For the first time in three years, I finally have all my harps and harp stuff in one place, here at home in Klawock. Kudos to Royal Hawaiian Movers and Alaska Marine Lines for getting the harps here safely. My harps and our tools arrived at our Alaska home, a couple of weeks ago, with lots of aloha messages on the boxes. The whole process was done in about a month. Harps are very delicate instruments. Temperature and humidity changes really bother them. My harps arrived here in Alaska without even a broken string. All other stuff that was packed was in great shape too. I cannot thank Royal Hawaiian Movers. enough! They did what I thought was almost impossible. They also worked with Alaska Marine Lines, which made everything more efficient here on our Southeast Alaska end. Everything was really well-coordinated. AML did an awesome job with the task of getting harps to our property here. I have to again thank our friend Josh for his help with replacing the string eyelets on my pedal harp, and with ultimately helping me decide to ship it to Alaska. Yes, he is the same guy who is building our house here in Klawock. In addition to helping me with my harps, he has built us such a nice, well-insulated house, in which we and the harps now comfortably live. The humidity of East Hawaii, was hard on the pedal harp. The environment here in our Alaska house is much more stable. Also, the acoustics in the main room of the house are really amazing. Practicing here is a real joy. I will still travel with my CF harp, when needed. I just heard from our housemates in Hawaii, and am looking forward to working on some music for one of their productions over there. Coincidentally, just as the harps were arriving, our good Hawaii friend, Amy Young, crossed the Boston Marathon finish line. She rocked it!!!
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Those of you who've known us for a long time may remember that we first came to Alaska in a 22-foot C-Dory named "Tonie O," an easy name for me to remember on a VHF radio. She was the first boat to take us across Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon Entrance. Over several summers in a row, we trailered the "Tonie O" to Washington or different parts of Canada, launched her, and headed up for our yearly dose of Southeast Alaska. That boat took us all over Southeast over the years: we visited almost every place that has a Post Office, and even officiated a wedding in Pelican with that boat. She also caught a lot of King Salmon in the Monterey Bay, out of Santa Cruz and Moss Landing, CA. After a few years of cruising around with "Tonie O," we noticed that we were usually attracted to the same places as the commercial salmon troll fleet out of Craig, Alaska, and we really fell in love with the communities on Prince of Wales Island. One of our friends in the fleet once told us, "I knew you would get bit." So we sold the Tonie O, and we bought our Allweather "Itsuro" we rigged as a hand-troller. We slowed down to life at six knots, while chasing salmon every summer. We were sad to part with Tonie O, so we later acquired a 16-foot C-Dory to keep us fishing in Monterey Bay, and to serve as our water taxi, once we moved up here to Southeast Alaska. But the 22-foot C-Dory always held a very special place in our hearts, since it was the first boat to bring us up here. Now that we've made POW our principal residence, we've realized how nice it would be to have a similar boat here, that we could trailer to other parts of the island, and that moves a little faster than our hand-troller, while allowing us to camp out onboard. I'm always amazed by our incredibly good luck: whether it's finding the most amazing builder for our house, or perfect timing for important life events, or finding the next "right boat." Apparently Shawn found a C-Dory in Ketchikan that's very similar to the boat that first brought us up here. At first, I thought that this was the worst possible time to get another boat. We're still in the process of getting our house finished, and we're catching up with a few unanticipated travel expenses, etc. Yet not only is the boat, in perfect, well-maintained condition, she was also being sold by one of the nicest couples in Ketchikan. Dale is a very talented woodworker, and he and his wife carry out a ministry that really helps others. On top of that, through the process of buying the boat, we also got to meet Ken and his wonderful crew at Timber and Marine in Ketchikan. They installed and performed all the maintenance on the Honda outboard on SISU. They share the same maintenance philosophy as we did with our twin Hondas on the Tonie O, which were still going strong after 3000 hours. So we're happy to have them as new friends here. I even love the name of boat, which is the Finnish word, Sisu. There's no direct English translation, but it's approximate meaning is so appropriate for a few people we know, and it perfectly embodies the attributes of this type of boat and our experiences with it. Here's what Wikipedia says about that: <<"Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience,[1][2] and hardiness[3][4] and is held by Finns themselves to express their national character.{{See talk page, at Lead refs}} Lead refs is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English. Sisu is a grim, gritty, white-knuckle form of courage that is presented typically in situations where success is against the odds. It expresses itself in taking action against the odds and displaying courage and resoluteness in the face of adversity, in other words, deciding on a course of action and then sticking to that decision, even despite repeated failures. It is in some ways similar to equanimity, with the addition of a grim kind of stress management. "Gutsy" is a fairly close translation that uses the same metaphor (found in more languages than Finnish and English), as the word derives from sisus, which means "interior" and "entrails, guts". A concept closely related to sisu is grit, which shares some of its denoting elements with sisu, save for "stress management" and passion for a long-term goal. Sisu may have an element of passion but it is not always present,[5] unlike in the case of grit as defined by Dr. Angela Duckworth.[6]">> I've learned to appreciate those full-circle aspects that our life sometimes takes. Klawock, AKThere is much to celebrate today: a good friend is currently on her flight from Hawaii to Boston for Monday's marathon. Another good friend celebrates a birthday, while yet another one makes serious progress with personal endeavors and strengthening relationships, while also helping me to learn more in that process. And, my harp shipment has made the journey from one rock to the other, and will be due to the house here early next week! I can hardly contain my excitement over that! And our house progresses. Hot water issues have now been fixed, and hot baths seems to help some of the nagging ailments of the past weeks. Aloha! The yellow brick road leading to home. “Now click your heels together three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home,’ and you’ll be there.” It had been 19 years since I had been back to France to visit my family. And usually, I really try to avoid Paris, and just go straight to the Bordeaux area to visit everyone. This time, Shawn convinced me to do a little bit of “tourisme” and spend a couple of days seeing the sights of Paris. I’m glad he did. And Bordeaux! So many changes and improvements! I should not wait so long for my next visit. I have not been updating gthis website very diligently lately. Facebook has been such an easy medium for staying in touch with my family and friends. However, not everything I post on Facebook is all that relevant to everyone, so it’s probably time to catch things up here. First, there was our winter Hawaii season for 2018-19. After that, Shawn and I realized that I was probably really overdue for a visit to my family in France. Now that we can travel during “off-season” times, that has become far more affordable. So, after about 20,000 miles of travel since last December, I’m ready to board the Bellingham ferry to Ketchikan tomorrow. While Shawn was at the dentist today, I got to visit my friends at SCHS. I also got around to using my Bookshop Santa Cruz gift card. I now have a bunch of good books to read while we travel. Gracias and merci to my World Language buddies!
Today we did the Highway crawl up to Santa Cruz for Shawn’s oral surgery appointment. I remember this. It’s good to finally be reunited with my trusty truck. I have also really missed the Grocery Outlet. Cantaloupes in Alaska are like eight bucks each, when you can find them. Avocados are around five dollars. Let the fun begin... We also managed to make it to the Cabrillo College Veteran’s Center BBQ. Naturally, Shawn was a celebrity at this event.
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Tonie OgimachiA few things I'm passionate about: CategoriesArchives
February 2020
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