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.
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