fresh pacific

Coconuts, Where Elegance Meets Utility. Niu Now!

Aloha kakou!  For elegance, utility, and design perfection, today, we’re honoring the coconut palm. The Niu, or coconut palm, Cocos nucifera L., is our beloved Hawaiian coconut!  Stately beacons, especially at the seashore.  The niu’s slender ringed trunk ascends to a crown of fronds, some up to 9 feet long. Coconuts form at the base of the fronds, and every part of the plant is used, it’s one  of the ten most useful plant species in the world. Here, Jessie Mikasobe Keali’inohomoku talks about the delicious phases of the nut meats! Among a lot of other things, including efforts to educate and propagate Niu culture.  Mahalo to Jesse, as well as Indrajit Gunasekara – Uluniu Project Founder, and Dr. Manu Aluli Meyer – Kūlana o Kapolei, Chancellorʻs Office and ʻAha Niu Director. Find out more about the Niu ohana here ⁠https://www.puuhonua-society.org/niu-now⁠ [https://www.puuhonua-society.org/niu-now] 808-725-0907  indrajit@hawaii.edu IG at Niu.Now  Mahalo to contributing musicians. Music programming and listing: Kit Ebersbach at Pacific Music Productions Hope the new year opens like a coconut for you!  Here are a few notes I made about the coconut meat: ʻōʻio, the unripe, green nut with jelly-like flesh haohao, as in “ka wai o ka niu haohao,” the delicious water in the maturing nut, with soft, white flesh  ʻili kole, the half-ripe nut, with chewy meat, eaten raw with salt and poi oʻo, a mature nut, but not brown, ripe, good for milk and cream maloʻo, brown mature nut, with dry husk, water still inside, best stage for planting ho’oiho, the spongy pulp in sprouting nuts; choice food (lolo) ōkaʻa, the dry, brown, old nut with no water and meat ‘āka’a, separated from shell so as to make a rattling sound; oil is extracted at this stage A hui hou!

Glimmers and Wala’ao with Florence

This program is, uncharacteristically, about me. After two shows working with Honoluluʻs unsheltered community, I made some paintings now at Bās Bookshop in Honolulu through 11/26/2023. Wednesday 11/15, Erin Yuasa and I will be there at 5:30 to talk about work, and making. She’ll demo the handsome lei she makes from repurposed t-shirts. Please do come by. I feel like making the whole night about how we in Hawai’i can contribute to a unified world.🌺 And because of this show, my UH Manoa grad school studio mate, Florence Matsuoka, got the idea to interview me. Argh! Plus, to make it an episode in my Fresh Pacific podcast. See her twisting her long mustache…all part of a diabolical scheme! Florence, I find out has ascended to become General Manager at Hawaiian Graphics, the venerable and indispensable art supply store on Beretania. They’re mobilizing their facebook page, hoping to be a link for artists around the state. Hear about that, and reminiscences of Helen Gilbert and Prithwish Neogy in the new Fresh Pacific podcast.

Pacific Perspectives on Climate Rescue with Kamanamaikalani Beamer

“We’re the last generation that has a chance to solve the climate crisis.” Hear a Hawaiian view of where we are and how to proceed. Kamanamaikalani Beamer applies a Hawaiian perspective to our future on this planet, incorporating environmentalism, economic justice, and indigenous knowledge. Author, thought leader, professor in the Hawaiʻinuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge and with the Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, Beamer introduced me to the idea of "circular economies" in 2019. Itʻs one of those "duh" concepts that we seem to have forgotten. In this conversation he presents the concept of Degrowth, an expanding movement, especially in Europe. Kamana talks about how solving the climate crisis connects to reforming our economic system. The idea of not pursuing growth at all cost seems anti-capitalist. Yes, every part of the natural world is calling for profound and immediate change. This episode closes with a song by U’ilani Tanigawa-Lum, U’ilaniʻs song celebrates the taro farmers of Waioli on Kaua’i, who organized to bring their crops and their lifestyle into the 21st century. Itʻs from Huliamahi Volume I, a recording of contemporary songs celebrating the challenges and legal victories that preserve cherished land parcels and life ways. The entire album satisfies on so many levels. Proceeds from the recording benefit the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation. http://www.kahulileolea.org/huli257mahi-vol-1.html

Lessons from Kahoʻolawe with Noa Emmett Aluli, Davianna McGregor and Franco Salmoiraghi

Aloha kakou! In this episode we are remembering a Hawaiian leader, Dr. Noa Emmett Aluli. A family physician and servant-leader, he shares valuable lessons about how resistance bears fruit and progress can be made. Among other things, Aluli was co-founder of a movement demanding that the Navy stop using a Hawaiian island for target practice.  Right now, Oʻahu is ramping up efforts to protect its drinking water from contamination by the Navy. (Toxic foam spill reported 12/6/22, UHWO guide [https://guides.westoahu.hawaii.edu/c.php?g=977248&p=7079960.] ) It happens that challenging the U.S. military has been successful in Hawaiʻi.  How did the bombing of Kahoʻolawe stop? Was it logic? Not really--- it took an amazing confluence of forces. Professor Davianna McGregor of the Protect Kahoʻolawe Ohana explains. Also, it was a heartbreaking loss that shook Hawaiʻi, Aluli recounts as much as is known about what really happened to George Helm and Kimo Mitchell in those rough seas off Kahoʻolawe.  Importantly, Aluli and McGregor chart the spiritual and cultural foundation for Aloha ʻAina. Their colleague and friend, photographer Franco Salmoiraghi, begins the discussion with frank talk about landscape and the nautical introduction he got to Kahoʻolawe. Mahalo to Native Books/Arts and Letters and the Puʻuhonua Society for creating the occasion for this interview. Mahalo to Hawaiʻi Public Radio, where segments of this interview first aired. #kahoolawe #protectkahoolaweohana #shutdownredhill #kukiaiwai #oahuwaterprotectors #maunakea #wearemaunakea #alohaaina #hawaii #servantleaders #hawaiianhistory #kakou

Plant Medicine: Can psychedelic therapy enrich lives?

🌱Trying Plant medicine🌿 FRESH PACIFIC podcast looks at the possibilities of psychedelic therapies in Hawaiʻi. “I have certainly seen depression rise, suicide thinking go up, Iʻve had some of my long term substance abuse patients that had been sober, alcoholics, for a long time have relapsed. Iʻve been dealing with a lot of increased demand for psychiatric services. My colleagues around Honolulu report the same thing,” says Hawai’i psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas Cook [https://beyondmentalhealth.com/]. “And thereʻs an uptick in child issues too, a lot of increased stress among children because of all the change weʻve seen.”  Addressing stress, depression, anxiety, and other issues must be tailored to each situation, each person. In some cases, Dr. Cook advocates the clinical use of psychedelics to treat some mental illnesses. He says depressed people, people caught in repetitive, hamster-wheel types of patterns can benefit. In 2019, the FDA called psilocybin "breakthrough therapy" for treating depression.  In November 2021, the New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/11/health/veterans-psychedelics-ptsd-depression.html] reported on U.S. veterans lobbying for psychedelic therapy options. The Veterans Administration has launched at least 5 studies on the effectiveness of psilocybin to treat PTSD.  “The point of psychedelics is the altered mental state and the learning from the experience that comes with that.” Psychedelics get people off drugs they’ve been taking for years, and Dr. Cook explains how that works. He also explains who might be against that. Guess who? Then, first hand experiences of transformation from a woman with brain cancer, and a Vietnam veteran who took mushrooms on Maui. Psychedelic therapies and recreation are already happening from Hanalei to Hawi. There are a couple of entertaining articles in the New Yorker, one, from 2016 describes an ayahuasca boom [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/12/the-ayahuasca-boom-in-the-u-s]in the U.S. Another article, printed in 2022 describes how one advocate of ingesting secretions from the back of a toad for psychedelic rebirth, "smoking toad [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/28/the-pied-piper-of-psychedelic-toads/amp]," appears to have gone off the rails. Michael Pollanʻs 2018 book, How to Change Your Mind, lifted the curtain on a re-examination of psychoactive drugs and their effects for a new generation. He does for organic psychedelics what he did for eating plants in 2006, with The Omnivoreʻs Dilemma. It’s not for everybody. Ashley Lukens is founder of the Clarity Project [https://www.clarityproject.org/our-story], advocating for clinical use of psychedelics. A brain cancer survivor, she attributes her wellness to therapies including ayahuasca and psilocybin. Meditation, mindfulness, psychoanalysis are all pathways as well, she says, but “I would argue there are a lot of people that do not attain the clarity that psychedelics provide you through meditation and psychoanalysis because there is a firmly entrenched mental block. Psychedelics have shown, time and time again to help you overcome that barrier.” As for music in this episode, my deepest thanks to Kit Ebersbach and to Dae Han, both of whom deserve closer listening on their own! Music List Kit Ebersbach: Faux Lyre and Lull. Find his work on popular platforms and at Aloha Got Soul [https://alohagotsoul.com/pages/kit-ebersbach]. Dae Han. In a Dream [ https://alohagotsoul.com/products/dae-han-blue-ags-031].