If you’ll be in the Islands over the Fourth of July weekend, there’s an excellent chance that you’ll be spending time in ocean waters. Before setting out for a swim, snorkeling among rainbow-colored tropical fish, or just bobbing about on waves by the beach, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asks you to double-check your working knowledge about strong currents.

During a daylong high-surf advisory for Oahu’s south shore, issued last week by the National Weather Service, lifeguards reportedly assisted 14 people and rescued 88 others from Ala Moana to Waikiki. In addition, lifeguards initiated hundreds of preventative actions to keep people out of the water as waves there reached face heights of up to 8 feet.

Rip currents claim more than 100 lives per year nationally. According to the United States Lifesaving Association, each year America’s beach lifeguards rescue more than 50,000 swimmers from rip currents. and swimming at a guarded beach can greatly reduce the chance of drowning.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has teamed up with the United States Lifesaving Association and the National Park Service to sponsor Break the Grip of the Rip, a a rip current awareness campaign which got under way earlier this month
 
Rip currents are narrow channels of water moving swiftly away from the shore, and they can pull people far out into the ocean. Rip currents are surprisingly strong. They occur just above the ocean floor and can knock people off their feet. Rip currents often occur with strong onshore winds, in cuts or breaks of a sandbar along the edge of the breaking waves, and near man-made objects such as piers or jetties However, they can occur anywhere there are breaking waves.

Here are some safety tips for swimming in Hawaii’s waters:
 
• Before heading to the beach, take a look at the National Weather Service's online surf zone forecasts.

• Study how rip currents work and how to escape them.

Rip currents are strongest at low tide. If you get caught in the grip of a rip current: Yell for help immediately. Don’t swim against a rip current — it will just tire you out. Escape the rip current by swimming parallel to the beach until you are free. If you are unable to swim out of the rip current, float or calmly tread water. When out of the current, swim toward the shore.

• Swim at a beach with lifeguard protection and talk with the lifeguard about the safest places to swim.

• Observe and obey signs and flags posted to warn about rip currents.

• Don’t swim in a large body of water that is subject to changing wind, waves and currents unless you are a strong swimmer. And even if you are hardcore, it’s still a good idea to swim with a buddy.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. For addition NOAA rip current information, click here.
 
 

Foster Botanical Garden, a 14-acre green haven in the midst of busy downtown Honolulu, is now hosting its Twilight Summer Concert Series, featuring music that will get your toes tapping — and maybe even dancing — during your stroll through the lush grounds.

Celtic Pipes and Drums of Hawaii, (pictured, right) is slated to perform from 5:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Thurs. June 30. Admission is free, and the garden will be open for the event from 4:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m.

So, take your time and explore the garden’s palm collection, orchid garden and hybrid orchid display, and check out its two dozen “exceptional trees,” which are protected by state law. Across the island, more than 100 trees — due to age, rarity, location, size, aesthetic quality, endemic status or historical and cultural significance  — are designated by the Oahu County Arborist Committee as worthy of preservation.

Twilight Summer Concerts will continue on Thursdays, 5:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. through the end of July. Here’s the rest of the performance lineup.
 
July 7 — Saloon Pilots (progressive bluegrass)

July 14 — KFC-Hawaiian Music: Keith Haugen, Frank Uyehara & Carmen Haugen
 
July 21 — Manoa Strings (string quartet)
 
July 28 — To be announced

For more information Honolulu Botanical Gardens, 50 N. Vineyard Blvd., and its summer programs, click here.

 

The second annual Hawaiian Steel Guitar Festival, slated to get under way in Waikiki this weekend, will feature a lineup of masters of the island-style musical touch, tone and chord progression.

The month-long festival’s opening performance Stars of the Hawaiian Steel Guitar, is set for 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sun. July 3  at Waikiki Beach Walk on Oahu. Featured musicians include: Alan Akaka & the Islanders with Na Keiki a Ke Kula Mele, Bobby Ingano, Casey Olsen & the Hiram Olsen Trio, Greg Sardinha (pictured, right), and special guest Kiyoshi “Lion” Kobayashi from Japan.


The Hawaiian steel guitar was invented and popularized in Hawaii. Legend has it that in the mid-1880's, an 11-year-old student at Kamehameha School for Boys, began experimenting with ways to make different musical sounds on his guitar. The story goes that while walking along the railroad tracks, he picked up a bolt and slid it across the strings, resulting in the very first characteristic slur of steel guitar. Intrigued by the sound, he taught himself to play using the back of a knife blade. 



Country Music Hall of Fame recipient Jerry Byrd moved to Hawaii in 1972 and committed himself to teaching new generations how to play steel. Three of the festival’s performers — Akaka, Olsen, and Sardinha — were Byrd’s students.

After Sunday evening's opening show, the festival's performances will continue, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays through July. Here’s the rest of lineup:

• July 10 — Henry Kaleialoha Allen


• July 17 — Eddie Palama 


• July 24 — Greg Sardinha 


• July 31 — Na Keiki Kika Kila, showcasing the combined schools of steel guitar masters Akaka and Sardinha. 


For additional information about the festival, part of the ongoing Na Mele No Na Pua Music Heritage Program organized by Waikiki Beach Walk and Outrigger Enterprises Group, click here.

 

A dedication ceremony was held today at Waikiki’s Outrigger on the Beach hotel for a lobby area now serving as a tribute to Herb Kawainui Kane, 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.

In the beachside hotel, Kane’s paintings of Hawaiian history and legend, which are both sweeping and detailed, have long graced the lobby. The new tribute area is intended to serve as a place “where islanders and travelers can gather to relax, reflect and share what’s unique about Hawaii, inspired by art, artifacts, books and treasured memories,” hotel officials said in a written statement.
  
Kane (pictured, right) died in March at his longtime Big Island Home. He was 82. Born in Minnesota, and raised on the Big Island, in Hilo and Waipio Valley, and also in Wisconsin, Kane is best known for his vast canvases, which 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. Kane was also a founder of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, designer of the Hokulea as well as its first skipper. (The traditional double-hulled voyaging canoe is best known for its inaugural 1976 voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti without modern navigational instruments.)

On the Big Island, another Kane exhibit — the largest collection of its kind in any Hawaii hotel — is slated for a reinstallation by the end of the month. Some 40 signed and numbered, limited-edition giclees, along with a lobby mural, were removed from the walls of the King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel when the March 11 tsunami hit the Kailua Village area.

In addition, at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Kane’s well-known painting of Pele is now on display in a retrospective exhibit titled Gods & Goddesses: Honoring the Art, Life & Voyage of Herb Kane. The exhibit will be displayed at the park’s Volcano Art Center Gallery through the end of July.

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

 

Ledward “Led” Kaapana, a master of ukulele and slack key guitar — a finger-style guitar art form that originated in Hawaii — was today named as a 2011 National Heritage fellow, the nation’s highest honor in folk and traditional arts.

Each of this year’s nine fellows will receive a $25,000 award and attend a banquet in September at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., according to a press release issued by the National Endowment for the Arts. The fellows were among 210 nominees judged by a panel of experts in folk and traditional arts. Previous fellows in the award’s 30-year history include bluesman B.B. King and cowboy poet Wally McRay. (Nominees are submitted by the public.)

Kaapana (pictured, right) grew up in Kalapana — the Big Island’s southernmost district  — in a family of musicians. His talent on string instruments, combined with his vocal skills in baritone and leo kiekie (falsetto) range, has made him a popular performer in Hawaii and elsewhere for more than four decades.

While still in his teens, Kaapana, along with his twin brother Ned and cousin Dennis Pavao, formed the Hui Ohana, a popular group during the 1970s and ‘80s and part of the Hawaiian Renaissance — a revival of long-suppressed and neglected Hawaiian cultural identity expressed in music, language, hula and construction of Hawaiian voyaging canoes.
 
Kaapana later formed the Na Hoku Hanohano Award-winning trio, I Kona. He has also released a solo albums including two Na Hoku Instrumental Album of the Year winners: Lima Wela and Black Sand. Kaapana has been nominated for a Grammy in 2006, 2007 and 2009 for Ki Ho alu, Hawaiian Slack Key, Grandmaster Slack Key and Force of Nature (with Mike Kaawa).
 
The 2011 NEA National Heritage Fellowship recipients are: 

• Laverne Brackens, a quilter, Fairfield, Texas.

• Bo Dollis, a Mardi Gras indian chief,  New Orleans.

• Jim Griffith, a folklorist, Tucson, Ariz.  

• Roy and PJ Hirabayashi, taiko drum leaders, San  Jose, Calif. 

• Ledward Kaapana, ukulele musician and ki hoalu (slack key guitarist), Kaneohe, Oahu

• Frank Newsome, “Old Regular Baptist” singer, Haysi, Va.

• Carlinhos Pandeiro de Ouro, Pandeiro player and percussionist, Los Angeles.   

• Warner Williams, Piedmont blues songster, Gaithersburg, Md. 

• Yuri Yunakov, Bulgarian saxophonist, Bloomfield, N.J. 
   
For more information about the 2011 NEA National Heritage Fellowship recipients, click here.

 

Terry O’Quinn, who won an Emmy for his role as the enigmatic John Locke on ABC’s Lost, is joining the cast of our favorite re-imagined police procedural drama, Hawaii Five-O, according to a news release issued by the CBS Television Network.

O’Quinn will play a Navy Seal Lt. Commander who trained McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and served with his father in Vietnam. “He's a man with secrets, holding some of the answers to the mysteries surrounding the murder of McGarrett's parents,” according to the CBS release.

The character will make his debut in September, during the premiere episode of the show’s second season.The exact date for the episode's broadcast has yet to be set. We’ll keep you posted.

The casting, of course, reunites O’Quinn with fellow Lost alumnus, Daniel Dae Kim, who said the Hawaii Five-O is lucky to have the 58-year-old actor slated for the recurring role. “He's a great actor who brings a sense of ease and professionalism to every project he works on, and I'm excited to work with him again," Kim said in the release.

Peter Lenkov, Hawaii Five-O’s executive producer, added: O'Quinn's character, who we will meet in the premiere, is going to be a major contributor to our team…because he taught McGarrett everything he knows."

O’Quinn won an Emmy Award in 2007 for his supporting role in the Lost series, which was filmed on Oahu.  His television credits also include: JAG, The X-Files, Alias, The West Wing, Millenium and Harsh Realm.

Along with Kim and O’Loughlin, Scott Caan, Grace Park and Masi Oka star in Hawaii Five-O, which CBS describes as “a contemporary take on the classic series about a new elite federalized task force whose mission is to wipe out the crime that washes up on the Islands' sun-drenched beaches.” The first season of Hawaii Five-O was filmed in many familiar Oahu locations, ranging from the Manoa Falls rainforest area to Honolulu’s Washington Place, which was the official residence of the Hawaii’s governors until 2002, when it became a historic house museum.

 

In old Hawaii, trespassing in areas sacred to Hawaiian chiefs was punishable by death unless the offender could somehow flee to the nearest puuhonua, or place of refuge.

This week, the Big Island’s Puuhonua O Honaunau — one of the last preserved places of refuge in — is marking its 50th anniversary as a unit of the National Park Service.

A three-day Hawaiian cultural festival — starting on Fri., June 24 and wrapping up on Sun., June 26, at Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park — will take visitors back to the old Hawaii of the 1800s. Participating Hawaiian cultural experts and practitioners will wear traditional dress from the period. The festival will feature hula performances, demonstrations ranging from lei-making and weaving to hukilau (traditional fishing), canoe rides, archaeological hikes and discussions with cultural experts about everything thing from musical implements to medicinal plants. Other attractions include a hookupu (offering) opening and closing ceremony.

Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park preserves a site where, up until the early 19th century, Hawaiians who broke a kapu (the culture’s strict laws) could avoid certain death by fleeing to a puuhonua. The offender would then be absolved by a priest and then let go. During battles, defeated warriors and non-combatants could also find refuge at a puuhonua.

The Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park’s website notes that the royal grounds adjacent to the puuhonua were a favored residence of Hawaiian chiefs, and that Hale-o-Keawe (pictured, left), a temple built in the 1650s and long ago destroyed, served as the royal mausoleum and held the remains of 23 chiefs.
   
The free festival will be under way from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day at the national historical park, on the Big Island’s west coast. Driving directions from Kailua-Kona: Take Highway 11 south, about 20 miles. Between Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park n mileposts 103 and 104, at the Honaunau Post Office, turn right towards the ocean onto Hwy 160. Travel 3.5 miles and turn left at the Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park sign.

The park, which sustained some damages tied to the March 11 tsunami, has completed repairs, and now all public areas are now open and accessible. For additional information about the cultural festival and the park, click here.

 

Cooking Channel’s Eat Street, which spotlights innovative curbside eats, is filming on Oahu this week.  The stars?  The island’s food-truck fusion fare — shoyu chicken tacos to adobo french fries. There’s also soul food and traditional Thai, both served up with local-style twists.

During lunchtime today, as television show’s cameras focused Flipt Out Eats, a fusion Filipino-American food truck, Eat Street director, Keero Birla, said his crew is excited to document a bit of Oahu’s rapidly growing street food scene.

Compared to some Mainland cities, such as Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., where the mobile meals trend took shape about six years ago and hundreds of food trucks are now thriving, Honolulu is in its “infancy” stage, Birla said. However, given Hawaii’s multicultural cuisine and penchant for plate lunch, Oahu has the potential to become a curbside-eats Mecca.

“We want to be part of the wave” that sees the food-truck trend evolve in Hawaii, Birla said, noting that he’s already looking forward to returning to the Islands to track the foodie trend.

Flipt Out Eats (pictured, above) is among about a half-dozen food trucks that line up along a park in the Kakaako area at midday on Tuesdays. Today, its operators were serving Pinoy Dogs —Filipino-style hotdogs topped with tocino (Filipino char siu pork), sisig (pork lacked with calamansi citrus juice) and gisantes (Filipino pork-and-pea stew), Fili Cheese Steak, and french fries dusted with adobo spices (pictured, below). For anyone with room for dessert, there was a banana-split lumpia and ice candy — ice pops studded with bits of coconut or fruit, such as pineapple, lychee or tangerine.

Eat Street is headed to the North Shore tomorrow, Wed., June 22 for a taste of popular curries and noodles served at Opal Thai, a Haleiwa-based food truck. On Thurs., June. 23, the crew will be back in the Honolulu area (near Beretania and Alakea streets) to sample Soul Patrol, which specializes in Southern-style eats but makes and effort to cook with locally grown and produced ingredients. The film crew started shooting yesterday, at Camille’s on Wheels in Kailua, which is known for fusion tacos combining Mexican, American and Asian flavors.

The Oahu episode’s broadcast has yet to be scheduled. We’ll keep you posted. If you’re on Oahu, the Eat Street crew invites you to check out the curbside lunchtime offerings. Oh, and if you happen to be in the Honolulu area this Friday evening, June 24, with no dinner plans, we suggest checking out Eat The Street, a monthly food-truck rally that be under way in the near-downtown Honolulu Kakaako neighborhood, 555 South St., from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The event’s organizer, Poni Askew, said Eat The Street, — now in its sixth month — is drawing up to 3,000 hungry diners. So, you may want to arrive early. In keeping with this month’s theme, “Pig Out!,” dozens of food trucks and other vendors will be serving at least one pork dish. For more information about Eat The Street and its food-truck participants, click here.

 

A  stretch of old koa forest growing on the misty slopes of Maui’s Haleakala Crater is now designated as Hawaii’s 20th natural area reserve. 

Earlier this month, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources created the 1,500-acre Nakula Natural Area Reserve (pictured, right) to help preserve what remains of a native forest that once covered 40,000 acres on the southern flank of Haleakala, extending from Makawao to Kaupo. Logging tied to urban development, invasions of alien plant species and grazing/terrain-trampling cattle, goats, pigs and deer have contributed to the forest’s decline.

In a statement released by Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources, the department’s chairperson, William Aila Jr., said: “The seedbank of the ancient forest remains in the Nakula (Natural Area Reserve), and with protection from threats, the forest can be restored.” The also noted,  “It has been repeatedly demonstrated that koa forest can rapidly re-grow in areas fenced from grazing animals.”

Koa, the largest endemic Hawaiian tree — the species exists nowhere else in the world — is the fastest-growing among Hawaii’s prized hardwoods. Still, the tree can take up to 50 years to mature. Koa typically grow to heights of between 50 feet and 80 feet. Its branches are tipped with pale yellow flowers throughout the year, peaking during winter months.

Early Hawaiians favored koa wood for building ocean-voyaging canoes, spears and paddles. These days, the hardwood is valued for items ranging from furniture and guitars to boxes, bowls (pictured, left) and paneling.

The koa tree is not listed as a federally protected endangered plant species. However, according to the Sierra Club’s Hawaii Chapter, “It is estimated that native koa forest ecosystems have shrunk to less than 10 percent of their former area. … The remaining koa forests represent a last haven for many rare, threatened or endangered species of endemic birds, insects and plants.”

The designation of Nakula Natural Area Reserve is part of the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources’ plan to revive Haleakala’s leeward forest, from mauka to makai (mountain to sea). The next step: Erecting fencing downslope from Nakula to keep out grazing animals, such deer and goats, and thereby help restore a native wiliwili forest in the lowlands.

Hawaii’s Natural Area Reserve system covers a total of about 116,945 acres on five islands. The reserves aim to protect fragile ecosystems ranging from marine and coastal environments to lava flows, tropical rainforests, and even an alpine desert. For more information about the state's Natural Area Reserves System, click here.

 

The inaugural Hawaii Food & Wine Festival, slated for Sept. 29- Oct. 1 in Honolulu, will feature a lineup of celebrity chefs from across the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.

Among the all-stars who will be serving up culinary creations are: Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, whose Morimoto Waikiki recently opened at The Waikiki EDITION; Hubert Keller of Fleur de Lys in San Francisco, who has appeared as a judge on Bravo’s Top Chef television show as well as a contestant in the first season of Top Chef Masters; and seafood sustainability advocate Rick Moonen of Rick Moonenʼs rm seafood in Las Vegas, who last year competed in the second season of Top Chef Masters.

Inspired by the ancient Hawaiian tradition of ahupuaa  — an interdependent mountain-to-sea system in which everything necessary for survival could be grown, gathered and exchanged locally — the three-day festival's theme is “Taste our love for the Land.” It will spotlight Hawaii’s sustainable food and agricultural traditions. Proceeds from the festival will go to the Hawaii Agricultural Foundation and the Kapiolani Community College Culinary Institute of the Pacific.

The festival will feature three dream-dining experiences.

• Thurs., Sept. 29  — Streets of Asia: Morimoto and Friends

Streets of Asia: Morimoto and Friends, set for from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Sunrise Pool and inside Morimoto Waikiki at The Waikiki EDITION, will feature “innovative interpretations of popular Pan-Asian dishes” by chefs from Hawaii, Korea, Singapore, Canada and the United States, according to a press release issued by festival organizers.

The event will be led by Masaharu Morimoto (pictured, above) of Morimoto Waikiki at The Waikiki EDITION. Other participating chefs include: Kaleo Adams, The Waikiki EDITION; Edward Kwon, LAB XXIV, Seoul; Susur Lee, Lee, Toronto, Shang, NYC, Zentan, Washington D.C., and Chinois, Singapore; Justin Quek, Sky on 57, Singapore; Douglas Rodriguez, Deseo, Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Guy Rubino, Ame, Toronto.  Tickets start at $200 per person ($75 is tax-deductible).

• Fri., Sept. 30 — Inaugural Halekulani Master Chefs Gala Dinner Series

The Halekulani Master Chefs Gala, a formal dinner at Halekulani, will feature “extraordinary food and wine pairings by master chefs and master sommeliers from Hawaii, Japan, Australia and the United States,” according to organizers.

Featured chefs include Vikram Garg, Halekulani, Honolulu; Hubert Keller (pictured, left), Fleur de Lys, San Francisco; Robin Lee, Nobu Waikiki, Honolulu; Yoshihiro Murata, Kikunoi, Kyoto, Japan; Alessandro Stratta, Stratta, Las Vegas; Tetsuya Wakuda, Tetsuyaʼs, Sydney, Australia, and Nancy Silverton, Mozza, Los Angeles. 

Tickets start at $1,000 per person ($800 is tax-deductible) — that includes entry to the cocktail party at Halekulaniʼs Garden Terrace Lawn from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. and a reserved seat for dinner in the ballroom. Seating for dinner begins at 7 p.m.

• Sat., Oct. 1 — From Mauka to Makai: Hawaiiʼs Sustainable Future

Mauka to Makai, Hawaiian for mountain to sea, will serve as the festival’s grand tasting event, with dishes prepared by 15 celebrity chefs known for promoting farm-to-table cuisine and for practicing sustainable sourcing and cooking practices.

The event, set for 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Hilton Hawaiian Village’s Great Lawn, will feature the following chefs: John Besh, Besh Restaurant Group, New Orleans; Michael Cimarusti, Providence, Los Angeles; Celestino Drago, Drago Restaurant Group, Los Angeles; Dean Fearing, Fearingʼs, Dallas; Michael Ginor, Hudson Valley Foie Gras & Lola, New York; Ed Kenney, Town, Honolulu; George Mavrothalassitis, Chef Mavro Restaurant, Honolulu; Peter Merriman, Merrimanʼs, Hawaii; Rick Moonen (pictured, right), Rick Moonenʼs rm seafood, Las Vegas; Michel Nischan, Dressing Room, Westport, Conn.; Philippe Padovani, Padovaniʼs Grill, Honolulu; Jeffrey Vigilla, Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu; Marcel Vigneron, a two-time contestant on Bravo’s Top Chef show, Marcelʼs Quantum Kitchen, Los Angeles; Alan Wong, Alan Wongʼs, Hawaii; and Roy Yamaguchi, Royʼs Restaurants, Hawaii. Tickets start at $200 per person ($75 is tax-deductible).

The Hawaii Food & Wine Festival will also offer wine tastings conducted by top-notch vinters, culinary workshops, industry seminars and field excursions. Two of Hawaiiʼs own James Beard award-winning chefs, Roy Yamaguchi and Alan Wong are serving as event co-chairs. For more information about the festival, click here.