WHOLE FOODS

FOOD TENANTS PART OF KAHALA MALL'S CHARM

One of the charms of Kahala Mall is the opportunity to visit that cosmopolitan section that features the Yen King Restaurant, Ginza Kimuraya Tokyo, I Love Country Café, and The Patisserie. What a delectable choice!

Yen King, in particular, offers food and an ambiance that are among the best on the island.

Does the Whole Foods plan to generate "a different feel for the area" constitute an improvement or is it another example of a Mainland chain fouling the local flavor in the name of "progress?" For shame!

I, for one, will boycott Whole Foods and stay with local farmers markets, while hoping that the above treasures will relocate nearby.

PLASTIC

ALL MUST LOVE THE 'AINA, DON'T TRASH LAND, OCEAN

I liked the letter by Rosita Sipirok-Siregar ("Walk the talk, protect Hawai'i's environment," Aug. 6) speaking about plastic bags and recycling.

There is no reason in the United States to buy bottled water. Your kitchen tap produces wonderful, clean water. You can buy reusable water containers and canteens and keep them filled from the water tap.

We compost all our green kitchen waste and produce soil for our yard. We give all our newspapers and corrugated cardboard to the recycling units at schools.

We don't buy soda cans, beer cans or bottles. We don't use plastic bags, but use specially made canvas totes that look like paper bags and string bags for all our shopping.

We love the 'aina and are shocked that an island paradise would allow so much trash to blow into our oceans and on our land.

Every person in Hawai'i needs to be personally responsible for keeping the island clean and not trash it for some inane convenience.

TRANSIT

BUSWAYS FASTER, MORE CONVENIENT THAN RAIL

The idea of rapid transit, according to your editorial of Aug. 6, is to get from Point A to Point B rapidly.

If I were living in Mililani, Pacific Palisades or Makakilo, wouldn't it be faster for me to ride an express bus from my suburb directly into town on an elevated busway through the congested Pearl City to Iwilei corridor? Or would I prefer to catch a bus (or drive and park on the streets) to the nearest graffiti-covered rapid transit stop, climb three flights of stairs (because the escalator broke down), and take the "rapid rail transit" that stops at every stop?

Are our few courageous City Council members looking for a free trip to Europe or a viable alternative? Are our rail consultants who refuse to look at other alternatives somehow vested in rail?

Is a two-year delay to build a better, faster-to-build system too much to ask for? Imagine a fixed-rail dinosaur with ugly elevated stations or streamlined elevated bus lanes over the worst traffic congestion and ask yourself which system will be faster to build, less expensive to operate and more convenient.

Fortunately, there are a few councilmembers who are awake.

SAFETY

DEAD TREES IN PUPUKEA SHOULD BE CULLED

I am glad to see they stopped cutting the trees by Mililani. They should bring those crews to Alapi'o Road off Pupukea Road. There is a large eucalyptus forest and some other large trees that are dead or dying.

One of the trees fell across the road on Aug. 2. If someone had been on the road at the time they would have been killed. On Aug. 3, city crews were out here cleaning up the mess.

That's the good news, the bad news is that when that tree fell it loosened several others on the hillside. There is a dead tree along the guardrail that is positioned to take down a power line.

INSPECTIONS OF BRIDGES MUST BE DONE CAREFULLY

For the sake of everyone living in Hawai'i, I hope that the people who inspect our bridges for safety are not the same people we entrust the inspections of hillsides for falling rocks or for dams like Ka Loko.

LANDSCAPE

ALBIZZIA TREES LOVELY, BUT ARE ALSO INVASIVE

Albizzia trees are indeed visually attractive. So is miconia. Both are introduced invasives. Both receive high risk assessment scores from the University of Hawai'i College of Tropical Agriculture.

These species were brought to Hawai'i by people who did not know how aggressive they would be.

Albizzia and many other introduced species crowd out native and other vegetation. Albizzia grows tall very fast, breaks easily and spreads quickly as the seeds are carried by wind. I pull out albizzia seedlings along with several other invasives nearly every day.

Paradise Park is now nearly solid albizzia, and every year the invasion spreads throughout Manoa Valley. Many of the fallen trees and branches that contributed to the Manoa flood (October 2004) were albizzia. The rapid spread can be seen throughout O'ahu.

Large mature trees are an asset to our landscape. Let's encourage the planting of native (or at least non-aggressive) shrubs and trees on both public and private land.

Plant retailers could help by posting lists of invasive plants and removing them from their inventory.

EDUCATION

COACH IS DOING HIS JOB, MAYBE TEACHERS AREN'T

In the Aug. 3 Advertiser, Martha Harding suggests in a letter that teachers are underpaid and a certain football coach is overpaid.

I don't understand her logic. The football coach seems to be doing his job — having winning teams and helping get players to the next level in football.

I would suggest that if Johnny can't read, those teachers who are teaching children who can't read are not underpaid. In fact, they should not be teaching at all.

IRAQ WAR

FLY FLAG AT HALF-STAFF UNTIL ALL TROOPS RETURN

The Bush administration told us after the 12-day war in 2003 that as soon as we trained the Iraqi military we would bring our troops home.

Here we are four years later, and more than 130,000 American troops are still in Iraq.

I recall that our military trained me in less than eight weeks for combat in Korea. I cannot believe it takes four years to train the Iraqi military.

They have 353,000 security forces, 160,000 army troops and 100,000 police fully trained and supplied with our equipment. To date, more than 3,660 of our young people are dead and 27,000 wounded.

It is time for Iraq to take over the job of stabilizing the country. What are we doing rebuilding their country when they are one of the richest countries in the world, thanks to petroleum?

Let us show our support for our military by flying our flags at half-staff, and keep them there to honor those who have died and will continue to die in a country we should never have invaded.

Keep them at half-staff until our troops are safely home. Send this message to everyone you know here and on the Mainland.

BUSH

PRESIDENT SHOULD BE ON TRIAL OVER WAR IN IRAQ

I am appalled at the article about Marine Cpl. Marshall Magincalda, who last week was found guilty of conspiracy to murder an Iraqi man.

Our president should be the one on trial.

A Marine goes to war because he is ordered to do his duty and believes he is serving his nation. A president creates a war on false pretenses without the consent of Congress and collects his giant salary in his protected little world.

Unless we are there we cannot know what goes on in a war. This man and others who have also been on trial are there in the heat of the moment trying to survive and accomplish their jobs, hoping to come home with their bodies intact and perhaps their sanity.

Let's get President Bush on the stand, and stop this war.

PAGE ONE

INFO ON MEDICAL SCHOOL FINANCES WAS NOT NEW

As someone who's an admirer of the role sound investigative journalism plays in our society, I appreciated the thrust of Mark Platte's After Deadline piece on July 29, "Digging for news, minus the spin."

But I was surprised that he thought the July 22 Page One story on the finances of the John A. Burns School of Medicine was new information, and I smiled at the assertion that "It's also a safe bet that the subjects of these stories ... preferred not to see them on Page One." I also noted the statement that The Advertiser preferred not to concentrate its coverage in attending public meetings.

At two such public meetings of our Board of Regents, in May 2005 and May 2006, my leadership team reported on the medical school's finances. We'll do so again later this year.

And, of course, we routinely deliver public testimony to our Legislature on this matter, as well as keep the executive branch informed.

Minutes of these two Board of Regents meetings can be accessed at UH's Web site.

Here in the summer of 2007, it's well known that my predecessor Evan Dobelle, who departed three years ago, did not fulfill his commitment to raise $150 million from private and other sources to match the $150 million in bonds used to fund the medical school facilities in Kaka'ako. The matching funds would have been used for facilities complementary to the medical school, as part of a plan for a complete Health and Wellness Complex.

We continue to work on realizing the full promise of the medical school and related healthcare facilities. The citizens of Hawai'i need physicians to provide them excellent medical care now and in the future, and the life sciences can and are contributing to a diversification of our economy.

In fact, we appreciate the front-page coverage of our efforts; we simply wish that your subscribers could have read a more complete and accurate story.