Some Things I Forgot

Since it is so much harder to work with Mom's old desktop, I have not been posting as frequently. Or including many photos. I am going to try to do better. Starting with tonight and catching up on some things I skipped these past couple of days.like the trip I made to the bank on Wednesday with the long line I ran in to right after lunch. Apparently they close the whole place down at lunch, then everyone comes back at the same time. What I thought was really interesting was the homeless gut that was outside waiting with everyone else; he went in last; he had no mask on. The branch manager called him by name and said, "Now Douglas, you know you can't be in here without a mask. Where's the mask we gave you earlier? If you don't have it, you need to go outside." And Douglas went back out; they treated him very respectfully. And it sounds like they try to accommodate him.


As I parked the car, I noticed there was a blue ribbon around the tree I was parked next to; it was the Manu-o-Ku nest tree warning ribbon. I looked up and saw an adult that had just finished feeding a chick! This is not the usual bank that I go to for Dad's banking; that one is closed during the pandemic. I am thinking I might just come to this one even after the pandemic so I can check on the Manu-o-Ku tree!


On Thursday night a guy decided the middle of the intersection by our house would be a good place to take a nap! Fortunately the police were able to arrive before anyone came flying over the hill and hit him because they were going too fast for the sight distance conditions. When I got out of the shower he was sitting on the side of the road.

He's not hurt; he's just lying in the middle of the road. (Photo by The Potential Most Favorite Roommate)

An hour later he's sitting on the side of the road.

On Wednesday I had also sent out 2 more COVID-19 Survival Kits. One was to Kai and the other was to Suzanne & Manu & their 'ohana on the east coast. I sent them Hawaiian print cloth face masks! Manu is kumu hula of Halau Ho'omau I ka Wai Ola O Hawai'i. Suzanne got hers on Saturday and sent me a photo.

I sent a mask for each family member including the kids. (Photo by Suzanne)

One of our Friday guest speakers, Dr. Manulani Meyers, also invited us to attend the NiuNOW webinar on Sunday to learn about coconuts. The webinar was created to replace the workshop about coconuts that was supposed to be held in September. Sunday was the 3rd webinar and covered mo'olelo about niu and some other uses of niu. The webinars are held on the 4th Sunday of the month from 11 am to 1 pm HST; if you want to be added to the list send an email to chelsie @ www.maooranicfarms.org.

It opened with an oli about the niu; I was surprised at how much I could understand!

This was a m'olelo (story) about how the niu helps humans.

We watched a video of ethnobotanist Edith Krass explaining how the Hawaiians used niu.

This describes a fementd sauce made with niu.

I hope to be able to watch next month's webinar so I can learn how to germinate niu seeds.

There are no classes on Monday or Tuesday for Dr. C's course; last Friday was the last one. So our team spent part of Monday morning recording video clips for our ho'ike presentation on Friday. We have a good mix of strengths in our team of 5. Jean is a good organizer; she keeps us on track with what we need to get done and when we need to be working on it. Malia is great at setting up the team Zoom meetings and starting things in Google docs for us. I am good at creating PowerPoint documents. Michael is good at video editing and creating short scripts for our projects. And Justin is good at brainstorming and also getting his grandkids to act things out for our video!

I spent some time registering for the testing that will take place on H-3 in the tunnel. And also checking out the information they provided on how to collect your nasal saw; you do it yourself under the direction of a staff person at the site. It should lessen the chances of the staff person being exposed if the person is positive.

Here are the stats for today; if you want to know the specific daily stats for the previous days you will have to look them up yourself. I have now decided to start this portion of the blog with the statistics from Lt. Governor Josh Green's Facebook page. He is a practicing emergency room doctor and summarizes the stats that matter when looking at whether we have the capacity to handle the results of rising cases. Then I will follow it with information from the Hawaii Data Collaborative which takes available statistics and puts them in a visual format that I find to be more understandable than the stats found on the department of health page. Finally, if there is information from the department of health page that is not available elsewhere I will provide those.




This bars on this graph shows the number of tests done each day; the dark line is the percent positive rate for that particular day. The graph immediately below it shows how long the turn around time is for tests that must be sent to labs on the continent, like the surge tests that are currently being done. Most of the local tests are returned in 1 or 2 days.




Hau'oli la Hanau e Anake Jeanne, Lillian, & Martin! Belated Hau'oli la Hanau e MIchelle, Pam, Diana, & hou hanau Yvonne!