by Judy Handley | Mar 16, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 75: Philosophical Kind of Day
Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Weather: Partly Cloudy, Still Cold; High 33, Low, 29 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
My morning was spent chasing down a Covid 19 test. I thought I could just go to the Urgent Care Center and get a Rapid Test, but not so if you have symptoms. I ended up getting a test at CVS at noon, but not a Rapid Test. I will not have the results for a day or two. I still have cold symptoms, no better but no worse than last night—which is whole lot better than yesterday morning. Where in the world did I get exposed to cold germs? At least, I hope it only a cold. For the past week, I have seen very few people and none of them have a cold or Covid, at least not that they are aware of. I have mostly been sitting at my dining room table writing.
And while I was sitting at my dining room table writing this afternoon, I found myself writing with tears streaming down my face. During the last four days of Windbird’s twenty-two day passage to the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, we were part of a radio net support team for a boat that was having a serious medical emergency. The boat was Procyon and Sheri and Randy had become friends. They were much younger than us, but we had immediately liked them when we met in Panama and again in the Galapagos. Randy was in his forties and had been in the Coast Guard. He was the most fit of all of the cruisers we had met. At least he looked the most fit. But he had suffered a back injury a few years prior and had taken too many pain relievers. He had to be air-lifted from the Galapagos back to mainland Ecuador to have surgery to remove stomach ulcers and then on the passage to the Marquesas he fell on his back on deck while making a sail change. That fall resulted in the medical emergency. Within 24 hours, he could eat or drink anything and was in so much pain he could hardly move. Over the next four days, the radio net we were a part of, worked with Sheri trying to support her. It finally became evident that we had to take action. A doctor on our radio net had been talking with Sheri three times a day, but he agreed something had to be done. I sent emails to four boats that I knew were already in the Marquesas. They sent emails to other boats. Other boats with doctors aboard got involved. Boats hundreds of miles apart on the longest passage in the world with no land to be found were willing to do whatever necessary to help. One sailing doctor that was already in the Marquesas went to shore to a hospital and got a French doctor there involved. He contacted the French Navy and found a cargo ship that could divert to pick up Randy and take him to Tahiti to a major hospital. Two boats from Norway that none of us had ever met were closest to Procyon and they went to sail on either side of Sheri. With all three boats on auto pilot. they could do watches for her while she slept. The reason for the streaming tears was reading about the outpouring of support given to Sheri and Randy from people who did not even know them. On land, I have never experienced a community quite so willing to take huge risks for one another. I miss that sailing community. I don’t mean that I don’t have wonderfully supportive friends, it is just that I don’t see most people taking the time to stop and help someone they don’t know that is in need. This is when things get philosophical. What makes one community more caring than another? Why could we walk through any little village in the South Pacific and have people invite us into their homes to have tea and food when they had never seen us before? They had nothing, but wanted to share what they had out of a sense of humanity. Back in New Hampshire, I didn’t know my neighbors, and no one had ever invited me in as I walked by their home. My mind kept going this afternoon. Why? Why? Why? Then, out of the blue, tonight my daughter-in-law Jo sent me a link to a song by a female duo called Mamuse. I had never heard of Mamuse, but I loved their music, especially the words to the one song Jo had sent to me called “We Shall Be Known.” To me, it fit so perfectly with my thoughts while writing and finishing another Chapter in the Voyage of Windbird, as well as with the times we are going through trying to find our way out of this pandemic. I know. I am not usually this philosophical. But this was just one of those days.
“We shall be known by the company we keep
By the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
The seeds of change, alive from deep within the earth
It is time now, it is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love”
Lyrics by K. Longaker, performed by Mamuse.
by Judy Handley | Mar 15, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 74: Two Times Cold
Date: Monday, March 15, 2021
Weather: Partly Cloudy, Windy, and Cold; High 28, Low, 18 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It is not only winter-time cold outside, I woke up this morning with cold symptoms. I felt fine, I just had sinus drainage and a runny nose. I think this is an allergy-related sinus issue rather than a cold, but what started the allergic reaction? This has happened to me in the past, and in each case, the next day I woke up symptom free. So, I’m hoping for that. But in any case, I will go get a Covid rapid test in the morning to eliminate that possibility. In the meantime, I asked Jed to pick up Ollie today. If it is Covid or just a cold, I don’t want to pass either on to him as he is already dealing with Lyme disease. His little body immune system doesn’t need a second assault.
And the weather outside is frightfully cold for mid-March. It was in the teens last night and did not get above freezing today. As I write this log, it is 24 degrees F outside but feels like 13 degrees according to Weather Underground. That is due to the wind from the north. Tomorrow will be a little warmer and then Wednesday and Thursday we will have time temps in the 40’s before it cools off again for the weekend. I’m hoping the forecast for next week with highs in the 50’s and lows above freezing is correct. The first day of spring arrives on Saturday and I’m ready for a little warmth.
In my writing, I made it half-way to the Marquesas Islands today. Hopefully I can complete the chapter on the twenty-one day passage from the Galapagos to the Marquesas tomorrow and maybe even begin the next chapter about our Marquesas visit. After spending a week writing about our time in the Galapagos, today’s progress was encouraging.
I made a couple of corrections to last night’s log online but should set things straight here as well. First of all, my lack of knowledge of football was made blatantly clear when I misquoted Dr. Fauci. Don’t spike the ball before you reach the end zone, not the in-zone as I wrote. And I misunderstood what Heather had said about the date for sending all Falmouth students back to the classroom full time. The return date is April 28th, after the week of spring vacation, not the 1st of April. That gives teachers almost five to six weeks to prepare, not just two weeks. I still worry that we are moving too fast, but I do understand how important it is to get students back to school. I just want it done in a way that is safe for all.
by Judy Handley | Mar 14, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 73: Too Slow, Too Fast
Date: Sunday, March 14, 2021
Weather: Partly Sunny and Windy; High 47, Low, 17 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I did it. I completed my book chapter on the 5+ weeks Windbird spent in the Galapagos Islands.
And I completed my food jigsaw puzzle—artichokes, peach halves, kiwi, arugula, spinach, and pink Peruvian lilies (Alstroemeria, only the roots are edible once cooked). The puzzle has been on my dining table for two months, so it was definitely time to finish it. It is beautiful, but I am ready to move on to a new puzzle. On both projects, Chapter 10 of my book and the puzzle, I was moving a snail’s pace. Maybe the writing will go faster on the passage to the Marquesas Islands. We were in the Galapagos for 38 days, but the passage took only 21 days and we saw almost nothing along the way. There will be the story about running over a sleeping female sperm whale, but otherwise, I remember it as a calm passage without much drama. When I go back and read the logs from that time, I might find out differently.
So, I have been moving too slow, and I think Governor Charlie Baker is moving too fast. Heather stopped by late this afternoon to deliver some packages of mine that were delivered to her house and she told me that as of the 28th of April, Jonah and Sam, and all Falmouth students, will be returning to school full-time. I wanted to call Governor Baker and sing the old Simon and Garfunkel song “Feelin’ Groovy” to him. If you remember, the song begins with the words, “Slow down, you move too fast.” Since September, pre-school through fourth graders have been in school full-time, but all other grades have only been in school four days a week, every other week. The rest of the time, they are remote. It has not been perfect, but the virus transmission rate has been very low. Now, in just six weeks, all students will be back in school full time. Teachers, who have just been elevated to essential worker status, might not all be vaccinated. I can’t imagine this is going to go well. If I ran the world, I would have added one grade at a time or just left things as they are until next fall. I remember last spring when all of us were very unhappy with remote learning. It has its good and its bad. But under the current system in Falmouth, coronavirus cases have been kept in control. When Sam and Jonah heard the news that they would be going back full-time they didn’t understand why they couldn’t do part of their schooling remotely. Many adults are having the same reaction to going back to work in their offices full-time. It is going to be very interesting to see how we handle this transition as a nation. And about going more slowly, I heard Dr. Anthony Fauci say today, “You don’t spike the football on the 5-yard line. You wait until you are in the end zone.” Great advice.
by Judy Handley | Mar 13, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 72: Writing, Writing, and Writing
Date: Saturday, March 13, 2021
Weather: Sunny and Windy; High 47, Low, 33 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It was a sunny day, but when I went out to take Shadow for a late morning walk, I wanted to turn around and go back inside. The wind was blowing and it felt freezing to me. We completed only half our normal walk and saved the other half for later in the afternoon when I would wear something warmer. Those two walks and two short phone calls were the extent of my day other than my writing, writing, and writing. Oh, I also took an hour break late afternoon to watch the IMAX video on the Galapagos. Yes, I am still in the Galapagos, but should be on my way to French Polynesia by Monday. And I have a correction to make. Last Monday I wrote in my log that we spent 30 days in the Galapagos, but today I realized it was 38 days. We had a six-week permit and because of another transmission issue, we almost stayed the entire time. When we arrived in the Galapagos, the anchorage was filled with world cruisers. By the time we left on the 22nd of April, there was only one other sailboat in the anchorage, and they followed us out. There was a reason people had moved on and that was because you have to go all the way across the South Pacific and get south to New Zealand, north to the Marshall Islands, or to Queensland in Australia before the cyclone season begins in November. You have to keep moving because, depending on your final destination, there are about 7,000 to 8,000 miles of ocean and beautiful islands to see in a very few months.
I stopped to watch the Galapagos video because I was writing about our experience exploring the Sierra Negra volcano on Isabella Island. That day rates in my top experiences of all the things we did around the world. Heather and Jed had flown to the Galapagos to tour with us and we were anchored off Isabella Island. We had read that if went to the café on the main dirt street in the town of Puerto Villamil, the owner would arrange a tour of the volcano for you. We did that and by chance our tour guide was a young man, probably in his forties, named Mathias Espinosa. What a piece of luck that was! He was a fabulous guide. His father was a geology professor in Quito in mainland Ecuador and Mathias had grown up with a geologist’s appreciation of the earth. I read online today, “When Mathias came to the Galapagos in the late 80’s, he fell in love with the raw and untouched beauty of the Enchanted Islands and decided to make the Galapagos his life’s work and passion.” By the time we met him in 2006, he had probably been in the islands for twenty years. He was a dive master and had made a living doing that on Santa Cruz Island which is the tourist hub until he ‘retired’ to Isabella where we met him. He told us he was working with the BBC on a movie about the Galapagos, but he did not tell us he had been the featured naturalist guide in a 1999 IMAX film on the islands. All of that experience was wrapped into one person and we were the recipients of his vast knowledge. And that was just one day of the thirty-eight days we spent in the Galapagos. I have struggled to compress all of the experiences there into one chapter of The Voyage of Windbird. But I am hopeful that I will finish that chapter tomorrow.
by Judy Handley | Mar 12, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 71: The List
Date: Friday, March 12, 2021
Weather: Partly Cloudy and Windy; High 63, Low, 29 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
If you were a common woman living in the beginning of the first century, your daily ‘to do’ list might look something like this.
Haul water.
Card flax.
Spin thread.
Weave clothes.
Mend sandals.
Make soap.
Pummel wheat.
Collect dung.
Prepare food.
Milk goats.
Feed men.
Feed babies.
Feed animals.
Tend children.
Sweep dirt floors.
Empty waste pots.
Are you tired yet? This list is from a book I am currently reading entitled The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. Heather gave me her copy of the book for my birthday. It is a novel about a woman named Ana, who, in this book, is the wife of Jesus. I am sure this offends many people, but the author did meticulous research into life during that period and the book is mostly about the life of this woman who was the wife of Jesus, not about Jesus himself. I find it a fascinating look into the life of a woman who struggles to realize her life’s dreams and am loving this book. From the background that I have read, the Sue Monk Kidd has stated that she did not want to offend with this story. In an author’s note she writes, “I am deeply and reverentially aware that Jesus is a figure to whom millions of people are devoted. His impact on the history of Western civilization is incomparable.”
I am not offended and look forward to taking Jonah, and sometimes Ollie, to the skatepark in the afternoon so I get in a little extra reading time. Reading Ana’s ‘list’ today, I thought about my daily list versus hers. We no longer have to haul water, weave clothes, or repair sandals. But we do need to feed whoever is in our household, feed animals if we have them, tend children, and sweep floors. My daily list changes with the seasons, but right now it revolves around writing. It goes something like: take Shadow outside to go ‘potty’, read the NYT The Morning online and work the mini-crossword puzzle, prepare and eat breakfast, read and answer emails, write, take Shadow out, write, prepare and eat lunch, write, pick up Ollie and ‘tend’ to grandchildren at the skatepark, come home, take Shadow out, write, prepare and eat dinner, write some more, watch cable television while riding my exercise bike and writing my log, take Shadow out, go to bed. Obviously, writing is the center of my world right now. Oops, I forgot to sweep the floor! What’s on your daily list?
