• DUI crash no accident • Rooster’s noisy, dirty • Volunteers made difference in pond • Hospital care excellent • God created all people equal • Ysidro Macias DUI crash no accident We just had a man on Kauai sentenced
• DUI crash no accident • Rooster’s noisy, dirty • Volunteers made difference in pond • Hospital care excellent • God created all people equal • Ysidro Macias
DUI crash no accident
We just had a man on Kauai sentenced for manslaughter for a vehicular accident in which he was driving drunk.
I take issue with the word “accident.”
I used to write and call a Honolulu TV station annually because they had a PSA about drunken driving around the holidays that started out with, “No one means to do it.”
I pointed out that the majority of holiday drunken drivers do make the decision to drive while they are drunk. They get up in the morning and drive to work or a party with the full sober knowledge that they plan to drink after work or at the party and drive home. They do mean to do it and decided that it was their right to take that chance with their own and other people’s lives before imbibing.
To call it an accident is exactly the same as saying that it is an accident when someone dies playing Russian Roulette.
The only sure way to avoid the inevitable consequence is to not play the game.
In fairness, The Garden Island article emphasized the court and prosecutor’s comments on the word. My point is that most often fatalities as a result of drunken driving are not a “preventable accident” or drunken behavior but a product of decisions made by sober people prior to the event and not impaired reasoning. They should be viewed as a conscious act with measurably predictable results and I feel that they should be treated the same as shooting a gun in the direction of a crowd and that premeditated murder is a more appropriate charge than manslaughter if the perpetrator had a reasonable expectation of driving under the influence.
Henri Carnal
Kekaha
Rooster’s noisy, dirty
We have lived in Kilauea for eight months, feeling so blessed to live in our favorite vacation destination. There is so much to love about this island. However, we’ve yet to have a night’s sleep that is not interrupted by the rooster cacophony, from 3 to 5 a.m., night after night after night.
As a tourist, I thought they were “cute,” though I was more likely in an area where they were controlled. So, unless you live in my neighborhood, you really can’t appreciate the noise, not to mention the filth.
Barbara Hanna
Kilauea
Volunteers made difference in pond
A hearty mahalo to the dedicated volunteers who came out early on a stormy Saturday morning to “Snorkel for a Cause” at Morgan’s Ponds at Lydgate Beach Park on national Make a Difference Day Oct. 26.
While thunder pounded in the heavens above, this energetic group of people dove for waterlogged tree branches to remove them from the bottom of the main pond and hauled them to a county-supplied rubbish bin: Mark Hubbard, Scott Oakley, Bill Buley, Bruce, Maka, Russell, Gary and Max. Also mahalo to Tommy Noyes, who took time out from coordinating maintenance work at the Kamalani Play Bridge to snorkel with us as well.
In one month, volunteer divers and haulers – including those named above and others (mahalo to you all!) — have removed 8,000 pounds of debris, had fun making a difference together and made the pond lovely again for all of us to enjoy.
Pamela Varma Brown
Lincoln Gill
Kapaa
Hospital care excellent
I recently visited Kauai and its beautiful beaches.
Unfortunately, I fractured my femur and needed medical attention. I ended up at Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital under the care of Dr. Richard Goding. He and the staff at the hospital provided such wonderful care to me for the five days of my extended vacation, I will be forever grateful.
Dr. Goding and all the staff were very kind, skilled and respectful at all levels of their duties at the hospital. I even received a two-week follow-up call from the staff to see how I was doing.
So thank you, Dr. Goding, thank you nurses and staff. You made an otherwise difficult situation better.
P.S. my wife thanks you, too.
Arick Stillwagon
Poway, Calif.
God created all people equal
I don’t understand. Yesterday, a small platoon of religious types were blanketing the road here in Hanapepe with signs asking the public to support “traditional marriage.”
Presumably their target was any supporters of same-sex marriage and the type.
I don’t understand. Where is the tolerance Christ preached?
Is there a God for heterosexuals and another for the gay/lesbian community? Since we know there is only one God, why are so-called religious types against the gays, whom God created along with everyone else and are all brothers, sisters, sons and daughters of someone on our island?
I don’t understand. How can you truly be “there for God” and yet rail against one’s fellow citizens and relatives merely because God made them different? I don’t understand.
Ysidro Macias
Hanapepe
Chickens not good
I agree completely with John Burns’ (Princeville) letter stating that chickens are not good for Kauai!
Kathy Wahl
Santa Cruz, Calif.
