After moving to Ventura County in 1988, it took me a few years to massage my home into a place where I could host Krishna Consciousness Gatherings. When I got everything prepared for hosting events, I regularly would invite the devotees I had served with to come speak at the programs I sponsored every two weeks at my home. One of the highlights of that effort was when HH TKG came to lead a Bhagavatam class in my backyard at 7 pm on July 22, 1995.
I was accustomed to making a cassette tape of all those who came and spoke, and I had done that for this gathering as well. After the tape was recorded, it got tossed into a drawer with all the other hundreds of tapes I had accumulated, waiting for me to do something more with it.
Years went by, and then I got a call from the devotees in Houston who had learned how I joined the Radha-Damodara Traveling bus party when I dropped out in my senior year of schooling at the University of Kansas. They asked me if I could speak a little about my experiences in serving Srila Prabhupada under Tamal Krishna Goswami. I was happy to do that, and apparently that material has been archived by the Houston Temple.
On November of 2026, I got an unexpected phone call from Jai Baladeva, a disciple of HH TKG, who had heard my tribute to his spiritual master. In that talk, I apparently mentioned how Maharaj came to speak to 100 guests in my backyard in 1995. He called to inquire from me more about that!
As we talked, I recalled the tape I had recorded over 30 years ago. I realized I might still have it buried in that drawer with all sorts of historic recordings. I told him I would see if I could find it and promised that if it was still in good enough condition to play, I would digitize it and make it available here on my website.
By Krishna’s grace, I was able to do all of that and then realized that I had also taken photos of each event I sponsored… but what had I done with those old film photos? Those who know my home know I have a wealth of KC material and do all I can to preserve and catalogue what I can, the best I can. This means knowing which of the many volumes of binders would have the few photos from that event, where storage requires shelving and binders, not just a large hard drive.
I had no idea where to start, but on the day it was time to publish this material, super soul directed me to the bottom of a filing cabinet I probably hadn’t opened in over 15 years, and, magically, as I pulled out the drawer, the label read AVA photos. That wasn’t so special because I have probably 20 binders with labels like that, and I had already searched all of them… but this was not on those shelves! Most of the material in this collection was photocopies, letters, and promotional material, but there was one vinyl sleeve and…walla! There were two photos of TKG speaking on the very evening I had found the tape for!
I got all the pieces together, collected some additional photos, and turned the MP3 soundtrack into an MP4 video, which is now loaded and available on YouTube for devotees who did not meet TKG to hear him speak on a magical summer night in 1995! Hare Krishna!
