Letters to the Editor
Nude bathers are blessing, not a curse
Regarding Timothy Hurley's Nov. 25 article on nude bathing restrictions being placed on Makena Beach on Maui: Since when is laying a towel on a beach considered a denial of use?
A bather on a beach towel — naked or otherwise — might take up 100 square feet, while a family living in tents will easily use 2,500 square feet or more. The bather's stay is measured in hours, while a "camper's" stay can be measured in weeks. A bather leaves foot and 'okole prints that vanish in the wind or the next high tide, while even careful and respectful "campers" leave long-lasting scars.
Nude bathers are a blessing to any beach since they have a vested interest in keeping the beach clean and free of any pilau 'opala or — even worse — broken glass.
Leave the shibai about "Western confiscation of lands" to someone else, Mr. Maxwell. Put on a pair of sunglasses and discretely "count your blessings" while you share Makena in the true spirit of aloha.
John Antilety
Wahiawa
UH security should target bicycle thieves
The nonchalant attitude of University of Hawai'i Security Chief Donald Dawson concerning theft on the UH-Manoa campus is unfortunately typical of entrenched arrogance of university administrators toward students and faculty that President Evan Dobelle has promised to root out.
Beverly Creamer reported on Nov. 20 in "Thefts still plague UH-Manoa" that Dawson said: "We sure get a lot of stuff stolen." "We're the candy store for bicycles." "They're the No. 1 hot item."
There are hundreds of bicycles reported stolen every year at UH-Manoa. Perhaps a thousand more actually vanish because students know it is a waste of time to go through the hassle of reporting it to the campus police. I know because I am on my fourth one.
These are not casual thefts. Half-inch cables are routinely found cut and lying on the ground where the bike was parked. A thief needs a large bolt-cutter to accomplish that. There is obviously a sophisticated ring operating on the Manoa campus.
Rather than making jokes about theft on campus, UH Security Chief Dawson should set himself and his numerous staff on the trail of the bandits.
Robert J. Conlan, UH Political Science Department
Smoking in the malls should be banned
Entering a store or restaurant through a fog of cigarette smoke is one of the most obnoxious things I have to do. I am immediately angry. That someone has the right to smoke I have no beef with, but that I have to breathe it, that's a different story.
The state of Hawai'i, by accepting the money from the tobacco industry suit, has acknowledged how harmful smoking is to its residents. Yet it lets infants, young children, people with asthma and people with chemical sensitivities breathe cigarette smoke daily in malls and in front of stores.
It's time to eradicate smoking in the malls. Or give smokers a room in the mall in which to smoke. Then they will be the only ones to have to breathe their smoke.
However it's fixed, fix it. It is complete hypocrisy to carry on with all the "quit smoking and save the children" jargon and then force such a large portion of the population into breathing secondhand smoke.
Sandra Gray
North Kohala, Big Island
Hospital nursing staff made stay bearable
Our 9-year-old medically fragile and developmentally disabled son Lokahi was hospitalized during Thanksgiving week at Maui Memorial Hospital. Lokahi was very ill with pneumonia, seizures, high fevers and vomiting.
During our sadness as we watched our son lie in his adult-size hospital bed, the Haleakala East nursing staff at Maui Memorial Hospital was kind and supportive. As the tears rolled down our faces, nurse Penny Pacubas was comforting. We spent our Thanksgiving day listening to nurse Penny share her personal experiences with us.
The Maui Memorial emergency room nurses and doctors, and the Haleakala East nursing staff, are wonderful people who brought joy into our lives during Thanksgiving week and all those previous medical crises.
Because of their kindness and support, we know that we can get through another medical crisis, and there will be many more crises in the years to come.
We would also like to thank St. Ann Waihe'e Church members and the Wailuku Door of Faith Church members and the Catholic communities for their prayers and support. We are fortunate to live on Maui.
Charmaine and Ken Bissen Jr.
Wailuku, Maui
Afghan women were treated miserably
Since the Sept. 11 terrorism, I have changed a lot. For instance, the other day I was sitting at home watching TV. Since there was nothing on, I decided to watch the news. I turned to CNN and I saw the most terrifying thing: a woman in Afghanistan being beaten because she was showing her face. I would think that would be against the law, but no, they didn't do anything about that.
Another situation I watched was of a woman who was executed because she was showing her face, and that picture in my mind made me weak in the knees. I almost started to cry. I looked at my mom and asked, "Why? Why, Mom, are they so cruel to these women?" She responded, "Well, they're just really mean. Their culture allows the men to treat the women like dogs; they treat their dogs better than they treat the women."
That makes me happy that I live in America, where the men don't treat us like dogs. We are all treated equally.
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal," said Martin Luther King Jr. in his amazing "I Have a Dream" speech, and that is exactly what I think.
B. Nakagawa
14 years old
South Korea's Kim still has much to offer
Tom Plate's recent column on South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was astute, as usual. He paints Kim's lame-duck status in too-vivid colors, however.
Kim condemned the terror attacks and put South Korea on high alert. "Terror is the enemy of all the people in the world who love peace and democracy," he said in a nationally televised address. He said the catastrophe was expected to have a "tremendously negative" effect on the global economy. "In particular, it is expected to affect our economy, which relies heavily on international trade," Kim said.
However, the Korean economy has been the only economy to actually improve its sovereign bond rating since Sept. 11.
Also, Plate doesn't appreciate that any South Korean president who would succeed in a "sunshine" policy with North Korea would have to divorce himself from determining his successor. South Korean political parties are a medley of progressives and conservatives, liberals and reactionaries. The politics of succession must be seen as a mad scramble, and not as Kim's failure.
Kim will accomplish much in the next months and years.
Richard Thompson
Visiting professor, Honam University, Kwangju
It's time to move on; Hawai'i's falling apart
Hawai'i again has surprised me with another out-of-the-box decision. Let's make it easier for sex offenders to "live Aloha" while the rest of us law-abiding citizens live in doubt or fear.
My family and I have had enough. We are moving back to Los Angeles, where we can at least have a chance. The government here in Hawai'i is too crooked and the laws too confusing.
We have enjoyed the beauty and the people, but let's be honest. The school system is sorely lacking, crime is rising, the economy is falling and the state budget is in ruins.
C.L. Thames
Gasoline service should be a utility
After reading about the legal battle between the state and the gasoline firms, it occurs to me that gasoline companies should be made into utilities, such as the electric and, in years gone by, telephone companies. We could save a lot of taxpayer money if we were this practical.
The reason our government has allowed utilities, which have a monopoly on their particular product or service, is that the product or service they provide is so important to the population that the government sees the need for a stable, reliable and reasonably priced commodity. Utilities are given the right to raise prices if they don't make a fair profit, and they are prevented from price abuses if their profits go too high, ensuring both a reasonable rate of return for these firms and continuity of supply.
We can't trust the gasoline companies to lower their prices given their desire to make profits, which is understandable, but with something so crucial as gasoline, can we really allow these companies to just charge whatever they like?
We are at their mercy, and gasoline prices here in Hawai'i are 100 percent higher than the prices on the Mainland, yet nothing seems to ever get done to change this situation.
Gasoline is a special item, affecting the price of so many other products and services. It needs to be elevated into a special category that is regulated by the government. The money we save can be directed to development of mass transportation and not put into the pockets of lawyers. We need legislators with the guts to do the right thing and not kowtow to the special interest money that is donated to their campaigns.
Mike Reilly
Kane'ohe
Football crowd touched by dedicated song
I would just like to write about one moment for which I will always remember Loyal Garner. It was the 1982 Hawai'i high school football Prep Bowl between the St. Louis Crusaders and Radford Rams.
Her hit "Blind Man in the Bleachers" was being played on the radio, and she decided to sing it before the game started in honor of John Velasco, the Radford High School football coach who died earlier that season. The Rams were dedicating the season, as well as the game, to their fallen coach, and Loyal's singing of that song brought tears to the eyes of many fans, including me.
I was 12 years old then, and I remember seeing a tear run down my father's cheeks and the many fans in attendance that night. It was a touching moment, one I will never forget.
James Bruhn
Kane'ohe
Rebuilding UH must include educators
It is indeed heartening to learn in the Nov. 25 Advertiser that President Evan Dobelle will spend one-quarter of a billion dollars to build the University of Hawai'i toward greatness. Our Hawai'i developers, to be sure, have had ample practice with such work — building, repairing and tearing down on the Manoa campus — and will welcome further experimentation.
In his own words our new university head told us, in the Nov. 16 Advertiser, he is "a tomorrow guy" who intends to "turn around" what he sees as a "broken down" educational institution.
Along with his big building program, he hopes for the considerable and necessary overhaul of the university's bureaucracy, plus aggressive strategies to increase enrollment, as well as accelerated fund-raising. Interestingly, he finds that "juniors and seniors are being lost because courses they need ... aren't available."
Perhaps it is too obvious to need the saying, but nowhere have I seen any precise indication that some money is to be spent filling the more than 300 teaching positions vacant on the Manoa campus alone. Perhaps this omission is merely one of those things that, as administrators are fond of saying, goes without saying. But for some years it has gone down the drain without saying.
And, when it comes to energizing and enlarging the student body, why not reinstitute experimentally the old rule, abolished some 30 years ago, that allowed Mainland students to sign up at the same tuition rate as our own children? Under the old system, we found that the Mainlanders were certainly no brighter than our own, but that they had in many cases a different experiential perspective that had a considerable educational value both in and out of class.
As against all those fancy quarter-billion-dollar buildings we're going to get, the tuitional loss caused by bringing in Mainlanders at the same tuition as our own sons and daughters would be very small and the educational gain potentially great.
Buildings are one element in the educational scheme, but let us not forget the two absolute essentials defined by the time-honored definition of a university: a student at one end of a log, a teacher at the other.
Travis Summersgill
Professor emeritus, University of Hawai'i
