Let's be responsible with our resources
Living on an island means our resources are finite. Recycling is responsible. Let's go one step further and initiate legislation encouraging and facilitating the development of businesses that use recycled materials.
Conservation is responsible. Green building is the next step. Let's update building codes to require that all new construction include solar water heating, and new retail and business construction require photovoltaic cells for electric use.
Balanced land use is responsible. Limit further rezoning of our already limited agricultural land so we can produce our own food.
We cannot afford to grant developers building permits without requiring investment in source and transmission for water and power and land to grow crops for consumption, not fuel.
Ed Tompkins
Waianae
Kids need more time in school to exercise
As a fifth-grader, I think it is not fair that the younger students in kindergarten through third grade have a shorter time for P.E. It should be long like the older kids because they are still building muscles and they are gaining fat.
I am angry because as we are young we should try to be healthy and stay fit in our body shape, and the grown-ups might forget how fun it would be to exercise and to work out so they might just drop out of exercising and become fat and be lazy.
I think P.E. helps you to stay in shape and to not get heart disease, and to stay healthy and to keep your bones and muscles strong, and for you not to be overweight. P.E. in Hawaii should be longer, "funner" and harder.
Justin Silva
Fifth-grade student
Aliiolani Elementary School
Ferry riders will save more than just airfare
I am a kamaaina and former Maui resident. I fly to both Maui and Kauai frequently for business. I usually awaken at 4:30 to 5 a.m. to drive, in the dark, to the airport from my home in Hawaii Kai. Airport parking will cost me $10 if I can find a spot, or $20 for valet parking because there is no spot. Add to that the round trip airfare and the additional hour at each end for security, baggage claim and the rental car I will need when I get there. Then, I will be in your rush-hour traffic when I leave Lihue or Kahului airport and again when I return to catch my flight out.
By the time I return to Honolulu, claim my car and get home it is 10 p.m. I am tired, hungry and irritable. Just think, if it weren't for the parking, airfare and car rental fees, I could leave the previous afternoon, stay in a hotel, have a nice meal, awake refreshed, get to my job site ahead of traffic and have a less stressful experience of your island. Rental car or my car -- what's the difference? It's still a car, right? No. It's a car I'm not renting and an airfare I'm not buying. The airline and car rental companies (the ones who stand to lose business) have thrown their collective support behind the opposition to the Superferry.
Change is inevitable and we need to accept it in order to prepare for it. I respect and share concern for our ecosystem. Those who would do it harm will do so without regard, ferry or no ferry. I support the Hawaii Superferry and look forward to its success and expansion. To my friends on Maui and Kauai, the guest room is ready. Pack your car and bring the kids.
Laure Hilden
Hawaii Kai
Visiting other isles is suddenly much harder
Well, it looks like we may have shot ourselves in the foot again! With the Superferry on its last leg and go! airlines in trouble with the law, it looks like we'll be back to the "good old days"! Aloha and Hawaiian airlines might breathe a little easier with less competition.
Auwe, no can afford go visit family on the neighbor islands, eh?
Eldred Kagawa
Honolulu
Protesters are the noisy ones
After listening to the loud croaking of the Superferry protesters, an invasive species, it will be a welcome relief to experience the comparative quiet of the coqui frogs.
Jack Stephens
Lihue, Kauai
President's priorities require reordering
Congress just passed a bill to expand children's health insurance. Then President Bush says that he would veto it since he wants to slow down spending. This bill would cost about $12 billion in five years! How come he doesn't even flick his eyes when the Pentagon wants $190 billion? And that's only for one year! What a hypocrite! What is more important to the American public?
Francis K. Ibara
Kahului, Maui
Set aside a trophy for June Jones, too
Is June Jones a man of his word?
After two consecutive record-breaking quarterbacks, one would tend to think that the coaching had something to do with it. A few years ago, when I lived in Tennessee, I read somewhere that the new football coach at the University of Hawaii said something like, "My aim is to make Hawaii one of the Top 20 in the nation." Oh? Hawaii? On that little rock out in the vast Pacific where all they know about is surfing?
Now, after Colt Brennan gets his Heisman, just maybe we will have our own Coach of the Year.
Bertram J. Wong
Honolulu