Just because the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit is rolling along doesn't mean that the Science Museum of Minnesota intends to roll over and play dead. It has scheduled an array of special programs connected to the show, a display of pages from the earliest written version of the Bible.

Kicking off in the coming week is a series of lectures by scholars who have studied the scrolls. First up is "The Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Jerusalem Origin" by Norman Golb, a professor of Jewish history at the University of Chicago. He'll speak at 7 p.m. Thursday.

He will be followed by Michael Wise from Northwestern College in Roseville on May 20; Risa Levitt Kohn from San Diego State University on June 10; Alex Jassen from the University of Minnesota on July 15; and Jodi Magness from the University of North Carolina on Aug. 12.

The lectures are held in a hall outside the exhibit space. Admission is $15 for museum members, seniors and students, $20 for nonmembers, and does not include admission to the exhibit. For tickets, call 651-221-9444 or, outside the metro area, 1-800-221-9444. (Sorry, techies; tickets are not available online.)

Speaking of the exhibit, the museum is offering a Mother's Day special. On May 9, moms get in free with an accompanying paid admission. The only restriction is that you have to get the tickets in person or by phone (same numbers as above). Nothing against Mom, but now let's see if the museum repeats the offer on Father's Day.

Seeing double With a little help from the Roman Catholics in Minneapolis, the organizers of the May Day Family Rosary Procession in St. Paul are hoping to double the turnout at the annual event, in which folks gather at the State Capitol and march up John Ireland Boulevard to the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Usually there are separate processions at the cathedral and the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. But the two have been combined this year in an effort to bring all the children attending Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to one place.

The procession is on Sunday at 2 p.m. Those who want to make the half-mile walk are asked to gather at the Capitol at 1:30 p.m. Those who prefer not to walk can go straight to the cathedral, where a service will be held once the procession arrives.

Prize speaker The 2009-10 Faith & Life Lecture Series is wrapping up with an appearance by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson. She has titled her speech "Faith and the Writing Life: A Dialogue of Self and Soul."

Robinson, who teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for "Gilead," a novel framed as a journal in which a minister who has been told he is dying shares his life's insights and observations with his 7-year-old son.

Her speech is at 7 p.m. Friday at St. Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church, 17205 County Road 6, Plymouth. There is no admission charge.

Onward Christian cheapskates There's somebody studying just about everything these days, including, it turns out, the relationship between our religious affiliation and our tipping habits at restaurants. The study was done by HCD Research, based in New Jersey. Their findings: The best tippers are Jews, followed by people with no religious affiliation. Penny-pinching Christians bring up the rear.

For good service, Jews tip an average of 20.8 percent, people with no religion tip 20.1 percent, and Christians tip 18.3 percent. For bad service, Jews tip 11.4 percent; no affiliation, 9.9, and Christians, 9.0.

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392