Banana tree treasure hunt

The original grid system is preserved in an OpenOffice spreadsheet without banana variety notation. The student source of the particular variety is reported in another spreadsheet. The SVG garden map includes in the desc and title elements information on the variety and student source of the identification. Due to browser implementations as of summer 2010, most browsers are displaying the xlink:title attribute on the anchor element rather than the title with the role attibute set to tooltip. Obtaining full identification information requires digging through the source code for the garden file.  The banana below is apparently in A1.If this is correct, then the banana might be a Preisihl (Brazil) variety.

To the north of the largest of the bananas at grid D1 can be seen the bananas found hidden under the tall grass. If this location is correct, then the variety may be that known as Kaimana, Kundihna, and Pisang Awak White.

Serious neglect and the impact of the January to March dry spell have impacted these bananas apparently in D2, D3, and C4. These are, potentially, Akadahn weitahtah, Karat en Kariki, and Tikahp.

Probable C4 banana.

At present it appears that five of the fourteen have survived over the past two years.

Haruki Flowers

On the to do list this summer was cleaning up Haruki. cemetery. The ethnobotany class tackles this task on Ohigan, March 21 and September 21. I try to tackle it on the solstices, December 21 and June 21 or thereabouts. Summer school delayed my getting up there to whack down the razor grass and unbury the plants. Unburying is the main task in this cemetery.

Despite being covered by reh padil, the plants were in profuse bloom.

Weeding around an agave means bleeding around the agave. What is a visit to the cemetery without a little pain. A beautiful plant to behold from afar, attempts to hold this plant up close, however, produces holes in one. Gardening and love are like that.

Not all of the flowers are in the Haruki garden. Some flowers are found in the office this summer.

Na Na Na

The play-offs for a basketball tournament were in action at Enipein Elementary School in Kitti, Pohnpei, on Sunday evening.

Over at Na Na Na market the ukeleles were out and playing. The market is the largest and most consistent of the markets in Kitti. Using a continuously reloaded peitehl, the market offers both pohn takai and by-the-cup options. Continuouly reloaded stones provide strong sakau on into the evening.

The market attract both youth and elders. The younger crowd sits at tables dispersed around the edges of the market and prefers sakau by the cup. The market is a meet and greet place for the youth, under the watchful eyes of the elders. At least until we go na na na.

I took the stone option, six dollars all you can drink as long as you can drink. Sakau prices are going up steeply. Bottles in Pehleng are 4.50 for a full size bottle, Kolonia sells weaker stuff for five and up. All of the major markets around Kolonia are eight dollars pohn takai, ten dollars if you want your own personal refilling cup. A couple markets, Sofia's at Namiki and one up near sunset are ten dollars flat pohn takai. For the nightly drinker, sakau is now an expensive drug habit!

Present at my table were Daug Kitti, a Nan Madeu, a Kaniki, and a Nahnihd among others.

The market owners run both the market and a key store in Enipein. Both operations are quite successful. The owners recently returned from a trip abroad bringing with four laptop computers. Two were sold in the store, one is for the daughter's use in school, and the fourth will be the raffle prize at market fund-raiser on Tuesday.

As the sun slants away into the west, the market rolls on into the evening. While the markets are not culturally correct in terms of the sakau coming to you (instead of you being called to the sakau), the markets are a place that both the elders and the youth join together in the evening. Seated separately out of respect, there is still the communal bond that keeps the society functioning as a healthy social entity.

Student evaluations

SC 130 Physical Science spring 2010 had 29 students. The students answered fifteen questions using a Likert scale provided by the college. All faculty are evaluated by the students using these same fifteen questions.The Likert scale was converted to number ratings from one to five and then averaged by the college.

Question	Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Usually	Always	Avg
1. Keeps regular schedule, every class day.				1	28	4.97
2. Shows interest in the subject.					29	5.00
3. Gives individual help as needed.				1	28	4.97
4. Avails himself/herself for student conferences.				1	28	4.97
5. Welcomes questions, suggestions and discussions from students.					29	5.00
6. Shows interest and respect for students.				1	28	4.97
7. Helps the students in meeting individual learning needs.				1	28	4.97
8. Uses classroom/lab time fully.			1		28	4.93
9. Provides clear directions for assignments and instruction.			1		28	4.93
10. Grades fairly and frequently.				1	28	4.97
11. Makes the purpose of the course clear.				1	28	4.97
12. Talks clearly and at an easy-to-follow speed.				1	28	4.97
13. Lessons are well paced with activity as well as lecture.				1	28	4.97
14. Makes the course interesting.					29	5.00
15. Textbook was appropriate and helpful.				1	28	4.97
Overall average rating						4.97

At the bottom of the form the students are allowed to add comments. I have included those comments below. I deleted comments that were of comparative nature to other faculty. The college is small and other faculty would recognize themselves in those comments.

He's a very good and respectful teacher! This is an interesting course; Mr. Lee Ling's method of instruction was a perfect one. Every week I have to learn something new and I actually learned. I really enjoy his class while I learn a lot throughout the semester. Very encouragable teacher academic and physical activities; He's a hard working teacher. Teaches understandable. Students would love to have classes with him. Keep up the good work; The right teacher for this course. Dana has been a good professor of physical science and I believe that no other teacher can teach this course the way he did. He always keeps me interested in the course, and allowed his students to tour the interesting world of physics taking the best route and journey. Clear, understandable and fun. Loved it. This class is fun and interesting. He is a nice good instructor. He make this class so easy and fun for students. So please he should keep up the good work; This is really the best class. Really interesting, fun. I learned a lot. The labs were all interesting. I enjoyed this class. homeworks, quizzes, test, were all understanding. Dana should continue teaching this class forever; Excellent instructor!; One of the most interesting classes I've been in. Learned new things everyday.

While very encouraging, I always look to constructive criticism as a way of learning what I might do differently or what I might improve. While the above survey is conducted by the college as is very interesting, my own liked and disliked laboratories survey often provides more information on what I can do differently, what I can do better. All positive comments lift up, but leave little room for anywhere to go but down.

The highly positive response on number fifteen is encouraging as the textbook is one written by me specifically for the course. I should note that fall 2001 data indicates that our students tend to rate high with an average of 4.49 on question fifteen. The average fall 2001 for all faculty in the science and math division on all questions was 4.51 with a standard deviation of 0.3, an indication of the high average and low variation exhibited by this data.Thus the 4.49 average on question fifteen was not statistically significantly different from the overall average that term. The spring 2010 average of 4.97 for the textbook would be hard to improve upon.

MS 150 Statistics spring 2010  student evaluations reported on 38 evaluations out of 67 students who completed the course. As with all of the student evaluations, students who withdrew from the course during the term are not included in the student evaluations survey.

Question	Never	Rarely	Sometime	Usually	Always	Avg
1. Keeps regular schedule, every class day.				1	37	4.97
2. Shows interest in the subject.				2	36	4.95
3. Gives individual help as needed.			3	1	34	4.82
4. Avails himself/herself for student conferences.	1		1	2	34	4.79
5. Welcomes questions, suggestions and discussions from students.				2	36	4.95
6. Shows interest and respect for students.			1	2	35	4.89
7. Helps the students in meeting individual learning needs.			1	3	34	4.87
8. Uses classroom/lab time fully.				2	36	4.95
9. Provides clear directions for assignments and instruction.				5	33	4.87
10. Grades fairly and frequently.				1	37	4.97
11. Makes the purpose of the course clear.				4	34	4.89
12. Talks clearly and at an easy-to-follow speed.				3	35	4.92
13. Lessons are well paced with activity as well as lecture.				4	34	4.89
14. Makes the course interesting.				3	35	4.92
15. Textbook was appropriate and helpful.				2	36	4.95
Overall average rating						4.91

Clearly there is a perceived need for more individual help, and a need to avail myself for student conferences. Item number four is one that generates discussion among faculty. The statistics course does not include individual scheduled student conferences. This is a feature of specific courses, often ones that deal with student research projects or capstone papers. Interpreting what the students were thinking when they answered this question is therefore problematic.

The clear pattern is a need to provide more individualized help.

Again, the textbook is written by me specifically for the course and is usually to always helpful - an encouraging result.

The student comments provide a sparse few additional details.

Keep up the good work; Interesting instructor; He is the best teacher I ever had; He a good instructor. He always make the course interesting and enjoyable; He is my best instructor; Excellent Teacher! Except he talks really fast; It will be great if he offer this class in the summer. I also strongly recommend him to continue teaching this course; He is the best teacher ever. he always be there when I needed help; Really like his teaching method. Its fun and clear to understand. Thank you so much Mr. Lee Ling. It's been a great, fabulous class. Loved it.; Very good instructor! Makes learning fun. I learned a lot; Keep up the good work!!; Instructor Lee Ling is an excellent instructor; The best!; He is a wonderful teacher that shows interest in every class sessions; Keep up the good work; This class is the best. So there is no comments; He is a good instructor.

The comment that I speak too quickly is one that I have received in the past and is an area upon which I continue to work. Virtually all of my students are using English as a second language. I cannot effectively shift to their L1 language to explain subtle points of statistics primarily because there are four or five L1 languages present in my classroom in any one section. Beyond this complication, I only speak a smattering of one of the languages, and even less of a second.

Snorkeling

My son and I accompanied the marine science program coordinator for a trip to obtain gobis for an aquarium at the college.

A boat trip on a tropical lagoon is magic enough for a young lad.

Pohnpei outside of Kolonia is exotic and appears uninhabited when seen from the lagoon.

As ride-alongs we enjoyed snorkeling among the many colorful fish and coral.

As a physical science instructor I am literally a fish out of my water in identifying the fish and coral we saw.

Wide-eyed at the wonders of Jacques Cousteau's Silent World, especially when a black tip shard swam lazily by. Up close and personal is better than Discovery Channel.

Healthy coral comes in a wide variety of colors.


The shapes and variety of coral are many.

Along the Intertropical Convergence Zone heavy tropical rain can move in at any time.

Heading home.

Lino caught the fish, Brian shows it off.

RipStik Round Pohnpei

Although chased by rain showers, we finally did a round island road trip with occasional stops to caster board. Our first stop was out in U.

Rain grounded us all the way to the former site of the Pohnpei Agriculture and Trade School in Madolehnihmw.

In Rohi, Kitti, near the Madolehnihmw border we enjoyed a fairly high speed run into a bowl the smooth asphalt of the Japanese road project.

A final stop was made in Enipein in Kitti, rain again closing in and shutting down the pidek.

A final swing around the basketball court.

A stop at the college to introduce another new rider to the joy of RipStik riding!

Compactor

The paper-airplane-a-day calendar had a fun blast from the world war II past that I had to explain to my son for Tuesday.

The island's first and only compactor is up and running in the dump.

This was our evening excitement - a trip to the dump to check out the compactor. Summer can be that way. A good time to do less and reconnect with big machines.

Laboratory prep room cleaning

The chair declared a day of laboratory prep room cleaning, fueled by free pizza. I had long known I needed to work on the physical science counter top space, which had disappeared in the wake of the re-tiling of the floor. All kinds of stuff was piled on the cabinet. I took the opportunity to also reorganize all the shelves and work on the contents of the physical science cabinets.

I also tackled the notorious north side counter which had disappeared under boxes and assorted equipment over two years ago. That is the cleanest that counter top has been in a decade. Observant residents of the prep room might note that the machete box is gone as well as the green roofing ramp.

The machete box now has a new home in A101, as does the green roofing ramp and a few other items.
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Orchids, pizza, and summer reading

On Saturday I tackled the first in a short list of summer gardening activities at the college. I had been meaning to move Spathoglottis plicata growing in the wild over to the college entrance sign. A previous attempt to move flowers into the planter was undone by the El Niño dry spell from January to February, along with subsequent damage done by weed whackers.

 A couple wild plants were selected and transplaneted.

 One was planted in the north side planter.

The other in the south side planter. This time wire fencing was put around the plants to protect them.

On a hot, humid, tropical summer day a picnic can mean a homemade pizza dinner in an air conditioned lounge.

I just finished reading The Tyranny of Email by John Freeman, a new acquisition by the college library. While a good read, one keeps having the feeling that the focus on email may already be misplaced. The upshot is that email is consuming vast amounts of time while impacting our ability to think deeply and function effectively.

The complication for me is that technology has given me the tools and permitted the development of habits to manage my email. Email is not the technology that I am struggling to manage. Social media is the technology that lacks management tools. Social media is rapidly becoming a place in which I have information to which I later need access. I may be looking for a link I saw, or an image I came across or posted.

Search in FaceBook is horrible. I can search my blog by using a site restriction in Google, but doing the same in FaceBook is not obvious. FaceBook's own search engine does not return information in photo captions, tags in photos, nor can FaceBook search do a search such as "all links posted by my friend Bill that have to with quantum mechanics as a key term."

Accessing old material is painful - one really would like a system like blogs have where there is a timeline you can use to access old information. I might remember that I saw what I want to find in March, but how to get back to what my wall looked like in March without repeatedly clicking "Show older posts" at the bottom of my wall. Painful way to get at one's history.

Subject tags would be useful, but that can only currently be accomplished by misappropriating the "Tag this person" to tag a photo "physical science laboratory." And then how to search for those photos tagged that way? There is no person page corresponding to "physical science laboratory."

FaceBook is the technology that currently provides a critically useful contact point with students, friends, and family, and yet remains a tremendous consumer of my time due to the lack of real management tools, indexes, metadata capability (subject tags), and search capabilities.

Still, The Tyranny of Email is a fun read and on a good page can provoke some thought. I am reminded of why I try my best to get out of the office periodically and talk to people, especially those who seem most uncomfortable with email communication - those who often misread the tone and intent of one's notes.

Now I am tackling Japanese Sports: A History. Eclectic and far from the fields in which I facilitate learning, but on a good day new ideas are stimulated that lead to new approaches in the class room.

Closer to one of my activities, I am also rereading Running & Philosophy: A marathon for the mind. Running distance is an activity that permits the mind to wander. When running alone, there is no ball to focus upon, no opponent to guard, nothing more than the most primitive of activities - falling forward onto alternate feet. Little wonder runners philosophize.

The short break between summer school and fall term is not devoid of all things school. I "decorated" an on-line fall syllabus with an animation that at present is functional only in Google Chrome and Opera browsers, but may eventually be functional in FireFox 4 or possible 5.

Clara's store

My son and I visited Clara's new store out in Meitipw, Madolehnihmw, Pohnpei.

Mugging for the camera in Meitipw.

On the way back we passed the 158th anniversary of the arrival of Protestant missionaries held at Ohwa Church.

We were neither dressed for nor invited to the occasion, so we skipped the obvious photo opportunity.