KITV caught the Public Utilities Commission report on the 2006 blackout which was issued December 19, just days before the latest island-wide loss of power, and the Star-Bulletin followed with a story today.

Neither online version of the stories includes a link to the PUC report. You can find it on the PUC’s list of decisions and orders (scroll down to Dec 19 and it is the first order issued on that date).

Now for a few reader comments.

This first comment arrived from someone in the Advertiser newsroom who describes staffers as “sick” about the failure to put a blackout edition on the street.

We — the people who worked that night, all of us at the paper — are just sick about this. It was the first time the Advertiser hasn’t published since Dec. 7, 1941. Ånd on that day the press was down, so at least there was an excuse.

Apparently there’s some question about whether the decision to go online only on Saturday was made because the presses were simply unavailable due to the blackout or whether it was an extension of Gannett’s current approach of putting the bottom line ahead of reporting the news. I think we all hope for the former but fear the latter.

Then a friend and animal activist had some further observations on the new Honolulu spay-neuter contract.

The changes to the Neuter Now program have caught many of us off guard !

I do, however, agree with the idea of a spay/neuter clinic for Oahu– especially a mobile one – because the vets get really, really good at the operations and can do them super fast. It’s just more cost effective – especially when it is the taxpayers footing the bill.

When you think about it – the vets at the Hawaiian Humane Society probably sterilize in one single day as many animals as your private vet will do in all of 2009…. There is just no way that an average vet can have as much spay/neuter surgery experience as a vet that works in a spay/neuter clinic. It makes them by far the better choice to get the job done successfully for all cats and dogs and I think it is the safest way to sterilize any animal.

I can’t help but wonder, however, how the City can say that Animal Care Foundation is the “ low bidder “ for the Neuter Now contract when ACF is offering to provide a completely different service than what is set up right now with the Humane Society?

How can you compare a bid for apples to a bid for oranges ?

The “ free “ spay/neuter clinics sponsored by the group “ Cat Friends “ cost that organization $ 25.00 per cat. They use several different – for profit – vets with clinics held around the island. An average Cat Friends clinic sterilizes approximately 100 -150 cats on a single day. It just seems to me like if the Neuter Now program was going to be put out to bid that the City would have contacted Catfriends for their input on drafting specs for the bid.

Only after the bid specs were are drawn up would the City be in a position to solicit fair and competitive bids for the Neuter Now program. I also think that the City failed to take into account that you and I – as animal owners and taxpayers – should have had an opportunity to give our input to any changes to this publically funded program .

But be sure to read the comment added by a reader to today’s entry in which she praises Dr. Sabina DeGiacomo of the Animal Care Foundation.

Everyone loves a parade, and today’s photos show a parade through downtown Honolulu in an earlier era. I found these tucked away in an old scrapbook among my father’s papers.

My guess is that this was a Kamehameha Day parade, based on the large wreath in front of the Kamehameha Statue and lei draping the statue. You can see the old Federal Building and Courthouse, Iolani Palace, and what I think is the Hawaiian Electric Building fronting King Street.

It’s hard to date. There’s only one car visible in the first photo, parked in front of Iolani Palace, and it appears to be an early 1930s vintage. And the photos were tucked away in the general proximity of pictures taken back in Long Beach just before my dad’s move to Hawaii on May 1, 1939. So could this parade have been during his first months in the islands? It seems plausible.

Any other ideas/observations would be much appreciated.

Just click on the photo to see all the parade pictures.