2021 Life Logs, Day 265: It’s Officially Fall
Date: Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds; High Temp 76, Low Temp 68 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Tweet from the National Weather Service: “It’s officially Fall!!! The Fall/Autumnal Equinox was today at 3:20pm EDT. This marks the time when the day-to-night line, called the terminator, is perfectly vertical from pole to pole and the sun is directly over the equator.” There you have it. Now we just have to wait for Winter Solstice for the days to begin getting longer once again.
My celebration of the equinox began with a walk in the woods with my friend Olga and Shadow. Then mid-afternoon, I tuned into a Woodwell Climate Research Center webinar entitled “Internalizing risk: What 1.5 degrees C (and beyond) looks like.” I found each of the four panel members engaging and the moderator was fabulous. (Disclosure—The moderator was my daughter Heather, and I am definitely not biased.) Seriously, I learned so much. Alison Smart from Probable Futures shared their world map that depicts temperature rises that are predicted if the average world temperature rises 1.5 degrees C or more. The hope is that planners can use this tool to make informed decisions. A woman named Wendy Cromwell from Wellington Management talked about how her company is partnering with Woodwell to learn more about climate change and are then using this information to help the financial world to make sustainable investments. Helen Adams, head of Science Engagement for COP26 (Conference of the Parties), helped us look forward to the next major UN climate change conference. The meeting in November of this year will be the 26th meeting of this group of nations, thus called COP26. The final member of the panel was Christopher Schwalm, Risk Program Director at Woodwell. The next webinar takes place in two weeks on October 6 and is entitled, “Tipping Points: Is There a Point of No Return?” If you are interested, you can go to Woodwellclimate.org to learn more.
Staying in the learning mode, tonight I tuned into another Zoom sponsored by libraries across the state in collaboration with the Library of Congress and the National Book Festival 2021. This included a recorded video of an interview with Isabel Wilkerson discussing her book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The following conversation was facilitated by civil rights advocate Byron Rushing and Professor Roopika Risam. I was so glad I participated in this. I am not quite finished reading the book, but I am hoping to find a local group that would like to get together to have our own conversation about this book.
In between all of this, I did a little bit of gardening. Little bit by little bit, I’ll get it done. But I am taking tomorrow off and going to the beach!
