All posts by johncohn

Monday night – wonderful, interesting and sometimes terrifying

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in 45 minutes 2012 will be history.. and I’m searching my mind for a way to sum up the year. .. its funny.. i was incredibly busy, but I can’t figure out how to characterize the year. My family is doing well/… life is good. Max is making it in NYC as a technical artist/videographer and lives a rich and interesting life, gabe is doing great in school and sports and diane is wonderful as always. Its another year without sam which is always hard… though I’m proud that we’re all out in the world with fun and love in our lives. Work wise.. I started a a new job in a new field in a new organization after doing more or less the same thing for 30 years.. I spent the year learning new stuff, new people, new politics. and managed to survive. Actually.. I’ve enjoyed it immensely.. thought its taking me far longer to learn these new tricks than I’d anticipated.. I guess I’m an old dog. One thing I have done with work is double down on the senior statesman part of my job.. This year took me to more customers, and more ibm sites than I’ve every visited in a year.. Believe it or not, I’ve been in 17 countries this year and given talks to 10’s of thousands of folks.. Some of them were technical talks.. but many were on other topics close to my heart like the importance of play, and how it feeds innovation.

It was an eventful time for the world.. an election, crazy weather, tragedies, triumphs.the same sort of blend that makes life wonderful, interesting and terrifying…

i guess I’d have to sum up the year as that… wonderful, interesting and sometimes terrifying.. I wouldn’t have it any other way…

today was a a great end to the year.. we got in from new york last night after a great visit to max and jac…onn the boat

I woke late still running a little fever , but not so sick that I could stray inside on such a pretty day.. Diane and the dogs and I did our first snowshoe of the winter… there was at least 2 feet of powder out in honey hollow as we trecked through the quiet woods.. it reminds me how lucky we are to live here

 

we spent the rest of the day getting the house ready for a ton of kids … there must be 60 or 70 of them here now…

 

 

 

My contribution was a small burning man to usher out the year. Gabe and I ignited him with a drop of water on a mix of Ammonium Nitrate, Zinc dust, and iodine.. on a bed of zinc and sulfer… very cool…

 

 

OK.. its about 20 of midinight.. I better go find my family…

hapy new year to you all, happy new year sam.. we miss you

-me

Sunday night – home sick

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I am both … Home and sick. We had a great trip down to nyc to take max home and to take max, uac, gabe and raya to a phish show at the garden. It. Was a fantastic visit. i love seeing how interesting and crazy and full maxs life is down there.. he’s learning so much… im very proud of him

One thing about the trip… we ended up spending a good part of yesterday outside in the rain and snow.. Ten came home to find out that the heat was not working on the boat. It was in the 30s where we slept last night.. I woke up with a little bit of a bug… It didn’t slow me down much.though . After a good bagel breakfast diane, gabe , raya and i spent most of the day driving home.. Not a bad thing to do if youre feeling a little under the weather…

Hoping to shake the bug tonight to clear the way for new year….
Right now trying to think about what i learned this year.. All in all its been
A pretty good year.. More on that tomorrow…

Now off to bed to sleep this off.

Nite all, nite sam..

-me
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Saturday night – NYC / Phish

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It’s about 2 AM and we’re just settling back in to the boat to go to sleep. We had a long and fun day cruising NYC. We woke late on the boat and took our sweet time getting ready.   It was about noon by the time we left.. which was about as planned..  The rain/snow mix we hadn’t planned.. but it didn’t slow us down.  we noticed a family of swans hanging out near the back of the boat as we left. they were still here at 1:30 AM when we got back.

first sop was a trip up town to see the Ann Hamilton show at the park ave armory. Several friends and even moms of friends had recommended it to us. It was well worth the trip !

first you walked past a group of people reading to pigeons.. their voices were broadcast through many paper wrapped packages scattered throughout the cavernous venue.

 

thjen you saw ‘it’.. it was a huge (150 foot ? ) piece of white flowing fabric suspended from a set of wires connected via pulles to a large number of 2 person swings. The idea was simple and elegant.. as each persona swung (swang ? hot geswungen ?)., it pulled one of the wires and that pulled up one point of the fabric.. multiply that by about 60 times and you get a beautifully flowing organic movement that was both chaotic and calming.. absolutely amazing

we all had to give it a try..   first gabe and raya

then diane and i did it

then jac

you could lie down under the fabric and look up.. it was beautiful as it wafted sometimes on you and sometimes 20 feet up.

there was also an element that we didn’t get to see.. every afternoon they record an opera singer doing a piece.. and they play i the next day… odd.. but I’ll bet it was cool…

at the other end of the exhibit a woman was constantly writing something.. didn’t quite pick up on what..

then we walked down 5th ave towards the modern art museum (MOMA) .. checking out the christmas displays  which were all still up

we grabbed some knishes on the way..   they’re hard to get anywhere else..

MOMA was abolutely packed due to the rain.. it took max about 45 minutes just to check his backpack !

crowds aside, visiting with the art was great.. i forgot how wonderful the collection is there.. … i particularly liked the  4th flloor.. they had some beautiful Cezannes.. i remember seeing the Cezzanne show here in 1980.

Van goghs starry night was there.. and everyone was packed around it.. even though there were equally fine  pieces all around it.. so you really couldn’t see,

There were Rousseaus’

picassos

 

and the star was a short stay here by Edvard Munch’s famous Scream.. I called it the ‘Screen’ because all you could see was the back of folks cameras’

they also had Munch’s Madonna which is one of my fav’s

they had somewonderful Matisses.. I also went to a matisse retorspective here when I was in college in the 70’s .

A great couple of Chagalls

pollucks

They also had a magritte that we’d just used as the cover art for a report we just did for work !

even some chip art (none from IBM .i note.. . we gotta fix that !)

and some great interactive pieces.. this one recognized shadows and added things like hair, teeth and wings .. very cool !

then back out into the rain and snow… ..We found a nice thai place near times square on our walk to teh garden..

we got to the garden just as door were opening…  it was PACKED !

we ad GREAT seats.. about 11 seats back right off stage left..

Phish played tow great sets.. .. some favorties included great versions of bathtub gin. prince caspian, suzie greenburg, reba.. and a ton of others..

covers of ‘lou reeds ‘nothing happening at all’ and stevie wonders ‘boogie on reggae woman’ (really amazing !)

we left-three samstones in the stands then took off back into the snow and rain..   We grabbed a few slices of pizza near the garden because miraculously, we were still hungry !

we all almost fell aslep on teh train home, but the freezing air woke us up as sson as we surfaced in brrooklyn.. max took us on a quick tour -de-streetart on the way home..

we capped the day by rummaging through our stash of candy

 

yike 2:30. i better get to bed.. It’s about 40 degrees in here.. so I need to bundle up !..

great, great day with my family.. very gratful for the chance to do that… more tomorrow

 

nite all,. nite sam.. (we missed you today .. and everyday)

 

-me

Friday night – bean cake

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Greetings from the boat in Brooklyn. We drove down today to a) take max home and b) to go to a Phish show at Madison Square Garden tomorrow night. Despite our intentions to leave around 9… We finally left jonesville around noon. .. That turned out to work well because we had to intercept raya and her mom on their way up from Philadelphia. We met them around 3 and headed down into the city. It was an easy drive.. Not much noteworthy, but we did happen to see a car with a friends name on its license plate


We made it down to the boat around 8 .. First step was to show raya around the boat


Then we took an abortive walk out to our favorite restaurant which turned out to be closed :-(… So we went and found ben at his new studio…


Then back forma late night (11pm) pesto and bean cake dinner… Now heading off to sleep.
More tomorrow from afloat

Nite all, nite sam
-me

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad