• Let legislation enable, not direct • Skateboarders should be accommodated • Human love despairs over ignorance • Don’t let swinging bridge rot • Teen’s letter was refreshing Let legislation enable, not direct In the olden days when bankers considered
• Let legislation enable, not direct
• Skateboarders should be accommodated
• Human love despairs over ignorance
• Don’t let swinging bridge rot
• Teen’s letter was refreshing
Let legislation enable, not direct
In the olden days when bankers considered themselves part of the Community, getting a mortgage to buy a house was a much different proposition than it is today.
Your local bank tried to make sure that you could repay the loan by checking your salary and assets such as your portfolio and other items concerned with your net worth. After granting you a loan to buy a house, the local bank held on to your mortgage until it was paid off.
If you had a temporary income problem, it was usually possible to discuss the problem with bank in order to prevent foreclosure and save your house. Not so today.
The mortgage lender, whoever it may be, will package your loan with others in a bundle called a derivative, and peddle it to an investment group at a discount, in order to recover the money that they lent you and maintain a liquid position.
Under these conditions your ability to pay becomes less important. If you have temporary money problems affecting your ability to make payments, who do you go to for relief? There’s the rub. Generally speaking, unless you can come up with the amount owed by getting a new loan, you will lose your house.
I am far from being a financial genius. I depend on my wife to handle the family income. This arrangement has worked for the 60 years that we have been together. Surely there must be people, whose business is finance, who can come up with reasonable solutions to this problem. If legislation is necessary, let it be of the enabling kind rather than a series of directives.
• Harry Boranian, Lihu‘e
Skateboarders should be accommodated
I wanted to take this opportunity to address the treatment of skateboarders on Kaua‘i.
We as a community need to provide proper facilities for these community members. If you look around the island you will only find one public skateboard facility and in the year 2009 it is far from an acceptable skate park.
Put it this way, if the skate park was lets say a baseball field it would look like this, home base would be outside the fence, the distance to first base would be twice as far as the distance from second base to third. The mound would be a ditch and the surface would be mulch instead of grass.
Well you get the idea, Kaua‘i’s public skate park is very subpar and limits our children from their potential.
Also the park is very small. I encourage the community to get behind its kids and skateboarders. It is a fun outdoor activity that can change your life. Skateboarding can open the world to our children.
It would be refreshing to see an article about how we are going to provide proper facilities throughout the island instead of an article making the kids feel like they are a nuisance.
Imagine if we only had one baseball field or one basketball court, and they were in Kapa‘a, do you think the kids from Hanapepe would be able to use the facility on a regular basis. Probably not!
The skateboarders need to be accommodated just like all the other activities in our community.
• Todd Anderson, Lihu‘e
Human love despairs over ignorance
I am, at the moment, perusing an old 1946-69 Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia in which, in Volume 18, 11 pages are dedicated to Palestine, its people, its land, its climate, plants, animals, history…
Also, in Karen Armstrong’s book, A History of God, seven pages are devoted to Palestine and the Palestinian people.
You might also like to read Madeleine Albright’s book, The Mighty and the Almighty (2003). Her knowledge of Palestine and its people and problems are profound, personal and professional.
That an entire country and its people have been shoved down the memory hole is so Orwellian it’s mind-boggling; and, as a devout non-believer, I cannot accept as truth that some mythical being gave this country to the Jews.
That such a being, according to believers, gave the Jews the right to senselessly murder 1,300 of them, as recently occurred in Gaza — so many of them innocent women and children — borders on madness.
It’s difficult to understand minds who worship such a god. My reasoning mind, and I hope many of yours, simply cannot wrap itself around such a horrible idea.
If I may be slightly irreverent here, with that kind of god who needs enemies?
My deepest core of human love and justice despairs over such ignorance and murderous behavior.
• Bettejo Dux, Kalaheo
Don’t let swinging bridge rot
Why doesn’t the city, county or state fix the swinging bridge by the Immaculate Conception Church?
I was originally baptized a Catholic and got my Holy Communion there. I feel it is a historical landmark. It has been there ever since I can remember.
If we let it perish it is like letting a part of our heritage die with it. If we are trying to keep Kaua‘i the beautiful Garden Island then why let it rot to destruction.
We should be trying to restore and beautify our landmarks so that they can stay historical.
It’s not something we can put into a museum but if we continue to let it rot they only memories we will have left of it is a portrait of it in a museum and why should it resort to that?
• Laura McNichols, Lihu‘e
Teen’s letter was refreshing
I just read the letter by sophomore Jocelyn Runice on America’s veterans and came away impressed (“Service by veterans benefits today’s youth,” Letters, Feb. 11).
I enjoyed reading her piece on recognizing America’s veterans past and present on their selfless contributions to protect the freedom and liberties we all enjoy today.
How refreshing it is to read of a young person understanding that the freedom we all cherish today was never free but won with blood, sweat and tears of our brave men and woman in our armed services.
I believe the same can be said for the men and woman that serve us daily in our police, fire and other public safety services. Jocelyn did a fantastic job in being able to create vivid pictures in my mind on what she wanted to convey.
Thank you Jocelyn for the gentle reminder that freedom comes at a cost, a cost that we are fortunate some are willing to pay for all of us.
• Stephen Shioi, Peacetime Veteran USAF, Kapa‘a
