Finally a quiet moment in a busy day.   My day began down on the Cape. I am so glad that I made the choice to go to my Dad’s birthday last night.. I could tell that it meant so much to him and my mom. It was great seeing them and my baby seeeeeeeeester and her little squids. 

 

Dad in the mirror

I woke this morning at about 8 after over sleeping my alarm for an hour.. After a quick breakfast and some more pictures, I got on the rode. I had a full day of meetings scheduled around my drive back.. Unfortunately, I hadn’t figured in some of the areas of bad cell coverage. I had to stop several places fro and hour or so to keep from dropping my meetings .  In the end it took me almost 9 hours to drive the 265 miles home  And I was on the phone for work all but about 20 minutes of it. !. The mornings meeting were continuations of the meetings I’d been attending in Minnesota.. it was tough doing it remotely.. I think it would have been much  easier and maybe even have gone better if I’d stayed in Minnesota.. but again.. I really made the life choice.

 

I did have a 15 min break in a meeting that let me dash into Hooksett Fireworks (http://www.nhfireworks.com/)  again and saw my friends there. I just love  that place. Christina helped me pick out some good stuff for Gabe.. She even gave me some tomatoes to take home ! 

We had a blast this afternoon. I love making my own.. but nothing beats professionally made stuff.  Gabe and I had great time setting some off  before dinner.

 

Gabe wears an octopus on their face 

I got back to Burlington around 6 and Max picked me up at the airport after dropping my car.   We got back to find the house full of Voices kids, Gabe and Will. By the end of the night I think we had 16 kids come thorough and visit/eat.  Around 6:30 my friends Kim and Kathy showed up .

Both of them teach at MIT. They have a summer house in Rochester Vermont and  were up for a week. It was great seeing them again. Kathy is a biochemist who taught school for 16 years.. Now she’s helping develop clever ways of teaching kids and teachers about biochemistry. She’s worked with Lego to develop a set of magnetic lego pieces that let kids explore how protein synthesis works (DNA, mRNA, all that !). I’s the coolest stuff. Kim is the Dean for Undergraduate Research and the Director of the Edgerton Center. The Edgerton center (http://web.mit.edu/edgerton/main.html)  is a laboratory at MIT which is open to anyone who needs a machine/electronic shop for research projects. They have some fantastic outreach programs where they get students to invent to help people all over the world. For example, their students have helped invent bicycle powered ambulances  for crowded 3^rd world streets. It’s one of the most innovative innovation centers that I know of on the planet…   I would love to find a way to work with Kim and Kathy on outreach projects… I’m going to find  way to make it happen.   It was really great seeing those guys

 

In honor of our friends, Diane had made a real Mediterranean   feast: pita,  roasted brie , home made hummus, tomatoes and fresh mozzarella,   spanikopita, tzatziki, fresh feta, roasted veggies and fruit strudel. It was really, really, really wonderful … Gven all the folks eating, we made a huge pile of dirty dishes.

I just finished an hour and a half o dish washing… It was still worth it…

 
So… it’s now about 1 AM and I’m about to go to bed.. The interesting thing is when I read what I’ve written here.. and look at the pictures, I see how it only shows what I’m doing.. not what I’m feeling.. The truth is .. I’ve been really missing Sam all this week. It might be the prospect of school starting that has me  blue.. not sure.   When my friends were here I reached in my backpack and pulled out some pictures.. and came across thee two from my birthday last year…  

When everyone left I pulled them out again and looked at them.. and finally managed to find the good cry I had been needing  all week. Sometimes you just have to dive in… don’t you Sam ?

 

-me

I made a good call today. I had been going back and forth on whether I should leave Minnesota and fly to Cape Cod for my father’s 77^th birthday. I’d made reservations.. but I’d also made plans to stay in the meeting I was having in Rochester. This morning I walked into the meeting room and polled some of  the folks there on whether I should stay.. or should go see my dad.. 100 % voted for me to go .. It was nice to know that I was not needed there 🙂 … but I’d already made my decision to go. I caught a 1 PM flight from Minneapolis to Providence and drove the rest of the way.   I was dialed in to my Minnesota meeting the whole way… The meeting ended just as  I drove up to my folks rental house in  North Falmouth. I came in just as my father’s birthday party was starting. He had no idea that I was going to show up. The look on his face made the whole trip worthwhile.  

Sam’s passing has been so hard on all of our family.. It’s really important for us to get with our extended families like this now.

    Dinner was a typical Cohn affair.. late, loud and delicious. My dad made his signature (and I believe only) dish.. Batchelor Spaghetti.. I think the Bachelor part means that you use whatever’s in the fridge to make it. The main ritual of its preparation is throwing the spaghetti against the outside of the fridge to see if it’s done.. if it slides off.. it needs more cooking. If it sticks:.. perfecto !

    Several of my sister Mary’s friends from up the street were there for the party… Mary’s college roommates Caroline  and Amy were there as well as Caroline’s kids and her parents Zippy (cool name ) and Barbara  and their friend Judy, her daughter Heather and Heather’s son.   It was very festive and chaotic. We ended with a big cake cutting ceremony. I could tell that my dad was happy to have us all around…

 

In the course of dinner I found out that Heather’s husband had passed away 6 weeks ago. I also learned that Zippy and Barbara lost a son to cancer 25 years ago.. Judy had recently lost her husband  and that one of the sons of the  owners of this rental had died 2-3 years ago of liver disease .  I’m reminded of the parable of Buddha and the mustard seed.. Who hasn’t tasted grief ?   As tough as that sounds.. we all had a great conversation about loss and healing.. It’s so easy to talk to people who have had similar.. (how can I even say similar ? ) experiences . It was interesting.. funny and lie affirming to talk about how each of us was doing at our different stages of grief. From there I went and roughhoused  on the floor with my niece Ellery. ..

and held my new nephew Jake .

Life is funny and good.

 

OK… bandwidth here is terrible. I’m going to try to post this now.. If I doesn’t work.. I’ll try tomorrow morning.   Talk to you all later.. G’nite all.. G’nite Sam.  

 

-me

 

Short post tonight as I need to get to sleep. .  I’m still in Rochester.   Not much happened today.. it was sort of a peaceful Midwestern kinda day. I began the day with a short run where I came across this sticker on a tree (I came back late this evening to take of picture of it). Somehow it made me think of Sam’s passing.. not sure of the connection.. but I felt it strongly.

 

One cool thing from breakfast was that they had a juice machine with both orange juice and grape juice.  You may not know the awesome power of that combination… In the Cohn household of my youth the following recipe gave one super strength

½ cup orange juice
½ cup grape juice
stir with a green tinker toy
drink entire cup
gives super strength

We’d drink the stuff then run around like crazy convinced we had superhuman strength and speed.  The recipe was a closely guarded family secret until Billy published it in a cookbook put together by my Moms extended family…   This morning the concoction just made me a little queasy..   Ok.. maybe I had a little super strength.

All in all I had  a very productive day. 

The meetings today had lots of good discussion… It helps to know that no one is armed..

 

As I said last night .. the folks here are the hardest working and easiest going people I’ve ever worked with..    After the meeting we all headed to a local watering hole for some team bonding..

One of our guys. Mike, knew the folks at the next table.. all school principals and teachers. I ended up talking to them about why more girls don’t go into science, math and engineering.. they had some good insights.. mainly everyone says that the messaging around engineering is ‘it’s hard’… rather than ‘it’s ‘fun’ . I’d be interested in anyone else’s view about why girls are a stating away from engineering in record numbers.

 

We left the bar and my friend Bryan and I went to a super market and bought a bunch of cakes and a pie and dropped them off at the local Ronald Macdonald House. I never really noticed RMH before Sam’s passing.. Now I see them in every city I visit. It is such a great organization. They were there for us when we really needed them . It’s a great organization.. check them out at http://www.rmhc.org/rmhc/index.html. We then stopped for another ‘meeting’ in a bar..

 

After that I ended going over to my friends Jeff and Karen’s to say hi. Jeff was my office mate and running buddy when I worked in Hursley England from 1984-86.  He’s always been one of my most important life advisors. Karen was already asleep.. but Jeff and I sat outside and talked about life, family’s, Sam, everything. It was great catching up

 

That’s about it for the day.. More to report tomorrow. Gnite all. Gnite Sam

-me

Believe it or not, I’m on the road again . Tonight I find myself in Rochester Minnesota..

Home of some of the hardest working and nicest people I’ve every had the pleasure  of working with.. It’s also the home of the least spicy food on the face of the planet. Here ketchup is a spice.. I’m sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for a bunch of my friends from Burlington to join me.. We’re going out for dinner ..  and I know I’m hoping I can score some hot sauce on the street.   Rochester is also the home of the Mayo Clinic.. one of the largest private hospital systems in the country. It’s strange for me to be among all these hospitals again.. It brings back so many memories. I saw a helicopter landing on the top of one of the hospitals. The image  hit me hard.. and I had to sit for a bit before I could drive on.

 

 

There’s a large IBM facility here.. In fact it was the site of my very first business trip almost exactly 26 years ago. I remember being so surprised that they’d let me rent a hotel room or rent a car for myself. I remember telling them that I was older than I was… Now that’s a change.   I also remember getting reported to IBM security for hitchhiking with an IBM badge on… (times have changed   I wouldn’t consider hitchhiking safe anymore ).. I also remember sneaking in to a Pinchus Zuckerman concert at Assisi Heights, a local convent.  The event had sold out… but one of the folks recording it for public TV told me to pretend I was with the video crew.. I did.. and they let me in.. more than that.. they put me to work. I actually saw the concert on PBS several months later and saw myself moving cables… That was a long…long time ago…

 

It feels very funny being away from home again. Max will be heading back to school in a few weeks… and I want to be with him as much as I can. Gabe also gave me a funny look when I told him I was leaving again. I almost canceled the trip.. but duty calls. I feel such a strong need to stay home with my family.. but I keep finding myself on airplanes.. It’s a hard habit to break.   I need to fix this. . 

 

 I just spoke with everyone at home. Gabe’s at a Friends of Sam meeting up at the Townsend’s this evening. The FoS got a really great write-up  in the Burlington Free Press on Saturday. I’m so proud of all of these kids ! They are really making a difference

 

Speaking of making a difference.. I’m still thinking about the seminar that Diane and I attended last weekend. One of the things that struck me most about Chopra’s message was the notion that we are all connected as a single soul. In his view, we spring up as different localizations of that soul when we’re in physical bodies.. then revert to the greater whole when we die. We’re then reborn into new lives when our collective soul feels it’s time.. Chopra spoke of the Buddhist meditation mantra ‘I am’ .. meaning I am part of the greater collective soul.. and ‘I am that’ .

meaning that things outside our selves like other people, trees,  animals, etc. are all projections of the same collective life force.. I’m not sure I’ve got my head all the way around that.. but the message still gave me great comfort somehow..  It makes me think of Sam

 

Another thing that struck me at the seminar is how optimistic Chopra is .. even in the face of all the war and injustice  in the world. In his opinion, society is evolving and is slowly improving . He sited social research that showed that the drive for social justice, better stewardship of the environment and for peace are gaining strength all over the world.. He sited He maintains that it will shortly ‘tip’ in the direction of a greater sense of world unity and collective good.. May it be so…  Chopra’s institute is making a movie about this coming tipping point. Check it out here

OK.. Speaking of tipping.. my head keeps rolling to the side a I fall asleep. Let me stop here and pick up tomorrow. 

Gnite all ! Gnite Sam

 
-me

 ps. Here are some more politically neutral bumper stickers I’ve seen over the last 2 days