Are you from my parallel world? (9-16-04)

I keep meaning to send you copies of the birthday cards (and 3-D
incarnation) that some of you have sent me for my birthday last month, but I
keep forgetting. So to all of you, I SWEAR it will be in next week's
email.

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Carey Meyers has brought to my attention that September 19 is Talk Like
a Pirate Day. Two friends, while playing racquetball in 1995, started
Pirate Slang and wrote an email to Dave Barry of their anectodes. They
also proposed Talk Like a Pirate Day to Dave Barry and he, being the
consummate bearer of good news, brought it to the WORLD (OK, various
locations in the US).

So, you beauties and bilge rats, smartly pick up your hornpipe and your
flagon of grog and scream ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/about.html The history of the Day
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/4018055.htm?1c
original Talk Like a Pirate Day column
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/partykit.html Plan a Pirate Party kit

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I was on the phone last night with Cynthia Anderson and she let me know
about this Iowa town, that used to be called Fairfield, but parts of
the town changed their name to Vedic City [Vedic is a Sanskrit word
meaning "totality of knowledge."]. The story begins with Fairfield, an
agricultural town that lost a lot of businesses and the college. The town
and its people were economically depressed and needed to find new
businesses to build up their local economy. So, then come the yellow buses
bringing the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his students to start the
Maharishi International University. The idea of the university started in
1955 when the Maharishi began teaching transcendental meditation (TM) in
India. (What is TM? http://www.mum.edu/cbe/tm.shtml ) The Beatles
went to the Maharishi and let's just say a star was born. So, in come all
of these people who want to meditate in the middle of farm country Iowa
and slowly the town folk begin to meditate too. Now, one-fourth of the
10,000 residents of Fairfield and Vedic City practice TM. They even
have a residential community where the houses are built to be in tune with
transcendental meditation tenets. People are retiring there. Even the
mayor practices TM.

This all shows me that people everywhere can open up their minds,
broaden their scope and get a little weird during the process.

Here's some links about the university:

http://www.mum.edu/ Maharishi University of Management
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3875438 NPR item re: the
Maharishi and the small Iowa town where it all began

Then there are the opponents of transcendental meditation:

http://unstress4less.org/
http://www.suggestibility.org/index.htm
http://www.watchman.org/na/outoftm.htm
http://unstress4less.org/transcendental_meditation-religion.htm

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This week's horoscopes go out to:
Saumya
Bob and Russell
Lamont, my ass kicking step instructor
Steven and Alex
Sandy
Ann and Dabney
Michelle E. (L'shanah tovah)
Good luck to the triathletes, Carey and Lynda!