Change your diet this spring

Spring brings renewed enthusiasm for all sorts of endeavors; it’s also a superb second chance to actualize those New Year’s resolutions favoring more exercise and healthy eating.

The shift toward healthy foods is omnipresent. Fast food chains like Chipotle, Starbucks, Subway, Taco Bell and Wendy’s all offer plant-based options. Vegan recipes are part of most food websites. Global Meat News reports that nearly half their consumers are reducing meat intake.

The financial community is taking note of innovative plant food start-ups, like Beyond Meat, or Impossible Foods. According to Gallup, plant food sales grew 8.1 percent in 2017 and exceeded $3.1 billion last year. Britain’s The Economist declared 2019 the “Year of the Vegan.”

Reasons abound: the World Health Organization links processed meat consumption with elevated cancer risk. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend reduced meat consumption. The media keep exposing factory farm atrocities. And animal agriculture is a chief culprit in climate change.

We can celebrate spring by checking out the rich collection of plant-based food options in our local supermarkets. An Internet search on vegan foods offers an unending variety of recipes.

LESTER NAITO, Lahaina

——————

Catholic Church needs healing

A joint Hawaii Senate committee recently passed Senate Resolution SR4 and Senate Concurrent Resolution SCR8, “urging the Hawaii State Department of the attorney general to conduct a statewide investigation of sexual abuse of minors in the state of Hawaii by clergy of the Roman Catholic Church.”

As my faith in Christ has been rooted in my being a Catholic, it is only fair for me to admit that my church’s collective hierarchical leadership/persona, and negotiating that approach with the Gospel of Christ, has pained us all deeply. It’s a Lenten penance and disappointment that many have quietly/painfully/shamefacedly had to endure, and that has found us responding with compassion.

At the very same time, I also deliberately recall how I DID meet the Lord’s love and power – a gift, not entitlement; not from the skies but through some wonderful people who just also happened to be bishops, priests, nuns, laity, etc. I do admit that there were, and there are, some really bad apples out there in those collective bunches – religious or not.

I never allowed the power of the bad apples to be the final straw – to distract me from believing God and believing in God – when good people were very much THAT experience of God. When I was arrested, they counseled me. When I was hungry, they fed me. When I was homeless, they sheltered me. When I couldn’t pay my tuition, they helped me. When I lost my job, they hired me. When I was being beaten up at home, they protected me. When I got caught stealing, they punished me… and they trusted in me again when they didn’t have to!

We must heal and pray hope for those who have tried to serve Christ to us – whether we got it or not. Now we Catholics have to step up and beg fraternal and divine assistance with finally seeing the power of faith – GOD WITH US – that has always been rooted in our God-given spirituality and humanity.

With Honolulu Catholic Bishop Larry Silva’s admission of the seemingly growing problem of abuse occurring within caring professions, and while also confessing/putting out there the evil that has surfaced among the Catholic community, I, as a member of that community, beg God’s mercy and compassion from all of you.

I, too, have to join with all Catholics and all people, and believe in Christ as the wounded healer while trying to empathize with those who, in recovering, are indeed wounded but wounding others in response. Now there’s the challenge of being a peacemaker!

KEN DEASY, Lahaina

——————

How Lahaina News was founded, Part II

Because the new Lahaina News was the only “all good news” newspaper, there was a popular demand from my decade at the Maui Sun/Lahaina Sun for radical, amazing, conspiratorial and hilarious events and people. So, I also started my own MAUI TIMES in 1979 (NOT to be confused with the later Maui Time that came out in the 1990s)!

Well, a lot of this was bad news. When I sold ads, customers got “two newspapers’ ads for the price of one,” so both newspapers prospered. The Maui Times was the legacy of my 1977 The Hawaiian Times, which went to Maui, Oahu, Lanai and Kauai, yet over-exhausted me selling ads and getting stories on four islands. I could find no salesperson who was willing to do it, and I had to manage all the employees, write many articles, take photos and be editor.

So, I downsized that newspaper to the smaller/simpler Maui Times, when it was making a nice profit.

I considered calling The Lahaina News the Maui Examiner, but instead used The Maui Times for the whole island. There were enough great contributing artists, writers, humor, interesting people and amazing events in Lahaina alone to not need to have an island-wide other newspaper.

The Lahaina News’ first issues were all very popular, and Channel 7 let us have our own newspaper show weekly. We could interview people we wrote about, and we did that on the radio also.

One day, circa 1980, I went to our office to get the next new issue, and it never arrived! I could not find my business partner anywhere, and his phone was disconnected. This scenario was very strange because he was a close friend for coffee and dining. I phoned the printers and was shocked to learn he never paid the printing bill! For days that turned into weeks then months, he had vanished with ALL THE AD MONEY to PAY OUR PRINTERS! He had emptied our bank account and fled!

Popular Maui Sun columnist Bob Kelsey was out of his job when that newspaper closed down, so he phoned me with an offer. The deal was Bob would pay the printing bill, which I did not have in my bank, to save the Lahaina News… if I would sign the newspaper ownership over to him.

He verbally agreed in exchange for himself being the editor, I could still write columns and articles. However, after a few of his issues he fired me, preferring his wacky, off-the-wall brand of sarcastic articles. (To be continued…)

STEVE OMAR