Category: Life In General

For the ʻōlelo-impared: This is a journal of my travels in Ireland, documented in Hawaiian. The journey begins June 17, 2002.

New York, Day 1

I woke up around 9AM, wife 11AM and daughter after 1PM. I had hoped to wake up realizing that it all had been a bad dream, but alas it wasn’t. I woke up in the same bed I went to sleep in at the Crown Plaza Hotel, Jamaica, New York last night. I can’t thank the many friends in Ireland who tried to help and those who are spreading the word enough. It’s hard not to be effusive with our thanks. I’m a quiet person by nature, non-confrontational whenever possible, and this is probably one of our downfalls. I expected…

The Donaghy Saga In Ireland

September 8, 2007 Aloha mai kakou (greetings to all) My name is Joseph Donaghy, and I am an Assistant Professor of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. Some of you may know me by my Hawaiian name Keola. It is not my legal name, but given to me in my youth by a Hawaiian family that I was very close to, and I have used it for many years. Late last year I applied to the Ph.d. program in ethnomusicology at University College Cork, and received my word of my acceptance early this year. I immediately contacted…

TwitterGrams – The New “Push”?

I’ve been following Dave Winer‘s experiments in TwitterGrams with some interest for the past week. He put a web interface on the service which allows people to post small (under 200k) MP3 files, and have them delivered as “Tweets”. Just for fun I made a short sample from Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole’s What A Wonderful World and posted it. It immediately showed up in my podcast area in iTunes, and a tweet showed up in Twitterific. It occurred to me what a great tool this could potentially be for music promotion. It’s the new “push”. Fans of a musician become their Twitter…

Cork Schools

I called a number of secondary schools in Cork last evening (Friday morning in Ireland – 11 hour difference) and have information and applications coming for my daughter. All of them were very pleasant and helpful, and seemed excited at the prospect of having a student from Hawai‘i there. None of them had previously heard about the “dependent of student” policy that had been related to me by the UCC International Student Office. One of the school is fee-paying, though the cost is not exorbitant. If Immigration requires us to put her in that kind of school, we will definitely…

Mass Confusion

I’ve been in contact with many helpful people in Ireland trying to determine what we can do with our 16 year old daughter. Thank you all for the kindness. UC-Cork’s International Student Office informed me about two weeks ago that we would have to find a fee-paying school for her attend. The Southern Regional office of the Department of Education and Sciences says no, we can put her in any school. “Please note that you may apply to any school in the area you will be living (fee paying or not) to enrol your daughter. I enclose a link to…

What would you do with a 16 year old for a year in Cork?

The chances of our family relocating to Cork in September increases every day. I’m awaiting answers to a few important questions, but they should be settled soon. One nagging question is what to do with my 16 year old daughter while we’re there. I’ve been told that we would need to pay for her secondary level education while we are there (as I’ll be there on a student visa and the government doesn’t want to pay for her education), but no one seems to know what it will cost us. Bernie suggests that we leave her out of school for…

When It Rain It Pours – And It’s A Good Thing

They say bad news travels in threes, sometimes good news does, too. First, I found out late last week that I’m on the final ballot for two N? H?k? Hanohano Awards, along with Kenneth Makuak?ne, and he’s also up for Hawaiian Album of the Year. To top it off, my composition “N? H?k? Pio ‘Ole” was selected as the theme song for the 30th anniversary celebration for the awards. Over the weekend my daughter found out she was one of thirty students who have been accepted to attend the Curie Academy at Cornell University. It is a week-long program in…

You can quote me (and you’d better get it right!)

Dave has had a lot to say about the press, inaccurate and incomplete reporting and how some reporters have acted at his and others recently decisions to decline interview requests. I’m not in Dave or Jason‘s league as far as being in demand for interviews, but do them occasionally in regards to Hawaiian music, language and technology as it pertains to the language and our programs. As with Dave and Jason, I have had a wide range of experience from having my thoughts concisely and accurately reported, to having them completely misrepresented. Wired Magazine did a feature on some of…

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