Recipe for astronomy
love in Hawaii
Take 1 telescope for every Big Island school
Add I trained stargazer per telescope
Stargazing for every first- through sixth-grader and family
Observatory field trips for every middle schooler
Respectful summit visit for every high schooler
Stir all ingredients and let sit for two to four years until cosmic interest rises
Garnish with frequent, free public stargazing wherever possible
Serves our whole island community!
Teaching the stars in the daytime is teaching about fish in the desert.
Snorkel once on a reef and you want to protect it.
Stargaze once and you want to endorse it.
Astronomy on Maunakea must start in all our local communities.
Jon Lomberg
Honaunau
When telescopes litter
Letter-writer Jack Love (Aug. 13) asks: “What is so sacred about Maunakea that it would be violated by the placement on its summit of the world’s largest telescope?”
To the people (Hawaiian or non-Hawaiian) who may regard the mountain as sacred, part of the answer may be that it has already been violated, and continues to be violated because telescopes which have long ago been declared unusable are allowed to remain there.
Any place where no-longer-usable man-made objects of any size are either stored or allowed to remain is either called a trash dump or a junkyard.
David Bouchier
Kailua-Kona
Tired of WHT’s
anti-Trump spin
We are new to the island but I’m already growing tired of the liberal bent the national news takes in WHT. For instance, on Aug. 8 there was an article about an immigration raid that netted 680 arrests with a strong bias against standing up for the rule of law in our nation. Included was this low-blow quote: “On a day when we seek unifying words and acts to heal the nation’s broken heart President Trump allows so many families and communities to be torn apart.” Really? Where was the quote from border agents, unemployed factory workers in boxer states or any one of millions of Americans who appreciate a president who wants to close the floodgates on illegal immigration because he cares deeply about America and American jobs? Nowhere to be found!
Then in a totally unnecessary article on Biden regarding unfounded accusations against the president, we read that Biden feels “Donald Trump is fanning the flames of white supremacy” and that Trump “offers no moral leadership and seems to have no interest in unifying the nation.”
Sadly, that one-sided and biased view dominated without anyone from the other side giving a dissenting opinion. Why wouldn’t WHT take the high road and offer the other side’s view to fairly counteract Biden’s nasty and inflammatory accusations? Why wouldn’t WHT insist on at least one counter quote — one that thanks the president for a strong economy, record stock market, pro-life stance, pro-Israel enactments, appointing two wonderful Supreme Court justices and, more specific to the Biden attack article, the fact that Trump strongly denounced white supremacy in a recent speech?
So, can we please hear both sides?
Bob Waliszewski
Waikoloa
Mahalo for ‘Threats target silencing pro-TMT Hawaiians’
Thank you, Sam King, for your very well written piece on the animosity and the vanity of the protesters. Your clear thinking needs to be adopted by all who live in Hawaii.
Mahalo nui, Sam.
Cecelia Smith
Honaunau
