2025 Life Logs, Day 286: More Rain and Wind
Date: Monday, October 13, 2025
Weather: Rain and NE Wind Continued; High Temp 59 Low 57 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

This nor’easter is staying with us until tomorrow evening, but the winds now are down to half of what they were overnight into this morning. There is just a steady, light rain that goes on and one. But since we desperately need the rain, and since the winds don’t appear to have done much damage, this fall storm has been good for us.

I spent my day working on a myriad projects—working on the Indivisible Falmouth website, communicating with others about the upcoming NO KINGS protest on Saturday, finalizing details for Wednesday’s first Encore program of the year, sending a meeting reminder to the Exploring Public Policy group about Thursday’s meeting, writing a Letter to the Editor of the Enterprise, completing the press release for the Nonviolence in Action film series beginning on Sunday, beginning to read Chapter 4 in Chemerinsky’s book, We the People, for the class I am taking on Friday mornings, making chicken broth. That was my day and I survived. That’s the good thing. Onward to tomorrow.

2025 Life Logs, Day 285: Nor’easter Brings Rain and Wind
Date: Sunday, October 12, 2025
Weather: Rain and NE Wind; High Temp 60 Low 56 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Northeast winds and rain have arrived and will be with us until Tuesday. It started raining this morning, but at least it didn’t start until after my walk with Shadow. It is Cape Cod Marathon weekend and the streets downtown were filled with cars and people yesterday and today, but that didn’t really affect our walks. We just had lots of people to watch out for.

I went to the UU (Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Falmouth) at noon today to hear a BORDERx artist give a talk about the exhibit of immigration border art on display there right now. BORDERx is graphic art focused on the border crisis. There are over 70 artists and writers in the nationwide-project, and one of the artists is located in Hyannis. He is C.R. (Craig) Florence, and he gave a fascinating talk today about the work he does. The art is in wall-sized comic strip format, but the subject matter is very serious. Craig draws the images in pencil and inks, another artist does the coloring, another the writing, and yet another does the lettering.

The exhibit at the UU is sponsored by the Falmouth Immigrant Rights Coalition.

I came home to have lunch and was then off to the Museums on the Green for an Indigenous Peoples’ Day Celebration of songs, stories, and art. There were many sponsors, but Sandy Faiman-Silva, the head of Falmouth Immigrant Rights Coalition, organized this affair, and she needed help setting up the sound system, and I volunteered to do that. It was a two-hour celebration with the first hour being an interview between Sandy and the 96-year-old Chief of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, Chief Earle H. Mills and his daughter, Roxanne Mills Brown. Chief Mills might be 96, but he is still quite the storyteller. And storied did he tell! The Chair of the Select Board read the town proclamation declaring tomorrow Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but he noted that he was standing in for Heather Goldstone who had worked to get the proclamation passed. Go, Heather.

Then it was home to fix dinner for Jed’s mother, Marti. She drove down from Maine today and on Tuesday, Jed will drive her home to Washington, DC, in her car. He will then fly home. But first, he, along with Heather, Jonah, and Ollie have to get home from Vermont. They will arrive late tomorrow afternoon or early evening. They are still having beautiful weather and enjoying every minute of it.

2025 Life Logs, Day 284: Quiet Saturday
Date: Saturday, October 11, 2025
Weather: Sunny, Warmer Than Yesterday; High Temp 64 Low 54 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Every Saturday I go to the standout for democracy held on the Village Green. I go for many reasons, but one of the most important is that every week I connect with people I have never met and those new relationships, as well as connecting face-to-face with people I do know, have led to a myriad of networking opportunities. I call it ‘community building’, and right now, I can’t think of a better use of my time. All of us, versus just one of us, is always a better way to solve problems. And me, oh my, do we ever have a lot of problems to solve.

Another reason it was a quiet Saturday is that the Goldstones headed to Vermont this morning. So no adventures with them today. Since it is a long weekend with no school on Monday, they took the opportunity to go camping in Smugglers’ Notch State Park near Stowe. They go to Stowe to snowboard in the winter, but the scenic 3.5-mile narrow, winding road through the Notch is closed due to heavy snowfall in the winter. The boys have wanted to see it, so this was their chance before the road closure at the end of October. Heather sent some photos of the state park. It looks dramatically beautiful.

I was curious as to how Smugglers’ Notch got its name. So, I Googled it and found that during the early 1800’s and then again during the Prohibition era, this remote mountain pass was used to move illegal goods across the border from Canada, about 40 miles to the north.. The dense forests and natural caves in the Notch area provided ideal hiding places for the ‘goods’ and the treacherous terrain kept authorities away.

I spent my afternoon after the standout working on the nonviolent resistance film series. Now that we know what films we are showing and when and where, we need to plan the follow-up discussions. That requires watching each film multiple times to become familiar enough to come up with questions to guide the discussions.

Tonight, I had a long phone conversation with one of my first cousins named Harry. He called to tell me that this sister, Sara Jane, passed away. My mother had five brothers. One brother had no children. Two of them had only one or two children each. But the other two had ten and eleven children each. Counting myself and my four brothers and sisters, there were 29 first cousins on my mother’s side of the family. Now there are only seven of us left, of which I am the youngest.

2025 Life Logs, Day 283: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
Date: Friday, October 10, 2025
Weather: Sunny and Still Chilly; High Temp 50 Low 49 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

The good news first. I went to a Falmouth High School soccer game late this afternoon that they won 2-0 and Jonah made one of those two goals. Go, Jonah, #14!

It was an away game and by the time we got back to Falmouth it was almost 7 pm. Heather and Jed stayed home to prepare dinner for me and two of Jonah’s best friends and soccer team members and their families. Jean Luc’s parents brought their brand new puppy, Lola, with them tonight. What a sweetie! So, that’s the normal, happy news.

Now for the dark side. It is Friday, October 10, 2025, and I mark that date because it is a date when something so unbelievable happened that I do not want to ever forget it. I am called Oma by my grandkids. I was called Mrs. Handley by the many students I had in my 30 years as an educator. Today I was called a paid protester, a person who hates America, an antifa person, and a person who is pro Hamas by Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He, along with some other Republicans who obviously read ‘the memo’, said this. Since they all said the same thing, I am assuming there must have been some sort of directive. I am calling that ‘the memo’. I have no evidence that there was such a directive, but I find it interesting that a number of influential people came forth on the same day, all saying the same thing without some directive.

Bear with me while I explain. A national organization that I belong to, Indivisible, along with many other groups, have been planning a nationwide protest for weeks. It is called NO KINGS II. NO KINGS I happened in mid-June and more than five million peaceful Americans protested to make it clear we love our democracy and never, ever want to see a King in the United States of America. We already fought and won that revolution, giving birth to this great nation. I did not hear of any incidents of violence during NO KINGS I anywhere in this country. We protested with determination, but also with joy, singing and dancing and listening to speeches about what we love about the US of A. On October 18, we are planning the NO KINGS II protest. For weeks now, Indivisible, along with other organizations, have been offering safety and security and de-escalation trainings to make sure we know how to deal with situations if we are challenged. Indivisible was founded in 2016 and has always stood for peaceful protests, a right guaranteed to all Americans by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Our First Amendment protects the freedoms of speech and assembly.

So, when I read that this morning, October 10, 2025 (I really want to remember this date.), that Mike Johnson said the No Kings protest scheduled for October 18 is being planned as a “hate America rally”, I was a bit confused. His statement would be funny if the stakes were not so serious. But outright lying about this is serious. I don’t know any person that does not have some problem with something the US government has done during their lifetime, but “hate” is not the same as not agreeing with something or offering constructive criticism. Johnson went on to say that these same people who are planning NO KINGS, people just like me, are paid protesters (I wish!), and that we will draw “the pro Hamas wing” and “the antifa people.” Does protesting against starving an entire population of people in Gaza or the killing of thousands of children in 24 months of war mean that that we are pro Hamas? The answer is absolutely not. Does protesting in defense of democracy when a fascist regime is trying to take over my country mean I am an antifa person? I don’t think so. What is antifa anyway? Oh, it just means anti-fascist? I naively thought all people who love America are anti-fascist. You might ask, “What is a fascist anyway?” AI tells me it is a person who has a political ideology or belongs to a movement that focuses on extreme nationalism, authoritarianism, and suppresses opposition. People like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

I will be out there for NO KINGS II on Saturday, October 18, standing strong for all the good and beautiful of the democratic way of life I have known and loved for my 78 years on this planet … until now. I hope you will be out there with me.

PS As I am sitting here writing this, I have the TV on and just heard Donald Trump talking about the ‘paid protesters’ in Portland, saying he will go after those funding terrorist groups like this. He rambled on that they have to have funding because their signs are made from “very expensive paper” and the “beautiful” white sticks that they use to hold their signs all look the same and therefore, must be purchased for them. Then he called them anarchists. Unbelievable. The signs I hold up at rallies are made by me in my dining room with ‘expensive’ paper I buy at Staples with my own money and my ‘beautiful’ white sticks are scavenged from my son-in-law’s garage workshop. Or sometimes they are paint stirring sticks I get for free from hardware stores. And I made sure they know how I am going to use the stirring sticks. This makes me an anarchist?

2025 Life Logs, Day 282: Letting Go of Summer
Date: Thursday, October 9, 2025
Weather: Sunny, but Chilly N Wind; High Temp 54 Low 39 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I’m still hanging on to summer but today was a stark reminder for me that it is autumn. The bright sunshine today made it deceptive. But by the end of the afternoon, I gave in and put on my winter jacket while playing outside with Shadow. The sunshine could not compete with the chilly north wind. And tonight, it will be in the upper 30’s. Ouch!
I had various meetings today and in the late afternoon I turned my attention to dealing with my sister. It was the time of month to pay various bills of hers as well as dealing with some issues at the assisted living facility. Then tonight I tuned into a Quaker Friends Committee on National Legislation webinar. I was interested in what the faith community is saying and doing right now. Basically, they are doing the same thing that Indivisible is doing, so nothing new learned. There was a Quaker woman from Salt Lake City that encouraged everyone to read Martin Luther King’s ‘Letters from the Birmingham Jail’. I am going to try to find time this weekend to do just that. And I loved their ending where they encouraged everyone to do four things every day:
Advocate
Learn
Grow
And
Empower
I’ll be able to remember this because I added the ‘and’, the acronym spells ALGAE!

2025 Life Logs, Day 281: Rainy Day
Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Weather: Rain, Cooling Down; High Temp 70 Low 44 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Lats night the low temperature was 66. Tonight, it is supposed to be 44. That is quite a cool down. Plus, it is raining. That is supposed to clear by morning, and we should have nice, but cooler weather until sometime Sunday. Then the rain and wind return with a vengeance. We need the rain, but we have had such beautiful weather that is it hard to think about an entire week of rain next week.

I did my presentation this morning and there was a luncheon afterwards, so I didn’t get home until 1 pm. I have been working ever since on all of the things I ignored yesterday to get ready for the presentation. So lots of work, but no super pressing deadline for the next few days. Maybe I’ll get caught up with life!

2025 Life Logs, Day 280: A Quick Trip Around the World
Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Warm; High Temp 72 Low 66 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I spent the entire day getting ready for a presentation of the Voyage of Windbird, part 2. I normally love preparing and giving this talk, but right now I have so many other pressing things that it seemed a bit frivolous to spend the day reliving a trip around the world. That being said, in the end, I still enjoyed it. I am giving a presentation to a small group that has already seen the presentation, so I had to completely change it to make it ‘part 2’. During the regular presentation, there is no time for some of the interesting stories. So tomorrow, I will be story telling. Then I’ll get back to business as usual.

06 Windbird Sailing Up the Coast of Southern India

2025 Life Logs, Day 279: Crossing the Border and Other Scary Stuff
Date: Monday, October 6, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Warm; High Temp 70 Low 60 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I somehow worked all day and didn’t even get to the first thing on my To Do list. Things are happening so fast these days that you can’t deal with the here and now, much less what needed to be done yesterday. But I did take time this evening to go to a talk at the Woods Hole Library. It was a book talk sponsored by Falmouth Immigrant Rights Coalition. The book was Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Border Lands. The author is Sarah Towle. I haven’t read the book, but her talk was one of the most inspirational I have ever heard. The FCTV team was there recording, so hopefully it will be on the local channel so others can watch.

I don’t want to be in doomsday mode, but a piece by Robert Reich that was posted late this afternoon is one of the scariest summations of where we are as a country right now that I have read. Put on your resilience suit and read away.

Robert Reich on Substack, October 6, 2025

“Friends,

The direction we’re going is either martial law or civil war.
Americans from so-called “red” states, with the backing of their Republican governors and legislatures, are on the brink of using lethal force against Americans in so-called “blue” states, whose Democratic governors and legislatures strongly oppose the moves.
I pray we don’t come close to this but Trump has now ordered the deployment of 400 members of the Texas National Guard to several states, including Oregon and Illinois — ostensibly to protect ICE agents and facilities from protesters. The first group of Texas Guard troops is expected to arrive in Chicago tomorrow.

The troops are under the control of the Pentagon, with Trump as commander-in-chief. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that “the orders will be effective immediately for an initial period of 60 days.”
Less than an hour after Trump’s order, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, responded that he “fully authorize[s]” such a move by Trump. “You can either fully enforce protection for federal employees or get out of the way and let Texas Guard do it,” Abbott said in a post on X.

The Democratic governors of Oregon and Illinois have sought emergency injunctions against these and similar deployments.
Late Sunday night, a federal judge in Oregon (appointed by Trump) temporarily blocked the mobilization of any state national guards to that state. Today, a federal judge in Illinois declined to block the deployment of National Guard units there.
What is Trump’s plan? What is the troika behind him (Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Russell Vought) seeking to accomplish, and how?
Sad to say, I believe Trump and his enablers have worked this out in advance. At the Pentagon on September 30, 2025, Trump pitched the plan to use American soldiers for the purpose of punishing his political enemies.

He told hundreds of United States military leaders that they must prioritize “defending the homeland” against the “invasion from within” in American cities run by “radical-left Democrats.” He stated his intention is to use certain cities “as training grounds for our military.”

The first step has been for the Department of Homeland Security to deploy ICE agents to use aggressive tactics in targeted cities.
ICE has sent masked and armed federal agents into cities with Democratic mayors — arresting and detaining people outside immigration courtrooms, firing tear gas and chemical munitions on city streets without warning, raiding homes and apartments in the middle of the night and arresting their occupants willy-nilly — including Americans and people legally in the country, and children, using racial profiling to stop anyone looking Latino and demand proof of citizenship without warrants, and detaining people they believe are here illegally, and doing so without due process.

The second step is for such aggressive tactics to provoke demonstrations, and for Trump to exaggerate the scale and severity of them.
Trump has described Portland as a “war-ravaged” city “burning to the ground,” with “insurrectionists all over the place.” In fact, demonstrations there had been muted and rarely expanded beyond a one-block radius of the immigration detention facility in the city.
On September 6, 2025, Trump posted on social media an image of the Chicago skyline in flames, stating “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” including a depiction of himself in the image of the fictitious warmonger character Lt. Col. Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, titling the post “Chipocalypse Now.”
Yesterday, he described Chicago as a crime-ridden “war zone.”

The third step is for Trump and Hegseth to deploy federalized National Guard troops to control the demonstrators, an act that’s already enflaming the public and provoking some actual violence.

Until Trump’s announcement that he was sending troops into Portland, protests rarely numbered more than two dozen people. Since his announcement, clashes have become more violent.

The fourth step will be for Trump and Hegseth to invoke the Insurrection Act.

All of this is preamble for Trump’s real goal: to invoke the Insurrection Act, which empowers a president to deploy the U.S. military and to federalize the National Guard units of the individual states to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or armed rebellion against the federal government of the United States.

It is a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the president’s power to deploy the U.S. military within the United States.

The Insurrection Act requires that after invoking it, but before exercising its powers, a president must formally order the dispersion of people committing civil unrest or armed rebellion.

The major clause of the Insurrection Act reads:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That in all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States, or of any individual state or territory, where it is lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed, it shall be lawful for him to employ, for the same purposes, such part of the land or naval force of the United States, as shall be judged necessary, having first observed all the pre-requisites of the law in that respect.
***
As I said, I hope we don’t come near to this. I hope the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, stops Trump’s plan. But I believe it is Trump’s plan (the details of which have been worked out by the troika of Vance, Miller, and Vought), and they are implementing it as quickly as they can.
I don’t want to unduly alarm you, but you need to be aware of this imminent danger. It’s unfolding very rapidly.”

2025 Life Logs, Day 278: Pumpkin Time
Date: Saturday, October 5, 2025
Weather: Sunny and Warm; High Temp 76, Low 59 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

What a beautiful day! On this warm and sunny October afternoon, I went to the pumpkin patch at Tony Andrew’s with the Goldstones.

We missed having Sam with us, but Heather managed to entertain us with her pumpkin balancing antics. And we managed to find the perfect pumpkins to bring home with us. Tomorrow night the October supermoon graces the sky, and soon after, the cranberry harvest begins. ‘Tis fall in New England!
I spent the rest of the day working at my computer on various projects. And tonight we had an Indivisible Falmouth leadership meeting. Justin continues to help me with our Indivisible website, even an a Sunday afternoon. Thank you, Justin.

2025 Life Logs, Day 277: Saturday Rally on the Green and FHS Saturday Soccer
Date: Saturday, October 4, 2025
Weather: Sunny, Warmer; High Temp 73, Low 55 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Now that I am involved in the leadership of Indivisible Falmouth, the time I spend on the Green on Saturday is longer. It ends up to be two hours instead of an hour and a half. And I spent the time prior to rally making a new sign encouraging people to stand strong on healthcare. We need to support the Democrats that are standing strong for all of us. Unfortunately, the only time I got to hold up my sign was at the end of the rally when someone wanted to take a photo of it.

I spent the entire two hours handing out flyers for the nonviolent resistance film series I have been working on for what seems an eternity. But it has come together and it is time to spread the word.

I came home and walked with Shadow, had lunch, and then headed to Falmouth High School for Jonah’s soccer game. It is Homecoming Weekend, so the team really wanted to win this one. It ended in a 0-0 tie. They did a great job on defense, and we all hoped, right up to the last minute, that they would score. But it was not to be. Still, the team seemed happy with the outcome. And it was a gorgeous afternoon for a soccer game.

I have spent this evening working on Indivisible and the film series. We have an Indivisible leadership meeting tomorrow night that I needed to prepare for and Justin had a question about the website which prompted me to update the calendar.