2021 Life Logs, Day 145: Noon Tunes, PICC Line, Hadal Zone, Full Moon
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Weather: Sunny, Windy and Cool; High 64, Low, 57 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Interesting happenings today. At 11 am I left to pick up friend Olga Mitchell. We drove downtown, parked in front of the library on Main Street, and walked the quarter of a mile to The Station Grill at the bus station. We wanted to get some exercise while we were walking to lunch and to hear some mid-day music. Another friend, Bruce Woodin, and the music group he plays with called Noon Tunes, were playing outside The Station Grill providing toons for people at noon.
Noon Toons play Celtic fiddle music and today they added a Turkish tune or two. The bus depot is right on the bike path, so bikers stopped to listen. Olga and I had lunch while we listened. Terry and Olivia White were there, so Olga got to meet them. I was not dressed for the occasion. The sun was shining, but the wind was howling. We were all cold. I was glad we had to walk back to the car as that gave me a chance to warm up. Olga and I then drove to Wood Neck Beach and the Sippewissett Marsh.
Olga had never been there, so I decided she just had to see it. By the time I got her home, it was time to go pick up Shadow at home and then go pick up Ollie after school. I had gotten a text from Heather saying I didn’t need to take Sam to Hyannis for rowing as their was a wind advisory. So I took Shadow with me. Ollie and I took him for a walk and then I went to get Sam from his drum lesson, took him home, and then Shadow and I headed home.
Heather, Jed, and Ollie had a 4 pm Zoom appointment with the Infectious Disease doctor from Children’s Hospital in Boston. This was the meeting Heather thought was happening yesterday. But it did happen this afternoon and the order was given to remove that PICC line. A visiting nurse came to do that. I am sure that made Ollie very, very happy. He has not been able to get his arm wet for a month. I’m sure he will still have to careful until the insertion point heals, but at least he doesn’t have a plastic line hanging out of his arm that he has to constantly protect.
The MIT Club (those people who have graduated from MIT) had their annual meeting on Zoom tonight and the topic of the program was the Hadal Zone. I certainly didn’t graduate from MIT, but I have a friend who did and she always invites me to their programs. Heather and Jed could also invite me, but they are so busy that they themselves don’t attend. I had to Google ‘Hadal Zone’ before the presentation. What is it? The name comes from the word hades or hell. This zone in the ocean was named ‘hadal’ because it encompasses the deepest regions of the oceans from 6,000 to 11,000 meters or 4 to 7 miles deep. These regions are called trenches and they comprise almost 50 percent of the earth’s oceans. Tonight’s program was about how those areas are being explored by a new kind of autonomous vehicle and what is found there–extreme cold, extreme pressure, and complete darkness. Sounds like hades to me! When you get down to 8,200 meters or 5 to 6 miles there is life but there are no fish. The program got more and more engaging as it went along and left me wanting to know so much more. But two things stuck with me. One was the photos of what the scientists thought was some sort of seaweed that ended up to be an octopus camouflaged as seaweed. The other was the answer to a question about how climate change is affecting life in the deep ocean. The answer was that the ocean life found in the canyons (deeper than Grand Canyon) off the East Coast of the United States is migrating northward because of the increase in water temperature. And according to ALL current models, the area of the East Coast that will be affected the most is off Cape Cod. The deep sea temperatures in our area are changing faster than in other areas. Depressing.
On the other hand, the moon tonight is glorious. It is a Blood Flower Full Moon and a lunar eclipse will happen in the wee hours of the morning. I won’t be up for that, but I certainly enjoyed the beauty of this full moon when I took Shadow out for his final outing of the day.
