Today is Valentine's day. Every time I turn on the TV there are commercials for flowers, chocolate, and diamonds. I was always told that diamonds are the hardest material on this earth. This I believe. Nothing will make an obnoxious cut in a glass window like a diamond. Quartz cuts glass, but one really has to press hard to make a mark. The problem I have with the diamond thing is this: They are supposed to be rare. If diamonds are so darn rare why does every Dick and Jane in my county have at least one? There have got to be billions of diamonds that have been mined. Most are used as abrasives or in industry. The really cool diamonds get weighed, cut, polished, and set in jewelry. The super cool stones end up in places like the Smithsonian.
Being the killjoy of romanticism that I am, I made a list of cool rare things I would like to get in lieu of a really expensive diamond ring. Actually I do have one of these items in my possession. See if you can guess which one it is: I could not figure out how to paste photos on to this Blog. Gotta work on that.
1.) A nice specimen of a Chrondritic Meteorite.
Meteorites are rare, and only about 5% of meteorites are made up of actual stone and volatiles. Most meteorites that we find are made up of nickel and iron, hence why it is so easy to find a meteorite with a metal detector. I always wanted to have something that has been floating around in space longer than life has been on this planet. Why not get the best?
2.) First Edition of George Lamsa's translation of the New Testament. Why not go from Aramaic directly to English? What do we have to read a Bible that went from Aramaic to Greek to English. Talk about "Lost in Translation."
3.) A pink diamond.
OK, the particular stone I was thinking of is retailing for $385,000. I like pink, what can I say? Most people however would mistake this for cubic zirconium.
4.) A Natural Alexandrite. This gemstone is the rarest gemstone on earth. They change color depending on the type of light that shines through them. I enjoy my "created" alexandrite ring, but I'd get a kick out of just seeing a natural one just once.
5.) A new 8' X 10' Tekke rug.
Someone said these rugs are addictive and they are correct. I have a small runner Tekke rug that I bought off e-bay from a seller in Turkmenistan. It came from Ashgabad with all these certificates and wrapped in a burlap sack sealed with an export stamp. I paid $40 for this rug and another $20 to get it to Idaho. The workwomanship (Women make the rugs by hand) is incredible. If you ever get one of these rugs you will be forever feeling every other Persian run to compare quality.
Someone said these rugs are addictive and they are correct. I have a small runner Tekke rug that I bought off e-bay from a seller in Turkmenistan. It came from Ashgabad with all these certificates and wrapped in a burlap sack sealed with an export stamp. I paid $40 for this rug and another $20 to get it to Idaho. The workwomanship (Women make the rugs by hand) is incredible. If you ever get one of these rugs you will be forever feeling every other Persian run to compare quality.
6.) A Marwari Horse.
There are only about 10-20 of these horses in the New World. They are rare to begin with and then one has to go through all the hoops to get them here. If they test positive for a couple nasty diseases they never get out of quarantine. They are from Rajastan in India. They just look like one smooth ride. I'd probably get my ass dumped quickly because I would not be able to quit looking at the unique ears of these horses. I was offered a trip to India to take part in an Endurance ride. I would have had the experience of riding one of these horses. I could have gone to India several times with the money I threw away on my youngest daughters tuition and rent. And I say "threw away" because she just quit going to class and got an "F" in every class. Oh well.
7.) A Contra Bass clarinet for my older daughter. She has a Bass Clarinet that she will probably keep for the rest of her life and even has it named. Two more months and I'll have the darn thing paid off. For the price of a couple trips to Rajastan, India I could probably buy her a Contra Bass Clarinet. We'll see.
OK, so you are probably guessing it's the Bible. I was going through my parents old books and stumbled on to the first edition. It was everything I could do to not to gasp when I found it. I just said, "Mom, this is kind of neat. Do you mind if I take Grandma's Bible home with me?" Thank goodness my mom said yes because it probably would have been stolen with all the other antiques at the estate sale. Or worse, my sister would have thrown it away.
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Awesome to hear that you got a good deal on Ebay (Tekke rug). There are definitely good deals to be had. Often during the springtime these deals pop up.
ReplyDeleteDave,
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting on my thread. I got interested in Tekke rugs from learning about the Tekke tribe after I saw an Akhal-Teke horse. It took me eight years to get an Akhal-Teke, but every time I look at him I think of all the history his bloodlines have seen.
Have you ever read the book "Unknown Sands?" In this book there is a passage that describes a market outside of Ashgabad, and the women that sell their rugs there.
There is even a youtube of this market. My kind of shopping!
Hi Hedy,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for visiting my blog and commenting on my post on the valentine's day and on Mary's comment. A little bit of love can make a huge difference.
I have two sons, 22 an 17. They both had horses when they were in Iran five years ago. They did jumping and were pretty good at it. The younger son stated horse riding when he was 8 and my older son started when he was 13. The younger son won few competition and became the champ 3-4 times in the state of Tehran. My older son ranked 6th in the nation on jumping. We moved to Los Angeles in 2003 and my sons donated their three horses to the children of Bam, a city in east south of Iran which had a devastating 6.6 Richter earthquake. Khosrow Sobhe
www.RugIdea.com
I will have to go and check out the George Lamsa version of the New Testament. I also took my mother's bible. My daughter is using it as part of her animation project at school. My Grandmother's bible was an interesting source of embarrassing family facts...like the fact that her first born son was born a mere 6 months after she and Grandpa eloped.... But I am going to check out just what all those other things are on your list.
ReplyDeleteLamsa's version is basically the King James version with some words and phrases corrected. But there are some things that make perfect sense. For example, Jesus' parable in Luke 18:25, "For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter in the the kingdom of God." The Lamsa version uses the word "rope" instead of "camel". The reason the King James version uses "camel" is because both words sound similar when one is translating Aramaic to Greek. Anyway, the Lamsa version makes more sense in this case. I still read the King James version almost exclusively, but I refer to Lamsa's version when I get curious.
ReplyDeleteI get furious when I read about the slow genocide of Assyrians in Iraq. It seems as though the US has made a bargain with the tribes, and part of that bargain is to ignore the plight of these people. These people are the last to speak Aramaic. Once they are gone much of our Chrisian roots will be lost. If we let anyone into the US it should be these people.
I don't know who has the old Bibles in our family. I would love to get my hands on my grandmother's Bible on my mom's side. Darn funny about the six-month issue. I am sure there are millions of Bibles will similar time tables!
Both my grandmothers were extrordonary women. My dad's mom was an orphin who survived the 1906 quake in San Francisco. When she was 16 she got on a train with her best friend and rode to St Paul, MN to become a nurse. She did quite well: married a doctor. But it must have took a lot of guts to get on that train in 1913. My mom's mom was a spinster until she was 35. She prompty had three kids and was widowed a month before the 1929 stock market crash. She managed to buy a dry cleaning/tailoring shop, take on the extortionists (Mafia) and get both her daughters through college. Those ladies give me a lot of courage now. I love telling those stories. I feel like such a wuss when I think of them.
On another note, I just love all things Central Asian (except for radical Islam, of course). I love their history, horses, rugs, and art. There is so much history in Persia and the ***stan coutries. Up until the last 100 years there were many vibrant Jewish and Orthodox Christion commumities. Between collectivization and radical Islam, most are now gone. Sad. But I get inspiration from the small communities that hang on dispite the difficulties.
I have the rare first & limited edition signed soft leather bound George Lamsa Bible listed right now on Bonanzle.com. Come check it out. It is more valuable than diamonds for it contains the Word Of Elohim.
ReplyDelete