This past week and for the 49th year our sleepy little coastal town of Hilo hosts the annual Merrie Monarch Festival and Hula Competitions with tradition, pomp and lots of hula. Â The Merrie Monarch Festival is committed to the perpetuation, preservation, and promotion of the art of hula and the Hawaiian culture through education.
Hilo dresses in it's best aloha wear to welcome visitors from all of the islands, the mainland and the world during this week of festivities. Â Stores dress their windows in traditional Hawaiiana; impromptu and scheduled hula demontrations sprout up in different venues; craft and art fairs can be found scattered around town; flowers and greeney can be seen everywhere; three full nights of hula dancing end up with the winners announced on Saturday night...and then of course...rain or shine...there is the Merrie Monarch parade!
Our friends at Local Hawai'i Realty provide a tent and seats right on the parade route and host a well anticipated food and beverage potluck for friends.
For some reason, and I'm not sure what happened, unbeknowned to me, my camera started acting up midway through the parade and I ended up having to delete 159 photos frpm the digital card due to a horrible bluish tint, so I don't have as many as I would have liked to share.
The different branches of the military were well represented as well as veterans from our foreing wars...unfortunately, many photos of the veteran groups participating were part of the ones I had to get rid of...
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Pa'u rider and her horse - You can learn more about the Pa'u Rider tradition and background Here and Here
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Floral arrangement on the back of a convertible.
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I'm so sorry I couldn't share more photos of bands and floats! Â I need to check and see what the problem was with the camera!
...........but if you visit Hilo during Merrie Monarch next year, you can see and experience not only the parade, but the whole exhuberant town of Hilo during Merrie Monarch week for yourself!
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Comments: 20
I experienced "The Descendants" as both a painful and beautiful movie..and the music is fabulous.
It was fun,....thanks, Risa
It's so frustrating to lose photos for whatever reason. I once lost a swag of irreplaceable ones to the self same bluish tint. I later figured that during the photo shoot I had absent mindedly set the camera to manual instead of one of the automatic settings such as landscape, portrait, etc. And blue (woe) is me happened.
Be that as it may. The photos you have posted here certainly give a good idea as to what the parade was like ... it was almost as good as being there with you to watch the passing scenes.
Is there still a real, traditional Hawaiian monarchy?
Thanks, I do think you would enjoy our parades and I can just imagine the Surreal Hawaii post you could do with it!
Yes, there are descendants of the royal family alive. No direct issue, as the last two monarchs had no children - the next one in line after Queen Liliu'okalani was Princess Ka'iulani and she died as a young girl while studying in England - but there are descendants and relatives to this day.
The blue colour cast cannot be neutralized by programs such as Picasa. The best one can do is to replace it with another overall colour. But it is not possible to remove the blue so that only the natural colours remain. A real bummer!
I surmise from what you say that none of the royal descents will be crowned monarch. Could this be an opportunity for a Queen Sonia?
Unless the US gives Hawai'i back or the Hawaiian Sovereign Nation is able to take it back, I doubt there will be another crowned Hawaiian monarch...and no chance of a Queen Sonia at all...although I have island blood, I still don't have the right kind of island blood... ;-)
Have you considered a blood transfusion ... of the right kind of royal island blood?
I'm afraid that in this instance no amount of blood transfusion would help make me royal!
Off to prepare dinner now...