•‘Together, we can’ •Great island music • Charity with conditions •Native ecosystems lost ‘Together, we can’ When Bernard Carvalho Jr. ran for mayor, he always said his campaign is for the people of Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau and his favorite words
•‘Together, we can’
•Great island music
• Charity with conditions
•Native ecosystems lost
‘Together, we can’
When Bernard Carvalho Jr. ran for mayor, he always said his campaign is for the people of Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau and his favorite words were “Together, we can.”
Bernard ran for mayor because he loves Kaua‘i and its people. Bernard ran a clean campaign always looking at the positive side of things. He once told me, “It doesn’t matter who you are, we should respect each other.”
Now that Bernard became mayor, in just a few months his leadership style shows that he can work with anyone in the political arena.
The mayor’s job is not easy, but the mayor is a type of guy that can work with anyone; he makes you feel welcome and is a good listener.
Speaking for myself, I believe the mayor is doing a good job for the people of Kaua‘i and Ni‘ihau. We must all work together and give our support to the mayor. And yes, together, we can!
Jerome “The Shadow” Freitas, Kealia
Great island music
My husband Don and I spend four months of the year on this beautiful island so remote from the hustle and bustle of cities on the East Coast.
At home, in Maryland, we live on the river in the quaint little town of St. Michaels where we have access to many fine musical and cultural performances.
However, we have never found such exceptional acoustics or better seating than that which is available at Kaua‘i Community College Performing Arts Center. There’s not a bad seat in the house.
April 5 brought a unique experience to us in the music of Alison Brown, banjo player, and Joe Craven, world-renowned fiddler, mandolinist and percussionist.
My dear ‘ole dad was a “self-taught” banjo, mandolin, violin and guitar player who was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in 1904.
Somehow, I knew he was right there with me Sunday night as I tapped my feet and clapped my hands to their awesome music.
Thank you, Kaua‘i Concert Association. And thank you, also, for the wonderful Monday nights at E Kanikapila Kakou at Island School. We are blessed.
Joyce Young, Po‘ipu
Charity with conditions
I owe it to myself and the record number of people on Kaua‘i who are being affected by our real economic meltdown to educate the few of our neighbors who feel that somehow receiving unemployment and welfare benefits is the perfect scam to beat the government and stay at home and do drugs.
For someone to qualify for unemployment benefits that person must have held a job in the past 12 months and paid taxes on their earned income. The amount you thereafter qualify for is figured upon a base earning period going back eighteen months. A forty thousand dollar a year salary will get you roughly four hundred and fifty dollars a week, and you are required to pay state and federal taxes on the monthly benefits received. I invite my working neighbors to trade places and live in our shoes until new employment is secured at a equal or better pay scale than their previous job.
Simply, unemployment is a benefit one works for and receives when they are laid off with no fault of their own, or lose their job due to other circumstances. This is the State of Hawai‘i/Department of Labor Relations working as it should and not a hand up through someone’s charitable donation at work, community fundraisers or tidings given to your local church.
Welfare benefits are what we do as Americans to help others who are less fortunate than us. Charity is a local, state and public provision for the relief of the needy. I say to the few who only want their “giving” to others to come with conditions (passing a drug test) to focus on the action of giving unconditionally and feel good about the fact that their tax dollars are helping our Hawaiian ‘ohana. Live aloha.
Dave Rullo, Princeville
Native ecosystems lost
Giving them benefit of doubt, maybe DLNR was ignorant back in the 1950s when they introduced predatory alien species of fish like bluegills and bass that eat native Hawaiian species of fish and insects and destroy the native Hawaiian ecosystems.
Maybe they didn’t know how the fish would spread in the streams and eat everything. Maybe they didn’t know they would eat or out-compete ‘o‘opu. But what is the justification of DLNR today? It can’t be ignorance when there are many scientific papers out there showing how bad the introduced species are to native ecosystems.
By law DLNR is supposed to malama the natural environment, keep our streams flowing, protect native species, not destroy them.
Make no excuse, this Wailua reservoir is not an “ecosystem” — it is a big fish tank. There is nothing natural about it to teach the students, except how to be janitors. The students are being educated in non-ecological principles to justify selfish entertainment (fishing), not food production or self-sufficiency. They are definitely not being taught ecological or Hawaiian cultural values.
This program is not teaching sustainability. It is teaching mono-culture and commercial feeding techniques. It is expensive and costly to continually re-supply the Wailua fish tank.
The students would be better taught principles of ecology through Hawaiian stream restoration programs and learn about the biology of our native stream species of ‘o‘opu, hihiwai and ‘opae.
Carl Berg, Lihu‘e
