and added erosion.  One neighbor’s front lawn looks like it has been plowed.  I saw three in broad daylight 100’ from the post office Tuesday and three after dark in another place the day before.  Our dog and I visit our perimeter nearly everyday and we’ve not had any in our yard for a year.  After I get some more tree work done I’ll do more fencing.

This week, after having a few days of NO bananas, we found ourselves working on four bunches at once.  Yesterday we bought a second food dryer but until I get a third there will still be times that we need to give some away.  If we had a pig we could feed it a lot of bananas and other fruit and sweet potatoes.  But then if our pig escaped we would be adding to the wild pig problem.  If we caught a wild pig and just fed it awhile before butchering that wouldn’t be an environmental problem and that is precisely what some of my neighbors do.

Aloha!

Movement Towards a Final Destination

                                                MOVEMENT TOWARDS FINAL DESTINATION

This is the finished lychee wood carving that I completed just before I left for Spokane.  For a slide show of the stages it went through see my facebook page.

Since I last wrote here I have made another round trip from Hilo to Spokane.  Sometimes it seems like I am spinning my wheels and getting nowhere.  When we left Eastern Washington to live here on the Island of Hawaii I didn’t expect to ever go back to “the mainland” even though I knew Myrna would continue to do so as long as her mother was still alive.  As it is that lovely piece of the Little Spokane River that was our home has not only proven difficult to sell, it has become a ‘money pit’ as well.

All along the shallow well of surface water at our former home has been a turn off for most prospective buyers.  Finally in August we signed a deal with a lady who grew up in the area with the same type of water system.  She failed to get bank financing but was willing to pay more if we carried a contract.  She had a complicated family situation and I didn’t expect the deal to go through but I flew there to help determine how much to stick out necks out for her and to have a real well drilled for in case she couldn’t close.  When the well driller reached 300 feet and had only hit a trickle at 80 feet, we decided to give up at $8,600.  So now the lady, who couldn’t come up with the down payment, as had become clear by then, was our only hope again.  What we ended up doing was to sign an extension to the purchase agreement till March 1 and to lease it to her in the meantime.  There are real reasons to hope that she (they) will have the down payment then but I won’t hold my breath.  At least the place will be occupied through the winter without us paying the heat bill

So yesterday I again flew home, this time through San Francisco, 2 hour layover, and Los Angeles, 4 hour layover then the ‘new’ Continental route to Hilo.  I read a couple books on our Kindle but still had a lot of time to think.  One conclusion is that even though the flights are boring I’d still rather be moving than sitting in an airport even if I’m not really getting any closer to my final destination.  So, yes, I continue to experience the feeling of  ”the older I get the less I know” .  In other words, I have thought I had reached the physical place where I would spend the rest of my life three times in the past but now I no longer think that way.  Now I still live nearly as if I was preparing my last stand, but I don’t really believe it.  I’m expecting some more surprises down the line.  And, of course, we all have the same “final destination” eventually.

But home coming in Hilo was sweet.  There were a few light showers, warm rich air moving from the Ocean and a wife and dog very happy to see me.  Today at the crack of dawn we walked the dog around Veterans Field and I was delighted that even though we had a shower during the night and the grass was soaked, I was totally comfortable in Crocs, shorts and short sleeves.  In the morning I also discovered that there were three weeks worth of chores to catch up on and I have made a good start on those.  I also had to pick a bunch of bananas, a couple avocados and a whole bucket of papayas and repair Myrna’s car.  Tomorrow I will go down to the Hakalau Community park and see how the volunteer maintenance crew has held up.  Maybe then I will buy a hand held power planer that I think I need for my next wood working project which is to be a curvy lychee wood love seat. 

The temperature range for the next few days is forecast to be 67-83.  I can take that!

Hawaiian Events

 v

                                                HAWAII SPECIAL EVENTS

 

Here special events can be anything as simple as encountering a rarely seen friend, which can call for blocking traffic a few minutes if one or both are in cars, to family benchmarks such as 1^st birthday, graduation or marriage which call for big parties, to prime fishing times on the bay, to paddle club events like canoe races, and every weekend there are free music performances somewhere, and a drum circle down at the nude beach.  There are also numerous cultural events celebrating the practices of the many cultures endemic to the Island.   This weekend one of the big events was down at our community park at Hakalau, under the highway trestle that used to be a railroad for the sugar plantaions.

For the past two years I’ve been working with the crew of volunteers cleaning up the ruins of the old Hakalau Plantation sugar mill and also creating both decorative and food producing lawns and gardens.  The work started six years ago when the non-profit Basic Image brokered an agreement with the County, who had received the property in lieu of back taxes but could not afford to do anything with it, so they agreed to give maintenance responsibility to Basic Image.  Basic Image is manned by a very ethnically diverse group that has fun working together for the public good.  I felt welcome as soon as I joined, although I still can’t understand most of the pidgin that many of them speak.  Usually we work every Friday from about 8 to 10 or 11 a.m. then have lunch together.  No one keeps track exactly and no one suffers any guilt trip if they don’t get there on time or not at all.  Each regular volunteer has a routine job plus major improvement jobs are organized and directed by two key people.  One of them also writes grants. The county comes down to collect the full trash bags and they contract for the portable toilets.  So far there is no plumbed water but it is possible that the county may provide that in the future.  Sometimes the county does a little road maintenance.  So I guess you could say we have a public private partnership except in this case the private expects no more personal gain than the all the public.

There has been a Basic Image event at Hakalau for three years and each has featured a couple bands, a big dinner, games for the kids, a kids surfing contest and over night camping.  It usually showers overnight and is even more likely to around day break, so every Ohana (family) into camping has more than one pipe frame canopy allowing one to be used for cooking, dining and lounging and the other to shelter tents so they are less likely to get soaked.  On just regular good weather weekends it can look like a village of refugees in any of the county parks. 

For this event our park was expected to be packed (we had nearly 300 last year without advertizing and this year it was put in the Hilo paper’s Events page so it was estimated to have about 500 this year) so we started set up on Wednesday.  A stage was assembled with its own canopy; one was set for kid’s activities, one for cooking/serving, one for registration and one to cover a portion of the audience area.  Just one week ago the County gifted us with an old shipping container (with fresh paint) to store our tools and lawn mowers in and we erected a canopy with two picnic tables for the work crew and their families next to it.   It was interesting to see the relaxed acceptance of how we are doing this for the public, but it was fine to reserve ourselves a nice place in it.

The set up proceeded at a leisurely pace so by the event day the flower arrangements, which at least the stage has at every Hawaiian event (we had much more), and the electric generator were about all that needed to be done.  The official programmed time was 10 am till 3:30 pm, it was to be an alcohol and drug free event. There was a noxious weed information booth, a light bulb exchange and the county police even had a photo I.D. booth there.  There were kids activities such as hand painting a portion of the sea wall and surfing, there was a free dinner served by a youth group that we work with, Starbucks gave away coffee, banana nut bread and juice, and free malasadas were cooked for about 3 hours by a couple from our crew.  And, of course, many people went swimming at least once.  Myrna and I swam twice.  There was less talking this year than last from the stage as we had four excellent bands during the afternoon.

After the official event the police and some of the spectators left, the crew cleaned up, and many people retired to their tents to emerge smiling with drinks in their hands as the evening band came on and played till dark while the people loosened up and some of us did some wild dancing, which was not dampened by a warm light shower. After the generator was turned off we took a break for supper then I went looking for a jam session with a few harmonicas in my cargo pant shorts.  I found the music under a big canopy where three guys were making up verses to a basic tune played by ukulele, guitar and drum and I fit right in.  The vocals were very good and each song went on for about 20 minutes before starting anew with another familiar song that they made many new variations to.  I couldn’t catch most of the words but it seemed many of them were quite raunchy.

We were blessed with a dry night for camping, so Myrna and I slept well on our air bed in a tent.  Unlike the “Barter Fairs” common around the Northwest Mainland, the night was quiet and a comfortable 69 degrees.  The night was even mostly star lit when I awoke once.  In the morning we got a good look at the sunrise around the usual offshore clouds.  We were expecting to drive home for breakfast as we didn’t think others would be up as early as we usually rise, but coffee was already made when we got up and by the time I took some sunrise pictures breakfast was ready!

 After eating we did some packing and then left to attend another event (more geared to the elderly).  We returned in the late afternoon to find many of the crew assembled with friends eating again (they may never have stopped) so we were forced to eat again too in spite of the fact that we had just had a huge potluck lunch at the other event.  By this time, although the campers from the night before had mostly left, the park had re-filled and the shallow water over the gravel bar was again full of happy kids.  As it had turned out our event drew over 400 people and now, the next day, there were nearly 100 and the park still looked great – clean and green!    Who needs to be rich when we can have this?

 Aloha!

Above The Clouds

                                     6/15/11   ABOVE THE CLOUDS

           

           

Last week I did some hiking at the 4,000-4,400 foot level of Mauna Kea, the long dormant volcano that we live at the base of.  Below the dirt road that girths the mountain lie mostly forest of Koa, Ohia, and other tropical hardwoods that are invaded by numerous, sometimes very invasive, introduced plants.  A lot of the below the road area is National Forest where the pigs, sheep, and donkeys have been removed and fenced out so the native trees can begin to re-grow.  Inside the fenced areas you can see many Koa seedlings; whereas, outside the fence, only ancient falling apart trees remain as the grazers love the young trees.   Above the road the trees grow more sparsely and more of the volcanic cinders are bare.

My companion and guide for this trip, Bob (pictured below at the Douglas monument), is a 76 year old neighbor, who was a state forest ranger/enforcement officer for many years when much of the now national forest used to be state forest.  He was able to identify many of the plants and trees, including sandalwood which nearly went extinct due to logging for export to the Orient.  I always wondered what sandalwood would smell like and I found a piece of dead wood that Bob passed to me had the aroma of spicy pine.  He also told me interesting things about a plant I already could identify, the Banana Poka. 

            Banana Poka, Passiflora mollissima, is an invasive introduction from South America that bears edible, when ripe, fruit but has larger seeds and a smaller amount of juice than the common passion fruit.  The bright yellow ripe fruits are the shape of a banana and quite eye catching hanging singly, apparently from trees that are known to NOT produce fruit.  The long vines may be sparsely leaved in low light forest till they find their way to the sun, and then they may cover the tree host till they break it or starve it of light.  But they do have beautiful pink flowers that are 4-5” across with a 4” trumpet to a round nectar reservoir.  I saw a honey creeper feeding on one of the flowers across a gulley from us.  When I looked at a flower in my hand I could not imagine how their bill could reach the nectar.  In fact there was no nectar in the one I dissected.  Bob picked five flowers and showed me that four out of the five had a small hole punched in the base of the nectar reservoir, and that is how the honey creeper feeds on them.  In fact, Bob went on to explain that the threatened native birds tended to become less numerous in areas where this invasive was brought under control, so there was less effort to control it in these upper altitudes.  Control may be impossible anyway as the pigs love to feed on the fallen ripe fruits and most of the seeds pass through them spreading them everywhere the pigs roam.  Inside the pig fenced areas the seeds are still spread by fruit eating birds.  The books describe Banana Poka vines as reaching to 60 feet but Bob and I believe that we saw some to nearly 100 feet.

We parked the car several times for short hikes.  Bob’s main focus was on the plum thickets that he remembered and in fact I believe now that is why he chose this day to ask me to drive him up there – the introduced plums were just beginning their season and he was determined to bring back a cooler full. The picture above shows plums below banana poka.  In fact, according to Bob, the plums should have been mostly ripe but even here in Hawaii seasons vary from year to year and this one is late especially at this elevation.  In fact there has been fresh snow fall atop MaunaKea each month this year lasting from a few days to a few hours.  Our first winter here our mountain had had only 4 days of snow all winter.

Our last stop was at Doctors Pit, named for David Douglas, the Scottish botanist who stopped here in 1833-4 on his way back to England from Northwest America and for whom the Douglas Fir (really a genus all its own) is named.  We parked the car and followed a weed wacked trail down the hill into a forest surrounded flat spot next to a vegetation covered pit crater.  Here there is a monument to David Douglas who died near this spot, in the pit trampled by a bull.  The story is that he was exploring with a local bull hunter as guide, when he fell into a pit that was used to catch wild cattle.  When help arrived to recover the body it was in pieces.  The bull hunter was suspected as less money was found with the body than Douglas was known to be carrying.   And, of course, there is another large plum thicket there.  I also picked and mostly ate out of hand a native kind of salmon berry that was bore fruit over 2” in diameter that is good eating from dark red to purple if you can tolerate a bitter aftertaste.  In the fenced forest 200 yards below is one of the several Sugi Pine groves from Japan that were planted for timber about 80 years ago.  Right next to the monument is a small grove of Douglas fir.  I doubt any logging will resume in this national forest unless the political climate changes drastically.  The road in is so long and bumpy that I had to drive 6-10 mph for an hour after leaving the paved summit road.

On the way back we were reminded of the difficulties of managing land in patchwork ownership.  For over a hundred years cattle have ranged the whole mountain, and in the effort to save native flora, increasing areas have been fenced to exclude the cattle, sheep and pigs.  Since the late 1940’s much of it has been put under federal management, and now, Bob thinks, there should not be any range animals.  Yet on the way in we saw manure on the road and one dead cow.  Heading out in late afternoon we saw lots of cattle, three sheep and a couple pigs.  We also saw turkeys, quail, ring necked pheasants and grouse (the biggest I’ve ever seen) which were all introduced and managed as game birds.  In addition we spotted three pairs of Nepalese Kalij pheasants that we also have a family of in the lowland forest behind our house and I’ve rarely seen at Volcanoes National Park.

Those huge grouse mentioned above live in a treeless area dominated by gorse, which is a thorny shrub imported from Scotland, to serve as fence hedge rows, but like so many plants they became an invasive nightmare that now covers thousands of acres.  A kind of tent caterpillar that eats the leaves and a weevil that eats the seed heads are being used as biological controls, and in one area it appears they have mechanically cut and windrowed the gorse between planted rows of koa trees.  Bob says there used to be lots of frogs (another introduced invasive) in some of the reservoirs in this area but we heard none and some of the reservoirs are dry.  On the way back down the mountain it started raining and has continued raining at least part of everyday since.  This year has been nearly rainfall normal.

Aloha!

   

4/22/11 THE SPICE OF LIFE

If variety is the spice of life I guess we’ve had a well seasoned April and there is still a week to go.  We started the month still in the drought then had 10 days of rain that included one day of 2.4” and another of 6”.  Since then it has been mostly dry again and the garden will need watering tomorrow if we don’t get a shower tonight.  The bananas have loved it and I’ve kept the food drier busy at least half the days.

We’ve improved our tropical sustainability skills this month by starting to harvest our kalo (taro) and learning to steam it instead of boiling it first before making other things so it doesn’t get too slimy.  We still like it best fried but I’ve added about 2 cups steamed grated kalo to each of the last two four-loaf batches of bread.  It makes the bread very smooth and fine textured and everyone liked it.

We also learned to better utilize our coconuts thanks to a friend from the Hakalau Crew giving me his old coconut shredder.  It is a 4” hemisphere shaped tool with burrs and a shield over the top of it that is mounted on ½ hp. motor.  This saves us having to dig the meat out with a knife then cut it up then shred it in a blender.  It is not only quicker but also does a finer job resulting in richer milk or smoother pudding if that is the end product.  I had to rebuild the shield and make a table strong enough to clamp the motor base to.  I also mounted a 1” steel spike to a porch post for husking the coconuts so I guess that I tripled my speed at both jobs and will probably get faster.

We also made three trips this month, one to a new place and two to old favorite snorkeling places.  In Volcanoes National Park the Chain of Craters Road has always been blocked at Mauna Ulu as long as we’ve been here because of dangerous gases.  This month the road was reopened so we decided to go see it quick before it closes again.  The road runs from the summit, at 4,000 feet, along the east rift zone to the Ocean where the road was blocked by several lava flows from ’77-’92.  There were some beautiful views on the way down and it is mind boggling how many million acres of lava have boiled out of the ground but it was hot at the lower elevations and got monotonous by the time we drove back up to the summit in order to return home back down the other side of the rift. 

Some lava pictures are attached. The Photo with the face in the lava is from the Mauna Ulu area and the rest of the lava pictures are from the end of the road.  The nose on the face was placed there by a human I believe.  

The 2 snorkeling trips of the month were to “two step” and the Kapoho tide pools.  For the first we were joined by our visitors Rick and Linda and we made it an around the whole Belt Road in one day starting to the South.  While Rick and Linda toured “the place of refuge” archeological site we snorkeled the adjoining wildlife refuge.  It was not the best of conditions there so soon after the storms because the water was not as clear as usual and the fish were less numerous.  It left us yearning for the always clear water of the Tide Pools.

A few days later we drove to the Tide Pools knowing that a long dead whale had been in and out with the tides and was now on the rocks there somewhere.  As we approached the tide pools I got a whiff of stench but by the time we got to the diving parking we were no longer down wind.  We could see the grey mound of what was left of the whale south of the tide pools but didn’t smell it there at all and we had a good dive including spotting an eel (Magnificent Snake Eel) for the first time in that location.  The parking here is is part of the private development and no facilities are provided probably because the local residents want to avoid having more visitors.  Since this is such a special place and part of it is already a marine preserve, I think it should be purchased by the county 2% Fund (same as the Conservation Futures Fund in Spokane County) but there are already a long list of properties in waiting, though I think most are much less worthy.  In addition, due to the economic crisis payments into the Fund are currently suspended to bolster the general fund and a move is being made to reduce it to 1% in the future.

     Aloha! 

Photos From the Big Island

This is shortly after sunrise at the mouth of the Hakalau River, about 1 1/2 miles from our home.

 The main highway spans the river canyon about 100' over it.
This bridge used to be a narrower rail bridge and was widened
 to convert it to two lane car traffic after the sugar plantations
closed and the rail line went bankrupt.

   Akaka Falls is the highest on the Big Island and is only about 4 miles away.  It is an easy stop for tourists as it is only 2 miles off the highway and has a paved walkway from the parking lot.










Our guest house as viewed from the roof of our house.

Now (two years after the roof view picture) the whole area in front of the guest house
of this is covered by six lima bean plants that are over a year old.

Fallout

                                                            3/17/11

                                           POWER PLANT FALLOUT

Hopefully restoration of electricity will allow the returning of coolant to the reactors in Japan but meanwhile, after 20 years of talking about coal power plant emissions control, their fallout continues increasing.  An article in today’s New York Times reports that the coal fired electric generation industry has not only fought more regulation, they have INCREASED mercury emissions by more than 8% to 53 tons from 1999to 2005 and arsenic emissions by 31% to 210 tons over the same time.

The industry complains that compliance with the proposed rule will cost $10 billion.  The EPA data show that savings in lives and healthcare will be $100 billion, 17,000 premature deaths and 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms per year.  As a government “of, by and for the people” isn’t the math result an obvious $90 billion savings to proceed with this rule?  Wouldn’t delaying this clean-up of emissions be another case of continuing to PRIVATIZE THE PROFITS WHILE SOCIALIZING THE COSTS?

While the new rule would only require adoption of the current best practices among the 400 coal fired generators operating in the U.S., the Republicans in congress are up in arms against it.  They are also bent on defunding the EPA (and the IRS) as much as possible while they are at it.  I hope you give them and the EPA a piece of your mind.

3/11/2011

               3/11/11 THE TRUE MEANING OF MARCH MADNESS

I am writing this on the 14^th and the situation in Japan is still getting worse.  Yes I’m talking about the nuclear power plants heading towards meltdown while in the United States we are still heading towards building more of them.  For a view of the worst hit the Big Island took from the tsunami go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqlpqtIjYrY&feature=email>

The sea wall and a lot of this video is Kailua looking down Alii Drive in front of Kamahamaha Hotel.

The surge on the East side of the Island where I am didn’t get above normal storm surge levels.

Now for some words on what is really on my mind today.  Our species is always acting like teenagers sure of their own immortality and even smug enough to believe we have the right to not only poison ourselves off if we want to, in the name of cheap profitable fuel, but also poison the planet for all higher life forms for thousands of years with nuclear weapons or, more slowly, with nuclear power.  We have no plan to deal with the waste even though we know it will be dangerous longer than we’ve been in existence. Even though we have the ability to provide every home with solar or other pollution free energy, what we plan the most on for replacing dirty coal is more nuclear power.

In the 50’s when our government was already the leading nuclear weapons power on earth we went to extraordinary lengths to force a nuclear power industry into existence “to harness the peaceful uses of the atom”.  Since no private company could afford to insure the risk of malfunction, in 1957 the PRICE-ANDERSON ACT was passed through congress allowing us, the tax payers, to cover all but the first 60 million dollars of damage.  This made it profitable for private industry to build centralized power plants to serve large areas at guaranteed profit levels and minimal risks.  It was the means for private profits from socialized risks and one of its tools became world wide insurance pools in our case represented by American Nuclear Insurers.

This scam was somewhat improved upon through a series of revisions.

When the Three Mile Island partial meltdown occurred, evacuation cost claims, lost wage claims and economic harm to business and individuals came to a total of $65,000,000.  A public health fund got $5,000,000 in addition. 

The latest revision to The Act was in 2005 and although on the surface it appears to offer much better compensation there are a couple possible loop holes.  A larger amount of money is in the insurance pool but only 1/3 of it is required to be kept available in this country and the rest may be invested in world wide pools.  Also the power plant operators are required to pay a larger dollar amount ($111,900,000) and all must pay it at once in the event of a plant failure but it is not really larger when inflation is taken into account.  But shakiest of all might be that the operators are not required to have this money on deposit but just “available” by the means of their choosing.  If we can’t even trust private companies to guard the pension funds of their employees (or even local or state governments now) how can we trust them to make prompt disaster payments that will damage their company’s future at a time when it is already in doubt?

Of course we need to question why we should be concerned with compensation for damages when lives and the whole land’s inhabitability is in question.  But it is illustrative of the fact that the risks are huge and would NEVER be undertaken were it not for the fact that the PROFITS ARE PRIVATIZED AND THE RISKS ARE SOCIALIZED.

The Japanese disaster will reduce the funds available if we have a nuclear disaster here.  A major earth quake in California, where the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Reactor is built right on a fault, or one on the New Meridian fault along the Mississippi River may damage more than one reactor at once.  We are so arrogant to believe that we can predict what the earth will do next based on our puny short lifetimes or upon our nearly as short “recorded history”.

The power plants failing in Japan did automatically shut down as designed when the quake struck.  The failure was because the fuel still needs to be high pressure cooled for days and kept under water for many years to not melt and go critical.  The water supply and/or the pumps failed so the fuel was not covered in water.  For full details follow the link below.  For safe power, go to renewable alternatives.

 http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear

02 17 11

 

                             2/17/11 HAWAIIAN DOLLARS

People often ask me how much more expensive is it to live in Hawaii.  I may not be the best person to ask since our lifestyle tends more towards self sufficiency and simple living than most, but here is my take on that question.

The first cost exposure that visitors get is a stroll down any supermarket aisle where milk is $4.50 or more a gallon and eggs are $2.50 - $4 a dozen.  Our first approach is to adapt.  We only buy soy milk by the case when we can get to Costco for about $14 / dozen quarts ($3.50/gal) and I only buy eggs when they are on sale and we use less of both.  The other way we adapt is to use what we can grow or forage.  We make coconut milk by shredding coconut meat in the blender then steeping it in boiled water and squeezing the result for a rich and creamy drink.   We toast the dry remains for adding to baking or cereal.  Coconuts are available most times either from our own palm (one producing and several will start in three or four years) or from the lower edges of the local sports field.  Eggs we’ve greatly reduced our use of (and hopefully our cholesterol levels) by switching to cereal more often in the morning and fish more often at supper.

Starting this summer we will be harvesting around 70 pounds of tilapia from our back yard pond annually at a cost of about 100 pounds fish feed.  I still hope to grow a larger percentage of their food in the future but I’ve found that difficult.  The store bought fish food costs around $1/pound and our other cost (besides the capital to build the pond) is the small air pump to keep the pond aerated and most of our electric we solar generate.  A valuable side benefit is the fertilizer rich water that is gravity fed to our gardens.

But, back to the beginning question, I estimate very roughly that groceries cost 1/4- to 1/3 more here.  Clearly this Island at least could produce all its own food if the people had not been conditioned by good times or by food stamps to expecting convenience food instead of basic unprocessed local food.  And we include ourselves in this expectation.  Even though we grow, forage or are gifted most of our fruit and vegetables we still spend $100 – 150 per month on groceries.  We probably also spend $100- 130/ month on gas even though Myrna’s Insight that she commutes to work in gets 60 m.p.g.  So far this year gas has been around $3.69/gallon on our side of the Island and average $4 on the west side (we have the refinery in Hilo).  So you can imagine why I’m planning for an electric car soon after we finally sell the house in Chattaroy.  But since we’ve lost so much on last year’s false sale, I may be building an electric conversion car instead of buying a new one.  Another price example, a round bale of grass hay costs $300!

The uncertainties of selling a house on the mainland are another of the expenses of moving to Hawaii that I’ve learned a great deal about lately.

The housing “bubble” caught many people with a house for sale on the mainland and a house to pay for here.  We were better prepared than most because our house on the mainland was paid for and Myrna had a good paying job here that although stressful was not impacted by the changing economy.  Unlike many people stuck with two homes we’ve not had to surrender one of them to the bank but we have seen our “investment” declining in value.  Just this week I finally got back the deed from the owner contract “buyers” who I let into our home in Chattaroy for a ridicules low down payment last fall and then never were able to make payments.  Now I guess I’ll need an appraisal to try to price it right to get a quick sale.  Both renting the house in ’09 when it didn’t sell and moving out the renter to prepare for the buyer in ’10 required an expensive and lengthily trip and this spring will probably be the same.

Another added expense of living here is all those items that we want but are not stocked here on the Island.  In Spokane County if it is not stocked it can usually arrive on a truck from Seattle or Portland in two days at no extra charge.  Here shipping might take one week from Honolulu or two weeks to two months from the mainland.  The shipping charges are astounding.  When shopping on line if it says free shipping in the U.S. we will usually encounter a suddenly added LARGE shipping charge for Alaska or Hawaii when we get to the LAST page of the transaction.  Or at the Sears parts store, as I was yesterday, when I only need a tiny drive belt for my belt sander, which weights one once and could be put in an envelope and mailed, they tell me that UPS charge will be $23!!!  Sears, like a surprising number of large businesses, refuses to ever use the USPS.  Even so, I frequently order on line but need to spend a lot of time searching for a company that offers free shipping or uses USPS because things are so expensive here.

As a lot of people my age need occasional medical care that is only available in a large city, trips to Honolulu or the mainland can be an added expense.  I have Medicare advantage with Kaiser which covers flying to Honolulu for anything they don’t do here.  As I remain basically healthy I think the fact that people here live an average of 2 years longer plus the fact that I gain a month of productivity every year that I don’t need to shovel snow and chop firewood makes retirement in Hawaii a great deal!

Here on the eastside the forecast is for a temperature range the next 5 days of 65 to 82, a passing shower and sun each day.  Kona side is usually 5 degrees warmer and Waimea area (2,000 ft) 5 degrees cooler.                Aloha!