I made a good call today. I had been going back and forth on whether I should leave Minnesota and fly to Cape Cod for my father’s 77^th birthday. I’d made reservations.. but I’d also made plans to stay in the meeting I was having in Rochester. This morning I walked into the meeting room and polled some of  the folks there on whether I should stay.. or should go see my dad.. 100 % voted for me to go .. It was nice to know that I was not needed there 🙂 … but I’d already made my decision to go. I caught a 1 PM flight from Minneapolis to Providence and drove the rest of the way.   I was dialed in to my Minnesota meeting the whole way… The meeting ended just as  I drove up to my folks rental house in  North Falmouth. I came in just as my father’s birthday party was starting. He had no idea that I was going to show up. The look on his face made the whole trip worthwhile.  

Sam’s passing has been so hard on all of our family.. It’s really important for us to get with our extended families like this now.

    Dinner was a typical Cohn affair.. late, loud and delicious. My dad made his signature (and I believe only) dish.. Batchelor Spaghetti.. I think the Bachelor part means that you use whatever’s in the fridge to make it. The main ritual of its preparation is throwing the spaghetti against the outside of the fridge to see if it’s done.. if it slides off.. it needs more cooking. If it sticks:.. perfecto !

    Several of my sister Mary’s friends from up the street were there for the party… Mary’s college roommates Caroline  and Amy were there as well as Caroline’s kids and her parents Zippy (cool name ) and Barbara  and their friend Judy, her daughter Heather and Heather’s son.   It was very festive and chaotic. We ended with a big cake cutting ceremony. I could tell that my dad was happy to have us all around…

 

In the course of dinner I found out that Heather’s husband had passed away 6 weeks ago. I also learned that Zippy and Barbara lost a son to cancer 25 years ago.. Judy had recently lost her husband  and that one of the sons of the  owners of this rental had died 2-3 years ago of liver disease .  I’m reminded of the parable of Buddha and the mustard seed.. Who hasn’t tasted grief ?   As tough as that sounds.. we all had a great conversation about loss and healing.. It’s so easy to talk to people who have had similar.. (how can I even say similar ? ) experiences . It was interesting.. funny and lie affirming to talk about how each of us was doing at our different stages of grief. From there I went and roughhoused  on the floor with my niece Ellery. ..

and held my new nephew Jake .

Life is funny and good.

 

OK… bandwidth here is terrible. I’m going to try to post this now.. If I doesn’t work.. I’ll try tomorrow morning.   Talk to you all later.. G’nite all.. G’nite Sam.  

 

-me

 

Short post tonight as I need to get to sleep. .  I’m still in Rochester.   Not much happened today.. it was sort of a peaceful Midwestern kinda day. I began the day with a short run where I came across this sticker on a tree (I came back late this evening to take of picture of it). Somehow it made me think of Sam’s passing.. not sure of the connection.. but I felt it strongly.

 

One cool thing from breakfast was that they had a juice machine with both orange juice and grape juice.  You may not know the awesome power of that combination… In the Cohn household of my youth the following recipe gave one super strength

½ cup orange juice
½ cup grape juice
stir with a green tinker toy
drink entire cup
gives super strength

We’d drink the stuff then run around like crazy convinced we had superhuman strength and speed.  The recipe was a closely guarded family secret until Billy published it in a cookbook put together by my Moms extended family…   This morning the concoction just made me a little queasy..   Ok.. maybe I had a little super strength.

All in all I had  a very productive day. 

The meetings today had lots of good discussion… It helps to know that no one is armed..

 

As I said last night .. the folks here are the hardest working and easiest going people I’ve ever worked with..    After the meeting we all headed to a local watering hole for some team bonding..

One of our guys. Mike, knew the folks at the next table.. all school principals and teachers. I ended up talking to them about why more girls don’t go into science, math and engineering.. they had some good insights.. mainly everyone says that the messaging around engineering is ‘it’s hard’… rather than ‘it’s ‘fun’ . I’d be interested in anyone else’s view about why girls are a stating away from engineering in record numbers.

 

We left the bar and my friend Bryan and I went to a super market and bought a bunch of cakes and a pie and dropped them off at the local Ronald Macdonald House. I never really noticed RMH before Sam’s passing.. Now I see them in every city I visit. It is such a great organization. They were there for us when we really needed them . It’s a great organization.. check them out at http://www.rmhc.org/rmhc/index.html. We then stopped for another ‘meeting’ in a bar..

 

After that I ended going over to my friends Jeff and Karen’s to say hi. Jeff was my office mate and running buddy when I worked in Hursley England from 1984-86.  He’s always been one of my most important life advisors. Karen was already asleep.. but Jeff and I sat outside and talked about life, family’s, Sam, everything. It was great catching up

 

That’s about it for the day.. More to report tomorrow. Gnite all. Gnite Sam

-me

Believe it or not, I’m on the road again . Tonight I find myself in Rochester Minnesota..

Home of some of the hardest working and nicest people I’ve every had the pleasure  of working with.. It’s also the home of the least spicy food on the face of the planet. Here ketchup is a spice.. I’m sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for a bunch of my friends from Burlington to join me.. We’re going out for dinner ..  and I know I’m hoping I can score some hot sauce on the street.   Rochester is also the home of the Mayo Clinic.. one of the largest private hospital systems in the country. It’s strange for me to be among all these hospitals again.. It brings back so many memories. I saw a helicopter landing on the top of one of the hospitals. The image  hit me hard.. and I had to sit for a bit before I could drive on.

 

 

There’s a large IBM facility here.. In fact it was the site of my very first business trip almost exactly 26 years ago. I remember being so surprised that they’d let me rent a hotel room or rent a car for myself. I remember telling them that I was older than I was… Now that’s a change.   I also remember getting reported to IBM security for hitchhiking with an IBM badge on… (times have changed   I wouldn’t consider hitchhiking safe anymore ).. I also remember sneaking in to a Pinchus Zuckerman concert at Assisi Heights, a local convent.  The event had sold out… but one of the folks recording it for public TV told me to pretend I was with the video crew.. I did.. and they let me in.. more than that.. they put me to work. I actually saw the concert on PBS several months later and saw myself moving cables… That was a long…long time ago…

 

It feels very funny being away from home again. Max will be heading back to school in a few weeks… and I want to be with him as much as I can. Gabe also gave me a funny look when I told him I was leaving again. I almost canceled the trip.. but duty calls. I feel such a strong need to stay home with my family.. but I keep finding myself on airplanes.. It’s a hard habit to break.   I need to fix this. . 

 

 I just spoke with everyone at home. Gabe’s at a Friends of Sam meeting up at the Townsend’s this evening. The FoS got a really great write-up  in the Burlington Free Press on Saturday. I’m so proud of all of these kids ! They are really making a difference

 

Speaking of making a difference.. I’m still thinking about the seminar that Diane and I attended last weekend. One of the things that struck me most about Chopra’s message was the notion that we are all connected as a single soul. In his view, we spring up as different localizations of that soul when we’re in physical bodies.. then revert to the greater whole when we die. We’re then reborn into new lives when our collective soul feels it’s time.. Chopra spoke of the Buddhist meditation mantra ‘I am’ .. meaning I am part of the greater collective soul.. and ‘I am that’ .

meaning that things outside our selves like other people, trees,  animals, etc. are all projections of the same collective life force.. I’m not sure I’ve got my head all the way around that.. but the message still gave me great comfort somehow..  It makes me think of Sam

 

Another thing that struck me at the seminar is how optimistic Chopra is .. even in the face of all the war and injustice  in the world. In his opinion, society is evolving and is slowly improving . He sited social research that showed that the drive for social justice, better stewardship of the environment and for peace are gaining strength all over the world.. He sited He maintains that it will shortly ‘tip’ in the direction of a greater sense of world unity and collective good.. May it be so…  Chopra’s institute is making a movie about this coming tipping point. Check it out here

OK.. Speaking of tipping.. my head keeps rolling to the side a I fall asleep. Let me stop here and pick up tomorrow. 

Gnite all ! Gnite Sam

 
-me

 ps. Here are some more politically neutral bumper stickers I’ve seen over the last 2 days

 

 

 Friends..   It’s 1:30 in the morning and I have too much to say for the wakefulness I still have in me. My day began with 7AM Yoga at Omega in Rhinebeck..

and ended with me blowing up several pounds of non-dairy coffee creamer in th parking lot of the Department of Motor Vehicles in Montpelier at 12:so AM.   In the middle I did a great deal of listening to Deepak Chopra,    had many great conversations with Diane.. Came home to my kids.. had dinner out with Gabe and his friends, 

and watched Max film some of his main scenes from the Voices movie.  

Nate steals my car

Jorrdan looking like jordan

Josh relaxing in his van

Jordan looking not like joran

Random music guy

Nate

Merideth and Dayne

Scott the avenger

The scene above the trestle

Quite on the set !

Nate and dayne (She’s telling him she’s pregnant)

Slumming

The fiming scene from down below

Max and merideth as Justin and Cassie

The mural below the trestle in Justin’s camp

Justin’s camp

Max and Diane

Max being Max (I’m so proud of him !)

Max in his ‘home’

More slumming

I don’t have the energy to try to fit all these elements into a sane narrative. I still have much thinking to do to integrate the messages we hear in the Deepak Chopra seminar we attended.. There was much to take in.. It was truly transformational for me.. though it’s  main message was pretty subtle. I  promise to try and extract what I really heard form  it tomorrow.. If I do that, can I get off easy tonight ? Let me take the cheap shot of most authors and stretch my posting tonight with a quotation.. This one’s from T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’ …   I like it because it almost ends with a ‘bang’

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I love you all. I love you too Sam..
-me