Earth and Space News: Hawaiian Quilts Are More Cryptic Than Magnum PI's Honor Among Thieves

Summary: Hawaiian quilts are communication devices for honor among Hawaiians, unlike cell phones on Magnum PI's Honor Among Thieves Oct. 4, 2019.

Hawaiian quilts admit to cryptic aspects that address honor among Hawaiians and honor for Hawaii, unlike cell phones on Magnum PI action drama television series episode Honor Among Thieves Oct. 4, 2019.

Director Carlos Bernard and writer Gene Hong bare the bad business of the legal owner of a pickpocketed cell phone on the second season's second episode. The two-season series' 22nd episode overall clusters Jin (Bobby Lee), career pickpocket of a cell phone with criminal communications, and Thomas Magnum (Jay Hernandez), private investigator. The first season's second episode, From the Head Down, Oct. 1, 2018, deals with a bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) diverted for dastardly designs and deadly deeds.

Magnum endeavors to enlist Juliet Higgins' (Perdita Weeks) expertise as computer hacker in Season One's second episode and as investigative partner in Season Two's second episode.

Higgins and Magnum function respectively as majordomo (from Latin maior domūs, "principle of the house") and security consultant for best-selling author Robin Masters' Robin's Nest property.

Higgins as property manager and Magnum as part-time employee gaze upon Robin's Nest grounds through their respective main and guest house glassed or open-air ground-level walls. The Robin's Nest lived-in houses harbor Hawaii-honed building, decorating and furnishing designs even though they have no Hawaiian quilts atypically on beds or typically on walls. Hawaiian quilts traditionally impart artistic itineraries that illustrate hidden or overt intentions and that individual, insular or even international events or island environments and plants inspire.

The oldest traditional Hawaiian quilts, perhaps from the 1820s through the 1870s, mayhaps juggled hidden (kaona) and non-hidden cultural juxtapositions of family- and neighborhood-specific environmental symbols.

Keen knowledge of helping others, homesteading skills, recycling resources and teaching beginners kindled in Protestant missionary women sharing with Hawaiian wahine ("women") quilting and sewing accomplishments.

Hawaiian women learning quilting and, from the 1840s onward, applique (from French appliqué, "applied") methods and patterns from Protestant missionary women led to resourceful leisure time. They merged making cut-out materials surface decorations for another material and mixing sewing scraps into stitched, two-layer bed coverings with older traditions of bark-cloth bed coverings. The older tradition of kapa moe ("bark-cloth bed covers") netted soft cloth from the beaten, felted fibrous inner bark of wauke (paper mulberry, Broussonetia papyifera) trees.

The kapa moe tradition offers geometrically intricate patterns obtained with 'ohe kapala, dye-stamped sticks from 'ohe (common bamboo, Bambusa vulgaris and Polynesian bamboo, Schizostachyum glaucifolium) trees.

Isabella Bird (Oct. 15, 1831-Oct. 7, 1904) put Hawaiian quilts into her published presentation, that six months in the Hawaiian islands prompted, about the Sandwich Islands.

The oldest traditional Hawaiian quilts queue up local ferns, flowers, foliage and fruits as quintessential quests, somewhat quizzical to outsiders, for cultural identity and family memories. Six- to eight-stitched inches (2.54 centimeters) before and after stitchless half-inches (0.13 centimeters) radiate from one-color appliqué over contrasting-colored backing to animal-hair, cotton, fern-fiber, wool padding. Magnum sees himself as unsophisticated about Jack Candler's (Hal Ozsan) private fine arts gallery in Season One's fourth episode, Six Paintings, One Frame, Oct. 15, 2018.

And yet Konstantin Somov's (Nov. 30, 1869-May 6, 1939) theft-triggering Lady in Blue, like criminal text messages and perhaps cryptic Hawaiian quilts, trigger Magnum's investigative talents.

Private investigator Thomas Sullivan Magnum (Jay Hernandez), prescription drug thief Lew (Rob Evors), self-described "asset redistributor" Jin (Bobby Lee) and Juliet Higgins (Perdita Weeks) in CBS TV's Magnum P.I. season 2, episode 1, Honor Among Thieves: Magnum P.I. @MagnumPICBS, via Facebook Oct. 4, 2019

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Niʻhauans in front of thatched dwelling display their decorative cloth; 1885 photo by Francis Sinclair (1833-July 22, 1916), co-purchaser of Island of Ni'hau with his brother, James (died 1873) on Feb. 23, 1864; in collection of Auckland War Memorial Museum, New Zealand: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Niihauans_in_1885,_taken_by_Francis_Sinclair.jpg; No known copyright restrictions, via @ Auckland Museum @ https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/discover/collections/record/1091131

Akana, Elizabeth A. 1981. Hawaiian Quilting: A Fine Art. Honolulu HI: Hawaiian Mission Children's Society.

Arthur, Linda. 2002. Contemporary Hawaiian Quilting. Waipahu HI: Island Heritage Publishing.

Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum @BishopMuseum. 17 January 2018. "On January 17, 1893, American lawyer Henry E. Cooper proclaimed that the Provisional Government was now the government of the Hawaiian Islands. On this day, we recall the motto of Queen Liliʻuokalani: ʻOnipaʻa. Stand firm. Photo: Hawaiians sewing a quilt with Hawaiian flag designs; Hawaiʻi, 1923. Image number SP 112780. Photographer unknown, Bishop Museum Archives. [Image sharing on social media is welcome; for all other uses, please contact Archives@BishopMuseum.org.]." Facebook.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/BishopMuseum/posts/10155812639337110

Bird, Isabella L. 1890. The Hawaiian Archipelago. Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands. London, England: John Murray.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/hawaiianarchipel00bird/page/n8

Breneman, Judy Anne. 2004. "Quilt History of Hawaii: Kapa Moe, Flag Quilts & Applique." Womenfolk > America's Quilting History > A Patchwork of Multicultural Quilters.
Available @ http://www.womenfolk.com/quilting_history/hawaiian.htm

"From the Head Down." Magnum PI: The First Season. Los Angeles CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, Oct. 6, 2018.

Hammond, Joyce D. 1993. "Hawaiian Flag Quilts: Multivalent Symbols of a Hawaiian Quilt Tradition." Western Washington University Anthropology Faculty and Staff Publications - Anthropology 14: 1-26.
Available @ https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=anthropology_facpubs

"Hawaii's First Quilt Museum Preserves Culture Through Fabric." Hawaii News Now > July 16, 2018 Updated Aug. 9, 2018.
Available @ https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/38650742/hawaiis-first-quilt-museum-preserves-culture-through-fabric/

"Honor Among Thieves." Magnum PI: The Second Season. Los Angeles CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, Oct. 4, 2019.

Magnum P.I. @MagnumPICBS. 4 October 2019. "Thomas Magnum is a dignified, professional, private investigator helping the Hawaiians most in need, so naturally he's lending his services to... A thief? Catch the latest episode of Magnum P.I., streaming now." Facebook.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/MagnumPICBS/posts/438503343461027

Marriner, Derdriu. 29 September 2019. "Ti Tree Root Okolehao Applies To Magnum PI's Payback Is For Beginners." Earth and Space News. Sunday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2019/09/ti-tree-root-okolehao-applies-to-magnum.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 14 September 2019. "Yellow Fever Mosquitoes Air a Killer on Magnum's A Kiss Before Dying." Earth and Space News. Saturday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2019/09/yellow-fever-mosquitoes-air-killer-on.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 7 September 2019. "Hawaii Mamo Feathers Are Like Gold Necklaces on Magnum's Die He Said." Earth and Space News. Saturday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2019/09/hawaii-mamo-feathers-are-like-gold.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 1 September 2019. "Koloa Maoli Hawaiian Ducks Are One Duck Less on Magnum's Sudden Death." Earth and Space News. Sunday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2019/09/koloa-maoli-hawaiian-ducks-are-one-duck.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 3 February 2019. "Makou Hawaiian Buttercups Add No Aconitine to Magnum's I, the Deceased." Earth and Space News. Sunday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2019/02/makou-hawaiian-buttercups-add-no.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 11 November 2018. "Makiawa Hawaiian Sardines Appease Magnum PI's The Cat Who Cried Wolf." Earth and Space News. Sunday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/11/makiawa-hawaiian-sardines-appease.html

Marriner, Derdriu. 6 October 2018. "Hawaiian Dolphinfish Mahi-Mahi Abide by Magnum PI's From the Head Down." Earth and Space News. Saturday.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2018/10/hawaiian-dolphinfish-mahi-mahi-abide-by.html

Root, Elizabeth. 1989. Hawaiian Quilting: Instructions and Full-Size Patterns for 20 Blocks. Mineola NY: Dover Publications, Inc.

Ryan, Tim. 10 March 2003. "The Queen's Quilt." Honolulu Star-Bulletin > Archives.
Available @ http://archives.starbulletin.com/2003/03/10/features/story1.html

"Six Frames, One Painting." Magnum PI: The First Season. Los Angeles CA: Paramount Pictures Corporation, Oct. 15, 2018.

Tsutsumi, Cheryl. November 2008. "A Stitch in Time." Maui Nō Ka 'Oi Magazine 12(6).
Available @ https://www.mauimagazine.net/a-stitch-in-time/

Earth and Space News

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Hawaiian Quilts Are More Cryptic Than Magnum PI's Honor Among Thieves

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