Aloha kakou and mahalo all you coffee drinkers! Hawaii calls!

I designed this potato chip bag in 2005. Is it just a coincidence?

I know a woman in Oregon who has extended the offer of my accompanying her on her next coffee buying trip to Hawaii. She has a bustling coffee stand and catering business, with clients such as Intel. By coincidence, I'd recently sent her a link to the Kauai Coffee Company http://www.kauaicoffee.com/ which led to our conversation about the trip. She has toured the Kauai Coffee Company before and bought product from them. I suggested she might form an alliance that would require her to go to Kauai more frequently, and hinted I would enjoy being her company's consultant, for a decade or two. I gave her my best sales pitch. I believe I swayed her with my turns of phrases; she spoke to me via phone and said that if I promised I'd wear a grass skirt and the coconuts she'd see what she could do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Lq4rAJ1rQ&feature=related

The Kauai Coffee Company has been growing coffee since 1987, when they made the transition from being the McBryde Sugar Company. That company had been in business since the early 1800s, and had been one of the first sugar cane growers in Hawaii. The transformation was not without setbacks. In 1992, Hurrican Iniki wreaked $8.5 million dollars in damages to their coffee crop. They bounced back from that devastating loss, and by 1996 Kauai Coffee's harvest exceeded the volume of coffee produced in the entire Kona region. I imagine after that harvest they had a big barbecue and surfing party on a nearby beach.

While I have yet to go to Hawaii, my love affair with Hawaii has been going on for a number of years. One of my brothers was married to a gal from Hawaii for over twenty years. He told tales of the ideal climate, and the prospects of his owning a chunk of land in Kauai, due to his marriage. But there can often be trouble in paradise, and it took the form of my brother abandoning his Hawaiian retirement plans for a new wife and new children. Ah well, so it goes. It was he who first introduced me to the writings of James Michener, whose wonderful novels included Hawaii, and Tales of the South Pacific.  Michener's novel Hawaii, was perhaps the true beginning of my fascination with the Aloha State. Hawaii had everything I desired: mangoes, hula dancers, grass huts, hammocks slung between palms, crystal clear ocean - perfect for snorkeling or diving, a laid back lifestyle, and good weather. You can therefore imagine my elation when this business owner spoke of her love of all things tropical, in a deliriously happy tone, "Aloha! Let's go work in paradise!"
Of course nothing every will happen. But all is forgiven; Hawaii simply made her get carried away. I don't expect this businesswoman or anyone else to shell out the money for me to fly to Hawaii.

The harvest ended at the Kauai Coffee coffee plantation in early December. On their website you can learn about the process. I am sure my sister-in-law, the one married to my younger brother, would love to tour Kauai Coffee's operation. She has managed a Starbucks in the Seattle area for fifteen years. Her love affair with coffee began in Louisiana, where she was born. Coffee was the way her parents were able to get moving in the wee hours to operate their chicken business. Coffee has many benefits on morning challenged human beings, but like all stimulants, more caffeine is required to elicit the same effects. (aka: the jolt effect). Without caffeine, many offices around the world would be staffed by zombies, and nothing would get done until sometime after ten in the morning. American industry wouldn't stand for that. It explains why Intel would be grateful for my friend's coffee business. They even said she could park her enormous trailer there free of charge. It's just good business. And, the coffee my friend brews is every bit as good as Starbuck's (ten words in their title's) coffee drinks. Though coffee does rob the body of calcium, regardless of who makes it. And I have to tell you, I was grossed out by this businesswoman's suggestion I try a coffee enema. No thank you, if I drink coffee it's only going down one direction. Yecch!

In 2005 I was contracted to design a potato chip bag for Tim's Chips (Birds Eye Foods), via my former employers at Epic Ad Group in Eugene, Oregon. It was, ironically, to depict a Hawaiian Luau Barbecue. I immediately thought of a conch blower as the main aspect of the illustration. He and the other people shown would be in traditional Hawaiian clothing, (leis would be mandatory), which is to say - in clothes suited for life on a tropical island. I suggested the bag be bright orange. The barbecue scene would have a border of plumeria blossoms, and would essentially be a reflection of my own desire to live there. The Creative Director on the project had roots in Hawaii, and he was elated with my design. I went a bit overboard and made the hula dancer's bust a bit too big, so I had to do a breast reduction, but that was easy with a bit of acrylic paint and a small brush stroke. The result was a new addition to the brand that was soon in every grocery and convenience store I frequented. I proudly told random strangers, as I thrust the bag in their faces, that I'd designed the bag and done the illustration. They often smiled in a polite way as if to say, "Oh, you mean you think I just fell off the turnip truck?"

When I think of Hawaii, I can't get the image of Don Ho and Hawaii Five-O out of my head. I sometimes put Don Ho as the lead actor in that series. I also think of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (aka: "IZ") http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZqPLxCDLs4&feature=related and his rendition of "Over the Rainbow." The Germans were especially crazy about this song, (it was Number One on their pop charts for over two months), perhaps owing to their love affair with the South Pacific. If you have been to Germany, and experienced their rainy, gray weather, you can understand why they have this affection for IZ. They need the D3 Hawaii offers in abundance. I bought IZ's album immediately - drawn to its happy tone that struck a chord in my soul. IZ died, like his father, of a massive heart attack. He was 38 years old. Both he and his father were also massively overweight. IZ, in one of his songs relates that his father died of a "broken heart." The broken heart part has to do with the perception that the old Hawaiian culture is being lost.

The Hawaiian gods are not yet forgotten, but many Native Hawaiians have amnesia about them. The Hawaiian language has not died, but the average Hawaiian is more adept at the popular pigeon English. Native Hawaiians have been replaced by Japanese and Anglo populations. Honolulu is like a tropical Los Angeles, with all the accompanying problems, such as smog, urban sprawl, and drugs in the schools. It is a portrait of the effects of a non-Hawaiian culture on an indigenous culture.  The non-Hawaiian diet that was foisted upon Native Hawaiians, like Big Mac's, French fries, Diet Cola, iceberg lettuce, chocolate shakes, and prescription drugs, has led to obesity and diabetes.  Once, taro, breadfruit, yams, seafood, fruits, and medicinal herbs were on the menu. Once, Native Hawaiians were trim and athletic looking. Aloha to that time. The Christian god replaced the Hawaiian's pagan gods of the land, sky, and sea. It was a familiar methodology missionaries, conquistadors, and crusaders had employed for quite some time, to the detriment of native populations.

Merchant ships from China and other ports of call had landed in Hawaii for at least two hundred years before Captain Cook arrived in Hawaii in January of 1778. Cook had previously sailed just about everywhere there was to sail, even exploring the coast of the Pacific Northwest, and Australia, in his ship - the Discovery. His first landing was in Kauai. He met the King of Maui, and spent six weeks exploring the islands. Then he set off again, looking for what was called "the Northwest Passage." A year later, in January of 1779, Cook and the Discovery landed on the Big Island, at Kealakekua Bay. The natives, who had mistaken Cook, upon his first arrival, for their god, Lono, a fertility and music god the first time they'd met him, were confused by his second arrival. Their prophesy did not say that Lono would return a second time. Shortly thereafter, a dispute erupted with the Hawaiians over the theft of a British dingy (the Hawaiians were seeking to strip the metal from the boat). Cook, in an effort to coerce the native to return the dingy, held their king hostage, which infuriated the Hawaiians. (Incidentally, the mistaken identity aspect of the story bears a remarkable resemblance to the tale of Montezuma mistaking Cortez as the returning  Quetzalcoatl, their feathered serpent god who promised to return, and had sailed away on a raft across the Atlantic ocean). Second comings would also be a theme of later missionaries, who promised the Hawaiian islanders that Jesus would return one day. But back to the story: during the altercation, Cook was slightly wounded, and when it was seen that he could bleed, it was further confirmation of Cook not being Lono. The Hawaiians promptly killed him and dismembered his body. (It did not help that Cook could not play the ukulele to save his life.) From the Hawaiians point of view, Cook was one more houle invader. Months later a peace was made, and the Hawaiians returned Cook's remains, which, by that time, amounted to a bag of bones, and a few shreds of Cook's naval uniform. So it goes.

King Kamehameha, (aka: "The Great") had united the Hawaiian islands at about the time of Cook's second arrival, in 1789. The islands had been dominated for a thousand years by invaders from Tahiti. The Tahitians were warlike and had easily taken over the islands. When King Kamehameha took command, the population of the Hawaiian islands were around 500,000 people. However, the population would soon decline dramatically due to STD's, and diseases spread by the visitations of merchant ships from the rest of the world. The Hawaiians had no resistance to diseases such as Smallpox, and the population plummeted much as the Native American populations plummeted due to contact with the outside world. King Kamahameha saw the writing on the palm tree, so to speak, and adopted the English's trappings for monarchy, as if he were ruling as the English under the rule of St. James (robes, bucklers, crowns, royal carriages, and caviar). He saw it was better to make peace than fight the invaders. A musket or a steel knife was superior to a spear or obsidian knife in most ways. The system of rule of the Hawaiian Islands was based on kapu, and involved the chiefs and the commoners. The people could own nothing, not even a good surfboard, and were under the rules of kapu and the chiefs were under the rules of the alii. King Kamehameha was living the high life. For a while anyway. He encouraged the young Hawaiian men to work as sailors on the merchant ships, and learn about the outside world. Many Hawaiians sailed in these boats to the Northwest and were referred to as "The Blue Men," and proved to be invaluable in their new roles as the white man's unofficial slaves.

Hawaii is the only U.S. state that was once a kingdom with its own monarchy. The Iolani Palace was completed in 1882, during the reign of David Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii. The last royal to live there was Kalakaua's sister Queen Liliuokanlani, who abdicated in 1895, after the overthrow of the monarchy by the United States. Three years later, in 1898, Hawaii was annexed by the United States. In August of 1959 Hawaii became the 50th U.S. State.

The 18th and 19th century's white landlords of Hawaii set about putting in crops that were not grown in the islands, such as sugar cane. Sugar cane grew very well in the islands, just as it had in other colonies, like Jamaica, where slaves made the plantation owners very wealthy.  The first coffee plantations began with a Spanish advisor to King Kamehameha, Don Francsisco de Paula y Marin, who planted coffee  and pineapple plants on the Big Island in about 1813. Mango trees arrived in 1824. In 1828, the first coffee plant was built in Kona. With the latest craze for coffee, the cultivation of coffee beans is one of the leading crops. And there are many health benefits to drinking coffee. The old wife's tale, that coffee will stunt your growth or put hair on your chest are erroneous. It will not give you more sex appeal. But as any coffee drinker will affirm, it does help develop one's social skills in the workplace. You will not find more social people than around a Starbucks, which explains why women in particular are such big time coffee devotees. Women are much more social than men; talking is their domain, and coffee is the lubrication. Besides the energy boost and the ensuing heart palpitations, coffee provides  a number of health benefits. According to the Mayo Clinic, who also have documented its ill effects, consumption of coffee can help protect people from Parkinson's disease,  type 2 diabetes, and liver cancer, as well as produce depression lowering effects. Yes, it will stain your teeth, and if you drink too much at one time it can turn you into Alvin the Chipmunk. And yes, if you drink it black without the milk products and sugar it will help you keep trim and energetic, and with those additives, (like whip cream and a danish to go) it can make you retain fat. But overall, it is a healthy drink that should be consumed once a day, forever and ever, even if you do lose some bone density. Better to lose it in Hawaii. Besides you float more easy without all that bone to hold you down.

There are Starbucks on nearly every block in Seattle. You will never be without coffee if you come here. Billions of people drink coffee every day of the year. My sister-in-law gave me several bags of Starbucks coffee for Christmas. I am stocked up until this coming June. And by then I hope to be wearing that grass skirt and the, um. . .coconuts.

So aloha, people. If you want to learn a bit of Hawaiian before you go, visit here: http://www.mauimapp.com/moolelo/hwnexprns.htm