Thoughts On A Silversword

 

The Silversword plant mirrors the human tale. At least to me.

The silvery hairs, fleshy leaves and low-growing rosette form the Haleakala Silversword ('ahinahina in Hawaiian) and grows only in hot, dry cinder slopes......... like the Haleakala Crater on Maui. These plants live between 3 and 90 years. They flower once, sending up a spectacular flowering stalk and then soon die, scattering drying seeds to the wind.

We humans are rather like this magnificent plant. We start as seeds, we grow in special locations for an allotted span of years and then we die. Our progeny, like Silversword seeds, have scattered to the wind.

If you go to Maui, do drive the twisty road to the top of Haleakala and take a stroll on the cinder paths among these fantastic plants.

 

WPA Projects...... Even in Hawaii!

 In February, 2023, we were blessed to be in Maui, Hawaii. Walking in downtown Lahaina, I spotted this memorial stone-marker. It really made me pause and think. I knew about Roosevelt's WPA projects, and the CCC corps, but only thought of it within the 48 states. But no, there were projects in all 50 states!

In Lahaina, it was a WPA project to develop the downtown Banyan Tree Park. Other Maui projects were Lahaina's  Sea Wall, the highway between Lahaina and Wailuku (and the airport) and the Hala Pa'ahao Prison....... which was first built in the 1850s and restored several times since as a historic site in Lahaina. 

A project many of you will recognize, having driven it perhaps more than once, is the Haleakala Road, built as a WPA project between 1933-1944 at a cost of nearly $500,000 (nearly $12 billion today). This is was a ten-year project as Haleakala summit lies at 10,000 feet and is about a15-mile very serpentine road. 

As you probably know, there were WPA/CCC programs and projects in all 50 states, and it was YOUR ancestors (as young men) who were involved in those programs and projects. Records of the many and various work camps in each state are available; ask Google.