Dear Kauai Surfers…
Yesterday a friend and I had a lovely visit to Waiohai beach to lay on the sand and soak up the sun. A foil rider was out at “left-lefts” frantically foil riding every small swell and ripple by pumping the board like a maniac.
As an avid surfer, I wondered if I would also like to try this new sport one day… When the foil rider exited the surf, I was amazed out just how far the metal wing blade at the end of the post was from the board. 3 feet maybe?
Regardless of actual length, I wondered just how he would not hit areas of the reef while riding. Anyway, a few minutes after he left the water a terrified mature turtle crawled up on the beach in the middle of the newly arrived tourists with his shell busted apart by something sharp… the poor creature was terrified and seemed to have crawled up to seek help or maybe even die. I was about to call humane society or someone but then it went back into the water.
My first thought was… “looks like a prop from a boat hit her”…. but could it have been the sharp blade from a fast moving foil board? Nobody knows… but it does make one wonder how that fast moving underwater metal knife-like blade could NOT do damage to turtles.
Have we sportsmen who love to surf thought this one through?
Steve Farrell, Poipu
The poetry of voting
Today I go out to vote, to pull levers, switches, triggers, punch tabs
To write in names
People I feel can represent
Me, the birds, the water, the air, my song, my new grandbaby.
Persons I can trust
To place life giving first
The children, the mothers, the fathers, their dogs and cats.
Trees I vote for green leaves filtering sunshine
Vegetables out of deep loam I vote for
Built in centuries of buffalo dung roto-tilled by
Thundering hoofs memories of blood of freedom
Tea parties, flags on hills, men who cared
I vote history that gives beauty to the future
I vote families all shapes sizes colors genders ages
Wilderness my voice sings my vote the wind
Work I vote together my vote for peace I vote
Sustainability I each from our best each to our neediest
I vote love
With my heart head soul
For men’s grief revealed
For women’s pain and all our liberation
For real learning human being skills
I vote
Listening friends pleas
Listening ancestors fleeing
Ancestors yearning dreams
Parents be happy that is all
We want I vote we did this for you
Hard it was
Globally and locally
Not in fear
Gross national pork corn barrel dow jones
Index slipping rates of interesting product
For no oil on the downy wings of the web
Of life for life for breath for song for art
With a prayer for peace
Today I go out to vote.
Steve Backinoff, Kapaa
