{"id":1296,"date":"2007-04-07T05:08:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-07T09:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2007\/04\/07\/friday-night-samstones\/"},"modified":"2007-04-07T05:08:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-07T09:08:00","slug":"friday-night-samstones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2007\/04\/07\/friday-night-samstones\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday night – SamStones"},"content":{"rendered":"
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  <\/span>I’ve been talking to many folks today about our SamStones project today so I think I’ll write a little more about it. As most of you know, SamStones are little fired clay rocks with Sam’s name on them. We’ve been making them at community gatherings since just after Christmas. The idea first started when Diane was thinking about what gift to Sam we should have in his Christmas stocking. I came up with the idea of having Sam’s name sand blasted into some nice river stones that we’d found in the Huntington<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> river. <\/p>\n

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Turns out that we all loved holding and rubbing these stones and started thinking about how we could make enough to give to our friends. Our friend Jen, a potter, had the great idea of making replicas of these real stones out of clay. She made name stamps by pressing heat-setting Sculpy into the sandblasted names on the rocks. We then had our first SamStones party at a potluck at our house. Since then we’ve had at least 4 more, At each we start  <\/span>with two bricks (40 pounds) of potter’s clay. Everyone grabs small handfuls of clay and form them into small shapes.. some are small flattened disks, some are  <\/span>circles, some are  <\/span>hearts.. some are  <\/span>other fancy shapes. Then we stamp Sam’s name into the clay using the Sculpy stamps. We then lay them out on the table to dry.  <\/span>It’s so much fun to do this kind of dirty hands-on squishy work with our adult and kid friends. The atmosphere at these parties is really filled with love.
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 <\/span>When they were dry enough to handle, Jen takes them up to her house and puts in the color. Sometimes she has a few of our friends over to help with these steps. First they take a dark iron oxide stain and puts it in the imprinted letters.. then after letting it dry, they sand the stain off of the raised surface, leaving just Sam’s name darkened. Then they hand writes our website Samstones.org<\/a> on the back with iron oxide stain. Then they fire the stones.<\/p>\n

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At this point we’ve made several thousand. Our original idea was to had them out to friends in our community. We have a bowl of them at our house for people to take. We encourage folks to either keep them, pass them on or put them in places special to them or to Sam. I’ve also gotten in the habit of taking them to pass out to friends when I travel too, We’ve even put a way to request a SamStone<\/a> from our website.  <\/span>Our hope is that people will find the SamStones and see Sam’s name and feel some of the love that went into making them. We also hope they check out the web site<\/a> and learn a little about Sam<\/a> and his family, see some pictures<\/a>, hear some of Sam’s music <\/a>and see  <\/span>the legacy he left. We also have information there on the Sam Cohn Foundation<\/a> we’ve created to fund scholarships in music, snowboarding, and summer camps. On the website you can leave a story<\/a> about Sam.. or request a SamStone<\/a>.. or let us know where you placed or found one<\/a>. We even have a map<\/a> that let’s you see where the SamStones are ending up.<\/p>\n

   <\/span>Anyway.. we’ve been making SamStones for about four months and now we’re getting several SamStone stories a week. I was looking today at all of the stories at it really makes me feel so good to read them and look at the pictures and movies people have sent like these I got from my Friend Robert today. he and his family placed this SamStone in High Hartsop Dodd – Cumbria England<\/a>,<\/p>\n

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I’ve been adding all of them to the map<\/a> on SamStones.  <\/span><\/p>\n

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Each of these ‘pins’ is a story someone has sent us about a SamStone they’ve placed.  <\/span>Many of them have pictures and videos. Here’s a quick list of some of them that are on the map. Check some of them out !<\/p>\n

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