Rick Monteverde on tue 17 jul 01
The green stuff is olivine. There was something about using one or
more of these sands in Ceramics Monthly a while back, in the article
about the rediscovery of that lost Japanese bright yellow glaze
formula. The beach is near my house, and the sands only go green
under the right surf and wind conditions. I saved a bucket of it for
whatevers, but haven't used it in pottery yet. Not sure what the
melting temperature of olivine is, or if it was supposed to stay
solid in the glaze.
The black stuff is basaltic lava, and tends to be a little bit gassy
and strange when heated. Don't know if anyone's using it in pottery.
The chemistry of lava varies quite a bit from place to place and time
to time in the island flows, so it would be hard to get consistent
effects in any case.
That stuff about Pele bothering about rocks and so forth is recently
created superstitious nonsense from the park service and others (like
bus drivers as suggested), but certain plants and a few special sites
(and any rocks or other materials from them) were/are regarded as
being sacred to Pele by the native Hawaiians.
- Rick Monteverde
Honolulu, HI
Penny Hosler on tue 17 jul 01
To begin the day as an extremely soggy wet blanket, I was told by the locals
that the tour bus drivers started the bad luck story re removing
sand/lava/coral from the islands. They got tired of cleaning it out of the
bus between trips. Madame Pele, you'll note, has no problem if these items
are purchased.
Herein lies the death of romance.
Penny in WA
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> I lived for two years on the Big Island near Kapoho. The black and
> green sand beaches there are beautiful.
>
> The Big Islanders believe that if you remove the sand from the
> island, the goddess Pele will seek retribution. This believe is so
> firmly ingrained that even visitors from the Mainland accept it.
> One of the most interesting displays I saw in Hawaii was at the
> Kilauea National Park. Under a glass display case were odd bits of
> lava with letters explaining that the visitors had returned the
> lava due to a string of bad luck. One person even returned a pair
> of tennis shoes with sand embedded into the soles.
>
> I just wanted to add folklore to the other excellent posts that
> covered the chemistry of the sand.
>
>
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