Last year I was invited to give a talk on the shapes of community engagement for a conference sponsored by the BC Treaty Commission called Forging Linkages and Finding Solutions. This is the slide deck I used and here is a transcript of my talk.
Back from Maui and here are the things that you need to know about that amazing island.
This was our fourth trip there and we’re very much in the flow of Maui as an almost second home. If there was a theme to this trip it was LOCAL. We stayed close to our living quarters for the most part, ate local food, consumed local media and tapped in to local issues.
When we are in Maui we rent a little condo at a place called Hale Kamaole, which is an older condo complex in Kihei on the sunny south side of the island. It lies right across the street from Kamaole Beach III which is a great beach for kids and about a half mile from our favourite beach, Keawakupu, a huge stretch of sand with a variety of surf breaks, snorkeling reefs and swimming waters. If the surf is up, the boogie boarding and short boarding is good here. If not, there is some decent snorkeling around the Mana Kai hotel front. Att all times of the day, there is a good view of the flying humpback whales that were incredibly active this year out in the whale refuge. The other local beach we camped out at was Ulua which is renowned for it’s snorkeling and diving, and although the water wasn’t crystal clear, swimming with sea turtles was pretty fricking amazing. Other beaches we got to on this trip included Makena Landing beach in Makena, Ka’anapali in West Maui and D.T. Baldwin Park in Pa’ia which is the boogie coarding capital of Maui, but not for the novice sponger.
On the local food front, we bought most of our fresh veggies from the farmers market in north Kihei, which is now open every week day and sells mostly locla food. Our groceries were purchased at Hawaiian Moons in Kihei and the odd piece of fresh fish (a nice piece of Mahi Mahi for the grill) came from Star Market. One of the highlights of the trip was a visit upcountry to O’o Farm, which provides food to two local restaurants in Lahaina. We got a tour of the farm and a lunch prepared on the spot. Nice crew of people working there and great to be eating off the land like that.
Local media, easy. Maui Time for news and commentary, KPOA for na mele Hawai’i, and I came back with another crapload of slack key, hula, and mele chanting CDs, almost all of them from local artists.
In terms of local issues, perhaps the biggest one was the inauguration of a Hawaiian in the White House. That played well across the whole state, and it was fun talking with folks about what Obama means to Hawaii. We got a look at some of the development being done at Makena, which is a hugely sensitive issue right now and I chatted a little with my friend Luana Busby-Neff who lives on the Big Island, but who is deeply involved in the restoration of Kaho’olawe, the island off Maui that was used for 60 years by the US military for target practice.
Sustainability is a big issue on the Hawaiian islands and lots of people are asking the question what would happen if the boast stopped coming? Lana’i has built a huge solar collector and is set to become power self-sufficient in 2013 and the windmills keep turning on the West Maui Mountain.
Highlight of the trip for me though was actually not a local thing at all. It was seeing the zodiacal light again, for the second time in my life, and this time I photographed it. Hawaii is one of the best inhabited places in the world to see this wedge of glow extending from where the sun set up into the sky, and it never ceases to amaze me. This is the dust in the plane of our solar system glowing in the sun’s light and in Hawaii, it stands straight up and down. On this trip, Venus was floating in the top of the light. It gives me this spine tingling feeling to see this, to recognize that we are simply small beings on a small planet that floats like an island in a sea of space. And that pattern is enhanced by being fractal in the Islands, where your whole world is limited to a few pieces of lava sticking up out of an ocean that goeas on forever in all directions.
Mahalo a nui to the Kanaka Maoli keepers of the land who hold us while we are there, even if people don’t see them much. We are so privilaged to be guests on their islands.
Stuff people threw my way:
- Brad Ovenell Carter has been using Webspiration. It works for me in Chrome but not Firefox…
- Mark Brady on when times will get good again.
- Dervala Hanley, whose taste I trust absolutely, posts her favourite books and music from last year.
- My own Bowen Island Journal has a new home
See you all in a couple of weeks.
I’m closing up shop, unplugging and dropping out for two weeks and going on holiday, and I don’t have time to work through this problem, but can anyone speculate about why my wesite shows up as a smiley face in Explorer but works fine in Firefox and Chrome?
See you on after the 24th
Today in our planning for the 2009 Food and Society gathering, one of our young core team members made a bold declaration. She agreed to step up to be a target for any blame that might be generated during our work. When I later asked her out of which practice her commitment came, she said it was from the Tibetan Buddhist Lojong mind training, in which one of the slogans is “Drive all blames into one.”
Trungpa Rinpoche comments on that slogan:
The text says “drive all blames into one”. the reason you have to do that is because you have been cherishing yourself so much… Although sometimes you might say that you don’t like yourself, even then in your heart of hearts you know that you like yourself so much that you’re willing to throw everybody else down the drain, down the gutter. You are really willing to do that. You are really willing to let somebody else sacrifice his life, give himself away for you. And who are you, anyway?
It was remarkable to hear my young friend utter that line with such clarity and conviction in a room of power and experience which was tasked with designing this incredibly important gathering. Remarkable, but not at all out of character for the six young (20 somethings) people that are working with us on the core team. We are lucky to have them.