Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

Today I got to accompany my 7th-12th graders to a heiau restoration project. In the discussion amongst us teachers leading up to this excursion, we were warned that "he wahe kane." It's a man place, a makahiki games sight. I didn't know what to expect As I picked up my walkie-talkie from the front office, the Hawaiian language teacher pulled me to the side with something like: "I na aia ia oe ka wailehua, a'ale pono e komo i ka heiau." I didn't understand-- he had to rephrase. "Ka waihooluu no ka lehua? Ka wai ulaula?" Ah. I finally got it. "Ma'i?" I answered. Monosyllabic and agrammitical,  as usual. He was telling me that, if I or the other women were on our periods, we were supposed to wait and not enter the heiau grounds.  The colorful idiom is "the water of the lehua blossom." Much more poetic than "auntie flow." We piled all of the non-menstruating students (luckily all of them) into the vans and ...

This morning we took a short trek up to Lawai to visit the International Peace Center's openhouse. It was so clear and bright that all the heavy cloud leis were gone from the mountains, and we could see their green rumpled skirts all around us. It's easy to forget to see them-- everything was bright today. The center is back in a little residential neighborhood. A flock of pretty goats graze the grass out front, and a cheerful greeter in a straw hat and designer sandals showed us to some lawn chairs with a serene view and gave us some jasmine tea and Manju--Japanese pastries. We joked under our breath that the red dot on top was the mind altering drugs. Our greeter said to sit and enjoy the peaceful surroundings for a moment while the previous tour finished up the orientation. The view from our lawnchairs was lovely--a long grassy mound in front of an imposing rock wall. Matt wondered, "oh no, the site of a heiau?" Sure enough, yes. A particularly powerful one, in th...

It was a sad week for Hawaiian music . Auntie Genoa Leilani Adolpho Keawe-Aiko died on February 25th. Her voice epitomized the high flexible Hawaiian soprano falsetto-- lyrical, easily, light. Then a few days later, Uncle Raymond Kaleoalohapoinaoleohelemanu Kane, the master slack key guitarist, died at 82 on February 27th. I loved his gravelly voice, and his boisterous but controlled slack key. His signature song is "Wai O Ke Ani Ani." He was a mentor to many young slack key artists. It is so sad to see the passing of the older generation of Hawaiian musicians. Luckily they are honored and remembered, and younger musicians like Keoki Kahumoku are carrying on their traditions. In honor of these kupunas, we went to the 7th annual Ukulele festival in Waikoloa-- a mixed crowd of local people and tourists, kids with ukuleles and grandma's in low chairs on the lawn. Parents cheered for the jangly middle-school ukulele band playing "The Entertainer." Gabby Pahinui...

It's a cold dark blustery night and I'm all alone in my one room house out on the plain of Mauna Kea. Sounds like a good time for some ghost stories! First let me admit that I am a folklorist but that I haven't done any kind of rigorous collecting since I've been here. And frankly I'm sort of stymied-- I doubt that I could collect anything even if I wanted to. If I dare generalize, one of the more beautiful and subtle charactaristics of Hawaiian culture is its understatedness. Great slack-key masters defer to young doofuses, kupuna in church sit back and let the younger ones talk and talk and talk. You have to listen very carefully, for a very long time, and even then. Being taught is a priveledge, not a right. So that being said, here are a few glints and glimmers of Hawaiian ghosts that I've heard in the last couple of years: The Wind Our young neighbor Pono is hanai-ed into the Hanohano family and lives with Auntie Val and her older son and his wife (Pono...