Musings: Been Wondering

It was all about color when I went walking with Koko and Paele this morning; indeed, the rosy glow soaking the world and seeping through the window was what spurred me to get up so quickly. Outside, the sky was streaked with great swaths of pearlescent clouds and awash in scarlet, which bled onto the jagged green ridges of Makaleha and turned it into an ethereal Maxwell Parrish landscape.

And then, in the course of just a few minutes, the color shifted to burnt orange, then pink, and on to pale lavender, mustard yellow, a faint robin’s egg blue and finally, the washed out grey of a cloudy pre-dawn waiting for the sun.

Right about that time the bamboo thicket came alive with the twittering of hundreds of birds, which come from all around to roost there, and they flitted and chirped and darted from branch to branch and I wondered, as I always do when I watch them each morning and night, why they chose that particular patch of bamboo and how they decide who should sleep where.

I’ve been wondering a few things lately, like exactly when the Planning Commission will choose a planning director to replace Michael Dahilig, who was put into the post when the mayor moved Ian Costa into a lesser position in another department. Or as was noted in the comments section of my last post:

I don't even see "interim" on his nametag, like we'll all just forget the charter and instead allow the Mayor to appoint the director.

I asked a commissioner if the panel had any intention of recruiting a director and was told yes, but an evaluation process had to be developed first, and commissioners, meanwhile, had gotten sidetracked with other things. And so the mayor’s choice keeps on serving…

I’ve been wondering why coverage of the Fukushima catastrophe has pretty much come to a standstill, even though occasional stories leak out — like this piece on radiation tainted beef — that make it clear we have yet to see the full ramifications of the crisis.

I’ve been wondering about the future of our food, and the ethics of our eating choices, after reading a New Yorker article on research into meat cultivated in a laboratory.

I’ve been wondering, where are the lychee, the mango? It’s late July, and I haven’t eaten even one of either fruit.

I’ve been wondering how Kauai Police Commissioners will respond to Henry Noa, prime minister of the Reinstated Hawaiian Nation, when he talks to them on Thursday about how nationals are establishing their authority on Maui.

I’ve been wondering why the new “official” telephone book is so thin. Has Kauai lost a substantial number of residents, or are more people dropping their land lines?

And I’ve been wondering about the strange stuff that happens off the coast of Anahola, where the Graces recently saw bright lights and I myself, when I lived there for six years, encountered silent black helicopters, loud booms, weird rumblings and unexplained lights.