After accompanying The Royal Order of King Kamehameha I on their Merrie Monarch Festival Parade and serving as one of the photographers/video documentors for their commemoration ceremony, it was off to Kahenna beach the next day, and then hanging with my hosts from the Order at thier place -I'm feeling kinda at home.

I'll post photos of the parade and ceremony in a few days. Too bad I didn't get good audio for you of Uncles Kaliko and Kahu doing their traditional invocations.

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I am so jealous!
I've never been to that part of the world.
I picture you as a sort of Paul Gauguin Skiff.
Chasin' the native girls around.

You better be back in time for Stevie though!

I will be back for Stevie. Just don't get me started on the local girls.

It's Saturdaynight in Puna.
Two doves are fucking in
the middle of Maku'u Street right
on the double yellow line. Each
would have crossed over for
the other but neither wanted
to have the advantage of
doing a favor for the other so
they met in the middle. Tomorrow
two feathers will collect
the mist and vog before
the trade wind bounces
them into the mango grove.

Well Daddy I think you would have liked the Hawai'ian version of the baths. A traditional swet hut with about 15 people sitting around the stone pit piled with 10 hunks of lavastone all glowing orange from being next to a huge bonfire for about three hours. I felt like I was being roasted. Kaliko did the pre-entry invocation in a driving warm rain. Inside there were numerous rounds of chants and group response calls, a novitiate, suitably the nakedest youngest person, dropping fat grains of salt on the rocks. I probably lost eight pounds. Afterwards it was a dousing with cold water, a huge communal dinner and rounds and rounds of local smoke. Tell Empress they really roll here.

Wow, what an experience!
Goblin is going to die!!!!!

Oh thanks darling for the recap - I am BROWN with envy!

*

Good to be back on main street!

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The Royal Order of King Kamehameha I just after the Merrie Monarch Festival Parade, Hilo.

My host Kaliko, at a pre-festival parade ceremony in Pahoa.

more images to come tomorrow

Did you get lei'd at the parade?

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The Royal Order of King Kamehameha I start thier parade march. Members of the Order are lineal descendants of Kamehameha who was the guy that united all the islands into one kingdom. They are widely regarded by the locals as being the real government of the Big Island. The guy with the grey beard sort of in the center of the photo had just returned from Washington D.C. where he was lobbying senators to restore Hawai'i's sovereignty and allow the islands to no longer be one of the United States.

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Royal Court members.

This is local bad boy Billy Kenoi, mayor of Hilo, greeting members of the Royal Court. He's famous for getting calls on his cell just before the cops come to break up the bar fights he's participating in so he can exit the back door. Right now he's under investigation for having his staff members use city government computers to facilitate his election campaigning,the charges to which he replied, "I don't even know how to work a computer." At least not like he knows how to work local politics!

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Voggy day in the jungle on the way to the volcano.

On the mainland this is called a fiddlehead fern and is about as big as a swizzle stick. But this is the size of your head.