New Vrindaban Brijabasi Spirit

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****CLUB108 NEWSLETTER (VOLUME 1 – ISSUE 1)*****
Sight – Sound – Vision – Multimedia Outreach – “Where East Meets West”

POWER-POINT PRESENTATIONS ON JANMASTAMI

Club108 was pleased to unveil its multimedia offerings for the New Vrindaban Community by presenting a series of Krsna-Lila power-point presentations made from our slide archive. It was viewed by dozens of pilgrims and guests during this year’s Janmastami celebrations.

Pictures of Krsna-Lila from the community’s slide archive were transferred over to digital images with the help of our newest Club108 member, the Super CoolScan 5000. The images combined with Prabhupada’s sweet narrations from Krsna book made for transcendental entertainment for young and old alike. We also featured an info table about our plans and projects, complete with a growing e-mail list. Feedback was uniformly positive, and we hope to make these Power-point Presentations a regular happening during festivals and busy weekends.

Thank-you Janaka Mahajana Prabhu for your enjoyment and appreciation of our Power-point presentation and the $10 donation, which was immediately put to good use

108 REASONS FOR YOUR STOMACH TO BE HAPPY

By the tireless efforts of HG Jagadish Caitanya Dasa, Club108 canvased community members to voluntarily cook and deliver 108 delicious preps for the Janmastami festival on Sept 4th. We offer our most humble thanks to all those in the community who prepared a cornucopia of different subjis, sweets, and other succulent delights for the pleasure of RVC, Their devotees and guests. The austerity of the all-day fast quickly transformed into a blissful feast thanks to the efforts and realized recipes of all those who were involved. Club108 hopes to continue offering this service of organization for future festivals.

THE VIRTUAL TOUR

In recent weeks, you may have seen and heard Arya Siddhanta and Bhakta-Chris making quite a ruckus in the RVC Temple room, using cameras, tripods, and loud voices, explaining to seemingly nobody and everybody about the unique features of our beautiful temple room. The fruit of this labor is a 20 minute first draft of the RVC Temple Virtual Tour. As an alternative to our face-to-face guided tours, which we are also developing, guests will be escorted through the temple by our virtual guides on state-of-the art personal video players. The Virtual tour includes unique visuals of the temple design and layout with exclusive narrations and accounts of the history by the devotees who built it, live in it, and worship in it. In the following weeks and months we request your input. Come and try this virtual tour, so we can get your feedback to improve its quality and make it a truly unique and authentic experience.

NEW VRINDABAN TO SOON HIT THE AIRWAVES

We are in the process of applying for a FCC license. When approved we’ll launch New Vrindaban’s first radio station. Stay tuned to this newsletter for further developments or talk directly to Bhakta Chris. By the way Bhakta Chris produced his own Ann-Arbor based radio show. Likewise, Kamalavati dasi was a 6 year radio personality at U-Mass in Amherst. Devotees interested in Krsna conscious radio should contact us with ideas, experiences and feedback. Don’t touch that dial.

“BAD KARMA IS NOT SUSTAINABLE” WORKSHOP APPROVED!!!

The emerging allicance between sustainable development and spirituality is a dynamic preaching field. Recently, the Pennsylvania Association of sustainable agriculture (PASA) accepted Tapahpunja Prabhu’s controversial proposal entitled “Bad Karma Is Not Sustainable-Farming As If Your Next Life Depended On It” His presentation will be delivered at State College on February 9th, 2008. The workshop entreats participants to carefully consider the sobering results of earning income through the sacrifice of animal or plant life. This is a block-buster breakthrough for integrating Krsna conscious philosophy with the world’s fastest growing grass-roots movement, sustainable development.

SUPERCOOLSCAN5000 IN FULL EFFECT!

As mentioned earlier, the newest member of our Club, the SuperCoolScan 5000 is up-and-running. We are now in the beginning stages of transferring the communities massive collection of slides over into digital format. This will allow us to create so many different and wonderful Power-point presentations taken from old slides. Be on the look-out for future Power-point presentations which will include themes such as the building of Prabhupada’s Palace and the history of New Vrindaban. Big thanks to Jaya Murari Prabhu for providing us graciously with the slide-scanner and feeder. It has the capacity to automatically transform 100 slides into digital pictures within an hour’s time.

THE HISTORY OF NEW VRINDABAN

Another Club108 initiative is to create a comprehensive chronicle of New Vrindaban community history. This is our biggest and most important project and we need your help! In the coming months, we plan to record audio and video accounts of the history of New Vrindaban. Our aim is to preserve the rich legacy of New Vrindaban, its struggles and successes, for the benefit of generations to come. Sankirtana Dasa has pioneered this chronology on a website hosted by Hanover College (http://www2.hanover.edu/newvrindavan/timeline.html). Remember, next year commemorates New Vrindaban’s 40th Anniversary as one of America’s oldest continuously existing intentional communities. The combination of advanced technology and carefully documented memories are the ingredients for making this chronicle a source of pleasure for Srila Prabhupada and Lord Sri Krsna.

OUR PRESENCE AT RADHASTAMI

The next transcendental festival here at New Vrindaban will be Radhastami, the Appearance Day of Srimati Radharani, which occurs on Wednesday, September 19th. Our plans for this great day include a Power-point presentation with narration, complete with live kirtan, and we are also approaching HH Varsana Swami to enlighten the community with a discourse on how Radharani combines with Her beloved Krsna in the form of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.

THE CLUB108 FILM FESTIVAL

Plans are in the making for a regular film festival. We plan to present a series of thought-provoking and inspiring films on topics of devotion and also issues of self-sufficiency and sustainability. The format will include the showing of the film, discussion, and prasadam refreshments. If there are any films that you would like to see shown, please stop by the Club108 office. Later this month we will kick off the festival with a New Vrindaban debut of Vegan Cooking Workshop, a short film made by our own brahmacari’s detailing their wildly successful prasadam and preaching programs at Ohio University.

THE CONVERSION EXPERIENCE

In conjunction with the Global Leadership Council and the Pluralism Project, (http://www.ohio.edu/glc/), Prof. Greg Emery, a longtime friend of the New Vrindaban Community, will be working with select devotees on a project focused on how people come to Krsna consciousness, or “The Conversion Experience.” Prof. Emery’s 30 plus students annually visit New Vrindaban to interview devotees. Their purpose is to see how we live and relate. Their report includes testimony about why someone chooses to break away from mundane society to get the higher taste of Krsna consciousness. We look forward to working with Greg and his students, and we’ll have more news and realizations as this project develops in the weeks to come.

CLUB108 WISH LIST

1. VIDEO CAMERA – With so many video projects in mind, one of our immediate needs is a professional quality digital video camera. Were humbly asking for a donation. Our price range is flexible, but the most important consideration is a quality camera that can create professional-quality films (i.e not “home movies”) for the pleasure of RVC and Their devotees. The models we are most interested in are: the Sony HDRSR7 DV Camcorder, the Panasonic PV-GS320 DV Camcorder, and the Sony HDR-FX1 High Definition DV Camcorder. Thanks for your help.

2.SLIDE SCANNING AND CLEANING HELP – We have boxes and boxes of old slides. Because they are dusty, each slide is in need of cleaning. Would you like to help us clean the slides, and also to learn how to transfer the slides into digital format? See you next issue…

Your Servants @ CLUB108,
Tapahpunja dasa
Arya Siddhanta dasa
Bhakta Chris &
Jaya Murari dasa

Email: NVCLUB108@Gmail.com
phone: 304-843-1600 x101
Address: RD1 NBU2
Moundsville, WV 26041