August 2009
10 posts
“Shine radiantly like the sun and softly like the moon.”
– Bharti Kirchner
We Are Family
While living large, as a pre-teen wahine, in San Clemente, California, I often complained to my mother that the stork had dropped me off on the wrong coast, in the wrong time period, to the wrong family. I was certain that I belonged to a Jewish family in 1950’s Manhattan. After grooving with the Crujido clan for over three decades, I’m thankful that directionally challenged, big-billed bird...
Pau Hana
For laborers who immigrated to the islands in the early part of the last century, “Pau Hana”— which translates literally as “stop work”— signaled the end of a day of back breaking toil in the sugar cane fields of Hawaii. Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and Portuguese men dreaming of a new life made Hawaii their adopted home and, in the process, created a pupu platter culture that has given...
“Hawaii isn’t just a place in the middle of the Pacific, it’s a place inside you—...”
– Tad James
Tiki: An Homage To My Polynesian Pop Loving...
In the late 1960s, as a micro-mini wahine, growing up across the bay from the city to end all cities— San Francisco— my parents were indoctrinating me into the cult of Tiki. The sound of exotica was lilting from hi-fi’s everywhere, Mai Tais were the drink of the moment, and Trader Vic’s could be found from coast to coast. Read: Tiki Modern-Sven A. Kirsten A must read for those of you obsessed with...