Open restrooms
While our population is on lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, people are still allowed out to shop and exercise.
The stores that remain open are filled with shoppers, and many people are walking for exercise and the fresh air while maintaining our social distancing.
What I find disturbing is the lack of open public bathrooms. That need hasn’t changed. If a business has bathrooms and wants to remain open during this pandemic, it should be required to keep its bathrooms open.
The same goes for our parks. A prime example is Lili‘uokalani Gardens. While the park is open, with lots of appreciative users, the bathrooms are closed.
And the homeless? Where do you think they’re doing their business?
Public bathrooms are a basic necessity of life no matter what the crisis. Open them up.
Lloyd Cabral
Keaau
Help those in need
It looks like most of us will be receiving special “stimulus checks” of $1,200 each in a couple of weeks.
Like everyone else, my wife and I will be happy to receive “free money,” and have lots of ways to spend it.
In all honesty, though, we don’t need that cash as much as do others in our community. Many people are being laid off or can’t work, yet have rent and other expenses to pay, especially now with their kids away from free school lunches.
It’s time now for us all to realize that those with less income badly need extra help at this time. I hope those of us who are able will consider making special donations to agencies such as The Food Basket (hawaiifoodbasket.org), Hawaii Island United Way (hiuw.org) or other charities when those stimulus checks arrive.
We’re all in this together, and this is a good time to share our good fortune with others.
John Lockwood
Hilo
Faith and the virus
Can someone please enlighten me?
At this time of our lives, being severely disrupted by a virus, why can’t we rely on God to help us?
As stated on our money (and a talking point of our government): “In God We Trust.” Why, then, do we disregard God’s help and revert to medical solutions? Is God just a myth, or can he really do something?
People die every day because of the effects of the coronavirus — even those who are devoutly religious. I can see atheists and other nonreligious people dying, but religious folks? Perhaps, just perhaps, the religious ones just don’t have enough faith.
I’m baffled as to why the “all knowing and powerful” God has let us down.
Even places of worship see fit not to have regular services at this time. We’ll just have to pray in private with no one to collect our offerings.
I’ll get by, but it will take a lot of belief in a superior being. Trust me on that. I’d think that this heavenly father could just magically absolve mankind of this condition.
All I can say is that God works in mysterious ways!
Michael L. Last
Naalehu