My Pitas page

Salon
Nerve
The American Prospect
Mother Jones

University of Florida
Many people say you can go to school at any age. It's a very open minded free thinking point of view, but I went back to school for a work skill in computers and it was not so easy.
I have computer skills now, but no work. Isn't that typical?
Of course before I went to Santa Fe Community College pursuing a degree in computer programming and ending up with a certificate in business data processing, I had other ideas about what to do with my life. I wanted to be a yogi. But yoga, or union with the divine, is not something we create Pell Grants and Stafford Loans for in the United States of America. No money in it!
In the 70's I didn't pass at the University and I was put on academic suspension. I didn't pass because I overstepped the 3 absence rule. Some students are very good at the game of attending classes. They miss 3 and only 3. I missed 4 in a couple of classes and failed them. Physical Science, an 8:00 A.M. class and Physical Education. The rule is apparently not enforced universally because I missed more than 3 of my freshman math class and still got a C.
It's a long story of how I became one of those without a Bachelors of the Arts degree, but psychiatrists and psychologists I spoke to in the 80's insisted I should go back to school and I wondered why. Why didn't they support my Guru Hunt? Why were they so disinterested in my thinking an important teacher, Guru, was about to appear?
Well, some Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door the other day and I guess that's the reason why.
I might have indeed felt encouraged to go back to school or continue had a I been able to find one course, even in philosophy, on the Bhagavad-Gita or anything like that. The one course I ended up taking and failing in philosophy was called "The Problem of the Self" and it was really, some said, for lawyers and those who had a philosophy requirement. It explored memory and ths self, experience and the self and the brain and the self. It was pretty dull although the teacher seemed to be leading a rather exciting life.

Siddha Yoga
I'm looking at this movie, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy starring Will Ferrell and it sort of reminds me of my friends from college, one of whom I encountered in robes and with haircut at the Hare Krsna Center in Gainesville, Florida.
The put on proper, almost British accent Will uses when he is making love to the new anchor, the first woman anchor at his station was a dimension that made me recall the Hare Krsna Movement and their very formal and pro-life spirit.
I was very attracted to the stories of the life of Krsna. I had read about incarnations of God and heard them compared to Jesus and it was a natural thing for me to be interested.
I find though that it is only these Vaishnavas who can present the story of the life of Krsna or Rama with any enthusiasm. I open a book I've bought from SYDA, Siddha Yoga and Associates, about Krsna or Ram and I just lose all my interest. I don't feel anything. It just doesn't "get me."
I wonder what sex has to do with it all as I was just thinking about The Urantia Book, and I thought of it as sexless. Perhaps you have heard about the devotees being like the Gopis and Krsna, with whom they seek union, their paramour. Ram Butler in his Siddha Yoga Correspondance Course to which I subscribed for some years says this erotic dimension is unheard of in western religion.

Amnesty International
Dear Sen. Martinez,
Last night I saw a movie depicting crimes against political dissidents in South Africa called "A Dry White Season."
The torture against innocents that the British sponsored white government covered up was dispicable, evil and sick.
Many invoke the name of Jesus these days to talk about abortion and sexual variance, but I would have them remember how Jesus, the Prophet, Messiah, Enlightened One, Avatar, Bestowal of Truth was tortured upon the cross. They may believe that Jesus was crucified for their sin, but there is no denying he was innocent of the "sedition" he was accused of.
If you have supported the McCain amendment to stop or prevent America from torturing its terrorist detainees, please continue. If you have not supported McCain, then please reverse yourself.
Sadgurunath Maharaj ki jay!

Car Mirror
Got in another little access with the wild life last week.
Something, a deer I think, hit me from the side and busted out my sideview mirror.
I called the Sherriff's Department and they took about 2 hours to come and write it up.
I think it was just 2 years ago I hit a buck out on one of these dark roads late at night. I was lucky to get home because he really damaged the car very bad. I didn't stop to see if I had killed the deer but I went back the next day and it was plain to see I had.
It's very dangerous out on the roads late at night, but that's because these days people won't be friends with each other and I think that's because there is no dope or something. There is no counter-culture. They have all had a falling out with one another. In fact I saw at a Rainbow Festival mentioned on the net they wanted friends to reconcile their differences with one another. This was the same festival where a woman was arrested for being topless and she took the state to court over the action and won on the basis of sex discrimination.
Ha ha! If men can do it, so can women.
At the museum of natural history on the U of F campus they have a bathroom that does not discriminate sexually. Men and women use the same facilities. It's known as the same sex rest area I think. I haven't been in there but I like the idea. Hell, we're just relieving our bladders in there aren't we? Yes, of course there is that other function.
Well, before that I had seen where they have facilities to change baby. That's another thing we can do in there, but I think these days we cannot smoke.

American Humanist Organization
Friend of mine I had a falling out with, he had a girl and she was very smart and attractive, an artist, a talented girl.
This friend and I weren't naturally friends we were just polite to each other like people are at parties and in Gainesville we had a lot of parties.
The thing was we had other guys who we were closer to but they all left because they were pursuing careers and other opportunities. Me and this friend we were not so fortunate in getting jobs and such as the friends we were close to and so we were left to be with each other because our closer friends just didn't need a bunch of beggars around them all the time.
And so it occurred to me this is how ghettos are created. We were like in a dopers ghetto, or hippie ghetto. We didn't see each other because we were so fond of each other but just because there was little else for us after those who were rewarded with success, due to there good attitudes or whatever the fuck they had, had left.
I've heard a woman's ghetto is the kitchen, so young men's ghetto is hanging out with guys he doesn't really understand and smoking dope with them and listening to music with them.


Ed

The Gainesville Sun
Editor, Sun; Mahatma Gandhi said religion and politics were inseparable. He wasn’t opposing America’s separation of church and state so much as trying to remind us of the importance of our conscience.
I’m a regular reader of the Sun. I’ve read the Sun for over 30 years, or ever since I moved here from Long Island, N.Y. I often read the op-ed pages looking for reflections of my own opinion mostly, but to my dismay, often being exposed to opponents beliefs as well.
Since coming from N.Y., I have, of course missed much of what was there, but I have grown and accumulated new views and interests since living here.
I wonder how in all conscience the Sun can publish a section of its paper called Religion and yet leave out the philosophy of the East. I’m sure Billy Graham and The God Squad sell papers, but do no others have a right to express their religious opinions in the Sun?
Where are the opinions that God did not require the death of his son to forgive our sins, or that there really is no chosen people? Where is the opinion that all religions are a reflection of the One Divine?
There is a big university in Gainesville, but is no one there interested in a religious philosophy that doesn’t fill us full of guilt for doing things that only come naturally?

Co ngressman Jim Davis - About Jim
I read today that State Sen. Rod Smith has been endorsed by former Lt. Gov. Wayne Mixson. I hope you remember that Mixson was an effective force in rejecting the Equal Right Amendment in Florida.
State Sen. Rod Smith, those in Gainesville might remember, ran against then State Rep. Cynthia Chestnut for the senate. When she made her concession speech she made mention of being african american. I think she also mentioned being a woman, but that was lost on me at the time.
Mr. Smith has made a point of not accepting money from Gentlemen's Clubs, something that has been parroted by the Republican Crist campaign. Some see this as a pro-woman statement, but I think it's important to remember conservative churches also hate the libertine Gentlemen's Clubs. From my own point of view I think they not only exploit women, paying them far below what you read in the classified ads, but they offer an image of men that is alcoholic, traditional and narrow minded. Gentlemen's Clubs are an old fashioned form of the sexual revolution that has not adjusted to criticism by women's groups and others. It's hard to see how rejecting money from Gentlemen's Clubs is any different from rejecting money from, for instance, The American Association for Nude Recreation. It seems the media has depicted them as being the vanguard of sexual liberation instead of defenders of the old guard opinions on sexuality and life in general. Get a Boca Burger at a men's club. Not likely. Meanwhile we insist the younger movement of health food and the spiritual path yield to old fashion ideas about them, that they should wear their clothes and not indulge in sexual activity.
On the subject of spirituality I have sent a letter to the Gainesville Sun on the subject of their Religion Section. It is a bastion of conservatism in a newspaper that many liberal minds turn to for opinions. I'll post that to the BLOG, as they say, directly.

Eddie's
Does anyone have veto power over your lifestyle?
Do you have any experience of this?
When I was a thumber and smoking pot and so forth, my mother was very vicious one time when I came home after I went up to Arkansas chasing love. She said, "you look just like your father!!!"
I didn't know what that meant. My big brother was with her and served as a distraction. I'm sure somewhere inside I was thinking about him. He apparently had become quite a square, married and playing golf, driving a cadillac. His hair no longer mimicked the fashion as it once had when Elvis was the "thing!" My big brother's long beautiful black hair had meant quite a lot to me when I was a kid. Now he was married to the daughter of a bank vice-president and had no need to look like a sex symbol, I conjectured.
But mom's declaration that I looked like dad really got to me. I took it as a rejection of what I had told my friends was her position in the past, that I could make my own decisions, that she would support me no matter what. Now I was hear she would be "supportive."
"Supportive." That was a new version. Had some compromise been made? I didn't no what that was except withdrawing her support. I had been very involved with gays then and I thought I would be rejected by my friends for my so called "preferences," and this was probably the worst thing I could hear was that mom would not support me, but would be supportive. Of course to the outside listener, the one not inside me, this sounded like a question of getting a job, something I just was not able to accomplish then.
And so, today, 28 years later, I am still living with my mother and living the lifestyle that I have been able to given my near untouchable status as unemployed man! I watch T.V., I drive, and I sit at a computer. I have developed diabetes and heart disease. I am now going to a gym. Where I once had ambitions in yoga and meditation I now am the ultimate Yankee fan and I watch Playboy T.V. I follow politics through magazines and the internet and my T.V. and I drive a big white Buick with political bumper stickers glued to the trunk. I mow the lawn and I take out the garbage and I do a lot of the shopping. Mom is 88 now.
Mom has a speaker phone and I hear what people say to her. It amazes me how many of her so called friends vote for Bush and hate the Yankees. She says she doesn't care much for them and then the ones that she does care for are suddenly sent to Intensive Care at the hospital or HOSPICE, and they die.
People used to chant with me. I attended a meditation center in the nearby university city of Gainesville, Florida, but they felt they had fulfilled their whole responsibility to e when the chanting was done, or the meditation. They asked me what I thought of it and when I told them honestly, finding it lacking because it was only the one small part of the whole, they got upset and gave me these awful, I want to say dirty looks, but on the whole they were more of the hurt and I hate you variety. No doubt their lifestyle choices had been VETOED just like mine and I would feel sorry that I could not get around these uncomfortable questions.
So tell me, I am at edbry_2000@yahoo.com as well as the e-mail posted on my website. Drop me a line and tell me how difficult it has been to live the life you dreamed.

Alex Rodriguez's Official Website
Have you seen Arod official website.
It's really keen!
What I really like about it is being able to e-mail Arod your own personal questions!
Some great galleries, too.

The Official Website of the New York Yankees
Editor, Sun; I have to agree with New York Times columnist David Brooks that John Kerry is hateful, as is most of the political Left, but it isn't their hatred of President Bush that bothers me but of the New York Yankees.
If the Red Sox win again this year, I swear I will vote against Kerry and the Left in the next election.
I just don't understand how people for peace can be against nice guys like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodgriguez and Mariano. What to speak of Ol' Joe?
They should be ashamed of theirselves!
Why don't they throw their weight around in some other sport?
I've never known them to be big baseball fans anyway.
Why don't they try LaCrosse?
Wouldn't that be more their thing? As I recall, it was!!!

Gainesville Sun Op Ed Page
Editor, Sun; Isn't David Brooks a kick? He writes for the New York Times, but what feeling does he have for that city? No, it is the deep south that he cares for, evidenced by his love of John Edwards' little man campaign which like the energizer bunny keeps on going, and going, and going.
It's easy to see how one could support Sen. Edwards over Sen. Kerry as the natural nemesis of President Bush. He is after all, a fellow southerner. No point in mentioning that he is also a fellow man. Isn't everyone? Well, no!
Equally as little a person, Sen. Hillary Clinton, a New Yorker, now, is not what we call a fellow. She is not a good subject for Mr. Brooks though, because she doesn't represent the poor mill workers that Mr. Edwards grew up with. Mr. Brooks, and many New Yorkers, find much appeal in the rural south with it's small populations and abundance of farms.
So, you wonder why are they living up there instead of here.

Siddha's Bookstore
The Gainesville Sun has been running a series on the grief and pain of the survivors of the student murders 15 years ago. Reading the articles one is hardput to see any reasoning behind abolishing the death penalty, but this morning I read something in a book I have been sorely neglecting which I bought at the Siddha Yoga Bookstore online. The book is called Stories of Indian Saints and it is edited or translated by Justin E. Abbott and N.R. Godbole.Originally a poem in Marathi by an author known as Mahipati called Bhakta-Vijaya, "Stories of Indian Saints" is a collection of the activities of a number of saints from India including Tulsidas, Kabir, Nanak and Jnanadeva.
I was quite surprised reading it this morning, a Sunday when there is a Guru Gita chant at the Siddha Meditation Center in Gainesville in an "industrial park," and when I was feeling "depressed" about my difficulties in yoga, on the spiritual path, as well as life in general. My depression arises from the variance of debate on the different paths, personal/impersonal, avatar/not avatar, reincarnation/not reincarnation, respect and love/not respect and love, only son of God/not only son of God, and on and on. What to speak of personal regards, friendship, politics, sexlife and I wanted to chant the Gita but my mom was sleeping and it is a quiet little neighborhood I live in and I wondered why meditation centers are so inhospitable and for what cause (in whose name), and I decided I would read the book which was an expensive though important book going at, as I recall, $35 at the SYDA Bookstore.
So let me tell you, I wanted to write one of my famous letters to the editor, but I remembered that they only print one a month and I would likely have many submissions in one month so I decided to put in my BLOG to save a lot of people time and trouble. When Tulsidas met this Brahman killer the Brahman was repeating the name of Ram. This repetition of the name of Ram had destroyed all the sins of the Brahman according to Tulsidas. It is in Ch. 3, verse 207,"The moment you utter the words Sita and Ram, sins like that of the killing of Brahmans and similar sins are burnt up as if they were straw."

Media Matters
I don't know how many of you know about Media Matters, but I've learned about it from watching the Al Franken Show on Sundance. (Sorry, I'm not a listener (the preferred audience).
I have been making it to the gym pretty well this week. I went both Monday and Tuesday. I walked a mile both days on the treadmill and I did a little sprinting for a minute and a half last night. I have new sneakers which help a lot and new gym pants.
Last night I also did some swimming. All I can do is a backstroke which I do like the butterfly, you know, both arms at the same time. I can do a couple of laps like that. I can't do the freestyle because I worry about breathing. I can't seem to coordinate that. When I'm on my back it's no problem, naturally.
I enjoy the swimming. The pool at GHFC is only 4 feet deep so their is no worry about not gaining your feet should you suddenly fuck up. And there is a good length to the pool, like an olympic swimming pool. It's in the Aquatic Center where they also have a whilrpool , a sauna and a steambath. I have often taken sauna and steambath and then gone into the "cold plunge," icy cold water that invigorates the blood. The Swedish do it, you know, and it's kind of a kick, but with the Air Conditioning we have nowadays you might look out for a little bit of a cold, especially if you go to the gym at night like I do.
My mother's birthday just passed. She was 88.
I saw Kinsey for the second time, on Pay Per View. We do need to learn more about sex and sexual relationships. It might cut down on the violence against women if we do.

Naked People at the Leopold
Have you heard about the museum in Europe, Vienna, Austria to be exact, by name, The Leopold Museum, that has opened up its doors to naked people for free?
I read about it at Salon.
http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8BL9FT80.html
Oddly enough I could only find the photos of the naked visitors when I viewed the page in German.
If you click "english" the page changes a bit and the link to go to the naked people disappears. We are that hung up in the United States.
There are some good links you might understand if you look at the page in english, especially the download link where you can download the current gallery in large jpgs.
Here's a shortcut to that page:http://www.leopoldmuseum.org/service/html/presseservice.php
Happy viewing!

Interview withBetty Wood
My mom lost another friend last week, Betty Wood, dancer and jazzercize leader.
Mom met Betty when she went to the Lake Area Fitness Center because she was having some problems with falling down. She sometimes fell getting out of her car.
Betty had been moved from Melrose to Gainesville to a place for retired persons that my sister had lived in for a while.
It is not a bad little place but I understand Betty didn't care too much for it.
She had been taken to the hospital for a bleeding problem. They put her in intensive care just for caution's purposes and she had a heart attack there.
I don't know if I mentioned it here but mom's friend from the Melrose Women's Club, June Steedly, died just a little while ago.
I'm sorry such good friends are passing on.
In the Urantia Book our passing is described as graduation which I think must be something to those who never went to college, or didn't graduate. They describe a world called the morontia planet and speak of sowing a mortal body and reaping a morontia form.
The Urantia Book differs slightly from Paramahamsa Yogananda's view that the law of karma is what the Bible means by reaping what one sows. You can read online or purchase EUBY (UB) online at http://www.truthbook.com/ or
http://www.urantiabook.org/

My Diary ...
Hey, go over to my diary and check out what I been doin' "lately."

Carefully Avoiding the Geneva Convention
I wrote a letter to the Sun last week.
They chose to print this one, but it isn't exactly as I wrote it.
Here is the original.
Editor, Sun; Kal Rosenberg writes the Sun so often you might think it's paying him. Indeed Kal has achieved the ubiquitous privelege of writing guest columns for the Sun, a feat I have not been able to accomplish.
But on the war on terror I would just like to ask him, if there is a war on terror why don't the rules of war apply?
I'm talking about the rules set down by the Geneva Convention which the Bush Administration gets around by saying there is no established government against which war has been declared. That seems to be the whole basis for denying these "enemy combatants" the priveleges due them as "prisoners of war."
That's nothing but semantics. The same may well have been said by the British Empire about American colonists, but of course there was no Geneva Convention then.
There is no doubt that we hated Great Britain and I don't see why this should be a buzz word for violating the given rights of people all over the world, today.
President Bush says people hate us as if he is unaware of hating anyone himself. Doesn't he hate the terrorists? Doesn't he hate criminals and hasn't he hated communists like his father did?
Has he not dealt with hate in his rich religious life or does he just wonder about it like some naive Sunday School student?
Hate and ignorance killed Jesus, Mr. President. It's nothing new, but I think it's something we've been working on through things like the Geneva Convention.

The New York Yankees
In 1972 a new guy appeared at the "party" place.
His name was like mine except his first name was like my last name.
His name was Brian. My last name is Bryan..
It seemed to be some kind of joke to them.
A new boy, from Orange Park, became friends with this Brian and he even went to Boston to see David Bowie with him, according to what they told me, but of course I didn't understand anything about the painful differences these boys, who I think all went to Green Cove Springs High School before coming to college, experienced among themselves.
The younger boy seemed to have a real hate for the older brother of one of the other younger boys.
So Brian was a dealer in methaquallone and when they had a big quallude party at the party place, Brian lost it and past out. The boys needed to get to some place so they let the boy from Orange Park drive. He was also stoned and he drove the car into a tree, injuring Brian's head.
When I arrived at the scent the party gang was deciding whether to get the injured Brian to the hospital. You see, the older brother of one of the Green Cove Boys, the one who was hated, he was studying to be a nurse. He was big on the heart and later that semester he would experience a patient dying, or so I was told, and he became very bitter. But his medical enthusiasm said Brian should go to the hospital.
So, I was there then and I was nominated to take "luded" Brian to the hospital.
They put Brian into my back seat and the boy from Orange Park sat next to me.
As we took Brian to Alachua County Hospital my leg was shaking on the clutch.
Mark, the Orange Park first year college student, was concerned that their would be a bust because they had been taking qualludes.
I tried not to think about it.
A year before I had been listening to DJ's on the radio telling me where I could take my drugs for testing to see if they were the real thing. Now, I was living in a world before tolerance. Mark didn't know anything about drug testing and maybe he shouldn't have.
Maybe it just wasn't on his radio.
Mark and I had a falling out years later and as now I am experience how much liberal people hate the New York Yankees, I look back and reflect...., Brian, Boston, Bryan, New York.
Perhaps I recall a laugh when someone learned my mother's name.
Why laugh?
Was this valuable information perhaps. Something to use against me when I become disposable or disliked.?
And then I recall everyone I revealed myself to. They called it self-disclosure in Psych 1 & 2 and they said it was essential to a healthy personality.
But did I know anybody else's mother's name?
Just my friend Jack's who went to the same High School as I did. Hawthorne High School.

Eddie's
I've spruced up my web page, in case that is not how you get to this BLOG.
I've made a link to a page that features the original brown paper copy of People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.
You might miss it since it's at the bottom of page 2 and not mentioned in type. Just click on the image of the old saying. You'll see a hand or whatever you have that indicates a link, when you pass it over that image.
Another link is on page 1.
You know that line drawing of a woman at the top of page 1 or the title page. That's a great yogini celebrated in Siddha Yoga known as Lalleshwari. I have of late learned that she was also known as Lal Ded and I have incorporated a link with the drawing to a page that tells us a little bit more about her.
If your interested you might like to go to the Siddha Yoga Bookstore and buy a book of her poetry. She was deeply devoted to her Guru and the mantra.
I've also added some clauses next to the page numbers telling what one might see should they go to those pages.
And last but not least I've removed the old photograph of our friend Lin, who introduced me to my friend Cathy back in '74, in favor of a more recent picture of the person who comes to clean the house in Melrose.
I was having a lot of trouble with the page working both in Explorer and Mozilla and although I might still have that trouble I am letting it remain.
I noticed today that my resume says something about supervisory skills and that my certificate in management and supervision is listed among my ecucational merits.
You might wonder what that's all about. Do I expect to be hired as a boss or something somewhere?
Well, the answer is no. In fact the whole idea of a boss runs rather contradictory to what was taught in the management and supervision course which was taught at UF in 1994. A key feature of the course was William Deming's Total Quality Management. http://www.tpmonline.com/articles_on_total_productive_maintenance/management/deming14steps.htm
TQM teaches about the problem of middle management. How it gets in the way of productivity. It talks about the adversarial relationship between management and employee and how to get rid of that. So the image of the BOSS is counter to what it seeks to produce. More harmony and less stess if you know what I mean.
Saw 2 great movies in the past couple of days. The first was on PPV and it's probably out on DVD and VHS if you want to rent it. In fact it probably has been out on for rental for a long time because PPV gets movies one or two months after the rental places, since I don't follow it that closely, it could be even longer.
The first movie was Hotel Rwanda. I was skeptical when they said Don Cheadle was terrific in this, but I saw him in the Sean Penn movie, The Assasination of Richard Nixon. His role in that was rather small but he was a friend of a kind of hippie type of character and I liked that. In this he was great. He had the african accent down perfectly and it really didn't seem like he was acting.
I learned a lot about Africa and the Rwandan crisis from the movie. And it wasn't so horribly depressing. It was about a hotel manager who saved over a thousand people from the genocidal slaughter there. It's a TRUE story.
The second good movie that I saw was "ENRON the smartest guys in the room." If you care about what is happening in America at all you've gotta see that. I once heard Gurumayi said that a great problem in America was greed. I knew that but I wondered why she had to mention that again.
What ENRON did was the perfect example of greed. These guys sold out and never told the common investor what was happening. So they scored big and the little investor lost everything.
In case you didn't know, Ken Lay is a real old son of a bitch. I hadn't been aware of that. His right hand man/men were younger though.
The Yankees beat the Red Sox on Friday night and a kid at the check out asked me who won. I was wearing my Yankee hat so that's why he asked me. He was a Red Sox fan and so dissppointed to hear the score. He got extremely happy in the next two games, I guess. But I really thought he was quite a "brat."
Mom and I are waiting for the game now.
She enjoyed Hotel Rwanda too.
I guess you have heard about Deep Throat.
It looks, too, like this Downing Street Memo may turn into an impeachment thing. What do you think?
I wrote a letter to the president and to the Gainesville Sun about this Guantanamo Bay thing. They call these men "enemy combatants" in order to get around the Geneva Convention. I say, what difference does that make. Hasn't every "POW" been an enemy combatant actually? And so they have no right to go beyond the rules of the Geneva Convention nor of the American Constitution. Doing so is really a violation of human rights. Remember human rights? President Jimmy Carter made a big thing out of that. You have to respect Jimmy for that, don't you, even if you can't respect his spraying Central American pot field with paraquat.
Finally, there is this guy at the Fitness Center who says I look like Elvis Presley. I told him I loved Elvis when I was kid and that the burns were not a deliberate attempt to look like him. Or at least I think I told him that. But don't you know a few rockers since the King that have had burns?
I would mention my sister and her visit here for a wedding but it just gives me pain. Also, Siddha Yoga.

Best Wishes 'til the next time.

Healthy Living, Keystone Heights, Florida
Well, Michelle, who helps clean our house found my keys today.

Cars
By the way, I want to tell you about an adventure we have had here for about a week. I lost the keys to my car. Right here in the house. I do suspect that mom stole them and put them somewhere. The kindest thing would be to say she is a cleptomaniac. I only hope I can keep paying the bills that she seems to miss when they come in the mail.
We thought we would have to get a locksmith and we called one who said we needed a key code from the manufacturer, which she said meant going to the place where we bought the car, etc. She was talking $80, if we didn't have the code, $40 if we did.
Well we called the Buick dealer where mom bought the car and they said she would have to come in with proof of ownership. OK, so I gave mom the vehicle registration that I carry in my wallet with my license. She couldn't read it >:->, and then she went to change out of the night gown she almosst always wears when she's in the house, and she lost it. She lost the registration. Of course she had plenty of other registrations but they were all out of date.
I didn't believe the Buick place would take a registration that was out of date, but they did. And 2 sets of keys cost $14.
I guess I'm luck I take a pill for my blood pressure.

Sanathana Dharma
I just got a book from Siddha Yoga called "Stories of Indian Saints. You can get it for $30 at the Siddha Yoga Bookstore. I mention that because I just viewed a page, http://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/IDE418/ , that sells it at $35.
I'm reading the introduction and it mentions faith in God failing in India and the influence of secularism, at the same time mentioning the angry differences among the many religions of India. Considering what's going on here in America I'm not sure it's what I want to hear, but I don't know the particulars or the author's own take on christian fundamentalim.
It crossed my mind while I was reading this scholarly introduction how mom deals with all these yogic studies or even the political thought that I enjoy and I suppose I am not alone in finding little intellectual nourishment from my mother. She seems so small minded, preferring to go to church and watch Billy Graham to reading books. It often seems to me that she is these illiterate people down here who can't read or write, of whom she often speaks.
On the other hand, what does the rest of the world do for me. There is not a person who will discuss the higher thoughts introduced in these books. Certainly there is no teacher willing to hold class.
It leaves an emotional hole in me. I remember discussing books, reading and issues commonly when I went to school, with my friends and others. I noticed at 24 that I had a passion for them, but suddenly no money. I was out of school and had no loan and grant to purchase these books with. My mother, who sometimes calls herself my father and mother, rebelled at letting me buy the latest titles.
The page that I have submitted to you, above, contains brief biographies of some of the saints contained in the book. Mahipathi is of particular interest because he wrote this book which in the scholarly realms is know as Bhakti Vijaya. Mahipathi was a Marathi poet.
There is no mention of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, although I have read that Tukaram, one of the saints written about in the book, did follow him, that is, was initiated into the Bhaki path by him. The method of the initiation is kind of blurry to me though.
I have a collection on Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in my library if you care to discuss it.

Microsoft
I've been having some problems with my computer. They started when I tried to upugrade my ZoneAlarm with Antivirus. I couldn't do it. I decided to use McAfee and paid $60 for the Internet Security Suite, but I had problems with the Privacy Servide and I was getting an error message about an Epson printer port service.
Well, while I was trying to figure out all this I came accross a little flaw that I thought was cured by having "automatic update" set up on my machine. I hadn't been upgraded to SP2.
Today I learned the SP2 is not upgrading because I have a program that modifies my boot file. It's called XP Styles and you can make your bootscreen into something a bit more arty than usual.
Although the instructions at Microsoft said something about certain files I had to locate, I thought about the DOS screen I get all the time which has 3 copues of Win XP listed. One copy doesn't work at all but the other two are the original reinstall that I had to do and a copy that is followed by the word bootscreen in parenthesis. That's the copy I always use.
So I had gotten a failure when I tried to install SP2 in SAFE MODE in (bootscreen) and that sent me to the article that told me about the modification to the boot file. So I've started safe mode under the other copy and I've been able to install SP2. I only hope it does install completely (it's copying files now) and that no further problems crop up because I'm not doing it exactly as it said to do at the microsoft knowledge base.
By the way, I just bought some new stuff from siddhayoga.org. 2 books, the life of Tukaream and The Lives of the Saints, plus 2 engraved pendants, one Shiva and one with Lakshmi. There is also a satsang webcast for $15 dollars available. You know Baba's Birthday is May 23 and Mayi's is June 24 so maybe they are in need of a little "attention."

Sant Kabir
I watched two tapes this morning from Siddha Yoga, "Believe in Love" and "Make God Your Friend."
Gurumayi had a lot to say about the ego. I especially "heard" how it denies people great things, the good life, happiness.
She sang a few phrases from Kabir and I had to believe this "song" was like mantra, something that is repeated and repeated and meditated on and contemplated. It was the first time I realized there was something "real" to her singing of songs.
Now that I think about it, maybe it had something to do with some people saying they liked the way I sing. There is nothing to the way I sing. And I often listened to Gurumayi sing as though she was trying to entertain.
Today I realized this is not entertainment!

Why punish DeLay but not the Democrats?
A letter to the Sun compares Hillary Clinton and Tom DeLay and I wonder how. I hardly even know who Tom DeLay is except that he was deeply involved in the 2000 election when the “terrible, bad republicans” did everything they could to make sure there was no recount especially in heavily democratic Dade county.
I know he is now the House Majority Leader, a congressman from Texas and one that has been reptimanded by the House Ethics Committee a record number of times. I have heard him compared to former House Leader Jim Wright, who was a democrat driven from his position as leader back in the 90’s when the democrats held the White House and the “mean and dastardly” republicans wanted it.
Hillary Clinton has written two best selling books, while representing America and the democratic party in an exemplary fashion. The former first lady is now Sen. Clinton of N.Y. and a leading prospect to become the first woman to make a serious bid for the presidency. Many polls in 2003 showed Ms. Clinton defeating Mr. Bush should she choose to run in the 2004 election.
I think many women look forward to the prospect of a woman becoming president especially when that woman is Hillary, a woman who was so embarrassed by her husband’s behavior when they both lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
What is happening to Rep. DeLay isn’t quite clear. Many of us except that our leaders, who are politicians, are crooks and liars therefore we say what has this one done that no one else has done. We think nothing of a politician promising endorsement and campaign support for votes. Indeed I was surprised that the House Ethics Committee did.
That was one thing Rep. DeLay did. He promised support to the son of one of his fellow congressmen if he could get that congressman’s vote on a bill. When the congressman didn’t vote yes on Mr. DeLay’s bill Mr. DeLay refused to support the congressman’s son and the man lost.
And there there were questions about money.
That’s always confusing to me since I’m unemployed and I have no idea about big money matters, but the point is Mr. DeLay has never been a famous person. He is no Kennedy, no Clinton and I wonder what republicans hope to gain by comparing him with famous people like them. Do they hope to see DeLay run for Governor of Texas like Kinky Friedman or something? I have to wonder when DeLay is going to write a couple of best selling books.

Apple
I bought an IPOD this week to take with me to the GYM.
Good sound to it and it holds a lot of music.
I bought the mini (4 GB). Blue.

Creative Labs Nomad MuVo TX FM 256MB Portable MP3 Player
I'm thinking about getting one of those little mp3 players, like Apple's IPOD.
I'm looking at this Creative Labs player.
The one in the link above is a 256 MB player.
I wonder if I need a 512 MB player or more.
I want to carry my mp3's of chants, you know!

Penn & Teller : Bullshit!
This show itself is bullshit!
Weren't these the guys who predicted the Super Bowl score this year. They could be on the Super Bowl but Move.On's contest winning ad could not. That's BULLSHIT!
Furthermore, tonight I had to listen to the deny there is any science behind the secondary smoke theories. Jesus, I've heard people say the beloved wives of smokers died of cancer having never lit up a cancer stick themselves.
Ah, but who am I?
I tell you, I am somebody. For one a long haired young person who was denied work because according to state laws my long hair was unsanitary. That was BULLSHIT! I kept my hair clean but that didn't matter, they just knew we were behind the dope and the sex and the rock and roll and they wanted to keep us out of work!
You won't see Penn and Stiller mentioning that!
Why, because they are a couple of hypocrites making a bundle off of Bush's tax cuts. They are a couple of republicans claiming to have the last word in BULLSHIT!
It was sickening to see how they found the term "cherry picked" to describe the facts that the EPA found (in '92, a Clinton year) to state that second hand smoke caused cancer. Of course cherry picked was the term for what Dick Cheney did when choosing the intelligence to go on to go to war with Iraq! But, hell, forget that! PLEASE! So we can make more money!

Mother Jones
The Kingdom, the power and the glory.
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Tough loss today for the Gators in the NCAA Tournament.
Do you watch the games?
I suppose you root for teams as well, don't you?
I bet you even feel like you affect the ball games.
It's a strange psychology.
Speaking of psychology, I keep remembering what a psychiatrist said to me once when I was "in treatment." He asked me "how do we talk?"
It was an odd question since I yearned to talk. Nobody was talking and I didn't think that was my fault.
Today it occurred to me that he wanted me to realize that I or we don't talk. But that wasn't good enough for me because I know that is what we say about kids, especially kids in school. They are asked quite frequently not to talk so they can study.
Today, mom was talking during the game. With 9 minutes to go and when it looked like we might close in on Nova she was babbling about some meaningless bullshit. And then she couldn't go out to her washing machine because of the cat. It scratches her feet and her feet were bare.
She was just wearing her nightgown, at 3 in the afternoon, and she couldn't go out to the washing machine to wash my all important towels ( I use them for showering at the gym and at home)and underwear and maybe those chi pants (gee I wonder if she'll "get to them" before Monday night, the next time I go to the gym), because the little gray cat might scratch at her.
So, I got mad, got up and put the cat out.
When I came back Roberson missed another 3 and the Villanova Wild Cats rolled the score back up to a 10 point lead.
Mom didn't know or care what the hell that was about.
So, how do we talk?
My brother John whose wife Maria is famous for having lied about John's situation once when they were just married or had just had their first baby and were taking over the house out in Kings Park where I used to live with mom and the very unpopular dad, lives now in North Carolina. The North Carolina Tar Heels would have been up next for the Gators had they won.
Maria lied to Aunt Marguerite. It has never been forgotten, but it goes to show you how important people in your family are compared to other things, for instance, your High School education or your opinions about historical or present day issues.
My father used to promote the idea of slavery to us. That's not important because dad is there to get us a job. The education doesn't get us a job, it's dad who gets us a job.
Maybe Aunt Marguerite knew something like that. All of our rights are bogus. It's all about who we know. She showed us how powerful she was by seizing upon this little white lie and making into a big white lie.
We were having big fights about the war back then and Maria was for the war. She was for the war a lot like Nixon was. She wasn't for the war, she was against communism. You see Maria's family is and was from Hungary and they escaped in 1956 when there was a revolt against communist rule there. America did not intercede then and my brother John is of the opinion that America was wrong in what it did there.
My Uncle Al who is the betrothed of Aunt Marguerite served America amirably in WWII and so we have 2 what I call "big war fans" in my 2 older brothers.
Bill, my oldest brother, dropped out of school. He knew it was people that mattered and not education. I sometimes think it was perhaps his handicap that made him do that. I think there was less sensitity to handicaps back in the 50's. Bill has a deformed arm which he has had since birth. Also, he is my step-brother since he can only count mom as his natural parent. He is 4 years older than my brother John.
My sister Barbara who is one year older than Bill and also a step, figures into all this somehow. She introduced Maria and John. Barb was friends with Maria's older sister, Edith, whom I am told died of cancer leaving behind her husband George, whom I am also told is one of John's favorite people.
Barb wasn't there when Marguerite called the house in Kings Park to talk to John, but I was and I'm the chief witness that John was home and lying down, trying to get some sleep. He had a job in the Long Island Railroad thanks to the strings our father pulled. Dad was retiring thanks to the hard work of mom who needed to talk to a lot of people in the Pennsylvania Railroad to make sure dad was ripped off in his retirement. The railroad was failing at the time, merging with New York Central and lots of employees were being let go with just their severence pay.
John had served 4 years in the U.S. Air Force but it seemed to be of little use to him in getting a job. He had worked at a store in one of the bigger towns but either was let go or quit there. He had a deep disgust of young people who in their turn had a disgust for military persons. And so dad had contacted this man and that man. Somewhere along the line, was John still in the service when he did it? John changed his last name from Connolly, which was Bill's last name and Barb's maiden name to Bryan, which was my last name. I guess that made it easy for dad to "pull strings" for him. But they say that wasn't it. Besides his change of name, John had to cut a Sgt. Pepper or spanish american looking moustache of his lip. John had been stationed ata base in Puerto Rico during his time in the service and it being 1969, it seemed like a cool thing, which is the one thing dad never liked, unless it was the cool of the air conditioning back in his home state of Florida where he intended to go when he retired.
So to John dad was more important than 4 years of the military and a high school diploma. Or actually he was just that added ingredient that made sure he was the "right stuff" for work in a railroad.

Chutnees
Mom took me out for dinner last night as a birthday present.
We went to a lovely place just off the Interstate as it runs through Gainesville called Chutnees.
I had Palak Paneer that was called Sag Paneer on the menu which was very lovely and mom had a little Indian tomato soup which they call Tamater Shahi Shorba and she ordered a Tandoori Chicken Tikka.
It was a bit too much to eat for mom so we had to take it home in a "doggy bag."
They served bhasmati rice with both the soup and the spinach and cheese (palak paneer), but it was really like a rice pilaf with small fried onions sprinkled over the top of it and I think I saw some saffron threads. It went well with the spinach.
I shouldn't have had the palak paneer because it is a high fat food. The spinach is creamed and spiced and then some curd cheese cubes are added. There wasn't really that much cheese in this though, so maybe it didn't clog my arteries too badly.
Mom ate practically none of her tandoori chicken but I tried it and felt guilty about it at the restaurant. I had been chanting Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya rooting the Gators on to victory over Kentucky on Sunday, now here I was on Tuesday eating meat.
But it was delicious!
And when we got home after wrestling with my conscience a while I ate the rest.
Just like Barbecue we used to have back in New York.
DELICIOUS!

UF Sports
Oh, what a game!

Ed's
Mom lost a good friend last night. She was the president of the Red Hat Club, a group of ladies dedicated to Red Hats.
Mom often campaigned for her to become president of the Melrose Women's Club, but June never won.
She went kind of suddenly. She was calling mom about coming to a meeting of the Red Hat Club maybe a couple of months ago.
Now she's gone.
Mom rooted for her to beat whatever it was, cancer, but she couldn't.
June was in Hospice for the last few days and died last night not very long after one of her other friends visited her.

Gainesville Health and Fitness
I've been trying to go the fitness center but it's an "unusual" activity. Usually I just go shopping in town.
I used to go to the meditation center but I've decided they're a bunch of frumps.
Just recently I've gotten discovered the Aquatic Center where you can swim, which I cannot, and sit in the whirlpool and enjoy a sauna.
There is a wonderful cold water splash that you can walk into after the sauna.
I sat in the sauna for 15 minutes last time. It's a good place to meditate if you don't fall into samadhi and end up sitting there for hours. I can't meditate very long so it's safe for me.

Wachovia
I applied for a job at Wachovia and I was invited to an assessment which I ventured out to at 9:00 A.M. yesterday. I bought a nice white shirt and tie, new shoes and socks for the assessment. There was a video and a long test. It was a kind of personality test with some simple math problems at the end. I was applying for a position as teller. I wasn't what they needed. :-(

Gainesville.com/The Gainesville Sun/ Gainesville, Fl - Mozilla
I keep reading on the forums at the Gainesville Sun how prejudice the country is against religion. And by religion, I guess you know they mean Christianity.
I was thinking the other day, Why don't they just have the pledge of allegiance say, "one nation, under Jesus, with liberty and justice for all" because that's what they really mean by it.
They don't mean any other God, but God the Father, which was how Jesus expressed himself about God.
The last post I read was about how Christmas Carolers had been condemned by the government. Yes, of course, there is a bit of hyperbole here. But, I asked them had they ever heard the Guru Gita sung.
They often say they embrace all religions when they are speaking of allowing religious expression within the confines of government, but experience tells me they mean Jesus and in particular their understanding of Jesus. Everything else, such as the Urantia Book, is blasphemy.
It was mentioned there is a pro-life candidate running to head the DNC. So I offered them some new links to some interesting Krsna Consciouness sites.
Did you know you can read Prabhupada's Shrimad Bhagavatam online? And hear it as well.
Here are those links.
http://www.srimadbhagavatam.org/
http://www.prabhupadavani.org/SB_index.html

Nader for President
I had an old copy of Esquire in my walk in closet. My mother and I keep old mags. On the cover was an essay by Gore Vidal where he suggested Nader should be president.
I never read it.
Nader was so much younger then.
He's older than that now.
He hasn't become born again like Bob Dylan and in general what he is doing with his presidential campaigns is undermining the people's interest.
I remember the Citizen's Party which he created in 1980. Ronald Reagan was elected that year. I think it was more owing to the fact that John Anderson ran advocating gas rationing and splitting the liberal democratic vote that gave us Reagan, but Nader has a part in the whole idea of running a third party candidate for president.
This year it could be argued that Nader had no influence in the final outcome, unlike in 2000 where clearly the votes he commanded in Florida determined who won our state's electoral votes.
His LEGAL BEAGLE energy could have been better served to make the voting process in Florida fairer, but as it was it just gave us 4 years of Bush, whom he claimed is no different from Al Gore.
I used to hear that kind of shit when I smoked pot and did shrooms. We weren't a very success oriented group. Sure we had some just complaints but in many ways we were defeatists and quitters.
The popularity of rich Rock stars who could also comment on the political and social policies of our day allowed us to sell our educations and work lives down the drain in the hope of attaining that kind of stardom someday.
I don't see, on the other hand, Bruce Springsteen standing up and saying Kerry Sucks, as Ralph Nader says Michael Moore did.
Seems to be the same campaign is being used against Michael Moore that they used against Kerry. He's not the man he used to be. And by God that's what I say about RALPH NADER!
He's not a hero if he defeats liberal democrats.
As liberal as Kerry was known to be, and Bush used this enough in his campaign, Nader couldn't keep his damn ass out of the race, though beginning the year of 2004 declaring he would not run again. Finally that only meant he would not run as a Green Party candidate.
Now they are tearing Kerry apart like they did Gore in 2000. They talk about swinging right with issues like abortion and gay rights, but I think if they would just take some of these extremists on the left to task they would make a great appeal to that faction.
The Green Party. Is that an environmental party? It was sold to me as a kind of little bit of everything party originating in Europe. More and more I hear it is environmentalism and that upsets me. That upsets me because it makes enviromnentalists look bad. Certainly there are some radicals amongst that movement who can be focused upon by the rich GOP candidates to make it look like the whole movement should be abandoned. The GOP would like you to think environmentalism is overdone. That the economy is suffering under the harsh restrictions of environmental protection and some reforms are needed.
When you do a looney thing like help defeat a pro-environment candidate like Gore or Kerry people do lose faith in your ability to think rationally.
Now we have 4 more years of Bush. Democrats had to fight Nader to keep him off the ballots in many states and he is still mad about it. What an ego the guy has.
Stephan Gaskin, another candidate for president in Green Party country, put down Swami Muktananda and his ashram saying "I could do that." He could run an ashram. Of course, it wasn't the groovey thing to do. He always does the groovy thing.

Manpower
Yesterday I had an appointment at Manpower.
Everything went o.k. seems to me and the "specialist" mentioned a job in Alachua at a Dollar Store Warehouse.
He sent me for a drug test and that was it.
Haven't heard from him today.

Tara
God! or considering the link above, Goddess! I need a job!
Won't you please give me one?
I've gotten a haircut and I've been working out, even if I have been loading up a bit on the low carb pasta and ice cream.
By the way, if you are in Gainesville, there is a great low carb ice cream place in the shopping center where the old Kash N Karry used to be. (You like that? It's an old Dick Shawn joke.)
Here is there web page - www.gatordlites.com

American Prospect Online
Will we go to war with Europe?
We are getting so angry at them it looks like we're headed that way.
It also seems like we could have ourselves a second civil war.
We could call it Civil War II.
It would be between the Democrats and Republicans or, if you want, the Left and the Right.
It could even go world wide including Europe and Asian nations in the battle.
I guess I'm thinking of that kind of war because Bush is a southerner, like LBJ was a southerner and you remember how us communist inspired dissenters to the war in Vietnam called the Vietnam War a civil war.
Yeah, Bush, is a southerner and he is ripping off Jimmy Carter on the born again trip.
All of his sins must be forgiven and you must smile and be nice because after all Jesus is watching.
And Jesus is Lord.
I am quite surprised at the protest that good christian church going people were being defamed and that's why the democrats lost the election because I couldn't get a word in edgewise to the demos about Baba, Gurumayi, Adidam Samraj, Guru Maharaji (who is especially hated) or the Urantia Book which liberal minded people called some kind of space book.
I am a liberal and I am unwanted at Siddha Yoga, or the Urantia Book Study Groups, of which there aren't any in Gainesville.
I don't know where this world is at.
Is it just ignorance?
They just don't know what is good for them, do they?
I remember guys back in the 70's wouldn't follow a Guru because they thought it meant giving everything up and they weren't ready to do that.
On the other hand I saw attractive young women at Guru Maharaji's satsang who wanted to go to bed with me.
Yeah, I believed you would join the International Society for Krishna Consciousness if you wanted to give everything up.
I was reading about this Reappearance of the Christ and that sounded neat to me.
I didn't and still don't think a Guru would be so demanding of me.
I had no friends in the matter though and over the years I did give up smoking and meat eating.
I would have given up sex but I just didn't see where anyone would give me enough love to do that.
Anyway, there is the Urantia Book which isn't the eastern ascetic way.
It's like christian, but it doesn't say God died for the sins of the world. It says the world is ignorant and killed a son of God, which it shouldn't have done.
Like the breach between science and religion, the fights over sex and religion are difficult and sometimes take a long time to mediate.
I hope we can get somewhere with it, but I know no one is going to give up a wild sex life as long as they get hassles from the religious.
For instance, if Siddha Yoga acts like a bunch of old crones you are eventually going to give them up.
There own books say too many rules destroys the power of the mantra.
But, a center figures it has the stereo equipment and it has the video and it has the chair and picture and we don't know anything about God being Everywhere, so fuck us!
You KNOW?

Askew Homepage
Is the reason Mel Martinez won in Florida and Joe Coors did not win in Colorado the hurricanes?
Just wondering!


Heard about the fight for a recount in Ohio?
What would the Bush voters you know say if Kerry ended up coming out ahead?
That's the thing. Isn't it scary? They just might kill you!
That's the Bush/neocon/right wing thing from the beginning. Intimidation.
I can't believe all the little old ladies my mother knows who "came out" as Bushies.
One had been a Bushy all along. My mom talked this woman through cancer treatments. They spoke every night.
Another one decided she didn't like Bush after Kerry's big Sept. 20 speech at NYU. That's when she decided Kerry was going to let the U.N. run American foreign policy.
This woman has been called names in our little town for going out with men at her age.
It's a wonder I didn't see that as intimidation from the start. But, of course, I was the one intimidated by losing so many supporters. Two. Like the amount of complaints I had a gainst me at BiCafe when they threw me off of that.

Where the BLOG used to be!
I lost the password at the old blog so I used a new e-mail address and created another blog here at http://ed71.pitas.com But I did do a lot of work at the other blog and if you want to see some of it including the archives the link is posted above. Here it is again in case you're dumb or something.
http://dbombxy.pitas.com/

E-Mail Molly
Dear Molly,
Someone was writing about you and your kind of folks at the Gainesville Sun.
It wasn't one of the regular columnists. In fact it wasn't even one of those guest columns that my newspaper refuses to tell how to write (I would like to write one). It was a lettet to the proverbial editor.
Here is the link. http://www.gvillesun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041129/EDITORIALS02/41128021/-1/editorials
He included you among the extreme leftists that he said blew the election for John Kerry.
Of course, I remember how you supported Howard Dean. Is that what he meant? Or that John Kerry had no ELVIS. Was he talking about that? It came to mind that I have been reading you a long time. Well, since Bush has been elected or a viable candidate. And what did I know about you? You can talk about Elvis as if he represented something liberal. Yes, I have thought so too, but lately I've been thinking the Iron Butterfly and Jefferson Airplanes are getting a raw deal out of this liberal Elvis fan club.
My big brother, born in 1940, loved Elvis and I loved him too, but my brother got married and I lost my virginity. Maybe that was the only reason Elvis really lived for us. Kerry had pictures of himself with John Lennon and of course, the evil of evils, the former Mrs. Ted Turner, Jane Fonda. Don't you love Bridgette?
So, I guess you get the point there.
I think maybe you could take a turn away from the Bible, too, although many saying that was exactly the problem, that people like you didn't read the Bible enough. I say the opposite.
I can't imagine you meditating or chanting. I can't imagine you eating them peas and carrots like the vegetarians do. John Kerry made a big thing about hunting, and although this was to speak out against gun control, I, the so called extreme leftist (although I still admire what Reuben Askew did for my state), was offended. I hate to hunt. I think it is barbaric.
The thing was, I didn't speak up. It might have made that asshole Dean the nominee.
This just isn't anyway to play.
You have never mentioned the Bhagavad-Gita in your column. I have one by a fellow named Radhakrishnan whom I think was a very influential man in India. There have been many interpretations of the Gita and I have read many of them. I have read Prabhupada's Bhagavad-gita and indeed I have loved a lot of what ISKCON publishes, yet I don't support their opposition to abortion. That's about women's lives. The fact that they are so radical about tea, meat and sex helps me fight the issue. Of course you know about the east and the right to life. They wouldn't hurt a fly. (They have no problem with your feelings though.)
Once Baba Muktananda made the Op-ed page by attending a conference on transpersonal pyschology concurrently attended by then presidential hopeful Jerry Brown. Now, Baba is known as a child molestor. No one on the op-ed page speaks up to protect this great man. No one had even read his spiritual autobiography, Play of Consiousness.
I have read Play of Consiousness and people at the local Siddha Meditation Center mention it frequently. But they don't care to hear about another spiritual autobiography, Autobiography of a Yogi which was the first among the great books I read when I was seeking out a spiritual guide.
When Jimmy Carter was having such problems dealing with the rising price of gas during his re-election campaign of 1980, I think I mistook fillerup for Milarepa. Of course there was no room for Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa in President Carter's list of books to read. And you'll be damned if you call that racism.
Bill Clinton, what a wonderful liberal he was. And I did like him in many ways, but as folksy as he was he couldn't stop eating the meat for even a little while. He was a poster boy for meat eating. I don't suppose Bush has a diet, he just works out constantly as you have mentioned in describing some of his habits.
So, talk about left wing, or talk about seperation of church and state. Should yogis support the GOP because that will let Bhagavad-gita in the classroom? Many yogis have said their religion, which they will call yoga, though it is not the yoga you know of stretching and hold difficult asanas (positions), is not a religion. They say anyone of any religion can practice their "yoga." Indeed one of the great yogis of the recent past, Ramakrishna , followed many different religions finding the same God in each one. None of this is mentioned even when a U.S General talks about his God vs. the God of some middle eastern tribal chief.
Why can't I hear you speak of the unity of all religions. Is it your folksy "style?" I noticed Bush mention style just after the election, like he had some. Are you actually doing it but I'm missing it because of your Texan drawl. You see I'm from New York originally. My mother is fond of mentioning that El Paso, or was is Pace, that mocks chili made in New York. Actually she hates the ad and it was withdrawn after 911. These assholes out on the range reminding you of a scene from Blazing Saddles decry the cooks chili and find out it was made in New York City.
You know being from New York brings up another issue I had with John Kerry. Maybe this is like your issue, though I can't imagine ever being for Gov. Dean. The goddam Boston Red Sox. Did he really have to get into that? He couldn't be "above the fray" as he was in the democratic debates about the Yanks and Red Sox. And look what happened. The Red Sox won but he lost. It's like a man being taken by a hooker. He thought it was necessary to screw Derek Jeter who was so nice to the children of a man killed in the fall of the Twin Towers. Whose name starts with a D like in Democrat.
It made sense to me that the Yanks should win. It says something about taxes. The Yankees winning appears to be as sure as death and taxes. That's why taxes don't freak me out so much. And of course I guess it's true that Ted Williams was a neoconservative right wing republican. Thanks again John. I gave you so much money, you give me the fucking Red Sox. Is it any wonder my passion ran out by election day. Is it any wonder I had trouble working with your organization in Gainesville, or that I came to hate you forum, which censored my links to Siddha Yoga in my signature.
Well, that's life, as my Elvis loving brother used to say. Now they think we need to be more like the republicans to win the White House, or anything else. They won't even consider what the hurricanes did to our election here in Florida. They think we need to move right.
Down here, or sould I say, over here in Florida we have a required class called Americanism vs Communism. I just never realized until now what that meant to anyone calling themselves left. There is no class, required or otherwise that pits Americanism vs. Fascism. And I have pointed out how radical Islam is fascism. To deaf ears I suppose.
So, I've had my rant. Hope you'll consider some of the things I have said and I hope to see a Molly Ivins column I can relate to better. Believe me, you'll always be better than John Leo, Paul Krauthammer and George Will.

Sadgurunath Maharaj ki jay!

Common Cause
Hope you will all look into the recount in Ohio situation.
They cover it at the link above, Common Cause.
Sent off a new letter to the Gainesville Sun.
Some people at mom's church have mentioned reading my letters to the Sun, albeit they call them articles.
In case you don't get the newspaper or haven't gotten the newspaper I'll print my letters, published and unpublished here.
I may even put in some things I never send to them.
Editor, Sun; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals made some big news by saying we shouldn't be eating fish because they are as intelligent and sensitive as humans.
I'm not sure how to take Michael Ramirez's editorial cartoon depicting a small fisherman about to be devoured by an enormous shark.
The fisherman said something about PETA being silly. When I heard the statement that we shouldn't be eating fish I took it personally. I am mostly vegetarian, eating meat very rarely. Fish is one of my most common ventures outside the vegetarian discipline. But could an organization like PETA know me personally?
Maybe PETA is speaking to the eating of Wild Alaskan Salmon which are rich in Omega 3 vitamins. I myself take a pill as often as I can remember that gives me dose of Omega 3's. The pill is nothing but fish oil.
Sardines are another source of Omega 3's.
This intake of the Omega 3 vitamin isn't silly. It's been a very important feature of Dr. Weil's advice and Dr. Weil is an important voice in the world of health today.
Omega 3's are said to lower cholesterol and be good for the heart. So you see, this not eating of fish can be important, especially since I have learned that Omega 3 from vegetarian sources is not as effective.
Do not take your dieting lightly just because someone has drawn a funny cartoon.

Siddha Yoga
Tonight at Democrats Revolt, some people were smoking.
I quite smoking in 1991, April 28, at 8:28 P.M.
I have criticized those in Siddha Yoga and many have taken that to mean some wholesale indictment, but there are many things wrong with many things. I'm not sure why. Some blame repbublican presidents and congressional leaders, but I think we could blame our own hard headedness a bit.
Nonetheless, I found Siddha Yoga and Hare Krishna who was also somewhat maligned tonight, to have been very helpful in my quitting cigarettes.
I did also use various gradual quit methods, one of which, called Kick the Habit used quotes from great leaders like John F. Kennedy and tidbits of fact like the possibility of saving enough to raise two children if we quit the cigs, to get us to quit.
I don't know if even the death of the college students in Gainesville in 1990 didn't help some. But I did quit and I'm glad I did.
I also returned to vegetarianism in more stabilized way through the influence of the two different yogas.
My Urantia Book bore the brunt of my smoking. I smoked while I read and made marks in the book. The marks were the suggestion of Clyde Bedell, one of the early leaders of the Urantia Book movement. His Concordex lists over 800 places at which to mark your book. I did that. It certainly helped me wade through the Epochal Revelation.
Often when I recommend the book to someone I forget how the Concordex helped me read a lot of it.
It is like an index to the Urantia Book.
And it contains an interesting section called As Jesus Passed By. An idea I wish a lot more people thought about especially when we seem so ready to denigrate people who fought so hard for our interests.
The New Republic has attacked Sen. John Kerry for considering a second run for the presidency. Whereas I really think Sen. Hillary Clinton is the best next, I do not FEAR a challenge by John again in 2008.
I do wish more people could have called him John on the campaign trail. I think it is the kind of respect he prefers.

Eddie's
Well, I lost my password for the other BLOG. Apparently I didn't update with my new e-mail address and so I couldn't get the thing.
Window XP went down on my so I had to reinstall it and all the programs so I lost the password saving browser. I got real upset tonight with my Meetup. It's a new Meetup called Democrats Revolt.
Seemed to me it was Deaniacs Reunite!
Kerry bashing seems to have gotten really in. Naturally, it should have been in before. No point really to a false front. He conceded the election, but I think had he held out there would have been more trouble than there is. The press, which appears not to be our friend, would have blitzed a hold out. It is hard to hold out.
This electronic voting may have been tampered with and some people are calling for a recount. It has been permitted in New Hampshire. In Ohio, I hear, the only need five citizens who supported the defeated candidate. However it does appear to require some money.
If you have some money to offer, $1 to $5 (I gave $10) please go to http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/

The New York Yankees
Air America Radio
Siddha Yoga