Friar Edgar's Globe of Wonders (FEGOW.com) invites you to feast in the Globe's premiere wonder: a look back at Year 7 of the Obama presidency, presented by the award-winning documentarians of "America Past." In the early months of 2015, a young United States President named Barack Obama made a fateful decision. Frustrated by the endless pressures of his thankless, dead-end, white-collar job, Obama delivered his State of the Union speech and disappeared to America's heartland—Lawrence, Kansas—where he began the great work of which he'd always dreamed. But with the lamestream media and the forces of Washington politics-as-usual hot on his tail, could this plucky POTUS deliver the change he believed in?
Edgar of Taunton (1276 - 1322) was a mythical Franciscan monk, scholar, and collector of wonders, enrolled in the Bridgwater Friary in southwestern England. In the early 14th century, he began collecting specimens for the Globe that was to become his life's work. His already keen biologist's eye turned to the flora, fauna, and folk arts of the townships he visited. The fancy born of rumor, and the Barnum-esque advertisement of the Globe by Edgar himself, make finding reliable information about the Globe and its contents a true problem for scholars.
The literature is even unclear on whether the Globe was an actual sphere or a merely cylindrical traveling case. Among the contents which are at least somewhat credibly reported, the more interesting are a sculpture of a deer made of human teeth, the skeleton of a "Balberine imp" (probably some sort of monkey), a tin sculpture of a girl who moved by clockwork, herbs and potions reportedly able to ease joint pain and induce miscarriage, and an armadillo.
While doing research for their book, The Medieval Drain as Image and Metaphor, Dr. Paul VanKoughnett and Dr. Peter Davis found the Globe of Wonders intact and with all its contents, hidden in a Navarre catacomb. Far from mere biological or artistic oddities, the items inside have proven to, as one of Edgar's pamphlets put it, "amaze and bewilder ... more than the many obeliscolychnies of the celestial plane."
In consultation with the Navarre Cultural Heritage Committee, Dr. VanKoughnett and Dr. Davis have decided to release the items, one at a time, as they feel the world is ready.
Contact Globe of Wonders researchers Dr. P. Van Koughnett and Dr. P. Davis at FriarEdgars@gmail.com. Learn more about the legacy of Friar Edgar of Taunton at FEGOW.com.