• ‘Love it or leave it’ is short-sighted response • Lihue Post Office should stay on Rice Street
‘Love it or leave it’ is short-sighted response
At various periods during my lifetime in America, I have heard versions of “Love it or leave it.” I hear that now, as supporters of the present administration say “If you don’t like it, leave the country.”
Our elections are frequently very close; the most recent so close that one candidate won the electoral college and another the popular vote. It is not productive to demand that half the country shut up or leave it. If that absurd “solution” were to happen, it would be repeated over and over until this vast and beautiful land was occupied by an ever-reducing remainder.
We need to be able to admit mistakes, find common ground, and work together. Otherwise, we’ll be isolated and in danger of being picked off economically or militarily by other countries or our own stubborn absolutism.
Suzan Kelsey Brooks, Lihue
Lihue Post Office should stay on Rice Street
Please leave the Lihue Post Office on Rice Street. I am in my 70s, live in Puhi and ride an electric-assist pedal tricycle all over the Lihue urban core to do banking, shopping, beachgoing and collecting mail from my P.O. box. I get exercise, build strength and charge my electric-assist pedal trike with solar cells so my fuel is free, clean and non-polluting.
One branch of the federal government, the U.S. Postal Service, is at odds with the $13 million federal government Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER program, to revitalize and increase pedestrian and bicycle usage and safety in Lihue. The USPS on Rice Street is a communal magnet allowing people chance meetings with friends. I have never had a parking problem even when using a car.
My use of photovoltaics and an electric-assisted pedal trike is being undermined by the USPS. First they closed the Puhi Post office and moved my P.O. Box to Rice Street in Lihue and now they want to move my P.O. Box to the USPS Carrier Annex facility at 3230 Kapule Highway, 1.3 miles away from the Rice Street Post Office.
My round trip on my trike of 2 miles to check my P.O. box in Puhi has become a 4-mile round trip to check my P.O. box in Lihue and if USPS gets its way I will now have a 7-mile round trip to check my P.O. box!
The federal government is at odds with itself and chewing off its own tail. Since our elected representatives seem unresponsive to the will of the people, it is up to the citizens of Kauai to demand a livable, breathable, cycle-able community. In an age of decentralization USPS’s move towards greater centralization and increasing customer inconvenience is a death spiral. Keep the post office on Rice Street where it is.
Edward Coll, Puhi
