• Church History

    The Solovetsky Monastery

    God’s Gulag A remote archipelago is one of Russia’s holiest places—and its most haunted. By Jeffrey Tayler   Image credit: Sergey Maximishin/Panos Pictures From the upper reaches of the whitewashed belfry—between the gunmetal onion domes of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral—a giant bell announced the evening liturgy. Scarved women in loose woolen skirts and shaggy-bearded monks in black frocks hurried across the cobbled courtyard of Solovetsky Monastery, passing me, their eyes averted. I turned to face the sun above the massive stone walls, seeking a warmth that’s fleeting here in Russia’s farthest-flung holy citadel, located on the largest of the Solovetsky Islands amid the gale-lashed White Sea, just outside the Arctic Circle.…

  • Uncategorized

    Etta James Dies at 73

    January 20, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/arts/music/etta-james-singer-dies-at-73.html   Etta James, Powerful Voice Behind ‘At Last,’ Dies at 73 By PETER KEEPNEWS Etta James, whose powerful, versatile and emotionally direct voice could enliven the raunchiest blues as well as the subtlest love songs, most indelibly in her signature hit, “At Last,” died Friday morning in Riverside, Calif. She was 73. Her manager, Lupe De Leon, said that the cause was complications of leukemia. Ms. James, who died at Riverside Community Hospital, had been undergoing treatment for some time for a number of conditions, including leukemia and dementia. She also lived in Riverside. Ms. James was not easy to pigeonhole. She is most often referred…