Today is Yom Kippur. The most important day in the Jewish calendar. It’s the end of the beginning of the year. The year starts on Rosh Hashanah which is 10 days ago. During the intervening 10 days were taught taught to consider aspects of our life where we may not have done the right thing and consider how going forward we could be better humans.

One tradition is to apologize to anyone you may have injured either accidentally or on purpose in the last year. And I mean this very sincerely if there’s anyone out there that I wrong in anyway last year I apologize… If you’ve got suggestions on how I could improve… I would really like to hear them. 

My intentions going forward this year are pretty simple. I’m trying to find a way to be more purposeful in my life and less busy and more at ease.… Most of my busyness comes from my own habit of taking on too many things while looking for something that matters. I intend to be more deliberate in choosing where to put my energy.. and more deliberate about creating more ease in my life and those around me if I can. 

Those of you who may still be reading this blog will realize that there was a period after early July that I stopped blogging. There’s a combination of being too busy on things like the burning  man bus and wondering if I still wanted to keep blogging after 15 years.   I’ve been thinking about it today as part of my Yom Kippur meditations. I dod this blog as a tribute to Sam.. and as a place to record my oen life.. not necessarily for anyone else to read. Keeping a record like this allows me to get in touch with how my life has run since Sam’s passing in 2006.. It’s a really good way for me to reflect on where my energies are going.. when it’s going well.. and hen its going not so well. I’m also setting an intent to keep recording here and see how I do with my intent to spend more time witht he things I really care about: my family,. my community and sharring my passion for sceince and technology with people. 

Wish me luck !

Shana Tova !

nite all, nite sam

-me

I broke fast at our friends Michael and Denises for a Generator board meeting.. lovely evening !

Back hoem in Vermont.. and trying to catch up from… .. well from everything. I’m trying to get things more organized at work, .. more organized at home.. and more organized in life. It’s a good time to be doing that as tomorrow is Yom Kippur…

Spent the day at work getting several projects organize to complete.. 

first I took a quick hike with diane to enjoy the lights

 

Drove home to meet up with freinds. One the way I managed to almost get a speeding ticket just a 1/4 mile from my house. I got a wanring.. but got a great chance to talk to one of the Richmond PD officers about her very good ideas on how we can address some of the recreational parking issues we’re tring to address in our Parking Advisory Committee.   After that   we went to stone  coral with Tim, Jen  and Deb.. Hannah., Sumner and Gee were a few tabels down celebrating sumner’s 30th birthday. 

A nice way to celibrate being back home.

nite all., nite sam

-me

 

Last day in DC.. I woke early and walked a mile to the BETA office on New Jersey Ave. BETA has an office here for showing our stuff to various government and non-government agencies.  It’s a great space. It has a full Alia simulator and a good group of other assets for telling our story. It looked like a small chunk of Vermont down here in DC
  Jill was my host..and she is amazing. In addition to working at Beta she flys giant C17 Globemaster planes for the Air Guard.    She told me about how they make handle  visits from everything from US Senators to 4th graders. We took the standup meeting together which was fun. Jill also let me put a Samstone on top of their charge cube

From there I ubered over to the NAS building to hear a panel talk about the coming Energy Transition. They had NAE reps from solar, wind, fission, fusion , petrochemical, grid.. there are many NAE studies goign on now about the conversion to sustainable power necessary to meet the worlds 1.5 degree heating target. It’s an unbelievably huge problem. It was good to know how many folks in the room are working either directly or indirectly on energy transition. Im glad  to be part of an organization who’s entire mission is focused on decarbonizing air shipping.  After those talks, we moved to the 2nd NAS building for section meetings. I’m in Section 7, which is Electronics, Communication and Information Systems Engineering. We’re one of the larger groups in the NAE. Our meeting focused on  how we plan to elect a more diverse group of new members. 

 

About 3/4 the way through the meeting I got a text message from United that our flight has been delayed due to weather and we would not make a connection home. I quickly texted ‘Diane and started working on alternatives. We rest of the airport and long story short were able to make it home by midnight… Exciting into an exciting weekend

Nite all, nite sam

-me

Today was my official induction into the NAE.. the other two classes were first which gave Diane and I time to walk over and visit the very moving Museum of African American History. It is a beautiful building which is laid out to take the visitor from the basement of the building where you saw early days before large scale slavery in the west up through the slave trade, the unbelievably cruel times of slavery .. and the hard times african americans have had since slavery..  and the huge gains they’ve made since.. Much of it was hard to see.. much of it was inspiring. It was very well done and very. very moving to me. 

 

It was raining on our way back to the hotel.. but it was still great to walk. we stopped at a great Mexican food truck and visited the WWII memorial. We were completely soaked, but happy.  Before the museum visit. We even ran into my good friend Heike from Zurich who  was also elected to the NAE. 

 

We got back to the hotel took hot showers to warm up and dressed for the formal induction. We got on a bus back tot he NAE building and got to see everyoen in my entering class introduced and welcomed to the NAE. It was so cool to see all the different people, their varied disciplines and ther accomplishments. Two of the group had been the engineers behind the roll out of the Pfiser and the Moderna covid vaccines.. they got huge applause. The two most famous inductees of the year.. elon musk and satya nadella did not attend.

Here’s me getting my certificate.. 

The rest of the afternoon there were some  great talks and plenty of time to meet the other NAE members.. I really enjoyed it 

After the NAE day.. we headed back to see our friends Caroline. Matthew, Anna and Kate for thai food.. Matt’s cousin Connor was there too which was a really nice surprise !

Super fun day !

nite all, nite sam

-me