Jason Jupiter has Landed

We are all extremely excited about Shamsi's new arrival (in early summer). She had a beautiful baby boy named Jason Jupiter Rune. He is sweet, cute and feisty. Isaiah and I drove down to meet him and hang with everyone for a night. Isaiah was buzzing on sweets that great grandma kept feeding him the first evening and by 10:30 pm I had to drag him over to Dad's for a nighty-night but not before he had Doug and Jamal in hysterics with a mad ramble about lattes and airplanes while doing super dooper karate kicks in the air. It was kind of scary but hilarious. The next day we went for a hike with Dad, Naya and Mimi to shoot a pellet gun. We got off about 10 shots before the thing broke. Dad threw it into the woods and we caught a snake and collected buttons (there used to be a button factory in that area long ago). On the way home Isaiah and I googled "swimming holes in CT close to I84" and found a fabulous bridge-rope swing that we played at for a couple of hours before driving home. umm ummm... good times

Triathlons

Well, I did it and am over it! I trained and participated in two triathlons this year. The first was the Whately Police triathlon where I placed 38th out of 110. Go to coolrunnings at Times_for_Whately_Triathlon to see my exact times (Also note 7th place). I did this race with three other coworkers (shown below). Then I did the Greenfield triathlon. I placed 72nd out of 260. I feel good about both results and have never felt this in-shape ever... and finally learned sort of how to swim (although I did do a lot of breast strokin it). I hope somehow to keep up some of this exercise regime through out the winter. It feels really good and I want to do both of those events again next year.

June 21st

It has been a while and much has transpired in our amazing lives... it is weird... could be a whole lotta stuff happened or a whole lotta nothing depending on how you look at it. Our lives are so amazingly full and the days just fly by... being on auto pilot, acting and serving with out much reflection on yesterday and not a whole lot of thought about tomorrow beyond the usual who will pick up the kids, what time and where.... we are all in this crazy "do" mode. The kids still require a lot of attention and it is at once easier than before and harder... we actually have to treat them like "real humans" now... I know that sounds horrible but they are becoming "people" whose weaknesses and strengths and real feelings to go along with them that we have to learn to recognize and navigate just like.... well real people... that still sounds so cold and callous but those are the only words I have to describe it at the moment... Both boys are wonderful yittle guys with huge smelly feet and fascinating sparks in their eyes. Aman is almost as tall as Isaiah and Isaiah almost fits end to end on his bed... Anyway, this "fullness of life" was our chaperone this year easing Britt and I into our 17th year of marriage on June 21st. We didn't do much on that longest day of the year other than to nod our acknowledgment of each other a little more enthusiastically than usual as we passed each other on the stairs going about the day's activities. Sounds depressing but it's not. I love the routine I have with Britt and the whole family. We have time set aside for celebrating 16 years of marriage but on that day, in order for things to be smooth we made it smooth... priorities in the right place. So I leave you with a pic of Mason really expressing how both Britt and I felt on the inside as we passed each other on the stairs on the day of our 16th anniversary.

Creativity

I was just listening to a talk by Elloy Anello at one of the recent Social and Economic Development conferences (http://sed.skyrunner.net/ ) in the car. I am an addict now. I take any excuse to jump in the car to listen to these talks and others that I am currently digitizing. He quoted Maria Montessorri as saying that creativity happens when truth and imagination get together for one common purpose... (paraphrase) ...what a wonderfully concise definition of creativity... I like it. What do you think? (This image by the way is of someplace in Iran)

Catching U Up!

We have had a full couple of months. Spring is here in full. Warmth has permeated everything and we still have the wonderful cool nights… but warm is king right now. The smells of spring are wonderful and waking up to the birdsong is heavenly… even if 2 hours earlier the Umass party goers were still in the high gear in their raucous romps through the neighborhood (earplugs) Gene Wallace has been living with us for a few months while she gets the weight up on her new baby girl Amani Pearl (hey that rhymes). It has been nice seeing Gene and catching up and also I have to admit it is sooooo nice having an infant in the house to hold…

Tomorrow Sunday is the kid’s last day of their break which started off in Maine on the beach for a few days with Britt. They have been … well growing. Isaiah is moody and spends a lot of time listening to story tapes… lost in his own little world. He is now in travel soccer and has games all over this section of MA. And Aman has been showing a little interest in playing… vamos a ver. Aman sees Isaiah’s moodiness as his cue to go play happily by himself most times and has taken up drawing as his main creative outlet.

Britt and Jamal worked for days to finish the first of a couple videos about Fit Together the program she started for Service Net. If you want to check it out go to: Fit_Together_Website . Britt went down a few weekends ago to NYC to support Ericka and Jennifer (my cousin) in their running a half marathon. Britt ended up participating… she walked the first 10 miles then ran the last three!!! One of the images here is of 5 women. From left to right is unknown, Ericka, Katherine Switzer, Jennifer and Britt.

Katherine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon that had been exclusively men til the 70s or so. She disguised herself, registered and ran almost the whole thing before someone saw that she was a she and they physically forced her from the race.

I have been doing a lot of cool projects at work that are sort of wrapping up now and have a lot of nit picky detail work to do for the next few weeks that I am not too excited about (at least the skate park is open for my lunch time escapes). I am also beginning training for a mini triathlon in early July. It will be ½ mile swim, 14 mile bike, 3 mile run… should be interesting… especially since Alf will be running it (thank God he is not in my age bracket!!!). I also played three of my songs at Amherst College arts night for about 70 people and then choked severely singing Allah’u’abha for about 100 folks at the first day of Ridvan celebration last Monday. Oh well little by little I will get over this insane nervousness at being in front of a group of people with a guitar!

The Alschulers are in Ireland for the week sightseeing and visiting a college friend of Ericka’s. We really miss them.

Anyway, I am beat at the moment. We had a pretty amazing romp up to the top of one of the peaks at Mt. Tom with Aman’s friend Ethan and his dad Matt. This involved the usual birch jumping, climbing, eating, hiding, trimming, throwing, yelling, etc…What a great day. Here are some of the images.