Saturday, April 20, 2024

Saturday, April 20, 2024

    Dan was scheduled to take out the large Shefferlara tree that damaged our cement driveway today and a second tree that shot up from an unwelcomed seed that was now blocking my view of the Pacific. He called around 9 a.m. He was at the vet with one of his dogs. He has something like five. He takes in rescues. The Humane Society has him on speed dial. He dog has some fatty lumps. 

   He didn't show up or call. I called him. Most of the lumps were lipomas. There was one at the neck the vet wasn't sure about. He said he wanted to stay home with his dog.

  We had to negotiate a new time. Sunday was out. It was Josh's day off, and he needed peace and quiet. I wouldn't be home Monday or Tuesday morning to care for Little, and Yvette would also be out. We rescheduled for Wednesday.

    Darby had returned the large trash barrel, and it was available for another load of fronds. Fronds are the huge 'leaves' that fall off palm trees. I had loaded up the last of the ones the gardener had dumped on the property for years. Now, I was ready to clean up others lying elsewhere on the property. I found a few freshly fallen ones. Then, I grabbed those lying at the top of the driveway just below the lower gate. I had gotten good about stuffing them into the barrel. I walked the trash barrel over to Darby's for delivery.  Her house is about a block away from mine.

  As usual, Darby came out to spend time with me when I dropped off a load of green waste.  We walked on her lawn barefoot. It is supposed to be good to have direct contact with nature. Anything to do with nature, and I'm there. 

   Darby talked about the Amish today. I have no idea why this was on her mind. She lived near a community and became interested in them. They don't advocate their lifestyle for moral reasons, meaning it isn't evil to live otherwise. They live a simple life because it is a slower one; living a slower one means it's easier to be close to God.

    While the community rejected most 'conveniences,' they did accept the washing machine. I wondered how you operate a washing machine without electricity, so I looked it up on the Internet. A washing machine can be foo or crank-powered.

  The machines we've brought into our homes and lives are considered labor-saving devices. I once asked my mom why we were busier these days than when she was young. For context, my mom was born in 1903 in Berlin, Germany. She said something so interesting. She said they didn't have telephones or washing machines. Without telephones, communication was all in person or in writing. That slowed things down a bit. 

  As for the washing machine, everything was handwashed. My mom changed her underwear once a week. She had a dress for school, a dress for play, and a dress for church for each season. That was it.  Besides not producing a lot of laundry, she didn't have to spend time selecting clothes every morning and shopping for a fashionable selection.

   Needless to say, there was no television to occupy anyone's time. The first television ever seen by the public was at the 1939 World's Fair. My mom saw it in 1940 when her mom came to visit. She was pregnant with me at the time.  I got my first computer in the 1980s.  Again, I checked the Internet. The first personal computer was available in 1975. These beasts occupy much of our time.

   Back to the lives of the Amish, Darby said only seventy-five people have joined the larger Amish community. While some have left the community, it continues to grow. Every time a given community grows bigger than forty families, it splits. Half the group leaves the area and sets up life somewhere else. This number roughly conforms to a functional community's magic number of one hundred fifty. Anything bigger than that requires an overseer, i.e. a government.

  A problem that plagues the Amish community is inbreeding. They make every effort to avoid it. They search for mates from different Amish communities. They keep genealogical records. They allow the adoption of children from outside the community, which brings in new genetic strains. When someone is inflicted by the consequences of inbreeding, they accept this as a consequence of keeping their communities and lifestyles. They are committed to caring for those afflicted.

   On the other hand, the Amish are free from many of the diseases that plague the modern world. If I remember correctly, Darby said they are free from cancer and heart disease.

  Since Covid, loneliness has finally received the attention it deserves. We need to belong to secure communities. Isolating ourselves in our nuclear families and, even worse, living alone is deadly. We have turned ourselves into zoo animals. We live with a degree of physical safety our ancestors never knew, and it is killing us.   I watched another of the Gokhale Online University videos. They're terrible. The guy leading it needed his posture corrected. His ribs were too far forward. The ideas behind Gokhale are spectacular. I believe in the process, but the teaching sucks. I can't say that for the group teacher, Lisa. She was wonderful. She had a background as a dancer and had a deeper understanding of the body.

  When I met with Adolescent D today, I asked him to read his poem to me. I couldn't believe it. It was really good, clever. I was suspicious. Had he copied it off the Internet? I looked for modern poems written alluding to the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme. I could find nothing. I would ask him to send me a copy of the poem and run through a plagiarism check on Gokhale. If I did find he cheated, I would only share that information with his mother. This was a moral issue that called for family guidance. It was up to his parents to respond, not me. I planned to ask for a written copy.