• Profitability over safety? • A pyrotechnic deal to please everyone • Don’t pet a dog without permission • Violence and taxes • AJA baseball discriminates Profitability over safety? It has been raining for at least seven straight days on
• Profitability over safety? • A pyrotechnic deal to please everyone • Don’t pet a dog without permission • Violence and taxes • AJA baseball discriminates
Profitability over safety?
It has been raining for at least seven straight days on the North Shore. The rain has been accompanied by steady wind, sometimes gusting to 40 mph, causing horizontal rain.
Visibility has been non-existent with the mountains socked in for pretty much the entire seven days. None of this inclement weather has slowed down the tour helicopters and their constant take-offs and landings from Princeville airport in this mess. Most of the time in this bad weather, the helicopters can only be heard and not seen, despite flying low and slow.
The flights are short and, I am told, the product of a coupon for a helicopter ride from sitting through a timeshare presentation. Hence the need for two helicopters flying out of Princeville. There are some longer flights from time to time that indicate actual paying customers — visitors that are misinformed about the danger in flying in bad weather with nothing to see, and no one to regulate or monitor the helicopter tours. The state and county coffers fill up on the revenue produced by the flights and cash flow trumps not flying for the helicopter company. Reason only prevails when a crash occurs, and then only for a short time, and then it is business as usual.
Bob Polli
Kilauea
A pyrotechnic deal to please everyone
It is obvious that Kaua‘i holds a huge disagreement between people who don’t like having their windows rattled and children and pets terrified on New Year’s Eve and those who consider blasting off huge bombs to be a sacred island tradition. So here’s a suggestion from a former Kauaian:
Why not find an isolated tract of land on the island that can be safely contained and on the 4th of July and New Year’s to allow anyone to enter the grounds and explode whatever they want? Require each entrant to sign a statement acknowledging that they are engaging in dangerous activity and if they are hurt they will bear full responsibility for their injuries. Have the fire department patrol to ensure that no fires spread outside the area.
A committee could award prizes to the producers of the loudest bangs, the most colorful explosions, etc.
Meanwhile, arrest and jail anyone caught detonating such bombs in residential neighborhoods.
Citizens don’t have their residential windows rattled and children and pets terrified; bomb-makers continue their tradition in a contained space; everyone’s happy. Win-win all the way.
Craig Callaway
Medford, Ore.
Don’t pet a dog without permission
Petting a service dog without permission is like groping another fellow man or woman without permission, or touching someone’s baby without permission. What makes people think they can kiss and pet a stranger’s animal?
Service dogs are mostly associated with giving aid to blind people, but a service dog can also offer Psychiatric service. These dogs are classified Psychiatric Service Dogs (PSD). When you come across a service dog, please do not pet, call, talk, kiss or otherwise distract it as doing so could put the handlers life in jeopardy (http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=7204).
When someone asks to pet my dog, I say, “No,” because she is a “service dog,” plus I am a germophobic.
I don’t want someone who may have a cold, flu virus or smelly hands petting my dog.
These are working animals, not pets and they are out with their handlers to help them, not to be a spectacle for the public. Please note it is rude to ask a disabled person what their disability is, as that is personal and confidential information.
Service dogs need to know who their masters are. People with service dogs are not portable petting zoos.
Remember to ask permission before petting any one’s pet.
James “Kimo” Rosen
Kapa‘a
Violence and taxes
Uncle just deducted one third of my earnings from a small retirement fund — John Hancock — to which I am beneficiary. That’s OK by me — leaves me a little short — as long as that money goes into Obama’s health care program. Buy one nuclear sub with it and I’m going to come out swinging.
On A6 of The Garden Island’s Jan. 10 edition there was an article written by Kevin Freking for the Associated Press: “Violence plays a role in shorter U.S. life expectancy.”
On this issue, concerned citizens, like me, hear about mismanagement of guns and ammo, of violent movies and computer games, and not one mention of the murderous violent killing machine we support with our tax dollars.
If you think for one moment teaching kids how to murder innocent victims in foreign lands isn’t a factor you are wrong.
We have cute, classy young recruiters in our schools coaxing kids to join this madness. We teach little girls to sit in trees and snipe. We award them. Do you actually think this kind of mind set won’t come home to roost?
Enough.
Peace and love,
Bettejo Dux
Kalaheo
AJA baseball discriminates
Now that AJA baseball has begun its 82nd year of play, it’s time to congratulate the directors, the sponsors, the coaches and the players for keeping some form of organized baseball going on Kaua‘i.
But wouldn’t it even be a far greater tribute to AJA baseball if my friend and president of this league, Tom Shigemoto, were to get their charter changed so that any person with the skills to compete in their league could? At the present time only those with some Japanese blood can participate in their games.
No matter how one tries to quantify the reasons for restricting participation in their league, be it cultural, birthplace, heritage or whatever, the fact is that this is discrimination in its fullest sense of the word.
For a brief period of time in 1953, I had the privilege of playing with some of our great African-American baseball players (Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella were just two) on the Brooklyn Dodgers. Because these players were black they could not stay at our hotel nor eat with us at the restaurants — this was Florida, the South.
When the legendary Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, the first black ball player to enter professional baseball in 1947, the world changed. That change is still going on and with the election of our first African-American president, it is going in the right direction.
Today in Major League Baseball, we see players of all colors and races and, again, their only restriction is that they have the ability to compete.
Major League Baseball became far stronger with the entry of African-Americans and with players from all over the world now competing.
I implore those in AJA Baseball power to open their play to any and all those who have the ability to perform at that level. As with big league baseball, your league would also become stronger and eliminate the discriminatory label.
Glenn Mickens
Kapa‘a
