Golfer’s Guide to Self-Awareness, or Stop Chanting and Just Tee Off, OK?

Just what you’ve been waiting for:

San Diego’s first culturally diverse, politically correct miniature golf course.

Presenting the newly redone Aha Mini Golf Course on Mission Bay.

Designed with the help of two Native American artists. Blessed by a medicine man before it opened in July.

A sign on the approach to the first tee warns/counsels: “No Spikes. No Smoking. Stay on the Paths. And Please Remember: Surround All Creations With Respect.”

The course is the baby of Jack Patterson, a former coordinator of the legal aid program for the Phoenix Indian Center.

These days Patterson holds the title of “coordinator of indigenous wisdom” for Bay Resorts, which runs the course and the rest of the Mission Bay Golf Center (owned by the DeAnza Corp.).

“It’s a miniature golf course, of course,” Patterson explains. “But on top of that, it’s a metaphor for a journey through life.”

There are “theme” miniature golf courses everywhere (King Arthur and Wild West are big). Aha Mini Golf Course is different.

“This isn’t a ‘theme’ miniature golf course. It’s a ‘concept’ miniature golf course,” says Patterson, 42, who got interested in American Indian culture while studying at Georgetown University.

“Winning is not really the point here, it’s not (even) how you play the game. It’s what goes through you as you play the game.”

The 18-hole course is thick with Indian symbols from the Southwest: the dream catcher, the trickster, the humpback flutist, a Hopi sun shield, the thunderbird.

Each hole offers a philosophic/atheletic conundrum. The scorecard gives you a handful of Indian folk wisdom.

Go one way and you encounter certain risks; go another and you have others. The “Aha” is from the shriek of epiphany, Eureka, shazaam or whatever.

The natural clientele for Aha is kids. But DeAnza also encourages its employees to play. Really.

“We hope employees will have an ‘Aha’ as they play,” Patterson says, “and see what the company is trying to do.”

And Stuff Yourself to the Gills

Less art, more matter.

* Slogan on the checks given to diners at Vera Cruz Fish House in San Marcos:

“The Only Way That Health Begins/Is to Eat the Food That Comes With Fins.”

* George Weston of El Cajon says he knows a widow who calls herself a “born-again virgin.”

* North County bumper sticker: “Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty.”

* Yes, there is a San Diego group called the Bureau Cats Toastmasters. Trolley district employees, mostly.

* What recession?

About 120 music lovers from San Diego will take a charter flight Oct. 10 to Merida, Mexico, to hear the San Diego Symphony do a concert in the Yucatan.

* The San Diego City Council today honors Alvin Brazelton, 66, whose 47 years on the job puts him at the top of the longevity chart among city employees.

He’s driven a street sweeper an estimated 300,000 miles (at 5-8 m.p.h. and without a single accident). He’s spent his life in and around monster vehicles.

During World War II, he served in the tank corps under Gen. George S. Patton.

We Need Somebody to Kick Around

Byron Slater, a San Diego real estate broker, has given us (free of charge) “Four More Years?”

This sure is a lousy election,

with Perot out, there’s no selection.

It’s Tweedle-Dum or Tweedle-Dee

and neither one agrees with me!

Pollsters favor Clinton-Gore

while George Bush looks for another war.

We all scoffed at Anita Hill,

while Tailgaters played Jack ‘n’ Jill.

The state of politics is sure a mess

I’m confused, I must confess.

But there’s one man, tanned and ready,

with a plan that’s proven steady.

The country’s broke and it needs fixin’

I think I’ll vote for Richard Nixon.