Out of Sync. The Hail Mary makes a surprising appearance in advertising.

How you can tell you are: 1) out of sync with the culture, and 2) Catholic.  I thought this Coca-Cola tweet was about real Hail Mary's, the prayer.

Go big or go home, that’s what game day is all about! Here’s to giving every game and watch party your all. #CocaCola

coca-cola.com

Savor Every Moment

Coca-Cola was referring, of course, to the long desperate forward pass in football which has been irreverently nicknamed after the prayer.  I don't watch football (it's titanically boring), and it took me a minute to realize what this was referring to.

The Hail Mary is, of course, the ancient Christian prayer petitioning Mary for assistance.  Its basic text is:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death. 

Amen.

I actually learned it in the post Vatican II American Church as:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with you.

Blessed are you amongst women

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

pray for us sinners,

now and at the hour of our death. 

Amen.

The formulation of the prayer is a little lost to history, but it seems to have come about gradually.  Some of it's text, of course, comes right from the New Testament.  References to early forms of the prayer appear in the mid 11th Century through the 13th.  It rose in the Latin Rite and therefore, the early versions took shape in Latin, which of course was also the language of the Latin Rite up until the 1960s.

In Latin, it's the Ave Maria, the text of which is:

Ave Maria, gratia plena

Dominus tecum

benedicta tu in mulieri­bus, 

et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.

Sancta Maria mater Dei,

ora pro nobis peccatoribus, 

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. 

Amen.

Contrary to what some seem to think, it has an Eastern Rite expression as well, and therefore also an Orthodox one.  The Eastern version is not used as extensively as the Latin Rite version, but isn't infrequently used.  Its text is:

Θεοτόκε Παρθένε, χαῖρε,κεχαριτωμένη Μαρία, ὁ Κύριος μετὰ σοῦ. εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξί, καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς κοιλίας σου, ὅτι Σωτῆρα ἔτεκες τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν.

Translating from the Greek is a little dangerous, as terms can be translated straight across and lose their meaning, but using that sort of translation, this translates to:

God-bearing Virgin (Theotokos), rejoice, grace-filled Mary, the Lord with thee. Praised thou among women, and praised the fruit of thy womb, because it was the Saviour of our souls that thou borest.

The Slavonic version, used in some of the Eastern Rite churches, is:

Богородице дѣво радѹйсѧ

ѡбрадованнаѧ Марїе

Господь съ тобою

благословена ты въ женахъ,

и благословенъ плодъ чрева твоегѡ,

Якѡ родила еси Христа Спаса,

Избавителѧ дѹшамъ нашимъ.

The prayer not only has crossed certain lines following the Great Schism, but it's done the same in regard to the Reformation, being used in the Lutheran churches and in the Anglican Communion.

All of which goes to show something, and among the things shown by Coca-Cola's use is that somebody at Coca-Cola is as clueless on certain things as I am.

Saturday, September 30, 1922. Camp Bragg becomes a Fort.

Greek Orthodox priests in the city of Kydoniae (Ayvalik) were taken into custody by the Turks while waiting, following the recommendation of their bishop, for evacuation The Turks would murder then three days later.

On the same day, Sotiros Krokidas became the interim Greek Prime Minister.

The Yankees took the American League Pennant, defeating the Boston Red Sox.

Camp Bragg, North Carolina, was redesignated as Fort Bragg, thereby indicating its permanent status.

Sunday, September 17, 1922. Separations.

The Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania declared its autocephalous nature at the conclusion of a conference.   That status would be recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1937.

Metropolitan Visarion Xhuvani, the head of the Albanian Orthodox Church during its unrecognized autocephalous stage.

Today there are seventeen autocephalous, i.e., self-governing, Orthodox Churches, with the most recent one to be granted that status being the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.  The topic can be a bit controversial in a larger Apostolic Christian sense, as the Catholic Church, which is also comprised of self-governing churches, and which by far makes up the largest body of Christians on Earth, does not recognize the theological claim of the Orthodox Churches that occupant of the Chair of St. Peter is the head of all the Apostolic Christian churches.  For its part, Orthodoxy recognizes the legitimacy of the Chair of St. Peter, but holds its occupant to be the "First among Equals".  The Catholic Church recognizes the legitimacy of the Orthodox Churches, but disputes its position on that point.

Orthodox Churches that obtain autocephalous status must do so through the Patriarch of Constantinople, who is the head of the "Mother Church".

The Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico formed through the union of a number of similarly minded parties.  Its goal was and remains independence for Puerto Rico.

Flag of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico.

The viability of Puerto Rico as a potential independent state is increasingly questionable.  It would always have been a small country, but the territory has become increasingly economically distressed.  Finding a legitimate reason for it not to obtain statehood, however, is also increasingly difficult to do.

The Kansas City Speedway held its first race.

The USGS guys were out again.

This photograph below is interesting.  It's the first one I can recall of a man wearing a t-shirt as outerwear.

Friday, September 15, 1922. Foreign Affairs

The USGS was at it again, taking photos on the Colorado.

I have to say, as somebody who started off in geology, this is leaving me envious.

Turkish forces on this day, fresh from defeating Greece, and followed by the murder of Armenians, approached Çanakkale and advanced on the Allied positions there.

The British government reacted with backbone, issuing an ultimatum. But the British commander on the location did not deliver it.  British Conservatives, moreover, did not support going to war against Turkey over the issue, contrary to British Liberals Lloyd George and Winston Churchill (yes, at this point in time Churchill was a Liberal).  The French did not a war either, nor did the Canadians, whose significant Dominion status mattered given that the British felt that they needed Dominion support.  Having defeated the Greeks, the Turks quickly backed down, defusing the crisis, but contributing to  one for Lloyd George.

In another Dominion, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland and two associates suspended habeus corpus in Ireland due to the Irish Civil War.

Firestone commenced production of rubber tires in Canada.  Oddly enough, on the same day William and Alfred Billes combined their savings to purchase the Hamilton Tire and Garage Ltd. which would be multiple retail lines company Canadian Tire.

Back to Turkey, the Turkish Orthodox Church was formed.  The church is not recognized by the Eastern Orthodox.  Pavlos Karahisarithis was the first Patriarch of what was termed the Autocephalous Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate, which he presided over until 1962.   The church principally consistgs of Orthodox Karaman Turks and numbers 47,000 adherants today.

The Council of Foreign Relations commenced publication of Foreign Affairs.

Sunday, September 10, 1922. The Murder of Bishop Chrysostomos.

The very first Our Gang, an episode entitled One Terrible Day, was released.

I reported on this event earlier, but I apparently had the wrong event for the terrible occurrence.

As these photos show, the Red Cross reported to assist at the mine.

Greek Orthodox Bishop Chrysostomos of Smyrna was lynched by a mob after the Turks took the city.  What exactly occurred is not known, but the Bishop, who was a Greek nationalist, refused to evacuate and reported to congratulate the Turks on their victory.  He was horribly murdered and is regarded as a Saint by the Greek Orthodox.

Not sure how that happened, but the Bishop was murdered on this day.

The USGS expedition on the Colorado, which we featured yesterday, was still in progress.

Saturday, August 26, 1922. Wings, Baseball stunt in Denver, The beginning of the end for Turkish Anatolia, Labor troubles, Ships, Controversial Eastern Orthodox Bishop, Magazine covers.

Boeing wing room, August 26, 1922.

On this day in 1922, Dixie Parker, catcher for the Denver Bears, caught a baseball dropped from the top of the May D&F Tower in downtown Denver.

On the same day, the Turkish Great Offensive was commenced, which would bring about the end of the war in a Turkish victory in the Greco Turkish War.

The Japanese cruiser Nitaka was driven aground off of the Kamchatka Peninsula in a storm, resulting in the loss of all but seven of its 301-man crew.

Ford Motors announced that it was closing down all of its plants due to the ongoing industrial crisis in the country.

The ammunition ship USS Nitro was photographed in port.  She was commissioned in 1919 and would serve all the way through World War Two.

Eastern Orthodox clergymen, including Bishop Ofiesh Aftimios, were also photographed.

The Bishop had been born in Lebanon and first served in the Middle East before coming to the United States in 1905.  At that time, the Russian Orthodox Church had canonical authority over the various Eastern Orthodox churches, including those of Arabic origin, but that became disrupted following the Russian Revolution.  The Bishop became a figure in that story, leading to the establishment of a small branch of Orthodoxy that sought to establish an American Orthodox branch that was separate from other Orthodox Churches.  He did that, establishing the American Orthodox Church, which has not reunited with a larger group even at this point.  The Bishop himself was effectively removed from his position when he married in 1933, thereby seemingly violating an oath of celibacy.  It seems clear that his intent had been to function as a married Bishop.  He died in 1966 at age 85.

Perhaps ironically, his desire to establish an American Orthodoxy that was separate of the national churches of other regions was ahead of its time, with some of the Orthodox churches in the country now seeking to distance themselves from their national origins.  His church, however, effectively collapsed following his removal.

The Country Gentleman came out, as it was of course a Saturday.

The Saturday Evening Post had a cover by Leyendecker which they could not run today.

Judge came out with one of its supposedly humous photos showing an act of stupidity.

Wednesday, July 26, 1922. Regular courts, regular limits, combating prejudice.

The U.S. submarine S-50 in port, photographed on this day in 1922.

The Provisional Government of Southern Ireland suspended all sessions of the nationalist established Dáil Courts in favor of the courts of the Irish Free State.  A pre independence tactic had been co-opting the features of regular civil life in a new nationalist system.

The British rejected an American proposal to search British vessels for alcohol outside the country's three-mile territorial limit.

Greek immigrants to the United States, facing racism and bigotry, established the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (Order of AHEPA) with the mission of promoting unity and assimilation into their new home country’s society.  Like immigrants from various Catholic countries, the largely Orthodox Greek immigrants were the targets of nativist hatred.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist XXXVI. The Lying edition

For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales! 

Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

I'm more than a little disgusted.

We're less than a month from the primary election, which will likely (maybe, a Hageman victory boost the chance of Grey Bull) decide who Wyoming's Congressman will be, will decide who the Secretary of State will be, and will decide if traditional Wyoming Republicans continue to lose ground to new far right forces in the GOP who regard anyone who doesn't think the way they do as RINO's.

But that's not the point here.

The mail is.

The other day in the mail I received a flyer. . . I've been receiving a lot of them, which when I read it shocked me.  Not for the things it revealed, but because it seemed to simply be stating a major lie.

Now, since then I've had time to reconsider it, and I'll back down a bit.  Perhaps it didn't contain so much in the nature of knowing falsehoods, but gross exaggerations and characterizations.  In doing so, however, it crept up on being brazen enough to have gone beyond hyperbole and into fib territory.  So maybe it wasn't outright lying.

I started this post after that.

Following that, I received another one from the same candidate linking the opponent's agenda to one of a despised (locally) national figure of the opposite party, suggesting they were the same.

That's a lie.

Anyone who reads this blog, and it's not as if it's a lot of people, knows that the author is Catholic.  Catholics, at least sincere Catholics, take lying pretty seriously.  All Christians abhor lies, at least in principle, but the nature of lying is actually something that Catholic theologians have discussed in detail beyond that which some others have.  St. Thomas Aquinas regarded all lies, and by that I mean all, as sinful, varying only in the degree to which they were sinful.  That position is pretty close to the generally accepted Catholic thinking on lies in general (St. Thomas' opinion is not binding on all Catholics; it's not dogma.), but there are those who hold otherwise on some exceptional grounds, such as a lie to preserve the non detection of the innocent, for example, under some circumstances.

Most average lies are probably venial in nature, but some serious ones are mortal, and some of the stuff I'm seeing out there, if done with proper contemplation of what the speaker is saying, would appear to be in that territory. I don't know the state of anyone's soul, so I'm not declaring them to be in a state of mortal sin, but I am saying that what Robert Bolt set out in his play on St. Thomas More is playing out in a different sort of way in this election.  There's a lot of liberty being taken with the truth in some quarters.

And in some of these quarters things are so extreme at this point they really cross into the knowingly misleading.  I'm willing to cut some slack for the misled, but not for those who, I know, know better. And self-delusion, which might at best be what is going on with at least one other candidate for state office, isn't really a defense to mistruths either.

If a person wants votes so badly that they send out flyers that depart from the truth in some fashion, that ought to give a person serious pause.  Lying is a sin that becomes habitual with people who commit it, and if a person is willing to commit it to obtain office, they're likely to keep it up in office.

There is no room in my house for anyone who practices deceit; no liar will stand his ground where I can see him.

Psalm 101:7

If we support a liar, do we endorse the lies and become liars ourselves?

At some point, surely, unless we make our reasons for doing so clear in the face of the lies.

A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.

Dryden in Lawrence of Arabia. 

There are really serious things going on in the world.

Serious.

Some serious things need to be done about them.

Which makes it all the more the shame that 1) television; and then 2) the Internet and finally 3) Twitter on the Internet has seemingly reduced the national legislature to a circus.

Now, there's a lot more than that causing that, and with the release of a recent New York Times article on a related topic, we'll explore it more fully shortly.

Some future generation stands likely to accuse the current ones, and it is more than one, of fiddling while Rome burned.  Part of that is the repeated "hey, look at this" distraction.

For weeks, a state politician in national office went on the news to point out the price of gasoline and blame it on the President.  Any economist knows that the current inflationary cycle can only be blamed partially on policies of this administration, but to hear the politician speak on it, you'd think the President was personally causing a rise in the price of gasoline

Now that they're falling, he's not giving the President credit.

Not that the President would deserve credit for that. That's independent of what him as well, but to run around blaming the President for gasoline prices and then say nothing as they fall is disengenuine.

This gets to another topic.

I'm not a co-religious with this candidate, but I am with one who ran around supporting the Arizona election fraud fantasy.  

Catholics have an obligation to confess their serious sins, but for those who can rectify them, they must.

He hasn't been pointing out that Arizona's election passed muster, which was always known in the first place.

Of course, some people have deluded themselves into believing the lies.  Convincing yourself that a lie is the truth as it serves your purpose, however, doesn't really get you off the hook.

RICH I’m lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence.  

CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very important to you.

Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

In the end, in a democracy (which is what we are, once again, save the silly "oh no, we're a republic line that) gets the candidates we deserve.

If we elect liars, there's no reason to believe that they'll quit lying once they're in office.  If they lied to get there, why would they?

Last Prior Thread:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXXV. Griner and Russian Law, Senseless Destruction, No. 10 Cat to get new Roommate, Russia threats on Alaska, Where's the followup?

Monday, May 8, 1922. The Spread of Soviet Terroristic Justice.

Monument to the victims of the Soviet confiscation in Shuya on Wikipedia. By Сергей Дорогань - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62975457

In the Russian city of Shuya, eight Russian Orthodox priests, two laymen, and one woman were sentenced to death for resisting the state confiscation of church property.

The episode was part of the cynical 1922 Soviet campaign to confiscate the wealth of the Russian Orthodox Church on the pretext of famine relief, a famine that Soviet policies and ineptitude had itself brought about.  No amount of stored church wealth was going to address what the Soviets had brought about and the effort has been argued simply as an excuse to attempt to break the back of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Lenin demanded the death penalty and Trotsky, who of course would ultimately lose his life as well at the hands of Soviet policy, concurred, but Politburo member Lev Kamenev intervened, saving the lives of the laypersons and three of the priests.  While Lenin was the dictator of the Soviet Union at the time, Soviet power was not yet as fully concentrated as it would become under Stalin, such that Kamenev could intervene.

Lenin was days away from a stroke at the time, and Kamenev would rise to be the acting head of the Soviet Union as a result in 1923 and 1924.  In that role, he sided with Stalin against Trotsky.  In 1936, he was a victim of one of Stalin's purges.

Blog Mirror. Churches of the West: Ash Wednesday 2022. A day of fasting and prayer for Peace.

Churches of the West: Ash Wednesday 2022. A day of fasting and prayer fo...: 

Ash Wednesday 2022. A day of fasting and prayer for Peace.

Today, March 2, 2022, is Ash Wednesday for this year.

The Pope has also asked for it to be a day of fasting for peace, with the war in Ukraine in mind.

St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church. Belfield, North Dakota

Belfield, North Dakota has a population of 800 people and four Catholic Churches, which says something about the nature of this region of the United States.  One of those four, St. John's, is a Ukrainian Catholic Church.

We featured a Ukrainian Catholic Church here for the first time yesterday.  Here we are doing it for a second time in the same region, and in fact at a location that's only a few miles down the highway from the one we featured yesterday.

In parts of the United States we've featured before, such as East Texas, seeing something like this in regards to Baptist churches wouldn't be unusual.  Here we're seeing a much different cultural history at work, and a very interesting one at that.

Saturday January 7, 1922. Orthodox Christmas (for 1921, and 2021).

On the "Old Calendar" (Julian calendar) this was December 25, so this was the date for Christmas, 1921.

This is actually considerably more complicated than it might seem, as the New Calendar is not the Gregorian Calendar used by the West and the Latin Rite of the Church, but rather the New Julian Calendar adopted in May 1923 by the Greek Orthodox Church.  This caused a split over the calendar in the Orthodox Churches.  The Russian Orthodox Church kept the Old Calendar, although by that time the Russian Orthodox Church was engaged in a struggle for its existence inside the Soviet Union, which was dedicated to its distinction.  The civil government in Russia had adopted the Gregorian Calendar, used in the Western World, and now the whole world, on January 31, 1918.

Anyhow, in the Orthodox Churches, this was Christmas for 1921. With the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, under siege from the Communist government, and starvation rampant in Russia, it was not a happy one for the Orthodox.

The Dail approved the Anglo-Irish treaty, establishing the Irish Free State as a dominion.  The vote was 64 to 57.

Dogsomyn Bodoo, Prime Minister of Mongolia, resigns after his efforts to make Mongolia into a Soviet style state meet with widespread opposition.  He'd be arrested and executed the following August.

The Washington Naval Treaty agreed to ban the use of poison gas.

____________________________________________________________________________________

This is also, I'd note, Orthodox Christmas for those Orthodox Churches that retain the Old Calendar today, and such Eastern Rite churches as may retain it.

Tuesday October 7, 1941. Stalin relents on religion.

Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, the de facto head of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1941.

On this day in 1941, former Russian Orthodox seminarian, later revolutionary and mass murderer, Joseph Stalin lifted the prohibitions on religious worship in the Soviet Union in order to, the story is usually told, boost morale in his besieged nation.

Today in World War II History—October 7, 1941

It's also inescapably true that in spite of the brutality of the German invasion, large numbers of Russians and Ukrainians welcomed the Germans as they advanced.  Much of this was prior to their becoming aware of the virulent racial hatred of the Germans, but large numbers of Soviet citizens would aid the Germans, and even fight with them, right up until the end of the war.

Indeed, while I'm not putting it up, as I'm uncertain of its rights' status, a well-known photo of a smiling German tanker with smiling Ukrainian women and slices of bread was taken on this day in 1941.

Religious loyalty had remained strong in the Russian people in spite of Communism's brutal efforts to stamp it out.  To at least some degree, Stalin's actions may have been calculated to acknowledge that and to attempt to arrest defections to the Germans, or even forestall a potential coup.  As for Stalin himself, there's reason to doubt that he was actually an atheist, and he made at least one recorded statement that would strongly suggest that he was not.

On the Eastern Front, Army Group Center was dealing with snowfall that had come down the night prior, the first time it had to do so.  The 7th and 10th Panzer Divisions completed their encirclement of Vyazma.

John Curtin.

In Australia, John Curtin became Prime Minister.  The change in leadership which brought the Labor Party's Curtin to power was due to a parliamentary move, rather than an election.  Curtin would remain the Prime Minister for the remainder of his life, dying just before the end of the war in 1945.  He was 60 at the time.

Curtin had started off as a Socialist politician and was part of Australia's strong Socialist movement in the 20th Century.  The son of an Irish immigrant policeman who had a troubled career, Curtin had left school at age 13 and become in left wing politics and unions thereafter.  Indeed, while not really recalled outside Australia, the country had a very strong left wing movement that teetered on the edge of Communism throughout this period, although Curtin himself was a Labor Party figure in his later years, and at the time of his leading the country.   This perhaps makes him an odd figure in that he brought the country close to the United States during the war, pulling way from the United Kingdom, while also building a welfare state during the war.  Left wing parties were strongly anti-Catholic in Australia, a legacy which remains there and which has figured in recent news from the country, and even though Curtin was raised as a Catholic and educated in Catholic schools, he personally became anti-Catholic in his adult years to a rather pronounced degree.  While a Socialist, he also strongly reflected the Australia if his age, and was a strong backer of its "white's only" immigration policy.

He did survive an election that was called in 1943, and  therefore at that point he was Prime Minister in an elected fashion.  Lest it seem odd that he came to power in a parliamentary move, it was also the case that Winston Churchill did as well.  Cutin then overplayed his hand and sought a referendum to give his government control of the Australian economy for a five-year period following the end of the war, which failed.

Curtin's health, like Franklin Roosevelt's, was declining rapidly in the later stages of the war and like Roosevelt's his passing was not a surprise to those who knew him well.

Sunday July 20, 1941. Broadcating V for Victory, writing Stalin.

Churchill's "V for Victory" speech was broadcast by radio, including of course to occupied Europe.

Indian soldier giving the "V for Victory" symbol.

On the same day, Churchill replied to Stalin's letter requesting a "second front" (which ignored the fact that the British were fighting on the ground in North Africa) by informing Stalin that the United Kingdom lacked the ability to do that on the European mainland at that time.  The letter pointed out all that the UK was then doing, and that it would expand its naval efforts northwards to protect sea lanes to the Soviet Union.

Churchill was rather blunt, if polite, in his reply, which actually risked insulting Stalin given as it suggested that Stalin might be quite ignorant of the actual situation faced by the UK, and for that matter, the USSR.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow delivered a radio address in support of Soviet resistance against the invading Germans.  You can read about that here:

Today in World War II History—July 20, 1941

This is actually a fairly complicated story, as the canonical status of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church at the time is a difficult one to easily define. The Church was extremely heavily repressed in this period and a large number of its bishops were not at liberty.  It had in recent years tried to make it plain that it would not interfere in civil government, but that had not brought it relief.  Additionally, its relationship to the church in exile was confusing and would not be sorted out until the fall of the Soviet Union.  Stalin, realizing that adherence, if clandestine adherence, to the Church remained strong, would ease up on its repression during the war, something that more or less started on this day in 1941.

April 17, 1941. Contrasts.

It remained the Easter season and Orthodox Easter had not yet occurred. Armenian Orthodox at St. James Church in Jerusalem were conducting the foot washing ceremony associated with the season.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Italian forces assaulted Tobruk but were repulsed by artillery.  The military government in Iraq that had seized power there in a recent coup asked the Germans for military assistance against the British.

On the same day, Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany, although that would not bring any semblance of peace to the country, which would soon be the location of a protracted guerilla war.

Igor Sikorsky, the legendary Russian aviation designer now living in the US, made some progress in his helicopter designs.

April 7, 1971. Withdrawals and Accessions.

President Nixon announced on television that he was withdrawing a further 100,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam, with the withdrawals to take place at a rate slightly over 14,000 per month. There were currently 284,000 US troops in the country, down from approximately 500,000.

Nixon had been withdrawing troops for most of his Presidency, while at the same time occasionally intensifying the air operations.  It was a twin strategy of brining the troops home from an unpopular war while simultaneously punishing the North Vietnamese for their actions. The strategy was termed "Vietnamization" and was claimed to be based on the evolution of the war to the point where the south could take over the fighting on its own.

Indeed, North Vietnamese forces had been so depleted during the Tet Offensive of 1968 that they were in fact more ineffectual in the field against the U.S. Army and the U.S. supported ARVN, something that has lead some to claim that Nixon was withdrawing troops as the war was effectively won.  In retrospect, based upon what we now know of Nixon's thoughts, Nixon was looking for a way out of the war that afforded some sort of cover that the U.S. hadn't abandoned the south, even though that is exactly what he was effectively doing.  As a practical matter, however, by this point in the war, and partially due to the obvious withdrawal policy, the morale of U.S. forces in Vietnam was collapsing and there were serious concerns about the extent to which that was impacting the Army as a whole.

Most of the American forces in Vietnam were always support troops, although there were certainly many combat soldiers. While there were still combat forces in Vietnam in 1971, by this point the scale was heavily weighted towards support troops.

On the say day, the U.S. abandoned Khe Sanh for the second time.  It had been earlier reactivated that year in support of ARVN operations in Laos.  In that country, the Royal Laotian Army commenced a defensive counter strike against Laotian communist troops in Operation Xieng Dong which would result in a successful defense of the country's capitol against them.

Meliktu Jenbere was elected as the second Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church, a branch of Oriental Orthodoxy, and indeed its largest branch. 

Saint Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Denver Colorado

This is Saint Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in Denver Colorado. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is a non-Chalcedonian (Oriental Orthodox) church. This church is located in north eastern Denver.

He was the second Patriarch of the church, reflecting the fact that the church became autocephalous in 1948, at which time it was accorded that status by the Coptic Church.  He became the acting Patriarch in 1970 at the time of his predecessor's death.

He was imprisoned by the Marxist government of Ethiopia in 1974 which attempted to depose him while he was in prison, an act that the Coptic Church refused to recognize.  He was treated cruelly while a prisoner and executed by strangulation on August 14, 1979.  The Church in general was heavily persecuted during it's Communist era, which ran from 1974 until 1991, and the largest political party in the country today remains a reformed Communist party.

Baseball opened with a double header, the A's v. the White Sox, for the last time.