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		Merle Niemi Kindred Email: mkindred@pasty.com

Guest columnist Merle Niemi Kindred is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and Technical Communication at Michigan Technological University. She has family roots in the Copper Country that date back to great grandparents who settled in Atlantic Mine in 1900, but left for Saskatchewan in 1912. Merle was born in Toronto, Ontario, and raised in Warren, Michigan. She has served as a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) Volunteer in the U.S. Virgin Islands and as a CUSO (Canadian University Service Overseas) Volunteer in Jamaica. Merle also trained teachers for six years in the Bahamas.

Merle and her late husband, Garfield F. (Skip) Kindred, moved to the Copper Country in 1998 to the passive solar, super insulated home Skip designed as their home and architectural studio. Merle is heavily immersed in both academia and activism as she attempts enlightenment on energy-related issues and empowerment of individuals both in North America and abroad to effect positive global change.

Viewpoints

Hancock City Council rejects Swedetown Creek grant

Posted and Updated 05/08/2003

HANCOCK -- Despite pledges of $83,000 from the Keweenaw Nordic Ski Club and the Keweenaw Land Trust to match a Great Lakes Coastal Restoration Grant for land acquisition at the Swedetown Creek Corridor, the Hancock City Council rejected the State of Michigan's offer of the $333,000 grant at their May 7 meeting. Noting the city's only responsibility would be to process the paperwork under its letterhead, guest columnist Merle Kindred says Hancock residents interested in preserving the Creek, which flows through the Maasto Hiihto trail system, should attend the Council's next meeting at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21. more

Merle Kindred: At-large candidate for Hancock City Council 

Posted 11/04/2002

HANCOCK -- Merle Niemi Kindred, president of Copper Country Habitat for Humanity, says if she is elected to the Hancock City Council as a Councilor At Large she proposes to continue making Hancock a model community by seeking support for energy-efficient, environmentally low-impact projects. Kindred, an MTU graduate student at 56 and grandmother of 10, says she supports the wisdom in the phrase, "Think Globally, Act Locally." more

Wisconsin volunteers help build South Range Habitat homes

Posted 06/27/2002

HANCOCK -- Guest columnist Merle Kindred describes the "blitz build" in early June when 29 members of the United Church of Christ Congregational Church in Amery, Wis., (Rev. Barry R. Schaefer, Pastor) arrived in the Keweenaw Peninsula for a week of volunteer work on two energy-efficient homes being constructed by Copper Country Habitat for Humanity (CCHFH) in South Range. more 

Early Morning Ruminations on Life after September 11th

Posted 10/16/2001

HANCOCK -- Guest columnist Merle Kindred thinks back on her immediate reaction to the September 11th tragedy in New York -- a letter published in the Michigan Tech Lode shortly after the event. Now, a month later, after receiving strong reactions to that letter, she "ruminates" on another kind of "hijacking" and possible repercussions for the future of the planet. more