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Teresa Fannin, reader, writer, gardener, chocolate fan & tea drinker

Month: May 2013 (Page 3 of 3)

coffee and Cook

05/12/2013 /

Kona. Think Kona and you think coffee.  So, today we drove south past the Kona airport to Ka’iminagni Drive IMG_0075and turned left. Like lots of places on this island when you turn away from the ocean, you go up. In no time, we were up 1500 feet above sea level. We were looking for Hula Coffee Company and they were closed. We drove a bit further, took an ‘s’ turn and came to Blue Sky Kona Coffee. We watched a video, not the best part but, then we got a sort of tour. The company is over a hundred years, farms five hundred acres and is still in the same family. IMG_0072Coffee beans start out pretty flowers, part of the gardenia family with a faint aromatic perfume. Then as the flower IMG_0067begin to fade, the beans start to grow. The bushes bloom from January to June and the beams are picked when they turn red. There are three beans, all from the same tree, the peaberry-small, less bitter [great with dark chocolate], the Ohana-a medium size bean and the Estate-the largest bean. Fact: the darker the roast the less the caffeine. Coffee was brought to Hawaii by missionaries, not a huge surprise if you know your history. Coffee labeled Kona must be grown within the Kona region, an area twenty miles by two miles and between 1200 and 1600 feet above sea level. IMG_0074
IMG_0080

And just to make this more interesting, here is raw chocolate! Yes, cacao beans, when they are pumpkin orange, that’s when they should be picked. Sad, all this chocolate going to waste. Boo! After the coffee farm we drove back down to highway 11 to find the Captain Cook IMG_0084monument. No such luck, we drove twice through Captain Cook Hawaii. On the way down Kamehameha Road to sea level, at a lookout we spotted this hedge of IMG_0078flowers, and a view  and the Kahalu’i Beach Park and the Catholic Church, Saint Peter’s By The Sea, a little small, but right there on the beach next to the surfers. We found a Humpy’s AleHouse by the Sea in Kailua and had lunch, outside, fish and chips, and a perfect view of the ocean. And we got home in time to take a nap!

Well, yes, this may well be paradise.

 

resorts

05/11/2013 /

IMG_0006We’re on a different planet for the next ten days. It felt that way after the trip here. I mean, four and a half hours to Phoenix and then six hours to Kona? Would it take that much longer to get into outer space? LOL, it’s not so bad, I mean just look at these pictures. Greenery, flowers, waterfalls, IMG_0009lots of waterfalls, pools, long, lovely pools, that meander from one side of the common area to the other and slides, there are three. If you are going somewhere to just be, then this is as good a place as any.

But. There’s something about being in paradise. I grew up in Paradise, yes, there was a capital P. The San Fernando Valley, 1950-1969. And my urban geography professor IMG_0010at Cal State Northridge said that we were living at the end of PERFECT! Right then, my senior year in college, it was quite a blow. The end of perfect. That’s was it, and there was me, a twenty-something, who feels immortal and, well, twenty-something,’cause that’s the way it works.

But every time we go to Paradise, any paradise, Disney World, Hilton IMG_0007Head and now Hawaii, well. I really don’t want to do perfect or paradise. I’d rather earn it, and I think we earned these ten days. I wouldn’t want to live here permanently. Because then you begin to see the flaws behind the magic of paradise.  S’matter of fact, I get nervous around perfect. I look for the flaws, the blemishes, the hiccups.  Maybe it was because I saw it and now it isn’t. Yep. That’s it.

grown

05/03/2013 /

Grown. Growing up. Some have it difficult, maybe not enough food, or not a stable home, maybe an insane parent or guardian, maybe there’s a war going on outside your door. I get that, and not for the first time think that if we have to be licensed for cars, and guns and maybe even to vote, we should be licensed to have kids. Maybe pass a test or take a course, or something so that when a child is brought into the world they are loved and cared for, treasured for the future they promise and to, somehow, make good on that promise. I’m also talking about the angst, the Catcher In The Rye angst, the disaffected, totally egocentric angst. Did I not have it, or, was I not allowed to have it, which seems all the more likely. Not that my parents were strict, they were and they weren’t, but I was brought up in a stiff upper lip and stand tall, be tall kind of world.

I’m writing about a girl, her brothers and a stranger. First off, I didn’t have brothers, just sisters, two very alike sisters, and I was the odd one out. Sometimes more odd. But, siblings are siblings. Are girls more wicked than boys? I have no idea, but I know that the stereotype is not what I want to write. I wonder how much I knew about my sisters. I look at them now, what they are as adults. It’s a strange world out there. I’ve said before, I was an unconscious person, more interested in plot, setting and voice than character. Strange when I write that, because in the history I studied, it was the main characters on stage; Elizabeth I, Charlemagne,  St. Thomas More, that fascinated me the most, that I couldn’t get enough of those characters that actually made a difference in the world.

Ha! An epiphany and maybe a help. It’s not the character that fascinates me, it’s the relationship the character had with the world. Elizabeth defining her age, much like her successor Victoria. Or Charlemagne defining what it meant to rule an empire. How a Twyla Tharp changed the world of dance, or Ayn Rand changed our view, maybe, of corporations and communism.

Hmm…I’m going to have to think about this. So, maybe it’s not that growing up is tough. It’s that growing up is a constant in the world.

 

 

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