Maybe it’s a good thing my new books, Sugarcane Days: Remembering Maui’s Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company and The Story of Lahaina, didn’t arrive during the last few days. Imagine unloading 3,000-plus pounds of books in the rain. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself after reading Sarah Ruppenthal’s great story in The Maui News…
Category Archives: Island Life
Maui’s HC&S Was Constantly Innovating
This is an excerpt from Sugarcane Days, due on the island any day now! Innovation was an everyday thing at midcentury HC&S. Safer, easier, cheaper—these were goals for everyone, from supervisors at “work simplification” conferences to the workers who informally fine-tuned the processes they performed. Isolated in the middle of the Pacific before the days…
Royal Maui Line Produced a Sacred Queen
Keopuolani, the “sacred wife” of Kamehameha I, was considered sacred because of her high lineage. She was the product of generations of intermarriage between high-ranking ali‘i of the Pi‘ilani line. The marriage of close relatives—full-blood brothers and sisters, half siblings, first cousins—was believed to magnify the mana, or power, of the chiefly class, concentrating it…
Two New Maui History Books on the Way!
Maui Then and Now is back! After a marathon of book creation followed by various technical glitches, I’m happy to return to this blog, my way of sharing the things I’ve learned about Maui history (and other odds and ends). I’m especially happy to report that the aforementioned book-creation marathon resulted in a book that will…
Maui’s Waters of Destruction
The Wailuku River (once known as Iao Stream) lived up to its name the other night when it became a “water of destruction.” The storm that wrought such destruction on other parts of the island resulted in what I’ve been wishing for in my new, dry Kihei location: a quiet rainy day. It wasn’t so peaceful elsewhere…
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