Day 84, Year 7: Mute not Trumpeter
Date: Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Weather: Still Sunny, High 40 degrees F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
Our good friend and bird watcher, Patsy Decker, emailed today to let me know that she sees no evidence that there are Trumpeter Swans on the Cape. I wrote about seeing Trumpeters on the cranberry bogs in Sunday’s log. I should have just said white swans as I had no idea what kind they really were, but in my not-so-bird-oriented head, white swans are Trumpeters. Well, not so. As Patsy pointed out, the swans here are Mute Swans. They are not mute but are named thus as they are less vocal than other swans. One of the things I love most about posting logs on the internet is the information we get back from readers. I have learned so much from others and hopefully others have learned from me as well. Patsy is now writing logs when she goes on her bird trips, so I plan to read and learn and from those.
The weather is still mild for January in New England and we keep enjoying it. We continued to work on the bedroom remake project at Heather and Jed’s today. Mark and I worked together to finish the curtains and matching reading pillows. Tomorrow we will move a few more things from one room to another. Yesterday the bunk beds for the boys were moved into the new room, but Heather and Jed’s bed is still in there as well. Maybe by week’s end we can get everything moved.
Our friend Dick Wiklund who has been so instrumental in getting us connected with doctors at Mass General emailed us this morning asking for a favor. He was just installed as the new president of the Falmouth Amateur Radio Association (local HAM radio club) and emailed to ask us to speak to the club in March or April about the role radio played in our round the world voyage. We wrote back that we would love to do this, and were both amazed at the deluge of memories that came flooding through about just how important HAM radio communication was to us. Contrary to what I have always thought, the term HAM is not an acronym. In the early years of the 20th century when wire communication was the norm, amateur radio operators were in their basements trying out new forms of wireless communication. Referring to a person at some level of incompetence as a ‘ham’ was in vogue at the time, so the wired folks referred to those amateurs experimenting in their basements as hams. Today HAM radio operator and amateur radio operator are used to mean the same thing. And these operators are found all over the world. The network in South Africa is the most organized and helpful to cruisers, but there are many other stories from nooks and crannies all around the globe. Preparing for this presentation will give us the chance to formally document all the different ways in which radio played such an important role in our lives. Dick, thanks for the invitation. I think I feel a cruising magazine article on this topic in the making as well.
