Greetings,

I love foreign flicks, almost as much as the French love American films. I really get into them, deriving a sense of bonhomie, adventure and international intrigue. Most of all, they fulfill my dreams of unlimited European travel without the hassle of interminable flights over the pole.  

Tonight, we treated ourselves to Babette's Feast.  It ranks right up there with Like Water for Chocolate, Eat Drink Man Woman, The Wedding Banquet, Life is Beautiful, Il Postino, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Crying Game, Shall We Dance? and The Red Violin.

Exquisitely lovely, this film carries a poignant message, that I too will rhapsodize:

Oh, to have been Babette! 
What fun she had making others happy. 
What a beautiful spirit she portrays. 

If you like meaningful, relationships-rich movies about human kindness, pleasure and purpose and you are a foodie, this is a must rental.  The presentation of food onscreen is, in all senses of the word, delectable. The cooking scenes are fantastic.  And the eating scenes, sheer torture.  Do not watch this on an empty stomach.

It has left me hungry for more. Alas, like Babette's feast of amazing and spiritually satisfying food, this is may be it.

I think I'll watch it again.

I received a beautiful card with an Art Furtado painting of three hula dancers from Auntie M, my dear friend with the huge Hawaiian heart, who lives in central California.  The painting is one of three hula dancers. Art Furtado is a graduate of Chouinard Art Institute (now Cal Arts, a school now funded by Disney), and having just perused Herb Ryman's work at Disneyland, I see a common influence in style and compostion.   

Don't get me started on art...

There are people in the world who actually read the Sunday paper and all its glorious detail. People like Auntie M.  As busy as she is with her thriving online business, she took the time to clip an article, Web Wandering, Hawaii Wikiwiki, out of the November 4th San Jose Mercury News with a post-it that said, "Ho`omaika`i! (Congratulations!) 

In the card, she wrote:  

Aloha!

What a joy to see your excellent site recommended in last Sunday's paper!

Hope you are doing well.  Miss you both!

Hugs! m

I felt those hugs coming right through that card. Does she know how much I miss her and Uncle B?  This was a bright spot on a physically painful day that has kept me "down the hill" this weekend.  I'll be fine tomorrow; these things come and go.

The article lists six Hawai`i websites and has this to say about a site that I put together as a thank you to hula:

http://www.oocities.org/~olelo/hula.html

Everything hula, from steps to words to lyrics to dress.  And it goes deep:  The gourd listing alone has three links to supplemental information.

I had not visited the site for quite awhile, and decided to check it out for myself.  I lingered on this site, and relived my hula days:

May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii

 

DH is on the hunt for a perfect digital camera.

I don't like to complain about pain.  Especially when folks like Kalena T teach me that the spirit can rise above it.

Kalena is crippled with the severest case of arthritis I have ever seen.  Her hands are gnarled.  She walks with great difficulty, able to leave her home with the help of an aide.  

This week, she came to the office with her aide, who is actually a devoted, life-time friend, and her remarkably youthful-appearing 83 year old father.  Kalena, her father and I are graduates of the same high school in Hawai`i, and we lustily sang our alma mater together.  

We were full of high spirits.  What pain!?

She came with a brown shopping bag filled with exotic, unique, and mouthwatering Hawaiian goodies from Munchies:  wasabi iso peanuts, deep-fried squid chips, li hing mango, and mochi crunch/arare.  Heady stuff that keeps tantalizing me back into the kitchen for a munchy break away from this 'puter. 

My teachers come in all shapes and forms.  

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