Puamana

A L O H A!

"People are like stained-glass windows.

  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,

 but when the darkness sets in 

their true beauty is revealed

 only if there is light from within."

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination.

  But the combination is locked up 

in the safe."

Peter De Vries

"A great part of life consists in contemplating 

what we cannot cure."

Robert Louis Stevenson

And now?   PUAMANA:

Comfort Clothes

Aloha & Welcome Back!

What do YOU wear when you want to feel like

 "yourself?"

  What Clothes make you comfortable?

If your friends are colorful,

 do you dress colorfully like the lady above?

Maybe you wear something that says:

 "DANGER, I'm explosive!"

Perhaps a uniform 

or piece of equipment 

shows your identity:

"I do real serious, physical work:

 building & repairing stuff. 

 I'm Patriotism & Union all the way!"

Hula Dancers wear foliage

 (for Hula Kahiko: ancient hula)

or colorful mu`u mu`u

 for Monarchy Era (and later) Hula `Auana.

What a bunch of dolls!

(there are a dizzying array of hula styles

under these broad headings.

see some  here.)

Some of us go through life wearing a shell.

Others can't see it,

but they feel it.

For me, 

my 'Chinatown Lion Dancing' T-shirt,
(one in black, one lucky red)
is my "go to."

Not my shirt. For illustration only.
For purchase go here.




The "base" is 

my Dickies carpenter shorts

with tons of pockets

for camera & notebook,

bandanna,

and neccessaries. . . 

(can't see the cargo pockets in this shot)

Of course, we all wear slippers

(what you probably call 'flip-flops')

And most importantly:

Hawaii Lifeguard Hat!






Now I'm ready
to go shoot some
pictures!

Hawaii wears rainbows;
We are under-dressed
without our smile!






 ><}}(°>


SO,
What do YOU wear
to feel
"comfortable,
safe,
and like
 Your Self?"


          Leave us a comment, Ducky!  cloudia

Trump Panders

Repeating a lie

does not make it

truth.

Perhaps Trump doesn't remember his closest college friends,

or the milestones in their lives,

but Governor Neil Abercrombie

 of Hawaii

attended the University of Hawaii with

Barack Obama Senior, and Stanley Ann Dunham,
the President's

parents.

He remembers the birth of Barack Jr.

as do many, many people

 still living here.

The President was NOT born in Kenya.

Repeating that lie,
or acting like it's
an open question at this point,

does not turn it into 

Truth.

Barack H. Obama was born August 4, 1961,

 at Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital

 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother,

 Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas,

 of mostly English, but also some German, 

descent.

Young Barack and Family (Mother, Grandfather, sister)
Here in Honolulu

His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was from

  Nyanza Province, Kenya. 

Obama is the first President to have been

 born in Hawaii.

Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class

 at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where his father

 was a foreign student on scholarship.

The couple married on February 2, 1961, 

but separated when Obama Sr. went to

 Harvard University on scholarship.

They divorced in 1964.

Obama Sr. remarried

 and returned to Kenya.

"REPORTER “LIED”

 ABOUT OBAMA NOT HAVING A BIRTH CERTIFICATE"

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(MediaQUICKY) Hawaii’s Governor

 was pissed this week at an old friend

 after the reporter said the governor

 told him “the state could not find

 Obama’s birth certificate”. Mike Evans

 (unknown journalist to many) is now

 changing his story and says he hasn’t talked to

 Hawaii’s Gov. Neil Abercrombie

 since he took office

 plus the Governor NEVER said he couldn’t find the President’s birth certificate.

 Evans says he “misspoke”

 and has since then apologized. 

SOURCE: KQRS

For Sharing

'Aloha' is not merely a word.

It is a concept, a philosophy of life, a powerfully simple

faith in Love.

Sometimes, I just need to stare.
And to recover. Pleasantly numb.
(Sounds too much like a drug reverie :-)


How about you? Do you give yourself
 this permission and time?

Hawaii is good for staring

 and soul healing -

 so much beauty.

'Polynesian Paralysis' we call it.

Along with the power of Aloha,

It's why folks visit here.

Watching people in their natural surroundings -

 on the sand, by the sea, with their families,

or traveling alone for business, wisdom, or war. . . 

It is healing to hear the tongues of the world,

all relaxing, all unwinding together in welcome,

 all feeling lucky they 'came Hawaii.'

 

"It's a pleasant thing to be young,

 and have ten toes." Robert Louis Stevenson

Watching people, clouds, animals, flowers. . . 

hearing the breeze, the surf,

 Hawaiian guitars-

replenishes the flame in my soul.

I hope you feel that way

when you come here

 to share what we care about, 

and play in the sand

of your mind's eye. . .

enjoying the warm sun of our mutual

Aloha. . . 

thank Y O U

         for sharing it.  cloudia

100th anniversary of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire

A L O H A!

"He that oppresses the poor to increase his riches,

and he that gives only to the rich,

shall surely come to want."

(Proverbs 22:16) 

"I have always felt that it was important

that everyone who was a worker

join a labor organization.
IBEW Strike, 1941

.

I believe you should tell the story of injustices,
of inequalities, of bad conditions,
so that the people as a whole in this country
really face the problems 
that people who are pushed to the point of striking
know all about,
but others know practically nothing about.
CIO Convention, 1943

.

The unionization of domestic workers
will be salutary 
for both the employer and the employee. "


"My Day," 1946
Eleanor Roosevelt (all)

<°)}}><

  Friday marked the 100th anniversary
of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire.

  146 people died that day,
most of them young immigrant women & children
(many of whom jumped to their deaths
to escape the flames).

The  March 25, 1911  fire started on the eighth floor of the Greenwich Village building  quickly engulfing the floors above.

Firefighters' ladders reached only to the sixth floor.

It was also common practice
for "bosses" to lock factory doors,
back in those good old days
before those nasty unions
forced us to work only 8-hour days
and to forswear child labor.


Let all that sink in for a moment.

The tragedy prompted many improvements
in fire safety across the country,

such as laws mandating fire drills. 

SOCIALISM!




Days after the Triangle fire,
100,000 mourners marched in a funeral procession
through the streets of New York,
while another 250,000 lined the route.

Their grief was the foundation
for the right of garment workers to unionize.

The tragedy is credited with conferring a certain
"self evident" moral authority
to the U.S. labor movement.

 

"I cannot let my children or my grandchildren go back to that time; You know we are moving back. Not just unions, middle class in general is moving back in that direction. America has got to get out and protest."
One man told the AP at Friday's observance.

Little-Known Great

Aloha    Friend-

Just days before the earthquake & tsunami

Hawaii lost a living treasure,

Herb Kawainui Kane.

Come meet this remarkable person

now. . .

Behind this land of Aloha there is a past.

It begins in the sea's deepest depths,

where we broke out in fire.  

A fiery goddess danced creation,

the plants and birds placed themselves here

and rejoiced. 

And then (only then) the people could come. . .

by Herb Kane

Great voyagers they were.

While all the world clung near to coasts,

they knew and followed the sea,

currents, birds and stars were their colleagues. 

Following the Hoku Le`a (the Star of Gladness)

they came here to virgin islands and named them

'Hawaii Nei'

&

'Hawaii Loa'

 names shrouded in the mists of Polynesian history,

shrouded in the mysteries. . . 

No one knows what they mean. Or they're not talking.

Herb Kane's Battle of the Pali

Great kingdoms came and went. 

Keawe kings ruled the Big Island.

Then one arose who saw the first ships of Captain Cook,

and who then united the islands

in the face of a suddenly bigger world.

Kamehameha The Great, the 'Lonely One' 

drove Oahu's defenders over the dramatic Pali cliffs

just above our Honolulu Town.

  We drive over the Pali

with ghosts and gods in our cars,

we know about these things,

largely because of one man:

 

HERB KAWAINUI KANE 

 (pronounced KAH-ney)

Historian, Fine Artist, Author, Hawaiian.

Born in 1928, raised in Waipi'o Valley and Hilo, Hawai'i, Mr. Kane served in the US Navy,

then studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning his master's degree 1953, and also at the University of Chicago.

Fortunately, he set up his studio

and his home

in rural South Kona

on the island of Hawaii,

(near my first Hawaiian home in a coffee shack).

While anthropologists strenuously disagreed 

about the peopling of these islands,

Mr. Kane and a few like-minded friends birthed the idea of building a real-life Hawaiian voyaging canoe, the like of which had not been seen in centuries.

Calling her Hokule`a,

and naming Herb Kane her first captain back in 1975,

was a first chapter in

the reclaiming of pride and respect to the native Hawaiian people who lost so much

along with their sovereignty.

The Holule`a sailed without instruments,

and suddenly it was cool to be Hawaiian!

Music and Hula flourished

and there was again pride 

in the old ways & wisdom.

In 1984 the artist/captain was elected

a Living Treasure of Hawaii.

In 1987 "The Year of the Hawaiian" 

he was one of sixteen persons chosen as

Po'okela (Champion).

From 1988 to 1992 he served as a founding trustee of the Native Hawaiian Culture & Arts Program, a Federal program at Bishop Museum. 

In 1998, he was awarded Bishop Museum's Charles Reed Bishop Medal.

In 2002, he received an award for excellence from  The Hawaii Book Publishers Association.

He is a 2008 recipient of an honorary doctorate awarded by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

Herb's Hawaii commemorative stamp for the U.S. Postal Service, celebrated 50 years of statehood, when released in August 2009.

But those are just awards.

This man raised his people,

his home,

and human dignity.

He redeemed the ancestors.

What a legacy!

The Hokule`a has since voyaged as far afield as Japan, visiting all corners of the Polynesian Triangle, to Tahiti and the Marquesas.  

And when we Hawaii people think of grandmother Pele (the volcano goddess)

of the Pali Battle,

of the discovery of Hawaii by canoes,

it is the images created by Herb Kane that we see

in our hearts & minds.

     Herb Kane in his Kona studio, October 2010. Photo by David Croxford for HAWAII Magazine



 

“Every brushstroke and every word

has brought and will forever bring

wisdom, beauty, inspiration

and understanding.”

Herb Kawainui Kane

his website

My little Hawaii novel was considered worthy of being brought along

on Hokule`a's Japan voyage!

"Thank you; we have lots of time to read out there."

Nainoa Thompson, Captain of the Hokule`a