by Judy Handley | Jul 18, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 199: Mingle and Mix at the Woodin’s
Date: Friday, July 18, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 80, Low 61 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
I spent my morning getting a little Excel tutorial from my friend Sue Gilbert. And while I was at her house, I got to meet Brian and Nadia’s new baby, Sequoia. She was a preemie, but now at four months, she has caught up. And what a beautiful four-month-old!
Then this afternoon, I headed to Bruce and Jane Woodin’s for an Encore Mingle and Mix. We gathered at 5 pm and enjoyed the summer evening together on the Woodin’s deck, with some escapees who sat out on the lawn. It was a lovely evening. Thank you to Bruce and Jane.
by Judy Handley | Jul 17, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 198: One Million Rising, Making Good Trouble, Lyme Disease
Date: Thursday, July 17, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 80, Low 69 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
One Million Rising, Making Good Trouble, and Lyme Disease … What do these things have in common? The answer is me. I attended the One Million Rising Zoom class last night, I went to the Making Good Trouble rally at the Bourne Bridge rotary late afternoon today, and this morning I found out that the inevitable finally happened. I tested positive for Lyme disease.
I’ll start with the bad news first. I live on Cape Cod where the chances of getting Lyme disease are extremely high. I have a dog that is protected against Lyme, but who probably carries little tick friends into the house all the time. I try to be careful, but I don’t use any tick repellent. So I finally have Lyme disease. Last Thursday, I discovered a tick attached to my lower abdomen area. The next day I discovered two huge red circles on my upper leg and lower abdomen where I had removed the tick. I went to Urgent Care on Friday afternoon and since I had been in one month prior with another tick ‘incident’, they decided it was time to do a tick panel. This is a blood test that shows what tick borne disease you might have. The final results are not in yet, but I tested negative for everything except Borrelia, common called Lyme disease. I have been on doxycycline since last Friday and will find out next steps once the full panel results are in.
Last night I joined 20,000 people on a Zoom call and another 80,000 on YouTube and other streaming options for the first of three classes to teach us how to build the number of people actively resisting what is happening to our democracy. It is called One Million Rising and is sponsored by Indivisible. More than 5,000 of us that watched last night pledged to hold face-to-face training meetings in our towns. The next class is on the 30th and then I’ll be ready to host classes here in Falmouth.
This afternoon I tuned into the weekly Indivisible Zoom meeting which included a guest speaker, Erica Chenowith. She is an American political scientist, a professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a brilliant strategist. She says the first step in getting the whole of society working towards democracy is to figure out how to get people to show up. Like other experts I hear, she says building the ranks with people who are willing to show up is the first step. How we do that is through initiatives like One Million Rising.
And then this evening, I showed up. I went to a Good Trouble rally at the Bourne Bridge rotary. I’ll talk more about that in tomorrow’s log.
by Judy Handley | Jul 16, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 197: A Trip or Two to Mattapoisett
Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny, AC Weather; High Temp 79, Low 72 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
I was not going to confess, but I made two trips to Mattapoisett today. One to get the pin that I got shortened a couple of weeks ago cut to even shorter. And a second trip to get something I left in Peter’s shop. Thankfully there was no traffic.
Peter the is the man I met this spring that helped me with my search for a boom for Ardenna and who ‘mended’ the spreader that had split, and then shortened a pin needed to attach the new boom to Ardenna’s mast. He did exactly what he was asked to do the first time, but when Heather and Jed got the piece attached to the mast, the pin was still too long. Today, as per Jed’s directions, I asked Peter to cut off the equivalent length of 7 washers stacked one on top of the other and redrill a hole in the pin near the bottom. He then proceeded to show me how to measure those lengths with two different kinds of calipers.
I know that doesn’t sound very exciting, but I really enjoyed learning about all of the different pieces of equipment while chatting with Peter about the state of the world.
Peter and his wife Jody finally got their sailboat in the water since the last time I was there. It is on a mooring in Mattapoisett Harbor. Peter reported that they ride their bikes to the harbor, sail or row their dinghy out to the boat, and never use the motor, not even to get off the mooring. Hard core sailors and environment advocates!
I returned home to a very hot house. We are once again having weather that requires air conditioning to be comfortable. So, I caved and turned on the little window air conditioner again.
by Judy Handley | Jul 15, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 196: Truth Brigade Indivisible
Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny, Warmer; High Temp 79, Low 69 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Today I discovered a ne part of Indivisible, the Indivisible Truth Brigade that I want to share with you. If you want to learn more, just go to https://indivisible.org/campaign/truth-brigade
.
What is the Indivisible Truth Brigade?
We are an ever-growing community of grassroots truth-tellers who effectively disrupt the flow of disinformation and misinformation online and offline. We do this by strategically writing and sharing powerful, personal, and unified counter-messages to the most damaging and destabilizing lies. We track our impact, learn, make adjustments and do it again–and again–together, to reclaim a civil society built on the shared value of the pursuit of objective truths.
I loved today’s Truth Brigade message:
DISSENT is Patriotic when …
Voices are silenced.
Neighbors are vilified.
Immigrants are dehumanized.
When science is attacked.
When war is reckless.
The weather once again defied the forecast of partly cloudy. It was another gloriously sunny afternoon. I spent most of the afternoon in an Encore meeting, but before and after, I was outside with Shadow.
by Judy Handley | Jul 14, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 195: Lost One, Gained One
Date: Monday, July 14, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny, Warmer; High Temp 76, Low 70 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Early this morning, I drove Claire to the Sagamore Park ‘n Ride to catch the bus to Boston Logan. She was flying to Toronto to spend the next four weeks with her parents who live in the city. Her only sibling, a sister, moved to Toronto with her family last summer, so Claire will be spending time with them as well before returning to Mexico. Kevin stayed in Mexico to work on the boat this summer. I truly missed getting my yearly dose of Kevin, but hopefully they will both be back next year. I consider Kevin and Claire a part of my extended family. It was wonderful having Claire for a few days, but at 8:35 am this morning when she got on that bus, I lost one family member for now.
But then tonight, I gained back one family member when Sam arrived home from his European adventure. He, along with friends Robert and Ethan, left 21 days ago. Jonah and I were the only ones home when he arrived tonight as Heather and Jed were both at meetings. It was so great to see him.
He was excited and talked non-stop to Jonah and I for almost an hour telling us some of the highlights of the trip. I can’t wait to hear more.
by Judy Handley | Jul 13, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 193: Not Feeling Like July
Date: Saturday, July 12, 2025
Weather: Partly Cloudy; High Temp 69, Low 63 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
The last four days have not felt like July on Cape Cod. It has been overcast and misty with very little sunshine. Not your typical beach days. I expect June to be like this, and a day or two here and there in July. But not four days in a row. And looking at the forecast for the next 10 days, there is not one day forecast with full sun. Hopefully the projected partly sunny days will be more sun than clouds for those of us who love our sunny summer Cape Cod days.
Claire is here to attend a reunion of the Martine Biological Lab’s summer class of 25 years ago. Those attending the reunion weekend were students of science back then, abut are now scattered around the country teaching and researching at various universities or working in one way or another as scientists. They chose to spend their Saturday afternoon together kayaking in Mashpee. So, Claire and I spent a good deal of time in the morning, hauling my kayak from under the house and getting it cleaned up and ready to go. We both searched and searched but could not find the back of the kayak seat anywhere, so we went to Heather and Jed’s and searched their garage for something to use as a substitute. A folding camp seat did just the trick, so off went Claire. When she returned from the kayaking adventure, she then went to Woods Hole to spend the evening with her former classmates. Tomorrow, each of the ‘graduates’ present a talk to this year’s students, and Claire wrangled an invitation for me!
