Weekly Warning Words

     Those who love Kona as the greatest area of Hawaiian heritage may also hate the ugliness & potential danger to wall-walking kids & friendly visitors of the Kailua - Bay seawall where it ends at the entrance to the Kailua pier. The Department of Land & Natural Resources, through some of its local officers, denies responsibility for this shabby feature although the heavy equipment, employed for a partial reconstruction of the Kailua pier, contributed to the degradation & ruin of their & our seawall.

     If the County of Hawai'i is responsible for the ugly risk spot, concerned citizens haven't been able yet to discover a responsible & responsive head of the blessed department in charge. Once our solicitous ladies of the Outdoor Club knew where to embellish our district. But since state & county offices multiplied by the hundreds, less community work is achieved in spite of ever greater expenditures.

     Perhaps our inclination to violence & self-delusion, our record keeping of teen-pregnancy records, our failures in education & eagerness for alcohol, nicotine & other drugs - ice, ice, ice! - make us concentrate on the time when the "The Iceman Cometh".

     That is our great threat of local terrorism, indicated by the huge trucks which cannot fit into our narrow lanes of street traffic. How can you get around the Coors, Bud Light, Coke, Suisan & monstrous dumpsters without murdering a 17-year-old high-school scholar, a participant in the Ironman Triathlon or a nonagenarian invalid?

      This is, indeed, the foremost village of terror: Trucks & vans & even smaller vehicles park where they find a spot on narrow sidewalks, in lanes marked for the safety of pedestrians, the very oldest & parents with their very youngest. You see even a policecar close to one other slow learner who planned to cross an intersection while the traffic light shimmered in yellow but really started moving as it just turned red. And the driver was too mean, idiotic or blind to notice a long line of non-moving vehicles up to the pedestrian lane. These murderous champions of "overdrive" land, last & lull to sleep in front of poor pedestrians.

     The short driver can't see the light & doesn't care what happens to the life of the threatened, fearful & trembling pedestrian who missed a few crossing opportunities because the motored maniacs feel it their mission to obstruct the luckless walker. Often, the monster vehicles obscure the pedestrian signals across the road. Result: Even if the ancient slow poke on crutches or with walking cane comes off immediately to a fast start, his few seconds of freedom to move is stopped by old & new occupiers in the other half of the pedestrian lane. It feels like a miracle when the walker's life is not threatened 3 times when crossing a 2 or 3 - lane road end which ends in a 4-fold intersection with a legal sign outlawing stopping in it.

     The pitiless scum which causes bursts of heart-flippings with the possibility of heart attacks or deadly injury has never been defended by a nearby police officer. Only twice the very old, very sick & badly crippled pedestrian was motioned by a young lady to lunge out with his cane as a weapon of measured destruction. Another time, a road construction engineer assumed the authority of a police officer. He guided this very elderly invalid across the well-marked pedestrian lane after the red light prohibited walking because he had observed 3 missed opportunities while hopes for a possible cross-walking had greened for a few short seconds. He considered the quick moves of terroristic drivers to block any chances for safe passing intentional terrorism. Nobody else would protect the life of one sentenced to suffer continuous stress, danger to his advanced "life" & daily near-death experiences.

     A pointed heel in the worn-out tire & some loud curses should teach the terrorist to give up his or her driver's licence. But what intelligence can you expect when a state's main broadcasting monopolies repeat a silly, meaningless weather forecast 6 times within 1 hr 20 minutes of prime time? One who is a good reader of materials with the help of so-called educated & trained meteorologists is still modest enough to call himself a "weather-tracker". Can you believe that one with longer experience of that same trade wants to be known as a meteorologist? Such idiocies could render any news-addict insane, especially when the advertizing of dubious, costly & potentially risky junk medications introduce & intercept reports of violence or endless discussions of movies.

     Could the Kona District also be the only place of legally supported suicide of the very old by forcing on them several injections of Tuberculin after telling X-Rays have already proved more definitely the absence of T.B.? Watch out for the dirty nurse who shakes hands all around to distribute everyone's germs, viruses and microbes before & after she does those injections without making the skin area first germ-free (aseptic) & not covering the pricked skin at once with germ-free cotton, held in place for some time by a solid bandage.

     In this poison atmosphere an April joke can steal from someone's garden plot, shovels full of topsoil, regularly seeded or planted with seedlings of leek (3 times), tomatoes (twice), garlic (twice), artichoke (twice) & filling big holes & flatten soil layers with vast tufts of good grass, beds of red fire flowers, thistles, spurges & other weeds. Unfortunately for the young terrorists, 2 ladies with handy cameras took the hoods' pictures & shared them with the authorities. Only a miracle can prevent the culprits from serving long prison terms for giving stress & possible heart attacks to a very sick nonagenarian. There may be time yet for public excuses, remedy the damage done & help to care for the ancient patient's will to live a bit longer with a purpose. However, if an old ex-nurse may praise a good airport baggage-handler as an ideal caretaker for those who have difficulties taking care of themselves, there is no "need" to have those in charge of laid-back seniors educated for geriatric requirements.
Week 87- May 18, 2005 - - Is School Over Before It Has Started?

May 11, 2005 - Week 86 - A License To Kill

BY DR. BRUNO J. KEITH