A request
A request
If the Hawaii County band puts on a performance when no one is there to listen, do they still make a sound?
Who would know? It sure would be nice to get a heads-up for their performances.
Last Saturday, the band not only marched in the Pahoa Christmas parade, but also put on a performance at the Aupuni Center on the same day, and I don’t recall seeing any announcements in the paper.
Perhaps the director of Parks and Recreation could designate a PR person to let us know (via the Tribune-Herald’s weekly community calendar on Saturdays), instead of some of us hearing about the events after the fact.
Reed Vallance
Hilo
Mauna Kea access
Photos posted on social media last weekend showed dozens of vehicles jamming the Mauna Loa weather observatory road as island residents — locked out at the 9,200-foot level of Mauna Kea — attempted to access snow between the recent blizzards.
In the 1990s, Mauna Kea Support Services often opened the Mauna Kea road to the 12,500-foot level after it was plowed so people could safely access two “snow play parking lots” below the more hazardous summit, built just for that purpose.
I was an observatory tour guide back then, and working the upper gate on those joyous days was one of my favorite duties. I talked story with families, showed them the latest satellite images of the weather systems creating the snow and shared information about the history, culture, geology and astronomy of their beloved mountain.
And we all gazed up in awe at the snowcapped peaks above us.
That was before astronomers began seeing the mountain as primarily theirs, before Land Board and University of Hawaii officials (including President Kenneth Mortimer and Institute for Astronomy administrators) advocated public access restrictions and then created the Office of Mauna Kea Management, in part to do just that.
Islanders have not failed to notice that while all these changes occurred, the Land Board and UH have done little to stem commercial tourism on Mauna Kea, which has had far more impact and created more safety concerns than islanders’ celebrations of snow days ever did.
Tom Peek
Volcano