VISITING MAUI & KNOWING THE LEGEND OF HAWAIʻILOA

Today, The Stones have flown to Maui, one of the Hawaiian Islands. The Grandma, who is a great fan of volcanoes and Astronomy wants to visit this unique place on Earth. The family has revised some English grammar and practised some A2 Cambridge Exams.

The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at 1,883 km2.

Maui is part of the State of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, which include Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, and unpopulated Kahoʻolawe. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444, third-highest of the Hawaiian Islands, behind that of Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island. Kahului is the largest census-designated place (CDP) on the island with a population of 26,337 as of 2010, and is the commercial and financial hub of the island.

Wailuku is the seat of Maui County and is the third-largest CDP as of 2010. Other significant places include Kīhei (including Wailea and Makena in the Kihei Town CDP, the island's second-most-populated CDP), Lāhainā (including Kāʻanapali and Kapalua in the Lāhainā Town CDP), Makawao, Pukalani, Pāʻia, Kula, Haʻikū, and Hāna.

Native Hawaiian tradition gives the origin of the island's name in the legend of Hawaiʻiloa, the navigator credited with discovery of the Hawaiian Islands.

According to it, Hawaiʻiloa named the island after his son, who in turn was named for the demigod Māui. The earlier name of Maui was ʻIhikapalaumaewa. The Island of Maui is also called the Valley Isle for the large isthmus separating its northwestern and southeastern volcanic masses.

More information: Maui County

Maui's diverse landscapes are the result of a unique combination of geology, topography, and climate.

Each volcanic cone in the chain of the Hawaiian Islands is built of dark, iron-rich/quartz-poor rocks, which poured out of thousands of vents as highly fluid lava over a period of millions of years. Several of the volcanoes were close enough to each other that lava flows on their flanks overlapped one another, merging into a single island. Maui is such a volcanic doublet, formed from two shield volcanoes that overlapped one another to form an isthmus between them.

The older, western volcano has been eroded considerably and is cut by numerous drainages, forming the peaks of the West Maui Mountains in Hawaiian, Mauna Kahalawai.

Puʻu Kukui is the highest of the peaks at 1,764 m. The larger, younger volcano to the east, Haleakalā, rises to more than 3,000 m above sea level, and measures 8.0 km from seafloor to summit.

The eastern flanks of both volcanoes are cut by deeply incised valleys and steep-sided ravines that run downslope to the rocky, windswept shoreline. The valley-like Isthmus of Maui that separates the two volcanic masses was formed by sandy erosional deposits.

Maui's last eruption, originating in Haleakalā's Southwest Rift Zone, occurred around 1790; two of the resulting lava flows are located at Cape Kīnaʻu between ʻĀhihi Bay and La Perouse Bay on the southwest shore of East Maui, and at Makaluapuna Point on Honokahua Bay on the northwest shore of West Maui. Considered to be dormant by volcanologists, Haleakalā is certainly capable of further eruptions.

Maui is part of a much larger unit, Maui Nui, that includes the islands of Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Molokaʻi, and the now submerged Penguin Bank. During periods of reduced sea level, including as recently as 20,000 years ago, they are joined together as a single island due to the shallowness of the channels between them.

Maui is an important center for advanced astronomical research. The Haleakala Observatory was Hawaii's first astronomical research and development facility, operating at the Maui Space Surveillance Site (MSSS) electro-optical facility. At the 10,023-foot summit of the long dormant volcano Haleakala, operational satellite tracking facilities are co-located with a research and development facility providing superb data acquisition and communication support. The high elevation, dry climate, and freedom from light pollution offer virtually year-round observation of satellites, missiles, man-made orbital debris, and astronomical objects.

More information: Go Hawaii

No Keia La, No Keia Po, A Mau Loa.

From this day, from this night, forever more.

Hawaiian Proverb

ISABELLA A. ABBOTT, LEADER EXPERT ON PACIFIC ALGAE

Today, The Stones & The Grandma have visited Hana, the hometown of Isabella Aiona Abbott, the Hawaiian ethnobotanist who became the leading expert on Pacific algae.

Isabella Aiona Abbott (June 20, 1919-October 28, 2010) was an educator, phycologist, and ethnobotanist from Hawaii.

The first native Hawaiian woman to receive a PhD in science, she became the leading expert on Pacific algae.

Abbott was born Isabella Kauakea Yau Yung Aiona in Hana, Maui, Territory of Hawaii, on June 20, 1919. Her Hawaiian name means white rain of Hana and she was known as Izzy. Her father was ethnically Chinese while her mother was a Native Hawaiian. Her mother taught her about edible Hawaiian seaweeds and the value and diversity of Hawaii's native plants. Abbott was the only girl and second youngest in a family of eight siblings.

She grew up in Honolulu near Waikiki, and graduated from Kamehameha Schools in 1937. She received her undergraduate degree in botany at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa in 1941, a master's degree in botany from the University of Michigan in 1942, and a PhD in botany from the University of California, Berkeley in 1950. She married zoologist Donald Putnam Abbott (1920–1986), who had been a fellow student at the University of Hawaii as well as Berkeley. The couple moved to Pacific Grove, California where her husband taught at the Hopkins Marine Station run by Stanford University.

More information: Indigenous Goddess Gang

Since at that time women were rarely considered for academic posts, she spent time raising her daughter Annie Abbott Foerster, while studying the algae of the California coast. She adapted recipes to use the local bull kelp (Nereocystis) in foods such as cakes and pickles.

In 1966 she became a research associate and taught as a lecturer at Hopkins. She compiled a book on marine algae of the Monterey peninsula, which later was expanded to include all of the California coast. She was awarded the Darbaker Prize by the Botanical Society of America in 1969. By 1972, Stanford University promoted her directly to full professor.

In 1982 both Abbotts retired and moved back to Hawaii, where she was hired by the University of Hawaii to study ethnobotany, the interaction of humans and plants.

She authored eight books and over 150 publications. She was considered the world's leading expert on Hawaiian seaweeds, known in the Hawaiian language as limu. She was credited with discovering over 200 species, with several named after her, including the Rhodomelaceae family (red algae) genus of Abbottella. This earned her the nickname First Lady of Limu.

In 1993 she received the Charles Reed Bishop Medal and in 1997 she received the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.

 More information: Hawaii

She was the G. P. Wilder Professor of Botany from 1980 until her retirement in 1982, upon then her and her husband moved to Hawaii where she continued her research as the professor emerita of botany at the University of Hawaii. She served on the board of directors of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. In November 1997 she co-authored an essay in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin criticizing the trustees of Kamehameha Schools, which led to its reorganization.

In 2005, she was named a Living Treasure of Hawai'i by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii.

She was considered the foremost authority on the algae of the Pacific Ocean basin and in 2008 she received a lifetime achievement award from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources for her studies of coral reefs.

Isabella Kauakea Aiona Abbott died at October 28, 2010 at the age of 91 at her home in Honolulu.

Abbott's surviving family includes a daughter who resides in Hawaii and a granddaughter who lives in Hawaii.

To preserve Abbott's legacy and career as a botanist, the University of Hawaii established a scholarship to support graduate research in Hawaiian ethnobotany and marine botany.

More information: Standford News

That was the first time anybody told me
that the scientific names meant something,
just like the Hawaiian names meant something.

Isabella Aiona Abbott

HAWAII, THE 50TH OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Yesterday, The Stones arrived to Hawaii. They are tired after almost 23 hours flying between Manchester and Honolulu. During the flight, The Grandma was reading about Hawaii, its culture and its history.

Hawaii is a state of the United States of America located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the only U.S. state located outside North America, the only island state, and the only state in the tropics.

The state encompasses nearly the entire Hawaiian archipelago, which consists of 137 volcanic islands spanning 2,400 km, which are physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. The state's ocean coastline is consequently the fourth longest in the U.S, at about 1,210 km.

The eight main islands, from northwest to southeast, are Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui, and Hawaiʻi, after which the state is named; it is often called the Big Island or Hawaii Island to avoid confusion with the state or archipelago.

Of the 50 U.S. states, Hawaii is the eighth-smallest geographically and the 11th-least populous, but the 13th-most densely populated. It has more than 1.4 million residents, and is among the most diverse states in the country, with the nation's only Asian American demographic majority.

The state capital and largest city is Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu. 

Settled by Polynesians some time between 124 and 1120 AD, Hawaii was an independent nation until 1898, when it was annexed by the United States. It became the most recent state to join the union, on August 21, 1959.

More information: State of Hawaii

Hawaii's diverse natural scenery, warm tropical climate, abundance of public beaches, oceanic surroundings, active volcanoes, and clear skies on the Big Island make it a popular destination for tourists, surfers, biologists, volcanologists, and astronomers. Due to its central location in the Pacific and successive waves of labor migration, Hawaii is a unique melting pot of Southeast Asian, East Asian and North American cultures, in addition to its indigenous Hawaiian culture.

The state of Hawaii derives its name from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi. A common Hawaiian explanation of the name of Hawaiʻi is that it was named for Hawaiʻiloa, a legendary figure from Hawaiian myth. He is said to have discovered the islands when they were first settled.

The Hawaiian language word Hawaiʻi is very similar to Proto-Polynesian Sawaiki, with the reconstructed meaning homeland. Cognates of Hawaiʻi are found in other Polynesian languages, including Māori (Hawaiki), Rarotongan (ʻAvaiki) and Samoan (Savaiʻi). According to linguists Pukui and Elbert, elsewhere in Polynesia, Hawaiʻi or a cognate is the name of the underworld or of the ancestral home, but in Hawaii, the name has no meaning.

Hawaiʻi is one of two states that were widely recognized independent nations prior to joining the United States.

The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was sovereign from 1810 until 1893 when the monarchy was overthrown by resident American and European capitalists and landholders.

Hawaiʻi was an independent republic from 1894 until August 12, 1898, when it officially became a territory of the United States. Hawaiʻi was admitted as a U.S. state on August 21, 1959.

Based on archaeological evidence, the earliest habitation of the Hawaiian Islands dates to around 300 CE, probably by Polynesian settlers from the Marquesas Islands. A second wave of migration from Raiatea and Bora Bora took place in the 11th century. The date of the human discovery and habitation of the Hawaiian Islands is the subject of academic debate.

Some archaeologists and historians think it was a later wave of immigrants from Tahiti around 1000 CE who introduced a new line of high chiefs, the kapu system, the practice of human sacrifice, and the building of heiau. This later immigration is detailed in Hawaiian mythology (moʻolelo) about Paʻao. Other authors say there is no archaeological or linguistic evidence for a later influx of Tahitian settlers and that Paʻao must be regarded as a myth.

The history of the islands is marked by a slow, steady growth in population and the size of the chiefdoms, which grew to encompass whole islands. Local chiefs, called aliʻi, ruled their settlements, and launched wars to extend their influence and defend their communities from predatory rivals. Ancient Hawaiʻi was a caste-based society, much like that of Hindus in India.

More information: Hawaii Tourism Authority

The 1778 arrival of British explorer Captain James Cook marked the first documented contact by a European explorer with Hawaiʻi. Cook named the archipelago the Sandwich Islands in honor of his sponsor John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, publishing the islands' location and rendering the native name as Owyhee. The form Owyhee or Owhyhee is preserved in the names of certain locations in the American part of the Pacific Northwest, among them Owyhee County and Owyhee Mountains in Idaho, named after three native Hawaiian members of a trapping party who went missing in the area.

During the 1780s, and 1790s, chiefs often fought for power. After a series of battles that ended in 1795, all inhabited islands were subjugated under a single ruler, who became known as King Kamehameha the Great. He established the House of Kamehameha, a dynasty that ruled the kingdom until 1872.

After Kamehameha II inherited the throne in 1819, American Protestant missionaries to Hawaiʻi converted many Hawaiians to Christianity. They used their influence to end many traditional practices of the people.

After William McKinley won the 1896 U.S. presidential election, advocates pressed to annex the Republic of Hawaiʻi. The previous president, Grover Cleveland, was a friend of Queen Liliʻuokalani. McKinley was open to persuasion by U.S. expansionists and by annexationists from Hawaiʻi. He met with three non-native annexationists: Lorrin A. Thurston, Francis March Hatch and William Ansel Kinney. After negotiations in June 1897, Secretary of State John Sherman agreed to a treaty of annexation with these representatives of the Republic of Hawaiʻi.

The U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. Despite the opposition of most native Hawaiians, the Newlands Resolution was used to annex the Republic to the U.S.; it became the Territory of Hawaiʻi. The Newlands Resolution was passed by the House on June 15, 1898, by 209 votes in favor to 91 against, and by the Senate on July 6, 1898, by a vote of 42 to 21.

More information: Go Hawaii

Let the old men, the old women,
and the children go and sleep on the wayside;
let them not be molested.

King Kamehameha I