• Koke‘e to be Hawaiian style Disneyland? • Monk seal heaven • A good piece of meat Koke‘e to be Hawaiian style Disneyland? Visitors go to different places for different things. People go to Vegas for its phoniness and tackiness.
• Koke‘e to be Hawaiian style Disneyland?
• Monk seal heaven
• A good piece of meat
Koke‘e to be Hawaiian style Disneyland?
Visitors go to different places for different things. People go to Vegas for its phoniness and tackiness. They expect that. They find it amusing. People come to Kaua‘i for its natural beauty. For Koke‘e’s natural beauty.
O‘ahu cannot go back from almost a million residents. They can only get more people per square mile. They can only lose less natural land over to population growth. When our local politicians continue to help developers and business to change the character and face of Kaua‘i forever, we can continually say goodbye to the grace and charm that is Kaua‘i on a yearly basis.
Being “business friendly” is one thing, but being short-sighted and not looking beyond today is another thing altogether. Kaua‘i is unique and so is Koke‘e. When you continually take away Kaua‘i’s natural beauty in the hopes of a quick buck, then you change the face of Kaua‘i and the reason people come here in the first place. You take away Kaua‘i’s soul.
“Expanding concession and management leases” and “focusing development at lookouts and along the roadway corridor between Pu‘u ka Pele and Kanaloahuluhulu Meadow” are perhaps the scariest proposals by the DLNR and its consultant, R.M. Towill.
“The road from the meadow to Kalalau lookout was to be widened to accommodate full-size tour buses.” Really? How long before we put in some tacky strip malls and fat food franchises?
Think that’s a stretch? Maybe, but then the current proposal is a start. It’s opening the door for further “business friendly” activities. All brought to us by the Department of Land and Natural Resources Director Laura Thielen, appointed by Gov. Linda Lingle and Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona.
In their quest for pleasing businessmen and women, they will end up ruining Koke‘e forever. Greed has always been a sin and it always will be. And in the end, you have to wonder if that is the Lingle-Aiona administration’s “master plan.”
Dennis Chaquette, Kapa‘a
Monk seal heaven
If there’s a heaven — and if seals go there when they die — then RK19 and RK06, whose ashes were recently scattered in ceremony at Po‘ipu Beach, are there right now.
At this moment, if they are swimming, then we can be happy that their new ocean is clear and healthy, rather than polluted, stinking of sunscreen, and caked with plastic junk.
If they’re hunting, then they are no doubt back to their usual acrobatics, their bodies tracing the corners of a living, florescent reef, not some crumbling monument to folly bleached and dying in the sun.
If they’re tired, as can happen even in Heaven, then they’re most likely shuffling their bellies deeper into hot sand with no sign of ropes holding people back, no flashes, no cigarette ashes, no tags, no GPS collars, and no critter cams tugging on their skin.
And no one is shooting at them. Not even the demons who, on occasion, scale Heaven’s gates stupid drunk with rifles in their hands. Devils won’t shoot a helpless seal sleeping on the beach. Even the lowliest devil, thank Heaven, has his limits.
When RK19 and RK06 swam into Heaven, their names, I choose to believe, slipped away without them even noticing, and they were just seals again. Back on Earth, these animals, like so many others, had all kinds of things to worry about. Or at least one really big thing — us. But not any more.
People say god is everywhere — even inside the spinning bullet as it entered the sleeping seal’s skull — but that his primary residence is in heaven. If anyone can look over our two seals in heaven, that duty will ultimately fall on him.
But then, people were made in god’s image, people say, which means that god is a lot like us. For the seals’ sake, let’s hope they’re wrong.
Akulina Povlov, Lawa‘i
A good piece of meat
During a recent visit to Burger King, I spotted a well-known vegan eating a Burger King triple Whopper with cheese. Caught in the act, he looked at me and said, “I don’t know how you can eat that food” (pointing to my Whopper Jr.) while rubbing his stomach with a gesture of indigestion.
Vegans enjoy meat, they just don’t want to get caught, it’s a political correctness of the rules of being vegan. A vegan eating meat is the equivalent of a politician having an extramarital affair.
It happens frequently, and no matter how you look at it, everyone likes a good piece of meat. Vegans and politicians are no exceptions.
James “Kimo” Rosen, Kapa‘a
