I’m somewhat at a loss for what to write this evening… on one hand, today was full of lots of fun and interesting stuff… on the other hand.. today marks the anniversary of Sam’s last full day as we knew him.. I’m torn between the ‘real’ world and the world that’s so much bigger.     That’s such a big deal.. yet at the same time.. what’s a year mean ?  Tomorrow marks the time it took for the earth to circle the Sun … after our son left this world. 365 times the earth has tuned on it’s own axis. Is it really different from all the days that have passed since Sam’s death ?  I don’t know, but I’m guessing that, in many ways,  tomorrow’s going to be like most of the others.. I’ll wake up grappling with the fact that Sam is gone. I’ll take comfort in the love of my family.. I’ll feel buoyed up by the folks in my community.. and I’ll have some really dark times missing Sam.. In the end, I’ll take stock of the day and record the parts I care to share in this commentary..   I am guessing that will be the rhythm of our lives for quite a long while.. Maybe forever,. Tomorrow is different  only in that our society chooses to recognize it as significant.

   So much has happened in this past year to think about.. we’ve had literally thousands of folks come in to our lives to share their care an feelings. Sam’s spirit has been passed on through the efforts of  his good friends in the  Friends of Sam movement.  The FoS have raised thousands of dollars for local kids… The funds that folks have generously donated to the Sam Cohn foundation are allowing kids across Vermont to enjoy snowboarding. music, and camping , all things our Sam loved. Sam’s name is on about 4000 SamStones made by his friends and now spread across every continent on the  globe..  We get messages daily about folks placing or finding them in some of the most beautiful, spiritually meaningful  and politically important sites from across the globe.   Sam’s many friends continue to write to him publicly and privately in his MySpace  sharing their thoughts and love for our son. This has shown me the healing power of the internet and the global community it supports. Sam left our physical life, yet his spirit seems to be magnified in so many ways..   The mystery of his passing is with  us every day.  Why did this happen to Sam? What does it mean ? How can this be ? Where is he now  ?  Questions that will never get answered…

   So much has changed in our lives… but one thing has not… the love we have for our kids… for Sam..  I love you so much my son.. Good night…

-me

 ps. If you haven’t already, please share a story, though or wish for Sam on the SamStones story page here.

So… Now begins our week of remembrance to mark the one year anniversary of Sam’s passing  We have several things planned this week in honor, memory  and celebration of our wonderful son, brother and friend.   We want to let folks know what’s up so you can participate either in person or in spirit with us..

We can not mark Sam’s passing with a single day. Tuesday the 20^th marks the anniversary of Sam’s accident. We know that Sam’s spirit left his body within moments of being hit..  The 21^st marks the day that he was declared brain dead, so that is the day we mark legally as the day of his death. By the end of the  22^nd Sam’s heart was  in another’s body keeping her alive. Each of those events brings its own memories .

Here’s what we plan to do this week. Please pass this info around to friends who may not be reading this on the blog.

Tuesday the 20th

This will be a day for our family to come together. We  don’t have much planned. We’ll be at our house laying low and thinking of Sam. 

Wednesday the 21st

We would love all of you who are close to Sam and to us to come and share part or all of the day with us.  You are welcome here even if you don’t know us well,  yet need the connection with Sam for yourself. We have several things planned for the day. Please come.

Noon  – Weather permitting, several of us are planning a trip up to the Bolton fire tower… where we released some of Sam’s ashes last year… we’ll meet at the base lodge at  noon.  

5 PM  – we’ll meet back at our house for some quiet remembrances, community  and a pot luck. Please bring warming soups, bread and/or salad to share. We’ll be playing music and making SamStones.

7PM – Please join us in lighting a candle for Sam. There’s no significance to the time.. it’s just a time where our friends around the world can join us in lighting a candle for Sam and sending him love. If you can be with us, that is wonderful… if not, please light a candle for Sam on your own..

7:30 PM on – We will have a bonfire, again weather permitting, You can join us to add something to the fire to mark the year as a remembrance of Sam.. it can be a message, a story, a poem, a song, artwork, slide show, anything. If you can’t join us in person, please add a story to the SamStones story log here. or add a comment on Sam’s Myspace . I’ll be putting copies  of both of those into the fire.    We’ll be holding  a ceremony I learned at the Solstice a two years ago with friends in Austria.. we’ll make a wish for Sam, ourselves or our world then jump over the fire to make it so.

Again, If you do come, please bring something for the potluck. Chairs to sit on around the fire, an offering to burn, musical instruments, songs, art anything you’d like to share.   If you have questions please call us at 434-3576

Thursday the 22nd

Thanksgiving morning, we’ll  be joining our friends the Williams in their 3/6K walk/run in memory of their son Jarred. We’ll all be running/walking in our Sam shirts. I’m not quite sure of the times, but I’ll post them when I get them. Please show up an help us support the Jarred Williams Foundation which helps raise money for families of kids with brain cancers. 

We’ll be doing Thanksgiving with friends.. so we’re being well cared for…

Friday the 23rd

Friday will bring some down time. My family will all be coming from Boston and some of our good friends from Diane’s home town will also be coming in…  Not much planned for the day but leftovers.

Saturday the 24th

On Saturday, we’ll be holding the 2^nd annual Sam Cohn Memorial concert at the West Monitor Barn on route 2 in Richmond. You can find details here. The concert will be a fund raiser for the Sam Cohn Foundation and will feature a ton of local bands. It will be a great show ! We’ll need some volunteers to help with parking, running the door, serving pizza/drinks, set-up and clean up. We’re having a planning meeting tomorrow at 6PM at our house on logistics for the concert. If you want to volunteer please show up.. or let us know if you’re available to help.

It’s going to be a hard week .. and a good week.. I can feel both . Thank you all for the wonderful love and support you’ve given us over this past long and tough.. and somehow beautiful year. We will never forget it.. we can’t…

Love you all.. Love you Sam..

-me

 PS. Remember, if you can’t join us this week in person, please add a story to the SamStones story log here. or add a comment on Sam’s Myspace . We’d love to hear from every one of you. Thanks !

Friends…
   Next week marks the one year anniversary of Sam’s passing. On Wednesday, Nov 21st we’re goign to be doing a quiet fire ceremony for Sam at our house. One of the things we plan to do is toss things in the fire as a way of honoring Sam..

OK.. On to the day.. and it was a very good one. We woke up latish and worked around the house for a bit. Job 1 was removing all the fireworks from the car…  It felt much safer to drive fter that.. After an hour or so of that.. I drove into town to return the spring board we’d borrowed from Tom and Erika and to drop off the large box of foodshelf items we’d collected at Halloween ( I know, we’re slow) .
After that I went and spent abotu 3 hours at the final ‘Voices for the Lake’ seminar which was being held at Champlain College. We got a great set of demo’s of various blogging, forum, and video cgame technology that we may try to use to promote Lake Champlain’s ecology among folks on both sides of the lake. It was great harign from the Champlain Game design kids again. i’m so impressed with them everytime I see them. We also heard from my friend Michael who helped start Front Porch Forum here in Vermont. Front Porch Forum is an emil based community building program.. It’s pretty cool. The Forum we use for Jonesville doesn’t get much use yet.. I’m hoping by positng this link here we can help build it up.

   I got home mid-day .. I went out for a short run and when I came back. the house was full of people again. it was great seeing all of the college kids returning for Thanksgiving. Here are Carolyn. Liz, Selena and friends…

And Connor , Justin and John

Around 4 we all jumped in the car and headed into Burlington for the evening. I was loved this  bumper sticker in the car next to us..   If you don’t read Thomas Pynchon. you probably wouldn’t think it’s funny. if you do read tom pynchon then you think everything is kinda random and funny. anyway…

First stop was Climb High  to see the premier of Angus, Alex and Max E’s movie the ‘Tonar Project’. Tonar was edited by Angus and produced by his dad Burt.   Climb high advertised noise and distruption.. but we broght our own. There were about 60 folks there to see the movie.

.. but first a word from our sponsors

Lots of good skiing and boarding.. and some spectacular wipe outs.

Even some R-rated parts !  (THis is just before the R-Rated part !)

Our Pirate Float in pond skimming last spring even made the closing credits. My feet got cold just thinking about how cold that water had been !

The whole project was dedicated to Sam..  The real premier of the movie is at the Jericho Community Center on December 1st. All the proceeds from that showing are going to Sam’s fund.  We really appreciate the kids doing that !

After that snow moview, we hurried over to the Flynn to see the lates Warren Miller Movie.. ‘PlayGround’. . I had the honor of having my ticket taken by our  dear friend Abbot , who was ‘ushing’ for the eveing.

Now.. I’m not a ski or snowboard guy.. so I wasn’t sure I was going to like this movie.. but the scenery and music were so good.. that I could have been watching backetweaving.  and still likes it. it was great..

We saw a ton of folks we knew there.. I may well have bene theonly non boarder/skier in the building

There were soem raffles at the Intermission.. One of the prizes wwas a clear ‘Mad River Rocket’ sled… and guess who won !!.. Hey, hey Max !

From there we walked over to ‘A Single Pebble;/   It was Tim’s birthday and we wanted to take everyone somewhere fun and nice.   Single Pebble is my favorite Chineese restruant on the planet.. and that includes all the places I’ve eaten in China ! .

Tim and I got help ordering .. but we got too much help. I think we ordered about twice as much as the 10 of us could eat !!!!!

Nate entertained us by scaring us with his evil glare..

Evil

Eviller

Evilest

I was so stuffed I could barely move…   As we left I put a SamStone in the resturant just for fun..

On the way home tow street lights went out as we passed under and then we saw the most big and beutiful shooting star.. Sam was right there with us in some way…

I love you all… love you still Sam..

-me

ps. Please remember to write us a Sam story for the fire… why not do it now  ?

Nice day…. Started late last night. I picked max up at the airport about 1:30 this morning. It was SO very good seeing him. It was good having us all under one roof again. We hung out for awhile talking.. then I drifted off to bed… another 2:30 AM night.. yawn…

I woke late this mornign to find the ground covered with snow. It was really beutiful.. I must have slept well because I felt really peaceful. I worked the morning at home. I’m trying to get my head around what I need to do for this new assignment. It’s really fun thinking about all that I have to do… I think it’s going to be fun and challenging.
While I was on a call, a delievry guy knocked on the back door. He was a courrier from DHL shipping. he was holding a box and makign a really wierd face. He haded it to me and told me he was glad that it was out of his truck.. Take a look at these labels.. I’m sure I’m on some sort of list now… actually.. I’m sure I was already on it

This is the one I love….

These are 4 large rocket motors for a big rocket I plan to launch next week in Sam’s honor. This is one like the kind I lunched at his birthday.. the kind you have to call the FAA about… they’re fun and very, very impressive

I quit working about 1 and headed to Montpelier . I’d been invited to be a ‘technology futurist’ (whatever that is) on a panel for the Council on the Future of Vermont. The CVF is a goverment mandated non profit that is considering what life in Vermont will be like in the next 20 years or so. I was on the panel with a guy from Senator Lehey’s office and an evironmentalist. It was a real Hoot. I’ll be interested to see what they do with the info we gave them..

Walking out of the meeting I saw the Music shop here in Montpellior. I used to get guitar stuff here for the boys… The name really grabbed me…

Outside the snow had really started to come down again. it was beautiful..

Since I was already in Montpellier, I took the short drive to East Montpellier to Northstar Fireworks to stock up on supplies for the toast to Sam next week. they were having a buy 1 get 2 free sale.. so I seriously overbaught.. Let’s just say that I did not park anywhere near my house when I got them home… Getting home was quite a chore I89 was covered in black ice in some spots. It was slow going and trecherous

Soon after I got home it was time to go to CHMS to catch Gabe’ s Circus. It’s a tradition that all three boys love. The kids were really great.. Here’s Syndney singing a girlie song.. Se’s got a great voice and great presense

The crowd was mesmerized !

Gabeand freinds where the ‘Coneheads’… cute !

Gabe as also in the 2nd to last act.. ‘the flippers’…they’re flippin sweet ! We ended up borrowign a springboard from our frinds om and Eriksa and Hruskas since the one that the shcool ordered had not yet come in. The guys were really good on the spring board.. Lots of flips and corks.

The kids all took a bow.

One of the acts used the Red Hot Chili Peppers song ‘Snow’… So it was still on my mind we went out to the car.. there was still snow on the ground and on the cars. That song always makes me think of Sam.. we went and saw the Chili’s in Quebec city just a few weeks before he died. I always choke up when I hear it.
The words are perfect

Red Hot Chili Peppers Snow (Hye Oh) .

Come to decide that the things that I tried
Were in my life just to get high on
When I sit alone come get a little known
But I need more than myself this time

Step from the road to the sea to the sky
And I do believe it, we rely on
When I lay it on come get to play it on
All my life to sacrifice

Refrain:
Hey oh, listen what I say, oh
I got your hey oh, now listen what I say, oh

When will I know that I really can’t go
To the well once more time to decide on
When it’s killing me, when will I really see
All that I need to look inside

Come to believe that I better not leave
Before I get my chance to ride
When it’s killing me, what do I really need
All that I need to look inside

Refrain:
Hey oh, listen what I say, oh
Come back and hey oh, look at what I say, oh

Stick:
The more I see, the less I know
The more I like to let it go
Hey oh, whoa

Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it’s so white as snow
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there’s nowhere to go

In between the cover of another perfect wonder
And it’s so white as snow
Running through a field where all my tracks will be concealed
And there’s nowhere to go

When to descend to amend for a friend
All the channels that have broken down
Now you bring it up, I’m gonna ring it up
Just to hear you sing it out

Step from the road to the sea to the sky
And I do believe what we rely on
When I lay it on, come get to play it on
All my life to sacrifice

Refrain:
Hey oh, listen what I say, oh
I got your hey oh, listen what I say, oh

Stick:
The more I see, the less I know
The more I like to let it go
Hey oh, whoa

Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it’s so white as snow
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there’s nowhere to go

In between the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it’s so white as snow
Running through the field where all my tracks will be concealed
And there’s nowhere to go

I said hey, hey yeah, oh yeah, tell my love now
Hey, hey yeah, oh yeah, tell my love now
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it’s so white as snow

Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there’s nowhere to go
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it’s so white as snow

Running through the field where all my tracks will be concealed
And there’s nowhere to go
I said hey, oh yeah, oh yeah, tell my love now
Hey, hey yeah, oh yeah

OK.. all for now.. . Love you all.. love you Sam..
-me