Wednesday, March 17, 2021

 Wednesday, March 17, 2021

            D's mother texted me that she wanted to cancel for the week. The Hawaiian schools were on their spring break. I was supposed to have an appointment with J, but I calculated the time wrong. There's a three-hour difference between Hawaii and CA with the time change on Sunday. I made a similar mistake for a new client. I rescheduled with J as I did with the new student. I couldn't connect on Zoom yesterday. I texted the mother, asking her to call me; I could not call her. Every time I dialed her number, the call was dropped. As I was on the phone with the mother, Julia, the step-up tutoring program tech support called. I merged the calls. Julia asked the mom if her email address was the one she had. No, it wasn't. Once I had the alternative address, we connected on Zoom. 

            E., the student I had difficulty connecting with, had to write a paragraph on the relationships between the American Indians and the Jamestown colonists. They had to write about something good or something bad about the relationship. I thought she had to write about both aspects. She thought she had to choose one or the other.       

            She had to work from a hard copy of a book. She read it to me. Her word calling is excellent. As she read, I took notes, but there was no reference to the topic. I finally told her to find the section of the chapter that spoke specifically to her topic. Some might argue that she's just skipping to what she needs and not learning more broadly. However, you also need to know how to address your objectives directly. Both are needed. She found the relevant section.  

            She chose to write about what was good about the relationship between the Native Americans and the colonists. I found her verbally constipated. I don't know if that was because she was afraid of me or other problems. I admit I pushed hard. I have been worrying that she was a kid who would need more than just homework help. I hate to work just to get an assignment done. I pushed her to say something. She resisted but finally came up with a great alternative to what I had in mind. I thought the logic was a little weak but not impossible. Whatever it was, it was good enough for a 5th-grade girl. I typed what she said and emailed her the results.

            All day, the gardeners were hacking away on the jungle in the lower forty. The guy who usually does it hasn't been available since December; it was a jungle. Besides weed whacking everything, they pulled out every haole koa they could. They cut back and poured diesel on the ones they couldn't pull. Yes, diesel is supposed to kill them. It may take more than one dose. Rodney told me he didn't have enough gas. I only got three gallons; it was as much as I could lift myself. 

            I invited another of our neighbors to driveway yoga. So far, no one has joined us. Let's see. Jenni and her daughter may join us tomorrow. Saturday, it may be the two of them, plus Jazzy, with both her babies, and Naomi. I passed Beverly on the evening walk and teased her about coming. She had said she wanted to, but the morning hour was too early. 

            I spent a good part of the day working on my taxes. After receiving more receipts, I recalculated the monetary donations and filled out the non-cash forms. Then realized that I didn't have all the receipts from Hope Services. Lisa diligently collected them; I was going to get them all at once, and then the virus hit. I never went back to the homeless shelter after some time in March. There must be 3 or 4 receipts waiting for me. Lisa said she had sent them on to headquarters. She gave me the woman to contact. I left a message. Let's see if I get a callback.

            B checked out where I could find the plans for the house when he learned that they couldn't be found at the civic center. We were trying to locate the cesspools. B. couldn't believe that the plans were just dumped. He tracked them down. They were transferred over to the health department. I called and got a digital copy of a rough sketch emailed to me. There was an image of the thirty-foot retaining wall. There's a big drop from the lanai outside my bedroom door and Yvette's ground level, a full story, at least 10 to 12 feet. It's quite a drop. Someone put in a dog kennel in that area with asphalt flooring. I hope the cesspool isn't under that. Digging that up would make for a big mess. The guy at the health department told me that the change from cesspools to septic tanks had to be completed by 2050 rather than 2030, as I thought. I'm on a roll; I have the money now. This way, the kids won't have to worry about it down the road, and it will increase the value of the house. 

            The only problem is septic tanks must be pumped out regularly. We haven't had to do anything with the cesspools. Although, there is no guarantee that we won't run into a problem in the unforeseeable future. 

       The guy at the health department mentioned only one cesspool. There had to be a second for the shed. My guess is it was never permitted. Great! Probably the whole shed was never permitted. I'm still waiting for the blueprints to reach me via email.  

            I continued watching Coming to America on John Zim's recommendation after he read about my struggle to find a fun video that wasn't violent or dark. It's okay. Murphy is incredible, particularly in his role as the old Jewish man. However, I was reading Paul Theroux's The Last Train to Zona Verde at the same time. He writes about the economic situation in Africa. Many black African leaders who led the overthrow of European dominance became horrible leaders. They rape the country's resources, keeping everything for themselves, just as the Europeans did. His description of the poverty in the continent is disturbing. No less to learn that extreme poverty is unnecessary. Many of these countries are wealthy, but their leaders keep every penny for themselves. The royal family of this movie lived that way. I could see the poor behind that rich façade. 

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Musings:

            Why did men wind up being the politically dominant sex?   I did a little research on the Internet. What I found said the sexes were equal in the hunter-gatherer groups. The change came in with agriculture and land ownership. Land titles were passed down through the patrilineal line. While this tells us when the change came in, it doesn't tell us why.

            I thought about why instead of when. How's this sound? In the hunter-gatherer groups, the women probably stayed closer to home base. They were burdened with carrying and caring for children. The men had to venture out to find and chase down game, sometimes traveling good distances. Women were attending to local details, negotiating the familiar. Men were ranging into unfamiliar territory, both literally and figuratively. Women probably had limited contact with members of other groups. The men wondering about would have encountered strangers. They would have learned skills of dealing with unfamiliar situations, negotiating with strangers, or fending them off. And then there is the usual argument; men were physically stronger than women. That physical strength said nothing about intelligence of anything other than being able to bash someone in case. Women's social structure is more subtle, less visible. 

            Is it the difference in men's experience with the world at large versus the women's that made the difference? They acquired knowledge and skills dealing with the unfamiliar. Women were better at dealing with the familiar.