I was away for the weekend at the Ohio Gourd Show in Greenville, Ohio. Vidya went up on Thursday to set up for the show which started Friday. I don’t have the energy to be gone for a long time so Soma drove me there, arriving Saturday. He then hauled back a bunch of gourds we bought that wouldn’t fit into our van, which we also stuffed to the gills.

On the way we were talking about how gas lease money should be used if it does become a reality. We talked about solar panels and windmills. Windmills are best sited on hilltops so we were talking about where and the end of the broad sidewalk behind the Palace came up.

There was supposed to a something grand at the end of the walkway, something that the walkway led the eye to. One of the first ideas was a conservatory with plants mentioned in the Bhagvatam. One idea led to another and eventually the large statue of Srila Prabhupada was put there.

Unfortunately, Kirtanananda put a crown on him, which seemed like a good idea at the time but was almost universally not liked, one main reason was the idea that a guru is not supposed to be the king, although that was Kirtanananda’s mistaken conception.

Still, the statue had taken like two years to build and a lot of devotees did a lot of pro bono work on it. While the crown could have been removed and a Prabhupada hat put on it, a small group of devotees took a secret meeting without consulting the sculptor or the community of devotees and tore it down, practically under the cover of night. A huge waste.

What is left is a void, a conspicuous emptiness at the end of the grand allee. A void that should be filled.

I mentioned that maybe we could put a windmill there, which would both generate electricity and be sort of a flag of our ideal of living off the land. Soma’s inner artist went off on the idea and suggested we could build a statue there with the windmill on top. He had multiple ideas, too numerous to mention, including one of Vishnu holding a chakra, the chakra being a windmill.

We discussed how a statute could create wind turbulence that might lead to inefficiency in electrical production and how to design one that would minimize that. Any aerodynamic engineers in the house who would have an opinion on how to do this or want to be involved in designing it?

One alternative was maybe a regular tower but with a hologram to give it depth, though neither of us understand how holograms work and if it would be possible to do one outside during the day. Another idea would be to do a light sculpture at night, using the electric generated during the day to power it.

By the way, here I am at the gourd show with a new friend.