Leaf and flower

This is about 4 inches long, maybe 2 inches at widest point. I swear it looks as though the leaf is a real leaf that has been spray painted gold. Very detailed and delicate. The flower picture is on both sides of the leaf, but the "R" is only on one side. I'll proclaim it stands for READ, and a teacher gave it out to students at the end of the year. Just too cute!

Counting and Doodling

This is a fairly small piece of paper, maybe three inches by 2.5.  I am guessing that this person was put in charge of recording the quantity of something while someone else called out the numbers. Whatever it was, it was incredibly boring. Barrels of nails, pints of paint, certainly not a food item, food is rarely boring.

In the meantime, our scribe got bored and started to doodle. I always say, and I firmly maintain, that faces are difficult to draw. Hands, also. You can practically read his/her mind as they are going along, starting a fresh drawing every time the nose isn't quite right. I don't know what is hanging off the neck of what looks like a flat chested girl. The face, totally a girl. Perhaps in peasant clothing, hiding the figure. Anyway, no clue what that could be.

Eventually, our scribe decided faces are just too darn hard and drew a bird. Lovely.

Union Jack

 The Union Jack, or Union Flag, is the national flag of the United Kingdom. The flag also has an official or semi-official status in some other Commonwealth realms; for example, it is known by law in Canada as the Royal Union Flag.

This little card was apparently a trading card that was issued by BOVRIL LTD in the 1930's. It unfold into three sections featuring the Flag of St George, Cross of St Andrew, and the Cross of St Patrick.

You can read a little bit about it on the back of the card. The red cross portion flip up, while the red and white X can be totally remove, turned over, and is all red.

Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick, salty meat extract developed in the 1870's by a Canadian named John Lawson Johnston. You can dissolve it in hot water and make tea. As the card says, "Bovril" is British to the backbone. Bovril was used to help feed troops during several campaigns and you can see the ads for Bovril with the "Bovril" Bull standing outside an army recruiting tent with the tag line "Bovril recruits its strength from the power of beef". So this was a fun way to advertise and be super patriotic all at once. Pretty cool history.  

Resurrection of Jesus article, 1954

The headline of this article reads, Are The Stories of Jesus Resurrection Misguided?  Seriously not getting into a religious debate. The Danish professor, N. H. Soe,  has apparently written some scholarly articles on the subject and I can find his name and works cited in other papers, but I cannot find a stinking thing about the man himself. I imagine that someday the Internet will truly be full of absolutely everything we want to know, and much we wish we could take back, but until then, I am stuck with certain limitations. 


The gist of what I have translated seems to revolve around the ethics of interpretation and looking at the gospels of the New Testament from every angle, while taking into account the research and researchers you are getting your information from. Yikes, everything I can find reads like a something I would need a dictionary and thesaurus to figure out what they are saying. And even then only after a large Diet Coke, some frozen M&M's, and some peace and quiet. As if that situation happens very often.



Still, a cool newspaper article that someone thought they should  save. There are some things that will always be scrutinized, debated, interpreted, and reinterpreted. The bible is among them, and I will leave that to the so-called experts. I guess I am a very simple creature, but I think I'll just stick to the love everyone theory, seems to cover all the bases.

Panda Bookmark

A bookmark, I see many, but this one is pretty cool. The black parts of the panda are actually feathers, I believe. Painted black and hardened. And I think the white body of the panda is a leaf of petal of some sort. It has dimension and details that I hope you can see when you click and enlarge it. It's rather beautiful. It says Doris on the back of it and I think Doris had a pretty cool bookmark.

Gottlieb Daimler,1896

I opened up one of my old books today, and out fall these two photos that are folded together at the edge. I thought, oh cool, check out the old cars. I then read the caption at the bottom of the picture, and low and behold, who is driving the car in the second picture? Mr. Gottlieb Daimler himself!

Hahaha, I'm totally kidding. I had no idea who Gottlieb Daimler was before I Googled his name.  I know, I know. Shame on me, right?  

Gottlieb Daimler was an engineer, industrial designer, and industrialist who was German. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He also invented the high-speed petrol engine. He had a business partner, Wilhelm Maybach, and in 1890 they founded the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, DMG. DMG signed a long term co-operation agreement with Karl Benz and in 1926, 26 years after Gottliebs death, the companies merged to become Daimer-Benz AG.

Benz! That I have heard of! That has to count for something, no? So Gottlieb was the inventor of the modern gas automobile. There, now we all know and can breathe a little bit easier around car enthusiasts. These two pictures were taken in 1896. Pretty cool to see the inventor of something using the very thing he invented, right???  I think so as well.

A Fern?

It's brown, falling apart, but still kind of lovely. But, it's a fern. I can see saving a flower, something with color, but this is the first fern I have found. Was it saved because it meant something? A walk with a special someone? A keepsake from a first kiss, a first date, a baby's first step? I certainly like that idea. The cynic in me thinks perhaps someone was reading a book and needed to save their spot in a hurry, so they grabbed the nearest plant and ripped a piece off to save the spot! Oh, that's rotten. It is a keepsake. There, much better.