Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

On Saturday we braved the $4.75 a gallon gas and drove to Hilo for the day. First stop, the farmers market. For ten dollars I got three bags of sweet smelling and sap-sticky tropical fruit and vegetables: papayas, 5 for a dollar, sweet potatoes, apples bananas as long as your finger and sweet and tender. I asked one farmer for a couple of the thick blunt plantains he had on his table. No, no! He said. Those are for cooking. I know! I insisted. I want them! I'm going to go home and fry them up. He reluctantly handed them over, shaking his head. Crazy lady. The micronesian grandmas push the gawking haoles out of the way and bargain in a shout with all the micronesian farmers. I also got a bunch of narrow light purple Japanese eggplants, and some zucchinis. I was tempted by the tiny light-yellow mangoes and the ice cold "organi" coconuts, and bought some authentic Japanese fish-shaped pancakes, stuffed with Adzuki beans and cream cheese. We went to the zoo and enjoyed the th...

This is my lovely friend Karen from envirobuggy.blogspot.com . Her 4 year old boy Shawn is in his pod back there. This ambitious pair are planning a marathon bike ride through the mountains, hills, rain and snow of the Big Island. Well, hopefully more sandy beaches than snow, and complimentary resort hotel rooms than grungy campgrounds. Good luck Karen on your adventure! May all your wildest dreams come true!

Yesterday I ran into Auntie Bertha outside of the senior center. She was excited to tell me, as she cinched up her black oversized raincoat, that they give free food-- even milk!--to seniors every lunch, so she gets on the bus and comes over every day. Why not? She's hip. She's so hip, she doesn't care that she's hip. She's almost 80 years old. She wears knee-length batik printed skirts to church and heavy bright jewelry. She waves off compliments-- "Oh, my daughter in law gave it to me." She came to the Halloween party in soft yellow leather with fringes and squash blossom jewelry, and chunky turquoise and silver rings on her bony hands, with her long gray hair in braids. She was stunning-- small and compact and content sitting in the metal folding chairs while her great, and great-great children ran around her in costume. "I'm part Indian" she explained. A half-Indian sailor came to Hawaii and stayed, married into her Hawaiian family tree. ...

This weekend we went to Maui for the 38th annual Farm and Ag fair. We saw lots of handsome pigs and cows raised up by and auctioned off for the 4-H kids, and enjoyed such culinary marvels as cold greasy pork and peas, and watery cold curry with blackening baby corn in asthma-inducing cumin goop. But those were nicely balanced by delicious crunchy sweet Banana lumpia (think friend spring roll with a banana inside) and awe-(and diabetes)-inspiring friend ice cream, served in a wad as big as a softball. There were acts on the main stage on and off: Uncle Richard, a brilliant Falsetto singer with white mutton-chops, a girl with a guitar covering Sarah Mclaughlan and country hits, and the "Amazing Stupor-Man!", the absolute worst magic act I've ever had the misfortune to endure. The amazing rope-cutting trick ended with a hopeless tangle, the card the kid picked was never found again, the card-repair "hospital" frame fell apart and had to be reassembled, the false bo...

Here are some of the lovely and strange places I've stumbed across lately. A strangely impaled 1.5" beetle on the barbed wire fence. This Hawaiian homestead farm is along the road I walk along. The day I went in and said hello, they were weeding beets, harvasting kale, and planting onions, arugula, and lettuces. This beach (I'm not telling where) and hike were so odd and lovely-- completely empty rocky beach and clear blue water over black sand and rocks... "Take care of the land..." An odd eerie horse holding perfectly still along the side of the road.

This weekend we hopped on a plane and went to visit Kauai for a couple of days. Yes, the airfare was outrageous--I bought a roundtrip from SF to NYC for less a couple of years ago-- but it was an adventure. And besides, it was the patriotic thing to do-- spending a bit of our economic stimulus money on a mini vacation (which doubled as a chance for a job interview). And after four days on the Garden Isle, I went home with this profound impression: All of the Islands are different from each other. The Big Island is big. Kauai, Oahu, and Maui are small. We have vog, they have clear blue skies. They are green and verdant jungles, we are yellow rangeland plains. They have a lot of good food, we have a little bit of good food, spread few and far across the island. And maybe I'm nuts, but everyone was very friendly on Kauai. I kept nudging my husband and saying, "am I nuts or is everybody friendly on Kauai?" The museum lady let us in for free, the shopkeeper pinched baby's ...

"Wow," said Auntie Val Hanohano, looking around as the Hula performance ended and all the parents and friends got up to push their way out of the theater, "the natives are getting restless! Ha ha ha!"

I was browsing through the webiverse yesterday and stumbled across some very lovely talk-story accounts of the history, culture, and spiritual importance of Kawaihae . As I read it one thing stuck in my throat a bit-- the people interviewed sadly mention the vast influx of extremely wealthy mainland people into the community. They say the populations of local people are shrinking and vanishing as the haole come in , buy everything up, and then lock themselves in their million-dollar gated communities. Here's one bit: “Back in the old times, we had a really strong sense of community,” Pua remarks. “Now it’s separated. Everybody has their own thing. Everybody wants this and everybody wants that and nobody wants to come together, and make it work. ‘I want this, I want a park,’ somebody else wants this and everybody want, want, want, but nobody wants to do what it takes to make it happen. So, I say, that during my time of growing up, we were as one community and one family. Not today....

I love walking on the back roads. The wind, the green fields, the vast riveted mountain iced with snow-- it's unabashedly picturesque. I love the ramshackle corrugated roof houses with tarp sheds and the delux garages-as-living space, complete with couches and flat screen tvs, and stacks of industrial size coolers. Yesterday I walked out through the Hawaiian home pasture land roads to a farm that I always admired. Kale, onions, red and green lettuce, cabbage, collards, beets, mizuna, arugula, chard in neat long rows over about 5 acres. There were two people weeding in the field-- I gathered my courage and pushed my stroller in and waved hello. Anna, the farm manager, said sure I could look around and told me all about how they use only organic pest control,(so let the baby out of the stroller!) and that she's worked there since her babies were born, and now they're off to college. She laughed at her dry muddy hands-- no gloves for me she said, and attacked the weedy overgro...

Saturday morning we went to the beach-- a sort of secluded one in a patch of burnt keawe forest and down a broken old trail. It's shallow with a white sandy bottom and plenty of thorny trees to drape your towels on. My little half-fish one-year old charged out into the waves, signing "fishie" and "water" and "wet" and screaming with happiness. She didn't even mind the unusally rough waves-- strong enough to knock me over a couple of times while she stayed safely perched on her daddy. We swam and splashed around-- two giant honu floated right past us, sticking their noses out of the water to take audible sucks of air. When their heads emerge you can see the lenalena yellow ring around their eyes and the green and amber scales on their wise faces. The big exciting waves knocked us all around a bit, we played on the beach (I enjoy writing things like "permanence" and "eternity" in the sand, and watching them get washed away, ha ha...

Last night I hosted my monthly book group-- ostensibly an excuse to get together and gossip and eat snacks (last night it was homemade bread with homemade cream cheese and homemade pickles!) Kehau picked "Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis to present. She began describing the story and the setting-- it's been thousands of years since the white witch, and a group from outside of Narnia has moved in and taken over. All of the true Narnians have been forced into hiding while the imposters rule. And the official schools don't teach about the true history of the place-- just a sanitized and superstitious version of things. The woods and the rivers are seen as dangerous places full of maleveolent forces. And young Prince Caspian is the rightful heir of... the Narnian conquerors. But he begins learning the true story of the place-- the magic, Aslan, the talking beasts-- from a half-Narnian tutor who evidently can "pass" as human. Eventually Caspian escapes from his crue...

Just now I was coming out of the KTA parking lot and witnessed a scene. A shiny blue rental car --some kind of boxy Chevy--pulled out in front of a battered mini-van with a big "In Memory Of..." decal across the back. The driver of the van leaped out of the car. He's wearing an "Eddie Would Go" tanktop in red, green and yellow. He runs and jams his face into the window and starts screaming at the driver. I turn down the radio to eavesdrop and catch some choice phrases: Why the **** you gotta drve like that, What the **** is wrong with you, Yes we have an ****ing problem, etc. etc. I can't see or hear the driver. He evidently decides he's had enough of this and starts to drive away. "Eddie" shouts after him, finally, answering my unasked question, "****ing haole!!"

We have a little problem in our city. Actually, not just our city. Across the whole island. We have no city councils. We have no city mayors. We, in short, have taxation without representation. What we do have is a sprawling, unfocused, wobbly top-heavy, obtuse and immovable county government. What we also have is rapid and uncontrolled expansion, erratic and flimsy zoning, and a terrifying traffic problem. A few weeks back while I was standing in line at the theater, somebody was walking up and down with fliers that announce: "Community Meeting! Review of Planning Process to date, information stations . Learn what is happening, ask questions, tell us what you think! Next Steps! FREE FOOD!!!" I decided to go see what a community meeting is like. Sure enough, there was food and it was free. The little room at the civic center was packed with about 50 people. Every wall surface was draped with elaborate maps detailing bypass roads, farm zoning, historical preserves, Hawaiian ho...

For ten years, George Kahumoku Jr. has been hosting a Hawaiian music camp on Maui. He invites famous slack key and ukulele players to teach a group of enamored haole mainlanders to play (and make leis and chant and sing in Hawaiian), while feeding them gussied up Hawaiian fare at the open aired Mauian hotel in Napili. For a week they get to be immersed in Aloha, Ohana, Mana, and Kaukau, playing Hawaiian music by starlight while the waves crash on the beach. It's overwhelmingly picturesque. I got to go a while ago because of a gracious research grant. So while everyone else were cultural tourists, I felt like an observer, on a mission to parse this odd experience. On the first day of the camp I drove up through the windy cliff-roads to George Kahumoku’s beautiful big house and great garden and taro-patch. George opened the gate and set us all to work. He’s a big Hawaiian guy- very busy all day—and his wife is a skinny haole lady, Nancy. She was the ticking clock that kept everybody ...

Tourists are interesting to observe. A great deal of time is spent posing and negotiating pictures—I half observed one struggle—a family with several kids posed for the grandpa’s camera- the 8 year old boy’s shirt was rumpled. The grandmother said, bafflinglingly, “the orange stripe is crooked! Do you want everyone to see you like that Andrew? Do you want me to tell everyone?” So then he had his arm over his face for the rest of the poses, with mother saying his name like a sneeze over and over, grandfather growling, grandmother whining and threatening. Poor kid, what’s the point of taking pictures? To preserve the joys of childhood? Tourists, on the whole, seem pretty friendly. Three year old boys must throw rocks over cliffs, their mothers must scold them. They are cheerful and trusting with each other—swapping cameras, flirting with each other’s children. They are gruff and overly buoyant with the locals—crazy young shirtless brown guys jumping off of the bridge into a rocky river 3...

I've had several conversations lately with other malihini. The consensus seems to be that it is hard to live in Paradise. Is that extraordinarily odd? We have all made painful sacrifices to move here--leaving family and friends and familiarity back on the mainland. It's expensive to ship your car and all of your stuff. It's hard to find a job that can keep up with inflated rents and $7 a gallon milk (as expensive as Manhattan on a quarter of the income!) I know heaps of people who are desperate to move here-- who fantasize about their lives as they would be, surely, in Hawaii. The haole mainlander Hawaiian music officianados I met through slack-key camp are positively fervent about Hawaiian culture-- weeping openly about the fate of King Kalakaua and about the beauty of Aloha. People feel compelled to come here, to fulfill their dreams. People come to become cocoa farmers, to thaw out, to relax, to restart their lives. And then they get disillusioned, and according to a Haw...

I was standing in line at the grocery store. The ponytailed local guy in front of me was paying for a stack of clothespins and some rope. A fat white guy followed me in line, checked out the big dark guy and his items on the counter and shouted amiably, "Hey Braddah! You Get Plenty Clothespins For Hang Choke Laundry!" "Oh," the local guy answered, "yes. They're actually for the printing master class I'm teaching."

Last Saturday, the day before Easter, we got up and went over to the school gymnasium for the much advertised Community Easter Egg Hunt. When we got there, the place was pretty packed-- parents in the bleachers, and an impressive table of prizes: tall pink plastic wrapped easter egg baskets, heaps of pastel chocolates, and even a pair of new bikes. We registered at the front-- filling out a form that asked for our phone, our address, our full names, birthdays, and which church we go to, and how often. I was suddenly dubious that this really is a nondenominational community event. In exchange for all of our personal information, baby got a little green wrist band that let her into the 0-3 egg hunt at 9:00. It was still 8:30 and the place was filling up. A woman stood up in the front by the prizes and shouted into a wireless karaoke mic, "Hey everybody, ready to celebrate Easter??? Come on kids, come up to the front! Let's celebrate Jesus!" All the kids shuffled out to the ...

Costco hulks in a vast squat industrial park in a lava field outside of Kona. It is sentried by furniture outlets, T-shirt printers, and, curiously, The Most Delicious South East Asisan Food I Have Ever Ever Had. The other day after a grueling trip to Costco, baby and I were tired and hungry and I saw a "Now Open" sign flapping in an industrial strip right above the Big Box Behemoth. I pulled up into the driveway and wedged into a parking spot between cement mixers and asphalt pounders, stacks of broken down crates, and dusty pieces of furniture, and made my way to the entrance of Lotus Cafe. Inside all the chaos disappears: you are first greeted by a man-sized stone slab running melodiously with water, then you enter a cozy breezy cafe, constructed ingeniously in a cavernous warehouse with draped tents and whirring fans. The laminated menus introduce the philosophy of the place: "Hawaii's only Asian Style Natural Foods Cafe: Serving organic food and beverages, prepa...

Upside-down Hawaiian flags, imposing painted signs, flapping tents. A couple of weekends a month we drive by an intimidating encampment on the church row lawn: The Hawaiian Nation Reinstated. Up to this morning, my impression of the Hawaiian Sovereignty and National movements came from reading Haunani-Kay Trask's From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii . The book is a sometimes diamond-clear description of the disparity in Hawaiian colonialism, but is studded with off-putting gems like this: “without doubt, Euro-Americans and the Japanese see Islanders as racially and culturally inferior. To these predators, the Pacific is vast and far away from the centers of 'civilization,' rendering it most suitable for dangerous projects” like nuclear experimentation (Trask 55). I guessed that I would be unwelcome at best, and met with hostility at worst. Luckily I was wrong. It's a family event-- adult sisters and sister-in-law sit with their mom, near the kid...

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...

Almost every day I walk or drive past the Kahilu Theater marquee, next to the bank. The programs are diverse, and tend towards the stuffy: jazz dance troupes, a capella singers, classical trios-- the only unifying element is the extraordinary cost of the shows. Although there have been shows that I would have like to see (Slack Key Masters and The Brothers Kazimero) I could never consider paying the ticket prices. Until. Last week I discovered that the theater has "school" shows during the day, and the nice ticket lady said I could get tickets as a "homeschooler." I am a little uncomfortable claiming to be "homeschooling" my 11 month old baby, but not uncomfortable enough to say no to these great shows for 3 to 6 dollars! So far I've been to two of these raucous daytime cultural events with my homeschooled child. The first was Huun Huur Tu-- a group of Tuvan throat singers. I was nervous: an hour of didgeridoo-like chanting didn't sound too promisi...

Last weekend we got to participate in a branding up on Mauna Kea. Our landlords' grandpa, Grandpa Bolo, works one of the beautiful 300 acre Hawaiian Homes lots up in the green plains up towards the mountain. The whole family comes. Horses, dogs, kids, cowboys and cowgirls, uncles and aunties setting out tray after tray after tray of food. Korean fried chicken, Luau, smoke pork, sweet potato, poi, salad (that's mac or potato), fried fish and steamed fish: Kole, yellow, and Moe, bbq ribs, and more. The cowboys and cowgirls gather in the herd with their horses while the rest of us sit silently and watch by the corral. Then they "cut" the cows away from their calves one by one-- it only takes them half an hour to sort the entire herd. The horses and dogs are a seamless part of the team. Then once they're sorted, everyone jumps in to help with the main project: one by one, the calves are roped, pulled into working corral, mugged (knocked over and sat upon, with one hoo...

It's Presidents Day and the place is packed-- a weary fan looks this way and that next to the door. There's a family of seven lined up sweatily by the counter, waiting to catch the waitress's eye. She's wearing belligerent thick black eyeliner, and a tight t-shirt with a picture of a bowl of soup, and the caption "Miso Hot." She shrugs us over to a sticky table, in a maze of mismatched chairs. There's a pair of Hawaiian aunties right next to us, and I eavesdrop and peer at their food before I order. And it's lovely-- thin little strips of yaki-something, and sweet little rolls like gems. They strike up a conversation with a family at the table kitty-corner from us. --Oh-- you folks from Honokaa! You never go work with my brother them? --Oh yeah, over there at the kine. My husband work with your brother Jon Gomes? --No the other Gomes. Milton Gomes. I get a brother Milton and Jack. Not the Ahualoa Gomes. Honokaa. I'm a honokaa girl. --Oh! Me too! -...

Last week I went down Kawaihae Road to buy some eggs. Half way down the hill is the sign: Organa Grown, Hawaiian Fresh Egg Farm, home of Mountain Apple Brand Eggs, and a turn off over a narrow bridge onto a lane shadowed by palm trees. Follow the dirt track around the bend and turn into a nondescript open lot between large warehouse-style buildings. Park and say hello into the open doorway, beside the whiteboad of egg prices and a faded copy of the ten commandments, and you'll be greeted by a member of the family: David Davenport in spattered jeans, his wife or two bright eyed teengaged daughters. David has run this egg farm for 21 years. He took it over from his grandfather. It's still a family affair-- his family works with him producing thousands of eggs for the Big Island brand, Mountain Apple. They also sell flats of eggs directly from their warehouse, which is how I came to be standing in their doorway. But in the next 6 months to a year, they will close down. When I aske...

100 years ago, three young Hawaiian cowboys made the long trek to Wyoming to compete in the World Roping Championship. They spoke Hawaiian, had peculiar Hawaiian-style saddles, and wore bright hakulei on their hats-- Old West Cheyenne didn't know what to do with these foreign oddities on borrowed horses. They certainly didn't expect much from them. And then the young "children of Waimea" showed their stuff-- they not only held their own in the competition, Ikua Purdy won the whole thing outright. His victory is still sweet. It is immortalized in song: "Rough Riders" and "Waiomina" and many more. Paniolo Preservation Society Last Wednesday was the opening event for a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of that triumph. We gathered with the crowd in the cold needly kipuupuu rain outside Kahilu theatre waiting for the doors to open and admit 500 of us to the free exhibit, lecture and concert. When the doors finally opened, we pressed into t...