2025 Life Logs, Day 183: The Midpoint of 2025
Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Rain Overnight; High Temp 75, Low 68 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Today, July 2, is the midpoint of 2025. We are halfway through the year. We have survived the first 182 days and now have 182 to go. We are also now closer to the year 2050 than to the year 2000. So, happy midpoint!

The high point of my day was trying a new recipe I saw in the New York Times on Monday … S’mores Brownies. I just had to try them and used Ollie and Jonah as my excuse for making them. These bars have three layers: a graham cracker bottom, a gooey chocolate brownie center, and a toasted marshmallow top. S’mores are a summer favorite. These come in a close second.

This evening at sunset, I took time to “smell the roses.” Actually, I have no roses in my yard, but I have purple, raspberry pink, and blue hydrangea, rusty orange, bright orange, and pinkish orange lilies, white and yellow daisies, and numerous varieties of plants with lilac to purple blossoms. Bathed in the muted light at sunset, they were still as brilliant and beautiful as in the sunshine … which we did not see today.

2025 Life Logs, Day 182: A New Month
Date: Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Rain Overnight; High Temp 75, Low 68 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

For me, the new month of July began with a trip to see the friend who is a metal worker in Mattapoisett. I met Peter when I was looking for someone to weld a seam on one of Ardenna’s spreaders. Peter repaired the stay but was also a wealth of information when I was hunting for a boom. Today I took a stainless steel pin that needed to be cut shorter and have a new hole drilled near the bottom end. I knew Peter could do this in just a few minutes, so off I went. Peter, who is my age, and his wife Jodie live on the land Peter’s father bought before Peter was born. I don’t know how old the house is, but it has been there many years. There are also a few old, some dilapidated, out buildings on the property, one of which is Peter’s metal shop. When we stepped inside, it was freezing cold. Peter then started telling me the story of how all of the buildings on the property sit on top of or alongside of a massive piece of granite that extends for miles. When he was a kid, he played in the quarry in Achusnet which is a few miles from his place. He was told that the granite extended from Achusnet to his father’s property on Buzzards Bay and then reappeared on the Cape Cod side of the bay at Otis Air Force Base. All I know for sure is that it keeps his metal shop which is above ground around 55 degrees F this time of year. Peter said his father built the buildings on the granite so they would have natural air conditioning. And they certainly do. Our conversation went way beyond the 20 minutes it took to cut off the end of the pin and then drill a new hole. That in itself was a fascinating process to watch.

I didn’t get back to Falmouth until almost 1 pm. But because it was a mostly cloudy day and not all that warm, Ollie had declared this a day to do nothing. No beach today. So, we just hung out until Jonah headed to a soccer game late afternoon. Ollie mowed the grass in his yard and put the bike rack back on my car after being stored away for the winter. Sometime in the afternoon, I went home to check on Shadow and while there, I made the mistake of checking my email. I then had to deal with a Library Trustee issue and send some emails dealing with that. That was about it for the first day of July.

2025 Life Logs, Day 180: From Camp Oma to Summer Assistant
Date: Monday, June 30, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High Temp 76, Low 67 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Camp Oma for teenagers is quite different from prior years. I don’t need to come up with activities for Jonah and Ollie. They are quite busy all on their own. I just need to assist. I took Jonah to soccer practice this morning and came back to their house to prep dinner for tonight. It is a Select Board Monday, and with Jed out of town and Heather in an all evening meeting, I did dinner for the boys. I also made some calls for appointments. Shadow has developed a strange growth on his eyelid over the past 3-4 weeks, and I was able to get an appointment for this afternoon. My car needs an oil change, and the check engine light came on last week, so I made an appointment for that as well. I did this while Ollie cut the neighbor’s grass and Jonah was at soccer practice. After I picked Jonah up from soccer, I got lunch for the boys and then took Shadow to the vet.

This visit was to the same veterinary practice that has seen Shadow when he was a puppy.
But today I saw a different doctor with a different take on Shadow’s gastrointestinal issues. She thinks he has severe allergies and wants me to put him on a prescription diet. He has an ear infection, and she thinks the strange little puffy bump on his eyelid is caused by the allergies. $350 later, we walked out of the vet’s office, and I am still not sure what I am going to do.

I went back to get Ollie to go to the beach, but none of his friends were going to the beach today, so he decided to go to my neighbor’s house to cut the front yard grass. Ollie is taking care of my neighbor’s lawn while he is out of town. It was a good decision not to go to the beach as it suddenly got cloudy. The high temp this week is in the 70’s, not the 80’s like last week. And when the sun goes behind the clouds, it doesn’t feel like beach weather to Ollie.

2025 Life Logs, Day 179: A Baby Shower and a Trip to Hyannis
Date: Sunday, June 29, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 79, Low 64 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Today I attended the baby shower for Brian and Nadia’s baby girl, Sequoia. Brian and Nadia stayed here with Shadow a few times when I went to Puerto Rico and North Carolina to visit my sister. Sequoia came early, so the baby shower had to be postponed until today. And after the shower, I drove to Hyannis to pick up some food items that I cannot get here in Falmouth. That was about it for my day, but I read a post from a David Attenborough Fans Facebook page that I want to share here in case you were born in the 40s-50’s or 60’s and missed seeing it

“Many have passed away, and those who are still here are called “the elderly.””
We were born in the 40s-50s-60s.
We grew up in the 50’s-60’s-70’s
We studied in the 60s-70s-80s.
We were together in the 70s-80s-90s.
We got married or not and discovered the world in the 70s-80s-90s.
Adventuring into the 80s – 90s
We’re settling into the 2000s.
We became wiser in 2010s.
And we’re going strong into 2020 and beyond.
Turns out we went through EIGHT different decades…
TWO different centuries…
TWO different millennials…
We’ve gone from phone with operator for long distance calls, pay booths, video calls worldwide.
We’ve gone from slides to YouTube, vinyls to online music, handwritten letters to emails and What’s App.
Live games on the radio, black and white TV, color TV, then HD 3D TV.
We went to the video store and now watching Netflix.
We’ve known the first computers, punch cards, disks and now we have gigabytes and megabytes on our smartphones.
We wore shorts all through our childhood, then trousers, ep pants or mini-skirts, Oxfords, Clarks, Palestinian scarves, jumpsuits, and blue jeans.
We avoided childhood paralysis, meningitis, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, swine flu and now COVID-19.
We’ve done roller skating, roller skating, tricycle, bicycle, moped, gasoline or diesel and now we drive hybrids or electric.
We played with the little ones
horses and checkers, ostrich and marbles, 1000 threshold and monopoly, now there’s candy crush on our smartphones
And we read… much
And our schoolmates’ religion was not a subject…
We used to drink tap water and lemonade in glass bottles, and the vegetables on our plate were always fresh, today we get meals delivered.
Yes, we have been through a lot but what a beautiful life we have had!
They might describe us as “ex-annuals”; people who were born in this 50s world, who had an analog childhood and digital adulthood.
We should add the Biological Revolution that we have witnessed. In 1960, biology was very descriptive. We have witnessed the event of Molecular Biology: the molecules of Life have been discovered: DNA, RNA etc. When you see everything that has come from it: gene therapy, gene fingerprints, and others the progress is considerable.
We kind of have “seen it all”!
Our generation has literally lived and witnessed more than any other in every dimension of life.
This is our generation that has literally adapted to “CHANGE”.
A big congratulations to all the members of a very special generation, which will be UNIQUE. ”

2025 Life Logs, Day 178: Switzerland, Czechia, England, PR, MA, and WV
Date: Saturday, June 28, 2025
Weather: Overcast, A Few Sprinkles; High Temp 71, Low 67 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

What do Bern, Switzerland … Prague, Czechia … Hazlemere, England … Rincon, Puerto Rico … Falmouth, Massachusetts … and St. Albans, West Virginia all have in common? The answer is that my immediate family members plus the nephew and his wife who were here this past week, are now distributed around the globe in those various locations. It’s like some magician said, “Poof!”, and they all scattered. Jo, Ziggy, and Coco arrived in England on Wednesday for a two-week visit with Jo’s family. Sam left here on Wednesday with two of his friends for their graduation trip to Europe. They arrived in Prague, Czechia, on Thursday and will continue from there to Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Italy. Jed’s annual trip to a science conference that is in a different part of the world each year had been cancelled due to DOGE cuts to science grants, but a couple of weeks ago, it was back on the agenda. He is actually in flight tonight to Amsterdam, then on to Zurich, and will arrive in Bern sometime tomorrow. On Thursday, my nephew Rex and his wife Diana, left here for Niagara Falls and arrived home in St. Albans, West Virgina last night. In the month of May they traveled out West, visiting or driving through 15 states and during their June trip to New England they hit another 8 states. This leaves Justin at home in Rincon, Puerto Rico, and Heather, Jonah, Ollie, and me at home here in Falmouth. I find it more than ironic that the Maga world wants to cut ties with the rest of the world and isolate ourselves here in the United States. No doubt, the USA is/was a wonderful country to live in, but in this 21st century, travel from place to place in the world is almost as common place for many as traveling from one town to another was when I was growing up in the 1950’s. I saw a t-shirt on Facebook this morning that said:

“Dear Racists in America,

Y Car is Japanese, beer is German,
O electronics are Taiwanese,
U fashion is French,
R vodka is Russian.

And never forget the land
YOU LIVE ON IS
Native American.”

With modern travel and technology, this great big world has become a small world. It is world where the people in other countries have become our neighbors. We need to be kind to our neighbors, not bullying them. “Love thy neighbors as thyself.”

2025 Life Logs, Day 176: Happy 16th Birthday to Jonah
Date: Thursday, June 26, 2025
Weather: Overcast with Sprinkles All Day Long; High Temp 73, Low 60 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I have been so incredibly busy that I have not posted a log for the past four days. I will be posting those logs in the next couple of days, but here is a quick summary. Sunday was Jonah’s birthday party with friends at R1, an entertainment center in Rhode Island. Monday was a beach day with Ollie and his friend Seton and my nephew Rex and his wife Diana from West Virgina arrived for a four-day visit. Tuesday, Rex, Diana, and I took off for a day trip to Provincetown. It was the hottest day of the year to date, but that didn’t deter our exploration of the town and the Cape Cod National Seashore. On Wednesday, I had an Encore Board meeting in the morning, but I made it to Heather and Jed’s in time to give Sam a farewell hug before he took off on a European adventure with friends. Then Rex, Diana, and I were off to Stony Beach for a relaxing afternoon. This morning, I woke up asking, “Where in the world is Sam?” Before I went to bed last night, Heather let me know that Sam, Robert, and Ethan had arrived in Amsterdam and were waiting for their flight to Prague. Early this morning we heard from Robert that they had arrived in Prague and were on the bus to explore the downtown area. They will be in Prague until Monday when they travel on to Freiburg, Germany.

That brings me to today. Rex and Diana left around 10 am travelling to Niagara Falls before returning home to West Virginia on Saturday. After they left, I spent the rest of my morning on my computer doing Library Trustee work and general catching up. I checked in with Ollie, but he really didn’t want to do anything today. Heather was working from home, so I left him there, checked in at the library to see if there were additional checks to write, attended the weekly Indivisible meeting at 3 pm, and before I knew it, it was time to go to Heather and Jed’s to celebrate Jonah’s birthday.

Sixteen years ago today, Mark and I took Sam to the Falmouth Hospital to meet his little brother. We spent that summer here before returning to Windbird in Australia and then didn’t see Jonah again until we finally sailed Windbird into Woods Hole just in time for his second birthday. We had left a baby and returned to a chubby cheeked, curly blonde-haired happy toddler.

Tonight, during dinner, we all shared some of our favorite memories of Jonah’s early years. My favorite story was about walking up and down the street with Jonah after a rain. He would put on his little astronaut suit and boots and pretend we were walking on the moon. He would announce when there was hot lava and we would have to tip toe at a run to get to safety.

Heather and Jed recalled his first birthday that was centered around tubs of colorful balls. He had loved playing with balls from the time he could hold one in his little hands. That hasn’t changed. Soccer is the love of his life.
Jonah loves soccer, but he also loves birthday cake. For tonight, he dreamed up a recipe and Heather executed the directions. It was a very moist, triple chocolate cake baked in two round pans. The rounds were sliced in half across the middle and warmed raspberry jam was spread on the layers. Each round was then reassembled with a layer of chocolate ganache between the two rounds. Then it was covered with chocolate buttercream icing. Decadent and delicious. Happy 16th birthday to Jonah!

2025 Life Logs, Day 171: Happy Birthday to Jo on the First Full Day of Summer
Date: Saturday, June 21, 2025
Weather: Sunny and Warm; High Temp 75, Low 65 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Summer solstice happened last night around 10:30 pm ET. In Falmouth, we consider the last day of school the beginning of summer, but officially today was that first full day of summer 2025. And it was my daughter-in-law Jo’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Jo! Along with Ziggy and Coco, Jo will soon be heading to England to visit family for two weeks. I am sure she will have birthday celebrations there, but I hope she had a special day today. I don’t know if it was related to Jo’s birthday, but yesterday Ziggy cut his hair. I honestly don’t know when the last time was that he had his hair cut, but it has been very many years, if ever. A new look, for sure!

I did not go to the weekly rally on the Green today. It is so important that we keep attending these rallies, but I had to take a pass today. I had a load of things that I really needed to do to get ready for my nephew Rex and his wife Diana to visit beginning on Monday with no other time to do it. I’ll be back at it next Saturday.

Tomorrow Jonah is having his 16th birthday party with a few friends at R1 Indoor Karting Entertainment Center in Lincoln, RI. I had originally planned to go to New Hampshire tomorrow to see my niece Candi and her family. Rex and Diana will be arriving there tomorrow around noon and we were going to have mini-family reunion. But in the end, the number of hours that I would be driving just made no sense to be there for just two hours. I will visit later this summer when I can spend the night. So now, I can go to Jonah’s karting party. I will watch, not ride in the go-karts!

2025 Life Logs, Day 170: First Day of Camp Oma 2025, Dinner at the Dearman’s
Date: Friday, June 20, 2025
Weather: Sunny and Warm; High Temp 79, Low 64 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Camp Oma this summer is just Oma and Ollie. Jonah might join us once in a while, but he has summer soccer and is working at Corner Cycle. His summer is packed. Ollie also has 12 days in July when he will be at Mass Maritime attending ASLP ( Advanced Studies + Leadership Program). But we have two weeks prior to that and two weeks after before the Goldstones head to Maine in August. Sam has definitely graduated from Camp Oma. He is headed to Europe on Wednesday for an 18-day self-guided tour of chosen spots in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Netherlands, France, and Italy. He begins the trip with two of his best friends, Robert and Ethan, and then they will pick up Sebastian in the Netherlands when he finishes school the first of July. When Sam returns, he will work at Corner Cycle until he leaves for Groningen University in the Netherlands around the 20th of August. That leaves just Ollie and me. The very first day of Camp Oma was on June 25, 2012, thirteen years ago. That first year it was just Sam and Jonah. Ollie started joining us the next year. My how those Goldpebbles have grown!

For the first day of Camp Oma 2025, Ollie and I picked up Ollie’s friend Paul and headed to Falmouth Heights Beach where the two boys brought lunch from the beach food truck. Ollie swears it is the best food option for lunch in Falmouth. And maybe that is true for 13-year-olds. Loaded fries topped with cheese and chicken bites and bacon bits. Then we headed to Stony Beach in Woods Hole, where we met up with three other friends. Simon, Seton, and Jack. The five boys frolicked in the water for two hours non-stop, riding the waves on boogie boards. Ollie was easy to spot in his bright yellow swim trunks and lime green boogie board. Even though it has not been that hot, the water was delightfully ‘warm enough’. I won’t say it was warm, but after the first shock of chill, it was great. Summer has arrived.

Tonight, the Goldstones and I went to Andrew and Lara Dearman’s for dinner. The Dearman’s are the couple from New York who bought the house next two doors down from the cottage where I lived prior to moving here. It is a vacation home for them. Because their three children are the same ages as Heather and Jed’s three, and since they arrived during the Covid years when we spent many Camp Oma days kayaking and playing in the water of the Eel River, the six kids always had great fun together. They are now a great deal taller than they were in the summer of 2021 when they met, but last night that didn’t stop them from acting just like they did four years ago. A very rambunctious six-some.