July 24, 2002 As the floods receded I proceeded, to Toronto, where I watched the outstanding Canadian film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Entirely in the Inuit language (with subtitles for us non-Arctic types), it portrays the events of a thousand years back, when evil enters a family in the Far North, and is eventually thrust out again.

From film to theatre, and a performance of an excellent production of Shakespeare's Henry VI, whose 3 parts had been condensed into two for the Summer Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ont. Henry VI provides a look into the politics of Shakespeare's day, and an explanation of sorts of how England lost all its possessions in France (save Calais, which was lost later) within but a few years of the demise of Henry V. Most striking to me was The Bard's portrayal of Joan of Arc as a sorceress who invoked demonic spirits to gain her strength, and who was captured by the English when those spirits finally deserted her. How common for one country's saint to serve as another nation's sinner!

When visiting the festival I have for several years stayed outside Stratford at the Dappled Pegasus, a B & B run by Jane & Graham, featuring acres of fields and trees, an ancient apple orchard, and a stable populated by up to six horses. During a decade of being involved in Thoroughbred racing in Bombay & Poona I conceived an admiration for the members of the equine tribe, and regard it as a great privilege to be able to rest my weary bones at an inn that shelters them as well.

On my return to the USA I proceeded to Ridgewood, NJ, thence to the Woodstock region of NY state, home to Shyamdas & Tulasi, devoted adherents of the Pushti Sampradaya, an intricately sophisticated world-wide community of Krishna worshippers that was founded nearly half a millennium back by the great saint Vallabhacharya. Shyam & Tulasi drove me over to the Menla Institute, an imposing conference center near Phoenicia, NY that, under the direction of Prof. Bob Thurman, focuses on supporting and enhancing the knowledge and practice of Tibetan Medicine (and, by extension, Ayurveda, which forms a significant portion of Tibetan medical doctrine), in the West and in the rest of the world. A worthy aim indeed …

June 24 - July 10, 2002 I ended this fortnight in Floresville, drying out from the Great Flood of 2002 which, though it dropped less water directly on town than did the Great Flood of 1998, still put several low-lying homes and businesses under water, and swelled the San Antonio River, normally a few tens of yards wide, into a half-mile wide behemoth (two miles wide, in a couple of places). Though we were nearly, but not quite, cut off from the rest of the state by floodwaters for a few days, the most surreal damage, like the uprooted houses dragged by floodwaters to float down their streets, occurred in more northerly towns.

The floods don't seem to have materially disturbed the local birds, and last week it was the cardinals who flitted about most noticeably. June Castle commented while in Turkey on what a privilege it is to have a nightingale wake you up in the morning; perhaps if the cardinal had invested its evolutionary birthright in song instead of color it would today be the Texas state avian instead of the mockingbird. Who the Creator had in mind to mock when he garrisoned this land with that bird I know not; but for me, being lulled into afternoon doze by cicada sound is a more significant reward for surviving the harsh South Texan climate.

While in England I was again abashed to realize how little I know of my natal land's native vegetation and creatures, far less than the English know about their own flora & fauna. It was the English, after all, who gave us BIRD NOUNS OF ASSEMBLAGE, those collective nouns that so well label their species. These include:

a bouquet of pheasants, cast of hawks, charm of finches, clamor of rooks, commotion of coot, congregation of plover, exaltation of larks, fall of woodcock, gaggle of geese, murder of crows, murmuration of starlings, mustering of storks, ostentation of peacocks, paddling of ducks, parliament of owls, rafter of turkeys, siege of herons, spring of teal, stand of flamingos, tiding of magpies, troop of penguins, unkindness of ravens, watch of nightingales

Mrs. Castle keeps in her yard a bouquet of Pharaohnic pheasants, with their impossibly golden feather helmets, and their black and white banded and beaded head & neck feathers that the ancient Egyptians so precisely copied in the headdresses that their Pharaohs wore. It was such a pleasant surprise to see so clearly how the pheasants had inspired the humans, and such a disquieting revelation to marvel at how very few commentators ever identify this the source of their inspiration!

I proceeded to rainy Texas from rainy Miami (a handy break in the clouds on July 4th permitted fireworks), and was in rainy Oxford before Miami, with Robert and Gill, to watch the World Cup final, and the first rounds of Wimbledon, and to trek over to Stratford-on-Avon for an evening with the Bard - Antony and Cleopatra it was this time ("Ton & Cle," in local parlance). Before Oxford, my first trip to Ireland, for an excellent week of studying yoga with Shandor Remete in a sizable country house in County Meath. God willing, there will be more of that in my future …

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