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Maui Connections

Maui folks are going places.

Vinnie Linares is off to New York in May to perform “Damien” on Mother’s Day. An inspiring English professor and versatile theatrical performer for decades, Vinnie premiered the one-man show 12 years ago at St. Rita’s Church in Haiku, going on to present it more than 75 times across the state, on the Mainland and beyond. A highlight was performing it in 2013 for the residents and workers at Molokai’s Kalaupapa settlement, where Damien had served.

Vinnie’s upcoming New York performance is part of a two-day celebration, culminating in naming a street on the Lower East Side in the newly canonized saint’s honor.

Vinnie calls his Damien incarnation a labor of love. “Everyone who has been a part of this on and off the stage will be with me in New York,” he wrote in a recent email to the University of Hawaii Maui College staff. “I am telling people I am performing-off off off Broadway!”

He plans to stage the work at Seabury Hall as a fundraiser for the school’s theater program in June.

* * *

The Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s brilliant marketing director Barbara Trecker is leaving us in April to do a yearlong stint in the Peace Corps.

This is Barbara’s second Peace Corps assignment. The first one sent her to the Ukraine a few years ago (look what happened there after she left!). This time she’s off to St. Lucia in the East Caribbean to modernize the island’s library system.

“The Peace Corps is all about sharing skills,” she says. “Not to change the world or ‘save’ it – just helping to effect positive moves, incrementally, person to person, within communities. We Americans learn about ways of life in other places and other countries and their people learn about us. All of a sudden we realize we’re all just people. That seems like such a small silly statement – a “duh.” But it’s a very large experience when it truly hits you, especially far from home and everything you thought you knew – it’s an ‘aha.'”

She attributes her wanderlust to “itchy feet” . . . and a tradition of service in her family.

Her aunt Florence joined the Peace Corps in the early days of the organization. Although Florence was in her 50s, had never lived anywhere but Iowa and had never been on a plane before, she served in Pakistan in the ’60s. Barbara’s sister taught in China for seven years, then in Cambodia since the mid-’90s.

It’s been Barbara’s “voice” – more specifically, her writing and marketing wizardry – that have kept the island informed about upcoming MACC events, from arts education programs for kids to Diana Ross adding a second show in June.

Modestly not wanting to talk about herself, she’d rather tell you about Saturday’s “Lei of Distinction” celebration honoring Dorvin and Betty Leis. The ceremony, first presented on the MACC’s 10th anniversary, is its highest honor, presented to “those among us who use their exceptional vision and talents to exemplify, inspire and enable creative endeavors in the arts and education.”

Around 350 MACC supporters took part in the Yokouchi Pavilion tribute. Barbara described the honorees as “humble yet magnanimous” in the face of the outpouring of aloha.

Working at the MACC has meant being part “of such a great team,” she says, from administrators and staff people to volunteers, all “working and working and working” to create the MACC’s immeasurable contribution to island life.

She’d never point to her own key role in that process. Leave that to anyone who has ever worked with her.

* * *

Marybeth Seavy tells me her friend Rosie Gibson is training to represent Maui in May’s Emerald Cup NPC National Bodybuilding Competition in Bellevue, Wash.

NPC stands for National Physique Committee. This might not be so noteworthy if Rosie weren’t 72, and didn’t look so amazing in a bikini.

Her quest began four years ago when the 5-foot-tall Wailuku resident saw a picture of herself and said, “I’m not going out looking like that.”

She started a 500-calorie-a-day diet and a rigorous bodybuilding regimen with trainer Tom Ockerman of Results Unlimited at 24-Hour Fitness and Gym Maui. She lost 45 pounds. The first time she entered a competition she came in second . . . among every woman over 35. Now they’ve upped the age limit to 50 and over.

“She wants to change the stereotype of what growing old looks like,” says Marybeth. “She wants people to start looking at their 70s as something to look forward to.”

To see how she’s doing, visit Rosie Gibson on Facebook.

* Rick Chatenever, former entertainment and features editor of The Maui News, is a freelance journalist, instructor at UH-Maui College and documentary film scriptwriter. Contact him at rickchatenever@gmail.com or 344-9535.

Maui Connections

He showed up at twilight last Monday, looking regal in in his black-and-brown coat with white spots. His antlers were morphing from velvet to a majestic rack. As much as axis deer are the bane of rural gardeners and night drivers on Maui, this buck striding through the brush on Haleakala Ranch was one majestic-looking dude.

We watched him from the deck. He was close enough to look into his eyes.

Two days later the goats arrived. There were maybe 100 of them, spreading out across the ranch’s meadows and ravine eating everything in sight. With little horns on their heads, wise cartoon faces and sturdy little hooved bodies traversing the uneven terrain, they put on a better show than Pixar or the Nature Channel.

Spring has arrived in Kula. Animals are in the ‘hood. We have new neighbors . . . with horns.

Living by a big swatch of Haleakala Ranch has its benefits. The goats next door have been making for plenty of curbside talk story with friends and neighbors like David Smalls, Katja Reiche, Bud Gintling, David Ward, Dean Wong and their son Tino. There’s nothing like being close enough to observe the goofy serenity in the face of a munching goat.

It’s as though we’ve got a zoo in the subdivision.

But as warm and fuzzy as it all looks to us onlookers, managing the almost 30,000 acres of the ranch is a balancing act for Haleakala Ranch Vice President and General Manager J. Scott Meidell.

While the ranch has long been identified with cattle, now goats, sheep and even a poultry division are part of the equation. “We’re working to cross-train the staff,” he says.

The goats and sheep are what Scott calls the “cultural way” of handling invasive species of brush plants – gorse higher up Haleakala, fireweed at our 2,500-foot elevation, buffalo grass next to Piilani Highway in Kihei.

Invasive vegetation species disrupt the integrity of the watershed and compete with the native forest. The options for controlling them are mechanical (bulldozers), chemical, or “by putting animals in to eat the plants.”

Or some combination. More animals mean less chemicals. “Everyone’s happy with multi-species grazing,” he explains. Grass eaters like cattle are “grazers.” Broadleaf eaters like goats and sheep must be more high-tech – they’re called “browsers.”

The ranch has 1,500 breeding goats, or does; and 350 breeding sheep, or ewes. They’re expecting 600 to 700 kids after introducing the ewes to some male goats.

The ranch has brought in Peruvian goatherds to handle the herds of goats, sometimes called “trips” or “tribes.”

“The Peruvians are extremely adept at this,” says Scott. This is a good thing since they have to be with the animals 24/7. Offshore labor isn’t the ranch’s first choice, but with local folks, after being with a herd of goats in a remote location for 24 hours – even if you’ve got a trailer to retreat to – “the thrill wears off.”

We haven’t yet encountered a goatherd. My wife, Karen, envisions them selling CDs of Peruvian pan pipe music through the barbwire fence.

One herder with two or three dogs can control the herd. The big white canines are Pyrenees Akbash from Eastern Europe. They guard their flocks from predators. As much as they may resemble big fluffy polar bears, it’s advised to stay away from them if you’re not a goat yourself. They’re very protective. Huntaway dogs and Australian shepherds are the ones that herd the animals, responding solely to whistle commands from the goatherd. Lightweight electrified fencing also helps contain them, and keeps them from getting their horns caught in the metal fence.

Haleakala Ranch is sending some of its guys to New Zealand – an island environment whose conditions are similar to Maui’s – to learn more techniques for using animals to deal with invasive species. Ranch management seems a mix of new science and old knowledge learned in the saddle.

When the goats browse an area, for instance, they need to create a firebreak, but not to get down to bare dirt. Which raises the question, how do they know when to stop?

Simple: Calculate how many of them there are, and how much vegetation is in the area, then make an educated guest, and remove them after a prescribed interval of grazing. The animals eat right down to the “sweet spot” in the plant, which promotes new growth, says Scott.

“The ranch is a committed practitioner of holistic grazing management. We try to be as precise as we can to make it as cost efficient as possible, and as environmental as possible.”

The great show comes for free.

* Rick Chatenever, former entertainment and features editor of The Maui News, is a freelance journalist, instructor at UH-Maui College and documentary film scriptwriter. Contact him at rickchatenever@gmail.com or 344-9535.

Maui Connections

Imagine the surprise of Keola and Moana Beamer when, after flying 6,500 miles to perform in Siem Reap, Cambodia, they were greeted by 25 6th-graders from a rural village dressed in grass skirts and haku lei doing the hula.

It happened on opening night of the fourth annual Angkor Wat International Film Festival. The festival is the creation of several Maui folks, broadening the connections between our two lands in imaginative and heart-touching ways.

Festival creators and coordinators Tom and Nancy Vendetti, Bob Stone and education coordinator Doug Schenk led the way. Keola and Moana became interested in the Cambodian festival after they performed in Vendetti Productions’ latest film, “The Quietest Place on Earth,” about Haleakala Crater, slated to play across the U.S. on more than 165 PBS stations this year.

(Full disclosure requires mentioning that this columnist was involved in the project, too, as scriptwriter and co-producer.)

When word got out, via Cambodia’s Ponheary Ly Foundation, that the Hawaiian slack-key and vocal master and his kumu hula wife would be at this year’s festival, the kids wanted to welcome them, reports Doug. He is a longtime supporter of the educational foundation, founded by a woman who has been honored as one of CNN’s heroes.

Honolulu resident Lucy Inouye has been a foundation volunteer for four years, flying over to teach hula, chant and Hawaiian song. For the Beamers’ visit, the kids danced the hula to “Hukilau” and “Pearly Shells” in costumes they had made themselves.

The performance was an opening-night highlight of the festival, hosted by Siem Reap’s Angkor Phokeethra Golf and Spa Resort Hotel, where all the films and other events are free.

The experience affected Keola Beamer deeply. Agreeing with Doug that visits to that ravaged, beautiful, exotic land are “profoundly humbling,” Keola’s not only planning to return for next year’s festival, but is exploring launching a “Ukuleles in Cambodia” campaign, with a goal of bringing 45 instruments to the children of that land who gave him such an amazing welcome.

*****

In a Maui film project closer to home, writer-director Brian Kohne is working on generating local support for his next production, “Kuleana,” subtitled, “What We Do Here Matters.”

Beginning with award-winning producer Stefan Schaefer, Brian is rounding up members of the cast and crew who created the rollicking comedy “Get a Job” on Maui, getting a great local reaction before winning awards in Mainland and European film festivals.

The tone of the new film is very different – Brian describes it as “a mystery/drama, and very unique.” It’s quest for cultural roots, wisdom and strength, set on Maui in 1971 – “a time when the Hawaiian identity had been supplanted by the facade created and perpetrated to this day.”

For more information, visit kuleanamovie.com.

*****

Those looking for more old-fashioned entertainment will find just the ticket in Maui OnStage’s cheerful “Annie Get Your Gun,” a Broadway evergreen that puts the “historic” in the Historic Iao Theater.

Ever since my old hometown of Norman, Okla., made the news last week, joining the sad litany of news stories showing how far we haven’t come since Dr. Martin Luther King took the first step in the Selma march 50 years ago, I had been longing for a hopeful, happier message from the heartland, even it was just a fading memory.

The Irving Berlin classic delivers that, and more.

A product of the cockeyed optimism that took root on Broadway in the ’40s, the show spins a romantic shootin’ match between eagle-eyed Annie Oakley (Alexis Dascoulias) and crack shot Frank Butler (played by her husband, Steven Dascoulias). It’s set in the “Wild West,” which wasn’t a real place at all, but a carnival tableau of cowboys and Indian chiefs orchestrated by showmen in buckskin with names like Buffalo Bill Cody (William Hubbard) and his rival Pawnee Bill (Joel Agnew).

The signature showstopper “There’s No Business Like Show Business” sums up the appeal of community theater productions like this. The song is a look behind the curtain, a willing admission that it’s not the reality but the illusion that everyone loves – the volunteers creating it on stage at least as much as the people watching it in the audience. Both its cast and audience span generations – the happy sentiments come in one-size-fits-all.

It’s this spirit and all the treasures from the Great American songbook that make the show soar. Along with a wonderful performance by its leading lady, doin’ what comes naturally and hitting the bull’s-eye with gumption, talent and sheer delight as well as Annie Oakley ever could.

It continues through Sunday. For tickets, visit mauionstage.com or call 242-6969.

* Rick Chatenever, former entertainment and features editor of The Maui News, is a freelance journalist, instructor at UH-Maui College and documentary film scriptwriter. Contact him at rickchatenever@gmail.com or 344-9535.

Maui Connections

Among local heroes featured on the front page of The Maui News, not many have four legs and a wagging tail.

I met Jade last Friday as she lay comfortably under the desk of Cari Wongsam.

“She’s my child,” said Cari of the golden Lab service dog who had been featured in the New Year’s Eve edition of the paper. Jade had been rescued from a pig snare in the West Maui Mountains where she had miraculously survived for two weeks.

Cari, a former veterinary assistant who had cared for Jade as a puppy, works in the Pukalani accounting office of Gene Simon. We were there to do our taxes. Cari and Chris Simon, Gene’s son and associate, share their Upcountry home and yard with several other dogs and a cat. Jade is the star these days, although “she spends most of the day sleeping and snoring,” Cari reported.

Jade had ridden to Maui Memorial Medical Center in the ambulance with her former owner, who was admitted for lengthy treatment. The dog was tied up outside, but got free and then set off over the mountains to find her way back to Lahaina when she was caught in the snare on watershed property.

When Cari saw Jade reported missing, she contacted the K9 Kokua rescue group as a point of contact. After two watershed workers found the starving, dehydrated animal and took turns carrying her “straight down” the hill – a four-hour ordeal – Cari rushed Jade for emergency veterinary hospital treatment. The dog was given fluids and treated for the inch-deep wound around her neck.

Cari inherited Jade when her former owner realized she could give her the care she needed.

Cari credits Jade’s survival to the relatively cold temperatures at 4,000 feet, and the fact that she was used to a leash and didn’t tug against the snare. Now, “she’s 90 percent there,” Cari said of Jude’s recovery.

She brings Jade to work with her every day. When Cari and Chris take her on errands, Jude is recognized by people who have read about her adventure.

“People just want to touch her.”

It’s not every year that you go to do your taxes and come away with a warm fuzzy feeling. Chalk it up as a refund.

*****

Speaking of recoveries, friends of Harlan Hughes – that’s a big group – were happy to read his Facebook post last week, announcing that the latest test at Maui Medical Group had shown him cancer free. He and his wife, Judy Anderson, both survived big medical challenges last year.

After Harlan’s many contributions to island life sharing his expertise with food, wine and living well in so many ways, it’s gratitude for life itself that rises to the top at times like this.

*****

Festival Director Barry Rivers chose Girls Day in Hawaii last Tuesday to start the buzz started for the 16th annual Maui Film Festival, returning to Wailea and the Maui Arts & Cultural Center June 3 to June 7.

“The Wave I Ride: The Life of Paige Alms,” a feature-length documentary about the Maui-born-and-raised surfer, will screen at the festival’s signature Celestial Cinema. Barry describes it as “a passionate, beautiful and powerful story, about an incredibly committed, centered and strong young woman.” Well known at Peahi, she is “acknowledged by surfers around the world as one of the best big wave surfers, male or female, on the planet,” he added.

Paige and director Devyn Bissen will attend the screening. Dates for the screening, along with other scheduling details, A-list film industry tributes, filmmaker panels and culinary arts celebrations and parties, will be announced after May 1. Keep checking www.mauifilmfestival.com, for news including discounts for passes and single tickets bought early.

*****

Which is your favorite face in the Schaefer Portrait Challenge 2015?

The $5,000 “Marian Freeman People’s Choice Award” will be announced in a 5 p.m. reception Sunday in the Schaefer International Gallery at the MACC.

Visitors have been casting their ballots since the statewide-juried arts competition opened Jan. 13. I know who the favorites were among my University of Hawaii Maui College students who had to write about the show as a class assignment. It’s always an exciting, empowering experience for students to set foot in an art gallery and realize it touches them and they have something to say about it.

Voting for the award ended Sunday. But you can still check out the wonderful exhibit – where you look at the art and it looks back at you – through March 22.

* Rick Chatenever, former entertainment and features editor of The Maui News, is a freelance journalist, instructor at UH-Maui College and documentary film scriptwriter. Contact him at rickchatenever@gmail.com or 344-9535.

Maui Connections

As cities across the Mainland were setting records for snow and freezing temperatures in February, Andrea Harris was setting a different kind of record for Maui.

She swam more than 100 miles in Pukalani’s Upcountry Pool as part of the “February Fitness Challenge,” spearheading local efforts in this national competition that has swimmers keep track of their daily workout yardage, then send in the results to see how they compare with others in their age groups across the country. According to coverage in The Maui News last Saturday, the Pukalani swimmers had the seventh best total in the country last year and Andrea was tops in her age group.

There are a bunch of Pukalani Pool regulars – you know who you are – who swim almost daily, finding the balance between health, happiness and endorphin-fueled bliss . . . but each February Andrea leaves the rest of us bobbing in her wake.

* * *

Speaking of setting records, I heard recently that the Maui Costco is consistently in the top five of the more than 670 Costcos around the world. That’s no mean feat for a tropical island, population around 160,000.

Why the success? Well, being the first thing tourists see after picking up their rental cars and heading for their condos can’t hurt. And the gas pumps have drawn crowds ever since they opened. If you Google Costco, you discover all sorts of factoids, like it’s one of the top pizza sellers in the U.S.

I’ve got my own theory. It not only turns the conventional wisdom about “box stores” upside down, but also says a lot about Maui. Someone once told me they have T-shirts in Hana saying, “I survived the road to Costco.”

Whether or not that’s true, it sums up the essential and much-appreciated role the store plays in many of our lives. It’s been light years ahead of other box stores in terms of wages and benefits, which may be why so many of its employees, including several of my former students at the college, have been there for years. It’s a great place to run into friends. The aisles are perfect places to talk story, while munching on free samples.

A lot of what I eat and drink comes from Costco. So do the tires on my truck, and most of my wardrobe. And my watch and my Maui Jims. And ink for my printer, vitamins, digital camera, HDTV, hedge clippers, rash guards for the grandkids and on, and on. And no problem taking stuff back when it doesn’t fit, or you changed your mind.

The Costco buyers have my number. Judging by the store activity, I’m not alone.

* * *

A different kind of record-setting is at the heart of the best new movie I’ve seen in a while – “McFarland, USA.” True, you already know the story if you’ve seen the TV trailers featuring Kevin Costner molding a cross-country team out of Mexican-American crop pickers in California’s Central Valley in the 1980s.

As predictably Disney as the plot may be, what makes the film so touching is a) it’s true; b) Kevin Costner is still as good at being himself as he was at the beginning of a great Hollywood career; and c) it was directed by Niki Caro, the supreme cinematic storyteller who also directed “Whale Rider.”

That film was set in her Maori New Zealand homeland; this one takes place in the heart and soul of America, where she’s equally at home, artistically.

“McFarland, USA’s” story is not unlike the one of Maui coach Soichi Sakamoto, who taught the children of plantation workers in the irrigation ditches of Maui in the ’40s and transformed them into champion swimmers

* * *

And speaking of Maui’s contributions to the rest of the world, cultural adviser Clifford Nae’ole is finalizing plans for the 23rd annual Celebration of the Arts, returning to The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua May 8 through 10. A lot of friends are taking part this year. On the schedule is a performance of “The Legend of Ko’olau,” the one-man play by journalist and playwright Gary T. Kubota; “A Reflection of Kalaupapa Past Present and Future,” a photo show of historic images and modern ones by Wayne Levin, coordinated by Val Monson; and a sassy, jazzy performance by the incomparable Amy Haniali’i in the Lobby Lounge, where they will also be selling her new Haniali’i Merlot.

In the panel discussions, which always bring together many of Hawaii’s leading teachers, cultural practitioners and creators, Clifford promises he’ll be pushing the envelope this year. We wouldn’t expect anything less; nobody pushes the envelope better.

* Rick Chatenever, former entertainment and features editor of The Maui News, is a freelance journalist, instructor at UH-Maui College and documentary film scriptwriter. Contact him at rickchatenever@gmail.com or 344-9535.

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