Woke early today in Boston and drove to Burlington MAn. My young find Jeffrey was one of the organizers of HackNEHS. A large hackathon for high school and middle school students . It was hosted at Microsoft Labs .. a beautiful building

There were more than 220 students

I gave the keynote they .. which was really fun

Then a long very beautiful drive hoe though great fall leaves

Tonight we had a party for Gabe’s visit and chai’s 16th birthday (!)

Now ready for sleep. More tomorrow !

-jc

Work very early to begin the drive back to Boston. It was so worth it to come home to see GabÉ yesterday. I really enjoyed the drive down. The leaves were really peek in the middle of New Hampshire and I got to Boston before I knew it.

I had a nice surprise waiting for me… Daisy one of the people who works in our building had left me some homemade Salvadoran papusas. They’re made out of Masa and water and are served with this really cool pickled cabbage and red sauce. Really delicious.

Somewhere vegetarian and some head meat… I got to share the meat ones with my friends like Aldo here

Later in the day I got to spend some time with my good friend Ronald who is in from Zürich. We used to joke that we had it “exclusion principle” that prevented us from being in the same country at the same time… I’m glad we were able to violate that today

After that I met my friend David whom I haven’t seen in years . We had a really nice dinner. Midway through our mutual friend Song stopped by for a drink. I’m working with Song on a research project at MIT

I’m giving a talk to a bunch of high school kids early tomorrow morning so I better get to sleep. More tomorrow from Vermont

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

Gabe flew in this morning for a quick visit. He wanted to see chai on her 16th birthday and watch a movie that our friend Ralf made tonight. It’s so good to see him ! Dan gabe and I took a great hike at Libbys just to check out the wonderous fall foliage

m

Tonight we went out for sushi

Then went to see Ralph’s movie “100 N.”… It had a whole bunch of kids in it that

we know I’m snowboarding. It was fun to run into so many old friends there.

Back to boston tomorrow..so gotta get some sleep.

Nite all, nite sam

-me

Today was Yom Kippur… And I was down in Boston. I haven’t gone to service in many years before tonight but I decided to go again today… It was Call mean to be surrounded by strangers but momentarily touching a tradition I’ve had for 50 years.

That was reform service it was mostly in Hebrew. It was nice letting this strange words and music roll over me. I was surprised and pleased to hear that my Hebrew… though a little rusty… Still came through.

I spent a couple hours there just reading through the text and singing along… My metaphysics don’t match what I was saying so much but the process of going through and self assessing for the past year… Things I could’ve done better… Things I should not have done .. that was useful as always.

One thing I love about that language is it simplicity and predictability. Many of the prayers are written as acrostics… That means either the first letter or sometimes strangely the second letter spells out the Hebrew alphabet. It’s like a secret code… One examples is the ashamnu.. It’s a listing of all the possible things you might have done wrong in the past year… You actually are supposed to thump your chest with every word… That’s kind ofFun and dramatic… Notice reading from upper right to lower left as we do you’ll see the words are begin with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet… Aleph, bet, gimmel

Kind of a cool code…

Just like life

Shanna Tova everyone

Niteall, nite sam

-me