Pennie and Wizzo were at an auction last week when this statue
– five feet tall and carved from a single block of  black marble –
was offered to the crowd.

But the auctioneer didn’t know the story of the piece, so no one bid on it.
On a different day with a diferent crowd, this statue might have brought between $6,000 and $8,000 dollars.
$3,500 would have been the bargain of a lifetime.

The wizard committed $350 of Academy funds to buy it and then he and 5 other guys – with the help of some really big hydraulic equipment – placed it in the woods on the walking trail just north of the tower.

If you’d like to reimburse the Academy for this irresistible expenditure, we’ll enter it in the records as a gift from you. As a result, your name will appear in the official campus guide book when it’s published in 2013. 

We won’t mention to Wizard Academy’s 50,000 visitors per year that
you paid only $350 for it. That’ll just be our little rabbit hole secret, okay?

If you want to give this little surprise-in-the-woods to the Academy,
go to this page, snag the “Available Items” pulldown menu
and whip out your credit card.

NOTE: Wow. Dennis Cole funded Samson
before the Monday Morning Memo server had even
finished sending to all the subscriber list. Oh, well. There
will be other cool things to buy. This is America, right?
– Indy

The only problem with the statue is that Samson’s hair is too short.
Samson, a Nazirite since birth, never cut his hair.
But the rest of the sculpture is appropriately dramatic.