Monthly Archives: September 2009

Sunday night – Amy and Allison

Yikes !.. 1 AM already and it’s a school/work night. I can’t afford to write much.. but lots happened today.. I’ll make it brief.

Around 11, Diane, Amy. the dogs and I hiked up Bolton Mountain. It was a gorgeous day. The conversation was so much fun (what we want to be when we all grow up) that we made the summit in record time. We made a quick stop in the staff warming hut at the top. I wanted to show Amy some of the Sam graffiti. The place had been newly repainted.. so most of it was gone. But I still found a bit of Sam There. We left another SamStone there just to make the place a bit more homey.

Then we climbed the rickety old fire tower. Climbing this tower has become sort of a ritual for me on on Sam’s passing day and on his birthday. It was fun being up there again just for no reason.

The view up there is really wonderful !

Ooops.. almost forgot the SamStone, Diane brought one up with her.

We paused for this self portrait on the way down from the top..

Back at home, Gabe and Dylan were hanging out with Kristinn and Sydney. The girls were goign through Gabes things and dressing up as him.. Here’s  slacker Gabe..

.. and nerdy Gabe…

.. and snowbord dude Gabe…

Around 5:30 folks started showing up for the potluck. First arrival was Fritz on his homemade electric motorcycle. Note that it runs on electric drill batteries !

THe food started piling up.. here’s a loaf of bread that Diane made in our earth oven, and a loaf that Gary had made in  his solar oven .   How green can you get ?!?

It was a great party.. not too big, not too small.. and lots of good food.

Then it was time to start making SamStones. With Jen’s help, we made a new mold to make 2 additional URL stamps for the back of the stones. I used Woods metal,  a low melting point alloy of Bismuth to cast the new stamps.

We made a ton of stones tonight.. more than 50 pounds of samstones tonight. Quite an accomplishment !

Allison (the Nurse from the Colany) and  her friend Samantha showed up around 8. . She’s a great friend of ours..  It was so very cool to see her  walk into our house !

Here we are showing Amy and Alison all of our pictures.. including the ones  in Sams room. I’m proud of all my kids…

The rest of the evening we hung out talking abotu the colony experience, and tlaking about/calling our other freinds. It was great to have other folks to talk about it again !.

Sround 11, Gabe convinced us all to go outside and launch a hot air balloon . The air was still and cool. just perfect for launching. The baloon when up several hundered feet.. then we all saw a huge shooting star cross under the balloon. It was magical !

OK.. too tired to keep typing.. so I’lll end there.. have a good night my friends . Good night Sam
-me

Saturday night – Rash Hashana

Today was Rosh Hashana, the head of the Jewish New Year.. For the  first time in many years, I decided to observe our holiday  at home.  Tonight is also the time Muslim’s observe Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. It’s a big day for the Semitic religions !.  As I said the other day. organized religion is not working for me since Sam’ passing.. Nonetheless, I felt the significance of the day, and used the time to hang out peacefully with my family. which is something I really needed to do (I also snuck in two naps.. which is another thing I really needed to do !) .
     Diane,. Gabe and I and our friend RJ spent some wonderful time just lying on the skateboard ramp in the sun..  The sky was clear blue,. the sun was bright, the leaves in the background we’re showing  a hint of orange… and I was happy… deeply happy, and that was as religious as I needed today.


Around 3 Diane and I took the dogs for a long hike up Ricker Valley in Little River State Park. There’s a great old history trail up there that leads you through old cellar holes, cemeteies and stone fences. Diane placed a SamStone in this fine old specimen

We stopped and explored the abandoned Godall farm.. It’s the only building still standing in the valley. All the rest have either fallen down.. or were carried away in the  1927 flood that wiped out our town and almost destroyed our house.

The house is sound, but pretty creepy, We took a look around and left a SamStone n the old cookstove.

A little way of the trail, Diane and I decided to explore a spur we’d ever tried. We knew there had been an old logging mill herein the early 1900’s .. but we’d never seen any sign..    We walked along the trail talking. I was thinking about the new year.. and how I might adjust my intentions.. more time with Diane.. more time with my kids, more fun in ,y life  and less stress…   those are my new yeas intentions.. If your a friend of mine. help m eby reminding me of those.

We were have ing a great walk and talk when the trail crossed a little stream and rejoined a bigger trail, we figured we’d missed the remnants of the old mil.. we turned to hike back up to our trail. and look at what we found.. It was like coming across a submarine in the woods !  I knew from reading this was one of the two 150 horsepower steam engines that was used to run the great saws used to cut up the trees into blocks. These trees milled here would be made into shoe lasts.. the foot shaped forms used to fabricate shoes.   It was fascinating to think that this mill, that ran from the late 1800’s until the early 1920’s was actually full of people once. And now it was so very isolated from anywhere else.

I loved looking at the old pieces of equipment that were here slowly fading to rust..

Here’s a classic near miss on a self timer photo I was trying to make.. This picture cracks me up !

We accidentally found a geocache inside the boiler. Goecaching is a game where folks follow clues with gps coordinates to small caches of items. they can add/replace some of the times then go find the next. We put a SamStone in the one we found. There are SamStones in geocaches all over the world !.

This evening, we didn’t feel like doing much, so Gabe and I worked on a design of a tramp deck he’d developed. A simple idea, two old sneakers screwed to the deck of an old skate board. Easy to make….

.. and really fun to use… !

OK.. It’s late again.. and I’m going to go to sleep ..  Amy will be bac with us as will Allison. We’ll have a full house getting ready for the last colony episode this Tuesday.. We’re having a party at Mexicalli’s on Tuesday night to watch the last show. Please see the Myspace bulletin I posted earlier.. or see the invite on Facebook.
 I want to wish all of you a healthy, happy and interesting new year..
Gnite Sam

-me

Friday night – !שנה טובה

Shana Tova folks.. Tonight is Erev Rosh Hashonah.. New Years eve to the MOT (Members of the Tribe  ). Tonight  Jews  all around the world are celibrating. Normally I’d be goign to services . but honestly, since Sam’s passing, I’ve found little comfort in organized religious observations. I am going to observe the holdiay with my family. It’s a good holiday.. one of my favorites actually. It starts the 10 days of awe where folks are to reflect on the past year and set intentions for the coming year. I’ve always tried to use this period to do that.. This year I feel a powerful need to do that. I’ll let you know what I come up with…

One cool tradition for the day is that we all eat apples dipped in honey to invite a sweet new year. .. We did that.. I added a little twist. A little habnero pepper.. I’m hobing for a sweet and interesting new year.. Hope you ahve one too !

Nite all, Nite Sam.. Happy New Year Shana Tova !
-jc

Thursday night – lucky

Man was I lucky to get invited to this CUSP conference. I said ‘yes’ to this just before I started saying ‘no’ to every thing . I am getting lots of invitations to give talks these days, but this one just sounded too cool to pass up.. and besides a friend asked me to do it.. I’m so glad I said Yes.

This worked out pretty well. I worked nearly full days both yesterday and today in my hotel.. then headed over to the conference in the afternoons.. I missed some stuff.. but still had a great experience…

The CUSP conference is hard to describe.. it claims to be about ‘the design of everything’. Most of the 300 folks here were Designers of one form or another..  The presenters were… man.. I can’t even categorize them.. we had retired priests, Islamic musical doctors, blind film writers, mountain psychotherapists, writer cartoonists, high school orchestra players, professors, futurists, improv playwrites, mdeia gurus, pilades instructures, scratch DJ’s, authors, singers.. and most of us gave really good/funny/interesting talks.

What’s even cooler is that beyond the common theme of ‘design’ there was a bigger theme of taking what we all did for our ‘day jobs’ and putting it somehow in the service of the world. There was the woman, Sarah who quit here industrial design

What’s even cooler is that beyond the common theme of ‘design’ there

was a bigger theme of taking what we all did for our ‘day jobs’ and

putting it somehow in the service of the world. There was the woman,

Emily who quit here industrial design  job designing doorknobs to found

‘Project H’   a comunity that puts industrial designers in service of

people who need it.  DOign things liek designing easier ways to carry

water from a river to a village.  Or Sarah who used her  network of

22,000 Facebook freinds to raise $150K for a local women’s crisis

center in 3 days (!!!!) . Or.. Shakeela who retired from teaching

medicine to promote interfaith understanding through sounds and music.

It was really inspiring company

My message was a hybrid . I started off with a short tesla coil demo

then into my usual  ‘Kids today Engineers talk… ” which looks at

causes of  decreasing number of engineers graduating in western

countries.. ..  I focused on the worldwide perceptions of engineering

and how they differed from what we know most kids want. I then  talked

about the power that the worldwide focus on climate environment  and

energy has to bring new, more socially focused folks into engineering

and technology. I then explained how living in a rat infested warehouse

for 58 days on The Colony was the best thing I could think of to show

kids that engineering was fun. relevant and could help the world..  I

talked about the colony experience and all the feedback I am getting

from kids, parents and teachers about how it is resonating with kids

interest in science and engineering.

 I then quickly assembled a potato gun on stage, fired it and walked off the stage with 10 seconds to spare .  I thought my talk was ok.. but I’m never really happy with any talk I’ve given immediately after.. I thought I’d left out so much.. As soon as I stopped, though I started gettign feedback from the crowd that it had gone better than I had  thought. .  More importantly,  I got the sense that my message ‘worked’ and resonated.  here.

Here are some bad pics from the day.. Here’s Emily talking about a mathematical playground design that her Project H had built in Uganda, Dominican Republic and North Carolina.. .She’s just written a book called soemthing like .. 100 products  that  impower people.

Here’s Joe from the NeoFuturist improv playwrites group playing his song “Hey Joe, you suck at the guitar”

Here’s Ryan talking about the funny aspects of going blind… .. and why he likes his stick

Here’s Shakeela the doctor turned interfaith music person , with DBR the amazing electric 6 string violing, me and DJ Scientific

I wish I got pictures of some of the other cool folks.. I loved talking to Aaron about Twitter (finally.. someone understood my obsession).. and he introduced me to ‘foursquare’.. (Damn another hour lost per day).   I had great Lunch with two very cool  Profs from Bradley University   (Robert… thanks for taking the SamStone) .   And I really loved learning how poorly I draw with Lynda..

In short… I overcame the shyness I was feeling yesterday

My talk wasn’t over until 8PM.. My cousin Peter had waited patiently for me .. As soon as we could get out, we sped out to Willmett and hung out with his family.. It was so good seeign them all. Here’s  Alison, Emma, Pete and Charlotte.:.. Pretty scary..

We all started to doze off at 11.. Pete called me a cab and I headed out to the hotel airport.. 

Here I sit. and it’s 2:15 AM.. Ugh.. how’d that happen again ? Damn Twitter/Facebook/Myspace

OK.. better sleep.. Night all, Night Sam
-me