• Ready, fire, aim? • He was crazy that way • Bannerless, but still proud • State-controlled Ready, fire, aim? Several issues on the council’s calendar recently ignited my brain cells thusly: Feral cats: yes, catch, neuter and release, hopefully
• Ready, fire, aim? •
He was crazy that way • Bannerless, but
still proud • State-controlled
Ready, fire, aim?
Several issues on the council’s calendar recently ignited my brain cells thusly:
Feral cats: yes, catch, neuter and release, hopefully they’ll keep the rodent population in check. When you charitable feral cat feeders dispense food, please be certain to stick around long enough to ensure the vittles are ingested by cats, not chickens, rats or toads. I speak from personal experience when I was given permission several years ago to feed the last Wilcox hospital’s neutered cat, Big Foot- a proven rat catcher- and had to sit by his side to protect his dinner from the varmints listed above.
Electricity costs: many large towering office buildings in the Los Angeles area use motion sensors to turn on lighting as needed, and to turn off lighting when offices are empty. The cost of retrofitting offices probably saves enough or more power costs to make the initial expenditure worthwhile.
Plastic bags redux: okay, now they are not blowing in the wind on beaches and roads, however we must use heavier plastic bags for our trash to follow our house rules and protect our maintenance workers and trash haulers from garbage, etc. Ready, fire, aim?
Alice Parker, Lihu‘e
He was crazy that way
Hank Soboleski’s Island History article, WWII Bomb Disposal, brought back fond memories of my late uncle John “Sonny” Perreira and one of the stories he liked to tell.
From a very young age he was a rabid pig hunter, and this incident happened in the early ‘40’s, when he was only 12 (yes, he was hunting alone even at that tender age). He walked from his home on Pu’uwai Road in Kalaheo, taking the No. 1 Ditch trail up to the old water filter plant next to what would become the Medeiros chicken farm. Taking the Goat’s Place horse trail beginning there, he hunted up the ridges where today the Mt. Kahili jeep road runs.
By mid-morning he had passed the area old timers called Black Lake, and crossed Wahiawa Bog to hunt the far back country called Cement River, named for a low diversion dam of a forgotten irrigation system.
He had just come upon heavy pig diggings, and his dogs were “taking air” with all the hot scent around, when a high-pitch whistling, followed by a distant boom, filled the air. Suddenly, there was a tremendous BANG seemingly next to him, and the ground shook so hard he fell. Hardly had he stood up when another whistle-boom-BANG occurred.
The soldiers doing artillery practice at the Grove Farm Range to the east had mis-set their ranging! The projectiles were flying over Mt. Kahili and exploding on the hardpan floor of Wahiawa Bog!
My uncle Sonny started running for his life. In all, 3-5 projectiles impacted, and, not even remembering how, he ran through it all, and did not stop until he got home, easily 5 miles through all that wild terrain.
Many was the time I stood at the Mt. Kahili translator radio/tv station and looked down on those perfectly circular ponds of water in Wahiawa Bog.
In my high school years I even walked across one or two of those ponds, marveling at the solid rock that kept much deeper craters from forming, thinking of a terrified 12-year-old boy running like the wind, outpacing even his dogs. But then I’d think of my uncle and smile, realizing that most likely, the very next Saturday, he would have gone right back to doing what he most liked to do, looking for the pigs that had been so freshly there at Cement River only the week before, checking out those craters as he hunted. He was crazy that way.
Wayne Jacintho, Kalaheo
Bannerless, but still proud
Well, all banners are now down. I would love to know who made the call to ban the support of our graduating students!
It’s OK to litter the island for months with political signs, but how dare we show our pride in our keiki for one week! I am disappointed.
Tonia Gamarra and fellow Kapa‘a High Graduates of 2011, we are proud of you!
Davlyn P Gamarra, Kapa‘a
State-controlled
The one thing I will never understand, as the vast majority, is the belief that our, so called, government and not the free enterprise profit motive can solve problems. Let’s look at the condition that our nation-state is in today in several key areas:
The economy is bankrupt by being trillions of dollars in debt with no hope of recovery without inflating the existing currency thus making our money almost valueless – clearly caused by our Federal Banking system.
Our infrastructure is in shambles. Our infrastructure is a good example of the consequence of public ownership (community property — a statist controlled system).
We have lost our manufacturing power. Our unemployment rate is staggering. As Thomas Jefferson said, “A nation that does not manufacture is the slave of one that does.”
The value of real-estate is plunging and the bankruptcies are overwhelming. See Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in addition to our Federal Guarantees.
Our medical costs are going through the roof. See Medicare, Medicaid and other Federal healthcare guarantees and statist interference.
We are fighting four wars — three external and one internal (war on drugs) with no end in sight for all four. The costs are beyond our capability to support and the cost in human carnage is unacceptable.
I guess it’s understandable why most feel this way. We have been propagandized through our communication media that the government can do no wrong. Television glorifies all government run operations to a point where alternatives – for-profit operations — are not considered. See all medical, police and lawyer shows, and the news. It seems that they almost always portray private, for-profit, businesses as the “bad” guys.
Ralph Tamm, Lihu‘e
