LETTERS for May 12 issue
COUNTY SHOULD ACQUIRE LAND AROUND HONOLUA
Honolua Bay averages well over 1,000 visitors a day — unsupervised recreational users. Maui Land & Pineapple Co. and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources have allowed the Save Honolua Coalition to provide two port-a-potties near the bridge. This and community cleanups are all that’s being done for the area.
Maui County has the chance to acquire the surrounding area utilizing money saved in the open space acquisition fund. Now is the time.
Landowner ML&P is also in a position to enhance its tarnished company image by helping the county and conservation groups take over this beautiful area.
The money is there; the time is right to work for pono management of the Honolua area.
JACK BAILEY, Lahaina
PRESERVE HONOLUA BAY
I am writing to ask you to save Honolua Bay from land development and the devastation it will bring. We must preserve Honolua Bay now for all future generations of Hawaiians and visitors to our beautiful island.
I am a lifelong surfer and activist with good fortune to have enjoyed riding the waves of Honolua Bay. My first visit to Honolua Bay was in 1973. I knew then, I would move to Maui to surf the waves of Honolua.
Of all the oceans and waves that have washed over me, renewing my spirit and cleansing my heart, none is more sacred than Honolua Bay. There is Ancient Spirit here that protects us and speaks to us in times of trouble and uncertainty. We must protect this sanctuary from greed and exploitation.
Honolua Bay is home to Hawaiian ancestors. It is refuge to our beautiful, life-sustaining coral, fish and turtles. It is a safe haven for our children, whose spirits belong to the sea. I have worked with many youth whose only salvation from a troubled home environment or daily failures at school was the solace of riding waves with friends and turtles at Honolua Bay. Please preserve Honolua Bay now!
DR. DAVID GILBERTSON, Makawao
PRINCESS NAHI’ENA’ENA PTA APPRECIATES SUPPORT
Another successful Teachers Appreciation Week. We would like to thank the following businesses for their continued support and generous donations: Barbara Potts, Realtors Wishing Well for Maui Students; Deason Baybayan-Island Froyo (Old Lahaina Center); Dr. Brendan Krause, Chiropractor (Old Lahaina Center); Jose & Luz Pascual-Jay’s Place (Wharf Cinema Center); Alton & Laurie De Gama-No Ka Oi Deli (Anchor Square); Chris Almeroth & Chef Alfonso Acevedo-Kimo’s Restaurant; Cool Cat Cafe (Wharf Cinema Center); Westin Maui Resort & Spa Kaanapali; Starbucks (Old Lahaina Center); Fu Lin Chinese Restaurant; and Parents of Princess Nahi’ena’ena School.
Thank you for filling our hearts with appreciation and so much more. Teachers Appreciation Week was another succedsful event because of you.
PRINCESS NAHI’ENA’ENA PTA
SEALS MAKE FAR LESS THAN SOCIETY’S ‘HEROES’
Young Americans making wages — considered by our civilian realm to be in the poverty level — not only placed their lives on the line recently disposing of Osama Bin Laden with the skill and finesse of a surgeon, but remain an unknown entity, save being a Navy Seal.
Yet fellow citizens pay astronomical salaries to greedy, fabricated hero entertainers and politicians, whose only contribution to society is indifference or a smile and chuckle.
RAY PEZZOLI JR., Kihei
WATCH OUT FOR BIKE RIDERS
I can so sympathize with Kim’s mother and how she feels about the incident on Front Street (April 21 letters, “Where is the aloha?”).
I, too, have experienced this kind of harassment when on my bike. A local man in an old pickup truck did everything he could one day to run me off the road. At the tree, he laid on his horn and held it down all the way to Longhi’s. People on the sidewalks were looking at him as if to say, “What IS your problem?”
I could not have gone any faster, since there were cars in front of me anyway. He managed to get around me — almost having a head-on with another car — then he stopped dead and waited for me to try to go around him.
Finally, as people watched, I started to squeeze by on his right (into the driveway next to Longhi’s, thinking I would cut through Foodland and exit mauka). As I came up alongside his truck, he turned his wheel and gunned it — so his left front tire was jammed against the curb and I couldn’t move. I was trapped between the curb and his truck.
He screamed profanities at me and shook his fist. I told him I hope people have more aloha spirit when HIS daughter, or mother or niece rides their bikes! This behavior is just not pono!
I get up at 6 a.m. now to take my ride from Canoes to Puamana. Sometimes people come closer than they need to in order to get around me, but for the most part it’s safer.
If you’re in a hurry, Front Street is NOT the best route to take, Bruddah. Grow up!
PENNY WEIGEL, Lahaina
ELEPHANTS NEED LOTS OF SPACE
I teach a children’s art class in Maui called the Kindness Club, and we recently discussed the plight of elephants in zoos and circuses.
The students watched videos that showed elephants repetitively swaying and rocking in a small, inadequate zoo enclosure, and others living in peace at a natural-habitat elephant sanctuary. They also learned about cruel, circus-style training that uses sharp steel bull hooks that look like fireplace pokers to punish elephants, and a more progressive and humane training system that uses only positive reinforcement and
treats.
The children all immediately agreed that keeping elephants captive in small, unnatural areas is not kind to them. Their paintings beautifully reflected their feelings about the way elephants should be living: free to roam in large expanses of land in the wild or, for those who cannot return to their countries of origin, a spacious elephant sanctuary.
Adults can learn much from children, whose hearts are open to kindness for all Earth’s creatures big and small. They agreed that they don’t need to visit zoos and circuses to appreciate and learn to love elephants.
Honolulu Zoo plans to add elephants once they expand less than one acre. This is already outdated, especially when compared to recent expansions of three or more acres at other zoos. The elephants should be retired to a sanctuary instead.
BARBARA STEINBERG, Kihei
COMMERCIAL PROJECTS CAN HURT MAUI’S CHARACTER
Maui still has a sense of place and of belonging — a sense of itself as unique and a sense of its own history. Much of the U.S. has lost that connection with community, history and the land itself. And it is lonely out there. People drive around in their big cars and shop at the same big stores with the same products. Nothing says, “We are here. We are unique. We have created this.”
Then they go home because there’s no connection out there and they watch TV in their isolation, hoping to feel something.
We on Maui still feel something. We still have the magic. We still have local shops, local products, local foods and local pastimes unique to this place. We still have a sense of giving back, of gratitude, of being careful guardians of this island and its seas. We have not zoned out yet completely.
We still give the shaka and let people into traffic. We are still warm and friendly and spend time talking story. We still have a sense of time’s natural rhythms, like the drums playing, the sun setting, the horns blowing, the hips in hula swaying, the paddles rowing.
And we still take time to hang loose. It is a priority for us. We still care deeply about the ‘aina and want to be out in it, enjoying it. We are here because of it.
The superstore and outlet store commercial development project planned for North Kihei mauka of Piilani Highway should not be part of this place. If you want to increase speed, sprawl, impersonalization, superstore minimum wages, traffic, a sense of isolation and meaninglessness, pollution (of all types), strain on delicate island resources, and the importation of more ways to consume, then this project is the perfect project for South Maui.
But it will also give our visitors fewer reasons to come here to “get away from it all.”
The more we look, act, feel, drive, speak, consume and live like we’re on the Mainland, the more we’ve lost what we have here. But also, the more likely we’ll lose the people who come here for what we have.
This place is not just about weather. It’s magical. And it’s about the history and the stories and legends, the music, the language, the local food, plants, animals, the way of life, the way business is done, the community, the land and the sea. This is what we have the opportunity to preserve. Now is our chance. It is not too late. We have not yet left our souls behind.
We have held to aloha, hoping to never lose this unique and beautiful heritage.
Please check out ainaohanafirst.community.officelive.com to see my campaign to stop this commercial development and my petition to our leaders.
CELESTE KEELE, Kihei
WIND CHIMES INTRUSIVE
To those who have wind chimes in Napili, please consider your neighbors. Not only are they noisy but also intrusive on one’s peace and quiet.
Some people have neurological problems, and this type of noise is very stressful and causes problems.
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