FRED

We have a great colleague named Fred
Who’d love to examine your head
He’s looking to see
If your wild EEG
Can turn to coherence instead

On goes the interesting cap
Will it deliver a zap?
Will you transcend?
Will brain waves ascend?
Or will you slip into a nap?

The audience watches and waits
To see what your cranium creates
On the screen it appears —
Coherence — and cheers!
Fred Travis is one of the greats

Fred is a Raja — it’s plain
Already he has a domain:
With neurons by billions
Synapses by trillions —
It’s that three-pound phenom called a brain

Its complexities Fred will explain
Till no further questions remain
He leaves no confusion
His simple conclusion:
People, take care of your brain

By ten o’clock, put it to bed
Be sure that it’s properly fed
Twice daily transcending —
The rewards are unending —
Here’s brain care according to Fred

Now Fred isn’t shy — he’ll get technical
He can create quite a spectacle
The concepts and phrases —
Each one amazes —
And one of them’s actually electrical:

Contingent negative variation . . .
Drop that in your next conversation
This, Fred will mention,
Is one’s strength of attention
And it grows through Transcendental Meditation

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia . . .
Fred talks, then asks, “Are you with me-a?”
“Well, Fred, in fact,
It’s pretty abstract —
But thanks for the knowledge you give me-a.”

He speaks to 800 provosts
On “higher education” — which he roasts!
“It injures the brain,”
He declares — “It’s quite plain” —
He was voted best speaker (no boasts)

His fortune is visibly rising —
What’s Mother Nature devising?
Fred, you’re a star —
You shiningly are —
So your rising is hardly surprising

As a carpenter, Fred’s also quite skilled —
There’s little that Fred cannot build
We gather today
And with joy we all say:
His wish for a Vastu’s fulfilled!

Talk about brains — look at his
It’s one of the best in the biz
His prefrontal cortex
Is a sweet, silent vortex —
No wonder he is what he is

Fred is pure silence in action
His desires gain effortless traction
He’s cheerful and charming
His demeanor’s disarming —
Fred is a leading attraction

As a teacher, Fred is a fave
Each year the students all rave
He goes beyond “factive”
To high interactive —
No wonder crowds give him the wave

As department chair, graduate dean
His leadership skills are quite keen
Fred gets things done —
Efficient and fun —
He is seer and seeing and seen

In research, he’s one of the greats
As his work through the years demonstrates
His great research theme
Is knowledge supreme —
The reality of higher states

To everyone out there who seeks
Fred has compared the techniques
The results of his test:
The most ancient is best
TM’s effortless, therefore unique

As a father, he’s done pretty well
Dariana, Avery, Joelle
What joy to be had
In being a dad —
His strengths are too many to tell

His neurons are peacefully humming
It’s clear what dear Fred is becoming
We love you, Fred Travis
We’re happy you’ll have us —
May Brahman be quickly forthcoming

Bhagavad-Gita kinchid adhita
Ganga jalalava kanika pita
Dariana, Avery, Joelle, Fred, and Nita!

July 5, 2002