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‘Hateful signs’

‘Hateful signs’

I usually look forward to reading your Sunday paper, but when I looked at this Sunday’s front page (Aug. 23), I was appalled to see that man who holds hateful signs at Lincoln Park.

I am shocked your newspaper would give him a front-page article. I do believe in freedom of speech, but James Borden is infringing on the rights of families, children and the public to go to the park and experience a peaceful and enjoyable time.

I was sickened to see one day as I passed by the park his huge sign of a bloody, unborn fetus on display. Little children should not be subjected to such graphic images! I can’t understand how he is able to park every day at a public park with huge, offensive signs and place crosses on a fence without any repercussions.

Several people have asked him to take down the signs, and he has become hostile and accused them of supporting abortion! This man clearly is unstable, and he even compares himself to Jesus in the article.

I hope your newspaper will contact other concerned citizens and get the other side of the story and not just the side of this hate-filled man. I look forward to a day when myself and others can go to the park or pass by without all these disturbing signs.

Kelly Kahawai

Hilo

Try volunteering

Regarding James Borden and Lincoln Park: If you Google “volunteering in Hilo, Hawaii,” you might be as surprised as I was. One site listed 55 opportunities — many of them with children, youth and disaster relief.

Why surround yourself with negative words and pictures when you could be doing something that would bring a smile to someone’s face, and a smile to your face as well?

That would be so much better than hours spent preparing offensive signage and glaring at vehicles as they pass by. Just eight hours a week means you gave 416 hours of positive energy back to mankind in one short year. That’s a lot of hours.

Robin Van Cleave

Kurtistown

Reign it in

Science, done correctly, is a method of unbiased observation and experiment. The sheer complexity of physical universe phenomena and the bewildering intricacies of our planet’s biosphere led to a specialization among scientists, their diversification into large groups of primates sharing a common language and tool set.

These specialized science groups do value ethics and creative initiative, but they are fiercely territorial, and their social structure tends toward a rigid hierarchy. A not-my-departmentalism mentality and a failure to communicate accurately on overlapping matters of concern pervades the internecine realms of corporations and academia.

Uncontrolled, large-scale chemical experiments on plants, animals and people are the result, for example. As we have only one viable planet Earth to live on for the foreseeable future, science must be reigned back to being a branch of philosophy and the humanities.

Eliot Greenleaf

Hilo