495 Third Avenue, San Francisco, 1975. These days I ride my motorcycle, and have plenty of spare time in between the postering runs for The Thumbtack Bugle. And while I was out putting up posters one day, I was looking at one of the posters.
I had been hired to put up a brightly colored large poster with colorful, banner-like flags pictured. It was advertising a special ritual that was to be performed by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, at the Nob Hill Masonic Center auditorium on California Street.
Sounded weird and maybe interesting, so I went.
I found it kind of noisy at the time — lots of banging drums and clashing cymbals and blatting, discordant horns — it was plenty weird, and I didn’t understand it much at all.
A week later I was speaking with my cousin Bruce (Richard Bruce Hurn), in Berkeley, and mentioned it because he was studying that same tradition, because they had a study center in Berkeley.
He fell upon the ground laughing. Apparently the ritual that I’d attended was a ritual for the dead.
Gosh. looks like I was in the right place after all!



There are many wonderful things in this world. There are many ways to think. There are many ways to plan. There are many ways to exercise. There are many ways to eat for health. And there are many ways to improve yourself.
Weed, California, November 16, 2010: Last night I was reading “Use Your Brain for a Change: by Richard Bandler, and he was describing how people motivate themselves to do things … such as how we wake up in the morning.