My Pal the Dalai Lama

       Dalai Lama Makes Surprise Landing,  with Another  Flash Festival of Peace and Music

The Ithaca Festival, the Grass Roots Festival, The Patchy Valley Fog Festival, and well advertised events like that are fine, but my buddy the Dali Lama    comes unannounced, though not always by air and sometimes drops in just to have breakfast with Gene Toby, whose son used to work for me  and designed the main North American Tibetan  monastary on the hill opposite Cornell.  

      The Dali told Gene at breakfast one day that one thing he often missed in the West, was being where chickens wander in and out of the conversation.    
   So Gene brought the Dali to my place the next time, and it is almost a regular thing now.....if three times in five years is a regular thing. 
       We drink mint tea, and sit in my yard jabbering  with the chickens.

       It's weird how the flies love that guy.  He suffers them mostly like little children and if they get too crazy  he shoos them away like they were puppies.
           One time there was a fly that wouldn't shoo and DID want a piece of his nose. 
Would you believe he ATE that fly!?  Put out his tongue....the fly lit on it.....and was gone.
         
        Nothing left but that Cheshire cat grin.     
         And then he says his doctors told him that, because of his personal health situation, he needs to either eat nails or have some meat in his diet. 
   'I try to keep a balance, "  he says.  "One nail, one fly."

      I'll tell you one thing: he's a nut.... but he fucking cracks me up!