Hawaiian Kapa Making Class from Dalani

Dalani  has recreated kapa making using only the tools and finished kapa pieces left behind by her ancestors.  She teaches our class at Leeward Community College from 6-9pm each Thurs. eve.

Six of us in the class.  We are all teachers.  Hawaii has 10% LDS, and we find that all but 1 student are LDS.  And the teacher is too.  Greg has her beautiful daughter in law in his lit. class at BYUH.

The first evening Dalani unloaded an 8 ft tree (wauke trees) and a large river stone for each of us.  We sat on mats outdoors as she showed us finished kapas and hardwood pounding tools.  The Hawaiians sit Indian style neatly.  Greg and I rudely stretch a leg or two our straight.  Then she set us to work.  We scraped the dark bark off our trees with the edge of a large round shell.  Then we sliced the inner bark from top to bottom with a shark-tooth knife and peeled the pliable 3/8 inch thick inner white bark away from the center core of the tree.  We threw away the inner core, accordion folded the inner bark, placed it on a river stone, and pounded it to break down fibers.  When class ended, we put our kapa into a large Ziploc bag labeled for each student. (There’s no way I can exchange Greg’s perfect intact piece for mine with shredded half length.) Dalani took the bags home, added water, and set them in the sun to ferment nicely.

Linda

Last Week

Last week was my birthday and my sister, Kelly, visited. We had fun eating the local treats, going to the farmer's market at Sunset Beach, and seeing the ambiguous middle-aged guy from "Lost" at the 7-11 when we were loading up on steamed buns. 

The waves finally settled down enough that we could have a good stay snorkeling at Shark's Cove and Three Tables. We saw lots of very spectacular fish. I saw an octupus hiding under a rock to I told Linda to watch while I moved the rock. I dove down, pulled the rock away, and watched the octopus swim away at full speed, shooting ink. Linda saw the ink.

After Kelly left we were exploring and found ourselves in an old sugar cane town called Waialua, complete with the town bank and the village green with bandstand and banyan tree.

Greg

Spring

There is a perceptible change of seasons. The waves are calming down. Surfing is something we have to wait to do until the conditions are right. Snorkeling is now what we can do more often. Our classes are winding down too. And the weather is getting a little warmer. 

We started taking a kapa class over in the Honolulu area. Kapa is Hawaiian tapa. We are learning the whole process. At the first meeting, we each stripped the inner bark off our own mulberry tree sapling, and then we pounded it out flat. We'll resume the process next time and eventually have our own shark tooth knife and kapa fabric with our printed design. I am the only guy, as usual. There are five other women besides Linda. The teacher is part Hawaiian who grew up on the mainland, returned here, and started rescuing kapa making from oblivion. During the three hours we worked together stripping and pounding the bark, we learned that she and all but two of the other women are LDS, and that the teacher is the mother-in-law of one of my favorite students. Strange.

We have been seeing whales spout and breach. Sometimes they launch themselves out of the water vertically and then crash back down. It's spectacular to watch. Didn't get pictures, though.

My sister, Kelly, is here. We took her to "culture night" where the campus nationality clubs perform their home music and dances for each other. Lots of fun to see our students do that, but we needed earplugs.

Greg

Stormy weather

Sun's out today for the first time in a few days. It's been very windy, enough to land roof shingles in our yard. The surf and wind have made the beach a mess. Our students have been bundled up in hoodies--with hoods up, and complaining about the cold. When they do we have a discussion about relativity. 

But Sunday we had enough of a break (Sundays are always the nicest days for Sabbath-breaking recreation around here) that we could gather some of the little shells we like as we walked. Even Mark Eubank was exclaiming about the weather after priesthood meeting on Sunday.

Yesterday there was an earthquake offshore at the Big Island and the announcements and alerts on tv and the radio forgot to be clear about the fact that there wasn't a tsunami associated with it. So we heard about an earthquake with no mention of a tsunami. But the sirens didn't go off and we didn't run for the hills. There are siren towers all along the coast for tsunamis.

I forgot to mention that when Tessa and Josh were here and we took them into Chinatown we found a "Lost" crew filming right at our parking lot and across the street from our favorite dim sum restaurant. It was so exciting--watching the same extras walk back and forth in front of a little building over and over again all afternoon--that I forgot to take a picture with the camera in my pocket. A crew guy told us where they were going to film some beach scenes the next day, but we decided not to follow them. We don't really watch "Lost." The trailer holding their two portapotties labeled "Men" and "Women" did have piece of cardboard stuck to it on which someone had written "Read the signs!"  I guess "Lost" has some toilet use issues.

Greg

Music

We have been enjoying the some of the local roots music--Hawaiian slack-key guitar, specifically. When the Hawaiians brought Mexican cowboys in to help them learn to handle cattle, they also learned to play their guitars. But when the cowboys left they didn't leave extra strings, so the Hawaiians loosened them to make them last and developed different tunings for their instruments. Slack-key has as many at 10 or 12 different tunings for different songs, and the guitar provides a bass line, a rhythm chording, and a melody line all at once. It is accompanied by beautiful singing. 

A good sample of slack-key music is on three Grammy winning compilation cds produced by George Kahumoku. We went to a concert with him and two others Saturday night. They are starting a tour of the mainland titled the Hawaii National Treasures tour. The concert was at Windward Community College, and at the entrance to the concert hall was a kitty-shiva.

Greg

After surfing

Between surfing events, Tessa and Josh were interested in eating. Our local friend, Joe Wilson, gave them lots of tips on food. So we had plate lunches with garlic shrimp and barbeque, dim sum in Chinatown, chocolate haupia (coconut custard) pie from Ted's Bakery, and the favorite--musubi from 7-11. Musubi is sushi rice with a slice of fried Spam, held together with a sushi seaweed wrap. They also enjoyed breakfast and lunch at the Hukilau Cafe. And lots of Diet Coke. 

Fate arranged that Josh would meet Nate Hong, husband of my graduate student, Maggie. They live in Honolulu where Nate is working at a law firm. Josh left the island with a successful interview with them under his belt and a real possibility of a job here next fall. 

Yesterday we took them to the airport, stopping on the way at our farmer's market for some jewelry shopping. After they made their plane--barely due to Fate attempting to keep them here by causing Tessa to leave her purse at our house--we got to shop at both WalMart and Costco in Honolulu Saturday traffic, and then ended with day with a concert down the road of slack key guitar and singing by three of the very best. We bought cds.

Greg

Tessa and Josh come to Hawaii

They were here all week--and it was a fun week for us. We even cancelled our Wednesday classes, irresponsibly taking a day off to be with them. Tessa's first priority was to learn to surf, so we arranged for our friend, Joe Wilson, who teaches surfing at BYUH, to take us on Tuesday. We were all severely humbled.

Surfing is hard. Paddling is hard, and getting up is hard. I was good at getting to my knees but from then on I wasn't able to stay balanced. Linda had the same problem. Linda outlasted me, though, with the paddling part. She's in better upper body shape than I am. Tessa and Josh--the athletes--also struggled, but they did catch on a little faster than the old folks. We went again on Thursday to another beach. 

When you do catch a wave it's a wonderful feeling. Ours were little, rolling, beginner waves on big, broad, bouyant boards. But when we caught one we were carried along with the wave with a whispering sound. On Wednesday we went out to Pipeline and sat on the beach watching the big waves and the experts. 

Tessa and Josh are gone now and we still have those big boards in the garage. Linda and I will keep trying to learn until Joe needs them for his classes.

The pictures are, I hope, self-explanatory. Click on them to enlarge.

Greg