2019 Life Logs, Day 283: James, Lumpy, and Cool Beans
Date: Thursday, October 10, 2019
Weather: Overcast, Rainy, and Windy; High 58, Low 54 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage. East Falmouth, MA
Do days ever go as planned? I thought I would spend my morning and early afternoon working on my Voyage of Windbird presentation, but I never got there. As my good friend Lynne Kirwin always reminds me, “We make plans, then life happens.” Yes, it does. I ended up spending my time finalizing the plans for a Newcomers Teacher Group field trip to New Bedford and getting that information out to people which took much more time than I anticipated. But I did get that done and am looking forward to the historic tour of “The City That Lit the World” . . . New Bedford, Massachusetts. In the late 1800’s, it was the whaling capitol of the world as well as a center of manufacturing, especially the textile industry. Much has changed since then, but New Bedford is still ranked as America’s #1 commercial fishing port. I look forward to the tour on October 29th.
In the afternoon, I attended a Technology Tips learning session focused on Dropbox, hurried home to have dinner, and then attended the evening Newcomers General Meeting featuring Greg Skomal. Greg has studied Cape Cod sharks for 30 years and after tonight’s presentation I can see why he is sought out as ‘the North Atlantic’s go-to-guy for separating fact from fiction about white sharks.” He shared a visual tonight that showed the movement of three great sharks that spend the tourist season with us here on Cape Cod and it was fascinating to learn that the three sharks have completely different favorite places.
A great white that they have named James hangs out near Chatham, whereas Lumpy prefers Monomoy, and Cool Beans travels the full length of the Outer Cape all the way up to Provincetown and then does down the Cape Cod Bay side of the Outer Cape down to Wellfleet. If you are not from Massachusetts, the names of those places won’t mean anything to you, but the idea is that the research is identifying patterns. The end goal is to try and learn enough about the travel patterns of the great whites to help people learn how to live with these creatures as our neighbors. Not an inviting thought, but Greg makes you want to learn more. Kudos to friend Karen Baranowski who arranged for tonight’s presentation.
As there is no school tomorrow or Monday, Heather and family left this afternoon for a long weekend in Boothbay, Maine with Jed’s mother, Marti. Thankfully for them, the weather in Boothbay looks better than here, so hopefully they will have a wonderful fall weekend. The nor’easter we are experiencing here will stay with us through tomorrow and part of Saturday. So, I do plan to spend both days inside finishing that Voyage of Windbird presentation.
