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Recent visit to Maui
August 27, 2012 | 10:39 AM

Here's a copy of a letter I just sent to the Maui tourist bureau:
Dear Sir/Madam,

My wife and I recently visited Maui after a 24 year absence. Back then, there were Mom & Pop grocery stores and no Walmarts. There were views unobstructed by massive condo complexes. McKenna Beach had a small church nearby with chickens running around. I could run from Lahiana to Kaanapali along a two-lane highway with very little traffic present. There was a smell of freshness in the air that gave one the impression of actually being in a relatively unspoiled place.
Fast forward to November of last year. A tangled mess of malls, Safeways, Radio Shacks, fast food joints, traffic of unimaginable proportions, obese tourists from the Mainland getting in each other’s way as they ruck through the T-shirt shops in Lahiana, humorless and in a hurry to go nowhere.
I never thought back in ’88 that your beautiful island would become, in essence, Los Angeles with Trade Winds.
Everyone on the island who let this happen ought to be, at least, ashamed; at most praying to the God, Akua for forgiveness. The all-mighty dollar has turned paradise into a freak show of human and environmental degradation.
Progress is not the name of this massive transformation over 24 years; greed mongering as practiced by the States would be a more appropriate description.
When we got home, my younger brother expressed interest in moving to Maui after his retirement; he had been there in the early 70s making a living gathering puka shells and making necklaces. I showed him some of the pictures we had taken in November.
He’s now thinking of moving to Death Valley to be in a more hospitable environment


Jan Sershen
Canon City, Colorado