June’s Musical Solstice Heralds Summer

6/21/26  Solstice dawned with the heat of summer and the sounds of local music all over East Jefferson County. 

I’ll never forget the morning of June 21 when our family arrived at CDG for a layover en route to somewhere else. We reported our intentions to the customs officer: “Just a couple of nights in Paris.”  

“Ah! Quelle chance! ” he replied, beaming. “C’est la Fête de la Musique!”

After naps, the four of us lost ourselves in Parisian serendipity. Music everywhere! Trios and quartets performed on café terraces among tables packed together. Music filtered through the trees of neighborhood parks and echoed from Metro stations. Residents pulled bows across strings, blew brass horns, beat drums, and presented whole DIY repertoires from the wrought-iron balconies of their buildings. 

The global adaptation of te French Fête de la Musique is Make Music Day. Jefferson County had 15 venues plus street activity. After Danny Barnes on banjo, a stroll down Water Street to the ukuleles, a teenage rock band on the waterfront, and an a cappella warm-up with Judith-Kate Freidman, I found myself in Singing Resistance. Minneapolis’s answer to ICE and the people incarcerated supports the whole community. Songs move easily from person to person and place to place.  A good way to celebrate 250th Fourth of July.

6/22/26  The Race to Alaska continues. Conditions are as difficult as ever. A number of proper sailing vessels have given up, but as of today, not a single human-powered team has quit. Go Muscles!

6/23/26  My Daily Outrage via the Washington Post: CDC’s chief blocked a Covid vaccine study. Now it’s in a top medical journal.The study found that the vaccine reduced the risk of emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half last winter. Ouf! That hurts.

6/24/26 Thank you, Brad Montague, for explaining y enthusiasm equation – why some things leave us more alive than when we started.

Yes, there are different kinds of tired. We all know the wrong kind – “too many tabs open in your brain.” It was the good kind of tired that hit last Saturday after an afternoon sailing on the bay, learning from an attentive skipper, acting fast, breaking things, fixing things, scrambling from deck to cockpit, timing ducks under the boom. I returned home exhausted and completely renewed.

6/25/26 Jack and I are public advocates for safe sidewalks and places clear of trip hazards. We often find ourselves trying to talk people into using mobility scooters or walkers. These let you move at a good pace and take a break to sit down. Do you really want to walk around unsteadily looking at your feet may land next? Seated on an inexpensive electric mobility scooter you can enjoy the atmospherics and stop to engage with others.

New data show fatal falls are increasing: Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among adults ages 65 and older, and the fall death rate is increasing. The age-adjusted fall death rate increased by 21% from 64.7 per 100,000 older adults in 2018 to 78.4 per 100,000 older adults in 2024.

Anyone who can’t pass this simple test is at risk of falling.

6/26/26 My advocacy guru Bethany Snyder approved my comment on her Substack. An Aprication Vacation? Apricate, a rare verb with early English origins means “to bask in the sun.”

6/28/26 Lynda Mapes, who has done landmark research on the entangled threats to Southern Resident Orcas, has turned her attention to lichen! The pictures are amazing. I’ll leave this one until I have time to take notes.

More disturbing is The Guardian‘s investigation of the National Design Studio on the disappearance of privacy. “It’s dangerous and it’s going to erode trust’: redesign of US government websites stokes surveillance fears: The National Design Studio, staffed by Doge veterans, installed visitor-tracking software on vital federal websites.

The NDS built and now operates four public federal websites: ndstudio.gov, trumprx.gov, realfood.gov and trumpaccounts.gov. All four ran commercial visitor-tracking software, configured to evade the privacy tools many web users install, and none carry the public filings federal privacy law requires under laws including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002.

6/29/26 The Race to Alaska’s Team Boogie Barge has pedaled and paddled all the way to Ketchikan! A team I’ve been cheering on for years has reached a milestone this summer. This comes after the four pedalers moving non-stop placed second of over a hundred teams in the Seventy48. Then they took two weeks to rebuild the still-unpainted catamaran with a “sleeping coffin” in each ama and two cyclists on top. You need watches when you’re covering 750 miles on treacherous seas filled with logs bigger than your wooden boat.

6/30/26 Saturday. The end of the “workweek.” No more waiting around for phone calls from workers and medical people. There’s no longer any recourse to offices where phones are picked up and no relief from business issues that appear in my email all weekend nor the bots who insist on making suggestions when I’m just trying to learn the new apps that are supposed to simplify my life.

A July of Friends, Family, Boats, and Wildlife

7/1/26 Another Wednesday at the boatshop. My friend Nick is a sign painter who runs his business from a rented workspace there. But what’s sitting across from his bench today is truly out of the ordinary. Here are my boatshop buddies, Winston and John, giving you an idea of the size of Nick’s next project.

I looked up Alaskan Frontier on my Boat Finder app. Sure enough, it’s a big boat. Built in 2004 under the Jones Act and renovated as a 193,049 deadweight ton Suezmax tanker, the Alaskan Frontier is back in service delivering Alaskan crude to California refineries.

After Nick assessed the old signs and advised the company of the options, they decided he should reproduce the historic wooden signs. One of the old ones will be integrated into a commemorative display, and the other will go into the ship captain’s collection. In the meantime, the ship name is in stick-on letters, which is very uncool.

Just another day at my neighborhood boatshop. Watch for updates as Nick of Whalesong Signs recreates these traditional wooden ship signs from scratch.

7/2/26 I am grateful that Kinza found time to book my round trip to Houston so I wouldn’t have to, while also working full days and tracking owls in the middle of Seattle. My humble thanks went out in the form of a forwarded Rainshow Bird Alliance newsletter with a note: When you mentioned your Ravenna Park owls, I said we had some, too. Today’s newsletter reminds me that ours are great horned, not barred. Now I learn that the sighting was first reported by an eleven-year-old girl! And she also ID’d the striking bird that I saw on the deformed birch tree out front about a month ago – the Great-tailed Grackle!

I resisted the temptation to mention that the magnificent-looking barred owl is actually pushing out that great defender of our last virgin forests – the snowy owl.

7/3/26 I was at Henery’s Hardware early. My list was long. Cleaning supplies, defenses against ants and mice, obscure fasteners, a washer and pin for my paddle board trailer, fixes that had to be figured out, and metal that required pre-cutting.

Finally, I unloaded my trove on the checkout counter. The nice man with a stiff, wiry beard extending eight inches all around his chin smoothly ran his scanner over my purchases. Then, picking up my new short-handled dish brush, waving it aside, and shaking his head, he said, “You don’t need this!”

“Why?” I asked.

“We have toilet paper!”

I cracked up! He’d landed that perfectly. I tapped, signed, shook my head, endorphins freed, smile intact. “If you get in trouble for that,” I said, “Just let me know. I’ll defend you.”

7/4/26 Bathing in full sun and protected indolence, a garter snake eyed me as I hung the stars and stripes on the porch. That crack under the second slate-covered step is often claimed by a snake on clear summer days. Is it the same one every day? Same family for years?

This is the indigenous American species of Thamnophis sirtalis, which comes in many colors. Is this a Puget Sound Garter Snake – Thamnophis sirtalis pickeringii – ID’d by Spencer Fullerton Baird and Charles Frédéric Girard in 1853?

The Frenchman may never have met Baird and it’s unlikely either visited the Pacific Northwest. But Baird, who was curious about everything, served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in the last decade of his life. By then he was managing its collection of over 2 million specimens. He lived rent-free in the Smithsonian Institution building and decided to convert the entire east wing into working space where accumulating collections could be studied. He was the type of guy you name things after.

My sources here are Wikipedia and iNaturalist. I’m both a Wikipedian and an enthusiastic iNaturalist member. As “baggywrinkles,” I seldom post my observations on iNaturalist but when I do, I’m often rewarded with insights from naturalists the world over.

For the past five years, my (pre-dawn) morning meditation on nature has been the extraordinary daily observations and notes by my friend Wendy Feltman, or “wendy5.” She’s terribly modest about her everyday contributions to our understanding of how creatures interact in our PNW ecosystems, the species she tracks on foreign trips, and her own growing standing as an international citizen scientist.

7/5/36 Good news in the Seattle Times about a new wildlife crossing under I-5 that will reconnect the wildlife of the Olympic Peninsula with their long-lost cousins in the Cascades. Here’s an excerpt:

The wildlife crossing could be a lifeline for the cougars of the Olympic Peninsula, which have some of the lowest genetic diversity and highest inbreeding of any population studied in the Pacific Northwest due to their isolation. For the black bears, deer and elk, and even the smallest of the animal kingdom — the endangered fishers and beavers and rough-skinned newts — a crossing could give them a leg up in the face of additional habitat loss and climate change impacts.

I was also buoyed by this article about Washington’s local manufacturers. My faves are the sister-brother team who focused on composites and got so good that theirs went to Mars. Their bootstrapping included the rebuild of a 100 year old lathe from Facebook Marketplace to fit their exact purposes!

7/7/26 In the sun of Tyler Plaza while talking with Doris, someone I didn’t recognize waved. It was Heather fetching Waterfront pizza for lunch with Tyler, who wants to join DASH and the endless work for better sidewalks. Good news. We’ll get him together with Jack.

7/8/26 Boatshop Wednesday. I had a painting question and misaimed my camera!

7/9/26 Lessons on active transportation from the Netherlands from Paul and Dianne, a Kitsap cycling couple. This month’s speakers at the monthly ODT meeting presented challenges of linking the Sound to the Pacific with confidence that it will be done. After three decades in a wheelchair, Dianne is now a double amputee fighting for the right to safely cycle everywhere. Photo below is from The Port Townsend Leader.

7/10/26 Good news in today’s Peninsula Daily News! Port Angeles is purchasing a fourth Portland Loo. This indicates the success of the first three. I’m unabashedly proud that City officials listened when I tweaked their siting plans, and I’m grateful to Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin for setting up that walking meeting to discuss the proposed sites.

7/11/26 A big long day. Hats off to Cindy for her patience and ability to stretch mine, plus feed me both lunch and supper. Firefly has to leave in an inexpensive but officially “undesirable” slip 733 because otherwise she’ll be tottering on the rocky bottom in the unprecedented minus 4-foot tide. Our check of the trailer lights lasted all day and included trips for parts, tools, and supplies, and resoldering of everything. After 7 carefully documented trials, we got the running, directional, and braking lights to work! But only the Element’s night lights remained off. So we scrambled to get Firefly out of the water and to her house before dark.

7/12/26 Renewal follows exhaustion. This morning, I was the first to arrive under the science center portico for the low tide walk and was delighted to see so many people gather. Local Port Townsend Marine Science Center volunteers work alongside staff to help visitors identify sea creatures. Most are from out of town, and given their numbers, the tiny ticket price offsets the cost of professional time.

The first species I spotted was Odocoileus hemionus ssp. columbianus. This trio of young bucks – Columbian black-tailed deer – arrived for their morning visit to Fort Worden’s Kinzie Beach just before we did. In the waters of Admiralty Inlet beyond, 20- and 30-ft-long bull kelp lay down in the 3.47-foot minus tide to show off the health and wealth of this local underwater forest.

The seaweeds and lettuces on the rocks glistened green, brown, red, and iridescent. Bent-over humans reached down to gently lift the fronds to see the even more splendidly colored creatures sheltering under them. Using the new-fangled iNaturalist app, I both took photos for verification feedback and my iNaturalist page, where I post as baggywrinkles.

7/13/26 This morning, my iNaturalist mentor Wendy Feltham chided and guided me when she discovered my hasty and sloppy postings online. Next Sunday, I will just use my eyes, taking photos with my regular old digital camera so I can identify and learn about the critters and post on iNaturalist later. And anyway, yesterday it was the tech-savvy teenagers on the walk who were making good guesses at orders, families, genera, and species. How did they do it? They’d downloaded Seek, a new app from iNaturalist that’s useful for quick information about the critters.

iNaturalist, originally a project of National Geographic, has become my favorite social media. This is largely because of five years of morning meditations on photos Wendy has posted the previous day. Wendy (wendy5) is the Heather Cox Richardson of regularity in serious observation of wild plants and animals and posting online. She’s in touch with naturalists the world over and they depend on her, too. When I post a photo, Wendy (and others) jump in to tell me what it is. As an ‘instant knower’ I then can educate myself on the specie’s environment, behavior, reproductive oddities, edibility, evolution, and other cool, interesting stuff.

Yesterday, after the low tide walk and lunch with Jack, I went to a book discussion also convened by the Port Townsend Marine Science Center. The book was Sabrina Imbler’s How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures. An amalgam of memoir and science, it was one of my top faves for summer 2023.

We were about a dozen women sitting around the table on the balcony at Aldrich’s, the uptown corner grocery. And the two ends of the table split over the book. When the other end left, I noticed I was sitting between two women I’d met on the beach earlier in the day!

7/17/26 A string of sunny days let me get serious about getting rid of stuff. The most fun was sawing off entire big branches from our honeysuckle bushes. It’s taken since the fierce winter storm of 2023 to determine that – despite their valiant efforts – they were dead. Now nearby branches that are thriving will fill the empty spaces. It’s nice to walk down the street and see the garden beyond the now-repaired and oiled fence.

The situation in the house and garage is more problematic, especially with a shelf crashing down in each remaining upstairs closet. Their burdens have been lifted for temporary fixes, though it’s inconvenient to have pantry staples in glass jars on the lowest shelf. In the garage, there’s some hope for space liberation as we identify stuff for Buy Nothing Port Townsend and aging electronics to be taken to the October collection run by the Kiwanis Club.

7/18/26 Data more and more show the links between wealth and health. And by extension, people taking more charge when they can afford to. I just finished this New Yorker article on ‘concierge medicine’ that profiles a gynecologist with a high-end practice. Eye-catching title: Billionaire’s Vagina Club: Dr. Sally Greenwald optimizes orgasms for the women of Silicon Valley.

7/19/26 Worked most of the day in the sun. Chopped up remnants of pruning one inch in diameter or less so they would fit into the bin. Then pushed Jack’s old blue recliner onto the deck and cleaned the hell out of it because Dan at the Habitat Store would like it as a donation. Power lift chairs are in demand in a town with a median age of about sixty.

7/20/26 Woke to a wonderful sunrise. I walked out, ever cheered by seeing “my bench” restored after erosion made sitting hazardous, and watched the colors change, Mt. Baker loom, and a couple of small sailboats make their way home for the beginning of the work week.

7/23/26 After reading about The Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism that the State Dept hosted last week, I took the time to watch the short speeches. Marco Rubio’s intro to the ragged history of domestic bomb throwers sets the stage for Steven Miller’s fascist call to arms.

7/24/26 5:30 AM call from Jack F with update on DSA advocacy for public toilets in Boston. What a great way to start the day!

7/25/26 And on the circular sanitation front, Evergreen professor Krisztina Mosdossy reports one of her policy wonk students is taking on Washington State code to advocate for unire diverting systems.

7/26/26 Up early, peddled to Fort Worden, had coffee and visited the Woodworking School with Piers, led a low tide walk at Kinzie Beach, dashed down to Boat Haven to remove the mainsail from Firefly with Cindy, took a 10-minute nap, ate the remaining half of Jack’s sandwich, and jumped into the car with Jack to pick up Joanna at Four Corners Park ‘n’ Ride rather than ask her to do two more transfers to get to the house. She’s fine with taking a bus that gets her within 6 miles of home, so this car ride is a happy ceremony.

I hadn’t mentioned to Jack the problem with the Element’s rear door: it no longer locks. As we drove up the Washington St. hill in a rare rainstorm, the top half of the door bounced open. By the time we were on Route 20, the passing line of traffic made it sound as if we were traveling in a washing machine! Jack laughed. “Another repair needed? Just as well we don’t drive a Lamborghini,” he said.

7/27/26 Up at 4:30 to excavate the surface of my desk. As the morning dawned, a tug passed pulling an Alaskan barge. I love seeing these barges laden with containers of frozen fish topped by trucks, cars, boats, and heavy machinery that don’t travel well in winter storms.

7/28/26 “Of course! You can bring anybody you like with you” said the NP checking me in for my annual physical. Pamela Ator is a beloved physician at Jefferson Healthcare. Better for daughter Joanna to meet her first in the clinic than at bedside.

7/29/26 “Jo is a barrel of monkeys”, says Jack. Indeed. So much fun.

7/30/26 Jo even drove us to Poulsbo, where we dropped her off for the bus to the Bainbridge ferry. Jack’s MRI went smoothly, and so did the drive home. With basic tests either nonexistent or booked up here in PT, we’re getting more used to driving to Poulsbo and Sequim.

August’s 200 Miles of Bike Tour Joy

8/1/26 One of the most joyous days of the year so far! Helene and Paul came all the way from Portland to join me on the Tour de Lavender.

My bike and body withstood the Metric Century. When sent to the volunteer photographer, I was punchy and talkative. Thank you, Daniel James of Pursuit Photography for managing me at the end of very long day for both of us.

8/2/26 I discovered that the Harbor Hopper foot ferry gets folks on Whidbey Island and in and around Everett across the Sound. This opens rich possibilities for a Car-Free Day Trip.

The tall ship Adventuress has a great two-week program to stimulate youth interest in the larger maritime industry. The Seattle Times’ photos are lovely. Would you like to spend three days on this ship? If so, join me as a Shipyard Volunteer for Sound Experience’s annual MLK Work Weekend. You get to fix and polish things all over the boat and enjoy superb company over food from the galley.

8/3/26  This view from our deck last night sure looks like a big ship.

By 10 am this morning, the canvas has been unfurled!

The circus has come to town! It’s a real traditional circus that comes quietly and lights up local hearts.

No house is closer to the circus tent than our own! Between here and there are a dozen or so caravans that house the performers who manage everything (except the online ticketing).

8/4/26 The forced removal from the United States of Haitians with TPS status is utterly wrong under immigration law and horrible for communities strengthened by their remittances. Here the acclaimed Haiti-based NGO SOIL explains the impact.

In Haiti, remittances from abroad account for more than 20% of GDP and are a critical source of income for the majority of vulnerable families. In addition to supporting their families in Haiti, Haitians on TPS contribute more than $5.6 billion to the US economy and pay approximately $1.6 billion in taxes. We are devastated that the U.S., which used to take pride in the accomplishments of immigrants, is undermining the deep positive impacts brought by diversity, and with such cruelty.  

8/4/26 Does the Sports Section of your local daily paper carry events such as Extreme Slug Races at the Family Kitchen during the Joyce Daze annual festival in Joyce WA? The Peninsula Daily News does.

8/5/26 Boatshop Wednesday. Moved, ripped up, and almost completed painting 24 sheets of 8’x4′ foot plywood for Wooden Boat Festival signs. Closed my activity rings by lunchtime.

8/6/26 A joyful ride around Whidbey to the Pacific Rim Institute for Environmental Stewardship. There, I attented a free Advocacy workshop facilitated by Tiffany Brace of the Nonprofit Association of Washington. On return, I hitched my bike trailer with a folding chaise longue for Jack and claimed a space in front of the stage for Uncle Funk and the Dope 6. Amazing evening with Megan Hudson belting out all the classics.

8/7/26 According to The Guardian, Bogota’s otherwise impressive cycling numbers have a gender gap. It’s similar to what I see in PT. That’s why the Tour de Lavender was so encouraging – full of women, including older women. I’m not alone in finding it the epitome of my summer joy.

Learning the contemporary vocabulary of dating had me giggling through breakfast.  In a world gone awry with relationship concepts born and raised on apps, it’s a relief to be married.  Enjoy this quiz: From shrekking to cookie-jarring: how well do you know the latest dating terms?  

I’m cheered by the timely concept and progress of the Data Rescue Project’s Save Our Signs. The initiative is crowd-sourcing photos of signs documenting United States history before their forced removal following Trump’s order to federal agencies.

The circus opened today, so we went. The traditional single-ring big top is brighly colored inside and imbued with the scents of popcorn and cotton candy. The acts fit together in a sort of story. No nets, flyers safely tethered. No animals or freaks, though the lovely, ballet-themed performance of the contortionist was hard to believe. The artistes, in their roadie-worker garb, welcomed us at the door and thanked us for coming as we left.

8/8/26 It’s the weekend of PTSA’s Small Boat Regatta. The Mustang Sally crew is helping with registration, the supper, and the awards gathering at the clubhouse. Twenty boats are competing. Young people are showing up from other communities to use the club’s growing fleet. As owning, mooring, and trailering a boat becomes prohibitively expensive, it’s clear that shared boats are the future. The PTSA leadership is on it.

8/9/26 Today, the family of John Frasca gathered at Northwest Maritime to celebrate his life with the community. We learned of his passion for living and of his professional and physical exploits despite his multiple disabilities. Seriously injured by a drunk driver in a head-on collision at age 23, he recovered to climb mountains across America and sail his Pacific Seacraft 25 on Puget Sound. Eventually, the repairs to his lower body caught up with him until he was unable to walk unassisted and later unceremoniously diagnosed with ALS.

Locals at the gathering told his family of his engagement with groups ranging from veganism to Disability Awareness Starts Here, or DASH, where he served on the board with Jack. John’s smart, committed advocacy has led to the reconfiguration of Lawrence Street with sidewalks, wheelchair-accessible Land Trust trails, recent upgrades in transit service, and new awareness of the needs of non-drivers. May John’s perseverance – his immunity to discouragement – rub off on me.

8/10/26 The single-ring big top is gone, while memories of the circus are vivid. It’s fitting that this traditional circus ended its season here. It was moving to watch the case say difficult goodbyes as they drove their trailers away.

This morning I stumbled upon this essay entitled On Quality. It’s not only an ode to Robert Prisig but also to Christopher Alexander, who said quality is objective and precise, but cannot be named. To define a quality building, town layout, or a cozy, functional home, Alexander came up with 253 “patterns.” Here’s a bookmarkable list of all of them.

Essay author Keyana Sapp tracks the demise of quality in formerly trusted brands on his blog Worse on Purpose. The subtitle is Why your stuff stopped lasting, who profited, and what’s still built right. When our old General Electric fridge was declared unrepairable and dead, we ordered the replacement. After a long wait, it arrived and the truck crew installed it quickly. Within two days, the top shelf in the door fell to the floor and shattered. Similar price, quality gone. Sapp is an acute observer of this phenomenon.

8/11/26 A blessed no-place-to-go Monday. After reading the leftover Sunday NYT, I processed and cropped the photos from the Small Boat Regatta Awards Ceremony.

8/12/26 While riding along the shore, I took these photos of a -2.14 foot tide. Note to self: When lowering sails after a day sail in small boat without a depth sounder, the area in front of the Pourhouse might not be the best place to do it. Also note where the entry to Boat Haven shoals out on a minus tide.

8/13/26 Jack’s reading Replaceable Me by Mary Roach, the endlessly engaging science writer. After learning that bone implants were inspired by dental implants, Jack asked if I knew anything about dental implants. I’d thought his disdain for them was informed. Turns out it’s more just wanting to go natural and not accumulate body replacement parts. I told him that I still wanted two replacement molars for the ones my upper jaw is missing, including one to support an already wiggly lone neighbor.

“If I’m going to love cooking, I’m going to have to continue to love eating.”

“Go ahead and get ’em then,” he said.

So I dug last year’s referral to Olympic Peninsula Oral Surgery from my health folder, photographed it, and emailed it to request the evaluation. They got right back with an evaluation appointment: 10:30 pm, Oct 19, right here in PT. Yeah!

I’m eager to be rid of the shadows in my smile. I smile almost as much as Zohran Mamdani. It’s possible I was coached as a child in smiling, as he was. But more likely, it’s just the happiness that comes with age.

8/15/26 Tour de Whidbey! I enjoyed every bit of it, including the difficult climbs of the rolling hills on the west coast of the Island that came in the final hours of my ride.

8/16/2026 No aches or pains this morning! I feel great. My phone even shouted out a New Move Record when I woke up. 1899 calories burned during my pleasant bike ride through giant homemade ginger-molasses cookies, bananas with peanut butter, fruit and nut bars, string cheese, and fresh zucchini muffins that arrived hot at the last stop before the hilly finish. Sixty miles of delicious food served by the Whidbey Islanders.

8/17/26 The painters covered every window of the house with foggy plastic on a foggy day. Enough to turn this perpetual out-the-window gazer agoraphobic. I bound myself to the screen and managed to post another CFDT. No, the writing does not rise to the quality of this sublime, inexpensive cruise across Puget Sound that delivers you to Seattle’s finally-completed Waterfront Park. It’s a reminder that driving a car onto a ferry only to pay downtown Seattle parking fees on arrival is insane!

8/18/2026 NYT’s Kevin Pang explains how to shop and eat well. This is my way, too. An essay to bookmark. I “Create Recipes for a Living. Here’s How I Fed My Family Really Well for $28 a Day”. Meal planning, sticking to the grocery list, and not letting any leftovers go to waste make it possible. It’s not easy and not for everyone.

8/19/26 My boatshop volunteer gig today was a week-long woodworking summer camp for kids 9 to 14. I worked alongside a squirmy fourth grader. I identified with him. Together we came up with some math workarounds as he decided the placement of the copper screws holding his new toolbox together. That done, tools were next. For traditional wooden mallets, the kids designed the handles first and then the block heads – each a unique design. Joel and Tyler have nailed it when it comes to teaching kids. Northwest Maritime is the place to send your kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. Send ’em!

8/20/26 This morning I got clarity on how World Liberty Financial (See ‘Trump accused of ‘disgusting’ greed after being paid over $2bn since return to office‘), was inspired by wildlife management in Hawaii (See “Destructive and delicious: how an invasive deer in Hawaii is being turned into dinner”), and learned a usable new word: tenebrous.

After that, I got busy. Merilee forwarded a PHLUSH contact form from someone with BC Marine Trails to Kyle, Ole, and me. Someone has requested information on wilderness toilets. So I drafted a quick two-line email referring him to the work of Geoff Hill of Toilet Tech Solutions.

Then we got a reply. The inquirer, Peter Englander, turned out to be the former Portland development official assigned to Old Town Chinatown. He even told us still had his PHLUSH t-shirt! I replied quickly to him, copying the three Portlanders: This is wonderful. I was just drafting a response and entering you into my e-rolodex next to the old Peter Englander, while remembering him fondly. I didn’t know he was an ocean kayaker and working for the First Nations all over the coast. I’m sure he’s great at it just the way he was with the weird and diverse communities of Portland’s oldest neighborhood.

Hearing screams of delight on the Northwest Maritime commons, I ran out to the end of the pier as a lone northbound male transient orca rounded it.

Then I checked out the boat shop where Dean was building a rack to hold several rolls of fiberglass. He’d challenged himself to use millennium-old techniques and tools. With chisles and awls, brace and bit, spokeshave, rasp, and mallet, he fashioned mortises and tenons to join large wooden hooks to the mounting frame. Then to secure each joint, Dean drilled holes and made dowels to fit them. To make sure the dowels did their work, he offset the holes in the mortises a sixteenth of an inch in the direction that supported the load. Magic! Now our fiberglass fabrics are easily pulled from their rolls, measured, and cut, or the rolls removed to the cutting table.

8/21/26 I had a really good time this noisy, happy Friday afternoon in the Boatyard. I sat in the sun and scraped the barnacles off the rudder of Doris’ sailboat. Doris, in Tyvek suit and respirator, sanded the bottom that she’ll paint over the weekend.

8/22/26 Heather Cox Richardson reviews Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion, white Virginians’ response, the rise of the Republican Party and the promotion of public education, the ongoing constitutional vicissitudes, and terrifying contemporary examples from Texas and Arizona. The Framers had quite explicitly organized the United States not on the principles of religion or tradition, but rather on the principles of the Enlightenment: the idea that, by applying knowledge and reasoning to the natural world, men could figure out the best way to order society. Someone excluded from access to education could not participate in that national project. Instead, that person was read out of society, doomed to be controlled by leaders who marshaled religion and propaganda to defend their dominance.

8/23/26 Sunday off. Quiet as an old-fashioned-winter-normal Sunday.

8/24/26 Boat troubleshooting on Morning Light. As I confessed to Jack, I may have been the culprit. No water on the boat. Toilet flushed when I poured water in. No, the tank wasn’t empty. It overflowed as I was talking to Reto on the dock and Sonia walked by and pointed it out. So that left the water pressure pump. I wrapped my head around how it works, the specs, the cost, and the options being spit out by my searches. At 3:45 pm I gave up, walked up the dock to Gold Star and gave my work order to Kyla and Beth. Just like Jack had told me to do.

8/25/26 “I built my career on developing confidential sources,” says journalist Catherine Herridge. What might happen to her in this interesting case supported by Fox News is chilling. From The Guardian: “‘The day I disclose, my career is over’: the journalist facing an $800 daily fine to keep her sources secret.”

Balancing the dirge of news flooding us in endless tenebrous waves are a couple of bright lights. First, Sailing through Life is the title of Lin Pardey‘s WBF presentation. Saturday, September 12 at 12:30 pm. Lin’s older than Jack and me and said it all: Go small. Go simple. Go Now. We’ve followed the mantra. Just get underway and figure it out from there. Second, and in the same vein, a wonderful interview and book review on the BC Marine Trails website that I saved until I had the time to savor it: “Sea Kayaking After 60: How Rick Davies Does It At 81”

8/26/26 The long-awaited Zoom meeting with Evergreen professor Krisztina Mosdossy and Olympia activist Jedidiah Haney on urine diversion went well. Soil science is clearly their beat, so I enjoyed musing on how UD can address just-as-pressing sanitation needs (both for rural housing and emergencies). My brief is to work on this aspect. It’s important that soil science and sanitation cross-pollinate at November’s Rich Earth Summit.

8/27/26 Heather Cox Richardson on Dolly Parton. Another inspiring life is that of Yayoi Kusuma.

8/28/26 Sea to Sound Day 1. The initial leg of our ride was along Lake Crescent on the Spruce Railroad Trail in Olympic National Park. Our route and the day’s video by photographer and drone wrangler Jesse Major.

This spring Jack and I met Ian Mackay at the events associated with Port Townsend Library’s 2026 Community Read. The book Ian’s Ride was this year’s selection. A string of events at the library featured serious presentations on active transportation, the planning and construction of trails, and adaptive technologies for people with disabilities.

Much to our delight, Ian showed up for all of these. He welcomed and introduced experts he’d recommended to library staff and disarmed city officials and us activists with his knowledge of the issues.

So Jack and I signed up for Sea to Sound, the ride Ian leads every year on 70 miles of the Olympic Discovery Trail. This year there were 50 disabled wheelers, people in manual wheelchairs with added electric power drives, high quads in high-tech wheelchairs, para athletes with strong arms and shoulders, unsteady older people pedaling trikes, and folks trailered behind the bikes of friends. Ian coaches individuals ahead of time to determine and meet needs ranging from battery recharges en route to overnight accommodations.

In the end, with Jack still waiting for his first treatment for backache pain, I rode as a volunteer. I spent three days with some of the most interesting and fun people in the world and came home to Jack each night. Sea to Sound was the capstone event of my summer. With two earlier rides, it brought my August recreational miles to 200, not counting everyday commutes. Riding a bike and sailing a small boat are the closest to flying one gets.

How auspicious for that Sea to Sound began on the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963! I have fond memories of my father telling me about it shortly after I arrived back home after a year’s absence in Europe. We watched it on the new black and white television, which my TV-wary family had relegated to a small upstairs room. Dad explained that folk music had become a thing as Peter, Paul and Mary set the stage for MLK. Forty year later I would meet the members of the famous trio at Christopher Yarrow’s Monkey and the Rat store in Old Town Chinatown.

In today’s Letter from an American, HCK notes the historic change in party alignments and their implications: In 1968, former vice president Richard M. Nixon won the presidency after promising that he would not continue to use the federal government to protect Black rights in the South. With that promise, racists made a permanent move from the Democrats to the Republicans, joining forces with businessmen who wanted an end to regulation and to taxes and the social welfare programs they funded. The race to tear apart the postwar government that helped all Americans by appealing to racism was on.

Now, in 2026, the contours of that bargain are extreme and unmistakable.

8/29/26 Sea to Sound Day 2. Costumes, color, smiles, shenanigans streaming through raw nature and into familiar territory. Route and Video

8/30/2026 Ian’s Ride Day 3. Ian Mckay is the most compelling communicator on the Olympic Peninsula. Route and Video.

Stickers from the Tour de Lavender, Sea to Sound, and the Tour de Whidbey adorn my bike. Oh, yeah, Boogie Barge is there, too, the sparkley sticker proffered by cyclist-skipper Blake Hansen’s daughter during The Ruckus. (See 6/29/26) I’ve been cheering for this unlikely freak of a bike-boat for most of the decade. This summer Team Boogie Barge placed second in the Seventy/48 and two weeks later successfully pedaled the entire Inside Passage in the Race to Alaska!

8/31/26 Waggoner’s Guide makes the case for protecting eelgrass with a shout out to the MRC work on the Port Townsend waterfront. Plus a new film on the Alaska explorations of La Perouse in the decade before the voyages of George Vancouver.

September’s Equinox Brings Quotidian Balance

9/1/26 The good news is Jack’s upcoming pain treatment appointment on Friday. Not so good was his third fall while waiting for it. He knows to grab something to break a fall but then has difficulty getting up. Again, our teamwork did the job. Tired but not worse for the efforts.

9/2/26 A bleak report in the morning news notes the link with Parkison’s.. Almost half of world’s farmers poisoned by pesticides every year, experts find. Study reveals that pesticide poisoning kills 11,000 people each year, with India accounting for nearly 60% of fatalities. Most of the fresh food I ate in the 20th century was not tested to US standards. I’m curious about my body’s toxicity, but not feeling consequences, see no need to test.

Ah, Nature! A 150-metre-long island appeared from nowhere on Williston Lake, British Columbia; vanished, then reappeared 20 miles away. Another piece in today’s Guardian.

9/3/26 At the boat shop this afternoon, I saw the results of Nick Mann’s work recreating the worn-out signs of the oil freighter Alaskan Frontier. These signs are ready to be fastened to the port and starbord of the bow of said ship, which plies Arctic seas. The older ones will be repurposed, one as a memorial and the other as a simple antique embued with decades of sefaring memories. Another fascinating project of Whalesong Signs.

9/4/26 Jack and I left at dawn for Peninsula Pain Clinic in Silverdale. Jack’s new doctor, who is versed in spinal neurology, gave him his first corticosteroid shot. I reparked the car as a reminder of how much space is needed to safely set up the scooter in traffic or a busy parking lot.

It’s pretty easy to load the Honda Element because of its horizontally split back door: when open it creates a handy shelf and a roof from the rain. The ergonomically sensible sequence for loading it is frame first.

Ah, my adventures in motoring! Our old and only car, which we bought used and have diven an average of 1000 miles a year, continues to stand by us. This year I finally got the plastic panel on port side aft replaced. It fell off when it hit a rock hiding in the grass while I was parking near the mailboxes to give space to builders’ trucks. That was three years ago, when we got our new, accessible bathroom. I’ve been told that driving an old car with a missing part may draw unwanted attention. Since duct tape and attempts to find a used part on line had failed, I called Evergreen Collision in Sequim, where Kevin ordered the part and got it fixed!

Then this summer, I found that S/V Firefly’s 8-foot oars didn’t fit in the car and need to tie the top door down. Amazingly, there’s no way to do this – no hook or padeye. While fooling with the latch, it snapped shut leaving just enough space for a tie down with a 1/4″ line. But the lock was stuck: couldn’t pry it open, nothing would open it, and the car key worked only for the other doors, So in anticipation situations where locking the car might make sense, I called Kevin. The huge garage was booked up for week. But he listened to me and said, “You know, sometimes that problem just disappears.” And last week it did!

9/5/26 Not only does the car work, the house has been put back together. We finally have access to our deck after the replacement of the rotten clapboards on south side of the chimney, the new paint, new trim, new color on the house, and the sanding and oiling of the deck, stairs, and railing once we learned it’s made of rare ipae hardwood from the Amazon rainforest.

Now we’re back to barbecuing and eating outside. Nothing like skewered food over an open fire to minimize cleanup. Marcus Bawdon illustrates the universality and simplicity of it all with illusrations from all over the world. For each he recommends seasonings – a rub – and an accompanying bowl of something you can spoon when serving – or salsa.

As I’d just hauled in Safeway groceries, including a package of yesterday’s tri tip at 40% off, it was time to grill last Saturday’s veggies as well. My potato peeler made ribbons of an aging zuchini, which wilted artfully on the shelf above the other skewers. Yum.

9/6/26 Confession. I confess to having looked at iNaturalist nearly every day for maybe 10 years. I’m a passive observer who learns from other people who post photos on their accounts or chip in on mine to help identify species in my photos. Especially Wendy Feltham, AKA Wendy5. I enjoy taking photos of plants and animals I can’t identify, as well as a couple I can. And I’m intriguided by taxonomy and classification systems, and changes within them. But do I post my own photos? Rarely! But I am hoping to in the future and I hope many of you will join me on iNaturalist. I’ve abandoned most social media but would like to spend more time learning what I am looking at. iNaturalist is a place where people really collaborate in the interest of understanding our world and they do it though spectacular photos and stories. Here are some critters and some kelps observed during one of the summer’s lowest tides on July 12th.

And here are some things we saw on a subsequent low tide walk, aslo at Fort Worden’s Kinzie Beach on July 26th.

9/7/2026 Off to Seattle on the first #14 bus to the Kingston Ferry. After a brisk walk downtown, I searched for the nearest light rail station. Map app sent me to Symphony. Symphony? Sure enough, under McCaw Hall. Station name change. Got off near the Huskies Stadium and walked the Burke-Gilman to the Apple Store, my first visit in years. How great to have my AirPods functional for the first time in years.

Then I walked up the street to soak up the hospitality of Kinza, Philip, and their grandson Maxwell. We feasted on their meal of kibbe, veggies with hollandaise, salad, and a custard tart with a variety of seasonal berries.

9/8/26 At first light Kinza and I were off in an Uber to SeaTac.

At the gate, I read news that the Cascade Bicycle Club is working on the Ballard gap in Seattle’s Burke-Gilman trail. “The Mile that Broke my Arm”. Solving Ballard’s access problems is a long way off. My fix works just fine: Just put yourself and your bike on bus #44. Later, I stumbled onto a fascinating Boatbuilder Logbook. Wow! Perhaps a place to document Firefly’s complex rebuild?.

9/9/2026 Driving under Houston’s astoundingly green oak canopy onto the freeways, Ruth Ann and Melanie delivered their six guests to The National Museum of Funeral History and into the care of Meredith, our tour guide, who took our photo. The exhibits are extremely interesting, especially those on Presidential and Papal funerary customs, the Civil War’s challenge of mass death, the emergence of embalming, Victorian mourning practices, and international funerary customs. Surprisingly, there was nothing on human composting, which was developed in Seattle and legalized in Washington State by Recompose’s Katrina Spade in the 20-teens.

9/10/2026 Knowing a trip coordinated by our Houston sisters would hold wonderful suprises, I didn’t look at the itinerary. Soon we were being guided through the new Ismaili Center, one of seven throughout the world. It was inaugurated in 2023 by Prince Rahim al-Hussaini, the current Imam of more than 12 million Ismaili Muslims as the 50th Aga Khan. He also heads the Aga Khan Development Network, a dynamic and innovative organization for which I have huge admiration.

The day continued with lunch and a visit to Buffalo Bayou where we played for an hour with lights and sound in a vast columned underground cistern. I shan’t try to explain this pleasantly disorienting art installation.

9/11/26 Predawn departure from Ruth Ann’s place at 1400 Hermann St to Hobby Airport.

On my way to the gate, I’m reminded it’s the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Over the PA system comes a tenor or alto voice singing America the Beautiful. Just ahead of me, five tall Texans climb down from their stools, lay their big hats on the bar, and stand at attention, hands on hearts. I fall in line behind them, patient and observant. But we can’t see a flag anywhere; not a single one materializes. And no one else seems to notice.

The New York Times‘ Charles Homans argues that life does not divide into neat geopolitical demarcations. Instead, 9/11 “is a middle chapter in the story of American fracture rather than the pyrotechnic beginning.”

Elsewhere in the NYT is a plea to read this: 102 MINUTES: Last Words at the Trade Center; Fighting to Live as the Towers Die — That’s how long it took after the first impact for the second of the two buildings, the north tower, to collapse. What happened in between? In 2002, Times journalists gathered phone conversations, emails and voice messages of people’s final moments. In many cases, they are the only window we have onto acts of bravery, decency and grace at a brutal time.

With the exception of a walk along Seattle’s newly completed waterfront snapping photos for my Car-Free Day Trip, my time was spent reading Martha Gellhorn’s The View from the Ground, a gift from Kit. In the ferry line, enjoying an essay in the pleasant breeze over the water, I was so relaxed that I failed realize I was in the wrong line! I suddenly found myself at the door of the West Seattle Water Taxi, as the Kitsap Foot Ferry to Kingston pulled away from the other side of the dock! So I retreated to the main terminal with my book, returned for the next ferry to Kingston, warmed up with chowder in a cheerful waterfront pub there, caught the last #14 bus to Port Townsend, and walked home, up and over the hill in the dark, my trusty light in hand.

9/12/26 Wooden Boat Festival Day 2. Having missed all of Day 1, I checked in at the Volunteer tent, got my wristband, and suddenly found myself being hugged by a friend I had not seen in over a decade. Nikki Jardin! She’s from our time back in Portland, an original PHLUSHer, and she now lives right here in PT.

9/13/26 Wooden Boat Festival Day 3. In a dazed maze of elation and disbelief that it could be over so soon, I stood on the jetty and watched the three hundred boats sail away home. I took photos, but every boat has a story too long to tell. Recounted by their owners, the stories are here.

According to the morning news, several of the Tech Bros appear to have stepped onto the same page, or rather onto the 78 pages of Dario Amodei’s recent essay. The Guardian reports the story along with doubts whether CEOs will actually agree to slow the pace of AI development.

9/14/26 This morning’s Guardian brings alarming news from Yemen. See this: Nearly 50,000 Yemeni civilians flee as Houthis advance along Red Sea coast and this: Global struggle for control of Bab al-Mandab strait threatens to turn Yemen’s on-off conflict into a forever war

A growing sideshow in today’s U.S.-Iran conflict, the Houthi rebels were getting active in the northwest of the country when we lived in Yemen in 1980s. I remember traveling with another woman when a Houthi attack resulted in our being called back to the capital by the U.S. Embassy. (Were we traveling without a car? Likely. How did the message to return to Sana’a reach us? At a checkpoint? No phones then. I need to check my journal.)

Wikipedia has historical overviews of the Houthis, the Al Houthi family, and of Zaydism, an ancient denomination of Shia Islam with which they are associated. While current news seldom comments on doctrinal aspects of clashes in the region, the Houthis are affiliated with Iran, as are Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. On the other side of the Shia-Sunni schism are is most of the rest of the Islamic World, including the governments of the Arabian Peninsula now being attacked by Iran.

9/15/26 More on the the Houthis. What they want. Their threat to Saudi Arabia, shrugged off by the US President.

9/16/26 Geography is Power, notes NYT’s Sam Sifton. It sure is. As I former resident of both the Red Sea and Persian Gulf coasts of the Arabian Peninsula, I can find Bab El Mandab and the Strait of Hormuz on a map – blindfolded. These places have always been in the news.

9/17/26 My day starts joyously with this exhuberant, colorful, microscopic view of Nature by photographers contributing to the Nikon Small World in Motion competition.

After a mere four years, the Boatyard BBQ has become a regular event. We entered the shipyard through gate of the 300 ton travel lift, large boats towering above us, food and drink carts and long, long tables among them. The new option of booking your $20 salmon dinner in advance, allowed 675 people to feast without waits or lines. After Lowire left the stage and the sun dropped behind the Olympics, a group of teenage punk rockers called Chloroform Rags played the short set and brought the house down.

Unlike last year year, there was no formal welcoming back of the the fleet, in fact, no ceremony at all. In 2025, Comissioner Pam read the name of every boat, before mentioning F/V Karolee, which had been found adrift and empty. The body of Joel Kawahara, the 2009 Highliner of the Year, was found on by hikers on an Olympic Peninsula Beach several weeks later.

9/18/26 In his new book, Restoring Childhood, Peter Gray addresses the theories of his former collaborator Jonathan Haidt. Gray argues that the evidence confirms that school is the source of kids’ anexity, not the social media they turn to in their efforts to allieviate anexity. This is an interesting divergence of mind between researchers who offen agree on approaches to raising children. Verge’s Lauren Feiner reviews the book and interviews Gray.

9/19/26 Perhaps the greatest joy of the summer has been the unexpected reunion with Nikki Jardin. This fellow co-founder of PHLUSH and two year resident of Port Townsend has fully integrated her deep, patient, multi-facered activism with life here. Mentioning her weekly shift at the Point Wilson Lighthouse, she asked Jack if he had any ideas on how to make it more wheelchair accessible. So we promised to visit.

One does not expect a lighthouse that was modern in 1913 to be a comfortable visit for anyone. In fact, after ascending the narrowing stairway to the top, I wondered how the keeper managed to lift a heavy oil can high enough, twice daily, to fill the oil tank to keep the light lit. That’s moot now because the old fourth-order Fresnel lens was recently restored and fitted with a contemporary bulb that shines 15 miles on a clear night blinking 1 second red for every 15 seconds white.

Enabling rollers to enjoy the exhibit on the lighthouse ground floor will take considerable renovation; such work might better serve the historic duplex behind the 1913 tower that houses the young volunteer keeper and an apartment visitors can rent.

But Nikki and her team – which includes Larry from the boatshop and the father of Winston, the highschooler who’s building a river drift boat there as his senior project – already have a solution for most visitors. It’s an ingenious audio exhibit in the lighthouse horn room halfway up the spiral staircase. You choose one of four plastic cards and lay it flat on a red metal box to trigger a performance by local actors amid sounds of fog horns, wind, and rain.

9/21/26 After lunch, I rode to the ReCyclery to meet Healther. She’s just returned from her weeks in Troy, New York, taking care of her mother and saying goodbye to her father. With her colleague leaving for patental leave with his newborn, she can use a hand. The fall programs get underway this week, quarterly grants need to go out, and the modest, semi-open shop brims with used and new bikes, parts, and tools requiring new storage space.

Fortunately, Heather likes to build things Here’s her plan for self-standing shop shelving. As she wrote down what to order, I thought of the 2X4 and 2×6 leftovers from the fence repair laying out in the yard. I’d forgotten about the six by four foot piece of 5/8″ plywood (with only a small corner missing) from the platform the crew built. They needed a platform over the back stairs so they could tear off the clapboards that had rotted away during 45 years of winter storms out of the south and replace them. What we have here is almost enough for the ReCyclery project. Music to my zero-waste soul!

9/22/26 The automnal equinox ends summer. Taking it one day at a time has stretched it out nicely.