"Open-church night spreads" in Austria

From The Tablet:

In Austria more than a third of a million people flocked to a spectacular array of late evening events staged on Friday night in hundreds of churches across the country.

Co-ordinators of the Long Night of the Churches said some 330,000 people attended 3,250 free events such as concerts, debates and lighting displays that took place in some 739 churches that are all part of the Ecumenical Council of Churches.

Since the first Long Night of the Churches was held in Vienna nine years ago it has been adopted by the Czech Republic - where 1,300 churches were involved this year - and in Slovakia, Hungary, South Tirol and Estonia.

The Long Night of the Churches was a "many-faceted door-opener to Christianity", Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said in his welcome to the participants in the Czech Republic this year.

Above: Austrian tightrope walker Christian Waldner makes his way along a wire above the roof of St. Stephen's Cathedral at the start of the Long Night of the Churches. The wire was fixed between the cathedral's south towers about 200 feet off the ground. Photo: CNS/Leonhard Foeger, Reuters

"Dominican Friars Growing in Number"

By Doreen Carvajal at NYTimes.com today:

For Friars, Finding Renewal by Sticking to Tradition

Andrew Testa for the International Herald Tribune

Rev. Gerard Dunne, second from left, and new priests talked to members of the public interested in joining the order.

Published: April 3, 2013


CORK, Ireland — The Rev. Gerard Dunne has worked for 12 years essentially as a human-resources recruiter — albeit one in a habit cinched with a dangling wooden rosary — for the ancient order of the Dominican friars. Once, his medieval robes may have deterred some. But today he is convinced that the garment is his greatest selling point for enlisting new priests.

A view of the city of Cork in Ireland
Andrew Testa for the International Herald Tribune

Other religious orders largely stopped wearing their traditional garb in recent years, as they tried to attract new followers in secularizing societies. But the friars deliberately went on wearing the robes and promoting the spiritual benefits of shared prayer and a communal lifestyle — with a little help, too, from a chatty blog.

“We made a conscious decision a few years ago to wear the habit because we had no vocations and we were in a bad way,” said Father Dunne, 46, who estimates that he has traveled nearly a half-million miles along Ireland’s country lanes and highways in search of recruits. “If we didn’t present ourselves in an authentic manner, who would join us? And that meant going back to the fundamentals.”

Those fundamentals — which include the signature white tunic and black capuce of the Dominican friars, fashioned almost 800 years ago — have helped lead to an improbable revival of the Dominican order of preachers. Even as other orders close houses and parish priests in Ireland are vanishing at a time of clerical sexual abuse scandals, the Dominican order is growing, and not just in Ireland.

The friars are something of a hybrid between monks and diocesan priests. They live together in a priory, sharing prayers and meals. But unlike monks, they work in the broader community in preaching and teaching roles in churches, universities and secondary schools. It is a way of life that Pope Francis himself has chosen, shunning the papal palace for a guesthouse to “live in community” with bishops and priests at the Vatican.

In the United States, the largest northeastern branch is expecting 18 novices to enter its theology school in Washington, which was expanded three years ago. In the smaller southern region based in New Orleans, the Dominicans are scrambling to finance an influx of novices — six this year — with annual expenses of $30,000 for lodging and theology education over seven years.

“People see the habit in a much more positive light then clerical clothing, the black shirt, white collar and suit,” said Martin Ganeri, who is a Dominican vocations promoter for England, where five people entered the order this year. “The habit doesn’t have the negative image of the clergy, the child abuse issue.”

In fact the Dominicans have faced child abuse accusations in Ireland. But perhaps because of a garb that harks back to the more austere and disciplined traditions of the church, the Dominican friars have managed to flourish even in the Irish Republic, where surveys show Catholics are deserting the church pews faster than in almost any other country.

In tough economic times, the stability of community may also be appealing, and the resurgence for the Dominicans has coincided with Ireland’s economic crisis. But Father Dunne and others said most potential candidates were already prospering in existing jobs in professional fields, and came to the order because of a yearning for greater spirituality.

The revival of the order has been particularly striking in a country where diocesan parish priests have been disappearing. Just 12 men started theology studies for all of Ireland’s 26 dioceses last fall — a record low.

In contrast, in January a Dominican vocations retreat in Cork was oversubscribed at St. Mary’s Priory and two more were added in March and April. The early events drew a total of 20 men to whom the idea of a simple lifestyle and a clear identity appealed at a time of uncertainty in the lives of many.

In the fall, the Dublin-based order enrolled five men, joining 20 other Dominican theology students. They will become part of a community of 175 priests in 18 priories or communal houses across Ireland.

Their rising numbers in Ireland have made the Dominicans the envy of other orders, which have sought to copy their recruitment methods.

“They’re the most successful to the degree that they were online and on the Internet at an early age, and had a blog before the other orders were catching up,” said Terence Harrington, a vocations director for the Capuchin order in Ireland, which has taken to Facebook and Twitter. The Irish diocese now has an iPad app for people considering the priesthood.

Typically, it takes eight months to two years for prospective candidates to decide whether to join the order while working with a Dominican mentor, like Father Dunne. With that period to reflect, the attrition rate for new entrants has dropped to 15 percent, Father Dunne said.

Maurice Colgan, 41, a former social worker for drug addicts who was ordained as a Dominican priest in 2011, said he was still adopting to his lifestyle.

“My hat goes off to diocesan priests, but I don’t know how they do it without community life,” he said. “Today, you need the support of your brothers. Now, of course they may annoy you and you annoy them, but that’s natural in a community.”

At one recent retreat, prospective recruits were invited to imagine themselves as black friars, as the Dominicans are nicknamed, gathering for evening prayer at the 19th-century St. Mary’s Church in Cork, where the order first arrived in 1229.

The guests included a university student, a government lawyer and a schoolteacher drawn by the order’s Web site, which is stocked with videos, among them one of a friar snowball fight set to the song “Eye of the Tiger.” Later, the group crowded at a long wooden table for a traditional Irish fry dinner of potatoes and sausages.

Some of the Irish candidates said they were impressed by the order’s rising numbers and openness to newcomers.

Matthew Farrell, 38, a former bartender from County Offaly and a novice, said he had sampled other orders, like the Carmelites. “I’ve been searching a long time for a vocation,” he said. “I wanted to get married or wanted to do something else. I tried to visualize myself as a priest.”

But in the end, he said, the Dominicans won out. “The Dominicans have a lot of enthusiasm and energy,” he said, “and I liked the fact that they wore habits.”

"New Gregorian Chants Group Blends Modern and Ancient"

From the Swarthmore College Daily Gazette:

New Gregorian Chants Group Blends Modern and Ancient

By Veda Khadka
February 5, 2013

“Ars’ an gobha fuiricheamaid
Ars’ an gobha falbheamaid
Ars’ an gobha ris an ogha
Na sheasamh aig doras an t-sabhail
Gu rachadh e a shuirghe”

(The blacksmith said, “I’ll wait”
The blacksmith said, “I’ll go”
The blacksmith said, in his confusion
Standing at the door of the barn
That he was going to go courting)

- Fionnghuala, by Anúna, early Gaelic

Interested? Confused? Both? With the new Gregorian chants group starting up, get ready to hear a whole lot more of ‘Fionnghuala’ on campus. The group had its first interest meeting last Friday evening and intends to have more rehearsals and performances throughout the semester.

The ensemble, initiated by Aaron Kroeber’16 and Canaan Breiss’16, centers on a form of vocal performance they both enjoy. “Sitting around procrastinating on a lazy sunday afternoon, we discovered we each liked chant; not many others do,” Kroeber said. “We figured it would be a crazy, cool idea if we got other people to come do this.”

The pieces are a form of a cappella performance where the words don’t overlap: “they’re all sung at once with certain characteristic harmonies, octaves and fifths” Kroeber said. Breiss pointed out that the group was “looking more at polyphonic chants that have different harmonies and drones,” and a more modern sound.

Traditional chant is performed in unison, without overlapping harmonies, leading to a monophonic sound very reminiscent of a liturgical atmosphere. Drones play a large part in creating the sound most people associate with traditional Gregorian chants: the sustained repetition of single notes throughout a melody was a common technique used in this form of chant. Polyphonic chants, however, consist of two or more melodic voices singing at once, creating a more contemporary melody.

This modern sound allows them to include female parts in a traditionally male performance. The group certainly does not lack aspiring female performers, like Phoebe Cook ‘15, who was pleasantly surprised to find a group on campus who shared her interest. “I’ve always liked chant and never known anyone else who did [...] I was curious and surprised and just hope to chant!” she said.

The duo are looking at cobbling their own music together from various recordings. Due to the common lack of awareness and appreciation for chant, Breiss and Kroeber are using their past vocal training and many years of choir experience (both have been performing in choirs since their early teens) to lead the group, transcribing certain pieces and working out a form of musical notation that integrates traditional forms with modern ones.

Traditional chant notation used symbols called “neumes”: simple squarish figures that indicated with great precision tonal movements and the duration of a note. Most Gregorian chants, however, were performed from memory. Drawing on his musical experience with the cello, Breiss aims to complicate existing notation by transcribing available chant into a notation that combines the modern five-line staff and a cellist’s fingering chart.

Although most available music is liturgical, “we’re a secular performance group” Breiss says, “though robes may or may not be optional.”

Though the group is in its infancy and still hoping to attract new members, Swatties can look forward to performances that are energetic, entertaining and, (no pun intended) enchanting.

Photo by Ellen Sanchez-Huerta/The Daily Gazette

Holy Innocents

The collect for Holy Innocents (December 28):

We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by the order of King Herod. Receive, we beseech thee, into the arms of thy mercy all innocent victims; and by thy great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish thy rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Stolen Codex Calixtinus recovered

I somehow missed this story over the summer;  apparently stolen medieval codices do not rise to the top of the news flotsam and jetsam.  But, here it is now, from BBC News: Santiago de Compostela Codex Calixtinus found in garage.

Police in northern Spain have recovered one of the country's great cultural treasures - a 12th-Century religious manuscript stolen a year ago.

The Codex Calixtinus was found in a garage near Santiago de Compostela and four people were arrested over the theft from the city's cathedral.

The richly decorated book is considered the first guide for those following the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago.

Police arrested a technician who worked at the cathedral and three relatives.

Christians believe the Santiago de Compostela cathedral to be the burial place of St James the Greater, one of Jesus's apostles.

The manuscript was found after the technician and three members of his family were arrested on Wednesday.

Besides the Codex, police also found other valuable old books stolen from the cathedral and at least 1.2m euros (£963,000) in cash.

A replica of the Codex is on display in a glass case at the cathedral.

Only a handful of people had access to the room in which the original was kept. It is thought to date from around 1150.

James Wood: "The Book of Common Prayer"

In the New Yorker, for the 350th Anniversary of the 1662.  It begins this way:

Suppose you find yourself, in the late afternoon, in one of the English cathedral towns—Durham, say, or York, or Salisbury, or Wells, or Norwich—or in one of the great university cities, like Oxford or Cambridge. The shadows are thickening, and you are mysteriously drawn to the enormous, ancient stone structure at the center of the city. You walk inside, and find that a service is just beginning. Through the stained glass, the violet light outside is turning to black. Inside, candles are lit; the flickering flames dance and rest, dance and rest. A precentor chants, “O Lord, open thou our lips.” A choir breaks into song: “And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise.” The precentor continues, “O God, make speed to save us.” And the choir replies, musically, “O Lord, make haste to help us.”

The visitor has stumbled upon a service, Evensong, whose roots stretch back at least to the tenth century, and whose liturgy has been in almost continuous use since 1549, the date of the first Book of Common Prayer, which was revised in 1552, and lightly amended in 1662, three hundred and fifty years ago. The Book of Common Prayer was the first compendium of worship in English. The words—many of them, at least—were written by Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury between 1533 and 1556. Cranmer did not cut his text from whole cloth: in the ecumenical spirit that characterizes the Book of Common Prayer, he went to the Latin liturgy that the English Catholic Church had used for centuries. In particular, he turned to a book known as the Sarum Missal, which priests at Salisbury Cathedral had long used to conduct services. It contained a calendar of festivals, along with prayers and readings for those festivals; and it held orders of service for Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and the Mass.

....

[T]he acute poetry, balanced sonorities, heavy order, and direct intimacy of Cranmer’s prose have achieved permanence, and many of his phrases and sentences are as famous as lines from Shakespeare or the King James Bible. People who have never read the Book of Common Prayer know the phrase “moveable feast,” or “vile body,” or the solemn warning of the marriage service: “If either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it.” The same is true of the vows the couple speak to each other: “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.” The words of the burial service have become proverbial:

In the midst of life, we are in death. . . . Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy. . . . Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body.

....

The Prayer Book was a handbook of worship for a people, not for a priesthood, and its job was to replace and improve the ancient collective rites of worship that bound people together in the English Catholic Church. The marriage service, for instance, was a medieval liturgy that long predated the final form it found in the Book of Common Prayer. It availed Cranmer nothing to invent a liturgy that threw out that history and erected a verbal screen or altar between the priest and his congregation. Cranmer’s prayers use ordinary phrases and familiar Biblical similes. Here is the General Confession, the collective prayer that opens the service of Morning Prayer:

Almighty and most merciful Father, We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done, And there is no health in us: But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders.

There is a Protestant severity to the avowal that “there is no health in us.” But penitence can be reached only by walking down a familiar path, lined with straightforward words: we are “lost sheep” because we have “left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” Likewise, Evening Prayer is a comforting service, not just because it closes the day and lights a candle at the threshold of evening but also because the Book of Common Prayer sends the congregation home with two consoling collects, intoned by the presiding priest, which glow like verbal candles amid the shadows. The last collect goes like this:

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.

To read, or hear, these words is to be taken back to a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century world of risk and daily peril, a place of death and sickness and warfare—a world in which Michel de Montaigne, for instance, lost five of his six children in infancy. The Book of Common Prayer contains a section with special prayers “For Rain,” “For fair Weather,” for protection against “Dearth and Famine,” for salvation from “War and Tumults,” and from “Plague or Sickness.” This plea is present in the penultimate collect of Evensong, too:

O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed: Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give; that both our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments, and also that by thee we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour.

A grand sonority (with the characteristic Cranmerian triad of “all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works”) gives way to a heartfelt request: please defend us from enemies, so that we may “pass our time in rest and quietness.” It’s interesting to compare the original Latin of this old prayer, which appeared in the Sarum Missal: “Tempora sint tua protectione tranquilla” can be roughly translated as “May our time under thy protection be tranquil.” In a fourteenth-century English primer, it was translated into English, and the prayer was now that “our times be peaceable.” But Cranmer has made the plea smaller and closer at hand. In the Book of Common Prayer, the language seems not to refer to the epoch (our time) but to something more local (my days); and tranquillity and peace have become the comfier “rest and quietness.” 

....

Above all, the Book of Common Prayer offered Cranmer’s language as a kind of binding agent, a rhetoric both lofty and local. The new English liturgy was quickly taken up by church composers. William Byrd (1540-1623), who became the organist of the Chapel Royal, composed anthems for Cranmer’s prayers and collects. His “Great Service,” probably written at the end of the sixteenth century, and still sung regularly today in British cathedrals and college chapels, set music to the English versions of the Te Deum and Benedictus (Morning Prayer) and the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (Evening Prayer). A little more than a hundred years later, Henry Purcell, also an organist of the Chapel Royal, took Cranmer’s beautiful words from the service for the Burial of the Dead and set them to music for the funeral of Queen Mary II, in 1695: “Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live. . . . In the midst of life we are in death.” (Parts of Cranmer’s burial service also found its way into the libretto of Handel’s “Messiah.”)

Cranmer’s language endures in English literature and popular culture, from Neville Chamberlain’s use of the phrase “Peace in our time,” on his return from his ill-fated meeting with Hitler, to David Bowie’s song “Ashes to Ashes.” It is the source of phrases like “miserable sinners” and “the face of the enemy” (from the prayer to be said by sailors before a fight at sea). Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments”) clearly borrows from the Prayer Book’s marriage service. Samuel Johnson told James Boswell that he knew of “no good prayers but those in the Book of Common Prayer,” and Cranmer’s rhythms can be found in Johnson’s prose, and in Jane Austen’s very Johnsonian prose. There is a rhythmic link between Cranmer’s fondness for triplets (“all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works”) and Austen’s: Lady Catherine de Bourgh “sallied forth into the village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold them into harmony and plenty.” Austen, like the Brontë sisters, was the daughter of an Anglican parson, so she grew up with the Prayer Book’s cadences.

More at the link.  HT Mockingbird.

"Campers in U.K. shun beaches for work on ancient cathedrals"

A terrific project - a great way to get two groups who need each other together - via Episcopal News Service:

Ecumenical News International, London] While many young people in the U.K. are gearing up for a summer of backpacking or the beach, one group is choosing to stay home and spend their holidays in a more unusual way — doing voluntary conservation work in ancient cathedrals, chapels and churches.

Cathedral Camps, run by the U.K. charity Community Service Volunteers, is seeing about 150 young people from ages 16 to 25 painting walls, polishing spires, ringing bells, surveying tombstones and cleaning graveyards during the day and sleeping overnight in gardens, presbyteries or cloisters.

“The experience is a chance to see the hidden corners of some of the nation’s most iconic religious buildings in England, Scotland and Wales,” said Hannah Foxon, a seasoned camper. “It’s also a great way to meet new people and learn new skills. Most volunteers come away with the feeling of great pride, success and achievement. This is my fourth year and fifth camp as a leader for CSV Cathedral Camps, and each camp I have attended has been totally different.”

One of the venues this year is Islington Union Chapel in London — a Victorian building which is used as a non-denominational “free church,” as well as a center for fringe theatre, comedy and music. Campers will be painting, polishing and cleaning the grounds, and may even get treated to concert tickets.

Another, Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire, southeast England, is more than 1,000 years old. The town of Winchester is packed with historic structures such as a fortified medieval gateway, museums and tranquil green spaces.

Bangor Cathedral in North Wales is situated in a region of natural beauty where the Snowdonia Mountains reach the sea. Campers will get a chance to explore the U.K.’s smallest city, which has its own Victorian pier and longest High Street in Wales.

Ripon Cathedral in Yorkshire is described as the “perfect” cathedral due to its epic proportions. Dominating the city skyline, the medieval woodcarving at Ripon inspired Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll.

The first camp, which opened on 4 July, was at Edinburgh’s Gothic Revival 19th century St. Mary’s Cathedral, the largest church in Scotland. Campers have begun polishing, gardening, dusting and are being treated to some outings in Edinburgh.

Wendy Lee, CSV’s project manager for Cathedral Camps, said that the program “is a great opportunity for young people … to learn new skills, while protecting historic places of faith. The charity celebrated its 30th anniversary last year, which is a testament to its success and the young volunteers who show great enthusiasm and commitment. Without the time and energy of volunteers, these jobs will not get done and spectacular buildings may be at risk.”

Cathedral Camps run throughout July and August.  Campers make a contribution of 195 pounds (US$239) towards accommodation, food, tools, equipment, instruction, supervision and work materials.

For more information see: http://www.cathedralcamps.org.uk/

“The Brothers of Clear Creek”

From the March issue of the magazine Oklahoma Today: 

“The Brothers of Clear Creek” portfolio by Tulsa photographer Shane Brown earns Oklahoma Today’s second Wilbur Award.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (March 9, 2012) – Oklahoma Today magazine was named a winner of a 2012 Wilbur Award from the Religious Communicators Council for the portfolio “The Brothers of Clear Creek” in its November/December 2011 issue. Tulsa photographer Shane Brown shot the portfolio during several visits to the Clear Creek Monastery near Hulbert, Oklahoma. Additional awardees this year include Entertainment Weekly, CBS News Sunday Morning, and the feature film The Help.

“What appealed to me about shooting at the monastery is that I was exposed to so much different cultural practice,” said Brown. “I’m an observer, and the camera is the perfect tool for that.”

One of the challenges Brown faced in photographing the Benedictine monks who live at Clear Creek, which is the only traditional men’s contemplative Benedictine monastery in the United States, was the monks’ de-emphasis on the individual. Many of Brown’s photos show the men’s hands engaged in various acts of work and worship―feeding sheep, creating icons, and stringing beads together for a rosary.

“We are honored to receive the Wilbur Award for Shane Brown’s beautiful portfolio of life at Clear Creek Monastery,” said Oklahoma Today editor Steffie Corcoran. “Shane’s photos speak eloquently to the quiet universality of faith.”

Brown holds a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Oklahoma. He has been a professional photographer for more than twelve years and also has worked as a cinematographer. In addition to Oklahoma Today, Brown’s clients include The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and This Land Press.

The Wilbur Award is given to secular media outlets for excellence in communicating religious ideals, issues, and themes and is awarded by the Religious Communicators Council. Past magazine recipients of the award include The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and Playboy. This is Oklahoma Today’s second Wilbur Award; the first was in 1998. Copies of the issue and a .pdf of the article are available at oklahomatoday.com.

Oklahoma Today, the Magazine of Oklahoma since 1956, focuses on the people, places, and culture of Oklahoma. A paid circulation magazine, it has subscribers in every state and many foreign countries. It is published bimonthly by the Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation Department. For more information, visit www.oklahomatoday.com.

Clear Creek is a new monastery, and is still under construction.  I've written about the monks before; click the image on this page to see a video from about four years ago.  This is from the home page of their website:

Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey is a Benedictine monastery located in the diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was founded in 1999 by Notre-Dame de Fontgombault, a French Abbey which belongs to the Solesmes Congregation, as does Clear Creek. The Patron Saint of Clear Creek Abbey is the Blessed Virgin Mary under the mystery of her Annunciation. See origins for a complete history.

Like the other monasteries of the Solesmes Congregation, Clear Creek Abbey belongs to those institutes of religious life entirely dedicated to contemplative prayer, without apostolic works. A particular emphasis is placed on the solemn celebration of the liturgy.

It is part of the Solesmes tradition to cultivate a solemn, public liturgical Office. The monks of Clear Creek Abbey celebrate God's glory in Latin, so appropriate to give an idea of God's majesty, a sense of the sacred. Thus the monks exploit the riches developed over centuries in the Church's liturgy and cultivate Gregorian chant.

Clear Creek, which attained Abbey status in 2010, is also offering a chant weekend this fall.  You can listen to some chant samples linked from this page, where some of the monks' recordings are available for purchase.

Here's an mp3 of the Christmas Responsory Quem Vidistis; here's the sequence hymn Ave Maria.

"Ox Carts and No Coffee: Building a Monastery the Medieval Way"

From SpiegelOnline:

What did a medieval stonemason do when heavy rainfall interrupted his work? Umbrellas are impractical at construction sites. Gore-Tex jackets weren't yet invented, nor were plastic rain jackets. "He donned a jacket made of felted loden cloth," says Bert Geurten, the man who plans to build an authentic monastery town the old-fashioned way.

Felted loden jackets will also be present on rainy days at Geurten's building site, which is located near Messkirch, in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, between the Danube River and Lake Constance. Beginning in 2013, a Carolingian monastery town will be built here using only the materials and techniques of the 9th century. From the mortar to the walls, the rain jackets to the menu, every aspect of the operation will be carried out as just as it was in the days of Charlemagne. "We want to work as authentically as possible," says Geurten.

The building contractor from the Rhineland region has long dreamt of carrying out his plan. When he was a teenager, the now 62-year-old was inspired by a model of the St. Gallen monastery plan in an exhibition in his home city of Aachen. The plan, dating from the beginning of the 9th century, shows the ideal monastery, as envisioned by Abbot Haito of Reichenau.

Haito dedicated his drawing to his colleague Abbot Gozbert of St. Gall, who presided over the monastery from 816 to 837. He meticulously recorded everything that he believed was necessary for a monastic city, from a chicken coop to a church for 2,000 worshipers. Altogether he envisaged 52 buildings -- but they were never built. That will change in spring 2013, though, when ox-pulled carts wil begin carrying the first stones to the building site in the forest near Messkirch. It won't be finished until about 2050, according to estimates.

A Glimpse of the Middle Ages

The lengthy time frame betrays the ambitious dimensions of the project, which is not just a tourist attraction, but also a meticulous scientific undertaking. Twelve experts, including historians, architects and archaeologists, form the scientific council that oversees the monastic town. Their job is to advise the artisans while simultaneously learning from their experiences.

Such experiments offer a rare glimpse into the everyday life of past centuries. Often there is only one way to find out how people once built their homes, prepared their food or sewed their clothes -- by recreating the historic experience. Experimental archeology researchers have discovered that antique linen armor offers as much protection as kevlar vests, how beer was brewed in the Bronze Age and how Stone Age people sharpened blades.

The 9th century -- the era which will be recreated by the Carolingian monastery town project -- is a particularly interesting focus for such experiments. There are few surviving documents from the period some 1,100 to 1,200 years ago. "Our goal is not to end up having a monastery town, but to build it," says Geurten.

The first building will be a small wooden church. "Of course, in the Middle Ages, they didn't build the large stone church first," says Geurten. The craftsmen at that time did not want to postpone their prayers until the stone church was finished, so they constructed a simple wooden church as an interim arrangement until they could move into the magnificent stone building decades later.

Harsh Conditions

Carts carrying building materials will be pulled by Hinterwald cows. With a height of around 115 to 125 centimeters (3' 9" to 4' 1")and weighing between 172 and 218 kilograms (380 and 480 pounds), these working animals come the closest to those used during the time of Charlemagne. "They are descended from the Celts' cattle," says Geurten.

Not just workers will have to adjust to medieval conditions, though. The plan also includes a special experience for visitors, who will walk a lengthy distance from the parking lot before reaching the construction site. "They should feel like they journey in time and leave the present behind them," says Geurten. If they get hungry, the monastery town will have a 9th-century menu. "The potato was unknown," says Geurten. "And there will be no coffee around to drink." Everything that the tradesmen and visitors will eat will be grown in the soil near the construction site.

The example of the French castle Guédelon proves that visitors will not be deterred by such a strict approach. In Burgundy, builders are constructing the 13th-century castle with medieval techniques. Every year the site attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors. "A Guédelon visitors' survey has shown that people want to return on average every three years," explains Geurten. "They want to see the castle grow and follow its progress."
He hopes for similar success at his monastic town. The project has initial funding of around €1 million ($1.3 million) from city, state and European Union sources, but that will only sustain it for the first few years. After that, the project will have to fund itself.

A Flood of Volunteers

Given the tight budget, craftsmen salaries will remain low. "The net wage is about €1,200 (per month)," says Geurten. "I can't pay more." The working hours are also a long way from what German trade unions recommend these days. They will work from April 2 -- Charlemagne's birthday -- almost without break until St. Martin's Day, on Nov. 11. During those eight months, there will be one single weekend off. "In the Middle Ages, the rent for the year was always paid on St. Martin's Day," said Geurten. The winter break lasts until April when the temperatures are warm enough to work again.

Despite the difficult conditions, the project has been swamped with applications. "I've had 85 stone masons apply already," says Geurten. "They all dream of having the chance to work with their hands." This also applies to the blacksmith. "They won't be hammering kitschy horseshoes for tourists. The forge must supply the site with tools," he adds.

Overall, the construction site will have 20 to 30 permanent staff in addition to volunteers. There has already been a lot of interest. "From Lufthansa pilots to a teacher, all kinds of people have applied." One candidate even sent his application written in medieval German on a real roll of parchment. Meanwhile, schools will likely be allowed to join in with the site's work for as long as a week. "We are developing a plan that will enable the children to prepare for their experience in the classroom first," says Geurten.

It will take about 40 years until the final stone is laid in the monastery church. By then it is highly unlikely that Geurten will still be alive. But he doesn't mind. "I just want a founding father's tomb in the crypt. Then they could come and light candles for me," he says.

Here's a photo gallery.

"Jeremy Lin goes to lunch with ESPN editor who was fired over headline"

In The Washington Post today:

When Jeremy Lin said he harbored no ill feelings over a racially insensitive headline about him that appeared on ESPN, he meant it.

Lin recently had lunch with the editor who was fired for writing the headline during the height of Linsanity with the New York Knicks in February. Anthony Federico apologized after the incident and Newsday’s Anthony Rieber reports that the meeting came at the instigation of the Asian-American point guard.

“The fact that he reached out to me,” Federico said. “The fact that he took the time to meet with me in his insanely busy schedule . . . He's just a wonderful, humble person. He didn't have to do that, especially after everything had kind of died down for the most part.”

Lin’s reaction at the time was low-key; he said there was no intent to offend. In addition to firing Federico, ESPN suspended anchor Max Bretos for 30 days for using the same expression. The matter wasn’t much of a topic at lunch.

“We talked more about matters of faith [and] reconciliation,” Federico said. “We talked about our shared Christian values and what we're both trying do with this situation .. . We didn't talk about the headline for more than three minutes.”

Representatives for the Knicks and Lin declined to comment on the lunch, which, in spite of Twitter and cellphones, remains private.

Dead Sea Scrolls Are Now Online : The Two-Way : NPR

Dead Sea Scrolls Are Now Online : The Two-Way : NPR

Sebastian Scheiner/AP.Shai Halevi, a photographer working for the Israel Antiquities Authority, IAA, photographs fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are 2,000 years old and very sensitive to direct light. At the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where they are housed, the scrolls are rotated every few months to minimize the damage. As Bloomberg explains it, the Great Isaiah Scroll, which is the most ancient biblical manuscript on Earth, is so sensitive that only a copy of it is on display.

Now, though, in cooperation with Google, the museum has digitized five of those scrolls and today they were made available online.

The scrolls are searchable in English and they were digitized using a $250,000 high-resolution camera, so you can zoom in and get a feel for the animal skin they was written on.

Here's a video explaining the digitization and the importance of the scrolls:

Source: YouTube

And the AP provides further background:

The five scrolls are among those purchased by Israeli researchers between 1947 and 1967 from antiquities dealers, having first been found by Bedouin shepherds in the Judean Desert.

The scrolls, considered by many to be the most significant archaeological find of the 20th century, are thought to have been written or collected by an ascetic Jewish sect that fled Jerusalem for the desert 2,000 years ago and settled at Qumran, on the banks of the Dead Sea. The hundreds of manuscripts that survived, partially or in full, in caves near the site, have shed light on the development of the Hebrew Bible and the origins of Christianity.

The most complete scrolls are held by the Israel Museum, with more pieces and smaller fragments found in other institutions and private collections. Tens of thousands of fragments from 900 Dead Sea manuscripts are held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, which has separately begun its own project to put them online in conjunction with Google.

Abschied von Otto von Habsburg - Die berühmte Anklopfzeremonie

"Farewell to Otto von Habsburg - The famous 'knocking ceremony'."



According to Ludwig von Mises Institute, here is what's being done and said on the video:

AFTER A requiem at Vienna’s St Stephen’s Cathedral, the funeral party entered Vienna’s Capuchin Friary (Kapuzinerkirche) after the following “knocking” ceremony.

FIRST KNOCK

Capuchin Friar : “Who desires admission?”

Leader of funeral party: “Otto of Austria, former Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, Prince Royal of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and Bukowina; Grand Prince of Transylvania, Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Osweicim and Zator, of Teschen, Friaul, Dubrovnik and Zadar; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trento and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria: Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenburg; Lord of Trieste, Kotor and Windic March; Grand Voivod of the Voivodship of Serbia”

Friar : “We do not know him!”

SECOND KNOCK

Friar : “Who desires admission?”

Leader : “Dr Otto von Habsburg; President and Honorary President of the Pan-European Union; Member and Father of the House of the European Parliament; Holder of honorary doctorates from countless universities and freeman of many communities in Central Europe; Member of numerous noble academies and institutes; Bearer of high and highest awards, decorations and honours of church and state made to him in recognition of his decade-long struggle for the freedom of peoples, for right and justice.”

Friar: “We do not know him!”

THIRD KNOCK

Friar : “Who desires admission?”

Leader : “Otto — a mortal, sinful man!”

Friar: “Let him be admitted."

Which is just perfect, I think.

The funeral took place on July 17, I believe. Otto von Habsburg was the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary from 1916 - when he was 4 years old - until the empire was dissolved in 1918. According to Wikipedia:

Otto was active on the Austrian and European political stage from the 1930s, both by promoting the cause of Habsburg restoration as well as an early proponent of European integration—being thoroughly disgusted with nationalism—and a fierce opponent of Nazism and communism. He has been described as one of the leaders of the Austrian anti-Nazi resistance. After the 1938 Anschluss, monarchists were severely persecuted in Austria, and—sentenced to death by the Nazis—Otto fled to the United States, with a visa issued by Aristides de Sousa Mendes.

The Requiem Mass, by Michael Haydn, is online, too; it begins here, with the Introit:

Requiem in c-moll
Missa pro defuncto Archiepiscopo Sigismondo
Michael Haydn (1737 — 1806)
Domchor & Domorchester St. Stephan
Hans Haselböck, Orgel
Leitung: Domkapellmeister Markus Landerer
Sopran: Tünde Szabóki
Alt: Alice Rath
Tenor: Gernot Heinrich
Bass: Günter Haumer
Orgel beim Requiem: Anne Marie Dragosits

Shabbat boundary rock with Hebrew etching discovered

Shabbat boundary rock w... JPost - Arts & Culture - Entertainment

Shabbat boundary rock with Hebrew etching discovered
By OREN KESSLER
07/12/2011 05:42

An ancient rock inscription of the word “Shabbat” was uncovered near Lake Kinneret this week – the first and only discovery of a stone Shabbat boundary in Hebrew.

The etching in the Lower Galilee community of Timrat appears to date from the Roman or Byzantine period.

News of the inscription, discovered by chance Sunday by a visitor strolling the community grounds, quickly reached Mordechai Aviam, head of the Institute for Galilean Archeology at Kinneret College.

“This is the first time we’ve found a Shabbat boundary inscription in Hebrew,” he said. “The letters are so clear that there is no doubt that the word is ‘Shabbat.’”

Aviam said Jews living in the area in the Roman or Byzantine era (1st-7th centuries CE) likely used the stone to denote bounds within which Jews could travel on Shabbat. The Lower Galilee of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages had a Jewish majority – many of the Talmudic sages bore toponyms indicative of Galilee communities.

The engraving uncovered in Timrat is the first and only Shabbat boundary marker yet discovered in Hebrew – a similar inscription was found in the vicinity of the ancient Western Galilee village of Usha, but its text was written in Greek.

Aviam and his colleagues plan to enlist local help in scouring neighboring areas to locate additional inscriptions, and eventually to publish their findings in an academic journal.

“This represents a beautiful, fascinating link between our modern world and antiquity, both emotional and archeological,” Aviam said. “Certainly for those of us who are religiously observant, but also for the secular among us who enjoy a stroll on Shabbat to know that we’re walking in places where Jewish history lived two thousand years ago.”

BBC News - Codex Calixtinus book 'disappears' from Spain cathedral

BBC News - Codex Calixtinus book 'disappears' from Spain cathedral

The Codex Calixtinus dates from the 12th Century and was compiled as a guidebook for medieval pilgrims following the Way of Saint James.

This is the oldest copy of the manuscript and is unsaleable on the open market.

Only a handful of people had access to the room in which it was kept.

This edition of the Codex Calixtinus is thought to date from around 1150.

Its purpose was largely practical - to collect advice of use to pilgrims heading to the shrine there. It also included sermons and homilies to St James.

On Wednesday afternoon, the book was reported missing from the room where it is kept.

"We are investigating its disappearance," a police spokeswoman said, according to AFP news agency.

"It is usually kept in a room to which only half a dozen people have access," she said.

The Codex is only brought out on special occasions, such as last year's visit of Pope Benedict, when it is closely guarded.

If the work has been stolen, it will be impossible to sell it on the open market, says the BBC's arts reporter Vincent Dowd.

This Is The Day - Westminster Abbey Choir and the Choristers of the Chapel Royal

Here's a video of John Rutter's new composition for the royal wedding in April.

"This is the day"

So apparently it's Rutter, for the commissioned piece, at the "Royal Wedding" tomorrow; we've been endlessly curious.

"This is the day," it's called, based on various Psalms. Here's the text:

THIS is the day which the Lord hath made: we will rejoice and be glad in it.
O praise the Lord of heaven: praise him in the height.
Praise him, all ye angels of his: praise him, all his host.
Praise him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars and light.
Let them praise the name of the Lord.
For he shall give his angels charge over thee: to keep thee in all thy ways.
The Lord himself is thy keeper: the Lord is thy defence upon thy right hand;
so that the sun shall not burn thee by day: neither the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: yea, it is even he that shall keep thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in: from this time forth for evermore.
He shall defend thee under his wings.
Be strong, and he shall comfort thine heart, and put thou thy trust in the Lord.

John Rutter (b 1945)
commissioned by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster for this service

Psalms 118: 24; 148: 1-3, 5a; 91: 4a, 11; 121: 5-8; 27: 16b

And now you know. The motet is Ubi Caritas, by Paul Mealor. I don't know it, and can't find a recording online, but here's his Locus Iste, to get perhaps an idea:



Oh, and yes: It's Parry's "I Was Glad" at the "Procession of the Bride":

Mockingbird: PZ's Podcast: Bishop Bell's Speech

Mockingbird: PZ's Podcast: Bishop Bell's Speech

EPISODE 41

If we ever needed Bishop Bell again, we need him today!

George K.A. Bell (1883-1958) was Bishop of Chichester in the Church of England during the Second World War. Bell became controversial -- highly unpopular -- because of a speech he made in the House of Lords on February 9, 1944, opposing RAF Bomber Command's 'carpet bombing' of German cities. Winston Churchill's War Cabinet regarded such bombing as the way to end the War. Bishop Bell regarded it as a war crime.

Today Bell's speech is regarded as one of the high points of Christian witness in England during the Twentieth Century. At the time, not one colleague of Bell's in the Lords supported his stand. Not one. He was also pilloried by the press -- which proves that journalism can swing with the times, 'like a pendulum do'. As one result of his speech, the Bishop received no further preferment in the Church, and was famously blocked as the most qualified candidate to succeed William Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Today's episode of 'PZ's Podcast' exposits Bishop Bell's speech. It is a wonder! Remember, although the speech is canonical today, it was universally abhorred at the time.

I wonder how George Bell would have regarded the use of un-manned drones to conduct targeted assassinations from the air. For his sake I'm glad he's dead.

Listen here.

Workers at Fukushima Plant Brave Radiation and Fire - NYTimes.com

Workers at Fukushima Plant Brave Radiation and Fire - NYTimes.com

A small crew of technicians, braving radiation and fire, became the only people remaining at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Tuesday — and perhaps Japan’s last chance of preventing a broader nuclear catastrophe.

They crawl through labyrinths of equipment in utter darkness pierced only by their flashlights, listening for periodic explosions as hydrogen gas escaping from crippled reactors ignites on contact with air.

They breathe through uncomfortable respirators or carry heavy oxygen tanks on their backs. They wear white, full-body jumpsuits with snug-fitting hoods that provide scant protection from the invisible radiation sleeting through their bodies.

They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots.

They struggled on Tuesday and Wednesday to keep hundreds of gallons of seawater a minute flowing through temporary fire pumps into the three stricken reactors, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Among the many problems they faced was what appeared to be yet another fire at the plant.

The workers are being asked to make escalating — and perhaps existential — sacrifices that so far are being only implicitly acknowledged: Japan’s Health Ministry said Tuesday it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation to which each worker could be exposed, to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers.

The change means that workers can now remain on site longer, the ministry said. “It would be unthinkable to raise it further than that, considering the health of the workers,” the health minister, Yoko Komiyama, said at a news conference.

Tokyo Electric Power, the plant’s operator, has said almost nothing at all about the workers, including how long a worker is expected to endure exposure.

The few details Tokyo Electric has made available paint a dire picture. Five workers have died since the quake and 22 more have been injured for various reasons, while two are missing. One worker was hospitalized after suddenly grasping his chest and finding himself unable to stand, and another needed treatment after receiving a blast of radiation near a damaged reactor. Eleven workers were injured in a hydrogen explosion at reactor No. 3.

Nuclear reactor operators say that their profession is typified by the same kind of esprit de corps found among firefighters and elite military units. Lunchroom conversations at reactors frequently turn to what operators would do in a severe emergency.

The consensus is always that they would warn their families to flee before staying at their posts to the end, said Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at three American power plants for a total of 13 years.

“You’re certainly worried about the health and safety of your family, but you have an obligation to stay at the facility,” he said. “There is a sense of loyalty and camaraderie when you’ve trained with guys, you’ve done shifts with them for years.”

Adding to this natural bonding, jobs in Japan confer identity, command loyalty and inspire a particularly fervent kind of dedication. Economic straits have chipped away at the hallowed idea of lifetime employment for many Japanese, but the workplace remains a potent source of community. Mr. Friedlander said that he had no doubt that in an identical accident in the United States, 50 volunteers could be found to stay behind after everyone else evacuated from an extremely hazardous environment. But Japanese are raised to believe that individuals sacrifice for the good of the group.

The reactor operators face extraordinary risks. Tokyo Electric evacuated 750 emergency staff members from the stricken plant on Tuesday, leaving only about 50, when radiation levels soared. By comparison, standard staffing levels at the three active General Electric reactors on the site would be 10 to 12 people apiece including supervisors — an indication that the small crew left behind is barely larger than the contingent on duty on a quiet day.

They are remarkable heroes; I have tears in my eyes just thinking about them.

I keep thinking of the disasters we've all witnessed, thanks to modern communications, over the past 10 years or so. Earthquakes in Pakistan, Haiti, and Japan. Tsunamis in Malaysia and now again in Japan. Hurricanes in New Orleans and typhoons in Australia. Large-scale terrorism in New York and elsewhere. Wars, live and televised.

Most of the time, we can do only very little. We can send money or clothing; we can work to send food to the rescue workers, if we're nearby. We can help rebuild. But at the time of disaster, we can't do anything; we can only watch the massive destruction as it unfolds - and pray for those affected. It's very strange, really; we can see everything that happens, all the time and everywhere - but we can't do anything about most of it.

In the old days, we wouldn't even have heard about most of these things for months or years - if ever. Now we watch them as they happen, helplessly.

In Tsunami’s Wake, Much Searching but Few Are Rescued - NYTimes.com

The news today is not good. In Tsunami’s Wake, Much Searching but Few Are Rescued - NYTimes.com

The mournful scene here in Natori, a farm and fishing town that has been reduced to a vast muddy plain, was similar to rescue efforts in other communities along the coast as police, military and foreign assistance teams poked through splintered houses and piles of wreckage. The death toll from what the United States Geological Survey called an 8.9-magnitude quake — the strongest in Japan’s seismically turbulent history — continued to climb, inexorably so, as officials uncovered more bodies. By Monday afternoon, the toll stood at more than 1,800 confirmed dead and 2,300 missing. Police officials, however, said it was certain that more than 10,000 had died.

Police teams, for example, found about 700 bodies that had washed ashore on a scenic peninsula in Miyagi Prefecture, close to the epicenter of the quake that unleashed the tsunami. The bodies washed out as the tsunami retreated. Now they are washing back in.

A string of crippled nuclear reactors at Fukushima also continued to bedevil engineers who were desperately trying to cool them down. The most urgent worries concerned the failures of two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, where workers were still struggling to avert meltdowns and where some radiation had already leaked.

The building housing Reactor No. 1 exploded on Saturday, and a hydrogen buildup blew the roof off the No. 3 reactor facility on Monday morning. The blast did not appear to have harmed the reactor itself, government and utility officials said, but six workers were injured in the blasts.

Later Monday, Reactor No. 2 was losing cooling function and workers were pumping in water, according to Yukio Edano, the chief government spokesman.
In the city of Fukushima, gas stations, grocery stores and restaurants were closed, and convenience stores had no food or drinks to sell — only cigarettes. Red Cross water tankers dispensed drinking water to Fukushima residents who waited in long, orderly lines.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan described the triple whammy — the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear troubles — as Japan’s “worst crisis since World War II.”

Some 350,000 people have reportedly become homeless and were staying in shelters.

Because of the Fukushima nuclear plants being lost to the national power grid, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the plants, announced plans for rotating blackouts across the region to conserve electricity — the first controlled power cuts in Japan in 60 years.

Tokyo-area residents worriedly followed a series of confusing statements from the power company about the location and duration of the power cuts. Just after 5 p.m., the utility said it had already started cutting power to parts of two prefectures — Ibaraki, north of Tokyo, and Shizuoka, south of the capital.

Tokyo residents had struggled to get to work Monday as a number of important commuter rail lines ran limited schedules. Six lines featuring Japan’s famous shinkansen, or bullet trains, were not running. Six major department stores also closed for the day because staffers were unable to reach the city.

Public conservation of electricity was significant enough, the company said, that the more drastic blackout scenarios were being scaled back. Still, anticipating deep and lengthy power cuts, many people were stocking up on candles, water, instant noodles and batteries for radios.

....

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded 96 aftershocks on Sunday, and many Japanese were alarmed at several earthquake warnings that appeared as televised bulletins on Monday. A warning at 4 p.m., for example, an alert announced by a gentle trilling bells, told of expected “strong shaking” across the entire waist of Japan, essentially from Tokyo to Kyoto.

Also over the weekend the Japanese Meteorological Agency revised upward its measure of Friday’s quake to 9.0. The agency often provides measurements that differ from the U.S.G.S.

And Second Explosion at Reactor as Technicians Try to Contain Damage - NYTimes.com

TOKYO — The risk of partial meltdown at a stricken nuclear power plant in Japan increased on Monday as cooling systems failed at a third reactor, possibly exposing its fuel rods, only hours after a second explosion at a separate reactor blew the roof off a containment building.

The widening problems underscore the difficulties Japanese authorities are having in bringing several damaged reactors under control three days after a devastating earthquake and a tsunami hit Japan’s northeast coast and shut down the electricity that runs the crucial cooling systems for reactors.

Operators fear that if they cannot establish control, despite increasingly desperate measures to do so, the reactors could experience meltdowns, which would release catastrophic amounts of radiation.

It was unclear if radiation was released by Monday’s explosion, but a similar explosion at another reactor at the plant over the weekend did release radioactive material.

Live footage on public broadcaster NHK showed the skeletal remains of the reactor building and thick smoke rising from the building. Eleven people had been injured in the blast, one seriously, officials said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that the release of large amounts of radiation was unlikely. But traces of radiation could be released into the atmosphere, and about 500 people who remained within a 12-mile radius were ordered temporarily to take cover indoors, he said.

The country’s nuclear power watchdog said readings taken soon after the explosion showed no big change in radiation levels around the plant or any damage to the containment vessel, which protects the radioactive material in the reactor.
“I have received reports that the containment vessel is sound,” Mr. Edano said. “I understand that there is little possibility that radioactive materials are being released in large amounts.”

In screenings, higher-than-normal levels of radiation have been detected from at least 22 people evacuated from near the plant, the nuclear safety watchdog said, but it was not clear if the doses they received were dangerous.

More at the links. Episcopal Relief and Development has opened the Japan Earthquake Response Fund.

The Japan Earthquake Response Fund has been opened to collect donations for emergency relief provided through local partners in Japan and other areas affected by the disaster. A massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake centered off the east coast of Japan’s largest island, Hokkaido, triggered a tsunami that devastated large areas of Japan and caused damage as far away as Hawai’i and the west coast of the US. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with all those affected.

You can donate at that page if you're so inclined.

BBC News - Japan quake survivors return to devastated Minamisanriku port

BBC News - Japan quake survivors return to devastated Minamisanriku port

Stunning video at the link.