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POSTED: Thursday, October 15, 2009

SOUL PATROL

Lunch wagon with a mission

There's a witticism somewhere here about chicken soup for the soul. ... It'll come. Till then, let's applaud the efforts of Sean Priester, executive chef of the Top of Waikiki restaurant, and Utu Langi, executive director of H-5 (Hawaii Helping the Hungry Have Hope) who also runs the Next Step Shelter in Kakaako. The two men have joined forces to launch Soul Patrol, a lunch wagon to feed the hungry and homeless in Waianae.

Thanks also to an American Civil Liberties Union grant that helped develop the mobile kitchen to provide nutritious meals for homeless kids. The hope is for Soul Patrol to visit Waianae every weekend. And it's not a pure handout: Integral to the mission will be the involvement of kids from the homeless community.

“;The kids are our future,”; says Langi. “;If we feed them, we are feeding their families. If we share positive values about food and health, we are modeling a self-sustained future.”;

It's about nutrition—and much, much more. Way to feed the needs of a community.

 

;[Preview]  Cheers and celebration on Wall Street
 

For the first time in a year the Dow Jones closed above 10,000.

Watch ]

 

10,015.86

Don't break out the champagne yet, but ...

Phew! There was a sense of relief yesterday as the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 10,000 for the first time in more than a year. That's still way off the peak of 14,000 in October 2007, but crossing the psychological threshold yesterday renews the optimism of investors and boosts the confidence of businesses. And a rosier outlook is critical to reversing the job losses that have created so much pain in this Great Recession.