Thursday, March 31, 2011

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:

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

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."
Yee's Hung Ga Lion Dance Team
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

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

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"



(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

Monday, March 28, 2011

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

Saturday, March 26, 2011

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.


Friday, March 25, 2011

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!
renowned_Hawaii_artist_Herb_Kane_dies

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



 renowned_Hawaii_artist_Herb_Kane_dies
“Every brushstroke and every word
has brought and will forever bring
wisdom, beauty, inspiration
and understanding.”
Herb Kawainui Kane


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