Homespun Honolulu

Kung Hei Fat Choi! 

Every year I wait for the sounds of those drums!  Whenever I hear them I follow the sound, grab my camera, and grab my wallet for dollar bills, or $5 bills if I am in a good mood and feeling the need for whatever prosperity the Chinese New Year will bring.

We are closing the year of the Rabbit and welcoming in the year of the Dragon.  I love dragons.  I’m more prone to the Old World dragons that guard castles and nest on piles of gold and jewels but, like I said to someone last week, a dragon is a dragon and I’ll take whatever I can get!

No, I am not superstitious and, no, I do not follow the teachings of the zodiac.  However, I have to admit that there is often some truth and accuracy to the things they say about our character traits.  Besides, it’s fun.  You can take it with a grain of salt but it is a heck of a lot of fun to see how things fit the people you know!

There is just something about the sound of those drums, when they are done right, that just triggers something.  Of all Asian art and culture, Chinese lion and dragon dances surpass it all for me.

The best part of Downtown Honolulu at this time of year is that it is so very close to China Town.  Businesses frequently enlist this rite to chase away evil spirits from their doorways.  Hopefully I will run into more of them this year than I did last.  I do not want to wait another year to hear those drums and watch this cultural marvel unfold.  Firecrackers included!

‘Ike Kūʻōkoʻa
Liberating Knowledge, The Newspaper Type Scripting Project

Awaiaulu, Perpetuating Past to Present, or binding that part to the present securely, is hard at work at a project to restore 60,000 pages of long-forgotten newspapers.  I had no concept of just how much Hawaiian text there is out there!  You have GOT to watch this video!  There are pages and pages of Hawaiian newspapers to be put into searchable form! This is so exciting!

I am so very proud of the volunteers who have stepped up to devote some of their time to this project!  Will they eventually translate it all into English?  I don’t know, but we can hope.  Yes, I know, we should all learn to speak and understand the native tongue of our home but, I have to admit, it’s hard to teach old people like me a new language.  In time, maybe?  The main thing is it will assist in the recovery of lost history!

Pssst… if you’ve been caught throwing things out your car window, if you need to put in some time doing community service, this counts against your required community service hours!  I’m just saying.

Suddenly I feel the need to say, God bless ‘Aha Pūnana Leo for what they have become and what they have accomplished over the years in keeping the language alive for all!  Those who are the products of the Hawaiian immersion schools will be able to read, and maybe even translate the recovery of this history.

If you can, please get involved!

You’ve go to love a huge cultural exchange like this one!  If you can get in just a piece of it, it’s worth it!  I was lucky enough to catch just a bit of it yesterday at Ala Moana Center’s Center Stage.

Halau Hula O Moanikeala performs on Center Stage at Ala Moana Center yesterday afternoon.

It was wonderful to watch the cultural exchange and the intensity with which the performers were into the task at hand!

Then there was Habibi Hawaii Ensemble sharing Middle-Eastern dance.  Be still my heart!

You don’t see this stuff everyday!  There’s more to the Honolulu Festival going on today so catch it if you can!

I have wanted to get to this place for the longest time!  I rarely get out to Wahiawa or beyond so, after I got my safety-check sticker, I made sure to take full advantage of this rare and infrequent opportunity!

Over time, the writing of this blog has created a much greater sense of aloha for Hawaiian culture and it has ignited a thirst for knowledge about that culture’s history.  Up until now, Kukaniloko was known to me only as ”the birthing stones.”   When I found my way there, I was lucky enough to find a rather interesting group of people.

This was a class of Geology students from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.  Apparently, Kukaniloko ”is the geographic center of O’ahu…” thus making it geologically important.  They were actually there with their geology professor!  Talk about a stroke of luck!

I tried to get closer so that I could eaves drop on part of what the professor was saying to the class.  I have to admit that I was a little taken aback listening to Dr. Scott Rowland as he told his students how an alii was birthed.  “They did what???” I was thinking to myself, relatively horrified.

I’m not going to get into it but, let’s put it this way, the State of Hawai’i’s flyer about Kukaniloko says, “The birth of a child at Kukaniloko was witnessed by 36 chiefs.”  This stunned me a bit because that is not the kind of birth-giving experience that I would care to deal with while bloody, sweating, and in pain.

Of course there are women today that have an audience during the birthing process.  The whole visual of the process being described by Dr. Rowland just caught me off guard, I think.  Of course, if you’re in that much physical distress, perhaps your only focus is on getting past that pain!  Mothers can weigh in on this.  Seriously, please do!

Dr. Rowland did remind everyone that, back then, this area did not look like it does now.  It used to be a forested area and hence much more secluded and private.  “Good point!”  That made it a little better.   Today, as you can see by the photos, it is wide open to the world!

I was quite impressed by how well-maintained this site has been kept after all these years!  Before the class departed for its next stop, Dr. Rowland was kind enough to share a copy of his handouts.  Part of the handout that had been put together for the class stated that Kukaniloko,

“is one of only two locations in Hawai’i where children of chiefs were born (the other was on Kaua’i).  Kukaniloko may have been established as a royal birthing place as long ago as the 12th century.  Fortunately, W.W. Goodale of the Waialua Sugar Plantation as well as the Daughters of Hawai’i made sure that this place was protected and not plowed over for agriculture.”

Thank goodness!  That would have been an archeological and culturally-historical disaster!

As I surveyed the area I became curious about the slightly-elevated area pictured above.  Was it ever used for rituals or halau performances or something?  It sort of looked like a hula mound.  Anybody in the know can share your knowledge on this too!

Any woman living in those times would have appreciated the honor it was to actually be giving birth to a chief!  Hawaiians had a great deal of respect for the alii, as they do to this day.  The birth of a new ruler was certainly an event to be celebrated!

It was really comforting to see how the grounds are so well kept.  I was very pleased but I wanted to know more about this heiau.  Again, anybody in the know on this is welcome to comment!

Dr. Rowland indicated that one of these stones was the main stone but I wasn’t close enough to the group to hear which one it was.  The one in the center of the picture above may have been the one but I’m honestly not sure.  I knelt down and touched the surface of the stones – they were unusually smooth and even soothing to the touch.

This sign posted by the DLNR shows that the land here is protected, as it should be.  The sign has taken a beating over time but the simple message it carries is essential — “Please respect this sacred area.”

I came away moved by the beauty and serenity of this simple site that is listed on both the National and State of Hawai’i Registers of Historic Places.  While feeling a little more educated about this little tidbit of our historic culture, I still remain overwhelmed by the very complex history of our State.  There is still so much to uncover and talk about.  And you thought you were going to get off easy!

Here is another one of those events that I keep missing.  Coming up on us very quickly is the 5th Annual Hawai’i Book & Music Festival, a Celebration of Story and Song.

This year’s event comes with an added touch for those who are literary-minded.  We have an O’ahu resident whose book will debut at this event!  Douglas Corleone was an attorney in New York but he left the practice and moved to Hawaii.  Now Douglas is a beach-going writer who is enjoying life at a much slower pace than what he found in New York city!

This is great — we have a resident novelist among us!  His book, One Man’s Paradise, is an award-winning crime-drama/mystery using Honolulu as the back drop.  It will be  interesting to see, and fun to watch, how this young author will do with this novel and the novels that follow!  I’ve started reading it and the personality of Mr. Corvelli, the book’s protagonist, is already an interesting study.

The book is now available at our local book stores and if you want to get a head start on One Man’s Paradise before the Festival, or if you can’t make it to the Festival, you can still get a copy and meet the author at:

     Barnes & Noble, Ala Moana on Saturday, May 1, 2010 from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.

or

Borders, Waikele Center on Saturday, May 8, 2010 from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m

Then there’s the Book & Music Festival where Douglas will be on May 16, 2010 at the Barnes & Noble Bookseller tent for signing at 3:30 to 4:00 p.m. followed by a reading and a Q&A at the Author’s Pavilion.

If you still don’t have a copy at that point, there is still June 5, 2010 at Barnes & Noble, Kahala Mall from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m.

Mahalo to all of the sponsors and contributors to the 5th Annual Hawai’i Book & Music Festival!  Try to get there if you can!

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.

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? 

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!