Cinco de Mayo (5th of May) is a Mexican holiday commemorating the Mexican victory over a French force in Puebla, Mexico in the 19th C.
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The last time two popes coexisted it was the era of The Great Schism- 13th to 14th Century. This event is truly historic and I hope all my students can understand this.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/world/europe/pope-francis-and-benedict-share-a-lunch.html?_r=1&
Behind Image of Seamless Transition, Vatican Navigates Uncharted Waters
VATICAN CITY — Sharing lunch is rarely historic, except perhaps when the two people eating are a pope and his predecessor.
On Saturday, the pope emeritus, Benedict XVI — who broke church tradition by resigning rather than dying in office — ate with Pope Francis at Castel Gandolfo, the hilltop villa where Benedict is living, while reporters waited outside for any scraps of news about how the meeting went.
Vatican officials gave no word about what the past and present leaders of the Roman Catholic Church discussed, and even rebuffed questions about what they ate. They did, however, paint a picture of a seamless transition: when Benedict offered his successor the “place of honor” during shared prayers, the Vatican said, Francis demurred, suggesting that they kneel side by side as “brothers.” Their first embrace, a spokesman said, was “wonderful.” Both wore white, the traditional color of the pope’s vestments.
But the reality of a pope and an emeritus pope living in his shadow will probably be more complicated, a fact driven home with the recent publication in an Italian gossip magazine of paparazzi-style photos of the 85-year-old Benedict strolling with his personal secretary through the private gardens of his temporary home at Castel Gandolfo.
The photographs were a vivid reminder of the uncharted territory the Vatican has entered, and the potential trouble it could bring.
Virtually every day highlights the strangeness of the circumstances and raises new questions about what the relationship between the two men will be, especially when Benedict moves back to a residence at the Vatican that is being renovated.
One Italian newspaper called the lunch on Saturday “a rehearsal for cohabitation.”
The last time two popes could even have met, other than in encounters before one of them became pope, was hundreds of years ago, the last time that one resigned.
During this transition, the new pope, the cardinals and the Vatican have gone out of their way to express affection and gratitude toward the pope emeritus. But each time they do, it does more to deepen the complexity of the relationship than to clarify it.
Francis telephoned Benedict immediately after his election on March 13, before appearing on the balcony at St. Peter’s Square, where the new pope publicly asked the crowd to join him in praying for “our bishop emeritus.” On Tuesday, after the installation ceremony on the feast day of St. Joseph, Francis called Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to wish him a happy name day.
There has been an unexpected amount of attention lavished on a man who had pledged to live out his days “hidden from the world.” As Francis’ papacy lengthens, the reasons for Benedict’s eventual seclusion inside the Vatican become clearer.
It is, Vatican experts said, a solution that not only provides a secure environment for Benedict, but also effectively avoids setting up a power center rivaling the Vatican. And it discourages any following that could coalesce around the pope emeritus in a church mindful of painful schisms that have shaken it at important moments in its history.
Now that resignation from the papacy has been resuscitated as an option after 600 years, the Vatican is no doubt concerned about setting precedents, said Alberto Melloni, the director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna.
“You couldn’t have the pope in a German convent where he could become a pole of attraction for those faithful reluctant to accept his resignation,” Mr. Melloni said.
In a few weeks, Benedict will move into a nondescript convent not far from the sumptuous apostolic palace where he lived as the leader of the church.
Already, canonical experts have raised questions about the correctness of Benedict’s adopting the title of “pope emeritus.” Writing in La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit magazine, the Rev. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a former rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, argued that a more appropriate title would be “bishop emeritus of Rome, like any other diocesan bishop who steps down.”
The Vatican has played down the novel accommodation. To have the pope emeritus “present, near, discreet” will provide a “great enrichment” for the new pope, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters recently.
Mr.V
As we begin our discussions of The Black Plague, this article should serve as a reminder of the human element in the generation and spread of disease.
http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/1987491
USA TODAY
AP
Workers collect dead pigs to deliver to a bio-safety disposal facility in Zhulin village of Xinfeng in east China’s Zhejiang province on March 13.
by Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY
Published: 03/14/2013 11:10pm
BEIJING – Armed with long bamboo poles, masked workers continued to haul dead hogs from a river in the Shanghai suburbs Thursday, where the pig body count now exceeds 6,600, according to the municipal government.
City officials repeated reassurances to a nervous public that the drinking water in China’s financial capital, which draws on the affected Huangpu River, remains safe, and carried out checks on pork in Shanghai’s shops and markets.
The tide of dead pigs, first discovered last week, swept in from upriver in east China’s Jiaxing city, a center of pig breeding where local media said farmers had resorted to river dumping after a government crackdown on selling meat from sick pigs.
From ear tags, investigators have already identified one Jiaxing farmer who has admitted dumping dead pigs and may face criminal charges. Local officials have denied an epidemic was responsible, and suggested a combination of illness and bad weather killed the animals.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Page 1 of 6
Mr.V
The Bishop of Rome, latest in a line stretching to the disciple Peter, has been chosen. He is now to be known as Pope Francis I.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/world/europe/cardinals-elect-new-pope.html?emc=na
The New Pope: Bergoglio of Argentina
VATICAN CITY — With a puff of white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and to the cheers of thousands of rain-soaked faithful, a gathering of Catholic cardinals picked a new pope from among their midst on Wednesday — choosing the cardinal from Argentina, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the first leader of the church ever chosen from South America.
The new pope, 76, to be called Francis, the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, is also the first non-European leader of the church in more than 1,000 years.
“I would like to thank you for your embrace,” said the new pope, dressed in white, speaking from the white balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica as thousands of the faithful cheered joyously below. Francis thanked his fellow cardinals, saying they “have chosen one from far away, but here I am.”
“Habemus papam!,” members of the crowd shouted in Latin, waving umbrellas and flags. “We have a pope!” Others cried “Viva il Papa!”
“It was like waiting for the birth of a baby, only better, ” said a Roman man. A child sitting atop his father’s shoulders waved a crucifix.
Francis is the first pope not born in Europe since Columbus alighted in the New World. In choosing him, the cardinals sent a powerful message that the future of the Church lies in the Global South, home to the bulk of the world’s Catholics. One of Benedict’s abiding preoccupations was the rise of secularism in Europe, and he took the name Benedict after the founder of European monastic culture.
The new pope inherits a church wrestling with an array of challenges that intensified during his predecessor, Benedict XVI — from a priest shortage and growing competition from evangelical churches in the Southern Hemisphere where most of the world’s Catholics live, to a sexual abuse crisis that has undermined the church’s moral authority in the West, to difficulties governing the Vatican itself.
Benedict abruptly ended his troubled eight-year papacy last month, announcing he was no longer up to the rigors of the job. He became the first pontiff in 598 years to resign. The 115 cardinals who are under the age of 80 and eligible to vote chose their new leader after two days of voting.
Before beginning the voting by secret ballot in the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday, in a cloistered meeting known as a conclave, the cardinals swore an oath of secrecy in Latin, a rite designed to protect deliberations from outside scrutiny — and to protect cardinals from earthly influence as they seek divine guidance.
The conclave followed more than a week of intense, broader discussions among the world’s cardinals where they discussed the problems facing the church and their criteria for its next leader.
“We spoke among ourselves in an exceptional and free way, with great truth, about the lights, but also about shadows in the current situation of the Catholic Church,” Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, a theologian known for his intellect and his pastoral touch, told reporters earlier this week.
“The pope’s election is something substantially different from a political election,” Cardinal Schönborn said, adding that the role was not “the chief executive of a multinational company, but the spiritual head of a community of believers.”
Indeed, Benedict was selected in 2005 as a caretaker after the momentous papacy of John Paul II, but the shy theologian appeared to show little inclination toward management. His papacy suffered from crises of communications — with Muslims, Jews and Anglicans — that, along with a sex abuse crisis that raged back to life in Europe in 2010, evolved into a crisis of governance.
Critics of Benedict’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said he had difficulties in running the Vatican and appeared more interested in the Vatican’s ties to Italy than to the rest of the world. The Vatican is deeply concerned about the fate of Christians in the war-torn Middle East.
Reporting was contributed by Daniel J. Wakin, Laurie Goodstein, Stefania Rousselle and Gaia Pianigiani from Vatican City, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 13, 2013
A photo caption and news alert misspelled part of the new pope’s name. He is Jorge Mario Bergoglio, not Jorge Maria Bergoglio.
The new pope will also inherit power struggles over the management of the Vatican bank, which must continue a process of meeting international transparency standards or risk being shut out of the mainstream international banking system. In one of his final acts as pope, Benedict appointed a German aristocrat, Ernst von Freyberg, as the bank’s new president.
He will have to help make the Vatican bureaucracy — often seen as a hornet’s nest of infighting Italians — work more efficiently for the good of the church. After years in which Benedict and John Paul helped consolidate more power at the top, many liberal Catholics also hope that the next pope will also give local bishops’ conferences more decision-making power to help respond to the needs of the faithful.
The reform of the Roman Curia, which runs the Vatican, “is not conceptually hard, it’s hard on a political front but it will take five minutes for someone who has the strength. You get rid of the spoil system and that’s it,” said Alberto Melloni, the author of numerous books on the Vatican and the Second Vatican Council. The hard things are “if you want a permanent consultation of bishops’ conferences,” he added.
For Mr. Melloni, foreign policy and the church’s vision of Asia would be crucial to the next pope. “If Roman Catholicism was capable of learning Greek while it was speaking Aramaic, of learning Celtic while it was speaking Latin, now it either has to learn Chinese or ‘ciao,’” he said, using the Italian world for “goodbye.”
Ahead of the election of a new pope, cardinals said they were looking for “a pope that understands the problems of the Church at present” and who is strong enough to tackle them, said Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the archbishop emeritus of Prague who participated in the general congregations but was not eligible to vote in a conclave.
He said those problems included reforming the Roman Curia, handling the pedophilia crisis and cleaning up the Vatican bank, which has been working to meet international transparency standards.
“He needs to be capable of solving these issues,” Cardinal Vlk said as he walked near the Vatican this week, adding that the next pope needs “to be open to the world, to the troubles of the world, to society, because evangelization is a primary task, to bring the Gospel to people.”
The sex abuse crisis remains a troubling issue for the church, especially in English-speaking countries where victims sued dioceses found to have moved around abusive priests.
On Wednesday, news reports in California showed that one cardinal elector, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the former archbishop of Los Angeles, the diocese and an ex-priest had reach a settlement of almost $10 million in four child sexual abuse cases, according to the victims’ lawyers.
Becoming pope also has a human dimension. In one of his final speeches as pope before he retired on Feb. 18, Benedict said that his successor would need to be prepared to lose some of his privacy.
Reporting was contributed by Daniel J. Wakin, Laurie Goodstein, Stefania Rousselle and Gaia Pianigiani from Vatican City, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 13, 2013
A photo caption and news alert misspelled part of the new pope’s name. He is Jorge Mario Bergoglio, not Jorge Maria Bergoglio.
Mr.V
Science lovers, philosophers, theologians, and the curious among us will be captivated by this TED Talk.
This month’s issue of National Geographic Magazine covers this topic in a way that only they can do. Here is a short clip hi-lighting a few of the ‘movers and shakers’ in this field.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-03/sistine-chapel-being-bug-proofed?dom=tw&src=SOC
The Sistine Chapel Is Getting A High-Tech Bug-Proofing
Plugging leaks as the Papal conclave confers
Sistine Chapel Clayton Tang/Wikimedia Commons
Back in 2005, before it was announced that Joseph Ratzinger would be pope, a leak helped the German media break the story. The conclave, the group of cardinals that elects the pope, will soon make another decision, and they don’t want a repeat of 2005. The answer? Bug-proof any areas where the cardinals are working, including the Sistine Chapel.
To do that, Vatican officials will be installing a Faraday cage that can block signals, while also monitoring and potentially even searching electors. The Synod Hall, where early meetings happen, has already had its wireless network disabled to ensure zero media contact. Officials are also working to remove their own bugs, installed in response to the 2012 “Vatileaks” document leak. Television, radio, and other news sources are banned unless absolutely necessary.
So, yes, this sounds more than a little Big Brother-ish, especially when papal police have been given broader powers in response to the Vatileaks scandal. Everyone preparing the area where the voting will take place has even been literally sworn to secrecy, under penalty of excommunication. But people might be looking for the scoop again, so we’ll see if this can plug the Vatican tight.
Mr.V
A Strict Adherence to Ritual and Secrecy in Election of Pope
VATICAN CITY — It begins with prayers chanted in an ancient language and ends with a tiny figure on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica unveiled as the supreme pontiff of more than a billion Catholics. The conclave to elect a pope, which starts Tuesday, unfolds with elaborate ritual, deep secrecy and politicking that would warm the heart of a machine politician.
While carried out in the trappings of past centuries, “In reality, the elections are a political fact,” said Paolo Francia, author of “The Conclave.”
The voting is minutely scripted. Rectangular paper ballots are counted, collected, pierced with a needle and burned. Exactly four rounds of voting are permitted each day. The winner’s name is intoned in Latin.
It is a process dating back centuries, with a rich history of chicanery — like the bought election of Julius II in 1503 and the undermining of a leading contender, Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, in 1978, thanks to the leaking of an embargoed interview he gave.
There are no formal nominees, and technically, each cardinal enters the conclave as a possible pope. The winner must garner two-thirds of the votes, or 77 of 115 in this case. In practice, a few names always emerge beforehand as favorites, although the principal truism is, “Go in a pope, come out a cardinal.”
The first ballot, expected late Tuesday afternoon, serves effectively as a primary. It identifies the cardinals to whom votes can flow in succeeding rounds — two every morning, two every afternoon.
“I expect the first vote is going to be quite scattered around,” said Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier of South Africa, given “the wider field of candidates with the potential” to become pope.
While the Holy Spirit is supposed to be the guiding light behind a pope’s selection, the cardinals are known to negotiate between the ritualistic voting rounds over dinner and coffee, although the constitution governing papal transitions forbids them from making deals.
The conclave that elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2005 as Benedict XVI lends some insight into how the voting progresses.
In 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger jumped out to a quick lead with 47 votes, according to the diary of an unnamed cardinal, as reported by an Italian state television journalist, Lucio Brunelli, in the journal Limes later that year. While never verified, the outline of Mr. Brunelli’s version was reflected in other accounts.
The diarist said Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, received 10 votes; Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the archbishop of Milan who was considered a less conservative choice, received 9; and four others held several votes. Many Vatican experts said that Cardinal Martini was not necessarily considered a real option, but a gathering point for anti-Ratzinger votes.
“We spoke at the table, exchanging impressions on the first vote that came to nothing,” Mr. Brunelli quoted the unnamed cardinal as writing. “More discussions, with maximum discretion, happened after dinner in the rooms. Small groups, two or three people.”
In the second round, Cardinal Ratzinger’s count rose to 65 and Cardinal Bergoglio’s to 35, the diarist said, according to Mr. Brunelli. Cardinal Ratzinger appeared to have picked up the 6 votes of Cardinal Camillo Ruini and 12 scattered votes. Cardinal Martini’s votes apparently went to Cardinal Bergoglio.
Round 3: Cardinal Ratzinger, 72; Cardinal Bergoglio, 40. At this point, Cardinal Bergoglio needed only four votes to exceed one-third of the total, enough to block a Ratzinger papacy.
“Great worry among the prelates who hope for the election of Cardinal Ratzinger; contacts grow thicker,” Mr. Brunelli reported the diarist as writing.
But on the fourth round, at least 12 went to Cardinal Ratzinger, giving him 84 and the papacy.
In an effort to limit the release of such inside information, the extras to the drama are sworn to secrecy, on pain of excommunication. The secretary of the College of Cardinals, priests for cardinal confessions, doctors, nurses, elevator operators, security officers, cleaning and meal crews and minibus drivers who all serve the cardinals — all took the oath on Monday in the Pauline Chapel in the Apostolic Palace. They numbered about 90.
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting.
Mr.V
CT Scans Find Vascular Disease in Ancient Mummies
Atherosclerosis — the buildup of fats and cholesterol on the artery walls that can lead to stroke and heart disease — is generally considered a problem of modern times, a result of fatty diets and inactive lifestyles. But a new examination of mummies from ancient cultures suggests that the disease appeared long before the arrival of junk food and flat-screen televisions.
Researchers performed CT scans on 137 mummies, including Egyptians, Peruvians, Aleutian Islanders and ancestors of the Pueblo people of the American Southwest.
The scans were read by seven imaging experts who judged atherosclerosis by the presence of calcification in the walls of clearly discernible arteries or along the expected route of an artery no longer visible.
Previous research has found evidence of atherosclerosis in Egyptian mummies, but mummification in Egypt was practiced among the elite, whose diet and lifestyle probably differed substantially from that of the rest of the population. Indeed, this study, published online Sunday in The Lancet, found atherosclerosis in 29 of the 76 Egyptian mummies examined.
But the researchers also found the disease in 13 of 51 Peruvian remains dated between A.D. 200 and 1500, two of five ancestral Pueblans who lived between 1500 B.C. and A.D. 500, and three of five Aleutian Islanders who lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Over all, 38 percent of the Egyptians and 29 percent of the other mummies had definite or probable evidence of atherosclerosis, the scientists concluded.
The senior author, Dr. Gregory S. Thomas, a cardiologist and medical director at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif., said that among the mummies of people age 40 and older, 50 percent had atherosclerosis.
Diet and climate varied among these four groups. The Egyptians may have eaten a diet high in saturated fat. The Peruvians farmed corn, potatoes and beans, and they kept domestic animals. Ancestral Pueblans grew corn and hunted rabbits, deer and sheep, while the Aleutian Islanders subsisted on a diet of fish, shellfish, seals, sea otters and whale.
“Patients with vascular disease feel guilty for having it, but you shouldn’t feel guilty,” Dr. Thomas said. “It’s part of the aging process. If people had it 4,000 years ago and in four different cultures, why wouldn’t we get it now?”
Mr.V
“Never leave your comrade behind!” A serviceperson’s creed with no statute of limitation.
Mr.V
mr.v@worldhistoryreview.org
After Over a Century at Sea, 2 Sailors Are Laid to Rest
ARLINGTON, Va. — Older women in hoop skirts and petticoats came together with youthful sailors in their dress blues for a rare public double interment at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday.
After a chapel service that included remarks by the secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, more than 500 people, including regiments of Civil War re-enactors and teenagers in camouflage-patterned pants, watched as the coffins, carried by horse-drawn wagon, were prepared for burial by a 76-member ceremonial guard.
The dead were two unidentified sailors from the ironclad warship Monitor, buried with full military honors 150 years after their ship sank during a storm off the coast of Cape Hatteras, N.C.
“This may well be the last time we bury Navy personnel who fought in the Civil War at Arlington,” Mr. Mabus said. “But we do not hesitate to keep faith and to honor this tradition, even more than 150 years after the promise was made.”
The flags over the sailors’ coffins had 50 stars, not the 34 they fought under. And their bones, a Navy official said, were covered with contemporary dress blues.
The funeral was inspired by an enduring fascination with the sunken ironclad, which is credited with helping save the Union in the Civil War, as well as the military’s pledge to leave no one behind.
It was also a reminder that family ties, however tenuous, are reinforced as much by narrative as by science.
“I’ve had relatives who served in World War I, World War II,” said Pete Gullo, a descendent of Jacob Nicklis, whose body may have been one of those interred. “For some reason — and it shouldn’t be, because he’s farther back in time — it’s almost like a more direct connection.”
Of the 16 men who went down with the Monitor on Dec. 31, 1862, researchers have narrowed the identities of the two sailors to six possibilities. While there are no conclusive DNA matches with their descendants, forensic researchers are convinced that they will eventually find these men’s stories in their bones.
Getting to know the six has helped some descendants feel a deeper sense of the sacrifice. Mr. Gullo, 47, has never served in the military, but he has thought about how Mr. Nicklis might have felt, drowning in the ship’s turret.
“What was it like to suffer through that kind of very physical event?” he said.
The Monitor was a technological marvel that took the sailing — and in many ways, the sailor — out of sea warfare. It survived the world’s first battle between two ironclads, fending off a much larger Rebel warship that threatened to destroy much of the Union fleet. But the Monitor’s glory was short-lived.
“It’s the irony of the ship that saved the Union,” said David Alberg, superintendent of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. “Ten months later, it was lost in a storm.”
In early 1862, the 62 or 63 crew members knew they were signing up for an experiment that the whole Union was watching, volunteering to be submerged astronauts in a 19th-century arms race. John Ericsson’s design was unlike the wooden steamships and sailboats of the day, and only about two feet of the deck was above the water line.
Compared with the 44-gun frigates that were dominant, the Monitor was small, less than 180 feet long. It had only two guns, though with an innovation still used today: the turret rotated. The South’s ironclad, the Virginia, was a Frankenstein — the salvaged hull of a destroyed Union ship, the Merrimack, 270 feet long with 10 guns.
By the time the Monitor left Brooklyn and arrived in Hampton Roads in 1862, the Virginia had already destroyed two Union frigates. The clash between the ironclads, on March 9, 1862, was deemed a draw, but the nimble Monitor successfully stopped the Confederate naval advance.
“For the Union, she was a symbol of American ingenuity,” said Anna Holloway, the curator of the U.S.S. Monitor Center at the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Va.
For much of history, the Monitor’s significance has overshadowed those who lived and died on it. “It’s this real abstract notion,” Ms. Holloway said, “and that’s compounded by the fact that most of the imagery of the battle doesn’t show people.”
Researchers from Duke University first found the wreck in 1973, but it was not until 2002 that the turret was excavated and the skeletons were recovered. Through more than a decade of forensic and genealogical research, a sense of the sailors is beginning to emerge.
“For years working on this project, the challenges were technical, and it was very much an engineering challenge, an archaeological challenge,” Mr. Alberg said, “and suddenly it became very personal.”
The remains were flown to the Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command, where researchers extracted DNA samples and made other determinations about the men: the younger one smoked a pipe and had some teeth missing, and the older one may have had legs that were different lengths.
Based on genetics and artifacts found with the men, researchers narrowed their focus to six of the white enlisted men. The crew also included three free blacks.
A genealogist found papers showing that Robert Williams, who might be the older sailor, emigrated from Wales, had “swarthy” skin, suffered from syphilis and might have witnessed a murder on another boat. The other possibility, William Bryan, had a brother who died for the Confederacy.
Based on the genealogist’s findings, potential descendents were asked to contribute swabs of their saliva for DNA testing.
When that trail ran cold, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the Monitor sanctuary, asked Louisiana State University scientists to reconstruct the sailors’ faces, in an effort to “shake some family trees,” as Mr. Alberg put it. (Researchers acknowledged that the results might fail to capture their true essences because of the lack of bushy facial hair.)
“Naval tradition holds that the site of a sunken vessel is a sacred burial ground, and that sailors who go down with their ships belong together,” Mr. Mabus said. But since the bodies were recovered during the excavation, he said, it was fitting that they be buried at Arlington.
Military officials said they would go to similar lengths to identify and honor any service member, fulfilling a commitment that dates to the Korean War.
“Across the ages, even across the centuries, you have that military bond where they want to go back and bring them all back,” said Michael Sledge, author of “Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, and Honor Our Military Fallen.”
“The military idea is an enhanced family idea,” Mr. Sledge said, “a family whose ties are, in some cases, stronger than the family itself.”
But the Navy was also committed to bringing family members to the burial. It spent more than $25,000 to cover travel costs for about 200 descendants of Monitor sailors to attend the ceremony.
