by Judy Handley | Sep 22, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
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!
by Judy Handley | Sep 21, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 264: Scattered
Date: Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Weather: Another Beautiful Day; High Temp 75, Low Temp 66 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Today was supposed to be all about gardening, and gardening did get done, but the day ended up a bit scattered. Not that scattered is bad, but the amount of gardening that needed to be done is still on the ‘to do’ list. A member of my book club named Lori, along with her husband John, came over as planned at 10:30 am. We spent almost two hours picking each other’s brain to get at our best tips for gardening. I think Lori has always grown perennials in her yard, but John started vegetable gardening in retirement and is full of enthusiasm. I saw the beginnings of John’s raised beds in April at one of our book club meetings, but now I want to return to see the end result of this summer’s bounty. It is great to find people who have the same interest in gardening that I do, and I look forward to more sharing.
After Lori and John left, I ate lunch and then Shadow and I went outside where I worked on cleaning up the raised beds while Shadow watched. I had hoped to get all three beds cleaned out and ready for fall planting. I did send a text to Heather offering to take Jonah to soccer practice if needed. The message that I got back was not that they needed me to take Jonah to soccer practice, but rather that he would probably not be going because they had been contacted to tell them that he had been exposed to someone with Covid today at school. So now they are dealing with trying to get to the cause of Sam’s ankle problem and figuring out how to deal with Jonah’s exposure. Plus yesterday at recess and split his ‘. Then he hit his lip on his bike handlebars today and resplit it. It is so swollen he can’t eat. Ugh. Nothing I can do about that, however, or about Sam’s ankle, but it did bring up the fact that none of us had purchased any Covid rapid tests. And as I read in the New York Times yesterday, there are very few rapid tests available for purchase in the whole country. I dropped gardening and started a hunt for rapid tests which took the rest of the afternoon. But I was successful in finding 6 test kits. There were none available in Falmouth or Hyannis, at least not that I could find, but I did find the 6 in Mashpee. When I got home, I talked to my sister in North Carolina and found that two people in her assisted living facility have Covid and she is in lockdown. Plus, my nephew’s wife found out today that she has Covid and other family members have been exposed. All have been vaccinated, but the Delta variant doesn’t seem to care. I am so disappointed that we are back to this point again.
When I got home from my Covid rapid test search, I took Shadow for his long walk of the day, fixed dinner, and watched a Woods Hole Oceanographic (WHOI) webinar on the ocean twilight zone and the role it plays in climate change. It was a great conversation. Something the President of WHOI, Peter de Menocal said really stuck with me. “Science isn’t completed until it is communicated.” And tonight the panel did a great job of communicating the importance of the ocean in each of our lives. It was pointed out that this is UN Climate Week, and we got to see some of the light show being projected on the UN building each night this week. 
A deep-sea luminescent creature from the twilight zone called a siphonophore is a crucial agent of carbon removal from the atmosphere. Its beautiful dance is what is being projected. Really beautiful.
Last, but not least, I labeled each of the jars of marinara sauce that are now ready to be delivered to Heather and Jed’s. 
Like I said, it was a scattered day from new gardening friends to tomatoes to Covid issues to siphonophores.
by Judy Handley | Sep 20, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 263: Happy Birthday to Shadow
Date: Monday, September 20, 2021
Weather: Beautiful Day; High Temp 72, Low Temp 51 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Tonight we celebrate the full September Harvest Moon AND Sir Shadow’s second birthday. His present form me was a trip to the Pampered Paws ‘dog spa’ to get shampooed and groomed. I dropped him off just after 9 am and headed on across the bridge to the world on the other side. When you live on Cape Cod, crossing one of the two bridges to mainland Massachusetts truly feels to me like entering another reality. I drove an hour north to Newbridge on the Charles in Dedham for a short visit with friends Helaine and Alan Kanegsberg. We spent an hour catching up on life. The biggest revelation for me was that their only grandchild, Torston, is a senior in high school. Torston lives in Reno, Nevada, and I can remember when Alan and Helaine used to call him on Skype to read books together when he was in early elementary school. Time surely does pass quickly.
After visiting for an hour with the Kanegsbergs, I drove to a different part of Dedham to have lunch with my niece Candi. That was the main reason for my trip today. I wanted to visit with Candi and deliver a gift for her upcoming grandchild. Her daughter Amy is due to have a little boy in October. We ate at a place called CAVA that neither of us had ever heard of and it was great. It is a casual fast food chain restaurant serving Mediterranean food. I got a Greek salad with falafels and Candi got the same with chicken. It was so yummy.
I had planned to do some shopping, but just as we were getting up to leave, I got the text saying Shadow was ready to go. So I headed back to the Cape to pick him up and spend some time walking and playing with him. Karen Baranowski came over to deliver some steamers that Peter had bought and wanted to share. Lucky me. And I got Karen to take some birthday photos of me and my Shadow. Then I took more photos while we were playing fetch. He runs so hard and fast that his tongue is always hanging out when he plays. Very cute. Happy birthday to that furry, rambunctious, wild two-year old that I share my life with these days. Don’t know what I’d do without him.
I am listening to the last canner load of marinara sauce jiggling away in the pressure canner. I am going to end up with 57 pints from the 120 pounds of tomatoes. I have one more batch of tomatoes in the garden that are just about ready to pick and process. Then that will be the end of tomato processing for this year. Tomorrow is reserved as gardening day. I have tried to find time to plant arugula and kale for the fall for weeks. Tomorrow is the day!
by Judy Handley | Sep 19, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 262: ‘Fun Guys’ Popping Up All Over
Date: Sunday, September 19, 2021
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds; High Temp 70, Low Temp 53 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I love to refer to fungi as ‘fun guys’. The plural of fungus is fungi or funguses ‘Fun guys’ sure sounds better than funguses to me and it is just more fun to say it that way. I suppose due to the recent amount of rainfall, ‘fun guys’ are popping up all over the place in my yard and in the woods and along the road in my neighborhood where I walk with Shadow. It is a bit like watching spring flowers bloom. But are fungi plants? Well, no. Are they animals? Definitely not. They are in a Kingdom all to themselves . . . plants, animals, protists, monera, and fungi. Some of the ‘fun guys’ that have popped up cause me to do a little step around dance while taking Shadow out for a potty break in the woods. 
Some look like wooden flowers. Some look like pancakes. Others look like little troll hats. Some hide in the leaves and others grow boldly in the open like the little red ones that seem to be everywhere right now. So just as I appreciate the flowers that appear in the woods around the time of the spring equinox, I am learning to appreciate the ‘fun guys’ that are coming with the fall equinox this year.
I am once again writing this log while listening to the jiggling of the pressure regulator on the canner. I finished turning the second 60 pounds of tomatoes into marinara sauce today and am now in the process of canning. I won’t have time to complete canning it all tonight, but the remaining sauce can wait in the refrigerator until tomorrow night.
Tomorrow is a busy one for me. I take Shadow to the groomer which is up by the Bourne Bridge early tomorrow morning. I am then going to continue driving toward Boston. I plan to stop to have tea with the Kanegsberg’s before having lunch with my niece Candi. If time allows, I will do a quick Whole Foods and Costco run before returning to the Cape to pick up Shadow in the afternoon.
Speaking of Shadow, we had our second e-collar class today. These collars used to be called shock collars, but technology and positive training methods have improved and now most people refer to the remotely controlled collars as e-collars. When I attended the first training, I came home and followed the directions for training Shadow. On the first correction, he fell to the floor and yelped. The setting was exactly the same as it had been two hours earlier in the class where he had reacted positively for me and for the trainer. But it was such a strong reaction that I decided to hold off and wait until the second class to try it again. Today in class with Ian, the trainer, he responded beautifully, no falling in the floor and yelping. But when Ian returned him to me, Shadow hung his head and looked totally dejected for the remainder of the class. Ian thinks he is smart enough to be doing these things to ‘train’ me. But Ian also said in his work with Shadow he has come to realize that Shadow is much more emotionally sensitive than most other dogs. I might only need to wear the collar on Shadow and not even turn it on to get the results needed after some initial training. I will work with Ian to continue to learn to use the e-collar to keep Shadow from running into the street and from jumping on people and hope that with enough positive reinforcement I can keep him from dragging his head on the floor to make me feel guilty!
by Judy Handley | Sep 18, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 261: Up to My Elbows in Tomatoes
Date: Saturday, September 18, 2021
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds; High Temp 73, Low Temp 63 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
In last night’s log, I set a rather ambitious agenda for getting all 120 pounds of tomatoes processed and canned. I am 10 pounds shy of reaching today’s goal, but even with that that I might have been able to get all the tomatoes turned into marinara sauce and canned by the end of tomorrow except that I forgot that I have a dog training class tomorrow. I did get 27 pints canned today and we’ll just have to see how tomorrow goes.
I did take time to go see part of Jonah’s soccer game today. 
He and Sam are camping this weekend with their Scout troop, but they are camping close-by so Heather was able to pick him up and take him to the game. And later in the afternoon I took Shadow for his daily walk. Otherwise, I stood in the kitchen all day long. I love seeing all of the pints of marinara sauce coming out of the pressure canner. But doing 120 pounds all at once is tiring. The problem is that you have to take the tomatoes when they ripen and they all seem to ripen at the same time!
