Happy Birthday, Saint JB. May you have a day filled with all good things! Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. Yes, yes, I forgot to include the Saint in front of JB's name earlier. Now, that that is taken care of....I feel much better. ;-)
In honor of St. Urho's Day, here is a little info. about a small town up nort' that really celebrates today. Lots of Finns up nort', yah shure, you betcha. Why don't the Swedes have something like that?? Below is a picture of the statue in Menahga where they crown a King and Queen from the area every year.
Menahga, Minnesota
Menahga, honors St. Urho (Pronounced "oorho"), the patron saint of Finland, with a statue recreating his mythical battle with giant grasshoppers. He is reputed to have used his "splendid and loud voice" to chase the grasshoppers out of pre-Ice Age Finland (when the climate was much milder) and save the grape harvest. The Finns love him.
At least, the ones in America do. St. Urho was reportedly invented in the 1950s by a couple of Minnesota Finns as a joke. Today it's taken seriously enough that St. Urho Day (the day before St. Patrick's Day) is officially recognized in all 50 states.
St. Urho was originally supposed to be carved out of a one-ton block of laminated oak in 1975, but a Minneapolis woodcarver took Menahga's money and never delivered. In 1982 Menahga gave the block to Jerry Ward, a traveling chainsaw sculptor, and he finally produced their 12-ft tall St. Urho. Oddly, the statue now standing along Hwy. 71 is a fiberglass replica; the original is stored in a mausoleum in the Menahga cemetery.
Menahga, honors St. Urho (Pronounced "oorho"), the patron saint of Finland, with a statue recreating his mythical battle with giant grasshoppers. He is reputed to have used his "splendid and loud voice" to chase the grasshoppers out of pre-Ice Age Finland (when the climate was much milder) and save the grape harvest. The Finns love him.
At least, the ones in America do. St. Urho was reportedly invented in the 1950s by a couple of Minnesota Finns as a joke. Today it's taken seriously enough that St. Urho Day (the day before St. Patrick's Day) is officially recognized in all 50 states.
St. Urho was originally supposed to be carved out of a one-ton block of laminated oak in 1975, but a Minneapolis woodcarver took Menahga's money and never delivered. In 1982 Menahga gave the block to Jerry Ward, a traveling chainsaw sculptor, and he finally produced their 12-ft tall St. Urho. Oddly, the statue now standing along Hwy. 71 is a fiberglass replica; the original is stored in a mausoleum in the Menahga cemetery.
One St. Urho statue is not enough. There's another in Finland, MN, along Highway 1. It's an "interpretive" Urho, very much like an arty Peter Toth Indian head, carved by the late Don Osborn in 1982. It was originally planned to be 30 feet tall, but the wood was rotten, so its 18 feet will have to do. Urho has a grasshopper on his hat, no body, and he's poorly positioned facing north. Finland hosts a St. Urho's Day Celebration in mid-March.
