11 November 2012. Lest We Forget… It’s Veterans’ Day

________________________________

Light a candle for the souls of the fallen soldiers at liturgy today…  it’s what Christians do. Lest we forget…

BMD

11 November 2012. From the Russian Web… Grandma Misa and Cat Fukumaru

______________________________

Grandma Misa found cat Fukumaru in the barn some thirteen years ago. No, kids, that ain’t Photoshop… the cat literally has eyes of two different colours. Fukumaru had been born to feral cats, and she was all alone. Grandma Misa took her in, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. It’s like my Nicky finding cat Tulip in the barn at Jordanville and nursing her back to health. The bond between animal and human is inscrutable…

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord…

BMD

 

11 November 2012. A Photo Essay. From the Russian Web… Two Cuties: Kiara the Liliger from the Novosibirsk Zoo and Kleopatra the Bear from the Simferopol Zoo

******

******

******

******

******

______________________________

What’s a liliger? Her pop’s a lion and her mum’s a liger (a lion/tiger mix)… there, that should clear things up!

BMD

11 November 2012. Something to Think About Before the Coming Sobor

______________________________

Let’s start with a quote from Frank Rich:

The country has a larger problem… “intellectual nihilism,” as the writer Noam Scheiber recently labeled it. Since 9/11, often, but not always, under the right’s aegis, truth has been destabilised in America. The Bush administration’s contempt for what it dismissed as the “reality-based community” was vindicated when it successfully ginned up a war by convincing Americans that the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis and that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Our susceptibility to elaborate, beautifully wrought myths remains intact… whether we’re being spun by politicians, captains of finance pumping up a bubble, or sports heroes like Lance Armstrong and Joe Paterno. The news business, which we once counted on to vet hoaxes and fictions, is now so insecure about its existential future that it was cowed to some extent by the Scarboroughs, Noonans, and Roves, with most of the networks, not just Fox, ignoring the statistical data of Silver and others and instead predicting a long, nail-biting Election Night. In reality, the election was called for Obama at 23.12 EST on NBC, just twelve minutes after it had been in 2008. Our remaining journalistic institutions have even outsourced what used to be the very core of their craft, fact-checking, to surrogates relegated to gimmicky sidebars (awarding Pinocchios and “pants on fire”). The fact-checkers have predictably become partisan targets, only further destabilising the whole notion of what is meant by “news”.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan might be surprised to learn that he’s now remembered most for his oft-repeated maxim that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts”. Yet, today, most Americans do see themselves as entitled to their own facts, with one of our two major political parties setting a powerful example. For all the hand-wringing about Washington’s chronic dysfunction and lack of bipartisanship, it may be the wholesale denial of reality by the opposition and its fellow travellers that is the biggest obstacle to our country moving forward under a much-empowered Barack Obama in his second term. If truth can’t command a mandate, no one can.

******

Much the same is happening in the OCA Succession Crisis (Part Deux)… some parties are paying no attention to what goes on right in front of their noses, so much so that the coming result may be just as much a shock to them as President Obama’s convincing victory was to the rightwing blogosphere. For instance, the Blunder was recently in the USA. The konvertsy all go gaga over this POS pseudo-intellectual. Trust me, he’s nothing but a powerless vicar bishop… indeed, he used to be a ruling bishop, but he fucked up so royally that HH demoted him (especially after his tits-up in England over the Osborne Affair). He has ONE PARISH in Bolshaya Ordynka under his jurisdiction, that’s all (there are archpriests with more parishes than that under their care).

HH took away two-thirds of the old DECR away from him, and he made sure that Vsevolod Chaplin and Mark Golovkov were out from under his thumb. All real people know that the real “foreign minister” of the MP is Mark, who’s HH’s kinsman to boot. I don’t know why the konvertsy blowhards fall for him… the evidence to the contrary is there for all to see. One of the closest confidants to HH is Varsonofy Sudakov, but you never hear the konvertsy speak his name, ever. As an MP source told me, “They’re so close [HH and Varsonofy] that you couldn’t slip a piece of paper between them”. Vsevolod Anatolyevich is the closest confrère of HH, and Mark is obviously his “anointed”. Yet, none of the konvertsy experts at Monomuckos speak of that… could it be that they’re ignoring reality?

The Blunder’s visit to Villanova University (a papist institution… the Catholics have more regard for this quasi-papist twit than the Centre does) in Philadelphia had been on the burner for quite some time… it had nothing to do with Hurricane Sandy. He met with Tikhon Mollard and with the Syosset/SVS set… not with anyone else. However, this visit did clear up one thing… it proved that Tikhon Mollard is the cat’s paw of the Syosset set, who’ve made a shaky truce with Bobby (as was shown by Mollard’s signing on to the appointment of Perich to the District).

Nothing has changed. Yustinian Ovchinnikov served with Mel Pleska at St Nick’s… not with Tikhon Mollard (nor was Fathausen present). Don’t be fooled by Fathausen’s closeness to Potapov. Potapov’s been ploughing his own furrow for years. He’s always had an independent source of income due to his job in the Langley apparat… that’s meant that he’s had the money to pursue an “independent” path. Do bear that in mind. Most of all, he wasn’t named to the “Gang of Four” (Lebedeff, Gan, Balashov, Dudko) charting the course and outline of the New ROCOR.

The Centre’s nod is still for Mel Pleska. Do your duty…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Sunday 11 November 2012

Albany NY