What is Contact Tracing?

There was a nice article in the newspaper about contact tracing; it explains what it is. One thing it does not stress though is that contact tracing happens after exposure to the virus occurs and will not eliminate COVID-19; it can only slow down the spread. What people really need to do to eliminate COVID-19 is practice physical distancing, proper hand hygiene, wearing a mask, and most of all, stop doing stupid things like going to coronavirus parties! Although some say the parties are a hoax, the bottom line is in a large group where distancing is difficult you are more likely to come in to contact with a person who has the virus. Or if you have it, to spread it to others.

And I read an article where 3 doctors were asked about the risk of doing 10 different common summer activities here specifically in July with out-of-state travelers still required to quarantine for 14 days. They ranked the activities as low, moderate, or high risk and also listed mitigating factors that would lower the risk. The bottom line is, if you don't follow physical distancing, proper hand hygiene, wearing a mask, and staying away from large groups even the low risk activities could put you at risk.


There was also an article about a report on a survey of residents regarding the opening up for tourism. It found that just over 80% of residents preferred to have tourism shut down even though they were hurt financially by the shutdown. The survey occurred in mid-June; one of the report authors said he believed,  "the number of residents against reopening tourism would be even higher today with the recent spike of confirmed coronavirus cases." They are probably right about that.

I actually got up before the time the Saffron Finch would have started singing; I had gone to bed at 10 instead of my usual midnight so my body thought it was time to be awakened by that bird. It did not sing this morning, so now I am pretty sure that yesterday I did not sleep through it when it sang. I wonder what happened? Did its young fledge so they are no longer here? 

Two minutes after sunrise.

I went back to sleep after I found out the Saffron Finch was no longer singing right outside my window; I still had little energy. My plan was to do laundry and listen to Papa 'Ōlelo Hawaiʻi later in the day and call that good for the day; if I had the energy to do anything else, Great! I did not go out and see where the water was going.

On Sunday Laurel had asked me if they could pick anything up for me from Costco; at first I said no, but then I realized the 110 calorie Whisps bags were from Costco. I asked her to pick up a bag for me; there are 14 little bags in the big bag. I know it would be more cost effective to buy one big bag, but the 110-calorie-portion bags limit how much I eat at one sitting. And the rest don't become not-so-crisps! She texted saying Bill had picked them up for me yesterday and they would come over to drop them off today.

When they arrived, they had 3 big bags of the 14-bag portions and 2 of the larger than snack-size bags! She said I could have them all; I found out Bill also eats them so I just took 2 of the big bags with the 14-bag portions. Laurel also gave me 4 more of the Kohala Koolies cooling scarves that she makes. She said I could keep them at the house for when Kai comes to visit. (You can order them from her through Ebay.) We had a great visit! When they left I gave them the hāpuʻu that had broken off to plant in their yard.


I had been in the middle of hanging laundry when Laurel & Bill arrived; after they left I finished hanging the rest of the laundry out. Then I went to harvest macadamias and check on the dragon fruit; I also went to pick up the other coconut that was on the ground. On Sunday Joy had asked me to be on the lookout for any sprouting coconuts; Wayne wanted to plant one in their yard since mine is the Dwarf Samoan Coconut. Bill had also given me 2 coconuts from their trees which are the tall type; I will give these to Wayne and see if he will teach me how to open up the coconuts.

These are the fruit I found a couple days ago; I thought they were the only ones.

I found these 2 today.

And this one!

Today's harvest.

I also checked out the kalo. I bought the poster to see if I could identify what variety of kalo it is. But it does not match any of the descriptions. I need better photos so I can post them on the Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers Facebook page that I belong to so I can find out more about this variety. It might be a very old one since Grandpa would have planted the original patch at this house in the mid-1960's. He would have brought the stock from the Halawa Camp house; I'm not sure how long ago he started that patch but Mom said he was raising them when she was growing up, so this variety may be from as far back as the 1930's.

This photo doesn't show the purple piko in the center, you can barely make out the dark edge of the lau.

The ha is purplish with dark edges.

I also saw the guys working at Jessica's house. I thought she had said they would be there yesterday, but it was actually today. They topped the hedge on the north (downslope) side today; tomorrow they will finish the west (road) side of the lot.



By the time I was done with all that it was almost time for Papa ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi so I got my laptop and notebook set up and got on to Facebook. I kept checking the 2 pages that they are on as well as my own home page but did not see the live feed; it was almost about 20 minutes past the time they should have started when I finally got something. But I also heard someone calling me; it was Delphine. Since I would already have to go back and watch the first 20 minutes I went out to talk to him. He had a bucketful of mountain apples for me! He was going to come through the gate but I had locked it up after Laurel & Bill left so he was calling from his side of the fence near the kitchen window!

I couldn't find the live feed!

Delphine's tree has large mountain apples!

It turns out they were having technical issues with getting the live feed up; I came in at about 20 minutes in to the class and later went back and watched the parts I missed. During today's Papa 'Ōlelo Hawaiʻi we learned more about numbers and telling time.

Slides for previous classes are here.

The schedule. They have not yet said whether fall classes will be online or in person.

It's number time!

They first went through the Hawaiian way of telling time which is based on the sun cycle. I like this way of telling time. I think it appeals to me because the rhythm of animals and plants is also based on the sun cycle. I will try to use more of these terms in my future posts.

 

This list is from Ryan Keawekane's blog about counting in Hawaiian ; he explains about using the ʻe form versus the ʻa form as well as some other things. He has other posts where it is all in Hawaiian and some that are translated in to English as well.


This is the western days of the week as taught to the Hawaiians by the missionaries. Hawaiians had their own calendar with months of 30 days, each having a specific name based on the moon phase. The calendar was composed of 3 weeks of 10 days each. The Pō in the first 7 days means night; the second part is just a number. The last column is how it is abbreviated for texting! The word for Sunday means "prayer day".


Counting tends to be pretty straight forward and is basically a mathematical formula. ʻUmi means 10 then you add the number after the kūmā , e.g., kahi (one), to figure out the number, in this case, 11.


The twenties is a little different.


The base numbers for each 10 numbers after 20 is fairly regular again.


And counting the individual numbers is also regular.



For the years, as in English, the numbers are broken up to 2-digit phrases; so this is eighteen forty-three, not eighteen hundred & forty-three.

The 2000's are a little different, just as in English.

We wrote the answers in the comments section.

If people did not want to disclose their birth year they could answer the other questions. I gave my birth year.

Then they went through the western way of telling time which was taught by the missionaries. It is math-based and can become cumbersome; the Hawaiian way seems much easier.

Many time words were given a Hawaiian pronunciation.

Asking the question.

Giving the answer.

The whole hours.

Question.

Answer.

For the people who had a difficult time with analog timepieces.

Now comes the cumbersome part.

Once again, you can go here to see all the presentations since class started in January.

I had seen Wiley waiting on the other side of the fence when I went out to get the bucket of mountain apples from Delphine; when Wiley saw me walking down the ramp s/he took off around the back of Jessie's house. As I came back from the fence Wiley was waiting at the same spot; once again s/he took off! I put food out for Wiley and called but s/he didn't come out. I went back inside to watch my class. Of course, the food was gone once class was done.

I had a late dinner because of class. There was leftover butter chicken with about a quarter cup of rice from when I made it for Kamaka and his dad and brother. I had taken it out of the freezer the day after I arrived so it was thoroughly thawed out tonight. It was still good and tasty! I will have to put some other cooked meals in the freezer to see how well they last.

Earlier in the morning, I had seen Mom Cat & Wiley on the far side of Jessie's yard, lying in the grass. Since Mom Cat was alert and looking around I decided to test her hearing. I went and loudly poured cat food in the bowl while calling them. They didn't budge. Oh, well, they can't hear me that far away. I checked again after I started the laundry a few minutes later and found the Mom Cat had come to eat; I spooked her. So I think she really had heard but decided to give me time to stop looking out the window at the food bowl. She's very wary.

Mom Cat & Wiley are on the far side of the lawn.

There were 29 new COVID-19 cases reported today; with the data correction, there are now 1292 known positive cases. There were no new deaths but there were several new hospitalizations; towards the end of next week we may begin to see more new deaths. A little over 73% of people have been released from isolation.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Mr. Shiraki, Pembo, Paula, & Karon!