GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

Dec 2014:  University of Hawaii Forestry Professor JB Friday helps me  nip an invasive albezia tree in the bud  UPDATE October 2024:  my Hawaii lot is for sale  for a  mele  (song). Read a  quick bio of the Big Island .  Contact  Lisa Roach  of Savio Realty, lisar@savio.com, Cell 808-494-8575, Office (808) 965-9500 Here's the listing .  This is a very decent buildable lot on the big Island of Hawaii - a mile and a half from the cute and cool hippie town of Pahoa and 20 miles up a highway to Hilo. After years at the sub-$3-4k mark, prices have gone up very slightly, but still incredibly cheap for a piece of land IN HAWAII. We are talking under $10K for most lots in subdivisions with roads, electricity and yes, some with town water and even a community center.  At 8429 sqft, my lot - a pizza-slice shaped near-corner lot, is slightly bigger than the average 8040 sqft rectangular rowhousy-sized lot. No brittle al...

Children's Book Council Picture Book of the Year - Notable Book : An excellent book for teaching kids (and the rest of us) about diversity - or at least being a bit different Once in a  blue moon,  everyone has  a really,  really excellent dream.  How easy is it to write a good 10-and-under children's book? Flip through the dozens of thin, large-format offerings in the 10-and-under kids section of any bookstore and you think, c'mon, how hard can that be? Large type, short sentences, the occasional big word thrown in (because kids these days listen to your business calls) and of course, cutesy illustrations - not photos. Drawings please.  Hey, my kid could do that! But flip a little slower and you'll discover just what it takes to achieve that winning trifecta: a fresh, engaging voice that's accessible but not infantile; a plot that's uncomplicated but not predictable;  a visual treatment you feel you haven't seen somewhere ...

1959 Pontiac Bonneville. Photo by Lydia Bogner. One of the nicest things about writing a book is having readers pop up out of the woodwork and regale you with their tales of retracing your steps, doing it better, faster, slower, weirder (and even enthusing about some of the same obscure obsessions as you...) Lydia Bogner, who hails from Massachusetts, discovered the Handsomest Man after taking a "lazy, 5 day cruise for my daughter and I, via Miami." Finding your book at the library was pure serendipity and truly has strengthened and magnified my memories of our one day in Havana. Reading it enhanced both my understanding of the Cuban people and my memories. Having been to San Salvador 3 years ago, I can't help but compare the survival instincts of these 2 different cultures. Salvadoreans must survive the gang violence, and Cubans must work and eat one day at a time...  Love me, love my Cuban car So what was the first thing Lydia went looking for in Cub...

A WHILE back, I organized the odd thanksgiving for NYC transplants and itinerants, aka “orphans.” Turkey with all the trimmings beckons from inside... Well, there must have been a lot of subsequent adoptions because this year, beau and I found ourselves to be the only orphans without invites in town. So we decided to do as the rent-stabilized might and the rent-controlled do, and seek out some turkey action at a local diner. But to work up an appetite, why not bookend a Thanksgiving meal with a bit of New York starchitecture, conveniently served hot and happening along the Highline?  See that gobletty thing wedged between the buildings? That's  Thomas Heatherwick’s "Vessel ," a honeycomb-like structure made of interlocking staircases, soon to be populated by thousands of bodies, aka the gum-chewing, selfie-snapping public. Like Calatrava's Oculus , it looks like it's elbowing for room in a subway car between those adjacent towers, but that'...