by Judy Handley | May 16, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 136: It Happened
Date: Friday, May 16, 2025
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds; High Temp 69, Low 56 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
So, ICE was spotted in Falmouth yesterday. I wrote about it last night saying we are living in scary times.
Today I went to my Beyond the White House Class, went to the clinic to get a one-day dose of doxycycline to combat the two Deer tick bites I got this week, and tonight went to Encore’s spring social, Margaritaville. We ate fabulous food and danced to the music of a band called Too Much Fun. The whole evening was just that. Too much fun.
When I got home, I looked at my phone and saw Heather had posted something on Facebook. She doesn’t post often, so I checked it out. And it took my breath away. It happened. Today in Falmouth ICE disappeared at least one person in West Falmouth around the corner from where a close friend of Heather’s lives. I won’t reveal names, but I am going to copy what the friend wrote on Facebook, and what another close friend wrote in reaction. I don’t think they will mind that I am ‘borrowing’ their words. I could rewrite the story, but it wouldn’t have the same impact. So, last night I was scared. Tonight, I am terrified and sad and angry. I am not scared or terrified for myself. I am scared and terrified for all immigrants in this country. And if it can happen to them, it can happen to all of us.
Copied from Facebook: Welcome to Hell: Day 116
Today, a man was snatched off the streets of my hometown and disappeared.
This morning, as a young business owner headed out to the first job of his day as a house painter, he was stopped by ICE. They demanded his passport. Then they drove his car to a house on Garrison Road in West Falmouth where he rented the basement. He let them into his home so he could look for it.
As I write this, I can see the street from my window. While I was guzzling coffee and rushing to an early meeting, just a few hundred yards away, someone was taken—without warning, without due process—and ripped from his life.
No sirens. No local police. Just six or seven unmarked cars filled with men wearing black.
I know the owner of the home. She went to Falmouth Academy. She danced at the local Conservatory. Today, she supports mothers of children with disabilities and helps caregivers avoid burnout. She said: “I want people to know this happened. He is not a criminal. And for the first time, I felt afraid. These guys were smug and entitled. They acted above the law. It was terrifying.”
She wants people to know her Brazilian tenant is kind, responsible, and hardworking. He pays taxes. He has a life here with his Serbian girlfriend. No criminal record.
She asked repeatedly to see badges or a warrant. They just smiled—smugly—and refused to show either and closed the car window on her. She said they never even took the passport.
ICE doesn’t care about Massachusetts’ sanctuary status. Under the regime’s latest directive, immigration enforcement has been “harmonized” across all fifty states.
Translation: states’ rights end where federal boots begin. No Miranda. No explanation. Just the execution of power.
He was taken. We don’t know where he is. His phone is offline. The fear is that he is being been moved out of state away from his network of support.
This is the quiet terror of the new normal. It’s not just Texas. It’s not just the border. It’s your neighborhood. Your block. Your neighbor’s tenant.
We must bear witness. We must record what we see. We must resist with all we have before it is too late. The U.S. Constitution, the law of our land, says that “every person” in this great land is entitled to due process. We need to hold the line. We need a hotline. We need lawyers. We need to act.
America has been, as The Boss said so eloquently “the beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years.”
Those who say “This could never happen here” can see that it already has.
A response to the post from a friend:
So, this is how it starts. The landlord is terrified, rightly so, their neighbors are scared and spread that fear to their neighbors and friends. People begin turning in their neighbors to protect themselves. And those that “harbored illegals”, or, otherwise phrased, rented to reliable tenants with an accent, also become targets and have terrible choices to make to protect their families.
What is the action, really? MA reps know the consequences and are doing what they can. What is meaningful? Walkouts? Sit ins? Going to DC en masse and not leaving until enough people join that we are un- ignorable? Hiding quietly?
by Judy Handley | May 15, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 135: Scary Times
Date: Thursday, May 15, 2025
Weather: A Little Rain Early, Mis of Sun and Clouds; High Temp 67, Low 56 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
For the past three months, I have heard people saying, over and over, how thankful they are that we live in Massachusetts. These people, including me, thought we are in a safe haven. But we have had many cases of ICE or HIS taking people who have done nothing wrong. A least that has not happened here on the Cape. Right? Wrong. Today I received an email from the Falmouth Immigrant Rights Coalition saying they have been receiving ICE sightings here in Falmouth over the past 24 hours in a couple of locations. One location reported is about a quarter of a mile from where I live and another is a half mile away in a different direction. The email went on to outline what you can and cannot do if you witness a confrontation. I truly appreciated the information, but none of this made me feel safe. We are truly living in scary times.
I spent my entire day dealing with Encore responsibilities. Then, tonight, I had a nice, long conversation with my friend Lynne Kirwin. She is coming to visit during the first week of June. Can’t wait to see her. But right now, I had better stop writing and get some reading done. I have my “Beyond the White House” class tomorrow and I haven’t finished reading the chapter about Jimmy Carter. So I’ll sign off with a promise of more tomorrow.
by Judy Handley | May 14, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 134: Encore Day
Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 65, Low 67 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
My morning was spent in an Encore Board meeting and this afternoon I attended a presentation at the West Falmouth Library. This is a program that I have booked to present at one of our Encore program meetings next year, so I wanted to know to what to expect. I am moving from Co-President to Vice President of Programs. Sure hope I’m not moving from the frying pan to the fire! Then this evening I spent some time gardening before getting back to answering emails. That was it for my day.
by Judy Handley | May 13, 2025 | Cape Cod, USA |
2025 Life Logs, Day 133: Hodge Podge of Activities
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 65, Low 52 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
This was a fast-paced day, moving from one activity to another. I started my day by taking bags of grass clippings to the town yard waste facility, doing some Encore work, having a friend over for coffee/tea and conversation, and then heading to a meeting with the woman who will be the Assistant Vice-President of Programs with me next year to review the programs we have booked to date. I left just in time to pick Ollie up after school as it is the day Ollie has to bring his saxophone home for his private lesson, rushed to a friend’s home to water plants while they are out of town, took Ollie to his sax lesson, rushed home to change clothes and then attended my first meeting of the Library Trustees. Too busy, even for me!
by Judy Handley | May 12, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 131: Boat Work
Date: Monday, May 12, 2025
Weather: Sunny, Very Windy; High Temp 63, Low 52 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Sometime before noon, I headed back to Ardenna. Yesterday, Heather and I worked together to clean and brighten the teak on Ardenna. Today, I went to work on Step 3, oiling the teak. You can varnish teak or oil it, and today I was so glad Heather and Jed have decided on oiling. It was a very windy day and the seeds and blossoms from all the surrounding trees were blowing in that wind—blowing right on to Ardenna’s deck. There is no way I could have continued if I were varnishing. But if pieces of debris blow onto the oil, it will just drop off when it dries. As always, I underestimated the time needed to do the job. It took twice as long as I expected to do half the job. I love doing the boat work although my old body doesn’t seem to love me crawling around on my knees on a hard deck. When I got home, I was too tired to eat a very late lunch. So, I skipped lunch and took a nap. After the nap, I was fine. For future projects, I need to double the time estimated and add in an hour for a nap.
by Judy Handley | May 11, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 130: Happy Mother’s Day
Date: Sunday, May 11, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High Temp 70, Low 44 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Happy Mother’s Day to all. Heather and I agreed on making this a working Mother’s Day. Between the two of us, we have so many projects needing attention that we both knew we would be happier getting something done. We weren’t sure until this morning which project would win our attention, but it was such a beautiful, warm day that we decided on cleaning teak on Ardenna. Although she is still on land, there is nothing I enjoy more than working on a boat on a beautiful day, especially if I can spend those hours with my daughter. If you know me at all, you know I’d rather be cleaning teak than just sitting on the boat reading a book. I know. I’m weird. But that is just who I am. Due to the fire in late February, looking around the boat’s location is a little depressing. But that Cape Cod blue sky today helped overcome looking at the destruction. At least Ardenna was untouched by the fire.
Sam came to deliver lunch to us mid-afternoon, and I ended up leaving with him as he said he would take me to Mahoney’s so I could fulfil my other wish for today. I wanted to buy plants with the Mother’s Day gift card sent to me from Justin and Jo last night. Sam and I ended up filling an entire cart with plants. He took me back to Grasmere where I wanted to work on another project with Jed. He was laying more deck floorboards but took time to help me get the garden soil out of one of the vertical planters that is being replaced by a large box planter on their deck. We got one of the three vertical planters dismantled and I will take it to Farming Falmouth tomorrow as a donation.
Once home, I played outside with Shadow and then had a wonderful phone call with Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco. This is their last week of school! Of course, they return to school in early August. Skype is no more, so we couldn’t have our normal video call on the computer. But actually the phone, using What’s App, worked just fine. I thanked them profusely for the wonderful Mother’s Day present. I so miss being with them on special days. 
I will end, not with a flowery poem, but with an article written by Robert Reich about the monsters in Washington. Happy Mother’s Day!
Sunday thought …
MORAL CLARITY IN A TIME OF MONSTERS
ROobert Reich, May 11
Friends,
We are living in a time when monsters roam the globe: Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Xi, Modi, Erdo?an, and others.
They are destroying countless lives, fueling hate, spreading fear.
What is our moral obligation as human beings in the face of this? How do we maintain integrity in a time of monsters?
Some people I know are in denial. They’ve stopped listening to the news. They’d rather not know what the monsters are doing.
I understand. It’s all too painful — the abductions and deportations in the United States, horrific deaths in Ukraine and Gaza, abuses of human rights in China’s Xinjiang region and in Turkey, violence in Kashmir.
Why learn of it? they ask. Nothing can be done anyway, they say.
Others are immobilized with grief. They cannot abide the inhumanity and suffering, so they’ve collapsed into despair.
Nothing will be done, they say.
Some others I know are resigned to what’s happening and believe their only real choice is to keep quiet. They don’t speak out against the monsters for fear of reprisal.
It’s the only practical choice, they say.
These are all completely understandable responses. If you are in denial, despair, or submissive silence, you should not feel guilty. You are only human.
But it’s also important to know that these attitudes help the monsters thrive and grow.
When most of us believe that nothing can be done, or assume nothing will be done, or think that silence is the only practical choice, we fuel more monstrosity.
Yesterday on the Coffee Klatch, Heather and I interviewed Emily Feiner, a social worker in Nyack, New York. Last Sunday she had gone to her congressman’s town hall and simply asked him — Mike Lawler, a Republican member of Congress — what would get him to refuse to go along with Trump?
When Lawler gave a non-answer, Feiner didn’t accept it. She continued to ask her question, and was told to leave. When she refused, state troopers lifted her — a 64-year-old — out of her chair and carried her out of the meeting. The audience erupted in calls of “shame, shame, shame” against Lawler and the troopers.
Feiner told us that Lawler subsequently labeled her a “radical far-left” activist. In reality, she’s an average American who sometimes votes Republican but has now had enough.
She also told us she’d received words of thanks for her act of resistance from all over America and the world, even from someone in Turkey.
Emily Feiner does not deny what’s happening. To the contrary, she’s going to town halls, asking questions, expressing her views.
She’s not in despair. When she talked with Heather and me, she seemed filled with positive energy.
She’s not silent. She’s actively resisting the monsters and their agents — demanding that they be accountable for what they’re doing.
Thank you, Emily. You are an inspiration to us all.
We are in a national emergency, as is much of the rest of the world. If you are in denial or despair or in fearful silence, you are hardly alone.
But if enough of us stand up as Emily did, the monsters cannot win. We will prevail. We will end up with a democracy stronger than it was before the time of monsters.
