by Judy Handley | Apr 6, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 96: April Drizzle
Date: Sunday, April 6, 2025
Weather: Drizzly Off and On All Day, Clearing Late PM; High Temp 48, Low 40 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
It was a very slow Sunday, with April drizzle on and off all day. We seem to be getting our share of April precipitation, so hopefully we will have beautiful May flowers. But in the meantime, it is a bit depressing. After such a full day yesterday, I have very little to report today. Heather left for a work-related few days in Boston late this afternoon. She will return home on Wednesday. Falmouth’s spring Town Meeting is tomorrow night, and Tuesday night if everything does not get done in one night. Jed is a Town Meeting representative, so I will get dinner for Jed and the boys tomorrow evening and probably Tuesday as well. Sam is at a Red Sox game in Boston tonight with his fellow classmates. This is one of their senior trips. Thankfully, Ollie has recovered from his cold, and Jonah is holding his own using just his right arm. All is well here. It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow with no hope of warmer weather until next weekend. But Wednesday is supposed to be sunny. I will look forward to that.
by Judy Handley | Apr 5, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 95: Hands Off Protest in Boston and Evening of Jazz in Falmouth
Date: Saturday, April 5, 2025
Weather: Overcast Am, Rainy PM Starting at Noon; High Temp 45, Low 41 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
What a Day! I left home at 7:45 am to head to Boston with friends Christina and Warren Brodie to attend the Hands Off! protest rally in Boston.
If you read this blog often, you know I wanted to go to DC, but the Boston rally was great. There were thousands of people, all peaceful and joyous, despite our very serious mission. As we walked from the Boston Common to the Boston City Hall, there were cheers of “Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Trump and Musk have got to go.” And that was mixed with a band following along playing a mix of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ with ‘This Land is Your Land’. Shoulder to shoulder, we walked the half mile, albeit VERY slowly with so many people, but with a feeling of solidarity.
I heard from Bruce and Jane Woodin back in Falmouth that there was a great turnout here at home. And when Heather and Ollie were returning from a soccer game in Yarmouth, they sent great video from the rally around the traffic circle in Hyannis. A message at the end of the day from Indivisible said, “Today, millions of Americans flooded the streets (all across the country) to demand an end to Trump’s authoritarian power grab. We expected hundreds of thousands. But at virtually every single event, the crowds eclipsed our estimates.”
Then tonight Jane Woodin accompanied me as my ‘date’ for the Falmouth High School Evening of Jazz at the Coonemessett Inn.
The Falmouth High jazz band is really good. And that is despite the fact that my grandson Jonah could not play his trombone tonight due to his broke arm that is in a sling. But he joined the percussion section tonight keeping beat with various instruments. Great evening.
by Judy Handley | Apr 4, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 94: Happy Anniversary to Justin and Jo
Date: Friday, April 4, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Warm; High Temp 64, Low 42 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
April 4 in 2007 was a Wednesday. It was on that day that Justin and Jo traveled from Venice Beach, where they were living at the time, to stand atop Eagle Rock in the Santa Monica Mountains to be married. Mark and I were New Zealand when Justin wrote and told us he and Jo were going to be married. I think we received that email on April 3. So, we wrote back to tell him how happy we were for him and that if he could let me know the date, we would try to arrange to come home. But then in his return email, he announced that they were married. We didn’t know that when he wrote the first email, he meant they were getting married the next day! Two years later in 2009, Ziggy arrived, and we did travel home from Malaysia to meet him. We had planned to be there for the birth, but Ziggy came a couple of weeks early, so we missed being there on the day of his birth. But we spent a wonderful few weeks in Santa Fe getting to know him. Then three years later, along came Coco. In their eighteen years together, they have added two children, multitudes of dogs and cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, horses, chickens, goats, rabbits, and even a pig. They are now one big happy family living in paradise in Puerto Rico. And they are still madly in love with each other and with life. Happy Anniversary!!!
Then
Now
by Judy Handley | Apr 3, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 93: Dining In with Friends
Date: Thursday April 3, 2025
Weather: Overcast and Rainy; High Temp 52, Low 49 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
We are getting April showers, needed but no fun for a sun lover like me. But rain and cloudy weather is the least of my worries. The whole tariff thing imposed yesterday by Trump makes any bad weather report look like a walk in the park. I wrote to my daughter-in-law’s father that lives in England today that I feel like I am on a roller coaster in a house of horror. And I think much of the world feels the same way.
But tonight, my Dining-In group that has been gathering monthly for eight years now, met and tried our best not to talk about what is happening in this country. We were actually successful until just near the end of the evening. For most of our time together we were successful in focusing on friendship and food. And the food was fabulous. Christina and Warren Brodie hosted tonight and prepared a super spread of toppings to go along with Warren’s Chinese beef brisket. I added Chinese fried rice and Bruce and Jane Woodin brought a fabulous wonton soup. That was preceded by Chinese chicken on a stick brought by Peter and Karen Baranowski as an appetizer. And Midge Frieswyk made fortune cookies from scratch. They were delicious, and I know I have never said that about fortune cookies before. It was a great evening.
by Judy Handley | Apr 2, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 92: On the Computer All Day
Date: Wednesday April 2, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny, Cooler; High Temp 42, Low 37 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
I’m making great progress on the photo project I have been slowly working on since January, but in doing that project I have found other things that needed to be done. I have more days to go, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But today, I did spend my whole day on this. I took breaks to take Shadow out and to go to the grocery store and to eat, but otherwise I sat at the computer from 10 to 8 today.
I’m still reeling from the powerful 25 hour long ‘speech’ given by Cory Booker on the Senate floor. Just the two hours I watched literally changed my life view of the impact one person can make. I’ve always said those words, but now I am seeing them in action. Republican pollster Frank Luntz said of the event to NewsNation, “I want to emphasize what Cory Booker did over the last 24 hours may have changed the course of political history … He struck the kind of tone that grassroots Democrats are looking for. He gave them a reason to fight. He gave them a reason to stand up and say, this is my country too. Of course, every Republican watching will say, this is nonsense. But he is not speaking just to Republicans, he is speaking to Americans, and what I saw over the last 25 hours absolutely blew me away.” Just reading that blew me away.
And today there was another glimmer of hope. Mallory McMorrow who won a race for the Michigan State Senate and has served in that capacity since 2019. Today she announced that she will run for the US Senate next year. She is 38 years and speaks with a very powerful and practical voice for the people. I hope more McMorrow’s keep popping up all over this country to challenge the Maga Republicans in 2026.
by Judy Handley | Apr 1, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 91: Cory Booker
Date: Tuesday April 1, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 53, Low 31 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
This afternoon while I was watching Ollie kayaking in Jones Pond, I was scrolling through today’s unread email. A Substack post written by Falmouth friend Jerry Lanson caught my eye. “Courage in the Congress—Senator Cory Booker Has Been on His Feet for 18 Hours Now and Is Still Making Sense.”
When I got home, I read Jerry’s post and it convinced me to get on YouTube to watch live streaming of Cory Booker, who by this time was 23 hours into his marathon speech on the Senate floor. I am paraphrasing here, but what I heard him saying is that what is happening right now in our country is not a matter of left versus right. It is right versus wrong. And he feels it is the greatest moral issue of our time. “This is our moral moment.” Booker was making sense, and I watched, spellbound, until he ended after more than 25 hours, the longest speech ever given on the Senate floor in our country’s history. I literally couldn’t stop watching because I felt I was watching ‘good’ history being made. Hopefully by now, you have seen some of his speech. And if you haven’t, I encourage you to get online and watch some of it. He was truly inspiring.
So, why did he do this? He says his constituents were pushing him to do ‘something’. He said their letters and emails were telling desperate stories of how the cuts DOGE and the Trump regime are making are affecting them. He did this as his ‘something’ and he said he hopes it will encourage others to do their ‘something’. No one has a magic answer, but as Rachel Maddow says, “If you do nothing, nothing will change.” It is up to each of us to pick our ‘something’ and do it. I am so thankful we have deeply thoughtful politicians like Cory Booker representing us. As he said over and over in his 25-hour speech, he was doing this because he wants people to understand that we are experiencing unordinary actions from our President that require extraordinary actions to fight back. Booker said to remember, “The power of the people is more powerful than the people in power.”
By the way, Happy April 1st. The daffodils in my yard bloomed today which I took as a message of hope. And the other message of hope was that Jonah got a positive report from his doctor at Boston Children’s. The X-rays today showed good progress. So thankful.
