Saturday night – Endicott

Greetings from Endicott. We’re down here at Diane’s folks house to see them and to visit some other families and friends.  After a good 6 hour drive with the two boys we showed up and had a nice family xmas with dianes folks.. Then a traditiaonl dinner of Phil’s Checken House Chicken and Roma’s Pizza.

we also celebrated Victors 21st birthday.. and pat’s birthday.

The pleasure of the day was tempered with real sadness for us. our good friend Ann..N, our dear friend Linda’s mom , passed away last night after 2 years of living with cancer. She was a great , great woman. I’ll always remember her firing my potato cannon off of her back porch while well into her 70’s.

 

We went over to visit Linda, David and Andrea tonight. They were sad… and still doing OK.. they told us some good stories about Ann’s last days.. she was a real character up to time she passed.

Ann, we will miss you and remember you …

 

Tomorrow morning we’ll head back to Vermont. We’re going to try and make Chris’s Mammoth burn tomorrow night. it was to have burned on the solstice.. but weather delayed that.. If you can make Chris’s burn, you should.. it will be amazing !

 

OK.. gotta sleep now.. more from the road tomorrow

nite all. nite sam

-me

 

Friday night – Sleetbow

Good solstice everyone..  I know it’s better not to count your apocalypses before they hatch.. but so far, we seemed to have survived the end of the world..   The day was raw and rainy, .. so bad that schools were closed and friend chris decided to delay the burning of the mammoth.   It will now burn on Sunday night

 

One highlight of the day was a rainbow.. or .. more appropriately a sleetbow..   The sun peeked through the slush and sent a promising sign. It seemed like G-d”s promise to Noah after the flood hat things were cool.. no end of the world today..

a good day.. and a dark day.. I could feel the darkness get me a little near nightfall.. biut feeling ok now… I’m feeling the day starting to win over the night already..

For all my pagan friends.. happy solstice.. blessed be !

nite all, nite sam

-me

Thursday night – its the end of the world as we know it.. and I feel …ummmmmm

So tomorrow is the day.. as I understand it, some mayan scholars and some new age spiritualists agree that the mayan great count ends tomorrow.. and with it ends the purpose of the world. It’s an interesting thing to contemplate.. If we all did disappear quickly and painlessly tomorrow, would it be so bad ? would it matter ? I’m all for long happy lives.. and I intend to have one.. At the same time, if there is no day after tomorrow, we won’t know it.. and therefore, logically, we shouldn’t care.    All the same,  will live as though there will be a day after tomorrow.. .as it’s easier..  Maybe it’s safest to do what the famous mathematician,  Pascal did when he was asked whether he believed in G-d, heaven and hell. He reasoned that if G-d is real, then believing in him was (in christian tradition at least) a pre-req for getting in to heaven. If He/she did not exist, then it didn’t matter what he believed.. since the consequences of not believing in G-d if he did exist was relatively expensive (eternity in hell) and the value relatively high (eternal salvation)  On the other hand . if there is no G-d then it doesn’t matter what you believe.. which is both low cost and low value .. Pascal therefor reasoned it was safer and easier to believe in G-d …   As I type that, this is precisely  the mental calculus I’m going when I put the ‘-‘ in G-d  .. If he/she does exist, he’ll be impressed that I did not write his/her name as dictated by my religious upbringing.. If he/she doesn’t exist .. then it’s just an amusing affect.. Again, i could live with either.. but why take unnecessary risks… ?

Which relates in a strange way to this whole mayan thread for the solstice thing is quite interesting to me.. Readers of this blog may know that  near the end of his life, Sam always wore a necklace with his name written in mayan glyphs. We got it when he, diane and I traveled to Tulum in 2006 .

We now have that necklace hanging where we can see it..

when sam died, we had that same set of glyphs etched into a stone by friend chris

then Sam’s good friend Nate had the glyphs inked on his arm

 

Then a friend then helped us make several more of the necklaces down in tulum.. I ware one all the time as do Diane and Gabe

then gabe had it inked on to his arm

I wonder if that mayan connection makes us safer or less safe… as tomorrow comes ?

Who knows.. Maybe it will be the end of the world..

but that already happened.. and as remarkable as it may seem , I feel fine-ish

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Wednesday night – delaxing

First day of vacation. Which meant only 2 work meetings. First stop this morning i did a presentation for the vermont chamber of commerce on the uvm fablab.. Went ok.. Not great. Then i did a little holiday shopping while listening to an ieee meeting. Around 1:30 i headed over to Bens to see if i could help him with his dollar stamped mobile.. Its a thing of beauty…but not yet reliable.. Will be interesting getting this thing working.


Jerry g, john m, his friend henry! Chico, perch and a few others were there as well. Max showed up to help too, which was fun…and very helpful


From there max and i headed to echo to meet with jen, the mmu student who will be working with us on the turtle growth project. It was our first meetin and went well. She will be scanning some baby turtles then making various size models of it using the uvm 3d printer various .. Echo will use the models to compare them with predator skulls to determine when the young turtles can safely be released in to the wild. We spent some time meeting the turtles


Then a bit more shopping.. Then home.. Fun but not relaxing..
Hopefully more down time tomorrow..

Nite all, nite sam
-me

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