The Bunker: First Year/Month in Review

All credit to the artist(s) 🎨

With 2024 drawing to a close, only 7 more hours left here in Hawaii, I thought that I would review the first year, first month actually of The Bunker project. Only a couple of new murals have been added since I started this project at the beginning of December, so most of this first batch of paintings are Bunker murals that I just happened to have captured over recent years.

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A couple of rainbows from this morning 🌈

A vibrant rainbow arcs over a lush green landscape with cloudy skies and sun shining, with the ocean in the distance.

A lush green lawn stretches beneath a cloudy sky featuring a faint rainbow, with trees and shrubs lining the horizon, and the ocean in the right distance.

An Evening at Polipoli

Yesterday evening a group of us went up to Polipoli Spring State Recreation Area for sunset and a picnic. The views were spectacular, looking across the Valley Isle to the West Maui Mountains, with Lana’i in the distance.

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πŸ€” It’s Monday morning but feels like Sunday to me. I think because it is that week. The stretch from Christmas to New Year always feels like the longest week of the year to me, and I get completely disoriented. I can’t decide whether I just want it to be over, or to simply wallow in the holiday feel of it all?

This morning’s rainbow 🌈

A lush green field with various vegetation stretches beneath a vibrant rainbow and cloudy sky. In the distance is the ocean.

Finished reading: This is Amiko, Do You Copy? by Natsuko Imamura. This was a short read, but both difficult to read the story, and sad. πŸ“š

The Bunker: Friday 20th December, 2024

All credit to the artist(s) 🎨

This photograph is of the ocean facing side of the bunker. If anything happens here related to art, it is usually random graffiti. However, I took this photo because of the cow and her calf sitting in the shade of the building.

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Reflections on Christmas

I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas on Christmas Eve afternoon, as I do each year. I say ”each year,” though it is a fairly new tradition for me, perhaps stretching back to a few years before the COVID outbreak. I find that this short animation touches the Christmas spirit on so many levels. Whatever your experience of Christmas, I think that you will find it within this annual tradition.

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The Bunker: Sunday 22nd December, 2024

All credit to the artist(s) 🎨

When I went back to the cliffs to see the waves the day after the last posting, someone had defaced or graffitied over the image from the day before. So I thought to include that update here, as well as a photo giving another perspective of the location of the bunker. Here you see people out watching the big swell that was breaking that day. In the distance are the lowlands of the West Maui Mountains, as well as the island of Moloka’i.

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I still can’t get use to this being a Christmas scene. It was a lovely couple of hours, watching the surfers, chatting with friends, dozing. And at times it feels… I’m not sure what the word is, wrong doesn’t convey the right meaning? Despite spending a good many years, decades, in the tropics, something in my cellular, read childhood, memory I think expects something else.

A sandy beach stretches toward a blue ocean with gentle waves under a clear sky.

I’m sitting at home on Christmas night, just the lights of the Christmas tree on, listening to A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.

The Bunker: Saturday 21st December, 2024

All credit to the artist(s) 🎨

Another double billing of the bunker. Aside from the front facing, main painting, some graffiti had also been added to the side, so I decided to share that as well.

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β˜” It’s raining outside. I didn’t see that coming. We have had such a long dry spell. Still it is welcome and I’m grateful for it.

I’m listening to A Child’s Christmas in Wales by and read by Dylan Thomas

A stylized illustration features a snowy village scene beneath a large tree, with text indicating Dylan Thomas reading: “A Child’s Christmas in Wales and five poems.

OK. One more (maybe πŸ˜‰) video of the big swell that has been going through the Hawaii islands. This one from yesterday afternoon.

One of my favourite Christmas songs is ”I Believe in Father Christmas” by the late Greg Lake.

Here is a version of the song sung by Lake and accompanied by among others, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. It is filmed at St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, in the City of London.

The Bunker: Monday 18th November, 2024

All credit to the artist(s) 🎨

I posted a photo of this smiley face on the bunker before I started The Bunker series, and so I decided to post two more angles of the building on that day.

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Waves, Whales and Celebrations

I was going to post this yesterday evening, but after starting to write on our return I was just too tired to finish it. So I’m completing it on the day after. I’ll leave the post in the tense fitting of my initial draft.

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A video from yesterday morning, stopping off again to see how the big swell was developing.

While Cleaning the house I’m listening to the late George Winston’s December

A snow-covered landscape with bare trees is featured on the album cover for “December” by George Winston, highlighting piano solos.