I am so very happy to have a comfortable place to work, read and be private.

Cold last night, but an exceptional day today.  Sat with Ron for a while on the deck while we enjoyed cider and an apple from the CapeAbilities Farm.

Finished mulching the butterfly bush garden.  Tossed the small bee balm seeds and a handful of soil in the oval.  Sifted through the dug out sod from yesterday and put that in the gardens.

Softneck garlic has sprouted.

Frost warning tonight.  Harvested green tomatoes; put Agribon on the Romas and cherries with clothespins.

Finished weeding the area in and around the butterfly bushes in preparation for mulch.

Planted John’s plant shares: Rose of Sharon and hostas here; lilies in the grass garden at Edgewater.  Six pots in all.  He was very generous with soil!

Also planted the little asters in the grass garden and did some weeding there and in the front garden.

Sterilized the pot, re-potted, sprayed with spinosad and brought in Ron’s geranium.  Had been a little wilted but looks better tonight.

White wash to use up the bleach water I used to clean the geranium pot.

We brought up a big box for Ron to sort through:  “good stuff”.

Finished mulching the corner garden.

Paid bills.

Made oatmeal, cauliflower rice and matzo ball soup.

Started weeding the butterfly bush garden.

Eating uncontrollably.

Ron skipped swimming, went to Beltone.

He won a geranium from the Senior Center!  I dug it up, will pot it tomorrow.

What they mean by PC seems, in this study, to be the fear of being “called out” for saying the wrong thing, usually around race and gender.

…The policing of speech under threat of social ostracism is never fun. It constrains speech, it sees evil where there often isn’t any, it conflates mistakes with malice, and it exacerbates racial tension, rather than alleviating it.

So who on earth favors it? It’s not loved by racial minorities. Hispanics oppose PC by 87 percent; African-Americans by 75 percent. But it does correlate with class and education and whiteness: “Progressive activists are much more likely to be rich, highly educated — and white. They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make more than $100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree. And while 12 percent of the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3 percent of progressive activists are.

With the exception of the small tribe of devoted conservatives, progressive activists are the most racially homogeneous group in the country.”

One might be forgiven for thinking that “wokeness” is, in fact, a mere virtue signal among the white upper classes in their own struggle for power and influence among themselves. Imagine that.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/andrew-sullivan-the-danger-of-trumps-accomplishments.html

Picked up donated plants yesterday: lilies, etc.

On Saturday, it poured in the morning.  Saw Emma at S&S;  heard part of a presentation by Mashpee Elder Amelia Bingham at the library; finished mulching around the dogwood;  picked up a loaf of Janet’s Finnish bread; brought cardboard to the transfer station.

Nice chat with Peter on Sunday for trash run; I like getting there early enough that we can visit for a bit.

Got used bread and bagels at senior center this morning.

Submitted a comment to the National Park Service’s proposed regulation on restricting use and charging a fee for DC demonstrations and events.

Made spaghetti sauce for eggplant parm with used eggplant, baked with hemp seeds instead of crumbs.  Made giant oatmeal cookies from some oatmeal with a year-old “use by” date.  Made nut and zucchini burgers using the recipe from Crazy Burgers in Narragansett.  All turned out very nicely.

Ron freaked out because he ran out of one of his meds.  Again.

Checked out books on Wampanoag history from the library.

We gave up on Town Meeting when we couldn’t find a place to park.  600 or so voters showed up.  Delighted that the ban on pot shops was soundly defeated!

We had a good four inches of rain since yesterday.  Washed away the grass seed; trying again.

Brought a pizza to the gang at iCape and a veg one for us.  Could have eaten ours by myself.

Ron got one of his work lights installed!

I did a small amount of garden cleanup and put a pile of cardboard boxes in the truck.

I dug out piles of grass and weeds and mulched around the big oval, the “Moonlight” garden and one of the trees.

I can’t remember how many bags of mulch I’ve bought or how many I’ve spread.  Did two today.  I think I did one yesterday to finish off the gardens on the right side.  Have three left.

Finished up just as it started to rain a little.  Came down harder around 3:30-4 or so.  I’ve been watering, too, so hope this helps.

The weeding has been killing me.  Feels like being run over by a truck.

We saw the film “Mashpee 9” last night at the Falmouth UU church.  Very affecting film, although hard to hear at times.  Ron let me wear his Mashpee 9 t-shirt; he put on one of his celebration shirts.

After finding the Wampanoag museum closed “indefinitely”, I called the Tribe today.  They said it may be open tomorrow, for sure on Monday.

Meanwhile, tried to find a copy of Paula Peter’s “Mashpee 9” at the library and the bookstore in Mashpee Commons.

They were both out, but I was able to buy a signed copy at Isaiah Thomas bookstore in Cotuit.  It was on Amazon; took a ride down there to save shipping charges.

Stopped by Dino’s around 6 to offer John Flores my “Common Sense is a Cape Cod value” banner.  He loved it.  I loved the mac and cheese and spanikopita, compliments of the always generous Dino.

Ron gave Robert a lift home.

I was able to spread 5 bags of mulch today, and it really looks nice.

Swept the driveway and pulled acorns out of the garden.

Found a seed packet of chard and planted all of it.

Had received a 23andme email 3 days ago about new DNA relatives.

Wasn’t too excited, since most of these are multiple times removed.  But not this time: Livy did the test, and it shows that we are, indeed, half-siblings!

Emailed Gail, who called right away to talk about the good news.  Her house is under agreement, and she’s recovering well from surgery.

The Mashpee police officer should have broken off the car chase that ended in three people dead, including a Marine who had just left his wife and newborn daughter at the hospital, police Chief Scott W. Carline said yesterday.

“The risk clearly outweighed the need to pursue the suspect,” the department’s investigators wrote in a report about the July 28 crash on Route 28 in Barnstable’s Cotuit area.

The 36-page release from Mashpee police includes the full transcript of the internal investigators’ interviews with the officers involved, the police report and a statement from police.

No one from the department who could speak about the report could be reached for comment yesterday.

Police repeatedly refused to answer questions in the days after the crash, acknowledging only several days later that an internal investigation was underway.

The report by Capt. Thomas Rose and Lt. Oliver Naas found (Matthew) Cascio violated department policy by continuing the chase, which reached speeds of about 100 mph in areas that had speed limits of at most half of that.