Filed under: Uncategorized
They say big changes need to be made to move us into a sustainable future. I have a couple of medium size changes just to test our capacity to adapt.
I’d suggest mail delivery 3 times a week nationally. How much gasoline usage and air pollution will that eliminate? I’m sure we can live with our mail every other day. I hope we can find a way to keep postal workers fully employed. This is about saving energy, not costing jobs
I’d also suggest we move to a national vote-by-mail system for all elections. Not only will that save the gasoline of everyone driving to the polls to vote, but it is a more secure system that leaves a paper trail and results in higher voter turnout.
And I don’t know about where you live, but the faithful crew running the polling place I vote at is getting old and I don’t see many younger folks coming along to replace them. Who is going to run all the local polling places so we are assured of knowledgeable staff moving into the future?
I know at present local jurisdictions have the right to run elections the way they choose, but some standardization moving forward will assure us of keeping one of our most basic, sacred and important rights intact. This is a time when national confidence is being rebuilt, and voting is not something we should take any chances with.
Maury King
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: community garden, gmo, Kamali'i Elementary, Kihei Elementary, Lokelani Middle, monsanto, school garden, SMS
I am so proud of South Maui Sustainability. We now have gardens in all 3 public schools in South Maui. After taking a few months to make the first garden happen at Kihei Elementary, our Garden Committee leader, Emily Goss got Lokelani Middle School and Kamali’i Elementary on board very quickly. They now all have raised beds that we built or resurrected.
We also had a chance to meet with Monsanto. They approached us at our last SMS Community Meeting about partnering with them on a community garden. Many of us feel that they are a very controversial company in the world of food production, with questionable business practices. Practices which are very different from the definition of sustainable as organic and GMO (genetically modified organism) that most of the core members of South Maui Sustainability hold as true. We thought that it would be important to have a dialog with them, just to see what they wanted to offer us and out of respect becuase we are neighbors on a small island. The meeting went very well. We got a lot of questions answered and voiced our concerns as well. Now our group will be continuing the discussion to see if we would consider taking the next step towards a garden. Since they offered us land and potable water for the garden, it is a very attractive offer. I’ll keep you posted.
