The Bus Stop Rant

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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

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

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.