All posts by johncohn

Saturday afternoon – Halowween Party tonight

It’s about 5:30 in the afternoon and I’m taking a few minutes now to do a short blog in case I’m too tired later after the party. We’ve spent the day mucking out the house in preperation for the party … we’ll spend tomorrow mucking out the party to get back to the house. It’s a tradion that goes back 26 years with us. I don’t beleve we’ve mmissed a year that we’ve been living here (with the exception of the 2 years we lived in england and 3 years in pittsburgh while I was in school) . In recent years we’ve tried moving the party to the Jubilee barn in Huntington.. but it’s more fun here.. Fun is a funny word tonight .   We’re all thinking so hard of Sam as we get the place set.. .. Halloween was always his favorite holiday.. he was in his element. costums, candy and the possibility of mischief. He just loved these parties.. and in recent years his friends were the bulk of the people who showed up. All four of us knew that we had to have the party this year as always. Sm would have absolutely wanted it.. I’m not sure what to expect this year.. who is going to show up ? Might be few folks.. might be many.. we’ll see.    I’ll post some pictures form the party later.. Hope to see some of you tonight

Trick or treat Sam
-me

Thursday night – urge for going

Once again we were all awake around between 3 and 4 AM.. this is definitely the best jetlag I’ve ever had… The one good thing is that it makes it easy to get Gabe to school on time. 7AM no longer seems early… Driving Gabe to school this morning it hit me how tough this time of year is for people.. after fall colors have peaked, after the warmth of summer and before snow. The shortening days and the persistent clouds, mist and drizzle have a way of getting into your soul. Everything’s muted and.. I don’t know.. sad, I guess. We’re all ready for bed by 8PM.  We’re going to have to work hard to keep our spirits up over the next few months. .. I drove hoem today thinking of a Joni Mitchell song that my college friend Alan introduced me to.. it’s called Urge for Going by Joni Mitchell

 

 

 

Urge for Going

By Joni Mitchell

 

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
And shivering trees are standing in a naked row
I get the urge for going but I never seem to go

I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I had me a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling’s heart could win
But when the leaves fell trembling down
Bully winds did rub their faces in the snow
He got the urge for going And I had to let him go

He got the urge for going
When the meadow grass was turning brown
Summertime was falling down and winter was closing in

The warriors of winter they gave a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out
See the geese in chevron flight flapping and racing on before the snow
They’ve got the urge for going, they’ve got the wings to go

They get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

I’ll ply the fire with kindling and pull the blankets to my chin
And I’ll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in
I’d like to call back summertime and have her stay jut another month or so
She’s got the urge for going and I guess she’ll have to go

And she get the urge for going when meadow grass is turning brown
All her empires are falling down
Winter’s closing in

 

I even found a good recording of it here

 

Oh man.. I need to sleep… I promise more tomorrow…
Gnite all, gnite Sam !

-me

 

ps. Just got the wonderful news from my friends Rafe and Laurence  that they’ve just had their second baby this morning !  Congratulations !!!!

 

Sophie Constance Nedelec Mazzeo

Oct. 25, 2007, 8AM, 7.75lb/3.5kg

 


 

Wednesday night – super jetlag

Ugh.. I typed in a complete Blog then Myspace crashed.. so here iI goes again.

I can’t ever remember being so jetlagged. Right now my body is tellign me that it’s 4 in the morning just like at 4AM this morning it was telling me it was 1 PM. I went around like a zombie most of the day.. Max joked that we’re so out of wheck that we’re almost on his timezone now.    It’s more than just the diffences in TimeZones, though.. it’s also a culture zone lag.. Gabe and I were both commenting how wierd it was to be driving to school this morning and being the only car on the road.. now swarms of people, no beeping horns like in India. . I like both places.. they’re just very different.
   One of the other wierd things to get used to is how differnt the ‘how was your trip’ thing goes for me now. in the past I used to carry around a bunch of trip stories in small tasty nuggests to doll out when some one asked abotu the triup. Now , thanks to this blog, someone is likly to start givig me their impression of our trip, what they liked and what they didn’t . For example, I took my car to Road Res-Q in Essex Junction  (a great place to take your car !) today to get a tire fixed. I hadn’t gotten a foot in the door before Phil, a guy who works there started asking me about India. wand the Haloween party  Phil hangs out at talent and was a friend of Sam’s and is a friend of Sumner’s, the Tounsands and those guys. He said he reads this blog everyday (hey Phil) .. It’s such a fun and wierd connection to people..
   Speakign of the Halloween party, It’s this Saturday.. Sam would have wanted us to keep up the tradion.. so please come party in his honor.. We’re having a custom contest  so “come as you aren’t” and when *fabulaus prizes*   (read that last sentance in a cheesy emcee voice for best effect )  In case you missed it here’s the invite

OK.. now I really have to sleep. Goodnight everyone, Goodnight Sam
–me

ps. Rmember at my birthday  last Feburary  when we made liquid nitrogen icecream at my birthday party ? Well, I put a short video clip of that on my myspace blog.

Sometime about 2 weeks ago, Myspace picked up that video and featured it on their home page. Since then . 293,471people have viewed  the video. That  really shows how powerful internet media can be.. !

Tuesday evening – jet lag

Oy… All three of us are walking around pretty spacy. I’m need to get to bed very soon. I did have a productive day back. I managed to push through the 1052 email messages I’d received since a week ago Sat. and caught up with the work things that had happened while I was gone. I also managed to work through  the backlog of emails  that people had  sent us about SamStones they’d placed or found . The ‘Where are Samstones‘ map is now up to date. I also went through and did some maintaince on Sam’s Myspace.. To this day I d  not read his private mail.. but I do occaisonaly have to remove the Spam that sometimes builds up on his comment list.. As I was doign that I was so moved by the comments that his friends keep posting to his site. If you’ve never read them… it’s worth a look.

I think all I’m going to do tonight in the blog is post some links to videos I took on the India trip. I didn’ thave enough bandwidth to upload them.. so I’ll do it now..

Here are a few videos about driving. the first is a time lapse that we took with Gabe’s camera. We’re driving up into the mountains towards Munnar. What you can’t see in the movie is the sheer cliffs that are right off to our right .. eeek !

The next is a video of some crazy passing that we had to do on these narrow mountain roads.. close your eyes !

Here are some monkeys we foudn by the side of the road on our first day. That was a big deal for us then.. we didn’t know that we’d be seeing monkeys everywhere we went.

.. and speaking of Monkey’s.. This little guy was in a zoo we stopped at.. I guess no one cared that the bars weren’t enough to keep him in

Cows were the most common animals we saw… They are everywhere and they are protected by law.. they can wonder into streets, homes, etc. We saw these guys .. or actually .. these guys chased us off .. in Cochin

Some of the Cows and Oxes are pressed into service as wanering minstrals..Wehre theire lead into your yard wiht loud music and you have to pay before they’re led away.. I’s sort of like a marriachi arraingement.

We also saw many elephants. These guys were at a rescue/training hospital

This movie is of a a bunch of musicians practicing for the Hindu Pooja festival. The video doesn’t do justice to the powerful effect ofbeing in the same room as this music. It was awesome !

Here’s a quick video of Gabe driving the speed boat in the resevoir. He’s good at it !

This last one is of our friend Chandu trying to juggle 3 coconuts.. Pretty impressive !

Well. that’s all I have for tonight.. Rmemebr the Halloween party is Sat, 7PM at our house.. Please come in costume if possiblr. We’d love to see you there.

OK.. gnite all, gnite Sam
-me