Nose to the grindstone...

Greetings all!

Sorry for being away fron the blog for a rather lengthy period. Between work, church, and other obligations, it was the usual problem of 25 hours of stuff to do but only 24 hours in the day.

It's interesting in my work getting to have some lengthy conversations with people running for office. In the last week I had two such and came away fairly impressed with both candidates. They were pretty forthright and I found that even though one is of a somewhat different political persuasion than myself, his views and beliefs appear well-thought out and not just "grafted on" by his association with a politcal party. The other candidate is nearer my own positions, but that person too made a strong impression.

I am grateful for the chance I had to chat with them both, and I hope it helps me to write more helpful stories about them as we get closer to election day--so that you can have a healthy helping of information on which to base your own voting decisions.

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I spent about 10 hours this weekend with a friend working our way through a simulation (aka wargame aka boardgame) of World War One titled DEATH IN THE TRENCHES. It was educational to say the least.

In addition to throwing in various historical events and having them affect what the two sides could accomplish in any given turn (which were considered to be one quarter of a year), the very mechanics that governed fighting and movement really heightened the "stalemate" sensation that the Great War was noted for (at least on the Western Front).

Basically you knew the standard strength of a division, and you assigned up to 20 divisions to an army. When you tried to take a bit of land you totaled up all the divisions attacking and multiplied by the basic strength. Then you subtracted a percentage for the terrain or for your enemy being in a fortress zone. Finally you looked at your total strength and decided how many dice to roll--you could literally roll as many as you pleased BUT if you rolled a number HIGHER than your strength for that fight you accomplished nothing! I won't say how many times I "threw caution to the wind" in the first couple of turns and ended up getting nowhere except losing a lot of my own divisions (because after all, my foe was defending so it stood to reason I would lose some men).

BTW if you rolled lower than your attack strength, you got that many hits on your foe. You would divide the number of hits by the Fortitude of the army you were fighting--that final number would be how many divisions your enemy would have to remove. Of course as I mentioned, he was defending too, so he did the same procedure and I would be pretty much assured of losing a few divisions as well.

We both ended up by about the middle of 1915 NEVER rolling more dice than would total the strength if we rolled all sixes. Add trenches in the first turn of 1915 and things quickly bogged down.

Though we quit before heading into 1916, I suspect we would have gotten back into massive buckets of dice rolling simply in order to get some real movement in the battle lines--and again, just like what happened in history with generals throwing more and more men into the fight in an attempt to get that always-elusive breakthrough.

I do play games for enjoyment as well as intellectual stimulation, but sometimes the lessons slam home pretty hard.

Very interesting game. Sobering too. The Great War truly changed our world.

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Finally an invitation.

On Saturday, October 14, St. Raphael Orthodox Mission is having an "Invite a Friend to Vespers" night. We usually have a 45 minute prayer service on Saturday evenings as a preparation for our Sunday service. This time we'll be inviting friends who want to know more about us, or about the Orthodox Church, to stop in. There will be refreshments after and Fr. Thaddeus will be happy to answer any questions.

We start at 5:30. Consider yourself invited by me.

St. Raphael is right next to the Busy Bistro on Hampshire.