Country and city have always been different world, as long as cities have existed. The language each uses to describe the other captures this… Hillbilly, city-slicker, redneck, yuppie, hick, the tradition of mutual derision is as old as history.
Windmills and silos in Wasco County, along state route 206This weekend I was borrowing a pickup truck to run yard waste to the county facility. When I started it up a rather annoying radio station began to play. Looking for an alternative I clicked through the presets on the stereo… Country? I can do country.
With a bed full of oleander branches piled higher than the cab and the tarp flapping I was off, with some very country, country music playing. There would be a few loads this Saturday before the county closed the scales at four.
One thing about country music, it is very reliable. Heavy on the guitar, simple melodic lines perfect for driving. The themes are often heavily based on nostalgia and a simple world of country values. The station is one I seldom listen to, KKOA out of Hilo, carrying the programming from ABC Radio’s “Today’s Best Country” satellite feed.
Mid-morning the awaited news found me… The Hawaii State Supreme Court has upheld the conservation district use permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea.
The Thirty Meter Telescope site as seen from the top of Keck 2 domeWe had been waiting for this decision for some time. Based on the usual length of time the court takes to decide a case the decision should have appeared well over a month ago.
To no one’s surprise, the court took a little longer with this particular case. A case fraught with many questions that are hotly debated in this state.
The news quickly fueled a firestorm of mainstream media articles across the country and social media postings. The pro-telescope communities I participate in were celebrating. Opponents were decrying the decision with responses that range from disbelief to inflammatory.
Mid-afternoon found me atop the Keck 2 dome to check on some instrumentation. From there I had a perfect vantage point to look down upon the TMT site on the north plateau. I stopped to consider what those few acres of rock below had cost so far in terms of time and passion.
Another interesting incident in culture popped up this week, one that illuminates where our society currently stands on the relationships between cultures. Living and working in Hawaiʻi, within Hawaiian culture made this event resonate on a personal level.
A Chicago based eatery has trademarked the name ‘Aloha Poke’. No issue there, simply a legal filing. What they failed to understand is that the word Aloha contains central concept in Hawaiian culture. Thus, when the lawyers for Aloha Poke sent out cease-and-desist letters to similarly named businesses around the country, including one in Hawaii, they were met with a firestorm of criticism.
An outrigger canoe awaits another voyageAttempting claim ownership of such a word, even in a limited business context, is simply total fail. Legal? Yes. A good idea? Nope.
I suspect the owners of Aloha Poke are actually figuring that out. On the other hand the management at Aloha Poke has not withdrawn their legal assertions and have made a non-apology.
The missteps of Aloha Poke aside, what is more interesting is how some in the Hawaiian community have responded to the case. There have been statements from a number of community leaders. One of the most telling is from the head of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state agency charged with administering state programs for the Hawaiian community.
We are now more than two months into this new eruption from Kilauea. Two months ago the fissures opened in the Leilani Estates subdivision and homes began to burn.
The lava fountain at fissure 8 in Leilani Estates throwing lava hundreds of feet in the air on June 4th, 2018For two months this slow motion catastrophe has continued. While a major earthquake may be over in minutes, or a hurricane over in a few days, this eruption just goes on. For the folks in lower Puna the lava continues to destroy homes and disrupt lives.
For those of us outside the eruption zone things are not quite as immediate. We read the daily news, peruse images of helicopter overflights each morning, and wonder when it will be over.
The multiple county civil defense status reports and various emergency alerts that pop up on our phones each day provide current information… A bit of the Mamalahoa Highway has collapsed in Volcano Village with a one lane restriction, the road to Kalapana has re-opened, there is no tsunami threat from that last 5.4 magnitude earthquake.
A plot of the July 7, 2018 summit collapse earthquake as recorded by an accelerometer in the Keck Observatory foundationEvery day is punctuated by a magnitude five point something earthquake. These summit collapse events have become very regular. You can guess when they will occur as the frequency of small quakes increase around the caldera.
For the most part these events pass unnoticed by much of the island. The volcano area gets shaken up pretty well, but these fifth magnitude quakes are often not felt very far beyond that.
On the summit of Mauna Kea these daily quakes often do disturb the telescopes at night, bumping the tracking and ruining exposures, but otherwise too weak to cause any damage to the facilities.
Hualālai peeks over a thick layer of volcanic smog, or vogThe most significant island wide impact has been the vog, wreathing the island in a sulfurous haze. Sulfur dioxide pours from the active vents, mixes with water in the air and forms a thick brown grey haze.
When the vog is bad you not only see it, you smell the sulfur, it irritates eyes and nasal passages. Fire and brimstone reaches out to touch us all.
While the vog makes for spectacular sunsets, the vog can also be thick enough to curtail outside activity. A day like today, with brisk trade-winds to clear it away, is a welcome relief.
The lava fountain at fissure 8 rising about 250 feet as this Kiluaea eruption continues unabated.Opportunities to legally witness this eruption are few, authorities have been enforcing the evacuation area increasingly strictly. Legal options are the fly or float to the eruption. Deb and I chose to fly a month ago, a helicopter flight I am sure we will remember for a lifetime.
I have not attempted to go to photograph the lava river, despite a very strong desire to do so. The county and state have repeatedly talked about opening a lava viewing area. while there is a great deal of pressure from the community, so far nothing has materialized.
We are so ready for this eruption to be over.
Given the collapse of the summit caldera and the enormous volume of lava emitted so far, it may be possible that when this is over there will be no further eruption for a while. It may take a while for the volcano to recharge, perhaps a year or two. Will we return to the pattern of intermittent eruptions that was seen through much of the 20th century?
The last month has been a bit… exciting… here on the island. With lava flows and explosive eruptions spawned by our neighborhood volcano.
Yet another eruption status message arrives on my phone.Along with the ongoing eruption in the lower east rift zone, there are the events at the summit caldera of Kilauea. The withdrawal of magma from the summit storage chamber has resulted in the ongoing collapse of the Haelmaʻumaʻu crater area. Magnitude five point something earthquakes are now a daily occurrence as this collapse continues.
The result? Over the last month we have been bombarded by far too many messages on eruption conditions, vog conditions, earthquakes, and non-tsunami alerts. It is wearing a little thin. And frankly I am ignoring much of it, when I probably should not.
One of the most poignant scenes we witnessed was the many farms destroyed by the lava
The front of the fissure 8 flow approaches Kapoho BayWe took our helicopter ride Sunday morning, June 3rd. At this point the large flow from fissure 8 had not yet reached the neighborhoods at Kapoho. What the flow was burning through were the many papaya orchards and flower growers found above the bay.
Houses are bad enough, seeing the farms in front of the lava flow was worse. I found myself looking through the telephoto lens at the neat greenhouses, the orchards green in the morning sunlight. The wide flow front was in the process of destroying so many farms, remorselessly moving through the neat rows of papaya trees.
The greenhouses of Orchid Plantation Inc. disappearing under the lava.I am aware of how much a farmer puts into the land… Sweat, blood, heart and soul. I look at the photos and I see immaculate operations… Well maintained buildings, no weeds around the structures, the pitiless lava flow advancing. Each scene that appeared in the camera viewfinder was gut-wrenching.
I understand that some of our family can be a bit fuzzy on island geography. We have had a few exchanges with family members over the last couple days where we have had to remind them that we live on the other side of the island from the volcano. Yes, we are just fine and in no danger from the new eruption.
Confusing the Hawaiian islands on Fox NewsApparently some who should know better have similar issues with geography.
Like Fox News.
At least our family members understand the difference between Hawaiʻi Island and Oahu. But a national news network? I guess that to many Oahu is Hawaiʻi, rather in the same way that Los Angeles is California. Shall we just ignore 230 miles of Pacific Ocean and a few other islands in the way.
Yes, Deb felt the earthquakes in Waikoloa, but they were not bad. There was not even a broken glass at the house despite a magnitude 6.9 earthquake at the the other end of the island. We are 65 miles and two very large mountains away from the volcano.
I was at work and experienced the earthquakes at the summit. Mag 6.9 is now my personal record for strongest earthquake felt, I really do not need to feel anything larger.
While we are safely away from the new lava flows, there are many who are not. It is hard to describe my emotions when seeing video of a house burning as the lava pushes through. Nicely kept gardens surrounding the house betray the effort and pride of the home owner. You can feel dimly the shattering loss of a home and everything that goes with it.
During discussions concerning a previous posting another aspect of the video of Ms. Pisciotta became the subject of the conversation. For one familiar with the summit and the position of the features, the claims seem unlikely, something worth a closer look.
Kealoha Pisciotta testifying on religious practice on the summit of Mauna Kea during a BLNR public meeting, video from Nā Leo TVIf you listen to the clip Ms. Pisciotta makes a very emphatic claim… That the construction of TMT will block the view of the Sun as it makes its annual pattern of sunsets along the horizon.
While I am singling out Ms. Pisciotta a bit here, she is a key figure in the opposition. She is a leader of Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, the most active opposition group and a primary participant in every significant legal case on the issue for the last several decades.
How can we examine this claim? From winter solstice, to equinox, to summer solstice, the position of sunrise and sunset changes significantly. This cycle has been tracked by shamans and priests for millennia, using the pattern to set the time of planting or religious ceremonies.
In learning about Mauna Kea and the multifaceted issues that surround our mauna. Reading and listening to modern practitioners describe their relationship with the mauna is interesting, you can learn much about the old beliefs and traditional relationships with the landscape and ecosystems of the islands.
In listening to some practitioners there are some claims that keep catching my attention. Claims that just seem out of place when considering traditional practices. More than once I have just stopped mid-thought and questioned what I just heard. A mental “What?!?”, did I hear that correctly? Some of these are subtle, perhaps missed by someone unfamiliar with the complex cycles of the our world and the sky above. Other claims are obvious, claims of practices or knowledge inconsistent with the old records.
Kealoha Pisciotta testifying on religious practice on the summit of Mauna Kea during a BLNR public meeting, video from Nā Leo TV
Most recently a claim that got my attention quickly was a celebration of a 26,000 year cycle. The claim was made during testimony at a BLNR board meeting when accepting the TMT conservation district use permit.
There is indeed a 26,000 year cycle in the patterns of the sky, well known to anyone seriously involved in astronomy. It is a result of a wobble in our Earth’s rotation called precession. The effect is extraordinarily subtle, something that could not be noted in a lifetime, or even a few lifetimes of careful sky-watching.
It is notable that the 26,000 year “cycle of the universe” is commonly celebrated in many modern new-age religions. It is one of the deep secrets that can be revealed and taught as if they have some great significance. As such the concept seems to have been borrowed widely by practitioners from many different traditions, including it seems by some modern Hawaiian practitioners.
This one is weird. This one is also an example of the strange maneuvers used by our state legislators to pass laws, particularly laws that face substantial opposition. Of these maneuvers, gut and replace is probably the most despicable, the wholesale replacing of a bill’s contents with different text of totally different intent.
The MKSS snowplow crews remove snow from the roads atop Mauna KeaThe latest example? SB757 is today’s subject. This bill once addressed the university’s ability to issue bonds. As of the latest version the bill calls for an audit of the agencies charged with the management of Mauna Kea… Yes, the bill is a now a nearly identical copy of SB2325, the same audit bill I addressed last week here on Darker View.
Why another bill with the same language? The first bill, SB2325 is still active and making it’s way through the process.
