Patanjali

Information about Patanjali and his teachings are available in English.

I suspect that I can find his teachings valuable and his life interesting.

My notion is now that he was skilled in dance, grammar, and yoga.

Let me list a bit of what I think I know about about him. The following is mostly made up of guesses and fragments from a faulty memory:

• he flourished in India about 150 BC,
• he was a Sanskrit grammarian,
• he was a compiler and a knower,
• Nandhi Deva might have been his yoga teacher,
• he was probably a master of dance,
• He seems to have been interested in a meaningful and worthy life,
• he wrote a work on grammar which is still available
• he wrote a four part book on yoga which is still available.
• he seems to have a rational and intellectual approach to reality,
• his teaching and understanding seems experiential and supported by concrete referents.

As my interest, energy, and the fates permit I may post more on Patanjali with focus on his Yoga Sutras.

Charles Leiper Grigg and Elzi Crisler Segar

I note, in "CRTA Contact" magazine, that it is the California Retired Teachers Association's 80th anniversary. That means that the organization began in 1929, the year the Great Depression began. An article in the mag. notes that a retired teacher received a maximum pension of $500 a year at that time. I'm proud to note that I receive a bit more than that a month! In an accompanying article we are reminded that our pension fund has lost a third of its value since this past fall.

I quote a section from this issue of the CRTA mag. called "Remembering 1929:"
~ Herbert Hoover was president of the United States
~ US population reached 120 million (over 300 million today)
~ Dow reached a peak of 381.17 on September 3rd, prior to the slide and eventual Wall Street crash in October
~ Cost of a first-class stamp was 2 cents (now we don't even use a cent sign)
~ Bread cost 10 cents (for a good size loaf)
~ Popeye, a comic strip character created by Elzi Crisler Segar, made his debut
~ Academy Awards, popularly know as the Oscars, were started
~ 'The Broadway Melody' became the first major musical film of the sound era
~ The soft drink 7-Up was invented by Charles Leiper Grigg
~ The first car radio was made by Motorola
~ Sir Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin
~ The first public phone booths appeared in London.