Traveler, one of our two certified cocker spaniels, expressed great excitement in hearing that her distant cousin Felicity's Diamond Jim had won the Best in Show at the 2007 Westminster Dog Show. Jim is the Springer Spaniel in the photo below.
If Diamond Jim is out there, the tricolored Traveler would like to show him a good time in Hawaii.

A local entertained Friday with the sunset streaming in at the best little steak house on the Big Island. It's found on the main drag in Waimea. Gecko and his wife were there, glad to settle for mushroom cheeseburgers.

When the British ship “Ravenscrag” arrived at Honolulu on the afternoon of August 23, 1879, it was carrying 421 Portuguese immigrants from the island of Madeira to work in the sugar cane fields. It had been a long and grueling journey of 123 days and some 15,000 miles. Overjoyed at their arrival, the 24 year old Joao Fernandes grabbed his friend's braguinha, leaped off the ship, playing his native land folk songs on the dock. The Hawaiians were said to be impressed at the speed of this musicians' fingers as they scurried about the fingerboard. As a consequence, they called the instrument "ukulele", which translates into English as "jumping flea". You see, that was the apt vision given by Joao's flying fingers.

Augusto Dias, Manuel Nunes, joined João Fernandes in being credited as the first ukulele makers. But, back then, I bet they kept their day jobs.

I did not intrude so as to ask for the names of these sweet young ladies.

Hula is a dance form accompanied by chant or song. It was developed on these Hawaiian Islands by the Polynesians who originally settled here. The chant or song is called a mele. The hula is a dramatic performance commenting on the mele.

The ancient hula (kahiko), as performed before Western encounters with Hawai'i, is accompanied by chant and traditional instruments. Hula is unique to the Hawaiian Islands.

Hula kahiko embodies an enormous variety of styles and moods, from the solemn and sacred to the frivolous. Many hula were created to praise the chiefs and performed in their honor, or simply for their entertainment.

Serious hula was considered a religious performance, performed on platform temples; even a minor error was considered to invalidate the performance and foretold of bad luck bringing dire consequences. Dancers while novice and practicing were ritually secluded and put under the protection of the goddess Laka. Religious ceremonies marked the successful learning of the hula and the emergence from seclusion.

Hula kahiko, with historical chant, is typified by traditional costuming, by an austere look, and by a belief in serious word meanings. Where Hawaiian history was oral history, codified in genealogies and chants, each was memorized strictly as passed down. Chants told the stories of creation, mythology, royalty, and other significant events and people. Much has been lost in these stories.

Female dancers wore the everyday wrapped skirt and ceremonial lei which left the breasts uncovered. Male dancers wore the everyday malo, or loincloth. Costuming worn for sacred hula were considered imbued with the sacredness of the dance and were not worn after the performance. They were typically left on the small altar to Laka as offerings. Among the more serious hula were a form of fealty, and frequently meant to flatter the chief. There were hula celebrating his lineage, his name, and even his genitals.

A few of you have requested a picture of something "warm". Here is the best that I can do today.

I work in a building that has gates at every outside access. No doors, No glass, No screens. No emergency storm doors held in reserve. The breezes flow through my building unrestricted every day, all year. And this is Hilo, one of the wettest cities in the United States. The rain usually falls as a mist, rather like the fine spray that descends upon the vegatables in your local grocery store. Always it is a warm spray.

I actually spied a fellow last week walking in a downpour with an unbrella folded up under his arm. He was drenched and smiling. He was strolling with an easy gate.

This is now my home. My head still spins about it.



Weather for Hilo, HI
5:59 PM Monday January 29, 2007
Currently 81°F
Clear
Wind: SE at 16 mph
Humidity: 48% Mon

82° | 64° Tue

83° | 65° Wed

84° | 68° Thu

82° | 66° Fri

(Picture taken by Gecko in a prominent cemetery on the outskirts of Hilo) This is not a wide angle lense view. The breadth of this tree is not exaggerated! And for the curious, yes - that is the Pacific behind the tree.

The magnificent Monkeypod, perhaps the most admired and widely cultivated trees throughout the tropics, forms a broad umbrella shaped canopy of feathery leaves. The massive trunk and branch structure of a mature Monkeypod reaches horizontally with an awe-inspiring grace and symmetry with astonishing structural integrity. It came as no surprise that it's wood can be as dense as the finest mahogany.

The Monkeypod has the capacity to provide its own nitrogenous fertilizer symbiotically through bacteria that live in nodules on their roots. The friendly bacteria chemically convert nitrogen gas from the air into soluble compounds that the plant can absorb and utilise. The Monkeypod effectively fertilizes itself.

Quite unlike the Banyan, the Monkeypod allows healthy grass to grow right up to its trunk. Abundantly produced nitrogen and the fact that the leaflets of the tree fold together at night and during rainy weather, allows the rain to fall through!

The Monkeypod is grown commercially producing seedpods with an edible pulp. When ripe, the pulp is sweet and sugary, with a flavour rather like licorice.

Needless to say, the wood of the Monkeypod is highly valued for furniture and boat building.

its seeds, which arrive in long pods, have been used in a limited way as emergency food. They are roasted, soaked to remove the seedcoat, then boiled or fried, or ground to a flour or starch. In Thailand, roasted seeds are ground and used as a substitute for coffee.

Its fruit can be used in fruit preserving and is recommended as a stabilizer in ice cream, mayonnaise and cheese and as an ingredient or agent in a number of pharmaceutical products.

In Malaysia, the wood ashes are employed in tanning and in de-hairing goatskins. Or, Gecko can recommend its use in conteracting an overdose of elephant dung and banyan root to the scalp.

Medicinal uses of the Monkeypod are uncountable. But lets briefly begin with the most interesting:

1. The pulp has been official in the British and American and most other pharmacopoeias and some 200,000 lbs (90,000 kg) of the shelled fruits have been annually imported into the United States for the drug trade.

2. Alone, or in combination with lime juice, honey, milk, dates, spices or camphor, the pod pulp is considered effective as a digestive, even for elephants.

3. In native practice, the pulp is applied on inflammations, is used in a gargle for sore throat and, mixed with salt, as a liniment for rheumatism. It is, further, administered to alleviate sunstroke and (seriously) alcoholic intoxication.

4. In Colombia, an ointment made of Monkeypod pulp, butter, and other ingredients is used to rid domestic animals of vermin.

5. An infusion of the roots is believed to have curative value an ingredient in prescriptions for leprosy.

There is a superstition that it is harmful to sleep or to tie a horse beneath the monkeypod, probably (seriously) because of the corrosive effect that fallen leaves have on fabrics in damp weather.

To certain Burmese, the tree represents the dwelling-place of the rain god and some hold the belief that the tree raises the temperature in its immediate vicinity.

In Nyasaland, Monkeypod bark soaked with corn is given to domestic fowl in the belief that, if they stray or are stolen, they will cause them to return home.

Mrs Gecko has been drinking and bathing regularly in Monkeypod bark juice and has never strayed from my side in 35 years of Marriage. She also has never had need to shave her legs either.