What a waste What a waste ADVERTISING The county council’s video-conference site in Ocean View is a failure. I was the only person to show up to testify on Sept. 18, but it still cost the county $500 for the
What a waste
The county council’s video-conference site in Ocean View is a failure. I was the only person to show up to testify on Sept. 18, but it still cost the county $500 for the day.
To make things worse, the H.O.V.E. Community Center staff and the county’s paid staff banned me from their location because they felt threatened by my fiscal opinions.
Waste of money plus abuse of power adds up to corruption. How long can this go on?
Jerry Warren
Naalehu
One bolt, one nut
With same-sex marriage in the headlines again, I thought how complicated things have gotten for something so simple. We need to break things down to its simplest parts, to the nuts and bolts. This got me thinking about the Mo‘o, a little known people from a group of six main islands in the Pacific: He, Mo‘o, Lelo, Wale, No and Keia.
They were forever changed by some cargo that washed ashore one day, a load of shiny hard sticks with knob-like heads and shiny rocks with perfectly round holes. Though strange to them, we know these as nuts and bolts. Some found religious and superstitious uses for them. Intellectuals debated their origin and purpose. Artisans made jewelry and even sewed the nuts into leis. With more effort and clever rigging, even the bolts were joined together. A whole economy developed as goods were traded for them.
But it didn’t take very long for them to realize the nuts and bolts were perfectly matched and could be used to hold things together. They called the bolts “poheo” and the nuts, “pa‘a poheo.” Soon their homes, canoes and other commodities were held together by the vast supply of poheo and pa‘a poheo. Some craftsmen would use two or more pa‘a poheo on a single poheo, which was viewed as wasteful and unnecessary.
The Mo‘o people would say: “Tahi poheo, tahi pa‘a poheo — one bolt, one nut!” The meaning grew over the years. If someone would steal or take another person’s spouse, the elders would scold them, “Tahi poheo, tahi pa‘a poheo!”
My Mo‘o friend laughed when he found out about all this fuss about same-sex marriage. He said to give you this message: “Tahi poheo, tahi pa‘a poheo!” Pipi holo ka‘ao …
Michael Dias
Hilo
An act of kindness
I witnessed an extraordinary service on Sept. 20 at Zippy’s.
A young male student of Kamehameha Schools stood behind me at the Zippy’s counter to place an order. I waved him ahead knowing that he was waiting for one of two buses that take students to the Keaau campus. The bus arrived before he got his order so he left to board the bus.
Angie, the waitress who had taken both our orders, sprinted through the restaurant to the bus to hand him his order, which was probably breakfast.
I was very touched by this act and wanted to acknowledge her thoughtfulness.
This kind of service
is noteworthy.
Sachi Fukuda
Hilo
