Pure Manaʻo

I wrote a proposal to the HAMS (Hawaii association of middle schools) held in October of 2014. I really was writing the proposal in order to model how simple it was to write a proposal and present at a local conference for my staff. I knew that they had a lot to share and wanted to encourage them to venture beyond their classrooms to start presenting locally and nationally. To write a proposal for a conference, decide on your passion. That is what I did. It wasn't anything new or exciting, but blogging was my passion and my lens was that blogging could bring back the literacy of our Hawaiian people in the same way that newspapers, the Hawaiian newspapers of old, made Hawaiians the most literate peoples in the world.   I have not made this my life work, but I still believe it to be true.  Not everything needs to be completed. Maybe someday the opportunity will come back to create a network of writers. Someday. 

Time to an Indigenous woman has to do with efficiency - the close management of time as a precious commodity, like water. I only know this because I was raised by my grandmother, a pure Hawaiian woman who could not keep still. Instead of watching us ride our bikes on the side of the road in Lahaina, Maui, she would pick up a coconut frond that fell down and start sweeping the bike path. When we played in the waves at Sand Box, she would be scouring the beach for shells and beach glass, hardened plastic beach toys that she would gather up and take back with us for her shell garden alongside her house.  So I see my need to zone out, to just stare at Netflix mindlessly or read a book on my iPad as a waste of time. Is it Western to waste time or just moloā (lazy)? It is now 10:12 p.m. and I belittle myself for wasting the day. There is so much left to do. I have articles to write, a syllabus to complete, reservations to make, research to do. I forget that I graded all of my pa...