Weekly Highlights & Lowlights

When I moaned about the ceaseless rain in a recent posting, little did I know that things could only get worse. By mid last week, the heavenly floodgates opened up in earnest, dropping a reported 4-5 inches of rain in a 12 hour period. This, of course, overwhelmed roads & nearby streams. Two small bridges within spitting distance of my home were overtaken by the deluge, washing away parts of the retaining walls of each and closing several roads in the area. A 12" water line servicing this area was also a casualty and problems with silt & debris continue to cause problems by jamming up several of the shut-off valves on various faucets around the house which now leak steadily. The water heater has also suffered damage and had to be replaced, the new one already having problems, less than 48 hours after installation, with debris wreaking havok with the pressure-overflow valve and waking me at 2:30 am this morning with a hissing deluge of another sort.

Can't complain too much overall... we got off easy, with only some minor flooding to the yard & driveway and the appearance of a hairline crack now running down the middle of the concrete slab of the new screened conference room. Neighbors just around the corner from here suffered much worse, requiring rescue crews to assist them in evacuation as their small cottage, used as a vacation rental, was swept away by the floods & leaving no evidence that it was ever there in the first place except for broken water and septic lines sticking up thru the mud. Parts of the cottage are now turning up on beaches more than a mile down the coast.

During the peak of the downpour, the road fronting my home & studio turned into a Class 5 whitewater kayak course, forcing more than one motorist to abandon any hope arriving at their destination while another motorist and friend from a neighborhood nearby pulled into my driveway and turned up at the door, soaked to the bone and seeking shelter from the storm. Add a little thunder & lightning, a dusting of snow on Maui's volcanic mountain and a solid 14" powder base to the Big Island's volcanos and we had what can easily be called a severe winter storm.

Once the rains had subsided, we loaded up the car and headed to the jungles of the remote east side of the island to scout locations for a pending fashion shoot and to take in the scenery, spending the night as house-sitters for friends living in the area. Evidence of the heavy rains a few days before was manifested by dramatic, swollen streams and raging waterfalls everywhere along the road as we crawled along the road to Hana.

Returning to the spot where nuptials were exchanged almost 30 years ago was a particular highlight of the trip.

While the heavy weather dominated the news of the week, there was also some good news waiting when I returned from Hana... word came that two photographs were accepted to the Hui Noeau Visual Arts Center's juried B&W photography exhibition, themed "The New Black". The show opens on March 9th and runs into April.

New work is also being prepared for the annual juried exhibition Art Maui. Receiving day is April 4th. This year, I have chosen three images to submit that I am particularly fond of yet suspect the juror my be less enthralled. To learn more about this year's juror, yesterday I attended a presentation given by said juror and left well before the end, underwhelmed and frustrated that the 90 minutes that I sat enduring his nonsense were 90 minutes that that could have been spent far more productively.