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Kalani Oceanside Retreat asks for help
#1
Aloha Friends and Neighbors….please read the following email from Kalani….and help keep EMAX open…this important gathering place hosts many events…including our elections, meetings, ecstatic dance, etc.

Thanks for your consideration….and please pass this along to our friends and neighbors here along the Red Road….

Mark


Kalani's Hawaii County Planning Department Appeal


Aloha Kalani friends,


Here's an opportunity to assure the continuance of community programs with a quick e-mailed note of support. The ideal support is to show up at the Appeals Board hearing on September 11 with your letter in hand, ready to read it! Next best is a paper copy mailed to Kalani (see mailing address at the bottom of this page). Next best is an email version. Mahalo for your support!
The County's demand:

That the EMAX greenhouse (in memory of beloved dancer co-founder Earnest Morgan), located near the entrance of Kalani, can only be used for working with plants, and Kalani must remove the free-floating wood floor and stop having all other activities, particularly dance.
Kalani's response:

Kalani has appealed the notice, and a public hearing is scheduled for 9/11/09, 10 a.m., in the County of Hawaii Aupuni Center Conference room, 101 Pauahi Street, Hilo.

I and Kalani ask that you please attend and send a support letter to:

BJ Leithead Todd, Planning Director, County of Hawaii Planning Department, 101Pauahi St. #3, Hilo, HI 96720 planning@co.hawaii.hi.us

Mayor Billy Kenoi, County of Hawaii, 25 Aupuni St, Hilo, HI 96720 cohmayor@co.hawaii.hi.us

and please copy to me, and I will print your letter and bring it to the meeting Richard Koob, richkoob@kalani.com, RR2 Box 4500, Pahoa, HI 96778

Kalani should be allowed to continue using the greenhouse for working with plants, dancing, yoga, art exhibitions, lauhala weaving, voting, massage training, and all other uses consistent with Kalani's Hawaii-nature-culture-wellness educational mission, the needs of area residents, and special use permits from the County of Hawaii, allowing and supporting Kalani arts, agriculture and wellness educational activities,
Because...

The greenhouse is fully permitted as an agriculture building within a County approved special use arts-agriculture-wellness area.

The use is consistent with sustainable agriculture practices, which, by definition "address the environmental, economic, and social issues related to agricultural systems; attempt to ensure that arable land is protected so that current and future generations will be able to farm it successfully; and also seeks to preserve the vitality of family-owned farms and rural communities." See www.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761579898/Organic_Farming.html



The use has historic precedent - local and global.

Traditional Hawaiian sustainable agri- and aqua-culture practices are well documented. Captain Cook arrived during the Makahiki Festival, which honored Lono, deity of peace and abundance. The harvest festival included hula, sports and feasting. The ahupua'a site of Kalani has preserved halau and Lono heiau sites - evidence that dancing and other arts and wellness activities have been fully integrated with farming on the land for the past 500 years. Greenhouse-like halau spaces used for weaving, tapa making, dye stamping, canoe carving, poi pounding, etc., were clearly used for arts, wellness and working with plants.

Around the world farming communities have included creative, industrious people that maximize the use of whatever shelters and spaces they have (long-houses, barns, sheds, greenhouses, fala, platforms, lawns, fields, churches,...) to work with plants as well as meet, vote, dance, stretch, massage, drink kava, socialize, tailor, sing, pray, wed, birth, die,...). Farming and dancing (i.e. agri-culture) have been intertwined for 9,000 years. See Yosef Garfinkel, Dancing at the Dawn of Agriculture: Dance and Display at the Beginning of Farming www.amazon.com/Dancing-Dawn-Agriculture-Yosef-Garfinkel/dp/029272845X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1 Hundreds of video clips can be found on the web showing everything from bon to barn dances, celebrating farming, and sometimes hugely marketing agricultural products, like the hula girl on the pineapple can, or, for a fun banana promo, watch Carmen Miranda www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/music/watch/e148630AmrwmSKT



The use is common today -- local and global.

Greenhouse structures on agricultural land in Hawaii and around the world are used by agrarian peoples for the same uses Kalani employs, and more, including housing, classrooms, art studios, assembly spaces, mechanical and maintenance uses. Green-houses are generally sturdy efficient eco-shelters that can handle harsh arctic weather, or, here in the islands, often embrace natural air, light, and views, using less energy and less non-renewable building material than other structures of similar strength. Like the garages and barns that nurtured American art and invention -e.g. Hewlett-Packard computers and Jackson Pollock paintings - greenhouses are core creative spaces for the farming+culture innovations that characterize contemporary sustainable agriculture.



The use is socially and economically essential on the basis of...

Human rights. The rural Puna coast community has the right to safely and peacefully meet, vote, pray, celebrate, honor, and educate in its own law-abiding way and place. The activities that have been presented in the EMAX greenhouse are standard activities that every community has a right to participate in, being held in a legal permitted structure that perfectly accommodates them, located in a special use designated area that especially approves and supports their arts, farming and wellness character. This is optimum greenhouse use supporting sustainable agrarian community. Diminishing the use of the greenhouse diminishes Hawaii by forcing people to waste energy and risk safety by driving further and crowding public roads to receive the same services that Kalani, without County restriction, generally provides.

Sustainable land use. This appeal meeting is being held on the anniversary of 9/11, a day that awakened the world to the need for more safeguards for peaceful, sustainable living. With full retreat build-out, per existing County approvals, Kalani's land parcels will remain less than 5% retreat structures and over 95% agricultural - forest, soil conservation, organic orchard-gardens, botanicals, farm roads and structures. While the Kalani `#257;ina and heritage sites are being organically stewarded for current and future generations, volunteers and visiting student guests and faculty from around the world are drawn to participate in the unique farming-plus-culture experience that is Kalani Oceanside Retreat. With a dollar spent elsewhere in Hawaii for every dollar spent at Kalani, this annual $5,000,000 eco-tourism stimulus to the local economy has grown to an estimated $100,000,000 boost to the State's economy over Kalani's 34 years of operation, ten acres of which began in 1975 as a papaya field and a cattle pasture.
Conclusion

If the County does not rescind its violation notice and its demand that Kalani stop using the EMAX greenhouse for dance and other sustainable-agriculture nature-culture-wellness educational community activities, then the County is restricting people's rights to assemble and forcing people to drive further or move for services, or the County will eventually tax citizens to provide such services. Additionally the County is, in times that are already economically challenging, acting to curtail bona fide educational eco-tourism and sustainable agriculture income, and risking increased unemployment. And the County is wasting its human resources, and the cost thereof to taxpayers, instead of acting to curtail the many known structure and land abuses that, unlike Kalani, are actually injurious to people, animals and the environment (e.g. methamphetamine factories, cock fights, auto stripping and devastation bulldozing).

Today's global challenges call for inspired leadership at all levels, from those of us who direct centers for learning to those of us who voters have placed in government to help assure that the sustainable agri-culture dance of farming and culture continues for generations to come. This is the kind of cooperative visioning Kalani has had with County leaders since 1975. Let's keep it happening, and growing!

- Richard Koob
Assume the best and ask questions.

Punaweb moderator
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Kalani Oceanside Retreat asks for help - by Rob Tucker - 08-31-2009, 09:31 AM

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