• Puhi Road needs to be improved • Dairy farm not worth the cost • Times, they are a changing • We can still feel ‘The Light of Lono’ • The Crimean referendum and Hawaii
Puhi Road needs to be improved
In the past couple of years Puhi Road has become a much more traveled street. The development of the industrial park is a boon to the community. However, the very heavy equipment that uses Puhi Road, coupled with the additional residential traffic, has turned the pavement into a mine field of potholes. The county patches these gaping holes from time to time, but the next rain washes them out. If we are using Puhi Road as a major route then we need a more substantial surface.
Residents who use this road everyday have to steer around the holes to avoid damaging their cars and this is very dangerous. Can the county please take a look at this much-used and much-neglected street before someone is seriously injured?
Robert James
Lihue
Dairy farm not worth the cost
We should say dairy farm versus tourism. The South Side depends on tourism, not milk. The impact will not be right away, but once the world hears about the smell and everything that comes with a diary farm, the beauty will be lost. Why not look at the other dairy sites, Waimea and Kilauea? Why did they close? And why not use these areas again instead of destroying the beauty of Mahaulepu? I use to work on a diary farm and it’s not a pretty site! There will be a lot of jobs lost! For what? A glass of milk and a lot of manure?
BJ Thomas
Koloa
Times, they are a changing
A giant mahalo to Judge Leslie Kobayashi for helping to protect the people, land, and sea of our islands. Finally, the companies and landowners that allow the poisoning of our islands will be held accountable. The best way to get their attention is to hit them in the pocketbook and it looks like that’s going to happen. I hope this ruling sends a loud and clear message — we don’t want your companies.
The pendulum is swinging the other way now, which to me means, a safer, cleaner, more Earth-friendly way of life. Let’s hope it’s not too late to bring back our reefs, heal our land, and save our people. Your companies need to become environmentally conscious. There are safer, organic ways to control weeds, insects and fertilize our plants, once again I suggest you adopt these practices. Then you could truly be good neighbors.
Linda Bothe
Kalaheo
We can still feel ‘The Light of Lono’
Kukuilono history for all to reflect on.
The crown jewel of a kindness and honor for the island to share. Take time and walk around the outside walls of the clubhouse and see the timeless history of the park and its visionary who founded it.
The museum-quality picture display tells the story of this fabled land and those who tilled the Earth and those whose kindness left the park for all the world to share.
Artifacts, flowered walkways and fruit trees grace the Japanese Gardens. Walter McBryde left the blueprints of success with his “play it forward” attitude for the generations that followed him.
May we learn from him and continue to open the gates daily and feel “The Light of Lono” that he and his family shared over a hundred years ago.
A lesson I learned at a young age, wisdom comes from those who share — you can never go wrong.
Thank you Walter McBryde.
Ronald Horoshko
Kalaheo
The Crimean referendum and Hawaii
I hope that many of you were following the events taking place on the Crimean peninsula where the citizens of the Crimean Autonomous Republic casted their votes to decide whether to remain part of Ukraine or to secede and join the Russian Federation. With 95 percent majority, they have voted for joining Russia and they celebrated with elation. Their action was a true exercise of self-determination.
The governments of the United States and the EU had warned them ahead of time that they would not recognize the results of this referendum, and they consider it illegal. But the Crimeans did not care, and rightfully so. Self-determination is when people themselves define what they want to become. So, neither the U.S. nor the EU has any business in it.
Talking about illegality? This appears to be more of a hypocrisy, because in 1959 in the Hawaii statehood plebiscite, the United States conveniently forgot about its obligation as stated in U.N. Resolution 742 of 1953 to allow “freedom of choosing on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples between several possibilities including independence.”
Plus the plebiscite took place under military occupation. Then, in 1991, the Kosovo referendum, which was about Kosovo’s seceding from Serbia, was greeted by the EU and the U.S. as a legitimate and highly welcome solution.
Should we redefine self-determination as an exercise of pleasing the governments of the U.S. and Europe? I don’t think so. Let the Hawaiians vote if they want to be independent or join another country. Let Puerto Rico have a referendum about joining the United States or Cuba. Let the free and sovereign state of Baja California vote if they want to join the U.S. or to become independent from Mexico. We don’t need a world police to allow people to define their own future.
János Keoni Samu
Kalaheo
