What’s in Mrs. Hale’s Receipts for the Million 1857?

To extract grease from clothes scrape off all the grease that you can with a knife; then lay over the spot a thick brown paper and press it with a warm iron.

The only grease I’ve had to contend with the last twenty four hours was from my plate lunch. Fortunately, it dripped on my Honolulu Weekly, not my writing.  Part of the reason I’m here is to relax with family, research and write. I walked all over Waikiki today, getting my bearings for the Hawaii Writer’s Conference that’s coming and wandered through the historic Royal Hawaiian Hotel. You can sometimes get jaded about Waikiki and what it is, but it is also a place worth honoring for its past and what it means historically to the people of Hawaii.  I get it.

It’s also incredibly beautiful with its white sands, brilliant turquoise water and Diamond Head.  Just ignore the masses out on the streets and the big hotels.  You’re a writer. You can edit them out.

Eventually, I found the cafe I discovered four years ago on my last visit and plunked my writing folder down at the window.  An iced coffee and biscotti and I was ready to sharpen my pencil and revise.  What a life!  I hope to come back to this place often in the next week.

Tomorrow I get the grand tour of Washington Place, the governor’s residence today, but once that of Queen Liliuokulani.  After that, a tour of Iolani Palace, the home of Hawaiian kings and queens and the Mission Houses. All this is history not often encountered by the average tourist and its a shame.  It’s Hawaii’s story and its 200 plus years of contact with the European world. I’m writing about it in my novel Mist-shi-mus that I’m currently revising and fact checking. Hawaii meets the Pacific NW.

So I’m researching, meeting new friends in the museum world and revising. I hope to get back to the window view soon.  Aloha nui loa.