All posts tagged: Hawaii

Island maid, or what I learned this week

I guess this is the week for quirky confessions. Yesterday I told you about my ignorance regarding the Prisoner of Zenda, today I’m going to tell you about my geographical ignorance. You see, I have never in my life been more than two hours drive from the ocean. Really. Never, ever. I am an island girl. I was born and grew up on Moloka’i, Hawaii, an island so small that you could drive from end to end in less than an hour. And then, all you could do was turn around and drive back. Then I went to school in the SF Bay Area, where I was never more than a few minutes from the ocean. Once we drove inland towards Sacramento as part of a birdwatching excursion for an Ornithology class, and that was as far as I ever got from the sea. After university, I briefly worked in New York City, and that’s just another island. And, of course, now I live in New Zealand, which is also an island, albeit a much …

Hawaii & The Descendants

Published by The Dreamstress

I don’t usually blog about movies, but last evening I saw The Descendants, and thought I would say a bit about it. So: 1) It’s a very good film. You don’t need me to say it, or to review it. All the critics have done that. Why I thought it was interesting enough to mention is because of 2: 2) It’s the only remotely mainstream film that I have ever seen that actually captures Hawaii in any capacity. Forget Blue Crush and 50 First Dates and all the other crap that pretends to be Hawaii and is really some weird fantasy land that only exists in the minds of movie directors and the gullible public, The Descendants actually looks like Hawaii. Granted, the Hawaii it shows is a rarefied version: I knew old Missionary families: the elite ‘Cousins’ who had been their for generations but never quite assimilated. And I knew kids who went to Punahou School and HPI. And the world they lived in was far, far from my world. But the neighborhoods? And …

A brave, sad trip

Published by The Dreamstress

In 1823 Liholiho, Kamehameha II, the 2nd King of unified Hawaii, chartered a boat and set off for England, along with his wife, Queen Kamamalu, and a party of other Hawaiian nobles. Can you imagine how daring and adventurous this was? Liholiho was born in the 18th century, when Hawaii was just beginning to have contact with the West. His exact birth date is not even recorded, and he barely spoke English. Sea travel was still a long, arduous, and dangerous endeavor. And yet Liholiho was determined to go; to see and understand the world that was beginning to to have such an effect on his kingdom. He and his entourage set off in the L’Aigle, stopping in Brazil to meet Emperor Pedro I, and arriving in London in May 1824. Liholiho and Kamamalu were welcomed by the Foreign Secretary, had balls and receptions thrown in their honour, and toured all of London’s top sites. Everywhere they went they caused a stir; travel was still so difficult that foreign royalty were still a huge novelty, …