When we walked the beach in Kaaawa this morning, we found three more trees that have recently been cut down as a result of continuing erosion.
These are in the section of the beach across from Kaaawa Elementary School and near the restrooms at Kaaawa Beach Park.
Several more trees also appear to be at risk.
Meda and I were out for lunch today when another customer walked over and asked how Toby is doing.
So just in case you’re also wondering, here’s the latest.
Beating the odds. That our vet, Ann Sakamoto at Hawaii Kai Veterinary Clinic, said about Toby after examining him Friday afternoon. We don’t have the hard, scientific results of his tests, which won’t be available until Tuesday. But he looks and acts pretty better as the days pass.
The night before we brought Toby home from the emergency vet center, we had a long talk with one of the vets. Toby seemed to be going downhill fast. When pushed, he gave Toby only a 10% chance of survival. At that point, we assumed that we would bring him home and then arrange euthanasia at home.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, sometime right after we had that conversation with the vet, Toby started eating. That’s what gave a glimmer of hope by the time we brought him home the next day.
And we’ve been able to see progress continuing since he got back home on Labor Day.
• He’s been eating canned food, a special formulation for cats with kidney disease. Yesterday I brought home a sample of the dry variety, since Toby used to prefer to graze on dry food, snacking several times a day. This turned out to be a success! Now he’s eating dry and canned food. He even wandered into the kitchen to take a taste of what I had out for Duke and Romeo.
• Toby started grooming again. We’ve seen him cleaning himself after eating the last couple of days. I’m assuming it’s a good sign, because cats stop grooming when they feel really terrible.
• He’s gotten over the labored breathing that had developed after the emergency vets tried to flush his kidneys but went beyond his system’s capacity to process the extra fluids, which then backed up and started to fill his chest cavity, putting pressure on heart and lungs. But that’s a thing of the past.
• And a real miracle. Yesterday, with some encouragement, Toby took a pill hidden in a Pill Pocket. And I’ve been successful with them for all his pills over the past two days. That’s huge!
• He’s making it easy for us to administer the subcutaneous fluids, which we’re getting into him each morning.
Thanks for all the support. Next update will be in a couple of days when we get Toby’s test results.
What’s amazing about the current legal challenge to the Honolulu Police Commission’s policies favoring secrecy is that it didn’t happen years ago.
The current challenge comes in the form of a petition to the Hawaii Supreme Court asking that the commission be prevented from closing the public and press out of contested case hearings over whether the public should pay attorneys fees for officers caught up in the current federal grand jury probe into the Honolulu Police Department. The case was filed by attorneys representing Civil Beat and Oahu Publications, owner of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Civil Beat’s story on the legal challenge reports:
[Brian] Black [attorney for the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest] said the current legal challenge is straight-forward.
Under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the public and the press have a presumptive right of access to court proceedings. That standard, he said, also applies to quasi-judicial government proceedings, such as the contested case hearings for police officers.
He noted that the Hawaii Supreme Court had already said as much in a 2004 ruling.
Commissioner’s Steven Levinson and Loretta Sheehan earlier made this same argument to the commission without success.
What the CB story fails to say is that Levinson, a retired justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court who was appointed to the commission late last year, was on the court and participated in that 2004 ruling. In a sense, he helped write the book on the public’s right to access agency hearings of this kind.
The 2004 decision, Freitas vs. Administrative Director of the Courts, involved a dispute over whether hearings of the Administrative Driver’s License Revocation Office must be open to the public.
The high court held that contested case hearings such as those of the driver’s license revocation office, which involve quasi-judicial procedures, are required to be open except under limited special circumstances. The same reasoning is applied to quasi-judicial settings as to formal court proceedings, which are also required to be open to the public.
It seems clear that the Police Commission’s proceedings are quasi-judicial. If so, it certainly does appear that prior legal precedent requires its hearings to be open, or closed only after it is shown that they meet procedural tests laid out by the Supreme Court.
This case needs to be resolved as quickly as possible, and hopefully leads to a shakeup in the commission’s overall approach in a way that puts the public back into the picture.
Last year, Civil Beat ran an award-winning series, “Dying for Vacation.”
It reported that snorkeling is now a leading cause of tourist deaths.
This was brought home last night in a Facebook post by a 2nd cousin from Oregon, Jim McPherson, who has been vacationing in Kona with other family members this week after scattering his dad’s ashes in the ocean off Waikiki on Sunday.
So I have to get this out and it’s probably going to take more than a few words….
This morning Deb and I made our acquaintance with a gentleman in a Denver Bronco baseball cap. We met in line for coffee and he was nice enough. We had a quick conversation about the Broncos and their upcoming game against the Cowboys. He mentioned he was getting some coffee for his wife. “She said she didn’t want any but I’m getting her some anyway. She’ll thank me later.” Then the discussion turned to how long we’ve been married and that kind of small talk. Then we parted ways.
I had to run back up to the room and the gentleman got on the elevator with his wife this time. We chatted again about the upcoming game and since they got off the elevator before I did we wished each other a good vacation and hoped we could chat again. That was about 9:30 this morning.Deb and I went on to do our activities and returned to the hotel at about 4:30. We pulled into the valet parking and were unloading the car. I plopped our bags on the ground and found myself face to face with the man in the baseball cap again. I know I smiled and asked how his day went. He asked me when the last time we talked was and I told him it was after coffee in the elevator this morning. Without missing a beat he told me his wife had drowned while snorkeling that afternoon. I really didn’t know how to respond other than, “I certainly hope you’re kidding me.”
It turns out that he wasn’t. They were out and somehow she took on water. He realized she was in trouble when he turned around to find her face down in the water. Apparently the lifeguards and the ambulance were quick to respond but she was now in critical condition in the ICU at the local hospital.
He was still in shock and was waiting for the rain to subside (we had downpours this afternoon) before he went to his car and would drive to the hospital. While he waited he talked to us about anything other than his wife’s condition. He’s a “birder” in town for a convention. He and his wife have been married for 52 years. He was a pilot and got his experience in South Africa years ago after United Airlines turned him down. He had a part in the Gulf War during Desert Shield. On and on he talked.
Deb and I let him talk…. he needed to keep his mind elsewhere because if he didn’t he would lose it. We could tell. We felt for him deeply because I suppose we were the only thing keeping him from going to the hospital to the reality of the situation.
Finally the rain let up and he said he was going. I realized we didn’t know his name so introductions were made. His name is John and his wife is Jackie. More conversation about how they’ve stayed married 52 years by “renewing their contract every 5 years.” It was very touching and made my relationship with Deb spanning 23 years seem short.
We asked what we could do to help but I think we already did… maybe…. in a small way. Just listen for the 25 minutes while the rain fell.
I don’t know if Jackie will make it. I don’t know if we’ll see John again. I hope she will and and I hope we will. But this is the first time I’ve been even remotely close to a vacation going this wrong. It really put things into perspective.
I know it’s a tragic accident but it’s a sobering reminder that even in a paradise like Hawaii it can happen.
Life’s a fragile thing…. enjoy it to the fullest because, well, you never know…..