2026 Life Logs, Day 241: Canvassing, Memorial for a Friend, Grandkids
Date: Saturday, August 29, 2026
Weather: Another Beautiful Summer Day; High Temp 77, Low 62 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I divided my day between canvassing for Ed Markey and attending the memorial service for Art Gilbert. I met Art and his wife Susan through Newcomers. Art was our tech guru and continued in that role up to the end. He was a beloved member of the Newcomers/Encore community. After the memorial service, Christina Brodie and I came back to my house to change clothes, eat some late lunch, and head out to do the canvassing. Then this evening, I got to do what I love most in life … be with my grandkids. Heather and Jed headed to Martha’s Vineyard to se the Indigo Girls in concert and I fixed dinner for the Goldpebbles plus three of Jonah’s friends. Then Ollie came over to spend the night with me. I am in grandmother heaven.

2026 Life Logs, Day 240: Canvassing ‘til You Drop
Date: Friday, August 28, 2026
Weather: Beautiful Day, Humidity Returns; High Temp 82, Low 62 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

One of my canvassing friends and I knocked on 70 doors today and tomorrow I will another 70 or so, by myself in the morning and with another friend in the afternoon. Jed took Ollie to play golf today and at the end of the day Ollie was proud to report that he made the high school team. Congratulations, Ollie!

I went to the farewell party for the library director mid-afternoon and this evening I did a massive food shopping trip. My refrigerator was basically empty, but now I have food. That was it for me today, and now I am off to bed to refresh and get ready for more door knocking. This is a last, big push before the primary election on Tuesday. Then the canvassing will continue but not be so intense. It will continue, however, until the general election in November.

2026 Life Logs, Day 238: A Surprise Dinner Treat
Date: Thursday, August 27, 2026
Weather: Beautiful Day; High Temp 82, Low 68 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Ten years ago today, I was at the Congregational Church celebrating the 50th wedding anniversary of friends Terry and Olivia White. Olivia was wearing the sari she wore on her wedding day as their daughter Sheri presented Olivia and Terry with their 50th anniversary cake. They looked like newly weds.

This evening, I walked into Kohinoor Indian Restaurant in Mashpee and Terry and Olivia were there enjoying a 60th anniversary dinner. I didn’t realize it was their anniversary when they invited me to join them at their table, but what a special invitation that was. We had a wonderful dinner together, sharing all sorts of memories, and then they headed back to Falmouth to go to the last Town Band Concert of the summer and I headed back to Bridges. Happy 60th Anniversary, Terry and Olivia! And thank you for sharing your very special evening with me.

At our birthday luncheon in Olivia’s honor earlier this week, everyone was talking about the new Indian restaurant in Mashpee. So, at 5 pm today, just after I had applied my sister’s new 15-day glucose monitoring patch, I decided to go have dinner while I waited for it to ‘warm up’. I was not going to go home until I was sure it was working and that takes an hour. Why not try to the restaurant? It was a great choice. Good food and wonderful company. The rest of my day was not quite so glorious. I spent much of the morning working on Patsy paperwork, took my car in to get a new battery, and then spent a couple of hours on Board of Library Trustee business. Yesterday I had hopes of salvaging my lost summer, but that idea did not advance today. One step forward, one step back. But slowly, I will get there.

2026 Life Logs, Day 238: Salvaging My Lost Summer
Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Weather: Beautiful Day; High Temp 81, Low 70 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I literally cannot believe school starts on Monday marking the official end of summer. At least that is how I have always thought of it. I spent all of June, all of July, and most of August laser focused on my sister’s needs. But it is time for me to take back some of my life. Today I tried to do that all in one day. I spent the entire morning door knocking for Senator Markey. The primary is on Tuesday and he has competition. So, I am devoting three hours to his campaign tomorrow, Saturday, and Monday. Sunday I am going to a Falmouth Immigration Rights Coalition Community Watch training and then taking part of the day for me. I spent my afternoon getting to know a woman I have admired from a distance. She has written a book about what it means to be a caretaker, and she had reached out to see if she could be helpful to me in dealing with my sister. She certainly was helpful and we plan to check in again in a couple of weeks to see how I am doing. After political canvassing and before my meeting with a new friend, I delivered Ollie and friend Simon to the Falmouth Country Club for another afternoon of ‘try outs’ for the high school golf team. Dropped them off, visited for a couple of hours with my new friend, drove to Mashpee to check in on Patsy, picked Ollie up on my way home and dropped him at the high school for freshman orientation night, came home and played with Shadow, attended part two of an election protection zoom offered by Indivisible, and am now going to go watch an episode of Ted Lasso. It sounds to me like my life is getting back to pre-Patsy normal craziness. This is my attempt to salvage by lost summer. Yippee!

2026 Life Logs, Day 237: A Special Wine Group Gathering
Date: Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Weather: Beautiful Day; High Temp 78, Low 60 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

After spending most of my day working on issues for my sister, even when I swore I was not going to do this, I broke away to take Ollie to the golf course, took my car in to see about getting a new battery, got the new wheelchair that I ordered for Patsy to UPS to be returned to Amazon because it is too small, and then spent the evening with my wine group. We had a special gathering tonight with a representative from Acquiesce Wines to lead us through a wine tasting with food pairings. But the best part of the evening was being with my wine group buddies. We have been together for seven years now and it is always a delight to be together. And another delight was driving home by the light of an almost full moon. it was beautiful.

2026 Life Logs, Day 236: From What’s App to Monarchs with Lunch In-Between
Date: Monday, August 24, 2026
Weather: Beautiful Day; High Temp 81, Low 59 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

The weather is perfect right now. Warm days and cool nights, no air conditioning needed, and today beautiful sunshine. My day started at Bridges getting my sister Patsy on a video call with her daughter Janet. Janet has a rare form of Alzheimer’s that causes blindness before total mental decline. At only 64, Janet has to live in an assisted living facility that can accommodate her needs. She has lost all executive functioning, but she still knows most people. It is a very sad situation, but getting Patsy and Janet connected via a What’s App video call today was wonderful. Our nephew Rex and his wife Diana were visiting with Janet this morning in Columbus, Ohio, before they traveled on to Cincinnati. Rex was able to handle the technology on Janet’s end and I on Patsy’s end, and we had a great conversation. And prior to the call, Patsy was reading a card sent to her from her sister-in-law, Judy Aylestock.

Patsy seems to be settling into her life at Bridges and was animated and happy today. The move here has been hard, but I think it is paying off. It is wonderful to see her be so contented.

I left Bridges just in time to be only 10 minutes late for a birthday luncheon with the Sensational Six.

This is my new name for the group of us who get together to celebrate our birthdays. We are the women from our dining-in group which was formed in 2017. Somewhere along the line, the women in the group decided to also get together for birthday luncheons. Today was a celebration of Olivia White’s 89th birthday which was actually on July 26. This was the first date that all six of us were available and we met at The Chart Room at Kingman Marina in Bourne. I decided to give us the name of the Sensational Six today, but tonight when I was searching for the French translation (six sensationnels), I saw that the original Sensational Six were the original six core Disney animated characters—Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. I do not think those characters apply to our Sensational Six, but I thought it was an interesting piece of information.

On my way home from lunch, I stopped by Bruce and Jane Woodin’s to participate in the release of a couple of Bruce’s Monarch butterflies. For many years, I did this with my first grade students and I still love seeing them fly into the natural world. At release time, my students used to chant, “I’m free, I’m free. And I can fly anywhere I want to be.” That place for Monarchs is Mexico.

The last activity of the day was picking Ollie up from an afternoon of playing golf. He was not happy with his performance today, but he said he was nervous as he was playing with new people. He is glad he has the rest of this week to practice before tryouts for the high school team.

2026 Life Logs, Day 235: Day Off
Date: Sunday, August 23, 2026
Weather: Overcast with Rain Early, Clear and Sunny PM; High Temp 80, Low 60 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I did what I said I would do in last night’s log. I took the day off. After a June, July, and beginning of August that were insanely busy and stressful dealing with my sister’s move, now that things with her are a little more settled, I have no desire to do anything at all. I just need a few days of doing nothing. So, I was happy to just putter away the day. I was going to visit Patsy, but my car wouldn’t start, so I couldn’t even do that. I have known since I got my oil changed almost 3 weeks ago that I need a new battery but did nothing about that. But that is now on tomorrow’s ‘to do’ list.. The battery went dead today just sitting in the driveway. When I had to jump start the car a few days ago, I didn’t bother to bring my little Imazing jump starter in the house to charge it, so I decided just wait until tomorrow when my Imazing is charged to jump start the car to go see Patsy. Sam came to try but was unsuccessful due to faulty jumper cables. Then later my neighbor Andy came over this evening with his device, similar to my Imazing, and got the car started. Thanks to Sam and Andy for their help. Hopefully it will start in the morning.

2026 Life Logs, Day 234: Saturday with Kevin
Date: Saturday, August 22, 2026
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Some Mist; High Temp 72, Low 64 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Kevin and I had a laid-back Saturday. Every year when he comes to visit, we tackle some task that I need done. This year it was to check out the bathroom sink drain which we did yesterday and to have him help me reorganize the stacks of plastic storage bins in the basement. I dare not try to do that due to my back. It is fine for now, but lifting heavy bins is not a good idea. We spent an hour or so and made great progress before we headed to the Green for the Saturday Rally for Democracy. It was Kevin’s first rally. He enjoyed the experience but suggested some marketing strategies to try and get younger people to attend. Almost everyone on the Green is more my age than his.

Once home, we did a little more work in the basement and got all of the bins move where I wanted them. I can do the rest of the clean-up myself. We had leftovers from Thursday’s dinner for lunch and leftovers from last night for dinner, so we had no cooking to do today. But in Claire’s absence, we thought of her as we ate food made from recipes in her cookbook.

After solving all of the world’s problems and catching up on each other’s lives, on the recommendation of a friend, we watched Nicole Wallace’s The Best People podcast that had aired on MSNBC earlier in the afternoon. It was an interview with Timothy Snyder who is one of the top academics in the world on identifying and fighting fascism. Kevin was not familiar with him, so I made a proper introduction taking Synder’s books, “On Tyranny” and “On Freedom” off the bookshelf to share with him. He said he was interested enough to download and read them once back in Mexico.

Kevin leaves by 7 am in the morning and I think Shadow and I are just going to take the day off. I plan to visit my sister, but otherwise just catch up on emails and texts I have ignored while Kevin was visiting.

2026 Life Logs, Day 233: Dinner and A Movie
Date: Friday, August 21, 2026
Weather: Overcast with Rain; High Temp 69, Low 64 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

This morning was overcast and rainy. I decided it was the perfect morning to go see The Odyssey, so I asked Kevin if he was interested. He was, as Claire was going to see the movie in Toronto with her family. There was a 10 am showing, so off we went. We both enjoyed the movie despite terrible popcorn!

We spent the afternoon working on my bathroom sink drain which takes forever to drain. What we discovered is that the problem is not in the u-shaped trap under the sink. It is further along in the system. A plumber is going to have to solve that problem.

Kevin fixed dinner and we invited Heather, Jed, Sam, and Ollie to join us. Jonah is in New York City with friends, so he missed the Thai curry with a fennel and tomato salad, and then tropical fruit salad for dessert. Dinner was wonderful and the conversations were wild. We covered everything from all that is good and all that is bad about AI. We ended the evening discussing Sam’s theory that all life is binary. I won’t even try to recap the conversation!

2026 Life Logs, Day 232: Kevin Arrived
Date: Thursday, August 20, 2026
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High Temp 86, Low 65 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Mark and I met Kevin and Claire in 2003 when we both arrived at Shipyard Quarters in Charlestown on our respective sailboats to become live aboards. Our reasons for deciding to live aboard our boats were very different and the difference in our ages was almost 30 years, but despite the differences, we became forever friends. I actually consider the two of them as extended family. They now live in Mexico, but they visit every summer when they travel to Canada to visit Claire’s parents and Kevin’s family in New Jersey and his mother in Los Angeles. Their time for visiting is short this year as they are hoping to finally get their boat in the water after a multi-year renovation. They drove their camper van from Mexico to Canada last week. Claire stayed there to visit with her parents and Kevin drove here today. He can only stay until Sunday when he heads to New Jersey for a family reunion and they will be back in Mexico by mid-September. Our first day together was spent catching up on life, visiting my sister Patsy, and making a recipe from Claire’s cookbook for dinner. But whatever we do, we just enjoy our time together.