2021 Life Logs, Day 108: More Writing, Thinking About Gardening
Date: Sunday, April 18, 2021
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Warmer; High 54, Low, 41 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
This is spring vacation week for Falmouth Public Schools, so I am hoping to spend time with the Goldpebbles. I had hoped to finish up my chapter on American Samoa today before taking some time off writing, but that did not happen. I tried, but I am just not quite there. We spent twenty-nine days at anchor in Pago Pago Harbor on the island of Tutuila in American Samoa. We spent eighteen days in Rarotonga, but four of those days were spent on a little side trip to Aitutaki. In French Polynesia, we never spent more than eight days in one anchorage. So, to this point in the Voyage of Windbird, we spent more time in American Samoa than any other place in the South Pacific. Because of that it is taking time to write the chapter. And it is a chapter that I really want to get right. I know how much it meant to Mark to revisit American Samoa after living there for two years in the 1960’s, so I will continue on—but not until after I have some fun with the Goldpebbles. Tomorrow we are going to spend the afternoon finally filling the deck planters that I brought as a housewarming gift with potting soil. They were supposed to be delivered last May but didn’t arrive until the fall. So, this will be the first growing season for the planters.
I wrote until almost 8 pm tonight and then had to stop and fix dinner for myself and Shadow. At 9 pm I watched ‘Ocean Crossing’ on Masterpiece Theater while I ate dinner and after that I started writing my log. But then I decided to stop and watch the Joshua Johnson show on MSNBC while I rode my exercise bike. I continue to log in my six miles each evening.
Joshua Johnson was the host of 1A on NPR, a national conversation program. It was the program that replaced the Diane Rehm Show. But then he was hired by MSNBC and does weekend evenings. He often has fascinating guests. Tonight, one guest was Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who is best known as the villainous-turned-valiant knight Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones. Tonight, he was talking about a new program, ‘Through Greenland’, which is about climate change. For the past few years, this actor, producer, and screen writer has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to create for awareness for climate change. Listening to him brought me right back around to what I had been writing about today. We had unusually extreme weather in the months we spent in the South Pacific in 2006. Today I wrote:
“Another couple that we knew from meeting them in French Polynesia came into Pago Pago Harbor (American Samoa) reporting on the extreme weather. George and Barbara of Gdansk out of Vancouver arrived after a rough trip from Suwarrow in the northern Cook Islands. They had heavy wind and rain for most of their passage. George said that wherever they sailed this year, the Convergence Zone followed them. Even though we had taken a different path to get to American Samoa, we felt the same way. We just could not shake that Convergence Zone. The South Pacific was having a turbulent season. They reported that in Suwarrow two boats were blown on the reef on a particularly stormy night. Both were recovered without significant damage, but it was a scary thought. We shared with them what Mark, the gentleman who ran the NOAA Observatory we had visited recently, had told us. He said that scientists were perplexed with what was happening. He confirmed what we thought. The weather in the South Pacific was not following normal patterns and the scientists he worked with believed it all had to do with global warming. He told us that many still did not want to believe there was such a thing, but as he said, “Something is making the ocean temperature warmer down here!” I think I would like to try to watch ‘Through Greenland’ this week in observance of Earth Day. Maybe I can convince the Goldpebbles to watch with me.
