All posts tagged: Hawaii

Duck attack!

Published by The Dreamstress

My parents have flocks of ducks on their farm in Hawaii, and every time I go home for a visit I pester them to put a clutch of eggs on to incubate. Their ducks are mainly khaki campbells and mallards, but they keep a few muscovy ducks (muscovy are to ducks what donkeys are to horses – they can breed, but their offspring will be sterile ‘mules’) as mothers.  Muscovy are much better mothers than many other duck breeds – they are devoted nest sitters, and intensely protective of their young.  My parents let their muscovys (and muscovy-cambell hybrids) create nests and lay a clutch of sterile eggs, and then they swap them out for fertile khaki campbell or mallard eggs. On my last trip home they started a clutch of eggs the week before I arrived, to hatch the week I would leave.  I waited and waited, and the darn things didn’t hatch.  On my last weekend Mum and I went away to Kalaupapa  (if you haven’t read that story you really must), and …

Cotton in Hawaii

Published by The Dreamstress

As a child growing up in Hawaii I remember occasionally finding a cotton bush in someone’s yard, and being fascinated by them.  I would pick the cotton and use it to stuff little dolls pillows.  So I was aware of cotton in Hawaii, but it was definitely a novelty. On my latest trip back I noticed cotton bushes everywhere: in yards and semi-wild along the road.  Once again, I was fascinated.  Had someone started a trend for cotton as a landscape plant?  Had one bush seeded successfully across the island?  Had the wet summer provided the perfect conditions to start a cotton boom? I meant to stop and take pictures and investigate a bush so that I could tell you about it the whole trip, but there was always too much to do, and I was too busy.  Then, on the way to the airport to fly home we stopped at a neighbors house, and there was a cotton bush.  So here are my extremely rushed, 11th hour, cotton images. The bush itself isn’t that …

Nahi’ena’ena — a tragedy of two parts

Published by The Dreamstress

Hawaiian history is, unfortunately, full of tragedy. It’s also full of moments of triumph, of hope and will overcoming great adversity, of mirth and hilarity, but behind all this there is often an undercurrent of sadness: the inevitable result of cultures, religions, and germs colliding. Perhaps the ultimate symbol of Hawaiian tragedy, and of the problems that plagued the young Kingdom in its formative years, is NāhiÊ»enaÊ»ena (1815-1836), a princess whose whole life was a tug-of-war between two worlds: the old Hawaiian traditions and religion, and the new customs and rules the New England missionaries were introducing to the island. There are two extent portraits of  NāhiÊ»enaÊ»ena, and they are the perfect illustration of the divide in her life. In the first portrait, done when she was 10 years old, and commemorating the funeral of her older brother Kamehameha II, whose body had been brought back from England,  NāhiÊ»enaÊ»ena is the traditional Hawaiian princess.  She is clad in a spectacular feather pa’u (skirt), and a feather cape, both the provenance of chiefs.  Her hair is …