Old-time story with the same result
When Capt. James Cook first arrived, the girls didn’t wear clothes. It was easy, that way, to decide what to wear every morning. Nothing. Well, there was always the task of picking a flower to wear behind the ear, leading to the inevitable question: “Dear, which one makes me look thinner — the white plumeria or the pink hibiscus?” It is a question in which, as every husband knows, no “correct” answer but only danger lurks.
The ship’s crew immediately began trading with the kanaka maoli. The most popular trade, according to the ship’s log, was “the world’s oldest trade.” The price for a smooch in the taro patch with a fun-loving wahine was a two-penny nail. The kanaka liked nails because they made cool fishhooks. So, when a wahine asked her hubbie, “Honey, do you like my nails?” she meant she’d spent the afternoon schmoozing with the barbarians. Rapid inflation set in. In the blink of a wink, the price rose to a 10-penny nail. Predictably, within a few days, the ship began falling apart as every nail that could be pried loose mysteriously disappeared.
Unfortunately for Capt. Cook, the big box hardware stores hadn’t opened yet, so it was up to the ship’s blacksmith to melt down the spare anchors and make more nails. By then, however, the price for a peck on the cheek had escalated to a diamond necklace. The English sailors had no diamonds, but fortunately for them they did have pCards.
Keneke Foster
Holualoa
Burying the facts
Once again, Big Island newspapers have buried — put in the second-to-the-last paragraph — the information that the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope would be 18 stories tall (“Standoff continues atop Mauna Kea,” page 6A, June 7).
As usual, the story has left out the information that the proposed TMT would have a footprint of 250,000 square feet, not including its surrounding parking lots, roads, support buildings, etc.
For comparison:
1) The tallest building on our island is an apartment building in Hilo that has 15 stories.
2) Costco has 156,000 square feet of floor in its Kona building (the shopping area is less).
3) Most of the existing telescopes are about the size of large, two-story houses.
For these and other reasons, the inappropriateness is overwhelming, whether or not you use the word “sacred.”
If you’re an American, would you like to see such a structure above George Washington’s head at Mount Rushmore?
Donna Worden
Waimea
Mauna Kea is wrong place for TMT
The Hawaii Supreme Court is bypassing the Intermediate Court of Appeals and will address the Thirty Meter Telescope issue directly. The state Board of Land and Natural Resources and University of Hawaii insist on allowing this venture with a footprint of four football fields, and a height of 18 stories to be built on conservation-zone sacred Mauna Awakea.
UH is irresponsibly promoting TMT as the world’s largest telescope and the tallest building on the island while apologizing for past negligent care-taking on the mountain. Many at the university working in conservation areas see this propossal as a blatant contradiction. A criterion required before construction is allowed on this protected zone is “tolerating the least degree of development” (Star-Advertiser).
As one of the 31 arrested April 2 as a practitioner in the spirit of Aloha Aina, we could not allow continued desecration of the Mauna. We repeat, we are not against science; our mountain is just the wrong place for the TMT.
Moanikeala Akaka
Hilo