Happy New Years 2015 !

Another year has past.  I must say 2014 went by so very fast.  

Well here's the revised crystal ball based prognostications... 

1. The vortex returns and North America has another long cold winter.
2. Crude oil prices will bounce like a rubber ball back up by spring.
3. Li Ion battery chemistry is now able to drive a Tesla 400 mi on a charge... recharge in 30 min. will re-define the "gas station" experience as a place to relax and recreate for a half hour every 400 miles... I think - renewable breakthrough...
4. A major motorcycle brand will introduce a production hybrid
5. Major sub sea volcano makes news
6. Kryptos final message will be decoded
7. Genetic pharma breakthrough
8. Emilia Earheart's Lockheed Electra is found and brought to the surface
9. Major quake in Cali
10. Big news out of CERN in 2015...

I've been very busy for months but have had the time to do a lot of research on some thorny problems.  I had the chance to tour the "Show Boat" recently.  Here's a few pics.

On board BB55!

The 16 inch guns could send their rounds 23 miles

The mosquito planes were hoisted on and off the fan tail

6 inch guns athwart ship

Another beautiful church - St Nicholas - a very special name indeed

Hope you all enjoyed the pics,

Lee

Western and Eastern Christmas

Greetings all!

I want to take a moment to wish all of my visitors a joyous Christmas in the West, and to remember all of my friends who will celebrate the Nativity on 7 January this year!

Every now and then I get asked about why the Orthodox often celebrate Christmas or the Nativity on a different day...

Many of you know the answer to this question, and many of my visitors have no idea... I'm borrowing from this Orthodox explanation which seems to be very comprehensive to me...

The original source is here.


One aspect of Orthodox Christianity the WORLD OVER is that many both within and outside the Church find confusing is the fact that some jurisdictions (and some individual parishes and monasteries) within the Church follow the Julian, or old, calendar in their liturgical celebrations, while others follow the Gregorian, or new, calendar, which is the same calendar used by the secular Western world. Here we will attempt to explain briefly the difference between the two as well as the reasons for the disparity in contemporary usage. The Astronomical Problem
The Julian (old) calendar was developed during the reign of Julius Caesar, in the first century B.C. It was based on the assumption that a year is 365.25 days long, so the calendar had 365 days with a leap year every four years. Unfortunately, the year is actually about 365.2422 days long, so the calendar was losing about 11 minutes a year, or one day about every 128 years. By AD 325, when the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea met, the actual spring equinox (the day when night and day are of equal length) was falling on March 21 instead of the original March 25. At that Council, the Church decided to accept the Julian calendar with its acknowledged flaws and to set the date of the equinox (for the purposes of determining the date of Pascha) at March 21.
Eventually, in the 1500s, it got to the point that the equinox was falling on March 11, and people realized that if things went on this way, they would eventually be planting crops in January. So Pope Gregory VII commissioned a group of scholars to correct the calendar. This they did by deciding that on three of every four turn-of-the-century years, there would be no leap year. This gets the annual discrepancy down to an average of about 20 seconds, so the calendar should be accurate for the next 40,000 years. In order to get back into synch with reality to begin with, in 1582 they just jumped from August 5 to August 15, dropping ten calendar days. (The Julian calendar is now thirteen days behind the Gregorian because it had leap years in 1700, 1800, and 1900, when the Gregorian calendar did not. Both calendars had a leap year in 2000.)

The Historical Complications
 
So far, so good. Nobody had any problem with the accuracy of the new (called Gregorian after Pope Gregory) calendar. Unfortunately, when Pope Gregory informed the Orthodox East about the new calendar, he made it into a package deal with a set of theological changes-things like purgatory, selling indulgences, the filioque, etc.-that were completely unacceptable to the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox hierarchs could not find any way to accept the new calendar without leading people to believe that they were endorsing all the theological changes along with it. So they said, "Nope, sorry, we're sticking with the Julian calendar." The calendar wasn't a theological issue in itself; this was just the only possible response to the ecclesiastical/political situation at that time.
Again, so far so good until 1923. Then Patriarch Meletios of Constantinople called a council to discuss putting the Church onto the Gregorian calendar. At this time the political situation was again very precarious, with Greece trying to win independence from Turkey. Unfortunately, the council was not truly representative of world Orthodoxy. Some people didn't come at all, and others left when they realized what Meletios's agenda was. It seems that he was trying to repeat history and again to package the Gregorian calendar with a lot of Western innovations-so that he could get financial and political support from the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. Ultimately a council of only nine men decided to adopt the Gregorian calendar for the whole Church.
Now, because of the decision of the Council of Nicea to accept the Julian calendar, a new calendar could only properly be accepted by an ecumenical council or a properly representative local council, which this was not. So because of the improprieties involved in the decision, the Patriarchs of Moscow, Jerusalem, and Antioch rejected it. (Antioch later changed its mind and accepted the new calendar.) They had no problem with the calendar itself, only with the way the decision was made. There needed to be an ecumenical council to decide the issue, but what with the Russian Revolution, etc., that wasn't possible at the time.
So that's why the Jerusalem Patriarchate-in company with 90 percent of the Orthodox world-is on the old calendar. The calendar is still not a theological issue, nor should it be a sort of "litmus test" of true Orthodoxy, although this attitude is occasionally encountered in some old calendar proponents. It's simply the result of some unfortunate historical developments.

The Practical Ramifications
 
Now, what does this mean in practical terms? Basically, it means that those feasts (called "fixed feasts") that fall on a specific calendar date (as opposed to "movable feasts," which are linked to the date of Pascha) are celebrated thirteen days later by old calendar churches than by new calendar churches. For example, the Feast of the Transfiguration falls on August 6 on the new calendar, but is celebrated on August 19 by old calendar churches-because August 19 according to the Gregorian calendar is August 6 according to the Julian calendar.
The same applies to the commemoration of saints who died before 1924 (when the Gregorian calendar was adopted by some Orthodox churches)-their feast is celebrated thirteen days later on the old calendar. However, modern saints (those who died after 1924) are celebrated on the same day in all churches. For example, St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco died on July 2, 1966, and his feast is celebrated on July 2. On the Julian calendar the day of his death is called June 19, but it is the same actual day as the Gregorian July 2.
The date of Pascha is determined with relationship to the spring equinox, the Jewish Passover, and the phase of the moon, and is the same for all Orthodox churches (although usually different from the date of Easter in the Western churches). Therefore, all feasts and fasts linked to the date of Pascha-including Lent, Ascension, and Pentecost-are celebrated on the same day by all Orthodox.

As we roll towards the 2015

Shooooof, 2014 went by so fast!  A pretty darned good year too I might add.  This is just a fun post and a way to pass my greetings on to one and all, especially Johanna and Nicholas who I love so much!  Miss you guys!  So here's 2014 in 12 pics.  Hope you enjoy!

Nick and I stopped in to a little hut to warm up one day in January while skiing the ABR. Love you Nick, miss you Johanna! Hope we get out again this year!!!

February was crazy cold!  Nick and I had a wonderful time in Calumet.

March and my little dharuma buddy from Shingijutsu.... when am I ever going to color in that other eye? This thing has collected dust and wore a hard hat for a few years now. 

April marked the end of the hardest winter I have ever lived through...340.5 inches of cumulative snowfall ooooph.

May and a beautiful scene of the start of spring, and with that spring came the nicest summer I can ever remember.

June was BEAUTIFUL!  The dwarf crab apple bloom was delightful.

July and Happy B-Day Johanna and me too! This was the best B-Day cake I have ever eaten! The secret ingredient was coffee - so I'm told! A 5 STAR rating.

August and on a hike in Virginia I came across this very cool Great Blue Heron...

September and another harvest. Lots of great food from this years garden too!

October brought beautiful Italy - this was a street I wandered down in Firenze

November and the Christmas trees are up!

Merry Christmas!

And a partridge eating wild berries!

I hope and wish and pray for our good health, happiness and prosperity  2015.

Battle of Chacellorsville

Readers of my blog know I like to explore in my travels.... today's adventure was a visit to the Chancellorsville Battle Grounds a notable Civil War conflagration which ultimately cost Stonewall Jackson his life.

Entrance to the park on a fine December day

A cannon ball lodged in a tree

The spot where General Jackson was wounded by his own men during a night reconnaissance mission

Out building where the General died eight days later.  The wounded General was brought back to Guinea Station, a safe location near a rail station where it was hoped the recovering General could eventually return to Richmond.

You can read about the plantation where the General past here.  The out building is all that is left today. 

Round bales, square bales and a really creative mind