Oahu:The Sky is Falling

10 days in Oahu.  Not many I know choose it when they're island hopping or fanata-sizing about hiking through birdsong throbbing jungles or canoodling in turquoise waters among sea turtles and banana-colored fish.   And yet--here we are:trying not to think about dust-gray Pearl Harbor ships, faux luaus run by Mormons and weak mai-tais siphoned into Waikiki tourists.
I've come to find out what drew my paternal grandmother to Honolulu in 1946 and how she died in 1949, at 51. No death certificate. No family talk of her disappearance over the years. (As far as we know, she lived a solitary life after divorcing when my dad was a toddler.  He never could look at her disappearance squarely, preferring his memory of Central Park summers with her, and their single cruise to South America. ) And yet, she seems to have led her life filled with ambition and verve. Florence flew to London during WWII to work in the Office of War Information, as a civilian. She was a vivid writer, and had planned a round-the-world voyage to research a book. The day he died, my dad still had her ivory-scabbarded sword and Burmese ebony elephant in his t-shirt drawer, along with a few treasured photos and letters. This scant evidence of her existence, and her early death have remained a mystery all my life. My dad kept a photo inscribed, "To Jim, This is the view from my lanai. Love, Mom July 3, 1946." I've come to find that view.

As today is Veteran's Day, all state offices and buildings are shuttered. The quest will have to start tomorrow. Instead I head out for the Foster Botanic Gardens, a few blocks from our hotel. I stop for orchid leis in Chinatown (apparently the airlines have abandoned the lei-draping on arrival, probably along with the free meals and thin blankets) but I still want fragrant blossoms around my neck. Honolulu's Chinatown turns out to be pretty seedy--loads of homeless folks and shuttered cafes and saloons. A few produce stores and humbow shops have particular customers. Oddly, this is also the stomping grounds of fresh-faced Hawaii Pacific students, who don't seem to mind stepping around the sidewalk-sleeping masses. The lei shops line Maunakea street--scent of plumeria and tuberoses mix with hum bao steam and clorox. It's all a bit overpowering so early in the day, so I press on to the gardens.

What doesn't kill you...

A fantastic temple fronts the botanic gardens. Incense and a perpetual flame coax me inside Yuan Kin for a brief moment, then I'm off to the temple of trees.

This critter is fondly called the "sausage tree." 

Wonder if it's filled with Spam 

(the meat of choice 

in the islands--spamandeggs --yummm)

it does seem like the tree gods have it in for the tourists

I'll bring an umbrella with me tomorrow...

Legally high in Mendocino

Craft brewers, world-class brandy distillers and pinot wizards are layering the Emerald Triangle with gold, purple and amber. Seeing the writing on the wall for the pot trade,  enterprising locals have turned to legal intoxicants to fill their coffers.

From Germain-Robin combining old-world technology with premium Riesling, Columbard and Zin to distill small-batch brandies rated "beautifully crafted...better than most cognacs,"to quirky Booneville's Anderson Valley Brewing Company. The solar-powered brewery derives their quaffs names from the esoteric Boontling dialect-- a blend of Gaelic, Irish, Pomoan and Spanish spoken by a handful of Boonevillians. The buzz is on.

Although a California native, this would be my first trip to legendary Mendocino and the Anderson Valley, called the New Napa by a pumped up Visitors Center. A new friend shared her method for tasting through this narrow valley snaking from 101 to the coast: Hit the wineries going northwest, beer while retracing your path on the way home, with a possible detour to Ukiah for the brandy and elevated corn whiskey (really?).

My partner-in-dregs and I did our best with the 20 tasting rooms in 15 miles-- heading west on 128,  we hit Boonville General store for coffee and pastries to coat the belly. First stop, with the sun barely ticking past high noon,  was at the lovely Navarro Vineyards, where we sampled their private label chevre alongside their fabulous dry Gewurtz. Heading down the Valley, we ducked into a tiny rose-festooned redwood cabin -- home to friendly Husch, oldest Pinot producers in the Valley. We braved six switchbacks up the mountain to reach another winery, Esterlina, with a killer view but mediocre wines. We swirled and spit single-vineyard Zins (consistently raking in 90 points or better from Wine Spectator) at Edmeades-Champ de Reves' elegant tasting room. Of these four, Husch won our hearts--both for their kindness and their  2010 Old Vines Mendocino Zin. Most wineries in the Anderson Valley don't charge tasting room fees: it really did feel like Napa in the 80s, before the really big bucks flooded that valley.

Sweating through 100+ temps, we twisted our way from umber hills through stately redwood forest to the fog-draped coast. I hoped arriving at the real town would finally dampen the inane tune,  "Mendocino"  from the Easy Rider soundtrack swirling in my brain. (Here's a priceless clip of Sir Douglas getting a little sweaty serenading the Playboy bunnies with his anthem of teenage seduction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIaYO3BkJzw.)

Mendocino village perches on a promontory; marine mist washes over the town most days--making it appear Brigadoonesque when approaching from the south.  We traipsed through the dog-eared streets where the flood of local marijuana wealth has slowed, in recent years, to a trickle. Among the vacant shops for lease, we found some standout survivors: Moore Books with a bookseller who looks like a cross between Santa Claus and Allan Ginsberg; Moody's organic coffee bar -- carrying Wicked Bon Bon's Whiskey and Gunpowder chocolates; and of course the local head shop, Spark, that stocked Chihuly-worthy blown glass bongs and some lip-smacking pipe tobaccos. While some tourists still come to see where Angela Lansbury starred in "Murder She Wrote," and populate the Victorian hotels and B&Bs, we couldn't shake that eerie feeling of a town nearly time-forgotten.

What to do here in this quiet village besides drink and shop? Kayak, dive, hike--just don't wander into the back country where international crime rings still grow and smuggle massive tracts of weed.  But smoke dope with a chill group on the beach enjoying a sunset bonfire? If you want to take in the very mellow mendo of it all.

With the weekend before us, we trudged along the dry paths of Russian Gulch to the waterfall; rambled out to seal rock at MacKerricher; and rode horses on the beach (yes, it is a travel cliche). The Glendeven Inn was a hit with their impressive scotch collection and incredibly well-schooled bartenders.

But the best moments had to be back at the Brewery Gulch Inn, a peaceful, light-filled retreat built from river-salvaged redwoods just outside of town. We say on the deck with a pomegranate-colored Husch 2009 Anderson Valley Pinot Noir and toasted the spirit of Mendocino-- quirky, gorgeous and still a little rough around the edges.

pancakes and burghers

They serve up a hearty brekkie here in Parliament Square on Shrove Tuesday. The pancake race launched at precisely 10:12 this morning, the Lords against the MPs... after a gruelling relay, and several cakes afoul, the Lords were in good form, showing their genetic propensity for flip-flopping and running flat out to stay ahead of the commoners.

The Matchless Vale De-animated

Today may have been my last day as a meadow warden, through no choice of my own. I scratched Fluffy and No. 349, watched the increasingly curly-coated calves snuffle their mums, and skimmed their water trough. Last month, the cows endured a vicious dog attack that, surprisingly, made the news as far away as New Zealand. Perhaps it was due to Petersham Meadow's celebrated beauty. Or the universal conflict between pets (really their owners) on public right of ways, and livestock.

In this case, the attack dog was part pit bull, what the Brits call an "illegal dog." A fellow meadow warden, Claire, who captured the attack on her camera, told me these dogs must be licensed and monitored by the police. While the owner and dog fled the scene, they were tracked down in half a day. (Perhaps there is an advantage to all these CCTV cameras everywhere. I just didn't know their acute vision extended to the meadow.)

The perfect storm stems from the muddy zone between public rights, health & safety regulations, Council land ownership, and the risk-averse National Trust managing the land. Meanwhile, an increasingly obstreperous segment of the public refuses to acknowledge the signs to keep dogs on leads, or barbecues out of the meadow-- both hazards to livestock roaming on and over public paths.

During my brief career here, I've seen small children gaze on the cows from an oak stump in the pasture for the better part of an hour, utterly transfixed--and weep to leave. Parents towing their older kids to show them descendants of the cows they grew up with. Hikers stopped in their tracks and figuring out how to get through the herd, mostly with bemused smiles. I've spoken with dozens of locals who cherish this bit of bovine heritage in their backyards, and supported the Petersham Trust for years, raising the money to keep the cows on the meadow through open garden days and cake sales. And the cows have done their part as well, anchoring the meadow and keeping it safe from developer's squalls. Last fall, the riparian meadow and cattle care were transferred to the National Trust, along with an endowment. The stipulation was framed in legalese, that the NT would "endeavour" to keep the cows on the meadow. That endeavour ended today.

The National Trust is unhooking themselves from the horns of the dilemma by shipping the cows and calves back to farmer Michael Bovingdon in Slough. After a mere six months, they are unwilling to carry the risk of a lawsuit, should someone be injured by a cow.

It raises all kinds of questions, not least of which is what have we trampled in our rush to maximize individual rights and freedoms. I think about the surly man who told me he would jolly well keep his german shepherd off lead because the dog is always under voice control. Or the 12-strong group of party folk who told Lin to shag off last weekend when she said fires were prohibited. Have we forgotten that livestock are more than trees dressing the stage of our theatre? That they might have something to teach us, if we were open to another way of being?

This was the closest herd to Hyde Park--a factoid one would have thought bore more intrigue than danger. Who is more of a threat, sloshed urbanites on their weekend idyll, or the cows protecting their young?

By any measurer, this is a tremendous loss. Now when parents bring their toddlers to watch large animals doing what they do, the kids will see a stunningly beautiful, but empty meadow.

Dances with Cows

When I tell people I work as a Petersham Meadow Warden on the prettiest pasture on the planet, they snicker. What kind of policing could these placid bovines possibly need I muse. I follow the herd from apple orchard to kissing gate, holding my whirly-twirly behind my back. They get nervous when they see a stick and toss their heads-- heavy as concrete blocks.

As they huddle at the saltlick are they plotting to interlope on riparian picnics? Or perhaps the head-butting calves will get over-excited and bite an ear a la Mike Tyson?

The cows are earnest protectors of their calves. They will stand patiently while their calves nurse until they get their fill and creamy milk streams down their faces. But unless one is ill, or has a bee up her bum, they dislike being alone. They are a herd with a social order, and moo among themselves to make that clear.

These privileged cows are pastured at the verdant foot of Richmond Hill, framed on the west by the winding Thames, and on the east by the stately red brick and white stone Victorians cresting Richmond Hill. Since Sir Joshua Reynolds painted the view from his house in 1780, visitors have flocked to the hilltop to paint, snap and swoon at the view. In 1902 it became the only prospect protected by an Act of Parliament. While only specks from the hill, for centuries the cows have been a beloved feature of the Petersham water meadow below. Recently, the National Trust--the largest landowner in Europe--took over the management of the herd, and placed them under the watchful eyes of Ian, the chief cow herder, and his cadre of volunteers.

I didn't grow up on a farm, my only experience with large animals was gentling my mustang at the age of 13. Yet I find large animals impart an air of calm and grounding, not necessarily found with pets that share our living room, and mirror our anxieties. Of course, I love those too, how dogs and cats become family, add their measure of joy, and respond to our moods. But the livestock have a bit of wildness left in them. They read our character but make up their own minds whether they wish to respond. They permit the collaboration, but only just. And only if we keep up our part of the contract. Take care, pay attention, and don't interfere with their duties--calving, nursing, eating enough grass to sustain them (which is a long day and half a night's work) and ruminating.

Last season, and this spring, as I watch Fluffy and her cohorts tidily clipping grass, I have a hunch it's the cows that need protecting more than the people. Ramblers, toddlers, and tipplers snake through the kissing gate to reach the high water path to Petersham-- many unaware of the bovine mob inside. There are signs, more now that the National Trust has taken over the keeping of the cows, but few stop to read them. What ensues is an often charming, slightly surreal encounter.

Urbanites who dodge the most heinous London cabbies while gulping a latte and talking on their mobile are at a loss when it comes to making their way through a herd. They scan the meadow for human help, wondering who let the cows loose.

Others, emboldened by memories of petting zoos, reach out an apple or handful of grass. A rather big mistake.

But that's what we're there for--to intercept the well-meaning, but occasionally wrong-headed, and gently enforce the proper distance and disposition -- in the humans. I keep the whirly-twirly behind my back.

All That Sparkles Isn't Gaul

Peter Hall places the ruddy chipped stone on the oak table.  Light through the Sussex cottage window illuminates the flint ax, his white ruff of beard, and the blue-eyed Bengal cat.

“Guess how old.”

Fine bubbles subduct in golden liquid while he waits.

I’m off by 270,000 years.  He points to a tiny catalog number on the side.  “The Sussex Archeological Society wanted it, but it belongs here.” Hall exhumed the Pleistocene spearpoint when he carved Breaky Bottom Vineyard out of chalk and flint in the 1970s. Chalk-- the porous, eminently drainable soil that connects the South Downs with the Champenoise. Flint to warm the roots. Hall’s French mother helped cultivate his palate early, and it’s paying off, as Peter patiently ferments, sniffs and riddles his way to world attention. Fame he dismisses with a Gallic shrug. “I just do what I care to. Every day.”

Liquid Renascence

Offer almost anyone a choice between an English bubbly and a vintage Cristal, and they’ll laugh.  Until they taste what judges at the 2010 World Sparkling Wine championships in Verona hailed as “a fine mousse, notes of lemon zest, shortbread and apricot. Well balanced.” Nyetimber’s 2003 West Sussex Classic Cuvee trounced 50 contenders, including offerings from venerable Bollinger and Louis Roederer -- selling at ten times the price.

Was this a warm summer fluke, or can the stealthy English sparklers sustain their explosion onto the global wine scene?

Perhaps the answer lies buried in the dirt. Driving south from London, I navigate over Kipling’s “bow-headed whale-backed downs” to suss out the secrets of the small winemakers with big aspirations.

Scenic backroads twist through copses of oak and ash and tiny medieval villages--Ardingly, Ashcombe Hollow, Ditchling. Often the cobbled streets are just wide enough for a horse and haycart--I can stretch my arm out the window and touch the half-timbered houses. “Kill your speed,” the yellow and black signs buzz. I do. Mostly to admire the thatched-roof cottages and stone-studded pubs.  Grape wisteria flows over sandstone walls as 400-year-old churches glimmer with the glassy flint chunks that frame life here. An ancient castle keep yields views of hedgerows divvying up the rolling green like a giant’s chessboard. Along the way, I fuel my quest with Harvey’s Bitter and Ploughman’s Lunches of aged cheddar and chutney, but am hard pressed to find an eatery offering local wines.

English bubblies have only begun rising to the collective conscious. A clutch of southeast vineyards have garnered top awards at international juried competitions. And a fortunate few have joined Nyetimber in what most Brits would consider the highest accolade: a niche in the Queen’s wine vault.

Jancis Robinson, renowned oenophile and consultant to Her Royal Majesty, says, “While English production is still miniscule, about 1,000 hectares, this may be the moment English sparkling wines make their mark.”


Who scooped Dom Perignon?

Mike Roberts pours a glass of his 2006 Merret Grosvenor-- served at the Queen’s 80th birthday bash--and tells why he took the risk to start Ridgeview with his wife Christine. “We have the same soil, and a better climate for fizzes than the French—with more daylight hours to develop the delicate flavors. We don’t need to imitate --what we have here is all English.”

Bubbles release aromas of elderflower and new mown grass (or is that hedgerow?), while 16 acres of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier bud outside the picture window. Last week the family was out all night lighting bugees--rusted tins with candles inside—against a late spring frost.

“An Englishman, John Merret, made wine sparkle in 1662 – thirty-five years before Pierre Perignon entered a wine cellar,” Roberts notes. Ridgeview trademarked “Merret” for their sparkling wines, hoping the moniker eventually earns the same cachet as the terroir reigning from France.

Don’t call them British

The joke still circulates that it takes four men to drink a glass of English wine: the victim, two to hold him, and one to pour it down his throat. What fuels the bad rap: British wine generally means high-proof, syrupy plonk. The grapes can arrive from Slovenia, and as long as they’re processed in the UK, it’s British wine. In contrast, English wines must be pressed from English grapes.

Yet homegrown makes up just 1% of the wine drunk here, and most upmarket restaurants still recommend Champagne or Prosecco to accompany their treacle tarts.


The upside of climate change?

Today close to 400 vineyards cascade over hillsides from Hadrian’s Wall to the Isle of Wight. In recent years, a warmer climate, and cross-fertilization with vintners worldwide has turned the tide to sparkling wine.

Robinson notes, “The French are nervous… they haven’t been getting the acidity they’d like.” No one wants to pop a cork to global warming, but the extra heat does appear to be helping English vintners -- and not for the first time. Native-grown wines have slaked the thirst of island inhabitants since the Romans first planted spears -- and vineyards -- here.

Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at Imperial College London, Richard Selley explains, “Viticulture has thrived in Britain for most of the last two millennia. That is, until socio-political factors and the Little Ice Age in the 14th century cooled winemaking off a bit.” But now it seems the heat is rising in Britain again.

“Whether it’s the result of human activity since the Industrial Revolution, or a natural cycle, no one knows for sure. But a one-degree temperature rise will transform a marginally good grape growing climate into an optimum one. Seventy years from now, we may be growing Cabs by the Cuckmere River.”


The great white way

Breaky Bottom and Ridgeview both lie within a flint pitch of the South Downs Way, the 100-mile chalk path drawn across the buoyant geography of East and West Sussex.  Walk it and your boots become dusted with the aeons. Stone Age burial grounds, Saxon forts, and signaling rings from WWII punctuate the rise and fall that once was the ocean floor.

I trek a short portion of the Way as lambs dodge across my path. A great English birthright guarantees foot access across land tracts. Fortunately for the untitled, even privilege can’t buy privacy here.

As I climb the last hill to Seaford Head, the Seven Sisters cliffs rise from the Channel, apparitions trailing white feet in waves.  On a well-placed bench, I offer a quaff of Breaky Bottom 2006 to a kindred hiker.  He accepts, and surprise crinkles his forehead. We muse on light radiating from chalk, a French connection and the warmth to come.

The table of life

"Out of the chaos the future emerges in harmony and beauty."--Emma Goldman

Bopping our table mates with limp scallions while singing Dayeinu wasn't the only highlight of the Seder last Monday. It might have been the "sacrificial Yam," offered in deference to the many vegetarians crowding the makeshift dining hall in this 1920s Berkeley bungalow. Or the elevation of Miriam (the dancing girl that usually only merits a footnote), to her revered place as prophetess and conjurer of mysterious wells in the desert--who refreshed lagging spirits during years and years of dusty wandering.

Nearly half the 50 guests weren't Jewish, many were attending their first Seder, yet somehow all made to feel like family. The hostess, Candace reminds us that we are all on a perpetual journey of liberation with the earth's peoples. We move backwards and forwards through history as the songs of the Tunisian protestors, the 1911 shirtwaist factory protest, as well as the struggles of civilians in Gaza are remarked on by Judy, the officiant.

Karpas, maror, matzah-- Foods tell stories, as we work our way through bitter herbs soaked in tears to the apple and nut relish standing in for mortar used for rebuilding--we take the myth of hardship, flight and freedom into our bodies, into our own histories.

But mostly it was a love fest of self-described"over-the-hill anarchists," filmmakers, politicians, academics, midwives and prison wardens--celebrating the battles for truth and freedom they had joined in over the years. Recounting struggles, up to their necks in water on the way to the land of milk and honey.

And that was the sweetest moment of all, over macaroons and strawberries, seeing that after a lifetime of struggle, hope for liberation for all was still alive among the old lefties, in the old house in Berkeley. My husband and I drifted out feeling like it had been a reunion with people we'd never even met. With echoes of the Buddhist precepts that no one is free from suffering until everyone is, the refrain of tonight's haggadah followed us out the door and into the full moon's shadow.

"So that the next sea-opening is not also a drowning; so that our singing is never again their wailing. So that our freedom leaves no one orphaned, childless, or gasping for air."