Saturday, December 17, 2016 -- Blogging Will Be Minimal

Active rigs:

	12/17/2016	12/17/2015	12/17/2014	12/17/2013	12/17/2012
Active Rigs	40	64	182	186	183

Quiet day. Not much to report.

Book trip. This is so wonderful. From The Williston Herald via Twittter, data points:

• Stony Creek eighth graders, field trip
• Books on Broadway
• "star" readers -- six students -- earned their way to a field trip to the best bookstore in the US: Books on Broadway
• each student got to pick out a book and enjoyed a cup of cocoa

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The History Page

Ivory Vikings: 

The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them 

Nancy Marie Brown

c. 2015

I've written about this book on a couple of occasions. Yesterday I made notes on the introduction of the book.  Today, I will skip ahead and take notes on chapter two, "The Bishops."

The chess bishops are most interesting. Chess originated in India. "Modern" chess came about among the Norse near the end of the Age of the Vikings. Modern chess bishops are "Christian"; obviously what preceded bishops in India were not Christian.

It will be interesting to see how bishops evolved.

Among the early Norse: secular king and chief religious cleric were one and the same. The question naturally arises, then, how "modern" chess retained the king/queen but added the bishop (or more correctly, replaced what came before with a Christian chessman).

Notes with regard to the Lewis bishops:

• only unarmed pieces on the board; only non-warriors on the board
• crozier, the ceremonial shepherd's crook
• curlicue, the top of the crozier
• the dalmatic, the stole, and alb beneath the chasuble, or cope
• all are bishops, no archbishops: all are missing the pallium (wool from sheep raised by Trappists)
• an archbishop also carries a cross, not a crozier
• none are bearded, though beards were the style in the 12th century
• all wear the latest in ecclesiastical hats: before 1049, bishops covered their heads however they pleased; in 1049, Pope Leo IX introduced the Roan miter "to remind bishops they were disciples of the Roman see"
• these miters date the Lewis chessmen between 1150 and 1200
• discussion: horns (twisted hats) vs non-horns; the miter of Absalon, archbishop of Lund (then Denmark, now Sweden) from 1178 to1202 matches that of the Lewis chessmen
• Archbishop Absalon consecrated Pall Jonsson as bishop fo Skalholt, Iceland, in 1195; either of these two men could have commissioned the Lewis chessmen

So, the "man" who put the bishop on the chessboard was .... a bishop. -- page 64 -65.

A third possibility: Eystein, archbishop of Trondheim from 1157 to 1188

A fourth, but very unlikely, name: Pall's predecessor, Thorlak, bishop of Skalholt from 1178 to 1193.

A fifth cannot be ruled out: Pall's friend Bishop Bjarni of Orkney (1188 - 1223).

Chess: 997 A.D.  -- "counts" were placed beside the king and queen

Predecessors to the bishops on the board:

• al-fil: the elephant; early texts; a form of the Arabic name for the original piece on these squares; makes sense, Indian origin; elephant; al-fil became alphins
• the Arabic elephant and the Christian bishop are not clearly linked until the mid 1200s
• Pope Innocent III is often said to have given the Middle Ages sermon that stated clearly, "alphini sunt episopi; "the alphins are bishops; Pope Innocent III reigned, 1198 - 1216
• but the sermon could not have been written by Innocent III -- the full sermon is harsh on bishops; likely writer: Franciscan friar John of Wales, writing between 1238 and 1262, had no sympathy for greedy bishops
• other possibilities
• bottom line: sometime between 1144 (when the French bishop twisted his miter) and the mid-1200's, bishops debuted on the chessboard
• standard in Iceland and perhaps, Norway, by at least 1300; but not universally adopted
• as late as 1562, English playwright noted that carvers made that position on the board anything they wanted: bishops, Alphins, Princes, Archers
• the Oxford English Dictionary cites that 1562 quote as the first use of the chess term bishop which has remained the name in English
• modern Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German: use a word that means "runner" or "courier"
• some suggest that use of that word suggests chess was carried north from England to the north (Norway, Iceland) and three possibilities: bishops Pall and Thorlak (previously mentioned) and a third: chieftain Hrafn Sveinbjornsson

Prime-signing: during years Norse were converting; a preliminary form of baptism; -- page 74

The chapter goes onto another 42 pages, but I have the basics of what I was looking for, so I will end here.

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Sophia Learning To Play Checkers

With her dad, and one of her older sisters, out in California: