Greetings from Parsippany New Joysee. Diane and I just got here after a pretty easy 6 hour drive in from Vermont. I’m down here to do a science show at the New Jersey Institute of Technology tomorrow morning before flying to Austin for work .  I’ve been doing shows/talks  at NJIT for several years now.. My good friend Kevin went to school here.. and he turned me on to the place.  NJIT offers a  great science summer camp. In past years it’s been  a great and really diverse group of kids. I’m looking forward to the show. I’ll dedicate it to Sam…

     I do this drive down to NY all the time by myself..      It’s so much fun having Diane here with me this time.. She’s a great travel companion.. interesting, fun and compact !..  Compact is a big deal because I have every piece of my science equipment crammed into our Prius. There’s not room for another toothpick in the car.. but it’s so much better on gas !

    Diane’s able to travel with me this week because Gabe left at 6AM this morning for High Cascade in Oregon. He was so excited to be going.. he’s been planning it for over a year. It will be extra meaningful for him this year. Sam went there last year and loved it.  The boys were looking forward to going there together this year. Gabe is taking all sorts of Sam stuff out with him. He’s also taking a box  to Tyler E., the kid who was paralyzed after a bad snowboarding accident. The box contains  a bunch of  SamStones, a Sam shirt and a letter from the Friends of  Sam with the donation they’re making to Tyler and his family. The High Cascade folks are taking the box down to Tyler next month,

   I have to admit that it was hard for me putting Gabe on the plane with Sumner.. but Diane and I are determined for the kids to live fully and bravely. I know that Gabe will be in good hand and will be well supervised. He got to Oregon without a hitch… so far he loves the camp.. I’ll post any stories he sends me.   He just called as I was writing. I love hearing from him.

    Meanwhile, Chai is home taking care of Max !  Max is dong a 4 going vegan for the next few weeks.. He’s been doing some amazing cooking over the past several days. Diane and I are trying to do the vegan thing too… I’m surprised how hard it is to do.. and I’ve been a pseudo-vegetarian for over 30 years (I eat fish.. but no other meat stuff). I’ll let you know how it goes.

    Speaking of stories.. I ran into our friend Charlotte-san at Richmond Beverage. She told me that she just had a dream about Sam.. In here dream, Sam was dressed in a big bunny suit and handed her a bunch of used-but-clean Tupperware.  Anyone what to interpret that ?

   OK.. gotta run.. Tomorrow, NJ and then Austin. I’ll keep everyone posted.

-jc

Short post tonight. A slow day today.  Diane and Max left early to help out with the Voice’s Movie fundraising banquette at Shelburne Farms. Max dropped me at Toyota in South Burlington so I could pick up my car.  I got back home around 11AM. Gabe was lying low as he still had a slight fever. He needs to gather his strength.. He’s leaving for High Cascade snowboarding camp in Oregon tomorrow at 6AM.    He’s really, really  excited.. He’s heading out there with his friend Sumner and Jeremy to do a little mid summer snowboarding. Sam went there last year and absolutely loved it.

   Scott and Mary were around this morning. They let us know that they’ll be moving back to Scott’s house .. I think they need a bit more privacy than this house can give right now. The kids from the Voices movie will start showing up next weekend.. and it will get pretty zooey around here.   I’ll really miss having both Scott and Mary around. They are both wonderful people. They’ll only be 8 minutes down the road, so I’m sure we’ll still see them around.

 I had no real plans for the  day so I started to see if I could salvage our downstairs computer. It’s got some sort of progressive hardware problem that prevents it from booting up.. or staying up most of the time. I checked online and found that it’s a common symptom of this model of eMachine. Evidently many. many people are now having this same problem n this now out of warranty model. Based on what I read today.. I’d really avoid that brand altogether. I was able to get it to boot and stay working up long enough to recover our critical data.. I had to  keep a fan on it to keep it from overheating.

 
Sam’s passing has made some of the data on all of our computers unbelievably precious. There’s music movies and pictures that we just can’t afford to lose now.. I’ve got them all backed up 3 ways. Like anything else in this house.. going through these files for salvage can cause great emotional ups and downs for me.. Sometimes seeing a picture or movie of Sam’s can make me so sad.. other times it makes me so happy.  The whole process put me in a pretty soulful place…

   As the data was copying I started to thumb through the ‘memories book’ from my 30^th high school reunion. My buddy Marie sent me a copy of hers. The reunion was in Houston on June 9th in Houston.  I didn’t  want to go  because it was Gabe’s birthday. The memory book was really fascinating.. I had trouble putting it down after I started reading. It was really weird seeing what people had done.. or not done.. with their lives. How had kids, how didn’t… who married who.. who divorced who.. what they’d done.. where they’d traveled.. what dreams they’d followed or given up.  My name was in there.. but no picture and no story. They hadn’t contacted me at all for the reunion. I was pretty surprised. I’ve been in the same house for 25 years.. and I’m pretty easy to find on the internet.. What would I have said to my 634  friends of the 1977 graduating class of Memorial High School ?   .. I’ve been writing the paragraph I would have submitted in my head…  had they found me to ask.  I think I would have told them how wonderful my life was.. how much I loved my life up here.. how much I loved my family and I would tell them about Sam’s passing.. I think I would even have said that despite. Our deep tragedy.. I still loved my life.. maybe I love it even more now.. since things are so precious to me now..   I want to reach out to all the folks who wrote their stories in the book to hug their kids.. to …..what.. pray for us ? Think about us / .. hug hteir kids ? .. at least that for sure…

     I was starting to spin on that when Diane called to tell me that our friend Arthur …was desperately in need of extra kitchen help. Arthur, who’s a professional cook..  and his family had very graciously offered to volunteer their cooking and serving to the Voices movie fundraiser He was cooking for 175 folks   and it required more than his two capable hands. Diane and I showed up to do whatever we could. It was a great experience. I ended up dipping several hundred chocolate cookies in chocolate, dusting a bunch of almond meringues with sugar , making Crème Fraise from scratch, and helping make some really cool Portobello  quiches. In addition I washed a veritable mountain of dishes.  It was fun to help 

I had planned on going to the fundraiser myself.. but when I got home, I could tell that Gabe was bored. He did not want to go all the way to Shelburne Farms to watch the voices folks serve people dinner.. Even if max is  a cast member.    Sensing his mood, I changed the plan.. I invited Gabe to  just hang out with me … first we went to Cody’s for dinner.. (yum) ..  Here we are just goofing around…

then we went to the Essex Cinema to see , Fantastic 4, Rise of the Silver Surfer. It’s a pretty good movie.. though I can’t tell if the story is true or not J .. Seriously.. I loved Silver Surfer comics when I was a kid.. they were so cool and bizarre..

   We got home around 9 just a few minutes before Diane and Max. Diane and Gabe quickly finished up packing Gabe for his trip. IN addition to all of his snowboarding gear.. Gabe is taking a box of stuff from the Friends of Sam which  High Cascade will give to the kid Tyler.. who broke his neck a few months back and is now paralyzed . In the box is a letter  form the group, a bunch of SamStones and a letter with a check for the  $2500 the kids raised for Tyler‘s care. I’m glad that Gabe can take this with him. He’s also taking a small amount of Sam’s ashes to spread on the mountain out there.. Sam would really like that.. It was an interesting emotional challenge for me to get the small vial of ashes for Gabe to take.. I though it would be harder.. but that just isn’t Sam.. it’s just…. stuff…

   Anyway.. we need to  wake up at 4 to take Gabe to the airport.. so I’m going to sign off now.. How everyone had a good weekend. Love to all..

-me

 Ps. our friend Erin B/ has just posted two songs she perfromed and recorded in her living room. You just gotta check these out. on Erin’s myspace music page. The first is  Billy Holiday’s : G-d bless the child.. You have really got to hear this record ing. The second one is Regina Specktor’s ‘On the Radio’.. it’s got that line.. “... so you stick your heart into soemone else chest, pumping someone elses blood’… “ She  is simply amazing !

Folks.  I’m in the Moscow Airport just about to board a plane back to the US. I found some free woreless so I wanted to get a quick post in.  For now, I’ll just post the pictures and add the text when I land.. sort of the reverse of what I’ve been fdoing all week.
  It’ll be really nice to be home ! Can’t wait to see my family.

-jc

I’m now on the flight from JFK back to Burlington . I’ve got a few minutes to add the text to the pictures I posted… Let me see if I can remember what I was going to write about….

     Oh yeah… Yesterday our Academy TC  meeting ended at 1 PM. It was a the end of a great three day session. We got lots done and got to interact with some very cool people from the IBM STG Russia Lab. The rest of the afternoon was free for us to do some email catch up then do a little exploring around town. We grabbed the buss back to the hotel then headed out on foot to explore. Our first goal was check out the Kremlin museums. One of the guidebooks had said that it was open everyday.. but it turned out to be closed on Thursday.. bummer.  Undeterred Lori and Charlie and  headed off to check out Arbat Street.. The “Haight-Ashbury” of Moscow. In the 60’s and 70’s Arbat was a big counter culture hang out… Musicians like Balat Okudcheva  (I’m sure I’m butchering his name) hung out here writing cool folk songs and playing guitar. Today Arbat is full of tacky tschotsky shops, bars, street artists ,toy vendors musicians and tattoo shops. I loved it ! the thing I loved most was the huge number of high school age kids hanging out and singing on the street. Their energy was really pretty amazing.  Two  things I noticed about Arbat.. and about Moscow in general.   First,  few people over 20 are smiling…   I counted 1 smiling person out of 30 that passed my in one minute… It’s not that they’re mad or sad.. it’s just that the general affect is pretty flat… Once you start talking to them they brighten up. The second thing that’s hard not to notice is that Moscow women really love to dress up.. Everywhere we went the women were dressed like they were headed to a fancy party. For example, of the same 30 people I counted for my smile experiment, 5 of the women had on spike heels even on the rough cobblestones.   The funny thing is that the guys don’t seem to care what they wear.. I fit right in.  Around 5, we stopped for a quick beer then headed back to meet the others at the hotel for dinner.

This add is all over the city.. not sure what it is

Notice the time and the color of the sky

By the time we finished dinner it was close to 11PM and the sky was still twilight.. That was so cool It was the longest day of the year after all. We made it back to the hotel around 11:30 after finding all the bars either full or closed.. We had one  more shot of Vodka to close out the trip.. Russians seem to drink a shot with every meal ! 

At about 10 of 12 I went out by myself to red square to finish off my solstice with sam. I was surprised to find the square full of people.. Nothing special was going on.. just folks walking around. I talked with Sam for a while,  took a few pictures and headed back home.   

Again.. notice the color of the sky.. thsi is just before midnight.

Sam and I in Red Square

Sam – courtesy of a Samsung sign and a building to block some of it for my camera

I woke this morning, packed  and checked out of the hotel . My friend Steve and I shared a cab to the airport since we were on the same flight back to the US. We passed this church on the way there.

It was good catching up with Steve. His wife Helen died last October. Every time we talk, we compare notes on our path towards healing. This trip we did a bunch of talking about how foggy our brains have become. As always, it’s good to talk to  someone who has some idea of what I’m going through. .. even if our situations are very, very different.

     The flight back was really a breeze. After the Asia and Australia trips I’ve   made over the last year or so, the 9.5 hour trip over the Atlantic seemed like a piece of cake. I was sitting next to the coolest guy, Mohamed.

He is an aerospace engineer working with companies like Boeing to help them meet international safety guidelines. Mohamed is a Palestinian who went to grad school in Germany and now lives in Seattle. We talked for a good part of the trip about the middle east, religions, politicians, kids, families, Sam, travel. By the time we landed, we had worked out most of the world’s problems. He is a really good thinker. I hope we find a way to stay in touch.  Another cool thing on the flight was tta there was a group of about 15 young kids from an orphanage in Moscow. They were going to NYC to do a band contest. The kids were wicked bored and the  flight attendants were trying to find things to do with them.. I went back and taught them my favorite paper airplane design: the flying ring.We were tossing them all over the plane. It was good fun..

Self-portrait in plane bathroom

Here we are passing near vilnus, the place where almost all of my great granpartents came from

    We got to JFK exactly on time, then I had a 4 hour layover waiting for the trip to Burlington. That too was a snap.. It was so beitiful flying in here

I was finally standing on terra firma in beautiful Vermont . Tim came and picked me up and took me up to his house where Diane and company were just finishing up a huge batch of SamStones.  It was sooooooooo nice to see my family again.. I had missed them so much..

   Right now, I’m missing the sandman… I can hardly keep my eyes open. I need to get some sleep.  There’s no place like home , There’s no place like home,
There’s no place like home

 -jc

I’m getting time lagged from my limited access to internet. I find myself about what happened yesterday, today… Hope it’s OK with all of you.

Today marks 7 months since Sam’s accident. I woke up thinking so hard about him. Today is the longest day of the year and I am going to spend it with Sam in my heart.. as I do everyday… I love you my son

So.. where was I ? (There’s always that akward transistion) Yesterday.. I mentioned I started with a 6:30 AM run around the Kremlin. It was so cool being out on the street in braod daylight with hardly another soul in sight. Folks seem to get to work here around 10 AM.. that’s because they eat dinner around 10PM.  Here are some pictures from yesterday’s run.. Note that Ameikansky culture is all around.. 

 It was a little surreal to see an McDonalds overlooking the Kremlin gardens. 

The walls of the Kremlin

More of St. Cyrils

Lenin’s tomb again

After my run in the elevator

Built like a brick s**thouse

I then went to the pricy ($32 $US)  but yummy breakfast buffet and grabbed some fruit and smoked salmon.

Breakfast food

The bus ride to work was quick. We saw a few cool statues on the way.

Yuri Gegarin, first man in space !

Kommrad Lenin

A statue that’s being moved because it’s ‘too ugly’  And that’s saying something here

I know I briefly described yesterdays meetings at IBM.They were really productive.. I think this Academy stuff is the most creative and satisfying part of my job right now..    I love meeting folks in other IBM communities.  Here’s a picutur of one of the roundtables we had with new employees. These were amazing folks… all were perfectly fluent in English,whip-smart,  funny and cynical as hell. Cynicism has been raised to an art form  here.. folks have a highly developed sense of irony but they seem to have fun with it.  

Some smart new guys at IBM Russia (Note: not all the smart people here are guys.. the lab director is my freind Jen T)

We also met with 4 senior professors from Russian universities. Profs V. Ivanakov, V., Gergel, I Galiamova, S,. Kalinkow.  Prof Ivonakov is  the dean of Physics and Technology at Moscow State University.. that’s the most prestigious Technical university in Russia.. ,, Its like their MIT.

The visiting Prof’s

We were introduced as visiting dignitaries.. By title, I’m one of the two most senior folks of our 20 person group  which is uber-weird for me. I’m certainly the most immature. Most  of the Profs spoke perfect English, but protocol demanded we have a cold-war style interpreter..

The interpretter

it was pretty funny.. the Profs kept correcting the translator… and would start to answer us in English. Then remember and restart in Russian . After the meeting we were able to talk to them informally which was great. Prof Kaliniokow is a world expert in visualization and is really excited about helping kids visualize science and math concepts. I think I’ve found a friend.

    We grabbed lunch in the cafeteria in this building. The food was hard to figure out…. But tasty enough…

Lunch.. (Note: most food here is brown)

The gang !

Then back for another couple of hours of meetings. My US-based day-job colleagues started to wake up in late afternoon over here and I dropped into trying to be in two places at once. I do feel guilty for being over here while they struggle back at home.. I need to pay attention to that feeling.. I’m always feeling torn between what I ‘should’ do and what I ‘want to’ do.   Anyway….

    Around 6 we headed back to the hotel. Last night was our big communal dinner . We went to a traditional Moscow place and it was fantastic.. The place was all decorated with mosaics and murals. The staff were all in native costumes. I could tell that the place was geared to tourists.. but it felt real. They kept bringing cool food out.. and we kept eating. The food was amazing !

The Russian flag

 The front of the resturant

Buns filled with meat, mushrooms , or cabbage

Special cranberry juice

One of our waitresses

One of my sculptures

Peter the Great and John the Pretty Good

Candle people

A sturgeon

Steve’s Lamb

My Stugeon

A ‘Heart- Sturgeon’ (Billy, thats for you)

The Lady Singers (see the movies !.. they sing beutifully)

My Beer (I added Cranberry juice just for fun)

The Balailika Boys

Serving

Joe and Jane

One of the really cool things was the entertainment.. despite the cramped quarters, we had two bands.. the first was two accordions and a balalaika 

Reminds me of a an old Yiddish song that I know… Eddie new it too and we started to sing it

 
Tumbala tumbala tumbalaleika,
Tumbala tumbala tumbalaleika,
Tumbalaleika, schpil balaleika,
Tumbalaleika, frejlech sol sajn.

 The next band was 4 women dancers and an accordion player. The women had really beautiful voices. They danced despite all the foot traffic moving around them.. it was really fun

After dinner, we could hardly move !.. We went once more to Red Square to try and walk off our dinner. Here are a few more pictures from that.

The gang in front of St Cyrils

Note the time..it’s 5 minutes of 11PM.. and this is the color of the sky.

We went back to the hotel around 11:30 and ended up having a spirited meeting on a work topic until about 12:30.. Vodka helped us all reach a good technical compromise. I went up to my room and dialed into the internet over the phone. I added all of last nights pictures over the 56kB phone connection.. which was pretty painful .  I also called home and talked to Max which was great. I miss those boys like crazy. I heard that Gabe has a 103.5 fever and still feels crummy.. It’s hard to be away when the kids are sick. It’s a big burden on Diane, I know.  I haven’t been able to catch her by phone yet.. I miss her so much..  I love you my family !  At about 1:30 I fell asleep and slept great..

    This morning I was up at around 7.. then met up with  a brave subset of my posse here for an attempt to get to work by subway.. It was a hoot !…  Pictures from that tomorrow !

 Anyway.. now I’m in the meeting and trying to type and participate  at the same time.  I’m not nearly as good at multitasking as I was before Sam’s passing.. So.. I’m going to stop now and pay attention.. 

 Talk to you later ! Love you all. Dasvidania !

 -jc