If you want to eat like a president, order the corned beef," advises Marsha Goldstein as 20 of us tramp off the tour bus and join an early lunchtime queue that is already out of the door of Manny's, near the corner of Roosevelt and Jefferson in central Chicago.

We are about a mile west of Hutchinson Field, where Barack Obama held his celebratory rally after winning the US presidential election. Whereas that November night was unseasonably balmy, this is a more conventional Illinois December day, with icy winds forcing us to shuffle around in oversized coats, scarves and hats.

The president-elect is the reason we are here. Manny's, a traditional Jewish-style deli long beloved by Chicagoans, has drawn international attention in recent weeks as one of Obama's favoured lunch spots. He popped in a few weeks after the election. Desperate for news, hordes of journalists swarmed outside. The media solemnly reported that the president-elect entered the lunch institution at 12.24pm, chatted with customers and staff, purchased two portions of cherry pie and three corned beef sandwiches, insisted on paying the $48.34 bill himself, and exited at 12.45pm.

The level of detail indicates the febrile atmosphere surrounding Obama. As the base for his transition team, America's third largest city had the world's attention as Obama held daily press briefings in the city.

McKenzie: I've heard where you're going to have folks come in to [your policy institute] from other countries that you all have dealt with. Do you envision something that you're going to have fellows and scholars ...

George Bush: Absolutely. There will be fellows and scholars. Let me tell what this isn't. This is not going to be "George Bush is a wonderful person" center or the "center for Republican Party campaign tactics."

It's going to be a place of debate, thought, writing, lecturing. There will be fellows. As an example of the type of fellow that I would like to have there, we've befriended Václav Havel. He was in Washington, and we invited him for dinner. And I said, "What are you doing here." He said, "I'm writing my book." And he was living in Georgetown in a rented house and was going up to the Library of Congress to write. They'd given him space to write his book.

And it dawned on me, why not have somebody like Václav Havel as a fellow - to give him a place to think and write? And all you do in return is lecture.

I could write about the wide effect psychedelic consciousness expansion had on society.  I could write that he'd been working just as carefully as always with the substance, but something changed just after the first controlled nuclear reaction in Chicago in 1942, and LSD became more psychoactive.  A few (not afew) months later, Hofmann had his first accidental trip, and the first calculated trip a few days later.

Much of the history of how LSD affected modern society is either hidden, for obvious reasons, or little reported or understood.  This really deserves a great, detailed, perhaps ongoing diary.  I sure won't get to it for a while, though I have a wealth of subjects to write about.

But I do not want to let this anniversary pass without mention, because a great and sweet and visionary man had been born on this day.  You can begin searching here, or perhaps Here, or even here at MAPS.

I will only say that i am indebted to this man for providing me a tool of consciousness expansion without which i wouldn't have been able to see and understand as well.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

• Beetroot
  
• Cabbage
  
• Swiss Chard
  
• Cinnamon
  
• Pomegranate juice
  
• Dried plums
  
• Pumpkin seeds
  
• Sardines
  
• Turmeric
  
• Frozen blueberries
  
• Canned pumpkin

I'm also a big fan of Black Salt.

You can't be me, I'm taken