The good men may do separately is small compared with what they may do
collectively. Benjamin Franklin
Welcome to
Kohala Gallery.Please contribute your Hawaii Photos. Here
you will find free photographs of
the Kohala/North Kohala area
and the Kohala coast from Waipio Valley on the windward side of
Kohala mountain, to Puako in the South Kohala District.
Kohala is the birthplace
of King Kamehameha the great. The original
statue stands in small town of
Kapa'au just several miles from Mookini
Heiau and Kamehameha's Birthplace.
Recieved an email from
someone concerned with my abbreviation of Kamehameha
to Kam the other day. Thanks. Following is the
defination of Kamehameha as close as I can find:
This is Hawai'ian, not Japanese. The root of the
word is "meha" and that means quiet (among other
things -- Hawai'ian is a language where context is
critical to meaning). When you see Hawaiian words
joined like "mehameha" it usually is the comparative
or superlative like fast is to faster or fastest, or
some extra special quality like "lightning fast", so
in this case it literally means "extremely quiet"
but when you add the prefix "ka" you are adding a
definite article "the" and therefore personalized,
and it is usually translated as "the lonely one"
because, well, Kamehameha was king and
euphemistically speaking, it's lonely at the top --
he was also known as very thoughtful, and if you
think about it, people who are thoughtful are often
contemplative and therefore quiet.
Hawaiian Reflections of Richard Kauhi and His Piano,
"Muliwai".
I've been in the
North Kohala District since 1973 and have watched it
change from a sleepy little cane town to a
little drowsy, mac nut, cattle, tourist town.
The people are still friendly and it is still
located just at the edge of the world.
I hear the whistle. I can
feel
it. Calling out a start for some men, a change of
shift. This land is a caring mother. The earth was life,
Sugar was Queen. Many years she sang to
men, Men at home. Men in the field. I smile now
and listen.
Now, the fire in the fields has died. The land that was the
mother of the sugar in my tea, has been fenced in.
The stack above the boiler room is gone, but the whistle I
still hear. Many times through the years I would her singing loud and clear from
town.
Now the voice that sang a century, and ruled the lives of
families is gone.
The ash drifted down in silent flakes throughout town
as the fields were burned.
Trucks at all hours, day
and night. Mud on the road . No one complained.
We roamed where we wished then,
there were no fences. Some cut chains when Cane went
away. Cages are difficult for a free man.
The pavement turned to gravel outside Hawi. A town just
outside of time.
The stack above the boiler room is gone.
Few,to no tall trees
were seen. No one moving in and closing the gate
behind them. We knew this land and no one complained of trespass. We ran
on steep, muddy cane roads. We looked around in the evenings and saw a panoramic
ocean view. It seems trees grow
very fast, fences sprang
up overnight.
