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Luter nurtured many at UH j-school
The late John Luter is the main reason I am in journalism (Star-Bulletin, April 11).I'll never forget going to him and confiding that I had run out of money. I was paying my way through school like lots of other University of Hawaii students -- working 20-30 hours a week --plus carrying a full load of classes and trying to be the first in my family to attend college.
John told me to go ahead, enroll in classes and that he'd figure something out. I was one of the few Hawaiian students in that program, so I must have been a rare bird. Trustingly, I took his advice.
On the last day of registration, he told me that I had been awarded a scholarship that covered my tuition and books for the semester. I cried because it was the break I needed to pursue my first love, writing.
If not for him, I probably never would have had the chance to work on three newspapers, write for a slew of magazines, and tackle work on video productions and other publications. Today I am an editor at an online news magazine.
Mahalo, John Luter. I pray that the UH Journalism Department continues your acts of kokua.
Leilani Haywood
News Editor
TelecomClick
Kansas City, Mo.
Street performers will defy regulation
I am a Waikiki street performer who performs on the public sidewalk along Kalakaua Avenue between Seaside and Kaiulani. While I don't generate a crowd, I do generate a lot of smiles and make a living at it.As an American citizen, I am guaranteed the right to freedom of expression by the U.S. Constitution. I have the right to beat a drum, dress in silver or do whatever I want as long as it doesn't break any laws.
Regulating street performances violates my constitutional rights. If anyone tries to ticket or jail street performers, we will be forced to respond with civil disobedience. We also will call the media to cover our side of the story.
From people's responses on the street, 98 percent of those walking along Kalakaua enjoy the sidewalk entertainment and would be sad to see it go. But, alas, since members of the City Council are lapdogs to the hotels and shops with the big money, they have no choice but to put special interests ahead of public interest and constitutionally guaranteed rights.
See you in court.
William E. Barker
Quotables
"I knew when I was crying that the cameras were on me, and I thought, 'Oh, geez, this sucks.' But real men, they can cry. I'm not into the whole macho thing." Ikaika Kahoano
One of eight young men vying for a spot on a five-member, all-guy singing group to be named O-Town
About having his life filmed for a weekly national TV audience
"Well, for a while I hung out with you." Randy Iwase
Democratic State senator and nominee as chairman of the Labor and Industrial Relations Appeals Board
In response to Republican Sen. Sam Slom's interview question, "Can you say what shortcomings you have?"
Girls show aptitude for computers, too
While reading your April 10 Cox News Service story, "Study: Girls disdaining computer careers," I couldn't help but contrast the premise with the situation at Sacred Hearts Academy:
Teachers who model regular computer use and who require their students -- especially girls -- to use technology creatively can inspire this generation of young women to enter the challenging and remunerative field of high technology.My Grade 9 English students work on their poetry booklets using Pagemaker, and the computer lab is anything but "a sterile set of cubicles."
Claire McCaffery Griffin
Chairwoman
Social Studies Department
Sacred Hearts Academy
Elian's father took too long to fetch him
The fate of a 6-year-old boy is being played out in the court of public opinion. Opinions are being shared from the most ordinary persons to the highest office holders in the land.If I were Elian Gonzalez's father, I would have climbed the highest mountain to petition my government to grant me passage to go where my son was and to bring him home. I would have done this the moment I knew his whereabouts.
Therefore, in Elian's case, the element of sincerity is gone. His father procrastinated too long and only recently arrived in the United States to claim his son from those who are reluctant to give him up.
Benjamin Dacalano Jacobe Sr.
Aiea
Build a bridge over Waimea Bay
I am concerned about what is happening to our beautiful North Shore. My big disappointment is that the powers that be let all that money be spent on a bypass road when it should have been used to build a suspension bridge over Waimea Bay.The suffering that the March 6 rockslide caused has hurt businesses as well as hard-working individuals. All could have been avoided if the bridge had been built instead of the highway.
It is not too late to get the ball rolling on the bridge. Don't procrastinate. Do it! The person successful in making this happen would be a hero.
Louise Frye
Haleiwa
Francis is strong congressional candidate
Russ Francis' announcement that he will run as a Republican for the 2nd congressional district against incumbent Rep. Patsy Mink brings great hope for our future. Francis brings tremendous community support and integrity to a race that has lacked any serious challengers in the past.While many think of him as only a former NFL star, Francis is much more. Yes, he has been a Super Bowl champion and was listed in Sports Illustrated as one of the Top Athletes of the Last 100 Years, but he also pilots airplanes. He has served in government with the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, and the Hawaii Tourism Authority.
Here is a candidate we can all get behind and support, someone who knows the people of our state and who will work to bring Hawaii into the 21st century.
Laurie Von Hamm
Ewa Beach
Hemmeter Building would be center for arts
The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts supports Governor Cayetano's far-reaching vision of purchasing the Hemmeter Building.We share a vision that the arts affirm life by providing leadership in promoting, preserving and perpetuating the diverse and unique culture and arts for all people of all ages, fulfilling government's role in a democratic society.
A state gallery would showcase more than 4,000 pieces of art created by local artists. It would also provide a facility for all children to learn the performing arts.
Eunice M. DeMello
Chairperson
State Foundation on Culture and the Arts
Cayetano has warped spending priorities
Governor Cayetano wants to spend $22.3 million to buy the Hemmeter Building (Star-Bulletin, April 5) and then spend another $3.4 million for air-conditioning and improvements to house the artwork and staff from the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.Meanwhile Maili Elementary School needs $4.6 million to install air-conditioning to help the children cope with the heat, flies and smell of nearby pig and chicken farms. The problem is that Maili Elementary is ninth on the list for such improvements, and likely won't get them for many years.
This is a no-brainer. Take the money proposed to buy the Hemmeter Building, air condition all of the schools, and put the artwork and staff in the schools. While you're at it, take the 1 percent funding the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts receives from all state construction projects and put it into a State School Air-Conditioning Fund.
Looks like our "Education Governor" has become the "Arts and Crafts Governor."
Marge Young
Ewa Beach
Takumi is all wrong about gun control
This is in response to Rep. Roy Takumi's April 8 View Point column. What does he exactly mean that "Hawaii must get smart about gun control"? There are at least six steps you must go through before you can purchase a firearm in this state.Takumi tries to make a case that gun-safety programs are not reaching children. But it is the responsibility of parents, not government, to teach children about firearms. Furthermore, it is the responsibility of parents and adults to keep guns away from children.
Takumi claims that technology exists to make handguns that can be fired only by their owners, those so-called "smart" guns. If this technology exists, where is it? Wouldn't police officers have such weapons if this were possible?
Finally, Takumi says that "handguns should not be exempt from health and safety laws that apply to every other consumer product in America." Get real. Does this mean if you run over me with your car, I cannot sue you but I can sue the car manufacturer?
I can just see the plaintiffs attorneys dancing to the tune of "Happy Days are Here Again."
Daniel Munn
Put more good news on the front page
On the front page of newspapers are mostly stories on murder or Bill Clinton doing another naughty thing. The only piece of good news I heard one week, besides the weather and sports, was how well Hawaii students did at the state science fair.It seems that people want to read or hear only the negative side of things, at least more than the positive. What is this world coming to if only what interests us is the most gory news reeking of shootings and killings?
This might be a happier place if the media would just feature a few more good stories, rather than the bad stories. You might not know it, but the press does have some influence on the way people think.
Laura Nagamine
Mililani High School
Fireworks must be banned this session
After following SB 680 throughout the 1990-2000 legislative session and hearing House Speaker Calvin Say affirm that the Legislature would address the fireworks issue early this session, I believed that House and Senate conferees would come to a speedy compromise on a ban.Well, here it is -- with just two weeks left before the close of the session -- and nothing has been done.
Will the people of Hawaii be subjected to another free-for-all of legal and illegal fireworks months before New Year's Eve? How many more deaths and injuries must we have before this issue is resolved?
Since health and safety should be the Legislature's first concern, a compromise must be agreed upon this week. Call Sen. Cal Kawamoto and Rep. Eric Hamakawa and demand that a compromise be made on SB 680.
Dawn Miyashiro
Legislature Directory
Legislature Bills & Hawaii Revised Statutes
Lobbyist's defense of senator is laughable
I had a good chuckle reading G.A. "Red" Morris' touting of Sen. Cal Kawamoto's "integrity" for refusing to hear a campaign finance reform bill (Letters, April 10). Who better to defend the recipient of the most special interest money in the Legislature than a lobbyist who dispenses the most special interest money.This is akin to a fox praising the integrity of a farmer who holds the door open to the henhouse.
If we publicly finance candidates who refuse all private contributions and thereby make it possible to get elected without being beholden to special interests, everybody gains -- except professional lobbyists like Morris. Indeed, Morris' clients have included some of the biggest political cash cows of all: tobacco, alcohol, insurance, banking and telecommunications industries.
If Morris were honest, he'd admit that "integrity" has nothing to do with it. He just wants to keep his job as a professional corruptor of the current system, profiting by helping big money organizations manipulate our elected officials.
If special interest servants like Kawamoto and Morris feel threatened, maybe we're moving in the right direction. "One person, one vote," must triumph over "one dollar, one vote."
Devin Nordberg
'Forcing' cure for
mental illness is unwise'Medicine' can be worse than the disease
In response to your April 6 article on depression, and in spite of what Dr. Wayne Levy says, depression cannot be cured until the cause of it is remedied.Sure, we can have people committed against their will. We can have them locked up, take away their freedom, their liberty, their right to make choices and treat them like caged animals, children, criminals.
They can be forced to eat institutional food, and have drugs pumped into them until they are nothing but zombies.
But we are all going to die sometime and everyone has a right to choose the time, place and method. This existence we call life is not right for everyone who is born into it.
For some, it is nothing but an endless march of loneliness and mental pain for which there is no cure. Everyone has the right to say, "Enough, I don't want anymore."
David Lipton
Imposing treatment isn't the best approach
I have concerns about your April 6 article on the stigma of mental illness. Its main message was for friends and family to coax and even force people into treatment, and giving red flags to identify people with "mental illness." This is dangerous.There are more than 300 disorders used by psychiatrists to label those with a mental illness, which cover virtually every form of normal behavior. To say then that one in five people has a diagnosable illness and is "suffering in silence" is dubious.
But to advocate that we look for certain behaviors deemed as red flags for illness, and force people into treatment including drugs, restraints and, as Dr. Wayne Levy puts it, "more aggressive therapy," is a violation of basic human rights, regardless of its legality.
Many people have been wrongly diagnosed and put on drugs, hurt with restraints, given electroshock, isolated from their family and personally invalidated by the gruesome practice of involuntary commitment.
People cannot jump to conclusions based on red flags in the newspaper about a person's well-being. The main message this article sends out is: "Send us anyone with these characteristics and use force if necessary. We need the money."
Steve Brown
A humane society abhors slow, tortuous death
In response to your April 6 article about suicide and depression, let me quote from "Conversations With God," Book 3, by Neal Donald Walsch:"On the question of ending one's life, it is the current imagining of the majority of people on your planet that it is 'not OK' to do that. Similarly, many of you still insist that it is not OK to assist another who wishes to end his or her life.
"In both cases you say this would be 'against the law.' You have come to this conclusion, presumably, because the ending of the life occurs relatively quickly. Actions which end a life over a somewhat longer period of time are not against the law, even though they achieve the same result.
"Thus, if a person in your society kills himself with a gun, his family members lose insurance benefits. If he does so with cigarettes, they do not. If a doctor assists you in your suicide, it is called manslaughter, while if a tobacco company does, it is called commerce.
"With you, it seems to be merely a question of time. The legality of self-destruction -- the 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of it -- seems to have much to do with how quickly the deed is done, as well as who is doing it. The faster the death, the more 'wrong' it seems to be. The slower the death, the more it slips into 'OK-ness.'
"Interestingly, this is the exact opposite of what a truly humane society would conclude."
Eva Martin
Legislature Directory
Hawaii Revised Statutes
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