Today concludes the first week of my time on the Big Island of Hawaii.
The big island, Hawai'i was the first island encountered by cook and also the subsequent seat of power when the unified Hawaiian kingdom was formed by an inspired ali'i or chief who had to british advisors from a ship encounter and who armed Khamehamea with british style war ships which allowed him to conquer the other islands.
I left Kauai last Saturday. I spent Thanksgiving on the beach and in the Dojo while everyone either left or went to a dinner. I was so thankful to get some time to myself. Skyped with the family and extended family and cleaned up, scraping myself into movealbe shape.
Megan the midwest princess dropped me at the airport with my packs, computer, ukulele and bike and I checked in. I checked through, wandered around the airport and just before boarding was paged on the loudspeaker. I was then escorted by the airport police (who are not real police but rather rent-a-cops) to a room and given a lecture by the TSA on why camp stoves can not fly, even if you have cleaned them, blah blah blah. Following my scolding by big brother I was rebooked and slept on the plane the whole way, arriving at 4 in the arvo.
Jim picked me up in his car and we drove the 10 miles or so from Hilo to Kurtistown, an outter suburb that used to be its own cane district back when. I got settled that night in a bamboo cabin built from on site materials plus nails and screws. Sunday I woke up to honeycreapers and was informed that the other wwoofers were driving round to the south west side of the island and did I want to go. I headed of with a girl from Nova Scotia, a women from Seattle and an older lady from Ohio as well as a local Japanese man and an old hippy women and the dogs.
We drove to the south point of the island where an old lava flow enteres the sea and then up to a farm on the side of a flow. There are two massive volcano mountains here, Mauna loa and Mauna kea. They get snow on each on and Mauna kea is the largest land mass in height including undersea, in the world.
All week I have been working on the farm. The whole place is off grid. Jim built a composting toilet on site and 3 cabins. The kitchen and common area and the cabins all have decentralised solar photovoltaic systems which can power lights and a computer. Water is all catchment. There are fish ponds and chickens and taro patches. I have been setting pig traps to try to stop the loss of sweet potatos to the buggers but no luck yet. I got some chainsaw training too. I can clean, fix and sharpen a saw and I felled abunch of weed trees on the land on Saturday. We wanna try to us the wood to make pig fences to help the sweet potatos. I sowed some fields of bean and corn too as well as harvesting heaps of fruit. The farm surplus is put into food boxes and distributed to about 150 local poor families and offers an organic alternative to hte synthetic food like substances provided by the food bank.
I work 4 hours in the morning to midday and then have time to myself, it seems pretty rad. A nice place to relax and vibe down before the Ethnobotany course.
Jim Albertini is an old war resister/vietnam protester. Jim's grandad was killed by the coal mining company in pensylvania where jims family lived when his mother was one. He was raised in a small mountain comunity durring the pograms of the 50s. By the late 60s he was activly protesting the US military industrial complex by burning draft records etc. He then came to Hawaii as it was the staging ground/jump of point for US ships and planes into indochina. Here he exposed nuclear weapons storage on the islands and led comunity resistance against nuclear subs and other such in the pacific. He has activly worked for a nuclear free and independant pacific here ever since. I've learned heaps about the US enpire in Hawaii, 20% of the island that Honolulu is on belongs to the military and I think 1/5 people in the state work for the military in some capacity. Here on the big island there is depleated uranium waste on the live firing range between the two big volcanos.
I've been cruising around after work on my bike. Playing music and reading a bunch which is nice. On friday arvo we went and did a vigil against the military on the island. Jim does a vigil every friday afternoon and has for the past 8 years calling for more sensible spending of money than war.It was interesting going along and helping out. I think its gonna take more than sign waving on a street corner to change the empire but I admired Jim's perserverance. He has served fedral time a number of times for protest related activites and civil liberties cases so I preseme he needs to picket. Is in his blood.
Today was fucking incredible. After breakfast the women from Ohio dropped me at the volcano national park. It was so beautiful. From the active steeming crater to the sulphur vents to the desert to the moon scapes of past eruptions. I could feel and see the earth living. The place where land is born. The hawaiians had a female Gaian figure named Pele who was the firery volcano godess and giver of life and energy. Interesting the island has been noted to look like a female figure and the volcano produces output glass and beads shaped like hair and tears. I rode around the park on my bike, walked through old lava tubes and then saw the sun set on the culdera, the boiling steaming magman crater. I didn't see big lava flows because you need to go out of the park to where it is flowing into the sea from a fissure in the earth that has drained the magma lake that existed for a hundred years. Thats my missions on Tuesday I think.
Hope all are well, stay good.
Love to everyone.
H
The big island, Hawai'i was the first island encountered by cook and also the subsequent seat of power when the unified Hawaiian kingdom was formed by an inspired ali'i or chief who had to british advisors from a ship encounter and who armed Khamehamea with british style war ships which allowed him to conquer the other islands.
I left Kauai last Saturday. I spent Thanksgiving on the beach and in the Dojo while everyone either left or went to a dinner. I was so thankful to get some time to myself. Skyped with the family and extended family and cleaned up, scraping myself into movealbe shape.
Megan the midwest princess dropped me at the airport with my packs, computer, ukulele and bike and I checked in. I checked through, wandered around the airport and just before boarding was paged on the loudspeaker. I was then escorted by the airport police (who are not real police but rather rent-a-cops) to a room and given a lecture by the TSA on why camp stoves can not fly, even if you have cleaned them, blah blah blah. Following my scolding by big brother I was rebooked and slept on the plane the whole way, arriving at 4 in the arvo.
Jim picked me up in his car and we drove the 10 miles or so from Hilo to Kurtistown, an outter suburb that used to be its own cane district back when. I got settled that night in a bamboo cabin built from on site materials plus nails and screws. Sunday I woke up to honeycreapers and was informed that the other wwoofers were driving round to the south west side of the island and did I want to go. I headed of with a girl from Nova Scotia, a women from Seattle and an older lady from Ohio as well as a local Japanese man and an old hippy women and the dogs.
We drove to the south point of the island where an old lava flow enteres the sea and then up to a farm on the side of a flow. There are two massive volcano mountains here, Mauna loa and Mauna kea. They get snow on each on and Mauna kea is the largest land mass in height including undersea, in the world.
All week I have been working on the farm. The whole place is off grid. Jim built a composting toilet on site and 3 cabins. The kitchen and common area and the cabins all have decentralised solar photovoltaic systems which can power lights and a computer. Water is all catchment. There are fish ponds and chickens and taro patches. I have been setting pig traps to try to stop the loss of sweet potatos to the buggers but no luck yet. I got some chainsaw training too. I can clean, fix and sharpen a saw and I felled abunch of weed trees on the land on Saturday. We wanna try to us the wood to make pig fences to help the sweet potatos. I sowed some fields of bean and corn too as well as harvesting heaps of fruit. The farm surplus is put into food boxes and distributed to about 150 local poor families and offers an organic alternative to hte synthetic food like substances provided by the food bank.
I work 4 hours in the morning to midday and then have time to myself, it seems pretty rad. A nice place to relax and vibe down before the Ethnobotany course.
Jim Albertini is an old war resister/vietnam protester. Jim's grandad was killed by the coal mining company in pensylvania where jims family lived when his mother was one. He was raised in a small mountain comunity durring the pograms of the 50s. By the late 60s he was activly protesting the US military industrial complex by burning draft records etc. He then came to Hawaii as it was the staging ground/jump of point for US ships and planes into indochina. Here he exposed nuclear weapons storage on the islands and led comunity resistance against nuclear subs and other such in the pacific. He has activly worked for a nuclear free and independant pacific here ever since. I've learned heaps about the US enpire in Hawaii, 20% of the island that Honolulu is on belongs to the military and I think 1/5 people in the state work for the military in some capacity. Here on the big island there is depleated uranium waste on the live firing range between the two big volcanos.
I've been cruising around after work on my bike. Playing music and reading a bunch which is nice. On friday arvo we went and did a vigil against the military on the island. Jim does a vigil every friday afternoon and has for the past 8 years calling for more sensible spending of money than war.It was interesting going along and helping out. I think its gonna take more than sign waving on a street corner to change the empire but I admired Jim's perserverance. He has served fedral time a number of times for protest related activites and civil liberties cases so I preseme he needs to picket. Is in his blood.
Today was fucking incredible. After breakfast the women from Ohio dropped me at the volcano national park. It was so beautiful. From the active steeming crater to the sulphur vents to the desert to the moon scapes of past eruptions. I could feel and see the earth living. The place where land is born. The hawaiians had a female Gaian figure named Pele who was the firery volcano godess and giver of life and energy. Interesting the island has been noted to look like a female figure and the volcano produces output glass and beads shaped like hair and tears. I rode around the park on my bike, walked through old lava tubes and then saw the sun set on the culdera, the boiling steaming magman crater. I didn't see big lava flows because you need to go out of the park to where it is flowing into the sea from a fissure in the earth that has drained the magma lake that existed for a hundred years. Thats my missions on Tuesday I think.
Hope all are well, stay good.
Love to everyone.
H
posted by Angel Ironhead at 5:41 pm
1 Comments:
Nice to read this blog post..
Photovoltaic training
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