All posts by johncohn

Tuesday – two dinners

Mixed bag of things today. Busy at work and outside of work. Diane is out of town so gabe and I are trying to keep the home fires burning. And we need to keep them burning…

We have another artic vortex happening here and so it's about 12 below outside and I love it. The dogs and I took a mid-day walk during lunch in the air was so crisp and dry in the sun . It was so bright and clear, it was beautiful.

Gave had a basketball game this evening… (as Screaming fan, Not playing) but we both took advantage of our laziness and grabbed a quick dinner together downtown instead of cooking. We went to the ASiana noodle house which served up huge steaming bowls of Tom kam spicy Thai soup. Cleaned our sinuses and warmed our bodies.

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From there I went to dinner number two. And met my maker friends in Williston at three tomatoes. Iour Good friend Jeff Branson from spark fun is in town. It's always really fun talking to him. Such a creative guy and such a great job to have. His role is to drive around in a crazy bus full of electronics doing experiments with kids. Not a bad life?

Ok.. Gotta gt ome sleep. More tomorow…

Nite all,nite sam

-me

 

Monday night – I have a pancake

I have a pancake… Today is Martin Luther King's day… And for that I got pancakes. Gabe was off school today so he made me breakfast.

 

as I was eating my pancakes and thinking about that day when I was nine years old when I heard that MLK had been shot. I remember how upset my mother was.. I remember the funeral on TV. And movies of Dr. King speaking. I was moved back then by his words. And I still am.

I remember hearing recordings of Dr. King speeches all through growing up. I learned from them the power of spoken word, the power of conviction, The power of being right.

I grew up in the Southwest and I remember unspoken prejudices of the time. Things were pretty black-and-white for me as a kid… Dr. King and his followers were good… And all of the Southerners were bad… But we were Southerners… Werent we? I remember being confused by it because we too were different… They're not being too many Jews in that part of the world in the early 60s.

It's tempting to say would come along way since then. But that's so easy to say in my bubble in the most racially homogeneous state of the union. I know there's still much prejudice and hatred in the world. I suppose there will always be ..

But Dr. King gives me hope.

Night all, night sam
– Me

 

 

Sunday night – international afternoon

I often forget how close we are to another country. gabe has been up in st anne quebec at a ski/snowboarding trip oganized by concordia. Diane and left here around 1 and were walking aound Montreal just over 2 hours later.

Our plan was to check out the modern art museum whih i ha never seen. I ha thought it was open until 6 ..but learned when we got there it was only open 'till 5 today.. No problem.. We had a great walk through of the museums really fine modern and early 20th century art. It was so fun and peaceful walking through the spacious and almost empty galleries an looking at all that great art.

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We got kicked out at 5 which suited me.. I was starvin. We found a. Really nice lebanese place 'garage beruit'

I had been hankering for stuffed grabe leaves (which i learned this evening are called 'warak enab' in lebanaon .. Not dolma) for weeks and this meal srathed that itch..

We finished our meal around seven and still had about an hour to kill so we wandered around that cold and windy city . We ducked into a bookstore is sitting on the floor and reading travel books until gabe's bus was near town.

As it happened, 4 hours before we wre luky int hat we had parked our car right around the corner from the concordia student center where the bus was to arrive … The kids were just pulling up as we rounded the corner.

 

2 hours later were back at home.. Preparing for anothr artic vortex..

Ok.. New week beginning, better get some sleep.

-night all,night sam

-me

 

Saturday night – Lisa P

this mornign I was thumbing through a n issue of Technology Review, my college’s magazine. The magazine is for sale . but In the edition for Alums theres also a section that keeps tabs on former alums. I tuned to 1981 expecting to see the same short paragraph asking for more input from my class. This time there was a long entry.. I read and was shocked and saddened to see the obit of my friend Lisa P.  She’d dies in August after years of living with breast cancer

Lisa lived in the girls dorm McCormick where I went every wed and/or thursday night to work on Course VI (electrical engineering)  problem sets..  I have so many memories of working there till almost sunup on problem sets for  6.011, 6.012, 6.013 . 6.014, 6.015  She was in Course III (material science) . but she still hung out with us nerds. Lisa was bright and funny nd an excellent musician.. .. I remember her once belting out a Katchturian sonata on the old piano in our dorm.  (Lisa grew up as an armenian maerican… and loved anything to do wiht Armenia)

As I read her obit I learned that she’d gotten into Juliard as well as MIT .. and might have been a concert pianist instead of  what she became which was an expert in molecular beam epitaxy.   It was nice and sad reading about her life since school, she went off to work, got a PhD, met the love of her life Scott while taking flying lessons, , adopted twin girls from Romania…met her birth mother, traveled the world. gave talks, kept in touch with friends…… and developed breast cancer. which she lived wiht for many years before dying last august.

Her husband made a nice video of Lisa life.. she looked happy. In that vid was this picture

Lisa is in the center, over her on her left is nancy, to her left is jenny, below jenny is hiedi,, to heidie’s left is lauren , to lernd left is marie, to maries right is mary (i think) and to lisas right is wizzy, i think..   I haven’t seen any of them in 33 years.. but I think of them whenever I see maxwells equations.  I have no idea what any of them are up to now.. but After reading about Lisa’s life and watching that video, I felt a real need to connect with all those folks.. I’ve been searching them out on linked in and facebook today .. just to reconnect…   not urgently.. just seems like the right time to try…

my thoughts are with lisa and her family..

night all, night sam

-me