Tonight was the fathers forever Christmas gathering. Fathers forever is a group I joined right after Sam died. Our common thread is that we’ve had all had children who have died. It’s a great group of guys… Some old-timers and some new people with fresh wounds. It’s an almost magical gathering… We get around and talk about all sorts of things not just our common tragedy… But our lives, our hobbies… Sports (though I suck at that)… Etc.

After eating our weight in pizza… We all gathered to check in. Steve took us through the lighting of the menorah with his son Jarrod had made… It was pretty touching. It was kind of interesting since so few of us are actually Jewish… It didn’t matter.

It also didn’t matter but Hanukkah is still two weeks away :-)

We had Christians,Jews,Hindus, Muslims… And I suspect quite a few atheists.… We all had various spiritual transformations after our children passed

From that point we all stood around and told funny stories about our kids… It was wonderful and sad… Mostly really really funny. I told the story about Sam’s broken elbow after I threw them up and forgot to catch him

After that circle time… We hung around and looked at each other’s pictures and got caught up.…

I Left feeling both happy and sad… And knowing a little bit more about Adrian, John Junior, Jared, Talia, Stephan, Anya, Annie, Samantha, and all the others

nite all, nite Sam

-me

I had a super busy day here in Cambridge. It involves lots of going back-and-forth to campus. I’ve been wearing my Santa hat everywhere I go and it’s wonderful to see peoples faces light up When my hat lights up

Made a bunch of new people today… Including some very cool people in a bio tech start up and finally managed to sit down with Adam from the media lab. He’s a friend of my friend Rodney who’s doing a fellowship with the media lab. Adam is in the dream lab at the media lab and we had so much fun talking

We’re going to figure out something we can make together



Around 630 I met my friend Steffen who is here visiting from Australia with two of his colleagues… Hank… Who is a well-known retired professor from Mit at Carl Who is the current professor there. We had lots of fun talking about common friends in common interest. It was a really good time

After that I walked a few blocks and Matt with my friend Hendrik who I hadn’t seen in quite a few weeks. It was really good catching up with them… By that time I was pretty far from the hotel and it was late so I got an Uber. The driver, Stanley, was awesome guy whose daughter is very interested in making things. We sat and talked for about 20 minutes after he he got to the hotel trading ideas about how to get kids interested in science…

I Really like this kind of day

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

I had the pleasure today of hanging out on the Yael campus. I’m down here for a collaboration meeting. I met so many really nice people. I haven’t been on campus here in probably 20 years. It’s actually quite a beautiful place

I was here seen our new friends Jeff who is the dean of engineering and science And his very impressive and diverse staff.

Tour of the brand new science building at Yale. It’s absolutely beautiful with green houses on top, the patio with a wonderful view, and some really amazing laboratories

It was fun hanging out with my IBM team Jeff and Lorin . It turns out that Lorin Is a good friend of my very good friend Rafe ! And Jeff from Yale is the brother of my friend Hugh at Red Hat.. He also knows Rafe well

Very cool small world things

I got to Cambridge around seven and spent the evening walking around trying to shop… I was wearing my light up Santa hat… I really loved That many people came up to talk to me… I guess I AM Santa

Got to get some sleep.

Nite all, Nite Sam

-me

I spent nine hours driving through the rain to do a pilgrimage today. I have a meeting at Yale tomorrow so I decided to come down a day early so I could go visit my friends at the Tesla science Museum in WardonCliff Long Island. It’s not really cold Wardencliff anymore.. I think it’s called Sherborn or something like that. What matters is that the last laboratory that Nichola Tesla had was on this site. It was a beautiful Stanley white building that was Tesla’s headquarters until the late 1920s… Maybe later… I don’t recall. Anyway I thought the building had been destroyed when it’s 75 foot tower had been taken down. Not so… It actually had fallen into other hands. It Turns out that it was most recently used by the Agfa Corporation for chemical manufacturing and had become a Superfund site. Now a brief group of people have bought the land and are making it back into a Tesla museum and science center. I’m down here because I’d like to be involved somehow. The details of that are a little too premature to discuss here… But their vision for what this place will become is amazing…

. It’s still too toxic inside To go inside without special clothing. Tonight I had to Satisfy myself by walking around the old building and the old coil base. Even that was wonderful



I had to travel to and from the museum by ferry boat… It was something that Google maps had forgotten to tell me.… It was a pleasure to be out on Long Island sound in the stormy weather

OK… I have an early meeting tomorrow… Got to go to sleep.

More tomorrow

Nite all, nite Sam

-me