I feel like I have been  just a little out of step  the world for these last two weeks. I seem to be constantly in the wrong place at the wrong time… or…  actually … not at  the right place at the right time. It’s like my whole ‘be in the moment’ thing has slipped a few hours into the future. Not wildly so .. like it used to be.. but just enough that I keep missing stuff I feel like I’m intended to see. None of it’s earthshaking stuff.. I’m thinking of stuff like missing that Ben Zander talk at the conference last week.. and having everyone come up to me and tell me how much the message was perfect for me.. or at the same conference last week.. always being in the boring conference presentation while hearing laughter or loud  clapping  coming from the meeting in the conference room next door. Monday I managed to miss an important meeting at work in which the secrets of the universe..  ..actually  the secrets of our product roadmap and the  budget for the year….  were finally revealed..  Everyone has been talking about that ,meeting all week about wha a great turning point it was for our area… sigh.. Tonight I had another one of those things. Several of our friends went and saw the Nobel prize winning Holocaust witness Eli Wissel  this afternoon at UVM. Wissel was in town to receive an honorary degree from UVM. I’d thought about going.., the talk was free and open to the public,  but I had work meetings throughout the afternoon   and miles to go before I sleep…

    From what I heard from Deb, Jen and their kids  Wissel gave a memorable talk.  They said he talked three types of reaction to tragedy like the holocaust: the first is to close off the past, try to forget it and live for your own pleasure and preservation.. the second is to become bitter and angry about the wrong that has happened to you and to stay angry at the world.. the third  is to become a witness to the world of what has happened to you and to become a force  to teach and to prevent others from ever having to face that same pain. Those descriptions sounded alot   (I know alot isn’t a word, mom 🙂  like the way that people react to a tragedy like  the death of a loved one.  Since Sam died we’ve met folks who’ve reacted in each of those three ways.. I always try to live in the third way….. that is live in such a way that we help others learn from Sam.. and learn by our experience of his passing.  but I don’t always get to choose how I react. In fact, I’ve come to believe that people generally don’t get to choose the way that they  react.. It comes from your nature, circumstance  and surroundings more than from choice.. and for that reason, I’ve also learned not to pass judgment on people   who react in one of the first two ways.  Deb told me that Wissell said exactly the same thing.. I think grief has no scale.

   Deb and Jen told me that Wissel also talked about  how unbelievable it was to him that despite all that the world has learned from the Holocaust that we still have genocide in our time:  in Darfor.. in Rwanda, Kosovo in Iraq.. He told a story about when  Pres Clinton had said that ‘if Americans had been in Rwanda.. 400,000 lives could have been spared…’ he wrote to Clinton and said  ‘why if ?’ . I think that’s a pretty telling story when you think about how fast our country moved  into Iraq or Kuwait when our business  interests were at stake.. makes you think.. no ?

  I really wish that I’d heard Wissel’s talk  today… but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time… .. and you already know what that’s like Sam.. you really know

-jc

 

ps. The TakeYourKidsToWorkDay thing I did yesterday was covered by the Burlington Free Press and  WCAX TV. Here’s a low-res video of the story

Today was Take Your Kid To Work Day (or TYKTWD for those of us in the biz). This morning there were over 800 kids roaming the halls of IBM. I always find it very cool to have all that ygood kid energy inside the walls of Big Blue. My  job this morning was to entertain roughly 500 of them with stories about how video game consoles are put together.

My  hope is that kids that like playing video games will get psyched about  learning more abut how the game consoles and game software works. It really, really  is cool stuff. I took the kids through ‘Game Tomorrow’,  a story that starts with the  history of video game consoles.. how the current ones are put together and the amazing stuff we expect from the next generation of machines. I was using a presentation from IBM Corporate Communications that I’d help put together back in November. In fact, the story line for the presentation was the thing I was working on the day that Sam died. Going through the same material today .. especially in a room full of kids really started out hard, After the first few minutes the feeling eased up and I was able to get into the material. I got pretty good audience participation and I think the kids ‘got’ the message. I had a whole bunch of them come up tot alk to me after I was done WCAX and the FreePress were there.. I just saw that there’s a short piece on WCAX’s website about the event.  (http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=6420872) Maybe there will be something in the paper tomorrow.  I can say that it really feels good to be ‘back in the saddle again’ and doing some education outreach work. I feel good when I’m working with kids.. and I think it’s a good way to honor Sam with my work.

    The rest of the day passed pretty quickly.. I managed to write Sam’s name in the snow of the parking lot.. I added some mud ofr contrast. I plan to do this until all the snow dissapears,

I got home about 6:30 just in time to leave with Diane and Gabe to go see ‘Citizen Cope’ at Higher Ground. I love live music anytime.. but live music mid-week is a great and rare treat. It was a  really young crowd at Higher Ground tonight.. which was funny because the music was definitely not  just for kids. Stylistically, Citizen Cope has a little of everything . including reggae, R&B, conutry and jazz . It grew on me as the night went on.

I loved the young crowd. At one , point I decided to take some of our spare French fries down to Gabe and friends who were right up near the stage. As soon as I walked into the crowd it was like a feeding frenzy.. hand were coming out of every ware to grab for the fries.. it was surreal and fun.. and a little disgusting.. I felt like I was in the company of piranha’s.

Overall ,he show was pretty good.. we saw lots of friends there including Sumner who’ still on crutches. Notice where those crutches come to on Gabe.. that Sumner is one tall boy

   We got home just before midnight to find Max studying hard. When we came in he took a break to make the world s most perfect baked potato.. Here he is just before the sacrifice…

   Oy.. I’m sleepy.. I’ll end here. Sam.. I wanted to let you know that I was in a book store today and saw one of your favorite books It made me sad and happy to see it.. I’m sure your know it…

 
-jc

 

 

The path we’re on is certainly tough. One day I feel like I’m making great progress and getting strong, the next day I feel like I don’t want to get out of bed. Today was the latter. I really struggled today at work.. and came home feeling like a whipped puppy. Nothing specific happened.. It was just hard… lots to ponder at home too.  I think I’m  getting too busy to do the grieving and healing I need to do.. I end up putting it off to later.,. then never make time for later. I’m going to have to work on  getting more down time in my schedule to think.. or actually to not think.

    I have been spending the little quiet time I have trying to figure out where I am on this new spiritual journey I’m on since Sam’s passing. I’ve been part-way through several books on death and dying. life after death,  men’s healing and I’m not sure what to think .  I know that I believe in something bigger than we are.. at the same time, the teachings of any organized religions I know of don’t do it for me. I was deeply moved by the Gandhi quote I saw at the Peace Abbey which I mentioned yesterday.. “There are as many religions as there are people’“ I think that is so true.. Diane, Pat and I were talking about this in the car on the way back from Boston last night . None of us can know what is true .. we can only know what we believe.  Even many of the strongest tenants of science that we take as facts are just elaborate belief systems.. Think of Newtonian physics before relativity.. it was believed as fact, taught as fact… and still it was wrong.. or at least it was incomplete.   

I’m thinking that all the scientific training I’ve received over the years has made the spiritual journey I’m on harder and more confusing..  On one hand my training makes it hard for me to beleive in a soul.. yet my heart ablolutely knows that we have one and that it lives on after we die. I hear it from Sam all the time. I remember a Terry Gross interview I heard last year with Brian Greene the well known String Theorist and Author of ‘The Elegant Universe’ (String theorists believe that all things in the cosmos from the very large big bang to the very small sub atomic particles can be explained by the actions and interactions of tiny one dimensional vibrating ‘strings’ of pure energy) Terry asked  Greene if string theory is true, does it make religion unnecessary. I can’t recall Green’s exact quote.. but he said something very similar to this quote of his  I found on the internet  “The universe is incredibly wondrous, incredibly beautiful, and it fills me with a sense that there is some underlying explanation that we have yet to fully understand,” he said. “If someone wants to place the word God on those collections of words, it’s OK with me.”

   I find it hard to believe in a G-d that is outside of me.. since I can’t rationally explain why that idea is necessary to explain what I see and experience . At the same time I can’t help believe  that the collective consciousness of all of the living beings in the universe can be  explained by physics as we know it. To me the organizing energy that makes us us is somehow divine and worth of respect. I also somehow believe that that organizing energy endures and builds, ..even learns throughout time. To me that’s our before-life, during-life and our afterlife…  And even though  its impossible to know this.. . I believe it  with all my heart. I know that Sam is part of that as am I, Diane, Max, Gabe and all of you.. That’s John-ism… and I’m the high priest.

-jc

 

We just got back from a very good 2 day quick trip down to Massachusetts. We were down to see my folks and for Diane and our friend Pat to attend an Open Heart, Swaroopa yoga workshop which was being held in my parents home town of Sherborn. We started down about 6:30 and got down there about 11Pm on Friday night…

My folks were up waiting and were very warm and welcoming. They hit it off with Pat right away..

After a little bit of talking. we all drifted off to sleep around midnight…

 Diane and Pat woke up and left about 8AM on Sat to get to their yoga workshop. The rest of us slept in.  The only plans I had for the weekend was to spend time with my folks.. and concentrate on showing Gabe and his friend Trevor a good time in Boston.. which meant skateboarding.   I gave a quick call to Hanna D. ad Dave at Talent to see what they knew about Boston skateboarding and they fixed us up..   They gave us the name of a good Skate shop and tipped us that there was going to be a skateboard movie premier at midnight that night. Hannah gave us a few people to call in town and we were off

 After a late breakfast, my mom and I drove the kids into downtown Wellesley to test their stuff on the ramps and stairways of some public buildings which were not in use on the beautiful weekend.   We spend a very nice couple of hours in the beautiful sun watching the boys not break arms, wrists or ankles on a variety of concrete structures designed to do just that.   When we’d exhausted the possibilities in Wellesley, my mom dropped Gabe. Trevor and me  at the T at the end of one of the Green Line trains.

We took the train into Copley  then back out to Bingham Circle to check out Orchard, the skate shop that Hannah had told us about..

The owner Debo told us a few places in downtown Boston where the boys could skate..   From there we got on an Orange train from  West Roxbury  and were downtown at the Aquarium a few minutes later.

We walked out to Long Warf. where the guys spent a good could of hours riding the sidewalks and terrorizing the crowds. It was fun to watch.. When it came time to head back to our train. We took the slow path along the harbor. Along the way we found some excellent skating . We got shoo-ed off a few times (since when is skateboarding a crime !?!) .

. but for the most part folks were ok.. The scenery was beautiful.. Gabe and Trevor loved it. We got back to South Station in time to catch the 4:30 train out to West Natick..   My mom met our train and took us back home.

 Diane and Pat made it back to the house just a few minutes after we did. They took Gabe. Trevor and my mom to the Sherborn park to skate some more (The park has a small but good skate park which is dedicated to some kid in town who died last year.. I’d seen it before and wondered about it.. This time when I saw it , I really felt it. .  

While the kids skated some more (7 hours of skateboarding on Saturday !) I stayed home and had a great talk with my dad.  We talked about all sorts of things.. mostly about how we were all doing after Sam’s passing. It was a good emotional talk.  

 Eventually Diane, at, my mom, Gabe and Trevor came back and everyone started cooking. We had a great dinner of red beans and rice, one of my Dad’s favorites.     Around 10:30pm  Gabe. Trevor and I got back in the car and drove 25 miles back into Cambridge to see the skateboarding movie.. I know the area well since I used to live in Cambridge.. but I know it as a walking guy..  I am not good at driving in it. I had done MapQuest.. but realized halfway there that I’d forgotten my glasses. Trevor was riding shotgun so I deputized him as navigator… Just as I did, I  took a wrong turn.. I asked Trevor if he knew how to read a map. His answer was no.. but he tried anyway. After a little bit of trial and error with Harvard Square‘s one way system.. he got us to the Brattle Theater.. We (almost) Pahked the Cah in Havad Yahd

 The scene at the theater was pretty wild. There were about 100.. studiously dressed down Kids.. some with skateboards doing some pretty amazing stuff.  Just before the movie, we met James, the film organizer.. He was really a great guy.. He told us that he’s bring the film ‘Magic Sticky Hand’ up to Talent in Burlington this week.. so check it out.

 

The movie itself was pretty wild.. It opened with a scene involving a clogged toilet.. I won’t give away any more of the plot.. but it involved some pretty amazing  skateboarding and some.. uh.. interesting … movie clips interspaced. It was wonderfully weird..   What made it even weirder was that I was easily twice as old as anyone else in the room. In fact.. the last time I was in the Brattle theater was over 26 years ago.. before most of the other folks had even been born… (eeeeek) I  suspect Gabe was just over half as old as most of the folks there.. so ..in a room of freaks.. we were the uber-freaks. They were still nice to us, though.

 At the end.. we wandered down to the car.. Just as we got there.. the street light over the car went out.. Sam was there too.  The trip home uneventful.. We stopped long enough to put a SamStone in the courtyard of Bexeley Hall, my dorm at MIT. We got home around 2 and went straight to sleep.. what a day

 When I woke today, it was nearly 10..  Had a nice long talk with my Mom outside.. Talked about how we were all doing since Sam’s passing..  it’s good  for me to here about my folks path through grieving and healing

  I then went  for a beautiful 4 mile run up through Sherborn woods and lanes .. hoping to catch a glimpse of Diane at lunch.. She was still in class.. so I made a  heart out of gardening mulch next to her car  in keeping with the ‘open heart’ theme of her workshop. 

On the way home I stopped at the Sherborn Peace Abbey.  The Abbey was founded in 1995 when Emily, a cow, escaped a nearby slaughterhouse.. and wandered to that spot. Several folks hid Emily until a family purchased her freedom. She lived at the peace Abbey until her natural demise in 2001.. During her life, Emily had visits from Mother Theresa and the Dali Lama plus thousand of pilgrims for peace and animal rights.

The Peace Abbey had several parts. First was the peace garden.. it had a large sculpture of  Mahatmas Gandhi… surrounded by brick walls arraigned as spokes.

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(Note.. i’ve tried 6 times to get this image of Gandhi pasted in and it’s resisted.. I get them message Gandhi-Gee !)

The spokes were covered with a 100 or so bronze places with quotes of famous peace activists  such as Margaret Mead. John Lennon, Francis of Assisi and Albert Einstein..  They also had peace prayers from many religions.. What struck me is how similar the peace prayers were.. even though the faiths had fought so much throughout the ages.. There was a great Gandhi quote that said something like ‘there are as many religions as there are people on the earth. All religions speak of the same truth, what difference if people find different ways to get to that truth’ I certainly believe that.. The Abbey also had an area devoted to the remembrance of Emily the cow including a large bronze statue of her that rests on top of her grave.

This was surrounded by quotes of many famous vegetarians  (I’ve been an un-famous vegetarian now for 30 years.. though I do now eat fish) . Behind that there’s a small area where the remains of several contentious objectors  are buried.. Inside the Abbey, there is a wonderful chapel to all faiths.   Inside there was the Quran, the Bible, , Jesus, Ganesh, Vishnu, Buddah, Moses, African prayer sculptures, Native American , Mahavira all in the same room.. and all seemed to be getting along very well.   I was very moved by the place… 

I left the Abbey and started running home to my folks . I decided to take a detour long  the railroad track.. I thought of all the times that Sam, Gabe. Max and I walked the railroad tracks here in Jonesville looking for railroad spikes.  Our yard is still full of them.. every year we hit a few with the lawn mower.. ‘Clank !’.  I was looking for a spike to bring home for Sam’s collection.. but no luck. Instead, I picked up a piece of scrap metal that looked a little like a phone and started talking to Sam. I often do stuff like that.  I don’t usually say anything special. I was just telling him that I loved him. I finished my ‘call’ and dropped the scrap metal.. An there where it hit the ground between my legs was a railroad spike. Thanks again Sam.

When I got home, the boys were up and around..   My mom and I got in the car and took them into Natick to find places to skateboard.. it was a gorgeous day.. We spent the afternoon looking for slanting cement for the boys to ride while my mom and I talked… It was a really relaxing afternoon…

 Eventually we ended up having a late lunch then walking the boys up to the Peace Abbey.. We had another quick walk through.  Diane had put an SamStone on Gandhi’s  foot earlier in the day which Gabe was surprised to find. 

  As we left the abbey I walked by a group of kids looking at the sculpture of Gandhi.. One of them found the SamStone, picked it up and said,, “what’s this ? Who’s  Sam” Then I listened as they speculated about who Sam is/was. .. It was just like I imagined it to be when someone found a SamStone.  It was good to see..   I told them about Sam.. then we we left

 

I dropped my Mom, Gabe and Trevor at the park for one last skate while I zoomed back to my folks house to pack.. Diane and Pat picked us up a few minutes later .. and  we all went back to the park to pick up the kids and say goodbye to my folks.  It had been so good seeing them,

 

The drive home was uneventful.. Diane and Pat told me about their Yoga Seminar.. I told them about our Skateboarding adventures.. and we talked about life for about 204 miles.. It was really nice. We got home around 11:30..  And Max had cleaned up the house and made us a welcome home pie…   He’d also booby trapped the door so it dropped confetti on our heads.. I love that kid… !

So here I am totally exhausted.. and typing in your room Sam.. time for me to go to bed… Namaste my sons !

-jc