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The sermon for Apr. 20, 2004 is: namedropping 11:13 p.m. An odd thing: a documentary on Ram Dass on PBS tonight made me sit up and go, Oh my, I've met that fellow. At Santa Cruz, Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, Noel King and Hakim Bey, with a crowd of other ageing hippies (Jerry Garcia, perhaps, at least according to rumour; I wouldn't have been able to pick that guy out in a line-up), would spend lunchtimes sitting out in the quad, smiling in that charming early stages of Alzheimers way in that bright young Santa Cruz sunshine, and inadvertantly blocking access to my mailbox. They were annoying old white people, but one does one's best to be civil and polite to one's elders, especially if they were possibly holding. I kid: I kid because I love. Actually I started talking to these folks because someone stopped me and said, "Ohmygod, that is Timothy Leary." OK, I never really talked to Tim Leary: he just smiled at me a lot. I talked to this nice fellow who sat to Mr Leary's left, and called himself Dick, and who knew a lot about the Mahabharatta. That guy: I just saw a documentary on him. My gosh! (Matt, do you remember this little kaffeeklatch? The only incident I can recall is that I was skipping around campus with you and Chip, and I started singing this old Dion song, viz. "I listen to the rhythm of the falling rain / Wondering oh what a fool I've been / Something something something something something a-gain / And something something something something something. / Rain, rain, go away, something something / And something something something something something something / Something something something something something something something something." You and Chip started berating me for forgetting the words, and started singing something entirely different, apparently some song from Sesame Street that had something to do with rain, or something. Uncharacteristically of me, I started shrieking at the both of you about how wrong you were. Then Ram Dass -- whom they made a documentary of, for Christ's sake -- gently spoke up from his chair: "Jonathan's singing an old '60's song. But Jonathan, that resembles the song from Sesame Street as well." Such a boddhisattva. Seriously.) Note apropos of nothing at all: outlaw all firearms forever.  
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