HONILIMA

These handsome stamps feature a Hawaiian rain forest painted by John D. Dawson to remind us all of the important of preserving this habitat for the plants and animals that need shelter from civilization.

from the US Postal Service site:
Featuring a Hawaiian rain forest, the 2010 Nature of America issuance is the 12th stamp pane in an educational series focusing on the beauty and complexity of major plant and animal communities in the United States.

The setting for the colorful acrylic painting on the stamp pane is a rain forest on Hawaiʻi’s largest island, which is also named Hawaiʻi. Artist John D. Dawson painted the scene and each of the previous ones in the Nature of America series.

To illustrate the spectacular biodiversity of a Hawaiian rain forest, the artist depicted more than 24 different species. The scene itself is completely imaginary. Such a dense grouping was necessary in order to show as many plants and animals as possible in the stamp pane format. Even so, every species depicted could be encountered in a Hawaiian rain forest, and all of the species and their interactions are appropriate and were recommended by scientists.

A description of the rain forest and a numbered key to the artwork appear on the back of the stamp pane, along with a corresponding list of common and scientific names for 24 selected species.

Hawaiian Shirt: the 2012 postcard stamps

The US Postal Service has put out some terrific Hawaiian stamps in the past few years and none will bring a smile like this new strip of thirty two cent stamps for postcards.

In this age of emails and texting take a moment to send a sunny postcard to a friend and adorn it with one of these so called Aloha shirts. You will be sending love and aloha to someone’s mailbox where a hand written message is now as rare as a four-leaf clover.

You Are in Our Hearts, by Nancy Lee Chong, (c) Pacific Rim Quilt Company

One of the younger generation of Native Hawaiian quilters in the Ka Hui Kapa Apana O Waimea Club, Sharon Balai of Waimea, Hawaii, is known for her ability to create innovative and complex patterns. She is also a strong advocate for protecting the cultural rights of ownership of traditional Hwaiian quilt patterns. She explains how this quilt, “Kaumoha Koli’i”, represents and speaks of marriage and was designed specifically to symbolize the union of Hawaii’s cultural past with the introduced materials, ideas, and influence from other cultures. Nothing on or of this quilt is native to Hawaii but for the Hawaiian cultural system that brought in the tradtions and the unique expansive concept of the eightfold process. The pattern of open hearts has a message to all who see it, saying “Na pua o Hawaii aloha” (from the flowers [children] of Hawaii, greetings of love). As is customary in Hawaii, the name also has a second meaning: Kaumoha is a heaviness or burden due to a troubling situation, such as sadness or grief: Koli’i is a disappearing or diminishing, such as water evaporating or a ship sailing off into the horizon. This quilt’s other name, “diminishing burden,” refers to the quilter’s sustained thoughts and feelings while this quilt was in progress.

From To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions

Kapa Pohopoho Ka Hui Kapa Apana O Waimea group

Occasionally the Ka Hui Kapa Apana O Waimea group on the Big Island of Hawaii makes quilts for educational or service organizations. During 1996-97 they made two identical sampler quilts; one was given to Michigan State University Museum, the other the Hamakua Health Center in Honokaa, Hawaii, originally a small medical dispensary serving plantation workers of the now-defunct Hamakua Sugar Company.

The quilt features the following components: sugar cane (in the center), an inner cross of squares depicting flowers that grow well but are not medicinal, an inner cross of squares depicting food items that my be used as medicine, and outer border of squares showing plants used medicinally by some but also used as decorations or food.

Featured in To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions

Hawaiian quilt makers have long borne special feelings towards their creations. Naming a quilt, is a nuanced affair that can incorporate strictly private symbols or meanings and bear no relationship to the visual pattern of the quilt itself.

Hawaiians were skilled in the creation of tapa, clothing or bedding made from the bark of the wauke or paper mulberry plant. The tapa technique — involving the pounding together of strips of bark to form sheets of different textures, which are then colorfully decorated by pen with various dyes — provided the foundation upon which Hawaiian quilting was eventually built.