Newspaper staffers are like family members
Mahalo to all the employees, support staff and backroom guys at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.I'd especially like to thank my mom, Helen Altonn, who has been reporting the truth and the news for almost 45 years for the Star-Bulletin. I don't think I've ever told her how talented, honest and hard working I think she is. Her voice, along with many others, will be greatly missed on Nov. 1.
For as many years as I can remember, I have been a newspaper brat. Both my parents worked for the Star-Bulletin. My dad delivered it as a district manager for Pearl City; my mom wrote the words.
Like ours, so many families have put their heart and souls and lives into this newspaper, and will be affected when it shuts its doors on Oct. 30.
Paige Kepina Altonn
Honolulu Lite has gone out
Please say it ain't so. What'll I do without my thrice weekly dose of Charles Memminger? How will all my mainland friends keep up with local news? The Advertiser doesn't have a web edition. What a sad day this is.Robin Makapagal
Kaneohe
starbulletin.com gives me link to home
NOOOO! This cannot be true. What devastating news. One of the absolutely best things about having access to the Internet has been your website. It has been my treasured link to Hawaii.I moved to the mainland more than 15 years ago, and although I still have family there, since going online during the last year I have really felt in touch with the islands for the first time in those 15 years. I read your site faithfully every day. What will I do?
Please pass along to your webmasters my compliments on the exceptional job they have done. Your site is the most user-friendly and informative of any that I view. I strongly believe that this trend to one-newspaper cities is detrimental to our society in ways we don't even fully appreciate.
Janel Mosley
Paola, Kan.
Via the InternetNOTE: We have received hundreds of e-mailed messages related to our closing. We will be trying to put more of them online this week. -- webmaster@starbulletin.com
Feeding wild chickens is bad practice
I beg to differ with Joy Tahara of Kaneohe, who said in your Sept. 6 issue that the Kahuhipa chickens "don't bother anyone." I haven't had a solid night's sleep in months due to the numerous roosters that hang out under the street lights crowing throughout the night. Chickens are also less than discriminating in their personal habits, making for messy walking in their wake.Our neighborhood chicken population has grown geometrically in the past two years, possibly due to kindly souls like Tahara and others who feed them regularly. This has the same result as feeding feral cats and dogs: They multiply.
I am an animal lover whose pets have always come from the Hawaiian Humane Society, and I abhor cruelty to any living creature. I have called the Humane Society to inquire about humane traps for chickens, but only one trap per person is allowed. This makes trapping these feral chickens a very tedious process.
Kahuhipa is a residential area. While a few stray chickens have always been part of the scene, the current population is out of control. If people would stop feeding them, their numbers would diminish naturally.
Nancy Kickertz
Kaneohe
Via the Internet
Quotables
"I just remember them bageling us
(15-0 in 1997). So many of us come
from Southern California and we
do not want to lose
to The Beach."Jessica Sudduth
UH WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL PLAYER Ecstatic that third-ranked Hawaii triumphed over
fourth-ranked Long Beach State
"This will be a test of faith.
We need to go back and reclaim
this place for God."Matthew Sanders
FORMER HAWAII BAPTIST ACADEMY TEACHER
ATTENDING SOUTHWEST BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY IN FORT WORTH, TEXAS Who survived Wednesday's shooting
rampage at Wedgewood Baptist Church
It's not paradise; it's high-priced purgatory
Cheers to the Star Bulletin for bringing this injustice to light (What price paradise?, Sept. 1-2). What's the next step?It seems strange that the word "paradise" can be used to describe a place where the people are being ripped off, gouged and then lied to. The state-controlled bureaucracy runs deep.
By the way, thanks for letting me know that my peers in Seattle pay 30 percent less for their goods and services, considering they earn 40 percent more. Some paradise.
Dean A. Spagnoli
Kailua
Via the Internet
Aborting 'criminals' is unacceptable
In his Sept. 9 column, A.A. Smyser suggests a relationship between increased abortions and lower crime rates. Such a relationship is irrelevant to the abortion issue.Studies show that a high percentage of abusive parents were abused as children. Since this is so, killing all abused children before they can become abusers is an effective way to lower child abuse rates in the next generation.
Why has no one suggested such an effective method of lowering child abuse rates? We recoil because neither our law nor our consciences will allow us to punish somebody simply for being at risk.
The abortion issues turns on one question: Does the womb contain unborn children or products of conception? If the former, then aborting them raises, not lowers, the crime rate, since every abortion is criminal morally if not legally.
If they are just products of conception, then one should be able to abort for anything, including gender preference or eye color.
Brad Smith
Via the Internet
Ousted trustees should stop fighting
I am not a graduate of Kamehameha Schools. I'm just a resident and taxpayer of Hawaii who has a message for those displaced trustees: Give it up!How much taxpayer money has been spent on this whole Bishop Estate mess, and how much more will be spent to prove, again and again, that these trustees were finally caught with their hands in the Bishop Estate cookie jar, all the way up to their shoulders?
They should take the millions that they collected during their tenures and get on with their lives. Very few if any citizens believe that these ousted trustees were dedicated to ensuring that the desires of the princess, as stated in her will, were their top priority.
Henry Peters and Dickie Wong, especially, give us taxpayers a break! Get off your soapboxes.
I only hope that the money spent by our state to remove these individuals can be recouped from them and not the Bishop Estate.
John Shupe
Via the Internet
Bishop Estate Archive
OHA trustees need to learn civil behavior
It is obvious that certain trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs have no respect whatsoever for their constituents, nor do they uphold the Hawaiian custom of respecting their elders.OHA is not pono. What needs to be done to make it so?
Clara L. Kakalia
Kailua
Trouble ahead when canal changes hands
On Dec. 31, Panama will legally own the Panama Canal.That means the United States will have an enemy that is about to seize control of the canal. It may commit other predatory acts.
The true character of communism is always revealed.
Kwock Young
Legislature Directory
Hawaii Revised Statutes
Ka Leo O Hawaii
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