Sunlight Shining Through Cloud

The bad news is that Iz Ka is dead.  The good news is that he was born into my own musical experience just today.  How that happened contains an element of embarrassment, but I don’t care.

The slightest strains of a male voice with ukulele accompaniment came through the waiting room speakers this morning.  I’d had brushes with this tune before, but never fully heard it.  The young girl opposite me was mouthing the words.

“Excuse me,” I said.  “What is this song?”

“I don’t know.  This guy’s been dead forever, but other singers have done this song, too.  Anyways, I like it a lot.”

The search began when I finally got home.  It didn’t take long to discover that the artist was Israel “Iz” Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole.  And the song that has been teasing me for so many years was his version of the iconic Over The Rainbow.

When he died in 1997 at the age of 38, Iz Ka’s coffin lay in state at the capitol building in Honolulu; only the third person to be thusly honored and the only non-politician.  Ten thousand people attended his funeral.  Thousands gathered for the scattering of his ashes into the Pacific.  Just last year, NPR named Iz one of the 50 greatest voices.  How could I have missed this?

Iz Ka’s 1993 Rainbow has been used in movies, TV shows and commercials.  He remains, today, a legend of Hawaiian music and culture eclipsing even the immortal Don Ho.

A treasure has been added to my life, and the more I luxuriate in it, the more it rewards me.  Iz Ka’s minimalist Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World medley can be heard on YouTube, as can many of his original songs.

If new things ever cease to thrill me, even old new things, please, shoot me.

We think of ourselves as city people.  I grew up in the Big Apple (New York), and Lisa grew up in the Little Apple (“Mini-apolis”, as the locals are fond of calling it).  We both like the energy that cities give to life there, and enjoy the cornucopia of opportunities available there.

"Sure. I'll walk it with ya."

The wonder of nature never escapes our attention, though.  We are especially fond of our visits to Lou Ann & Gerald “up nort” of Brainerd where you have to drive a twisty, dirt road for ¾ of a mile before reaching their hand-built log home nestled amidst a huge forest.  Lou and Gerald are surrounded by nature, and their home has been carefully built to complement it.  Birds and deer and even bear feed from the rough-hewn trough set comfortably away from the front of the house where the enjoyment of nature can be appreciated by both man and animal.

Lisa and I have always tried to incorporate nature into our own citified existence.  We’ve deployed feeders and other enticements to bring it near.  Our first effort was a messy disaster.  The wrong feeder attracts the wrong crowd, don’t ya know.  But we have learned, and we’re now making better choices with both the hardware and the feed.

On the day we first occupied the Minneapolis high-rise, we were mystified by the grey blur zipping along the railing of the deck.  This railing was both metal and about seventy feet from the ground.  Two or three spottings later, we speculated that we had a flying squirrel which was eventually dubbed “Rocky.”  Naturally.

"So I can't fly. But I'm cute."

It turned out that our Rocky was an ordinary female grey squirrel.  She had a seemingly extraordinary ability, though, to leap tall buildings at a single bound, or to climb the brick facing of the building’s exterior walls.  The latter turned out to be the case.  She climbed up the wall, and she slid down the six-inch wide poll connecting the decks — head first — all the way down to terra firma.  We never ceased to be amazed, and figured that any animal who made that kind of effort deserved to be rewarded with both snacks and refreshments.  Thus, our deck became the province of nature year ’round.

Other squirrels eventually found Rocky’s secret feeding spot, but she chased them off in most dramatic fashion.  Remember, this was a high-wire act without a net.  Rocky became so familiar with us that eating from our hands became a possibility, not that we encouraged it.  A wild animal is weakened if domesticated.

We added a feeder for our avian friends, and the food for them — and the nature-communing for us — was never ending.  Ironically, we did become the hitching post for a real flying squirrel who’d silently arrive in the dark of night, wrap itself around the feeder and load up for another busy day of waiting for another busy day.

From the living room window

We’ve been in North Carolina for eighteen months now.  Our humble abode was carefully selected based on several criteria, not the least of which was our closeness to nature.

"Hey, I belong here."

All manner of wildlife enjoy our presence here.  The state bird — the cardinal — is as beautiful as it is plentiful.  We have bluejays, pileated woodpeckers, mockingbirds, all kinds of colorful finches and other birds yet to be identified.  We have ground-feeders, too, including mourning doves, blackbirds and crows.

There are squirrels, of course, and we’ve discovered a midnight marauder — a raccoon — stretching high up from the ground to empty the feeder.

And we have chipmunks.  One of ours has a distinctly reddish-brown hind end, so we call it “Rusty Butt.”

"Me, too. I belong here, too. Yeah. Keep feeding me."

Chipmunks are hyperkinetic, and ours are no exception.  Rusty Butt, however, is particularly enterprising.  He’s figured out how to jump up to the feeder displacing however many birds there might be currently on it and without regard to their size.  Rusty Butt only knows that his occupancy of the feeder means cheeks full of food.  He then transfers the load to a secret hiding place and returns to scatter the birds yet again.

The moral of this story can only be that us humans are easily entertained.  Either that, or the animals have us humans well-trained.