History, Maku‘u Stories

Kamahele Family of Makuu, Puna, Hawaii

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I’ve been talking with my extended Kamahele family over on my Facebook page. It’s got me thinking about our Kamahele family of Makuu and how it was back then.

I’m going to rerun five posts I wrote back in 2009 about life in Maku‘u and my family there. Every Monday I’ll post another one, and here is the first.

My Kamahele Family in Maku‘u

Today I was thinking about my Kamahele family and especially my grandmother Leihulu’s brother, Ulrich Kamahele.

Everybody knew him as Uncle Sonny, as if there was only one “Uncle Sonny” in all of Hawai‘i. He was a larger-than-life character. In a crowd, he dominated by the sheer force of his personality. Since I have been thinking about him, I thought I would write a several-part story about Maku‘u.

My extended Kamahele family came from Maku‘u. When we were small kids, Pop took  us in his ‘51 Chevy to visit.

He turned left just past the heart of Pahoa town, where the barbershop is today. We drove down that road until he hit the railroad tracks, and then turned left on the old railroad grade back toward Hilo. A few miles down the railroad grading was the old Maku‘u station. It was an old wooden shack with bench seats, as I recall. That is where the train stopped in the old days. A road wound around the pahoehoe lava flow all the way down the beach to Maku‘u. That was before there were the Paradise Park or Hawaiian Beaches subdivisions.

We did not know there was a district called Maku‘u; we thought the family compound was named Maku‘u. Of the 20-acre property, maybe 10 acres consisted of a kipuka where the soil was ten feet deep. The 10 acres on the Hilo side were typical pahoehoe lava. The property had a long oceanfront with a coconut grove running the length of the oceanfront. It was maybe 30 trees deep and 50 feet tall.

The old-style, two-story house sat on the edge of a slope just behind the coconut grove. If I recall correctly, it had a red roof and green walls. Instead of concrete blocks as supports for the posts, they used big rocks from down the beach.

There was no telephone, no electricity and no running water. So when we arrived it was a special occasion. We kids never, ever got as welcome a reception as we got whenever we went to Maku‘u.

Tutu Lady

The person who was always happiest to see us small kids was tutu lady Meleana, my grandma Leihulu’s mom. She was a tiny, gentle woman, maybe 100 pounds, but very much the matriarch of the family. She spoke very little English but it was never an issue. We communicated just fine.

We could not wait to go down the beach. Once she took us kids to catch ‘ohua—baby manini. She used a net with coconut leaves as handles that she used to herd the fish into the net. I don’t recall how she dried it, but I remember how we used to stick our hands in a jar to eat one at a time. They were good.

She would get a few ‘opihi and a few haukeuke and we spent a lot of time poking around looking at this sea creature and that.

Between the ocean in the front and the taro patch, ulu trees, bananas and pig pen in the back, there was no problem about food. I know how Hawaiians could be self-sufficient because I saw it in action.

The house was full of rolls of stripped lauhala leaves. There were several lauhala trees and one was a variegated type. I don’t recall if they used it  for lauhala mats but it dominated the road to the house.

There were lauhala mats all over the place, four and five thick. There was a redwood water tank, and a Bull Durham bag hung on the kitchen water pipe as a filter.

Years later when I showed interest in playing slack key, I was given Tutu’s old Martin guitar.

She played it so often that the bottom frets had indentations in it where her fingers went.

Medical Cannabis

M.D. Says Imported Hemp CBD Products Unregulated, Unsafe for Medicinal Use

Honolulu ophthalmologist Clifton Otto wants a ban on imported hemp CBD products – cannabidiols – being  sold in Hawai‘i health food stores and smoke shops as “dietary supplements,” or at the very least have such products subjected to the same regulations that apply to other controlled substances.

“This is non-pharmaceutical grade CBD that is being extracted from the stalks, and sometimes even the flowers,” he says,  “of hemp strains (THC of 0.3 percent or less) that are being grown in other countries and other states that allow this activity.”

He says they are being classified as “dietary supplements” because a product labeled with a medical use is considered a new drug and has to go through Food and Drug Administration approval process.

“The problem is that CBD is not a dietary supplement,” he says. “It’s a chemical that’s being used exclusively for medical purposes to treat seizure and arthritis inflammation and even cancer.”

Why is he concerned? Because the hemp is not being produced for medical use, he explains, it’s not undergoing the manufacturing practices all drugs go through. He says medical patients are using something that’s untested and of unknown purity. He adds it could also contain contaminants we don’t know about.

In addition, he talks about some 2007 medical studies done with CBD in simulated gastric environments. “They found that CBD can be turned into not only tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but some other metabolites as well,” he says.

“They’re proposing this might be part of the reason why children, these medical refugees who are going to Colorado to gain access to hemp CBD, are having unusual reactions. Because some of the CBD is being converted into THC in their stomachs, which is making them tired and disoriented and can sometimes stimulate seizure activity. That’s something I don’t think people are that aware of yet.”

He says he recently heard about someone who failed a pre-employment drug screening test because he tested positive for THC. The applicant told the doctor he’d only used hemp CBD products.

Richard and Jaclyn Moore, who is a pharmacist on Lau Ola’s team, visited with Honolulu ophthalmologist Clifton Otto the other day. “He’s a passionate proponent for patient’s rights,” says Richard.

Research and Law

Otto’s  interest in medical marijuana began a few years back when a family friend used it while undergoing treatment for colon cancer.

He says his first exposure to medical marijuana was a real eye-opener.

“I realized if my friend hadn’t been using marijuana during the chemotherapy before and after surgery, he probably would’ve lost a lot of weight and developed secondary infections. And he probably would have died from that before he died from the cancer.

“I started doing some research online,” he says, “reading some of the peer-reviewed articles, and it’s just amazing how much information is available. Even how much research was done back in the ’70s before this was all shut down by the war on drugs.”

Then, he says, he started looking at the law.

“That’s when I started to become a patient advocate. I just couldn’t believe how our patients were being treated in terms of lack of access and being harassed by law enforcement.”

It led him to look into the “scheduling” of marijuana at the state and federal levels. That, he says, is the crux of the problem.

CBD is a Schedule 1 controlled substance:

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are:

heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote

Marijuana is illegal on a federal level. But medical marijuana is legal in the state of Hawai‘i. The federal government is not currently enforcing its law. Otto says that’s what led to the importation of unregulated hemp-based “dietary supplements.”

Bigger Picture

He is not against medical marijuana, and in fact provides patients with written certification to obtain it. He just wants to know that what’s out there, used medicinally, is safe.

“One of the reasons I’m interested in this is because of this whole potential for being able to produce a locally sustainable health care system for Hawaii. I believe cannabis can be a centerpiece of that because of all its medical benefits,” he says.

“I think this hemp CBD products issue is important because it points out the opportunity the state has to benefit from the purely intra-state production of cannabinoids. We could have cancer patients coming from all over the world to be administered CBD at high doses for anti-cancer treatment.

“I’m not sure that the state realizes that about the potential yet, ” he says, “because of how biased we are towards federal law and the federal policy towards marijuana.”

He has spoken to the state Public Safety Department (PSD), which issues controlled substance certificates to doctors, about his concerns over hemp CBD products as “dietary supplements.” Someone there recommended he contact the governor’s office directly, which he did about four months ago. He hasn’t heard back yet.

“I asked PSD to offer a rescheduling recommendation, because PSD has the authority to make scheduling recommendations to the legislature every year when we match up our state-controlled substance acts with the federal-controlled substance acts. They wrote back to me and said, ‘Actually, we’re not going to do that because we are following the federal schedule.’”

Someone there recommended he contact the governor’s office directly, which he just did. He hasn’t heard back yet.

“We just don’t know if it’s safe,” he says. “It’s certainly not being used as intended.”

photo: Clifton Otto

Science

CRISPR-cas9: Jennifer Doudna is a Role Model

U.S. patent judges have started hearing a case about who will hold the patent on the gene editing technology called CRISPR-cas9.

One of the main players is Dr. Jennifer Doudna, a scientist affiliated with the University of California at Berkeley.

I’ve written about Jennifer Doudna here before. She grew up in Hilo and graduated from Hilo High. What a great role model she is for our kids. We need to nurture our young people here to learn and reach for the stars (or the genes), as she has done. Not, no can. CAN!

“The stakes are enormous,” Anette Breindl, senior science editor at the trade journal BioWorld, told NPR about the patent case. She said three companies built around those patents “already have a billion dollars of investment behind them, and a fourth company has a stake in the technology that could be worth $2 billion.

From NPR’s All Things Considered:

The high-stakes fight over who invented a technology that could revolutionize medicine and agriculture heads to a courtroom Tuesday….

“This is arguably the biggest biotechnology breakthrough in the past 30 or 40 years, and controlling who owns the foundational intellectual property behind that is consequentially pretty important,” says Jacob Sherkow, a professor at the New York Law College.

The CRISPR-cas9 technology allows scientists to make precise edits in DNA, and that ability could lead to whole new medical therapies, research tools and even new crop varieties.

…On one side of the dispute are research collaborators Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley and her European colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier (currently at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin).

“When they filed their patent application [in 2012], they did a great job disclosing how to use CRISPR for bacteria, but were a little lighter on details about how to use CRISPR in the cells of higher organisms” such as human cells, [Jacob Sherkow, a professor at the New York Law College] says.

“Later in 2012, Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard files his patent application that gives a pretty detailed description about how to use CRISPR in the cells of higher organisms,” Sherkow continues.

And since the most important use of the technology is its ability to edit DNA in higher organisms, the real battle is over who can claim that invention.

Read the rest

Photo by Hiroshi Nishimasu, F. Ann Ran, Patrick D. Hsu, Silvana Konermann, Soraya I. Shehata, Naoshi Dohmae, Ryuichiro Ishitani, Feng Zhang, and Osamu Nureki [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Mauna Kea

Is the TMT Contested Case Hearing a Filibuster?

I’ve been keeping up with the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) contested case hearing that is now underway, and have watched most of it.

Sunday’s Star-Advertiser had a front page story on what’s currently happening with the hearing.

Testimony in the TMT contested case hearing started October 20, and there are still 80 more people to testify. This means that, at the current rate, the hearing could continue through the end of 2017. The paper reports it’s being called a “filibuster” by some.

I don’t think it will take that long, though. I say that for a couple reasons.

One is that most of the most important witnesses have already spoken. Another is that the judge has done a good job of letting the anti-TMT people know what they can and cannot do and what’s needlessly repetitious. The process is becoming more streamlined.

We who support building the TMT on Mauna Kea agree with much of what the opposition is saying. The culture must be accommodated.

We don’t want to be adversarial or to toss them out of the room; we just all want a seat at the table.

Our main difference is that for us it’s not “all or nothing.”  The anti-TMT people are pretty much “all or nothing,” whereas we think there should be some compromise to accommodate education.

From the Star-Advertiser article:

Telescope hearing called a ‘filibuster’

By Kevin Dayton

November 27, 2016

HILO >> After nine days of exhaustive questioning of a half-dozen witnesses in a contested case hearing for the Thirty Meter Telescope, some TMT supporters are now privately describing the lengthy proceedings as a “filibuster” that will stall the project, and may even effectively block the $1.4 billion telescope from ever being built in Hawaii.

Testimony in the trial-like hearing for the proposed telescope began Oct. 20, and about 80 more witnesses are scheduled to testify. If the proceedings were to continue grinding along at their current pace of about six witnesses per month, the hearing would finally conclude sometime around the end of 2017,

Lawyers for the University of Hawaii complain the hearing so far has been characterized by “repetitive questions, attempts by cross-examiners to present their own testimony, and cross-examiners trying to argue with the witnesses and the hearings officer,” according to a recent UH filing. 

But opponents of the TMT contend in a filing with the state Supreme Court that the hearing process has been so flawed that they have been “deprived once again of any meaningful participation and any meaningful opportunity to be heard” in the contested case. Read the rest

photo Courtesy TMT International Observatory

Medical Cannabis

Cannabis Education – ‘Not a Group of Stoners’

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June and I are in Las Vegas for some cannabis education. We are attending the 6th annual Marijuana Business Conference & Expo. And what I find so interesting is that everybody here is well-groomed and in business attire. You wouldn’t know this isn’t Washington D.C.

This is not a group of stoners with long hair and wild colors. The industry is maturing. These are business people walking around. There is a lot more regulation, and the more regulation the more uniformity and safety there is.

session

The conference website calls it the longest-running, biggest and most respected conference for the cannabis industry, with 7,500 cannabis industry leaders attending. “The entire marijuana business ecosystem under one roof,” they call it.

Impressions from my first day

  • We really don’t know what all we don’t know. The possibilities of using cannabis medicinally are great. It is so exciting to be on the cutting edge.
  • We all (humans and many animals, too) have an endocannabinoid system, which is a series of receptors that accept cannabinoids only. It’s the reason our bodies so easily process cannabis. The way the cannabis plant and our endocannabinoid system interacts is really interesting. Read the Beginner’s Guide to the Endocannabinoid System to learn more.
  • Terpenes, which cause cannabis’ odor among other effects, interact with other compounds in cannabis. But we don’t yet know what the entourage effect is when terpenes interact with the various cannabinoids. “Cannabis is inherently polypharmaceutical,” Dr. John McPartland, DO, noted in the journal Phytomedicine, “and synergy arises from interactions between its multiple components.”
  • Indica vs. Sativa – it’s not that simple! Those are the two main cannabis species, but as a speaker at the Marijuana Science Convention in Portland pointed out, there are an incredible number of hybrids and crosses from from combining the two. When they showed all the dots indicating all the different combinations on a screen, it looked like the Milky Way on a dark night above Mauna Kea.

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There are so many things we don’t know yet. This is mainly because marijuana has been illegal and so we haven’t been able to do the studies.

Science is how we will make sense of it all. It’s very exciting and the potential is tremendous.

Energy, Geothermal, Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative, Mauna Kea, Peak Oil

Making Life Better, Part 3: Why These Big Island Issues?

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I want to talk about why I’m involved in all these different Big Island issues: Geothermal. The Thirty Meter Telescope. The Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative.

These are not random, unrelated concerns. They are all directly related to what’s happening in our world and on our island.

I am always working toward making our lives better here on the Big Island, and making this a better place for our children and grandchildren.

Everything came together for me when I started going to the Peak Oil conferences  in 2007. That’s where I learned about Charlie Hall and his theory of Energy Return on Investment (EROI).

What was interesting to me about that his is a biophysical approach. A systems approach. It doesn’t put everything into its own silo, but instead takes everything into consideration all together.

EROI boils down to one basic concept: You have to have net energy to survive. This concept is discussed as an economic concept, but really it goes all way back to biology. Think about a rainbow trout swimming in a river and catching flies. At the end of the day, it has to have caught enough flies not only to survive but also to reproduce.

It’s the same for every animal. Look at cheetahs. They’ve got to be able to run down antelopes and rabbits and whatever they eat, and still have energy left over to reproduce and raise their kids.

It takes energy to get energy. We have to be able to get at our source of energy – like oil – and still have enough left over to power our society.

This concept applies to organisms, organizations and civilizations – everything.

How These Big Island Issues Apply

I’m no scientist. I’m a farmer who’s spent a lot of time out there on the farm, dealing with the physical stuff, out in the rain and the dirt. I come at this practically, always remembering my Pop’s lesson about, Not no can, can.

I am always trying to find a solution to something or other by thinking hard and planning ahead. When I went to school I learned there’s a name for this. It’s called “contingency planning.”

And it’s what we need to be doing now. Contingency planning. We need to take sustainable actions now to prepare for a better future.

What makes a solution sustainable? It has be economically, environmentally and socially sustainable.

As for the economic part, people understand what you need to do to make that work. Environmentally, too.

What is generally missing, and what I gravitate toward, is the social part of sustainability: leaving no one behind. I always come at everything from that point of view.

When we look at the Big Island, we have the lowest median family income, a homelessness problem and many other social problems. When I look at solutions, I want to make sure they address these problems.

Solutions

From what I see, education is the game changer. There are clear correlations between education and family income. And education and family income have a strong impact on the other problems. It’s not very complex.

The TMT brings $50 million to our island,  earmarked solely for our kids’ education. And geothermal and the Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative bring smart energy solutions to our peak oil crisis.

I’ve been influenced by my Pop, who taught me to look long term. When you’re looking long term, you don’t have to make radical decisions you might regret later. When you  focus on the long term, you can make gradual changes to get to where you want to go.

We need to have a sustainable energy situation, and that will help with everything else.

History

Making Life Better, Part 2: Hawaii in the Information Age

Consider how history has impacted us here in Hawai’i:

Around 1000 AD, people were sailing back and forth to Hawaii. At the same time, the Crusades were taking place. Around the time Captain Cook arrives, in 1778, the Declaration of Independence has just been written.

By 1860, the Pony Express was delivering mail from New York to San Francisco in 10 days.

In 1908, Ikua Purdy, Archie Kaaua and Ben Low take the top award at the Cheyenne Rodeo – the pinnacle of rodeo competitions in the world.

In 1952, KGMB was the first TV station in Hawaii.

In 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.

In 2010, the “like” button was added to Facebook.

This timeline gives us a hint of how much Hawai‘i and its people have assimilated into the world around us.

This is not a bad thing. This country elected someone who grew up here as President of the United States. We enjoy our iPhones.

Our young folks under the age of 20 or so don’t remember a time before we pressed electronic buttons.

The Information Age

We are in an information age; an electronic one. It’s an age of learning by doing, which is what Hawaiian have done for eons. And it’s exactly what our group PUEO (it’s short for Perpetuating Unique Educational Opportunities) is reaching for.

When my friend Rick Blangiardi, general manager of Hawaii News Now (HNN), spoke at the Hawai‘i Island Economic Development Board’s annual meeting he gave an impressive talk about the history, as well as the future, of HNN under his leadership.

He said the most impactful thing to happen to the news industry was, “This.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPhone.

Shortly after that, there was a stand-off on Maunakea about building the Thirty Meter Telescope. Movie stars and sports heroes jumped on board and the story went viral.

Welcome to the world of real time news and to the Information Age. There’s no backing away now. We cannot pick and choose in which areas we interact with the world, or hide as though there are no outside forces affecting our lives here in Hawaii’i.

We’re all still adjusting, but this is a good thing. We aren’t only taking in information. We have something that is unique to the core of Hawai‘i, our aloha, that we can share instantaneously as well.

photo: Calerusnak at English Wikipedia

Energy

Hawaii Energy Picture: Making Our Lives Better

How do we make the Hawaii energy picture, and our futures, better?

I sense that young folks know something needs to change in our modern world. And I see lots of folk helping each other cope.

This is all very encouraging, so I want to have a conversation: What can we do to make things better for all of us? I’m going to be posting about this in the next few weeks.

I’m going to talk about it being important that we take care of ourselves here in Hawaii, because nobody else is going to worry about us. In a world of declining energy, the pie is getting smaller and everybody is jockeying and fighting for a smaller piece of pie. This is when you get discontent. Look, for instance, at the current presidential election.

But the solution is not fighting with each other like what’s going on right now.  The solution is helping each other.

The bottom line is that in whatever we choose to do, the pluses have to exceed the minuses.

This is why I look at the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) as a plus. It supports education, and that helps us develop new technologies. Technology is not energy, but it helps us to extend energy. Also, investment in the TMT is all coming in from foreign dollars, instead of us taxing ourselves. All pluses.

Another thing we have that’s clearly a plus in terms of energy is geothermal. We will be over the “hotspot” that provides us with geothermal energy for 500,000 to a million years. That isn’t going away. A huge plus.

And GMOs are a plus because they help us find different ways to keep feeding ourselves, which of course is critical.

This is what it all boils down to. This is the graph that changed my life.

Hawaii Energy

I first saw it during the 2007 Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference in Houston. It shows, simply, that we have been using much more oil than we’ve been finding.

Obviously there will be consequences if we don’t either:

  • conserve what oil we have
  • find affordable alternatives
  • or use technology to extend what energy we have.

It takes energy to do work and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measurement of work, so this graph implies the world GDP may be challenged if we don’t find alternatives.

It was clear to me that this was going to be the biggest challenge facing Hawai‘i.

I continued studying this and also attended four more ASPO conferences. And I realized I was the only person from the state of Hawai‘i that was attending these conferences and hearing all these experts, and Hawaii energy became my kuleana. It’s not that I wanted it or needed it; I just felt stuck with the knowledge and knew I had to do something with it.

My friend, Professor Charles A.S. Hall, who is known as the father of Energy Return On Investment (EROI), was someone I found clear and easy to understand.

Hawaii energy

What it’s about and what we can do

I am going to revisit a lot of what I’ve learned since I started studying about this problem in 2007, and write about it here. For example, it takes energy to get energy (for example, to get oil up out of the ground) and net energy is decreasing as we use increased amounts of energy to access more difficult sources.

Is it surprising that World GDP is lessening? Not many of our leaders seem to be paying attention to these things.

So to get back to my question above: What changes can we make? What can we do to make things better for all of us?

People have ideas, and I’m going to write some posts about what makes sense to me (and others). Stay tuned.

Education, Mauna Kea, Science

Pro TMT: Didn’t Just Fall Off the Tomato Truck

Through their former attorney Richard Naiwieha Wurdeman, some of those who feel the Thirty Meter Telescope should not be built atop Mauna Kea suggest I helped form the pro TMT group PUEO, short for Perpetuating Unique Educational Opportunities, on the spot – that we just popped up out of nowhere.

You can read that in this Civil Beat article about the TMT Contested Case Hearing, which starts Tuesday.

From Civil Beat:

Apart from the TMT itself, the only intervenor that has taken a stance in favor of the TMT’s construction is a group calling itself PUEO, short for Perpetuating Unique Educational Opportunities, Inc. As described in its petition for standing, PUEO’s purposes “include furthering ‘educational opportunities for the children of Hawaii in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.’ Its board members and beneficiaries include native Hawaiians that reside in the Keaukaha-Panaewa Hawaiian Homesteads located in Hilo, Hawaii. PUEO’s board members include native Hawaiians who seek knowledge and understanding and exercise customary and traditional native Hawaiian rights on Mauna Kea.”

The original petitioners have objected strenuously to PUEO’s admission as an intervenor. In a memorandum opposing Amano’s decision to admit PUEO, the original petitioners’ attorney, Wurdeman, claims that PUEO was formed for the sole purpose of intervening in the case.

“[G]iven the timing of its formation, the P.U.E.O., Inc., was obviously formed solely to try and participate in the contested case hearing and the Petitioners submit that such an attempt is clearly improper,” Wurdeman wrote.

The Reality

The truth, of course, is that I have been a very vocal supporter of the Thirty Meter Telescope for many years.

For years I’ve written at my blog and elsewhere about the Adopt-A-Class program. We formed that program to help kids in schools that cannot afford field trips. The program, which expanded after awhile to cover every class on the Big Island, paid for buses and admission to send students to ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center once a year, where they learned about the world-class science on Mauna Kea as well as our traditional Hawaiian culture. My first of many posts about Adopt-A-Class was nine years ago, in 2007:

My friend Duane Kanuha and I have this big idea, and we’re asking for your help: We want to send Keaukaha students on excursions that broaden their horizons and help them develop excitement for learning and positive attitudes about their place in the world. It’s my opinion that if Hawaiian kids are comfortable with their place in the world, they will not hesitate to participate in that world.

I’m specifically thinking about excursions to Hilo’s new astronomy center ‘Imiloa. ‘Imiloa is particularly powerful because it situates the Hawaiian culture and scientific knowledge in parity with the highest level of astronomy. It is a “discovery center” that celebrates both science (the world-class astronomy atop nearby Mauna Kea) and Hawaiian culture (including the marvels of traditional Hawaiian voyaging, navigation and much more).

It’s a place where Hawaiian kids see that there are careers and avocations directly related to their culture, and that these cultural traditions are important enough that they are celebrated in a world-class museum. And that the people pursuing these careers and passions are people who look just like them and their families.

I’ve written about Kumu Lehua Veincent asking me “What about the rest?” (of the students) since at least 2009, and many times since:

What I keep coming back to again and again is what Kumu Lehua Veincent told me the first time I asked him what the TMT should offer the Big Island as an introductory, good faith gift. I asked him if it would be appropriate to ask for “full ride” scholarships for at least five native Hawaiians to attend the best colleges in the nation.

He asked me, in a very sincere way, “And what about the rest?”

I felt so stupid that I could feel my ears getting hot.

That is the essential question: “What about the rest?” This is about the keiki, the future generations—all of them.

Three years later, University of Hawai‘i President McClain has announced that if the TMT comes to Hawai‘i, in addition to its other negotiations there will be an annual, $1 million benefit package for education emphasizing K-12. It will be effective for the life of the project—50 years—and will begin as soon as all the permits are in place.

It will be set up to address Kumu Lehua’s question: “What about the rest?”

The Process

The first time I wrote about Patrick Kahawaiola‘a, and what I learned from him about how important the process is as we talk about TMT, was also in 2009:

We talked story in the community a lot, and over and over we heard from Patrick Kahawaiola‘a, President of the Keaukaha Community Association, that the most important thing was “the process.”

And as we thought about this, we realized that if the process is most important, then all contributors to the process, no matter what side of the issue they are on, made for a better product. And so we always need to aloha the loud voices, too, who early on told us that things were not quite right. It was about us. All of us. Not me against you.

So when we had our first sign waving in support of the TMT, nearly 150 people showed up. We told everyone that we were meeting to celebrate the process and told them to bring their kids, and they did. It was very significant.

I also wrote about it six years ago in this 2010 post:

As we went around visiting people, Patrick Kahawaiola‘a,
 president of the Keaukaha Community Association, told me that it’s about “the 
process.” And since the process would result in the best possible result, we
 need to aloha everyone who participates in the process, no matter which side of 
the issue they are on. Therefore, we must mahalo Kealoha, Nelson, Debbie, Paul,
 Ku, Hanalei, the Kanaka Council, Jim, Cory, Moani and many others. We would not 
be here today had it not been for their passionate advocacy.

The whole state has noticed that we on the Big Island are
 doing this differently. Our approach is based on mutual respect, collaboration 
and trust. The TMT folks, led by Henry Yang, did it the right way. It
 would not have worked any other way.

And I’ve been writing about the TMT’s money for education, which became the THINK Fund, many times since 2009:

If we teach our keiki the values they need to make a society that is successful and thriving “when the boat no come,” we will have done our jobs. This $1 million that will be dedicated to keiki education annually is key to the survival of future generations. It is no longer about us – it is about the future generations.

We must learn and perpetuate what it was that allowed Hawaiians to survive for hundreds of years out in the middle of the ocean without boats coming in every day with goods from someplace else.

In the future, our values will need to revolve around aloha. We will need to assume responsibility—kuleana. We need to make more friends and stay closer to our families.

We live in the modern world, so how do we use what we have and meld it with the values that worked? We need to have a balance of science and culture in order for all of us to do what we do to help our greater society.

My Pop told me: “There are a thousand reasons why ‘No can.’ I only looking for one reason why ‘Can.’”

What it really all boils down to, as I wrote above, is the process. In the last six years or more, I’ve spoken and written about how it’s all about the process many, many times. If the process is pono, and we aloha everyone on all sides of the issue, then we’re good.

Let’s proceed with the process.

Education, Schools

Hawaii Robotics: ‘Kids Don’t Want To Go Home!’

Art Kimura, who’s been called Hawai‘i’s “Father of Robotics,” has a lot of enthusiasm for promoting Hawaii Robotics programs in our schools.

We talked to him about what sorts of careers Robotics sometimes leads children toward, the exciting state and world championships the kids compete in, and what’s going on with access to the programs.

This is the second part of a two-part series on the subject. Read Part 1 here.

Q. What do children learn from Robotics, and what sort of careers are those skills useful in?

Art Kimura: It definitely leans toward engineering and computer science. Those are the two high-level occupations that we’ve seen many kids strive for as a result of Robotics. I think one real strong piece of evidence, although it’s never been studied well enough to say this is definitely it, is that the University of Hawai‘i College of Engineering enrollment has nearly doubled since Robotics started.

Nobody’s done a study on it but we kind of see the linkage because if you interview the students there, many of them say, “Yeah, I was on this Robotics team or that Robotics team.”

It’s also well documented that many girls will say, “I’m an engineer because of Robotics.” In other words, they never thought of it until they joined the Robotics team and then the light bulb went on. “Hey, I can do this.”

Tell me about the Pan Pacific VEX Championships that were just held here.

We were in the Kamehameha Schools gym and we had 88 teams playing and hundreds of parents and other supporters. It was an awesome ‘ohana of Kamehameha faculty and students who provided the venue and services, from the opening 60-plus dancers who showcased Hawai‘i’s culture to the concluding final matches on Sunday.

Hawaii robotics

The place was so loud with the parents cheering and the music blaring out and excited MCs calling the matches, students dancing in the stands. You could hardly hear each other talking, even if you were sitting next to each other. It was just like a sporting event.

Is it an annual championship?

We used to have it annually and then we stopped for a couple of years for different reasons. The reason this was reignited is we had a discussion at Hawaiian Electric Company.

Hawaiian Electric has a partnership with Okinawa Enetech, which is the utility on Okinawa. They’re trying to learn from each other. The Okinawans were interested in what Hawai‘i Electric does in Hawai‘i in terms of STEM education.

Hawai‘i Electric has been long-time supporters of STEM education. They give money to support science fairs, they give money for many different causes in terms of STEM, and they’ve become a strong supporter of Robotics. Twenty years ago, they supported Waialua and they’re still supporting them today. They’re our title sponsor of our state VEX championship, so they have contributed not only funds but their volunteers also come out and support the tournament.

In that discussion we had with Hawaiian Electric, and because of their partnership with Okinawa Enetech, we thought we would bring back the Pan Pacific Championship as a means of trying to get this tournament held not only in Hawai‘i but also in other countries. The vision is this tournament that we just hosted will rotate to other countries, like an Olympic-style event, where it could be in China or it could be in Taiwan (but all in the Pacific Rim because that’s what our focus is).

By having teams come here, our kids can participate in an international competition and see how they measure up. A few years ago when we hosted it at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, we grew the tournament into the second largest tournament in the world. One hundred and twelve teams. We still consistently get 20 teams from China coming to that. China has thousands of VEX Robotics teams, probably approaching 5 or 6 thousand now.

Hawaii robotics

We have some sub-issues going on where we’re hoping this tournament will catalyze Okinawa. Right now, Okinawa has no VEX Robotics program because they have their own program. We’re trying to see if we can get into their system with this program and sort of selfishly, we would like our teachers here, who are really experts in this area, to be the trainers; to send them there to train the Okinawans.

We also had representatives from three Department of Defense schools, from Korea and Okinawa, at our tournament to see whether they can include that in the Department of Defense schools in Korea, Japan, the Philippines and other entities around the Pacific. Again, with our goal being our teachers will become the trainers.

We work very closely with the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation. They’re a non-profit and they organize all these VEX tournaments worldwide. Their president was the one who helped start our program back 20 years ago. He brought his team to Hawai‘i and helped us start.

Anyway, he offered us two world championship slots for our Pan Pacific Championship, so two teams would qualify for next April’s World VEX Championships in Louisville, Kentucky. We’re first in the world to qualify two teams.

Has Hawai‘i Robotics gone to the world championships before?

We went to that championship this past year with 31 of our Hawai‘i teams and it was absolutely amazing. The facility’s so large. Literally, I was walking 10 to 12 miles a day inside the building just to go visit the teams.

There will be probably about 25,000 people cheering on the kids next year and probably 1,000 teams competing from all over the world.

How did Hawai‘i do last year?

We do really well, but we don’t win the championship. It’s just difficult to get to that level, but our teams win trophies, they finish high. We’re proud of them when they do that. Several came home with trophies.

What’s coming up this year?

This year we have two different games. One game is called Starstruck. It’s a fun game where these stars get thrown back and forth across the field, these bean bags get thrown back and forth, and at the end of the game the robot climbs a pole.

The state high school championship, for the very first time, is going to be held here on the Big Island on January 5th at Kea‘au High School. It’s the start of some two dozen more IQ and VRC Robotics tournaments statewide. The VEX middle school state championship will be held at the new Stevenson Middle School STEM center on January 7, and the VEX IQ state championships for elementary and middle school will be held February 20 at the Hawai‘i Convention Center.

Robotics is something you don’t get until you see it, really. You don’t feel what the kids feel until you actually go to a tournament and see the excitement.

It’s really exciting. It’s the value of having fun while you’re learning. And when you ask the kids what they like about it, they come up with all kind of different reasons about what it’s teaching them.

What are the challenges?

One of our big challenges right now is access. Less than five percent of kids in Hawai‘i have access to participating on a Robotics team.

Representative Mark Nakashima really helped us this past year with legislation he got passed by the legislature. Several years ago, he sent money to the Department of Labor and initially they focused on things like agriculture. This past year, the Labor people contacted us about IT. In other words, how do you get more kids interested in IT kind of stuff?

We got access to that funding, and because of that we were able to increase statewide participation in VEX IQ 55 percent in a single year.

That kind of infusion of money really helps because I can go to a school and say, find me a mentor and we’ll provide all the resources for you.

It’s not a huge investment. Offering Konawaena Elementary three Robotics kits and a game field, the value is probably about $1,700. We’ve got 55 kids involved there. And everything is reusable except the new game, because every April a new game is announced. As far as the kit, though, you can use it year after year. Once you get the initial parts in the schools, they can sustain it on their own.

Why should people encourage their kids to get involved with Robotics?

It goes back to having kids learning life skills through this process. I think it’s a wonderful way – it engages them and it’s real to the students.

One major complaint I get from teachers about Robotics all the time is the kids don’t want to go home. It motivates them to do something on their own. It’s nothing that they’re forced to do and they don’t get graded on it. They do it as a club activity most of the time.

You never know, the experience could change their life. They never thought of engineering, they never thought of programming, but all of the sudden, the light bulb goes on and there it is.