Great day-after-birthday day. I rolled out of bed at around 8:30 to find the house still full of kids.. about 8 of Gabe’s friends had spent the night and about 4 of Max’s had too.. though no one really looked like they had slept…

Gabe’s posse had decided to attempt the same river raft expedition that Devon and friends had done yesterday. They put a slightly different twist on it by lashing the canoe and the kayak to the raft to form a catamaran of sorts.. They shlepped the stuff down to the river in pieces than tied the crafts together.. they had 9 kids on board It was pretty funny to see.    They managed to make Richmond in just over 2 hours.. not too bad with the low/slow  water.  Might be because they had a cooler of Red Bull with them ?

    Around midday I caught up with my friend Sandy who was down in Houston for our 30^th High School reunion. She gave me a quick run down of who showed up… hair quantities and color.. and a few stories about folks.. She had been my proxy for the event and handed out some info including this blog and the SamStones website.  I’ve already heard from my friend Mer  which is very cool. Sandy is going to bring me the email list from the event  I’m looking forward to connecting up with a few old friends  I want to tell them about our lives up here.. about Diane, my kids.. about Sam.. . about Vermont.. it’s so very different than where I grew up. 

    After I talked to Sandy I went out to help Diane, Scott , Mary working in  the gardens. We spent several hours mulching which is a job I love.. It gives you an instant sense of accomplishment.

Diane has opted for much for flowers than vegetables this year.. and already the yard  is alive with color. The flowers are so bright and life affirming. I love it.. Here are some of the flowers she already has growing here:

   Late afternoon we all decided to do one more family thing for Gabe’s birthday. We all piled in the car and headed out for a dinner and a movie. First we stopped at Moe’s Burritos to harass our friend and roommate Mary ..  really like Moe’s.. .. everyone there is  programmed to say “Welcome to Moe’s” whenever anyone comes in the shop..  You can mess with them by standing there opeening and closing the door.  Mary looked quite professional rolling those burritos (burriti ?)

After a good dinner we headed next store to Starbucks to see  Elsa.

It’s fun having both of our good friends working so close so that we can torment them both. 

From there we headed  to the Majestic to catch Shrek III. It was really wonderful.. technically it’s amazing to see how far computer graphics has come.. I spent the whole time staring at the texture of things like Shrek’s shirt, trees and clouds just amazed at the compute effort required to do that.. I loved the pot.. but won’t give it away.. One thing I will say is that this movie has a new character , Merlin, voiced by Eric Idle from Monty Python… Merlin is me… even down to the Birkenstocks with socks (though I rarely do that anymore)

   We got back home in time for a little light up Frisbee

then we all headed off to bed.. everyone was exhausted.. I think none of us got more than 5 hours of sleep over the last several nights.. It’s nice to be this tired… It was a great long birthday weekend for Gabe.

Happy birthday my son. gnite all !

 

-js

 

ps.. Phoebe  P. got curious about the recurring theme of the nautical star in Meghan’s guitar, Kyle’s tattoo and her own drawn on Tattoo from Staurday… Sh figures that anything that’s occurring that often has some meaning.. Here’s what she dug up.

 

…  the nautical star tattoo…  would be a symbol of guidance. Now as time has passed the nautical stars represent the direction of one’s life, for those of us who are not sailors but still need guidance.  Some say that if the nautical star is pointed upwards they have a higher outlook on life and so on.  The meaning of the Nautical star is to create your own path, but use the stars as a guide when you are lost or scared.

 

I like that meanng

 

 

Today is  Gabe’s 12^th birthday and it was a really fun and full day. Everyone was awake early and ready to get on with the parties .  I woke up determined to help make this a day completely about Gabe… We started by wrapping Gabe’s presents in our traditional  family style using towels, shirts and socks… preferably clean.

We all gathered around the pile downstairs then summoned Gabe to come down.. The first thing that Gabe opened was a box with a slip of paper in it… with a picture of the trampoline that is somewhere in route between Texas and here.

Gabe was so psyched ! He always has wanted a ‘tramp … and we finally gave in.. .Sam always wanted one too.. I think/hope he’d be happy that Gabe is getting one now. Gabe also got a digital camera since he’s always borrowing mine

      After the booty was all unwrapped we retired to the kitchen for the first cake of the day.. Casey and Chris  had slept over the night before… so we already had 6 in the house.. just as Gabe was blowing out the candles another 5 people showed up… Scott, Justin. Julia, Nate, Devon and a Blond kid I’d never met.. That brought the first party up to about 12 folks..

After Cake,   I helped Devon and his friends re-rig the ‘Spirit of Captain Sam’ the raft that we used in pond skimming at Bolton a few months back. We’d taken off the skis and now relashed the intertubes to the platform that Sam had built last year. I built them a new flag pole and we raised the colors.. (note the Sam pin on the flag). The boys took the raft down to the Winooski and launched under the bridge. I think it took them about 4 hours to make it to Richmond.. looked like a very cool adventure..  

 

    A little bit after than. Gabe got ready for Lacrosse. Diane took him, Chris and Casey up to St. Albans for three games today.. I stayed home and prepped for the party tonight.

I spent several hour cleaning the house and yard in order to let the kids mess it up tonight J.   I still have a sore  throat .. but  my fever had broken so I slipped out and took a great run up in the woods up the old long trail and down some of the old logging roads.. it was a lot of climbing which felt good. Gabe and Diane got home around 5. As soon as they got home the guys called from the park to ask me to come fetch the raft. I got down there to find that there was a big concert going on. The concert was called . ‘Heiferpatwoza’ because it was a benefit for the Hiefer foundation (http://www.heiferfoundation.org/)  that uses donations to buy livestock for folks around the world who need them .   :It looked like all my favorite music was there  Skanky Green, Kevin, Erin B. Lara H… but I couldn’t stay.. we were expecting the next wave of folks at home for Gabe’s birthday

The kids helped me load the raft into the car .. We had to stick the flag out the sunroof.

Before I drove off I took a quick peek into the new home of ‘On the Rise’   down by the park. It looks so wonderful in there. When I walked in Ben motioned me behind the counter and showed me how they’d cemented a SamStone on the upper right of the brick oven they built.. He told me there’s another one deep inside the chimney. That is just so wonderful !

    I got home just as kids and parents were starting to show up for Gabe’s party .. I think there were about 40 folks here around dinner.. Diane and Max grilled hamburgers, hotdogs, veggie dogs and veggi  burgers while I just sat like  a veggie myself and drank beer with Dave K and Deb.. It was pretty nice.. The kids had a blast too.. lots of folks in the pool, paying Frisbee and running around…  One thing I noticed is that lots of the kids had painted parts of their bodies at the concert today.. here are a few samples.

 

This is Abbot’s black and whte tatoo that was colored with face paint

This is the same design on Meghan’s guitar and on Kyle’s leg !

 

Around dark we sang happy birthday again and ate the second and third cakes for the day. (Note Max’s tasteful decoration of his brothers cake.. )

 

After cake we lit a fire in the back yard and sat around and talked. Some friends of ours had brought some great fireworks which we set off in honor of Gabe.

They were some of the best store bought fireworks I’ve ever seen ! I also took the opportunity to write Gabe’s name in Magnesium ribbon and burned that..

We also burned off some of the leftover ;rock candy’ smoke bomb material I made for last weekends mythbusters movie sequence..

Boys and fire… what could be sweeter ?

 

Once things calmed down Diane and I took a walk to the sandpit to watch the stars It was a beautiful night.. so we did a little catching up with Sam.. we both needed that after this long and happy day…

   Well.. tit’s 1:30 and there are at least 8 kids spending the night tonight The house is peaceful and quiet.  Which  means something must be  up.. I’ll sign off now and go check. Happy Birthday Gabe from all of us. We love you !

-me

I woke up feeling under the weather this morning.. I had a bad sore throat and a fever.. … I really elt like saying in bed but I had some important meeting and a Jolts and Volts show in the early morning. This time of year I typically do many shows because the teachers seem to be looking for end of the year fillers. I packed my equipment in the van and headed off to Williston Central school. It was wicked hot and muggy this morning which combined with my slight fever to make me feel pretty skanky. I immediately got stuck behind a street line painting truck with no option to pass it took me nearly 30 minutes to get to Williston. I was running late. By the time I got there I was in a pretty foul mood. I barked at the kids who’d been sent to help me unload and barley spoke to the teacher . My good friend Ron had surprised me by showing up to help me set up .. and I think I was even mean  to him I even asked him if he could do  the show because I couldn’t imagine being funny given how lousy I felt.. but in the end, I decided to go on…  It was a 5^th—6^th grade class just like Gabe’s.. I started slow and serious but my whole mood switched from grouchy to great in about 3 sentences. That’s how much I love doing this kind of work with kids.  If I was a jerk this morning to anyone reading this .. I’m really, really sorry !  The show was a pretty routing mix of sparks, dumb jokes and explosions which the kids seemed to love.. Here I am shocking a large ring of kids with 400,000 volts.. What a great job ! 

One bonus this morning was that my friend Liz D who teaches in Williston was able to come in to watch for a bit.. I also ran into a long lost colleague Dee G. who used to  be my travel agent many  years ago.. she remembered helping me find vegetarian restaurants all over the world even back then !  The funny thing is that we’d never met face to face.. we’d only talked frequently by phone and that was about 22 years ago.. it was fun to finally meet.

 

.The rest of the day was a mix of phone meetings. I took a three quarter day and split early to get some of Gabe’s birthday food shopping in.

I got home just before five in time to wash up for our planned grown-ups night out.. Deb, Jen K. Tim K, Tim F, David K., Brian , Dian and I all piled in to Deb’s Suburban for a road trip. We were all bound for the Vergennes opera house to hear our good friend Wendy F. sing in Sondheim’s ‘A little night music’.. Road trip !!  On the way down we stopped at the Starry Night Café in Ferisburg for a very nice meal.

Two noteworthy aspects of the meal.: first.. they were selling a dangerous concoction of rum, coconut, grenadine and about 4 other alcoholic beverages  to raise money to send some Somali kids to Camp Abenaki… Kind of a an interesting choice for  sending non-drinking Islamic kids to a YMCA camp… but what the heck. We figure you’d have to drink 40 of them to send a kid to camp…    1 was good enough for us.

. Another noteworthy thing that occurred with dinner is that Tim K gave me some of the mussels from his seafood stuff. Sam loved mussels.. so I smuggled one outside and heaved it into the pond behind the restaurant… not sure why I do stuff like that .. but it feels right.

 

Dinner was so nice that we almost overstayed. We zoomed down to  Vergennes and got to the Opera House with only a few minutes  to spare.

The production was really good.. funny, a little risqué… The music was really good.. It was great  finally hearing Wendy sing.. she has a beautiful voice and can really project. It was a great experience..  Here’s Wendy on the left.

After the last curtain, we grabbed Wendy and all walked down to the Antidote, a great funky bar in Vergennes..  There I ran into Doug, the Opera Director.. We quickly figured out how we knew each other.. We met in 1983 and we’re both very good friends of Catherine Nix and Vince Thomas.  Catherine was an actor in the VT Shakespeare company back in 1983. Vince was a close IBM work friend from England. Doug and I both spoke at  Catherine and Vince’s’ wedding in 84.. Small planet !

 
After the bar we all piled back in the van and headed home in a beautiful lightening storm.. I’m pretty sleepy so I’ll end now. Tomorrow is Gabe’s 12^th birthday so I need to be fresh.

 

On that topic.. here’s the last children’s price movie ticket we will every buy for Gabe.. Your full fare now kiddo.

I love you all !

-me

 

Ever since Sam died I’ve been more aware of connections.. connections in events, in associations and in people. Today was absolutely full  of connections. It started in a normal groove. I had to work at home this morning because we have a car in the shop. Diane took Max to work in Shelburne while I got Gabe to school. Oooops, we both forgot his geography project so I had to turn right back around and deliver it to school. Here’s Gabe’s teacher  Ralph from planet Tryfamedor) holding the project.

Luckily the school, like everyone else   is giving us  lot of slack

   I got home and immediately started working with my friends in Austin on prep for a big meeting we had this morning. We’d all been sweating how this would go.. and lie all things. The event itself was much better than the pre-worries about it. it was actually a very good meeting.. I was very  proud of our team…that put me in a pretty good wor mood which allowed me to motor through this morning’s meetings.

   My only face to face meeting I had afternoon  was with two profs and the dean  at Champlain College. The meeting had been se up by my friend Marion weeks ago..  One funny sidebar is that a half hour before the meeting I was frantically waiting for Diane to come home with a car to let me get to my meeting on time.. it took me about 15 minutes of pacing to realize that I had a car… .. not only that I’d just parked it. This is an indication of how spacey I’ve become since Sam’s passing… Anyway, the folks at Champlain have a really, really, REALLY cool academic program around video gaming and it’s application to society. I was extremely impressed with the vision and energy that these folks had to this emerging technology. It was so cool to see how they’ve built up this program from nothing to a nationally recognized degree program in such a  short time.. We had so much fun brainstorming on how to use gaming and related technology as a tool for teaching, and as a force for social good.  We spent a bunch of time talking on how we can best use video game to interest kids.. in math. Science and technology.  I left the meeting absolutely  jazzed and certain  that some level of collaboration with these folks was in my near future.  I was so surprised to find this sort of program.. and these sorts of thinkers virtually in my back yard…  It was an amazing connection .. much too strong to be a pure coincidence..  I forgot to take pictures of them.. but I did find this very Nifty S-am artifact on the road outside their offices

    After work today I headed to Advanced Music to meet Meghan G and her dad. Meghan is the winner of the first annual Sam Cohn Musical Soul award. She’d picked out a killer Schecter electric guitar for herself with a beautiful swirl finish and liberty star inlay.  (Sam played a Schecter, too)

The folks at Advanced gave us a generous  deal on the guitar and case.. which we really appreciated. I could tell that Meghan was the perfect recipient of this first guitar.. she was wearing not 1 but 2 guitar picks around her neck.

She was the only student who was nominated by multiple people in the contest.  And getting to know her.. I understand why. She’s totally committed to playing and songwriting..  One  other  amazing thing is that Meghan and I were talking about her wish to get a tattoo just like the liberty star on the inlay,  Just as we were talking, my friend and neighbor Kyle who works at advanced came over to talk to us.. here’s the tat he has on his leg.. (queue the twilight zone music)..

The whole experience with Meghan and her dad was wonderful.. and sad in a way you can probably imagine.. I cried some.. but mostly I was very, very happy…

   At that ppint is was after 6 so I decided to walk around downtown Burlington  and so some birthday shopping for Gabe and Max’s birthdays.  I kept running in to folks I knew.. and kept getting hugs from folks..  It was nice and surprising considering I live nearly 20 miles away  .. First I ran into my friend Bruce A. who I hadn’t seen in several years. Bruce and I used to share an office about 20 years ago.. he didn’t know about Sam.. so we had that conversation.. which branched into other parts of life. Bruce is getting married this weekend.. which is very cool. It was great to reconnect.

A bit later  I ran into  my friend Susan.. Susan might well have been  Vermont‘s first lady If the last governors election had gone a little better. Her husband and my friend Scudder was the leading opposition for the VT Governors election. Seeing Susan gave me an idea.. our close mutual friend Sandy and I grew up and graduated high school together in Houston., TX.  Sandy is leaving for Houston early, early tomorrow morning to go to our 30^th  high school reunion .. hard to believe. I was tempted to go.. but Gabe’s birthday is this weekend.. and that’s far more important to me now.   Anyway.. I wanted to get some  SamStones to Sandy to take to the reunion.. but I spaced out and forgot to send them. Susan lives  Middlesex near Sandy.. and offered to take them to her tonight.. Serendipity again !

   After a little shopping, I was starving.. so I headed to Moe’s  burritos. In S. Burlington.   I wanted to see if Mary.. our house mate, was working..(She wasn’t) I felt like I was being disloyal to my favorite Mex place, Mexacali.. but I have to admit Moe’s was very very good.   While there I ran into our friend Bister and his friends Owen and Vanessa..

Bister and Owen are both straightedge.. meaning no drugs or alcohol.. and they got themselves inked to prove it..

   They are also opening up a vegan restaurant in Burlington pretty soon.   They’d just gotten back from an  animal rights rally in Boston.. I love that these guys are being socially active.

   From there I headed to Williston t o meet Diane, Gabe and three of  his friends for a movie. The movie didn’t start until 8:30.. so I had some time to spare. I wandered into Mexecali with Moe’s burritos on my breath.. Do you think they could tell ?   I love Mexecali because all the folks who work there know me and know what I like. My favorite beer was poured for me before I’d even settled into my seat. Even though I was only there for about 15 minutes I ran into a bunch of people I knew.. Here’s my friends Niten and Erica from work.. they’d never met…

And here’s a ‘lady’s night out group  with Erica and my friends Julie and Lamiaa. Very comfortable there..

   Diane and the kids shoewd up around 8:20 . We ran into my firend Ron, Dave and Xand freinds/ Ron and I went to MIT together.. Dave and X (shoot.. X = .. begins with a B.. I’m so spacey) are our frind Bazz’s mom and step dad

then we headed into 3 hours of Johnny Depp and the rest of the pirates.

I really liked the movie.. which meant I only slept for 15 min.. That guy with the squid face makes me want to dred my beard…

2AM and I have a full day tomorrow. I’d better go.. G’nite mateys

-me

ps/ I forgot to mention another important connection from today. David P., one of the Chaplain’s from All Childerens Hospital in FL called today to check on us. All Childeren;s is where they took our Sam after his accident. Wetalked for about 20 minutes about how we were ding, our healing path and life in general.  I offered to to let them give my name to anyone who finds htem selves in the terrible situation we found ourselves.. and who needs to talk.  I think doing this is now part of my Dharma.  It meant so much to me that he reached out to us after nearly 7 months.  I will never forget how kindly that David and the rest of the staff  at All Childeren’s treated us. Tahnk you