Old friends, new friends and I gathered around Victoria's table in Oakland to carve pumpkins for the evening's ritual.

Hearty laughter, food and drink were shared as each designed a pumpkin to remember the season's reason - beloved ones residing in the Summerland, or memories of All Hallow's Eve as a child.

Corby surveys the scene as Sarah sits in front of the pumpkin canvases yet to be created.

According to Sarah, proper pumpkin protocol requires that the carver ask the pumpkin what it wants to be - after all, you are sacrificing it and as such, it should have a say in what it becomes.


So, I closed my eyes, rested my hand's on the pumpkin's top, and gave it a long thought. Sure enough, after a minute or so, a clear image materialized in my mind:

Here's Jack before:




And Jack after:



and Jack on duty on All Hallow's Night as a sentinel at Doug and Ingrid's house:

I was staying with an old Oakland Public Library buddy of mine, Doug, and his daughter Ingrid.

Doug and Ingrid have a new cat, Margalo. I brought some of my ritual garb for the Spiral Dance that evening and popped my hat on Ingrid to see how it fit (like a glove).


Ingrid is very photogenic. Margelo is either beside herself with joy because of the lei around her neck, or else she is winding up for a dramatic jump from Ingrid's arms.

In the kitchen before slicing a pomegranate, Ingrid turned to talk to me, and this picture was irresistible...

In less than a month, I will arrive on the Island of Yap, Federated States of Micronesia. For those interested in the planetary coordinates, Yap is 9:30:52 North latitude and 138:07:46 East longitude and is 520 air miles from Agana, Guam.

Typhoon Sudal roared through this group of four small islands last April, and the inhabitants are still picking up the mess.

I've been told to prepare for Dengue fever, mischievous rats, and lack of fresh vegetables and fish.

So what the heck am will I be doing on Yap? I'm a linguist, and will be working with a resident group of speakers of a language called Satawalese, in an effort to help them create a grammar and dictionary of their language. The island of Satawal, where some 500+ speakers live, is a nine tenths of a square mile 600 nautical miles to the east, on the edge of Yap State.

So it's 0300 Hawaii time again, Insomnia is my friend, and I just finished Tsuguya Sasaki's latest post from Jerusalem about his barking dog problem, a common complaint if you are unfortunate to have neighbors in close proximity. It seems that Dr. Sasaki is dealing with the non-stop barking of a dog in his neighborhood, whose owner is a very famous person in Israel.

Of course, having lived in Israel myself, I am very nosy about who this famous person is, and why he, she, or his/her people cannot control a dog but I will refrain from asking Tsuguya who this is for the moment, but will spring the question after both of us have downed a few beers in Jerusalem sometime.

Dogs. I'm a cat person myself, but I grew up with dogs and tolerate them pretty well. I live in Honolulu up on a hill overlooking Waikiki and the airport. Next door live Koa and Hoku, two average run-of-the-mill-mutt-type dogs. Koa is the larger male, and Hoku, a smaller female. My partner and I have been trying to train them how to 'bark responsively.' Dogs, unlike cats, feel they are born to work. Many do, as shepherds' assistants, guard dogs, and the like. Dogs feel the yoke of responsibility, of 'earning their keep.' Cats, on the other hand, feel that life owes them a living, and that a human's sole purpose is to open cat food tins, scratch their chins and ears, and rid their litter boxes of offending, uhm, 'kitty cigars.' 

Back to dogs. Some dogs fulfill this need to work by keeping any and all unauthorized life out of the backyard (cats, bugs, other dogs), meet and greet their human family and visitors, or simply clean plates. And some of the most lovable ones are just there to dish out unconditional love with the wag of a tail, or a wet tongue on the back of one's legs.

There are those dogs who love to hear themselves bark, and believe their sole responsibility is to alert the entire neighborhood of any and all suspicious behavior, including falling leaves and mangoes, the rising full moon, ambulance sirens several blocks away, slamming car doors 100 feet away, or sneezes heard on the street. There is an acceptable limit as to what I will tolerate when it comes to barking, and the doggies next door sometimes are too earnest in their chosen vocation.

The daily arrival of the postman at 0923 sharp every morning should NOT set them off.

Oddly, the owners of the dogs are a husband and wife with five of the quietest children I have ever had the pleasure of living near - yes, I do count my blessings--but back to the damn dogs.

There are many Web sites that advise irritated neighbots how to address over-zealous dogs. We decided to get "the bark-alator," a humane device that sends out an ultra-high frequency when it detects out of control barking. The "barkalator" can be set for so many barks before it kicks in, just like the ring settings on old phone answering machines. How it works goes something like this - when the dog barks and trips the mechanism, supposedly the dog hears the tone, stops for a momen to think/react "What the hell is that sound?" and momentarily forgets why s/he is barking - or so the advertising would have you believe.

Voila! Problem solved - only $29.95 - Order yours today!

If you told me 10 years ago that I would indulge my occasional bouts of insomnia by reading about a Japanese-born Hebrew linguist's life in Israel (as reported in his weblog 'Reflections-Schmeflections') I would have said you were crazy. But I'm not, because I've been an avid reader of Tsaguya Sasaki's life there, and just finished his latest missive at 0308 HST.

Tsaguya is a very engaging writer and writes extremely well. His observations about Japanese and Israeli life are very interesting. I can't think of two cultures that are more opposite, yet more alike, than the Japanese and the Israelis. I've lived in Hawaii for almost 14 years, the home of a large population of American-born and mainland Japanese residents and visitors, and I've lived off an on, and have visited Israel, with a large population of.... uhm, Israelis, in Haifa and on kibbutzim, for the past 30 years. Drawing generalizations by comparing both in this forum would be doing a disservice, as I have a lot to say about both, and I wouldn't want a cursory blog entry to be misconstrued by my readers as misplaced racism or anti-semitism.

But I will say that both cultures resemble the 'Borg mentality' - the perception that there is a single cultural ideal that everyone shares, and if you're "not with us, you're out," and thus ostracized. This may or may not be a fair observation. If you know lots of  Japanese and Israelis, write me - I'd really like to know what you think.

Read Tsuguya's specific observations on Japan's education system, especially his 11 June entry. I can sympathize with him about students who have no motivation or outward desire to learn. They used to irritate me until I realized two things: 1) these students will never have the capacity to understand what a good education will give them (Hey! you'd better not stand in a full tub with an electric shaver plugged in the wall!), and will be forced to work as a WalMart cashier forever, OR 2) one day they will wake up, kick themselves for having wasted precious time, and get going with their lives.

Tsuguya sees his fellow Japanese as hardworking, humorless drones. I see Japanese tourists as fairly wealthy Western culture hounds, judging by the throngs of Japanese tourists that populate O'ahu on any given day, wearing the latest in Western fashion, piercings, and shoes. These folks visit the Prada, Vuitton, and Fendi shops that are too pricey for local folks here. In fact, Hawaii residents can't even walk into some of those stores, as a few store owners won't let anyone in unless they look like rich Japanese tourists, or have some other outward sign of wealth that might indicate a wallet full of MasterCards, trailing 'shopping assistants' who carry their bags of purchases to ridiculous stretch Hummer limousines. It was reported in the papers several months ago that some high-end stores in Waikiki and Ala Moana  adopted the "If they don't look rich enough, we won't let them in" business motto, surely one that would eventually backfire on them, and did. It's so funny to walk by these stores to see a handsome gentleman/bouncer dressed to the nines,  handkerchief in hand to blot the sweat from his brow, while the passing mob wears flip flops, shorts and baggy Ts.

I encounter many Japanese students at the community college where I work. Many come to Hawaii to study English, surf, or just get away from Mom and Dad (and I can relate to that!).  I've met Japanese nationals and Americans of Japanese Ancestry (AJAs) who have nothing in common with the stereotype, and I love them for that, since I'm a non-conformist myself. Of course, stereotypes DO exist (we all know a few, right?) Some people conform to their roles like tight polyester clothing, but there are many more who are their own persons, despite cultural pressure to act alike.

Israelis are viewed as so family-oriented that they ostracize anyone who is not married or has borne children. My good friend Jeanine in Haifa, whom I try to call on Shabbat, tells me stories. [Though Miss H. is very kosher in kitchen matters - we no longer talk about the Strawberry Cake Incident without starting a friendly argument, as she has her recollections of it, and I mine. This incident, as you might guess, involved a piece of her very delectable cake sliding down my gullet at an odd hour of the night in Remot Remez, a suburb of Haifa, using a MEAT fork rather than a DAIRY fork. A fork is a fork, right? Not  to Jews who follow kashrut.] When the phone rings on Saturdays, observant Jews are forbidden to answer it, because it's considered "work," a mundane, worldly activity that is suspended to attend to more spiritual matters for the 25-hour Shabbat period. However, I am quite delighted when she picks up.

Anyway, Jeanine tells me sad and infuriating stories about how poorly people treat her because she chooses to be single (at least until the right guy comes along) and childless. I think they're jealous of her svelte body, thick hair, and challenging personality. Anyone in Israeli society who has not participated in the reproductive effort, she reports, is made to feel less of a citizen, and make to feel guilty for his/her lack of fecundity. Some have observed that Israel has two main reasons for its population growth - to replace the loss of the Holocaust, and to beat the Palestinians, who have an equally high birth rate. You decide - I'm going back to bed.

Samhain approaches at the end of the month. Am I ready for it?

Samhain (pronounced sow-en, the Celtic word for 'summer's end') is a major, if not THE major, holiday in the Pagan calendar. Some of you might know the day as Halloween, All Hallow's Eve, or even the Witches New Year.

It is a day, and night, where the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is very thin. On this night, and the days leading up to it and after, we remember our Beloved Dead of Blessed Memory, and acknowledge those who have recently left us by building altars laden with flowers, pictures, mementos, and other reminders of our loved ones. We will join them one day and it's best if we understand that with every passing day.

Mike Nichols, a wonderful writer, summarizes the holiday here.

We also remember the babies who have been born during the year and shout their names joyfully in a large gathering called the Spiral Dance (in the Wiccan tradition I am most familiar with - the Reclaiming Collective in San Francisco)  that is both solemn and joyful.

It is sad to see how mainstream culture has interpreted Halloween generally, as the most mass-commericalized holiday after Christmas. Hooliganism by drunken troublemakers who do not respect the holiday doesn't help.

The day *is* unpredictable, as the dead have interesting ways of communicating with us. The living are on the edge of their world, dangling their toes (and sometimes more) in their realm. The day challenges human mortality - after all, we're not here for very long. Some can't deal with the fear of the unknown, and exhibit their behavior in destructive ways.

I have witnessed a number of people's passings into the Summerland - through accidents, disease, and war. Mainstream culture has no day where all who have died are remembered - only soldiers on Memorial day. To me, Samhain has much significance and to properly prepare for it, one must let in those memories of the dead, which in some cases, are happy, and in others, not.

But Samhain celebrates life - we must continue, raise our children right, and to struggle to ensure that the world we live in is ready for the generations who will follow. The world must be green, and healthy to enable those after us to be nourished physically and spiritually so they may accomplish great things.

Also, we have to have someone around who will remember US as dearly departed at Samhain, right?

Blessed Be.

Today I  hung out with my fellow Linguistics graduate students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

At least 20 of us are working on an interesting collaborative project. Native speakers of languages in the Pacific that have no dictionaries, grammars, or newspapers are teamed with graduate students to begin the formidable task of documenting a relatively unknown language for the first time.

Today was morphology day - In an hour, graduate students teach the essentials of morphology to students, and in the next hour, speakers and students attempt to discover some morphs of the language and then explain findings to the rest of the class. It's informal, and a lot of fun.

Morphology is the study of word formation - morphemes are the smallest units of meaning, and in some languages, consist of affixes (prefixes, infixes and suffixes) that appear before, inside, and after root words. Word meanings are changed as a result.

For example: anii rotz-eh, at rots-ah in Hebrew 'I want, you (fem) wants' is an example of a language that uses suffixes to denote person, gender and tense.

An English example would be walk, walk-ed, walk-ing for present, past and ongoing action respectively.

I learned an interesting word today during the morphology lesson  from the Lomoholot language. According to the Ethnologue, the language is spoken in the Lesser Sundas on the eastern tip of Flores, east of the Sika language, and on Western Solor. Lerawulang Tanaekang

a compound  phrase, parsed to

Lera 'sun' - wulang 'moon ' tana,' earth' ekang 'environment'

=

'G-D,' Goddess,' 'deity'

wow.

Today is is anniversary of my arrival on the planet 49 years ago.

As a child I was told "age doesn't impart wisdom" but how can it not, really?

I've experienced so much and have seen so much in my short life, and I want to share it with whomever might find this blog on the Internet.

My sister, now in her early 60's, told me years ago that the forties were fabulous. I'm here to tell my readers that she was right. She also told me "If you think the 40s were good, wait until you get to the 50s - they're even better!"
Do not fear age!

I love my sister.