There's a famous line from the Hawai'ian-themed Disney movie, Lilo & Stitch: "Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind."But as even the movie demonstrates, Family is also a very complicated thing. Sometimes it takes some time---decades, even---to reach that point where nobody is being left behind.Our family is a pretty good example, "All-American" in its complexity. Keoni … Continue reading The Double-Bride Wedding
The Diarist’s Conundrum, & a Story About Community
I've been keeping journals since I was six years old. That first diary is a real gem, with one-sentence entries like: "Today I went crazy and thawt I was a frog." I wish I remembered the story behind that... The trouble with keeping journals, though, has always been the fact that when you have the … Continue reading The Diarist’s Conundrum, & a Story About Community
Once Upon a Restaurant
Once Upon a Time... Kana & Keoni owned a Hawai'ian barbecue restaurant. For more than a year, Kana Girl's Hawai'ian BBQ held UrbanSpoon's #1 spot for "Best BBQ restaurant" in the Treasure Valley (home to one-third of Idaho's population).... And we had a kick-ass time of it, building a unique atmosphere with our combined knowledge … Continue reading Once Upon a Restaurant
Superb Owl Sunday (OR… The Anthropology of Advertising)
So I hear the Super Bowl was last Sunday! Who knew? Well, okay---everybody else knew. This is one of the "social side-effects" of having no television channels. Last weekend's Super Bowl actually came to our attention accidentally a few days before the game, when a nursing assistant asked us which team we'd be rooting for. Long … Continue reading Superb Owl Sunday (OR… The Anthropology of Advertising)
The Holiday Card
My mother used to joke that as far as holiday cards were concerned, "the Holidays" should mean not just Christmas, but also New Year's---and probably Martin Luther King Day, Valentine's Day, and Presidents' Day as well. In other words, if the holiday cards got sent out before the end of February, they shouldn't be considered … Continue reading The Holiday Card
A Swimming Chicken, a Filing Ferret, & a Knight Seeking Work
Our chickens won't be winning any intellectual awards. Ku'okoa (aptly named with the Hawai'ian word for "freedom") is brighter than the rest---she spends a fair bit of time outside the chicken-yard, but she always returns when she's done adventuring. The other girls, though... Maybe I'm too much "Mother Hen" with them, but I just don't … Continue reading A Swimming Chicken, a Filing Ferret, & a Knight Seeking Work
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 … Continue reading The Physics of Family
Kana's Chronicles 