Birding at the Edwin B Forsythe Natl Wildlife Reserve

August 26, 2012
This morn­ing the fam­i­ly joined a bird­ing group at the wildlife cen­ter near Absec­on, NJ. Birds spot­ted include the clap­per rail, semi-palmated sand­piper, many black skim­mers, snowy and great egrets, great blue herons, glossy ibis, For­rester’s terns, a semi-palmated plover, and a pair of black crowned night herons​.It was great going with a bird­ing group. Some of these birds weren’t even vis­i­ble (much less iden­ti­fi­able) to untrained eyes.

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Russian Old Believers in Millville NJ

March 13, 2012

A few weeks ago we were con­tact­ed by some­one from the St Nicholas Cen­ter (http://​www​.stni​cholas​cen​ter​.org) ask­ing if they could use some pho­tos I had tak­en of the church my wife is attend­ing, Mil­lville N.J.‘s St Nicholas Ukrain­ian Catholic. Of course I said yes. But then my cor­re­spon­dent asked if I could take pic­tures of anoth­er church she had heard of: St Nicholas Old Believ­er’s Church. It’s on the oth­er side of Mil­lville from our St Nick­’s, on an ancient road that dead ends in woods. We had to visit.

The Old Believ­ers have a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry. They were Russ­ian Ortho­dox Chris­tians who refused to com­ply with litur­gi­cal changes man­dat­ed by the Patri­arch and Czar in the 1650s. As usu­al, there was a lot of pol­i­tics involved, with the Czar want­i­ng to cozy up with the Greek Ortho­dox to ally Rus­sia against the Mus­lim Ottomans, etc., etc. The the­o­log­i­cal charge was that the Greek tra­di­tions were the stan­dard and Russ­ian dif­fer­ences latter-day inno­va­tions to be stamped out (more mod­ern research has found the Rus­sians actu­al­ly were clos­er to the old­er forms, but no mat­ter: what the Czar and Patri­arch want, the Czar and Patri­arch get). The old prac­tices were banned, begin­ning hun­dreds of years of state-sponsored per­se­cu­tion for the “Old Believ­ers.” The sur­vivors scat­tered to the four cor­ners of the Russ­ian empire and beyond, keep­ing a low pro­file wher­ev­er they went.

The Old Believ­ers have a fas­ci­nat­ing frac­tured his­to­ry. Because their priests were killed off in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, they lost their claims of apos­tolic suc­ces­sion – the idea that there’s an unbro­ken line of ordi­na­tion from Jesus Christ him­self. Some Old Believ­ers found work-arounds or claimed a few priests were spared but the hard­core among them declared suc­ces­sion over, sig­nal­ing the end times and the fall of the Church. They became priest­less Old Believ­ers – so defen­sive of the old litur­gy that they were will­ing to lose most of the litur­gy. They’ve scat­tered around the world, often wear­ing plain dress and liv­ing in iso­lat­ed communities.

The Old Believ­ers church in Mil­lville has no signs, no web­site, no indi­ca­tion of what it is (a life­long mem­ber of “our” St Nick­’s called it mys­te­ri­ous and said he lit­tle about it of it). From a few inter­net ref­er­ences, they appear to be the priest­less kind of Old Believ­ers. But it has its own dis­tinc­tions: appar­ent­ly one of the great­est icono­g­ra­phers of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry lived and wor­shipped there, and when famed Russ­ian polit­i­cal pris­on­er Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn vis­it­ed the U.S. he made a point of speak­ing at this sign­less church on a dead end road.

Links:
* Wikipedia: http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​O​l​d​_​B​e​l​i​e​v​ers
* Account of US Lithuan­ian Bespopovt­sy com­mu­ni­ties: http://​www​.synax​is​.info/​o​l​d​-​r​i​t​e​/​0​_​o​l​d​b​e​l​i​e​f​/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​_​e​n​g​/​n​i​c​o​l​l​.​h​tml
* OSU Library on icono­g­ra­ph­er Sofronv (PDF): http://​cmrs​.osu​.edu/​r​c​m​s​s​/​C​M​H​2​1​c​o​l​o​r​.​pdf
* Solzhen­it­syn’s 1976 vis­it: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f‑news/2057793/posts

In album St Nicholas Old Believ­ers, Mil­lville NJ (9 photos)

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Mike’s Precision Carpentry

December 3, 2009

Mike's Precision CarpentryMichael Oliv­eras is a long-time union car­pen­ter mak­ing the entre­pre­neur­ial jump and start­ing his own busi­ness: Mike’s Pre­ci­sion Car­pen­try, serv­ing the New Jer­sey, Penn­syl­va­nia and Delaware from his shop in Ham­mon­ton, NJ. He came to me look­ing for a web­page to adver­tise his new enterprise.
It’s a sim­ple design, a typ­i­cal small-business site of half-a-dozen pages. The col­or scheme match­es his busi­ness cards for a bit of brand­ing. Oliv­eras faced a prob­lem typ­i­cal for new busi­ness­es: a lack of good pho­tos. The work he’s done for many years is not tech­ni­cal­ly his own (per the employ­ment con­tracts) so for now the pic­tures are a mix of the few jobs he has done on his own and a few stock images. I’m sure he’ll have a well-rounded port­fo­lio before long and we’ll be able to fill out the site with his own work. In the mean­times, he added a cou­ple of great pic­tures of him and his fam­i­ly on the “About Us” page to give it that per­son­al touch.
See it live: www​.mike​s​pre​ci​sion​car​pen​try​.com

The ascent of Apple Pie Hill

September 30, 2007

Yes­ter­day the kids and I took a road trip to Apple Pie Hill, a sum­mit of loose grav­el that tow­ers over the South Jer­sey pinelands from a dizzy­ing height of 209 feet above sea lev­el. A fire watch tow­er on the sum­mit adds anoth­er few dozen feet, enough to get a vis­i­tor over the tree­tops. On a clear day it’s said you can see the sky­lines of Atlantic City and Philadel­phia. For­tu­nate­ly for me it was an quin­tes­sen­tial­ly beau­ti­ful­ly fall day – clear and crisp. It was easy to spot the cities, both thirty-two miles away (most­ly to the south and most­ly to the west respec­tive­ly) and here’s blowups of the two resul­tant photos:
Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill
Sand road to Apple Pie Hill Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill Trip to Pine Barren's famous Apple Pie Hill
More pic­tures, from left: Sand road to the hill, the fire tow­er, the view down through the steps of the tow­er (the kids were left in the car), two year old Fran­cis eager but thwart­ed attempt to repeat Papa’s climb up tow­er. Click indi­vid­ual pho­tos for enlarged and geo­t­agged ver­sions. More pho­tos of this and out stopover at Atsion lat­er in the day on yes­ter­day’s Flickr page.

For those inter­est­ed in repeat­ing our jour­ney, here’s a map show­ing our route up and back. I was most­ly wing­ing it, depend­ing on these direc­tions from NJPines​land​sand​Down​Jer​sey​.com start­ing from near­by Chatsworth NJ, self-styled “Cap­i­tal of the Pine Barrens.” 



Oth­er map views: View Larg­er Map | Satel­lite with Route Map