Thor and Thrym

When you hear the thunder roll across the heavens, you're hearing Thor, the blacksmith of the gods, wield his hammer in Asgard. So said the ancient Scandinavians, and they told of a time when his thunder was stolen by the lord of the giants, an unpleasant fellow named Thrym. Like the Greeks and Romans (who also had blacksmith gods named Hephaestus and Vulcan respectively), the Norse folk acknowledged a hypothetical race of giants who were separate from and often antagonistic to the gods. And in this case, Thrym's thuggish theft of Thor's thrifty hammer threatens to throw a wrench into the thunder. But Thor comes up with a classic and rather comical ruse to get it back. Will he succeed? Tune in and find out.

We come to you from New Jersey, where we recently put in some time volunteering at Cerebral Palsy of North Jersey, assisting the patrons of the center with an art project called “Brush with the Masters”. The idea in this series of projects is to encourage them to create art in the style of certain famous artists. The day we went was Andy Warhol day, and we assisted them in adding color to black and white photographs of themselves, then affixing those photos to posterboard in a repeated series somewhat like Warhol's portrait of the Beatles or a soup can. Great fun – Thor himself couldn't have produced better art than they did.

Happy Listening,

Dennis (Thor, Thrym, Narrator) and Kimberly (Loki, Freya, Narrator)

• September Laugh and Learn Ledger (nod to Thor, story of Hofus the Stone Cutter)
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