Letter from a Visitor: A Special Place, a Special Feeling

By Barbara Bennett

This is that time of the year to reflect, again. We look at our blessings, our transgressions. Yes, Happy New Years do that to us.

So I am going to take this opportunity to thank you, yes, thank you, readers, advertisers and supporters of For Kaua`i Magazine — the people on Kaua‘i and around the world who come here and receive our wonderful publication. Thank you for your kind words, emails, messages and comments posted online and sent personally to me.

You are our guide, our inspiration. You love our cultural stories and our community pictures. We are about families, cultural festivals on Kaua‘i. Each issue brings you more and more that deepens your understanding of just who we are.

I save all your messages and share them with our For Kaua‘i team. All dedicated, hard-working people need acknowledgement, inspiration, and that is what we receive when we read your messages of encouragement and when you share our stories through social media.

For Kaua‘i’s website, e-newsletters, phone calls and texts, yes, people still do make calls once in a while in this electronic era. All this communication helps to direct me, and I pass that on to my people. Thank you, mahalo!

It doesn’t matter if what you send me is written with proper wording, punctuation or structured sentences. Goodness knows I’m not a perfect writer; just ask my editor who edits my writings. Thank you, Léo. A lot to be thankful for? Absolutely.

So keep the comments, emails and replies coming. We at For Kaua‘i really listen. We are your community in print and online. The only way we can be an authentic community newspaper — you call us a magazine — is to listen, really listen and serve. That’s where our motto generated from, from you. We are all local, all community, all Kaua`i because of you.

To wrap up this monthly communication with you, I am closing with this email that came to me via www.ForKauaiOnline.com. It expresses my own personal experience when I came to Kaua‘i more than 20 years ago, that I had to share it with you.

So here goes:

I live in New Jersey and you graciously send me a copy of For Kaua‘i, which I look so forward to, just wanted to let you know.

For 10 years, I visited many times, my first visit I was overcome with this special feeling I just can’t describe. It was on landing, walking into the airport, out into the parking lot, the magic hit, and it stayed with me ever since, the smell, the warmth, the comfort, the beauty. It is a feeling one has within oneself that can’t be explained, but it brings oneself to a higher place.

Anyway, when I read your magazine, it is the closest I can get to being there. And this year, due to the increase cost of my private health insurance (thanks to obamacare), $400.00 more a month, there goes any money that would be put toward a trip to Kaua‘i, or to Molokai, where my great great aunt, saint Marianne, tended to Hansen’s disease patients. I have been there too, such beauty and reverence.

Again, I thank you for continuing to send me copies of For Kaua‘i Magazine, it’s great.

Patricia from New Jersey

• Barbara Bennett is the publisher and owner of For Kaua‘i Magazine. She can be contacted at barbara@forkauaionline.com.