by Judy Handley | Apr 16, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 106: Meeting, Meeting, Meeting, Event
Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 50, Low 39 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
In addition to an all morning Encore general program meeting, a meeting with the events coordinator of a local restaurant to arrange for an Encore luncheon next fall, an Exploring Public Policy meetings with Falmouth School District administrators, and an evening event at Woodwell on the connection between climate change and your health … this afternoon and evening I had to deal with my sister being sent to the hospital. It appeared that she had pneumonia, but it is looking more like congestive heart failure issue. We just won’t know how serious until more testing is done tomorrow. Needless to say, it was a busy day. I am exhausted, so I am off to bed and hoping for a quiet day tomorrow.
by Judy Handley | Apr 15, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 105: 101 Years
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Weather: Rainy AM, Overcast PM; High Temp 51, Low 41 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
I decided to take the night off and not write a log at all, but then when I took Shadow out for his bedtime ‘walk’ the beautiful moon changed my mind. The pink moon of April was full on Saturday, but probably because of cloudy nights, I didn’t notice it until tonight. But it is still round and beautiful. That put me in a better state of mind, so I decided to come in and at least write to say I wasn’t going to write! When I wrote the date in the heading, I realized that on this date in 1924 my mom and dad got married–101 years ago—and it was a Tuesday. It totally blows my mind to think my parents were married that long ago. I also read that Adolf Hitler was found guilty of treason on April 15, 1924, and sentenced to five years in prison. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop him.
by Judy Handley | Apr 14, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 104: Bright Yellow on a Dark Day
Date: Monday, April 14, 2025
Weather: Sunny and Warmer; High Temp 57, Low 45 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
This was a Cape Cod blue sky day dotted with splashes of yellow forsythia, yellow daffodils, yellow primrose, and yellow sunshine.
But there was a darkness that dominated this beautiful day. I never dreamed I would see a dictator from El Salvador sitting beside the president of the United States of America in the Oval Office discussing how to expand the number of prisons in El Salvador to hold “homegrowns” from the US. We are now in a constitutional crisis. If the Supreme Court does not make the Trump regime follow the law and send Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to this country, we will be in totally uncharted territory. Today El Salvador’s president said it was preposterous to think he would send Garcia back to this country. Preposterous is the right word but not used in the right context. What our government is doing is what is preposterous
by Judy Handley | Apr 13, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 103: One Thought Leads to Another
Date: Sunday, April 13, 2025
Weather: Overcast, Rainy and Cold; High Temp 42, Low 40 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Fo me, one thought leads to another. I spent two hours this afternoon attending an online Resistance Lab learning how to organize for resistance. I’ll share more about that in tomorrow’s log. Tonight, I celebrated the Passover seder with Goldstones. Passover is celebrated by the Jewish people each year, commemorating the anniversary of the exodus from Egyptian slavery. The seder is a dinner centered around the telling of the story of the exodus as told in the Bible. At some point today, I realized that today was also Palm Sunday, the Christian feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter celebrating Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. On this day, Christians reflect on Jesus’ entry in Jerusalem as a king and the events leading up to his crucifixion. Unfortunately, thinking about this in these political times made me think that maybe declaring to be a king is not such a good idea. And that led me to thinking about next Saturday when there will be another national day of protest centered around the ‘No Kings” theme.
But before I get to my final thought, I just want to say that we had a wonderful dinner tonight. Jed’s smoked beef brisket was delicious, Heather added all of the details that make the seder so special, and we all enjoyed my contribution which was a decadent flourless chocolate cake with all the trimmings. It was a special family evening together.
And finally, all of the things that happened today led me right back to a post written by Robert Reich that I read this morning. It was entitled, “Sunday Thought—Fighting the Regime’s Cruelty.” Hopefully, you have already read it, but if not, I think it is a worthy Sunday thought that I share here:
Friends,
It’s been another grueling week.
Several of you have asked me how to live in a nation whose leader has embraced cruelty as public policy. How do we inhabit Trump’s America without becoming complicit in this cruelty?
Molly watched Trump sign the executive order initiating criminal investigations of Miles Taylor (who wrote an anonymous 2018 New York Times op-ed describing internal resistance to Trump in his first term) and Christopher Krebs (who played a major role in undercutting Trump’s false claims about 2020 election fraud).
Molly asks: Is this America?
No, Molly, it is not — at least not the America we have known and loved.
Others of you are thunderstruck by Trump’s cruelty toward refugees who fled violence and have been living in the United States legally but are now being forced to return to their home countries and face more violence.
And the Trump regime’s cruelty toward people here on temporary visas who are deported arbitrarily, without a hearing — some sent to a gruesome prison in El Salvador even after the regime has admitted error in sending them.
And children in poor countries who are in desperate need of vaccines but are now doing without them because Trump has ended USAID.
The cruelty toward vulnerable people in Gaza, in Ukraine, and in Yemen who are being bombed, wounded, or killed because the Trump regime is doing nothing to stop these bloodbaths or is contributing to them.
Cruelty toward tens of thousands of public servants who are suddenly and without warning fired — some just months away from retirement and a pension.
Revoking security protection for Biden’s son and daughter. And for General Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Revoking security protection for other former members of his first administration despite warnings of ongoing threats from Iran because of actions they took on Trump’s behalf.
Firing more than a dozen prosecutors who worked for the special counsel Jack Smith on criminal investigations of Trump.
Revoking security clearances of 51 people who merely signed a letter suggesting that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation.
Targeting law firms that employ or have employed lawyers who worked on investigations into Trump or on causes Trump objects to.
Targeting universities that have allowed international students freedom of speech.
And on it goes, day after day — the Trump regime’s abject cruelty, viciousness, heartlessness, brutality.
How does a moral person live with this? How do we not become complicit?
The answer, I think, is to do whatever we can to protect those who are vulnerable to this cruelty. We speak out against Trump’s use of criminal investigations to punish public servants who helped expose his venality. We make our communities into sanctuaries that limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities. We urge our universities to protect free speech and expression of everyone, at whatever the cost.
To the extent we can, we fund groups that are helping poor families around the world get the medical assistance they need.
We call our senators and members of Congress to tell them to retrieve their constitutional authority over government spending.
We tell them to stop the brutality in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, and everywhere else America is either encouraging it or failing to discourage it.
We tell them to stop Trump’s criminal investigations of opponents.
We protest. We organize. We mobilize. We do what we can to put good people into office and keep them there, and we help regain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
In other words, we become organized activists against Trump’s organized cruelty. We try to make this country an America we can love again. Years from now, when our children and grandchildren ask what we did during Trump’s reign of terror, we can tell them that we worked tirelessly to curb his cruelty — and we did it with our compassion.
by Judy Handley | Apr 12, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 102: Take a Look at Your Garden (Lawn)
Date: Saturday, April 12, 2025
Weather: Overcast, Rainy and Cold; High Temp 41, Low 38 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
It is April. It is cold and rainy which can easily turn me into grump. But Earth Day is coming up on the 22nd, so today I went with Heather to a Wampanoag ‘Honor the Earth’ fair in the hopes of brightening my cold, rainy day mood. I talked with a ranger from the Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge. I had a Wampanoag salmon hash for lunch. I talked to the women of ‘Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage’ (OLAUG) who literally dive down in Cape Cod ponds and remove the garbage they find to help restore the ponds. And I met an amazing Wampanoag woman, a Falmouth native, whose accomplishments are so impressive. She works at WHOI, teaches at MIT and Harvard, makes films, and more, all trying to help us keep our ties to the earth as the Wampanoag people have for thousands of years.
Then I came home and read a NYT article entitled, “The Four Ecologically Crucial Things You Should Do in Your Garden.” Unlike the British, most Americans do not refer to their yard as their garden. But for the purpose of this article, pretend you are British, and your garden is your yard. According to Douglas W. Tallamy, the entomologist and University of Delaware professor who is co-founder of Homegrown National Park, the four ecologically crucial things that need to happen in your garden are:
1) Every landscape (yard or garden) needs to manage the watershed in which it lies.
2) Every landscape (yard or garden) needs to support pollinators.
3) Every landscape (yard or garden) needs to support a viable food web.
4) And every landscape (yard or garden) needs to sequester carbon.
If you already have ornamentals in your yard, you have a head start. According to Tallamy, “You don’t have to think about redesigning the entire landscape. Just say, ‘Can I improve on any one of those four goals incrementally over time?’” But if you just have a yard with grass and no trees, bushes, or ornamentals, you have to start from scratch. A grass lawn doesn’t address any of the four ‘crucials’. Tallamy writes that if you have a ‘good’ lawn in terms of beautiful, green grass, it degrades or destroys the water shed. It doesn’t support any pollinators, nor the food web. And grass is the worst plant choice for sequestering carbon. What small step can you take?
• Do a one-to-one swap. Remove one invasive plant and add one native. The eventual goal is to get to at least 70 percent native, one step at a time. But start slowly by adding one oak tree or a little patch of goldenrod.
• Reduce artificial light at night by switching to yellow lightbulbs and motion detectors.
• Don’t give into mosquito-fogging treatments. Even natural solutions indiscriminately kill monarchs and other butterflies, pollinators, fireflies, and more.
• For Earth Day on April 22, plant a keystone plant in your garden (yard). To find out what these plants are for your area, go to https://homegrownnationalpark.org/. For Cape Cod, these are native container plants like Grass-Leaved Goldenrod, Autumnale Sneezeweed, Common Evening Primrose, Black-Eyed Susan, Cutleaf Coneflower, Old Field Goldenrod, or Blue Wood, Calico, or New England Aster. Keystone trees and plants for Cape Cod are American Aspen, American Plum, Black Cherry, Black Willow, Chokecherry, Red Maple, Red Oak, Sugar Maple, or White Oak.
When I went out into my ‘garden’ to play with Shadow late afternoon, I looked around to see what tiny step I could take this spring, but it was so cold I had to come back inside to get my winter coat. I had put it away near the end of March thinking I would not need it anymore this spring. But for most of our April days this year the high temp has been in the 40’s with the lows in the 30’s. For most of April last year, our days were in the 50’s with nights in the 40’s. There were a few exceptions, but nothing like this last week. After tomorrow, the rest of the upcoming week looks more like last year’s April. I hope!
by Judy Handley | Apr 11, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 101: Beyond the White House
Date: Friday, April 11, 2025
Weather: Cloudy, Rain Late; High Temp 48, Low 38 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
No, I’m not daydreaming about what might happen to Trump once he is “Beyond the White House.” That is the name of a 6-week course offered by the Mashpee Public Library that I am currently taking. It is an hour and a half class, once a week on Friday mornings, and is taught by Jane Scarborough. Jane is a vibrant 80-some-year-old retired constitutional law professor. She is currently running for a position on the Falmouth School Committee, and she definitely has my vote. Jane seamlessly weaves current events with history. The book that is the basis of our class is “Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House” written by Jared Cohen. Today we focused on Thomas Jefferson. His ‘beyond the White House’ founding the University of Virginia. Before his death, he designed his own gravestone and wrote his own epitaph, “Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.” There was no mention of being the third president of these United States.
I had a wonderful artichoke dinner with the Goldstone’s tonight. It has been quite a week. Heather was in Boston for four days at a staff retreat, Jonah had unexpected surgery to set his broken arm,Trump’s tariffs sent the US economy into a period dangerous instability, and the chaos in Washington just keeps on going. So many things happen in just one week these days that a week feels like a year. Hopefully Trump is off playing golf again this weekend so we can have a bit of a break. TGIF
