I’ve been wondering how to wriite this  post for a while. Our Friends Dave and Hannah just had to close Talent.. the skate  park/skate shop where our kids and their friends hung out as kids.  It got too hard to compete with online  sales..  Last Sunday was their last day. Many of our friends went down  to.. what..  pay their respects ? I guess thats how I’d put it..as it does kinda feel like a passing.. 

 

Talent has been a fixture here for as many years as I can remember having kids.. Hannah and Dave were like surrogate parents to many of those kids.. and like super-cool aunts and uncles to our kids. Hannah and Dave were good teachers, excellent  mentors and great role models. They had passion for their business and their craft. They were/are so generous with their time and advice and they sold excellent gear  and hired the best folks… and so many freinds we met thought there. . many of whom are still close  friends of ours. Whenever kids in the area needed help or a safe place.. Talent was there.  They he;ped soem many kids in the community through camps and after school programs.. They were the grownups that every kid could talk to and relate to . 

Talent  was the place we went when we had something to celebrate .. or something sad to work through. When Sam died, Hannah, Dave and the rest of the Talent staff and Sam friends organized benefit skates.. .. Talent has sold Sam Shirts for the last 12 years.. and still had cool Sam posters until the dya they closed. .. same when Dylan died, or Pucket died,.. or A-dog.. or… wow.. so many  in this community. 

They were there for all of us when things were sad.. but thats not the way I’ll remember them at all .. the place was almost always fun and crazy.. skate camps, locki-ns, pizza parties, .. or just hanging out. I remember so many hours watch Sam or gabe going back and forth on those ramps and jumps, .. even a couple of broken bones just added to the fun. 

We got to knwo Hannah and  Dave’s   family well.. their kids Senyah and Adah.. (they call me ‘whiskers”) .. hannahs mom, dad and sisters.. Daves friends From Mass. Feels like a big extended family. I took a quick look thofuth my blog and found a ton of posts and pics of Hannah. Dave, their family and talent .

Here’s a sampling.. and I’m sure there are more 

Saturday afternoon

Late Saturday

Sunday night – Max at Pratt and Friends of Sam at JDK

Wednesday night – babys

Saturday evening – Robbins Mountain

Wednesday night – code monkeys

Wednesday night – Jen’s birthday

Friday evening – Hag sameach

Force Myself

Sunday night – worms and insects

Saturday night – Jam for Sam

Saturday night – 80s to 80s

Sunday night – winter ball

Wednesday night – Dylan’s memorial

Sunday night – stomp and stack

Friday night – tryptophan

Saturday night – Nice break

http://johncohn.org/base/2017/page/46/#sthash.EMR1pawh.dpbs

 

Well.. what can I say.. Hannah and Dave.. thanks for all you did for our community  and for us.. We’re all here for you. 

Talent will always be part of us !!!!!

 

nite all, nite sam

-whiskers

I woke up early today.. very early.. 4 AM.. we went to bed around 10.. so I’d already had a decent nights sleep I meditated.. .. twice actually.. but was not sleepy so I got up. By 7 AM I’d already caught up on emial, run 3 miles and was ready to take the dogs to the river.. I could get used to this ‘early to rise’ thing if I didn’t need to do the ‘go to bed early’ part. 

 

it was pretty steamy this morning. The falk to the river felt like any equatorial jungle I’ve ever visited. 

\

 

 

the water felt SO good ! 

 

by 8:30 I’d alreay had a couple of meetings.. I took a short break for a safty meeting at Genreator and a visit to my friend Eliot’s studio 

 

gettign the day started early was awesome.. I felt awake and productive..

 

but I wanted to go to sleep at 4PM

 

Let e try doing that tomorrow

 

nite all. nite sam

-me

 

I am radioactive !… 

At least for the next couple of hours .

 

I had a cardiac stress test today.. as I do about every 5 years.; it’s something my doc has me do bcause of the family history we have.. it’s  kinda  fun.. you get on a treadmill then they shoot you up with a radioactive gamma-emitting isotope (⁹⁹Tc).. then they put you in a gamma CT scanner.. Every time it tells me I’m fine.. and today was the same.  

It does get me thinkign of the wierd life of Isotopes.. .. I read about ⁹⁹Tc  . 

It  was discovered in 1938 by Emilio Segrè and Glenn T. Seaborg after bombarding natural molybdenum with 8 MeV deuterons in the 37-inch (940 mm) cyclotron of Ernest Orlando Lawrence‘s Radiation laboratory.^[2]

I learned that the doeses.. which  are only useful fro about 6 hours are made locally by a company in Willisont using soemthing called a ‘Moly Cow” .. .. which Wikipedia helpfully explains thus:

Technetium-99m’s short half-life of 6 hours makes storage impossible and would make transport very expensive. It is instead its parent nuclide ⁹⁹Mo that is supplied to hospitals after its extraction from the neutron-irradiated uranium targets and its purification in dedicated processing facilities.^{[notes 1][56]} It is shipped by specialised radiopharmaceutical companies in the form of technetium-99m generators worldwide or directly distributed to the local market. The generators, colloquially known as a moly cows, are devices designed to provide radiation shielding for transport and to minimize the extraction work done at the medical facility. A typical dose rate at 1 metre from Tc-99m generator is 20-50 μSv/h during transport.^[57] These generators’ output declines with time and must be replaced weekly, since the half-life of ⁹⁹Mo is still only 66 hours.

Molybdenum-99 spontaneously decays to excited states of ⁹⁹Tc through beta decay. Over 87% of the decays lead to the 142 keV excited state of Tc-99m. A
β⁻electronand a ν_eelectron antineutrino are emitted in the process (⁹⁹Mo → ^99mTc + β⁻+ ν_e). The β⁻
electrons are easily shielded for transport, and ^99mTc generators are only minor radiation hazards, mostly due to secondary X-rays produced by the electrons (also known as Bremsstrahlung).

At the hospital, the ^99mTc that forms through ⁹⁹Mo decay is chemically extracted from the technetium-99m generator. Most commercial ⁹⁹Mo/^99mTc generators use column chromatography, in which ⁹⁹Mo in the form of water-soluble molybdate, MoO₄²⁻ is adsorbed onto acid alumina (Al₂O₃). When the ⁹⁹Mo decays, it forms pertechnetate TcO₄⁻, which, because of its single charge, is less tightly bound to the alumina. Pulling normal saline solution through the column of immobilized ⁹⁹MoO₄²⁻elutes the soluble ^99mTcO₄⁻, resulting in a saline solution containing the ^99mTc as the dissolved sodium salt of the pertechnetate. One technetium-99m generator, holding only a few micrograms of ⁹⁹Mo, can potentially diagnose 10,000 patients^{[citation needed]} because it will be producing ^99mTc strongly for over a week.

Well.. that makes me feel better

The only let down.. is that I don’t appear to have gained any super powers

shucks

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Just back from a weekend helping max pack. h’s almost out of his apartment. I was so glad I coule get down there and hep him pack all his stuff.. like all of our family.. he’s got lots of stuff

.. lots and lots and lots of stuff

job number 1 today was clearig out his storage bin.. TA DA !

 

luckily max and becky have an old van with a handicap lift.. just the thing when you’re lifting a 200 pound case with theatric lights 

 

and there’s always room for an old jeep grill (I know this kid has my DNA !) 

 

hot day to be workign !

 

and soem wonderful treasures uncovered.. like this shirt we made for one of my dad’s birthdays’ 

 

 

by the time I left .. we had it all triaged.. .. stuff to give/throw away

 

empty boxes (victory !)

 

and sorted stuff (tools, electronics, materials, office supply.. normal stuff a maker has ) 

 

oh.. and of course a baloon sculplture of a squid riding a bicycle 

 

and ben and bridget  .. just for fun 

 

 

soemthing had to make it fin.. it was so @#$&ing hot !!  (thats 40 C for my friend s in other parts of the planet) 

 

ok.. now i’m home. its hot here.. but .. only 76.. 

which makes it like the hottest night time temperature ever.. but still 25 degrees cooler than the day

 

got home and DIane has been working like crazy on our house.. still trying to recover from the party, etc.. she’s got this place looking so nice !.. and its all while its been SO hot here..

 

i’m really so happy to see her after a week away.. .. I miss her so much when I’m not here..

 

So.. I gotta go find her !.. she’s somewhere around this huge house.  !

 

nite  all. nite sam

-me