Swami Vishnu Devananda Appreciation Day
Here's today's story:
Back in the day, at Tabb High, in Ms. Borden's government class, Jon Jones and I usually were finding something other than classwork to do. One of our favorite pastimes was to collect strange news stories and bring them in, incorporating the characters and situations into our collective psyche. This was no mean feat in 1983/84. Even though we were on the Internet at that time (such as it was), the Web was still about 11 years away, and the local BBSes weren't exactly hotbeds of news activity. Still, we soldiered on, finding whatever headlines and articles we could.
"Elderly Woman Almost Foils Thieves"
I still remember a few of the titles, still have some of the articles.
But our favorite by far was the story of Swami Vishu Devananda, who - dressed in purple robes - flew an ultralight over the Berlin Wall, throwing flowers to prove that peace conquers all things. The headline was "Swami Flies Over Berlin Wall". The story went on to explain that the communists gave Swami Devonanda a cheese sandwich and a subway ticket home. Presumably, they kept his ultralight. Well, we thought the idea of some Swami flying around throwing flowers was about the coolest thing we had ever heard of. We were especially amused by the cheese sandwich bit, since as good Reagan Republicans, we had a healthy distrust of communists, not to mention their dietary habits.
Every year on the anniversary of this story, we celebrated by eating cheese sandwiches. I can't remeber the exact day anymore - I think it was October 11th. So today, I was thinking of this story, and thought I'd do a Google for the Swami, and see if I could find any mention of this dusty old story. Of couse, this is the Internet, and there is quite a bit of information about the famous flying Swami online.
Check it out...
Back in the day, at Tabb High, in Ms. Borden's government class, Jon Jones and I usually were finding something other than classwork to do. One of our favorite pastimes was to collect strange news stories and bring them in, incorporating the characters and situations into our collective psyche. This was no mean feat in 1983/84. Even though we were on the Internet at that time (such as it was), the Web was still about 11 years away, and the local BBSes weren't exactly hotbeds of news activity. Still, we soldiered on, finding whatever headlines and articles we could.
"Elderly Woman Almost Foils Thieves"
I still remember a few of the titles, still have some of the articles.
But our favorite by far was the story of Swami Vishu Devananda, who - dressed in purple robes - flew an ultralight over the Berlin Wall, throwing flowers to prove that peace conquers all things. The headline was "Swami Flies Over Berlin Wall". The story went on to explain that the communists gave Swami Devonanda a cheese sandwich and a subway ticket home. Presumably, they kept his ultralight. Well, we thought the idea of some Swami flying around throwing flowers was about the coolest thing we had ever heard of. We were especially amused by the cheese sandwich bit, since as good Reagan Republicans, we had a healthy distrust of communists, not to mention their dietary habits.
Every year on the anniversary of this story, we celebrated by eating cheese sandwiches. I can't remeber the exact day anymore - I think it was October 11th. So today, I was thinking of this story, and thought I'd do a Google for the Swami, and see if I could find any mention of this dusty old story. Of couse, this is the Internet, and there is quite a bit of information about the famous flying Swami online.
Check it out...