MAMOMA

 My Super ‘Ohana and I are putting together a celebration. Inspired by the challenge author and peace maker, Rivera Sun (creator of the Ari Ara series of novels among others) seeded in me an Earth Day gathering grows.

On Wednesday, April 22, 2026 we invite our Whidbey Island community to Sow Peace, Weave Lei, Sing A.L.O.H.A. A two hour celebration and ceremony to Mahalo Momona Makuahine Thank you Generous and Gorgeous Mother Earth happens at the end of day with a shared meal, sowing of marigold seeds and seeds of peace-filled actions, weaving ti leaves from Maui and nature from Whidbey, while singing and chanting globally resonant sounds of the true meanings of Aloha.

I put this here to attract and inform those who still find the mea ‘ai the nourishment of this original place of mana.👍🏽🌈💜. In this regard the tiny iPhone I use to post leaves few options to fully inform. If you are truly interested open up your best spider spirit and seek us out!

Fingers crossed this old storyteller will be ale to get you from where you are to be with us if you want 

🙏✌️Mokihana

On Naming and Awe

 This post brazenly lifted inspiration from my long favorite elder teacher, Rachel Naomi’s Remen’s book Kitchen Table Wisdom,

Thank you Rachel I know you’re here to spread light, me too!

“A Label Is A Mask life wears.” … Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are…We are in relationship with our expectation and not with life itself…Belief traps or frees us.”

“We may need to take our labels and even our experts far more lightly.” Rachel goes on to tell her readers about a doctor-in-training studying people who thought they may have had an unusual experience of healing. One such person was a farmer who had done exceptionally well despite a dire prognosis. That doctor-in-training told Rachel she felt his outcome was related to his attitude. 

“He didn’t take it on,” she said.

🎈

I’m pecking at the tiny letters on my iPhone in the hour of po just ahead of puka I Ke ao. Early early morning. Pete is now tucked back into bed with our mo’opuna’s sleeping bag to warm him after a unexpected encounter with a glass water bottle. A small but significant stream of water and broken glass flowed.

“That’s the end of that,” he said as he went to his old knees with a roll of paper towels to swab our Vardo and gather glass shards. Like this rose of a home we built, that was a glass bottle we have used for more than fifteen years choosing the fragile transparency.

We built this rose sized home because many common products e.g. plastics were making us sick. Over the years this home and that glass jar have weathered the decision we made to appear odd and different in the twenty first century. 

In today’s world our golden rose Vardo much worn from wear is pointed to often and admired or surprised people when we two kupuna tell people we’ve been doing live from her for nearly two decades.

I said to Pete last night in a moment of such fond appreciation and aloha, “Our memory holes are like old lace, honey.” A far lighter and loving view of aging than the other labels so quickly uttered as diagnosis.

“Old Lace.” I’ll live that! Like spiders webs. Appearing fragile but not.

Sophie’s Almond Cake

 “Time takes time,” I heard her when she said the three words across the circle unlocking something long constricting my heart.

Another woman told me that same thing, decades earlier and in another language. She was my elder cousin come to send me off at twenty five when I left my O’ahu home for a different life. “Ho’omanawanui,”she said. The meaning of her message took decades to find meaning in my unrecovered life.

Seated now, on a rainy morning waiting for a pot of quinoa to cook for breakfast I peck at my phone to post this: a marker. 10 years ago almost to the day I wrote a story and blog as medicine. A Native Fern is the medicine story. In this story the recipe for almond cake Sophie Lei Maku’e loves is included: love land, feed people—it’s basic to a pono life. 

Just this week I reread the story (the medicine is Still powerful !) and noticed I had left something out in this recipe. A spiritual bit of navigation: I left the liquid out, but put it in this year. The cake was wonderful, was shared with beloved friends and shared here on at The Safety Pin Cafe too!

To read it go to the “Stories” tab on this blog, find the the Table of Contents and scroll to “A Native Fern.” Sophie’s story is very wonderful. Her recipe for almond cake is its own blog post. E hele kakou, go ahead!

Hope you 😊 enjoy, Mokihana 

Setting up The Pin

 Today was a beautiful fall day. The sun was warm, a breeze became almost blustery and the Marigolds, late in coming, are grand. Giant orange. Giant yellow.

I’m slowly feeling a little better and stronger after a bout with virus and deep recovery work. Like giving birth my medicine woman pal says, you need a couple weeks to be cared for. 

I like that perspective.

So I’m setting up the space where care can be received and given. The sign originally read The Safety Pin Cafe. With the early and sudden rains, the sign got soaked and mildew set in before I noticed. 

To salvage the sign and keep mold free, I trim off the two ends of the sign, and moved the lettering around,

She’s now “the pin,”

Sometimes change can surprise you. 

I’ll keep you posted.

Opala man cometh

 A virus has come. 

The dreams have been stirring up so much opala garbage. “What? I lost Dikka.” In last night’s dreams I was carrying (literally) piles of old stuff, some containers I recognized from my day life. 

A friend was with me in the dream. Kind and calm. But I was having none of that. “ Stay here.” I told her as I walked off to find something… I didn’t remember what. 

Recognition struck me, in the dream. I didn’t know where I’d left my friend(the thing of value!)

Back in my day life in the hours just before dawn I called a trusted friend. She held me in her heart, listened deeply without interrupting. 

Then, we sorted things out. 

“You’re on the threshold.”

“Ha?”

“The threshold of receiving good. Good CAN follow good.”

Pause.

“Let all that garbage go.”

Oh.!

We ended our call and I sent myself to the bag of oatmeal and boiled water.

Outside where our stove is I set the oats to simmer and climbed the vardo steps to wait inside. A few minutes later I went back to check my breakfast, stirred and then saw two bright lights coming through the alder woods. 

Rrooom! 

The garbage man cometh! Friday morning. Garbage day.

I let the shut go and filled my blue pottery bowl with hot oatmeal, butter and a scoop of apricot preserves.

Good can come from good if I set out the garbage and let it go. 

Seems this is the flavor of the day. Our landlady forgot to wheel the garbage bin out. The universe has a sense of humor and I got to unload onto this blog post!!

Whew 😰 

Medicine Stories

 This blog began as a medicine story. Literacy has its benefits and stringing together imagination with the written word fills libraries. 

I’m experiencing one of those times when a good medicine story comes in very handy. My plant medicine is doing their job and I’m grateful! St Joan’s Wort ( also called St. John’s) along with Echinacea root tinctures ease the fever.

But it’s the rereading of 10 year old remedy that is so comforting. Dumpling Woman and her friends have been such delightful company in the duck bed.

http://cornsquashbean.blogspot.com/2015/07/dumpling-woman.html?m=0

If you link to that connection above and slip into one of my old blogs written as sequences of tale you might enjoy a sweet story. It may require finding your way through old school navigationals. Good luck, I think it may be worth it.

Three Sisters was fun to write and a practice of soulful remedy making that all storytellers hope catch you by the wrist and take you somewhere wonderful!!

Placeholders

 Pete and I have a county not far from where we live now which we can only name “placeholder.” Perhaps you have one of those on your personal life map?

What is a placeholder? Well, for me it starts with a faint but persistent math memory from grade school. Something about “0” holding a place in a subtraction lesson. Sound familiar?

The county we call our placeholder include a couple little towns in Skagit County in Washington state. These towns and the memories we each have marked months of separation: we lived apart during that time though in the same town. It was pivotal time in our relationship and over the past 18 years we revisit those places and find bits or chunks of of our individual selves that linger … holding a place in our memory or in the place’s themselves.

Yesterday’s experience with placeholder memories for me were more about being in the moment willing to savor a new recipe(for chicken pot pie specifically) after the surprise of its unexpected form!

Rather than living a metaphor I enjoyed a fresh version of now and I loved it! Yum. That’s progress. That old math problem takes on a nuanced meaning. Hmm. Zero can mean more than nothing.