by Lilasuka dasi

Every Festival of Inspiration is more ecstatic than the last. The twelfth annual Festival of Inspiration has come and gone, but the excitement still lingers on in the hearts and minds of those who participated.

Many people helped to make the Festival a grand success, under the expert guidance of Mother Malati.  The intricate details of organization, once again, made things go smoothly. Different guests share their variegated experiences.

One newer resident remarked: “I somehow felt very enlivened with the association of so many of the Srila Prabhupada disciples all in one place. Their bright smiles, filled with deep understanding and compassion were very encouraging to me.”

One guest remarked: “The bathrooms were, for the most part, clean and well stocked. That’s important.”

Another visitor declared, “I had wonderful accommodations since a devotee opened their home for me and my family.  The prasadam was healthy and tasty.  Bhaktimarga Swami’s drama about Maharaj Dhruva was my favorite part.  The Saturday night dance was also fascinating.”

Some people were also talking about the talented devotees at the rocking kirtan which was part of the Saturday night entertainment.

It seemed to some that both the temple and the front lawn kirtans transported you out of this world. One  guest related how she is from a small temple, so the wonderful kirtans at the Festival, led by a variety of empowered devotees, young and old, were a very special treat for her.

The workshop presentations were stimulating and well- presented from the “Dealing with Sexual Desire” seminar to the “One Chord Wonder” workshop on harmonium.

The outdoor vendors provided a variety of fun shopping. Many guests also browsed and shopped at the newly opened “BlueHome Artworks”, a shop that boasts the many arts, music, books and crafts talents of devotees and friends.

The association alone was worth coming for, according to one young lady, who declared: “The association at this Festival was very important to me. Cooking in the kitchen with the “2^nd generation” devotees and others was the most uplifting part.  The cooks saw to the minutest details and even put icing and garnishes on gingersnap cookies as if they were cooking for one special guest in a gourmet restaurant, instead of 1,000 cookies for a big Festival! In conclusion, I can say that before the Festival, I just wasn’t feeling connected. But as a result of this Festival of Inspiration, I was reminded that I am part of a dynamic, vibrant movement.”

We had a nice conversation about that project and how it worked as well as other topics about gardening.   While discussing tomato varieties, he was recommending Sungold, a cherry tomato, which I am trying for the first time this year as it turns out. He predicted I would be quite pleased with it.

I also met an artist who was selling his work. Turns out he and another family just bought a farm in Kentucky.  If you are interested in getting in on supporting or being part of a new project on the ground floor, here is your chance.  From their website (which includes a blog):

A baby bull was born to Jamuna in the early morning hours of May 15th. When Jaya Prabhupada came to milk the cows Tuesday morning, he found the bull already standing and sucking milk from his mother. The calf is healthy and tall and has a little tuft of hair on his right ear to distinguish him.

There was a drawing to name the calf and many New Vrindaban brijabasi’s submitted name suggetions. On Wednesday morning, Jaya Prabhupada drew HH Varsana Swami’s name suggestion, and announced the bull’s name… ”Dharma”. Please welcome little Dharma to the world, and come by to visit and make friends with him and his attentive mother, Jamuna.

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die?
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome, I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Light’s up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome, I could cry

This has sometimes been called the saddest song ever written. Though Monday night when I was at a kirtan with Radhanath Swami he announced that a plane had crashed in Nepal, and 8 devotees had left their bodies, including 7 known to him from his home temple in Chowpatty, one of them a child.

He dedicated the kirtan to them and the start of that kirtan was pretty sad.

Naturally Hank Williams sings this song best.

It is a country standard, so you can hear any number of versions, including this one by Jimmie Dale Gilmore.

Even rockers take it on occasionally. Here is a version by Volbeat.

And who could sing any song more sadly than the Cowboy Junkies.

The bagpipes by themselves tend to sadness. Here is a version by Me First and the Gimmes with bagpipes.

Here Electric Black does a version with animation that “focuses on the sentiment of modern alienation captured by the song.”

Although we had surplus strawberries last year and did freeze a bunch that we have been eating throughout the year, it still doesn’t compare with fresh.  Those available in the supermarkets are simply imitators –  disguised as strawberries in appearance and maybe even texture, they are devoid of flavor and unappealing.

While strawberries in the garden do take some effort, the reward in flavor makes it so worthwhile. Thus to catch that first glimpse of a pink strawberry, indicating a ripe one is only days away, can be a cause of great anticipatory joy.

This does incite a need for action on my part however.  While we enjoy fresh strawberries, so do the night critters –  possums and racoons.  Even if I wasn’t adverse to sharing with them, they aren’t very good dinner guests.

Strawberries form a canopy of leaves. When picking, you move aside the canopy and all the ripe red strawberries are easy to see in the greenery.  The unwanted guests for some reason find it necessary to swirl the plants around and twist them into bunches. This makes the berries hard to see and necessitates having to unwind the plants to pick them, a tedious process.

The canopy serves another purpose — it creates a shade mulch.  It keeps the sun from hitting the ground and prevents weeds from growing.  When the plants get messed up, weeds start to grow.

To keep the critters from climbing my deer fence I  use electrified wire.  While unpleasant enough to deter touching it, it doesn’t hurt them other than a momentary unpleasantness. At the bottom of the deer fence there is a rabbit fence skirting. They  climb that to get through the deer fence.  So I have an electric wire at the top of the narrow openings in the rabbit fence.

This is fairly close to the ground so vegetation can grow up and short out the electric wire, rendering it ineffective, so it behooves me to keep vegetation off the wire.  This time of year  grasses are heading out and reach it.

The easy solution would be to spray herbicide  but I am an organic grower so that isn’t an option.  The alternative is  a weed whacker and cut them down where the lawn mower can’t reach them,

Last year my son Tulasi was with us and he handled that task but this year it falls on me.  I need to get it done in the next couple of days before the strawberries ripen and the critters discover them. Once they have a taste and a notion that something good is in there, they can become relentless and extremely clever at penetrating any defense. If I have the fence (turned off for winter snows) functioning before the strawberries ripen, they won’t know what they are missing and be less motivated.

When I first installed the electric wire, they were still getting in. I eventually figured out that they were grabbing the bottom of my gate and flexing it out enough to be able to slip in. So a second part of this is I  have to start leaning  a concrete block against its bottom.

While pink can be exciting, so can yellow, as in the first tomato blossom that opened up yesterday.

That is on the early 45 day  variety of tomato I put out in the garden weeks ago under the protection of a cloche. I will be watching that with keen interest.

From Elephant Journal

Genius is a multifaceted jewel. It has many rough edges, and it doesn’t care for any mundane norms or compromises.

Why do we assume simple is good?….Simplicity isn’t just a visual style. It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity. To be truly simple you have to go really deep.

Krishna and Radha

I played soccer in an organized competitive league until 2004.   After having made a run and being in involved in the action, when I was off the ball I would concentrate on breathing. Deep breathing would recharge me and I would soon be ready to make another run.

We hear about Tour de France bicyclist who use blood doping.  The more oxygen getting to the muscles the greater the stamina and the longer you can exert yourself at a higher level.  Blood doping increases the amount of Red Blood Cells (RBC) which carry oxygen through the blood stream.  By packing more RBC in more oxygen can be transported to the muscles.

A normal range for RBC is 4.3 to 5.9. My most recent blood work had me at 2.95. What this means is I have a lot of things to do in my own garden plus a lot of projects I am involved in pro bono for the temple and while the spirit is willing the flesh is weak.  I can do anything but not for very long and it is common that once I get exhausted, I don’t recover quickly or not at all.

Which is frustrating.  An older self image I had of myself is as a doer, someone who accomplished things, and the reality is that my current state is a pale imitation of that person.

Somehow or another the key thing they measue is hemoglobin.  A normal range, which I have never been in since I started getting blood work done in the late 1990s, is 13.9 to 16.3.  I have been wallowing in the 12.x for the last decade or so but in the last year that has been sliding and most of this year I have been 10.x.  Last month it dropped to 9.7 which is bad but bad enough that it triggered  authorization from my medical insurance to pay for Procrit. Procrit is one of the drugs used by athletes for blood doping.

For me it is about “PROCRIT^® is indicated for the treatment of anemia due to chronic kidney disease (CKD), including patients on dialysis and not on dialysis to decrease the need for red blood cell (RBC) transfusion. “

Below 10 is the benchmark.  It has taken a while to get get all the ducks in a row to get the authorization and actually take possession of the drug, then get to a requisite tutorial at the doctor’s office but I have finally self administered a dose.  A month had gone by so I had my monthly blood work done that day and the hemoglobin was 9.3, a further slip.

My instructions are to wait two weeks then get another blood test and they will instruct me how large a does to take then based on how I have responded to it.

I can say it has been a couple of  days and no dramatic increase in energy yet. Procrit works by supplying erythropoietin, a hormone that regulates RBC production which is normally produced by the kidneys. When it is underproduced, not enough RBC are produced to replace those lost normally to attrition and henoglobin levels fall.

So I wasn’t expecting a sudden boost of energy but I am guardedly optimistic I can eventually get a little more stamina. Who knows, I may even try some dancing at this weekend’s Festival of Inspiration.

The tactic of nonviolence is a tactic of love that seeks the salvation and redemption of the opponent, not his castigation, humiliation and defeat. A pretended nonviolence that seeks to defeat and humiliate the adversary by spiritual instead of physical attack is little more than a confession of weakness. This may be easy to talk about in theory. It is not easy to practice, especially when the adversary is aroused to a bitter and violent defense of an injustice which he believes to be just. We must therefore be careful how we talk about our opponents, and still more careful how we regulate our differences with our collaborators.