Moat Or Fence, Your Highness?

A  L  O  H  A   from USA's Only 
                              Royal Palace

IOLANI  PALACE, 

Seat of Hawaiian Royalty

High Chiefs 

occupied this piece of land

in today's downtown Honolulu.

behind a wooden palisades. 

In 1862 this magnificent 

palace was built.

[Makai/seaward side] 

Illuminated by 

Edison Electric 

before the White House 

was electrified!

Mauka/Mountain Side

You can see the monarchy era 

Troop Barracks

through this 19th Century gate.

A proper castle! 

Look at those regal spikes!

King Kalakaua was 

the first royal head of state 

to make a journey around the world. 

He was a favorite personality

 all over Europe, visiting

his brother royals.

Glance inside the book

HERE

"Around the World With a King"

Click on "Preview"

to see a smashing 

frontispiece of the King.

Today the book is

chiefly noteworthy

for the blatant,

matter of fact racism

of the author's

 attitude towards

his Hawaiian King! 

The Caucasian (Hawaiian)

officials who accompanied

the beloved King

[including author]

were HIS APPOINTEES

and SUBJECTS!

The chief job of 

Hawaiian royals from

Kamehameha the Great

onward, was to remain

independent and not a

colony in a frankly colonial

age. This they accomplished

with great dignity

until island-born

American business men

[including the children of missionaries]

overthrew the monarchy

in a bloodless coup

because Queen Liliuokalani

wanted none of her people

shot. And she trusted in the 

justice of the USA,

even lobbying Congress

in person!

She did fly the US

flag over her lovely

[private] home during

WWI.

You see, this was not

so very long ago.

We are all guests

of the Hawaiian People.

That should ALWAYS

be respected!

- 1883 -

Aloha `Oe

"Aloha to You"

                   warmly, cloudia

Linking to 
GOOD FENCES

Battleship

A L O H A!

Happy Saturday, Come in and Relax-

click on photos - then saluteUSS Missouri Being Towed Past Diamond Head

“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board”
Zora Neale Hurston

Her Great 16 inch Guns
(They fire shells the size of volkswagens 20+ miles)


"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
Dwight David Eisenhower

Surrender Deck, Tokyo Bay

"Lord, bid war's trumpet cease;

Fold the whole earth in peace."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

"When eating bamboo sprouts,

remember the man who planted them."
Chinese Proverb

Where did Summer Go?

Suddenly the floats are gliding down Kalakaua Avenue for today's Aloha Week Floral Parade.

The season just past was EPIC for South Shore surfers, and forecasters are calling for perfect big waves (and soon!) for Oahu's legendary North Shore.

Looks to be 6 to 10 feet today!

Just now, Waikiki is a glistening jewel set in azure waters, perfect for revving your engines - or just relaxing in style. China's Shaolin Monks are here, showing off their amazing moves at the Blaisdell Arena, and Aerosmith will perform here this Fall too. So many choices! Why just the other day a friend asked me if I was going to the Cazimero Brothers' Christmas Show at the Hawaii Theater again this year. Of course! But there's so much to enjoy around here before December. Heck, we even have opera!

One thing you WON'T be able to do for a while is to visit the Battleship Missouri; The "Mighty Mo" will be freed from her moorings on October 14th for the first time since arriving in Hawaii 11 years ago. Beginning before sun-up on that day, all 887 feet, and 54,899 tons of the grey lady will be nudged by three or four tugboats the two miles from Pearl Harbor's Pier Foxtrot 5 to the famous shipyard's Dry-dock 4. Dignitaries are invited along for the 12 to 14 hour ride. But hundreds more of us average folks are expected to be watching from the sidelines. Some lucky people residing up on the hillsides will be able to see the drama unfolding from their homes. Engineers are custom building 310 wooden "keel blocks" (8,000 pounds EACH) on which the giant will rest. Once inside the dry-dock it should take 3 hours for the water to be drained out while divers ensure the correct placement of bulk on block. (The dignitaries will be stuck with each other's company until the ship is high and dry ;) One of Hawaii's top 10 visitor attractions, the Mighty Mo drew 48,111 guests and pilgrims in July. That's 12 percent of all visitors to this island, including numerous WWII veterans from EVERY side of the war.

And yes, those are the big 16 inch guns that Cher cavorted on for her

"If I could Turn Back Time video!"

Sadly, the Association that manages the ship is forbidden from firing them (or the ships engines) inside Pearl Harbor. Watching the grey ghost glide past Waikiki from the deck of my own boat on Fathers' Day of 1998 was a surreal experience! Once tours resume on January 29th you can also hold your function or soiree aboard the ship's fan tail. What a place for a birthday party! (I'm just saying. . . .) You will again be able to walk the "Surrender Deck" where the Japanese Empire and the United States signed the instrument that ended WWII. While you are there, just look over one ship's length to the Arizona Memorial, and you will be looking at the spot where war began, from the very spot where it ended. Only in Hawaii!

I'll take plenty of parade pictures to share with you.

Have a great day-

A L O H A Cloudia

Fifty Years of Statehood Today

Welcome to

the

"A L O H A

STATE"

. . .

Welcome to the unconquered

"Kingdom Of Hawaii"

This is not where the story begins, in 1959.

It's a much older story, with a much broader context.

My grandparents came to America as young children. They were fleeing a bad situation, and they were yearning towards a great hope that, by and large, did not disappoint them.

I love the values that the USA stands for

(if imperfectly realized some times).

But America came to the Hawaiian People, a sovereign nation.

The "How" and the "Why" of this is seen very differently

by different points of view.

A King was forced to sign away his hereditary powers by subjects of his kingdom (who were) of American birth or extraction.

History remembers this as the

"Bayonet Constitution."

His sister (after his death) the final Queen, was deposed and imprisoned (1893)

when she tried to promulgate a new constitution;

All under the watchful eyes of US Marines.

She asked her beloved people

not to resist as they burned to do.

Hawaiian blood,

and the blood of her other multi-cultural subjects,

was too dear to this gracious lady,

who was libeled as a savage.

She took her message to Washington DC and the world.

Riding by rail across the continent,

she wondered aloud why such a huge country

would want her tiny kingdom.

President Cleveland

bemoaned the overthrow

as a betrayal of a weaker and confiding people.

But Congress had other things to occupy their time.

McKinley's assassination

brought Bully Teddy to the White house.

The Spanish American War

made Pearl Harbor an indispensable mid-Pacific coal refueling station

on the road to Manila Bay.

And so

the Queen died a subject

of the U.S. Territory of Hawaii.

(1917 - a mere 24 years before the Pearl Harbor Attack, and 42 years before Statehood)

Though the world is made up of HER subjects

whenever we hear the strains of her song:

"Aloha `Oe"

The Hawaiians have no land base, or government structure,

as North American Original Inhabitants have.

Most Hawaii people, Hawaiians included,

celebrated Statehood.

Statehood is superior to being a Territory.

But the rights of the Hawaiian Nation

deserve to be honored

by a great nation.

I am a proud US citizen, a citizen of the world,

but also consider myself a subject, a guest, of the displaced

Hawaiian Kingdom.

Today's videos (below) will give you the flavor of what is going on here politically and socially around these unresolved issues.

But Hawaiian wisdom understands

that it's kingdom is not purely of this world.

For theirs is the realm of the heart,

and as such

Aloha has conquered her conquerors.

Existing within this reality of Statehood,

Hawaiian Heart remains

immutable,

for as long as a drop of

"Koko,"

Hawaiian Blood,

lives in these islands;

for as long as outsiders

like me

come from far away, and capitulate to a completely

unique reality and understanding of life.

We produce amazing people,

scientific breakthroughs,

US patriots and even a

President.

Hawaii and the USA

are married;

and few marriages run smooth

all the time.

Perhaps our native son,

born & bred

Barack

will refresh the entire world system

from the well of

Ho`o ponopono.

Amen.

Please enjoy these stirring expressions of the Hawaiian Nation & her remarkable people (below)

who are the True Flowers of this Land.

And "Kaulana na Pua"

Famous are these Flowers.

* Ho`oponopono: Prayer, Mediation, "Making things righteous-RIGHTEOUS"

"Ho - oh - pono - pono"

The Queen's Flowers

Click on photos to enlarge! Lotus - by Beth Eisenberg

"This very moment is the perfect teacher, and lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are." Pema Chodron

Queen Lili`uokalani, Last Monarch of Hawaii;

Iolani Palace in Background.

(note the lei & hu`ukupu, "gifts")

“Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship”
Omar Bradley

Racist Political Cartoon of the Queen,

Her Throne Precarious on American Bayonets.

In her hand are papers reading "Scandalous Government"

and "Gross Immorality."

“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.”
Albert Einstein

The Beloved Lili`uo Herself

"All things change; nothing perishes."

OVID

When the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown by local American businessmen in 1893 with the tacit backing of U.S. Marines off of the USS Boston, the Queen was imprisoned in Iolani Palace.

In addition to being quarantined from her beloved people, she was also denied any news of the world beyond her window.

The gardener at her gracious Waikiki home, Paokalani, continued to tend her beloved flowers in expectation of her return. Every day he sent the Queen a bouquet of fresh flowers.

And each bouquet was wrapped in fresh newspapers!

The tides of larger events oft rock our little lives. Even a royal ship of state can founder.

But though we experience loss, even the loss of a whole kingdom, there still remain flowers to pause and enjoy.

And those we love will find simple, yet eloquent ways reach out to us.

A L O H A! Cloudia

PS: Yesterday's photo of "mystery fruit" was: MANGO on da tree!

Fifty Years Ago

Click on photos to enlarge!Ted Trimmer: Golden Dream

By building relations we create a source of love and personal pride and belonging that makes living in a chaotic world easier.

Susan Lieberman"

Royal Hawaiian Band on the steps of Iolani Palace, 1906

"The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down."

A. Whitney Brown

Dan Axler: Indiana Sky

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America - there's the United States of America."

Barack Obama

It was 50 years ago this week that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Hawaii Admission Act by a 323 to 89 vote. One day earlier (March 11) the Senate had granted their "yay" by a margin of 75 to 15.

With the expected signature of President Eisenhower it would be up to the citizens of the Territory of Hawaii to give their assent. A mere 66 years after the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani's monarchy, just 42 years after the old Queens passing, the Territorial Legislature sat in morning session at her Iolani Palace while Congressional delegate (not representative!) John A. Burns relayed his account of the historic vote by telephone from Washington DC, where afternoon shadows already lengthened.

When Territorial House Speaker Elmer Cravalho announced the final affirmative tally, the representatives took to their feet spontaneously to sing the "Star Spangled Banner." Then they sang the Isle anthem, "Hawaii Pono`i." With the future (the Sixties!) and a young President right around the corner, American optimism swept the isles in a tsunami of excitement and opportunism. With full citizenship rights and voting representation, it was hoped, the strangle-hold of the old Big Five companies would be broken. Then a post-missionary, post-colonial, post-plantation-oligarchy, multi-ethnic society might bloom and prosper after lifetimes of labor, denigration, and exclusion. The Japanese-American veterans who we saluted last week: http://comfortspiral.blogspot.com/2009/03/go-for-broke.html

deserved no less. Even the frank southern racism of certain U.S. senators and representatives, fortified by the anti-communist/anti-labor organizer sentiment of the day, ultimately withered before the evident justice of Statehood. If Hawaii was too different, then the decision to admit Alaska first, as 49th US State, might be viewed as an easy step in America's westward expansion.

Not everyone was celebrating. Hawaiians who had endured "future shock" cultural dislocation, genocidal health emergencies, and political dispossession, still felt a deep pulse of love for their nation and their Monarchs. Many Hawaiian families still cherished elder members who had been born in the waning days of an Island Kingdom. These kupuna passed on stories of a stolen past that they had overheard in small kid times as their parents, who had lived through it all, quietly talked into the evening. The mother tongue, Olelo Hawaii, was spoken in private homes, and hula & chant never really died.

Nevertheless, the momentum seemed ordained. 99 % of the 140,744 local voters who cast their ballots in the June 27, 1959 statewide plebiscite favored statehood. America's "affair" with the brown hula girl was rendered respectable as she assented to become Uncle Sam's latest wife.

On August 21st President Eisenhower signed papers dissolving the Territory and establishing the 50th State of Hawaii. "Us guys stay EQUAL now!" Soon jets would bring newly prosperous visitors from the continent, many of them WWII veterans who had forged an emotional attachment with the isles. I still see the hula girl tattoos fading on their tired arms as they sun on da beach with their Midwestern wives. Pearl Harbor continues to welcome daily visitors from all over the world; Many Japanese visitors pay their respects to this day. The planeloads of visitors did come to "get lei'ed" and to catch a whiff of Elvis. They followed their dreams of an American paradise. Did you see Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's incendiary send-up of island tourism on last week's Saturday Night Live?

Far far away from the islands, in every way that places can be distant, lived a very young Me who watched "Hawaiian Eye" and "Adventures in Paradise" on a small, family black and white Philco television. It had rabbit ears, I wore Mickey Mouse ears. Already longing for escape from the conformity of 1959, I dozed off on the living room carpet dreaming of an endless summer of no school, no bullies, no stultifying arithmetic lessons.

Somewhere distant in that long ago night, a train howled and chattered; a Harley Davidson backfired, a finned convertible wheeled past my first window blaring Doo Wop. Stirring slightly in my baby sleep, my lips practiced once again the lovely words I had "sounded-out" from the pages of the National Geographic. "Aloha" means "hello" "goodbye" and "love." A porch (my grandma had a Philadelphia "stoop") is called a "Lanai."

But first I had to grow up and move on to second grade. . .

A L O H A! Cloudia

ps: it still means "love!"

Overthrow

click on photos to enlarge!

"States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions."
Noam Chomsky

"If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law." Henry Thoreau

"The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating."
Cesar Chavez







Yesterday, January 17th, marked the 116th anniversary of the overthrow of the legitimate Hawaiian Kingdom largly at the hands of American residents - some born in the islands.

Wearing a red shirt and carrying a small Hawaiian flag I joined the Ku I Ka Pono March commemorating the sad event, and protesting Governor Lingle (R). She is attempting to monetize the Royal Lands which the State administers SUPPOSEDLY for the benefit of the Native Hawaiian People, the Kanaka Maoli. Many of our airports, harbors & public university campuses stand on these so called "ceeded lands." and yet Hawaiian elderly, handicapped and families with babies sleep under tarps at remote beaches.



In 1998 scholars working in the National Archives in Washington D.C. uncovered a document forgotten for a hundred years: the Ku`e Petitition. It had been sent to Congress to protest the Queen's arrest and demanding the resotration of soveriegnty. It had been signed by almost every citizen of these islands. When copies circulated in the press, contemporary Hawaii citizens were touched and uplifted to see their Kupuna's (elders) signatures on the suppressed and forgotten document. President Clinton formally apologized for the U.S. role, but. . .

Loving Hawaii and her people as I do, while loving the land of refuge for my Kupuna - the U.S.A. - is like being the child of a complicated marriage. You love both of your parents, but must wonder at their relationship sometimes. Most Hawaiians are proud citizens of the U.S. and they serve, and have served the nation with distinction. But as they fight for the freedom of others, they no doubt long for their rightful dignity at home in these islands. . .

Kaulana Na Pua

"Famous are the Flowers"

or

"The Stone Eating Song"

Famous are the people of Hawaii

Who love the land, the `aina

Who care not for the wealth of the world

But are satisfied

With the pohaku, the stones of this `aina

They rather take the stones for bread

No one will fix a signature

To the paper of the enemy

With its sin of annexation

And sale of Native Civil Rights

We do not value

The governments sums of money.

We are satisfied with the stones

Astonishing food of the land.

January, 1893

A L O H A? Cloudia