That phrase "live and learn" is usually used to resign oneself to mistakes made. I think it captures my feelings about life right now, but maybe Learn and Live is more like it. Building and promoting a website has been frustrating, but because I learn, it is eventually satisfying, and creative. Folks, learning is an act of creativity. And here is why:

Wow! 1989 was a long time ago. Writing and producing this play was such a learning experience. So many people came together to make it happen. Hope to do it again for a new generation. I will write more about all the people involved at another time, but wanted to get this link up. 

I am new at being retired. There is no one way to do it, and rightness and wrongness is a matter of opinion. But this is how I am doing it so far. How different it is to be able to make travel plans outside of the school year! Before, it wouldn't be possible to go to a wedding on the mainland during the school year, but now that I am retired, it is in the realm of possibilities. 

I scored this frame for $6 at Salvation Army in Hilo, then got free prints from a promotion (photoaffections.com). They are mostly photos from Guam, but I had to add in other things I had on hand, like that photo of Dance on the left, and the quotations on post cards. I'm gonna say this is pretty much a self-portrait. Right?

Everything that I wanted to say about the death of Robin Williams has been said, and so eloquently by many. How sad that he is gone and that he was in so much pain. In mourning, I want to see all his movies, have a Robin Williams marathon. It will take a long time to get through such a huge and wide-ranging body of work.  What a legacy he left, not only of a body of work and his ability to make us laugh, but in his acts of kindness that we are now hearing so much about. We can't all be Robin Williams brilliant, but we can all aspire to be as kind. 

While trying to pull together an application for a writer's residency, I wanted to include an excerpt from my play, Ka `Ikena, for my writing sample. I cannot find it anywhere! The last time I worked on it was for the Aloha Performing Arts Company Original Play Festival (happening this week, by the way) in 2007. That was 7 years and 2 laptops ago. I have looked high and low for digital and hard copies and it is nowhere to be found. I am in mourning. I am still in denial, and can't believe it's gone forever. But, I'm starting to transition to acceptance, which is why I'm writing this piece. My hope is that it will be found eventually, but for now, I am treating it as a loss and this is its obituary.