• No weddings on sacred sites • What about personal responsibility? • Warriors are winners • Housing and medical care are the real problems • Healing place No weddings on sacred sites We, the 65 members of the Kauai Wedding
• No weddings on sacred sites
• What about personal responsibility?
• Warriors are winners
• Housing and medical care are the real problems
• Healing place
No weddings on sacred sites
We, the 65 members of the Kauai Wedding Professionals Association, agree that Hawaiian sacred sites (heiau) are never to be used in wedding services. Our membership unanimously voted at our last quarterly meeting to add verbiage similar to Agnes Keaolani Marti-Kini’s letter (“Married on heiau unheard of,” Letters, Nov. 28) to our Web site under the “cultural information” heading, as well as revising our bylaws to reflect this position. The KWPA is made up of licensed Kaua‘i-based professionals in the wedding industry dedicated to providing the highest standard of service to our brides and grooms, be they local or from the Mainland. Our members are aware of the significance of heiaus to the Hawaiian people and will do all we can to educate our clients. If you see a wedding service being performed on a sacred site, please get the name of the coordinator, minister, photographer or family member and then contact us at kauaiwedpro.com, and the Department of Land and Natural Resources. KWPA members have the best interest of the island, her people and her long held customs in mind when we conduct our business on the beaches, parks and lands of Kaua‘i.
Michael Dandurand, Jill Kozen, Deanna Shafer, Elaine Lasota
Kauai Wedding Professionals Association Board of Directors
What about personal responsibility?
The letter “Sue guidebook not state,” Letters, Dec. 3, was correct in asserting that the guidebook publishers should bear the brunt of the responsibility on this one, but what I’d like to know is why sue anyone? When did people lose the ability to be responsible for their own actions? Why is it always someone else’s fault when someone has an accident? I was walking down the sidewalk and tripped. Now as soon as I can figure out who is responsible for me tripping, I am gonna be rich. I know it’s got to be either the shoe company or the county for not fixing the crack in the sidewalk. Sounds stupid, yea? It is. When I was a kid we learned, touch the stove, it’s hot, we didn’t touch the stove anymore. Now kids learn, touch the stove, it’s hot, call an attorney and get paid for those burns on your hand.
Roger Olsen
Lawa‘i
Warriors are winners
What a display of one of Winston Churchill’s most famous quotes:
Churchill’s words, “Never give up, never give up, never give up” were put to the test and challenge Saturday night and were proven to be correct as a result of diligence, hard work, teamwork, a belief in oneself, trust, supported by dedicated, competent, professional, open and honest leadership. Result: a perfect season.
This past Saturday night Hawai‘i’s youth proved to our state and nation that absolutes do still exist in our lives. The “Warriors” of our University of Hawaii proved that words do have meaning, an important real meaning, in life.
Churchill’s October 1941 speech to the boys at Harrow School actually read: “Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Great words to live by these days considering the vast efforts to abolish absolutes and meaningful words, thoughts and actions in our daily lives. Perhaps Hawaii’s “Rainbow” parents can learn winning lessons from their youth. After all, our young are our future. Perhaps by emulating their winning football team, parents will understand the need to “never give up” when it comes to responsibilities of citizenship. Register, vote and “never give up” the demand for open and honest leadership in government; accountability of office; involvement in the system. If you are not registered, register and vote. If you are registered but do not vote, pull your head out of the sand and begin learning lessons from your “Warrior Children,” join their ranks. It is time to stop yielding “to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy,” our own government leadership.
John Hoff
Lawa‘i
Housing and medical care are the real problems
Hawai‘i’s sugar and pineapple plantations could not have succeeded without company-provided housing and hospitals.
We have now come full circle. Older employees, who bought their homes early in their careers, will retire, sell their debt-free homes for top dollar and move to the mainland, taking their retirement income with them.
Younger Hawaiians, facing high housing and medical costs, cannot afford to stay in Hawai‘i and will look elsewhere for employment.
The only answer is company housing and medical benefits now. To do otherwise will be disastrous to our economy. The best legislature that money can buy had better get off the Superferry harangue and concentrate on this real problem of employee housing and medical care. Outside of the need for cheap land, I frankly don’t know the answer as to how it should be done. Legislative staff should put research of the problem and possible solutions on the fast track in order to head off the economic disaster that now exists and is getting worse. Example: Costco is offering $12.50 an hour and up, and is still struggling to get enough new hires to run the business.
How about it, Hooser and Morita. Maybe you and your respective staffs can start earning your pay instead of beating a dead horse.
Harry Boranian
Lihu‘e
Healing place
As a new resident of Kaua‘i, I have been noticing so many deep-hearted qualities of those who have lived here for a long time. I got lost on a walk last week just in time to meet a police officer who kindly took me to our starting point, I got a flat tire and in only minutes someone stopped to help; The same week I also ran out of gas which was promptly resolved by a kind neighbor. There is a generous spirit here that is both subdued and obvious. I also see the bad things though, on my runs up different roads I have actually seen tourists throw trash from their convertibles, hear about people killing all sorts of “pests” and doing terrible things with the chickens.
Kaua‘i to me is a land of nature (one of the few left on the planet) and a place that should be respected and treated well as all of its creatures great and small.
It is such a healing place if we all do our part.
Ingrid Middleton
Kapa‘a
