October 20, 2002 This year's Ashvin Nava Ratri officially began while I was still in Colorado, but started in earnest for me once I got to New York City, where I stayed as usual at the Clubwalas' apartment. While in the Big Apple I worked with Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya on various projects (including her new NIH grant for developing modules of complementary & alternative medicine that medical schools can use in their curricula), met visionary painter extraordinaire Alex Grey at his exhibition at Tibet House, and rendezvoused with Fred & Wendi for performances of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and the soggy stage play Metamorphoses, and to dine with beat poet Ira Cohen.

Nava Ratri 2002 expressed itself best during my visits to 430 Broome Street, where in Eddie Stern's Patanjali Yoga Shala stands a genuine Mysore-style temple within which sits substantial stone image of Ganesha, one that a dedicated Eddie carefully tends with full, regular, extended pujas. During Nava Ratri Eddie had established a small image of Durga in front of the temple, which he (and we) enthusiastically served each evening after Ganesha had been pleased. Jai Ma Durga!

On Oct 14 I flew to Toronto, driven from Manhattan to LaGuardia by one Yusuf Mohammed. Originally from Accra, Yusuf spent more than twenty years in the USA, and now mainly lives in Ghana, coming to NYC to drive cab for a couple of months at a time to generate cash. Once he has a bundle he returns to Accra, to run his computer school for students who want to learn to "think for themselves." Clearly a man who takes his own advice, Yusuf takes a distinctly unorthodox line for a Muslim: he refuses to be labeled either Sunni or Shia, and is married to a Christian. He & his wife are taking their children both to mosque & to church, to let them decide on their own which faith they would like to follow. Yusuf loves the opportunities the US offers to those who are willing to work hard, and strongly supports the American campaign against Al-Qaeda, saying "you have to protect yourself when you are attacked." He regrets the omnipresence of Libyans in Ghana, dropping loads of money on people there, trying to lure them to Libya to be indoctrinated. When I asked him, as he dropped me off, what advice he gave his students who were tempted to go, he replied, "I tell them what I think the Libyans are up to, and then tell them to make up their minds for themselves."

This theme of contemporary internationalism continued for me during the next week in Toronto, where I stayed with Shelina Kassum, who is an Ismaili, a member of a group that describes itself as Muslim, but is regarded by millions of more bigoted Muslims as heretical. We watched The Season of the Drunken Horses, a Kurdish film telling a heart-rending tale of Kurdish children on the Iran-Iraq border who are forced to serve as smugglers in order to make ends meet. Coupled with Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore's alternatively hilarious and appalling film on why Americans are so obsessed with firearms, they served as fitting bookends for our latest editions of the bitter reality of global brutality.

At the end of that week I was relieved to escape the urban landscape to spend a day in rural Walter's Falls, and the beauty of its autumn's leaves. That was the evening before and the morning after Kojagiri Purnima, the "Autumn Full Moon," the night when the Moon "sweats" nectar down onto the earth, and revives, however briefly, the hope that humankind may someday awaken from our collective nightmare.

October 6, 2002Each year's Ganesha festival ends on Ananta Chaturdashi, the night before the full moon of the lunar month of Bhadrapada. This year that full moon fell on September 20, and the Pitri Paksha, or "ancestor worship fortnight," accordingly began on the 21st, hand in hand with the autumnal equinox. After ministering to my mother (and, one would hope, her forebears through her) at her home for the first few days of that period, I proceeded on September 25 to Albuquerque, where I visited a newer generation, in this person of Christina Werthe and Bryan Tarin, and their newly-opened yoga studio.

The next morning Dr. Claudia Welch & I proceeded to the banks of the Rio Grande, where we summoned ancestors and deceased friends to offer them the water, milk, and black sesame seeds in the approved, Pitri Paksha kind of way. That afternoon I flew to Sacramento, where Bette Timm collected me, and we drove to the graduation ceremonies of the California College of Ayurveda, in Grass Valley. I know Rick Silberman, the college's administrator, from Vermont, so his invitation to speak at the college was one I could not turn down (he & wife Judy also know Claudia, since she was a child). One highlight of my trip to Grass Valley was a fig-picking expedition to the bountiful tree in the Bank of America parking lot. Another was a tour of the Empire Gold Mine - one more reminder of how easy it is for humans to become one-pointed when they search for gold.

A third highlight was a visit to the justly-renowned Yuba River, driving boldly along the local dirt roads in Bette's new gasoline-electric hybrid Toyota Prius - no need for an SUV here! From the river to Coyote Ledge just in time for a glorious sunset, and then the next morning it was time to drive back to Sac, and return to NM in time for the SIMPLE conference, on integrating conventional and alternative forms of medical practice, at the University of New Mexico Medical School. I addressed that gathering on the subject of Ayurveda, then dashed off to Colorado Springs to meet my mother & sister and attend the reunion of the Army Air Corps 69th Service Squadron, my father's World War Two unit. He & most of his buddies are now gone, but a few of the remaining comrades still meet annually, and encourage family members to attend too. Having not been before, I regarded this my first visit with them as yet one more mode of ancestor veneration.

On Sunday, October Sixth I accompanied one of the participants up to the panoramic views atop Pike's Peak. On our descent a substantial flock of bighorn sheep wandered unseasonally down toward our train, and that evening the dusk flight back to Albuquerque offered a spectacularly long sunset punctuated by a brilliant Venus on the horizon, a fitting end to the Pitri Paksha and stellar beginning for Ashvin Navaratri, the autumnal "Nine Nights" of invoking the Divine Feminine.

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