Friends…
    I hope that you will allow me a very short posting for tonight. I just got home (It’s 2AM) afte a really, really, really great Dark Star Orchestra concert that I went to with Max and Jessie. Gary and Forrest graciously drove me home while Max toook jessie home. Dark Star is a greatful dead cover band that plays entire greatful dead shows note fro note…(including mistakes). Tonight they played a show from Chicago in June of 1976 ..they were fantastic.

As always.. live miusic has a great healing power for me.. I had had a very low day.. Mondays seem to be like that pretty often .. I was hardly able to work..
 I came home a little early to catch Diane’s Yoga class that had ben moved a little earlier today. Yoga made my day infinetly better..

 then we went to CHMS to hear Gabe in is end of year concert. He had a good drum solo which was fun..

 After that Max and I went to Higher ground and I picked up our ticket.. I was even able to score one additional ticket for Jessise . Turned out that I bayght the very last ticket.. The show was sold out.. and it was compely packed… Once again as I moved through the crowd several folks came up to me to talk abotu Sam. I just love the supty er get form out commnity.. zI can’t imagine where we’d be with out it…
   Well. right now the support I need is a bed.. I only have about 4 hours to sleep. I have a very ealry morning meeting… Gnite all.. and once again.. sorry for the very short post..
-me

Ps. My firend Dan jsut sent me pictures of the SamStone he placed in Wailing Wall  in Jerusalem.. That’s a very special place for a SamStone.. lots of historey.. lots of meaning. I really appreciate San and his famly’s help here.

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Busy. Busy day…   Diane was up at 5:30 working on her gardens.. (she’s got them all almost in).   She was out cleanign up after yesterday’s hailstorm. Look what it did to our rhuebarb !

I was a lug and stayed in bed until 7.  There were at least 6 kids sleeping over after an impromptu party after the Voices project fundraiser last night. I like it when we have guests in the morning.

    I puttered around for a while trying to get some of the new shopbot milling  machine software working . My goal is to get the Sam picture on the T-shirts blasted into a piece of  wood. Homer has the machine working beautifully.. the challenge is still the software. I thought I had it all worked out.. I’m able to take the picture into the software, vectorize it and create the commands to send it to the tool… It seems to work very well in the tool simulator…..

 

I was so excited I jumped in the car and drove  the 25 miles to Homer’s to try out the data… I noticed that someone had taped a picture of Sam on the steering wheel of the van.. Nice

Homer and I  decided to start small by just trying to get the ‘peace out’ text on the back of the shirt to work. Unfortunately.. we still have several kinks in the software.. the best we could do was a very nice looking ‘p’ and a weird box…

It’s always fun to watch the mistakes (‘How fascinating.. as Ben Zander would say).. but the mistakes can be pretty interesting/dangerous when you have a 10,000 RPM router bit moving back and forth at high speeds.   I’m going to see if I can get it all strengthened out this week

    I stayed at Homer’s a little too long then had to rush back to Jonesville to intercept Jeff D. and his friends.. They had a science class assignment to do an episode of Mythbusters.

The Myth they chose was to test the possibility of lighting something on fire using a flaming arrow. They got an old archery set from Marshal P and a hay bail to use as a target and set to work.

I recall that the traditional material for flaming arrows was pine pitch.. Lacking that, our first try was an oil soaked rag….  We  quickly found that the oily fire would go out when they fired the arrow.. so.. no luck.

We then started trying other volatile liquids to see if we had better luck. We tried denatured alcohol (stayed burning.. but not hot enough)… and Acetone.. Burned hot.. but went out in flight. Gabe suggested WD40 which worked best of all.. but didn’t stay lit when it hit the hay. I’ve got a healthy fear of gasoline.. so we didn’t try that.. Like all good mythbusters, we decided to up the ante a little when things didn’t work.. We decided to make some ‘rock candy’ incendiaries (don’t try this at home !)  .. Rock candy is made by carefully melting 2 parts by weight sugar with three parts by weight KNO₃ . This has to be done outdoors, over low heat with constant stirring and with proper protective gear. The web tells many stories of this stuff going off in someone’s kitchen.. bad idea.. Anyway.. the resulting moldable carmel-y goo is a great smoke bomb and even greater fire starter. 

We did a few test burns then molded some of it around the tip of one of the arrow. The experiment didn’t work as planned.. The candy burned too well.. .the arrow missed the hay bail and quickly burned in half…

  Our only option was to kick it up one more notch.. We  ended up wrapping magnesium ribbon around an arrow  and lit it with a blow torch. Magnesium burns with an intense bright white light which is very hard to extinguish.

It burned fine.. we just had trouble keeping it on the arrow long enough..    Finally we added a little acetone and rock candy to the hay bale, lit the magnesium and let the arrow fly.. instant inferno.. and wouldn’t you know it.. my camera battery died right before that shot.. You’ll have to take my word that it was beautiful.. so that myth was only pseudo busted.. ut we had a great time trying !

   By that time it was almost 5.. I found this guy slithering into our foundation

Then Gabe, Scott and I went off to do some climbing and play some Frisbee.
I got this picture of Gabe and Scott jumping off a cliff.. They are booth nuts…

   We got back to the house just before six to meet our guest.. Sharon, the ‘dog whisperer’ Believe it or not, Sharon has found that she can channel for animals . Our friends Bill and Gina had her come over and ‘talk’ to their cats.. so we decided to give it a go with Chai… I must admit that  I was very skeptical going into this.. but it was really an incredible experience. Chai came in and lay down peacefully between us for the hour or so we all talked to her..

We learned that Chai loves us all very much.. She does not like us to pick her up or use her for a pillow.. but that she loves  taking walks, runs, getting scratched and loves cheese.   She said that sometimes the activity level in the house is too much for here and she just needs her own space. She told us that she eats rocks because the weight feels good to her.. and makes her feel like she were going to have puppies.. (that made me sad.. she’s neutered)  She  said that taking care of us since Sam died has been exhausting work for her.. and that she longs for things to be the way they were (don’t we all !) She got very excited about the prospect of going back to the Crate Escape to play with the other dogs.. She said that she loves walking with Diane in the woods and sometimes ‘sees’ Sam while she walks with Diane.. That led to a really cool conversation about Sam .. and how he still hovers near us. It felt like Chai continues to have a special relationship with Sam. Then she said that she found the activity in our family to sometimes be exhausting. She said that each of us was zooming around maybe even avoiding the need to talk/think about Sam. .. She wished that the four of us and her would come together more often just to ‘be’ with Sam.   This got the four of us really talking… which was wonderful. It’s true that we only manage to get together by ourselves only a few times a week.. and even then only briefly. Whether it was  really Chai’s thinking.. or just our own thoughts that Sharon was giving voice to… it was a wonderful experience. ( I have to admit.. I think it really was Chai !) . we all felt   really good and relaxed after the session.. Sharon said Chai did too. .. The funny thing is, as soon as Sharon left.. Chai disappeared and did not come back for 30 minutes.. we could not find her anywhere inside or out and she did not come when we called.. which has never happened. We finally found here underneath the pool deck just hanging out. … she just needed a break.

What a cool thing.. if anyone wants Sharon to try talking to their animals.. let us know and we’ll put you in touch…

    Well.. it’s late again… and this has been an incredibly full day.  I need to get some sleep.. goodnight Chai.. Goodnight Sam!

-jc  

 

 

Nice early summer day. Chai Scott and I went for a very hot and muggy run this morning. It was fn running with Scott. I had to keep him talking so he didn’t run too fast or me. We had a great conversation about ‘Kids Today’.. we were talking about the large number of 17-20 year old males that we know who are not interested in doing the whole   “study-hard-
so-that-you-can-make-good-grades-
so-that-you-can-get-into-a-good-college-
so-that-you-can-get-a-good-job-
so-that-you-can-work-your-butt-off-your entire-life-
so-that-you-can-die-rich“
thing.  Scott had some good thinking about why.. and I was talking about why grown-ups can’t understand it.   One of the big lessons I’ve learned from Sam.. both before and since his death… is that some of us overly driven grown-ups would be doing ourselves a big service to learn a little of that neo-slackerism.  We got to a point in the conversation where we started talking about a book about this topic with perspectives from both young and old folks… It sounds like a fun project.. put it on the infinite  maybe do list..

   We got back from the run just in time to leave for Gabe’s Lacross game.. our friends Chris and Casey came with us. The game was in Shelbourne at the newish rec fields. Gabe had a good day out there.. until the heat started  getting to the kids. It really felt like mid –summer.. I don’t function well myself over 65 degrees.

Gabe giving chase

Chris

Casey

Me napping

Our new friend Christina..

   After three games we came back, grabbed a bite in Hinesburg (Kovals Deli, Yum !) .. It was a little overcast when we left Hinesburg, but as we got closer to Richmond the temperature started to drop.. by the time we got home the temperature had dropped 16 degrees !.. It had obviously rained a ton . I later heard it had hailed too ! When we got home we saw that a large part of our neighbor’s tree had come down..

A bunch of us helped to clear the tree out of the road.  

 

There must have been a huge blast of wind.. the grass in the field opposite the tree had all been flattened. It was amazing !.   

As we were clearing that tree we learned that our friends Gale and Dave had also lost a tree that had fallen on both of there cars !..

By the time we all got there, they’d gotten the tree off.. but their cars were a mess. It is very cool to live in a community where neighbors   help each other…

 

    After that adventure, Max and I headed up to the Voices project fund raiser at the Jericho Community Center.. there were about 20 folks up there.. and some great music.

Max, Mason and Rusty did a funny rap routine unrehearsed.. it was a hoot..

    Right now it’s 11:30PM and thee are about 12 of Max, Sam and Gabe’s friends over here  for swimming and music. . and Diane is just about to pull a fresh baked cake out of the oven.. so I’m going to go nab some of it.. I’ll save you a piece, Sam .. Gnite !

-jc

I woke up excited because this was the day we were going to give away the first of the Sam Cohn Musical Saul Award guitar.  We all headed up to  MMU at about 8:30. We got there in about the middle of the underclassman awards ceremony. It was being held in the gym and I think the entire school was there..

In the middle of the program. Jen, the wonderfully  principled principal. took the mike. (P-A-L, the principal is your PAL)  she introduced the four of us and we went up to the podium. The nominations were in envelopes in a large glass bowl , Gabe started stirring them up while Max did a great job talking about Sam and this Musical Soul Award.

At the right moment, Gabe reached in and picked the name and Max read it out. We like this random selection because it gives Sam a chance to ‘vote’ The winner was Megan G… a freshman who I hear is a really good singer/songwriter.  I could tell that she was really surprised. To win. She came up and took the envelope.. but we haven’t had a chance to talk yet.

Sometime next week, we’ll go down to Advanced Music and she can pick out the guitar of her dreams… again.. the only strings attached to  this gift are 1)… that the winner keep the guitar  and not sell it.. and 2) the guitar can never be used for evil.. or for playing billy joel, barry manilow or anything close to that style of music. I’m guessing that won’t be a problem for Megan..   It felt so good for us to be able to kick off this program …It’s a really nice way for us to remember Sam.

    As soon as Megan sat down.. I had to run to work for a meeting.. and that’s how I spent the bulf of the day.. one phone call to the next.. I felt pretty productive today… The thing at MMU had me feeling pretty good.. I’d hoped to kick off a few hours early and get some personal time.. but I had a bunch of loose ends to clear up for the week. It was late afternoon by the time I snuck out the door.

     I decided to head over to Homer’s to  take a look at th milling machine. Going to Homer’s is like going to a museum.. there’s always unexplainable things.. like these gold painted frogs and dragon flies.. and this still life with expired bird.. I wish I could take pictures of what’s inside of Home’s brain.

I spent a few hours there goofing around with Homer trying to get the image of Sam that we used on our T-Shirts into the milling machine.. We were  able to get part of the way there.. but we were not able to get the image through the last software hurdle.. We were told that our ‘splines were not exploded’… Don’t you just hate that ?! You  work hard all day, come home tired and cranky just to find that your splines are not exploded.. . I’ve ended up spending a good portion of the evening trying to figure out how to explode my splines..( whatever that means. )  If you yourself are a spline exploder.. please let me know and tell me what to do…

    It was about 7:30 by the time I got back home. Gabe and friends were coming back from the bridge  and Diane was cutting the grass because she needed the clippings for mulch.. 

I sat down with a glass of wine. It was a prefect early summer evening.. well.. almost perfect.  We miss you Sam… we really do.

  -jc