Marathon Pundit: Iowa I Opener: Fairfield and Obama

Monday, December 20, 2010

Iowa I Opener: Fairfield and Obama

Fairfield Town Square gazebo

In 2009, President Obama spoke at Georgetown University, a Catholic college, but the letters IHS, a commonly used monogram for Jesus Christ, were covered during his speech--so the sacred initials and Obama's face wouldn't appear in the same photograph.

Two summers prior, candidate Obama spoke at Fairfield, Iowa's town square. Fairfield is well, uh...different. It's the home of Maharishi University of Management, which was founded by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the creator of the Transcendental Mediation movement and briefly, guru for the Beatles. The Fab Four later disavowed him. They skewered him in "Sexy Sadie."

Mahesh Yogi, 1918?-2008

The Maharishi's philosophy is difficult to classify, but I'm going to call it a morphing of Hinduism and Buddhism with some crackpot science and a dash of hucksterism thrown in. Oh, I am not a follower.

Enlightenment came to the rolling hills of southeastern Iowa in 1974 when the university purchased the campus of bankrupt Parsons College.

TMers have an obsession with things facing east-it puts them in alignment with the earth's rotation. For instance, in the 1990s, most of the former Parsons buildings, including some listed on the National Register of Historic Places, were demolished because they weren't easterly facing.

I can see why Parsons closed its doors.