Stuffed Animals

I once knew a woman who had her pet kitty cat stuffed, after he died, of course. I thought it was quite creepy.

Over the weekend a friend showed us a set of birds that family members had stuffed and put behind glass over 100 years ago. They were quite beautiful. I wonder how they died (couldn't have been shot, they were perfect) and how they were stuffed all that many years ago.

Then this morning I had an e-mail photo from my son who is bird hunting in Bolivia. I don't image he'll have the birds stuffed but he does have a whole herd of heads of big, beautiful animals mounted on his walls.

And now I have before me a newspaper article about my childhood hero, Roy Rogers (King of the Cowboys) who died several years ago. Christie's is auctioning off his memorabilia, including his horse, Trigger, whom Roy had stuffed in a very picturesque pose after Trigger died.

(But if you're interested in more horsepower you can bid on Roy's 1964 Bonneville convertible with door handles and gear shift made from silver plated pistols.)

I loved Roy Rogers and his lovely wife Dale Evans (Queen of the West,) and I saw him perform in person - with Trigger - several times on the grounds of Sunnyside Sanitarium where my beautiful 34 year old mother was dying from T.B.

He always let us little kids pet Trigger.

But I just didn't know what to think when Trigger was stuffed. It was creepier than the lady's kitty cat.


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Writings in Caves

I am a person of faith. But, as you know, I'm full of unanswered (and probably unanswerable) theological questions.

But one of the exciting clues to the scriptures, discovered in my life time, are the Dead Sea Scrolls.

They're currently on loan to the Science Museum of Minnesota. You may wonder what they're doing here since they're so valuable. It's a matter of economics. The science museum paid $6,000,000 for the loan.

We haven't seen them but we recently went to hear the guy who's the academic adviser to the museum speak about them.

He's Alex Jassen, a young Professor of Early Judaism in the Dept. of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. Here are a couple of interesting things I learned from him along with some other research:

- The scrolls were found in caves 13 miles East of Jerusalem between 1947 and 1956.

- Made mostly from animal skins, the scrolls were not made accessible until 1991, 44 years after the discovery of the first scroll.

- They were written around 200 years Before Christ, therefore Jesus is not mentioned. They were hidden away by a Jewish sect that was most likely destroyed by Roman soldiers.

- There are over 800 scrolls and fragments, biblical and non-biblical including 19 copies of Isaiah, 25 of Deuteronomy and 30 of Psalms.

- They contain stories about Noah and Abraham including an explanation of why God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Issac.

While Dave and I haven't seen the scrolls here in St. Paul, I did see them in Jerusalem in the 70s. It was exciting at the time but the full value wasn't known then. Now we know they were the most important archaeological find of the 20th century.

And, to me, they are an enormous clue along the road in my mysterious faith journey.

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What Was Your Favorite 4th of July Experience?

This morning I looked up the 4th of July blog postings I've written about over the decades.  I've seen fantastic, over the top, Disney extravaganzas. 

And here where I live in Central Florida, I've seen our Red, Hot and Boom display that draws around 200,000 people.  But we can see it from where I live.  Some years I've watched it from the lake, some years while swimming in the pool.  

And I love the Boston Pops and all that patriotic music.  

But, below is my very favorite 4th of July event ever.

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On July 4th, 1976 my husband, Ken, was invited to take part in the swearing in ceremony for brand new Americans.

This was in Fort Lauderdale in the middle of summer. The auditorium had no air conditioning. I envisioned a dozen immigrants standing in front of the judge, answering his questions and Ken offering a blessing.

Boom, we're done! Now everybody to the beach.

But, no, it wasn't like that. The auditorium was jammed with people, mostly Cubans. Many of them had experienced tremendous peril coming to the U.S. Almost every person carried an American flag.

We sang patriotic songs and when the time came for swearing in, hundreds of people came forward.

The judge gave a speech about how fortunate all of us in the room were to be living in the United States of America.

After the swearing in there was wild waving of flags, hugging, crying, laughing and singing.

Along with the other nationalities, hundreds of men and woman arrived as Cubans and left as Cuban Americans.

I was moved beyond measure.

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Poking Fun At Larsson

Dave said, "You're gonna love 'Shouts & Murmurs' in this week's New Yorker."

He was right.

As you know, "Shouts & Murmur" is a clever, satirical column, sometimes written by very famous people. This one is by one of my favorites, Nora Ephron. She teases Steg Larsson's third novel "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" for it's long and difficult Swedish words.

Blomkvist appears at Salander's door. He's in despair. The umlaut won't work on his computer. Now we readers know how serious this is. How can he type city names like Svavelsjo or Strangnas or Sodertalje?

(Obviously I can't type them because I don't have an umlaut to put those two little dots over some of the vowels.)

After much soul searching, angst, profanity and use of long words, Salander finally restores Blomkvist's umlaut.

With a Q-tip.


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Moved by Art

Dave and his friend of many years had an opening last Saturday night at a small art gallery here in Minneapolis. Their paintings (each has about a dozen ) will hang for a month. At the opening we saw a lot of Dave's old friends, many of whom had no idea that he did art. Dave and his friend's paintings are cheerful and fun. Their title for this show is "Mr. Loose and Mr. Tight."

We had a really nice evening.

At the same gallery, in another room, a young artist is showing his work for the same amount of time. He participated in the opening.

This guy is amazing!

It was exciting to see people walk into the room and gasp at his work. When I walked in it took my breath a way. His canvases are large, most around 4 ft. x 4 ft. His work is very dark in content and color.

The artist is Luke Hillestad. His showing is called "Phantom Limb."

In these paintings (he) explores themes of loss and healing from war. Phantom Limb Syndrome as a metaphor for the memory, sensation and longing that we are left with after a loss...

We all can relate to the memory and sensation we're left with after a loss. My "phantom limb" experiences have made themselves known in many terrible and bizarre ways. I thought of them and others when I saw the painting above. At first glance I thought it could be Mary comforting Jesus but then it could be any one of us comforting any one of us at a time of great loss.

As you can tell, I was greatly moved by Luke Hillestad's work.

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Steg Larsson's Women

Along with 20 million others who've bought the books, I'm a fan of the three long, complex, convoluted, imaginative Swedish mysteries by Steg Larsson:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

As you other fans know, Larsson meant to write a volume of ten, but, after writing and delivering three and a half manuscripts, he died.

All of us fans known a lot about Lizabeth Salander, his complex heroine. But Larsson gave us many strong women characters. More than I can remember from a series of three books

In just "Hornet's Nest" alone:

Monica Figuerola - the super fit, attractive inspector with the Swedish Police Department.

Sussan Linder - the snuff-dipping former policewoman, current investigator for Milton Security who gives us a very satisfying solution to the problem Eric Berger has with a stalker.

Annika Giannina - the sister of Blomkvist and domestic violence attorney who defends Salander in one of the most exciting and satisfying trials ever.

Erica Berger - Blomkvist's boss/off and on lover.

All of these women are Katy Bar the Door, Take No Prisoners, Super Smart gals. It's pretty clear that Larsson had huge respect for women. Period.

Not just Salander.

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Fat Fingers

One day several weeks ago the stock market lost hundreds of points in an instant. They think that some trader with "fat fingers" made a big mistake and dumped millions when he meant to dump thousands.

A few days later, as the DOW continued to sink, I used my own "fat fingers" to take a significant chunk of money (for me) out of the market.

That was stupid.

Why am I sharing this? Because I believe that all of us need to be responsible with the resources God's entrusted to us. It's darned scary sometimes. And, of course, we do some dumb things when we're scared.

So, when I finished being angry with myself, I started the slow, cumbersome, difficult process of getting back in. This required much research and consultation with a professional who has no personal stake in what or if I buy.

But I had to listen to him tell me about 1,000 times, "You can't time the market!"

"Yes, I know. What I did was stupid. Let's move on."

I had to restate my priorities. They're very clear:

1. I want enough money to live simply the rest of my life but, more importantly, to take care of end of life illness and issues. This required an assessment of how much longer I will live. Sobering.
2. I want to be able to give money to the causes that I feel led to support. (By the way, these have already been chosen.)
3. I want to leave a little something to my children even though they don't need it and have never expressed the slightest interest in it.

Next, I had to take yet another test to assess my risk tolerance. Like most everybody else, it's high when the market's high and nil when the market's low. But the test did give me a guiding number.

Then to the scary picking of funds and doing the actual investing.

So I no longer have the money under my pillow or buried in the back yard. I've done the responsible thing. Hopefully.

I just hope I don't get nervous and develop Fat Fingers again.


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