Lovely day of doing nothing, not my strongest skill.s. but I’m adapting to it. I did just about nothing for most of the day.. Ran, cleaned up the house a little.. But other than that.. Just hung out and enjoyed the warm weather… We didn’t have anything planned until 4 pm.. At 4 folks started showing up for Diane’s feldenkrais party.. Feldenkrais is a body awareness system.. It reminds me of yoga.. But without the stretching… (is that like saying pizza without the crust ?) I always assumed that feldenkrais was some sort of mystical name.. A place shrouded in mystery.. An ancient order of monks… But no… It was named for its founder, one Moshe Feldenkrais, an Israeli engineer and Marshall arts specialist who developed it in the 50s .
Our friend Uwe is the only feldenkrais instructor we know in the state.. He sometimes uses our studio to teach classes.. Which is fun because we get to attend them.. I like the classes.. Even though I manage to sleep through about half of them.. Something about Uwes voice just puts me right out.. The practice is about body mechanics.. You position your body then pay attention to how it makes you feel supposedly your body ‘learns’ from these positions and develops new awareness of … Uh.. I don’t know what.. But something…important… Actually.. I find it pretty cool. Once we took a feldenkrais running class from uwe which taught us about contralateral movement.. Believe it or not.. It changed the running stride I’d been using for nearly 30 years..
Tonight we had about 12 folks there… There were two class sessions.. With a break in between for beer… Which made me doubly sleepy during the second session. Then we hung around for a potluck.. Peter brought his Oed, a middle eastern instrument he plays. It was a great evening.. An interesting collection of friends who didn’t know one another .. It was a fun mix..
No… Don’t worry.. Its not me Not me.. I’m not retiring for another 15 years…. But suddenly lots of my friends are . It seems every day there are 1 or 2 retirement parties going on at work.. And I’m getting 2 or 3 “dear friends” email letters. I really enjoy those letters by the way.. It’s so interesting to see how people sum up their 30 or so years of work … most are upbeat.. Some are chronological lists of accomplishments, others are more philosophical. All have a phrase like ” the best thing has been the people” . I read each one of these carefully.. Looking for clues about the persons real state of mind.. Its rare is see any bitterness.. But I often see ambivalence .. Or uncertainty. Some have clear ideas of what they are doing next.. They’re moving ‘towards’ something. Some are moving ‘away’ and just are trying to avoid burnout.. I also read with a little bit of wistful envy.. No, envy is too strong a word…. Maybe vicarious longing.. I love my work right now.. Still the thought of being able to devote all of my time to my personal missions.. Whatever they may be.. Is so very tempting. How will that feel when it’s my time to take the watch and go ? Will I know what I want to do next ? Some thing tells me ‘yes’ .. But I’m sure it will be bittersweet when it happens.
Well, I Think I’ll retire right now.. To bed…
More tomorrow…
I finished work around 5:30.. and immediately got lazy.. diane was lazy too.. we talked about going for a run, taking a walk, going canoeing, or going for a bike ride. In the end we decided to do nothing of the sort.. we plopped down on the couch and watched netflix. We’ve just gotten hooked on a show (dirty, sexy money.. a realllly stupid drama/comedy from 2009-10).. this is the first time I’ve ever watched a series online.. and its evil.. I’ve always prided myself for not having a tv.. but this is far worse)
Luckily, something saved us. Chris and Kim called to ask if we wanted to come over and shoot flaming arrows at a wooden man full of gunpowder and covered with gasoline.. Who WOULDN’T want to do that ?!?!
It’s harder than it sounds.. Chris wrapped the arrows with paraffin soaked cheese cloth.. but even those are hard to stay lit..
here’s smoke from Chris’s cigarette getting caught by the flash.. I see ‘S’ ‘A’ ‘M’ do you ?
OK.. I think I’m in love.with an idea..The last couple of months I’ve been starting to follow an idea loosely called “open data’ the basic concept is that entities like cities, states and nations, individuals and even sometimes companies are putting data online for anybody to use. It may not sound like such a radical concept but it is.. Just like the open source movement for code and the maker movement for things.. the open data movement is about sharing things with the hope that someone else might find it useful. .
. It’s a cool blend of altruism and capitalism.. the data is put out freely.. but there are lots of folks starting to make money out of turning it into soemthing useful. Cities like Chicago, NYC. San Fran. DC, Honolulu, Helsinki, Zurich etc are holding social ‘hackathons’ were a combination of social do-gooders, hobbyists and entrepreneurs come together to try and spin data into useful apps for citizens use.. I’ve seen apps for vacation planning. snow plow tracking, bike route planning and pot hole reporting.. Over the past couple of years I’ve donated code to open source, designs to the maker movement.. now I want to try my hand at open data.
My buddy Tim and his company are organizing a civic open data hackathon for this coming October and I’m planning to help. It’s a cool convergence of my hobby interests and my work. We’re speaking to the governors office and the mayor’s offices of Burlington and Winooski to set this up. I’m curious if there are folks out there reading this who would be interested in helping ..
OK.. gotta go render a video.. more tomorrow.. Let me know if you’re interested
nite all, nite sam
-me
