Ladies and Gentlemen,  I am pleased and proud to announce the birth of a new blog. My last (and first) blog began in the months before the youngest child departed for college on the Mainland and it was titled, appropriately, "emptynest".  Seven years hence,  that daughter is now 25, and this writer has been only sporadically blogging, perhaps due to the weight of history buried deep in those e-pages. Or because she has become a Facebook addict.

So, a new blog is here, but what to name this baby? Yesterday, she was quietly christened Moana Marie Crab. Perhaps you are thinking: "That's really weird...why?".  First, I need a pseudonym.  From the elder blog, I learned that strange strangers do visit, though mostly to promote their sometimes bizarre sites. And, since I may write about family. public figures or folks I meet at Starbucks, it is best to thinly disguise identities and protect the author from accusations of slander (mainly by the kids).

Second, why this name?  Many years ago, when I worked on the Wai'anae coast, cultural etiquette dictated beginning meetings with introductions in which each person described the story of his or her name. This was in a community where many people had long Hawaiian names with deep double meanings given to them by beloved elder family members who received that special name in a dream before or after the birth of the child.  I knew I was named after my godmother, a woman of enormous intellect, courage and humor who protested against the atomic bomb in the 50's and for civil rights in the 60's, but I had never been told that my name had a meaning.  There was no internet yet  (can you imagine?), but I did manage to learn that in Greek, one of my names is Δωρις - say it with me now: Δωρις.  In Greek mythology she was a sea nymph, one of the many children or "Oceanids" of Oceanus and Tethys.  As a result, I was informally granted a Hawaiian name, Moana, which means ocean or sea.

When I was a child, my family spent many happy summers in creaky old beach houses between the dunes and wide sandy coastline of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Soaking up sun in his beach chair with eyes closed, my dad would tell us stories of the adventurous and brave Marie Crab family. Mysteriously, the surname of this family of crabs was the same as my middle name; and the very first story featured a crab named Moana (aka Δωρις) Marie Crab.  As other daughters joined the family and friends joined us at the beach cottage, their names were woven into the tales my father told: Moana Marie Crab fought off sharks and fooled fishermen with the help of Margery Marie Crab, Barbara Marie Crab, Sonny Marie Crab, and an evolving cast of crustaceans over the years.

So, as I mediated upon a name for this blog, these pieces of the past arose and assembled themselves like a puzzle - or a prism through which I might gaze at the stars of the future.

Join me for the next courageous literary adventures of Moana Marie Crab!