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.
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