All posts by johncohn

Thursday night – space station

Friends,
    Last night I asked for you all to consider voting for the ‘Shine a Light’ nomination for our friends at Talent Skate park. They’ve been nominated for a $100K grant to support their work in the community. Several folks have pointed out that the process for voting is a little hard to figure out..We love these guys.. so we want to do whatever it takes to improve their chances. If you’re willing to vote.. here’s what you need to do:

1. Register for shine a light
2. Login to ShineALight
3. Vote for Talent‘s nomination by hitting the button as shown below


Thanks for doing that for us…

OK.. what happenede today.. oh yeah.. the end of burning man !.. The guys made it to Vermont late, late last night after thier three day drive back from the Nevada dessert.  I’d arrainged for a big work crew this mornign to help them unpack the truck..

The guys were happy but tired.. really tired..

I got there about 8:15…. but had to start work around 9..   so I

couldn’t hang around. I did get to see Homer and David.. Then went over

to the Markowsky’s to sift through and organize the Time cycle

electronics.

Steve and Eben M. were there working. Eben was doing seem cool artwork for the Art Hop tomorrow..

Steve showed me around the wonderful machines that he and his dad were working on.. Mostly Ferrari’s.. it was a beautiful shop.. filled with beautiful machines.

I said mostly ferrari’s

this one will be worth about $2,000,000 when complete… It’s a living…

I was most impressed with the engine work.. Steve was rebuilding this 1961 ferrori engine.. what an amazing guy.. (he worked out the hydraulic drive for the time cycle)

Even with that early start.. I managed to get in an over filled day at work.. long.. but interesting.

After work, Diane brought Amy to work so I could take her to a work party.. On the way she spotted some solar cells.. she wanted to take them home to the colony .. but I stopped her !

Around 8:30 I walked outside to watch the international space staiton make a spectacular transit of the sky.. it was like a bright star moving across the night sky.. It was cool knowing when and where to look for a cool thing like that..

OK.. gotta go watch a movie a firend of ours was in.. I’ll report on it tomorrow.. Night folks.. Night Sam
-me

Wednesday night – two requests

Friends..
   First.. two requests: . 

1) we still need help tomorrow morning (9AM) unloading the Time Cycle at Peter Markowski’s (462 Monkton Road, Vergennes, VT 05491. 802.877.2645). We have too much work and not enough hands. Please show up if you can…

2) our good friends at Talent Skate Park have been nominated for a $100,000 ShineALight grant from  American Express . These grants are for small businesses that have done good community service. Talent does benefits for all sorts of good causes.. For example, they’ve held three benefits for the Friends of Sam charity to help make an injured snowboarder’s house wheel chair acceptable, they’ve helped reunite Somali families.. and more recently, they’ve helped Friends of Sam raise money to dig 3 wells in rural Cambodia. Talent also runs a summer skate camp which they make available for free to kids in need.  

They are wonderfully generous with their time, their facility and their money.. They are so deserving of this grant. The grants are competitive.. the proposals wiht the highest number of endorsements win the awards. If you have a sec, please look at this link  and read about the good work that Talent has done. If you agree that they are deserving, please add your vote by registering and submitting an endorsement for this nomination. Thanks !!

 OK.. what else happened today… hmmm.. Oh, here’s soemthing cool, while I was working. Julie and Sam R dropped by with a copy of last weeks Times Argus. Gabe’s on the cove ! It’s a picture form last weekend’s Rail Jam at Bolton.

Here’s a better pic of that image.

It was a long hard work day.. so I was glad when it was time to knock off for the day. Diane. Gabe, Amy and I headed down town to do some shopping. Amy immediately wen for the Zombie books. Seems Zombies are everywhere in the post-post apocalypse !

We walker down to the waterfront to get some dinner.. but the Skinny pancake was closed AGAIN ! .   So we wondered down the waterfront until we found another place.. the ‘Breakwater’ .. It was a nice place..  We ran into our old friends Ellen, Kenny and WIll (Diane was present at Will’s birth !)

 It was a a great place to catch up on our lives and let them get to know Amy.. and watch the sky start to darken.

OK.. my eyes are darkening,. can’t stay awake.. so  I’ll say good night.. Night folks, Night Sam !
-me

Tuesday night – the right woman

 


 

Finally,
    I can talk about one of 

the most wonderful surprises I ever got. Any of you watching the Colony

tonight now know that my wonderful wife Diane showed up at the Colony

during our 8th week. It was a complete and beautiful surprise to me….

(and a very hard secret for me to keep for the past 4 months ! ) When I

left home in Feb I hadn’t expected to see any of my family until I was

done with the show..   Diane had no idea either, from what I now know,

Diane was invited to participate  several weeks after  I had already

started. I wrote her a silly card on her birthday (which she received

after the show) .. that said something like

Roses are red,
violets are blue
the Apocalypse is nice
but it would be better with you 

Ironically, that was the same day she got confirmation that she’d be on the show.

 

I 

seriously could not have been more surprised when Diane showed up. I

remember when Leilani came down and told me “John Cohn, your wife is

out there”.. my first reaction was …”how do you know my last name”

..   then it sunk in what she’d said..  when Diane came in I was

laughing and crying at the same time.. I had missed her SO much.. and

there she was.. ! My love was with me on this crazy adventure.

I

got about 3 minutes into showing her around when the water main broke..

and our Normal colony crazy existence resumed.. Diane fit in

immediately.. She became a calming, grounded, rational adviser to many

folks on the show.. sort of taking the role that George had played as

the peacemaker. She also is a damn good engineer and immedialy jumped

into helping with the builds.. I was so proud of her.. and so glad to

have her by my side..   Diane and I have always worked together well..

she showed that she could work together with everyone else very well,

too. She could not have been a more welcome add.. (and did I mention

that she’d smuggled us in some more coffee ? )

I want to

publicly thank all the folks who made it possible for Diane to come and

join us on the Colony.. Especially Tim and Jen for taking care of Gabe

and the dogs..

So.. now you know.. isn’t that a cool story !?!

 

I 

was pretty excited about Diane’s arrival on the show tonight.. but I

managed ot have a really productive day anyway.. On the way in early

this morning I saw Victor, the guy we’d met on the long trail

yesterday, hitchhiking into Richmond.. I picked him up and dropped him

in town..

When I got home after a long work day, I found Viktor 

at our house !. He’d come by to say hi and Diane had convinced him to

stay and join us for ‘Colony Night’ ant Jen and Jim’s .  .. Oh yeah..

and we have another big surprise, We have another cool surprise 

visitor..  I had some pictures of her yesterday.. but we wanted her visit to be a surprise tonight .. can you guess who it was ?

 


 

 

 

Amy from the Colony is here visiting . We all showed 

up at Jen and Jims..without telling folks we were bringing Amy.. Folks

loved it.. we had  3 colonists  in the room nowinstead of 1 !

We had a good turn out tonight.. nearly 30 folks..  They loved having Amy there.. and they loved seeing Diane arrive..

It was also fun having Victor, our random MIT 

backpacker guy there.. Amy had taken a picture of him reading about

himself in my blog from yesterday.. I took a picture of that picture…

 

and a picture of victor looking at that picture

 

… and a picture of victor looking at that picture

After the show we all came back and looked at folks comments and questions about  the show in the forums, facebook. myspace and twitter. .. I can see that Amy obsesses abotu the show as much as I do.. It was fun to have her here to do that with. 

OK.. That’s about it for today.. somehow it’s already 2 AM and I have a full day tomorrow. Gotta sleep !  . .Oh one more thing.. Please take a sec and check out this outtake clip (here’s a new link April 1 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjuLX-dLFgc&feature=youtu.be) we just found on the Discovery page tonight. It’s about Joey’s birthday. it’s a fun ‘behind the scenes’ piece about a real celebration we had for Joey’s 36th birthday..