Tuesday evening – Think Peace

September 22, 2010 johncohn

Folks.. today is International Peace Day (http://www.peaceoneday.org) . A great idea.. I personally believe that we have to work hard for peace. We may not be able to completely eliminate war in our lifetimes, but we can certainly increase peace.. I thik we’re evolving as a species.. if everyone sets their intention for peace… peace will increase..

think peace !

On a more personal front, I too am working on peace.. my own.. Every mornign and night I repeat my 5 intentions

1. be a fun and loving X (where X= husband, parent. son, friend, neigbor, etc)
2. take care of my health
3. do work that is meaningful and fun
4. give back to the world
5. have peace in my life

I feel that I’m doing OK on the first 4.. I seem to be backsliding on number 5.. I’ve taken on so many things…. said ‘yes’ to so much.. that I have very little peace and quiet left .. Yesterday things got so bad.. I couldn’t stand it.. I had folks asking me to be in 3 places at once, projects that i’d volunteered for fun turning into stressful commitments, groups I’d volunteered to lead stalled on progress.. ENOUGH, ENOUGH…

I spent the rest of the day trying to pare down all the yes’s I’d given to a more manageable amount.. I won’t renig on any commitments, I’ll just be careful about what I take on starting now.. I’ll try measuring any new opportunity against 1-5 above..
Hopefully that will help.. (until I forget again:-)

OK.. peace out everyone.. peace out Sam
-me

Monday night – light years

September 21, 2010 johncohn

Sitting here working with Gabe on his science homework. He’s taking earth
science and they are studying astronomy right now. I’ve just been reminded that
one astronomical unit (Au) .. which is the distance between the sun and earth at the major radius of it’s elliptical orbit is .. is 149597870.691 kilometers or 1.58128588 × 10^-5 light years .. By that measure I am 1.18851959e-11 astronomical units.
Gabe just told me that Proxima Centari, which is the closest star to our own, is 4.2 light years away.. Put another way..the light we see from every start in the sky was emitted when Sam was still alive..

I can’t write anything after saying that

nite all, nite sam
-me

Sunday night – brace yourself

September 19, 2010 johncohn

Peaceful day at home.. Just worked around the house, starting the annual ritual around the change of seasons.. This weekend we closed up the pool. cut the grass (Diane did a tleast) , weedwacked, fixed a couple of windows, cleaned out the yoga space, moved the drums inside, cleaned and cleared the garage to bring the cars in. We moved lots of stuff from one place to another and throwing stuff away. I’m never sure what memories will be locked inside an old box, or attached to a bike or something like that. Sometimes I can take some old thing that Sam had and toss it out without a second thought. Sometimes I touch something and it’s like an electric shock.. .. I guess it will always be like that..

Not much else new to report.. Oh. one very cool thing from this past week. Gabe got his braces off !while I was on my trip. He sent me these two pictures right before and right after they came out..
.

He has a totally new smile !

OK.. time for dinner. More tomorrow
nite all, nite sam
-me

Friday night ? – יוֹם כִּפּוּר

September 18, 2010 johncohn

Greetings from LAX.. I just got here from beijing and actually landed earlier on the same day that I left. It’s a peculier day.. Today… whenever that is.. is Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the jewish calendar.. It’s the day where you reflect on all the things you did that were ‘wrong’ in the past year.. Wrong here can mean places where you wronged someone, stole, didn’t do your best, told false stories.., disrespected teachers., demonstrated false pride, been hard hearted, been immodest, been glutenous, lied etc. etc.. There’s a whole litany of these wrongs spelled out.. a really comprehensive list . Anyway.. today’s the day you ask forgivness of those you may have wronged.. and of yourself.. and set your heart to do better in the coming year..

The custom is to spend the day fasting and attend services in shul..(aka synagogue) I am fasting..the proscribed 25 hours.. but instead of shul.. I

am spending the 24 hours in planes finsihing up the last legs of this

round the world trip

(btv->nyc->stockholm->bejing->LA->Boston->BTV) .

Being on a plane is a good place to reflect. The combination of jetlag and low blood sugar have me in a kind of mystical stupor..

I hesitate to say I’m enjoying it.. .. maybe finding it meaningful is more like it..

Even though I no longer consider myself to be religious.in a formal

sense.. I do take this part of being reflective and setting your

intentions very seriously.. so.. If you’re reading this and I somehow

wronged you or was a jerk to you this year.. I sincerely apologize.. and will do my best to do better this year.

Thanks !

nite all, nite sam,
-me

ps. Here are some more pictures from this week.. It’s so nice to be able to get to my blog and myspace again.. That was pretty strange being offline that long.

Here was lunch yesterday at work.. it’s rare that our cafeteria food looks back at you like this ..

Here are soem pictures from the 15th anniversary celebration from our China Research Lab.. it just happened to be going on at the same time my meetings in china were happening. It was fun to participate ! The whole place was decorted a

Here’s some of the folks I was working with.. Petras, Ling, David Radha, Jane and Andreas

There were even fireworks.. real and simulated.. it was really festive.. lots of speeches.. everyone was proud of what the lab had accomplished in these past 15 years. I think my first trip here was about 10 years ago.. the place has really grown into such a great collection of brilliant and cabaple folks.

Here’s Jane wiht my host for the visit Hai.. he’s oly been at IBM for 6 months after getting his PhD in Switzerland. He took such good care of us.. driving us around, getting us to places on time, making sure we were fed.. I’m hoping Hai and his colleagues come visit us so we can take care of them sometime..

Hai even brought us Moon Cakes in honor of the coming mid autumn festival.. This one had a duck egg yolk in its center.. (ewwww !)

We managed to take some of our hosts out to lunch in appreciation for all they did for us.. (and for a nice work success) . They chose a Bejing Duck place..

Most of the food was parts of a duck.. eg. liver

hearts

even duck feet (:-)

There was veggie stuff too like this tofu pizza thingy

bok-choy and chesnuts

and as everywhere.. another big fish head !.. They are really big on fish heads !

It was great seeing the China team relax. they work amazingly hard every day..

Here’s the team with the SamStones I gave them all..

Afterwards we went back and worked a bit. then it was time for them to go.. It was kinda hard to say goodbye. I really, really like the team here.. I am looking forward to workign with them and seeing them again soon.

Then it was time to head to the airport. I had a choice to make.. I could take an hour and a half cab ride for about 20 bucks.. or I could take the subway. I have this ‘thing’ for subways.. I love riding them.. I have ridden Beijing subways many times.. they are the most crowded in the world, I think.. but I love them.. so that’s what I decided to do. I wakde about 2 KM to the tran station.. which had this cool.. (and really smelly) outdoor market)