Walkers of the Forbidden Path
Apr. 26th, 2020 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aWalking out to the golf course today, I stepped onto the trail near our house, under the caution tape and around the "Path Closed" sign. Just a few steps beyond, I saw someone headed my way. I carefully stepped to the side to giver her and her dog six feet to pass. We didn't even exchange a word, though perhaps we put our hands under our chins and wiggled our fingers to express membership in a secretive clan: The Walkers of the Forbidden Path.
This has become typical, in this Age of COVID-19.
As I've written before, the instigator of these events is our golf course manager's decision to close all the paths surrounding the course because of a fear that people might not be able to offer the six feet that I did. These paths are not narrow, but there are certainly points where you'd be limited to 4 or 5 feet.
And, in turn, the instigator of that decision was our intrusive, controlling mayor, who is driving his policies based on fear of enforcement. So, the manager is afraid that he might be closed down entirely, and so he adds restrictions.
And I tried to be respectful of them. Oh, the first time out I ducked under the caution tape because I thought it was no big deal, and then I saw how much work they'd gone through to block up several entrances to the trails with logs and branches. They were being serious, not just offering a facade for the mayor.
So the next time I walked up Papalina Road to get to the front of the course, rather than walking up the trail that exits so enticingly near our house. The problem was that Papalina is a typical Kauaian road. So, it's narrow, it's windy, it has areas with no shoulders, and it encourages cars to go too fast. There was one particularly nasty shoulderless area of the road where a car had to come to a complete stop while I was walking, because there was a car coming from the other direction, and there was literally not enough room for all three of us. The other car passed, the car in front of me pulled over, and we were all able to get through, but it clearly wasn't safe.
So on the way home I walked the trail, choosing to enter down by the lower parking lot, which is away from where the course currently has staff watching over the whole area (with this spying being another "innovation" of recent weeks).
I actually met my first fellow Walker earlier that same day. He'd cut straight across the trails. He didn't even talk about how unsafe it was to walk up Papalina. He was just annoyed that he was being made to go ten minutes out of way when a cut-cross path went straight from his street into the heart of the course.
I met a second Walker as I trekked back along the Forbidden Path that evening. Like me, she'd tried to respect the desires of the course, and so had walked home via Papalina the previous day. And had thought she was going to die as a car roared around her on a corner.
Yes, obviously we could choose to not walk the course until this is all over.
We choose not.
Or rather, I choose not unless at some point in the future I get into a situation where a golf course employee chides me. Because this golf course is pretty much my local park, and I don't want to upset the staff. So if that happens, I'd move on.
To be precise, I'd get in my car and go to walk elsewhere. Because that park is our safe, local place to walk.
I'm probably already swimming more than I would otherwise, which totally defeats the idea of keeping people close to home — which is the other problem of blocking up local parks like this, and especially when you're explicitly blocking access from the local neighborhoods.
I also drove Papalina last night, between Poipu and home, and saw for myself a family of four walking the street. They were on the inside of the street, next to the course, which pretty much means they were walking the street on a long, blind curve.
Good times.
Today they had a second marshall sitting out by the front gate. So I walked out to the street and about 30 feet up scrambled up the slope and over a log, which looked like it'd been purposefully piled with branches, back onto the Forbidden Path.
The Forbidden Path is very porous.
Here's my philosophical issue with all of this. I mean, beyond the fact that access to a public resource is being increasingly limited.(And I should clarify, this isn't just a golf course. This is land that Walter Duncan MacBryde put into a permanent trust to benefit the people of Kalaheo and nearby communities.)
My issue is that we've got a public safety issue: making sure people stay six feet apart.
And to resolve it we're creating a much larger public safety issue: forcing people to walk on a street where it totally isn't safe to do so.
I'd say there would be almost zero chance of someone getting COVID-19 on the course due to momentarily getting to close to someone on the paths. And that's not even accounting for the fact that there's pretty much no COVID-19 on the island at this current time.
As for the chance of someone being injured or killed by a car on Papalina while walking around the trails to get onto the course? I think that's a real possibility. (And that itself could endanger the public trust that supports the park.)
So not only do we have what I consider security theatre, given the current status of the island, but it's security theatre that actively endangers people.
I actually think we're about to start seeing increased pushback from people in Hawaii against our politicians. They've been very authoritarian since the start of this, and perhaps that's to credit for Hawaii being one of the safest states in the union, but they've also been really unfocused and not understanding that the priority had to be keeping new COVID-19 from coming to the island. So they locked up residents while still allowing visitors to pop into the state, clearly not realizing (or caring) what the real danger was.
And now they're engaging in some sort of bizarre purism that wouldn't fly in any other state. They seem to think that COVID-19 needs to be entirely gone before they can open anything.
Mayor Kawakami in Kauai offered the first really jawbreaking statement like this, and it's one of the few times I've seen him personally get pushback (the other being for his road checkpoints, where soldiers were doing things like demanding to search peoples' groceries, seriously, but which disappeared within a week). This time, Kawakami said that we couldn't open the island until 28 days had gone by since the last case of community spread.
I mean, I think it's entirely foolish to think almost anywhere could entirely eliminate the virus like that. But a small island like Kauai, with carefully controlled access? Maybe. And his date for that is May 3rd, so if that works out, maybe he can have his cake and eat it too. Say he walked a hard line, and it controlled COVID-19 on the island, but start getting people back to work before his popularity plummets. (Mind you, I don't even believe we had one case of community spread: a single, isolated, unknown case seems really remarkably unlikely, so my guess would be the person was lying to protect someone violating quarantine or something.) But if he has a second case of community spread (or a first as the case might be) and he tries to lock down the island for another 28 days based on a single case of COVID-19 on the island ... I don't think that's going to go well.
And then we have Governor Ige, who was just forced to walk back his beach closure because it was wildly unpopular to say that people couldn't even walk or run on our mostly empty beaches, go figure, to the point where some of Hawaii's mayors were giving him public sass.
Well, Hawaii under Ige is looking pretty good. it's been a full week since we had any day with more than six cases. Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island are each having a case or two a day. If you look at the statewide totals, we've bee on a clear downward trend since April 3rd, over three weeks. Meanwhile, we have one of the highest testing percentages in the nation. I don't know how well our contact tracing has developed, but other than that, it's clear that we meet the federal government's criteria for phase one reopening. And then some.
So Ige on Friday extended the shelter-in-place order through the end of May.
Suffice to say, that ain't going over well either.
We've already had some protests, and unlike those in places that still have growing or plateaued cases, I think the one's here have a foundation.
But at least one of the issues is that there is a real case of the haves and have-nots here on the islands, and the have-nots are out of work and hurting, and the haves are working remotely, living on their interest, and/or making the laws.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are protests again next week, but even moreso I wouldn't be surprised if at least one lawsuit is fast-tracked.
I'll admit I'm a have. But I am also a rebel Walker of the Forbidden Path.
Because I don't want to be killed by a car.
And we need to be talking about nuances like that, which relate to our current decisions.
This has become typical, in this Age of COVID-19.
As I've written before, the instigator of these events is our golf course manager's decision to close all the paths surrounding the course because of a fear that people might not be able to offer the six feet that I did. These paths are not narrow, but there are certainly points where you'd be limited to 4 or 5 feet.
And, in turn, the instigator of that decision was our intrusive, controlling mayor, who is driving his policies based on fear of enforcement. So, the manager is afraid that he might be closed down entirely, and so he adds restrictions.
And I tried to be respectful of them. Oh, the first time out I ducked under the caution tape because I thought it was no big deal, and then I saw how much work they'd gone through to block up several entrances to the trails with logs and branches. They were being serious, not just offering a facade for the mayor.
So the next time I walked up Papalina Road to get to the front of the course, rather than walking up the trail that exits so enticingly near our house. The problem was that Papalina is a typical Kauaian road. So, it's narrow, it's windy, it has areas with no shoulders, and it encourages cars to go too fast. There was one particularly nasty shoulderless area of the road where a car had to come to a complete stop while I was walking, because there was a car coming from the other direction, and there was literally not enough room for all three of us. The other car passed, the car in front of me pulled over, and we were all able to get through, but it clearly wasn't safe.
So on the way home I walked the trail, choosing to enter down by the lower parking lot, which is away from where the course currently has staff watching over the whole area (with this spying being another "innovation" of recent weeks).
I actually met my first fellow Walker earlier that same day. He'd cut straight across the trails. He didn't even talk about how unsafe it was to walk up Papalina. He was just annoyed that he was being made to go ten minutes out of way when a cut-cross path went straight from his street into the heart of the course.
I met a second Walker as I trekked back along the Forbidden Path that evening. Like me, she'd tried to respect the desires of the course, and so had walked home via Papalina the previous day. And had thought she was going to die as a car roared around her on a corner.
Yes, obviously we could choose to not walk the course until this is all over.
We choose not.
Or rather, I choose not unless at some point in the future I get into a situation where a golf course employee chides me. Because this golf course is pretty much my local park, and I don't want to upset the staff. So if that happens, I'd move on.
To be precise, I'd get in my car and go to walk elsewhere. Because that park is our safe, local place to walk.
I'm probably already swimming more than I would otherwise, which totally defeats the idea of keeping people close to home — which is the other problem of blocking up local parks like this, and especially when you're explicitly blocking access from the local neighborhoods.
I also drove Papalina last night, between Poipu and home, and saw for myself a family of four walking the street. They were on the inside of the street, next to the course, which pretty much means they were walking the street on a long, blind curve.
Good times.
Today they had a second marshall sitting out by the front gate. So I walked out to the street and about 30 feet up scrambled up the slope and over a log, which looked like it'd been purposefully piled with branches, back onto the Forbidden Path.
The Forbidden Path is very porous.
Here's my philosophical issue with all of this. I mean, beyond the fact that access to a public resource is being increasingly limited.(And I should clarify, this isn't just a golf course. This is land that Walter Duncan MacBryde put into a permanent trust to benefit the people of Kalaheo and nearby communities.)
My issue is that we've got a public safety issue: making sure people stay six feet apart.
And to resolve it we're creating a much larger public safety issue: forcing people to walk on a street where it totally isn't safe to do so.
I'd say there would be almost zero chance of someone getting COVID-19 on the course due to momentarily getting to close to someone on the paths. And that's not even accounting for the fact that there's pretty much no COVID-19 on the island at this current time.
As for the chance of someone being injured or killed by a car on Papalina while walking around the trails to get onto the course? I think that's a real possibility. (And that itself could endanger the public trust that supports the park.)
So not only do we have what I consider security theatre, given the current status of the island, but it's security theatre that actively endangers people.
I actually think we're about to start seeing increased pushback from people in Hawaii against our politicians. They've been very authoritarian since the start of this, and perhaps that's to credit for Hawaii being one of the safest states in the union, but they've also been really unfocused and not understanding that the priority had to be keeping new COVID-19 from coming to the island. So they locked up residents while still allowing visitors to pop into the state, clearly not realizing (or caring) what the real danger was.
And now they're engaging in some sort of bizarre purism that wouldn't fly in any other state. They seem to think that COVID-19 needs to be entirely gone before they can open anything.
Mayor Kawakami in Kauai offered the first really jawbreaking statement like this, and it's one of the few times I've seen him personally get pushback (the other being for his road checkpoints, where soldiers were doing things like demanding to search peoples' groceries, seriously, but which disappeared within a week). This time, Kawakami said that we couldn't open the island until 28 days had gone by since the last case of community spread.
I mean, I think it's entirely foolish to think almost anywhere could entirely eliminate the virus like that. But a small island like Kauai, with carefully controlled access? Maybe. And his date for that is May 3rd, so if that works out, maybe he can have his cake and eat it too. Say he walked a hard line, and it controlled COVID-19 on the island, but start getting people back to work before his popularity plummets. (Mind you, I don't even believe we had one case of community spread: a single, isolated, unknown case seems really remarkably unlikely, so my guess would be the person was lying to protect someone violating quarantine or something.) But if he has a second case of community spread (or a first as the case might be) and he tries to lock down the island for another 28 days based on a single case of COVID-19 on the island ... I don't think that's going to go well.
And then we have Governor Ige, who was just forced to walk back his beach closure because it was wildly unpopular to say that people couldn't even walk or run on our mostly empty beaches, go figure, to the point where some of Hawaii's mayors were giving him public sass.
Well, Hawaii under Ige is looking pretty good. it's been a full week since we had any day with more than six cases. Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island are each having a case or two a day. If you look at the statewide totals, we've bee on a clear downward trend since April 3rd, over three weeks. Meanwhile, we have one of the highest testing percentages in the nation. I don't know how well our contact tracing has developed, but other than that, it's clear that we meet the federal government's criteria for phase one reopening. And then some.
So Ige on Friday extended the shelter-in-place order through the end of May.
Suffice to say, that ain't going over well either.
We've already had some protests, and unlike those in places that still have growing or plateaued cases, I think the one's here have a foundation.
But at least one of the issues is that there is a real case of the haves and have-nots here on the islands, and the have-nots are out of work and hurting, and the haves are working remotely, living on their interest, and/or making the laws.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are protests again next week, but even moreso I wouldn't be surprised if at least one lawsuit is fast-tracked.
I'll admit I'm a have. But I am also a rebel Walker of the Forbidden Path.
Because I don't want to be killed by a car.
And we need to be talking about nuances like that, which relate to our current decisions.
skotos
Date: 2020-04-27 05:18 pm (UTC)I enjoy your blog. TEC is dead. when will it be fixed again? :)
Re: skotos
Date: 2020-04-27 06:02 pm (UTC)Re: skotos
Date: 2020-04-27 06:14 pm (UTC)