https://www.thehour.com/opinion/article/Awards-to-seaweed-professor-youth-swim-coach-in-8188479.php
Awards to seaweed professor, youth swim coach in Westport
Published 8:30 pm EDT, Friday, August 24, 2012
Well, it's back to school time. Be prepared next week and use extra caution on the roads as school buses will be back in force. Technically, the summer does not end until Sept. 21, but don't try telling students that. For them, summer ends when the carefree days are over and classes resume.
So with education in mind, we dole out our weekly awards. Fittingly, a University of Connecticut professor gets our first bouquet. Charles Yarish put on a demonstration this week at the UConn Stamford campus on the various uses of seaweed.
Yarish is encouraging the increased growing and harvesting of the versatile plant. In his own words: "Seaweed can be used as a table vegetable, a fertilizer, animal feed, a biofuel and can be used as a natural tool for fighting the effects of pollu­tion in Long Island Sound by reducing nitro­gen in the water. It's an amazing plant."
Yarish and a team of faculty and students from UConn Stamford have been researching the matter for more than a year. He sees aquaculture and seaweed farming as good for both the environment and job growth.
Sounds like just the out-of-the-box type of thinking we need as we look to the future of our country.
A brickbat to some political campaigns that have immediately turned to attacking their opponent instead of focusing on their own strengths. Attack campaigns, of course, are nothing new, but it would be nice if the politicians would stick to the issues once in a while.
Another bouquet to a coach dedicated to teaching youth in Westport.
Betsy Matheney is the coach for the Westport/Weston YMCA Water Rat swim team and has recently been named by her fellow coaches as the Connecticut Swimming Age Group Coach of the Year for 2011-12. She teaches swimmers aged 10 and younger. Matheney, and all youth sports coaches for that matter, have the power to instill values such as healthy living, teamwork, responsibility and determination in our young people. What can be more important than that?
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