On a plane back to Munich.. Fever is pretty much gone… (pretty much)

Not much happened today, so I’ll go back to last Friday. Diane and had the sad and happy pleasure of attending our 10th Mount Mansfield Union school awards ceremony . Every year we do several things in Sam’s memory.. You can check them out on the legacy tab on http://samstones.org/WordPress1/?page_id=31  .  We give a scholarship to the Camp that Sam and his brothers went to and loved, we give away  a scholarship to allow a kid to spend the winter riding or skiing Bolton Mountain which Sam really loved.. and we make the Musical Soul award .

The musical soul award invites anyone in the school, teachers or students to nominate a kid.. other than  themselves.. who has a musical soul. Sam loved music.. and was an excellent guitar, bass and drum player. He was great at classical guitar and ad head banging metal.. and he loved to play…  The kids who are nominated dont have to be the best musicians.. they just have to love music and tell us how and why.

Each year we stand up in front of the students and tell them about Sam.. We put the nominations into a bowl and one of us closes their eyes (so sam can choose) and we pull one out. The winner gets to go to Advanced Music to choose a guitar or bass of their choice.. Advanced gives us a good price.. so basically the kid can choose any instrument they want

This year it was a kid named Nick.. He’s a perfect match.. a natural musician.. .. We heard how he’d fixed all 13 instruments the school owned to make them all playable.. He had recently been working on “Asturius” by Ibenez.

Sam had just learned to play that whole beautiful piece just weeks before he died. It still makes me cry to hear it…  you can too

Here’s Sam’s guitar teacher James… playing Asturias  at Sam’s memorial 

I passed on the only instructions for the award.. I tell them they cannot use the instrument to play billy joel or elton john .. because , I say, Sam hates their music

actually.. I’m not sure thats true… but .. I don’t like them.. and I help make the rules

nite all, note sam

-me