Murray Reads Maya

This is an interesting concept: in preparation for Maya Angelou's upcoming appearance at Murray State University in August, Western Kentucky residents are being encouraged, en masse, to study up on her oeuvre before she gets here.

The "Murray Reads Maya" program is being engineered by the good folks at murrayreads.org. Says their site: "The Murray Reads program is designed to bring in the entire community of Murray together through books. There will be different authors throughout the year that will be highlighted, so everyone in the program will read something by the same author."

And the West Kentucky Star says: "Groups such as book clubs, cooking clubs, women’s clubs, children’s story times, elementary, middle school and high school classes, churches, and others are encouraged to use the website to be a part of the program and record which Angelou book they read."

I like this. I like it a lot. I'd love, in fact, to see something like this instituted statewide from a central hub. Like, on a given month, say, Menifee County could be reading Langston Hughes, Boyd County could be reading Thomas DeQuincey, Wolfe County could be reading William Faulkner, Letcher County could be reading Robert Anton Wilson, Jackson County could be reading Hunter S. Thompson, Livingston County could be reading Oliver Onions, and so on, and so forth. (Maybe some county could even be assigned to read me.)

Eckankar

The Eckankar religion has a considerable presence in Kentucky, and why not? Their founder, Paul Twitchell, was a Kentuckian.

Twitchell was born in Paducah in 1909, and went on to attend Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green and Murray State University. He dropped out of both colleges each time.

After returning from a stint in the Navy during World War II, he began dabbling in mysticism, Eastern religion, and New Age belief systems. He followed Swami Premananda for a time, then Scientology, then Kirpal Singh.

In 1965 he announced that he had been chosen by an ancient society of holy masters, to become the new leader of the formerly secret religion known as "Eckankar" to the world. He claimed a 500-year-old man (who supposedly still lives to this day) named Rebazar Tarzs visited him regularly in his apartment to guide him in his writings. According to Wikipedia:

Rebazar Tarzs presently resides in the Hindu Kush mountains, and is "the emissary of ECKANKAR in the physical universe". There are several essays by ECKANKAR followers who report having met him, including one who describes Rebazar Tarzs's guiding him to herbs that cured his heart condition, and one who tells of receiving a gift from Rebazar Tarzs during the Korean War, the gift later being traded for desperately needed food.

There is a story of a taxicab driver who picked up Rebazar Tarzs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in around 1952, and during the ride, Rebazar Tarzs was able, among other things, to read the driver's "secret prayers." In a second incident, Rebazar Tarzs miraculously repaired the driver's automobile.

Twitchell claimed that past members of the secret ECK society included Plato, Pythagoras, and St. Francis of Assisi. He also made some pretty lousy predictions, such as that the Vietnam War would end in 1968, and that Lyndon Johnson would be elected US President for a second time.

So what exactly do Eckists (followers of Eckankar) believe? Their website says this:

"Eckankar teaches that there is an audible life current known as the ECK, or Holy Spirit, that connects each of us with the heart of God. We can experience the ECK as Light and Sound. Through study and practice of the Spiritual Exercises of ECK, we learn to recognize the Light and Sound of God as It touches our lives and brings increased divine love."

They also believe in the power of HU, which is a Sufi vocal ritual considered by Eckists to be "a love song to God". Reincarnation and astral travel are also important parts of the religion.


Twitchell died in 1971, which also dashed another of his predictions; he said he would live into the 1980s. Currently Eckankar is headed by one Harold Klemp (pictured above), who attended Indiana University and was connected to military intelligence before joining the ECK movement while in Japan. Klemp is regarded to be "the 973rd Living Eck Master" in an unbroken line that goes back to the dawn of human life.

NUFORC UFO Roundup

It's been a while since I've checked out NUFORC's files of submitted UFO reports in Kentucky. Here's the latest ones they list:

7/14/2008: Fern Creek, KY. "VERY SMALL OBJECT , MOVING VERY RAPIDLY, AT VERY EXTREME ALTITUDE. THE OBJECT APPEARED TO BE FLYING VERY VERY HIGH AND AT A VERY VERY HIGH RATE OF SPEED.IT MADE NO SUDDEN ZIGS OR ZAGS, IT ONLY FLEW FORWARD, AND WITHOUT SOUND . I'VE SEE MANY PLANES FLYING AT VERY HIGH RANGES BUT NEVER AT THAT KIND OF SPEED!!!! TO THE NAKED EYE THE OBJECT WAS ABOUT THE SIZE OF A PIN HEAD. I DONT BELIEVE IT WAS A METEOR OR MODERN AIRCRAFT."

7/27/2008 : Florence, KY. "I left my boyfriends house in Hebron KY around 1:15am. I was headed south to my home in Crittenden KY. I noticed a large, bright orange light (about a half mile in front of me) in the sky along south-bound I-75 around the Dream Street area. As I got closer I noticed that the light was on the front of what appeared to be a triangular shaped object. It did not appear to be moving. My best GUESStimate was that it was about 50-75 feet in the air. As I drove underneath the object I saw two green lights and one red light, all of which were blinking as opposed to the one in front (the orange one) which was not blinking. I could not tell if the three blinking lights were on the bottom or the side of the object due to the fact that I was passing under it at around 60mph."

7/28/2008 : Mount Sterling, KY. "My children and I watched as blinking lights (red, white, green, and blue on some) moved across the sky at different directions. Then there were several more that even met up and went almost in circles before disappearing. Lastly, we even saw one meet another, then both go in the same direction with one following the other. They were definitely not plane, or helicopters due to the amount of them, lack of noise, and the strange flight behavior. It lasted roughly 30 minutes, and I would've watched longer, but I was getting tired. I wanted to film it, but my small video camera would not have captured it very well due to the dark night and they were pretty high up in the air. Some were barely able to be seen if not for the blinking of the lights. It was amazing and I wish someone else would believe us!"

8/8/2008 : Murray, KY. "Oval object shoots across the sky and explodes in bright flash. My step-brother, his friend, and I were walking down the road. The event occurred between 1:30 to 1:45. First we were just walking we were about 200 yards away from the house. And we all saw a flash of light and, then there was an oval shaped object that shot across the sky with a hissing noise. It left a bright trail that remained even after it was gone. But after it shot across the sky it had seemed to explode in a sudden silent flash."

8/9/2008 : "Two small orbs seen hovering over Dawson Springs, KY at a great distance. The objects were too far up to describe in much detail. There was one object that appeared to emit light or simply reflected sunlight. The other object appeared only for a few seconds and simply appeared as a dark spot. The lighted object moved only a small distance then stopped, moved back and then stopped and did this about 4 times before disappearing. I have taken photos of the objects as well."

(Photo above: UFO spotted over Louisville in 1973.)

Murray State's Shoe Tree

There's a very strange tradition that pops up in several places around the world, seemingly independently of each other, and that's the quaint surrealist custom known as the "Shoe Tree". According to Wikipedia, "There are currently at least seventy-six such shoe trees in the United States, and an undetermined number elsewhere."

Kentucky has one such tree, and it's located on the grounds of Murray State University in Calloway County. The Murray State Shoe Tree is in front of the Pogue Library, and has been a local curiosity for many, many years. There's not a lot left of the tree - in fact, it's really reduced to a tall stump these days - apparently because all the nails driven into the tree to attach the shoes over the years have literally turned it into a lightning rod and it keeps getting zapped during thunderstorms.

The tradition, as the story is told, is that if a couple who met at Murray State end up getting hitched, they return to their alma mater and nail their shoes to the Shoe Tree. Why? No one seems to know.

If said couple has a baby, the baby's shoes are then nailed to the tree as well. Why? No one seems to know.

Don't ask, just accept it.