PEPPER: See You In Heaven

Time magazine had three articles on Donald Trump's blow-out win in Iowa last night:

• Trump Dominates in Iowa.
• How Trump Took Control of the GOP Primary.
• In Iowa, Ron DeSantis Takes His Loss as a Win.
• Also, Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchison dropped out, leaving three Republican candidates.

You might wonder why DeSantis and Haley are continuing to run.

• They mostly harbor hopes that Trump will be prevented from running for president this year.  The Supreme Court could still make their dreams come true.  Clearly, court cases won't be any factor.  And Trump is in a New York court today.

• 
  Odds are fair that Haley could beat Trump in New Hampshire, with DiSantis a distant third.
• However, the Donald will embarrass Nikki in her home state of South Carolina, and the end result will be similar to Iowa, with DeSantis this time in third place.  That will occur on February 27.

• 
  So if Trump remains eligible to run, he will be officially nominated in mid-July.
• One reason will be states like California, where he today has 70% support and the other two around 10% each.  In this state, if you get more than half the votes, you get all the delegates, which for California is 149.  This will occur on March 5, Super Tuesday, when a whole bunch of states will have their Republican primaries.  Trump won only 20 delegates in Iowa.

• 
  Chances are high that at some point, and probably soon after February 27, both Haley and DeSantis will also quit, for they will lose financial support.
• So is Joe Biden in trouble?  Nah, this is exactly what Democrats want.  Trump is their best hope for a landslide on November 5, 2024.

80% of the USA faces sub-zero temperatures today.  Honolulu?  Might rain a bit today, but the low was 69F, might go up to 79F, with the rest of the week sunny and a temperature range of 69F to 80F.

Yesterday I mentioned our dog Pepper.  On this nostalgic Tuesday, I would like to feature him, for he was the joy of our life who died at a very young age.  It was in 1963 that my wife Pearl adopted him at the age of six weeks.  I was trying to avoid the draft and was in basic training at Schofield Barracks for six months, after which I had to serve for six years in the Army Reserves.  When my active duty ended, C. Brewer sent me to work as a sugar factory trainee of Kilauea Sugar Company on Kauai.  Turned out that this one year on that island was perhaps the most memorable of my life, and Pepper was a good reason why.

For one, I learned that Kilauea was the source of my family roots in Hawaii.  My grandfather had first come in 1900 from somewhere in the USA on his way back to Japan, but stopped to get married and build the first hydroelectric facility in Hawaii.

We lived in a trainee cottage, and our backyard was where the movie South Pacific was filmed in 1958.  Here is a photo of Pepper with Pearl.

Note that waterfall.  This is where Juanita Hall sang Happy Talk to France Nuyen and John Kerr.

What made it more memorable is that Pearl looks like France.

But back to Pepper, he was mostly German Shepard and grew to be 140 pounds.

I still remember when Pepper and I went fishing.

The first time we went reef fishing, I caught a Hinalea, which, for reasons I did not know then, threw them back.  Turns out the reason is many are infected with ciguatera.  So I gave the fish to Pepper.  He walked back to the beach (about 25 yards away), dug a hole, placed the fish in, and covered it with sand.  Must have been instinctive.

Further:

The three of us regularly drove to a beach and walked around.  Here we are at Hanalei Beach, the first scene in South Pacific, and you can see the pier.

I saw a rather large piece of wood on the beach and inadvertently tossed it into the sea.  I too late realized that Pepper was going to retrieve it.  A large wave came, pulled him under and he disappeared for what seemed like a full minute.  Then the middle photo showed that a rip-tide had sent him further out.  The third photo is Pepper with what he retrieved.

As we were traveling a lot, he was just too big for neighbors to care for him and there were no services in Kilauea for this, so we gave him away.   One final incident:

I worked in the sugar mill, and to get to my office, you had to walk into the middle of the factory, then way up some rickety steps.  One day, I returned from lunch, and he was waiting for me next to my desk.  How he got there is another one of those mysteries.  I dropped him off to his new owner.  A few weeks later we learned that he ate something poisonous, and died.  He was the last pet we owned.  The grief was the most both of us felt, ever.  I still think about it.

That was sixty years ago, and the grief part is still etched in my mind today.  My wife passed away around 15 years ago, and when I returned from the hospital I wrote something for the Huffington Post called GRATITUDE...NOT  GRIEF.  Maybe I'll see both in Heaven, if there is such a place.  74% of Americans believe.

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