2025 Life Logs, Day 298: Saturday Rally on the Green, Dinner with Jonah and Ollie
Date: Saturday, October 25, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Cool; High Temp 55, Low 43 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Today was a beautiful fall day. I took an extra-long walk with Shadow this morning, spent some time working on the resource list for the film series, and then went to the Village Green for the weekly standout. After the 2,400 people on the Green last week, our weekly regulars looked sparse today. But the conversations and networking that happened are invaluable. So, whether it is 100 people or 2400 people, gathering is a positive thing.

After coming home and having lunch, I went back to work and then this evening I went over to have dinner with Jonah and Ollie. Heather and Jed were invited to a combination social/work dinner and I offered to fix dinner for the boys. But once I got there, we all three decided that we would love to have Indian take-out from The Golden Swan on Main Street. Jonah had Chicken Makhni (butter chicken). Ollie had Chicken Tikka Masala. And I had Bhindi Masala which is okra cooked with onions, ginger, tomatoes, and spices. I had never had it before and really enjoyed it as I am a true okra lover.

2025 Life Logs, Day 297: Meeting, Class, Research, Soccer, Football Game
Date: Friday, October 24, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Cooler; High Temp 52, Low 44 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Degree by degree the temperature has been going down. I just checked and the forecast for the next ten days is more of today, a high temperature in the 50’s, low in the 40’s, some mostly sunny days, some rainy days. Yes, it is fall on Cape Cod. I knew that for sure tonight when I went to the high school football game. I went because it was Step Up Night for the middle school band. Ollie plays in the band, but I missed the ‘opening act’ when the middle school band was on the field with the high school band.

So that both Heather and Jed could be at the high school, I offered to drive Jonah and friends Jean Luc and Kaiden to Mass Maritime to a soccer game. We got slowed down with traffic trying to get off the Cape and I didn’t get back to Falmouth until just after half time at the football game. I stayed for the last half of the game … wearing my winter coat! It actually felt warmer tonight than in the late afternoon but a winter jacket felt just right. That is when I knew for sure that “Fall has fell.”

My day started with an Indivisible Falmouth Zoom meeting, followed by my “We the People” Friday class. I spent the afternoon working on a resource list for the next Nonviolence in Action film screening next Wednesday. The Nashville lunch counter sit-ins in 1960 and Gandhi’s nonviolent defiance against the British Crown in 1930 are the two stories that will be shown. The resource list will be a handout.

Heather was back in Boston today at a conference and Senator Ed Markey was one of the speakers. She sent me a photo of him and the sign beside him said, “Not Just Do-Gooders – Can-Doers.” It was a reminder that in these difficult times, we all need to be can-doers, doing whatever we can to save our democracy.

2025 Life Logs, Day 296: Learning About Nonviolence
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Windy, Getting Colder; High Temp 60, Low 44 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I had two meetings today, but other than that, I spent the entire day learning more about nonviolence and some of the successful movements during the past century. Organizing a film series is one thing. But implementing it, at least to me, requires me to know as much as possible about the topic. As a lifelong learner, this is my thing. So, yes, I am spending hours and hours researching and learning, and I am enjoying every minute of it.

2025 Life Logs, Day 295: Soccer Game and Dinner with My Nephew Tommy
Date: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Windy; High Temp 65, Low 55 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

My nephew Tommy from North Carolina works for a company that has had their national conference here on the Cape for the past few years. And when he is on Cape for the conference, he always comes to visit. Today was that day. Since he wasn’t coming until 6 pm, I went to Jonah’s mid-afternoon soccer game. He got some good playing time today and did a great job. He loves playing soccer (number 14) and it is such a joy watching him play.

Heather and Jed couldn’t make it to the game, so I took Jonah home, picked up food I was adding to the dinner, and headed to Heather and Jed’s to have dinner there with Tommy. We talked and laughed and solved all of the world’s problems until the clock struck midnight. It was a wonderful evening.

2025 Life Logs, Day 294: Planning for the Next Film Series Screening
Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Windy; High Temp 65, Low 55 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

My day was spent working on the film series project. I spent the morning preparing for a meeting with the committee, went to the meeting, took Ollie to saxophone lesson, and then spent the entire evening back on the researching material for the next screening and getting another press release to the local newsletter. Tomorrow my nephew Tommy from North Carolina come to visit in the evening. He has been in Chatham at a work-related conference. We will have dinner at Heather and Jed’s.

Happy birthday to my friend Lynne in New Zealand!

2025 Life Logs, Day 293: Gale Force Winds and Shifting Tides
Date: Monday, October 20, 2025
Weather: Rain and Gale Force Winds; High Temp 64, Low 59 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

The gale force winds of earlier today were on the low end of the scale, but still gale force which means windy. Often, here on Cape Cod, the winds are from the NE. But during this weather system, the winds were coming from the south, so it was warmer today than it has been. Tonight, the winds are down and there is just a Small Craft Advisory. And tomorrow is forecast to be sunny. So one day of sunshine before it rains again.

“Shifting Tides” had nothing to do with the weather today. It is the name of a short documentary film that was shown tonight by the Falmouth Climate Action Network (FalCan). The filmmaker, Angela McNerney, was at the screening tonight, along with Lyra Brennan, Director of the Mass Audubon Coastal Waterbird Program, and Dr. Charles “Stormy” Mayo, co-founder of the Center for Coastal Studies. The film was beautiful, but I found it certainly didn’t move me to take any action. McNerney says that she did the film to give people hope. But hope is not a strategy. Research shows that taking action, getting involved, is what will give you hope. This is true whether you are talking about fighting back against an authoritarian take-over of your government or against those who dismiss climate change altogether. Again, my two cents.

2025 Life Logs, Day 292: The Third Harmony
Date: Sunday, October 19, 2025
Weather: Another Beautiful Day; High Temp 64, Low 59 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

This afternoon was the first of four film screenings/discussions in the Nonviolence in Action series I have spent so much time organizing in the past few weeks. It was a beautiful fall afternoon, a football afternoon, a Falmouth Chorale Concert afternoon, and an afternoon with many other activities, so I feared we might not have more than 5 people attending. We didn’t have a crowd, but we did have between 25-30 people who were all very engaged. The film was The Third Harmony done by the Metta Center for Nonviolence. It was about the theory of nonviolence and featured many people who are currently nonviolence leaders around the world. We learned about the three harmonies—harmony within ourselves, harmony with those around us, and harmony with the earth. One of the people featured in the film was Dr. Bernard Lafayette. He was a Civil Rights Movement hero, continuing as a nonviolence activist for nearly fifty years. “Dr. Lafayette was a co-founder and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Nashville Sit-ins, a courageous Freedom Rider, an associate of Dr. King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and national coordinator of the Poor People’s Campaign.” While making the point that nonviolent tactics are a weapon more effective than violent tactics, he said that the only weapon you need for nonviolence is love and to love you have to have a heart. Since everyone has a heart, when you emerge from a shower every morning, you ae fully armed. I love that analogy. This afternoon was a good beginning, and now it is time to get ready for the next screening in a week and a half.

Heather invited me over to dinner tonight. Otherwise, I might have starved. I haven’t been to the store for days and the refrigerator is almost empty. Hopefully, this week, I will have the time start living a semi-normal life again. There were just too many meetings last week! Onward.

2025 Life Logs, Day 291: NO KINGS II
Date: Saturday, October 18, 2025
Weather: Beautiful Day; High Temp 61, Low 48 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Our Falmouth NO KINGS II protest began at noon today on a perfectly gorgeous Cape Cod fall day. The Village Green was filled with people with all kinds of signs, some in inflatable costumes, some wearing the chosen color of yellow signifying solidarity, some in good old red, white, and blue, and there were plenty of American flags throughout. We had the Freedom Singers, the Fight Against Fascism group with their new neon signs, enthusiastic members of the Boston Teachers’ Union who took a lunch break from their annual conference which happened to be in Falmouth, and a fantastic line-up of speakers, one of which was Heather as Vice-Chair of the Falmouth Select Board. She gave an awesome speech! We read the Preamble of the Constitution, all 2,400 of us together, and the bell made by Paul Revere that hangs in the belfry of the adjacent Congregational Church rang out over the Village Green. Wow! It was truly a picture perfect, fantastic day.

As soon as I got home, however, I had to buckle down to get ready for the first screening in the Nonviolence in Action film series I have been organizing for months now. It starts tomorrow at 3 pm. I just finished the final prep, but I still have to make copies of handouts for the attendees tomorrow morning. I truly don’t know how many people will attend, but even if it is only 5, it will be a beginning.

2025 Life Logs, Day 289: Exploring Public Policy
Date: Wednesday, October 16, 2025
Weather: Sunny, Windy, and Cold; High Temp 53 Low 46 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Most of my day was spent working on various aspects of the film series on nonviolence I am organizing. I spent time reaching out the local faith leaders today, asking them to invite their congregations and/or offering to do a special showing of our first film at their places of worship. I am also working on a resources page that will be shared with attendees. Still much to do.

Mid-afternoon I had to change gears and head to the Rec Center for the Exploring Public Policy monthly meeting. I had arranged for Stephanie Madsen, Falmouth’s Sustainability Coordinator, to come speak with us. She gave an information-packed presentation that was well received by all.

Then tonight, I turned my attention to preparations for Saturday’s NO KINGS rally. I missed the weekly call with the national organizers this afternoon, so I watched the recording. There were 5 million people who attended a NO KINGS rally in June, and we are hoping that number will double this time to 10 million. If so, it will be second only to the first Earth Day demonstration in 1970. The George Floyd protests involved more than 26 million, but that was in multi-day protests, not just one day. On last week’s call we learned that the organizers want everyone to wear something yellow. Why yellow? People on the call wanted to know why not red, white, and blue. There were many reasons yellow was chosen, but I think the most important is what Ezra Levin said on the call. “It’s like if those colors (red, white, and blue) stand alone, they’re very much affiliated with, like, Red America, Blue America, in a way that, I think most people here probably don’t want to play into, because what we feel like we’re doing collectively is we’re trying to represent everyone in America across lines of party and across ideology who are opposed to authoritarianism, corruption, attacks on our neighbors. And so, out of that process of trying to reflect back to folks, like, we need to have some kind of unified symbol that we can work with.” So, yellow was chosen as it is joyful, conjuring up images of sunshine and sunflowers. Plus, it has historically been used by many pr-democracy movements around the world to signify solidarity. Of course, people are welcome to wear any color they choose for the rally, but the color yellow will go forward as a symbol for those of us who are pro-democracy in the United States. How very sad it makes me to write those words. I always thought a democratic form of government would never be seriously challenged in this country. But now we are having to stand up for democracy to assure its survival.

2025 Life Logs, Day 288: A Little Sunshine
Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Weather: Some Sun, Some Clouds; High Temp 63 Low 41 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Today was the first Encore program meeting of the year and it was a success. We had a good crowd, and everyone seemed to be interested in learning about the early history of Falmouth. I was able to use our new sound system and it was a vast improvement over using the one stationary microphone the church has. People could actually hear the presenter wearing our lavalier mic. Hurray.

After the meeting, I went to a birthday luncheon for Jane Woodin with our little birthday group. It was nice to be out with friends and talk about various and sundry things. Happy belated birthday to Jane!

I came home, tried to catch up on emails, and then was off to another meeting. As I was driving home that that, when I got a text from Jonah that he got out of soccer practice early and needed a ride home. I picked him up and then spent the rest of the late afternoon between home and delivering Jonah and Ollie to various activities. Jed drove his mother home to DC yesterday and won’t be home until late tomorrow. And Heather had non-stop meetings until 8 pm tonight. So I needed to pitch in to help. Now I’m back on this computer going through the list of communications that need to be done before the film series begins on Sunday.