• Lucas family inspired by kindness • Welcome home • Call me backward then Lucas family inspired by kindness How is it that one of life’s worst experiences can also be one of life’s most rewarding? On the morning of
• Lucas family inspired by kindness
• Welcome home
• Call me backward then
Lucas family inspired by kindness
How is it that one of life’s worst experiences can also be one of life’s most rewarding?
On the morning of Sunday, April 20, we started the day with none of the normal joy that comes with this special day of the week. We had no expectations for the day. What we were experiencing was an underlying fear of how exactly we would survive this day.
We were definitely on Hawaiian time that day as getting out the door was an incredible effort. We were only a quarter of a mile from Camp Naue but it seemed so long. And then upon arrival and in the turn of a moment we realized we were going to be okay. There was more love and support awaiting us there than some people experience in a lifetime.
Our friends and ‘ohana of Kaua‘i had spent days on end, adding extra hours to their already long work days and incurring extra expenses to their budgets, planning every detail to perfection. Their goal, no matter what it took, was to honor our beloved Keoni Kai Lucas.
Every word seems so insignificant in trying to describe the labor of love each person contributed to making this day beautiful. Combined efforts created a setting of a white Camelot tent surrounded with arrangements of perfect flowers, music composed and performed from deep within the heart, words that touched everyone’s souls, and perfectly prepared food to nourish our bodies and give us the time to talk and share some laughter. We know God’s greatest gift to us are our children and their performance brought smiles to our faces, inspiration to our hearts and truly lightened the sadness of our souls.
Everyday is still a struggle. We are not our usual energetic and productive selves. Our hearts physically ache and our minds are exhausted from trying to understand why. But we know we have to focus on all the positives of life to gain strength. And to our friends and ‘ohana of Kaua‘i, we will never be able to thank you enough. Each day, several times a day, we are able to reflect on your very special gift of love, the gift that keeps on giving. Because of each and every one of you, in time, we will heal and find comfort in our lives.
We Love you.
Family of Keoni Kai Lucas
Welcome home
In response to Mark Beeksma (“Taking is not the same as giving,” Letters, May 11) and Jason Nichols (“Religion as justification,” Letters, May 12):
Maintaining freedom is a little like trying to balance oneself on top of a ball. Fall too far in any one direction and you are quickly on your way to totalitarianism. It doesn’t matter if you call it Communism, Socialism or Fascism, they are all ultimately Totalitarian states with centralized planning and diminishing freedoms.
Living on Kaua‘i we should all be particularly aware of the dangers associated with centralized power. Just think of how many issues decided in the state house in Honolulu run contrary to the desires of a rural community like Kaua‘i. Centralizing even more decision making power in Washington, D.C. is sure to be even more folly.
Money, markets and trade can almost be considered forces of nature in that they have always existed and continue to exist regardless of the nation/state flag that flies over them. We would all be much better off if politicians realized that attempting to control or direct these forces only perverts the natural order of things. When the government provides “welfare” to individuals (preferred M.O. of the Democrats), corporations (preferred M.O. of the Republicans) or foreign governments (preferred M.O. of both), they are tampering with the natural order of things and like it or not the force of nature (in this case the market) will ultimately win out.
We would all be much better off if all three forms of “welfare” and regulation were drastically cut and the market could run unencumbered for awhile. Just look at the progress that has been made in the technology industry over the last 30 years with “little” external regulation or manipulation. Some 30 years ago you could spend a couple thousand dollars for an Apple II plus computer that couldn’t do much of anything. Now you can spend a couple hundred dollars and have a cell-phone/computer that is capable of far more. If only the same could be said about our highly subsidized and regulated healthcare industry.
My hat is off to both Beeksma and Nichols for demonstrating the failures of both the Republicans and Democrats.
Welcome to the Libertarian Party.
Drew Brumbaugh
Koloa
Call me backward then
In response to the Monday letter “Religion as justification,” Letters, May12:
The writer uses the words “corporate elitist” for the Republican candidate while using the words “liberal,” “progressive,” and “aware” for the Democratic candidates. Thus he claims intellectual superiority for those who vote for the Democratic candidates.
Intellectual superiority you say? Like the sexist liberal voters who vote for Hillary just because she is a woman? Or the racist liberal voters who vote for Obama just because he is black? What is so progressive about hating male-white America? The left has been doing that for almost 40 years.
As well, your intellectual superiority may be seen when millions of innocent babies are murdered each year under the guise of “a woman’s sexual freedom.” That’s right. The power of life and death that belongs to God alone has been given to women. At the same time liberals despise the men and women who die protecting and defending this country’s freedoms.
The liberal left’s superior intelligence also shows when they insist on claiming two evolutionary driving mechanisms that both decrease information when science shows evolution requires a mechanism that increases information. How does subtraction increase? Only the superior intelligence of the liberal left knows.
And don’t get me started on global warming, increasing taxes, the purposeful misinterpretation of our first and second amendment rights, the refusal to use coal, reverse discrimination, homosexuality, and using age as the only criterion for premarital sex or viewing people unclothed. By the way, you’re never old enough because marriage is the only criteria by God’s standards.
If all of this somehow makes the liberal left progressive, aware, and intellectually and morally superior in their own minds, then I’m content to be thought of as being backward, unaware, and intellectually and morally inferior.
Peter Saker
Lihu‘e
