Another beautiful day.. clear and warm.. I can’t remember this many prefect weather days in a row.. it’s incredible . It’s great for all the kids that are on school break. You can tell that it’s a vacation week for most people. The halls at work are pretty empty and so is the parking lot.

I put in a very full day.. Still trying to get my momentum back. I feel like I can clearly see what I’m supposed to be doing.. but I’m really. really struggling to grab hold and engage. At the same time I’m not able to get myself too worked out about it. I’ve always freaked about my work.. am I working hard enough.. is my stuff getting done in time.. Now I have trouble getting worked up about it.. Is thta progress ? or a step back

    I got home in time for Diane’s yoga class. It as great as always.. Gabe’s having fn down in South Carolina.. Max’s in school.. so it’s just us here this week.. kinda sad.. and kinda nice at the same time. I made dinner (pasta putenesca) Then we put the trash  and recycling out together.. it was so romantic.   Actually.. the deep cleaning we’re doing is both difficult and cathartic.. As I said when the car turned 100.000 the other day.. I always view things as having souls.. I really think about the things I’m putting into the garbage bag or recycling bin..  I often think.. “I’m the last human who’s likely to look at or touch this ‘xxx’ .”. (e.g. pencil, gum wrapper, transistor, oscilloscope, chair, etc) ..I think about what purpose they served us.. was it satisfying for ‘them’ i.e. did they serve their purpose well. I always say sort of wordless  prayer to the stuff as I walk away from throwing something away. It goes something like.  ‘Thank you for serving me and my family. .. good luck in your next existence.”

Gabe just called to say he was having a good time… I really miss him..

OK.. I have to catch and early plane tomorrow. so I’ll sign off here… Gnite everyone.. Gnite Sam.
-me

The dogs woe us this morning.. Gabe is down in Hilton Head with Alex and Jack… so all we had to do this mornign is wake up and feed Rafe… Actually eh fed us .. we we went to the Daily Bread and had a late lucnh.. then sent Rafe on his way.. He’s spending a few days with our mutal freinds Richard. another MIT mathematician .  and his wife Jillian who live part time near Danville.   It was so great seeing Rafe yesterday and today…

As soon as Rafe’s wheels were rollign we got to work. our goal for the week is to do some serious house cleaning.. today’s task was the ‘old lab’ .. a small cloet like room on the north west cornr of the hosue.. At one point it was the kitche of the school.. then it was a pottery studio.. then an unheated bedroom.. then my first laboratory.. and now.. a huge mess of a storage room. our only goal for the day was too make it possible to walk across the flor in there..

As you can figure… doing serious claning means touching … and getting rid of all sorts of things with associated memories..  As if to underscore that.. Diane found this note she’d written to Sam last time we did a major cleaning..   The question was even more improtat now.. What would he want us to keep .. and what wouldn’t he care about ? So wierd to talk about him in the the subjunctive …

 Honestly.. I’d been dreading this memory jolt  all week.. but like many things we dread.. the reality was not as bad as the expectation.. I had several tough moments today.. but all in all my biggest challenge was untangling stuff, figuring out what to throw away and getting rid of the dangerous stuff I found..

Diane took first turn at untangling.. it’s actually a cool Zen thing that you can’t really hurry. She successfully untanlged this rats nets of cords, transformers string and wire.

I found tons of memories for all three kids.. Here’s some stuff from Sam.   Here are some odl running ribbons. he was a fast kid !

A version of Nirvana’s Ltiihum from his guitar case.. (the MMU chorus along with Max and Gabe sung it accapella at Sam’s memorial service )

Here’s one of Sam’s best inventions.. the ‘MagnaBoard’. a skate board that held unto your shoes with strong magnets.. still a cool idea, I think ..

And.. the first thing we welded together.. he did this grappling hook at Kerry’s house when he was about 10…

I also found stuff from Gabe, Max.. Diane and me.. Like number 3 piston from my old Volkswagen camper.. complete with a broken off value top still stuck into the piston head.

And a big bag of what turned out to be Zinc/Sulfer/Sulfer smoke composition.. I took it outside and burned it to get rid of it.. Pretty green flames.. (no more ‘Booms’ .. I promise !)

I also found a few scraps from the old Jonesville bridge. You can see from this how the crane had to twist and tear the old bridge apart.

I also came across an anciet treasure trove of very old electronic components.. I felt liek I was looking through a box of vacuum tubes ! This stuff is ancient.

For example .. a 1000 bit  static RAM (you can now buy 1,000,000,000 bit flash  at Best Buy for nearly the same price)

.. and a 256 bit read only memory.. this is like finding an artifact from the stone age.. I’m trying to figure out what to do with this stuff. I’ll never use. them .. but they’re too cool to through away.. Anyone out there want this stuff ? I probably have 300 ‘brand new’ 74xx (TTL ) , 74LSxx  (low power schotkey ) and 4000 series (CMOS)  ,logic chips..  You want them ? They’re yours.   ( if these acronyms don’t make sense to you.. you probably don’t want this stuff)

Well.. abotu 9 bags of trash , a car load of goodwill stuff and 10 hours later.. We can finally see the floor. (Don’t worry Gabe or Max.. we kept all of your stuff) ..
Everythign is isn sealed and labeled boxes.. it actull looks nice in there !.. It feels good

I was cleaning up when I found this print out of the t shirt design we’re working on in a pool of water.. it looks pretty cool this way..

So cool in fact.. that I’m going to go jump in some water myself.. I’m dirty and tired.. Time for a bath then bed..  

Talk to you all tomorrow. Thanks for the help with cleaning Sam.. I neede all the advice I could get.
-me

ps. Gabe just called from Hilton head and is having a great time !!.. He and Jack saw a big alligator down there this morning.. !

I spent a few hours working on a new shirt design for the next Friends of Sam event… We’re having a Skate night at Talent in about 2 weeks (I’ll send out a bulletin). The proceeds will pay for Deb’s friend Abraham to bring his wife and baby over from a refugee camp in Sudan. Working on the drawings for the shirt is a true act of love.. I worked with Brit to edit out one of our favorite pictures of am… as a pirate at Camp Abenaki.. I had to edit out his mustache.. I sent hours staring at his face.

While Brit and I worked on the shirt design. Brit’s brother. Matt worked in the lab drilling wholes in 3/8″ plate steel to make decorative brackets for their post and beam house frame. He put in a ton of work drilling these holes. 

Shortly after noon my great friend Rafe showed up. He’d driven down from a conference in Montreal. Rafe is my old suite mate from MIT.. and now lives in Palo Alto..where he’s  the head of the Math Dept. at Stanford. Here he is looking very professorial..   It is so good to have Rafe here.. first order of business was to see some baby pictures.. Rafe and his wife Laurence have 2.5 year old Sabine and 6 month old old Sophie.. Both exceedingly cute.

We fed Rafe. then decided to take advantage of the beautiful warm weather and go for a hike up at Bolton.. .. and I do mean warm !!!  The car said it was 82 degrees !

We drove up to the ski area.. where we found they still had a ton of snow.. We didn’t need snowshoes.. but the snow was still quite deep.. it was mid thigh in some places if you feel through the surface.. other places it was less than a foot.

clear blue sky !

We kept climbing until we reached the very top. We took a short brake at the warming hut..

And checked out some of the Sam graffiti there.

Not sure why this metal thing is an ‘S’ .. but I took that as a Sam thing too..

Since we’d made it this far, I decided to go up the fire tower. It’s a place of special significance to us.. Thats where we sent up some of Sam’s ashes in fireworks in December of 2006.  It looks like something out of an old movie set.. but not as well built.

Diane,. Rafe and I climbed p the rickety ladders..

The view was so worth it !.

The dogs sat below barking.. ‘Where’d’ you guys go ? , Where’d you guys go ?”

Here’s Waterbury Reservoir.

The walk down was gentle and sunny.. What a perfect hike !  We got to the car and headed back to the house.

A few of the music kids were down at the house practicing (and sounding great0.. They helped me take down a few of the storm windows.. While I was out there I fixed most of the lights on the Sam guitar man sculpture in the front yard.

Meanwhile Diane and Rafe cooked dinner. Rafe had been talking about Risotto all day.. so we forced him to make us some.. It was delicious.. We also grilled some fish.. it was a great meal.

As I went out to get the fish… I caught a beautiful rise of the full moon.

Rafe and I decided to take a short walk up to the rock.. As I was leaving. Diane called down from the upstairs bathroom window.. I say window.. but there was no more window. It had blown off in the wind…  !

It now lay in a thousand pieces in the back yard.. Yikes ! Never, ever a dull moment around here.

Rafe and I too k the road over to the high meadow.. It was nice having the guitar guy lit up again !

We got up to the rock.. and in the  moonlight I saw that a daffodil had bloomed today up there !.

The moon was now clearing Robbins mountain.. Rafe and I sat up there and talked for a while It was a clear and warm night..

As we walked home. the moonlight was bright enough to cast our shadows..

We got home and Rafe told me a little about his research. I nodded politely to pretend I understood what he was saying.. (Actually.. he’s a good explainer.. I think I actually did understand what he was saying. tonight)  .. Rafe went to bed about midnight..It’s now about 1.. and time for me to go to sleep.. More stuff tomorrow. 
   G’nite everyone.. G’nite Gabe in South Caroline.. Max in NYC.. and Sam.. everywhere.. We love you !
-me

We walked down to the river to check it out.. It was still near flood stage..

And still quite cold !

I got a cool tour of all of Hannah and Dave’s artwork. they have some cool stuff like this.. All of it made by freinds of theirs. This was one of my grandfather Dave’s favorite expressions.

One of Hannah’s friends made all of this cutout art.

They bought tihs picture from Max’s friend Chris at the Friends of Sam auction in December.

And they made this Warholization of a picture of daughter Adah.

And of course, tehre is Sam.. they said that this picture always wants to hang at an agnle.. nothing they can do to make it stay straight !

And a drawing of Hannah’s dad’s Bar Mitzvah.

Then it was time for the seder… We even had Grape flavored matzot ,

And the obligatory Maneshevitz

Hannah put out the ceremonial seder plate.. We had a plastic chicken in place of a shank bone..

And xeroxed Hagadot

At last it was time to start. hannah and I colead the service.. everyone took turns reading.. It was fun.

We had a special glass for Sam

And one for Eliahu…

It was fun/interesting mixing our families customs.. Hannah’s folks always cover the rest of the food during the recitation of the 10 plaques. That way your food doesn’t get all plague-y. 

Her family also has egg fights… (We tied)

I ate a ton of gefilte fish.. bit others only ate it on a dare. not sure why.. I love it !

It was a great celebration.   Nice to be with friends. I was thinking of family here and not here. (Hey Max.. Hey Ma and Pa and Billy and Mary and families…Hey Sam)

After dinner the kids all scrawled off to  look for the Affikommen.. Gabe was victorious.. he found the middle piece of matzo hidden in the dish washer downstairs.

For his troubles he won a cool pair of goggles.. Not too shabby !.. I think we used to get a quarter for finding it.

Afterwards we ate ice cream sundaes like my Mom’s grandmothers family used to do.. and played with the babies. here’s Diane with little baby Senyah .

And Adj and Andrew’s cute mowhok baby Lilly.

It was a really nice night… … I’m goign to improve on it further by goign to bed now.. G’nite everyone.. Hag Sameach Sam !
-me