In Hawaii, Arbor Day falls on the first Friday in November. If you happen to be in the Islands this week, there are plenty of tree-planting opportunities and green celebrations.

The Territory of Hawaii first observed the day in 1905 when Gov. George Robert Carter proclaimed Nov. 3 as Arbor Day and recommended that all public schools dedicate part of that day to planting trees and shrubs on school grounds.

Arbor Day’s origins are tied to event held in Nebraska in 1872, through which tree-planting was encouraged as a means to prevent destruction of forests. Most of the states on the U.S. mainland celebrate Arbor Day during the spring planting season.

Here’s a listing of various events, collected by Arbor Day Hawaii, a nonprofit sponsored by Friends of Hawaii's Urban Forest.

 
• Hawaiian Electric Company’s tree/shrub giveaway — Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) and its partners will give away 2,700 trees and shrubs on Sat., Nov. 5 at six locations across the island. One plant per family, while supplies last.

You can select from a variety of popular fruit trees, flowering shrubs, and native plants. Certified arborists and volunteers will be on hand to assist you in selecting plants. You’ll also get information to help you to properly site, plant, and care for your tree. For information about the giveaway’s six locations and pickup times, click here.

• Hoakalei Cultural Foundation’s Ewa Beach Arbor Day giveaway — Hoakalei Cultural Foundation will hold its fifth annual Arbor Day giveaway at the Keoneula Elementary School in Ewa Beach, Sat., Nov. 5.

Interested in picking up three Native Hawaiian plants? If so, organizers request that you pre-register for an hour-long mini-workshop. The plant trio: ground cover called ilima papa (Sida fallax); a shrub, hinahina ‘Ewa (Achyranthes splendens var. rotundata); and a tree, naio (Myoporum sandwicense). Workshops are set for 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. For more information about pre-registration and plant experts slated to take part in the event, click here.

 

The perfect way to relax at the end of a day in paradise? There are, of course, many answers to that question. But the correct answer, as we see it, must include mention of catching the Hawaii sunset. Where, exactly? Just about anywhere in the Islands works well for us. Still, everyone has favorite go-to place for those most serene of scenic sunset moments.

We’ve counted all of the votes from our latest HAWAII Magazine Facebook Ohana poll question: Where is your favorite place to watch a Hawaii sunset? The top five vote-getters are on the pages ahead.

Your picks pinpointed dozens of different stretches along Hawaii’s major islands. Some specified viewing spots along shoreline as well as offshore areas. Others listed favorite pau hana spots —  beachside restaurants and bars, hotels and resort lanais. One response even noted favorite poolside lounge-chair placement and a drink to sip at the onset of the evening hours. Mahalo for sharing your favorite sunset settings!

If you’d like to join in on our next poll and vote, along with our Facebook fan page ohana, click here, then press the “like” button at the top of our Facebook page. Become part of our HAWAII Magazine Facebook ohana and you’ll get our “Hawaii favorite” poll questions as soon as we post them, and also you'll get instant updates on your Facebook wall when we post our daily HawaiiMagazine.com stories and features.

We’ll be posting our next Ohana Poll question on HAWAII Magazine’s Facebook page in the days ahead, so join soon if you haven’t yet.

OK, now, here we go. Here’s the top five countdown of our Facebook ohana’s favorite place to watch a Hawaii sunset:


It takes about 45 minutes to drive from Waikiki to the North Shore’s famous surf town, Haleiwa. A few miles before reaching Haleiwa’s cluster of beach shops, restaurants, and shave ice destinations, you’ll see the shoreline’s waters. And during winter months, you’ll see the world-class waves. Spanning more than seven miles, the North Shore’s beaches host premiere surfing competitions. Sunset Beach, from the Banzai Pipeline area to Sunset Point, is, of course, among the most popular places to bring a camera during dusky hours.   

 

Got a great photo taken in Hawaii? You need to know about our HawaiiMagazine.com Reader Photo of the Week contest?

We’re entering our fourth year of asking HAWAII Magazine and HawaiiMagazine.com reader ohana to send us their best photos taken in Hawaii—the places, scenery, people and, really, anything that captures a moment of life in the Islands. And over the last 208 weeks, we’ve accumulated a truly breathtaking gallery of HawaiiMagazine.com Reader Photo of the Week winning photos.

From stunning sunrise and sunset photos taken on nearly every island, to snapshots of our lush rainforests and valleys, to clear blue and stormy gray Hawaiian skies, to unforgettable vacation moments, the members of our reader ohana always manage to surprise and amaze us with their great eye for capturing Hawaii on camera.

Go ahead and check out the slideshow of our HawaiiMagazine.com Reader Photo of the Week winners. Take some time to see ‘em all. We’ll wait.

Inspired? Why not send us one of your best Hawaii photos for consideration!

Each week’s winning photo gets a weeklong residency on our HawaiiMagazine.com homepage and a lifetime spot in our Reader Photo of the Week winners gallery. For added inspiration, each week’s winning photographer also receives a one-pound bag of 100% Kona-grown coffee from Hula Daddy.

Since 2002, Hula Daddy owners Lee Paterson and Karen Jue have produced consistently award-winning roasts from their farm in the heart of the Big Island’s Kona Coffee Belt. We’re card-carrying fans of Lee and Karen’s crisp, flavorful 100% Kona-grown coffee. Our thanks to Hula Daddy for offering our winners such a fantastic prize, and sending it straight to their doorsteps.

You’ll find contest rules, more information and the e-mail address to send us your photos on HawaiiMagazine.com's Reader Photo of the Week page.

Start searching for that perfect Hawaii photo! We can’t wait to see what you send us!


 

The Historic Hawaii Foundation is honoring the late Herb Kawainui Kane as its Kamaaina of the Year and last week unveiled the artist’s final painting, which is now on permanent display at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki.

Titled Kamehameha Landing, the image (pictured, right) depicts Kamehameha I and his warriors landing in Waikiki during the 1795 campaign to conquer Oahu and unite the Hawaiian Islands under his rule.

The painting, commissioned by Kyo-ya Hotels and Resorts commissioned for the entrance to the Monarch Room at the Royal Hawaiian, A Luxury Collection Resort, was reportedly 90 percent complete at the time of Kane’s death in March.

During a three-day event celebrating Polynesian voyaging, held at the resort last weekend, the Historic Hawaii Foundation honored Kane for his life’s work as an artist, historian, and for his role as one of the founders of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. Kane was a leading figure in the Hawaiian Renaissance — that revival of long-suppressed and neglected cultural identity expressed in music, language, hula and construction of Hawaiian voyaging canoes, which got under way in the 1970s.

Born in Wisconsin on June 21, 1928, Kane was raised in both the mainland’s Midwest and on the Big Island. He died at his longtime Big Island home in Kona.

During the 1960s, while working as a graphic artist in Chicago, Kane researched and completed detailed paintings of Polynesian and Hawaii canoes. He later helped design and build Hokulea, a double-hulled voyaging canoe that made its inaugural voyage — without modern navigational instruments — from Hawaii to Tahiti in 1976. In addition, Kane served as the canoe’s first skipper.

Kane’s canvases — often depicting elements of Hawaii’s history — won him international recognition. His artwork illustrates seven U.S. postage stamps, including one, issued in August 2009, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of Hawaii statehood.

The Historic Hawaii Foundation’s Kama aina of the Year award honors individuals who have made “unique and lasting contributions to the preservation of Hawaii’s historic places and cultural resources.” The event serves as Historic Hawaii Foundation’s annual fundraiser, and proceeds support preservation of historic sites throughout the Islands. For additional information about the nonprofit, click here.


(The July/August issue of HAWAII Magazine features an interview with Kane from October, 2010.)


 

If you read HawaiiMagazine.com regularly and follow us on Facebook and Twitter, you likely know about the 2011 Taste Hawaii Tour—a week of food-related events in the San Francisco Bay Area featuring James Beard Award-winning Hawaii chef Alan Wong and Hawaii food historian Arnold Hiura.

HAWAII Magazine is a co-sponsor of the tour—which runs from this Thursday, Oct. 27, to Nov. 2—and its schedule of cooking demos and lunch and dinner tasting events with Wong and Hiura.

Click here for more info from HawaiiMagazine.com on the Taste of Hawaii Tour’s schedule of Hawaii food events.

Need more of an incentive to attend the lunch and dinner events than Chef Alan’s renowned cuisine? Three events on the Taste of Hawaii tour will offer attendees chances to win Hawaii food-themed prizes, including a trip for two to Hawaii, with hotel accommodations, to dine at Chef Alan Wong’s new restaurant at the Grand Wailea Resort, set to open in February.


Taste of Hawaii Tour events and their prize drawings include:


• Oct. 30, 5 p.m.: Alan Wong Blue Tomato and Hukilau Restaurant Hawaii food tasting event and talk story, at the Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Northern California, San Francisco, $75 (includes tasting event and your-choice copy of either Chef Alan Wong's The Blue Tomato: The Inspirations Behind the Cuisines of Alan Wong or Arnold Hiura's Kau Kau: Cuisine & Culture in the Hawaiian Islands). Click here for the menu!

Prize drawings at this event include chances to win …
   
• Dinner for two at The Pineapple Room by Alan Wong

• Dinner for two at Alan Wong’s Honolulu

• Set of Hawaii cookbooks from Watermark Publishing



• Nov. 2, 11 a.m.: Alan Wong Blue Tomato and Hukilau Restaurant Hawaii food tasting event and talk story, at the Akiyama Wellness Center, San Jose, $60 (includes tasting event and your-choice copy of either The Blue Tomato or Kau Kau). Click here for the menu!

Prize drawings at this event include chances to win …
   
• Dinner for two at The Pineapple Room by Alan Wong

• Dinner for two at Alan Wong’s Honolulu

• Set of Hawaii cookbooks from Watermark Publishing



• Nov. 2, 6:30 p.m.: Alan Wong Birthday Bash Blue Tomato and Hukilau Restaurant Hawaii food tasting event and talk story, Hukilau Restaurant San Jose, $75 (includes tasting event and your-choice copy of either The Blue Tomato or Kau Kau). Click here for the menu!

Prize drawings at this event include chances to win …

• A Hawaii vacation prize package, including roundtrip airfare to Hawaii on Hawaiian Airlines, 4 nights ocean view accommodations at the Grand Wailea Resort on Maui, and a $200 dining credit at Chef Alan Wong’s new Grand Wailea Resort restaurant, opening in February 2012.

• Dinner for two at The Pineapple Room by Alan Wong

• Dinner for two at Alan Wong’s Honolulu

• Set of Hawaii cookbooks from Watermark Publishing


Click here to read more about the 2011 Taste Hawaii Tour, find a schedule of tour events event locations and event menus, and to reserve your spot at Chef Alan Wong's Bay Area lunch and dinners!

  

The latest episode of the Travel Channel’s Off Limits show, through which host Don Wildman explores “secret histories” tied to various travel destinations across the United States, focuses on Hawaii’s past.
 
Among the difficult-to-access sites Wildman visits: Ford Island’s Adair Battery, which was used as a makeshift bunker during the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The show airs at 10 p.m. (Eastern/Pacific times) tonight.

Construction of the underground Adair Battery complex was completed in 1917 and, along with another battery for rifled guns, served as the first presence of the U.S. military on Ford Island. The batteries were used until 1925, when both were deactivated and gun inventories removed.    

According to the National Park Service’s World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, on Dec. 7, 1941, when Imperial Japanese fighter planes attacked Pearl Harbor, members of military families and others took shelter in the battery, which was then a sort of basement situated below the senior Naval Air Commander’s home in a military housing area. From a strip of small window in the battery, they watched the bombing along Battleship Row, including the nearest ship, the USS Arizona.

Check out Wildman’s trip to the battery in the video at the bottom of this page.

Also featured in the episode are the once-glamorous Coco Palms Resort on Kauai, where stories about Early Hawaiian “bloody rituals” linger, and waterways (pictured, above) and a tunnel tied to former Koloa Sugar Plantation operations on the island.

The Coco Palms, in Wailua, opened in 1953 and became the premier resort on Kauai, attracting famous guests, such as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley. Much of the last portion of Presley’s 1961 movie Blue Hawaii was shot at the resort. Wildman’s visit there delves into the area’s stories of human sacrifice, which are tied to nearby Early Hawaiian temple sites and burial areas. The resort has been closed since 1992, when Hurricane Iniki damaged it.

Founded in 1835, Koloa Plantation, near Kauai's south shore, was Hawaii's first sugar plantation and touched off what would become Hawaii’s largest industry. It was shut down in 1996.




 

Hawaiian Airlines is now offering an airfare sale on roundtrip travel during early 2012 — Jan. 5 through March 14 — between Hawaii and its 10 U.S. mainland cities.

The sale's fares, which start at $298 for roundtrip travel between Kahului, Maui and Oakland and San Jose, Calif. will be offered through Mon., Oct. 31.

Tickets at the special fares rates are subject to availability. Also, there's no special website page for booking these deals. So, you'll have to enter dates under round-trip listings.

Here are the sale’s fares (listed fares may not include all applicable taxes and fees).

• Las Vegas – Honolulu $348, Las Vegas- Maui $348

• Los Angeles - Honolulu $338

• Oakland - Honolulu $328, Oakland - Maui $298

• Phoenix - Honolulu $338

• Portland - Honolulu $328, Portland - Maui $328*

• Sacramento - Honolulu $338

• San Diego - Honolulu $338

• San Francisco - Honolulu $328

• San Jose - Honolulu $328, San Jose - Maui $298

• Seattle - Honolulu $338, Seattle - Maui $338

For additional information about Oahu-based Hawaiian Airlines, click here.



 

Lance Armstrong will be among the off-road triathletes lining up at the 9 a.m. mass-start swim (pictured, right) for this Sunday’s 16th annual XTERRA World Championship, which will be held along Maui’s northwest shoreline.

The sport of XTERRA — 1-mile rough-water swim, 18.3-mile mountain bike ride and 6.1 mile trail run — debuted on Maui in 1996. The winner that year, Jimmy Riccitello, reportedly encouraged Armstrong to give XTERRA a try. Last month, Armstrong competed in his first XTERRA, the USA Championship held in Utah, and finished fifth overall.

In an interview conducted by XTERRA Television at the Ritz Carlton Kapalua, Armstrong, 40, was asked about his race day expectations. In response, he said: “I didn’t have any expectations, really, in Utah. I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into. I certainly hadn’t trained for it. I had been too busy. And at the end of the day, I didn’t really enjoy it because I suffered so much. I thought this is terrible, why do I want to go through this? I could be doing other things.”

Armstrong continued, “But I took a few days and thought about it, went home and started training again and said maybe I should at least focus on this. Do some interval work, at least adapt the training to what the race is like.”

Asked if he would surprised if he won Sunday's world championship, Armstrong said: I’d be really happy if I won. So I guess that means I’d be surprised. Maybe shocked is too big of a word, too strong of a word. But yeah, I’d be very pleasantly surprised.”

The seven-time Tour de France champion will have some tough competition, including two-time Ironman Hawaii World Champion Tim DeBroom, who is also a newcomer to the sport. Also, there will be a total of 12 athletes with Olympic experience in sports ranging from triathlon and cycling to mountain biking and skiing. Conrad Stoltz, a two-time Olympic triathlete and four-time XTERRA world champ, is the defending XTERRA world champion.  

This year’s lineup will include 675 racers — 75 professionals and 600 amateurs representing 28 countries. For the pros, a total of $100,000 in prize money is up for grabs. 

Also, this year, for the first time, the world championship has moved from Maui’s south shore to a course that covers 27 miles in the Kapalua area, on the island’s northwest side. The event now serves as an annual finale that follows a series of more than 100 off-road triathlons held in 15 countries. For more information at the 2011 XTERRA World Championship, click here.


 

Sweden? C’mon, start strumming. Hawaii is tuning up for a try at topping the recent Guinness World Record set on Aug. 20, 2011 when exactly 1,547 ukulele players performed in unison in Helsingborg, Sweden.

In the interest of Island pride, passion for music, a fundraising effort and, yes, just plain fun, ukulele players from Hawaii and elsewhere are getting ready to strum in an ensemble dubbed GO FOR DA RECORD.

Led by Hawaii’s ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro (pictured,right), the ensemble will assemble at 10 a.m. on Sat., Oct. 22 at the Waikiki Shell Amphitheater on Oahu. GO FOR DA RECORD is hoping that more than 2,000 ukulele players will make their way to the amphitheater to play one song — a new Shimabukuro composition — in unison.

The record-breaking attempt is slated for noon. (A 30-minute performance warm-up will precede the big moment.)

Wanna give the tune a try? Check out the instructional video at the bottom of the page. Beginners should be able to master it fairly quickly, according to event organizers.

Participants are advised to practice the piece before the record-breaking attempt because simply sitting in a mass assembly with an ukulele in your hands will not cut it. Guinness World Record guidelines specify that the performance must be of a “professional standard;” each participant must play their instrument during the entire attempt (no sharing allowed); also, no improvisation is permitted.

More than half of all net proceeds from the event will go to Rainbow for Japan Kids, a relief program for struggling earthquake and tsunami survivors. Proceeds will also be used in the purchase of hundreds of ukuleles and other musical tools for teachers and needed music programs in Hawaii's schools.

Registration for the event is $10. All participants will get a certificate of participation and commemorative cap for use on the day of the performance. For more registration details, click here.

Don’t have an ukulele to bring to the event? GO FOR DA RECORD will make instruments available through a “Pay It, Play It, Donate It?” opportunity, through which participants may purchase and ukulele to use as a member of the ensemble with the option of giving it to Hawaii schoolchildren after the performance. 

The event is coordinated by Music For Life Foundation, a nonprofit  that organizes music-focused programs and special events in Hawaii. For more information about GO FOR DA RECORD, click here.




 

On Maui this week? If so, you can catch a glimpse of West Maui’s sugar plantation past at the third annual Lahaina Plantation Days.

The stars of this year’s event will be two original steam locomotives — No. 7 (pictured, right) and No. 97 — used by Pioneer Mill Company, West Maui’s last sugar plantation.

They served the company’s operations in the communities of Lahaina and Launiupoko before being replaced by trucks in the 1950s. At that time the locomotives and train cars were reportedly sold to a California buyer. Donated by the Burbank, Calif.-based Allen and Lenabelle Davis Foundation to the nonprofit Lahaina Restoration Foundation, the locomotives arrived in Lahaina last week.

After their unveiling at Lahaina Plantation Days, the locomotives will be on permanent display under the Pioneer Mill Co. smokestack. The restored 225-foot high landmark was unveiled at last year’s Plantation Days. The smokestack is the only remaining structure of the Pioneer Mill, which was founded in 1860 and shuttered in 1999.

Plantation Days festivities will get under way with an Ohana Movie Night, 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. tomorrow  under the Pioneer Mill Co. smokestack. Great Grandfather's Drum tells a century-long story about Japanese-American culture in Hawaii, including plantation life, World War II patriotism, and helping to create statehood for Hawaii. Among the storytellers: a Japanese-American drum ensemble, descendants of plantation workers, and elders.

Lahaina Plantation Days, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Fri. Oct. 21 and Sat., Oct. 22, will also be staged under the smokestack on Lahainaluna Road. It will feature historical and cultural displays and exhibits, entertainment ranging from Hawaiian music to Taiko drums, and, of course, plenty of booths serving up food and drinks.   

For information about ticket prices to the movie night and Plantation Days evenings, click here.

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