Letters for Thursday, May 29, 2014

• Kauai wedding caps storybook romance • Is this who we are?

Kauai wedding caps storybook romance

Aloha Kauai,

We were married this week on your beautiful island at Poipu  Beach. Our wedding officiant was Kahu Kauilani Kahalekai. We shared our story with her and our wedding coordinator, Steve Mu. They thought you would also enjoy our story and how we ended up choosing your island to get married.

Michael and I met in our neighborhood when we were 14 years old. We were each other’s first boyfriend/girlfriend and first kiss. During the summer, we would constantly be outside playing games with the neighborhood kids. Once school started we barely saw each other. During the next summer we would again spend time hanging out. Then it was time for high school and I didn’t see Michael anymore. As many years went by, I would often think about or talk to someone about the boy that lived down the street. One day I was on Facebook and noticed my brother had made a comment to a Mike Love … was this “My Mike Love?” It was. I checked out his Facebook page and decided to send him an email.

He responded back and I gave him my number and sure enough that next weekend, he gave me a call. We had so many things in common. We both had a son and daughter, we had animals that had the same name, and he played golf at the club where I lived. At one point, he actually lived 15 houses down from me, and we didn’t even know it. I gave him my email address and the next week I had received an email from him that he was thinking about playing at my golf course. Over the next few days we corresponded via email and established a day that he was going to golf and I would go and hangout with him. Thursday afternoon came. I walked up to the clubhouse and there he was waiting. We gave each other a hug and the sparks were flying. That four hours on the golf course was so much fun. It was like 33 years hadn’t gone by. We were so comfortable with each other. We both knew we were supposed to be together. 

 We both turn 50 this summer and decided to celebrate with a nice vacation. We both love the beach and Michael thought Hawaii would be nice. After doing a little research, your island was where we decided to go. Michael was taking college classes, so we had to wait for him to finish before we could go. During this five-month period, Michael asked me to marry him and thought getting married on the beach while we were there would be awesome. We researched what we needed to do and ended up using a coordinator to help make sure the paperwork and photographer were all lined up and ready, along with our request to be married by a native Hawaiian. We couldn’t have dreamed of a more beautiful place. The Pointe at Poipu was breathtaking, and the sea turtles were a wonderful surprise. We planted our dreams and wishes from our ceremony, and as we head back to Texas, we are hoping to be able to come back someday.

Michael and Amy Love, Gatesville, Texas

Is this who we are?

First of all, I am thrilled about the addition to our island of Pier 1 and Sports Authority to our Kauai business family. When I first heard about it, I was a curmudgeon, “Do we want to be a big city? Or another suburb?” But after seeing the liveliness both spots have created and the professionalism they add to our humble mall area, both companies have my full support. Full disclosure: I’ve walked around and enjoyed both stores and made mental notes of my planned purchases, but I am too unwilling to wait in a long, long line but I will be buying from both.

I did not have a lot of exposure to Sports Authority before visiting our new location. The store is gorgeous, the staff is friendly and what they provide inspires me to become more active and involved athletically.

I was shocked and surprised not to see just guns, but also military-style assault rifles at the new Sports Authority location.

I’d like to take a pulse of our community: Do we want those items sold here? I am not calling for stricter gun legislation—Hawaii is already much more gun-regulation-friendly than other states. I also am not denying the significance and perhaps necessity of our hunting culture on an island with too many pigs and chickens. What I am questioning is the need to promote and sell military-style assault weapons.

Allow me to explain more: I like action movies. Guns can be cool. I’m not opposed to my own private Rambo-esque guy fantasies…. And I look at where the realities of those safe fantasies lead: To disturbed minds that lead to horrible realities at Sandy Hook or at a Colorado theater showing of The Dark Night. But my more critical personal belief is that this does not reflect the heart of the people of Kauai.

I am not calling for tighter gun legislation or an impediment to any believed rights. What I am asking is generally, “Do we think our community will benefit more or less from the public and highly visible sale of these type weapons?”

I personally believe we should all as much as possible support these new businesses: The jobs they create and the life they both add to Kauai are very valuable and appreciated. At the same time, I’m wondering if, as a community, we want to say, “Sports Authority, thank you! Thanks for the jobs! We’ll buy generously. We’ll even buy guns. But the small town of Kauai doesn’t want to tempt fate and encourage a culture that glamorizes militaristic violence in our communities or makes weapons easily available that most people don’t want to see in their neighborhoods. Please remove the military-style assault-type weapons from your Kauai inventory and replace it with items that are more appreciated here.”

I really don’t want to get political. Rather, I want to find out what our community wants. Please weigh in.

Respectfully,

Jason Blake, Lihue, HI