Letters To The Editor

Glades nights

Thanks to Jade Moon for her reference to Prince Hanalei and The Glades nightclub. It brought back fond memories of fun nights in Chinatown. I would never want to go back to those days, especially given the progress we’re making in gay rights, but it would be fun to time travel, even if for just one night, back to The Glades and see Hanalei swinging his tassels.

Bobby Kim
Honolulu

No celebration

I was disgusted with Jade Moon’s column on a gay film festival. Festival? What is there to celebrate about this perverse lifestyle taking our traditional culture?

Joanne King
Honolulu

Help, Japan!

Regarding Ron Mizutani’s column on the tons of floating trash from the Japanese tsunami that is floating toward Hawaii:

We give lots of press to Japan when it is taking help offered by the United States, but we almost never see Japan helping others in need. A good opportunity to level the field occurs now that the trash and pollution from the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster is washing up on our shores and tainting our waters. Hopefully, Japan will act to help us with this mess.

Nancy Dahlem
Waikiki

Love that country

Regarding Bob Jones’ column making fun of country music lyrics:

While I hold two college degrees, I am also a lifelong fan of country music. Mr. Jones speaks about intolerance and exclusion in his column, yet it seems he is intolerant of multiple generations of hard-working men and women who use this music as a mark of our culture. This music is a reflection of the daily struggles in the life of rural America. It does not, as he suggests, glorify illiteracy. Rather it points out that as a poor people who mostly cannot afford education, through hard work, perseverance and adherence to a higher moral standard we can rise above our upbringing and become successful in our own right.

We do not exclude those who are successful, but contend success is not measured in the number of cars in the garage or dollars in the bank, it is measured by the love of one’s family and the work of our hands. I was the first in my family to complete college and I am not considered the most successful; by the standards of my people, my grandfather was more successful in that he was married to the same woman for 50 years and raised a family to build a farm from 5 acres of dirt to over 200 acres of livestock and crops.

Bob Jones is nothing more than a narrow-minded bigot lacking the intelligence to recognize the stories of a culture whose toil and sweat have built a nation.

Jason A. Spence
Honolulu