Peter T Young

May 5, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Cinco de Mayo

OK, it’s not Mexican Independence Day (Mexico declared its independence on September 16, 1821).

By 1861, though, the financially struggling country had defaulted on debt payments to several European nations. France’s Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, decided to use the outstanding debt as a pretense to invade and extend his overseas empire.

Napoleon’s troops stormed Veracruz and drove Benito Juárez, Mexico’s first indigenous president, into exile. Emboldened by their early victory, French forces under General Charles de Lorencez attacked Puebla de Los Angeles, about 80 miles outside Mexico City, on May 5, 1862.

Juarez sent a ragtag army of Mexicans and Zapotec Indians to defend the town under the banner of General Ignacio Zaragoza. The battle lasted from dawn to sunset and, though they were outmanned nearly 2-to-1, Zaragoza’s troops repelled Lorencez’s troops.

The battle wasn’t a decisive victory — in fact, the French recaptured Puebla a year later — but many Mexicans saw it as a symbol of throwing off the shackles of colonialism and oppression. Four days later, on May 9, 1862, Juárez declared Cinco de Mayo a national holiday.

French troops fully withdrew from Mexico in 1867, and Maximilian I, the Austrian archduke Napoleon installed as the country’s emperor, was eventually captured and executed.

In honor of the Mexican victory, Puebla de Los Angeles was renamed Puebla de Zaragoza, and Cinco de Mayo was made a national holiday.

Why is Cinco de Mayo celebrated in the US?

As the French and Mexicans were battling, the US was embroiled in the American Civil War. Napoleon III had aligned with the Confederacy and planned to supply Southern states with weapons in return for cotton, which was being blockaded by the Union.

The loss at Puebla and the resources Napoleon expended in Mexico helped derail his strategy to continue northward and bolster the Confederacy.

US citizens of Mexican descent overwhelmingly supported the Union, according to David E. Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the UCLA School of Medicine. They voted for Abraham Lincoln, and many served in the Union army, navy and cavalry.

News of the decisive victory in Puebla “electrified Latinos in California, Nevada and Oregon into redoubling their efforts to defend freedom, equality and democracy in both the United States and Mexico,” Hayes-Bautista told CNET.

For his book El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition, he traced period newspapers showing that Cinco de Mayo celebrations were held in Los Angeles and other parts of the West almost as soon as the battle in Puebla was over.

“Every Cinco de Mayo, Latinos marched through the streets of cities, towns and mining camps to let the world know where they stood on the issues of the American Civil War and the French Intervention in Mexico,” Hayes-Bautista said.

By 1910, the Mexican-American veterans of the American Civil War were dying off, and a new wave of immigration was coming to California amid the Mexican Revolution.

“These new arrivals noticed the Cinco de Mayo celebrations here in California, and began to join them,” Hayes-Bautista said. But they repurposed the celebrations with songs, music and images of the Mexican Revolution, he said.

In the 1960s, leaders in the Chicano movement repurposed Cinco de Mayo again, as a symbol of cultural pride and resilience as they advocated for farm workers’ rights, educational and economic opportunities and other social and political causes.

“The David versus Goliath story fittingly mirrored the struggle for civil rights,” Kirby Farah, an anthropologist at the University of Southern California, wrote for The Conversation.

For generations, Cinco de Mayo wasn’t widely known in the US outside of Mexican American and Central American immigrant communities.

Then, in the 1980s, as Latinos became a larger economic force in the country, beer companies saw an opportunity. In 1989, the Gambrinus Group, the Texas importers of Corona and Negra Modelo, launched an ad campaign encouraging Mexican Americans to drink Mexican beer on the holiday.

The marketing was soon broadened to reach Americans of all backgrounds, and, in 1993, Gambrinus marketing director Ron Christesson told Modern Brewery Age magazine that Cinco de Mayo was “becoming one of the beer industry’s biggest promotions.”

It was in this era, Hayes-Bautista said, that Cinco de Mayo “became highly commercialized into ‘Drinko de Mayo.'” (Info here is from Dan Avery)

(I have not yet found a connection to Hawai‘i, other than it’s another good day for cerveza, tequila and/or margaritas.)

May 4, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

May The Forest Be With You

Please join us at the Friends of Hakalau Forest https://friendsofhakalauforest.org/membership/

The National Wildlife Refuge System is a series of lands and waters owned and managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Wildlife conservation is at the heart of the refuge system.

In the Islands, prior to 1975, very little was known about the distribution and abundance of many of Hawai’i’s forest birds or the extent and quality of their forest habitat. From 1976 to 1981, the FWS conducted intensive forest bird and habitat surveys on the main Hawaiian Islands.

Data from this “Hawai‘i Forest Bird Survey” demonstrated a high density of endangered forest birds within and around the Shipman Ranch, a large privately owned parcel surrounded by State and other private lands, on the eastern side of Hawai’i Island.

In 1985, the FWS, with the active involvement and support of The Nature Conservancy, purchased Shipman Ranch lands and established the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge (Hakalau Forest). Later, other nearby privately owned parcels were purchased or donated to the refuge.

The Hakalau Forest consists of two distinct units. The Hakalau Forest Unit is a 32,830-acre parcel on the windward slopes of Mauna Kea on Hawai’i Island. It was established to protect and manage endangered forest birds and their rainforest habitat.

This higher refuge contains some of the finest remaining stands of native rain forest in Hawai‘i and habitat for dozens of critically endangered species including seven birds, one insect, one mammal and 20 plants found nowhere else in the world. Currently, it is the only place in Hawai’i where native forest bird populations are stable or increasing.

The refuge provides essential habitat for three endangered honeycreepers (‘Akiapola’au, Hawai’i Creeper ‘Alawi and ‘Akepa), one threatened species (‘I’iwi) and one threatened waterfowl species (Nene – Hawai’i’s state bird that was reintroduced to the refuge in 1996).

Reforestation at the upper elevations of the Hakalau unit of the refuge has increased available habitat and control of feral animals has enhanced habitat quality.

Because of this management effort, the refuge has the highest density of three Hawai’i island endemic endangered bird species, the ‘Akiapola’au, Hawai’i Creeper and Hawai’i ‘Akepa, each with populations in the low thousands. These birds are also found in a few other areas of Hawai’i Island but are in lower densities.

The refuge is one of the few areas on Hawai’i Island where Nene can reproduce freely thanks to protection and small-mammal predator control. Occasionally, Hawaiian Ducks or Koloa are found in stock ponds and along rivers in remote areas in the Hakalau Forest Unit.

In 1997 the FWS added the Kona Forest Unit through a purchase of 5,300-acres south of Kailua-Kona, on the slopes of Mauna Loa. In 2019, an additional 10,000 acres were added to the Kona Unit through the purchase of McCandless Ranch lands that are adjacent to the original parcel, making the total acreage for the Kona Forest Unit 15,448-acres.

The lower elevation Kona Forest Unit is predominantly ‘ōhi‘a trees with an understory of nonnative trees and shrubs and home to a number of endangered birds, plants and one insect.

The primary purpose of this unit is to protect, conserve and manage this native forest for threatened or endangered species. The few remaining wild Hawaiian Crows, or ‘Alala, were found as recently as 2002.

At will public access is not allowed at Hakalau Forest Refuge for a variety of reasons – with the primary one being that the analysis and public scoping conducted during the development of the current management plan found the risks posed to the sensitive native resources were too great.

These risks include the introduction of invasive plants and animals, diseases, and hazards such as fire. Furthermore, the Refuge does not have the types of access or infrastructure necessary to accommodate public visitation in a safe and manageable manner.

Despite Hakalau Forest Refuge not being an ‘open’ refuge, there are still ways for the public to experience the wonders of the refuge, these include:

Refuge-sponsored events and tours
Private tour with one of the guides that is permitted to conduct tours at the Refuge, and
Participating in a volunteer service trip. During these trips, the volunteers plant native trees, work in the greenhouses, or help with other refuge tasks. (Lots here is from the Friends and the FWS Hakalau Forest Refuge.)

I am a Board member on the Friends of Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge. Check out https://friendsofhakalauforest.org/

Please join us at the Friends of Hakalau Forest https://friendsofhakalauforest.org/membership/

May The Forest Be With You!

Remember, it is for the birds.

May 3, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

William (Will) Joseph Arthur Goodhue

“When we pause to consider that here is a studious and altogether competent observer who has had 18 consecutive years of constant and exclusive leprosy practice among 800 to 500 patients, constituting one of the largest segregated colonies in the world, we begin to realize the value of his accumulated experience and his opinions as a leprologist.” (Report of the Governor of Hawaii, To the Secretary of the Interior, 1914)

William (Will) Joseph Arthur Goodhue was born October 4, 1868 in Quebec, Canada and graduated from Rush and Dartmouth Colleges in medicine. He went to Hawaiʻi in 1902 as an intern practicing on Kauai.

He fell in love with Alice Saburo Hayashi, aged sixteen, and she ran off with him to Honolulu where he had been offered a job, and he set up a home with her in Pālama. A child (William Goodhue George) was born in 1903; William paid child support, but did not marry Alice.

Dr Goodhue and John D McVeigh assumed the positions of Resident Physician and Superintendent of Kalaupapa. Goodhue was not only a surgeon in the colony, but spent a great deal of time developing new treatments and improving upon old ones; several of his findings were published in medical journals.

In October 1905, Goodhue married Christina “Tina” Meyer, daughter of Henry and Victoria (Bannister) Meyer. Tina was grand-daughter of Rudolph Wilhelm Meyer, prior Superintendent of the Kalawao settlement (Kalaupapa) (who served with Father Damien and Mother Marianne Cope.)

Will and Tina had three children, all born at Kalaupapa: William Walter Goodhue, John D. Goodhue and Victoria Goodhue. They were later divorced.

Sister Leopoldina of Kalaupapa said of Goodhue, “We had been in the work nearly fifteen years and until Dr. Goodhue came we had never been assisted by a doctor only a very few times, as they were so much in dread of leprosy.”

“Dr. Goodhue, a true American brave and fearless, plunged into the work with strong will and whole heart doing wonderful work, and it became like a different place.”

The noted author, Jack London, visited the colony, and wrote of his friend, “Dr. Goodhue, the pioneer of leprosy surgery, is a hero who should receive every medal that every individual and every country has awarded for courage and life-saving. … I know of no other place … in the world, where the surgical work is being performed that Dr. Goodhue performs daily.”

“I have seen him take a patient, who in any other settlement or lazar house in the world, would from the complication of the disease die horribly in a week, or two weeks or three – I say, I have seen Dr. Goodhue, many times, operate on such a doomed creature, and give it life, not for weeks, not for months, but for years and years.”

But that is not all. Goodhue used Alice Ball’s treatment of using chaulmoogra oil at Kalaupapa; and out of the five hundred and twelve patients, one hundred and seventy-five have been taking regular treatment. (London)

(Ball isolated the ethyl ester of chaulmoogra oil (from the tree native to India) which, when injected, proved extremely effective in relieving some of the symptoms of Hansen’s disease. Although not a full cure, Ball’s discovery was a significant victory in the fight against a disease.)

Goodhue, speaking to members of the legislature visiting Kalaupapa in 1921, said, “With two years’ chaulmoogra oil treatment, I believe sixty-five per cent of the chronic cases of leprosy on Molokaʻi can be cured. And within ten years, all cases should be cured, and Kalaupapa be abandoned as a leper settlement.”

Once known as leprosy, the disease was renamed after Dr. Gerharad Armauer Hansen, a Norwegian physician, when he discovered the causative microorganism in 1873, the same year that Father Damien volunteered to serve at Kalaupapa.

Goodhue retired in 1925. He had contacted Hansen’s disease and left Hawaiʻi for Shanghai, China, to visit his son who was attending college there (he did not wish to be confined to the leper colony where he had worked all those years on Molokaʻi.)

He lived there on his pension and died of a heart attack on March 17, 1941. He had made the request that if he should not recover to bury him there. (Lots of info here from NPS.)

May 2, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Kanawai

In ancient times, native Hawaiians drew their water supplies from fresh water streams, springs, lakes and shallow wells.

For centuries, Hawaiians recognized the life giving qualities and significance and value of water to their survival. Water is life; water is wealth.

You could draw water from only the upper parts of the stream. Bathing was to be done downstream. Damaging irrigation systems or harming the water source was severely punished. Water conservation was a preeminent law of the land. (HBWS)

The Hawaiian word for ‘law’ is kānāwai – it is interesting to note that the literal translation of kānāwai is ‘relating to water.’ Traditional Hawaiian law initially developed around the management and use of water. (Sproat)

The first laws or rules of any consequence that the ancient Hawaiians ever had are said to have been those relating to water. The rules were undoubtedly simple at first. The supply of water was usually ample to satisfy the requirements of the land; cultivation on a large scale for purposes of export was unknown. (Perry, Hawaiʻi Supreme Court)

In pre-Captain Cook times, taro played a vital role in Hawaiian culture. It was not only the Hawaiians’ staple food but the cultivation of kalo was at the very core of Hawaiian culture and identity. The early Hawaiians probably planted kalo in marshes near the mouths of rivers.

Over years of expansion of kalo lo‘i (flooded taro patches) up slopes and along rivers, kalo cultivation in Hawai‘i reached a unique level of engineering and sustainable sophistication. The irrigation systems enabled them to turn vast areas into farm lands, feeding a thriving population over the centuries before Westerners arrived.

Kalo lo‘i systems are typically a set of adjoining terraces that are typically reinforced with stone walls and soil berms. Wetland taro thrives on flooded conditions, and cool, circulating water is optimal for taro growth, thus a system may include one or more irrigation ditches, or ‘auwai, to divert water into and out of the planting area. (McElroy)

Dams that diverted water from the stream were a low loose wall of stones with a few clods here and there, high enough only to raise water sufficiently to flow into the ʻauwai, which entered it at almost level.

The quantity of water awarded to irrigate the loʻi was according to the number of workers and the amount of work put into the building of the ʻauwai. Water rights of others taking water from the main stream below the dam had to be respected, and no ʻauwai was permitted to divert more than half the flow from a stream. (Handy & Handy)

In some ʻauwai, not all of the water was used; after irrigating a few patches, the ditch returned the remainder of the water to the stream. (YaleLawJournal) By rotation with others on the ʻauwai, a grower would divert water from the ʻauwai into his kalo. The next, in turn, would draw off water for his allotted period of time. (KSBE)

Loʻi dependent on an ʻauwai also took their share of water in accordance with a time schedule, from a few hours at a time day or night up to two or three days. In times of drought the luna wai (water boss) had the right to adjust the sharing of available water to meet needs. (Handy & Handy)

With ‘contact’ (arrival of Captain Cook in 1778,) Western influence played into the management and use. Kingdom laws formalized and reduced Hawaiian customs and traditions to writing.

The Declaration of Rights and Constitution of 1839-40, which was the first Western-style constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, expressly acknowledged that the land, along with all of its resources, “was not (the King’s) private property. It belongs to the Chiefs and the people in common, of whom (the King) was the head and had the management of landed property.”

In 1860, an act was passed providing for the appointment in each election district throughout the Kingdom of three suitable persons to act as commissioners to decide on all controversies respecting rights of way and rights of water between private individuals or between private individuals and the government (the powers and duties of the commissioners were finally, by act of 1907, transferred to the circuit judges.) (Perry)

Then groundwater was pursued when James Campbell envisioned supplying the arid area of ʻEwa with water. He commissioned California well-driller James Ashley to drill a well on his Honouliuli Ranch. In 1879, Ashley drilled Hawaiʻi’s first artesian well; Campbell’s vision had made it possible for Hawaiʻi’s people to grow sugar cane on the dry lands of the ʻEwa Plain.

Subsequent well production expanded and diversified the collection and distribution of water. (Now, nearly all of Hawaiʻi’s drinking water comes from groundwater sources.

Constitution amendments in the 1978 Constitutional Convention (later ratified by the people,) put water as a public resource. Under the State Constitution (Article XI,) the State has an obligation to protect, control and regulate the use of Hawaii’s water resources for the benefit of its people.

Ground and surface water resources are held in public trust for the benefit of the citizens of the state. The people of Hawaiʻi are beneficiaries and have a right to have water protected for their use and/or benefit.

Legal challenges and subsequent decisions by the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court identified four public trust purposes: Maintenance of water in their natural state; Domestic water use of the general public, particularly drinking water; Exercise of Native Hawaiian traditional and customary rights; and Reservations of water for Hawaiian Home Lands.

In 1987, the State Water Code was adopted by the Hawaiʻi Legislature, which set in place various layers of protection for all waters in the Hawaiian Islands; it formed the Commission on Water Resource Management.

The Hawaiʻi Water Plan adopted by the Water Commission (that includes the Water Resource Protection Plan, Water Quality Plan, State Water Projects Plan, Agricultural Water Use and Development Plan and Water Use and Development Plans for each County) is critical for the effective and coordinated protection, conservation, development and management of the State’s water resources.

A comment by an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court 100-years ago holds true today, “Water rights are destined to play an important part in the future of Hawaiʻi as they have in its past.”

“The growth of urban communities and the agricultural development of the territory render inevitable the conservation and use in an increasing degree of the available waters, with probably consolidation of some rights and new distributions of others. The subject will lose none of its interest with the passage of time.” (Perry)

We are reminded of the importance of respect and responsibility we each share for the environment and our natural and cultural resources – including our responsibility to protect and properly use and manage our water resources.

I was honored to have served for 4½-years as the Chair of the State’s Commission on Water Resource Management overseeing, managing and regulating the State’s water resources.

We are fortunate people living in a very special place. Let’s continue to work together to make Hawaiʻi a great place to live.

May 1, 2025 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

May Day Is Lei Day In Hawai‘i

May Day has been a traditional day of festivities throughout the centuries.

May Day is most associated with towns and villages celebrating springtime fertility and revelry with village fetes and community gatherings.

The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian times, with the festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and the Walpurgis Night celebrations of the Germanic countries. It is also associated with the Gaelic Beltane.

Many pagan celebrations were abandoned or Christianized during the process of conversion in Europe.

The day was a traditional summer holiday in many pre-Christian European pagan cultures.

Fading in popularity since the late 20th-century is the giving of “May baskets,” small baskets of sweets and/or flowers, usually left anonymously on neighbors’ doorsteps.

A more secular version of May Day continues to be observed in Europe and America. Here, May Day may be best known for its tradition of dancing the maypole dance and crowning of the Queen of the May.

May Day is Lei Day in Hawai‘i.

The first Lei Day was in 1927 and celebrated in downtown Honolulu with a few people wearing lei.

From that it grew and more and more people began to wear lei on May 1.

The lei known the world over, is a symbol of aloha. Great care is taken into the gathering of the materials to make a lei. After the materials are gathered, they are prepared and then fashioned into a lei. As this is done, the mana (or spirit) of the creator of the lei is sewn or woven into it.

In 2001, Senator Akaka, during a May 1 address, said, ” ‘May Day is Lei Day’ in Hawaii. Lei Day is a nonpolitical and nonpartisan celebration. Indeed, its sole purpose is to engage in random acts of kindness and sharing, and to celebrate the Aloha spirit, that intangible, but palpable, essence which is best exemplified by the hospitality and inclusiveness exhibited by the Native Hawaiians – Hawaii’s indigenous peoples – to all people of goodwill.”

When you give a lei you are giving a part of you. Likewise, as you receive a lei you are receiving a part of the creator of the lei.

“A lei is not just flowers strung on a thread. A lei is a tangible representation of aloha in which symbols of that aloha are carefully sewn or woven together to create a gift.

This gift tells a story of the relationship between the giver and the recipient. Many things can make up a lei. One can string flowers, seeds, shells, or berries into a lei.

One can weave vines and leaves into a lei. One can weave words into a poem or song, which is then a lei. The ultimate expression of a lei is kamalei – the child which represents the intertwining of aloha between the parents.”

The lei of the eight major Hawaiian Islands become the theme for Hawai‘i May Day pageants and a lei queen chosen with a princess representing each of the islands, wearing lei fashioned with the island’s flower and color.

Hawai‘i – Color: ‘Ula‘ula (red) – Flower: ‘Ōhi‘a Lehua
Maui – Color: ‘Ākala (pink) – Flower: Lokelani
Kaho‘olawe -Color: Hinahina (silvery gray) – Flower: Hinahina
Lāna‘i – Color: ‘Alani (orange) – Flower: Kauna‘oa
Moloka‘i – Color: ‘Ōma‘oma‘o (green) -Flower: Kukui
O‘ahu – Color: Pala luhiehu (golden yellow) or melemele (yellow) Flower: ‘Ilima
Kaua‘i – Color: Poni (purple) – Flower: Mokihana
Ni‘ihau – Color: Ke‘oke‘o (white) – Flower: Pūpū (shell)

The video plays May Day is Lei Day in Hawai‘i with scenes from across the state.