Photo: Waikiki Highrise by Mr. NEV
Well, the draft got eaten, didn’t it? And when I sat down to post, it was nowhere to be found. Forgive the one day delay, kindly, and with no further adieu, here’s the massive link fest that’s The Carnival of Cities!
I have been very sad lately.
First there was the seemingly unnecessary departure from Hawaii just when it was starting to get good. I lie. It was good from the day we arrived and it wasn’t totally unnecessary to return to the mainland, after all, a person has to earn money, not just spend it. I was blue on the plane on the way home and it did not help that we returned to perfectly awful weather. That’s moderated a little, though according to our local weather guru, the June gloom is on the way. What I’m saying is that we were in Hawaii and then we weren’t, and it hasn’t yet turned to the time of year when Seattle is the most perfect place on the planet. It will, it does that every year just so you won’t leave in a snit.
McMinnville has a darned cute downtown, with brick facades and those tschotke shops your mom likes, and, for some reason, a bronze statue of Ben Franklin – you can sit right next to him on the bench, button your shirt up, ladies, I hear Franklin was quite the lech, but even better, there’s some fine …
In the last month I found myself chatting with two coffee roasters while they worked, one at Mt. Hood Roasters in Rhododendron, Oregon, and one at Java Kai in Hanalei, Hawaii. I did not admit to either of them that the coffee we drink the most of at our house is Trung Nguyen, a mass produced Vietnamese coffee that we buy ground in big quantities from our local Asian supermarket.
We buy this stuff because, well, we like it. I acquired my first package out of desperation. I was in Seattle’s International District and I needed coffee, stat. When I opened the can — it was still in cans then, it smelled of chocolate. Brewed up it tasted very smooth, not bitter at all, and it held that nice deep aroma. It’s cheap, too, really cheap, compared to anything else I like.
Click the image for a short selection of photos from our time in Hawaii.
The sand on Ha’ena beach is coarse and golden and it’s scattered with chunks of coral and broken seashells. Little crabs dance in the line the foam leaves on the sand while the sun goes down and in the morning, the sand is piled in pyramids along the tideline, the remnants of little crabs digging …