Monthly Archives: August 2013

Friday night – bacongate

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We're lucky in our town. We have something called 'front porch forum' . It a locally developed neighborhood forum system developed by my friend Michael and his colleagues. The way it works is that you can share posts with people in your immediate neighborhood. You cant see the posts of folks in other towns, nor can they see yours. It lends itself to tight community conversations on all sorts of things. You'll see 'for sale' notices , 'looking for' notices, lost and found, t own announcements.. That sort of thing

But thats not the only thing.. You also get a really funny sort of conversation that would never happen in real life. Sometimes its funny and light hearted.. Sometimes its angry and mean spirited..sometimes its just nutty…. This weeks discussion is about 'bacongate'… Evidently, someone observed another richmondite smuggling bacon into the vegetarian bakery to spice up his/her meal… I didn't read the original story.. ButI'm enjoying the aftermath… I guess generalizations and counter generalizations were exchanged between the baconites and the vegamites..what type of folks eat bacon ? What types dont ?

All was in fun at first.. Then some took offense … Some folks chimed in with ideas (bacon flavored cologne ?).. Cant wait to see where it goes next…

Im just glad to live in a town where bacon smuggling is still big news

 

Night all, night sam

-me

thursday night – dilemmas

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What a curious day.. I spent this morning in  a little bubble of peace despite a ton of pressing work stuff.. by this afternoon, storm clouds were brewing. By late afternoon, i was presented with a serious of strange dilemmas.. none of them earthshaking.. but all of them vexing.    should I attend important meeting A and blow off important meeting B, or visa versa ? Should I support friend A in a technical argument at work or friend B.? Should I complete late project D or project E?  Should I pass on unwelcome feedback from Y to Z  or keep it to myself ? How do I do the right thing in a difficult work situation ?  yada, yada, yada…

Diane was helpful as always… the truth is the way..   Just spent the last hour making choices on all those topics.. hope i chose right .. but. then again. i’ll never know.. will i..

maybe it’s more important just to have chosen…

nite all. nite sam

-me

 

 

wednesday night – school day

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Today was Gabe’s first day of school as a senior in high school..    Hard to beleive.. Very proud of this kid.. and his 23 pound backpack !

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He’s so organized !IMG_3716

 

He woke up early and pumped for school.. .. .. !IMG_3717

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It brought back memories of putting him on the bus for kindergarten. we  gave him a name tag just to make sure he got to school IMG_3719

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Diane had a cake waiting for him when he got home..

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OK.. so we overdid it a little 🙂 .. it’s just fun going through this on last time…

hope its a good school year for all of you out there..

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

Tuesday night – mustard seed

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Back home an din a thoughtful mood. I had a long trip home for what should have been a one day trip. My plane home from NY was canceled last night around midnight. The airline gave me a voucher for a hotel.. whch turned out to be incorrect which took another 30 minutes or so at the hotel.. They finally gave me a key to a room.. which I found to my (and their) surprise already had a family in it. Buy the time it was all straightened out it was almost 2 am.. and I had to wake at 6:30 to catch my new flight …

Now .. I’m not complaining.. i took all the above in stride and found it strangely amusing but the reason I tel you this is to setup that I was really tired and behind in my work when I got on the plane this AM. I had a ton of things I’d hoped to get done on the short, but wireless enabled, flight back to BTV…

As e took of, I was planning on what to do first in my huge pile of work.. just before we hit the magic 10,000 feet ok-to-use-laptop-beep i got into a casual conversation with my seat mate.. He turned out to be a really nice guy on his way from north Carolina to inspect a prefab building materiel factory in Starksburo.. We got to talking.. an within a few seconds.. I’d found the ‘mustard seed’ .

It happens to me so often. Within a few moments of meeting someone I can somehow tell that there is a story in there about loss. My seatmate Niel’s brother and his wife had drowned in an accident 30 years before.. I told him about Sam and we spent the rest of the 45 minute flight talking about loss, love and life.. it was really good talking.. We both had so many stories about the the moment that you connect with someone on the lessons of losing a loved one..

Niel is a gospel singer.. (He sings the Star spangled banner at professional baseball games for fun.. see here.. ) and a religious man.. We talked about religion  .. Thats when the parable of the mustard seed came up..  THeres a christian parable about a mustard seed as well i guess.. I think it’s about something small being able to grow into something large..

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To me it’s the story where  a a woman’ son has died. In grief she asks the Buddha to bring her son back to life. The Buddha agrees to do it if the woman can bring him a  single mustard seed . The catch is.. the mustard seed must be from a home that has not known loss..   Se discovers that this is impossible because loss and dying are inevitable and unavoidable. and finally comes to know that one must accept lass as part of life..   and part of everyone experience eventually..

talking about it  often forms strange but good bond between strangers. and i guess thats one of the wonderthings about being human

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

 

and I ended up in a hotel. The paperwork the airline gave me was maessed up whch