Favorite gift, 2008

This may end up as the longest post in the history of the board. I don't know where to begin. My family outdid itself, many times over. An unreal haul by a guy who is not deserving.

1. My son is framing two things for me (I pick them up next week). I have a poster from Opening Night at Nationals Park and I have a picture of the shot Eric Maynor took to beat Duke in the 2007 NCAA Tournament. Even though I wasn't at VCU then it means a lot to me because it IS my alma mater and I have since come to know and work with Eric (great GREAT kid). My son found a matte that looks like a basketball. Both will look amazingly sweet on the wall.

2. I became obsessed with the legend of the Kokopelli some years back. I have them on keychains, stickers, statues around the house. If I ever get a tattoo, that will be it. My daughter found some fleecy material with Kokopellis all over it and used it to make me a ridiculously cool blanket. I damn near cried. Pictures of it are posted on my Facebook page for all my "friends" out there to see.

3. During the Seattle outing, The Queen and I took a ferry to Bainbridge Island. She found some street craft fair, something she manages to do everywhere we go. I know DocTalk and Angola (and his lovely girlfriend) were on the ferry with us but I don't think they were with us when I saw this amazing, gorgeous glass bowl at one of the stands. I told The Queen I thought it was way cool and didn't give it another thought until it showed up under the tree. Stunned me. I love it. It, too, is on my Facebook page.

Even the non-big gifts were great. Some cool shirts. A CD collection of Broadway hits. My father-in-law got me a Barnes and Noble gift card. My sister-in-law got me a book with more than 2,500 baseball trivia questions. I nailed the first two. The third one I tried? Which pitcher holds the record for consecutive errorless appearances in World Series games? The answers were three Hall-of-Famer types and Mike Stanton. The answer of course is Stanton, though I didn't know it at the time.

Great, great, great day. I got hooked up way beyond what I deserve.

 

Well, depends on which version you believe. Some say he's, uh, using a bong. Others call it a flute.

From the ever reliable Wiki:

Kokopelli is a fertility deity, usually depicted as a humpbacked flute player (often with a huge phallus and feathers or antenna-like protrusions on his head), who has been venerated by some Native American cultures in the Southwestern United States. Like most fertility deities, Kokopelli presides over both childbirth and agriculture. He is also a trickster god and represents the spirit of music.[1]

Among the Hopi, Kokopelli carries unborn children on his back and distributes them to women (for this reason, young girls often fear him). He often takes part in rituals relating to marriage, and Kokopelli himself is sometimes depicted with a consort, a woman called Kokopelmana by the Hohokam and Hopi.[2]

Kokopelli also presides over the reproduction of game animals, and for this reason, he is often depicted with animal companions such as rams and deer. Other common creatures associated with him include sun-bathing animals such as snakes, or water-loving animals like lizards and insects. Because of this, some scholars believe that Kokopelli's flute is actually a blowgun (or started out as one). Alternatively, the "flute" may actually be a pipe for smoking tobacco in a sacred ceremony, or some other device entirely.

In his domain over agriculture, Kokopelli's fluteplaying chases away the Winter and brings about Spring. Many tribes, such as the Zuni, also associate Kokopelli with the rains.[3] He frequently appears with Paiyatamu, another flutist, in depictions of maize-grinding ceremonies. Some tribes say he carries seeds and babies on his back.[3][4]

In recent years, the emasculated version of Kokopelli has been adopted as a broader symbol of the Southwestern United States as a whole. His image adorns countless items such as T-shirts, ball caps, and keychains.[5] A bicycle trail between Grand Junction, Colorado, and Moab, Utah, is now known as the Kokopelli Trail.