Black Clay Rants

I need taro-py

2010-03-29T14:32:00.000-07:00

i'm departing from my ongoing road tale for this post. this one really is a rant! last night there was a meeting where michael moore's video 'capitalism, a love story' was shown, with discussion to follow, on what i thought was meant to be an exercise in building the best-case scenario for a new nation. hawaii (the nation, not the state) has the opportunity to actually create something out-of-the-box and truly life-affirming and aina/kai/wai-friendly. i made the mistake of thinking that people want to go there. and in a sense, they do, but not right now. maybe later, when some of the pressures are off, or as soon as this other thing is done, or as soon as obama is able to do something useful and not corporate-driven, or as soon as... well, you get the picture. this was the hardest thing i've ever had to do, primarily i think because i made some assumptions up front (silly me) that everyone was fed up. but even though some will admit systems failure on the part of governments and corporations in terms of the rest of us, the truth is that the system hasn't failed for many others, esp. those in control of resources. so what i had hoped would have approximated poka's idea of discussion within the 'dream state', all i heard was how to fix the abysmal mess we're all in, rather than how to create something that might work better. everybody's got their two feet in two worlds. i admit i'm there, too. i have a job that i need to keep myself in a house and food on the table. the job isn't too bad. i get to do what i want, mostly. and some people are impacted positively by what i do. but the university, like all school systems inside the 'system', is failing to meet the needs of the future, of a world that hasn't yet owned up to how ongoing use of diminishing resources robs young people not even born yet of things they need to survive (read: clean air, water, healthy food, shelter, basic stuff). the university system helps us to be what the system needs us to be (read: just another brick in the wall).

back to the meeting: the film was good, interesting, and the wrong one to launch a discussion about 'what next'. might have been better to show something that impressed on people why fixing the system wouldn't work, why it would be impossible to fix a system that is not necessarily perceived as broken. because truth is, it actually does work very well. and that's why no one is excited about planning for survival 'after' system failure. it won't fail, even as the banks go bust and the unemployment rate is up to 50% and houses are empty while people live on the streets or in parks. the system is doing what it was designed to do. no systems failure unless you're on the receiving end and have nowhere to go. i feel like a crazy person thinking about all this and wondering why no one else thinks it's important enough to address now.

one other thing i learned from last night's meeting was that people inevitably go where it's comfortable to launch resistance. no one seems able to do two things at once--resist and plan. resistance always seems to take precedence, and the planning part goes down the tube. and it makes people feel like they're doing something, so they feel better. it was depressing for me to talk about the need to get the philosophical stuff down first, and build that thing we want (whatever it's called) on top of it, knowing that everybody was giving me looks like 'what?'. how come no one notices that the needs of the individual is something that underpins societies that are selfish? societies that steal, make war, cause harm to its own members? societies built on self-interest and short-sightedness? what about the needs of the group? what about respect and caring, sharing and responsibility? what about aloha and aloha aina? if we laid that down as foundation, and built on top of it, what would we get? certainly nothing like what we have now! so the rant is because we never got there. we never had the discussion. and we may never have the dicussion, especially if activist types, which most of us were, don't want to go there. there is a certain amount of comfort and status in being at the top of the activist movement inside the system that currently exists, the one i think is in system failure. we don't know how to step outside and take a good, hard look at who we are and what we are doing.

i think i should retire. this is turning out to be far more difficult than i had imagined. and it's lonely, too. and i'm too old.

Writing from memory, now

2010-03-29T02:17:00.000-07:00

couldn't write while we were on the road, but i get to catch up now that i'm home and all the photos have been uploaded to shutterfly. here's link below to pics from our arrival in phoenix until we took off for globe: http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/album.sfly?fid=e141a399683e2375&startIndex=0&sid=0QbtmTRu2bMmMq

we did the swapmart/flea-market trips, of course! and i ended up buying fried bread (which was ono), incense, and a couple of other small things. then we were off to globe, which was a long way off for me, but not too far for others who grew up in an area where 'far' meant really far. we passed lovely mountains, and all the tall stones looked like people to me, like they were sentinels guarding their sacred land from invaders (a bit too late, unfortunately).

also, i happened to look out the window of the hotel we stayed at in phoenix (aloft) and noticed their mass transit system. it was fabulous looking and very quiet. wish hawaii were as progressive and artsy as phoenix. even their highway walls have south-west type designs built into them; not ugly and cement-looking.

there's something about sitting in the back seat of a comfortable car while traveling 150 miles on smooth road that makes people sleepy. i include myself in that 'people' group. i kept dozing on and off, and finally woke up when we got to the first stop on the road with the turkey jerky sign. while maria and evern bought stuff, i went into the little trading post shop behind the jerky seller. tons of interesting stuff in there, but i didn't buy anything. i did look at signs, however. and took zillions of pics.

eventually we got to globe, stowed our gear at the quality inn, and ate dinner next door to the hotel. in the morning we drove over to the san carlos apache reservation to meet vern and her husband and to visit one of the families whose young daughter (12) was preparing for a 'dance', a kind of coming of age ceremony in which traditions are passed on from the older to the younger generation. they were way out on a piece of land that looked both beautiful and isolated, far from everything. the young lady dug post holes for setting up her wickiup and in the process uncovered a beautiful arrowhead (good luck!) and some other artifacts. her family had already constructed a kitchen and posts with a kind of wire fence for a wall around the compound. some of the male relatives were bringing in willow branches to weave in and out of the wires on the posts and when we left they had completed just a small portion. while we were there, a member of the tribal council came by to visit the family and to wish them good luck.

what does this have to do with anything? at 12 years old, this young girl has the benefit of being inside a system that promotes traditional practices. she'll be in a position to mentor some other young girl when she gets older. we don't have anything like it. that's very sad.

Aloha from Phoenix

2010-03-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

i can't believe i haven't posted anything for nearly a year. my bad! but in that time, a crapload of things have happened. so i welcome myself back, as well as any readers (with nothing better to do than read this rant) interested in looking at my self-reflections. aloha from phoenix. i'm on a road trip with two other women, evern and maria, and today is the first day of what might very well be a life-changing experience, a chance for each of us to recharge our waning spiritual essence individually and as a group (read "we're all burned out from too much work and not enough ancestral and universal connection").

in the last year life has changed drastically. my husband of 18 years went on home to his kupuna, na aumakua and na akua. guess he had had enough of driving me around and being dragged along to various and sundry protests and meetings. he didn't know how to say no to me, so of oourse he became as much of a regular fixture as me at some of these rather long and boring things, so that at some point he simply refused to come in the door and hung out outside talking to old friends on the phone. anyhow, this post is as much about him as it is about me.

james died at home, sometime between breakfast and lunch. i'm reminded constantly of what a sweet thing he was. a nice guy. a loving husband. a good friend. seldom grumpy. always busy. constantly engaged in self-reflection. so this is something of a tribute to him, as much as it is a journal of reflection for me, being on a road trip, and all. in many ways i brought him with me.

sometime later, after i get home, i'll post the eulogy i wrote for him, and that i read at his celebration of life at nuuanu valley park. he passed on sept. 9, the day after fall semester began. so that sorta bombed out my semester and the truth is i'm not sure what the heck i was doing for the next few months. but friends and colleagues, ever faithful to both me and james, took over my teaching duties. to this day i have no idea what they did in my classroom. students were lovely--caring and compassionate. understanding and forgiving of my forgetting sometimes what i was doing. lucky me. and sad me.

james' celebration of life was lovely. it was a potluck in the park, complete with music and kind words, chants and other craziness. it was also a protest of sorts of all the things in the world that were screwed up. and it wss also a celebration of the life of our queen. for that i mahalo all the diehard activists who can be counted on to do their thing. on that day in the park, they did their thing and james would have been proud. and from what i heard afterward, he really was.

one of the reasons for this road trip is that i couldn't, for the life of me, stop working as long as i was home and connected to my computer. so, sans computer, i hit the road (via hawaiian airlines) with friends, thanks to my angel hanai brother, and am now writing up a journal entry after a year's absence. so with a different kind of connection, seeing as how it's not my computer and i have to schedule time on it, i write merely to log in my own experiences for future reference.

i have a new camera, but failed to bring the connector for uploading pics, so these get to be done later. at some point i'll load up the thousands of pics i'm taking and posting the link for viewing to this blog.

Kahoolawe

2009-04-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

i meant to post some photos of the trip and of our excellent crew! it was interesting and intense living in extreme (for me) circumstances for 4 days, kinda like Lost, without being lost. good crew. good lessons about what works and what doesn't. i was particularly impressed by one of the kua there, kau`i, whose commitment to the PKO project and the need to heal not only the island, but the people as well, was...outstanding and apparent. those are good words, and applicable to her behavior and her feeling about trying to walk the path with the ancestors. what did i learn there? things are not always what they seem. trust your gut to tell you when things are not exactly in synch. hope for the best. ask the ancestors. i do. and i will.

Back from the (near) dead

2009-04-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since i was here last. and since then, a zillion things have happened. i took students to kahoolawe, for one. that was a life-changing event for many of them, and certainly for myself, as well. i learned things about how the pko trips are organized. i also learned that it's not always a good idea to offer constructive criticism (another way of making "recommendations", but phrased more positively). i learned, most of all, what it means to some to 'own' a piece of history and struggle. this was a message for me, personally. so now i'm thiking about what it means to me to be a person in struggle, trying to follow the example of those who came before me, like the queen, and poka, and soli, and dallas vogeler. being in struggle is not just about social justice, but also about how to live one's life, and how to stay in the good fight while still trying to pay rent, and eat, and deal with debilitating health issues, not to mention old age. being in struggle is having to put up with stupidity from those around you, even those who say they love and support you. sometimes that love and support only go as far as people are able to align with your philosphy or your values. i imagine that's what separates the spectators from the allies. those who keep their distance appreciate that you do what you do, but it really has nothing to do with them. they have nothing to add, will never participate, think it's all interesting, but are too busy to contribute to the cause. the others, people like me, for example, try to show up, schlep stuff around, pay for supplies out of their own pocket, stay up late at night sending email testimonies to legislators who act in their own self-interest, volunteer for everything, take flack from non-believers, hold signs that generate jeers and negative responses (but not yet thrown tomatoes!). it's hard work.

i am grateful for those who do anything at all to signal support, from the smallest word of kindness for our work in the cause of independence, to sharing photos of an event; from helping us set up a performance of ka lei maile alii -- the queen's women, to being willing to loan us a flag for back drop; from individual sign holders at a 'fake state' demo, to videographers who post our actions on youtube. it's a kakou thang. we can't do it alone.

this brings me back to kahoolawe and what i learned there. i learned i needed help. that's something i've not wanted to acknowledge for a long, long time. i needed help. and our little group of 10 helped each other out. but mostly they helped me. i was reminded that i'm a bit too old to be traipsing around in the bush doing extreme camping. i had so much help, i began turning into a lazy person. i didn't do the 8 hour hike on the day before we left. instead, i sent my hookupu with a student, not thinking really about what that would mean to my student. i did other things, easy things, like making pili bundles. and carrying rocks from the beach for the floor of the hale. i took my time. i acted like the old person i am. yikes! realization had set in that i was slowing down. and then a second realization that it was okay to slow down.

life as an activist is crazy. knowing the right thing to do, trying to keep one's spiritual life in order (he pono no), remembering that there is also family waiting out there in the wings for some attention, dodging the 'slings and arrows' of critics who know everything and hate you for not doing what they want you to do, being happy in the flow when the feeling of rightness, of doing the right thing, settles over the work. it's crazy, alright. but it's also happy-making hard work, when it pans out. and if it's done right, it pans out more times than not. kahoolawe was the biggest challenge for me personally than anything else i can remember. i made new friends and new family. i think i alienated some other folks, too. the place did not benefit from my presence as much as i had hoped it would. i didn't know what to do, but when i did know, i felt constricted--i couldn't do it without proper protocols, and i didn't know what those protocols were. but ultimately, it was probably the best experience of my life. i learned that kimo mithell and george helm hang out near the plaques in the stones, and they had much to say to the folks who passed by. i learned that women need to spend some time by themselves on an island that had become too masculine and male-dominated; and men, too, need to spend time alone to talk about whatever men talk about. the women had no problem articulating their own challenges. i learned that 'interdependency' was that thing that helped us through some rough situations, in the sea and on the land. and penultimately, i learned that everybody missed me and coming home was really, really good.

Really early Monday morning

2008-10-27T03:47:00.000-07:00

i just realized it's after midnight. still uploading 714 photos from the kauai civic club convention and from various site visits. it was a long week. james and i went up on sunday and returned late saturday night. our club performed the re-enactment on sunday, oct. 19 at the kauai hilton. we had a pretty good crowd--about 100 people, most of them from the community, as not many civic club members had arrived by sunday. keanu's presentation was longer and different. he talked a lot about how to fix the problem and stressed that what he offered was a legal, as opposed to political, resolution to the illegal overthrow and so-called annexation of hawaii to the united states. ho`ike (kauai public access tv) videotaped the event.

monday we did two things: met with and videotaped a dialogue with kaiulani edens huff, a radio commentator who hosts "songs of sovereignty" on KKCR radio on kauai. it was a fabulous discussion and she shared with us some of the issues surrounding the development at naue by brescia and how absolutely essential it was to protect the iwi. she and several others had camped next to the burials for several months, hoping to convince the owner not to build there, but to no avail. next to kaiulani's house, in the area way above kapaa high school, is a goat farm. couldn't resist hanging out with the goats for a bit, even though on the other side of the fence. i had my trusty camera, so pretty much tried to get into their faces. but they were having none of it. goats are cute except, i imagine, when they're trying to bite you.

after taking goat photos, we headed into town for lunch. i have to admit, we ate a lot. even though we had rented a house, it didn't have a stove, so we didn't eat at home much, except for some microwaved coffee and cold cereal in the mornings. still, eating in town was way cheaper than eating at the hotel. in the afternoon nani rogers took us to naue to visit the grave sites and to offer hookupu. long ride to hanalei area. naue was/is beautiful! i can see why haoles want to speculate on property there. mr. brescia owns 6 other lots in the area and has developed and is selling all of them. the site being developed now is not very large. it's also surrounded by black cloth so no one can look it. concrete pilings have been put in, one set of which covers some of the iwi. in the photo above, taken from the beach side when a mysterious hole suddenly appeared, shows poles with orange netting wrapped around. the orange net or color marks the site of a grave. this is a very sad place.

something crazy is going on here. and everywhere. i thought the sky falling would wait at least 4 more years, until 2012! omigod! it's here now.

more tomorrow!

Super Saturday

2008-09-21T03:54:00.001-07:00

it's actually sunday as i write this, almost 1 am. wanted to talk a bit about what an amazing saturday i had. started out at 4 am riding out to kukaniloko with pilipo and leota to participate in ceremony on the fall equinox, sept. 20-21. we watched the swearing in ceremony of mahealani (forgot his last name) as he became kahuna for kukaniloko. it was pitch dark as we walked along the newly cut trail, among tall grasses (cows would have had a ball there!). i truly felt the presence of all kinds of folks other than ourselves and it made me happy. sometimes i get tired of thinking that we can actually make any kind of change at all. i don't think we can unless we have lots of help from outside this world. after the ceremony we headed over to dot's at wahiawa for breakfast (james, me, maria, robert, pono, kamuela, leota, pilipo). later we were joined by another couple who were at the ceremony. they trace their genealogy to queen kalama and gave us lots and lots of genealogy. it drained my energy. but talking with robert was really interesting. his major interest is in geomancy. luckily i had a little bit of knowledge about that, so didn't come across as a total idiot. the more he explained, the more fascinated i was. my energy level went up.

we got home around 10 am, took a shower, and hit the bed for a couple of hours. then we went down to palolo studio for some 'downtime', at evern's invite. it really was downtime! there was a karaoke machine set up. everybody brought food and some serious singing took place. i hadn't laughed so much in a very long time. and i didn't know all these folks around me could sing! jeff, who works at the studio, brought his saxophone and played a bit. check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okSksqM24AQ

i noticed my own reaction to jeff's playing. i felt like he was giving us all a present and i was honored by it all. we were there several hours, listening to all the attempts at singing and laughing at our silliness. kamuela put on his elvis persona. what a crack up. haven't had time to upload kamuela yet, but will tomorrow.

saturday - an almost free day

2008-09-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

i've gotten a few mini complaints about not updating my blog. too busy. and too lazy. and not a hell of a lot to write about, once school started. i'm always just trying to keep up. but there are a couple of things of interest to report.

i got an interesting email from a friend, which i've posted below. some of you also received it and some of you witnessed it, especially if you live on the leeward coast. i ran into him yesterday with his little girl (of whom i have numerous photos since the time she was a baby, and that's because she's there with her parents at all the ku`e functions!) at kaneohe mall in the food court. he mentioned that subsequent to his sending the email, he talked with a number of folks at makua, and the whole community is aware of these sitings. even more, apparently some uh professor has gotten a grant from the military to monitor these ufo sitings on the west side. i deleted some of the names (to protect the innocent!) and just included the substantive part of the message.
On Aug. 2nd, Sat., we were camping out at the place called, Camp Mokuleia. Since dogs are not allowed at the camp site, I was taking my dog for a walk on the beach for a long time until the night got solid.When I was looking at the night sky on the beach (I could see so many star), I immediately recognized two bright lights. One towards west, ka‘ena point and the other towards north. Both of them looked like a bright planet and the ka‘ena point one was hovering over the horizon and the other one was about midpoint to the zenith.Now those on ka‘ena point turned out to be two lights merging one occasionally. My first thought was fishing boats as it was close to the horizon. Then I realized those lights start floating over the horizon smoothly coming to a new position.At that point I called my son and another boy. I asked them to watch those two lights towards Ka’ena point for awhile and see what happens.They were looking them for awhile and they too recognized that those were indeed moving and in between those two we could all see a domelike “force field” expanding and contracting constantly.Then the other boy called his father, and his baldhead friend (I don’t know his name) came over and first his dad said “it must be optical illusion.” But he watched them for quite sometime enough to recognize that they are actually moving.Then he said it must be the “RIMPAC.” Not too long after he said that those two lights moved to the north west direction (quarter point between ka’ena direction and north), all of a sudden an explosion like flash of light (with no sound) took place quarter to mid point to Zenith and we all saw legs like Figure coming out and started to walk towards us. It was like a moment of flash but it was clearly recognized by all of us and all we could say was “what was that?” It was like a mega-gigantic human or he’e or some other being revealed at an instant. Even after that those two lights were moving along as if they were playing with each other hovering over, up and down, This whole thing took place between 45 mins to 1 hrs. we were able to go back to the tent and grab something to keep ourselves warm and also something to munch while we witness this cosmic event. As those light came right in front of us they began to go down into the ocean come back up and down again. And those two lights eventually sunk into the sea. And we realized the bright light on the right side was gone by the time they went below the ocean.The following morning I discussed with the other boy's father how UFOs and ETs are part of Hawaiian Sovereignty.

k-den. is that interesting or what? i recall kawehi telling a similar kind of story some years back, but this siting took place in waikiki in the early morning. something came up out of the sea and later went back in. at the palace on sunday, after we did the play, i mentioned this email to a few folks and, of course, other people started sharing their own stories of their own experiences. now i hear that a similar occurrence was witnessed just off kualoa a while back, only the 'thing' actually came up on the land. yikes!

is it related to sovereignty? i think it's way bigger than that. if the military contracts with a u.h. researcher to find out what's going on, can we assume it's not them? or maybe they just want to know how many other people have witnessed stuff they're doing. dum da dum dum...

i wonder if folks in kaneohe ever see anything?

oh, and by the way, i dyed my hair last night with two red streaks, one on each side. preparing for halloween. my son said i look like the joker in batman. i'd better get a hair cut today.

no pix of either ufo or hair.

Thursday, July 31

2008-07-31T22:47:00.000-07:00

today is really la ho`iho`i ea, but we celebrated that last sunday, on the 27th. it was okay. lots of booths and kid games. i must be getting old because i'm constantly listening for new info or ideas, but seldom find them at these gatherings. maybe because that's not what these gatherings are for. actually i think it's about activists celebrating themselves. i can relate. we certainly don't do enough of that!

tomorrow evening i'm heading out to san francisco with cast and crew to do the re-enactment at berkeley and in ukiah. our club got a small grant from people's fund to cover airfare (actually we were short of money and had to kick in our own funds!). keanu's coming along as part of his, and our, attempts at exposure--exposing the truth of the continued existence of the hawaiian kingdom and the work of our ancestors who signed their names to the petitions against annexation of hawaii to the u.s. i think it's good work. and we never know who will be in the audience who may hear something that will cause them to take up the cause. if the queen were here today, she might be directing the re-enactment and the broader work of our club! last friday we did a performance for students at hawaiian studies. i thought there were a bunch of flubbed lines, but only the cast noticed! the students seemed to enjoy it and spent another hour talking with keanu after we had all left. good news! na opio will definitely have to pick it up! we're gettin' too old!

last week i went to kalaeloa with shad kane to look at the sites that are, ultimately, slated for destruction. made me very sad. but i took some videos and posted them on youtube. check it out: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kalaeloa+shad&search_type=&aq=f

i also took a ride to the omega station and took photos of the H-3 from underneath. i didn't realize there were so many buildings in the area, and all of them have been tagged. some of the artists did a great job! impressive. check out the video below:

Tuesday

2008-07-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

i've uploaded the video of claire's excellent talk about imiola young to youtube. hope this link works: http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=QUvarKArMno&rel=1&eurl=&iurl=http%3A//i.ytimg.com/vi/QUvarKArMno/default.jpg&t=OEgsToPDskKc3eBIkva0rQmKqjcy6R3m

Sunday morning

2008-07-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

james and i went to community church of honolulu yesterday for imiola's celebration of life. this was the second one, for his "townie" family and friends, and those from out of town. the service was nice and relatively short. jon osorio sang a buffalo springfield song (come on, people, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now). god, i love that man! we took classes together in grad school, but i think he was way smarter than me. the song was appropriate! made me remember how old i really am!

imiola was a man of depth. i didn't know, for example, that he spoke several different languages, having joined the peace corps and lived in mississippi, guam, and different places across the pasifik and the u.s. just after he graduated from college. he marched in washington with mlk in 1963, and worked in the voter registration effort in mississippi in 1964--risky work! but i was particularly impressed by the short talk given by claire shimabukuro, which i had the good fortune to tape so others could hear her description of the kalama valley resistance on oahu. imiola, because of his experience in vietnam, helped the kalama valley effort by teaching them how to build latrines, as there was only one small house and one toilet for the hundreds of people who gathered at kalama valley to help them resist eviction. for some reason, i'm unable to add this short video on blogger.com (i probably went over my quota with the last video of a`o) so will post claire's talk on youtube and link to it in my next blog. btw, the photos, left to right are: jon and pua burgess, imiola's photo with ho`okupu, and claire and jade young, imiola's sister.

Friday evening

2008-07-19T00:40:00.000-07:00

things are settling down in our 'new' home. we have furniture! we have an interesting yard. the owner/landlord likes color, obviously. she wired a lot of pretty pink and red plastic flowers to the fence. looks a bit weird up close, but from afar i guess it looks okay. mountain apple, avocado, and banana trees in back. one bunch of bananas is about ready to cut down. after years of carrying around all these rocks from every place i ever visited and having friends bring them to me from all over the world, i finally decided to put them somewhere where they could be seen and enjoyed. i carried them over in buckets, from one house to the next, and never really did anything with them. but now they're out in the yard where they can enjoy the rain and sun, and chameleons and toads hopping around on them. i think they're happy. i'm happy to see them. when gabe and i graduated from u.h. in 2003, we had a joint graduation party, and all our guests signed in (with their good wishes) on rocks (yup! rocks!). and i've had them since then. right now they're all spread out in a circle surrounding some plants in the backyard, as you can see from the photo.

last tuesday, i attended the dcca hearing at mckinley high school on what should be done with cable franchise. re-contract with oceanic time-warner? what happens to olelo community television? will time-warner continue its contract with olelo? or will it opt to bring in some other non-community type management firm? the place was packed. i signed up to testify as no. 33, i think. i got to speak just before the scheduled end time, but there were another 70 people waiting after me! at 6:30 i left for another meeting, but heard that it went on for 3 more hours. the consultants that dcca brought in didn't seem happy. oh well... i videotaped some of the folks who gave testimony while i was there, but particularly liked a`o pohakuku's kickass statement, which i've included here. it made all of us laugh.

July 15 random thoughts

2008-07-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

Kitty Sitter (Mexican Superheroes) i came across this neat pic on 'mother jones' photo essay on mexican superheroes. neat! spiderman was washing windows, and the hulk was doing construction work. what great photo ops to catch people doing interesting and weird things.

spent the weekend at makaha resort doing an oahu council institute training. learned something, especially about roberts rules of order. the meetings i run are based on consensus decision making, but most of the ones i attend use rro. i never know what to say or how to say it appropriately, so i don't. and 90% of the people at these meetings don't say anything, either. rro will silence everyone who doesn't understand the rules, so it's either assimilation or silence. pretty clever for those who want to move people away from native cultural behaviors of respectful process, toward dog-eat-dog nastiness of "order" that can cut people to shreds because the rules rule and feelings/emotions are downgraded to less than zero. i think it has the effect of putting the rules front and center and leaving the issue, whatever it is, somewhere in the back. of course, some people think that's good.

Sunday (low key) rant

2008-06-29T13:53:00.000-07:00

taking off from saturday's low key events... imiola's celebration of life at the opelu project in waianae was good. most of the activist-types sat on one table. i guess it's always time to hook up again with folks in struggle whom you haven't seen for a while. james greeted kalani ohelo as "maurice", which dated their relationship to "before" the movement. everybody's gettin' old. most of the folks i recognized were long time activists in the movement, certainly long before i came along. i remember when i met soli back in 1992 and first listened to him speak at a hui na`auao meeting. i was blown away by what he said at the time--it all made sense to me. at the gathering yesterday, he pretty much reiterated what he said back then: we should never forget that for those who seek social justice, it's important to know who the enemy really is. it's not about race or ethnicity (although that may play into it), but rather who calls the shots, who has the power to call the shots. so developing a strategy (i'm using my own words here, but i think i got the gist of it) is about identifying who the players are in the struggle and realizing that the big players are the same in all the struggles. money, power, the ability to manipulate someone else's life, these things feed into (and are part of) a system that oppresses us all. what to do about it? soli says use political analysis to determine what the action should be. okay! i'm good. i may not agree with every little thing, but i won't counter what he says, as he is correct. let's not ever think that all hawaiians are in the same boat. some actually call the shots, or think they do, so those hawaiians-by-blood participate in the oppression of other hawaiians. soli's talk was a lead in to how he knew imiola. imiola helped introduce political analysis into the discussion of activists at the time. he did his part. the question for us today might be 'what is our part?'. i had to go home and sleep on it, which i did. this morning i woke up thinking about what it's like to feel oppressed (in several areas of my life, actually) and what i can do about it. i also thought about the lesson for me to learn in trying to deal effectively with the issue. i'm afraid to look, for fear i might actually see something. yikes! i don't want to be the oppressor!

i stuck in a photo of soli and kekuni, and kekuni, jade young (imiola's sister), marsha joyner, and claire shimabukuro, just to give folks a sense of who all was there at imiola's life celebration. it was a really nice day, but hot as hell.

today i'm packing up more stuff (i have too much stuff, hence no light footprint for me). while i was outside in the garage, i saw a beautiful green gecko catch a roach. it was a huge roach, and that whole encounter caught my eye. so of course i had to run in to get my camera and see if i could get a good, clear shot without getting too close and frightening the gecko. i've posted this shot, too. i think i'm turning into a crazy person driven only by my own spur-of-the-moment desires. get that photo! yesterday, while i was walking around taking pix i thought about how intrusive i might have seemed. but after a short moment of reflection, i decided i didn't really care what anybody thought. i feel like (for the most part, except for some shots of ducks and lizards) i'm serving the movement and capturing a sense of what it is/was like to be an activist type in service to the movement, to humanity, to life in general. what would the world be like without activists? activists are the ones who advocate for 'fixing'--wages, job safety, cultural rights, human rights, environmental rights, animal rights, cultural practices, truth in labeling, healthy everything, pono everything. the system itself is not interested in fixing things as, for those who (again) call the shots, everything works just fine.

ginny metaxas, my friend from connecticutt, left yesterday. james and i didn't even have time to say goodbye to her. we ran from meeting to meeting until we were exhausted, then finally went home. i think i have to re-think my life. even though all the meetings seemed essential, what if i didn't go? would anybody notice? probably not. except when i take photos. then they'd notice they didn't get any. so i'm useful because i archive the movement and aspects related to it. that's a good thought to end with on a hot and still day in kahaluu. i added a photo of what this area looks like from makai side, at the bus stop on kamehameha highway.

Saturday's (low key) rant

2008-06-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

it's been a while! my email program was corrupted yesterday and i sent out a zillion emails (the same one) to several different people who didn't appreciate it. oh well... i think my computer is, along with several other entities in my life, beginning to "give up the ghost". i use such terminology as remnant of my church-y days, when james was still ministering (for real!) and i was in the congregation. them days is long gone, i tell ya. now i try not to wince when i hear some hallelujah/praise the lord benedictions floating down from heaven to land on me (ancestors forbid!). i try to remember that, as a matter of fact, our queen was a christian and, obviously, found some solace in the christian religion, even as the missionaries and their chillun did their best to swindle her (and, as a result, us) out of a nation and all that came with it (again, i say, "us"). what comes around goes around, we hope. let us hope we stay intact (we're already in the constant ducking mode!) when the u.s. collapses from the sheer weight of trying to control everything in the world.

today is imiola's memorial services at mt. kaala. doubt if james can hike up to the site, so we'll go instead to the boat harbor at waianae for the service there and scattering of ashes. i actually have some photos of imiola from a zillion activities in the past, none of which are accessible to me at this moment. but i will post later. we miss him. he was an all-around good guy. but one of the things he regularly did was videotape any number of activities from different sovereignty events. i think those tapes will likely end up in our sovereignty archive, when and if we get a place to put all the stuff saved over the years. as i recall, imiola came to my house in palolo, several years ago, with boxes of files, papers, and other memorabilia about stuff that happened in waianae, including all poka's published materials and (i swear) everything that johan galtung ever wrote in his life! and because of his travels all across the pacific, his time spent in guam, and all the other places he visited or lived, he saved stuff about those areas and passed on to me. imagine having to store and then move all that stuff (plus my own stuff) everytime i moved house!

anyhow, the moving house again stuff is another story. in preparation for moving from our rental on waihee road, i decided to put all this stuff in storage. i rented a pretty large storage area in kaneohe and, after 8 trips in the van, managed to fill it about 3/4 full. and there's more! in some ways i feel sad about leaving this house. it's a nice place and the view out the window (where my desk is) is pretty good--a big field with chickens running around. we live downstairs, which is cooler than the upstairs unit. i have refrained from feeding the chickens, as i did in palolo, because last time we ended up with 30 chickens who came for breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday. pretty noisy! the kids from palolo housing would come up the walkway into our backyard to catch chickens. roosters tend to crow all day and all night, and i didn't want to encourage them to crow next to my window. so...no feeding, even though the little chicks are cute! they will all end up on someone's dinner plate, sooner or later.

yesterday i went to visit my daughter in kailua. on the way to the market, we saw a momma duck and a line of chicks crossing the street. i couldn't whip out my camera fast enough to catch them until after they were in somebody's driveway, but i thought i'd post. not sure this happens anywhere else on oahu, but in kailua it's a regular sight!

thursday was last day of school for summer session I at HPU--a happy/sad day for all of us, i think. the students were fabulous for both my classes, which were rather small--six in one and 13 in the other. everybody got a chance to know everyone else and i got to know them all. we spent a considerable amount of time outside of class, during field trips, to get to know each other, so that was really nice. i've also posted photos of the last day for both classes. my intro anth course final project for students was titled "my culture/my life". i think i'll use that as final project theme for all the intro classes, hereafter. the presentations were both funny and charming, and we spent a great deal of time laughing and eating. interestingly (but not surprising!), almost everyone brought food to share, so it turned into a party--a celebration of culture and life, and end of semester. one of my students is from mongolia, and his presentation focused on music, particularly an instrument called "morin khuur", or horsehead fiddle. he showed a little clip from youtube so we could hear what it sounded like. it was the most interesting thing! and another student, because of his zeal, prepared a slide show with around 80 slides--for a 10 minute presentation! i urged him to cut to the chase, so he went from slide 5 to the last two in about 5 minutes. but all of it was totally enjoyable. hearing so much laughter on the last day of class was good for my soul. i'm writing this part for all the teachers who may be reading. i know they can relate.

poka, mel, and i have been working on the 'hawaiian roundtable' series. so far, the response has been good. we did our first meeting at the oha boardroom, with oha staff and 4 trustees present. around 40 people attended. we had advertised via email notice and on poka's radio program. that was supposed to have been a planning meeting, basically asking those present if they felt that a dialogue that helped us all to develop a way of speaking with one another (i'm beginning to sound like poka, now), instead of at each other would be useful in building bridges among ourselves. poka uses pukui's method of hooponopono in his own work, and felt it could be used in the service of the movement. our second session was at jarrett middle school cafeteria. there were 39 people in attendance, no trustees, and a couple of oha staff. the third meeting is scheduled for july 4, friday, 4 pm, again at jarrett school. more people may attend, as both poka and i were on oha's radio program with brickwood and kimo kahoano last tuesday advertising the next meeting. i'm pretty sure folks got the invite, so hopefully we'll expand our reach. in the meantime, we heard from maui folks that pekelo listened to the radio program and really liked the idea, so is now starting a roundtable of his own on maui. it's all good, considering we're all going to be riding on our own dime.

in the meantime, bumpy's moving forward on calling for a hawaiian concon, one more way of gathering people together to talk, but way more focused. i'm looking forward to participating in that one, which is open to everyone, regardless of ethnicity. manu kaiama and i both interviewed him and steve tayama for our olelo programs, and these are up and running now on olelo.net, so can be viewed via computer. there's something in the air. it's all good.

a bunch of us are leaving in early august for s.f. to do the play, "ka lei maile alii--the queen's women". we got a little bit of money to cover travel costs (mahalo to people's fund). it may not be much, but it's what we (our civic club) has to offer the movement--educational outreach on hawaiian history. keanu's coming with us to provide context for the play and, hopefully, bring everyone up to date on what else is going on with him.

okay, i'm off to waianae boat harbor. i'll take lots of photos and post some on the next rant.

June Rant #1

2008-06-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

i can't believe i haven't posted anything for so long. so much for commitment to write stuff down. i think i've been in constant mourning for friends and colleagues who keep dying on me. it's too sad. on the one hand i feel like crying all the time. on the other, i have to remind myself that death is part of life. so my friend imiola (carl young) passed away on saturday, june 14. his sister, jade, called to tell me while i was on a field trip with students at kahana fishpond. it was such a beautiful day and students worked hard cutting back hau trees and clearing brush. her call made me cry. i think i'm still mourning my friend nalani's death, and my nephew, Lono's death. and kumu lake. and john kaimikaua, and did, who wrote the play, and...and... our other friend gloria passed away a couple of weeks ago. james called to say hello and found out she was in hospice. when he called her at hospice, she said she was about to take a bath and would call him back later, but there was no later. yesterday, her husband, maluhia, called just to "talk story". james later related to me that in all the years that he has known maluhia, he has never called just to "talk story", so james suspects that maluhia is putting his affairs in order, contacting old friends, and saying goodbye in various ways. i hate the idea of death (i mean other people's death) because it's so final. but i don't hate the idea of my own death, as i look forward to (hopefully) a new adventure. i think others will be sad, however--certainly my kids.

today i finished up a report i contracted to write for a friend for the board of water supply's well in haiku. it took forever to write and i had to keep shortening it because there was so much to include. i read numerous docs about the omega station at haiku and its connection to the military's development of new technology during WWII. even though the omega station officially closed down in 1992, the infrastructure laid down in that valley is still there. the haiku stairs was built to allow maintenance men access to the tower at the top of the mountain in haiku, and the stairs later became a popular hiking spot for island residents. when H-3 was built, hiking was cut off. the 'friends of haiku stairs' was formed to urge access be resumed. the state had to insert some protections into the freeway while it was being constructed to neutralize the impact of the signals coming out of the ground to those who traveled on H-3. maybe that's the best reason not to travel on H-3. even though the omega station is officially shut down, i get the sense that the underground complex still exists and is still beaming short pulses to various places in the u.s. and globally. reminds me of a doomsday science fiction movie. there's a web of antennae all around the world, and the omega station at haiku covers the whole pacific like fingers! mahealani cypher ma, from koolaupoko hawaiian civic club and the koolau foundation have requested use of the abandoned omega station building as a museum to house information and artifacts from the koolaupoko moku. maybe not a good idea, if crap is still being broadcast on ultra low frequency from that area. yes! scifi! maybe the aliens from roswell were transferred to the site via (black) helicopter!

i'm obviously losing it. grief rules my life at this moment in time, despite the beauty of nature at kahana and elsewhere.

Monday, Memorial Day (the set aside)

2008-05-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

it's not really memorial day, but i suppose it will do, as it gives me a day off to move house. what a hectic week! no time to blog. friday evening went to visit imiola at his house in kapahulu. he's looking thin and has bruise marks all up and down his arms where nurses have been poking him relentlessly. imiola said 'no more', so he decided to go home. stella made a pot of curry stew. we brought dessert. then poha arrived to hook up his computer on the chair near the bed. so he can read and send email more easily (one does not give up one's virtual life!). then evern arrived. we all ate together around the bed in a very tiny room with not enough chairs. but it felt homey and family-like. i think imiola ate a tiny piece of custard pie while the rest of us chowed down on stew and poi and stew and rice. i could have cried, but waited until we got into the car. and even though i had my trusty camera, i did not take a photo of him or of anyone else.

i don't remember when i met imiola, but i think it was around 1992. imiola is carl young, a great friend and supporter of poka and of all social justice issues. i worked for hui naauao, back then, as oahu island coordinator. i set up educational workshops in schools, homes, and for public events. poka was present for many of these, as was imiola. imiola was a substitute teacher for many years, and is a student/admirer of johan galtung, a peace activist who taught for a while at u.h. manoa. most of the papers i have from imiola are of galtung's writings. back then, in the early 1990s, i remember having numerous talk story dialogues at iolani palace grounds. one time, in particular, it was pouring rain. we had a tent and everybody, including galtung, tried to jam under the tent. it leaked. we were wet. but no one left. the discussion was so important to have that we simply couldn't let the opportunity to talk pass because of the rain. i mention this because 16 years later, we're still trying to have the same kind of dialogue--one of peace, justice, aloha, malama aina, malama i ke kahi i ke kahi. i can't believe it's such hard work.

on thursday next week, june 5, we'll be doing a similar kind of dialogue, trying to move away from the strictly political/legal/analytical kinds of educational gatherings we've had in the past, toward a talk story format that allows us to be honest in expressing how we feel about hawaiian sovereignty in this hectic and sometimes scary world. i sent out the invite the other day--and wouldn't you know i'd get the damn info wrong! so i re-sent. already got several responses, positive ones, from those who want to attend. maybe there are others tired of the never-ending barrage of "my way is the only way" rhetoric. we've been spoiled by the push for self-determination (at any level)--we actually do want to choose, and any process that comes down already made has obviously made the choice for us. where's the self-determination in that? sometimes it's so crystal-clear to me that nothing can be 'created' for someone else, not if you want that someone else to take kuleana for it. we need to create for ourselves so we live and die by our own actions, good or bad. part of growing up, of evolution for the whole human race.

yesterday i took my students to palehua. we were hosted by shad kane, who shared a ton of info with the students. there's stuff up there, and a few people mentioned they felt the presence of something/someone in the area. one of the students didn't want to walk around in the pa, even though it should be okay, as permission was requested to enter. since nobody dropped dead, it should be safe and we could take that as a "come on in" sign. anyhow, his hair kept standing on end, so he walked in and out quickly. on the way home in the bus, one of my other students shared his own native american genealogy. his great grandma, and grandma practiced shamanic rituals. we talked about ritual and blood. then he showed me his hand and a cut that was drying up. he had been watching from a little distance as shad took students around and noticed a stone over which a number of dragonflies were flying in a circle, which he though was odd. then a bunch of butterflies came (white ones, brown ones, and golden ones) and flew around in a circle over the same stone. so finally he figured there must be something special about that stone and went over to take a look. he put his hands on the stone to feel it. then he walked away. but he noticed a moment later that he had blood on his hands, which is when he noticed the cut. he didn't feel it and couldn't remember where he cut himself. so he went back to the rock and saw that his blood was on it, so he obviously cut himself there. i asked him how he felt about that. he said he felt really, really good, as if leaving his blood there, on the stone, was an appropriate thing to do. i was happy he was happy, as i'm not sure of the significance of that act in his culture. but i was intrigued about its significance in hawaiian culture. we'll see...

Sunday at Makua

2008-05-18T19:30:00.001-07:00

despite the oppressively hot weather, it was a fabulous day at makua today. around 13 students and friends showed up for today's access. we were all cooking in the heat. but the students seemed to really enjoy the walk around and history of that aina. the army guys weren't too happy to be there and took it out on us. pretty rude bunch, i have to say. nevertheless, it went well. leandra was super good with protocol. fred did a great job of sharing history and story telling. i think the younger archaeologist, alton (?), was the most hospitable of the bunch and shared a bit of history about the army's strategic plan for makua. he gave me a brochure to share with my students, and i saw a photo of a petroglyph that i hadn't seen before. it's in a different area/valley that we haven't had access to--yet. curtis, trevor, and jean emptied the mud out of the drying up spring. the kalo growing there the last time i was up had died. trevor removed his shoes to work in the mud and got yelled at because not wearing shoes was against the rules. and fred got yelled at because he found (and picked up) a spent shell from an M-15. that's also a no-no. oh well. it was a really good crew, however, and i'm glad we had a chance to experience the power struggle that goes on there between community and military and between rules and culture. obviously the military personnel are not interested in having a relationship with any of us, hence the rude treatment. it just makes me want to go more often and try to give them a hard time whenever we can. the option is to kowtow, and aint none of us going that route.

on the way home to kaneohe i noticed hundreds of tents stretching from makua to beyond kahe point. it's amazing! i had read in the paper that the state would be cracking down on the homeless living out on the leeward coast. that's pretty sad. where else could they go? how can it be against the law to be poor?

not much has changed in the last 18 years or so. the poor get poorer. the super rich don't give a rip. the middle class--where is the middle class? i used to think i was the middle class, but i feel much, much poorer and living on the edge all the time. having an education and an 'average' income guarantees nothing.

Tuesday - First Day of Summer School

2008-05-14T01:50:00.001-07:00

haven't written anything in a week! can't believe it! too many things going on and i'm overdue on everything. sunday was a good day. had lunch with three of my kids, my grandson, his girlfriend, my son's girlfriend, and my son in law. it was enjoyable and we pigged out. my grandson, koa, is the same age as my son, akoni. koa flashed his tattoos at everyone, and i was happy to see the hawaiian flag on his hand. i thought it was kinda cool. after lunch james, akoni, and i went over to the house in kahaluu to cut the grass and haul away assorted trash for ruth. we'll be living downstairs--moving out of here at the end of the month.

monday i started unpacking more boxes. so much stuff! i read george kahumoku's book "a hawaiian life". that was pretty fascinating, the stories he tells about his dying and being revived when he was six weeks old. reminded me of john kaimikaua's story about his experiences in molokai when he was a child, and watching the revival, hours later, of a young girl who had died in her sleep. there were all kinds of kahuna practicing their arts in those days, and bringing someone back from the dead apparently wasn't unheard of, and we're not talking about ancient history, here. so if this is still happening during our lifetime, and maybe our parents' lifetime, then it wasn't so long ago. it might still be happening now. i hope so.

today was the first day of summer session I. i have two classes, 3 hours each, back to back. that was grueling! on the other hand, both classes are relatively small and went really well--six students in one and 10 in the other. we did a lot of talking. nobody dozed off. during the second part of the first class, i took the students for a walk to iolani palace. the hawaiian kingdom government folks are still there, although we didn't stop to visit, as they looked like they were having a meeting. this was my ahupuaa resource management class, so we went to look at the ahu and to give them a sense of what the makai side of the honolulu ahupuaa looked like. in a couple of weeks we'll be going to upper nuuanu, to kaniakapupu and to the pali to look at ahupuaa from the top (or almost top) down.

last saturday james and i went to the democratic party pre-convention meeting at kalakaua intermediate school. i chaired the national/international affairs committee meeting. that was hectic! we had 43 resos to plow through. took us about an hour to get through the first three! there was a reso submitted in support of giving lt. ehren watada an honorable discharge. there were a number of former military personnel at the meeting and all of them were adamant that he be denied an honorable discharge because he didn't follow orders, he signed a contract, he made an agreement, etc. i was kinda shocked--not sure why. but it seemed to me that no one wanted to look at the larger picture, at the justification for/reason behind people committing inhumane acts on other people. it came down to an issue of legality. made me very sad. but i had to remind myself, of course, that watada wasn't protesting war in general, just that particular war, the one in iraq. he was okay with war elsewhere. he wasn't advocating peace.

for my ahupuaa class i'm showing them an inspiring video on youtube, on the TED site. go look. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=william+mcdonough&hl=en&sitesearch= i'm beginning to use youtube as a regular resource--so many current things going on in the world that students can relate to. today in my cultural anth class we watched a five minute clip on youtube about some jazz artists jamming with pygmies in the congo. talk about a meeting of cultures! i find the whole idea of relationship building through music and art as something that transcends politics. there's a tremendous amount of joy generated by people who love music, who play music, who dance, eat, sleep, walk music. the video "playing for change" documents street musicians, some extremely talented and professionals in their own right, who play on the streets for the love of playing and interacting with audiences, strangers, who are captured by the sound of their music. each one says the same thing--if you want to make money, this is not the way to go because you won't make much. but if you love people, and you love the way they receive your music (your gift), then this is the life for you. but you'll be poor unless you have a regular job, too. i showed the short clip in the beginning. we had a discussion (fairly long and drawn out), then at the second half i showed the video, which i thought was a good illustration about how class, race, age, and gender become irrelevant in the sharing of music, something that transcends all of the above. it was a good day.

Oops!

2008-05-04T23:07:00.000-07:00

forgot to add the photo links, for those who might want to see them:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?UV=766378406907_779286534605&mode=fromsite&collid=25023499905.491186534605.1209967674069&conn_speed=1

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?UV=766378406907_779286534605&mode=fromsite&collid=25023499905.231489634605.1209967756473&conn_speed=1

Sunday Musings

2008-05-04T22:31:00.000-07:00

i had two things to do today, out in the field, so to speak. went up to kaniakapupu for our regular first sunday of the month clean up. we had a good group up there, even though hpu regular school session is pau, we had all hpu students there. it rained but we went right on working, anyhow. it was a good day!

later that afternoon, i went to mokauea island for a meeting with the mokauea fishermen's association board and supporters/volunteers from kai makana. my student, bee, was there. as usual, he surfed over. there was an architect from u.h., who came to help with the design of a halau for volunteers to use. it was a great meeting. and i got some really nice photos. you can see all the photos from both trips here:

at the same time the kaniakapupu clean up was going on, i found out that a memorial was being held for my friend/ex-partner who passed away last week. i mentioned this in an earlier rant. it was just down the road at jackass ginger. i drove by to check it out. lots of kids and their parents. saw my grandson, dayton, and his mom, kanani. but i went back up to the kaniakapupu trail head to meet with students. my daughter drove by and stopped to ask if i was going, but i said no. so she went ahead. i asked my son, who was with me at the time, if he wanted to attend and he said no. he didn't have any positive energy to lend to that event, so he didn't want to go. he said his experiences were mostly negative, so his presence wouldn't add anything. so of course, i asked if we ought to be having that discussion at some future time. he didn't respond. i'm learning more about my kids and about myself as time goes by. i hope i'm up to the challenge when one of them asks me how come they had such screwed up lives. i hope they don't ask, but if they do, i suppose i ought to be prepared for some heavy and gut-wrenching stuff to spill out on me. my bad.

i reflect often on how i might have been a better parent, friend, partner, daughter. in some instances, it's too late, of course. james reminds me that i am the person i am today because of the experiences i lived through--i'm a product of all the good and bad stuff that impacted me, and which i developed protections against (or resistance/reactions to). i like to think that i've tried to be a kinder and more caring person over the years, having been exposed to some wonderful teachers and examples of how to be in the world.

i've been getting phone calls and emails from people who have seen re-runs on olelo of my interviews of john kaimikaua on the issue of pono. i'm so sad he is no longer here to advise. it's rough to think about his not being around--no one to call and ask questions when confusion sets in, and no one to speak to on what is the pono thing to do. the world is a sadder place for his having passed on. how will we do our aha aina for the nation? it was john's vision to build the ahu in the rotunda and to do ceremony to cleanse all the entrances to that building so that the people there would exit and we could walk in and the nation could begin, the people would govern ourselves. i really miss him. who will carry on his legacy?

Frantic Friday

2008-05-03T02:37:00.000-07:00

it (friday) really was frantic! meetings in the morning, noon, evening. aargh! but of course, it's never all bad! met with mel, clyde and mona in the morning. then on to school for faculty stuff. then on to the aquarium for the 'changing of the seasons' event. that was very nice. i took photos of the sun every couple of minutes until it was just about to set in puu o palailai, i think behind puu o kapolei. i'm exhausted! sam gon and kumu lake's halau were excellent, as always.

yesterday was the last day of school for me. i took photos of two of my classes and realized that i would, indeed, miss my students. in my evening class, i took a bunch of scripts of "ka lei maile alii--the queen's women" to school with me and had the students do the reenactment. they had a couple of minutes to prepare and then we went right into it. i think it went well. in the debrief they talked about the need for education and 'out of the box' thinking as ways to resolve the sovereignty issue. they liked the idea of connecting large issues, like sovereignty, with on the ground folks like those who respond from the audience. i think we can fix it by next week, given the range of recommendations offered! no problem!

Pau school!

2008-05-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

i have a love/hate feeling about end of semester. on the one hand, i have great relief that school is done, for the moment. on the other hand, i miss my students. some classes are better (for me) than others. i try to form a relationship with each student, although it's not always possible. this semester i had them all write journals, as i am required to look at and grade according to writing samples. i usually require short papers. this time i went with the journals for all three classes, which meant i had about 70 to read. very time-consuming. but also enlightening. journals are like diaries. i had specific outcomes in mind when i asked for them. but students forget (i think) and they allow me to look inside their lives at all the things that concern them and inspire them. or sometimes keep them from doing their best.

i think my journaling is kinda personal, but not as personal as what my students share. i'm mindful, for example, that there may be any number of people reading this, most of whom i don't know. since nobody posts any comments, i can't really tell. but some of you do email me personally, and that i appreciate.

this morning one of my students came to visit. she has a lovely baby--cute, good-natured, just very sweet and appealing. every now and then, my grandma and elderly aunts used to say they were lonely for the feel/smell/touch of a baby. i never knew what that mean, being a kid at the time i heard them. i couldn't relate. when i got older i realized they were feeling the same thing i was feeling growing up, except i was lonely for my mother. my sister and i grew up in a house where everyone worked. i think we weren't the only ones. latch key kids hadn't been invented yet, so we weren't that. we were just lonely. my mother and father were both musicians, certified, card-carrying, union member musicians. she played, and still plays, ukulele, guitar, and stand-up base. i don't know what happened to her instruments after she went into lunalilo home (for aged hawaiians). my father drove the bus for HRT (honolulu rapid transit, back in the day), the forerunner of The Bus. he played guitar. they both sang. he was my adopted father, but he sang, so those genes got handed down from another line. but what am i saying? everybody sang. we sang. and we danced hula because my grandfather (daniel machado) had a brother who was married to lena machado (hawaii's songbird) and we ended up taking hula from her for a few years at their old homestead on john ena road. the kalauokalani ohana were cousins (wonder where they all are now?). so anyhow, i grew up in a house where everybody was always singing. my mother worked at the kodak hula show when it first started up. then when it folded, she worked as a casual musician for years and years. when kodak hula show started up again, she went back to work for them until they folded the second time. i have a postcard with all the musicians and dancers that i'll scan and paste into the next post.

after my father left HRT, he went to work for young brothers, part of dillingham corp. at the time. i remember him talking about "ben", like everybody at his level was buddies with ole ben dillingham. he may have been. i never thought to ask. my father was an oiler on a tugboat, the eleu. he went all over the world tugging barges here and there. he was gone for months at a time, sometime. but he always brought home presents. i guess those were the good times, but they weren't always. he stayed with young brothers until he retired. the not-so-good times stand out in my memory more, but i'm not quite ready to write about that now. suffice to say that my sister and i were subjected to a lot of abuse, both physical and sexual (her more than me, unfortunately for her). we dealt with it in different ways. i ran away a lot, especially as a young teenager.

we lived across the street from the waikiki library, in the little lane between the service station and the little market on the corner, my grandma's house. i ran away to the library--every single day. i began to read science fiction books--every book they had in the library. i would stay there for hours on end and read one book after another. eventually i started catching the bus to the main library downtonw because there were no other scifi books to read. as i got older, i realized that there were other people like me, who found a safe place in libraries and in other people's stories. that place saved me. and educated me. i learned how to read and digest and, eventually, write.

my sister was a different story. she was two years older and way more popular. she had choke boyfriends and hung out with the popular crowd. she went to roosevelt high school. then they rezoned the area and i went to kaimuki. at that time kaimuki was almost but not quite like mckinley high school--tokyo high. not many hawaiians at kaimuki. the school was sectioned off into upper, middle, and lower achieving students, with four levels in each section. so: U 1, 2, 3, and 4. M 1, 2, 3, 4, and L 1, 2, 3, 4. and then there was special ed. i was in U4, the lowest of the upper level. i was the only hawaiian. all the rest were orientals (didn't use the word 'asian' at the time), and maybe one haole. my sister didn't do that well academically, not that she cared. she was a partyer and had lots of friends. i was a loner and read a lot. all the time, actually. i couldn't wait to get home and finish a book, or to finish a book and run back to the library. obviously we came from a dysfunctional home! but my grandma was the best. she looked grouchy, but she wasn't. my grandfather was grouchy. my sister and i tried to steer clear of my father. and my mother was always working. i think you get the picture.

anyhow, we did the best we could. holidays were great because all the aunties, uncles and cousins would come over and everybody would cook and play cards (they were all gamblers), eat, drink (and drink, and drink, and drink), and sing. one of my cousins, kehaulani burgess, was a natural at the piano. we had a piano in the house and when she came over, she would sit down and start banging away. what a treat! and people would sing and be happy. in the evenings the adults got down to some serious card playing that lasted all day and all night and into the next day, and it was to our advantage to keep out of the way. so we played hide-and-seek in the yard and down the lane, and we did this all day and all night. if we didn't want to get a whack, we stayed out of the way of grumpy gambling adults. i remember those times fondly because i had fun. over the years, the family separated. the cousins grew up and moved away. i have no idea where most of them are now, but i certainly am lonely for those times.

The Bus Stop Rant

2008-04-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

as i waited at the bus stop this morning, i noticed a couple of interesting things. i catch the bus in kaneohe, right across from windward city shopping center. i notice a lot of people walking by the bus stop, i assume to or from their homes. most of them are elderly or young (school age). the elderly tend to stop and sit down, so i assume they're waiting for the bus, as the stop is a covered one with a bench. but not always. today 4 people were there when i arrived. two of the older men on the bench, after a few minutes, got up and walked away. okay--they were resting. it's not like kamehameha highway is full of apartment complexes so you'd find folks walking to and from the shopping center, for example. this is not considered kaneohe town. rather, the people walking, if they're walking home, have a fairly long walk no matter which direction they're heading in. after the two guys left i watched them walking up kam highway toward kaneohe elementary and hpu. then a woman came by heading toward kaneohe town and sat down. again i assumed she was waiting for the bus. she lit up a cigarette, had a brief conversation with one of the young folks on the bench. then got up and left, heading back in the same direction she came from. is that weird or what? about a minute later, a scraggly looking haole man came walking by with his sign that said "will work for food". he sat down, too, then started walking toward burger king and the intersection. in the meantime, more folks had joined us and were crowding the area. hmmm...

it has occurred to me, and i mentioned this once before, that unrelated people congregate at certain places (like at bus stops with benches, markets, parks, churches, malls, etc.) for certain reasons. i'm not sure what those reasons are, but there seems to be some kind of draw, perhaps something attractive to people who feel lonely--they feel better, somehow, when they are near other human beings. these people don't generally talk to each other, unless they've been meeting the same folks over and over for years--then dialogue seems not only friendly, but natural. obviously, if i want to research bus stop behavior, i'll have to gather way more data than just a few weeks or months of observation. people who gather at bus stops are not all waiting for the bus. likewise, people who gather at churches are not all interested in religion. people who gather at malls are not all interested in shopping.

there is something to be said about taking comfort in the presence of other people, to know that even when you're alone, you're not really alone. the earth is teeming with millions and millions of people, and zillions of non-human beings, and multi-zillions of entities who have been here since time immemorial. we are never alone. but our awareness of being in the company of others is limited to what we can see/hear/taste/feel/smell. we depend on our senses to tell us what/who is around us. and then we don't pay attention and go around feeling lonely for, specifically, living human beings. it's a shortcoming. okay, that's the rant for tuesday.

People Dying

2008-04-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

it's sunday evening and i got a phone call that someone i had known for a long time, and lived with for 14 years or so, just passed away. i felt sad, both for him and for me--for not having been able to work things out so that we could stay together. but we were mean to each other and everybody around us caught flack. it was our fault, totally. apparently he had had a fall and a heart attack yesterday. i meant to go visit him today, or at least call. but i didn't. and then this evening i got a call that he had passed at castle hospital. he was a year older than me, was a smoker, and was, i think, high strung. he was a kind man, sometimes, and really aggressive about what he wanted. it wasn't a good fit. when he went to prison, all i could think of was that i was free at last. so i went one way, and after he got out of prison, he went another. that part of my life was over. and i went on to school and to do other things. but i feel it appropriate to honor his memory by recognizing that he and i shared a life together for a long time, even if it was rough a lot of that time.

yesterday morning james and i headed up to nuuanu pali for the commemoration of the battle of nuuanu. it was kinda cold out. the women from the women's prison were there with their guards--they came to participate in the ceremony at the invitation of chuck burrows, as they regularly help with the clean up of ulupo heiau, a project that chuck oversees. the ceremony, as always was beautiful. i videotaped portions of it, and also took photos. they're posted at http://olympus.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=bhucg3l.cdshzrkd&Uy=s7h0ww&Ux=0&UV=166654196375_330607414605 if anyone wants to go look. i also attached a video at the bottom.

after the morning ceremony, our civic club's cast and crew of "ka lei maile alii -- the queen's women" met at 1 pm at city hall auditorium to perform the re-enactment. it was the 'hawaii women of distinction' event, sponsored by the bishop museum. in this case, they were honoring mrs. nawahi. kanalu young did keanu's presentation. his was entirely different than what keanu had presented in the past. and he wasn't given enough time to finish it before the play itself began. nevertheless, it went okay. i could see people crying, a good thing when we're trying to gauge how the performance is being received. but i don't think we'll do anything like that again, as the time they gave us kept getting shorter--first 55 minutes, then 45 minutes. it was hectic and i'm glad it's over.

today james, akoni, and i went to the palace to cut the grass in the burial mound. it was so LONG! yikes! akoni cut inside, james did the outside, and i just stripped yellow ti leaves and pulled weeds. that took a couple hours and we didn't even finish! baron came by to turn on the water sprinkler, so that ended the weeding part.

so i ended up the day unpacking and repacking stuff for the move in may. i amaze myself at the stuff that i have saved over the years. i found francis boyle's st. thomas law review article titled "restoration of the independent nation state of hawaii under international law, from summer 1995. then i found a bunch of old newspapers: ka huliau, an independent newspaper focusing on hawaii and pacific issues from the 1980s; the worker for hawaii, 1977 [interesting article, "protect kahoolawe ohana says: 'Not Our Laws'. here's the first paragraph: "on may 19th, the trial of joyce kainoa and sam kealoha, the first of 14 who face charges of trespassing on the island of kahoolawe, drew the battle lines for the struggle ahead. on one side stood the military and the courts, with judge sam king trying time and time again to make sure that the legal system of the land would rule the course of the struggle. on the other side stood the ohana, now swelling in size with over 300 supporters taking a stand on the side of the hawaiian people..."

sabine, i am thinking of you as i write this, as i know you would have liked to go through this stuff with me. when you come back you can go over it yourself. it's amazing stuff.

what else is there? a few copies of a newspaper called 'hoe hana' from the early 1970s. one interesting story deals with how roland kotani and kenn saruwatari from hawaii were booted from yale for protesting william shockley's (from stanford) claims that black people were genetically inferior with regard to intelligence, as "each 1% of caucasian ancestry raised IQ level by one point" and that eugenics was necessary to eliminate 'bad genes', thus a sterilization program should be put in place for blacks. there's so much stuff here, as relevant now as it was then. this issue also has a photo of ceasar chavez joining striking moanalua carriage workers when he visited here in 1974.

other magazine issues: the young micronesian (congress is burned, marianas wants secession) , the valley isle (were helm and mitchell murdered?), indochina chronicle 1974, Z magazine 1989. i also have a copy of the transcripts of the senate closed session of may 31, 1898. this is the document referenced in the 1969 advertiser news article that keanu noted--he called the national archives and ordered a copy of the doc and i, subsequently, borrowed his copy to copy!

i have about 20 more boxes to go through--history at my fingertips, packed up in cardboard boxes that are falling apart.

here's video from saturday's event at the pali.

Freak out Friday

2008-04-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

i say 'freak out' because i'm freaking out. mel's hosting folks for a talk story at the commemoration tomorrow morning of the battle of nuuanu at the pali lookout. i guess i have to be there at 5 am. but tomorrow is also the re-enactment of our play at the city hall annex and i still don't have someone to play mrs. campbell. aargh...

on a more positive note, i wanted to share how my students have been delivering their final projects. yesterday in my anth 2000 (intro to cultural anth) class we were treated to pancit (filipino noodles) and some pastry stuffed with purple sweet potato. ono. a duo talked about growing up in hawaii on the leeward coast and shared a fabulous short video of life on the waianae coast. impressive! another group of students talked about the various language dialects on different islands in the philippines. about half of my students are from the philippines or are second generation here in hawaii. i had never tried balut (a kind of snack with a semi-formed duck fetus inside the shell), although james likes it. but this last group brought some to share with students. a couple of the haole students looked like they were about to turn green. a couple of filipino students enjoyed sipping the liquid (salty, i think) from the cracked shell. it was pretty interesting, i tell ya! i ended up taking some photos of the eggs, as you see above. i commend them for sharing their culture and experience with the rest of us. obviously i'll have to give them all "A"s. i have learned so much from them--lucky me!

Very early Thursday

2008-04-24T03:36:00.001-07:00

dang! i can't believe i'm still up reading journals. 3 more to go! but all so interesting. gotta go to bed soon.

wanted to invite you all to go to my other blog, maoli talk, to listen to my interview of poka and james on "dreaming hawaii". i audio taped an "issues that matter" video segment from tuesday, april 22. it went all over the place, but eventually it got to a description of the stages of decolonization that poka has on his website: 1) rediscovery and recovery, 2) mourning, 3) dreaming, and 4) commitment [http://www.opihi.com/sovereignty/colonization.htm]. i think we're in all phases at once. my students are in both phase 1 and 2. most of us are in phase 2 and 3. a very small minority may be in phase 4. anyhow, the discussion was moving toward the invitation to participate in dialogue and to 'dream' the nation as best case scenario. the question always is: if not this (what we have now), then what? all the kingdom advocates, especially those that have already created their governing structure and filled their positions, seem to be already rolling along. one wonders what they might want with the rest of us. the upshot of the talk was that we ought to be having these circles of discussion to dream what we want to dream and to be the masters of our own fates. in other words, if we go down, we ought to be able to say that we made bad choices. as it is, we've been going down because we've been impacted upon. we inherited a situation not of our own creation. so maybe it's time to have that discussion to figure out what we want, rather than just what we don't want. and then take responsibility for its success or failure.

it takes a few minutes to download the audio, a 58 minute program. but i'll hope you'll listen anyway and give input.

Wednesday -- catch up day

2008-04-23T20:42:00.001-07:00

i think i did 15 things before i left home today and throughout the day before i got back to my computer: read my email, wrote a letter of recommendation for tony castanha, revised and forwarded 3 resos for the oahu county democratic convention gathering next week, created a flyer for the re-enactment presentation on saturday, made 300 copies of the flyer at kinko's downtown, did a walk through of the city hall annex with baron and jamie to figure out logistics for saturday's performance, picked up the stands at olelo palolo for use as a base for the big 6x12 foot flag (ka hae hawaii) for saturday, dropped off tony's letter at uh manoa, fielded at least six phone calls from brian about work-related stuff, talked to gabe about possibly flying to s.f. in july to set up venue for the re-enactment in s.f. and ukiah in august (she had saved up almost enough miles for a free round trip to hawaii--alas, with aloha airlines!), stopped off at pali lookout to take some short videos (one of which i've posted below) picked up lunch, and...am i at 15 yet? still have 10 journals to read for my anth 3980 class tomorrow. next week is the last week of school for me. i'm looking forward to doing very little, except take photos and do short videos. i'm becoming addicted. but luckily, it's a cheap fix. i can handle.

i wanted to share some thoughts about who i am in the place i am. part of my questioning my own identity--who am i and where do i belong? james and i have been talking a lot about the issue of the "settler". we're settlers on oahu. our genealogy is big island. i remember talking with mel and ray kamaka years ago about the different families along the kaneohe-kahaluu-waiahole-waikane coast. they were all from the big island. my uncle, herbert ewaliko, was one of those. even though i never met him, nevertheless i was assured he was my uncle and that all the ewalikos were related (my father was james ewaliko). finding out that bit of information got me thinking. did everyone on oahu (or mostly) trace their genealogy to either maui or hawaii island? what happened to the oahu people?

that was one of the reasons that mel started doing the sunrise ceremonies at the nuuanu pali ten years ago (or maybe 11 years). he felt there was a need for acknowledging what happened at the great battle in 1795, and to recognize the damage done and try to repair that damage within the hawaiian community. perhaps it was, indeed, necessary for the unification of hawaii--if unification is your bag. this saturday, april 26, is the commemoration of the battle of nuuanu at 5:30 am, or so. hope folks show up. the gate will be open all night. people will be there from friday evening, setting up a tent for the program after the ceremony on saturday. it's open to the public!

a couple years ago i went on a hike with mahealani cypher into the nuuanu watershed to lulumahu falls. that's really a fabulous hike, and the waterfall, maybe 150 feet high, is fabulous, too (obviously i have a limited vocabulary for describing peak moments). last month i was up there again with students. mahea tells the story of a part of the battle, where oahu people were on the run from kamehameha's warriors. they fled into the mountains and were headed to a place called lulumahu (hidden valley). the oahu men, women, and children were caught and killed. on the sides of lulumahu stream are huge rock mounds where the bones of these people remain. on our hike we stopped and asked permission each time we passed one of the guardian rocks on our way up. it's not a happy place. but nevertheless it is beautiful at the waterfall. students jumped in and swam while we were there. some stood under the waterfall. wild watercress grows up there, and we ended up picking some for our sandwiches when we were there before.

it has occurred to me that the issue of "settler" really deserves more discussion. i had heard that some folks in waimanalo have made reference to homesteaders in their area as being settlers. i think i'm in agreement. i'm a settler on oahu. my family comes from kailua-kona (on my mother's side) and hilo (on my father's side). when i'm on hawaii island, i always feel sad to leave to come back "home" on oahu, as if this is not my home. and even though i've been living here on oahu for most of my life, my kuleana to care for the land is primarily there, on hawaii island. but i don't exercise that kuleana. as a transplant, my kuleana now also includes oahu, all the places i've lived: kapahulu/waikiki/kapiolani, waipahu, wahiawa, kailua, palolo, kaneohe. geez...i've lived all over the place. this whole island is now my kuleana. but that doesn't take away from the fact that i am a settler. not sure how to resolve that...

anyhow, here's my little commentary on being a settler on oahu from my top-down view at the pali lookout.

Monday Scrunch!

2008-04-21T19:14:00.000-07:00

i hate being such a procrastinator, but can't seem to help myself. if it's not directly in my face, i probably won't deal with it. it has to, basically, jump up and slap me! this morning i got the big slap, so from then until now (about 8 hours, so far) i've been writing resos to submit to the oahu county convention (democratic party) coming up on may 2. hard work. due today! but that's what i get for committing to actually write these things. and smart me, i got other people, experts in the field, to send me things to include in a draft and then wrote them up straightaway. i can truly say that i'm not always clear myself about the issues, but i get clear in trying to write them up in resolution form. in the back of my mind are all these other pressing issues: two more weeks of school, unread journals that are due back tomorrow, missing-in-action students (where the heck are they?), uncompleted and two years overdue manuscript for a book about the sovereignty movement with information that is probably old news by now (so much for contemporary history!), finding a place to live in the next few weeks, reports due, meetings, meetings, meetings! i hardly have time to take photos! where's the fun stuff?

but i am including a nice pic i took at zippy's yesterday, out in the parking lot. the ferns were beautiful and worth capturing, i thought. after the meeting we took nyrell to the stadium flea market. she didn't shop, but i did--ended up buying cookies, macadamia nuts and assorted unnecessary things. it made me feel better, which tells you something about me. i'll shop for self-validation as long as it's cheap :-) after that we dropped nyrell off in waikiki and went to diamond head beach, down that narrow road where there's never any parking. i took a zillion pics of birds that i seduced with crushed cookies. i liked this one (above). i'm including a short video of the beach so y'all can hear what i heard and, if you live away from hawaii (like gabe) you might remember what the water sounds and looks like here in hawaii nei. not at all like atlantic ocean beaches. i remember visiting my son in providence and looking for a beach. what i found was rather dreary and grey. my son's father-in-law took james and me on a cruise on his boat in what i considered 'cold' weather. i was bundled up, anyway. james said it was 'cool'. somewhere out in the bay, near where the old beautiful mansions are--newport?--the boat stalled. we were drifting in the cold, almost dark ocean. some kelp or something got tangled in the motor. so my son strips off his shirt and dives into this really dark and unfriendly ocean to untangle us. i had stress! not sure why, as he was an adult and obviously used to doing this. but the ocean seemed unfriendly, and i was used to friendlier pacific ocean water, smell, color, sound. i guess i'm weird. enjoy hawaii's beach sounds!

Sunday Stuff

2008-04-20T23:21:00.001-07:00

i feel like everyday is a learning day. that's not a bad thing. rather it's a thing that tells me everyday is also a busy day, as i'm busy learning.

this morning james and i had early lunch with nyrell and poka at zippy's on vineyard. i thought it was a good idea to hook these two up to discuss work and share philosophies. it worked out pretty good! at the end of the lunch meeting, which i tried to discreetly audio tape while they were talking, poka and i had a chance to talk about putting on a conference about next steps. richard kinney had sent me a message about possibly hosting a 'kanaka maoli conference' and i told him i would look into it asap, but actually put it at the back of my mind and on hold while i dealt with other stuff. after i talked with poka today, i realized that this might actually work--a kanaka maoli conference that builds upon a framework that poka describes as "the dreaming stage", the last step in a process of decolonization (or de-occupation) where people reconnect with their own deep culture through the practice of oluolu, lokahi, and aloha. this is the time when the people dream the future. [see http://www.opihi.com/sovereignty/]

all of this sounds exciting to me, as it seems reasonable that we should all be makers of our own destiny, rather than being passive onlookers as our destiny is created (or re-created, as the case may be) for us. i can imagine a lot of folks, most of whom have the nation already created, wouldn't be happy with this scenario. the dreaming stage assumes that we can determine for ourselves whether or not, for example, the kingdom actually works as a model of governance in the present world context. yes, i understand that the kingdom continues to exist and, if we are to win our case based on international law, that the kingdom structure would be the existing framework for re-establishing our government and moving forward to control our own lives (if that's possible, given the intrigue and major players within the existing system who probably have their own ideas about how things should fall out). nothing ventured, nothing gained. and i personally think that more talking is better. more planning. more information sharing. more insight. more group think. more inclusion. poka's "ola"--oluolu, lokahi, aloha--and its practice as expressions of deep culture makes sense if we focus on people. but the model speaks also of the connection of man and aina, kai, and wai. thus, "ola" includes more than people. it embodies a working connection among people and place (aina, kai, wai, and lani) which, in its deepest sense, complement and therefore constitute the wholeness of us as people within our element. now doesn't that make sense?

i think we'll move forward on a kanaka maoli conference so we can really have this discussion.

Saturday leftovers

2008-04-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

it's early sunday morning and i'm supposed to be calling poka's radio show to comment on the "big meeting" held at nuuanu valley park last sunday, but i'm too lazy. besides, i haven't put the notes together yet. only couple weeks left of school. i think we'll meet again in june, anyway, so there's lots of time.

saturday, after the sativa encounter, i dropped james off again (at the people's fund) and went to pick up nyrell in waikiki and took her to jarrett middle school for olelo's "kahea". there weren't too many of us, but enough producers were in attendance to be able to give feedback on olelo's new marketing plan calling for inspirational programming (of which there is an abundance) to be spill over on NATV, channel 53. in a sense, the inspirational programs are using up all their space and the proposal is to put them in "our" space. the presenter, olelo staff, gave a little powerpoint presentation which i didn't like, primarily because he gave as reasons for the change surveys that point to the desire of the general olelo-viewing public to watch "entertainment" and "light" viewing during primetime hours, 6-11 pm. i turned into an academic, for a moment, and asked him what surveys? what was he citing? he said he had been in advertising in hawaii for many years and was confident the survey figures from surveys done on the continent were similar to here. while he may have been correct in applying those figures to hawaii, i didn't agree. i believe, as did many of the producers present, that the reason people watch olelo is because mainstream television IS entertainment and light fare, and the only thing with any substance going on is on olelo. so that was the first thing that pissed me off. and the audience (us guys), which had been pretty quiet until then, became not only animated but really kinda noisy! it was a great discussion. some of the olelo staff got a little nervous when a couple guys began raising their voices and got into it with each other, but hey, we were all adults! anyhow, the little bit of tension worked itself out and that made for an interesting and spirited meeting! what could have been a presentation met with dead silence actually turned into some folks freely expressing their feelings and being heard and acknowledged by olelo admin. i thought it was great. NOT listening could have translated into an escalation and possible punch in the face, but that didn't happen.

the photos above are of 1) nyrell, rob kinslow, and jim brewer; 2) some of the folks having lunch at the jarrett school cafeteria (evern and crew always see that there's ono food available for these meetings), and 3) meredith's kids (a couple of cuties!). i think she's teaching them to ham it up before the cameras! but good on meredith for setting up this talk story session. i think it worked out well. palolo was the first. no telling what will happen at the other olelo meetings, but hopefully they'll adjust the next one based on this one. olelo's cfo got yelled out, but to his credit he took it all in and they worked things out (i think). i see growth!

Saturday Smaturday

2008-04-19T23:51:00.000-07:00

nobody ever accused me of having a boring life. and based on today's small adventures, i know why! this morning i drove to town with james, dropped him off at keoni agard's office downtown so he could kokua keoni with computer problems. while i waited for him, i walked around town for a bit and took photos of whatever interested me. i've posted some. i walked to the downtown post office and a haole woman walked right up to me and asked me if i was lynette. i said yes, wondering if i should prepare myself for some kind of weird request, but all she said was that she had seen me on olelo and really enjoyed whatever it was she saw. so i thanked her and felt great that she watched olelo and not the crap showing on mainstream tv.

then james and i went to eat breakfast at karen's downtown. pretty good grinds for cheap! where else can you get a decent and hefty breakfast for $2.95, complete with coffee! people were coming and going the whole time we were there--nice crowd! while we were having breakfast, i got a phone call from a really interesting guy about one of the programs i taped for na leo o oahu council, this one with dr. lorrin pang on the lies told by gmo-promoters about gmo safety, etc. that was one of the better shows, i think. anyhow, this man who called had watched that program and told me about a friend of his who worked for some federal agency, i think food and drug admin, who expressed concerns about gmo safety, wrote some reports to that effect, and was subsequently fired. the person who replaced him knew zero about gmo and graduated with a bachelors degree in botany. the feds are happy with him. he knows enough to do what he's told, so everybody's happy. anyhow, this guy is coming into town in june and is, apparently, okay with sharing his story, if i'd like to tape him. i said sure! so he invited me over to his house in kalihi.

so right after breakfast, james and i went to kalihi and found ourselves in a really strange (but not boring) place. i went in and took a tour of the house and the yard, at this guy's invitation (i'm not giving him a name for a reason that you'll see later). good thing james stayed outside, as the house itself was rather fragile looking inside, with multiple levels kinda built on a framework made of pipes with boards laid across them. the word "warren" comes to mind, in reflection. and it had numerous dark hallways with doors everywhere, as if there were small apartments behind each door on each of the floors (four floors, total, with two more being planned). i heard people talking, children's voices, all kinds of noises. met a couple of guys, one in the kitchen, one on the street level, as i was going out and he was coming in. on the very bottom floor, where a door opened into a small yard and stream, i met some local guys and said hi. they were friendly. i asked my host, mr. x, who all these people were and he mentioned they were folks who had nowhere to go, so they all ended up at his house. once in a while one of them would rob him or beat him up, but by and large everybody got along and shared the house and helped him to install the pipe framework and walls, stairs, doors, etc. i will say it was so dark in there i couldn't really see much. you might wonder what kind of idiot would be wandering around in a strange house with some strange guy i just met as he told me his plan for building and for the future, etc. hmmm...

anyhow, before i was able to get out to the street level again, he insisted i look at all the various floors, which meant i was climbing up, over, under, through all kinds of stuff, working my way up to the natural daylight. and that's when i saw the PLANTS! of course, i couldn't pass up the opportunity to take pictures, so i did. he explained about the different kinds of plants, sativa and some other kind, which he thought was less potent. maybe that's why i forgot the name. i learned that if you keep a light on it at night, it keeps the plant from flowering and allows it to grow taller. yes! now i know better. i was flashing back to a time in my past when i actually knew a lot of this stuff, but old age takes its toll. my mind is a blank.

on my way out, i met the tipsy fisherman coming in. he didn't look too happy when i took his picture, but oh well. mr. x then showed me his hand, which had been wrapped in a sock, except for the thumb. he told me he was a practicing physician and went to work for the cia (i hope me spilling all this info doesn't get me killed!). they were doing some research on some kind of bio something-or-other and he contracted a staph germ that caused his hands to become deformed. he whipped off the hand covering and encouraged me to take photos. he had been treating himself (since he was a doctor) and showed me where the new skin was growing in. i guess that was good. by this time i was like--yikes! what's going on! he gave me copies of the american free press newspapers and urged me to check out a man named david icke, which i did. mr. x is convinced david icke's theories about a centuries old reptilian invasion are true and we sheeple should be aware of them. [see http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/reptiles/reptiles06.htm]

mr. x also mentioned that he had had his doctor's license revoked for "in vivo" stem cell therapy, but that he would continue to speak out about the reptilian invaders who now run the government and control all positions of power. i was, to say the least, speechless. his final words to me, as i hurried out the door to my next meeting, was (to paraphrase) "i am an aryan. this, what i do, is my legacy, my duty". i took that to mean he had finished my indoctrination and i was free to fly, and i did. but he did rush out to say goodbye to patient (and smart) james who nonchalantly waved goodbye to mr. x as we drove off.

whew! what a day. i mean, what a start of the day. more to come...

Moving

2008-04-16T19:24:00.000-07:00

i hate the thought of moving again, but one good thing is i get to (once again) downsize all this stuff i've been carrying around for at least 30 years. started unpacking and repacking and found all kinds of interesting stuff. most of it i've been saving for our hawaiian national archive (one day), i have notes of all the living nation meetings and most of the flyers and programs and various other stuff over the last 20 years. yikes! so i found a booklet called "the saga of ihu nui, economic man". it was put out in 1978 by the office of instructional service, state dept. of education. not sure how i got this copy. but i do remember hearing haunani-kay trask raise the issue of racism in class around this book. she questioned if the d.o.e. had put out a book using a japanese person if they might have titled it "the sage of 'slant-eye', the economic man". but of course, they wouldn't. that would have been racist. however, calling a publication ihu nui, as a way to exaggerate a body part of hawaiians was okay. and this is stuff put out by the state's dept. of education! what's the message here? i don't recall if anyone raised a stink about it. i don't think so. some years later the state issued an updated and revised version, same name, same illustrations. for all i know, they're still using it in the public schools. it must be okay, even though i think it's fucked up.

i was reminded, when i saw this book again, about a talk i gave at the uh law school a few years ago. i don't know why they asked me. i never really have anything good to say about academics or about the state of hawaii. i think it was a talk for young attorneys who were interested in the current state of cutural and political resistance to ongoing theft of hawaiian cultural resources. i forget who else was on the panel, except for william aila sitting way down on the other end. he was actually reasonable, as i recall. in my talk, and this is the only part i remember, i said that one of the problems from my point of view was that the state of hawaii does not love hawaiians. if anything, hawaiians stand in the way of full on development by the state and their bedroom buddies, big land developers. so always trying to be on the alert and being maka`ala every minute of the day was not the best response to the threat. a better response would be 'u.s. out of hawaii'. i don't think anyone there appreciated what i had to say. they certainly didn't ask me any questions. and they also never asked me to speak again :-) oh well...

we like to think what goes around comes around. that's a good note to end on. tomorrow i'll look at what else is in all those boxes. aargh...

Wednesday Rant

2008-04-16T10:45:00.001-07:00

i had a weird dream last night. mostly i'm so exhausted when i go to bed i don't dream. or i don't remember that i dream. i was at a house that belonged to one of my nephews. not lono's house, as this one was quite different. my nieces and nephews were all there, but they were much younger, actually younger than 20. i didn't see lono, and i didn't see my sister, but i saw all the other kids and they were still school-age. there was a grassy front yard that sloped down to the street. one of the kids had been outside and came to call all of us in the house to come and look at the sky. so we all went outside and sat in the front yard and looked up. the sky was absolutely black, and raining shooting stars. it was kinda like the perseid meteors, but big time! it was beautiful, fascinating to watch, and rather thrilling. no one spoke. we just sat there watching. and when i say 'raining', i mean just that. there was so much of it the falling stars (or whatever) looked like streaks of rain. and then i woke up.

it never occurred to me in my dream to run fetch my camera. it wasn't a kodak moment. if anything, it was a 'family' moment. i had a chance to hang out with my nieces and nephews to witness something major. i didn't see my own kids around, but i sensed they were there--i could feel their presence nearby. i didn't see james, either, but he's always hovering in the background. but i kinda got the sense that a BIG change was coming, and this one would manifest first not on the aina or the kai, but in the heavens. and that manifestation would signal the next change, here on earth. a big thing is coming--not news to anyone, of course. let us be ready for the transition.

Tuesday stuff...

2008-04-15T22:58:00.000-07:00

i had an odd experience this morning on the bus. it was crowded when i got on, but there were seats in front. nowadays, my white hair gets me a seat anyplace and i don't have to feel guilty. but there were a couple of ongoing conversations among several people in the bus who didn't seem to know each other. most of us try to keep ourselves in our little spaces, and keep our ukana out of other people's way. that includes, of course, our voices and cell phone conversations. but today it was different. the person to my left, and another person two rows down and across the aisle, and then another person further down were having a discussion. loud. everybody heard every detail. they were talking about the price of gasoline and complaining about having to put $80 worth of gas in their car every two or three days--which was why they were riding the bus. at first i tried to tune them out, but that was tough. then (shifting into my anthropologist role) i asked myself what was really going on here. people were being mighty friendly and breaking all the unspoken rules about bus behavior! and these were not kids! not even teenagers! they looked like ordinary, going-to-work adults, middle aged or older, rather conservative. one lady was filipino, one guy was haole, and next to me was an older japanese woman who looked like she worked in an office. they were noisy! and friendly! by golly, they were behaving almost like a community! it occurred to me that the people on the bus, if they were allowed to ride together as a group for a longer length of time, would coalesce into a community of like-minded (around rising gas prices) individuals who saw themselves as sharing a common crisis, like survivors of a plane crash, for example. they would become compadres, all of them at the mercy of a system in which it became harder and harder to live an ordinary life. and no one who had not experienced their hardship could relate. my fingers were itching to take photos! i had to restrain myself.

so of course, as soon as i got off the bus i started taking photos of everybody and everything i passed on the way to my office, including a homeless man in a wheel chair with his cart of belongings nearby. and then beautiful flowers at the flower shop next to my building. after my first class, i walked down to the open market where all kinds of colorful things called to my camera lens. i saw some little painted wooden egg-like decorations. i wanted to buy a bunch, but had to rethink whether or not i could really shell out $6 each for the four eggs that i wanted. what would i do with them? but a really neat thing happened on my way back to my office. three young students were playing violins on the mall. it was so beautiful. i stood there for a few minutes listening. what a treat! it made up for all the times i felt depressed or sad during the week. it made me happy. so i get to end this post on a happy note.

Tuesday thoughts...

2008-04-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

i just posted to twitter (see right side of this page) about receiving copies of a tape from from a friend, robert, that he made when he was a kid of a conversation between mary pukui and william meinecke that took place in 1974 at her house in manoa. this was 34 years ago. he found out his mother was a cousin of mrs. pukui (who wrote the hawaiian dictionary) and told his teacher about it. his teacher suggested he interview her next time robert was on oahu (he's from pahala on the big island). so he and his sister had a chance to visit mrs. pukui at her house in manoa. when he got there, she had a visitor, a man named william meinecke, who was 92 at the time. mrs. pukui was 82. robert and his sister stayed there for several hours and he taped the discussion between these two kupuna. mr. meinecke said he had come to oahu from big island to meet with mrs. pukui because he had had a dream. in the dream he was given half a chant. mrs. pukui was supposed to have the other half of the chant. and he was directed to give it to "the boy". not knowing anything except that he was to come to oahu to do this, he arrived that morning and was sitting in mrs. pukui's house waiting for something to happen. and then robert and his sister arrived.

so they stayed all day and he taped about six hours of these two people talking about everything under the sun. then mr. meinecke chanted the half of the chant he was given. and mrs. pukui, who really did have the other half, chanted her half. at the end of the day, he said goodbye to them all, went home and packed up the tapes, and sent them back to pahala school for his teacher, who said she would have the tapes transcribed. two weeks later, robert called the school to see how the transcribing was coming along. the school registrar answered and told him that pahala school had burned down and the tapes were nowhere to be found. he was bummed, and that was it.

three weeks ago, robert (who lives on oahu) said he was watching olelo (i think the program with james and me about james' life story) and something he heard caused him to call the school again (as it is still there) and ask if they knew the whereabouts of his former teacher. they suggested he call information, as she lived in pahala town. so he did. he called her, she answered, he asked if she remembered him, and she said yes. he asked her if she had listened to the tapes before the fire happened, and she said no, but that he shouldn't worry about it, because she had the tapes. for some reason, she had taken them home with her before the school burned down. and she had been carrying them around with her for the last 34 years. last week they arrived in the mail. robert took them to an audio guy and had the tapes' contents transferred to cd. he gave me a set (6 CDs from the six tapes) and asked if i could help transcribe. i said yes, in my spare time (hah!). yesterday i started listening. yikes! talk about history coming alive!

anyhow, robert mentioned that tape 3 (or CD 3), the one that had the chant on it, seems to have been taped over, so the chant is unavailable to him. he simply couldn't make it out. but all the other tapes were pretty clear. that sounded weird to me. but that's kinda what's happened. is that interesting or what?

he came with us to kaniakapupu on sunday. he mentioned that his life has been rather unusual, although he's not quite sure what's going on. seems like there are some entities following him around. more details on that as i get them.

on another issue, yesterday morning i spent a couple hours talking story with my neighbor at his house up the road. mike went to school with my sister. they both grad from roosevelt in 1960. he used to be the manager of star market when i lived in kailua in the late 1960s and early 70s. mike's a hiker and has hiked all over this island and come across all kinds of interesting sites and stuff. he has an interest in how hawaiians built walls, in drywall stacking. over the years he has walked all the mountain ridges on both kaneohe and kalihi sides and found a bunch of bottles, so inadvertently became a bottle collector. i went around his house with my camera (of course) and took a bunch of photos. what an impressive collection! i'm going hiking with him sometime next week (with my trusty camera!) and will post photos. btw, the two little bottles are ink wells.

Updating...

2008-04-14T01:45:00.000-07:00

haven't written for awhile. too busy. had a fabulous trip to waimea valley for oahu council meeting. not sure what transpired at the meeting, as i was too busy talking outside and taking photos of the area. got a fabulous tour from david orr, the botanist on-site. years ago, david showed us some artifacts that were found in the valley. they're being held for safekeeping, but hopefully waimea folks will open up a little cultural artifact display. i'll be taking my students there for my summer class on ahupuaa resource management.

the place is noisy with screeching peacocks, very spoiled ones! but the plants are beautiful (even though many are alien). we took a tour of some of the native plans, which are now spread out in four native plant gardens. several large stones safeguard the areas, including a large one with a petroglyph man on it. it took an hour just to go through a small section of the park because everybody wanted an explanation about every single thing. it was fascinating. we all picked up wiliwili seeds on the ground, both bright red and orange ones. david picked flowers from the different trees and shared them with us. so after an hour had gone by, we all realized that we left our stuff on the tables with one of the kupuna, who probably wanted to go home. oh well...next time!

the only thing i remembered about the meeting was that jonathan scheuer from oha did a brief presentation about the acquisition of waimea valley by oha. kahoonei asked if the road the army planned to use (and continues to maintain) at the back of the valley was for the express use of transporting strykers, and he said yes. however, since oha had taken a position against the strykers in hawaii, the army hasn't pushed them to expand the road for that specific use. some of the long time activists in the audience didn't like jonathan's recounting of history, probably because they knew a different story than the one he shared, which he probably read in oha records. he's too young to really know all the struggles in the valley.

the other thing i wanted to mention was that maile meyer and artists had opened up an opportunity for hawaiian artisans to exhibit and sell their wares at waimea. i ran into kaha`i topolinski, who had brought his students to show and market their featherwork products. these were really beautiful! one of the craftsmen said the uliuli center can be designed to reflect someone's logo. something to think about for the future! anyhow, it was fabulous stuff.

Tuesday Blathering...

2008-04-08T22:45:00.000-07:00

james and i went up to bumpy's village today to pick up a computer that steve tayama no longer wanted. recycle! we hadn't been up there for a while. steve took us up the road a bit and to the left of the houses along the road to check out the area. a bulldozer was grading the land to level it out for a road and for planting. a friend of bumpy's, an older tongan man, had been planting crops in the cleared area, as you can see from the photos. it's pretty extensive. looks like they'll be growing taro and sweet potato, and other kinds of food. steve seemed pretty excited by this project and by the idea that the aina was going to be used to grow food to feed the people. it sounded pretty good to me, too. steve also mentioned that there might be opportunity to grow the village itself by inviting more people to come and live there. sounds exciting!

in other news, i have been reading up on kaneohe (where i now live) and the various sacred places on this aina. kaneohe's history is interesting, like it is everywhere else in hawaii. i went up to mahealani cypher's website, malamapono. she describes the building of the H-3 freeway. inouye first proposed it in the 1960s as a small pork barrel project to connect two military bases on oahu. over the next 30 years it ballooned from a few hundred thousand dollars to $2 billion. although the military in the 1980s decided they didn't really need an H-3, and opportunities were there for building a mass transit system in honolulu, instead, inouye pushed forward, persuading congress to provide a special waiver of environmental laws to allow the project to succeed. that set precedence for other sttes to also circumvent environmental protections.

however, even though NEPA (national environmental protection act) was waived for this project, certain provisions of the Historic Preservation Act were not. of course, the feds and state knew this, but nonetheless hundreds (maybe thousands) of ancient hawaiian sites, burial grounds, and heiau were destroyed in the building of the H-3. kukuiokane heiau, the largest temple in the windward side, was one of the victims. in addition, luluku archaeological district, which is near to where i live now (i'm probably living on it, as a matter of fact), was destroyed except for one small part. this whole area was a large complex of irrigation systems (all lands for growing food for an obviously large population--lots of food, lots of people to feed).

bishop museum contracted, mahealani states, "as the main facilitator of the destruction and benefited to the tune of $40 million in federal aid over the years." so much for the museum's commitment to preserve hawaii's history and culture. or maybe that was the museum's "development plan". OHA also failed to protect these sites and now so few of them exist that people will forget, in time, the role of these major organizations in hastening our cultural demise by allowing these areas to be destroyed.

kukuiokane heiau was the larget heiau on the windward side, as i mentioned earlier. it was dedicated to the hawaiian god, kane--god of procreation, fresh water, sunlight, and taro. it's located just below the ridge next to the roman catholic monastery near likelike highway in kaneohe. the temple itself was probably built around the 12th century.

luluku, where i live, was considered the breadbasket of oahu. this is probably what kamehameha saw as the prize and the reason for the battle of nu`uanu. he could certainly see it from the pali area where the last battle for oahu took place. i imagine that the longer i live here, the more i'll find out about this interesting and rainy place.

Kahana Valley

2008-04-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

about 30 students showed up at kahana fish pond today to help clean up the area next to the pond. huge trees and choke bushes. they did a great job. aunty mae, ulu bierne, ben, and ulu's husband, john, told students the history of the area and of the project, itself. here's what i learned: 1) the community is really wanting to restore the fishpond walls and make the fishpond productive. most of the rocks on the walls have (of course) fallen into the sea. the community is not allowed to retrieve the fallen rocks because doing so might cause an imbalance in the tidal pattern (or some shit like that) so the restoration process requires that other rocks be brought in. this is a pretty expensive proposition. after numerous truckloads were brought in, a small portion of the wall was restored (or rebuilt). they really can't afford to do this. now they just wait for stones to roll down the old stream bed and use those rocks to rebuild the wall. 2) they can't restore the wall until AFTER they cut back the bushes, ironwood trees, and other weeds growing next to the pond, which is why we were there today. 3) the community is trying to change the (kind of stupid) law that prevents restoration of the fishpond by putting so many obstacles in their way that it's hard to move forward. but i don't think anyone has ever acccused the state of promoting particularly intelligent policies. that must be the job of the people--to force the state to be smart, kind, reasonable, just, and fair. good luck to us all.

we worked steadily for about 2.5 hours. we got instant gratification! first it was overgrown and looking sad and unattended. then when it was cut back, it looked cared for. what can i say?

later in the afternoon, brian and i, after i made him work his butt off, went to hygienic store to buy hot laulau and pastelles (pa-tell-ays) for dinner. ono stuff. i took photos of the signs and flowers. pretty! definitely only in hawaii!

Friday Rant

2008-04-04T20:47:00.001-07:00

yikes! i've been accused of losing my mind! on reflection, i think it is so! too many things going on, although most of them are interesting; and they're all time-consuming! i'm losing track. how can that be? i always stay on top of it--aargh...

poka laenui spoke in my class last night. the topic was ho`oponopono, but he took the long way to get there, to discuss how one "fixes" the breaks in relationships in hawaiian families. he says the kind of ho`oponopono done in the "old days" requires too much prep, and that it can't be done that way anymore. he's a professional in the field, so he should know. but i beg to differ. i think we should always give it a shot if a way to resolve an issue is identified. it's better than not doing it. the problem could get fixed or half-fixed if we try something (or it could get worse), but the reality is it WILL get worse if we don't do anything. i'm wondering how/if i might try to do a practice session in next thursday's class. maybe i should call in a different expert...something to think about.

yesterday (wait, what day is it?), no wednesday i attended a lecture by stephen schneider at the rRed Elephant downtown (cute spelling, but pain in the ass to write correctly all the time). he's a nobel laureate who has worked on climate change issues for a number of years. he shared something that i found useful, in terms of how i think about climate change and global warming. he showed a slide that says "the jury's still out on climate change" and then proceeded to talk about how evidence is used to determine whether or not an issue merits concern or a decision. in terms of global warming and man's part in hurrying that process along, dr. schneider (i'll call him steve, hereafter, and assume some intimacy because no one cares, anyway) noted that "beyond a reasonable doubt" is the criteria used by some to determine whether or not global warming is really happening, and whether or not human beings are contributing to it. some scientists are not at a place where they can or will apply that criteria. but from his point of view, the legal definition of guilt or innocence doesn't/shouldn't apply. rather, if it's going to be a legal definition, then it should hinge on the kind of criteria that is used for civil cases--a preponderance of evidence. this merely means that a majority, or 51% of the accumulated evidence, points to a fact that needs to be addressed--global warming is definitely happening, and policies should be developed (maybe too late now!) to deal with the issue. the arguments are political ones, primarily. the evidence is suppressed because there are economic ramifications for launching any program to halt human impacts on global warming. bad for business, basically. so i walked out of there, late to my next meeting, feeling the usual depression from having too much information and knowing there wasn't much i could do about it except, maybe, saying "ah, i got it" as i watch the sun set on humanity and the earth. oh happy day.

Monday, April Fool's Day

2008-04-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

this is an ellsworth kelly print. i like the colors. it has nothing to do with anything, but i thought i'd start my day out with artwork.

i dreamed about my friend, nalani, last night and realized i missed her terribly. i think the dream was triggered by a song i heard yesterday, "into the mystic". she was really kind to me--like a sister. she was also kind of manipulative, but nowadays who isn't? anyhow, her kindnesses outweighed any negative things and i felt a kind of lump in the bottom of my stomach just hearing the music and remembering all those meetings and eating together, and on and on. i caused her to cry once because i told her something someone had said that was critical of her leadership. i should have kept my mouth shut. but i always feel that the more info you have, even unpleasant info, the better able you are to deal with what's around you, especially those who don't wish you well. i feel sad for her passing. i could have made her life better by holding back some of the crap. sadness undealt with, which is one of my shortcomings. i never purposely, openly deal with stuff that makes me sad. instead, i have stiffness in shoulders and upper back, and i get quiet. it's my own weakness, to pretend that i can turn away from things that hurt me as if they don't hurt me. i still haven't dealt with my nephew, lono's death. it's like if i don't look, then i won't see, and that means it didn't really happen. or if it did, it was so far away, in such a distant place, that the reality of it hasn't (and won't ever) really hit home. if i could just keep it at bay a little longer, then i'll be strong enough (later) to deal with it. well, that sounds ridiculously weak, but it's enough to get me through it for the moment. i have lots of those moments.

in thinking back on my life, i think i had a mini-nervous breakdown about 24 years ago (i remember it was before my youngest son was born). i was feeling hopeless--no one to turn to, in a heap of financial trouble, and pregnant, to boot. i remember sitting on the front porch of my house, holding my head in my hands, and screaming. and the next thing i knew, i was lying in my bed. i sat up and saw my son, bennett, sitting on a chair next to my bed watching tv. he was in high school at the time. and in the other chair was my friend, mark. mark was actually my daughter's friend from school, but my friend from work. he was watching tv, too. no one paid attention to me. i wondered why the hell they were sitting in my room while i was in bed. no one said anything to me and i never spoke to them at all. instead, i lay back down and went to sleep. there was an interval of time there that i have never recovered. but i think that little episode changed me. i decided i didn't have time to have a breakdown or, basically, to have any regrets. and since that time i have lived my life knowing that once a thing is done, it's done. it can't be changed. and all the stupid and bad things we do can't be undone. but we can try not to do stupid and bad things. and we can try not to act in ways that we'll regret later. and we ought to think about how what we do impacts on everyone and everything.

i really liked mark. he was a nice guy. his father was hawaiian and his mother was haole. he and his family moved away from hawaii, eventually. and then we lost touch. but i did talk with him many years later (about five years ago). he had just gotten married and had a baby on the way. he lives in new hampshire (yikes!), where his mother's family is from. when my daughter and her husband were on the east coast last, they tried to hook up with mark, but not enough time. i'm happy he's happy. i'm thinking about him because i think he must have been pretty worried about me to be sitting with my son in my room watching tv. i hope i didn't do any weird things that i forgot about after. another thing i remember is that once mark made chocolate chip cookies and gave me a can of cookies for christmas. i was feeling kinda depressed back then. my partner at the time was not the kindest person and abusive to me and to everyone (in retrospect, i wonder why i put up with it). so i appreciated the cookies. but i appreciated even more the $100 bill mark stuck in with the cookies. i always wondered why he did that. i think he must have thought that would help me feel better. and it did.

gotta go to school now.

Lunch in Waikiki

2008-03-31T02:30:00.000-07:00

our friends from australia invited us for lunch at the 'cheeseburger in paradise' restaurant in waikiki. it was kinda tacky, with its plastic pineapple cups for softdrinks, and waiters wearing fake hula skirts over their long pants. i took photos, of course! but the talk was good and the food not too bad. i ate one of the 20 different kinds of cheeseburger (what else?). james ordered his usual cheeseburger with no cheese. on the way back to the hotel, i took a picture of a plastic hula girl doll dancing around on the floor in one of the hotel shops. i'm caught by the unreality of it all--this must be what it's like to acknowledge living in the matrix. rather jarring! and kinda spooky! the doll was dancing to 'aloha oe', a song the queen wrote. and just steps away, down the hall, there she was--the queen! twilight zone!

after lunch, we went with them to their hotel room. i had brought my camera and interviewed nyrelle patell, the director of the australian first nations academy for cultural family therapy and counseling (whew! long org name) about her work in north queensland and why she was here in the first place. she came for a conference at the waikiki convention center sponsored by the american counseling association. must have been a thousand people at this convention. anyhow, she was the international speaker brought in for this conference. nyrell happened to find me, as i mentioned in an earlier post, because of kuhio vogeler. she needed to have someone (hawaiian) provide protocol and give permission for her to speak. the conference organizers didn't know what she was talking about but, as i understand, offered her some dancers/chanters from polynesian cultural center. she declined. we ended up taking them all to kekuni's house on thursday. we all stayed until midnight. she explained what she needed and he agreed to provide it. saturday morning, kekuni showed up at the convention center and offered her and the session participants oli and lei. people were blown away by the protocol and their ability to be participants/witnesses to it. kekuni had made a lei out of the puakenikeni flowers in his yard. he had explained on thursday evening that his wife, irene, planted that tree a month before she died. and here it was, pretty huge and full of flowers. so he gathered the flowers and took irene (the lei) along with him to the convention center. he presented that lei to nyrell. and she told the audience the story. apparently people were so moved, they cried. all good!

nyrell invited kekuni to be the keynote speaker at a conference for first nations people re generational trauma in november 2009. he accepted her invite. with any luck, we'll all go along to carry his bag carriers, or set up his equipment, or something.

Willy K in concert

2008-03-31T01:59:00.000-07:00

saturday night at the waikiki bandstand, willy k. and kaukahi, a local band, provided music for the prince kuhio moonlight concert. i have to say that was probably one of the highlights of the year (thus far) for me. he was fabulous! his friends, one from mexico, the other from israel, accompanied him, also on guitars. the music was outstanding. must have been a thousand people sitting there, in the dark, enjoying the music. the tourists seemed to like it. but the locals loved it--we could hear them screaming and cheering somewhere behind and to the sides of us. wish i had gotten a clear picture of them, but all i got was fuzzy blobs, which is what you get :-)

maria (who i was sitting next to) and i commiserated on the crazy lifestyle we live--obviously too much work and not enough sitting around listening to and enjoying music. i reflected on my youthful days of hanging out in bars and clubs and, basically, having a "no thinking" life. my sister worked in club pantheon, downtown, kind of a sleazy joint, as i recall. i think she could drink any guy under the table. but it was funny and fun, nonetheless. pre-kids, of course. notice i didn't write pre-marriage, just pre-kids. back then not many women i knew were out partying with their husbands or boyfriends. most of the males were home baby-sitting. my bad. my fun, too. i remember writing around with a bunch of drunk people, mostly women, not thinking at all about the possibility of being killed by someone who could black out behind the wheel. but as i mentioned it was not a time in my life when i was particularly conscious.

the concert started around 6 pm, immediately following the prince kuhio parade in waikiki. i was supposed to be watching the parking lot but ran off just when the parade cars and marchers started to arrive. and i forgot to return! my desire to 'capture' the parade via images overcame my sense of responsibility to the group. that's another way of saying that i ran away from working the lot and worked the road, instead. but i got some good shots. all of the photos are on the aohcc.org website, if folks wanna go look. it has occurred to me that next year at this time some of the folks i've digitally captured will no longer be here. some of those who were here last year are not here this year. ua pau, ua hala lakou--they have departed, and we are saddened because of it. but they were captured in my camera and they still live via images here and there and everywhere.

so yesterday was a long day, but the concert made up for all of it. afterwards, we went with maria to zippy's to eat ice cream and sandwiches. while we were there, i noticed a couple of guys sitting on a table across from us. two young local guys. one of them had a fabulous tattoo on his arm. i kept staring at his tattoo and i think he noticed, as he kept looking over at our table. eventually i just loudly commented to him how striking it was. when you ask about people's tattoos, something i notice about all of us with tattoos, they immediately want to share everything about their tattoo. then they want to show you all the rest. so this guy whipped off his shirt (in the restaurant) and showed us the other tattoo on his shoulder and talked about the significance of the different designs. then the other guy pulled up his pants leg and showed us his tattoo and talked about its significance. then (of course), i whipped off my olelo jacket and showed him the circles on my upper arms and described them as mo`o tails, one on each upper arm, with two mo`o on my back looking at each other. i had thought, of course, about whipping off my own shirt to showoff my mo`o, but thought better of it. didn't want james to have a heart attack, or maybe give me a couple of cracks :-) just kidding, of course. anyhow, we got into a long discussion about tattoos, and finally we went back to eating and to letting them eat. local people are crazy that way. the guy's tattoo on his right arm was from elbow to wrist. it was much like a glove, or maybe gauntlet, and looked somewhat like armor. it only took four hours or so to do. it goes around his whole arm, front and back. anyhow, i left the restaurant convinced i needed to have something like it. then i regretted not getting a photo, so i ran back in, like a crazy person, and asked to take photos. a couple of them are posted. i'm sure they thought i was crazy, but at my age, i don't really care.

Lunch with Australian First Nations Reps

2008-03-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

james and i had lunch today with nyrell pattel and her husband and another friend (natives from australia) at wailana. it was interesting, and kinda like talking to ourselves. it took a little bit of time to share info that we thought might be relevant to starting a relationship. i hadn't met them before. rather, kuhio vogeler, a friend, had called from california to ask if i might meet with them and help them out with protocol issues (as if i could!). half hour into our discussion and lunch, we all realized that there was nothing any of us could share that the rest didn't already know about from firsthand experience: same statistics re health, education, economics, prisons, etc, etc. so we got that out of the way. then we talked about what she had in mind when she asked kuhio to help her connect with local people (hawaiians). nyrell wants to network with native people throughout the world to share strategies for healing generational trauma among native populations. she's a native healer as well as a western-trained psychologist. but she seemed to be in resistance to western understandings of illness. that was all good! but she also inferred she thought new age healing methodologies (including reiki) smacked of theft, like the white folks that now call themselves 'shamans' and 'healers' because they took training from somebody who had the 'gift'. nyrell believes that all healers heal because they have the gift of healing, not because they've been trained to heal. okay. i'll support that. then i'll have to rethink my own position on reiki. i know it works for me, or so my students and friends say when i work on their headaches that go away. i took training! yikes!

just as an aside, kuhio (my friend now in california) is on his way to estonia for 5 weeks or so to do research for his diss. he's comparing the struggle for independence of estonia, latvia and other baltic nations to hawaii's case. they were independent. then they were taken over by the soviet union. then they declared their independence again. what strategies did they use? what strategies could we use? i am reminded of a story that niklaus schweizer shared about national symbols, in particular the estonian flag. the people there would raise their own flag above the usurper's flag a little at a time, until one day it was flyin higher. just a small thing, and not many people noticed, but of course all the activists noticed, and they took heart by this action. small steps, indeed. reminded me of the time i was at the palace and someone came over to tell me that the hawaiian flag flying at the state capitol was upside down! i ran over (having my trusty camera on hand) and took photos. by that time, someone inside the building noticed and had come out to lower the flag and turn it right side up. i asked him what he thought happened, and he said it was probably an accident. but i don't think so. it wasn't the first time!

anyhow, back to the meeting today. the white woman in the photo with nyrell is a german woman who happened to be walking by outside the restaurant and offered to take our photo (which is why i'm in it!). so i took her photo with nyrell. she mentioned that it was a shame the terrible history of the u.s. in hawaii and how they stole the land. that made us all smile. james told her he felt germans were much more aware of such issues than most americans, and thanked her for her comments. he was remembering, of course, our friend and compatriot, sabine deiringer (now at cambridge finishing up her phd), who always struck us as being particularly cognizant and sympathetic to our efforts at resisting white american hegemony. not to mention that we miss her dearly.

we invited nyrell and her party of 4 to meet kekuni at his house tomorrow evening. hopefully he'll actually be there! last week he wasn't around, even though the meetings are standing meetings! oh well...

after we left the restaurant, i asked james to drop me off at waikiki beach near the police station so i could take surreptitious photos of tourists and others hanging out at the beach. something weird is happening to me. i've turned into a photo nut, trying to capture photos i think are interesting, colorful (i like red in particular), and catch some kind of action that tells a story all by itself. the photos above are two photos that i particularly liked. feel free to comment, if you're reading this.

Tuesday Stuff

2008-03-26T01:21:00.000-07:00

i had an excellent interview today with palani vaughn on why he didn't support the filming of the life of princess kaiulani now taking place at iolani palace. he had been asked, originally, to play the part of kalakaua, and this was months ago. he asked then to see the script, but none was provided until earlier this month. what they did give him was a couple of lines to look at. when he finally got a copy of the script and read it through he thought it was pretty bad and suggested some revisions to the writer and director. he shared several emails with them over the months, but to no avail. they weren't interested in changing the script. apparently (and i say this because i haven't read it myself) the script calls for sanford dole to be the champion of the princess. he advocates on her behalf because she favors annexation to the u.s. she's greatful for the willingness on the part of the usurpers to grant hawaiians the right to vote (like hawaiians didn't have it already), and dole opposes lorin thurston who does not support, on this issue. he becomes her champion. never mind there were these two great petitions in opposition to annexation of hawaii to the u.s. that part gets left out of the story. never mind that the princess supported the queen against the annexation, against the takeover by u.s. military. supposedly the writer (who researched for 10 years, by golly!) knows his stuff. never mind everybody else in hawaii, including hawaiian academics, who have a difference (and documented) take on what really happened in hawaii's history. 'it's just a film' is the stock answer. 'it's just a story'. and, according to palani, they did consult with hawaiian experts--who?

palani made a good case about kuleana--whose responsibility is it to see that things are done properly? whose responsibility was it ever? ours, all ours. who stands behind the princess, in her line? kalakaua, lili`u, their kupuna back to the beginning of time? ua hala lakou--must be all our responsibility now. palani's argument was simply to be pono. that seems to have no place in our lives today. most people think such issues are irrelevant, that the purpose of life is to make money and to do it in every way possible at the least cost to oneself. but there's something to be said about speaking up. so he did. he maika`i loa kela.

it's not as if hawaiians don't have enough crap to deal with, enough loss. after a while, depression sets in and sometimes people don't even know why. i'm back to kawika liu's explanation about self-determnation (or lack, thereof), and what happens when a family, a group, a lahui gets hit time and again. they get tired. no one listens. no one believes. people turn them off. and after a while, they stop talking. hawaiians aren't quite there yet. they're still talking :-)

Monday at the Palace

2008-03-24T17:29:00.000-07:00

i had heard there would be a protest at the palace this morning. henry noa and the reinstated government were there when we arrived, and handing out flyers about why they were protesting the filming of "the last native princess", or whatever the film would be called, because of a badly written script that portrayed a view of the princess as in support of the annexation of hawaii to the u.s. somehow, sanford dole becomes the hero in this film, in opposition to lorrin thurston. since i haven't read the script (yet), i can't say much more, but it was interesting to hear what folks had to say. i videotaped henry and, later on, soli niheu, about what each considered the primary issues. as soon as i edit, i'll post these short interviews online.

soli was there to talk with the film crew about whether or not they should take some responsibility for the filmmaker's portrayal of accurate hawaiian history. not sure what the response was. but from the few i spoke with, very few, if any, had even read the script! no one seemed to have much to say about anything substantive. the medic guy i met, sonny, was clear about his job as medic. he was there to take care of the cast and crew. the security guys were there to take care of equipment, etc. it was hard to have any kind of substantive discussion with folks whose primary reason for being there was 'the job'. understandable. so okay, i understood.

but as james continues to remind me, this is not really the issue. rather our concern has to do with not minimizing the princess by revising history so that the actress who plays her part makes her look stupid, or weak, or unintelligent. she was none of those things. and she dearly loved her country (our country). it was made clear that none of the folks involved in production had considered (or would consider) any of these points. oh well...

i watched people accessing the palace, the balconies, the whole area so freely, without consequence, i suppose. unlike hawaiians who must always face consequences when they think they can access the palace without 'permission'. money can provide permission. rumor has it that the film co. paid the friends of iolani palace %50,000. that's nothing we could ever do, thus we have less compelling reason for access. and our concern is always for our behavior while on the grounds or in the palace--protocol still rules us. but no one else is held to or holds themselves to those same standards. it wasn't that long ago that hawaiians trying to access the second floor to offer hookupu to the queen at her door (not even in her room) were denied the ability to do so by fip security, and by their watchdog lua group. sad days, indeed, for hawaiians who face consequences for wanting to pay tribute, as compared to businessmen whose tribute is in the form of dollars. reality check!

i heard from kehau watson that abigail kawananakoa had called for a press conference today at 11:30 am at the state capitol. unfortunately i wasn't able to make that one. but her reason for the press call was to inform them of her filing an injunction to stop the filming at the palace. i have no idea why that is. i did hear from security that she caused them to change the title of the film from "the last princess" to "barbarian princess" (or some other title), as she claimed to BE the last princess. too bad she hasn't seen fit to hook up with those of us stils advocating for the restoration of the hawaiian kingdom. more on this tomorrow!

Sunday Non-Easter Rant

2008-03-24T02:16:00.001-07:00

james and i cut the grass at the burial mound today. we invited robert (more about him later) to meet us at the palace to offer his oli to the kupuna still in the mound. he helped us cut the grass--very helpful! certainly the place looked and felt much better when we were pau.

after that we went to ranch 99 for lunch and met ruth hsu there. good talking. we decided all three of us (james, robert, me) would be guests on ruth's 'tuff talk' show. her topic: what does it mean to be a hawaiian today? it was an hour show. the time flew by, literally, as we were so engaged in the discussion. one of the issues we touched on was what it means to take responsibility for the well being of the family, the group, the lahui. i was moved by some of the things that both james and robert shared. i think we actually out-talked ruth, effectively using up all the time!

just a bit about robert (see photo above)--he saw james and me talking on one of the half hour shows on hawaiian spirituality. my number is listed in the end credits, and he called me last tuesday and shared his story on the phone. robert's mother was a cousin of kawena pukui. robert shared an incident that happened to him when he was a student in kau. his teacher found out that he was related to mrs. pukui and suggested he write his genealogy. so he decided to meet her and went with his sister to her house on oahu. when he and his sister arrived, there was another person there, an 81 year old man named william meinecke. mr. meinecke shared that he had just flown in from kau because he had been having these recurring dreams about coming to oahu to visit with mrs. pukui. in his dream, he was given information and an oli to be given to "the boy". he had no idea who "the boy" was, but got on the plane and came over anyway. in the dream he was given one part of an oli. mrs. pukui was supposed to have the other part. and together they would provide to "the boy" the two parts of the oli.

so robert and his sister, armed with tape recorder, sat with the two kupuna and taped the discussion, including the two parts of the oli. they sat for several hours. robert taped the whole talk. a week or two later, robert mailed the tapes to pahala, to the school, and asked that a transcript of the tapes be made for him. then he forgot about it. some time later, he called again to check on the progress of the transcription and found out that pahala school had burned down. the woman who answered the phone said that the tapes had been lost. this was in 1974. so for the last 34 years, he hadn't thought about it at all. last week he called the school again and asked, this time, about his former teacher. he was told that she had retired, but was living in the area. so he called the operator and got her number and called her. he introduced himself. during the talk, he asked if she remembered about the tapes. she said yes, and that she had the tapes! she had been holding them for him all this time, even though others had inquired. she did not pass them on to anyone. they will soon be in his possession again.

robert went on to share that ever since he met the two kupuna and was given the oli, his life has changed. i guess you could say he has regular visitations. when he came to the burial mound today, he offered his oli to the kupuna there, in asking permission to enter. it was his hookupu.

i'm not really sure what any of this stuff means, but i'm certain it means something. it's too soon to tell. but our talk on ruth's show touched on some aspects related to this story. it has to do with cumulative impacts--actions/activities that have to occur before the next thing can occur. if you believe there are no accidents, then everything that happens happens for a reason. and the next thing can't happen until the first thing happens (if you get my reasoning). everything happens in order.

In my garden

2008-03-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

when i came back from ukiah, i vowed to plant a little garden. not exactly a 'peace garden', as gabe had planted, but just a 'wish for a better world and respect the `aina' garden. it wasn't hard to do, as i got akoni to help me and we started with plant starters from home depot. i cheated. we've yet to put up a sign, and probably will never get around to it, but at least we (akoni and i) started. one day we may even bring ourselvesf to actually eat these things, but probably not. we've adopted them, like pets. they're beautiful to look at and don't demand too much attention. i, personally, just get a kick out of thinking that i could actually help something to grow and to be beautiful just for the sake of growing and being beautiful.

i imagine building a nation ought to be done with exactly those kinds of feelings--to help something bloom so that along the way we can see the beauty of it emerge from all the energy and commitment put into laying a healthy foundation. kawika liu spoke in my intro class yesterday on the topic of "self-determination as a determinant of health" (good thing i took notes or i wouldn't have remembered the title of his ppt.). what he discussed was the differences in health between whites and asians, on the one hand, and brown/native people, on the other--given the same socio-economic, education, and age status. white people and, in hawaii asians, do much better healthwise than pacific islanders, hawaiians, filipinos, etc. his research showed that 56% of differences were unaccounted for, after you factor in smoking, diet, genetics, etc. and i'm probably being too simplistic in my own summarising of his talk, but bottom line is that our ability or inability to govern ourselves, to have control over our own lives in every aspect, from work to social relations, to where and how we live, to what we eat (or what we can eat) determines our level of health. and the result of not being able to practice self-determination has resulted in high stress/low control lifestyles that make us susceptible to every kind of illness. he cited statistics for heart disease, diabetes, and asthma. hawaiians, pacific islanders, and to a lesser extent filipinos, fit the profile. it's the same profile for native americans in the u.s. and black people. higher ed generally means access to better jobs. better jobs mean more money, health insurance, ability to make choices. people are not always at the mercy of the 'system'. being poor has the opposite effect--no money, homelessness, a feeling of hopelessness, being at the mercy of the elements and of society in general, and feeling shitty about oneself. such experiences contribute to a feeling of wellbeing or not.

i would like to think my students got something out of this lecture. i think maybe a quarter of them did. the rest looked like class fell in the middle of their naptime and they were fighting to stay awake. that may have been due to the delivery, but i don't think so. it had more to do with the topic--who gives a rip about health disparities, anyway? i think there's only one person in class who's over 30, not counting myself, and very few of them see this issue as having any relatioship to them at all, so no wonder the nodding heads! all that makes me feel a little sad. these guys hold the future in their hands, whether we like it or not. that's the point, nowadays, of pushing higher ed. somebody's gotta do the work of the future. the present rockheads (most of them) who are supposed to be leading in government don't seem to be doing a good job, if statistics are to be believed.

i like to think of my students as being part of my garden. most of them thrive and are beautiful. and we won't eat them. we just watch them blossom and we send good energy and hope to hell they don't go out and damage an already fragile world. they'll have to contend with bugs and drought and others less kind who WILL eat them, but for the most part, as long as we keep watering and the sun keeps shining, they'll survive. some will thrive and go away and do good work. john kaimikaua, when he was teaching at HPU windward campus, actually wrote a chant talking about the students at HPU--the last two lines of his ole are "ola ka aina i ka wai ola mai ka lewa, ola ka lehulehu i ka hana pono maika`i": the land lives by the life giving water from the heavens; the people (students and the community) live and thrive by their good works. i think when john wrote this, he was watering the garden, a much bigger garden than HPU students, really it was the garden (aina) of the whole world. his message was for the whole world. maybe he was gardening the gardeners.

Anti-OHA settlement press conference

2008-03-18T01:28:00.001-07:00

interesting day at the state capitol today. but actually, i didn't go to the capitol, just to the queen's statue for a press conference. i videotaped the event and interviewed a few people, meaning anyone who was standing around looking like they were willing to be interviewed! i was practicing, as usual, trying to get some good and interesting photos. good means that i should get them in focus. interesting means (to me, anyway) that the photos don't make me fall asleep.

i happen to like flags, especially the hawaiian flag, even when it's upsidedown. i have tons of pictures of richard kinney with the flag; sometimes with ten flags. he's the man! tomorrow i'll edit the video footage i took and put it up on youtube.

i've been focusing a lot on stones lately. today, as i was driving by punahou school, i took photos of the stone in front of the gate. in glen grant's book _obake files_ he tells the story of the pohaku-loa of punahou. when the school was founded over 150 years ago, that rock placed on the property. it had/has supernatural powers. one story is that when the punahou lands were first given to the protestant missionaries, they sought a stone to serve as a boundary marker. behind the campus they found a 9 foot tall rock, with 2 feet buried in the ground. men were hired to move it to the proper area. so they dug around the rock expecting to move it the next day. but when they returned, the rock seemed as firmly entrenched in the ground as the day before. so they dug again. they became concerned that a kupua actually lived in the stone. but after asking a kahuna, they were told it was not a stone, but a person. and this person would not be forced out, but could be coaxed to move. the kahuna instructed the men to prepare a fest of black pig, black awa, green coconut, black fowl, red fish, and pink poi. everyone was invited to the feast. when it was completed, the workmen began to dig up the stone. then it was asked 'who shall lift it up and set it in place?" paki, a large and powerful chief then took hold of the stone and lifted it upright. then, to the amazement of all the people there, the rock began to move itself to the place where it now stands, with men on either side supporting it from tipping over.

some years later, pohaku-loa was broken into two pieces. one piece was taken to the kapiolani maternity home, which was then located on beretania st. later on it went missing. what remains at punahou campus at the front gate is the other part of that stone. this is the first photo at the top.

Visiting Da Cuzins

2008-03-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

it was nice to be out in nanakuli today, despite the heat. we sat around in the garage area talking with my niece, jesse, and nephew, kimo, and assorted kids. very pleasant. the family is fixing up the house, painting and doing minor repairs. we weren't very helpful, james and i, just sitting around shooting the breeze. but we brought lunch and dinner, so that might have been useful for all of them. i took photos of whoever was there. then we drove up to the cemetery to visit lono. jesse said the boys who dug the hole also created a little rock border. when they were digging, they had a hard time removing one of the stones. eventually they did, however, after they built the border, they put that stone upside-down on one of the border stones where it now serves as a kind of guardian. it didn't seem to want to move to begin with, so they put it back to stand guard over lono. that's a pretty huge stone. i'm surprised it's still standing, but (again) it probably doesn't want to be moved.

james and i drove by gerry jervis' old house in nanakuli. gerry said when the property across the street was being developed, a huge stone in the middle of the property had to be moved. so the backhoe moved it out toward the road. the next day it was back in the middle of the yard. this went on a few times until the contractor decided to move the stone and build a cement block around it. when we last saw it, a few years ago, there it was in the middle of the sidewalk. people had to walk around it. today we went to look for it, but it wasn't there. we did look in the neighbor's yard across the street. two stones are now in a cement slab close to the road, but a fence was built between the road and the stones. i asked a girl riding her bike in the yard if one of these was the stone that used to be outside on the sidewalk. she said she thought so, but from further down the street. neither of these looks like the same stone, but it may be. i was sorry the stone i saw before was no longer in the sidewalk.

Sunday musings

2008-03-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

the other night i had a dream about my sister. she was much younger (20 something), wearing a long black dress or muumuu, couldn't tell which. she was looking very pretty and had long black hair. i remember her as having choke boyfriends and doing all kinds of crazy things that i would never consider doing (i think i was really conservative almost my whole life!). she took my father's 1955 chevy once and took her friends for a ride down the ala wai canal and got into an accident. i think he was really pissed, but i don't recall what happened when he found out. i think the cops called him because she had no license (just a key!). anyhow, my sister was looking good. i mentioned to james, who merely raised an eyebrow. dreams are significant to him. he sent me a telepathic message that said "put that on the shelf for the moment, but don't forget about it." that's what happens when you've been together for a while--you don't have to talk; silent messages will do. hard to tell lies when you're that connected :-(

the day after lono's funeral, my sister went home to the big island. she lives in pepeekeo. i've never been to visit her, despite the fact that i've traveled to the big island at least ten times since she moved there. tells you something about our relationship. the line between blood relatives and spirit relatives is fuzzy. and the definition of family has shifted in my lifetime, in my understanding. we always say "i love you", but the feeling that keeps family members connected for a lifetime, whether we see each other or not, seems sometimes less strong with real blood relatives than with others. why is that? i suspect there's something wrong with me.

the family finally secured a death certificate and had the house (homestead lease) changed over to roy, the next oldest child. and roy also inherited guardianship for some of his nephews. it's a big chunk of work and responsibility to pick up. but i imagine it will, as always, be taken in stride. roy is a deacon in his church in nanakuli. lucky he has "god on his side", instead of practicing heathen ways, like some of his relatives (namely his aunty, me). the church supports him, and has supported lono and the family in the past. that counts for something. i think i may have had that once before, when james and i first got married and he was pastor of a church in kalihi. but then he decided to step down (i gave him such a hard time about the church and missionaries and their impact on hawaiian practices and culture--that may have helped convince him). he became a 'recovering christian' (in his words) and acknowledged that his removing himself was because of his disenchantment with the church and with christians who could not, would not see that the christian perspective should always take into account social justice issues. he believed that jesus was, among other things, a social justice activist, hence he was hanging out with those at the lowest class level--workers. that's kinda like the ahupua`a philosophy that recognizes healthy streams as those with cold, clear, fast running water that benefits the basic life in the stream--shellfish, limu, etc. if you raise the quality of life at the bottom, everything/everyone else benefits. so a good christian, aside from sticking the work of raising the bottom on god, actually has a responsibility to help (kuleana, the action verb!) everyone in society to thrive, beginning at the bottom! i like that.

today i'm going to visit my nieces and nephews in nanakuli. it's sunday. i have a day off, for a change. i want to make sure they remember who i am! i shall take photos and post on the next post!

Playing for Change

2008-03-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

it's 1 pm thursday. i showed students a video called "playing for change" in my anth tourism class, about street musicians and music, culture, a philosophy of life that reflects the need to engage with beauty and passion--can we live our lives in such a way that the driving force is to create and practice what is beautiful in the world and at the same time make enough money to live? the question of the day!

the director did a great job of tying in various perspectives, both in the video and in the piece of music created by different musicians in overlays throughout the show. the outcome of the music piece was wonderful. the outcome of the video was that it held our interest.

but back to the question: can we live our lives such that our main reason for being is that we create and practice what is beautiful in the world (food-sharing, art, music, poetry, "random acts of kindness", group singing, dramatic renderings, street plays, group art, gardening, massage, healing methodologies, long-drawn-out-and-thoughtful discussions, writing, etc.)? and can we then add something to that mix that allows us to somehow meet our daily physical needs: food, water, shelter? all the other stuff is covered under "beauty". what's the model we use now? does it work?

i traveled to ukiah in january to visit my friend, gabrielle. their living situation is interesting. they call it a 'ranch'. several houses are spread out here and there, with a community kitchen and bathroom/shower. everybody has their own private quarters in little (and not-so-little) separate units. on sundays they come together to share food. although i'm not sure how many people actually live on the ranch, i did meet several of them at the sunday evening potluck. they were a like-minded bunch (i think), mostly anti-war, well-educated, older folks, with as many men as women. some, like gabe and king, were partners, but had separate units. gabe lives in a little yurt with a window at the top of her round house and all around the sides, and a little metal fireplace that kept me warm while i was there. not much space, but enough for a little makeshift office, with desk and shelves. i liked it immensely. the community kitchen was jammed full of shelves and jars and cans of unidentifiable stuff. maybe edible. maybe not.

the whole time i was there it rained. i wisely wore layers of everything, but it didn't really help, since they were thin layers. what would i know, coming from a place where 60 degrees meant we were 'freezing'? neighbors brought food they had cooked--cabbage, squash. someone made soup. the local market made our contribution: roast chicken, same as in the markets here. and wine! we brought wine! but the food and the talk around the big old table with every kind of chair was fine. everyone was interested in hawaii and i was interested in what everyone else did in ukiah. we traded info. i noticed squash and pumpkins sitting on a shelf. they looked like perfect plastic, but (surprise!) they weren't. one of the farmers at the ranch grows them in the field down the road. i noticed all kinds of fruits and vegetables in bowls here and there, and out on the porch. it occurred to me that these were so common, no one really ate them. they just sat around for decoration, kinda like how we lay out mangoes and tangerines from the tree, hoping someone would stop by and eat them, or take them.

outside gabe's yurt is a little garden with a sign: wendell berry peace garden. i found it inspiring and vowed to plant a garden when i got home (and i did). across from the garden was a large old wooden house, where the owner lived (sometimes). it was full of holes made by woodpeckers. and each hole had an acorn in it. something new for me. and like a good researcher/anthropologist type, i went around taking photos of everything. now i know what woodpecker holes look like. i suppose i could develop a thesis around it :-)

i took a shower every night. and sometimes in the morning. i mention that because i noticed that i may have been the only one. they probably thought i was crazy, but if they had grown up on an island, they might have done the same thing. old habits are hard to break. if gabe lived in the desert, this probably wouldn't have gone over so well.

gabe's friend, tisha, lived way up the mountain. we drove to her house one day, up and down winding roads in beautiful country. oak trees everywhere. turkeys ran across the dirt road. there was mist rising up out of the ground in several places. tisha has no neighbors to speak of. she no bathroom (not exactly). she has a toilet outside with a partial enclosure, but basically it's a place to sit and contemplate nature while you're doing your natural thing. since i didn't have to 'go', i found it beautiful. otherwise there was a bucket sitting in the middle of the driveway under a tree. why worry about privacy when you have no neighbors? tisha had two large dogs whom she had rescued as puppies from a garbage dump somewhere. they really owned the house and kept it safe from intruders. tisha is a healer. when she found out i had a swollen knee, she immediately set to work healing it. i found out my knee was protesting the cold so did as i was told and covered it up with a sock with a hold where the toes would have been. it helped.

okay, i'm off to class.

Wednesday's Rant

2008-03-13T01:26:00.000-07:00

i considered not posting and just going to bed, but changed my mind. today was interesting. i hosted a bunch of students from barrow, alaska and their teachers. last week barrow had chilly -20 degree weather. today they were sweating in the heat. they took a tour of the hpu windward campus at hawaii loa, then met us at the downtown campus. afterwards i accompanied them to kaniakapupu and gave them a quick history of kamehameha the great's desire to become 'great' by taking, one by one, the different islands. when kamehameha came to oahu, he battled the chiefs from waikiki to the nuuanu pali, and warriors on both sides fell all along the battle lines to the final battle near the place now called 'pali lookout'. i had brought with me 14 pu ohe, made from bamboo gathered at kaniakapupu, kamehameha III's summer palace. the place is certainly a sacred place, and we acknowledged that saredness by offering oli and blowing on our pu, everyone at once, at the outer wall surrounding the house site. it was awesome to hear the different tones all at once.

the students took a little walking tour, learned a little bit of history. i shared only one story with them, which i'm writing about here, about one part of the site that was discovered perhaps ten years ago. a friend had asked me to accompany him to the platform that was uncovered during the UH summer archaeological field school at kaniakapupu. we went there in the evening, around 5 pm. we had gathered plants and flowers to offer as hookupu (offering) out of respect for those spirits and persons resident on the property. when we got there (it's just a short hike into the forest and up the trail, but you can't see anything at all from the road), we went over to the platform, just to the right of the main structure, and looked for a place to put the offering. we walked over, climbed up on the lower level over some rocks. i waited while he went to find a suitable place. he walked away from me and within a minute it became dark. i couldn't see him. but i could hear him chanting. we spoke to each other in the dark and he found his way over to me. it was pitch black. then we turned around the way we had come and began to inch our way back. couldn't see a thing. i thought we might trip over something if we didn't go slowly. all of a sudden there was a flash of light--perfectly round and clear--that illuminated the rock we stepped on coming in. so i put my foot on the rock where the light shone and then it was dark again. we stepped off the platform safely and walked back to the main structure, which was illuminated. the sun hadn't yet gone down, even though it was black in the area where we left the flowers. my friend commented on how lucky it was that i had brought my flashlight. i stated i didn't have a flashlight. moreover, i had left my backpack on the wall, next to where he left his. we walked over to the backpacks and turned to look at where we had been. it was still pitch black there. then we took off down the trail, heading back to the car.

none of the students made any comment. they just looked at me. so i asked them what they thought the point of the story might be and why i thought it might be important to relate. one young man said 'maybe they're still here. maybe they were happy to have a gift and were saying thank you.' i liked that answer. it reminded me that even though these students came from far away, experientially they weren't that far away. they could relate. calvin hoe came over and gave me a hug and honi and thanked me for the story. the same young man asked me why we did that--what did it mean to touch noses. i said that it was commonly done in the old days, and only recently has the practice come back into use. then he turned and asked his teacher, 'how did we use to do it before'? i was intrigued. i knew then, and i guess i always knew, that as a matter of fact, young people are always watching what older people are doing. and they're always watching to see if we're acting like idiots or fools; or maybe like role models with something to teach by our behavior, rather than with our words. the words can come after the action, for edification. for making sense. but the words all by themselves mean little.

my nephew, lono, was a man of action. and he was a man with an 'eye' for fish--a fish spotter, or kilo kilo. he could see schools of fish other people couldn't see. and when he spotted the fish, he became the best fisherman. i kinda think he also could spot a friend, and then became the best friend. i thought about all the stuff lono could have shared with these students, and with their teachers. he wouldn't have told a story with words, but with his hands--doing things, mending things, saying little but teaching much. i realize how far away i am from that way of story-telling and teaching. i rely on words. i'm over-educated.

how did we use to learn before? by watching and doing. no talking! pay attention! what has been the cost of relying less on language and more on action? today we have difficulty getting people to understand what we mean. if the only way to get an idea across is by using spoken words, then those of us who grew up in an earlier time are doomed. we can see how words become separators. no one is quite sure if the words they use are defined by those who hear them in the same way. are we talking about the same thing? can i just show you what i mean? and if i can just show you, then are we required to be in the same place at the same time so that i can, literally, show you? and with the advent of virtual space and the creation of virtual worlds that rely more and more on words, have we learned to ignore nuances that are created by the paralanguage of body movement or simply what we feel on our skin?

these students were great to be around. it was a privilege to interact with them, even if just for a short time. and even as i say that, i reflect on my own relationship with my nephew, lono nihoa. it was great to be around him, and a privilege to call him my nephew, my family. we had a lot more opportunity to learn each other without words. i learned him as a baby, and a toddler, and a child, and young man, and young husband, father, grandfather. i learned him and kept him in a safe and distant place. and then he left, and now i don't have the words to deal with the loss. i never had the words to deal with the life, so it's no surprise.

i gave him the only words i knew how, and that was in poetry.

I learned something new today

2008-03-12T00:37:00.000-07:00

[some of you may notice that i am now reverting to writing everything in lower case--it's quicker for me and i'm naturally always in a rush, so don't care much about conventions and 'proper writing'...tis the truth]

tuesdays and thursdays i teach anth 2000, introduction to cultural anthropology. today's class was interesting and personally challenging for me. i hate when that happens. the class is divided up into four groups and each group is responsible for presenting one of the texts [there are four] to the rest of the students. it's partly to insure that at least one of the books is really read by them, but it's also to see how students can take a book and make it real for others. in a sense, it's practice for students who go on to get their MAs or PhDs--they'll be doing a lot of talking and presenting of ideas to others. today's group did a couple of interesting things.

they first gave the students (and me) a quiz on the book [barbara ehrenreich's _nickel and dimed_], assuming everyone had read it so could easily answer the questions. unfortunately for me, i couldn't see a thing on the ppt (small words, no glasses) so refrained from taking the test. as a result i ended up failing and had to hang out with the low scorers :-) the top 5 or 6 scorers were asked to remain in the class and the rest of us went outside to the hallway near the elevator. we could hear those inside having fun, laughing a lot. we weren't having so much fun. we had been divided into two groups: one group wrapped plastic knives, forks, and spoons in paper napkins and the other group cut up little pieces of paper and piled them into stacks. both groups had supervisors. ours was pretty laid back, so no problem, but what boring work! we did that until we ran out of stuff to wrap. the other group had a supervisor who seemed less patient and way more business-like. he stayed on their case until they got it exactly right. in the meantime, the group in the classroom continued having a good time. we couldn't see, but we could hear.

the second thing was the discussion. when we were done outside, we were invited back to the classroom and the presenters commenced the debrief. what exactly happened and what was the message with that exercise? people who go to college and do well get 'picked', have fun, probably attain some measure of success. people who don't go to college or who drop out end up taking dead end jobs for minimum wage. one of the facilitators asked the question: how many of you would take a minimum wage job? several said they were already working minimum wage jobs but no one, in the future, would even consider it. that's why they were going to college. so college was a way out of the rat race, the minimum wage/two jobs per person, poverty path. then we got into a discussion of poverty and minimum wage standards globally. as it turns out, while the u.s. is supposedly the richest country in the world, the possibility of earning a living wage, as opposed to minimum wage, is dismal in america. the two countries that actually try to approximate minimum wages as living wages are australia and new zealand.

part of the discussion focused on a definition of poverty. measurements of poverty rely on real income: money as wealth--how much you make determines where you fall on either side of the poverty line. but if you move away from money as sole criteria, then the situation changes. social relationships provide alternative economic scenarios. an informal economy exists side by side with a capitalist one. just because you don't have money doesn't mean that you are impoverished. cash poor people still live in homes/houses, still eat, still live quality lives, etc. their idea of wealth is not vested in how much money they have but in how many relationships they have built over time. so the measurement of poverty, and maybe even the creation of such a category, seems not to be based in reality. it is totally irrelevant when applied to real people's lives. the indicators of wealth and poverty were created by economic advisors and bankers to measure wealth, something other than real life--to keep track of how money and goods flow. informal economies don't fit in.

i always give the example of the baby luau as the best way to illustrate this principle. and why i titled today's post as "i learned something new today" allows me to connect back to lono, whose story i'm trying to tell, even as i weave in my own story, my own revelations.

lono was the best person to do the baby luau. he spent his time building relationships, helping other people, sharing resources, teaching skills, practicing aloha. so when lono wanted to do a luau, and he had no money to do it (of course), he called all his friends and relatives and asked them to help. lono and his brothers always knew there would be fish--even if there was no poi, there would be fish. so fish became the staple, and the rest of the meal was built around it. everybody committed to something, right down to the paper goods. if there was no room at the house, the luau was at the beach--plenty of space for spreading out, plenty of parking, restroom nearby, no cost for any of it (except maybe toilet paper!). each gathering was successful, meaning that every party was a good party. and really, no one had any money to host a party, so lono's party was actually a group party, a community celebrating itself. cost effective. friendly. warm. seductive, even. go to one and you want to go to more. i've said in my classes that the purpose of life is to get high. and here was a perfect example of how to get a low-cost high hanging out with good folks and sharing food, friendship, and spirit. once you experience it, you get hooked. you want more. and its effect is to transform the (sometimes lonely) individual self into the warmth of family. in addition, money and goods don't flow in this model. they come together and transform in the celebration, like matter transforming into energy--the wealth and reality of relationships take on life in a different form.

as i think back on how profoundly lono lived his life, and how he affected those around him, i realize how lucky i was to have witnessed different phases of his life. i think it's tough when a parent outlives his/her child, and i know my sister is really having a hard time. death, especially untimely death, jars us into realizing that life is a crapshoot. we need to love a lot, as often as we can, because it may all fall apart tomorrow, or next week. nobody wants to think about it, as if holding the thought at bay keeps it there. silly us.

at the end of class today i shared with the few students who stayed afterward that the bible states something like "the poor are always with us". and from an anthropologist's point of view ( mine, anyway), this statement is indicative of structure within different cultures. religion and governance models resemble each other. that's another way of saying that religions with a pyramidal structure that posits a god at the top will mirror a political structure that has a president or king at the top. tribal cultures, on the other hand, that worship many or multiple gods tend to have governing councils, a flattened pyramid with perhaps one or two layers. in such tribal communities, people tend to take care of each other. class or status divisions still exist, but to a much lesser degree, and the communities are more egalitarian and more concerned with relationships and responsibilities. so if the bible states that "the poor are always with us", what that indicates is that in biblical times the hierarchy was so pronounced, and the power so embedded at the top, that the poor would, indeed, always be there. the stratification of both religion and governance ensured that the place of the poor was permanent. one of the students mentioned that an instructor had asked in another class 'who would do the dirty work if there were no poor people?' indeed, the structure demands that a place be set aside for the poor.

lono was part of the cash poor, but i don't think he was in poverty. he didn't have much money, but he certainly had resources and people who cared about him. his death caused other things to happen. it certainly caused me to reflect on everthing.

tomorrow is another day with more lessons to learn...

2008-03-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

Wish I had a clearer photo of Lono, but this will have to do until I get one. This is graduation picture from Castle High School in...I forget when (auwe!)

2008-03-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

Da kids: Isaiah, Kehau, Jacob

2008-03-10T23:51:00.000-07:00

Da Cuzins! They love to take photos! This is in Nanakuli, just outside of the hall where the funeral services took place. [3/10/08]

2008-03-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

Fishhooks on Lono's coat were made as a gift from Roy, his brother. Lono taught Roy and the other brothers how to make them.

Rethinking my comments

2008-03-10T22:19:00.000-07:00

Today is Monday, March 10. This morning was Lono's funeral services in Nanakuli. I've posted photos. It was an interesting place for a funeral--the church rents space in a little business area near the Nanakuli courthouse. Maybe 150 people attended, mostly young people and mostly relatives. But there were also high school friends of Lono, friends of his siblings, family of siblings. The place was abuzz with children running around and friendly chatter. Everyone seemed like one big family--connected in different ways, but primarily connected through their respect and love for Lono.

In my first rant I made the comment that Lono was a man whose life and death seemed to have gone unnoticed by the community that he loved. I was in error. Everyone at the funeral was devastated and I saw, to my surprise, people I had not seen in at least 20 years--high school friends of his, fishing buddies, folks who at one time lived on the beach and remembered the Nihoa family and the times they shared. Darlene H. was there with her two daughters and grandchildren and noted that the times they spent camping at Sand Island Beach were good times, despite the fact that they had no regular home to go to. They felt close to the other families and the beach became a home while they were all together. My conversation with Darlene reminded me of a television show hosted by Channel 2 news back in 1991 or so when the news host, Bob Jones, facilitated an in-studio program to discuss issues of homelessness in Hawaii. Lono was there, in-studio. Jade Moon had earlier interviewed him on the beach, asking him how it felt to be homeless. This was, of course, before the term "homeless" came into popular use. In answer to her question, Lono replied "I'm not homeless. I live right over there," and he pointed to the tarp and blue tent where the family lived. He wasn't trying to be sarcastic. His honesty came through loud and clear. But at that time, just after federal funds had been appropriated for each state to deal with the issue of homelessness, there needed to be a way to determine who was homeless and who was not. So the folks who used to be 'beach people' (they lived on the beach, after all) became 'homeless' in order to be counted and to take advantage of services offered by homeless shelters and programs that were popping up all over the place. So Lono became homeless. And the family became homeless. And the system that had pretty much ignored them became a system that now took the 'problem' seriously because attached to the problem was a significant amount of money (as I recall, $6 million). Everybody on the beach, on all the beaches, became homeless overnight because they lived in "non-conventional dwellings". A whole slew of programs developed shortly afterward to deal with the 'problem'.

For years before that, everybody camped. Everybody got permits to camp. Our family camped at Waimanalo, at Kaiona Beach Park, for two weeks every summer from the time I was a kid. My parents applied for a two-week permit and all the aunties, uncles, and cousins camped together. As kids we felt those were the best times of our lives. It was safe and no one paid attention to us so we could stay up all night and look for crabs on the beach or play hide and seek. The parents played cards or sang or drank (poker and alcohol, as I recall, were standard!). After the Waimanalo evictions and the growing population at Sand Island, cops used to come around to check on the permits. It was no longer possible to get a permit for two weeks. It was shortened to one week. Then the same person couldn't get a permit for the same place twice in a row. So the families had to send someone else with a different name to get a permit. The city started to crack down on families by making it difficult to be homeless. Then new rules were made--campers had to break camp on Thursdays so the city could cut the grass and clean up. If anybody left their gear on the grounds, it would be taken by park keepers and trashed. Then the city began to put up gates so those who left their cars in the parking lot would be locked in, which discouraged families from visiting, especially if they had work the next day.

Homeless families started to move out to the Waianae coast and set up tents in the tall grass and bushes that were off the regular beach-goer's path. But both the city and state started to harass them and to cut back brush and trash tents, and confiscate property of the campers. The city and the state both refused to look at the larger issues involved, or to ask why this was happening. Seriously, would families with children opt to live in tents if they could afford to live in homes? But no one ever asked why there were so many families forced to live on beaches and in dangerous circumstances. They just kept booting them out, knowing there was no where else for them to go.

Around 1992, after federal funding came down, Lono and his family, as well as a number of other families at Sand Island, were adopted by Calvary-by-the-Sea Lutheran Church, by a program run by the pastor's wife, Ivy Olson. Ivy founded Angel Network Charities in 1989, and began outreach to people living on the beach, offering them food, clothing, support and, eventually, housing, in a kind of "homes without walls" program that helped move people into homes all over the island, picking up the tab for both first month's rent and deposit, and then assisting them to find jobs or income to continue to pay the rent. It was a tough job, but she persevered, and eventually a number of families found places to live. Lono's family was one of those. She helped him hook up with another church and that church helped Lono to find the means to move on to Hawaiian Homestead lot in Nanakuli a couple years later. All the brothers and sisters got together with Habitat for Humanity and put a house where once was an empty lot. They finally had a place of their own to live.

Lono never forgot that church, or Ivy. Ivy later became ill with cancer and at the funeral services at Calvary-by-the-Sea, all the families that she had helped showed up to mourn her.

And today, all the families and friends that Lono had helped showed up to mourn him. He was a such a good man. In a sense he carried forth her legacy-- she was such a good and caring person. I miss them both. She came into his life at the right time. I'm sure someone later on will tell about how Lono helped them by coming into their life at the right time. The circle goes round and round.

Today's gathering in Nanakuli reminded me that I should write about what I see. Here's what I saw today. After the pastor welcomed everyone, he asked that people come forward to greet the family and view the body. All the brothers and sisters, their wives/husbands, their children, on both sides of the family, stood up. There were so many of them they formed almost a circle at the front. Then everyone else stood up and came forward. I'd never seen so many people in the front near the casket to greet the line. It was both fascinating and beautiful to watch, even though it was solemn and people were crying. It was, obviously, the family--the caring community, a throwback to a time when we were all family, all related, all caring, with lots of hugging and kissing and down-home, bruddah-bruddah handshakes and happy-sad smiles. I tried not to cry, but at some point saw no sense in pretending that all was a-ok. Seemed dumb.

Brothers Kimo and Roy (Roy is now oldest son) gave the eulogy--beautiful, moving, simple. Kimo shared that when he was asked to do it, he said sure, but what's a eulogy? So he did a google on it. And everybody laughed at his joke and his honesty. Roy talked about Lono the fisherman, his 17 years as a deckhand, then as first mate, then engineer on the Corsair, and eventually his post as 'citizen captain' on both the Corsair and the Kula Kai aku boats. The boat owners were from Okinawa and couldn't legally be registered as captain, so Lono, as a citizen, became captain. Roy shared his respect for is older brother, as both of them after graduation from Castle High School went right out of school to fishing. Lono was strong and could catch the huge tuna for extended periods of time--no rest while the tuna are biting! Brian later shared that Lono gave them a sample of what catching a tuna was like--fill up a 5-gallon plastic container with water, hook it and lift it up over the shoulder. Roy said Lono could do this over and over again, that his strength and ability to work left him (Roy) in awe. The other thing that captured my attention was the fly fishhooks pinned to Lono's lapel--Roy made those (see photo). Roy said Lono taught all the brothers to make those fishhooks. They would have little contests to see who could make the best ones. Three of the brothers actually became fishermen, following in Lono's footsteps: Roy, Junior, and Aliiloa. After years and years of doing this, they realized they needed to have steadier means of income, and each of them sought land jobs.

I need to reflect more on what was important about today. That's another post. But let me leave you with this poem I wrote when I got home this afternoon:

For Lono
3.10.08

in early evening is when you know
the birds have come home for fellowship at dusk
cousins in different branches and trees
remark to one another their challenges at work
tell stories about close encounters
and chirp about what’s for dinner
as they settle down with family for the night
and the raucus noise of dinner conversation slowly fades

I’m reminded that here, in my small world
I have chosen not to look, but from afar
To step out of the nest so the young have space to grow
to find their own branches, or fly away
And my heart aches but too late
For, when I turn to look, they have departed
Wafted away by the wind, without so much as a quick goodbye
Leaving feathers like tiny raindrops that
Evaporate too quickly and remind me
that settling down with family for the night
is, in the end, all we have left

our sons and daughters grow up too quickly
too anxious to take the reins, to fly point
to branch out and build the nest of the world
and they go, sometimes, unprepared
but never afraid, never looking back
flying with the wind, carried by their own dreams
we love them all the while and shut down
those parts of ourselves that yearn to call them back
knowing, of course, there is no return once
they leave, as we have, the guarded sentinel of home

More later...

2008-03-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

Part II -- Continuing the rant on the brain-eating amoeba and where Hawaiian sovereignty fits in

Lono and siblings saw their mother, calabash aunties and uncles, and supporters get dragged off Waimanalo Beach for protesting the state's inability (and/or unwillingness) to recognize Hawaiian land claims stemming from the overthrow in 1893, and the history of United States (thus the eventual State of Hawaii) with regard to these claims. so whenever Hawaiians pushed the issue, especially through (re)occupation of lands, the state pushed back, complete with men in blue and weapons, and Hawaiians were always on the losing end. As I recall, one woman shouted as she was driven away by HPD, "this our land, Hawaiian land."

Fast forward to 2008, and we see that the Hawaii State Supreme Court has tossed an interesting tidbit into the fray re Public Law 103-150, also known as the Apology Bill [Jerry Burris writes about this in his 2/6/08 Honolulu Advertiser editorial: "In 1993, when Congress (or rather, about five members of an otherwise fairly uninterested U.S. Senate) debated the so-called "Apology bill" for Native Hawaiians, Sen. Daniel Inouye argued it was merely a "simple apology" designed to set the nation's historical facts in order. What Inouye was focused on were arguments that the Apology bill was the first step toward independence for Hawai'i. Nothing, he said, could be further from the truth. That may be so. But it is now abundantly clear the Apology bill is far more than a mere token of remorse. It is, according to the state Supreme Court in its Jan. 31 opinion on a lawsuit involving ceded lands, the very law of the land. Put it this way: The Apology resolution is the controlling law when it comes to ongoing questions about whether the overthrow of the monarchy was illegal, whether Hawaiians are due restitution for that overthrow and whether ceded lands (property that went from the Hawaiian government and crown to the U.S. and then to the state of Hawai'i) should be held in impregnable trust until that restitution debate is settled. To each point, the legal answer, as declared by our highest court, is "yes."

Backtrack to 1986 and (re)occupation of lands, Waimanalo Beach Park for example, that are 'ceded'. Hawaiians protested the taking of those lands, citing basically the same reasons for doing so as the State Supreme Court did this past January. Since the land was taken [read 'stolen'], asking about its legality at this time seems a big strange. If there's a question about whose land it is now, then there's obviously a question about whose land it was when it was taken. We know whose land it wasn't. At the time of (re)occupation, meaning in 1986, that Hawaiians decided to challenge the legality of the State of Hawaii in designating so-called ceded lands as state lands and turning them into parks, schools, government buildings, etc. for the use of the 'general public', they seemed to have overlooked the ugly history of the U.S. in Hawaii.

I imagine few people know that anyone who purchases property in Hawaii is required to do a title search--a title insurance company is contracted to research the title of the property to its title of origin. Most people contract with firms like Title Guaranty and trust that their title searches guarantee that the property they are seeking to purchase actually are clear of any kind of encumbrances and can be purchased. But never has Title Guaranty or any other title company (except Perfect Title Co.) ever researched title to its origin. And therein lie two problems: 1) no one has clear title to any property in Hawaii by either American or Hawaiian law, and 2) the state of Hawaii cannot legally claim to own title to any lands, thus every time the state tries to sell land, it is challenged by various individuals and organizations [see, for example, HCDCH vs. OHA et al]. Yes, the state will continue to do whatever it wants with so-called ceded lands, but it cannot ever prove clear title to any of it, and it's exempt from doing so, because it cannot trace its title to the origin of all lands in Hawaii, which happened in 1848 during the dividing of all lands at the Great Mahele. What a pickle!

Okay, back to 1986 and the eviction of Hawaiians from Waimanalo Beach Park...

My nephew, Lono Nihoa, and his ohana were evicted from Waimanalo Beach Park. They had nowhere to go. The family ended up at Sand Island Park, along with 18 other families, mostly Hawaiian.

Stay tuned for Part III

2008-03-07T10:33:00.000-08:00

What does a brain-eating amoeba have to do with Hawaiian sovereignty?
Part I

A week ago today my nephew, Lono Nihoa, died because an amoeba, known as naegleria fowleri, ate his brain. Sounds like a sci-fi movie. But this rant is not about the amoeba, but about my nephew, and how it was that his life, so dear and vital to his family and his community in Nanakuli, could pass with hardly any notice.

Lono Nihoa, 44 at his passing, was the genuine nice guy, almost the stereotypical Hawaiian man, gentle and kind to family, friends, and neighbors. He took care of the needs of the people around him with few complaints and sometimes minimal funds. He seldom asked for anything, preferring to share his limited resources with those who had no resources of their own, or nowhere to go. It was like that on holidays--Christmas, New Year's, birthdays, weddings, funerals. He was the man who fed, in numerous ways, those around him. He was a good guy and I miss him dearly.

Lono was born on April 3, 1965 in Honolulu. He was the eldest of ten children and, at a very young age, took on major responsibility for his younger siblings. His father passed away, himself, at around the same age, and his mother (my sister) was charged with raising ten young children as a single parent. Times were rough. The family lived at Waimanalo Beach park at the time of the Waimanalo evictions in 1986, when Hawaiian issues were being raised in the minds of the general public. Sovereignty was not a commonly-heard word. The most pressing issue of the times was the displacement of Hawaiians from ancestral lands. The rallying cry at the time of the Waimanalo evictions was "Keep Hawaiian lands in Hawaiian hands," and the evictions pointed out to the government and the public that Hawaiians were willing to occupy lands and push the issue about landless Hawaiians into the spotlight. Land occupations were one of the earliest steps in calling attention to the dispossession of Hawaiians in their own homeland. Na Maka o ka Aina, Puhipau and Joan Lander, videotaped many of the early struggles, including the Waimanalo evictions, and for any who have seen this particular video, it was an emotion-packed scene where one young girl says "Where we goin' live? We no mo house!". There were several other children standing around this young girl (now an adult), including my nieces and nephews. By virtue of being Hawaiian and living on the beach, they became part of the struggle.

Stay tuned for Part II