The Dunk Tank is back!! Benefitting the Tibet House in memory of Jim Woolsey, this event is a great chance to come and dunk your bartenders, servers and friends!
$5 for 5 tosses, drink specials TBA, and keep the night rolling with DJ AggrEschen!!
Exactly the type of activity that would generate harrumphs…
The following excerpt is from the Bucks County Courier Times, Aug. 30th 2014
Time and again, Jim Woolsey was drawn to Tibet.
And over time, Woolsey would help bring Tibet’s culture to the world, electronically.
The preface of the Dalai Lama’s 2004 book “Cultivating Daily Meditation” includes a note of thanks to the hippie intellectual, sound technician and frequent bartender from New Hope.
Jim Woolsey, 70, died Thursday after a life split between New Hope’s art scene and the southernmost outer ridges of Himalayas. He had lung cancer.
At 6-foot-3-inches and skinny as a post, Woolsey never owned a car, frequently hitchhiked, and in his 20s went to Woodstock, friends and family said.
Among his dying wishes, Woolsey left instructions that all his Tibetan treasures be returned someday to that spiritual capital some 7,000 miles away.
“I think he lived in a cave over there,” remembered friend Cynthia Wuthrich. “We would get these letters from him describing an event, some wedding or festival, and you began to feel like you were there with him.”
Longtime friend John Larsen remembers the day when Woolsey, then just a stranger, encouraged him to obtain a liquor license for his restaurant John and Peter’s, now a famous nightclub in New Hope.
“This guy was just sitting there,” said Larsen. “I didn’t really know him. He tells me he knows something about bars, and he offers to help me set it up,” Larsen continued. “Then, he just disappears to go to Tibet.”
“One time, (Jim) brought home a Tibetan monk,” Larsen said. “Frankly, I don’t know how he managed to get along.”
Woolsey first journeyed to Tibet more than 40 years ago. Over time, he became a sort of technical guru for exiled monks, working to codify thousands of historical and spiritual texts. He also helped design a computer keyboard for the Tibetan language.
Exiled from their homeland by the Chinese government in 1959, refugees had carried hundreds of manuscripts over the rugged mountains into northern India.
Located in India, the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives first launched an online database of manuscripts back in 2003. At the time, the Central Tibetan Administration had released a public statement, crediting Woolsey for his volunteer hours of computer training for government staff.
Ten years earlier, Allentown’s Morning Call newspaper interviewed Woolsey about his efforts overseas and a meeting with Tibet’s spiritual leader.
“A couple years ago, I was given the opportunity to brief the Dalai Lama about what’s going on,” said Woolsey. “We had some interesting conversation, but I feel that he’s got better things to do.”
