My pal Esther really had a great year in 2024.  She taught several classes – full of good students eager to learn ceramics and watercolor.  She was an invited artist at Cedar Street Galleries’ Matchbox exhibit, in Cade Roster’s Maneki Neko show at Fishcake, was a recipient of an award by her State Representative Jackson Sayama, and was featured in PBS Hawaii’s Home is Here (see previous post).

She was always grateful for what she had, where she lived, and the care and attention of her good friend Alana.  We should all be so fortunate and so content with life as she.

However, she was ready to leave the world, at 104 years old.  She has left us in body, but her spirit will forever live on in the lives she touched, the students she taught, and her art that brought joy.  We were all made better because of her.

Aloha, dear Esther.  Aloha.

A few years ago, while I was a student of clay at the Hawaii Potters Guild, a Board member asked if I could provide a ride to their 100+ year old instructor who stopped driving. Little did I know that this would lead to a very sweet friendship with a very special lady, Esther Nowell.

Over the past year, PBS filmed Esther teaching classes in watercolor and ceramics as well as interviews with students and associates.  It was such a great segment on “Here is Home”. 

Here it is in full.  Esther’s part is in the middle:

Waikele Christmas Lights, Kāko‘o ‘Ōiwi, Esther Nowell

I subscribe to the Sacred Science team because I am an alternative healing believer. However, I don’t always pay attention or do what I really should be doing (i.e. eating my veggies) but I do like the wisdoms that Nick Polizzi shares each day. I think I did post one of his “words” before, but this time, he shared 3 of them. I really liked it. I hope you do, too! Here it is:

Hi Aunty,

Mother Teresa once said, “Be happy in the moment; that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.”

It isn’t always easy to live that way though. Our minds often lurch here and there, and sometimes they don’t feel like our friends.

If left unchecked, my own inner critic can turn on me. Does that ever happen to you?

Yet there are times when the beauty of a sunset stops me in my tracks or simply looking at someone I love fills my heart with a gratitude that just leaves me speechless. In those moments, my higher self sits at the helm and the stories in my mind stop mattering whatsoever.

This is the essence of mindfulness.

Mahatma Gandhi once said,

“A man is a product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”

Science backs this up. According to a recent study by Massachusetts General Hospital, consistent mindfulness literally changes the neurons in your brain.

So if you practice mindfulness in moments of anxiety or depression – and you take positive actions such as listing 5 great things you have going for you – your brain will transform your experience on a chemical level.

Then you become the author of your own life story.

But it takes practice to be mindful. And it takes a willingness to set aside our little stories and quibbles with life – no small thing!

This nondenominational Serenity Prayer (which is usually attributed to American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr) is a wonderful touchstone for exactly this purpose:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference

We are souls in physical bodies, stuck in linear time – so we cannot change the past. But the future is your oyster, and it’s up to you to walk in the direction of your highest self…

Stay curious,

Nick Polizzi
Host of Healing Kitchen: Let Food Be Thy Medicine
& Founder of The Sacred Science

I had Covid once. It was very mild – sore muscles, achy body but it just lasted for a day.

There is so much that is unknown about it that I test if I have a cough or anything that might be related to Covid. I had several home tests that were given away for free by the Federal government – and they were expired but possibly still good enough to show positive results.

I heard that we can get free Covid tests again – though they might be expired. So, I went to https://special.usps.com/testkits , put in my name, email, address and will soon be getting 4 free tests again, mailed after September 30.

September 30! Oh my, it will soon be October. Time sure did fly this year! And this has been a doozy of a year.

Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie wrote this song under pressure and an unbelievable star studded cast was thrown together for one special and grueling night to record this epic: “The Greatest Night in Pop – the untold story behind We are the World” on Netflix. The recording had the megastars of that time all gathered in one place without their assistants, for an entire evening and into the morning. It was coordinated with land lines because it was before cell phones came to be.

Here is a version done by elementary school students at Clarksville Community School. Michael Jackson would have been so touched. After all, this song was written for these kids.

Enjoy, please!

I do believe one of the rules of successful blogging is to post at least once a week. Ha! So I am doing unsuccessful blogging and not stressing about it. When my techie son comes in October (from Portugal!), I will ask him to reinstall Google adsense which places ads on my website – but I want more subtle ads – like maybe only one on a page.

Older and maybe wiser, but more forgetful
I got older – but I think I am a bit healthier because I take exercise classes at the Kaimuki YMCA. I take the Silver and Fit chair/weights/resistance bands classes on Tuesday and Wednesday with Yoli. She plays the best music and makes all of us energized and happy. TaiChi got moved to 6:45 am – yikes! So I only do the Thursday afternoon practice session with Mike. I just stopped doing Jazzercise because I have more morning events at the Hawaii Potter’s Guild, the pace was too energetic for me since my speed is TaiChi and sit down stuff.

Moving and change
My move from upstairs to downstairs is complete but I still have SO much stuff! I donate to Re-Use Hawaii (temporarily closed while they find a place to relocate) and Savers (senior discount of 30% on Tuesdays!). And I began selling on ebay under 3 user names – bead_bozu, thcollection, and honoluluaunty. Why 3 user names? Not sure – but I have always made my life more complicated than it needs to be. Ebay has gotten even easier to list items for sale and is helping me clear out things that my kids won’t want (which makes me sad).

I now have 2 cute hapa grandsons and 1 cute hapa granddaughter. But I do not babysit. I am being selfish and want to have my own time to do what I want. I do occasionally watch the 2 little ones since they live upstairs from me. But boy! parenting is such hard work! I had 4 young ones and I really don’t remember how I got through each day and the passing years.

And now, the tip of the day!

We have young new neighbors across the street. Chika and her family bought the house that used to have single guys who did short term rentals and the yard was a mess with bushes of haole koa as well as cars everywhere. They really cleaned up the yard, renovated the house, and trimmed the trees so it now looks great! And she loves to do yardwork – just like me!

So one day I was clearing out a patch of weeds to make room for a puakenikeni tree. I had so many keiki haole koa growing – and those roots are deep and tough to pull. Chika saw me struggling and came over with an old plier and started pulling out ALL of them very quickly and rather easily!

It was AMAZING!

So that is the tip of the day. Save your old pliers and put them in your gardening tool bag. Below are pictures of roots that I would never have been able to remove without disturbing the root ball of a night blooming jasmine tree that I was given. They were just skinny deep roots that were part of a grass weed that could have become a problem, but are now exterminated. Thank you to young Chika! Goes to show that you can teach an old dog aunty new tricks!

Okay, I had my root canal done by Dr. Nozomi Yamauchi over at Island Endodontics a couple of weeks ago. How was it? Longer than anticipated because my tooth was quite endangered. But it was also very wonderful because of the gadgets that are employed (mouth trampoline, soft block to hold my mouth open, and the most comfortable chair to relax in and headphones to listen to music. He is located in the most beautiful building in Kaimuki – 3660 on the Rise, and fully validates parking (I was there for TWO hours!).

I was worried that I would have extreme pain and recovery but I had zero pain that day and night, except for the area where the numbing shot went into my gum line. He had to cut away some of my gums (deep and invasive decay) so I was told to keep that area free from food debris with rinses. This was easy to do since I had started Dr. Ellie Phillips’ rinse, brush, and rinse, rinse procedure. I was shown pictures of my abscessed tooth and the after pictures of a ceramic post (which was then covered with a temporary “tooth”.

Yesterday I went to see my wonderful dentist, Hideki Kurokawa (808) 538-0047 for a cleaning with my favorite dental hygienist Liane (she cracks me up) and to schedule a crown. I told her about Dr. Ellie’s rinse brush rinse rinse protocol with certain sodium fluoride products and she commented about how glossy my teeth had become. She was a bit taken aback when I mentioned not flossing. She also showed me how to brush the gumline and teeth with a diagonal motion rather than straight across to really get into the pockets of teeth and gum.

She spoke to Dr. Kurokawa about what I was doing and when he came in for the consult, he said to keep doing what I was doing. According to Dr. Ellie, if my mouth is in optimal health and my saliva is doing what it should be doing and not acid from sugar, foods, etc., cavities can actually be reversed. I have this one cavity right on the top of my front tooth that will be the guinea pig for this. It is so visible and easy to monitor.

What Dr. Kurokawa said was very interesting. He said many things do work for peoples’ health and well being but it also depends on whether or not people actually do what needs to be done. I raise my hand in guilt. But this one – I WILL do. And I just received my order of Zellie’s Xylitol gum and mints (it took 2 weeks to get to me!) and will have a gum after every meal, drink or snack. Did you know that in Finland they give Xylitol gum to the little children after their lunch and recommend it to pregnant mothers so they combat the ravages of decay in their mouths?

But I digress. To floss or not to floss. Here is Dr. Ellie Phillips presenting her side of the story. And if I do floss, it will be when my mouth is full of Crest Anti-Cavity toothpaste.

Update: Pal Cleta is doing Dr. Phillips’ protocol and had a very good dental exam recently. Hurray! I, myself, am beginning to take my cleaner teeth and mouth for granted – but it really is so much cleaner and feels so much more healthy. It is quite wonderful that I stopped wanting to just pull out all of my teeth and wear dentures.

This tip is for Cleta. Those Act mouth rinse bottles are different from the other bottles with measured doses by squeezing the bottle. I liked that feature and now have the CloSys mouth rinse and the Listerine mouth rinse in the Act bottles. To do that, I pull out the tube thing that sticks up from the “cup” with long nosed pliers. Then I am able to fill the empty Act bottles with either Listerine or CloSys. Put the tube thing back in the bottle, cover with a paper towel and use a small hammer to pound it back in place. I peel off the old Act label (leaves a very stick residue) and then put the CloSys label in its place. I do the same with Listerine (though that label is rather difficult to remove). Then, tadaaa! I have 3 very easy to use rinses that give me just the right amount of liquid for each step. Hope this is a good tip to others!