2020 Life Logs, Day 59: Mt. Kilimanjaro
2020 Life Logs, Day 59: Mt. Kilimanjaro
Date: Friday, February 28, 2020
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Still Windy; High 37 degrees, Low 27 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
No, I’m not planning to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, but I recently met someone who is doing the final ascent to the summit tonight. When I got an email this morning announcing that, it piqued my curiosity and I decided to do a little reading about Kilimanjaro climbs. When I made my Voyage of Windbird presentation to the Bourne Newcomers Lunch and Learn Group, Donna Pascarella, the woman in charge of the event, invited her husband and brother to come. The three of them are leaving in September from Chicago to boat down the Mississippi to the Ohio to the Tennessee River and finally through a waterway that will bring them out into the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile, Alabama, and then on down to the Keys. The brother is the one climbing Kilimanjaro with his youngest son. After the presentation, I asked Donna to keep me posted on the Kilimanjaro climb, so this week she has been forwarding texts sent by her brother. I didn’t really expect to get the day by day account, but I have found it very interesting. What surprised me most was that I knew almost nothing about this mountain. I thought maybe it was the highest peak in Africa, but I didn’t know in what country. Google told me, “Renowned as the highest peak in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro boats exclusive jaw-dropping sceneries, treacherous trails, and the infamous Barranco wall.” The piece I was reading went on to say that there are seven different routes to the top. I did not ask which route Donna’s brother was taking, but when he mentioned in a text earlier in the week that they had successfully climbed the Barranco wall, I looked that up. That narrowed the possibilities to four of routes and from my reading it seems the Lemosho route would be the safest bet for a successful climb to the top and it is also supposed to have the most beautiful path. I’ll be interested to find out which route they did take. And I’ll be sure and let you know if they made the summit.
I spent a good deal of today finishing the ‘just for fun’ book I have been reading so that I can do the reading for my next book club meeting. I have ten days to read The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. On the back of the book, the first review written by Oprah says it kept her up at night reading. If I am going to finish it in time for the book club meeting, I think I will need to read into the nights as well. I’ll start tonight.
Every Friday I get an email from one of my health gurus, Dr. Mark Hyman, listing his five best picks of the week. Today one of those was a research report that outlines some preliminary suggestions for dosage levels of ‘nutraceuticals’, defined as pharmaceutical alternatives that I will just call supplements, that in the words of the research summary, “ . . . might be expected to be worthwhile for controlling RNA viruses.” RNA viruses include the flu and coronavirus. I am going to copy the list of these supplements as well as a link to the research report. It can’t hurt to have this information on hand. Some of the things on the list are things many people already take to avoid colds—zinc and elderberry. Copy this link to see the whole research paper or just look at the list of suggested supplements below.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033062020300372?utm_source=Mark%27s+Picks&utm_campaign=836e435ca8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_03_29_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3eb7466668-836e435ca8-124384525&mc_cid=836e435ca8&mc_eid=18b3097ac1
Ferulic acid 500-1,000 mg
Lipoic acid 1,200-1,800 mg (in place of ferulic acid)
Spirulina 15 g (or 100 mg PCB)
N-Acetylcysteine 1,200–1,800 mg
Selenium 50-100 mcg
Glucosamine 3,000 mg or more
Zinc 30-50 mg
Yeast Beta-Glucan 250-500 mg
Elderberry 600–1,500 mg
The dinner was fabulous with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, roasted veggies, Brussels sprouts slaw, cranberry salad, and the mushroom wellington. And for dessert we had a choice of chocolate pie, pumpkin pie, apple-cranberry pie, or pumpkin cheesecake. I still feel like a stuffed turkey! 
Everyone enjoyed the dinner, especially Ollie who decided he needed a whole turkey drumstick. 
And just a bit ago, I got an email from my daughter-in-law Jo in Puerto Rico sharing their Thanksgiving bounty with me. It is so hard to be apart from family and friends on special holidays, but photos sent across the miles really help.
It is almost as big as him, and the kids enjoyed seeing him at play. At some point in the conversation, Coco was talking about having only two and a half weeks of school after Thanksgiving and that gave me a little jolt. I have been so preoccupied with thinking about getting a puppy and then getting one, that I honestly have not thought about the holidays. So, I spent some of today doing that and then went grocery shopping. And who greeted me at the door of the store but Ollie. He was dressed in his Cub Scout uniform and was passing out donation flyers to shoppers.
The flyer was a list of what could be bought while in the store and then given to the Scouts to be donated to the Falmouth Service Center. As Heather noted on her Facebook page, this is one of her favorite days of the year. Watching the young Scouts working so hard to get donations for people who wouldn’t have a turkey for Thanksgiving without their help. Jonah was taking a bathroom break when I arrived, but he returned just as I entered the store. Heather was with Ollie and Jonah and Jed was with Sam at the Service Center receiving and storing all of the donations. Sam said there were so many frozen turkeys donated that the freezers were overflowing. How wonderful! Heather and gang come over for dinner this evening and the boys got their puppy time. Unfortunately, Shadow had been quiet most of the day, so he was a wild one while they were here. But the boys are learning to deal with him when he has too much energy. They take him outside. Of course, it was dark by this time and one boy would run around the perimeter of the house with a flashlight and another would follow with Shadow leading him on his leash. When the boy have too much energy, we often tell them to go outside and run laps around the house. So they are using that same strategy. Fun to watch!
The historical tour of New Bedford, Massachusetts, today was so very interesting. Every summer many tourists who drive from New York, Connecticut, or Rhode Island to Cape Cod, pass by New Bedford on the highway, but most don’t stop. I have driven to New Bedford to take the Goldpebbles to the Whaling Museum a few times and I have gone to Zeiterion Theater, but I have never driven through the historic streets. I had no idea they were there. I knew that New Bedford was the whaling capitol of the world in the mid-1800’s, but I knew little else. So today was a true eye opener for me.
He was a wealth of information on types of architecture, on the role of the Quakers in establishing the whaling industry while also offering a safe haven for runaway slaves through the Underground Railroad, and the barons of the textile industry. 
We saw the home that is now the New Bedford Historical Society. It is an unremarkable structure with a remarkable history. It was once the home of Nathan and Mary “Polly” Johnson, African-American entrepreneurs, who allowed their home to be used as an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglas and his wife Anna lived in the Johnson home at 21 Seventh Street. Abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, also lived in this house for a period of time.
We saw the home of William Rotch Rodman that was known as the grandest home in New England and visited the the home and gardens of William Rotch, Jr. There were many other stops, but one of our last was at William J. Rotch Gothic Cottage. It is a National Historic Landmark as it was seen as one of the most outstanding examples of American Gothic Revival architecture when it was built. 
The Quaker Rotch family came to New Bedford from Nantucket and were instrumental in establishing the New Bedford whaling industry.
After the film, Park Ranger Rufai Shardow, originally from Ghana, gave us a wonderful overview of the role of slavery, the abolitionists and whaling in New Bedford’s history.
Kevin flew to LA in the wee hours of the morning for a business meeting and will be back in tomorrow morning. So, Claire took Lynne and I on an all day historic tour of old town Philadelphia. According to Lynne’s FitBit, we walked 17,280 steps or 8.15 miles today. Whew! It was quite a walking tour. We hit all of the historic places in old town starting with Ben Franklin’s grave stone in the Christ Church Burial Ground. It is just a huge granite slab covered with pennies that people shower upon it. It was ironic when we ended the day in the Ben Franklin US Post Office. In between those two Ben Franklin landmarks, we walked by the Quaker Meeting House, the US Mint, the National Constitution Center, and the Independence Visitor Center. It was late morning by this time and we wanted to make an appointment to see Independence Hall. We were told that the first reservation available for a tour was at 3 pm, but we had much more we wanted to see, so that time was fine. We walked on to see the Declaration House display and then walked to China Town, and on to visit the Reading Market, one of the largest and oldest public markets in the country. We walked through what is now Macy’s, but was once Wannamaker’. There we saw the largest fully functioning pipe organ in the world as well as the bronze Philadelphia Eagle. We walked in and around the Philadelphia City Hall which is quite an impressive structure, and then we walked on toward Rittenhouse Square which is the heart of the city’s most expensive and exclusive neighborhood. We were all getting hungry but not sure where to eat when Claire literally looked up and saw a sign that said, “Organic Plant-Based Food.” We couldn’t resist and had a great lunch. It was nearing the time of our Independence Hall tour and there just wasn’t enough time to walk back, so Claire called an Uber and we were there in minutes. The Independence Hall tour was definitely the highlight of the day. We had a great guide who showed us the West Wing which served as a Court complete with a juror’s box and a defendant’s box where the defendant had to stand during the trial . . . thus the term ‘stand trial’. In the East Wing we got to see the room where the Founding Fathers wrote both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As we walked back toward the waterfront, we ended our tour by walking through the place where Ben Franklin once lived and visited the US Post Office that bears Franklin’s name. It was a wonderful day.
Sam now plays on a much larger field, so lots of running and harder for me to get close-up photos. But today I got one of Sam throwing the ball in and one kicking the ball.
Even though Jonah was wearing a head band at this coach’s insistence, he’s is still the wild-haired kid on the field. Such a contrast to his good buddy Luke with his black hair.
