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Two days before the Fiftieth Reunion of the Class of 1948, I went into isolation and attempted to compose something special for that event.

Fragments of "poetry" resulted, such as ....

"We lived beside a highway,
Where the Nation's traffic roared;
We lived through the Great Depression,
Where the Grapes of Wrath was stored."

and .....

"The miners came here to practice their craft.
They got the lead out, and we got the shaft."

And then came this ==>

Something Special for the 50th Reunion

"It's the Fiftieth Reunion of the Class of Forty-Eight.
It's a reason for a party. It's a cause to celebrate.
It's a recapitulation of five decades that slipped by,
But some of us are missing, and we dare to wonder why.

Invitations to this party went out to near and far,
But some folks didn't show up, and we wonder where they are.
And something else is missing from the old home town we knew:
They've hauled away the chat piles. This gives us a broader view.

It's expanded our horizons, so perhaps now we see the truth
That we denied and shoved aside when we were in our youth.
They're blaming Eagle Picher for the lead polluted chat.
They say it turned us into half-wits, but we learned in spite of that.

We can forget our differences and sort through the debris
And come up with one idea upon which we all agree:
Our classmates and our teachers are the greatest of the great,
So let's all pledge our allegiance .. to the Class of Forty-Eight."

ERGONOMICS
by Jerry Thomas

Friday 29 January 1993

Yesterdays Hawaii Tribune-Herald has a special section on Health and Community Help. It lists sixty-two different places to go and people to contact if you have problems with your health or if you need help. Through these agencies and organizations you can get medication, meditation, and mediation. You can get legal aid, first aid, and aid for AIDS. In addition to this long list of helpers, this section of the newspaper has ads for massage parlors, clinics for treating the pathology of all parts of the human anatomy, the mind, and related subjects.

It has articles about diet, exercise, chiropractic services, ways to overcome addictions, and the one that caught my attention : NEW WAYS TO BEAT PAIN AND FIGHT STRESS, by Debra Lee Baldwin, of the Copley News Service. After a discussion of headaches, backaches, and pains in the neck, under the sub-head CTS and PMS, the article says,

Computer users, is your keyboard too high or too low? Think ergonomically: Your wrists and hands should be level with the keyboard. Avoid extension (hands angled upward) or flexion (hands angled downward). The danger is carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS); symptoms include numbness, tingling and pain in the hands and fingers ...

The article goes on to tell about how the members of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons deal with this problem, using braces, splints, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or cortisone injections. Then the writer went into PMS, which I dont have, so I went back to see how she suggested that I, as a computer user, should THINK. Think ergonomically, she wrote.

Help!! I studied the list of agencies and individuals that help the community with its problems. I needed help with that big word. Before I could begin to think ergonomically I needed to know what it meant. Should I call the Public Library?

Suddenly I remembered the dictionary that is electronically connected to my computer. I went to my bedroom/office. Placing my keyboard in its usual position, on my lap, I extended and flexed my hands, moved them to where they were level with the keyboard, and started typing in the usual manner. If I could overcome the numbness, tingling, and pain in my hands and fingers long enough to type ergonomically Alt-W, I might learn how I should think.

For ergonomically my computer dictionarys response was none found. But when I entered ergonomic, my computers dirty little mind, lurking down there in my hard disk, suggested that I might mean erotic.

Indeed.

With my numb, tingling, pain-ridden hands and fingers, I reached for my dust-covered Merriam Websters Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, opened its mildewed pages, and found not ergonomically, nor ergonomic, but ergonomics. Close enough for me! I thought maybe the word came from the Latin ergo, meaning therefore, as in cogito ergo sum. But no. Its from the Greek erg, meaning work. As in ergophobia, which I and a lot of others suffer from. It says,

ergonomics n. pl but sing or pl in constr [erg- + -nomics (as in bionomics)] (1949): an applied science concerned with the characteristics of people that need to be considered in designing and arranging things that they use in order that people and things will interact most effectively and safely -- called also human engineering.

And now, as I really get immersed in the work of typing this article, my hands and fingers begin feeling less numb. The tingling is diminishing, too, and the pain is going away. Working has taken away all of my symptoms of CTS.

But where had those symptoms come from? Not from an improper arrangement of my keyboard and my hands (which, ergonomically speaking, might have led to unsafe, ineffective interaction .. ) but from some other interaction between my hands and things. In the old way of putting it, my hands were asleep. I had been sitting on them. Working awakened them.

After breakfast this morning I had been sitting on a barstool at the counter between my kitchen and dining room. With nothing else to do, I spread yesterdays newspaper on the counter and read it again. Its an unusually chilly morning for Hawaii. My hands felt cold; I warmed them by slipping them between the stools seat and my own seat. Sitting on my hands. Concentrating on the newspaper, forgetting about my hands, I devoted my attention to Debra Lee Baldwins article.

As I read about headaches and pains in the neck, I thought of my hands again. They felt uncomfortable. A kind of numbness, tingling, and even a little pain was creeping into my now warm hands. By then I was into CTS: these were the very symptoms I was reading about ! Were I employed, I might sue my employer for exposing me to CTS; being a retired teacher and part-time self-employed writer, I am forced to rely on my own resources.

When I found out about ergonomic thinking, and forced myself into that unusual activity, the source of all those symptoms came clear: I should have been working, instead of sitting on my hands. This revelation might be useful to some computer users in government agencies, and to those keyboard operators having problems with their hands in the private sector. Thanks to my new-found knowledge of human engineering, I might be able to get some writing done today.

--30--

NOTE to interested readers: During the past 18 years I have made numerous trips to Mainland America from my home in Hawaii. The pattern for some time was that I would fly to Reno, Nevada and borrow a car from my friend Ralph. The following tale happened during that epoch:



Sincerely Yours

Im on my way from Lexington, KY to Lawrence, KS. Its two p.m. and Ive been driving westward steadily since five a.m. except for a two-hour stop in Paducah.

Im on I-70 a few miles north of Jefferson City. Its time for a cigarette, so I light one.

And now I see flashing lights in my rearview mirror. I jerk the Cadillac onto the shoulder of the highway and stop so rapidly the tires almost screech.

In the side mirror I watch her. So cute in her Missouri Highway Patrol uniform. Short brown hair, blue eyes. I lower the window and she smiles and mumbles something but her words are drowned in the roar of the passing traffic.

Im deaf, I tell her, and I hand her my Hawaii drivers license and the Registration Certificate for this 1988 Cadillac that Ralph lent me. With effective sign language she tells me to get out of the car and I still cant understand what she says, so she invites me into her patrol car. Cars, busses, and huge trucks continue to zoom past us, creating a deafening roar in my hearing aid.

But youll have to get rid of that cigarette, she says, eyeing my freshly lit Lucky Strike.

I flip the Lucky out into the waving Missouri grass and get into the Patrol car.

The digital read-out on her Radar machine says 83, and I figure that must have been my speed. Only eight miles over the posted 75-mph limit.

Nobody seems to pay much attention to the speed limit, I comment, and she says, with a giggle, I do.

She talks into her radio, which responds immediately, repeating the license number on Ralphs car. ... to a Ralph W. Parker, 501 W Moana Lane, Reno, NV no wants or warrants.

I explain, as usual, the anomaly of my Hawaii drivers license and ... Did you stop me because its a Cadillac, or because of the Nevada plates, or because I wasnt keeping up with the flow of traffic? I ask.

She giggles and says, Its sort of random. What do you do?

I tell her Im a retired teacher and writer and former Police Dispatcher in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Pretty place, she says. She starts filling out a form.

I sincerely hope youre not going to give me a ticket, I say, and she giggles again.

SINCERELY!

The word seems to tickle her.

Yes, sincerely! You are in a position to give me three tickets, and any one of them could ruin my whole beautiful day.

THREE tickets???? she protests.

Right! Three tickets. One for speeding, another for not using my turn signal when I pulled onto the shoulder, and another for littering.

Shes giggling so hard she has trouble speaking.

Look, she finally is able to say. Im just giving you a Warning, and it wont affect you.

Whaddaya mean it wont affect me?

It wont go on your driving record.

Well it certainly WILL affect me! It will make me drive even slower from now on. At least until I get out of Missouri!

She giggles again, and she lets me go. And I thank her. Very sincerely.

I take the next exit and fill the gas tank in Fulton. Returning toward the Interstate I see her again. Shes writing a ticket to the driver of a huge semi. Maybe that trucker wasnt sincere enough!

--30--

It's The Fiftieth Reunion
of the Class of Forty-Eight






Teachers: Irene Hinman, Sixth Grade, Liberty School
Juanita Gaston, Second Grade, East Galena
Dorothy Fisher, Third Grade, East Galena, and
Seventh Grade Home-Room, and
Eighth Grade Math, and
Algebra, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry, Trigonometry,
The Baker Twins, Myra Louise and Mary Lucille, Typing, etc.

---

Click on the photo for full size image.

---

April, 1999
       
(published with photo of me, donating books to the Galena Public Library)

Readers who read the fine print on page ten of the April 7 edition of the Galena Sentinel-Times are aware of the latest local escalation of the War On Drugs. Ordinance Number 99.5, passed and adopted by the governing body of the City of Galena, defines drug paraphernalia and describes punishment for those in possession of bowls, spoons, sifters, blenders, and scales.

        Under circumstances which would give a reasonable person reason to believe ... that you might be thinking of using your kitchen utensils for processing controlled substances, the possession of those utensils can get you a year in jail and/or a fine of $2,500, depending on the judges decision.

        Throughout our nation elected official are passing and adopting more and more similar similar ordinances. In many cases the minimum punishment is mandatory. This relieves the judges of the responsibility for making decisions and this accounts for the horrendous overcrowding of the nations prisons.

        Another article in that same issue of this newspaper points out that On the average ten to twelve prisoners a month are housed out of county due to a lack of adequate facilities in Cherokee County.

        Obviously we need a new jail. The prison construction and maintenance industry is one of the nations fastest growing industries. Its more than just a local problem. The state of California will have to build a new prison every year in to the foreseeable future to keep pace with he growing prison population. Our nation has more people behind bars than any other country except Russia, and were gaining fast.

        City Manager Durward Nice urges all citizens to GET INVOLVED. One way to get involved is to read any or all of three books that were recently donated to the Galena Public Library.

        The war on drugs, particularly the prohibition of marijuana, is a national problem that can be solved on a local level. You are invited to learn how that can be accomplished by reading Marijuana: Not Guilty As Charged, by Dave Ford.

        And Marijuana Myths / Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence, by Lynn Zimmer, PhD, and John Morgan, MD.

        And Drug Crazy, How We Got Into This Mess & How We Can Get Out, by Mike Gray.

        These three books are now available at the Galena Public Library.

        Drug Czar General Barry McCaffery still insists on classifying marijuana as a dangerous drug with no medicinal use. He says the several states that approve marijuana for medical purposes are victims of a clever ruse. Meanwhile, Dave Ford, author of Marijuana: Not Guilty As Charged, has made a well-publicized offer of $50,000 to anyone who can prove scientifically that marijuana is not medicine, and so far there have been no takers.

        The three books mentioned above show beyond the shadow of a doubt that the War on Drugs is a mistake. The time for correcting that mistake is long overdue, and the solution is in the hands of reasonable people who have the courage to GET INVOLVED.

--the end--

---

Jack Herer's offer:

Prove us wrong! Prove us wrong! Prove us wrong!
And we hereby extend our $100,000 challenge to prove us wrong!

---

These links found by Marie GHS'57

google.com - "Drug Czar" General Barry McCaffery

---

google.com - Woody Harrelson - Hemp

---

PLUS CA CHANGE, PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHINE
1991 Jerry Thomas

At five o'clock on the morning of the second of October, 1991, Danny Young and I were awakened by the telephone that was ringing in our Taipei hotel room. I think it was about three a.m. when we asked the desk clerk to give us a five o'clock wake-up call. The previous night, in Taichung, we had not got more than three hours of sleep. After three cups of coffee gulped while stuffing stuff into my suitcase, I was about to start peeling the last of the three luscious Taiwanese oranges that I had bought the night before at a street stand, for breakfast. It's one of m favorite fruits. Although the skin is not orange, but dark green, it is paper thin and crisp. Once the skin is removed the plump, juicy sections fall apart like a tangerine. Gastronomically orgasmic. But Danny said there wasn't time for that. We had to hurry to the airport for my eight a.m. departure. I stashed the orange in my flight bag for later. We went to the lobby, checked out, and took the elevator to the basement of the hotel, where Danny's black 1988 Corvette was parked. (It's one of four Corvettes in all of Taiwan, and Danny enjoys the admiring stares from almost everyone who sees it.)

Traffic was relatively light at that time of day. A few days earlier, I had told Danny that whenever we travel in his Corvette, it's "white-knuckle country" for me. He likes to make the tires squeal, and although he claims that he's not behaving like a child, and that he's not challenging all other drivers to drag race, he feels it would be an insult to his car if he didn't pass everything else on the road. But in this light early-morning traffic he had no need to pass trucks on the right, or to dodge oncoming motorcycles. We passed a number of long luxurious limousines, some with pennants on their fenders, that seemed to be carrying Very Important People. "They're coming to the airport to see me off," I said. "Then we have to be there when they arrive," Danny said, screeching around another limousine. But we never saw them again.

After paying the airport tax and standing in line for my boarding pass, I said goodbye to Danny and headed through the series of gates toward my China Airlines airplane, bound for Hong Kong. At the last of those gates, a smiling young Chinese woman stared at the 1983 (beardless) photograph in my passport, then stared at me. She seemed to be taking a long time. "Is there some problem with my passport?" I asked her. "you have grown older," she said, still staring alternately at the passport and at me. "So have you," I said. It took her a minute to digest that idea. "We Chinese people demand a recent photograph for passports," she said. "And mine still has two years before it expires," I said. She said, "yes." Finally I said, "you're acting as if that's the first passport you ever saw, and I can't believe that's true." "No, Sir," she said, handing me the passport, "I am practicing my English."

I went ahead and boarded the airplane and found my window seat. An unusually large Chinese man sat in the aisle seat of the row in front of me. He was dressed like a farmer, except that his hat was cloth instead of bamboo. His skin was very dark and copper-like. His bloodshot eyes looked around nervously. A one-liter water bottle was suspended by a cord around his neck, and on is back was a crude backpack with strong cords instead of straps. His tan hat's brim was turned down all the way around and he never took it off. He sat down and a pretty Chinese flight attendant came to help him with his seat belt. I could hear just enough to know they were speaking in Mandarin as she showed him how to buckle and unbuckle the seat belt.

She suggested he take off the backpack. He stood and did that. Then he sat back down and clutched the backpack in his lap. The flight attendant spoke to him gently, took the backpack from him and stashed it in the overhead carry-on luggage compartment. He thanked her and she went away. He unfastened his seat belt, stood up, furtively removed the backpack from the luggage locker, and put it on his back again. It took a while; the heavy jacket he wore (despite the tropical heat and humidity) made it difficult. He sat back down and took a long drink from his water bottle; I assume that the colorless liquid in it was water, although it could have been gin, or vodka. This whole process was repeated with another flight attendant, who then held a conference with the fist one, and they finally let him keep the backpack. It occurred to me that it might have contained a parachute.

As with thousands of other Chinese characters I had seen in the past month, I wished I could speak to him and find out who he was and where he had come from and where he was going and why. And what was inside his backpack.

A middle aged Chinese couple sat in the seats beside me, killing my hope that those seats hadn't been sold and that I could make a bed for myself. The woman wept quietly all the way to Hong Kong an I wondered why but could not ask.

Breakfast was soon served, and I drank a lot of coffee. In China I had drunk far more tea than ever before in my life 1 and not nearly enough coffee. On the Mainland, food was good wherever we went, except on the airplanes, where the (usually) unsmiling flight attendants coldly plopped in front of each passenger a cardboard box half filled with an assortment of packaged weird stuff like prunes, smoked peanuts, dried fish, and God knows what else2 , and the only thing to drink was boiling hot tea served in flimsy plastic cups and poured from old-fashioned metal teakettles.

As my airplane approached Hong Kong I remembered my first arrival there, which was on Christmas Eve, 1953, with Lucinda -- a vacation trip while we were living on Guam. The next visit was in the summer o 1985, with Lois, at the end of our tour of Southeast Asia. The next was a month ago on my way to Mainland China, and the next was just a week before, when Danny and I had stayed there overnight on our way from FuZhou to Taiwan. Hong Kong was crowded in 1953; in these 38 years the buildings have multiplied and grown taller and closer together, and so have the people. I gazed at the many new skyscrapers and the hordes of ships (no more sailing junks) in Hong Kong Harbor and I got a couple of peeks at the crowded airport. In the inflight magazine I had just read about the new airport they are about to build on an island in the bay. In 1953 Kai Tak Airport's runway was too short for a Boeing Stratocruiser, so we had come by way of Manila, where we left the Stratocruiser for a smaller airplane. The present runway is a lot longer than it was then. Long enough or all airplanes, but there are now just too many of them. Population density in Hong Kong is near the world's greatest; in 20 square miles of the Colony's space there are more than six million people -- more than 270,000 per square mile.

I had nearly three hours to spend in Hong Kong, and I was so tired I didn't even leave the airport, ate an expensive roastbeef sandwich, chatted with an American man who like many of his countrymen abroad seemed suspicious of everything. I searched for, and finally found, a place where I could buy one pack of cigarettes. Then I found a place where I could smoke one.3 And I watched the people. Then I paid my airport tax and found my way to Japan Airlines and checked my suitcase all the way to Honolulu. By then it was time to go to the boarding area and see about getting on the airplane for Osaka.

Looking back, it seems weird that I was going from Taipei to Osaka via Hong Kong, but I had got a better deal on Japan Airlines than any other airline, and although my round trip from Hong Kong to Taipei had been unexpected, my Japan Airlines itinerary was unchangeable without great surcharges.

This time my window seat had two empty seats beside it. Whenever I batted my eyes it was hard to get them open again. After takeoff, I wrote a note on the bottom of my burp bag "If I'm asleep when you serve dinner, please wake me up." I stuck the note where the busy flight attendant would surely find it, lifted the arms of my empty adjoining seats, made a pile of blankets and pillows, lay down, and sank into a deep, peaceful sleep. Next thing I knew, the lovely young lady was asking me if I wanted beef or seafood. Seafood. A huge pile of luscious shrimp, "western" style vegetables, salad, plus some unidentifiable but delicious Japanese food.

Then it was sunset, and as we descended I could see that Osaka goes from horizon to horizon, with several rivers, lots of bridges, many ships, and countless boats. Somehow I learned that more than 15 million people live in the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto Metropolitan area, and in that Land of the Rising Sun I watched the sun, a pale red ball, setting amid their homes and their smog.

Leaving the airplane, I went with the crowd until I got to a gate where a man demanded my passport and my "form." I didn't have a form, and he pointed to where I could get one. I got one and filled it out. One blank space asked me to describe the countries I had visited in the past month. "They were all beautiful," I wrote. In the blank that asked for my address in Japan, I wrote, "None. I don't intend to leave the airport." I returned to the man and handed him my passport and my form. He studied both for quite a while, then wadded up the form and trashed it with an _expression of disgust. With a tone of voice that was more like a bark, he directed me to turn abound and go through that door over there.

I walked through a narrow passageway, then came to a Security Checkpoint where I had to take everything out of my pockets. As usual, the stainless-steel bolts holding my hip bones together caused the security mechanism to beep, and, as usual, I explained about my repaired hip. Then I tried to put my stuff back into my pockets, but a uniformed man reached around me and grabbed my Swiss Army knife. We had a discussion. I pointed out that my knife is no more dangerous than the one they would issue me to eat my dinner with, but he made it clear that I could not take it on the airplane with me. "Then mail it to me," I said, making a charade of putting it in an envelope, then licking and sticking a stamp. He demanded my passport and laboriously copied my name. He put my knife into an envelope and gave me a receipt. "Get it back from Japan Airlines people in Honoruru," he said, handing the passport to me.

Too tired to care, I went through another doorway and found myself alone in a room about sixty feet by sixty feet. In the center of the room, suspended on chains from the ceiling, was a large television that was loudly giving the world news in Japanese. On each side of the TV was a sign in Japanese and English saying "NO SMOKING." There were ten rows of seats in front of the TV and two rows of seats around the perimeter of the room. In one corner of the room a girl was ready to sell goodies, magazines, and books, all in Japanese. I looked the merchandise over and decided I didn't want any, and had no yen anyhow. I found the men's room and dared to light a cigarette, knowing I might be risking arrest.

I looked for somewhere to go, something to do. I wished I had brought something to read, in addition to the several newspapers (from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) in my flight bag, which I had already read through and through. I dug out my notebook and tried without much success to get up to date on all that I wanted to write about this trip. Dan Rather with the CBS Evening News live at 8 a.m. on Hong Kong TV; things that are "fei ch'ang chung kuo" (very very Chinese), customs and Customs; rites and rituals; the one kid who had winked at me while his companions stared with faintly suppressed apprehension, thus humanizing this foreign devil who couldn't help grinning, proving again that the contagion of a grin transcends all language barriers; the group of deaf mutes in the Forbidden City who charmingly asked me to pose for photos with them as if sensing some commonality ... I craved a cigarette.

A uniformed girl appeared at the desk for Gate 7. I walked over there and she smiled and I said, "Is there a place where I can go to smoke a cigarette?" She gulped and looked afraid and said, "Prease spik more srowry." I pantomimed, pointing out that the two signs said, "NO SMOKING." "One moment prease," she said, and she vanished. When she came back into the room the man with her was talking rapidly to her in Japanese. He asked me what my probrem was, and I explained it to him. He stood in the center aisle between the rows of seats and studied each of the NO SMOKING signs for a while. Then, indicating the rows of seats, he said, "No Smoking here; No Smoking here." I pointed to the seats at the perimeter. "Smoking there?" "Oh," he said, "yes, yes, yes. Smoking there." He bowed. I bowed. I sat. I smoked.

An hour later a gentleman came in and sat in the seat in front of me. He lit a cigar. yearning for human contact, I said, "Honolulu." "yes," he said, pleasantly, "Honolulu. I live there. Do you?" He stood up and I moved over so he could sit next to me. He gave me his card. His name is Albert H. Miyasato, and he's President of the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii and one of the official interpreters for the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet. He used to live on the Big Island, practically in my neighborhood, and he used to be Principal of the high school at Pahala. He grew up speaking Japanese and English and is totally bilingual. I envied Dr. Miyasato. While we talked more than a hundred people came in and lined up to board our airplane -- all of the Japanese, and all of them physically handicapped in one way or another. Appropriate that I should be their fellow traveler, I thought, with my hearing handicap and my linguistic disability.

Dr. Miyasato and I relaxed -- and smoked -- while more and more people filed through the narrow gate to board the airplane. I told him about my knife, and he showed me how he palms his own Swiss Army knife to shield it from Security metal detectors. Next time .. ..

The room filled up with people. Long ago I quit trying to find out how many people fit on the various kinds of airliners. A lot. A long line formed at Gate 7, and the people in that line started pushing each other. The Japanese aren't quite as pushy as the Chinese. I could never understand why people push each other o much when waiting to board an airplane on which everyone has already been assigned a specific numbered seat. Dr. Miyasato could wait no longer. He tossed the remainder of his cigar into a trash barrel appropriately labeled "Trash Container," stood up, wished me a pleasant trip, and got in line. I was the last to board, and I never saw him again. Perhaps he will get a copy of this dissertation if I ever am fortunate enough to complete the writing of it.

My window seat was next to a middle aged Japanese couple. For a few hours they and I conversed. She could say "Thank you" in English, and she did that, frequently. My knowledge of Japanese is a mere smidgen better than her knowledge of English. Her husband knew a few sentences in Chinese and a few in English. He could understand some of what I said in those two languages. In this very limited way we discussed our background and our families and how close the volcano is to my home. Part of our conversation consisted of my writing Chinese words on a napkin and letting them figure out what I was trying to say. Next time I might remember to ask how close their volcano is to their home.

My Japanese seat mates marveled at my ability to eat dinner with chopsticks and how I knew how to mix the green paste with the brown liquid, then dip the noodles into the mixture. The two of them shared several bottles of saki, and I drank a lot of orange juice. We had a lot of laughs, but I was never sure that we were all laughing at the same thing. I wanted to ask the man, who was near my own age, maybe a little older, what he was doing during the forties, but it was probably just as well that I didn't, or couldn't. Each of them, at the very end of their dinner, did something I never saw done before. The man ripped the end off his packet of ketchup and squirted the contents into his mouth and gulped it down. His wife, having watched him carefully, disposed of her ketchup the same way, thus taking one giant step toward total Westernized sophistication.

Some ten hours after takeoff (catnaps, weird dreams, near nightmares) we landed at Honolulu. It had been a long day and a short night. Somewhere over the Pacific I thought of calling the International Date Line to see what they had to offer. In Honolulu the dykie Customs Inspector, who looked and acted like a retired Marine Corps Drill Sergeant, confiscated my Taiwanese orange (which had truly forgotten about) and thoroughly inspected the rest of my luggage. She probed the walls of my worn suitcase. She could not believe that I had spent a month in China and brought back goods worth only sixty dollars (two pointed peasant hats from southern FuKien at one dollar each, a colorful cotton shirt and a beautiful red silk robe from the Hong Kong Night Market at less than ten dollars ah, some chocolate candy for Terry and Wendy from the boutique at Kai Tak Airport, and so forth). She asked me three times if any strangers had given me packages to deliver, and whether or not I make frequent trips to the Orient. I must have looked like a mule.

It took an hour and a half and three round trips (lugging my luggage to the third floor and back to the ground floor of the Honolulu airport for me to retrieve my Swiss Army knife. When, finally, I found the Japan Airlines employee who had it, I said, "I've been awake for more than 36 hours, and I think I'm about to lose it." "Oh, no, no," he said, "you no ruse knife. Japan Airlines keep it safe for you."\

I caught a Wiki Wiki bus to take me to the Interisland Terminal, checked in with Hawaiian Airlines, and spent two hours people - watching and trying to stay awake. Then I boarded the thirteenth airplane that I had been on in 29 days and buckled up for the short flight to Hilo. I had left Hawaii on the fourth of September, sincerely believing that it was an insane thing for me to be doing. A pleasure trip to China is something for the rich. Far out of my class. And I had a number of other things that I really should be doing. But when Danny young had urged me to go touring with him and I had said I could not afford it, and he had said, "your trip is on me; I'm mailing you a thousand dollars for the purchase of your round-trip ticket," it was an offer that I simply could not refuse.

Danny met me in his chauffeured car at FuZhou airport, and we stayed in that city for a week, spending some days at his polyurethane foam factory and making trips in his car to visit his customers, among which are the manufacturers of Adidas4 , Nike, and Reebok sports shoes.

We went to the International Trade Building in downtown FuZhou several times on business. On our first visit to that brand-new 20-story skyscraper I couldn't help but notice a sign that is cast in brass or bronze, about two feet by three feet, with raised calligraphy in both Chinese and English. It says:

ELEVATOR NUMBER ONE STOPS AT ODD NUMB
ERED FLOORS ELEVATOR NUMBER TWO STOPS
AT EVEN NUMBERED FLOORS PLEASE NO
STITTING OR SMOKING IN THE ELEVATOR


Three days later we were back, and the sign was gone. Three days later we were back again and so was the new sign. "STITTING" had been changed to "SPITTING." Danny remarked on the expense and trouble they had gone to in order to make it correct, "But any civilized person knows not to spit or smoke in the elevator," he said. Surely they don't expectorate a good grade in spelling!

Dreadful and unexpected errors occur in the English on most of the signs we saw wherever we went. No doubt we would produce something even more laughably incomprehensible if we tried to paint signs in Chinese.

As everyone knows, there is a surplus of people in China. The Communist government has relaxed enough to let foreign industry operate there. Many Taiwanese companies are taking advantage of the opportunity by setting up factories, which is why Danny is doing business there -- to be in a position to conveniently (and profitably) service his customers.

While in FuZhou we lived in a condo that Danny owns. He also owns the one next door, and that's where his cousins live. A new doorway joins the two units. His parents fled from FuZhou to Taiwan in 1949. Danny was born in Taiwan in 1950. Three years ago he accompanied his widowed mother to FuZhou and witnessed the understandably emotional reunion of his relatives who had been totally out of contact for some forty years. One of his cousins frequently cooked breakfast and dinner for us, and daily washed our laundry. For breakfast we usually had either peanut soup or lotus-seed soup, and pastries purchased at the local bakery. Diner was even better; there were often a dozen different dishes, all expertly cooked. Her husband, Lin Hua, is supervisor of half of Danny's FuZhou factory and her brother supervises the other half.

After a week in FuZhou Danny and I flew to HangZhou, which Marco Polo declared to be the most beautiful place on earth. It has natural beauty plus art and architecture thousands of years old, such as the many life-size Buddhas carved in the face of a marble cliff, China's largest temple, and so on. We rented bicycles at our hotel and spent a lot of time on them. Once I made the mistake of asking a couple of girls if they were sisters. They are cousins. Since the 1979 one-child-per-family law went into effect Chinese children have no siblings.

We flew to Beijing and spent our days visiting places like Tien An Men Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, etc., and so on. We stayed in a hotel that is ten miles from the center of the city. We were on the 16th floor.

Late one night Danny and I stood out on the balcony taking in the broad view of China's Capital City: From horizon to horizon the blackness was sprinkled liberally with lights of all colors. I was feeling mellow. I tried to express my appreciation to Danny. Making a sweeping gesture from one side of our view to the other, I said, "Danny, that is an enormous sheet of black Chinese silk draped over the valley and the hills, and somebody has dumped a vast quantity of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds on it. That is the gift that you have given to me." It was too dark to see if either of us shed a tear at my eloquence. Neither of us would forget it for years, if ever.

One morning in that Beijing hotel, heading out for another day of touring with our friends whose room was also on the 16th floor, we noticed that one of the two elevators was out of order. I punched the button for the other elevator. We watched the numbers on the elevator-location indicator. Starting on 1, it went up to 3, back to 1, up to 5, back to 1, up to 8, back to 5. Thinking the exercise would be good for us, I said, "Let's take the stairs." The stairway was on the outside of the building, and the double doors leading to it were propped open. We started down, but four floors down we came to a locked gate, and the access doors were locked on the other floors. Feeling somewhat trapped, we climbed back to 16 and tried the elevator again. It rose to 11, back to 1, and so on. Finally it came to 16, just after Frederic Alegre suggested we call room service and order an elevator. Twenty-five minutes had passed since I first pushed the button. Patience is a virtue.

Danny had made our reservation for that hotel by telephone while we were still at Beijing Airport. While we waited there for a van to transport us to the hotel, I kept looking at a young couple who were waiting also. When our hotel van came, that couple got in with us. For some unknown reason, I spoke to them in Spanish, to which the guy replied in perfect Spanish. They are Frederic Alegre and Veronique Guisset, from Paris, France. Frederic is a lieutenant in the Police; they have two sons -- 4-year-old twin boys; they love to travel. During the trip to the hotel I explained to them how Danny and I had met and become good friends nearly ten years earlier when I was giving Danny private lessons in Spanish. Danny's English is still far better than his Spanish, though. We made an odd foursome with our various languages. Veronique knew only a few words of English, and no Spanish. Danny and Frederic conversed in English, with Frederic continually asking me in Spanish how to say this or that in English. And Danny, of course, was our official Chinese-English interpreter when it came to dealing with local people.
Like hotel staff.

On the day when we took a tour bus from downtown Beijing for the two-hour ride to the Great Wall, then on to other outstanding scenic places, I got a little angry at the bus driver. He was in a great hurry because we were five minutes behind schedule. I was the last to board the rear entrance of the bus at one stop, and he closed the door on me. "Danny, tell that son of a bitch I don't like that a bit," I yelled very loudly. Of course nobody on the bus (including the driver) understood a single syllable of what I said (except our little group) and all of those Chinese tourists roared with laughter at the funny noises the funny-looking foreigner was making.

At the next stop Danny had a little talk with the driver in Mandarin, telling him, "You hurt my friend, and that's bad PR for China." I made sure I was the first to get back to the bus at the next stop. As I approached, I saw our driver sitting on a stump chatting with his friends. He saw me coming and jumped up. He bowed. He shook my hand with both of his, and he apologized profusely. I was proud to be able to say (in Mandarin) "It's no big deal. I'm no longer angry. You are my friend. I am your friend.:" Later, Frederic Alegre said, "C'est la vie; some doors open, and some doors close!"

On a couple of different evenings in Beijing we feasted on Roast Duck. It's one of my favorites among all the many wonderful Chinese dishes. There's no equal to the taste and texture of a thin slice of roast duck and sliced green onions smothered with thick brown hoisin sauce and wrapped, burrito-like, thin crepe pancake. Also, one evening Danny asked our pedicab5 drivers to take us to where we could get dumplings. During the trip, as our pedicabs wove their way through the swirling sea of bicycles, our French friends' pedicab came alongside ours briefly. Frederic shouted, "Where we go?" "For dumplings," I yelled. But he couldn't hear me, and traffic forced us apart again. Once our drivers must have decided simultaneously and spontaneously that we were going in the wrong direction. As they both made a U-turn in front of several oncoming buses I turned and saw Veronique's terror-stricken _expression. Her eyes were as big as her mouth.

When we got to the dumpling place and were seated on the little stools around a rickety table, Danny asked me how many I could eat. "Fifteen or twenty," I said. Danny said, "Twenty for me, and how about you guys? How many can you eat?" "How many WHAT?" Frederic asked. He looked at me. "In English it's dumplings," I said, "and I can't think of any word for it in Spanish."6

The woman who ran the place put a menu (all in Chinese, of course) in front of Veronique, who looked up and said, "Do you have any chicken?" Danny interrupted, "No no, not chicken. We are here for dumplings." In Chinese he told the woman to bring eighty. Soon, the proprietor's husband (the cook, and waiter) put a heaped plate of steaming dumplings on our table, along with little bowls of sauce to dip them in. Veronique looked at the dumplings and clapped her hands. "I know the right English word," she shouted. "Ravioli!"

Danny always ordered for us in restaurants, and after sampling everything and always finding it delicious, I often pointed to one dish or another and asked him, "What is this?" And he often said, "I don't know." "But you ordered it," I'd protest, and he'd point out that he knew its Chinese name perfectly well, but didn't know how to say it in English. Or Spanish. Or French. It was almost always good, even if there were no other word for it in my languages.

Later that evening the four of us were standing on a street corner when a young Chinese man, probably a tourist from Hong Kong or Taiwan, suddenly walked up to Frederic and asked (in English) for directions to the Beijing Hotel. "Certainly," Frederic said, "He pointed up the street, saying, "You go right, right, right, and then you turn straight, and there you are: Beijing Hotel!" The Chinese man thanked him and walked right on up the street. Frederic explained to us that "Right" and "straight" are the same word ("droit") in French, "So what is the difference?"

The next morning Danny and I bid adieu to our French friends. Then we returned to FuZhou for a few more days, getting there (because of Danny's timing) just in time for the Moon Festival.

Mainland Chinese people live under the Communist government; Taiwan thrives as a Republic; but regardless of politics, all are Chinese. Many Chinese people are Buddhists; some are Taoists; a few are Christians; but regardless of religion, all are Chinese. The Chinese culture survives and is kept alive and well by almost every individual, every family, every clan, in every part of the Chinese nation(s). Chinese holidays have a strength and substance perpetuated by their universal observance. While I lived in Taiwan I was impressed with the idea that a vast majority of the Chinese people actively and enthusiastically participate in the traditional celebrations. For example, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, young families get together at the home of the husband's parents. The next day they meet at the wife's parents' home, and the third day they visit with their best friends. Associated with the holiday are many traditional activities that are practiced by all: The massive use of firecrackers, the giving of substantial money gifts (in standard red envelopes) to children, the wearing of new clothes, the cooking and sharing of special foods. From the point of view of this foreign observer, these things are done by everybody, and all at the same time. One result of this mass celebration is that buses and trains are outrageously crowded with people trying to get to where they are expected to be at any given moment; another is the steady, unceasing roar of exploding firecrackers for as long as 24 hours., and the ankle-deep firecracker debris cluttering certain street intersections the next morning. Still another is the way the practice of traditional rituals binds families -- and a nation -- together. I'm digressing. I intended to write about the Moon Festival.

It's a two-day affair. On the evening of the first day, Danny put on a dinner party for his more than fifty employees in the factory dining hall where they are served their daily lunch. Six round tables, ten people per table, at least fifteen different dishes. Lots of Toasts and Speeches. Mine was short; with Danny as my interpreter I talked about how they made me feel welcome and how we all look forward to more openness and international understanding.


Danny Young


Danny is a politically conservative capitalist and "a non-practicing" Catholic, he says. A gold cross hangs on his neck and a crucifix hangs on the wall of his office. His wife is very much devoted to Buddhism. I don't know what religion his mother and his aunt adhere to, but in FuZhou I watched Danny and his mother's sister celebrating the second evening of the Moon Festival in the same way it was being observed in all Chinese homes on that evening of the harvest moon. When we returned from Beijing in the afternoon Danny had phoned his wife in Taiwan to make sure she would take their kids and go to his mother's house. His presence in FuZhou was an acceptable reason for him not to be at his mother's house in Taichung, but his family HAD to be there. The older of his two brothers, Dean, would take charge of the ceremony there.

Ever since his father's death a few years ago, Danny has been the Head of the Family because he is the oldest of three sons. In that role, assisted by his maternal aunt, he performed the Moon Festival ritual while I looked on. For this occasion, in a corner of her dining room, his aunt had built an altar where two candles burned. Danny ignited some long sticks of incense in the candles' flame and, holding them toward the altar, bowed several times. Then he placed the incense sticks in a vessel so their smoke rose up past the photographs of his grandfathers that were placed high above. His aunt brought a dishpan, which she placed on a stack of bricks on the ceramic-tile floor. Then the two of them slowly and ceremoniously set fire to hundreds of small sheets of tissue paper bearing flecks of gold leaf, igniting them and dropping them into the dishpan. As the paper burned, the specks of gold swirled upward. The also burned larger packets of variously-colored tissue paper, igniting the folded packets and tossing them into the dishpan. Danny explained to me that the gilded paper is money and the packets are clothes, both to be used by the departed ancestors in the spirit world. Soon, the upper atmosphere of the condo was filled with smoke and the dishpan, which was plastic, began to melt. We fanned the smoke toward the open windows and I looked out and saw similar smoke pouring from many windows of other condos where other people were doing the same thing. Using a plastic dishpan is a modern touch, but the fundamental idea remains the same since ancient times.

Danny and I consumed the special dinner that his aunt had cooked for us. After dinner, together with Danny's cousin and Lin Hua (who had done the ritual at his mother's house) we drove downtown and joined the indescribably immense crowd in milling around FuZhou's Central Park, beneath the gaze of a forty-foot white marble statue of Mao Tze Dong. The nearby parking lot, where we conveniently left the car, was only half full, and along the main street there must have been ten to twenty thousand bicycles parked. Everyone was there except the cloud-hidden moon. A reporter for a local radio station interviewed me. With Danny interpreting, I said the people of FuZhou are lucky to live in such a clean city. The reporter asked me if we have a similar holiday in America, and I couldn't think of any. Memorial Day is the day of the Indy 500. Nor does Halloween come close to measuring up! I wished everyone a happy moon Festival.

I was surprised the next day when Danny suggested forcefully that we go to Taiwan. His younger brother, David, a vice-president of the company, had arrived in FuZhou and could take over the management of the factory. Danny thought I'd like to see how Taiwan has changed in the past five years since I have been there, and he was right.

We flew to Hong Kong and spent night, then on to Taiwan. It has certainly changed. Five years ago two-thirds of the traffic in Taiwan streets was bicycles, as it is on the Mainland now. Now there are hardly any bicycles in Taiwan's cities; they have been replaced by lots of cars and motor scooters. Traffic is almost at the perpetual gridlock stage. And there are scores of automobile agencies, McDonald's, Pizza Huts, supermarkets and (! ) Seven-Eleven stores everywhere. I asked Dean, "Where are all the bicycles? " "We sent them to FuZhou," he said, and I remembered wherever we had driven in that city we had had to make our way slowly through the tens of thousands of slow-moving bicycles. (Once, we travelled slowly alongside a bicycle driven by a particularly beautiful girl. "Tell her she's beautiful," Danny said, so I lowered the window and said to her, "Ni hen piao liang!" She smiled, and in perfect English said, "I am happy to meet you." Two minutes later she took a right turn and we lost her forever).

On the site where Providence College used to be, preparations are being made for the construction of an immense condominium with a major bank on the ground floor. Providence College has moved out of the city to a site near Taichung Harbor, and it's now Providence University. Lois and I, along with several nuns, some other teachers, and hundreds of our nubile Chinese students, attended the ground-breaking ceremony for the new University campus in 1984. Danny and I drove out to the new campus in his Corvette and drove (careened) around its winding streets. It was Teachers' Day (the birthday of Confucius, patron "saint" of Teachers) a National Holiday, so the university was closed and there were very few people around, none of whom I knew. My students of five to seven years ago are all scattered like the seeds of a ripe dandelion in a typhoon, all living successful and rewarding lives, I trust.

I'll be writing more about this once-in-a-lifetime adventure, including descriptions of a couple of visits to an incredibly filthy hospital, some close contact with the Police, and so forth, but that will come later.

It was noon when Hawaiian Airlines got me to Hilo and Terry picked me up. By the clock, seven hours had passed since that early-morning wake-up call in Taipei. My sleepy brain was unable to calculate how many hours had actually gone by (somewhere around 23, I reckon). Time flies like a speeding arrow; fruit flies like a Taiwanese orange.

Stand by for more travelogue episodes and events. Perhaps, if I haven't lost you already, I can tell you more about China than you ever wanted to know. The more it changes, the more it remains the same China!!

=====> If, during the reading of this, you sometimes felt confused as to time, date, location, or what was really going on, then you have succeeded in capturing what I felt and what I have tried to convey. <======

End note: Five years later, when I was deep into the planning stage for the first of several trips to Mainland America, I had decided I would fly to Reno, borrow a car from Ralph, and drive east. I was marking my map with conveniently spaced stopover sites ====> I could stop overnight with friends in Salt Lake City, spend a few days in Fort Collins, then go on to Lawrence, Kansas, Miami, Oklahoma, Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, and on to Lexington, Kentucky. I was in the process of contacting good friends in those locations with this message, "I'll be in your neighborhood on such and such a date, give or take a day or two, and I can visit with you when I'm eastbound, westbound, both or neither -- your call." With perfect timing I then received a note from Frederic Alegre: "Remember, Jerry, you're always welcome at our home in Paris!" Later, maybe!

--0--

Here are the footnotes that got lost in the shuffle .........

1. TEA. On the Xiamen Airlines airplane from Hong Kong to FuZhou (and all other Mainland airplanes) the flight attendants served tea. Whenever Danny and I arrived back at the condo, there was (thanks to his cousin next door) a boiling hot pot of tea waiting for us. Every one of his customers we visited served us tea. We had an automobile accident, and while we waited for the police to come, one of the many spectators went into his nearby house and came out with a teapot and cups, and served us tea. We walked two miles in the rain to find a telephone to report the accident, and the owner of the telephone served us tea. Later, while Danny negotiated with the people at the Police Station, the cops served us tea. At various times and places we drank Oo-Long Tea, Black Tea, Green Tea, and (my favorite) Jasmine Tea, most of it served in tiny cups. One morning in HangZhou we got into a conversation with a couple of girls who took us to a village in the nearby mountains. At their house, in the midst of enormous terraced fields of tea bushes, they served us tea and conversation for a couple of hours and we watched the people out there picking the tender leaves. This time our tea was in large water glasses in which a handful of tea leaves is placed, then filled with boiling water. I had a little trouble holding the hot glass and straining the leaves through my teeth. Their purpose was to sell tea, and Danny bought a dirt-cheap kilo from them to take back to Taiwan. Anyone who says, I wouldnt do that for all the tea in China just doesnt understand how much tea there is in China. The first Chinese sentence I ever learned was Thank you for your tea. On this trip I got a lot of practice at repeating that sentence.

2. AIRLINE FOOD. The list of ingredients on one package says, DINGDANGyERONGSU CAI yONG yOU ZI yUAN LIAO KAO ZI ER CHENG, SONG CUI KE KOU WEI DAO SI AN MAI, SHAN SHU ZHI JI, XIAN TAN XIAO ZHUO HUO XI AO HAI LING SHI JIU SHI yONG. ZHONG LIANG: 25 G. Expiry date: Two years. Would YOU have eaten it??

3. SMOKING. Its getting harder and harder to find places where smoking is permitted in airports. The huge room whre I waited three hours for my flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong was decorated with NO SMOKING signs, yet it smelled like the bottom of a well-used ashtray, yet I saw no one smoking nor any place where the filthy habit was permitted. On Mainland Chinese airplanes I saw several men smoke in spite of the NO SMOKING signs that were always lit. young (Chinese) women, despite the authority vested in them by their Flight Attendants uniforms, dared not tell older (Chinese) men what to do or not to do. I usually did without, but where smoking was permitted (and when I had cigarettes) I smoked; in countries where I felt linguistically deprived, I resorted to doing simple things that I was sure of.

4. SPELLING. As Dan Quayle allegedly pointed out to a Chinese diplomat, they might beat us at math, but their spelling is terrible. While we drank tea in the main office at Adidas, and Danny talked business with the Head of Purchasing, I noticed the white ceramic ashtrays that were provided. Each of them bore the word ADIDAS, in blue letters, permanently a part of the ashtrays ceramic glaze. But it was spelled ADIADS. It pays to adidadvertise! When your own language has no alphabet, the indiscriminate, random juggling of the elements of another peoples writing system has little significance.

5. PEDICAB. The modern version of the now defunct riksha. A bicycle-sized tricycle with seats for two passengers inside a fabric covered cab. Each pedicab driver expresses his individuality in the way his vehicles cab is covered, upholstered, and decorated. Almost all of the pedicab drivers wear conical peasant hats. All that I saw seemed to enjoy their work immensely. The one with the most guts has the right of way.

6. DUMPLINGS. From my experience in Taiwan I was familiar with dumplings, and they are supposed to be especially good in Beijing. To make them, you place a tablespoon of chopped pork mixed with chopped veggies and spices inside a circle of noodle dough, seal the edges, and boil it. Then you dip the slippery dumpling in a mixture of soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil and eat it, following it quickly with another.

--- end of footnotes ----

LAVA !


Now it's nearly noon on Sunday, December 7, 1986. we are about to leave our house in Kehena to view the lava, and the sun is still promising to be out, so maybe we'll get some pictures. If the sun gets hidden among the scattered clouds, we'll try to snap some word pictures, to be developed later on the screen of my word processor.

In Kehena there are residences only. The nearest store is Ching's, in Kaimu
, three miles down the coast road.

Before coming to live on this island a year ago I used to study maps, imagining how each village must look. I tried to translate symbolic map language into the reality of stores, homes, and streets. But the map is not the territory. Those attempts were mostly unsuccessful. They were based on my notion of how a village should look.

The only visible building at Kaimu, for example, is a 20' X 30' concrete-block building that houses a small store and an outdoor self-service snackbar. It's parking lot is large enough to accommodate the tour buses that regularly stop with their loads of tourists. Tall coconut trees across the road at the black-sand beach are kept stripped of their fruits by employees of Hawaii County to protect those tourists from falling coconuts. Our usual errands -- shopping, bank or post office business -- swing us to the right fork of the highway junction at Kaimu. Today we go straight ahead.

At Kaimu we see a pedestrian. A wild looking bearded barefoot young man wearing nothing but a lavalava, his blond hair in long dredlocks, trudges northward along the Kalapana-Kapoho Highway. We used to see him on the local roads a lot, carrying his possessions in a weathered backpack. Now he has acquired a skateboard. With its blanket-wrapped load the skateboard looks top heavy as its owner pulls it along with a piece of rope. he looks like a refugee, fleeing disaster. We drive on, toward Kalapana. We pass the smiling lady who daily displays the seashells she sells (from Seychelles? No, they're from Micronesia!). We pass Harry K. Brown Park and see people playing tennis. Across the highway the surfers ride the waves.

Passing slowly through Kalapana Village we see a few athletic members of the Puna Canoe Club doing calisthenics near the large A-frame shelter that houses their seagoing outrigger canoes. my son Terry paddled with the Puna Canoe Club last year, but this year his studies at the University keep him too busy for that. A cluster of people stand outside the brown frame Mauna Kea Kalapana Congregational Church, on our right, on this Sunday morning, and another cluster stands in front of its Catholic counterpart, the "Painted Church," on our left. Those two churches, the canoe shelter, Walter Yamaguchi's Store, and perhaps a dozen residences comprise Kalapana Village. A half mile onward we pass Kalapana Gardens residential subdivision, location of about 150 homes. Clouds of white smoke fill the sky ahead of us. It's awesome.

We drive along Chain of Craters Highway, which leads into Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but only as far as the roadblock. We park on the highway's shoulder. Joining the flock of spectators we walk a half mile to where the lava crossed the road on the night of Thanksgiving Day. Along the way we look at the four-foot-thick ancient 'a'a lava flow that roadbuilding machinery cut a few years ago when this highway was first built. Its surface is rough and clinkery, unlike the pahoehoe lava in the current flow. The difference, Terry says, is in the gas content. He's taking a course in Geology of the Hawaiian Islands, which is essentially a "hands-on" study of local volcanoes.

Since last July, Kilauea has been spewing hot gasses from the Pu'u O'o vent, which fountained every 28 days for about three years. For the past five months the nearly gas-free pahoehoe lava has been flowing from a fissure farther down the East Rift Zone -- between us and Pu'u O'o, filling a lava lake that is now overflowing or feeding old lava tubes. Where the flow will go is anybody's guess. Much volcanic activity is unpredictable.

As we walk past an official looking van Terry points out an enthusiastic young man working with some arcane equipment. "That's Dr. Hazlett, Resident Volcanologist and Head of the Geology Department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He's a professional geologist," Terry says, and we have already walked too far to go back. We'll catch him later, on the return trip. "I'd like to talk to him on the way back," I say, "in case I should decide to write something about this."

The new lava looks like rock. Solid rock. It looks as old as any of the rock here on the Big Island. "The Island of Hawaii is 100% lava," Terry says. It has been a-building, flow on flow, for three quarters of a million years. Living here, we see lava everywhere we look, in various stages of erosion. This lava looks like any other, but the air above it dances with heat waves. Hot gases spew from holes here and there. Coconuts dangle from palm trees that are still standing but surrounded by new lava rock. The coconuts look roasted; the leaves are cooked.

Clichs come to mind. "As hard as rock.' "As hot as fire."

Filling the roadside ditch, the flowing lava had nudged its way parallel to the road for several yards before finding a low place and flooding over the pavement. It had slopped into the ditch on the other side before continuing its determined march to the sea. Its surface looks like thick congealed tar that has flowed out in layers, or like viscous but runny, solidifying fudge. It's hard. As hard as rock. And it's hot. A withered coconut tree drops a frond onto the rock surface that newly surrounds its base. The frond disappears in a whisp of smoke. Two hundred yards upstream we see an island of vegetation. A tree on the shore of that island flares bright and is gone. A frustrated photographer, his camera finally aimed and focused, yells, "Come on! Flare again!" It doesn't. Towers of smoke rise from smoldering vegetal around that tiny island's perimeter. The scene resembles a painting; the stuff around the island appears to have the soft, smooth, wavy surface of water, but in fat it has the solid rigidity of congealed, solidified pahoehoe lava. Spectators talk in subdued tones. One hears English, Japanese, Spanish. "El agua abraza la lava ardiente, besndola, lamindola. Lavndola. La lava ... ... ... "

Someone says it will be two years before it's cool enough to build a new road. Someone else says it will be two weeks. Someone who speaks with authority says, "the crust that forms on top insulates the molten lava, which continues to flow inside its lava tube, while the tube itself maintains its own near 2000-degree fahrenheit temperature and its solid structure, except, of course, when it's stagnant."

We stare at the lava. The asphalt paving is intact to the point where it enters the rock. The paint of its white centerline is not even scorched. There is a sense of suddenness about the scene, as if we are seeing a highway that suddenly plunged into the petrified landscape. Off the roadway on the uphill side to our right someone has tossed a plastic bag into the bowl-shaped fossil of a basketball-size bubble in the surface of the fresh lava. Liter? Already? The bag is beginning to melt and smolder.

At the edge of the flow the lava looks knee deep. A few yards beyond, where the highway used to dip, it must be more than ten feet deep. The flow is more than a half mile wide. The telephone cable, following the dip of the road, leaves its perch on this pole here beside us and plunges into the side of the congealed lava flow, as if it were supposed to do that. As if it were an element in a permanent sculpture -- a monument to the premise that man is no match for the forces of Nature. It's eerie. I try for a picture of that "sculpture" but the light is not quite right. I'll get one later. It looks so permanent.

We arrive at the wide yellow tape that says "Police Line. Do Not Cross." We suppress a sudden desire to kneel down; to reach out beneath the tape and touch the rounded loaf-like edge of the lava. To make contact with this awesome force. We compare and contrast the forces of man's laws versus the Laws of Nature. We are close enough to reach out and touch that outpouring from the Goddess Pele, but touching it is out of the question. It's hot as fire. And to go beyond the tape would be to violate the law.

Off to our left is the Roberts family's home, beautifully landscaped with lush tropical ornamentals, fruit trees, and flowers. A moving van is parked in the driveway, just in case. But the house, we can plainly see, is safe. The lava flow has passed it by.

Most of the hundred-odd spectators stand around as we do, looking appropriately awestricken. Some are passengers from the Tour Bus we saw parked at the roadblock. Some we recognize; they are our neighbors. Their homes, mostly in Kalapana Gardens, are in dire peril. Some of the tourists take pictures of each other, showing how the highway plunges into the congealed, fudge-like stone wall. "Smile!" Or showing in the background of their picture the single piece of corrugated sheet metal roofing that is the solitary remnant of Sam Ka'awaloa's beautiful house that was among those that got incinerated on the night of Thanksgiving Day. "Smile!" shouts the tourist to his friend, "You're looking too serious!"

Seeing people we know who live in Kalapana Gardens we stand beside them and silently take another careful, slow, sweeping, probing look at the lava finger upslope from us. For the hundredth time we study the topography. We see the black rivers of now cool lava that flowed in 1977 and 1984, both of which stopped before reaching the sea. We can see no way that Kalapana Gardens will escape being inundated and incinerated if the present rate of flow continues. A cloud of white smoke rises from the probing, nudging, pushing, shoving, flowing end of that threatening fiery finger.

"What do you think?" we ask Bess Davids, a friend whose house is in Kalapana Gardens.

"Mostly I just don't think about it,' she says, looking serious. Then, "If it keeps on coming I'll pack some things up in a few days, I guess. But mostly I just don't think about it." She gazes up at the rising clouds of smoke. A puff of black smoke rises from an exploding tree. Bess looks uneasy. Impending doom is heavy in the atmosphere.

Someone says, "Maybe it will stop." Everyone stares at the relentless approaching flow front. A man says, "I thought it would stop when it hit the ocean. Well it hit the ocean last week, but it sure ain't stopped yet."

"Wow! Look at those flames!" A large mango tree at the flow front has exploded. The photographer, who had been looking the other way again, shouts, "Come on! Flare again!"

We walk through the crowd and back along the highway. Dr. Hazlett, the geologist, is not at the van. His helper says he's "gone into the bush." The helper is too busy to answer questions. "Win some, lose some," the writer sighs, muttering something inaudible about a bird in the hand.

Driving away from that area of molten magma Terry opens the Audi's sun roof and turns its sound system on. We listen to he "solid rock" of the radio station in Hilo. "The last thing you want during this Christmas season," the announcer declares, "is trouble with your VCR." Well, maybe one of the last things !

"I'd like to go into the bush," says Terry, who wants to be a geologist, "but I'd prefer to do it legally." He and Christa, his girlfriend and classmate, hiked illegally along the surf-hugging cliff edge on Thanksgiving night. It was illegal only because of the current crisis. Aside from the police officers at the roadblock, whom they avoided, they saw only one other person. A female geologist. "She," Christa said, "did not go with the flow. She was going in the opposite direction. We told her in passing that we are geology students."

Shortly after midnight Terry and Christa arrived at the very tidepool where the lava entered the ocean, at the very moment of that event. There were no other spectators. Next day the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported, "At 5:12 a.m. the lava had not yet entered the ocean." You and I know different, don't we !

Parked near our car at the roadblock we see a fire-red Pontiac Fiero that looks brand new. A slender, brown-skinned middleaged man stands behind its open door, his arms draped over the car door, clutching it to him. He grins a lot. Individuals and small groups stop to chat with him. Locals recognize Sam Ka'awaloa and remember that he won the Fiero in a supermarket's promotional raffle last summer. We remember that Sam's was one of the first houses to be cremated by this lava flow. "Win some, lose some," Sam says. "My house had grass all around it. Now I don't have to mow the grass no more." We hear that some Hawaiians who live in the path of the flow make a point of cleaning their houses before abandoning them, out of respect for Madame Pele. They do the windows, too. Sam Ka'awaloa spends a lot of time watching the lava nowadays. "I got nothing else to do. Nowhere else to go," he says. "I hope the next flow will follow this one, so my neighbors' homes will be safe."

Last Wednesday afternoon (3 December) our friend Dave Ford, the real estate broker, phoned to invite me to see the volcano from the air. He was taking a couple of friends up, and I could occupy the one remaining seat in his Cessna Cardinal. Being not only a noble martyr but a busy writer as well, I chose to stay home, and sent Terry on the flying trip in my place. Later Terry said it's easy to see why Dave has been a little subdued and depressed lately. Two thirds of the 34 acres he owns -- a strip between the highway and the sea -- have been covered by the lava flow. Four hundred ninety thousand dollars worth of real estate have been rendered worthless. "That was my nest egg," Dave told us. The stench of burning nest eggs is horrible.

From the air, Terry said, they could see how the flow front at the edge of the sea had broadened since he last saw it a week before. It has created some fifty acres of new land. His pictures show a bird's-eye view o recreational boats near the edge of the new laupahoehoe -- the leaf-like plateau of new solid rock. divers form the boats observe the molten lava's submarine contact with the water. Some surfers have talked of the great photo opportunity: A surfer riding a good wave in with the boiling flowing lava entering the sea in the foreground.

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