Monthly Archives: April 2008

Sunday evening – Birthdays and other passages

Yesterday I told folks that it was my sister SPG’s birthday. I can’t believe it, but I just found this picture from when she was 3 or 4 day old… Se still looks a lot like this. For those who are wondering… I’m the guy on the left.. I shaved  for the picture. The other guy is my adorable brother, bizzy-wizzy-woo-woo . Happy brthday again SPG…

I didn’t realize it until last night, but our friend Adah shares SPG’s birthday. Adah is the oldest heir of the vast Talent Skatepark legacy.. We met Adah, her folks Hannah D. and Dave and her baby sister Senya up at Deb’s last night for falafel and barbecue.  Adah loves horses… so Hannah T. made her a cute cake in the shape of a horse.
Adah loved her presents.. she even got a cool stick pony.

Here’s baby Senya

As always it was great being up there with folks…

I woke today feeling pretty low.. It’s amazing how much more linked my sense of the world is to the weather these days.. It was rainy and raw with periods of snow.. We all hung low this morning and stayed inside   Gabe had two friends over. . Around noon we finally escaped the house. We dropped Gabe off at a movie, dropped off Gabe’s friends and went back to join the tail end of Barbara P’s going away reception.

After 18 years, Barbara is leaving her position as paster  (priest ? minister ?, chaplain ? guru ? . what do Congregationalists have ?  of the Richmond Congo church. She’s joining the VT National Guard  to minister to the families of folks in Iraq.

She is so loved by this community. She’s been so interwoven into our lives.  She led the memorial celebration for Sam… I will always remember her loving and thoughtful leadership of the evening. I’m also so very grateful for the many visits she made to our home in the weeks and months following Sam’s death. .She made the time for us even though we’re not part of her large flock..  She’s one of the most calm, caring and wise spiritual beings that I have ever met.

I’ll always remember the interdenominational service she organized after 9/11.. she asked me to say Sim Shalom, the Hebrew prayer for Peace.. I also remember her beautiful handling of George Saffords  memorial service. 

The reception was nearly over when we got there.. many folks were there… Grit told me that it was the most full she ever saw the church on a non holiday.. We spent soem time looking through the pictures.. I loved this one of Barbara and her husband Charlie.. who’s also a Chaplain with the guard (Yes, Charlie Chaplain)

And here they are doing a handsome Grant Wood imitation..

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. I started working on the plaque for the Sam Cohn Musical Soul award which will hang at MMU. It meant spending some time going through some Sam photos.. It made me happy and sad to look through some of the photos we’re incorporating into the plaque. I needed that release.

OK.. now it’s dinner time.. so I’ll end here… More tomorrow… Gnite all Gnite Sam !

-me

Saturday evening – happy birthday SPG

Today is my seeeeeeester Mary’s birthday . Happy birthday SPG !!!! ( We call her that because before she could spell she used to write her name SPG……) , Oh, we used to be so mean to her.. I remember wrapping her old toys and given them to her again as Christmas gifts.   I was an evil brother.. forgive me Mary.. !

I woke late this morning..still feeling bad about the experiment-gone-wrong last night. I went around apologizing to the neighbors for the scare of the noise. From what I can tell it was still pretty loud a mile away. Tyler P. just walked in and told me that he was over at Texas Hill sitting on the roof of his car. He gave a salute to Sam.. and then he saw the flash from the explosion… He thought it was Sam..
Nice stry.. but still  stupid thing for me to do.. I’m getting rid of the chemicals

It was beiutiful and warm this morning. Gabe went outside to do some airbrushing. Iwent outside in sweat pants and a hoodie to go for a run.. I had to go in and put on shorts. It must have been in the 50’s .

After Chai and I went for our run Diane. ‘tori, Chai and I went for a fast walk along the rivershore. It was getting pretty gray by that point… the sky was gray, the woods were gray. .. I came across this tree that I run by all the time and noticed.. for the first time.. it’s great face.

Tori found a few nice patches of snow. She’s loves snow.. it’s been around since she was born.. She’d better get used to not having snow quickly !

The water is really up from the rain and snow melt.. Yesterday it was up in the field across the house. It’s still about 2-3 feet high.. it completely covered Chai’s favorite beach on our path.

The beavers are active again.. we saw a ton of new trees down.. it’s like they’re trying to stop the Winooski !

On the way hone we had to pull the dogs over to allow a pair of logging horses to go through. I remember seeing these big Percharon’s being driven by a cool old guy named Raleigh True. He was quite a character. Still logged with horses. He explained that they’re much better pulling timber through the mud than any machine. Sounded True to me.

When we got home. I ran out to my friend Paul’s on an errand. On the way there I came across a procession in support of a free Tibet… There was quite a crowd.  I honked and thumbs up-ed my support

Paul was doing a big favor for me and for Champlain College. They’re having their Student Exxcellence awards tonight. The winner of this year’s InterSteller Award is my firnd Laura N. She’s one of the students in the Champlain team that worked with us..In fact she was over here yesterday evening.  The Champlain profs wanted to make her an award . We’d been trying to see if we could ‘print’ Jai. the character from our project on the 3D printer at UVM. Unfortunately, the characters geometry wasn’t correct.. it had  holes in it that prevented me form turning it into a proper solid for printing. Last night I had the idea of ‘printing’ the character on a piece of wood using Paul’s computer controlled laser. I sent Paul this image.

He etched it  on the wood wit the laser. He called and told me that it came out pretty well. I came over to take a look.. I was really impressed. It was beautiful. We beveled the edges and put some lacquer on it

Instant award.. Not bad !

Luckily, my friend Jeff, R. who’s the Dean of Champlain’s media program lives just around the corner form Paul. I was able to deliver the award to him a full 15 minutes before he had to leave for the awards ceremony.  (The lacquer was still drying).   

I think Lauren must be receiving it tight now as I type !  Congratulation Lauren !!!!

OK.. We’re heading up to Deb’s for dinner so I’ll end here. More tomorrow. Gnite all.. Nite Sam !
-me

Thursday night – everywhere at once

I’m still trying to recharge after my last trip to Florida . I think I got 12 hours of sleep in 3 days..  Ate only 3 real meals and only ran once. It seems that all my careful attention to deliberate mindfulness , sleep, diet, meditation, etc. go out the window when I travel.   The funny thing is that many friends at the conference told me that I was looking/seeming/acting more like ‘my old self’ . I’m not sure if that’s a) a sign that inside feeling and outside appearance aren’t always linked.. or b) ‘my old self’ was always burned out, sleep deprived and spacey.. I’ll go for b)
   I spent the day trying to get started on stuff.. and for the most part didn’t get anywhere.. mostly got caught up on stuff left undone while I was gone. One thing I did get done while I was traveling was to get about half way through Brian Greene’s excellent (so far) book “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality” .. The book gives a very accessible (i.e. no math) overview of the evolution of our physical understanding of the world. It starts with classical Newtonian mechanics then describes how Einstein and relativity showed that as appealing as they were.. Newton’s laws were only an approximation of the way the world works. It then goes into the introduction of quantum mechanics and how it challenged Einstein’s view of a deterministic world.. Right now the book is talking about the concept of spacetime. It spends a great deal of time discussing the very meaning of time.. what is time ? .. and why does it only appear to flow forward. ? . It points out that there is nothing in the math that we use to describe the universe that prefers forward time to backward time.. Our perception of time seems to be the only thing that is asymmetrical there. Greene talks about the ever increasing entropy.. the disorder in the universe, and how it relates to the ‘arrow’ of time… Right now he’s talking about how time and quantum mechanics relate on the scale of very small things… on his way to describe string theory and eventually the current thinking on ‘M’ theory.  The thing that has me really thinking hard at this point in the book  is how some folks think about the dual wave/particle nature of things like electrons and protons.   E.g. It turns out that you either know where an electron is.. or how fast it’s going.. but never both at the same time. The ‘where’ an electron is ,in general, can only be described as a probability distribution… all that I’ve ‘known’ since I was a kid.. but here’s where it gets weird.. Many folks have tried to explain this dual wave/particle nature .. The strange thing is that if you observe where an electron is.. it suddenly isn’t in all the other places it might otherwise  be.. If you don’t observe it.. it can literally be anywhere.. And that ‘not being elsewhere’ effect can effect the outcome of experiments that are far away in both space and time.. In fact observing a particle at one moment can,  mathematically speaking, change it’s past. This effect can actually be observed in the laboratory in experiments like the double slit experiment.  (I know I posted this before).. I just got a note from the producers of ‘What the Bleep do we know’ that these videos cost $250K to make.. eeek !)

The way this works has changed the way that physicists think about words like ‘now’ and ‘then’ .. Folks like Richard Feinman chose to explain the distributions of ‘wheres’ as a sum over all history that is.. every thing that could ever happen to you .. if you’re an electron.. does happen to you .. in one universe or another.. all at the same time.. every possible place, every possible interaction.. all right now..
Greene is talking right now about how by extension it might imply that everything that can ever happen to us actually happens all at the same time. An infinite number of possibilities and outcomes playing out in an infinite number of interacting worlds.. right ‘here’.. right ‘now’ .. Now wonder I feel tired.
Maybe there are a huge number of worlds out there were Sam is still snowboarding or floating down a river. I really hope so.. in fact I’m sure I’m right there with him right  ‘now’ .. Gnite folks.. I have a bunch of universes to go through tonight. Catch you later Sam.
-me

Tuesday night – waiting for gus

Hi friends… I’m sitting in my little corvette in a parking garage waiting for my friend Gus to show up.. Gus is the friend I ran into miraculously at hertz the the other night.
    I’ll get as much blogging as I can now.. Probably I’ll just post the pictures and add the text tomorrow.

The conference started yesterday morning with a main session. There are about 4100 people here.. quite a crowd. The kick of included some acrobats from disney/ Most impressive

Then  talks from management folks..like Ted.. the companies vP for training.

And Fred the VP for Services..

And my buddy John the Sr VP in charge of research .

The initial session lasted 2 hours..

(more later.. gotta run)

I just spent a very excellent 2 hours catching up with my freind Gus… which was really great.. the only catch is… it’s now 2:30 in the monring.. so My comments on the rest of the blog will be sparce 🙂

Where was I.. Oh yeah… yesterday…

I had a great conversation with my friend Chandu .. He’s in the process of building a crbon nuetral home.. very cool and contentious

We sepnt the rest of the day going to talks of various types.. from the technical to the …. well… non-technical. this one was actually pretty good.

On  thing I did notice.. the gender ratio here is so bad that there line to the men’s room was 10 times longer than the lien to the women’s room.. have you ever seen that ?

Here are Sharron and propeller-head Curry.. both from canada

Curry and me… Curry is one of my favorite mischief makers in out traveling group/

I ren into my old friend Kursad .. originally from Turkey. but now in Raleigh

Here are Jai. Joanne and Dan.. all friends from corporate / the Academy

After the day.. we went back to our hotels.. here’s the view off the balcony near my room.. nice

Then we went to Animal Kingdom for a private party.. very cool. it was strange waling in there.. the last time I was in there was with the sam, gabe and diane.. I think Max came later that trip)

Here are Chandu and Bruce right before we stared riding the Mt. everest Roller coaster a bunch of times.. wheeeeeeee (I’m still dizzy a whole day later)

Me and Mr. Yeti

I tossed a SamStone into the main pond at animal kingdom ..   I felt so much better after I did that !

Here’s Ron with his candy flower

and Lori demonstrating her dance moves…

I drove back to my hotel around 11:30

And found this guy blocking my path.. This palce reminds me aof houston .. where I grew up.. the air is almost as humid as being under water.. all the bugs and slimy things love it !

OK.. now it’s today.. I drove to the convention center.. I got out of the car and my glasses immediately fogged up.. again.. just like Houston

I ran into friend Jose.. who sometimes looks so much like my brother .. it’s spokes me out.. Look around his eyes.

Hey.. I found some lint on the floor in the shape of a valentine.. even in the middle of 4000 walking folks there is sometimes magic.

We had a great meeting of our outreach volunteers at lunch.. many of these folks had never met each other in person.. only over phone and email.. it was pretty cool meeting face to face.

I spent soem time catching up with friend Glehhhhhn from Australia.. he described how he’s wired his new house to be so automatic that the toilet flushing can open the garage door.. if thats what you want. Here he is logged on to his house in Sydney Australia looking to see if anyone is up and walking around at 5AM there.

I also ran into my friend Barbara.. she and I were working in Corporate at the same time. She’s a specialist in the math behind modeling rivers.

And here’s his emminance Chris. my friend and co-conspirator from England.

After the days meetings I drove Joanne. over to our dinner. I took a short stop to help a turtle cross a fast road…   Luckily.. not a snapper !

At the reception we welcomed the newly appointed Distinguished Engineers.. Here are Cara and my friend Romellia..

At the reception I met my friend Peter for the first time face to face.. he’s  an alpha geek here at IBM.. and a great classical musician.

And two friends Sub and Bala.. both with the last names Iyer.. I learned about the cast name Iyer and what it meant..

Hey Leo.. (another canadien)

Ann from Poughkeepsie .

David from California.. he once got us out of a bind in China by producing an American Chinese restaurant menu .. we used it to help us communicate with the waiters in Beijing when we couldn’t speak Chinese.

My hero Karl-heinz from germany

And friend Kerry from SanFran (originally from Cuba.. I think )

I saw my old friend Dave from Enidcott.. We haven’t really tlaked in 24 years !!!

Wendy and Luba (ukranian)

And our patron Nick with Lisa and Karl Heinz

OK.. that’s it.. I’m goign to sleep now. More tomorrow. Gnite all. Gnite Sam !
-me (3AM).