• Don’t charge for trash pick-up • Stick around, Rosen • You got it all wrong • Mayor’s Aloha Garden: salad campaign Don’t charge for trash pick-up The idea of charging residents for refuse pick-up should not be even considered. The only good of
• Don’t charge for trash pick-up • Stick around, Rosen • You got it all wrong • Mayor’s Aloha Garden: salad campaign
Don’t charge for trash pick-up
The idea of charging residents for refuse pick-up should not be even considered.
The only good of this outcome will be the desecration of our ‘aina. Take a good look around. You should see areas where some have dumped their trash due to lack of knowledge (just plain stupidity).
So just imagine if these people have to pay. No way. They will just find deserted areas that are not monitored and dump.
There are some things that the general public should not pay for, and this is definitely one of them. If the idea of charging residents should happen then maybe use some of this money to raise the rewards for Crime Stoppers because you will have created more crime here.
Ken Sakai, Waimea
Stick around, Rosen
Mr. Rosen, I don’t want you or anybody else to move to Boston (“Just kidding,” Aug. 24, and “Problem with language? Move to Boston,” Aug. 21).
Perhaps my tongue-in-cheek was over your head. I only suggested that perhaps they speak “the king’s English” there, as opposed to the County Council you were making fun of. I hope you stay on Kaua‘i until you are old and gray, like me.
Kim Nofsinger, Princeville
You got it all wrong
In reference to Mr. Diamant’s criticism (“The ‘H-word’ entrenched here,” Letters, Aug. 27) of writer Hank Soboleski’s use of the term “haole” to describe Maj Johnson, a member of the 100th battalion, Diamant just doesn’t get it.
As a local-born haole, I’ve listened to use of the term over the many generations of my family living in Hawai‘i. My great-aunt, the late, and very gracious Esther Crozier, was one of the Hofgaard girls born in Waimea in the 1800s.
Aunt “Essie” would often use the word in statements such as “…I met the nicest haole gentleman yesterday…” That was common usage back in those days to describe a Caucasian, and for me, it still is.
For the old-timers, it is just a local descriptive without necessarily having negative inference, but like any descriptive, emphasis can imply a different meaning.
Of course, as a youngster in our local schools, I had been called a “f…ing haole” but that never changed my translation of the term, which is “new-comer, and most often, white.”
But Mr. Diamant’s interpretation, that this term sows the seeds of bigotry and racism, is a contributing reason why some folks, especially recent arrivals, may view “haole” in a derogatory light.
On the contrary, I believe using the term “racist” at the drop of a hat is a growing illness in America that should concern us all. Example: “Do you support Arizona’s immigration law? You do? Well then, you must be a racist.”
Sandy Brodie, Princeville Mauka
Mayor’s Aloha Garden: salad campaign
While waiting for a to-go order from the best restaurant in Lihu‘e, Garden Isle Barbecue, I strolled over to the grassy area in front of the Kaua‘i War Memorial Convention Hall to look again at “The Mayor’s Aloha Garden”. If you are not familiar with it see what appears only to be no more than what Hollywood calls “a location shoot” for a few political photo opportunities: “‘Mayor’s Aloha Garden’ takes root in Lihu‘e,” The Garden Island, March 17, 2009, and “Date set for celebration of the ‘Mayor’s Aloha Garden,’” The Garden Island, March 13, 2010.
The reason I say this is because I was not surprised to see before me a limp, sagging, mud-splattered sign extolling the “aloha garden” — now for weeks a partially abandoned plot of marigolds and flowered basil and garlic too late to pick accompanied by scattered and faded paper postings of bygone veggies. Equally sad (or amusing) one can find only a few feet away worn bronze plaques glued to lava rocks– dedications to past figureheads at the base of unkempt or downright mildewed trees. All this a few footsteps from the mayoral incumbent’s campaign headquarters.
Now that’s about right.
Currently, the Mayor’s Aloha Garden exemplifies very well how the mayor’s handlers and many politicians in general continue to present a string of well-meaning but ultimately propagandizing programs to a public at large without real commitment or strong leadership.
The groundswell organization Kaua‘i Agricultural Initiative that brought us the garden spun a yarn of multiple benefits. My favorite was the idea that the Mayor’s Aloha Garden would provide a regular stream of fresh vegetables to the Food Bank. Reality tells me the garden might supply two or three family’s intermittent salads.
Instantly I am reminded of the “Kaua‘i Made” program propping itself up here and there when convenient for the administration like Christmas at Kukui Grove or the Kaua‘i Farm Bureau Fair to “sell the brand” but ultimately providing less than advertised. I’m certain the readership of this newspaper can think of more examples of this type of political slight-of-hand.
Again, the usual suspects are at work. However well-intentioned, I don’t believe the public ultimately buys into it, but sees it for what it truly is — a campaign.
Rolf Bieber, Kapa‘a
