Don't place Hawai'i's trust in super-ferry

The word on the street is Aloha Airlines wants to get out of the interisland business, leaving Hawaiian Air a virtual monopoly. A ferry system has been discussed for many years, and some years back, there was an attempt at a hydrofoil, much like that used in Hong Kong.

In March of this year, we had the opportunity to see another type of ferry that was on its way to Rochester, N.Y. The company has proposed to build one three times as big for interisland travel. This so-called super-ferry is being heralded as the answer to our problem.

I would caution the people of Hawai'i to check out the track record of this ferry in Rochester. It has spent more time tied up in port with financial and mechanical problems and under repair than on the sea.

A federal judge recently impounded the ferry and put guards on board because the owners couldn't pay their bills. It has turned into a financial nightmare for the cities of Rochester and Toronto, with millions spent on docking facilities that are not being used, because the ferry won't sail. The mayor of Rochester is now proposing to buy the ferry and run it as a service in the public sector.

Any ferry system will require massive taxpayer money to build docking and support facilities. Europe has excellent ferry transportation and, while not as fast as the proposed super-ferry, has a good track record. The super-ferry is yet to be built and has yet to be tested in the rough waters of the channel and during the humpback whale migration season. Don't forget the 300-foot security zone that has to be maintained around the ferry that will affect use of the harbor during the times it is (in) port.

Slight to Wahine doesn't make sense

I am very proud of the University of Hawai'i women's volleyball team for going undefeated in season play. How can a once-beaten team go ahead of an unbeaten team?

I feel that the Wahine were slighted because of jealousy. They began the season as the 13th-ranked team in the nation. Because of their hard work as a team, they were able to beat many teams. Going undefeated is very hard to accomplish.

Hawai'i proved that it could win matches without superstars. I feel that this move is a slap in the face to women's volleyball. The biggest losers are the fans who have supported their team.

Guard mistreatment story was demoralizing

With regard to the Nov. 27 article "Isle Guard unit's colleagues allege mistreatment by Army": Why are you making such an effort to further demoralize Hawai'i's citizens as the war gets closer to our husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters deploying to Iraq?

As the days get closer to the end of training and the beginning of the real fighting, families are already beginning to feel the fear and anxiety that come with a war hitting home. It is disrespectful that you print front-page material that makes it seem as if our soldiers are equivalent to inmates.

Before printing this, how much effort was made to ask if soldiers from Hawai'i, and not California, felt the same alleged mistreatment? Probably not much. How did this article uplift the morale of our 29th BCT families waiting at home? Thanks, but it didn't.

It's time to lighten up about Joe Moore

That Nov. 19 letter from W. Ogitani regarding Joe Moore and June Jones was fun.

I choose to watch Joe just to see what he's up to with the UH football team and "Hawaii Five-O" music. Joe is our local news. After giggling, I can switch the channel to the professionals.

I have a son in Texas today and prefer watching my hometown boy from 'Aiea get silly than watching war news on every channel.

Humor is needed here. Get a grip, Ogitani — put your feet up and enjoy any news channel with a cool iced tea.

'Deep kimchee' line is no big deal

In response to Maureen Ko's Nov. 29 letter in which she found the term "deep kimchee" offensive and racist: Wow laulau! Lighten up! In Hawai'i we also use the phrase "chop suey" when referring to many things that are mixed up together. "Duck soup" means easy or simple. "Toast" means ruined.

Why should everyone walk on eggshells when saying phrases that refer to food?

I hope that the next time Ms. Ko poses for a camera and says "cheese," she doesn't offend some dairy farmer in Wisconsin.

Brother Berndlmaier gave much of himself

The Damien Memorial School community and the community at large lost a great man last week, Brother Karl Berndlmaier.

Brother Berndlmaier didn't say much, he just worked. And gave. And gave. And gave.

He was a teacher at Damien. He also did charity work for the Red Cross, was involved in counseling for the Diocese of Honolulu and worked with immigrants, teaching them English after school.

He collapsed on an "Encounter" retreat with Damien students — an off-campus spiritual affair that was totally voluntary on his part.

And, oh yes, I first met him as he worked the student bucket-and-equipment brigade at Damien football games, both varsity and intermediate, hauling water, towels, equipment and sometimes players on and off the field.

I'm sure I've missed some of the things that Brother did, but I do know this: You won't find too many men like him.

Our mountains of trash lie on our own shoulders

In your article "Landfill options down to three" of Nov. 28, Jeff Stone is quoted as saying: "The only way our city officials are going to get off their butts and do the right thing is if you take away the hole they've been dumping in."

Unfortunately, while Honolulu's waste-disposal policy is woefully inadequate, the blame cannot be placed solely on city officials. The reality is that every one of us is contributing to our waste dilemma. Everything we purchase, consume, construct and dispose of is eventually a contributor to our dependence on landfills. Shipping our garbage off-island to someone else's backyard would only mask the real problem: We generate too much trash. Dumping our ever-growing "mountain of trash" on other states, or worse, other nations, should not be an option.

To responsibly deal with our waste problem, we must all come face to face with the garbage we are all generating and act to reduce the waste we produce; reuse items that are usable; recycle our paper, plastics, glass and metals; and rot (compost) our food waste, yard debris and other compostable materials. We cannot look only to landfills, private trash haulers and H-Power to solve our waste problems.

Hawai'i needs a comprehensive waste-reduction program that encompasses the following: (1) outreach, education and awareness in our schools and communities; (2) a reuse-materials industry that collects and redistributes reusable materials for education, art and construction; and (3) a complete residential and commercial recycling program.

We can and must do more than recycle cans and bottles. We should work toward a goal of a zero-waste Hawai'i. By raising awareness in our schools and communities, we can start to tackle our "mountain of trash" together.

Are schools really reforming?

Finally, the decision of the Legislature to mandate a single school calendar for public schools has reached full disclosure in your paper ("Parents being surveyed on unified school schedule," Nov. 19). So, before all of the unhappy parents, whose sentiments are supposedly driving the need for a unified calendar, give thought to which calendar to choose, please remember why there are different calendars.

Different school calendars were the result of School/Community-Based Management. For more than a decade, schools have spent valuable human resources dealing with compliance to the legislative mandate that all schools shall embrace SCBM. As a reminder, SCBM had for its purpose reform of education in the national aftermath of "A Nation at Risk."

Sadly, the only aspects of day-to-day activities of the school that were reformed were the starting and ending dates of the school year and implementation of "intercessions" to provide compliance with the number of workdays covered by collective bargaining. And what is worse, the "modified year-round" calendar seems to have for its advantage only cheaper airfares to the Mainland in October. The policy rationale that breaking up the long summer into breaks during the school year would increase student retention has produced no evidence that student learning has been improved.

However, if the variety of different school calendars is considered to be a reflection of what school communities wanted, then why does the Legislature want to undo the reform that it implemented?

The rationale for a single school calendar is being justified by the Department of Education as reducing the costs of dealing with multiple calendars. But if there are increased costs to multiple calendars, and multiple calendars were the result of a legislative mandate, then the Legislature needs to fund the cost of change, not simply mandate a single calendar that ignores community input.

Of course there are those who argue that the multiple calendars were not the result of the SCBM process of gathering input from teachers, staff, parents, students and communities, but instead they were the result of administrators using SCBM as a tool to implement change that only administrators wanted. Modified school calendars were examples of how administrators were meeting the mandate of SCBM. So strange methods were developed when it came time to count the votes to decide whether or not to implement a new calendar. "Undecided" or "don't care" votes were counted as yes votes. Sadly, the meaning of undecided or don't care is that one who casts such a vote is really not in favor of what is being proposed but does not want to go against the principal.

So, what will be the single calendar that will be chosen? Hopefully the superintendent and the Board of Education will reflect back on the conditions of the classroom and remember how hot those plastic seats and how noisy those wall fans and floor fans are. Hopefully the board and superintendent will want to stem the growing decline in teacher morale in a climate of compliance and make a decision to implement the traditional school year as the calendar that makes the most sense in a situation where legislative mandates are senseless.

Or, perhaps it is time for the Board of Education and the superintendent to make clear to the Legislature and the Department of Education that reforming our schools is a cost worth bearing and that schools are entitled to have different calendars.

If the latter statement is not true, then the public is due a full accounting of the notion of reforming public education in Hawai'i.