2025 Life Logs, Day 116: The Penguin Lessons
Date: Saturday, April 26, 2025
Weather: Rain, Rain All Day and Evening; High Temp 57, Low 46 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
These days in Falmouth, if it’s Saturday, it’s ‘Standout on the Village Green Day’. People come with their signs and American flags and stand on the village Green in protest of the Trump regime. So, for the hour between noon to 1 pm today, I stood in the rain with a few other hardy souls holding our signs to protest the arrest of a judge, the abduction of students on college campuses, the deep cuts to, and in some cases, total elimination of, science, health, education institutions, the disappearing of people to El Salvador with no due process, the financial chaos in this country, and the world, caused by unnecessary tariffs, a proposed budget that could mean drastic changes to Medicare and Social Security, and the elimination of Medicaid. And the list goes on and on and on and on. Even in the rain, it felt good to be taking a stand in the hope that more and more people will eventually join us. We have to remember Cory Booker’s words during his recent marathon stand on the Senate floor, “The power of the people is always greater than the people in power. We must use our voices to demand a government that works for and by the people.”
Then, tonight, I went to the Cape Cinema to see “The Penguin Lessons.” I really knew nothing about the movie. I went just because I love penguins and a friend asked me to go with her. But I got a lot more than a “feelgood” movie about a penguin. The basic story is centered around a disillusioned Englishman (played by Steve Coogan) who goes to work at an exclusive boys’ school in Argentina in 1976. Transport yourself to Buenos Aires on the eve of a political revolution, just as Isabel Perón is being ousted in a military coup. People on the streets were being killed or disappeared for no apparent reason. In the film, you see this happening at the same time an orphaned penguin rescued from an oil spill is transforming the lives of a teacher and his students at the boy’s school. It was the kind of film that had me on the verge of tears thinking about some of the similarities to tactics being used in this country right now, and then the next minute I found myself smiling at that adorable penguin. The overall message of the film was that the actions of one person can make a difference. It was definitely worth the drive to the Cape Cinema.
