All posts by Leslie Lang

Contest

Caption Contest Winners!

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It’s blog editor Leslie Lang here with the winners of our caption contest.

Here is the picture for which we asked you to supply a caption:

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You’ll recall that Richard asked me to choose the winner, ostensibly so he wouldn’t be swayed by friends or family. But now I’m thinking he just remembered how hard it is to pick a winner!

We had lots of entries, and there were some really clever ones. It was hard, but I narrowed them down. I stripped the names off my top four, showed Richard and tried to get him to help me decide which one was the best one.

He read them, laughed and announced a four-way tie.

So here are the four winning captions and the winners’ names. They are not in any order (except alphabetical):

• And the four little piggies cried ‘Auwe!’ all the way home  – Maia Nilsson

• Dinner on the run – Patrick Kahawaiolaa

• Finally, Porky was able to fulfill a lifelong dream: to recreate the cover of the Abbey Road album – Baron Sekiya

• Hey Ralph… are they stopping for us, or did that oil thing peak out? – Wally Andrade

Congratulations to Maia, Patrick, Baron and Wally. If you are on the Big Island, please call Richard at 960-1057 and make arrangements to pick up your prize: a box of fresh, mixed Hamakua Springs vegetables.

If you are not located here, then we send you our heartiest congratulations, and unless you have plans to come to the Big Island we’ll have to leave it at that (as we mentioned in the first post; sorry!).

And thanks to everybody for the submissions. It was fun.
Community, Schools, Tomatoes

Pahoa Elementary: Tomatoes All Around

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Richard told me they took tomatoes down to Pahoa today, and gave some to every kid in the elementary school there.

There was an unexpected spike in production, he said, and he wanted to give them to the kids and their families.

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“We’ve done that over the years,” he said. “We just kind of made our way down the coast to the elementary schools. Kalani‘ana‘ole, Ha‘aheo, Hilo Union, Kapi‘olani, Waiakea Elementary, Kea‘au Elementary, ending up in Hawaiian Beaches at Keonepoko. So the next one was Pahoa Elementary.”

The farm first started handing out tomatoes and bananas at Keaukaha Elementary, back when the Thirty Meter Telescope adopt-a-class project was new and there were a lot of extras one season.

Over the years, he said, he’s been floored by the response. “There are so many people, I have no idea who they are, who come up and tell me they were so happy to receive the tomatoes.”

“We decided elementary kids because it’s a prize they can take home to their parents,” he said. “I feel pretty good being able to do it.”

Where We Live

Merrie Monarch 2012

So finally, on Wednesday night, I got to see what it was like to watch my daughter and her halau perform, for a huge audience, chants and hulas I’d been watching in rehearsals for months, my daughter in a costume we made ourselves.

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It was exhilarating. Thrilling.

Afterward I asked my daughter, who’s 8, to tell me a little more about her performance. She said, “I thought it would be scary but it wasn’t really. You were right, the people were all so happy about our dancing that I wasn’t scared.”

Beforehand I’d told her that the crowd loves her halau, Halau O Kekuhi, and would be roaring for them and loving the performance, and indeed that’s what happened. It was definitely not a hostile crowd. But, then again, there was nothing to be hostile about!

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You can see and hear that on this Big Island Video News video of the Ho‘ike, which gives a good taste of Halau O Kekuhi’s performance, as well as the ones that followed it on Wednesday’s Ho‘ike (Exhibition) night.

And if you want to see some of Hilo’s Merrie Monarch competition, it streams live here at 6 p.m. Hawai‘i time on Friday, 4/13/12 and Saturday, 4/14. Tonight is the hula kahiko (ancient style) competition, and Saturday is the ‘auana (modern style) one.

Where We Live

Merrie Monarch: The Buzz Has Started

Last night, all of the sudden, Merrie Monarch practice at the Edith Kanaka‘ole Stadium was different. Last week, it was just my daughter’s hālau there in a quiet stadium in the evenings, rehearsing. Now, just three days before the first performances, we arrived to find great activity.

Ti-leaf diplays are wrapped around the railings now, and anthuriums, heliconia and greens sit in arrangements around the stage. Sponsors’ banners were affixed to framework – Mauna Loa Macadamias, Hawaiian Airlines, Big Island Candies. Two women were crouched down behind the bleachers, soaking ti leaves, and braiding ti leaves; they were surrounded by buckets and buckets and buckets of flowers. Clearly they were decorating the place.

The sound people have set up behind the stage and were there, doing what they do. Oficial people walked around, studied the area where the royal court people sit, and talked about last minute repairs.

It wasn’t the quiet place they’d been practicing for days. There were suddenly lots of people, each with the jobs they’re doing, and there was a buzz.

Itʻs nothing, though, like the buzz that will fill that stadium on Wednesday night.

Uncategorized, Where We Live

Merrie Monarch: Intense!

I mentioned last time that my daughter, 8, is dancing in the Merrie Monarch hula festival this year for the first time, and so this is our first experience with what goes into preparations for the big hula event.

The number of practices with her hālau has stepped up a lot. During these last two weeks before their performance, they’ve gone from meeting twice a week, as they do during the year, to practicing most weekdays from two to four hours a day.

As a parent, let me just say WOW. That’s on top of school and homework (finding time for her to do homework is taking a lot of parental ingenuity) and trying to make sure she gets enough sleep at night.

But it’s only for a very short time, and as I watch these kids practice on that stage at the Edith Kanaka‘ole Stadium I think about how very much it’s worth it.

I marvel at how much they are learning. It is huge, and great, how much they are learning about the Hawaiian culture – stories, chant, hula, history, ways of being, ways of learning, respect, continuity, integrity, community, cooperation and more.

And they are also learning how to come together and be a part of the total hālau by dancing with the adults, whom they don’t usually dance with the rest of the year. They are learning confidence, and how to perform in front of 5000 people. They are learning to take direction.

They are learning how to work hard at something that’s important to them. Is there any greater lesson?

These kids are working hard but there are so many smiles at rehearsal. My daughter is loving it. She keeps telling me she likes practicing every day, because she feels herself getting better each day in a way that’s different from when they meet twice a week.

What I love is seeing her take part in something that’s so much bigger than herself, than our usual world, and enjoying it and fitting herself into it so well. What more rewarding thing is there for a parent to see than their young child successfully taking on a big challenge?

A reporter and videographer from Honolulu were at the stadium and taped part of their rehearsal for the television news last night. It’s starting!

Stay tuned and I’ll report back again.

Community, Music, Where We Live

Merrie Monarch: Cultural Traditions

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I’m not a hula person, but my daughter is and this year is the first year she’s dancing in the annual Merrie Monarch hula festival. If you live in Hawai‘i, you know that’s a big deal here. It’s a hula competition held every spring in Hilo, and it’s one that people come to from around the world.

My daughter, who’s 8, is dancing with her hālau on the Hō‘ike (Exhibition) night, and this is the first time I’m experiencing firsthand what all goes into preparing for the Merrie Monarch.
We’ve been working on her costume, which started with each parent and child going into the forest and cutting down a hau tree. Wow! Pretty intense, but so interesting!
(This blog talks a lot about sustainability, and if you don’t live here that might sound unsustainable to you. Please note that hau trees grow like weeds. I don’t think you could wipe out the hau even if you tried.)
I have since learned how to strip the bark, clean it, and separate the layers, so we can braid it into cordage that we’re using in her costume.
Similarly, we have gathered lau hala – the leaves of the hala tree – and trimmed and cleaned them. When I mentioned that I got a box-type stripper – it lets you strip hala leaves to an even width so you can weave them or use them to make hula implements, for instance, as below – Richard said it makes him think of his grandmother’s house where there were always rolls (kūka‘a) of prepped lau hala.
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It was always the same in this house where I live, too, which was my grandmother’s home and her mother’s before her, and where there used to be hula and weaving and more.
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Somehow that managed to skip a couple generations, but I love that once again, this house is sometimes filled with hula and ‘oli (chanting), and that rolls of lau hala and skeins of handmade hau cordage and handmade hula implements, like this ‘ulī‘ulī we made, again fill our home.

Big Island, Hamakua Coast, Peak Oil, Sustainability

Sustainability in Hamakua

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My worlds collided on Saturday, when I led a tour that included a stop to meet Richard and see Hamakua Springs Country Farms.

Along with Hilo historian and anthropologist Judith Kirkendall, I lead van tours around East Hawai‘i. Right now we are doing a series of five tours that focus on agriculture and sustainability – what people are doing right now to be more sustainable, and how we can support them and also be more sustainable ourselves. The tours operate through Lyman Museum.

Our tour this past Saturday was called “The Garden As Provider,” and we focused on Hamakua. First we met at the Lyman Museum and heard a short talk by Sam Robinson about Let’s Grow Hilo. That’s the program she started that has volunteers planting edibles along downtown Hilo streets and in traffic medians.

“Anyone is free to help themselves to the fruit or vegetables once it’s ripe,” she told us, and she invited anyone interested in the project to come help plant and tend. They meet every last Sunday at the East Hawai‘i Cultural Center at 2 p.m.

Then we visited Barbara and Philip Williams, who live just outside Hilo near Pueopaku. Barbara grew up in Kenya, where they lived 50 miles away from the nearest railroad and so had to be self-sufficient. After she and Philip married, they lived on a plantation in East Africa. Now on the Big Island, they still grow and harvest everything they can. They have animals, including goats, and every fruit and vegetable you can imagine. “We retain the habits of being self-sufficient to the present day,” she told us.

From there we headed to Pepe‘ekeo, where Richard met us at Hamakua Springs.

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Richard is such an interesting speaker. He told us the story of how he started in farming (after flunking out of UH and consequently serving in Vietnam, he returned home and helped his father on the family’s chicken farm; then traded chicken manure for banana keiki and started farming bananas). He talked about how they decided to move the farm to Pepe‘ekeo and why (hint: free water; the farm alone has one-third as much water as supports agriculture where 234,000 people live in Leeward O‘ahu). Our tour group was totally engaged.

He told about how he started noticing prices going up (on fertilizer, boxes, all the things they were using on the farm) and how he realized it was due to oil prices and decided to attend Peak Oil conferences to learn what was happening. And how he felt bad and so didn’t tell the others there that he would return to Hawai‘i and wear shorts throughout the winter, and grow his produce throughout the winter; nor how we have geothermal to provide us with energy – which we don’t even fully take advantage of.

He spoke about how he has been positioning themselves for how conditions will be five or 10 years from now, and about the hydroelectric project that is getting going on the farm very shortly, and how since his workers first asked to borrow money for gas to get to work he has started what they call the Family of Farms, working with nearby farmers. And about how they are experimenting with how they can produce protein on the farm by raising tilapia, and giving their workers fish (and produce) every week in lieu of monetary raises they cannot afford to give right now.

There was more, and as editor of this blog for all these years, none of it was new to me, but I, too, listened intently and enjoyed it thoroughly. It was fascinating to hear Richard pull all the pieces he talks about on this blog together into one, interrelated, narrative that tells such a real, on-the-ground story of how things are (and how they are changing). The people on the tour were really interested. We all were. Afterward, I heard people talking about what a great thinker he is, and how much they enjoyed meeting him.

That Richard, he’s all right!

We also went to Hi‘ilani Eco House in Honoka‘a, an amazing house being constructed to be as “green” as it gets. Wow, that’s a fascinating place (they say it should last for 500 years!) and they are very open to groups visiting, if anyone is interested. And we stopped a couple other places as well.

It was a neat day (the upcoming tours are listed here if you’re interested), and Richard’s information really made it so good. We were all wowed. Thanks, Richard!

Community, Government

Women as ‘Economic Growth Strategy’ & East Hawaii’s Business Woman of the Year

Richard and June had a table at the Hawaii Island Chamber of Commerce’s Athena luncheon yesterday, for the presentation of East Hawai‘i’s Business Woman of the Year, and they invited me to join them. It was a good lunch at ‘Imiloa, and a nice event.

Before the Athena award was presented, Connie Lau, President/CEO of HEI, gave a talk about empowering women that I found really interesting.

She discussed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s High-Level Policy Dialogue on Women and the Economy at a recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

(Clinton) articulated important steps in a path toward the Participation Age—where every individual has the opportunity to be a contributing and valued member of the global marketplace—including strategies to remove barriers that have prevented women from being full participants in the economy and unlock their potential as drivers of economic growth.

Clinton said that unlocking the potential of women in the work force, where women are underutilized or are bumping their heads on glass ceiling after glass ceiling, would add 9 percent to our GDP, 13 percent to the Euro Zone’s, and 16 percent to China’s.

At a time when the U.S. is struggling to have a 2.5 to 3 percent GDP, seeing it bump up to 12 percent would mean we would even surpass China (currently at 8.5 percent), Lau pointed out.

It’s all about “women as an economic growth strategy.” Wow, what a sentence. Another interesting concept: “Empowering women is not only the right thing to do, it’s an economic imperative.”

From here:

If we address the barriers to women’s economic participation, we can fundamentally transform our economies.

  • The World Economic Forum Gender Gap Report shows that where the gender gap is closest to being closed in a range of areas—including access to education, health survivability, economic participation, and political participation—countries and economies are more competitive and prosperous.[ix]
  • Reduction in barriers to female labor force participation would increase the size of America’s GDP by 9 percent, the Euro Zone’s by 13 percent, and Japan’s by 16 percent.[x]
  • Narrowing the gender gap could lead to a 14 percent rise in per capita incomes by the year 2020 in several APEC economies, including China, Russia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Korea.[xi]
  • Globally, women will control $15 trillion in spending by the year 2014. And by 2028, women will be responsible for about two-thirds of consumer spending worldwide.[xii]
  • The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 percent. This increase could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 percent and reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 percent, or up to 150 million people.[xiii]
  • Women disproportionately spend more of their earned income on food, healthcare, home improvement, and schooling, which has a multiplier effect in local communities.[xiv]
  • Research shows a correlation between the number of women on boards and higher corporate profits. One analysis found that companies with more women board directors outperform those with the least by 66 percent in terms of return on invested capital, by 53 percent in terms of return on equity, and 42 percent in terms of return on sales.[xv] Another study indicates that one-third of executives reported increased profits as a result of investments in employing women in emerging markets.[xvi]

I found the data and topic really interesting. There’s lots more, and you can go here to read the rest.

And how about East Hawai‘i’s Business Woman of the Year, you ask? Congratulations to Charlene Masuhara, a counselor and Key Club Adviser at Hilo High School.

Food Safety Certification

Hamakua Springs is Food Safety Certified

The farm had its external food safety audit yesterday.

“We don’t hear officially for a week or so, but I know we did pass,” said Tracy Pa, Richard’s daughter, who – among other responsibilities – handles the farm’s food safety certification process.

I asked her how she knows.

“Because the auditor couldn’t believe how clean our place was,” she said, “and how orderly the records are.”

There are two different audits – one for the farm, and another for the packing house. “It’s all about worker protection, safety and cleanliness,” said Tracy.

For the farm audit, she said, you even have to show documentation about what the land was used for before you got there.

“Everything has to be documented,” she said. “We are on land that was previously sugar cane land for 90-100 years.

“There’s a cleaning schedule for when to clean your harvest bins, you have to sanitize your knives every day before you use them, we wear disposable gloves when we’re working, and they’re discarded once they touch some surface other than the food itself. They take water samples and test the water quality.”

“These days pretty much everyone requires it,” she said, “like Costco requires it to sell anything to then, and more and more supermarkets, too.”

But back when the farm first received “Food Safety Certification,” in 2003, it was not the norm. “We were ahead of the game,” she said. “It was very unusual then, and everyone looked at us as if we were crazy because we were spending a few thousand every year to get audited. And it’s a lot of paperwork on top of whatever else we’re doing.”

It was primarily as protection for their workers that they started pursuing Food Safety Certification, which they received every year.

These days, “the employees are proud when we pass,” she said. “When it’s over and you tell them we did a good job, they give a sigh of relief.”