Yearly Archives: 2008

Sunday night – Solstice/Chanukah

Happy first night of Hanukkah .. Happy Solstice !

We got on the road this morning at 7 to avoid the worst of the snow.. The drive back was slow, but uneventful.. actually it was kinda fun. We had three dogs in the car.. and the constant arraigning, fiddling. calming feeding, walking of them kept the drive interesting.. as did the audio book we were listening to .. (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.. very good !)

We got home around 2ish… to find oVermont full of beutiful kneedeep snow.. It was pretty cold out.. but it wasn’t much warmer inside !  Our room was 48 degrees.

It was tough coming back into a cold and dark house.. sometimes I swear that coming home is the hardest thing for me to do. At the moment I came in..it was easy  feel thayt it was  the darkest day of the year..   But withing the hour we had lights and candles lit, the fire roaring and the heat on.. and things began to feel better for me..

We got settled for a bit then headed out in the snow to get our Christmas tree. we’d put it off until Max was back..and now, he’s here.   We skidded our way up Wes White Hill to Puritans.. They pointed us up back to where the bigger trees were going… We quickly homed in on a pretty 8 foot guy that stood out from the rest…   I like this picture.. it has  several of those mystery spheres in it.. I love the one over the tree. Sam.. is that you ?

Cutting the tree down was a comedy of erros. our saw broke half way and Diane had to go fetch another
..

… but in the end it came down with a gentle woosh…   and we pulled our prize back the long way to the car…

We got it home and Gabe unwrapped the thing.. It’s a beutiful treee..It’s smell makes me happier..

..
Our house was full of kids when we got back. Skanky Green and their enterage were practicing in the barn.   Gabe sat them down and taught them the finer points of playing dreidel… the 4 sided top used on Hanukkah… The stakes were high.. they were playing for real candy !

Diane was busy in the Kitchen making a huge platter of latke, the special potato pankakes of hanukah…

So I got busy pullign ou thte condiments. most people stop at apple sauce and sour cream for their latke.. We have chile and mango pickle, thai chili sauce. sambal, thre kinds of mustard, barbeque sauce katchup, island pepper sauce, enchilada sauce, cranberry chutney, vidalia onion sauce,   and humous. Yummm..

We rounded up the 11 of us and lit the first hanukah candle

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha’o’lam asher kid’sha’nu beh’miz’vo’tav veh’tzi’va’nu leh’had’lik ner shel Chanukah.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָה יְיָ אֶלוֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הַעוֹלָם אֲשֶר קִדְשָנוּ בֵּמִצְווֹתַיו וְצִיוַונוּ לֵהַדְלִיק נֵר שֶל חֲנוּכָּה׃

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, Who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to kindle the Chanukah lights.”

And we lit the candle for Sam….

Then we dug in !.. Yum !

The last thing tonight was something I chose to do for solstice observance. A group of folks lead by Melissa Etheridge, Salman Ahmad and Deepak Chopra have asked everyone to ring a bell today for peace… It was to have been at noon.. but since we were driiving then. we didd it when we could.. It’s a beutifil throught.. Yyu can read about it here

And you can hear my bell ringing here.
..

I’ll end tonight with a Wiccan prayer for the earth on this longest night… 

Cold and dark, this time of year,

the earth lies dormant, awaiting the return

of the sun, and with it, life.

Far beneath the frozen surface,

a heartbeat waits,

until the moment is right,

to spring.

blessed be everyone.. you too, Sam

-me

Saturday night – 400 miles


Long day.. I left Endicott just before 9 this morning on a quick round trip to grab Max and his dog in NYC> The roads were sloppy.. but I had a good book on tape (Malcolm Gladwell’s new book ‘Outliers’.. it’s great !)

It ytook me about 4 hours to get to the city.. A completely different world. I know I’m close to Max’s when the signs turn to Yiddish..

… or chinese

It was a drag driving thoguht the city with no map, no copilaot.. and only  the GPS on my phone (We took the van).. I was really happy to get to Max’s door.

We did a pretty effiecient Evacuation.. btu before we did.. max took me up on his roof to see his metal workign final… It’s called ‘Down in flames’.. He learned to Tig weld for this.. it’s really cool !


The drive back was fun-=ish.. the first bit of getting out of the city was rough with my cr*ppy GPS… we managed to have to cross Manhattan.. and the beutiful town of Newark NJ.   Max and I talked on and off most of the way home.. which is a great pleasure. He’s so much fun for me to talk too. We’ve got so many similar interests now. I get inspired by listeing to his ideas.

It took us a little less than 4 hours on the way back.. as we pulled into the driveway, my milage for the day read 399.9 miles.. so.. I exagerated.. it was less than 400 miles..   We have another 320 tomorrow.. this will be a 1000 mile weekend.

It was nice having Max with us in Endiocott.. I love seeing the boys together..

Gabe had used his day to further perffect his candy cane welding.. he’s now the frank lloyd wright of candy cane architecture

My brother and sister in law Joe and Pat were there too.. We sat down and had a great meal.. toasteign each other.. and Sam…

Then we did a really nice gift exchange.. It was the first christmasy feelign I’v ehad this year.. It felt good to be all together with Diane’s family…

Diane’s mom had a nice suprise for us.. She’d found an old newspaper clippign of the time that Diane taight Highschool part time at Bellows Free Academy.. This is from Oct of 1986.. and she looks the same to me.. very cute !

OK.. Gotta sleep. We’re leavign early tomorrow to beat the snow..
Nite folks.. Nite Sam
-me

Friday night – Keep Vermont Weird

Hello from Endicott, NY.  We’re down at Diane’s folks. We left this morning at 10.. we managed to follow a snow storm all the way down here. It was slow going.. large stretches of 20-30 miles per hour..  I’m glad to be done driving.

I have a bunch of pictures from yesterday that I decided not to run last night in honor of the anniversary of our friend Kate’s passing yesterday….  May favorite form yesterday was this bumper sticker I saw while out for lunch.. I love it !

Yesterday was a crazy day .. I had meetings all morning.. then I tried to take the afternoon off to do some shopping.. but, I still managed to spend much of it on the phone.

Our friend Julie came by on her way up to the mountain.. she was sporting a Sam shirt.. which made eme happy ~

I had a lunch meeting at the Echo Center.. I’m goign to be part of their advisory board.. That entilteld me to a behind the scenes tour of how they keep the place healthy. That gave me a great face to face with a couple of oversized sturgeons..

I alogot a chance to meet soem of their ‘spare’ poiison arrow frogs.. These guys arent that deadly because they don’t feed on the special teermintes that gives their aamazon cousins such a dangrerous poison on their skin.

On the wat back I stopped for a 10 minute meetign with Herb to fetch ne of the power supply components out of the Pumpkin man. We first had to go figure out which truck the beast was stored in…

THere he is !

I forgot how much I missed this big guy !

THanks Herb !

I went back to work ad got anohter good 4 hours in.. aorund 8 I headed over to Higher Ground to see the Matisyahu show with my firend Gary. THe show was sold out and packed. I ran into lots of friends in the corwd including Gabes freinds Jack and Austin… and our old friend Rachael.

Matisyahu is an ex Phsh-head who found releginon and became a chasidic jew/ His music is a cool blend of ereggae, jewish negun style trance and beat boxing. There’s nothing like it  He was awesome live !.. as were his two back up bands.. really a great musical soul .. and very upbeat message…

I had to leave around midnight because.. beleive it or not.. I had one more phone meeting around 1AM..   As soon as that was done.. i crawlde off for a few hours sleep..

This mornign we decided to try and leave earlier. The big predicted snowstorm  was coming soooner and harder than predicted… we got on the road around 10.. and I said above it was about 9 hours of driving (compared to 5.5 usually.. yuck !)

Gabe spent most of the long drive in his own multi media cacoon in the back…

Meanwhile.. the front seat was having much less fun !  It was a tough day to be driving !

Gabe finally surfaced as we were approaching Ednicott..   The dogs were pretty patient as welll.

OK.. I’m just beet.. 4 hours of sleep last night and a 10 hour drive yesterday.. tomorrow I’m drving  into NYC to grab Max and Reptar…   I’ll be back tomorrow night…

In the meantime.. good luck digggin out.. Gnite Sam !
-me