Thatching

Thatching opened with the question "What are the two styles of Pohnpeian thatch?" Setting aside a student from Chuuk lagoon, two from Kapinga, one from Lamotrek, one with roots in Chuuk, and two with roots in the Mortlocks, the other 16 students were Pohnpeian. After polling around and not getting an answer, one student from Paies answered with hesitation and uncertainty in her quiet voice. She was right, and by her expression she had not been sure that was the answer. In years past the students taught me these two styles. Now the knowledge is slipping away.

Sharla, Mesenda, Elmerlynn, Joanalynn, Mary May displaying their completed dokoahs en ruk thatch panel.

In the past the spelling for weaving thatch has been communicated to me as being doakoahs. The dictionary indicates that the spelling is dokoahs. As the orthography is phonetic and sounds are consistent with spellings, the difference will likely be a pronunciation difference. English is not phonetic and holds spelling paramount over reflecting pronunciation or dialectical differences. Spelling is rigid, pronunciation is flexible. On Pohnpei pronunciation is paramount over spelling. Pronunciation is fixed for a given locality and the spelling is flexible. There is no one singular orthography, there are orthographies. 

Joana and Drewnida

Well ahead of class I retrieved a branch of Ixora casei from behind the gym. This was complicated by the downed Falcataria falcata from a storm last April. This proved to be prescient and useful as I could then carve my dok at my desk. Ketieu works very well as a dok when properly carved. Stiff, hard, and resistant to blunting. 

Berkarihna

Berkarihna named dokoahs en Ruk and dokoahs en Pohnpei, the two styles. No student attempted dokoahs en Pohnpei. 

Mesenda works with Joanalynn

Sharla removes the nohk for Mesenda. Reenomilyn at the left observes.

Ivan

Devron

Shaquille

Jordan

Joanalynn and Sharla

Teamwork helps keep the lower or backside aligned

Mary May assists Elmerlynn and Sharla, Cassandra and Reenomilyn in the background.

The weather was beautiful and having the materials at maintenance helped. The early prep of the doak worked out nicely. And while the bundle size was smaller than a decade ago, back then we threw out a lot of leaflets. The smaller bundle was good enough. The real plus this term was having five small machetes available. Those were, unexpectedly, in the faculty closet 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plotting polar coordinates in Desmos and a vector addition demonstrator

Image
In an earlier post I noted that Desmos did not directly plot polar coordinates. Not only was I incorrect, but Desmos responded to my blog to correct me! Although I had at some point seen that one could define a function f(x)=3x+5 and then have Desmos calculate f(6), I had not absorbed how this might be used to plot polar coordinates. The above works beautifully . Realizing that I could effectively program Desmos, I applied this thinking to demonstrating how to add two vectors when given the magnitudes m and the direction angles theta. The graph calculates the i and j components for the two vectors and then adds the vectors, graphically displaying the result while also providing information on the magnitude and direction of the vector sum. m1 and theta1 are the magnitude and direction angle for one of the two vectors, m2 and theta2 are the magnitude and direction for the other vector. All four are dynamically interactive and can be changed. The diagram purports to illustra
Read more

Setting up a boxplot chart in Google Sheets with multiple boxplots on a single chart

Image
The  Google Statistics  add-on for Google Sheets can display multiple boxplots in a single chart. The key is the layout of the data. One column should be the variable by which the data is to be grouped, the other column should be the data to be box plotted. Set up the Statistics add-on with the data to be plotted as the variable, and the grouping column as the "by" variable. In this image I had deselected all but the boxplot option, the result was the appearance of the Moment, Standard errors, and Confidence intervals options. The default is apparently a 95% confidence interval for the mean. The result is multiple boxplots on a single chart with a common scale. The new tab that is created also quotes 95% confidence intervals for the mean. Note that as of 2018 the Google Statistics add-on cannot be found by search in the add-ons. In addition, as of May 2018 the add-on no longer verifies, possibly due to the add-on not having been updated since August 2017. One may ha
Read more

Traditional food dishes of Micronesia

Image
Clara, Jennette, and Joanie presented ground hard taro cooked in an umw, effectively a hot rock oven. Pohnpeian: rotama. Pingelapese: sero. Mwoakillese: rodma. Mortlockese: Amahd. Kosrae: rodoma. After cooking in an umw the rotama is pounded with the petiole of a palm frond. Rotama is made from hard or swamp taro, known as mwahng on Pohnpei, mweian on Pingalap, pula in Mortlockese, and pahsruhk on Kosrae. In traditional times on the outer islands the women had primary responsibility for tending the taro while the men handled fishing and climbing tasks. Joesen and Noeleen presented fermented breadfruit from the outer islands of Yap such as Woleai and Eauripik. The raw ingredients were actually brought in from Yap, Noeleen prepared the maare.  The leaf wrap is ti leaf - Cordyline fruticosa. Pauleen, Barnson, Trisha, Verginia, Con-ray, and Maylanda from Kitti, Pohnpei brought in mahi umw, koahpnoair koakihr, and uht sukusuk. Above is breadfruit umw, mahi umw, one o
Read more