Updates for 2007/Q2 appear below from oldest to newest:

In this file 2007/Q2, and the prior one 2007/Q1 are the wrap up of Virginia's journals, and the primary memorial for her. Please read the prior Journal 2007/Q1 If you haven't already. Things written in this file assume you know what is written in that one. There will be much more done here as her husband Mark continues to maintain Virginia's Journal regarding near term events, including upcoming celebration of life potlucks in various areas for the over 1200 people Virginia kept up with on a regular basis.

Wednesday April 4, 2007

Announcement

The Oregon Memorial for Virginia H. Lane Bolzern will be held on April 14th, at 11am, in the Fellowship Hall at WestSide Church in Bend Oregon. You may click on that link for directions. Because we have no idea how many people are coming, and for social reasons, it will be a Celebration of Life Potluck. Please bring a quantity of any dish you'd like to eat and or share for lunch, and something to drink. Virginia hopes that sharing each others food, and memories of her will build relationships between all the people she cared for. There will be a microphone available to be passed to anyone who has a memory or an observation regarding Virginia that they would like to share.

Here is a recent picture of Virginia with Cheryl Freese as they coordinated one of the last meetings Virginia put together n November of 2006. Cheryl is a professional musician and will be singing some of Virginia's favorites songs and making arrangements for sound at Virginia's memorial in Bend. Oregon.

I finally located Virginia's paintings this morning as I put together stuff for display at the first “Celebration of Life” Potluck here in Bend. I am hoping this turns out to be good for everyone who comes, and an apt model for later ones in Anchorage, Denver, and Lubbock to be scheduled soon.

I am posting here scanned images from two of Virginia's paintings, these are the only two that are not landscapes, skyscapes or unfinished. You can click on them to see larger images. Virginia is not totally unknown as a painter. She has paintings already hung in an upscale rest home, and also an upper scale home in a private collection. She chose to focus most of her time working with people rather than selling her art. But she hoped that someday we could make a living from her talents, with her painting and me marketing for her. This would occur while we traveled and did our ministry work for BBTJ.org.

If you would like to have some of Virginia's artwork to remember her by, or just to decorate your home, office or other location, please let me know. You may click on each of the images to see the web page for that painting, and if you wish, a larger version of the image. In general I will be getting scans made of her artwork and adding it to the Art & Prose area of this site

Wednesday April 4, 2007 continued

Late this evening I sent out the following E-Mail to every email address that Virginia and I have in our contact list.

Subject: Death in the Family Part II

As you know my wife Virginia H. Lane Bolzern passed away on March 8, 2007. The Celebration of Life Memorial has been scheduled for Saturday April 14 at 11am in Bend Oregon, at Westside Church. This will be a Potluck Social, so bring food and drink to share, whatever you like. Virginia hopes that sharing food and memories will build relationships among her friends. A microphone will be available in case you have memories or insights you would like to share publicly. For more information and directions please visit http://www.bbtj.org/journals/vj2007Q2.html which is being actively updated regarding Memorial Services, Memories and and many Materials never before shared. We intend also to schedule one each in Denver, Lubbock and Anchorage where concentrations of Virginia's friends live. This should happen in the not to distant future, please keep an eye on her Journal (the link above)! If you know other people who knew Virginia, please ask them if they got the message, and if they can visit her journal. Perhaps even print for them if they need it. Peace and Health, Mark

Then I went to bed.

Thursday April 5, 2007

This morning Mitch, one of Chris' close friends and I left early in the morning to drive over to Stayton and see the Drown Family.

I needed to fetch my little Chevy Luv, which I'd left there earlier and there were also mail packages I needed to pick up. I hope that the Luv is large enough to transport to Texas all the stuff Virginia wanted her various family to inherit. I won't know till I sort & try to load. It's an old pickup but it makes great fuel mileage.

While at the Drown family home, they posed for a picture with Virginia's URN. More on the urn below.

Robyn has confirmed that the Drown family intends to be at the memorial in Bend on Tuesday the 14^th if you'd like to meet them. I think it is fitting to honor the people who cared for Virginia so much as to make their home our home in our hour (weeks actually) of need, and perform whatever task came up, however distasteful it might have been. In my mind, this was demonstration of love at it's purest. This was the family's first experience with the death of someone close to them whom they loved. While they worked, believed and prayed for healing, they knew going in that death was a possibility and were willing to risk it..

The following was written by Robyn Drown for inclusion here “Starting with a canning jar, because Virginia loved to cook, the children hand painted this ½ gallon Jar as their final present to Virginia. It is a home for her ashes until they are spread or buried.. The designs are as follows: David age 15, made the overall design of flowering vines with blue and gold Macaws resting in-between. Arthur age13, gave his depiction of Mark and Virginia enjoying a bicycle ride together. John age 11, painted a rose bush for Virginia to enjoy. Yehudah age 9, in remembering the hours he spent with Virginia helping to accelerate his reading, drew a book with a vase of flowers nearby. Moshe age 7, painted two vases of roses. Sarah age 6, decorated the lid of the urn with her version of Mark in a flower garden, a rainbow and sunshine are above him. Ruach and Navah, ages 3 yrs and 9 months, added their artistic "scribbles" which includes blue and red raindrops and a blue rhinoceros”.

I am sorry the pictures are not uniform, but as usual you can click on the images to get a larger and clearer image of what you are looking at.

I have also received many cards and letters, and hope to be scanning and posting some of them here soon, thank you to everyone who cares enough to send cards thoughts and prayers. Many of the cards have included checks instead of sending flowers. Special thanks to those of you caring and thoughtful enough to follow Virginia's wishes on this matter. It is helping to defray some of the final expenses as she intended.

Scanning and posting cards is a very time consuming process. I've also gotten more emails which I'll be sharing as well.

Friday April 6, 2007

I've been working on paperwork most of the day, along with pulling together items for Virginia's memorial. I also photographed another painting for you all to see. This again is a “one of a kind”, as Virginia painted no other landscapes that looked like this one does. This painting is one of my personal favorites.

Tomorrow I'll be heading back to work until Tuesday again, so my next post will probably be after that.

Thursday April 12

Wow, time has gone fast. I got off the hill from work on Tuesday as expected, and then proceeded to take care of things. My primary computer, a 7 year old Compaq Laptop just died, so I was forced to replace it. I tried to choose another Laptop powerful enough that I can phase out the entire computer network that I had set up in the bus. Fortunately technology has continued to march forward making this a possibility. That took most of the last several days, I am now making this entry using the new computer. There are still some details to handle before I can shut down the network of 5 computers (actually 4 after the death of the Laptop) and use only this computer. What unfortunate timing for an unexpected expense.

I also got the door and canopy locks repaired on the Luv in anticipation of it's trip south with a load that I would not want stolen. Why do I think this might happen? Several months ago Virginia and I were returning home from a church meeting driving the Luv with it's unlockable doors. We stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up a few items, and when we came back out, Virginia's favorite bible, a KJV/NLT parallel in a nice case had been stolen. It was irreplaceable because of both her notes in it, and the fact that this particular bible was no longer in print. That threw her for a loop for quite some time. I sure hope that the thief chose to read it!

Finally I pulled together a list of hymns that Virginia enjoyed for the Memorial on Saturday, and sent them in a message to Cheryl Freese.

The much anticipated server upgrade finally happened this past Sunday night, and other than some people having difficulties getting to our website for a while thereafter, and a minor programming update I was forced to do quickly, it was fairly uneventful. That was fortunate.

Thanks for reading, I hope to be back with more paintings very soon. I still need to photograph them in order to post them.

Wednesday April 18, 2007

Virginia's Graduation Ceremony / Memorial here in Bend went great this last Saturday April 14, everyone who participated did a wonderful job. The only downer was that my recorder failed, so I cannot post the audio here as I'd hoped. I do have some pictures and other items I hope to be posting soon. Afterward Chris and Pam had the Drowns over, and then I had to leave to go to my work shift at the mountain.

But now I'm back down from work, and found that someone had hacked this website, so I have been fixing that. I think it's completely back online now. I have to go do some errands, and then come back and start sorting on boxes of stuff to separate what goes to Lubbock in the Luv, and what stays here in the big truck. I also need to deal with Sprint about phones and many other things. I'll post more later.

Thanks for sticking with me.

Friday April 20, 2007

Sorry to be posting so infrequently. I have still been working on setting the new computer up to do everything I had been doing with the entire network. I'd hoped to be posting using it by now. But I'm not, as there are still some issues to resolve. I also went through about 20 boxes of stuff today. I've about half filled the Luv with stuff that goes to Texas, and separated out quite a few boxes to be split between sell, and charity. I also took a bunch of stuff to the burn pile. I trimmed a tree for Pam to make room for parking truck, car or trailer under it, and then cleaned up all the branches.

In the morning I'll be headed back up to the mountain for another 3 night shift. I'll be back again on Tuesday or so. I still need to photograph the paintings, and scan a lot of pictures that I've found in various boxes.

I think we are close to being able to set a date for Denver's memorial, and before that happens I'll be posting things from the Bend memorial on this site.

Saturday April 21, 2007

2:30 AM and I am almost there. I am composing this on the new machine. Time to go to bed!

Thursday April 26, 2007

Dates seem to have come into view for further Graduation Ceremonies / Celebration of Life / Memorials for Virginia in Denver May 19, Lubbock May 26 or 27 and Anchorage probably June 9. These should firm up shortly.

I got back down the hill from work on Tuesday, and nearly every waking moment has had me sorting stuff in boxes, or continuing to tune the computer system. This is my first actual post from the new system.

Friday April 27, 2007

Good Morning! It looks like the cracker struck again, and compromised this website again after I cleaned up. I've done some thorough auditing this morning, and I think I've figured out how he did it. I've now closed that security hole. Boy, what a job. I really didn't need this now, and neither did anyone who was visiting this site.

Thursday May 10, 2007

I've been working steadily on sorting our all our stuff. I have the back of the Luv completely full of stuff that needs to go south. Julie Brown also came over today and helped by cleaning up the bus, and then refused payment and said it was her gift to Virginia. Thank you Julie. Later this morning I will be delivering the bus back to where I've been storing it, and focus on reloading the keeper items in the larger truck. I'll need to pack, work another shift and then head out on Tuesday.

I'm finally doing this posting and the emails from the new computer. But tech support wants me to take it down and rebuild it yet again. I just don't have time, and yet it's dangerous to the health of my data since it cannot do a “backup”. Backups are pretty essential. Please pray with me that it lasts until after all the traveling so that I can have time to mess with it. I had hoped to have a lot more material posted for all of you by now. Please be patient and keep watching, I'll get there.

Here is a copy of the message that just went out regarding scheduling of our memorial services / celebration of life / graduation ceremony / social / whatever.

Hello again everyone, Please join us!

The Denver, Lubbock and Anchorage Memorials / Graduation Celebration /
Celebration of Life for Virginia H. Lane Bolzern have been scheduled.

The information follows below.  Please note the date, time and
location for your area.

This is the opportunity for the hundreds of people who knew Virginia
to say goodbye, commune with Mark and other friends, in order to bring
about peaceful and proper closure.

These are each Potluck so that the food is scalable. Bring whatever you
would like to share, food and drink, taste what others like. Meet other
people that knew and loved Virginia. See photographs, paintings, and
many things that she created or treasured. Share your memories and
stories. Build new or stronger relationships with each other to take
on into the future. It would please Virginia greatly to have been able
to serve as a catalyst for new or improved friendships even in death.

A microphone will be available for anyone that has a memory, story,
thought or scripture they would like to share with the group.

Please put this on your calendar. This notification is going out
via email only, so if you know others who knew Virginia and might
not have gotten this notification, please pass the info along.

Denver, Saturday May 19, 2007, 1 PM at Fellowship Community Church,
6263 South Parker, Centennial, CO 80016
 http://www.fcchurch.org/fccMapTo.htm

Lubbock, Sunday May 27, 2007, 1 PM at Westminster Presbyterian
Church, 3321 33rd Street, Lubbock, TX 79410
 http://www.wpclubbock.org/index.cfm/pageid/309

Anchorage, Saturday June 9, 2007, 5 PM at: Trailside Community
Church, 5150 Abbott Rd, Anchorage, AK 99507

Finally the primary memorial on the website is still being built.
Between crackers (bad hackers), failed computers, bungled warranty
assistance, and sorting out stuff, cleaning the bus for sale etc,
it is all going much slower than Mark would like. You can find the
continuation of Virginias Journals at:
http://www.bbtj.org/journals
with the two top files 2007Q2 and 2007Q1 and all the links they each
contain being the salient material. Mark will continue building these
files until finished... at which point it will say at the end of the
top entry that it is finished, and Mark will send one final email
saying so as well. He is hoping it does not take beyond the end
of June.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

I finally have a functional system, so today I get the rest of the finished paintings prepared to be uploaded and go online. I also moved the list of hymn links above to it's own page and replaces the list in this page with a link to that one. I also completed sorting the stuff to get rid of, the stuff to take to Texas and the stuff to put back in the truck. The Truck is still too full, but it is less than there was before. And the bus is empty and mostly clean. Almost ready to leave. One more 3 day shift at work, and then I head off on Tuesday for Denver.

I am still going to have to rebuild the computer one more time, because it still won't make a full back up due to a hard disk sector error. But it is functioning otherwise, and I am able to get file backups. So I have the rest of the network stored in the truck, and am using the new system only at the moment. Here are some more paintings to look at.

The remainder of the paintings are in the ArtProse area in the menu on the left. I won't post them on this page, as you can easily look there for yourself!

Julia O'Dell, Virginia's sister has written a nice piece entitled “Memories of My Sister, Virgina” including a nice eulogy. This is available by clicking on it here, or in the ArtProse area.

In Bend when we had the memorial there was a hand out flyer that people could take home. Here is a PDF file of that flyer. Pat Abernathy did a nice Tribute to Virginia at the Memorial in Bend, from an email she wrote to the CWC women around Oregon.

Also at the memorial in Bend, Jan Mathers, the speaker trainer for the area gave a personalized and abbreviated version of the testimonial speech that Virginia gave on her speaking tour. I also have both the full text of the original, and an audio copy of one of Virginia's practice sessions before she went on the Washington tour.

In addition, here is an Autobiography that Virginia herself wrote in about 2003, an image of the biographical entry in our CBC yearbook and finally a very short eulogy written by Mark.

Sunday May 13, 2007

Boy that was a lot of work, I hope you all enjoy it. The next posting will take some time. Why? I have a lot of pictures and other materials that need to be scanned for posting, and I am out of time. There are still plenty of things I could put online. However, I am doing my 12 hour shifts at the mountain today and tomorrow, and then I'll pack and vamoose for Denver for the memorial there, followed by Lubbock and then Alaska. After that I have no idea , other than that I will need to go through what is in the truck another time and make selections to keep based on where Father leads me next. And I will need to finish Bussie, and put her up for sale if that still seems like the right move when I get back.

Monday May 14, 2007

After my work shift is over tonight, I'll drive down to Bend, take care of a few last minute things in the morning and then head out for Reno where I have a couple of stops to make. Then I'll head to Denver where I'll be staying at the home of Connie and Andre Armstrong until after the memorial. I have a job interview there on Monday with an old client from almost 20 years ago, and then off to Lubbock.

Here is a directory full of pictures of Virginia for your perusal. I have not had time to create small images, so you'll just need to click on each in the list, and see what you see when they load.

Thursday May 17, 2007

I've arrived. In Denver that is. Connie & Andre Armstrong are putting me up in their beautiful home. Thank you! It was a long drive, via Reno, across Nevada, Utah & Oregon in the little Luv. It started to overheat several times, but each time I caught it before it was too serious and added more coolant. I've not yet figured out why it insists on blowing coolant out over time. While I was in Evanston, Wyoming I got a call from Connie, Virginia's best friend in Denver, that the hall we had scheduled was not available to us after all because of a scheduling conflict. So I have sent out the following message:

Subject: Death in Family; New Info, DENVER CHANGE
If you have not looked lately, there is a lot of new information
at http://www.bbtj.org/journals
Memorial: URGENT DENVER LOCATION CHANGE information:
Same Date & Time, Saturday May 19, 2007 at 1pm
New Location:
Parkview Congregational Church
12444 E. Parkview Drive, Aurora, CO 80111

The hall we thought we had reserved at Fellowship Community
Church is not available to us after all.  Very sorry for the
short notice, we just found out ourselves.

NEW DIRECTIONS: From Interstate 225, take Sixth Avenue west, almost
immediately turn left (south) at Potomac. Then the first right
is Parkview. Proceed down it until you see the church on the left.

The people of the "House of Faith" have their services at 10:30am
if you would care to come early and join them. This is where Virginia
attended for many years before heading out to bible college and
the mission field.

Peace and Health,
Mark
I forgot to mention again in the message that this is a PotLuck, and that the other locations remain as scheduled. I sure hope that everyone who wants to come gets the message. Unfortunately the chosen date is at the same time as this year's graduation ceremony at CBC, the bible college that Virginia and I attended. So probably none of those people will be able to come. Sorry guys! It was the best I could do.

Monday May 21, 2007

Tomorrow morning I leave for Lubbock. This morning I had an interview for a potential IT job, but no results yet. The memorial here in Denver went well this past Saturday. Fewer people than expected due to it being the same day as CBC graduation, many other people's proms, graduations, surgeries and seminars, etc. But that worked ok since we had to use a much smaller hall than originally planned. Here are some links. 1) MP3 file of the Sermon given by Tim Snyder before the memorial to the congregation attended by Virginia and Myself for many years here in Denver. He makes several references to Virginia and I.. 2) PDF file of the program / flyer handed out in Denver, 3) PDF file of Jesus Loves Me words with original on one side, and Virgina's arrangement on the other. And, 4) an MP3 recording of the entire Denver memorial.

Wednesday May 23, 2007

I'm at Kight Lane's right now. I drove down here to Lubbock from Denver, yesterday and this morning staying the night with Sammy & Julia O'Dell in Amarillo last night. Julia and I worked out for the most part, the program for the Lubbock memorial. I've emptied the Luv's load of Virginia's stuff into Kight's garage and am starting to go through it. Lots of memories.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Today would have been Virginia and my 21^st wedding anniversary. Kight and Julia are in pretty good spirits. We just finished the memorial brochure for the Lubbock event, and with their help I've sorted through most of the boxes of items I brought. It looks like only a few will be going back with me, and while there was a little trash to throw out, it wasn't too much. Most of what I'm keeping are photographs that I need to digitize, and then eventually send the originals to the people that I think would be most interested in them. There are also letters, and various writings.

The memorial here will be tomorrow. I seem to be getting more organized with each one. Only one more left after this one. If you want to hear the recording from the memorial in Denver, please see the link two entries back. I hope to make and post a recording from the Lubbock event as well. Each event is turning out to be unique.

Monday, May 28, 2007

The memorial yesterday here in Lubbock went as well as such a thing can go. I have a pretty good recording of this memorial to share with those who are interested. Just click on the link in this entry. The Lubbock Memorial Brochure was linked in the previous journal entry. It might be convenient to look at the flyer while playing the recording.

There was much more music in this memorial, because Virginia's sister Julia is a piano teacher, her daughter and my niece Christy & Christy's husband Nick play Viola, My niece Karen plays violin, and her husband to be, Scott plays trumpet. Karen and Scott are to be married on August 4^th. Christy is due to have her first baby July 5^th. I told her that Virginia would have loved to been able to see her new “grand nephew”. There were others there that have known Virginia and the family for a very long time, and a few came who just got to know members of the family recently.

One more memorial in Anchorage Alaska in about 2 weeks, and a lot of things to do, including travel in between. I'll make another entry when I can. Until then, God Bless.

Saturday, June 2, 2007

Following is the latest announcement that I am about to email broadcast . I am currently at the home of Bill and Sandy Kranich in Anchorage, Alaska preparing for the final Memorial for Virginia. The Kranichs are wonderful people that I have known since I was a young child, growing up here in Alaska. They are helping me in many ways despite their extremely busy lives. I feel at home and wanted here. Doing all this memorial work, travel and interaction has kept me pretty busy and distracted. Shortly I am going to have to face reality. I am not looking forward to it. Until next entry, all the best to you!

Subject: Virginia, Final Memorial Event

The final memorial for Virginia H. Lane Bolzern is being
held in Anchorage as previously scheduled. We hope anyone
within range will come join us at this Graduation Party.

It is:
 Saturday June 9, 2007, 5 PM
 Trailside Community Church
 5150 Abbott Rd, Anchorage, AK 99507

We are having PotLuck with food and social interaction available
throughout. Please bring dish and drink that you would like to
share with others, and come sample what they bring.

If there is a memory, a story, a song, a scripture or
ANYTHING else you would like to share, there will be time
for an Open Mike Forum.

Each of the prior Memorials in Bend, Denver and Lubbock were
very positive and uplifting events enjoyed by all who came.
Recordings and other materials of those are available as links
from Virginias Journals at our http://www.BBtJ.org website.

Peace and Health,
Mark

Monday, June 4, 2007

Saturday and Sunday I attended events at several of the churches that split out from the congregations that Virginia and I attended while we lived here in Anchorage. In the process I have had the opportunity to re-meet many people from our past. It has been good to see them, and it seems most know about Virginia's memorial and plan on being there. This may turn out to be the largest attendance in any area.

While contacting and arranging for local talent to help, I've run into a snag. Each of the people here that Virginia and I used to love hearing sing various songs are already booked on the date I chose, except one who is having trouble with his voice, and may or may not be able to do it. It's a challenge. I'll pray for his voice, but in the meantime I thought as a backup we might have Elvis Presley lead “How great Thou Art”. It appears however that Elvis never recorded the entire song, just the first and last verse. Scratch that. I'll need to use the MP3 on our website. Daniel & David Kranich will be helping me with “Jesus Loves Me” by playing Guitar and Mandolin respectively. Thanks for your prayers as I finish this whirlwind trip and the memorials in each area.

Monday, June 11, 2007

The Anchorage activity for Virginia's graduation is over. The flyer and recording are available by clicking the links in this sentence. Many long time friends came. I have also had the chance to visit and spend time with many of them during the days before and after the memorial. Since I lived here most of my life, I am known to many people. Fewer people knew Virginia, who was here only for about a two and a half years, May of 1986 through October of 1988 when we moved off to Denver.

Do I want to move back here? Maybe. Not going to do anything about it at the moment.

People have asked what I am going to do now. I don't know. Post some more of Virginia's materials as I get to them. Plus go back to Oregon for starters, and then see what happens from there I guess.

I'm pretty lost without Virginia at my side. I need to find a decent computer industry job, go back to start over with my electrical engineering training, or do something else that makes better money than Mt Bachelor pays. I'm flying back to Denver Tomorrow evening, to join my little Luv pickup and drive back to Oregon. I did have a potential job offer in Denver that I would have liked, but I think I've screwed it up. I've been pretty worthless since Virginia got really sick near the end of last year. I need to focus on solving this.

Saturday July 21, 2007

It has been a long time coming, but I finally have pictures of Bussie online in preperation for her sale. They can be found at http://www.BBtJ.Org/about/bussie How am I doing? Plodding along, working back at Mt Bachelor, waiting for the annual bonus to come out in July or August, then I've accepted a position at Breitenbush for the near term future.

Keep watching, More to come

Above is the Journal for 2007Q2. For the previous Virginia's Journal 2007/Q1 click.