Thursday, July 31

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

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

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

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

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.