• Festival wasn’t in TGI calendar • Feel free to take chickens home • Respect all opinions • Tougher anti-GMO laws needed on Kauai • Chickens have long been around Kauai Festival wasn’t in TGI calendar Each October, the Eo’
• Festival wasn’t in TGI calendar • Feel free to take chickens home • Respect all opinions • Tougher anti-GMO laws needed on Kauai • Chickens have long been around Kauai
Festival wasn’t in TGI calendar
Each October, the Eo’ e Emalani i Alaka’I festival delights Kauai residents and visitors with its distinctive blend of history, music, and hula. For many visitors, this celebration is their only contact with real Hawaiian culture, as opposed to the diluted forms on view in many tourist venues. For residents it is an opportunity to honor a beloved ali’I and to learn more about her life.
Those who attended Saturday’s 25th anniversary event enjoyed a memorable day. Besides the fine presentations of dancers and musicians from Kauai, Oahu, Maui and Japan, they witnessed the first-ever performance of ‘Aha Pulama Pa’u Holo Lio at Emalani. How splendid the riders looked as they escorted the Queen through the meadow!
How disappointing, then, that The Garden Island did not see fit to include this wonderful event in its calendar section during the previous days. With all due respect to the other programs listed on the calendar for Saturday, was not this celebration equally deserving of mention?
Heu’ionalani Wyeth
Anahola
Feel free to take chickens home
In reference to Kauai chickens (TGI, Oct. 20), I read with interest the comments by Kansan Brenda Diederich in reference to Kauai feral chickens. You got Toto, we got chickens, kazillions of lousy, noisy, useless feral chickens. Spend a month on the North Shore and then tell me how lovely they are. We’ll trade you all these chickens for your Toto.
She says how much she enjoys waking up to the sounds of roosters crowing. Probably because she knows she’s going back home soon and won’t have to listen to the incessant racket any more.
And thank you Dorothy Kulik for your letter — they are a “pain in the butt.” But — you’re mistaken! They are not too tough to eat. They are tender and delicious if cooked properly. I cook and eat every one I trap. Organic with no chemical crap unlike the lovely looking birds you find in your local grocery store.
And to the Huntsberrys from Las Vegas, if you really think “they’re great,” please, by all means, take them home with you.
Billy Whelan
Kilauea
Respect all opinions
I really don’t understand the point behind some of the letters regarding Bill 2491. One writer states that those who have marched in support of the bill do not represent the 94 percent of Kauai’s population, but the same can be said of the hundred or so in blue that stood in opposition. Both sides should be applauded for exercising their freedoms as beneficiaries of rights protected by those who made the ultimate sacrifice. To speak ill against either side is to devalue the efforts of those who fought and died so that people would be able to exercise their constitutional rights. People on both sides of the issue have been accused of being “terrorists.”
What’s equally appalling is the undertone that council members have passed the bill to increase their chances of re-election. However, if there is any truth that there were only 4,000 people, or just about 6 percent of Kauai’s total population, who wholeheartedly supported Bill 2491, then passing it would not work in their favor, would it?
People will always accuse the other side of not fully comprehending the implications of an issue and that’s OK. What’s not OK is the animosity carried against those whose views differ from yours.
Life is full of disappointments, the sooner we accept this fact the better our lives will be. As one spiritual leader puts it: “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die.”
It serves no reason and with little resolve to belittle anyone in opposition to your views. It affects you more than anyone else.
Tiare Acain
Kekaha
Tougher anti-GMO laws needed on Kauai
The environmental community here on Kauai should counter the threats made by the GMOs to initiate a legal challenge against 2491 with a threat of our own.
If the GMOs sue, then we should push for a law which would essentially outlaw their activities on this island altogether, rather than just the oversight required under 2491.
As to Carvalho and any other reluctant politician, let’s adopt the Tea Party position … run someone pro-environmental against them and get them out of office.
Ysidro Macias
Hanapepe
Chickens have long been around Kauai
I’m sure there will be many comments concerning the front page article about “Chickens in Paradise.”
This will be brief, perhaps at a later time I can write an editorial with more history and information on the infamous Kauai Chicken.
Hurricanes Iwa and Iniki did release contained chickens, but chickens have been in the Hawaiian Islands for thousands of years. ‘The Red Jungle Fowl’ were brought here on Polynesian voyaging canoes, along with the pig, dog, coconut and taro. They date back to the dinosaur era. On all the other islands the chicken, along with the shearwater, petrel, nene and nearly all species of endemic/indigenous birds, were decimated by the introduced mongoose.
Chickens, like coyotes, rabbits, deer and all wild animals, are in our yards and towns because humans have destroyed their habitat. We have replaced their homes with ours, are we now entitled to eradicate them?
The suggestion that a “pet food factory” be built on Kauai is almost comical. If anyone does not know the negative repercussions of factory farms, i.e., animal abuse and polluted environment, please watch Earthlings, narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. Every year, factory farm hatcheries grind up tens of millions of baby chicks in meat grinders, that’s pet food.
Enough for now.
Lucky we live Kauai. Learn to co-exist. In honor of the illustrious Moa.
Mika and Stuart Hollinger
Kilauea
