The Woman Who Died Twice

She was a young, pretty and very wealthy, Danish, a widow after a seemingly successful marriage to her somewhat older cousin, the rich ship-owner and merchant Andreas Bodenhoff. 

However, she wasn't only wealthy, but also DEAD: Giertrud Birgitte Bodenhoff (1779-1798).

The grave of Giertrud Birgitte Bodenhoff on the beautiful and stylish cemetery in Copenhagen, Assistens Kirkegården, that also holds Hans Christian Andersen

Such a rich and elaborate grave wasn't for everyone, but Giertrud really was very wealthy. Also, she was out of a well-connected family. One might assume that that ought to have been her guarantee of a peaceful and undisturbed resting place, but no, on the contrary. Not long after her burial, there were rumors that she hadn't been dead when she was interred, but only in some kind of coma. The doctors had treated her with some heavy stuff, morphine and the like when she had a boil inside one of her ears. That in itself is dangerous, and when the patient is overdosed it may even be lethal. Anyway, Giertrud was pronounced dead by her doctors and buried in her splendid grave. As it is, one of her three half-brothers wasn't too sure that she really had died, and he said: "I don't understand, why my sister is laid to rest, 17 years old and with red cheeks."

How did the rumor of Giertrud not being dead start? Well, a grave digger by the name of Christian Meisling made a confession when he lay dying: He and some of his colleagues had not only digged graves out, but had also been grave-robbers. They knew that this young and rich widow had been laid into her coffin, adorned with jewelry which any poor, pennyless grave digger would want to get his hands on, so they had dug her up. To their extreme horror, the "dead" woman woke up, when they pulled at her ear rings. When she realized what was going on, she begged them to save her life, offering them a lot of money, but they choose to kill her and close the grave upon her once more.

Had Giertrud and her family known this she might have saved herself even before the grave robbers found and murdered her, but they didn't, so this time she stayed dead, so to speak. Actually, for many years, until one of her relatives had her grave opened once more as he wanted to check up on what had happened to her. Even at the time of the death of Giertrud it was well-known that the grave-diggers had robbed several corpses, as some of them had been found in the bushes or on the ground. The dead body of one totally nude, young man, who was found robbed of everything in the bushes by his grave, made it obvious that there must be foul play on the cemetery. 

Viggo Starcke

When the grave of Giertrud was opened in 1953 by her relative, the Danish politican, Viggo Starcke, he found evidence that she had moved - or had been moved - after her interment. However, this observation wasn't conclusive, as some expert said that it happened quite often that corpses moved when their coffin was moved. 

So, WHAT happened to the rich, young widow, who even knew how to run the business she had inherited from her dead husband? I would say that that still is an open question, but I, for one, believe the grave-digger, Mr. Christian Meisling, when he said that he and his colleagues killed her.

 

https://cemeteriesroute.eu/poi-details.aspx?t=2786&p=15521

https://slaegtsbibliotek.dk/920461.pdf 

Wikipedia

Recycling A Brain-Dead Woman

 

Well, if women are glorified trash bags in the context of reproduction, then men are nothing at all - and they know it. The day may come when technology makes it possible to design easy to use artificial and safe uteruses, but up till now science only succeeded in creating artificial semen as well as the IVF-technique. 

It has been known that the IVF-father of many children, Elon Musk, had some plans of working on the design of artificial wombs. However, that plan many have been postponed for a while as he seems to have other concerns right now. "Luckily enough" (???) someone else, namely Yemen born biotechnologist Hashem-Al-Ghaili, has great plans of building a sort of "birth factory" which may accommodate all the experts in gynecology as well as the necessary settings for "birth labs" with machinery that replicates the female womb. In his opinion, it would be easy to bring forth c. 30,000 babies a year in such a "factory". 

Some years ago, scientists working on the same lines as Hashem-Al-Ghaili and Elon Musk, succeeded in bringing forth a lamb in an artificial womb, but as far as I know that's the only time that happened. Something which is understandable when one considers how costly something like that would be, and how vulnerable a fetus is without the natural protection of its mother's womb. 

Babies are cute, but also they are an investment in a society which can't do without workers. If modern women prefer not to have human babies, but only "furbabies", it's understandable, as society hasn't made it easy on them in some so-called "highly developed" countries. 

While guys like e.g. Elon Musk and Hashem-Al-Ghaili may dream of the day when they free the male sex from the female power-grip on breeding by using machinery, mimicking a womb, others may have more sinister ideas. Recently there have been some reports of a pregnant, but brain-dead woman, who shall be forced into going through a full pregnancy and some kind of birth. The reason for this is the new abortion-law-system, and the killing off of Roe. However, this situation has led to several suggestions by some people/men: "If healthy women prefer furbabies to human babies and thus go on strike, refusing to give birth, then we should target brain-dead women to do so!" I find it easy to see such a situation develop from idea to reality because some societies already, sort of, toy with that kind of "solutions".

https://thenextweb.com/news/berlin-scientist-solution-population-decline-artificial-wombs

https://people.com/pregnant-woman-declared-brain-dead-kept-alive-due-to-abortion-ban-11734676

 

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/georgia-abortion-law-forces-doctors-to-keep-pregnant-brain-dead-woman-alive-239757893686?cid=referral_taboolafeed 

Wikipedia

 

A Dane For Unicorns: Ole Worm

Looks like a joke, but who knows, maybe someone likes the very idea of unicorns that much that he/she is trying to find one this way. One man who might have done just that, was the Danish "multi-"scientist", the medic, the researcher of zoological as well as prehistoric objects and finds, Ole Worm (1558-1654). 

He built the very first museum in Denmark and just filled it up with exotica, like e.g. old fossils and stuffed animals of all kinds. Much of it exist even today, but, of course, there are no unicorns to be found in his collections as they belong to the world of fantasy and old legends. That truth was established by him when he found out that all those "unicorns"-horn that were found up til then were in reality narwhal-horns.

He was very diligent as well as open to all kinds of interesting subjects that he saw as worthwhile to study. For instance, he found out that lemmings were indeed natural animals of the rodent family. Up till then the general belief had been that they simply generated from air, which may sound crazy now, but wasn't considered so at that time. Also, he was very concerned about the old myth about birds of paradise not having any feet. That weird idea he disproved, but when it comes to the "unicorn-horns" one of the legends stayed on, at least for a while: According to the myth, grounded unicorn-horns were a wonderful medicine for curing victims of poisoning, but when he set out to poison some cats and dogs to disprove this notion, they really seemed to be cured by this remedy. Well, after all, he was a man of this time ....

However, most probably it was this experiment that earned him the interest of H.P. Lovecraft and turned him into one of his notorious characters, namely Olaus Wormius, who was set to translate the so-called "Grimoire the Necronomicon" from Arabic into Latin. This fictive character is rather creepy, which Ole Worm doesn't seem to have been.

His rich collections were famous, and it was obvious that in his opinion nothing - absolutely nothing - was too small or too big to study. However, when he contracted a bladder-infection, neither his studies nor his medical knowledge were enough to save him. His big collection of exotica was sold to the Danish king, Frederik III, and became part of "The Royal Kunstkammer". 

This painting from 1647 of the Worm family depicts Ole, and, as he married three times, all of these wives as well as their many children and other relatives. Also, there has been made room for Jesus and the four apostles.

https://collections.reading.ac.uk/special-collections/2020/05/12/a-cabinet-of-curiosities-ole-worms-museum-wormianum-1655/

https://www.strangescience.net/oleworm.htm 

Wikipedia

 

 

 

The Invisible, But Murderous, Stalker

 

Christina Grimmie (1994-2016)

I've often thought about the strange phenomenon of someone - man or woman - coming to mean "everything" for an individual, whom they don't even know in person, but has seen on the scene or on a screen. That means that someone is sitting at his computer - and it very often is a "he" - and out of the blue he falls in love with a woman, whom he sees performing in some way. She may be an artist, an actor or simply a pretty woman, who may be selling "adult shows", but somehow these individuals, these strangers, are being turned into an important part of some man's private life: He comes to feel that he has a relationship with the paid sex-show-goddess or, as in the case of Christina Grimmie, the famous and very popular Voice-singer from YouTube. Actually, they have never met, but he has dreams and plans about the day they shall do so. He feels that being attracted to her gives him a right to approach her and somehow "collect what's his" - without her ever having been so.

Kevin James Loibl (1989-2016)

 

Many fans are still mourning the death of Christina Grimmie, but some who knew her murderer, the super-incel Kevin James Loibl, are also feeling sad for him. As with many other stalker-killers targeting young, budding, female stars, he was a recluse, even to an extent that he shunned sun-light, sitting in his room with shaded windows, living his life at the computer. However, he simply fell in love with this young, budding singer, and then he started to change his looks in order to win her heart. He had LASIK eye surgery, had his teeth bleached, lost 50 pounds and had some hair implants to cover up his receding hairline. As Christina was religious, he even started to profess a new-found belief in God himself.

 

After one of her performances he had a chance of meeting her in person, and she, seeing him as one of her many devoted fans, was about to hug him, when he shot her before shooting himself. What an utterly stupid, meaningless tragedy because a socially imbecile fell in love with the picture, he had made up in his mind!

 

Christina was a talented, young woman who loved life and animals, like e.g. this dog from an animal shelter.
 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/gunman-who-killed-voice-singer-christina-grimmie-id-d-kevin-n590316 

 

https://christinagrimmie.com/

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/22/us/christina-grimmie-the-voice-orlando-police-end-investigation 

 

Formerly Published Poem by EC: "Horror"

The drilling sound is muffled by the closed door

curious as I am, I tiptoe to open it

then, out of the drillings, I hear the word "please"

I stop in my tracks, too shocked to proceed 

After the drillings comes the total silence

live noises turn into nauseating emptiness

nothing to hear, no voice, no drills

sucked into this silence, I listen desperately

but no, no sounds, then I open the door 

what I find is an empty room, void of life

no one to plead, no one to drill

nothing to cast shadows, still there they are 

Yes, what is this formless shadow

growing in the corners, spreading in silence? 

I don't know, and I close the door upon it

then, there it is, the voice and the "please"

even the drillings, coming out of nothing

Thoughts About Optimism And Taking A Fancy To Something

 

And what is this young, vintage lady doing? Of course, being an animal lover, she is walking her pet, which in this case is a snake. It might have been a rabbit, cat, dog or bird, but no, all of them might be used for snake food, and she doesn't walk food, only snakes. That being the case made me think about an interesting linguistic term: To take a fancy to someone or something. It may happen to the best of us, and, strange as it is, one might come to take a fancy to something or someone that isn't good for one. Is this specific pet dangerous to its owner? I don't know, but it may be, as that often is the case with these slithering reptiles.

Nonetheless, this woman prefers snakes as pets, and maybe she even feels that she has a really meaningful relationship with her pet, which she may have named Dolly, Darling or Beauty although all her friends and relatives find the creature detestable. Some may even remind her of the snake which allegedly seduced Eve to eat that forbidden apple ....

Best friends or just being pals because they live in the same household? Maybe they can't abide each other, but have to pretend, not to upset their humans? Well, beggars can't be choosers, and being pets they have to make a good impression on those fickle, human creatures who hold the strings to the bags of treats. Don't rock the boat, so to speak, and stop claiming friends who are like yourself. 

Yes, sadly enough, the body and mind of the same person don't always fit each other. The mind may take a fancy to sports and gymnastics, but the body doesn't feel the same way. Sometimes the body feels like doing a lot, but can't, because the mind calls its wishes "immoral" or maybe even "criminal". Not an easy situation, especially if they can't agree on any fancies at all. 

GOOD DOG, VERY UNDERSTANDABLE!

 

Some Bad, Human Habits

 

Poor Marmaduke, being scolded for his human's bad habits. So very, very unfair! I know it may be tempting to do something like that, because it's part of the human nature to look for another "culprit" than the one that meets one's gaze in the mirror. 

Alas, that's the way of the world, unless you take one step out of the hamster mill that, at least in some respects, constitutes the life of most of us. Most children who were asked whether he or she wanted to be a part of such a future would decline the offer and point to other options like e.g. becoming a rich and famous rap-star, an astronaut, or maybe an overpaid politician. The good worker who is toiling day by day isn't the ideal of most people. What they dream of is a life of leisure and pleasure, which include riches beyond belief as well as fame, which has attained a stronghold of many dreamy minds these years. 

 

I know, and it's damn annoying! Nobody who knew me would take me for a tRump-fan. How could I, when he is a genuine crook in actions as well as in plans and ideas? However, there is ONE thing about him, that I understand, although I don't condone it. I see how he could choose his many blatant lies as well as tall stories over the historic truth that literally can't be denied by normal, decent people: It's pleasant to the lazy and callous mind .... 

 

Of course, he gets angry and feel betrayed when he is being fact-checked by some "nasty" individual who don't comply with those lies that flatter his ego. No matter what proofs of the difference between truth and lies, he has his own alternative truth. To make such a choice in one's personal scheme of things, which even is accepted by one's many (deluded!!!) fans, simply must make all of one's toiling worthwhile. "Shrug it off" might be his motto.