I have said it before:
Hawaii is more than beaches.
“Don't grow up too quickly,
lest you forget how much
you love the beach.”
Michelle Held
We are more than amazing skies
"You can't put your feet on the ground
until you've touched the sky. "
Paul Auster
Our history still lingers, IF you know where to look
The past is our definition.
We may strive, with good reason, to escape it,
or to escape what is bad in it,
but we will escape it only
by adding something better to it."
Wendell Berry
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On Saturday
I visited Hawaii's Plantation Village,
an outdoor history museum
that tells some of the stories
of life on Hawaii's Sugar Plantations
(c. 1850-1950).
The Village includes restored buildings
and replicas of plantation structures,
buildings like the plantation store,
community center,
and the humble homes
of the workers
who built our Hawaii.
The story that emerges
speaks of Hawaii's various cultures:
Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Puerto Rican,
Japanese, Okinawan, Korean,
and Filipino.
There are the people that came to work,
and then stayed to shape
and to share our uniqueness.
The lives of those people breathe in the setting,
and in the veins of locals
who come to see where grandma, grandpa
came from.
Waipahu
was one of O'ahu's last plantation towns,
and its sugar mill operated until 1995.
I remember the emotion
as the last 'cane trucks' sounded their horns,
carrying the last crop to the mill.
A way of life was passing.
But the smokestack still stands proudly
above the Waipahu town
that it built,
reminding us to be grateful
to those workers,
and
for all
that has been accomplished
Listen to the song,
While you watch the slide show: