2023 Life Logs, Day 12: Ahhh . . . A Quiet Day
Date: Thursday, January 12, 2023
Weather: Overcast, Some Sprinkles; High 48, Low 46 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:08 am & 4:35 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

After a few days of crazy activity, today was nice and quiet. I got up and called by sister’s doctor in North Carolina, worked on my jigsaw puzzle, walked with Shadow and played fetch, and made soup. I did have to tackle a little problem with the field trip I am leading to the Edward M (Teddy) Kennedy Institute on Wednesday. Their cafeteria is not open, but I was told we could order boxed lunches from the JFK Library next door. I have called every day this week and have gotten no further than voice mail with no return calls. So, this morning I was told by my contact at the Institute that maybe I should just order lunches to be delivered from Panera. That wasn’t quite as easy as just picking up the phone and making an order. I had to register to be a ‘host’ and then send a link to participants where they can order their own lunches. But I hope I have it figured out and that people will be successful getting online to order. I also talked to my sister this morning and she seems to be holding her own against Covid. Her companion called me this evening and said she put her to bed early and that I should not call Patsy tonight as there is no phone in the bedroom. I smiled but said nothing. I am sure my sister got up as soon as Edie, the companion, left. But I will wait until tomorrow morning to call and hope I will find my sister feeling even better after a good night’s sleep.

2023 Life Logs, Day 11: Another Busy Day
Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Weather: Partly Sunny, Day, Snowflakes Tonight; High 38, Low 30 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:08 am & 4:34 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Another gain in daylight today—1 minute earlier sunrise and 2 minute later sunset. Yippee!

I was up early to walk with Shadow and then take him to his every 6-week appointment to be groomed. It takes 45 minutes to drive him to Pampered Pets, drop him off, and return home. I made a slight detour on the way home to go into downtown Falmouth to pick up a package for a friend who is out of town. Then it was home to finish prepping for my afternoon presentation on food and climate change. At noon, an insurance inspector came to give the thumps up, hopefully, on new home insurance. In the meantime, I learned that my friend Olga Mitchell has Covid and needed some Pedialyte from CVS. I went to pick that up and then got a text that Shadow was ready for pick up. I had begged this morning that they get him ready early today as I had to pick him up before my afternoon meeting. Otherwise he might have been spending the night at Pampered Pets as they would have been closed by the time the presentation was over. They came through, so I went to CVS for Olga, delivered the goods, and then drove back north to pick up Shadow. I barely got home to do one run-through of my proposed presentation and then it was show time. Shortly after the presentation was over, I got a call from my nephew in North Carolina telling me sister Patsy has tested positive for Covid. Her companion returned today after being out for 12 days with Covid. So far, so good, however, with my sister. She does have a cough and feels a bit tired, but otherwise is okay. I sure hope she gets no worse. I will check with her in the morning, but I am definitely ready for a day of rest tomorrow!

2023 Life Logs, Day 10: One of Those Days
Date: Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Weather: Partly Sunny; High 42, Low 28 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:09 am & 4:32 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Writing and sending out the one week from today email for a field trip I am leading next Tuesday to the Edward M Kennedy Institute . . . book club . . . time with Ollie on an Early Release Day from school . . . back home to play with Shadow . . . then back to Heather and Jed’s to spend the evening with the boys . . . fixed dinner . . . took Jonah to Scouts . . . canned chicken broth . . . and then finally sat down and worked on a jigsaw puzzle with Ollie. And in between all of this, I was working on my food and climate change presentation for tomorrow afternoon. Whew! It was one of those days.

Tonight, Jed went with Heather to a staff gathering at Woodwell to celebrate the beginning of a new year. They had a great time and picked Jonah up from Scouts on their way home. I got home around 9 pm, took Shadow for a walk, and then finished up the PowerPoint for tomorrow’s presentation. Now it is time to go to bed!

2023 Life Logs, Day 09: A Trip to Newbridge on the Charles
Date: Monday, January 9, 2023
Weather: Partly Sunny; High 41, Low 31 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:09 am & 4:31 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Okay. I admit that I am obsessed with tracking the increase in daylight minutes. But I just have to report that today we gained 2 minutes of daylight when sunset moved from 4:29 pm yesterday to 4:31 today. I love it!

I picked Heather up this morning, and we drove north to Dedham to Newbridge on the Charles. When you Google Newbridge online, it is described as “modern senior living community offering dynamic, top-tier amenities.” And from my visits there with my good friends Alan and Helaine Kanegsberg I would definitely agree with that description. Helaine is part of a Newbridge environmental group that invited Heather to come speak today. Before her presentation, we had lunch with Helaine and the three women who help set the agenda for the environmental group. What a dynamic group of women! Sixty members of their environment group came to hear Heather speak. I overhead people saying what a masterful speaker she is, and I have to agree. She takes very complex information and somehow breaks it down so that you as the listener can easily understand. Today, I heard people gasp when they saw a few of the PowerPoint slides she presented. One slide showed a graph of world climate changes over the past 800,000 years. After the last ice age, climate variations have gone up and down, but within reasonable ranges. Then around the time of the Industrial Revolution, the rate of change started climbing radically. You could instantly see how out of line it is now as compared to what it had been for the previous 800,000 years. I’m probably not describing this exactly right, but the point is that it was immediately obvious that we are now off the charts. Heather also left the audience with a sense of empowerment. Yes, we need to take immediate action, any action that can help. Things are dire. But the good news is that we caused problem. When Heather said that, you could hear the questioning in the audience. How can causing a problem be good news? Her answer was that if we caused the problem, then we can fix it. And one thing we can all do is to just start talking about climate change with other people. According to a survey, only 35 percent of Massachusetts residents discuss climate change at least occasionally. It has become so politicized that we are afraid to talk about it for fear of alienating others. According to Heather, it is better to start talking which will hopefully lead to more action. Good job, Heather. And thank you Helaine and your Newbridge friends for hosting us.

2023 Life Logs, Day 08: Futsal Afternoon and Evening
Date: Sunday, January 8, 2023
Weather: Mostly Sunny but Colder; High 35, Low 26 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:09 am & 4:29 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Just three months ago, I had never heard of futsal. But Jonah being Jonah, the grandson who cannot get enough of soccer, needs to play it in all four seasons. He plays spring soccer, does soccer camp in the summer, plays fall soccer, and now plays futsal in the winter. So how is futsal different from outdoor soccer? When I looked that up online, this is what I found. “Soccer is normally played as an outdoor game on large fields, whereas futsal is a type of soccer that is played indoors on a much smaller court. The smaller field size ensures a game of Futsal is fast-paced and more intense, with more opportunity for goal scoring.” The closest place for Jonah to play is a little more than an hour’s drive north. He plays two games each Sunday and this afternoon I volunteered to take him. The court looks a basketball court. Each half is 20 minutes in length. But when you add in half time and time outs, it is more like 50 minutes per game. The first game was not good one for Jonah’s team, but they came back for the second game fired up and ready to go. The game ended in a tie, but Jonah scored three of his team’s five points. That helped to gloss over the first game loss.

Until I left home at 3 pm, I had continued to work on my presentation for Wednesday’s Public Policy meeting. My dining room table was piled with papers, so I gathered them up and took them with me. Before the first game started, I sat in a plastic chair outside the futsal court and got the whole mess organized and put in a notebook. I went in to sit on the bleachers to watch the first game a little late, but it felt great to be organized. I could then concentrate on the games. I’m not completely ready for Wednesday, but almost, and had a great time watching Jonah play.

Tomorrow, I drive back north with Heather. She is making a presentation at Newbridge on the Charles, the retirement community where Alan and Helaine Kanegsberg live. I couldn’t resist the invitation to come with Heather and have lunch with Alan and Helaine plus a few climate change movers and shakers at Newbridge. So I had better get myself to bed so I can be ready for a big day tomorrow.

2023 Life Logs, Day 07: In Defense of Food
Date: Saturday, January 7, 2023
Weather: More Clouds & Drizzle, One Hour of Sunshine; High 42, Low 25 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:09 am & 4:29 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Hurray for daylight. We gained one minute of daylight this morning and another one this afternoon. That’s the first time I have a minute added on both ends since December 14 when I started noting the time of sunrise and sunset. I used those two extra minutes to have a longer walk than normal with Shadow, enjoying the nature in my neighborhood, and to make chicken bone broth today. Life is good.

I am STILL working on that PowerPoint presentation for my Public Policy group on Wednesday. It is taking me forever to just say that the EAT-Lancet Commission Report says we need a global agricultural revolution and a new planetary health diet. Simple, but weighty words that are not easy to achieve. However, all of the evidence points in that direction. In our country the problem is that our current diet is literally killing us. In other parts of the world, not having enough food of any kind is killing them. And all the while, food production contributes about 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The authors of the EAT-Lancet report outline specific steps for achieving this ‘food revolution’, but it is going to be a very hard sell in this country due to the power of the meat and dairy lobbies. I will continue to work on this presentation tomorrow morning and hope to have something to show for my hours of work by early afternoon. I know I said this in another log, but I keep coming back to Michael Pollan’s words in his 2008 book, In Defense of Food: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Seven words of wisdom. If you have 2 minutes and 10 seconds, you can go to YouTube and watch an animated video summarizing the EAT-Lancet report. I watched and transcribed the whole thing because it was full of more words of wisdom.

Here’s the link and the transcription.
Video Animation on YouTube, “Can healthy food save the planet?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIc42oIU0Ik

You know the saying, “You are what you eat.”
But the way we currently eat is, in fact, ruining our health, the health of others, and that of the planet.
Unhealthy food is now deadlier than alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined.
2.1 billion people are overweight, yet we eat sugar, fat, and red meat more than ever. (Note: Red meat consumption is down in the US.)
Still 821 million go to bed hungry every night.
On top of that, our food is the main cause behind species extinction and 1/3 of all global greenhouse gas emissions.
So, “Can we feed a growing population without destroying the planet and ourselves?”
Science had no clear answer.
That is why EAT gathered 37 of the world’s best scientists to determine what a healthy and sustainable diet is and how to get there.
The result is the EAT-Lancet Commission report—a scientific blueprint and answer for a healthy and sustainable future.
If we change the way we produce, consume, transport, and waste food, we can feed everyone a healthy diet while improving the health of our planet.
What does this look like?
Meat can stay on our plate, but it can’t remain to be the new main course.
We should eat a huge amount variety of fruits and vegetables and a low amount of meat, dairy, and seafood.
We should choose unsaturated fats and stay away from refined grains, highly processed food, and added sugars.
And we have no food to waste.
It will take huge changes but following this plan will lower our risk of cancer, strokes, and diabetes.
It could help avoid 11 million adult deaths per year.
In fact, consuming and producing food more efficiently and mindfully will help to keep our planet flourishing.
We have an answer now.
We know the right course for a better future.
It’s on us to actually take that step.
Our food can be the key to solving the biggest challenges we face.
Food really can fix it.

2023 Life Logs, Day 06: January 6th
Date: Friday, January 6, 2023
Weather: Overcast with Drizzle All Day; High 43, Low 31 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:10 am & 4:28 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Prior to 2020, January 6th was a day of celebration for me, the twelfth day of Christmas. For more religious Christians, January 6th is known as Epiphany, also known as Theophany in Eastern Christian traditions. It is a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ. But now as Americans, we have to add to that definition of January 6th a day of shame, not celebration. January 6 is now a day we need to give thanks that we still have a democratic form of government, albeit just barely. So, I now combine my love of January 6 as a day to celebrate the final day of Christmas with the sober commemoration to those who fought on January 6, 2020, to keep Donald Trump and his followers from overturning a free and fair election.

I did get my Christmas tree lights off this morning and took the tree outside. But one thing after another happened and it was after noon before I started working on the PowerPoint. I continued working on that all afternoon and I could be finished, or I could add a bit more. I guess that will depend on the time I have available. I have mentioned that the topic of the PowerPoint is public policy around food and climate change. I am learning about this as I am putting the presentation together and I do get sidetracked. In order to understand a major report that was published in 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission Report, I need to know about the Paris Agreement coming out of COP 21 in 2015 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted that same year. And since the 2019 EAT-Lancet Commission Report and the UN Sustainable Develop Goals say that the world needs to move toward a more sustainable way of producing food and that people need to move toward a diet that is mostly plant-based, you then need to consider how that is going to play out in this country. The meat and dairy companies in the US spend million lobbying against climate change legislation, so our national policies are definitely impacted by that. The topic can quickly get very complicated, very quickly. So, I keep running down many rabbit holes. But it is a topic that I am deeply interested in and that we all need to examine, so I will forge on.

On December 14, I started putting the time of sunrise and sunset in my daily log. On that day, sunset was at 4:14 pm. On a chart I found online, it shows that December began with sunset at 4:12 pm and started moving forward from there. So, sunset today at 4:28 pm is a definite improvement. By the end of January, sunset here will be at 4:56 pm and by the end of February it will be 5:30 pm. I love my afternoons, so I love watching this increase in daylight time in the evenings.

2023 Life Logs, Day 05: Tomorrow is the Twelfth Day of Christmas
Date: Thursday, January 5, 2023
Weather: Overcast, Fog Tonight: High 47, Low 40 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:10 am & 4:27 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

On the twelfth day of Christmas, it is finally time for me to tuck away the holiday decorations. That day is tomorrow. I started tonight my taking the ornaments off my tree, but I will not take the lights off and take the tree down until tomorrow. I will enjoy one more night with those lights on all night to greet me in the morning. Taking ornaments off my tree and doing a once a year total cleaning my fish aquarium were the only house centered things on my to do list for today. I also continued to work on the PowerPoint for my presentation about food and climate change for next Wednesday. I plan to spend the whole day on that tomorrow and try and hope to get it done. But first, I will take the lights off the tree and get the tree outside.

I have to confess that today I keep getting distracted by what is happening, or maybe I should say what is not happening, in the Congress. I turned on the TV to check and see if any progress had been made and ended up leaving it on longer than intended. I just can’t help myself. I am a political junkie. I’ll try to resist the temptation to watch the proceedings tomorrow and keep my attention on that PowerPoint presentation. But we shall see.

At 6:09 pm EST tomorrow, the January Wolf moon is full. Because of the timing, some people consider tonight the full moon while others consider it to be tomorrow night. Unfortunately, it is overcast here tonight, so no moon can be seen. Maybe tomorrow night.

2023 Life Logs, Day 04: Taking Time for Friends
Date: Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Weather: Overcast, Rain Tonight: High 50, Low 43 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:10 am & 4:26 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Today I had lunch with my friend Karen Baranowski and then I visited with Jane and Bruce Woodin. At the end of the day, I realized that I take very little time to just visit with friends. I go to events and to dinners, but rarely do I just visit to talk. Doing that today was so nice and I promised myself to do more of that in 2023.

It was almost 4 pm when I got home, and I have spent most of the evening working on a PowerPoint for my presentation to my Public Policy group next week. It was going to be an in-person meeting and in that case, I didn’t need a PowerPoint. But because so many people have the flu and Covid right now, we are back to Zoom meetings where having visuals in a PowerPoint are helpful. I also spent some time watching the circus happening in the Washington, DC, or should I call it Crazy Town. Tomorrow I will continue working on the PowerPoint while watching more of the happenings in Washington. It is so sad, and more than a little scary, to see such dysfunction.

2023 Life Logs, Day 03: Taking Care of Business
Date: Tuesday, January 3, 2023
Weather: Overcast with Some Rain: High 51, Low 46 degrees F
Sunrise and Sunset: 7:10 am & 4:26 pm
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Woohoo! Gained another minute of daylight this evening. But it was overcast and rainy all day, so the extra minute was just as dreary as the rest of the day. Heather came over early this morning to help get Andrew’s dock walkway put back in place after our huge high tide before Christmas. When it happened, Andrew contracted to have someone come to work on the dock, but day by day it has been getting worse. Last night Heather offered to come try and get the walkway out to the dock back in alignment. I just can’t standby and watch things self-destruct when that can be prevented. Thank you, Heather. After Heather left, I took a long walk in the neighborhood with Shadow. I spent the remainder of the day inside on my computer and my phone. I worked on my 2023 calendar, on my phone and on a hard copy calendar, putting in major activities that I know about at this point. I dealt with some of my sister’s health issues and arranged for her doctor to come to see her at the assisted living facility tomorrow. I met via phone with Claudia Needham. I have agreed to be co-leader of the Newcomers Public Policy group with Claudia, and we needed to divide duties. One of my jobs will be contacting members ahead of each meeting to send them meeting details and reading resources. Since we are meeting next week for my presentation on food and climate change, I then had to get the email ready to send out. Because so many people are sick, with either Covid or the flu or colds, we decided that we will meet via zoom and that means I now have to put much of my presentation into a PowerPoint. That will be tomorrow’s job.

It feels good to work on getting organized for the coming year. So, in that respect, today was a good day. I also spent time watching what is happening in the US House of Representatives. It was not a good for Republicans in the House. I could be happy about that, but I am not. The dysfunctionality of the Republicans in the House means that the business of the House is not being done. And if ever we needed a functional government, it is now. It doesn’t bode well for the next two years.