Kana's Chronicles

Life in Kana-text (er… CONtext)

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about

I am… a writer, an explorer, a coffee-drinker, a recovering addict, a barefoot linguist, a book-dragon (“bookworm” doesn’t cover it), a raconteur, a sailboat skipper, a research diver, a tattooed scholar, a pirate, a poet, a spiritual adventurer, a photographer, a few kinds-of-crazy, a joyful wife, a mom… a list-maker! :)

Author: Kana Smith

  • The Physics of Family

    The summer I graduated from university, I joined my mom’s Karate class for a couple months. She had been participating for a year or so in a class comprised entirely of women (aside from the male Sensei), and pleasantly free of any of the pressures of machismo or testosterone. I thoroughly enjoyed the lessons, and…

  • Bathing Ferrets, Idaho Wildlife, & Pumpkin Pie

    I used to think that my sister and I had the best-ever outlet for playing with our bath toys. We grew up in an Idaho farm-town that practiced irrigation-watering for the lawns in town, so our front yard was flooded in several inches of water for a couple evenings every week. I still have memories…

  • Time-Travel via YouTube

    My husband Keoni found a historic gem online yesterday: game-film from the championship football game he played his senior year of high school. The whole game—complete with a “pause to change reels.”  Yep, reel-to-reel, black-and-white game film. Classic 1973. Naturally, I didn’t miss the opportunity to tease him about my Favorite Fact. “Wow, there’s Senior-in-high-school…

  • From Noah’s Ark to Yellow Submarine

    I jinxed myself, no doubt about it. When I wrote last week about our growing tribe of pets and animals, I ended by saying I hoped we wouldn’t be floating away like Noah’s Ark. Just a couple nights later–Saturday night, to be specific, or rather, the “wee hours” of Sunday morning–Keoni woke me to say…

  • Our Arc Afloat

    We don’t usually get a lot of rain here. We live in Idaho’s “high desert” climate, where it gets really cold in winter and really hot in summer, but we seldom get even an inch of precipitation in a month. Which makes the last few days unusual—we’ve had more than an inch of rain this…

  • The Shampoo Manifesto

    When our son Christian started Kindergarten, the school called me up within the first two weeks to ask if they could move him to second grade. Eep! We compromised at the halfway point, and he skipped just one grade. I had no question that he could handle the academics, but I had fears for junior-high…

  • Chickens & Pickles! Autumn hits Idaho…

    As of last weekend, our little Idaho “homestead” is up in population by seven, thanks to the adoption of seven (long-awaited!) laying hens for the chicken-house we’ve been all summer building.  With the kids incoming for the weekend, I contacted everyone on Craigslist who was offering chickens, and we lucked out by hooking up with…