• Lifeguard looking out for walkers, too • Farmers make other people’s lives better • KHS faces daunting task with pet overpopulation Lifeguard looking out for walkers, too Most Sundays, my friend and I enjoy an hour or so walk on beautiful Kekaha Beach. We park my
• Lifeguard looking out for walkers, too • Farmers make other people’s lives better • KHS faces daunting task with pet overpopulation
Lifeguard looking out for walkers, too
Most Sundays, my friend and I enjoy an hour or so walk on beautiful Kekaha Beach. We park my old but much loved Mieta, lock our purses in the trunk, and like so many locals, leave keys in a “safe” place.
On Sunday, June 22, the lifeguard greeted us after our walk with, “You may want to check your car and see if anything has been taken. I saw that person (pointed to a figure sitting on the beach) walk around your car, open and sit down, and because I see you every week and have never seen you with that person, I began walking to your car. The person left.”
We immediately checked and although the consul, which had been locked, was now unlocked, nothing had been taken.While it is unsettling to think that valuables may have been stolen, it is also so heartwarming to know that members of our community pay attention and look out for each other.
This proactive prevention is positive and does so much more to enhance this community, that we are privileged to be a part of, than the often futile, punitive measures that are enforced once a crime has taken place.
Thank you Alan Yamagata for paying attention and caring enough to act when you noticed suspicious behavior. It is people like you that remind me what a special place Kauai is, and that aloha in its essence is being lived.
Sharon Douglas
Kalaheo
Farmers make other people’s lives better
I’ve been farming for over 45 years. During that time, farmers have grown and shipped billions of tons of healthy food to people who don’t grow their own. Soon, there will be even more people to feed, and we farmers will continue to do our part to make their lives better.
It’s hard for me to understand the ungrateful people who attack farmers for what we do. They demand that we grow and eat food only a certain way, but very few have actually tried to farm for themselves. They demand that we stop our operations, as if our life’s work is evil and millions of people with full bellies and warm clothes are now at serious risk.
When I was a young farmer, our job was to make needed changes to agriculture and continue to improve. We worked for productive change and still do. Thanks to modern agriculture, our food supply is safer today than it has ever been. Safe and beneficial genetically engineered crops are an important part of agriculture today, and have been for many years.
Today, fewer than 2 percent of Americans work in agriculture yet we produce the base for more than 60 percent of the nation’s economy. We’re doing our part. I’m saddened to hear the misinformation and insults about our life’s work, but I know the truth. What we’ve done so far has been good for the world, and if treated respectfully, our young farmers will do even better.
Raymond Foster
Kaunakakai
KHS faces daunting task with pet overpopulation
A recent letter to The Garden Island castigated the Kauai Humane Society for allegedly killing more and more animals, not promoting spay and neuter, and charging a fee for the use of the dog park.
I wonder if the writer of that letter advocated for KHS last year when we learned that the former KHS director had gutted the budget and left KHS with almost no revenue to provide even the services they are contracted to perform. Did the writer lobby his council members to increase KHS funding to help KHS recover from the previous administration’s disastrous policies?
In fact, does the writer even understand that until this year, KHS got no county funding to provide services to cats? Does he know that even with partial funding from the county, the vast majority of the cost to provide services to cats comes from private donations? How much has the writer donated to the cause of animal welfare on Kauai? How many unwanted animals has he adopted?
What actions is the writer taking to convince his neighbors to spay and neuter their dogs and cats rather than allowing them to have litter after litter? Is he bringing his neighbor’s pets in for them to get “fixed?” Is he taking any action to reduce the problem of pet overpopulation? Or is he a person who believes it is kinder to abandon an unwanted pet in a county park or wilderness area so that it can starve to death, rather than receive a humane death?
Pet overpopulation is a community problem. We are all responsible for the problem, and we all need to own the solution. It is incredibly destructive and irresponsible to pillory the nonprofit agency that does as much as it can to save our pets from suffering resulting from our collective unwillingness to do the right thing.
Every single employee at KHS would rejoice at not having to euthanize another animal. But as long as we don’t act responsibly, KHS will have to do what our inaction forces them to do.
Margaret Hanson
Kapaa
