November 15 The precise moment of this New Moon of Dipavali found me at London's Gatwick Airport. Not the most auspicious locale for the "Festival of Lights," but inescapable if I wanted to reach Bologna on schedule. During the first half of the fortnight prior I discovered that I had made it to New England in time for the last of a long leaf season, brought on by the unusually clement weather that I enjoyed while in Vermont and New Hampshire. Temple, NH, is the home of The Old Schoolhouse, an old schoolhouse taken over and converted into a yoga and retreat center by the ever-hospitable and affable Robert & Meenakshi Moses and their children Satya, Tejas and new arrival Sita.

I spent my day in Montpelier, VT (at 7000 permanent residents, the smallest of our state capitals) outside of town, driving through Maple Corner (whose male residents recently made national news by posing nude for a benefit calendar) to visit Calais (calling on a woodworking shop and its well-trimmed grass tennis court, its owner's pride), Worcester (at Wawasiki, one of Sant Ajaib Singh's ashrams), and near the Romney School (with the redoubtable Padma, stone-wall-builder extraordinaire). Padma, whose dried tomatoes must be tasted to be believed, hosts an iconoclastic radio show on which I appear irregularly. He has recently adopted a pure-bred wolf, orphaned when the Native American owner of a "petting zoo" of questionable morality/legality went to meet his Maker.

Most of my Vermont time I spent, however, in the south, in Brattleboro, in the Wilder Building, on the Whetstone Brook, in the company of Sarah Osgood and John Levin. Highlights here included an ascent of Mount Wantiatiquet, and an excursion (across the street) to the Brattleboro Museum.

The last half of last fortnight I spent in Palm Springs at the Southwest Yoga Conference. I had not been to Palm Springs before, and was favorably impressed by its ambiance, its date shakes, and its palm-lined canyons amidst the desert. A night excursion to the Joshua Tree National Park capped it all off, and prepared me well for my long flight to Europe.

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