|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
After a presentation last month, we have a new destination should we decide to venture east to Washington D.C.
We were privileged to join a group of people to learn more about the Museum of the Bible. Key supporters in the valley, Mark and Maria Triska, were among the organizers who brought CEO Dr. Carlos Campo to the Round Hill Country Club.
It’s been almost 20 years since I last was in the nation’s capital and the museum did not exist at that time. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum (both the branch on the mall and the branch at Dulles Airport) and was moved significantly by the Holocaust Museum on our last trip. On trips to Germany, we have toured Dachau outside of Munich.
The Museum of the Bible grew out of the vision of Hobby Lobby President Steve Green who assembled a team to raise the money privately and open the museum in 2017. Hobby Lobby donates half of its profits to charity. It operates more than 900 stores and grossed more than $8 billion in revenue in 2024. His stores, like Chik-a-filet are closed on Sundays.
Dr. Campo served nine years on the museum board before being actively pursued to take the CEO role. It took plenty of prayer and convincing he told the crowd before he agreed to take the job. Previously, he had served as president of two universities. He began his career as a non-native speaker teaching English.
He and the board, convinced they needed to make the museum available to anyone regardless of ability to pay, allow anyone to visit without cost on the first floor and one day a month is free. Because of the taxpayers, all Smithsonian museums are free.
There’s plenty of competition with 26 museums in our capital and that’s not including all of the memorials and monuments. One highlight of my prior visit was late night stops at the World War II and Korean War memorials.
There’s plenty of room for attendance growth—getting to 5% of the visitors would be huge—currently it’s in the 1% range.
The next featured display will be the Dead Sea Scrolls that will be open later this year and run into 2026.
Campo and the board are committed to neutrality within the Christian and Jewish faiths. He had one donor who really wanted to pay for a chapel to take communion with millions more available and he had to graciously say No thanks.
You never know what you’re going to find on the NextDoor, but I thought I would pass along a helpful one. With many homes being over-run with rodents this year, the snakes pursuing them have been showing up in yards and near houses. The only venomous snakes we have locally are rattlesnakes, but we do have them, particularly in our hills.
Gopher snakes are our friends when it comes to rodents as is the rare king snake (I don’t remember ever seeing one in the wild—I’ve been lots of gopher snakes and a few rattlesnakes).
Robbie Miller, who lives in Mission Park, posted an item volunteering to identify, capture and relocate snakes. He described himself as a certified handler of venomous snakes. He can be called or texted at 925-315-7134.
