This autumn has been stingy with clear weather days aligned to peak fall color. Shortly after arriving at work this morning, I checked both my calendar and the weather forecast. Realizing I had a light schedule and a window of ideal weather, I decided I would take a vacation day to enjoy the fall foliage, something I increasingly look forward to with each passing year. I drove north for two hours to the Franconia Notch State Park, a favorite New Hampshire destination which never fails to provide a wealth of photographic opportunities. I revisited many of my favorite locations and several new ones. My calf muscle has healed sufficiently to allow pain free walking and benefited from all the hiking I did over the course of the day. I returned to Concord by 7:30PM with a camera full of wonderful images and a happy soul.

In 7 years of maintaining this photo journal I have never devoted a post to a topic entirely unrelated to our family. Today I would like to adopt, as my own daughter, 14-year old Malala Yousafzai from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of Pakistan. She was named after Malalai of Maiwand, a Pashtun poet and warrior woman. At the age of 11, she began blogging for the BBC under a pseudonym about the atrocities of the Taliban regime and their ban on education for girls. Malala was awarded the first National Peace Award by the Pakistani government last year and was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by the international children’s advocacy group KidsRights Foundation. She remains a defiant voice against religious extremist views and an outspoken champion for children’s rights.

Yesterday she was shot in the head and neck along with two of her classmates as they were returning home from school by two masked gunmen. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed to try again after learning she had survived. She is now in stable condition after an operation to remove the bullet from her neck.

I was reduced to tears and filled with anger when I learned of this story. Perhaps it is Malala’s nearness in age and appearance to Maya that has contributed to my profound grief and rage. I am not a man who believes in a God but I found myself praying for the full recovery of this brave young girl.

Today, I embrace Malala as my own daughter. Today, let her be your daughter as well. Tomorrow, let her be the daughter of all nations and let us all vow to protect her and to punish the cowards who attack our children.

In what will likely be the last interview Nicolai grants related to his now famous soccer goal (nearly 1.5 million YouTube hits and counting), we were visited this evening by a crew from the Fuji Television Network. They are working on a segment for a TV show called Shiritagari that will air in Japan this Friday afternoon. We have also been contacted by a South Korean network interested in doing a 20-30 minute short documentary piece to be filmed over 3-4 days. Given how time consuming each one of these interviews can be, we have decided to say no to the Korean opportunity. Nicolai is in the thick of the college application process which takes top priority. He has completed applications to 6 schools and plans to add another 6 before he is done. He is also sensitive to the distraction such interviews create to his soccer team when he is filmed at practice or during games. Hopefully life will now return to what passes for normal at the Calabria household.

I have encouraged Kyle to send the occasional photo of his life at Santa Clara University so that we can share it here with our family and friends. He is pictured in the basement of his dorm, participating in a P90X fitness workout. We are happy that he has nearly returned to his pre-snowboarding accident level of strength and flexibility. He made great progress over the summer and judging from this photo (see if you can find Waldo) it appears he is really staying on the path to full recovery. From our conversations with him it sounds like he is doing well academically and thriving socially. All of us miss him enormously and are looking forward to seeing him at Thanksgiving.

The joy of being an uncle is that you can enjoy a relationship with your nieces and nephews that is unencumbered by years of established patterns that exist between parent and child. My niece Rachel is a smart and beautiful young woman who is already an accomplished ballroom dancer at the age of 15. Like her mother, she is something of a fashionista and her idea of fun leans more towards an afternoon at the shopping mall than a walk through the woods. I decided, with very little input from her (an uncle’s prerogative) that she needed to join me on a kayak outing. The fact that she liked the color of the paddling shirt I provided (hint to her mother that she would like a rain coat in this hue) and that I could offer her a selection of sun hats to choose from worked in my favor. Before she could say “boo” we were in my car headed for a nearby put in. After a brief review of basic paddling strokes, she was on the water where we spent a few minutes practicing before setting off downstream for the Old North Bridge. Rachel’s dainty little stabs at the water soon gave way to powerful strokes that propelled her with great speed. By the end of our three mile round trip she had mastered forward and reverse sweep strokes, could easily perform a 360 degree turn and was able to steer with great accuracy. We encountered several Blue Herons and a couple of turtles which we glided right up to for close viewing. Rachel was undaunted by my reports of trolls which lived under the bridges or alligators that infested the river. She did, however, seem genuinely terrified when a tiny fish jumped out of the water near her kayak. Apparently her next uncle-niece outing will need to include a fishing pole, an adventure I will leave to my brother Mark, the master angler of the family.

Cool night air made for perfect camping weather. Maya and I were quite cozy in our down sleeping bags and two person tent. We enjoyed a hearty breakfast in the nearby town of Jaffrey before embarking on a kayaking tour of the Contoocook Lake and River. Maya can be seen above just barely able to paddle underneath the Monadnock Branch Rail Trail. I had to resort to a Limbo style maneuver and had an even tighter clearance.

This is without a doubt my favorite time of year in New England. Everywhere you turn the colors of autumn cover the landscape and in our case the waterscape as well. I never take for granted the beauty which surrounds us and sharing the experience with Maya is all that a father could ask for. We covered about 4 miles on the water but a very serious headwind on our return translated to about 6 miles of paddling. Maya put ashore on what could easily be the state’s tiniest island and relaxed after a full morning on the water. From this vantage point she took a photo of me which I thought she did a very nice job of framing. We returned to Concord by mid afternoon as the perfect weather gave way to overcast skies and the threat of rain.

Twenty two years ago, on a similarly spectacular fall day, I married Jeanine at our home in Fishers, Indiana. Our ceremony was held outdoors among massive beech trees with nature as our cathedral. We celebrated our anniversary this evening in the company of Maya and my sister Alissa and her two children, Rachel and Johnnie, at the Petit Robert Bistro in Needham. An exquisite finish to an exceptional day. My only wish now is for another 22 years with the woman I love.

With kayaks atop the car and camping equipment in the back, Maya and I left on an impromptu father-and-daughter weekend adventure. When we left the house at around 6pm we turned right on Williams Road with the intent of heading north. As Maya ran down a checklist of critical gear, I realized I had forgotten my GPS unit and PLB (personal locator beacon – last resort distress signal). We turned back having traveled less than a mile. With the missing items retrieved, we struck out again and this time turned left on Williams Road heading to the west.

There is something very exciting about setting out on an adventure without a predetermined destination. When we stopped for dinner about an hour later we found ourselves in the vicinity of Ringe, Hew Hampshire at Lilly’s on the Pond, a fine restaurant familiar to us from a past outing. When we returned to the car we programmed our navigator to locate the nearest campground and were please to discover that we were minutes from the Woodmore Campground which happily had a few tent sites remaining (exquisite fall foliage brings many campers to NH at this time of year). Maya and I quickly pitched our tent and built a rather massive fire by which she did homework while I enjoyed photographing her.

Chocolate syrup, honey, and milk. Which is the most dense? Which is the least? This evening Maya conducted a science experiment to determine the answers to these questions. Her initial hypothesis was correct as confirmed by her testing and documented in this photograph that she took. Apparently, Maya is unfamiliar with the tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and concluded her experiment by sampling her concoction which she reported to be VERY sweet.

Nicolai’s penchant for destroying tires has extended to rims. During his very short driving career, he has managed to destroy (not talking flat tires here) four tires. Today’s incident was his first foray into rim damage. According to his account, he drove across a construction trench at the high school at a reasonable speed. The photographic evidence suggests that either he was going very fast or he had very little air in the tire. Regardless of whether it was due to excess speed or poor maintenance the bill to Nicolai for this lapse of judgment will be $550. On a positive note, reaction to his recent news coverage has led to a speaking engagement request in Pennsylvania which may help him offset the damage to his bank balance. Today he also gave an interview to a commercial website called Proving People Wrong and donated the $1000 fee he earned to the CCHS Soccer Team.

Nicolai, with engineering consultation from Maya, constructed this PVC xylophone for a school project. As part of the assignment, he had to explore the mathematical relationship between the length and diameter of the pipes to the frequency of the tone produced by each, and the relationship to the speed of sound. Apart from the questionable paint job, the construction turned out quite well and the “instrument” produces an array of tones. I appreciate the fact that this assignment has helped further Nico’s interest in building things in the shop and with each new project he is gaining new skills and mastering new tools. I particularly enjoy watching the way Maya offers her assistance. She anticipates problems but lets Nico make his own discoveries and then offers helpful suggestions and ideas.

Nico’s interview with Jim Axelrod of the CBS Evening News aired this evening. Jeanine and I sat with him on the couch, our anticipation growing with each promo. It is fair to say that he was more nervous waiting for the segment than he was during the interview. We were thrilled with the piece and pleased to see so many of his teammates included in the opening scene (they have had to put up with a lot of media attention for Nico and each is a star in his own right). Phone calls and e-mails started pouring in from all over the country and we are so happy that this story has allowed us to reconnect with so many people.

As promised, here is the Boston Globe article about Nico. If you click on the image and then click again on the larger one it should be possible to read. This is one of the more comprehensive articles to date and we liked the photographs that they took.

I celebrate my 54th birthday today blessed with more gifts than I deserve. I have shared half my life with a woman I continue to love dearly. Our three children have made us very proud, each in their own way. I have enjoyed good fortune in my career and I am still, plus or minus a pulled calf muscle, playing soccer. Some people do not know how lucky they are. I DO.

Jeanine and I started the day at Maya’s soccer game. It was an exciting match despite the 0-0 tie and Maya was in fine form. She made a very impressive run up the center of the field beating several defenders before laying off a perfect pass to a forward who almost scored. During halftime another parent shared his copy of the Boston Globe with me. There was a picture of Nicolai on the front page and an in depth article about his recent soccer exploits (I will post the entire article tomorrow). Most importantly, it included details of today’s Kicks for Cancer fundraiser which is taking place at the high school. The Kicks for Cancer event is held annually in memory of Concord resident Lois Wells, who passed away in 2007 after a courageous battle with cancer. Last year the team raised more than $28,000 for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute to support women’s cancer research. This year I was asked to photograph the event and was happy to volunteer.

Each player on the six participating teams wore a special jersey carrying the name of a loved one who had battled with cancer. Normally, when shooting a soccer match I try to capture images which include the athlete’s face. For this event, I prefer to shoot ones which capture the names on the back of jerseys.

Nicolai’s middle name is Laurent, so named for his grandfather, who he chose to honor on this occasion.

When he participated in Kicks for Cancer as a junior, Kyle, our first soccer star, dedicated his play to the memory of his grandmother, Eunice. That match produced one of my favorite photos of Kyle playing soccer.

I caught iRobot’s Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer acting suspiciously as he exited the office of one of our financial Directors who was on vacation today. This Director who will not be named is so cheap that he uses a couple of reams of printer paper to elevate his computer monitor to the correct height. Our CLO, who I can now see is something of a prankster, has been adding a ream of paper each day this week. Once I discovered what he was up to, I suggested that he start another pile underneath the telephone.

Let’s see. Improper use of company resources, an OSHA safety violation, and unauthorized access to a secured office. All this from the head of the legal department. I love working at iRobot.