Homespun Honolulu

Preservation and protection seem to be strong themes these days. We’re protecting our land, our landmarks, our culture, and our health. We’ve got interesting items to pull together this time.

We love home and we love the icons that have grown up around us.  I’m just so amazed that so many others feel what I’m feeling.  With that said, I would like to welcome our newest Carnival blogger!  She’s been out there a while but she’s new to us here!

Margaret Wille presents a Success Story for Our Island: Mama Banyan and Other Special Trees at Reed’s Bay Park (Banyan Drive) Saved! | www.margaretwille.com posted at Kohala Blog.  Margaret says that this post was “the success story following preceding blogs on this subject.”  If you’re taken by this story, you can see more of the story here and here.  Thank you, Margaret, for joining us!

We need to run down to the shoreline and Ryan is going to help us with the running skills we need as he shares a piece of an event that is near and dear to my heart.

Ryan Suenaga shares the outcome of The Great Aloha Run 2010 posted at The Athletic Diabetic.  I haven’t talked about it yet myself, but I will.  We have a lot of similarities, Ryan.  I’m right there with you!  Thank you for sharing my friend!

Let’s run back over to the Big Island now as we let our emotions take in the impact of the shoreline.

Bobbie asks a loaded question!  “What do you think when you see the ocean?”  My oh my!  I could go on for hours with that question!  Think about it and then go tell Bobbie what you’re thinking, if you haven’t already!

Going back inland, Sheila is going to show us what happens when we care for and protect what we have.

Sheila presents Visiting Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden posted as always, while giving Hawaii Vacation Advice at GoVisitHawaii.com.  I am amazed at the different ways that people write about things and Sheila’s viewpoints always come in on a fresh breeze where nothing is taken for granted.  Hats off to you, Sheila, for always putting a fresh spin on things as you see them through fresh eyes.

We have more to preserve and protect.

Evelyn (me) shares a bit about the birthday gift for King Lunalilo when she talks about Historic Events Repeating Themselves and follows up with a few notes about the preservation of the Hawaiian language.

That’s it for this time! Please join us and submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Aloha using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.  Guidelines can be found here.

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King Lunalilo’s tomb was blessed with new kahili a few weeks ago as part of the King’s 175th birthday.  These kahili were beautiful new additions to replace the old ones that were not in the greatest of shape after all of these years.

Apparently the making of the new kahili was orchestrated by Paulette Nohealani Kahalepuna which says to me that these kahili were not only crafted of feathers but that they were done correctly, carefully, and beautifully.

The gentleman pictured here on the left is Kamehameha Maertens.  He is quite familiar with the kahili in King Lunalilo’s tomb.  Back in 1938 an article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin listed him as one of the kahili bearers back then. Mr. Maertens’ grandson took him to the new kahili event to celebrate Lunalilo’s 175th birthday on January 31st at the King’s tomb on the grounds of Kawaiaha’o Church.

That, in my opinion, is certainly something worth talking about — a man revisits a part of history that he himself was a part of.  I’m not sure how many of us will be around long enough to see history repeat itself or to say we actually had a hand in it!

In the Star-Bulletin article, Kamehameha Maertens was listed incorrectly as a member of the Royal Order of Kamehameha.  His first name may have been the reason for the reporter’s confusion but he was certainly an important part of the royal procession paying tribute to the memory of a man who was once a very popular monarch.

After all of those years gone by, I can’t help but wonder if he ever dreamed that his own grandchild would push for the preservation of the Hawaiian culture through the protection, perpetuation, and restoration of its treasured language.  In case you can’t get into Facebook, here’s the meat of what’s on the other end of this link:

“After the unlawful overthrow of the Hawaiian government by white supremacists, four generations of Hawaiian people endured cultural genocide beginning in 1896 when the Hawaiian language was banned as a medium of public instruction. 30+ years have passed since the 1978 Hawai’i State Constitution nominally restored Hawaiian as an official language along with English, yet speakers of Hawaiian cannot vote using their language. Without public information readily available in Hawaiian, the current policy of English-only community services is indeed tantamount to ethnic cleansing! Will you please join with us to implement Hawai’i’s Official Languages Act to put this unfortunate era of cultural genocide against Hawaiian speaking people behind us for good?”

I’ve talked about this before and, while it is a touchy subject, most people will agree that it is a terrible thing to cut off a people from their own language.  It is a wretched behavior for a country claiming to be “civilized.”  Make no mistake about it, I’m an American and proud of it, but there are times when I just don’t know what we were thinking!  But I digress.

There are quite a few of us who missed the Hawaiian-language boat in school and are now trying to learn.  This is where Mr. Maertens’ grandson comes in.  Michael Malulani Odegaard is trying to help us do just that.  Some students are doing better than others.  I have to admit that life, as usual, gets in the way of that too.  Mahalo, Kumu, for all you do and for your infinite patience!

For those of you looking to learn ‘olelo Hawai’i or looking to brush up on your skills a little, there are small classes available on Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 8:00 PM and Thursday evenings from 5:30 to 7:00 PM.  Follow this link for more information about the Wednesday evening class and for contact information in case you have questions.

For those who try to call it a dead language, I’m very happy to let you know that you are sadly mistaken!  It’s alive and well and getting stronger every day!

Comments left on Facebook will be copied and shared here on Homespun Honolulu so everyone will be able to listen to your thoughts and input.

While listening to the tsunami warnings this morning and the boat harbors asking boat owners to move their vessels out into deeper water, I couldn’t help but think about “my boat.”  What happens to the Falls of Clyde when a threat like this one comes over the Civil Defense and other warning systems?

Relatively recently I received an email message about the Falls of Clyde with this YouTube video.  I cried.  Of course.  I almost started again while making sure this link worked.  The video kind of shows what many people wanted to have happen to the Falls before the Friends of the Falls of Clyde stepped up to stop it.

I’ve been thinking about sharing this here but there is nothing like the threat of a tidal wave to get someone to their keyboard.  Still listening to the news and all of the closed City parks, shopping malls, and golf courses, etc., I’m more worried about the sea vessels getting bashed.

Hmmm… a tsunami moves at the speed of a jet.  It’s scheduled to hit the Big Island of Hawai’i at about 11:05 this morning, February 27, 2010, and the rest of the islands in succession after that.  Hilo Bay is going to be the lucky recipient of this “event.”

Standing by and worrying about how it will all pan out.

Updated 03/01/2010 - No impact.  Civil Defense did a good job.  Local media stayed on top of the crisis and kept us informed from start to finish.  No panic.  There was just a lot of people doing what they felt needed to be done.

Now that Hawai’i is in the clear, I can’t help but think about poor Chile.  Google offers some ways to help if you can.

It always comes as such a surprise and I am  always quite moved when a corporation takes steps to assist the community where it does business, and/or takes steps to educate itself about that community.  Respect, preservation, and education is not always something taken on by corporate America’s larger brand names.

In the most unlikely of places, we found a little bit of cultural respect from Wal-Mart.  I’m not one to give a lot of credit to Wal-Mart since most of what we hear about them is anything but good news, but I’ll give them this one.

In Hawai’i, the finding of iwi (bones) is probably one of our most sensitive and touchy subjects.  Honolulu probably suffers from the largest number of incidents because it is constantly growing and there is always something being built.

The discovery of iwi during the construction of the Wal-Mart store on Ke’eaumoku Street was a finding taken very seriously.  The last I heard when this came to light was that there were 64 set of iwi that were about 150 years old.  While things were kept relatively low key, it was not an all-happy or non-confrontational event!  Findings such as these occur much more frequently than we would like them to and the parties involved had no problem sharing their views.

After reading through some of the articles, it seems to me that some of the “experts” hired to do a job were perhaps not the best choice to handle a matter so delicate and/or to handle the treasured bones themselves.  I know we have talked before about the importance of the iwi in Hawaiian culture.  These are not dinosaur bones from an archaeological dig!  They are family members!

Wal-Mart, and any other business for that matter, cannot always control the behavior of the people they hire to perform a service.  It is difficult to be at the mercy of those performing work that is outside one’s own line of business.  That’s why they hire specialists.  All of that aside, I think the completed memorial is actually very attractive and whoever was in charge of that, did a fine and respectful job!

There are, as you can see, “Keep Out” and “Don’t Walk on Grass” signs all around this little monument.  It looks quite a bit like a heiau and it is surrounded by newly-planted indigenous plants, the kind often found in such places.  They originally said it would be landscaped and open to the public so perhaps they’re waiting for the plants to take root.  In case residents haven’t found it yet, the photo above shows you exactly where it is — on the corner of Makaloa and Sheridan Streets on the property shared by Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club.

Cultural preservation is on the upswing in Hawai’i and it’s not all being left only up to us.

Getting ready for work and listening with one ear to the news the other morning, I was stopped in my tracks and had to run to the TV and press rewind on the remote (thanks to Oceanic Time Warner Cable, we can do that!).  As I fumbled for the right button I muttered, “They’re doing what?!?  No way!”

I love this story and I’m sending a shout out to the Ka’anapali Beach Hotel for being a part of the community where they do business and for proactively reinforcing its culture!  KHON2 News did a nice little segment about a family whose son wanted a big tree on their property to be made into a canoe.  I hesitate because links like that one often become dead when the story gets moved so I’ll include the gist of it here just in case.

Their son passed away six years ago but his dream may still become a reality.  The Ka’anapali Beach Hotel asked the family to donate that same tree for them to turn into a canoe!  Based on a quote from the KHON2 News article, the father responded:

“The only thing we like out of this is to have the canoe named after my son cuz for a while he had already seen this being one canoe”

The hotel agreed, and named the canoe “Kaililaau.”

The canoe is being built as part of the hotel’s Pookela program which allows employees to learn aspects of the Hawaiian culture.

Building a canoe is certainly no easy task and for the hotel to have done this with the goal of perpetuating a piece of Hawaiian culture is nothing less than commendable!

Mahalo to KHON2 and kudos to the Ka’anapali Beach Hotel!

See how great it is when big business does the right thing? 

To be specific, let’s talk about soup!

Our food-blogging friend, Valerie, does Four Foods On Friday as a blog meme over at Fun Crafts and Recipes.  Val usually throws four questions out there for us to think about and answer.  More recently, Val has done it a little backwards — she put one question out there, looking for four answers.

Last Friday, Val asked, “What are your four favorite soups?“  I thought about avoiding this one because I’m not much of a soup eater, or a soup maker.  After thinking about it for a while, I realized that there are some that I like.

I came up with these:

1. Cream of just about anything soup (zucchini and celery are good)
2. My own Corn Chowder (Val’s post reminded me about this one.)
3. Zippy’s Portuguese Bean soup (This one is very popular in our State.)
4. Pea soup was my favorite as a child (I think it was Campbell’s.  I don’t remember any ham but I could be wrong.)

There are others I like such as French Onion (if it has a lot of cheese) and Miso soup (when it’s cold outside).

I’m actually talking about this because the lenten season is upon us and I want to see what kind of soup you guys like! So, join in the meme in Val’s Kitchen!  Maybe even provide a soup recipe or two — for those of us with soup-deficient menus.

Welcome to the February 1st Chapter of the Carnival of Aloha! This Chapter we’ll just take a leisurely cruise down stream and visit these stories of interest!

As everyone knows, as we trickle downstream, we’ve got to have something to eat.  That’s usually my first stop and this time will be no exception as we welcome our newest Carnival participant!

Trailblazer Hawaii assures the Pineapple Princess, Maui still loves you posted at Trailblazer Hawaii.com asking that we follow their tracks to Kauai, Maui, Oahu and Hawaii the Big Island, saying, “Maui Gold, wishing you the best, way to go!”  They want to be sure our Carnival trip is a sweet one with the pineapple from Maui.  The sweetness of Maui’s pineapple is hard to beat!  Thanks, Trailblazer, for joining us and providing such sweet sustenance!

Andrew Cooper wrestles with Defining the Sacred posted over on A Darker View.   I was all warm and fuzzy reading his post and then it actually did become a bit of a “darker view” as he was accused at worst of misunderstood at best.  Read it and you’ll see what I mean.  I understand but, in this case, Andrew did not fit the crime.  Sorry Andrew and thank you for sharing information about a heiau that I never knew existed.  I like the “take only photographs and leave only footprints” motto, very much!

We’re all concerned with conservation efforts and, now that we’ve ruffled a few feathers, let’s put some of that energy to use.

Bobbie tells us about the Hawaii Marine Debris Action Plan: Much needed program is the first in the nation posted at The Right Blue, saying, “the Marine Debris Action Plan was a long time coming, and very much needed. (Beach goers/ocean users still need to be mindful about bringing home their trash and disposing of it properly.)”  Andrew’s motto fits here as well — take only photographs and leave only footprints, not your opala!

As we care for and love our islands, one of our Carnival regulars takes it a step further!

Sheila sends A Love Letter To Lanai and shares it with us over at Hawaii Vacation Blog - GoVisitHawaii.com, saying, “As Valentine’s Day is approaching, I thought I’d write a love letter to the island of Lana’i. Though it’s one of the least visited islands, it’s full of beauty and Aloha spirit.”

It’s not hard to see why the islands are loved so much, even our President loves his home.  We can investigate why the President is so comfortable.

Aloha Tony shows us Obama’s $10 million Hawaii vacation home over at Hawaii real estate, saying, “President Obama’s $10 million Hawaii vacation home.”  Wow, Tony, thanks for getting those pictures and sharing them with us so we can get an idea of the comfort we provide.

Of course, with those prices, it’s scary to watch and see where the real estate market will go!

Pua is talking about the Hawaii Real Estate Market 2010 over at Best Hawaii Vacation with Hawaii Vacation Blog, saying, “Hawaii real estate still enjoys a buyer’s market. But who knows for how long.  Not even our Hawaii realtors can predict for certain. Here is an a interesting article from an experienced Hawaii realtor. Will there be a return of the Hawaii seller’s market in 2010?”

What will the commercial real estate market do?  That too remains to be seen.  There are, believe it or not, commercial properties that have had a place in the hearts of many.

Most recently, Evelyn (me), expressed some concern that there will be No Cars or Hearts Racing Anytime Soon as we wait to see what will happen as the property that was once many people’s darling, Hawaii Raceway Park, goes up for foreclosure auction on Tuesday (that’s tomorrow).  Evelyn asks, “is anybody listening?!?”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnival of Aloha using the carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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The parcel of land once known to all of us as Hawaii Raceway Park is scheduled to go on the auction block on Tuesday, February 2, 2010.  Once upon a time, (in years before 2006) hearts raced to the sounds of revving motors .  There will be no more of that kind of excitement near Campbell Industrial.

Some time ago I mentioned that it was a hard thing to lose Hawaii Raceway Park and that it affected a lot of people.  As dangerous as car racing is, Hawaii Raceway Park kept a lot of our youth in a legal racing environment, it kept them busy, and it kept them off the streets!  It was a passion they could share with others and it even provided potential career training for the automotive devotees.

I know that, at one time, there were people who blamed the closure of the Park for some of the motor vehicle accidents plaguing our streets.  We had a rash of racing on Honolulu’s roadways as young racing enthusiasts seemed to like using the public roadways and the H-1 freeway as outlets for their racing abandon.

Kapolei Raceway LLC had all of the intentions of restoring the park to its former glory, maybe better, but was apparently not able to manage the financial needs of this endeavor.  Despite all of the lobbying that fans did for its support.

Foreclosure is an ugly word for all but particularly for Honolulu’s racing community right now. This story seals it!  Sigh.  So many memories, so many stories.  The location has slid backwards in recent years with the loss of this and the feed lot.   I just know our beef tasted better back then.

Is Anybody Listening?

Meanwhile, Lt. Governor, Duke Aiona wants to talk about a Hawaii Sports commission.  Let’s see, race car driving is a sport.  Ya think?  Let me tell you where to be with Aunty Linda’s wallet on Tuesday!  Are you listening?!?

We should get that baby up and running again just in time to join in with Disney’s newest project, Aulani and… yeah baby!   Yo, Hawaii Tourism Authority, are you listening?   Keep the streets safer, bring the racing enthusiasts down here from the mainland for events, and put the burning rubber where it belongs — earning money instead of burning taxpayer dollars!

“Is anybody listening?  Let us know!”

It’s baaaack!  Again the view of the mountains is blurred by the vog carried over from the Big Island of Hawaii.  Kauai is probably the only island that is free and clear of the air smog vog floating over the rest of the smaller islands.  The Big Island’s Kilauea volcano is obviously very busy!

Here’s hoping that the tradewinds will return soon and carry all of that bad air away, quickly.  In the mean time, I’m hoping that the Big Island and ALL the other islands will send in their posts for the upcoming Carnival of Aloha scheduled to go live on Monday, February 1, 2010!  Send in those posts about anything to do with the State of Hawaii.

Consider yourselves reminded!  The deadline for submissions is this coming Wednesday, January 27th.  Come join us!

As I was sitting listening to Haunani Apoliona talk about OHA’s role in the community, and as I watched the keiki at one of the ‘Aha Punana Leo schools talk about ethnic food dishes (using the Hawaiian language of course) I can’t help but feel a need to share some gratitude with Oceanic Time Warner Cable and the State of Hawaii’s Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (DCCA) for their continued support of community programming!

We almost lost it, or at least a big chunk of it, or so we thought! The franchise contract was up for renewal and one of the articles I read seemed to have a very negative view of what the outcome would be.  The concern was largely focused on the availability of channels designated for various types of community programming.

No need to worry — there’s good news!  The conditions of the newly-restored, 20-year franchise include, aside from other things, the addition of more community channels!  Instead of the six (6) we had before, there will now be fourteen (14)!  We will have even more places to accommodate the PBS, ‘Olelo, and PEG (public, educational, and governmental) channels than ever before!

Mahalo to DCCA and Time Warner Cable for staying on top of the things deemed important to the viewers!

I started this article back in December of 2008.  That shows how long I’ve been aspiring/contemplating the sharpening of my literary pencil.  In reality, it has been a lot longer than that but only relatively recently has the plot actually decided to come alive.

The best part of all of this is that blogs that managed to make an impact on me are still around!  So, I’m going to share some of my literary darlings with you guys.  As I was putting this together, I couldn’t help but be reminded about my eclectic taste.  Don’t be too surprised, I’m afraid that it’s just my nature.

Part of what drives me is the “voice” of others who are aiming at the same aspiration.  In the case of Mark David Gerson, that aspiration has been reached and now, as a writing coach, he aims to help others to reach there as well.  A source of inspiration himself, Mark David has said to me (and I haven’t forgotten it) that, “your inspiration is all around you!”  Mark David’s greatest asset in my eyes?  He’s a former Hawai’i resident!  No bias or anything.  I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover but I can’t help but love the cover of The Voice of the Muse!  I’m not sure just whom to blame this on.

I can tell you to whom goes the blame for that “uppity” last sentence!  Writing Forward handles everything from grammatical topics to plot and character issues.  I fell in love with this blog when I read the post that I’ve used for the link to this blogger and I’m afraid that I’m very stuck with my opinion.

Wait, I’m not done!  About my “uppity” sentence — in January, 2010 I found another article from Writing Forward to add to this!  I threatened to link back to this article by using the word whom rather than the word who in a sentence.  That way, I could blame being “uppity” on poor, darling Melissa Donovan who is just trying to help us all write better.

Jurgen Wolff at Time to Write also shares “tips, ideas, inspirations for writers and would-be writers and other creative people” along with a lot of thought-provoking observations and commentary.  I admire Jurgen’s genuine concern for the written word and the old-fashioned publishing medium that encases those intelligent and carefully-crafted texts (I mean books).

Attempting to make my own story-in-progress verisimilar (yeah, I had to look that word up too), I have done some research into different aspects of cultures, societies and lines of business that are normally outside my circle of knowledge and my physical boundaries.  In the process I found places like The Golden Pencil (I love that name) that provide a little bit of everything.  (That was the name of the blog in 2008.  Now, in 2010, it’s called EveryJoe.com.)  But, there are still articles about writing and all kinds of things.

Oddly enough, or maybe not odd at all, I have learned many things from other bloggers, even the strange ones.

I’ve picked up new words like the one above, “verisimilar,” from bloggers like my brilliant but sick friend Bobby Revell at Revellian.com.  To provide a movie-type rating for his writing, I would rate them somewhere between R and X.  For a letter grade?  I’m afraid I have to give him an A+!

WARNING!  Bobby is, from time to time, a bit unorthodox, so be careful!  His writing is carefully crafted together with great visual descriptions that are, er, um, colorful.  Let’s put it this way, horror and smut fiction are his specialty.  If you can’t handle it, don’t go there.  But, you really should!  He’s so deranged, I just love him!  Some of his horrific and disgusting literature has left me rattled for days, so beware!  I’ve also found some other writer bloggers by following them back from their comments left at Revellian.com.  Thanks, Bobby, for the introduction to the other writers and for the occasional vocabulary boosts!  I’m not quite sure if I want to thank you for shaking up my nervous system.

Need a reality check?  Larry Brooks over and StoryFix.com will give you one!  Just the facts baby, those very often cold and hard facts.  It’s okay, Larry is here to help us “get it written, get it right, get it published.” Larry doesn’t pull any punches or play games with the facts.  I’m just glad he wasn’t one of my high school teachers!  I subscribed to his posts (as I have with the others) and I save them all so I don’t miss too much.  For many things that have caught my attention, I keep a tab open on my Firefox browser.  For StoryFix, I have a whole window set aside from the rest.  I think that’s a compliment.   It doesn’t say much about my ability to commit and stay focused, but that’s another issue.

Jennifer, who is Writing to Survive, presents some very insightful thoughts and provides a little of her own inspiration without even realizing it.  She too seems to have novel aspirations!  Reading between the lines, it seems that Jennifer has been infected by the NaNoWriMo bug, as have I.

Many people have been infected by the NaNoWriMo bug and that’s not just Americans — there are people from all over the World that focus in on National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) every November. At this point I have to mention Chris Baty and his No Plot? No Problem!  Chris says it’s not a problem but Larry Brooks says, “Wanna bet?”  Hey, I never said they all agree with each other!

I do have to also acknowledge that this post has gotten way longer than I had originally intended.  I’ll end here and figure out who has been forgotten and talk about them later.  What got into me?  I have no idea!  They have all inspired me in one way or another and I just felt the urge to share some link love with them.  Besides, anyone willing to help me fix my writing receives automatic friend status!   Thanks guys, for helping me with my literary aspirations!