2025 Life Logs, Day 276: We the People Class and Shadow’s Day with the Groomer
Date: Friday, October 3, 2025
Weather: Sunny, Warming a Bit; High Temp 66, Low 55 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

This morning was the second meeting of this fall’s “We the People” class based on the book by that same name by Erwin Chemerinsky. I appreciate the time focused on our Constitution that is deep trouble right now. Before the 10:30 am class, I took Shadow to Pampered Paws for his every other month grooming appointment. My afternoon time was split between my Board of Library of Trustees treasurer’s duties and nonviolent resistance film series duties before making the trip back up to Pampered Paws, which is near the Bourne Bridge, to pick up my handsome little Shadow. He is back to full energy level. Whatever was wrong with him, has faded away. I can even play fetch with him again. And then, I took the night off. I caught up on news and watched some recorded Colbert and Kimmel shows from this past week.

2025 Life Logs, Day 275: Originalism, Whaling, and Dinner with a Friend
Date: Thursday, October 2, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Still Cool; High Temp 60, Low 43 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I had no meetings today. Woohoo!!! I spent most of the morning reading an article for the class I am taking on Friday mornings. The class is based on a study of the book, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century by Erwin Chemerinsky. For this week’s class, in addition to a chapter from the book, we also had to read an article published in the Atlantic written by Jill Lepore, “How Originalism Killed the Constitution.” Really good article dated September 10, 2025.

Later in the afternoon I went to the Museums on the Green for a lecture on Whaling in Falmouth. The speaker was the husband of one of the women I am working with on the film series committee. It was an interesting presentation on whaling in general, and about the whaling boats that were built in Falmouth and those with captains from our town. Then tonight I went out to dinner with a friend. I rarely go out to dinner, but it was a wonderful evening of good food and conversation. I love Shadow, but our conversations always seem to be one-sided!

2025 Life Logs, Day 274: October 1 Feels Like Fall
Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny and Windy. Cooler; High Temp 60, Low 48 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

The first day of October felt like fall. It was windy and cool, ending with a string of wonderfully warm fall days. We have one more cool day then it is supposed to warm up a bit again. But whether the days are in the 70’s or the 60’s, we are having spectacular fall weather. I had another day of meetings and trainings. The good thing is that I am learning a lot and meeting lots of new people.

2025 Life Logs, Day 273: Happy 50th Birthday to Heather
Date: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 72, Low 53 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

After a walk with Shadow and Archie this morning, I spent my day focused on getting ready for Heather’s 50th birthday dinner tonight. My head is still reeling from the realization that one of my ‘babies’ is now 50 years old. Fifty years sounds like such very long time, but those 50 years have passed by so quickly. I took time to look back through some of the photos of Heather over the years and decided that my very favorites were one when she won a sled dog race when she was just two years old and the other was when she picked a zucchini that was almost bigger than she was … and she looked so very serious.

That was Heather. She was a delightful child, fun loving while always being so focused and serious. To this day, she continues to amaze me with her energy and insight, and her dedication to her family. She somehow manages to balance work, community engagement, family, and still has time to enjoy the things she loves most. I was so happy that she got to take three of her good friends sailing on Ardenna on Sunday as part of her birthday present to herself.

This afternoon I baked a double decker version of one of her favorite cakes, a flourless chocolate decadence with chocolate ganache icing. Making one of those cakes takes up the better part of the afternoon, and making two of them took even more time. I also bought a wooden base at Michaels, drilled 50 holes in it, and placed 50 candles in those holes. I wanted to make sure she had a chance to make 50 wishes and blow out all of those candles!

Happy Birthday, Heather. May the next 50 years be as amazing as the first 50.

2025 Life Logs, Day 272: First Indivisible Falmouth Public Meeting
Date: Monday, September 29, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 75, Low 57 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

My day started a little differently than planned. Olivia White sent a text early morning to ask if I could take her to Hyannis for an important dental appointment. Her husband, Terry, wasn’t feeling up to driving, so I took Shadow for a quick walk, picked up Oliva, and off to Hyannis we went. The appointment took less time than expected, so we were back in Falmouth by noon. I then turned my attention to preparing for our very first Indivisible Falmouth meeting. I went to the library to pick up the key since the library would be closed before our meeting time. And while there, I got some pointers on using the technology in the Hermann Room. Unfortunately, the room was in use, so I went home and got things ready so I would return to the library at 5 pm to get the technology. The meeting wasn’t until 6:30, but it was a good thing I arrived early. My computer would not work with their system, so I had to make some last minute changes and use their computer.

Jim Newman, the head of Indivisible Falmouth, also arrived early to set up the room. He set up over 50 chairs which I thought was too ambitious. I didn’t think we would get that many people. But we did! We had a good meeting with people sharing lots of ideas for going forward with us.

2025 Life Logs, Day 271: A Day Just for Me, Not
Date: Sunday, September 28, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny, Rain Overnight; High Temp 75, Low 61 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Well, that didn’t work. I got up, walked Archie and Shadow, got out the book for the Friday class I am taking, and settled in for what I had planned to be a relaxing day of reading and working on some personal projects. I was taking an idea from a friend who doesn’t do any volunteer work after 5 pm. I thought I would start the same idea by doing no volunteer work on Sundays. I was going to make Sunday a day just for me to do what I want to do. I only got as far as reading my email. I needed to reply to an email from a woman from the Adams National Historical Park tour division. None of the dates I had requested for an October tour were available and I needed to pick a day immediately and deal with other details. Evidently she works on Sundays. The next email was similar. Someone else was working on Sunday and needed things from me by tomorrow. And on and on. I certainly got a lot accomplished, but I didn’t get to read my class assignment, and I certainly had zero to time to work on personal projects. I simply worked all day, only taking breaks to do little mini-walks with Shadow. The good news is HE IS BETTER!!! He could get onto the back seat of the car today without help and he is back to being his rascally self. For that I am most grateful. I’ll try the ‘no volunteer work on Sunday’ again next week. In my defense, the requests made of me today really were all time sensitive and all needed to be done by tomorrow. And I really did want to do all of these things, just not today.

2025 Life Logs, Day 270: Thank You, Justin
Date: Saturday, September 27, 2025
Weather: Beautiful Fall Weather; High Temp 75, Low 61 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Every Saturday, I head to the Village Green for our weekly rally for democracy. About half-way through today, I got a text from Justin saying he could call me in an hour to give me some requested help with our Indivisible website. I’m still feeling guilty that I asked him to build our new Indivisible Falmouth website while he was here from Puerto Rico to take me to the Willie Nelson concert. But ask I did. And built he did. Today I needed some direction from him on making a few changes, so again I asked. Thank you, Justin. I promise we will try to handle this on our own going forward, but I know I’ll still have to reach out for help. We are all so appreciative that you are always there to help.

I left the Green and came home to talk with Justin. That took almost an hour and then I needed to go to over to Joanie Thompson’s to share with her what I learned from Justin. She is the one who will be doing the updating from here forward, and I wanted to pass off the information while it was fresh in my mind.

Next it was off to the Falmouth Cinema for a screening of my friend Lynda Connolly and her husband Michael’s film, Unfinished Business. This meant I spent my entire day going from political activity to political volunteer time to politically related fun time. Judy Fenwick went with me to the film. I saw it earlier in the summer when it was first rolled out, but I wanted to go to the screening today to support my friend Lynda and Belonging To Each Other, Falmouth’s organization that works with the homeless. Today’s proceeds went to them. The screen play was written by Lynda and Michael after he retired from being Secretary of State in Massachusetts for 15 years. The film is about state politics 50 years ago. The story did not always paint a pretty picture of what was happening in the state house, but the videography highlighting scenic Martha’s Vineyard and Boston was drop dead gorgeous. It was worth going a second time just to enjoy that. But I can’t wait to corner Lynda at our next book group to have her answer some of questions about the characters in the film.

After getting home and fixing dinner, I have spent my evening catching up on Kimmel and Colbert monologues from this past week. More politics, but at least there was an opportunity for laughter.

2025 Life Logs, Day 269: Working on This and That
Date: Friday, September 26, 2025
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 75, Low 60 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

It was not a very exciting day, but I did get a lot of work done. Not enough, but as much as I could. I tried unsuccessfully to pin down information for a field trip I am organizing in October. That will continue next week. I watched another film for the nonviolent resistance film series, one that I needed to watch and make a decision on by Monday. I watched a No Kings webinar that I missed on Tuesday night, and then I did some organizational work for Indivisible Falmouth–contacted Justin about the website and figured out what to do about our calendar. And in today’s weekly paper, the Enterprise, there was a great front page article about Indivisible Falmouth. So, it was a good day that ended with dinner with Heather, Jed, and Ollie. Jonah was at an away soccer game on Martha’s Vineyard.

2025 Life Logs, Day 268: Head Spinning
Date: Thursday, September 25, 2025
Weather: Overcast, More Rain; High Temp 71, Low 65 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I have spent much of the last few days watching as many videos on nonviolent resistance that I could cram in between other activities to prepare for a meeting I had this morning. Then tonight I see that Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum today aimed at reining in what he calls a radical leftwing domestic “terror network.” All of this is head spinning. In watching the videos on nonviolence, I learned that authoritarians ALWAYS go after leftwing ‘deep state terror networks’ that do not exist. But they say this as part of their playbook to frighten people. They are the ones bringing the terror, but we must stand strong and not let this move sidetrack us.
Indivisible is preparing for the October 18 NO KINGS 2 protest and just tonight I attended the first of many workshops designed to make sure all NO KINGS protests are BIG, joyful, powerful, and nonviolent. We must all be trained in nonviolent resistance strategies and know how to de-escalate situations that might be the least bit confrontational. There are no terrorists here. We are people who love our country and are organizing to save our democracy. The Trump regime is doing everything possible to block this effort, but the people have the power in this situation. We just have to stay the course. If we stand together, we win. As Kamala Harris had us chanting during her 107 day campaign for the Presidency, “When we fight (nonviolently for what is right), we win.”

2025 Life Logs, Day 267: Meetings, Even When Not Scheduled
Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2025
Weather: Rain, finally; High Temp 68, Low 63 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Even when I don’t meetings scheduled, I seem to have a propensity for conjuring up meetings out of then air. So, it was a busier day than expected. At least I am never bored! The really good thing about today was the rain. It really rained for a couple of hours, rain that was desperately needed. But it let up to a mist by evening and Jonah’s soccer game was on. I didn’t make it until halftime because I thought it was cancelled. But Ollie and Jed let me know it was on, so off I went.

There is no visible improvement with Shadow today, but he is no worse. So, I’ll take it.