A Tribute To Our Dog Cloe

Today is my 43rd birthday and I am being uplifted by all the messages on Twitter and Facebook, but today is a sad day for the Norks. Our dog Cloe has been battling kidney failure for several months.  We have been watching her waste away before our eyes and the time has come to put her to rest.

In November of 2007, we lost our German Shepherd suddenly. Cloe came to us through a Google Search on the key word "German Shepherd Rescue". My wife Ali searched on the internet and her picture came up in the search results. Cloe had such a happy look on her face. Ali said "That's the dog for us!"

So on Saturday December 15, 2007 the family made the trip down to Brooklyn NY. This was the first time we had ever been there.
We got to see the Brooklyn Bridge and even a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty!

Cloe was taken out of the kill shelter on her last day before being euthanized by the Brooklyn Animal Foster Network. They set up in the parking lot of a store in Brooklyn trying to find adoptive homes for the animals.

A student at Brooklyn College saw Cloe in the morning on his way to class and stopped to play with her. On his way home he saw that she was still there. He knew what that meant. If no one adopted her, she would be taken back to the shelter to be euthanized. 

So he decided to sneak her into his apartment even though his landlord didn't allow dogs. Shortly after Ali saw Cloe's picture and the rest is history.

Cloe quickly became a member of the family posing in our 2007 Christmas card, playing in the snow and taking hikes in the woods with the boys. She was a great watch dog that looked mean enough but everyone knew she wouldn't hurt a fly. It took her many years but eventually she made friends with the cats and in her final years she seemed happy to see them!  Cloe loved her boys and took turns sleeping in each of their bedrooms at night.

Cloe will be sorely missed but we were so happy to have her as part of our family for the past 4+ years. Cloe rest in peace my friend.

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Wallace Roney - Cyberspace

Cyberspace by Wallace Roney Listen on Posterous

I've never been a big Jazz fan. I think it's like the poetry of the music world.

It takes some work to understand and appreciate.

I will continue to give it a chance. I'm wondering if seeing live jazz will help me connect with it more...

People are buzzing about tripple Grammy Award  winning Wallace Roney coming to town. 

Take a listen to this song. What do you think?

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Teen at the ATC

Taken at Amity Teen Center

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@lodgemusic performers from Saturday 2/4 [pic]

Taken at Lakeview Lodge

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We Can Do Better?

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Cloud of sand

Taken at Bethany Town Hall

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Green Haven Co-housing Sociocracy Conference - Day 1

Jerry Koch-Gonzalez and John Buck lead the Green Haven Co-Housing Sociocracy Workshop held at The Grove in New Haven Connecticut .
Here are some snapshots of day 1 1/28/2012 and more information about Sociocracy: 

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Dynamic Governance at Lost Valley Educational Center and intentional community:

An introduction to sociocracy and its processes written by Jerry Koch-Gonzalez:
"Governance by Equals: An Introduction to Sociocracy"

Equality_in_Governance_-_Intro_to_Sociocracy.pdf Download this file

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The Nork Creations For The Create96 Show-And-Tell #FF @wordmason @jkubarych @create96 #NHV #SWCT

I love how my good friend Aldon Hynes always puts up Follow Friday posts on his blog. 

I want to do a Create96 themed Follow Friday (#FF).

Tonight Friday 1/27/2012 is the Create96 show-and-tell - 6:30 at The Grove.

#FF Create96 Masterminds:

@wordmason - Mason Rabinowitz 

@jkubarych - Jeff Kubarych

@create96  - Create96.com

The Norks will be there in full force!

Evan will be unavailing the latest music video from his side-project band Synchron.

Hayden will be showing the slide show he made for the 2011 Robotics season to a rockin Led Zeppelin soundtrack.

Liam will be showing his Harry Potter Lego creation. (pictures to follow)

Ali and I will be announcing the launch of GiveLaptops.org

 

Give Laptops collects donated laptops less than 5 years old, refurbishes them in partnership with City Wide Youth Coalition

and distributes them through teacher partners directly to the children who could most benefit from a laptop.

Goal for 2012 is to distribute 24 laptops. For our pilot year, two schools have signed on:

• Amity High School in Woodbridge
• New Horizons High School in New Haven

We handed out our first laptop (donated by a fellow Grover) and have 3 more ready to be given to students.

If you would like to donate a laptop to the cause, please fill out the form here: http://givelaptops.org/donate-a-laptop

Create 96 Idea List.pdf Download this file

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Amity Teen Center Coats For Kids - 1,002 coats to give away!

Hello All;
The Amity Teen Center has acquired 1,002 brand new winter coats from Operation Warm in Pennsylvania.  Joyce Van Lines has graciously offered to pick up the coats in Pennsylvania and deliver them to the Amity Teen Center.  Joyce and Operation Warm are still working out the timing and logistics. In the mean time the teen center wanted to get the word out to organizations in the greater New Haven area that have children and teens in need. They would like to have all organizations fill out a coat request form to identify the number of coats in each size that their community could use this winter. Once the coats arrive they will coordinate with a representative from each organization come to the teen center to pick up all of their coats to distribute to their community.

Please have an organization representative fill out this form indicating the number of coats needed:
http://bit.ly/coats2012

The teen center would also like your help in identifying all organizations that could use new winter coats. Please share this message with any other organizations in the greater New Haven area that you think may have a need for brand new children's coats.

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Evan's English Report

Evan had to do an English report over Christmas Break so he decided to do it using Xtranormal Desktop. 

Kino_and_Doug_english_-_Final.mov Watch on Posterous

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Video Of The BMAD Solstice Bonfire 12/22/2011

Happy Solstice everyone!

I hope you enjoy this snippet of video as much as I do. My favorite part is at 1:10 when Bill is stoking the fire and causing sparks to fly up into the night sky!

 

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My Collaborative Consumption Wish List

As a techie geek I get asked for help from my friends all the time with setting up computers, recovering lost files and just about anything else you can think up.

I run a consulting business and charge a decent rate for my time but I always feel awkward charging friends.  I wrote a blog post about this back in October that's worth a read:

http://jcnork.posterous.com/creative-consumption-in-action

Since that time I have don't several collaborative deals and people have been asking me what they can trade so I made a quick list:

If you want to barter for service there are a few things I can think of off the top of my head that we could pick from:

• Watch people's kids at the Lakeview Lodge Concerts (www.lakeviewlodgemusic.org)
• Watch my kids so Ali and I can have a date night
• Clean my gutters
• Install a new mailbox
  
• Prepare dinner for the family
• Clean garage 
  
• Mount and frame 3  8x10 photos
• Fix the ceiling in my kitchen
• Put more insulation in my attic
• Purchase and install 4 guitar wall mounts
• Clean our windows
• Cut the dead branches out of the oak tree in my back yard

Some of these jobs are small and some are not but all things I would most likely need to pay someone to do for me.

With collaborative consumption everyone wins!

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Happy Thanksgiving! Meet the Parents - Saying Grace

Hope you have a wonderful day! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DlNF_ukr0I

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Music Video - "Electron City" by Synchron

I love this video by Synchron. My favorite part Is 0:39 to 0:49 :) I want a video of just that playing over and over. I have a request into Synchron to make it :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twA7fT67r8s

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Our First Letterbox - Naugatuck Forest Stonewall Letterbox

We stumbled across a letter box completely by accident last Sunday. The boys were so excited that they wanted to place their own in the woods. Our goal starting out this morning was to make it to Beacon Cap but I think we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way so we decided to leave our box in an old stone wall.

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Nork's Stonewall Letterbox Location:
	Latitude:	41.453997º N
	Longitude:	73.014420º W
	Altitude:	712 ft

View Norks Letterbox in a larger map

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