Marlon Byrd signed with the Cubs today. The 32 year old agrees to a 3 year deal worth $15 million. The deal is reported to be backloaded to give Jim Hendry some flexibility to make a few more deals this offseason.

ESPN 1000’s Bruce Levine broke the story earlier today. According to Byrd much of the deal has to do with the relationship he has with the Cubs new hitting coach:

“[Jaramillo] was a big part of [signing in Chicago],” Byrd said. “I really enjoyed my last three years with Rudy. I’m very comfortable with him. He is the best in the business. We are especially close. It’s going to be nice working with him the next three years.”

The 32-year-old Byrd had a career year in 2009, hitting .283 with 20 home runs and 89 RBIs. It was his first major league season with more than 500 at-bats; putting up career highs in games played (146), home runs, doubles (43) and RBIs.

“I’m very happy to have signed Marlon,” Cubs general manager Jim Hendry said. “Obviously, he had a lot of success in recent years in Texas.

“Rudy Jaramillo has been very supportive of signing him, since the day we signed Rudy. We explored every avenue of free agency and trade to try to fill this role, and we kept coming back to Marlon being the right guy.”

MB21 at ACB takes a look at Byrd’s projections and his value.

Texas FLDS Compound On Its One-Year Anniversary: The Lessons We Must Learn to Effectively Protect Children in the Future

By MARCI A. HAMILTON

Thursday, April 16, 2009

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the valiant attempts by Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) to save the child sexual-abuse victims in the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) group situated at the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch outside Eldorado, Texas. In this column, I’ll take stock of related events since then, and explain the lessons they teach. The authorities’ concerns were triggered by a call to a hotline, and confirmed when they entered the compound to discover a significant number of underage mothers – who were, plainly, victims of statutory rape — and clear evidence of bigamy involving underage persons, a first-degree felony in Texas. Not only did CPS have clear visual evidence of these crimes, but it also had written recordsshowing that girls had been married off to much older men, even after those men had taken other spouses, and some disturbing pictures, including one particularly disgusting one of their prophet, Warren Jeffs (who is now in jail on other charges), passionately kissing a 12-year-old girl who wassitting on his lap.

The promise of the YFZ raid to free oppressed children, though, was never fully realized. All of thechildren but one has been returned. As I discussed in a prior column, the Texas appellate courts bear much of the responsibility. They refused to back up CPS’s actions, because they discounted the claims that girls had been victims of statutory rape, if those girls were over the legal age of consent at the time of the raid. The courts’ reasoning was offensive to victims of statutory rape, and made a mockery of Texas criminal law. It was also just another moment when the interests of child sex- abuse victims were trivialized for no good reason.

One Aspect of the Raid that Was Not Widely Covered: CPS Was Simply Following Its Usual Procedures

Most Americans were fascinated by the FLDS/CPS story as it unfolded, but many did not know that CPS’s actions were actually not out of the ordinary, though the context was extraordinary. As with any ordinary child-abuse investigation, once the authorities had clear evidence of abuse (in this case, of statutory rape and child bigamy), they took into custody all of the children who were sharing the same living conditions as the alleged victims, and who, therefore, were also at risk. CPS really had no choice but to bring out all of the children, because many of the adults and children lied about their ages and relationships, and because the FLDS compound was much like a commune wherein family lines and relationships were blurred. It was obvious that the child brides were part of a lifestyle that was being imposed on all of the children, and that not only were the girls at risk of rape, but the boys were also at risk, for they were being groomed to perpetuate the situation – groomed, that is, to be law-breakers. By some measures, the State’s actions were the most promising step forward yet for the numerous victims within the FLDS. (To get a sense of the depth of the organization’s problems regarding children, read Flora Jessop’s recently-published book Church of Lies.) Twelve of the men from the compound have been indicted for perpetrating child sex abuse, aiding such abuse, or failing to report it.

Before those indictments were issued, the most any prosecutor had achieved was to indict a single man from a compound at a given time, and such indictments rarely happened. Essentially, the FBI and the state Attorneys General had simply looked the other way in the states where compounds existed. The FLDS group made it difficult to investigate its crimes of abuse and abandonment of children by living in insular communes, and the authorities found it easier to co-exist with the illegal behavior than to try to stop it.

Thanks to CPS, however, we now have official documents that record the behavior of the FLDS that put children at serious risk. CPS pursued its investigation professionally, and released what should have been a shocking report detailing the problems discovered within this group, including approximately 25% of the pubescent girls being subjected to statutory rape and child bigamy. Unfortunately, the report barely made the national newspapers.

These are extraordinary developments for victims and justice, and CPS and the Texas system (despite the appellate courts there) deserve credit for taking us this far.

The Appallingly Wrong Decisions by the Texas Courts – and the All-Too-Familiar Public Relations Strategy by the FLDS Group

The Texas appellate courts were as wrong as CPS was right. Essentially, the appellate courts told the girls to just get over it. Sadly, the court decisions were part of our general culture’s deep instinct to wish away the suffering of the children living among us. As a factual matter, the evidence conclusively proves that children who have been sexually violated by adults do not simply “grow out of it.” To the contrary, their victimization radically alters their horizons forever. And not only did the Texas decisions dismiss children’s suffering – suffering that may well last a lifetime – but it also laid the groundwork for the return of the children to the compound, even if CPS lawyers believed that there were strong legal grounds to terminate parental rights.

Defense attorneys celebrated the destruction of CPS’s cases, and added their voices to the FLDS public relations machine, which issued a steady drumbeat of criticism of the state. The public relations strategy was to portray the adults as the “real” victims; to deflect attention from the rape, bigamy, and abuse by loudly demanding vindication of the adults’ alleged rights to religious liberty (rights that were no license to break the law); and to flood the media with images of defenseless FLDS women in pastel dresses pining for their beloved children. The media followed suit; for example, the Today Show repeatedly hosted gaggles of FLDS “couples” to talk about their suffering. There were no hard-hitting questions; there was just clucking on the part of Meredith Viera.

The FLDS’s public relations attack was actually standard operating procedure for any religious group that finds itself on the other side of the law: Such groups — as we have learned from the Catholic Church’s and other religious groups’ child-sexual-abuse scandals — almost always use religion to seek to transform the adults into the “real” victims, so that the viewer’s attention is no longer on the children. They count on what I call “adult preferentialism,” that is, the tendency of adults to exaggerate their importance and to treat children as far less valuable. It is also common practice for them to shout ”persecution,” regardless of the fact that they are being charged with serious crimes, and to present an angelic face to the press. In this culture — saturated with trust for religion — this can be a pretty good strategy, unless you are the child. Then, it is disastrous.

The Texas appellate decisions at least left open the door for CPS to do investigations that would produce evidence to justify holding onto individual children, and CPS investigators did just that. But the vast majority of the children were quickly “non-suited” and returned to the compound. It is obvious that there was pressure either from the press, or from Austin, or both to shut down the case quickly. A year later, we are learning that there were serious differences of opinion within CPS over the return of the children. Some are heartbroken over having to let the children return to the FLDS and others are so demoralized by the failure of CPS to protect the children, they have quit. One attorney, Jeff Schmidt, quit last week and was quoted as saying, “We had some serious differences of opinion based on applicable law and what was in the best interests of the children. We completely failed to protect those children. That’s my opinion.” Another attorney quit as well. These attorneys were both willing to go forward on parental-termination claims for a significant number of the children, because they thought that the evidence supported the termination, but the Department rejected their recommendations. There are also reports of CPS workers who cannot get the sight out of their minds of FLDS children resisting being returned to the FLDS adults, often only posing as parents. Some had to be pushed toward the adults; many of them had already been separated from their birth parents long before. YFZ was for the upper class of FLDS members and for children identified for their abject obedience to authority, their Aryan genetic traits,and as future wives for the leadership. Many of the children were sent to Texas,then “given” into new families,according to Flora Jessop, who recently met with Texas authorities about the case. No matter how often the FLDS winds up its PR machine to declaim that the separation was horrific for the children, the fact is that seeing the outside world, riding bikes, and eating pizza, may have been the best thing that ever happened to these children.

So how does the system permit children to be returned to living within an entrenched culture, for which there is documentation that 25% of pubescent girls are forced into child bigamy and childbearing? The answer is: Through the distortion of both message and meaning. We want to believe these insular religious groups are loci of goodness and piety. We want to believe that religious liberty is always good. And we want to have these beliefs even if the facts dictate very much otherwise.

So when the FLDS’s public-relations hired guns put those images before us and demand religious liberty, we, including the media, close our eyes and shake off the grotesque images of girls being sexually assaulted in order to bear the twentieth child of a man who already has four wives. The real legacy of the Texas raid on the YFZ compound is that it has made it harder to close our eyes to the children in these settings. Are they now safe? Absolutely not. But they are safer than they were a year ago, when Texas started down the courageous path.

Marci Hamilton, a FindLaw columnist, is the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge 2008). A review of Justice Denied appeared on this site on June 25, 2008. Her previous book is God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press 2005), now available in paperback.

Advertising Agency: singh&sons
Creative Directors: Roger Paulse, P-J Kensley
Art Director: Marcel Witbooi
Copywriter: Oskar Petty
Director: Terence Neale
Aired: September 2009

(Za Scary Ideas.)

The Evil Doer has left the building! This, dear readers, is proof that nightmares do eventually come to an end. The fact that he was ever allowed in the building in the first place is proof that Americans can get a bad case of stupid from time to time.

Who knew that it would be so easy — just put him on a helicopter and wave bye? Can you honestly say you’ve ever seen a better sight than that helicopter fading into the distance? Well, yeah there was a helpless Cheney being pushed around in a wheelchair but besides that.

Have you heard the news that the Shrub is abandoning his Texas “ranch” and is settling in the very affluent enclave of Preston Hollow, a kind of townlet right in the middle of north Dallas plastic?

Now a skeptic might point out that Bush only called the “ranch” home as long as he was occupying or running for some political office. Having a ranch made him seem more aw shucks and less pompous – I guess there’s something appealing about a good ‘ole  boy out cutting brush and running cattle like a real man.

Now I’m as glad as anybody that Bush is gone but I’m selfishly worried that Obama might not be as much fun to write about. I mean I can poke fun at Texans all day long because I’m intimately acquainted with all the weirdness and sometimes downright stupidity that inflicts the breed but I don’t know diddly squat about Illinois and Hawaii.

What do people from Illinois call themselves anyway, Illinoisans? That doesn’t sound right. All I know is that Chicago is big, Oprah tapes her show there, there’s a big lake that looks like an ocean and that it gets colder than a well-digger’s ass. Not much to hang my hat on.

I did go to a conference in Chicago once and noticed that everybody called the chain restaurant Chipotle Grill, Cha-poolie instead of Cha-poat-lee. Now that’s just wrong but it’s not really enough to sustain eight years of sarcastic humor. Besides, living in a state that says Shar-lot rather than Charlotte kind of disqualifies me from making fun of people for the way they talk.

I do know that Hawaiians call themselves Hawaiians – my daddy always said High-wah-yuns – and that there’s a real ocean there, but I don’t know what’s funny about them. I know there has to be something – people don’t live on an island for thousands of years without developing weird ticks and some serious inbreeding.

Oh well, it will all come to light eventually. I’m sure there are things about Barack Obama to poke fun at – I just can’t see them yet because I’m still so in love and thinking he’s perfect and just everything a gal could want.

meland Security

Wed Nov 12, 12:05 AM ET

Prev 22 of 53 Next

FBI agents guard the entrance to the Holy Land Foundation in Richardson, Texas in December 2001. A Texas jury was to begin deliberations Wednesday in the re-trial of the Muslim charity accused of being a front for Palestinian militants, in the largest terrorism financing prosecution in American history.

(AFP/Getty Images/File/Ronald Martinez)

I still remember my visits to Osho ashram, Mysore. Before that first meet with neo-sanyasis there I had many negative prejudices regarding Osho. But after taking complete meditation courses and reading numerous of his books my perspective was totally changed. He was a true maverick, true iconoclast, true Anarchist. Anarchist to a level beyond just materialism but right to spiritualism.

He was the first person in my view who completely understood the meaning of true freedom. He demanded everything unconditionally. Not even a slight tinge of alterations or hidden bondages. He understood the real cause behind every problem on Earth. Although bit Freudian in view his went to a greater depth. He believed that it was the conditioning provided by Society which snatches hi natural freedom. After all its we who divide our children in to Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Inidan, Chinese, American etc. and then make them fight over it. His total contention was to unify everyone and everything. Let every child be a property of whole society. Let all national bvoundaries be dissolved. Its nothing utopian or artificial. In history, petty cities combined to form provinces which then yielded their way to bigger states which ultimately congregated to form nations. So why delay in combining those nations at last.

I think a brief biography of Osho would be better so as to continue my views regarding his teachings in future.

Biography Of Osho

Childhood and adolescence (1931–1950)

Osho was born Chandra Mohan Jain (Hindi: चन्द्र
मोहन
जैन) in Kuchwada, a small village in the Narsinghpur District of Madhya Pradesh state in India, as the eldest of eleven children of a cloth merchant.[6] His parents, who were Taranpanthi Jains, sent him to live with his maternal grandparents until he was seven years old.[7] By Osho’s own account,[8] this was a major influence on his development, because his grandmother gave him the utmost freedom, leaving him carefree without an imposed education or restrictions. At seven years old, his grandfather, whom he adored, died, and he went back to live with his parents.[9] He was profoundly affected by his grandfather’s death, and again by the death of his childhood sweetheart and cousin Shashi from typhoid when he was 15, leading to an extraordinary preoccupation with death that lasted throughout much of his childhood and youth.[9][10]

In his school years, he was a rebellious, but gifted student, and acquired a reputation as a formidable debater.[11] As a youth, Osho became an atheist; he took an interest in hypnosis and was briefly associated with socialism and two Indian independence movements: the Indian National Army and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.[11][12][13]

University years and public speaker (1951–1970)

In 1951, aged nineteen, Osho began his studies at Hitkarini College in Jabalpur.[14] After acute conflicts with an instructor, the principal asked him to leave the college, and he transferred to D. N. Jain College, also in Jabalpur.[15] He began speaking in public, initially at the annual Sarva Dharma Sammelan held at Jabalpur, organised by the Taranpanthi Jain community into which he was born, participating there from 1951 to 1968.[16] He resisted his parents’ pressure to get married.[17]

Osho later said he became spiritually enlightened on 21 March 1953, when he was 21 years old.[18] He said he dropped all effort and hope.[19] After what he describes as an intense seven-day process he says he went out at night to the Bhanvartal garden in Jabalpur, where he sat under a tree:[18]

”     The moment I entered the garden everything became luminous, it was all over the place – the benediction, the blessedness. I could see the trees for the first time – their green, their life, their very sap running. The whole garden was asleep, the trees were asleep. But I could see the whole garden alive, even the small grass leaves were so beautiful.

I looked around. One tree was tremendously luminous – the maulshree tree. It attracted me, it pulled me towards itself. I had not chosen it, god himself has chosen it. I went to the tree, I sat under the tree. As I sat there things started settling. The whole universe became a benediction.[20]

“

He completed his B.A. in philosophy at D. N. Jain College in 1955 and joined the University of Sagar, where he earned his M.A. in philosophy in 1957 (with distinction).[21][22] He immediately secured a teaching post at Raipur Sanskrit college, but soon became controversial enough for the Vice Chancellor to ask him to seek a transfer, as he considered him a danger to his students’ morality, character and religion.[23] From 1958, he taught philosophy as a lecturer at Jabalpur University, being promoted to professor in 1960.[23] A popular lecturer with a “golden tongue” in Hindi, he was acknowledged by his peers as an exceptionally intelligent man who had been able to overcome the deficiencies of his early small-town education.[24]

In parallel to his university job, he travelled throughout India, giving lectures critical of socialism and Gandhi, under the name Acharya Rajneesh (Acharya means teacher or professor; Rajneesh was a nickname he had acquired in childhood).[23][11][25] Socialism, he said, was a dead loss that would only socialise poverty.[25] Gandhi was a masochist and reactionary who worshipped poverty.[11][25] To escape its backwardness, Osho said, India needed capitalism, science, modern technology and birth control.[11] He criticised orthodox Indian religions as dead, filled with empty ritual, oppressing their followers with fears of damnation and the promise of blessings.[25][11] Such statements made him controversial: they shocked and repelled many, but attracted others.[11]

Soon, he gained a loyal following that included a number of wealthy merchants and businessmen.[26] These sought individual consultations from him about their spiritual development and daily life, in return for donations – a commonplace arrangement in India, where people seek guidance from learned or holy individuals the way people elsewhere might consult a psychologist or counsellor.[26] The rapid growth of his practice, however, was somewhat out of the ordinary, suggesting that he had an uncommon talent as a spiritual therapist.[26] From 1962, he began to lead 3- to 10-day meditation camps, and the first meditation centres (Jivan Jagruti Kendra) started to emerge around his teaching, then known as the Life Awakening Movement (Jivan Jagruti Andolan).[27] After a speaking tour in 1966, he resigned from his teaching post.[23]

In a 1968 lecture series, later published under the title From Sex to Superconsciousness, he scandalised Hindu leaders by calling for freer acceptance of sex.[28] His advocacy of sexual freedom caused public disapproval in India, and he became known as the “sex guru” in the press.[29] When he was invited in 1969 – despite the misgivings of some Hindu leaders – to speak at the Second World Hindu Conference, he used the occasion to raise controversy again.[28] In his speech, he said that “any religion which considers life meaningless and full of misery, and teaches the hatred of life, is not a true religion. Religion is an art that shows how to enjoy life.”[30] He characterised priests as being motivated by self-interest, incensing the shankaracharya of Puri, who tried in vain to have his lecture stopped.[30]

Mumbai (1970–1974)

At a public meditation event in spring 1970 Osho presented his Dynamic Meditation method for the first time.[31] At the end of June 1970, Osho left Jabalpur for Mumbai.[32] On September 26, 1970 he initiated his first group of disciples or sannyasins at an outdoor meditation camp, one of the large gatherings where he lectured and guided group meditations.[33] His concept of neo-sannyas entailed assuming a new name and wearing the traditional orange dress of ascetic Hindu holy men, including a mala (beaded necklace) carrying a locket with his picture.[34] However, his sannyasins were expected to follow a celebratory, rather than ascetic lifestyle.[35] They would be free, creatively responding to the present situation, as comfortable with being loving as with being alone.[35] He himself was not to be worshipped, but was rather like a catalytic agent, “a sun encouraging the flower to open, but in a very delicate way”.[35]

He had by then acquired a secretary, who as his first disciple had taken the name Ma Yoga Laxmi.[11] Laxmi was the daughter of one of his early followers, a wealthy Jain who had been a key supporter of the National Congress Party during the struggle for Indian independence, with close ties to Gandhi, Nehru and Morarji Desai.[11] She raised the money that enabled Osho to stop his travels and settle down.[11]

In December 1970, Osho thus moved to Woodlands Apartments in Mumbai, where he gave lectures and received visitors, among them the first Western visitors.[32] He now travelled very rarely, and stopped speaking at open public meetings.[32] In 1971, he adopted the title Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.[34] Shree means Sir or Mister; the Sanskrit title Bhagwan means “blessed one”, indicating a human being in whom the divine is no longer hidden, but apparent.[36][37]

The ashram in Poona (1974–1981)

The hot, humid climate of Mumbai appeared to have proved detrimental to Osho’s health; he had developed diabetes, asthma and numerous allergies.[34] So, in 1974, on the 21st anniversary of his enlightenment,[38] he and his group moved from the Mumbai apartment to a property in Koregaon Park, Pune, which was purchased with the help of Catherine Venizelos (Ma Yoga Mukta), a Greek shipping heiress.[39] Osho taught at the Pune ashram from 1974 to 1981. The two adjoining houses and six acres of land became the nucleus of an ashram, and those two buildings are still at the heart of the present-day Osho International Meditation Resort. This space allowed for the regular audio recording of his discourses and, later, video recording and printing for worldwide distribution, which enabled him to reach far larger audiences internationally. The number of Western visitors increased sharply, leading to constant expansion.[40] The ashram soon featured an arts-and-crafts centre that turned out clothing, jewelry, ceramics and organic cosmetics and put on performances of theatre, music and mime.[40] Following the arrival of several therapists from the Human Potential Movement in the early seventies,[41] the ashram began from 1975 to complement its meditation offerings with a growing number of therapy groups.[42] These became a major source of income for the ashram.[43][44]

A typical day in the ashram began at 6:00 a.m. with Dynamic Meditation.[45][46] At 8:00 a.m., Osho gave a 60 to 90-minute spontaneous lecture in the ashram’s “Buddha Hall” auditorium, either commenting on literature from a religious tradition, or answering questions sent in by visitors and disciples.[46][40] Until 1981, lecture series held in Hindi alternated with series held in English.[47] During the day, various meditations and therapies took place, whose intensity was ascribed to the spiritual energy of Osho’s “buddhafield”.[48] Evenings were for darshans, where Osho engaged in personal conversation with small numbers of individual disciples or visitors and gave sannyas.[40][46] Sannyasins came for darshan when departing or returning to the ashram, or if they had an issue that they wanted to discuss with Osho.[40][46]

To decide which therapies to participate in, visitors either consulted Osho or made selections according to their own preferences.[49] Some of the early therapy groups in the ashram, such as the Encounter group, were experimental and very controversial, allowing a degree of physical violence as well as sexual encounters between participants.[50][51] Conflicting reports of injuries sustained in encounter group sessions began to appear in the press.[52][53][54] Violence in the therapy groups eventually ended in January 1979, when the ashram issued a press release stating that violence “had fulfilled its function within the overall context of the ashram as an evolving spiritual commune.”[55] Besides the controversy around the therapies, allegations of drug use amongst sannyasins began to mar the ashram’s image.[56] Some Western sannyasins were financing their extended stays in India through prostitution and drug running.[57][58] A few of them later claimed that, while Osho was not directly involved, they discussed such plans and activities with him in darshan, and he gave his blessing.[59]

The Pune ashram was, by all accounts, an exciting and intense place to be, with an emotionally charged, madhouse-carnival atmosphere.[40][48][60] Many observers noted that Osho’s lecture style changed in the late seventies, becoming intellectually less focused and featuring an increasing number of jokes intended to shock or amuse his audience.[61]

By the latter half of the 1970s it had become clear that the property in Pune was too small to contain the rapid growth of the ashram and Osho asked that somewhere larger be found.[61] Sannyasins from around India started looking for property that could be purchased and used for a larger ashram and alternatives were found, including one in Gujarat, in the province of Kutch, and two more in India’s mountainous north.[61] Plans for a large utopian commune in India were never implemented, as mounting tensions between the ashram and the conservative Hindu government led by Morarji Desai resulted in an impasse.[61] Land use approval was denied and, more importantly, the government stopped issuing visas to foreign visitors who indicated the ashram as their main destination in India.[61][62] In addition, Desai’s government cancelled the tax-exempt status of the ashram, resulting in a claim of current and back taxes estimated at $5 million.[63] Conflicts with various Indian religious leaders added to the situation – by 1980, the ashram had become so controversial that Indira Gandhi, despite a previous association between Osho and the National Congress Party dating back to his early speeches made in the sixties, was unwilling to intercede for it after her return to power.[63] During one of Osho’s discourses in May 1980, an attempt on his life was made by a young Hindu fundamentalist.[61][64]

By 1981, Osho’s ashram hosted 30,000 visitors per year.[65] In stark contrast to the period up to 1970, when his following was overwhelmingly Indian, daily discourse audiences were at this time composed predominantly of Europeans and Americans.[66][67] On 10 April 1981, having discoursed daily for nearly 15 years, Osho entered a three-and-a-half-year period of self-imposed public silence, and satsangs – silent sitting and music, with readings from spiritual works such as Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet or the Isha Upanishad – took the place of his discourses.[68][69] Around the same time, Ma Anand Sheela (Sheela Silverman) replaced Ma Yoga Laxmi as Osho’s secretary.[70]

Move to America (1981)

On 1 June 1981, Osho travelled to the United States on a tourist visa, for medical purposes; he reportedly had a prolapsed disc which had already been treated by several doctors, including James Cyriax, a leading orthopedic surgeon flown into India from London.[71][70][72] The move seems to have been instigated by Sheela,[73] who claimed Osho might have died if he had stayed in India and would find the medical assistance he required in America in the event that he needed emergency surgery.[74][70][71]

Sheela had apparently been urging Osho to move to America for some time, and had discussed a new commune in the United States with him as early as late 1980.[70] Laxmi told Frances FitzGerald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who wrote a study of Osho’s years in America for The New Yorker magazine, that she blamed herself for the move to America; she had been unable to find a suitable property in India, and thus, when the medical emergency arose, the initiative had passed to Sheela.[72]

Other authors have attributed the move to mounting tension, criticism and possible punitive action by the Indian authorities, which may have created an impetus for Osho to relocate to the U. S.[75][76][77] The U.S. authorities believed that Osho had a preconceived intent to remain in the United States.[72] He never sought outside medical assistance while in America, and the INS would later contend that false statements had been made on his visa application.[72] Osho spent several months in Montclair, New Jersey.[78]

The Oregon commune (1981–1985)

Further information: Rajneeshpuram

On 13 June 1981, Sheela’s husband bought, for US$5.75 million, a 64,229-acre (260 km2) ranch located across two Oregon counties (Wasco and Jefferson), previously known as “The Big Muddy Ranch”.[79] The following month, work began on setting up the so-called Rancho Rajneesh commune; Osho moved there in late August.[80] The initial reactions of the host community ranged from hostility to tolerance, depending on the observer’s distance from the ranch.[81] Within a year of arriving, Osho’s followers had become embroiled in a series of legal battles with their neighbours, the principal conflict relating to land use.[82] The commune leadership was uncompromising and behaved impatiently in dealing with the locals.[83] They were also insistent upon having demands met, and engaged in implicitly threatening and directly confrontational behaviour.[83] The repeated changes in their stated plans looked like conscious deception, whether it was or not.[83] In May of 1982, the residents of Rancho Rajneesh voted to incorporate the city of Rajneeshpuram on the ranch.[82] The conflict with local residents escalated, with increasingly bitter hostility on both sides, and over the following years, the commune was subject to constant and coordinated pressures from various coalitions of Oregon residents.[82][84]

Osho greeted by sannyasins on one of his daily “drive-bys” in Rajneeshpuram, 1982.

Osho resided at Rajneeshpuram, living in a purpose-built trailer complex with an indoor swimming pool and other amenities. He achieved notoriety for the large number of Rolls-Royce luxury cars[85] that his followers bought for his use, eventually numbering 93 vehicles.[86][87] As part of his withdrawal from public life, Osho had given Ma Anand Sheela limited power of attorney in 1981, and removed the limits in 1982.[88] In 1983, Sheela announced that he would henceforth speak only with her.[89] He would later claim that she kept him in ignorance.[88] Many sannyasins expressed doubts about whether Sheela truly represented Osho.[90] An increasing number of dissidents left Rajneeshpuram, citing disagreements with Sheela’s autocratic leadership style.[90]

The following years saw an increased emphasis on Osho’s prediction that the conventional world would destroy itself by nuclear war or other disasters sometime in the 1990s.[91] Osho had said as early as 1964 that “the third and last war is now on the way”, and had commented in the intervening years on the need to create a “new humanity” to avoid global suicide.[92] By the early 1980s, this had become the basis for a new exclusivism, with a 1983 article in the Rajneesh Foundation Newsletter announcing that “Rajneeshism is creating a Noah’s Ark of consciousness … I say to you that except this there is no other way”.[92] These warnings contributed to an increased sense of urgency in getting the Oregon commune established.[92] In March 1984, Sheela announced that Osho had predicted the death of two-thirds of humanity from AIDS.[92][93] As a precaution, sannyasins were required to wear rubber gloves and condoms while making love and to refrain from kissing.[94][95] The measures were widely seen as an extreme overreaction; AIDS was not considered a heterosexual disease at the time, and the use of condoms was not yet widely recommended for AIDS prevention.[96]

Osho ended his period of public silence on 30 October 1984, having announced that it was time for him to “speak his own truths.”[97][98] In July 1985, he resumed his daily public discourses in the commune’s two-acre meditation hall. According to statements he made to the press, he did so against Sheela’s wishes.[99]

On 16 September 1985, Sheela and her entire management team having suddenly left the commune for Europe a few days prior, Osho held a press conference in which he labelled Sheela and her associates a “gang of fascists.”[100] He accused them of having committed a number of serious crimes, most of these dating back to 1984, and invited the authorities to investigate.[100] The alleged crimes, which he stated had been committed without his knowledge or consent, included the attempted murder of his personal physician, poisonings of public officials, wiretapping and bugging within the commune and within his own home, and a bioterror attack on the citizens of The Dalles, Oregon, using salmonella.[100] The subsequent investigation by the U.S. authorities confirmed these accusations and resulted in the conviction of Sheela and several of her lieutenants.[101] The salmonella attack was noted as the first confirmed instance of chemical or biological terrorism to have occurred in the United States.[102]

Osho claimed that because he was in silence and isolation, meeting only with Sheela, he was unaware of the crimes committed by the Rajneeshpuram leadership until Sheela and her “gang” left, and sannyasins came forward to inform him.[103] A number of commentators have stated that in their view Sheela was being used as a convenient scapegoat.[103][104][105] Others have pointed to the fact that although Sheela had bugged Osho’s living quarters and made her tapes available to the U.S. authorities as part of her own plea bargain, no evidence has ever come to light that Osho had any part in her crimes.[106][107][108]

On 23 October 1985, a federal grand jury issued a thirty-five-count indictment charging Osho and several other disciples with conspiracy to evade immigration laws.[109] The indictment was returned in camera, but word was leaked to Osho’s lawyer.[109] Negotiations to allow Osho to surrender to authorities in Portland if a warrant were issued failed.[109][110] Tension peaked amid rumours of a National Guard takeover, a planned violent arrest of Osho and fears of shooting.[111] On 28 October 1985, Osho, his personal physician and a small number of sannyasins accompanying them were arrested without a warrant aboard a rented Learjet at a North Carolina airstrip; the group were en route to Bermuda ($58,000 in cash and 35 watches and bracelets worth $1 million were also found on the aircraft).[112][113][111] Osho had by all accounts been neither informed of the impending arrest nor of the reasons for the journey.[110] Osho’s imprisonment and transfer across the country took the form of a public spectacle – he was displayed in chains, held first in North Carolina, then Oklahoma, and finally in Portland.[114] Officials took the full ten days legally available to them to transfer him from North Carolina to Portland for arraignment.[114] After initially pleading not guilty to all charges and being released on bail, Osho, on the advice of his lawyers, entered an “Alford plea” – through which a suspect does not admit guilt, but does concede there is enough evidence to convict him – to one count of having concealed his intent to remain permanently in the U.S. at the time he applied for his visa extension, and one count of conspiracy to have followers stay in the country illegally by having them enter into sham marriages.[115] Under the deal his lawyers made with the United States Attorney’s office, he was given a 10-year suspended sentence and placed on five years’ probation; in addition, he agreed to pay $400,000 in fines and prosecution costs, to leave the United States and not to return for at least five years without the permission of the United States Attorney General.[101][113][116]

During his residence in Rajneeshpuram, Osho dictated three books while undergoing dental treatment under the influence of nitrous oxide (laughing gas): Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, Notes of a Madman, and Books I Have Loved.[117] Following her departure from Rajneeshpuram, Sheela claimed in media interviews that Osho took sixty milligrams of Valium each day and was addicted to nitrous oxide.[118][119][120] Osho denied these charges when questioned about them by journalists.[118]

Travels and return to Pune (1986–1990)

After leaving the United States, Osho began a somewhat restricted world tour, speaking in countries which allowed him entry including Nepal, Greece (Crete) and Uruguay.[122][123] Being refused entry visas by twenty-one different countries, he returned to India in July 1986, and in January 1987, to his old ashram in Pune, India.[124][125] He resumed discoursing there, although with interruptions due to intermittent ill health.[126] His discourses were now held in the evenings.[127] Publishing efforts and therapy courses quickly resumed as well, though now in less controversial style, and the ashram experienced a renewed period of expansion.[126][127] It now presented itself as a “Multiversity”, a place where therapy was to function as a bridge to meditation.[127] Osho devised a number of new meditation techniques, among them the “Mystic Rose” method, and, after a gap of more than ten years, began to lead meditations personally again.[126][127] Among his followers, the previous preference for communal living styles receded, most of them preferring to live ordinary and independent lives in society.[128] The former red or orange dress code for sannyasins and the mala, which had both been optional for some time, were abandoned in 1987.[127]

In November 1987, Osho expressed his belief that his deteriorating health was the result of some form of poison administered to him by the U.S. authorities during the twelve days he was held without bail in various U.S. prisons.[129] His doctors hypothesised that he had been poisoned by radiation and thallium, and that he must have slept on his right side on a deliberately irradiated mattress, since his symptoms were concentrated on the right side of his body.[129] However, sannyasins presented no hard evidence in support of this theory,[130] and the allegations, repeated by Osho’s former attorney, Philip J. Toelkes (Swami Prem Niren), were dismissed by U.S. attorney Charles H. Hunter as “complete fiction”.[131]

From early 1988, Osho’s discourses focused exclusively on Zen.[126] In late December 1988, he said he no longer wished to be referred to as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and in February 1989 took the name Osho Rajneesh, shortened to just Osho in September 1989.[126][132] His health continued to weaken; he delivered his last public discourse in April 1989, and from then on only sat in silence with his followers.[129] The wearing of red robes – only while on ashram premises – was reintroduced in summer 1989, with white robes worn for meditation, and black robes worn by leaders of therapy groups.[127] Malas were not worn.[127] On January 19, 1990 Osho died, aged 58, with heart failure being the publicly reported cause. His ashes were placed in his newly built bedroom in one of the main buildings (LaoTsu House) at the Pune ashram. The epitaph reads, “OSHO. Never Born, Never Died. Only Visited this Planet Earth between Dec 11 1931 – Jan 19 1990.”

Legacy

The Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune, India, at 200,000 visitors annually, is one of the largest resorts of its kind in the world today.

While Osho’s teachings met with strong rejection in his home country during his lifetime, there has been a sea change in Indian public opinion since Osho’s death.[133] As early as 1991, an influential Indian newspaper counted Osho, among figures such as Gautama Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, among the ten people who had most changed India’s destiny; in Osho’s case, by “liberating the minds of future generations from the shackles of religiosity and conformism”.[134] Since then, his teachings have progressively become part of the cultural mainstream of India[133][135] and Nepal,[136][137] perhaps in part because of his status as a figure who had a large Western following.[3]

Osho is one of only two authors whose entire works have been placed in the Library of India’s National Parliament in New Delhi (the other is Mahatma Gandhi).[133] Excerpts and quotes from his works appear regularly in the Times of India and many other Indian newspapers. Prominent admirers include the Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh,[138] and the noted Indian novelist and journalist, Khushwant Singh.[138] The Osho disciple Vinod Khanna, who worked as Osho’s gardener in Rajneeshpuram,[139] served as India’s Minister of State for External Affairs from 2003 to 2004.[140]

Over 650 books[141] are credited to Osho, expressing his views on all facets of human existence.[142] Virtually all of them are renderings of his taped discourses.[142] His books are available in 55 different languages[143] and have entered best-seller lists in such varied countries as Italy and South Korea.[144][134]

After almost two decades of controversy and a decade of accommodation, Osho’s movement has established itself in the international market of new religions.[145] His followers have redefined his contributions, reframing central elements of his teaching so as to make them appear less controversial to outsiders.[145] Societies in North America and Western Europe have met them half-way, becoming more accommodating to spiritual topics such as yoga and meditation.[145] His followers run stress management seminars for corporate clients such as IBM and BMW, making between $15 and $45 million annually in the U.S.[146][147]

Osho’s ashram in Pune has become the Osho International Meditation Resort,[148] one of India’s main tourist attractions.[149][150] Describing itself as the Esalen of the East, it teaches a variety of spiritual techniques from a broad range of traditions and promotes itself as a spiritual oasis, a “sacred space” for discovering one’s self and uniting the desires of body and mind in a beautiful resort environment.[4] According to press reports, it attracts some 200,000 people from all over the world each year;[138][151] prominent visitors have included politicians, media personalities and the Dalai Lama.[149] HIV/AIDS is still a concern for the Osho movement, and AIDS tests are mandatory for those wishing to enter the resort.[152]

Teachings

Osho’s thought was rooted in Hindu advaita, which considers all reality as being of a single divine essence.[153] In this mystical ontology, the human experiences of separateness, duality and temporality are understood to be illusions produced by the mind.[153] The dualistic and transient phenomena of the world are the dance, the external play, of cosmic consciousness.[153] In this dance, every thing, every happening is sacred, has absolute worth, and is an end in itself.[153]

Osho’s discourses were not presented in a dry, academic setting, but were interspersed with jokes, and delivered with an oratory that many found spellbinding.[154][155] His teachings were not static but changed in emphasis over time: he revelled in paradox and contradiction, adding to the difficulty of summarising his work.[156] Conversant with all the Eastern religious traditions, he also drew on a wide and eclectic range of Western influences in his teaching.[157]

On the ego: man as a machine

Osho’s view of man as a machine, condemned to the helpless acting out of unconscious, neurotic patterns, reflects the thought of Gurdjieff and Freud.[158][159] His vision of the “new man” who transcends the constraints of convention is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.[160] His views on sexual liberation bear comparison to the thought of D. H. Lawrence.[161] And while his contemporary Jiddu Krishnamurti did not approve of Osho, there are clear similarities between their respective teachings.[158]

Osho taught that every human being is a potential Buddha, with the capacity for enlightenment.[162][163] According to him, everyone capable of experiencing unconditional love and of responding rather than reacting to life: “You are truth. You are love. You are bliss. You are freedom.”[162] He suggested that it is possible to experience innate divinity and to be conscious of “who we really are”, even though our egos usually prevent us from enjoying this experience: “When the ego is gone, the whole individuality arises in its crystal purity.”[162]

The ego, in Osho’s view, represents the social conditioning and constraints a person has accumulated since birth, creating false needs that are in conflict with the real self.[164] “The whole of religion is nothing but that: dropping the ego, disappearing as your own master … Then life becomes such a grace; because all tension arises out of ego … all anxiety, anguish, despair, frustration. All illness of the mind is because we have taken this wrong attitude … Dissolve yourself as a separate entity. Become part of the cosmic whole.”[164] The problem, he said, is how to bypass the ego so that our innate being can flower; how to move from the periphery to the centre.[162][164]

Osho views the mind first and foremost as a mechanism for survival, replicating behavioural strategies that have proved successful in the past.[162][164] But the mind’s appeal to the past, he says, deprives human beings of the ability to live authentically in the present.[162][164] Individuals would continually repress their genuine emotions, shutting themselves off from joyful experiences that arise naturally when embracing the present moment: “The mind has no inherent capacity for joy. … It only thinks about joy.”[165][164] The result, he stated, is that people poison themselves with all manner of neuroses, jealousies and insecurities.[166] In the case of sexual feelings, for example, Osho believed that repression only makes these feelings re-emerge in another guise, and that the final result was a society that was obsessed with sex.[166] Instead of suppressing, Osho argued, people should trust and accept themselves unconditionally: “We have been repressing anger, greed, sex … And that’s why every human being is stinking. … Let it become manure, … and you will have great flowers blossoming in you.”[164][165] This solution could not be intellectually understood, as the mind would only assimilate it as one more piece of baggage: instead, what was needed was meditation.[166]

On meditation

According to Osho, meditation is not just a practice, but a state of awareness that can be maintained in every moment.[166][164] It is this total awareness that awakens the individual from sleep, and from mechanical responses to stimuli, conditioned by beliefs and expectations.[164] Osho employed Western psychotherapy as a means of preparing for meditation – a way to become aware of one’s mental and emotional hang-ups – and also introduced his own, “Active Meditation” techniques, characterised by alternating stages of physical activity and silence.[167] In all, he suggested over a hundred meditation techniques.[167][168]

The most famous of these remains his first, known today as OSHO Dynamic Meditation.[167][168] This method has been described as a kind of microcosm of Osho’s outlook.[168] It comprises five stages that are accompanied by music (except for stage 4).[169] In the first, the person engages in ten minutes of rapid breathing through the nose.[169] The second ten minutes are for catharsis: “[L]et whatever is happening happen. … Laugh, shout, scream, jump, shake – whatever you feel to do, do it!”[167][169] For the next ten minutes, the person jumps up and down with their arms raised, shouting Hoo! each time they land on the flats of their feet.[170][169] In the fourth, silent stage, the person freezes, remaining completely motionless for fifteen minutes, and witnessing everything that is happening to them.[170][169] The last stage of the meditation consists of fifteen minutes of dancing and celebration.[170][169]

There are other active meditation techniques, like OSHO Kundalini Meditation and OSHO Nadabrahma Meditation, which are less animated, although they also include physical activity of one sort or another.[167] His final formal technique is called OSHO Mystic Rose, comprising three hours of laughing every day for the first week, three hours of weeping each day for the second, with the third week for silent meditation.[171] The result of these processes is said to be the experience of “witnessing”, enabling the “jump into awareness”.[167]

Osho believed such cathartic methods were necessary, since it was very difficult for people of today to just sit and be in meditation. Once the methods had provided a glimpse of meditation, people would be able to use other methods without difficulty.[172]

On the function of the master

Another key ingredient of his teaching is his own presence as a master: “A Master shares his being with you, not his philosophy. … He never does anything to the disciple.”[173] He delighted in being paradoxical and engaging in behaviour that seemed entirely at odds with traditional images of enlightened individuals.[173] All such behaviour, however capricious and difficult to accept, was explained as “a technique for transformation” to push people “beyond the mind.”[173] The initiation he offered his followers was another such device: “… if your being can communicate with me, it becomes a communion. … It is the highest form of communication possible: a transmission without words. Our beings merge. This is possible only if you become a disciple.”[173] Ultimately though, Osho even deconstructed his own authority.[174] He emphasised that anything and everything could become an opportunity for meditation.[173]

On renunciation

Osho saw his sannyas as a totally new form of spiritual discipline, or “a totally ancient one which had been completely forgotten”.[175] He felt traditional sannyas had turned into a mere system of social renunciation and imitation.[175] His neo-sannyas emphasised complete inner freedom and responsibility of the individual to himself, demanding no superficial behavioral changes, but a deeper, inner transformation.[175] Desires were to be transcended, accepted and surpassed rather than denied.[175] Once this inner flowering had taken place, even sex would be left behind.[175]

Osho said that he was “the rich man’s guru” and taught that material poverty was not a genuine spiritual value.[176] He had himself photographed wearing sumptuous clothing and hand-made watches,[177] and while in Oregon drove a different Rolls-Royce each day – his followers reportedly wanted to buy him 365 of them, one for each day of the year.[86] Publicity shots of the Rolls-Royces (93 in the end) were sent to the press.[178][176] As a conscious display of wealth, they reflected both Osho’s embrace of the material world and his desire to provoke American sensibilities, much as he had enjoyed offending Indian sensibilities earlier.[179][176]

[edit] On the “New Man”

Osho hoped to create “a new man” combining the spirituality of Gautama Buddha with the zest for life embodied by Zorba the Greek in the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis: “He should be as accurate and objective as a scientist … as sensitive, as full of heart, as a poet … [and as] rooted deep down in his being as the mystic.”[173][180] This new man, “Zorba the Buddha”, should reject neither science nor spirituality, but embrace them both.[173] He should be “all for matter, and all for spirit.”[179] Osho believed humanity to be threatened with extinction due to over-population, impending nuclear holocaust, and diseases such as AIDS, and thought that many of society’s ills could be remedied by scientific means.[173]

The new man would no longer be trapped in institutions such as family, marriage, political ideologies, or religions.[181][182] In this respect, Osho has much in common with other counter-culture gurus, and perhaps even certain postmodern and deconstructional thinkers.[182] His term the “new man” applied to men and women equally, whose roles he saw as complementary; indeed, most of his movement’s leadership positions were held by women.[181]

Osho’s “Ten Commandments”

In his early days as Acharya Rajneesh, a correspondent once asked Osho for his “Ten Commandments”. In his letter of reply, Osho noted that it was a difficult matter, because he was against any kind of commandment, but “just for fun” agreed to set out the following:

“

1. Never obey anyone’s command unless it is coming from within you also.

2. There is no God other than life itself.

3. Truth is within you, do not search for it elsewhere.

4. Love is prayer.

5. To become a nothingness is the door to truth. Nothingness itself is the means, the goal and attainment.

6. Life is now and here.

7. Live wakefully.

8. Do not swim – float.

9. Die each moment so that you can be new each moment.

10. Do not search. That which is, is. Stop and see.

“

He underlined numbers 3, 7, 9 and 10.[183] The ideas expressed in these Commandments have remained a constant leitmotif in his movement.[183]

In the course of his life, Osho spoke on all the major spiritual traditions, including Hinduism, Hassidism, Tantrism, Taoism, Christianity, Buddhism, the teachings of a variety of Eastern and Western mystics, and on sacred scriptures such as the Upanishads and the Guru Granth Sahib.[157] But the topic that predominated, and on which he came to focus exclusively towards the end of his life, was Zen.[181]

If Osho’s teachings seemed mad, playful or simply absurd, this was no doubt intentional: as an explicitly “self-deconstructing” or “self-parodying” guru, his teaching as a whole was said to be nothing more than a “game” or a joke.[182] His early lectures were famous for their humour and their refusal to take anything seriously.[182] His message of sexual, emotional, spiritual, and institutional liberation, as well as his contrariness, ensured that his life was surrounded by conjecture, rumour, and controversy.[181]

[Disclaimer:

All this information was taken from wikipedia to give a complete and accurate information about this great personality and to create a base for my future posts about my stay at Osho Ashram. For those needing some authentic material given below are links to a great collection of his photos and articles.]

Some Good Sites Regarding Osho:

www.osho.com

www.oshophotos.com

Some Books Of Him (Do go through them):

http://www.esnips.com/web/FreeDownloadOshoEbooks

Complete Web Album:

http://www.esnips.com/web/OshoPhoto

More here…

i.e. dheerajsuthar.com

Come da titolo, mi sono licenziato dal mio oramai precedente lavoro.

Purtroppo non riesco a studiare come vorrei, inoltre, il clima all’interno del mio progetto si è fatto un pochino pesante, troppe persone che mettono bocca dove non sanno, troppe persone che dovrebbero decidere la direzione da prendere che per un motivo o per l’altro non lo fanno (o peggio lo fanno male), ritardando ulteriormente la stesura del codice (o peggio facendo scrivere codice inutile).
Tanto per farvi un’idea:
1 programmatore per implementare da ZERO il codice del “prodotto”. (io)
2 “hardweristi” che hanno realizzato il “prodotto” e responsabili del progetto.
2 miei superiori che dirigono il mio lavoro, che è anche diretto dai responsabili del progetto.
1 consulente esterno che dovrebbe aver bisogno di me, ma che mi parla appena, e per questioni marginali.
5 programmatori che stanno realizzando classi di appoggio per il sottoscritto, ma che << … è meglio se te le fai, poi al massimo usiamo queste …>>
4 persone “importanti” che disegnano le interfacce grafiche, senza interpellare nessuno, neanche a proposito si usabilità/fattiblità (fattore di vitale importanza), quindi 4 proposte, ma neancora una ufficiale.

Ora noterete anche voi che ci sono troppe persone, direi che le prime 3 servono IMHO, le altre no, una volta terminato lo sviluppo, servirà anche una persona che si occupi del lato visivo, diciamo che 4 persone sono il giusto, le altre sono inutili e aggiungono confusione.

Speriamo capiscano che così non si andrà molto lontano, ho lasciato un SW che funziona bene, con qualche “peccha” (dovuta al fatto che sono stato costretto a scendere a patti con altra gente, naturamente DOPO che avevo già fatto tutto) che mangia “poca” CPU e ottimizzato per  quanto possibile (fattore di estrema importanza, anche se a nessuno sembra importare molto, appena lo proveranno sul serio come ho fatto io e gli HWisti, noteranno come è importante la velocità).

Se non fosse stato per l’uni, probabilmente sarei rimasto un altro po, anzi, sicuramente, ho deciso di andarmene ora però, per evitare che la situazione si facesse veramente impossibile.

Inoltre ho trovato un lavoro pat-time che mi permette di studiare e avere tempo libero.

Cosa lascio:
Un lavoro sicuro, pagato poco e con una prospettiva di miglioramento bassa, (si parlava di 200€ in più netti fra 5 anni), a mio parere per un laureato con laurea specialistica (tale sarò io fra 5 anni) sono molto pochi, c’è ci si accontenta, io no e visto che ora poso permetermi di cambiare, cambierò fino a che troverò il lavoro che più mi soddisfa.

Cosa trovo:
Un lavoro sicuro, part-time, pagato meglio del precedente, con alcuni benefit e molto più tempo libero, meno attinente a quello che studio, ma non si può avere tutto, inoltre nel tempo libero posso sempre entrare in qualche progetto per conto mio no?!?

Speriamo bene.

Cosa ne dite, ho fatto bene?

Aryn has been impossible to live with these past few weeks. Ever since Grandma called from the Nort’land and said they planned to swing by and pick her up on their way to Niagara Falls.

“Cool.”

And they planned on bringing her bestest cousin along.

“Sweeeeet!”

And then the questions . . .

“How many days until they get here?!”

“Where’s my suitcase?!?!”

“What am I gonna wear?!?!?!?!?”

They see each other once a year at most. Usually around the annual BeerGossipHorseshoeFest that is the family reunion. So a double dose of Aryn’s favorite cousin is always a good thing.

They couldn’t be more different. Robyn is a bean pole with attitude while Aryn is quiet and tentative . . . for the most part. But they both have a DS, love chocolate and fall asleep while talking.

And they started packing at least a week before departure.

I smile at all of this, remembering being just as pumped before a visit with my cousins from the Big D. Eddie is a year younger, Danny a year older. So, yeah, Eddie and I pretty much had a ball pestering the elder Stooge. We teased him mercilessly about his bright red hair, the way he stared into the mirror and coiffured the mess with Fonzie-like care using a big-handled comb that always stuck out of his back pocket. We’d listen to Dio’s “The Last in Line” or some southern-fried rock tune so loud he couldn’t hear Simon Le Bon squeak out “The Reflex.” Or we’d tag team him and tangle him up in some wrestling move, pushing the limits of the springs in the fold out couch we used for the “square circle,” making him whine for mercy, as Kerry Von Erick – The Modern Day Warrior! The Texas Tornado! – did the same to Nature Boy Ric Flair on late-night television.

But if I stuck around long enough we all ended up getting along fine. And we always went on the neatest adventures. Like the time we hopped in my aunt and uncle’s carpeted and cozy conversion van and drove to Port Aransas, stopping along the way to indulge in every young boys dream sandwich, a double-meat Whataburger, with fries and root beer. We scoured the beach for seashells in which we could hear the gurgling of the Gulf. And tossed Fritos in the air and ducked with laughter as a flock of seagulls gracefully snatched our mid-afternoon offering out of the happiest bluest sky I’d ever seen. I saw my first real shark; a hammerhead strung up and gutted, reeled in by some bronze, barrel-armed fisherman.

While there, someone noticed my ingrown toenails. Kind of hard to hide forever the bloody and festering stumps that were my big toes back then. Especially on a beach, where shoes and socks made one look silly. Like a city boy. So, once safely back in the Big D, my aunt took me to the doctor and stood by as he made me cry like a girl. I nearly had the same affect on the poor nurse whose fingers I crushed during the procedure. I survived, however, and during my recovery – lots of sitting around with my feet propped up on pillows while eating Blue Bell ice cream – my aunt and I had plenty of time to catch up. She is the only sibling of my birth mother, who died of a blood clot just before my first birthday. My aunt went above and beyond to see that I spent time with her boys. And having me around perhaps felt a bit like having her sister back again, if only for a few brief moments. Both were school teachers. So making sure my letters home were grammatically correct came honestly for her. And during that week she took me to the circus, where we watched anxiously as a performer who had fallen off a trapeze had to be taken away for medical treatment.

The good and the bad all rolled into one amazing trip.

But the times I remember the best are of the simple things me and my cousins did. We hung out with the kids in the youth group of their mega-Baptist church. Once we all gathered in church vans and went on a progressive treasure hunt. I saw areas of the city common to the other kids but exciting for me in an “I’ve-never-been-here-before!” sense; everyday experiences brought to new life because the faces and the places were unfamiliar. Like the coin-operated laundry mat with tumbling blue jeans and tank tops and those big wire laundry carts which we decided worked better as prams. Or the afternoon we spent at Eddie’s friend Joe Pat’s house playing Defender for hours on his Atari console. Or the trip to the movie theater where we cheered from the edge of our seats as Rocky pummeled Clubber Lang. “Eye of the Tiger” may still be Eddie’s favorite song ever.

Burying critically wounded green army men in backyard, only to disinter the ones we’d buried and forgotten after the last horrific battle. And the midnight chats on the couch discussing the moral implications of Journey’s “Open Arms” or the graces and hang-ups of girls, a few of which we were just starting to notice for the first time.

We chatted ourselves to sleep.

Just like my daughter and her cousin Robyn.

Before Aryn left this morning I took her to Best Buy and bought my girl her very first digital camera. I don’t want her to forget a single spray of Niagara Falls mist. Or the Cheshire-cat grin on her cousin’s face as they invade and occupy some poor unsuspecting hotel for a few carefree days of summer.

These are memories that should last a lifetime . . .

(Yo! Cuz! We haven’t been together since this picture was taken. Don’t you think it’s time . . . )

Now that I have moved back to Los Angeles I was privileged to meet with Bayhawk Ales’s General Manager and Brewmaster Karl Zappa. The brewery is located at 2000 Main Street in Irvine; the facilities are shared with a McCormick and Schmick’s restaurant. It is a showcase brewery with limited production.

Interview with Bayhawk Ale’s Manager Karl Zappa:

OH: What have been the biggest difficulties with production and costs?
KZ:  Raw materials increases. The restaurant business is pretty flat right now and they are our biggest customers, Outback, Claim Jumper, and such. This is a showcase brewery and to grow our volume we need more production space we are running nearly at capacity of ten thousand barrels. Also, if we want to grow any sort of bottle business that will require more space.  3-6 percent of our business is currently in bottles, to grow more we have to produce larger than that.

OH: How do you sell the product?
KZ:  We work mostly with large restaurant chains because distributors are not interested in selling one barrel a month to bars.

OH: What are your goals for the brewery?
KZ: We are following the hundred-year plan, I want this brewery to be here in a hundred year and so that’s how I look at my relationships and the company. I am not here to grow super fast and then flip for a big paycheck. This brewery will continue to work on its craft and its way of life for its employees, customers, and consumers.

OH: Who are the stakeholders in the company?
KZ: This is a public company, it is one of the breweries that was owned and operated by Jim Bernau.

OH: How is the distributor environment?
KZ: We have used several different distributors in different states, including Wine Warehouse, Glazer’s, Authentic Beverage, and some others.

OH: How do the different states compare as far as ease to function as a brewery and do business?
KZ: Texas was the hardest to deal with and we have actually decided to pull out of Texas. The license is around four thousand just to run in the state while the licenses for other states such as Nevada are as low as fifty.  Also, Texas has a provision in their budgeting laws where if the state has a deficit they can raise permit fees on any of the businesses deemed “sin” business, which includes brewing. It is definitely one of the tougher beer markets and the regulations aren’t making it any easier. We currently operate in seven states, Hawaii, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, and Illinois, of those Nevada and California have the best laws to support smaller breweries. California actually allows smaller brewers to act as their own distributors.

Karl and I spent a good two hours talking about his business and the industry environment in different states. The brewery is fully integrated into the “Pilsner Room” of McCormick and Schmick’s adding a great feel to the restaurant and bar. However, to grow the brewery is going to have to look into new facilities or contract brewing through another brewer. Many thanks to Karl and Bayhawk Ales to spending time with me and brewing great beer.

Ich hasse diesen Witz, – ich hasse, hasse, hasse ihn wirklich!

(Wer weis was gemeint ist, ist entweder Piercingträger oder hat ihn schon mal einem gestellt.)

…Aber wie es aussieht ist die Frage berechtigt. Eine Amerikanerin musste in Lubbock (Texas) bei der Sicherheitskontrolle auf dem Flughafen ihre beiden Brustpiercings mittels einer kleinen Zange abnehmen, da sie beim Sicherheitscheck den Alarm ausgelöst hatten.

Sie wurde hinter einen Vorhang geführt und hörte während sie die Piercings entfernte das Gelächter der Secuity Guards. “Es war eine totale Demütigung vor Leuten, die ich überhaupt nicht kenne“, so die 37-Jährige.

Nun verlangt sie eine Entschuldigung von der US-Luftsicherheitsbehörde (nein, ausnamsweise kein GeldO.o) Die US-Luftsicherheitsbehörde TSA will jedoch noch nie davon gehört haben das Fluggäste derart kleine Gegenstände abnehmen mussten.

Tjaaaaa… Ich kann den Witz noch immer nicht leiden (untersteht euch) und kann nur sagen das ich auch schon mit meinen Piercings in ein Flugzeug gelassen wurde. Bei mir haben sie jedenfalls nicht gepiept.

Und die Moral von der Geschicht: Man sollte schon auf das Material des Schmuckes achten.

SVdL                                                                                         

Oggi è passata la mia prima settimana di lavoro, anche se parlare di settimana è difficile visto che ho saltato i primi due giorni per febbre e quindi ho fatto solo gli ultimi due…. Si la settimana è cominciata Martedì….

Che dire, mi trovo bene, a parte qualche litigio con il Visual C++, neanche tanto con il C++ a dirla tutta, me la sono presa proprio con il Visual, sarà che è MS…

Cmq sia ritengo che l’ambiente di lavoro sia migliore di tutti gli altri luoghi in cui ho lavorato, bel posto, ottima compagnia.
Sono abbastanza soddisfatto, ora quando prenderò la prima paga, lo sarò pienamente.

La paga purtroppo non è adeguata secondo il mio parere, e non mi riferisco alla mia, ci mancherebbe. Fortunatamente però l’ufficio nel quale sono è:

• Pulito e al Chiuso (Oserei dire quasi “di Classe”)
• Ho una scrivania tutta mia. (Sarebbe meglio dire avrò nella prossima settimana)
• Il mio pc è un Intel Dual-Core P4 con 2GB di ram e con uno schermo LCD da 19”. (Come tutti del resto)
• Per ora mangio gratis (poi pagherò 2-3 €)
• Entro alle 8:00 e finisco alle 17:00, ho il tempo per fare molto nel pomeriggio!
• Sabato a casa
• La compagnia in ufficio (sfortunatamente solo uomini) è ottima, tutti giovani (o giovanili), simpatica e disponibile.
• E’ un gruppo molto unito.

Ovviamente si lavora anche,  e molto.
Inoltre oggi hanno/abbiamo anche dato due “festini” …
Speriamo continui tutto bene.

Alla prossima

In case some readers still need to be convinced that the American healthcare system may be detrimental to your health, a recent study finds that physicians don’t police themselves adequately even when required by law to do so. The study by the Institute for Health policy indicates that physicians seem to be quite comfortable violating the law and allowing potentially dangerous mistakes or poor care to go unreported.

As a test, next time you have to go to the hospital stop by the medical staff office and ask these questions:
1) How many physicians have been involuntarily removed from the medical staff in the last 2 years?
2) How many physicians have been reported to the data bank in the last 2 years?
3) How many physicians have had privileges restricted in the last 2 years?
4) How many physicians have had their privileges “non-renewed” in the last 2 years?

I can tell you now that the answer to every question will probably be NONE. Now you have to ask your self: Is it possible that every single physician on this medical staff is really that good? Are the standards too low? Could it be both?

Every state in the US has a medical board that licenses physicians. Every state medical board has as the fundamental reason for existence the protection of the public. Take for instance this exerpt by Donald Patrick, MD, JD in my own state of Texas, in which he notes that the purpose of the board is “safeguarding the public through professional accountability.” The state medical boards do not exist for the benefit of physicians. To his credit Dr. Patrick has begun disciplining physicians who fail to report misconduct. I think that’s an excellent move.

Yet the study clearly indicates that state medical boards have poorly influenced the willingness of physicians to meet simple requirements of the law. It’s a pity. I had higher expectations of my colleagues.

You must be in charge of your healthcare.

18 December 2004, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Today, I discovered through the photographs of Irving Penn the Dionysian principle among the Dahomey people of Africa. In Legba, guardian of household entrances, bestower of sexual potency, seventh- and youngest-born son of Mawu, divine trickster, temperamental messenger and linguist of the gods, we discover an elemental disruptive force, “the personification of philosophical accident, of the way out in a world ruled by destiny”.

From Dahomey/Legba XI 1967: “Legba, the arch individualist, maybe thought of as the personification of the being who loves mischief, knows no inhibitions, recognizes no taboos, dares to challenge injustices, even on the part of the Creator, and to expose them…”

Legba is represented as a human figure made of red clay, with cowrie shells for eyes, giving it an appearance in-between a grinning Cheshire cat and a laughing Buddha. Often, it is stained with the blood of sacrificial animals or egg yolk, and sometimes portrayed with goatish horns or huge phalluses. The latter screams to mind the Greek satyr whom Nietzsche describes as “the offspring of a longing for the primitive and the natural… the archetype of man, the embodiment of his highest and most intense emotions, the ecstatic reveler… something sublime and divine”. (The Birth of Tragedy)

Is it coincidental that these symbols of life, death, and fecundity intersect in this playful African figure of Legba, as well as in the Greek Dionysian spirit? Or is this principle at the core of all cultures, in the manner of Jung’s archetypes buried in our collective unconscious–the primitive response to our primal encounter with Nature? Primitive and primal because it is a priori contemplation, before all science and philosophy.

For Nietzsche, knowledge will not do. Once we have looked into the essence of things, we can only react like Hamlet: nausea that inhibits action, “for… action cannot change anything in the eternal nature of things.” Only art “knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live: these are the sublime as the artistic taming of the horrible, and the comic as the artistic discharge of the nausea of absurdity.”

In so far as it quiets our fear of death, and allows us to come to terms with Nature, then art, and the aesthetic experience, serves somewhat as our form of Legba, our way out from the absurdities of life.