From friend of the blog Dustin Anastasios Hudson
550th anniversary of a sad event

Today, May 29, 1453, the city of Constantinople fell to the Turks. Let us pray for the suffering Orthodox Christians who still reside in that city, and that we may one day regain Hagia Sophia, no matter how slim a chance that may be...

During or shortly after World War I at one point the British had Constantinople. This by-then-nominally Christian people had the chance to 'put the cross back' atop Hagia Sophia (Greek for 'holy wisdom'), once the great cathedral of Greek Orthodoxy and a mosque since the 1400s, but didn't. It's now a museum.

The Turkish name for the city since the 1920s, Istanbul, is actually from the Greek eis ten polin, 'to the city'.

The Greek community in the city and in Asia Minor, before 1923 a centre of Greek civilisation for 2,000 years, has been driven nearly to extinction. The Phanar, where the patriarch of Constantinople (an ethnic Greek and required to be a Turkish citizen) lives, routinely is bombed.

From an Irish person
On the pseudo-Celtic spirituality game

From my reading, many who espouse 'Celtic Christianity' go to it with a idea of 'This was the warm, egalitarian mutual woman-affirming, nature-loving Christianity before those Awful Romans took over'. A sort of allergic reaction to things Latin maybe. [And perhaps the pseuds don't know the real Celtic Church prayed in Latin.] But since little is known, they 'reconstruct' i.e. make it up. Then you get the things like 'St Brigid was really a goddess who was taken over by the evil misogynist RCs' New Age stuff (gag and also bang head on keyboard).

Happy feast of the Ascension, traditional Roman Catholics. 'Men of Galilee, why do ye stand there, gazing up into heaven? Alleluia.' (From the Introit at Mass and the Antiphons in the breviary.) Click here to hear this chanted!

Fun fact
The meter for William Blake's poem 'The Tyger' is the same as 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'.