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Games

#249: A 2018 AnimeNEXT Adventure

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #249, on the subject of A 2018 AnimeNEXT Adventure.

Last year in An AnimeNEXT 2017 Experience I reflected on being a guest of the convention–a minor guest, listed as staff, but brought there because as a role playing game designer I hopefully add something to the experience of convention goers.  I’m looking at it through a different lens this time, hoping to give something of my own experience.

I suppose the story really starts months ago.  Last summer, shortly after my guest appearance at AnimeNEXT, I was hospitalized for emergency surgery and lost quite a bit of time recuperating.  Complicating it greatly, two days after I was hospitalized my wife fell and broke a hip and a foot, and was also hospitalized for emergency surgery followed by extended rehabilitation.  In what would have been a comedy of errors had it not been so serious, three of our sons were working at cross purposes trying to resolve issues with the house so that we would be able to maneuver in it while convalescing, with wheelchair and walker and such, and when I came home in the middle of this it was in an uproar.  I don’t know that I contributed much to it, but after perhaps a week my wife came home, and I was there for a few days helping her get settled before I returned to the hospital for another couple weeks and she was struggling to get along without me with the help of two of those boys and a neighbor friend of theirs.  We took a long time to convalesce, and things are still not entirely normal–which meant, among other things, that I had serious doubts about whether I would be able to get to the convention myself, and whether she would be able to manage without me for a few days.  She still doesn’t drive, even though she’s back to work, so I have to drive her.

I’m not sure whether it was the last week of April or the first week of May, but one night when I drove my wife to work the most reliable car we have broke down, and that put a dent in our transportation.  I had one of my sons pick me up, and used a different car in the morning to retrieve my wife from work, and AAA towed the car to the nearest AAA approved service station, which happened to be a few blocks from home, which was quite convenient since work is fifty miles away.  I was beginning to worry that I wasn’t going to make it.

Why should I worry?  Well, if you read the aforementioned linked article, you know that I was present in 2014 and 2017, but that in 2015 and 2016 last-minute disasters prevented my attendance.  I thought we were potentially facing another, particularly since one of the cars on which we rely belongs to a son who spends the school year driving around the country in a company car and then uses his car, which is legally my car so that he doesn’t have to pay insurance and garage fees during most of the year just to have it, for the summer.  So I was anticipating losing a car, on an uncertain date, complicating transportation further.

Then a few weeks prior to the convention I ran out of printer ink.  I was in the middle of printing the first draft of the next novel for online publication, and I’m collaborating with someone on this one, so an exchange of printed pages has been part of the process.  Printer ink might not be that important, but it is important, and with the car in the shop (for the entire month) and an expected cost estimated with a variable of about two hundred dollars more or less, I had to be careful about spending money.  HP makes a reliable all-in-one printer which I’ve been using for near a couple decades now, but they have a policy of underpricing their printers and then overpricing their ink cartridges.  Complicating it further, apparently the cartridge mine uses has become less commonly used, so that it wasn’t on the shelf at my local Walmart when I finally decided I needed to buy one.  The convention was two weeks away, and I went online and found a place that sold their own replacement cartridges, and ordered some.  They arrived about a week before the convention–and two out of two black cartridges were defective, in different ways.

I will credit SwiftInk for great customer service.  Their online help gave me suggestions for trying to make them work (cleaning the contacts), and when these failed promised to ship replacements immediately, which they did.  Unfortunately, those replacements did not arrive until after the convention began, so I had no print capability.

If somehow you don’t know, I go to conventions to run Multiverser, the roleplaying game I co-authored with E. R. Jones.  I take a stack of books; they’re out of print, and I don’t have any copies of the rules other than my own, but I have several of the world books and a couple others.  I also have a small (probably twenty-two pocket) file case in which I have a lot of papers, including unpublished worlds that I use, worksheets for magic skills, and on-the-fly character creation papers.  As noted, last year when I returned from the convention there was a lot happening, and I wound up hospitalized not too long thereafter, and never gave another thought to those books and papers.  At least they got put away–the suitcase that I used was left in the living room until one of my sons decided to move it outside to get it out of the way, and when I found it this year it was ruined.  It went through my head a couple times in the hectic days before the convention that I ought to find the books and papers and make sure I had everything, but then part of me was uncertain I was going to go at all, and part of me recognized that if I didn’t have printouts of the needed papers there wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway, not having printer ink.

Complicating it further, as the date approached it became known that my wife, who works alternate weekends, would be working that weekend.  At first I thought that was the kibosh, but I realized after mulling on it for a few days that the convention started early Friday, with staff arriving starting Thursday night, and ran through Sunday morning; Sunday was the quiet day, generally.  If I could check in on Thursday night I could be active on Friday and up until lunchtime Saturday, get home in time to get organized and have my wife at work Saturday night.  I was not able to get confirmation for that from, well, anyone anywhere, but it became my plan, at any rate.

Transportation was settled a couple days in advance.  The car that was in the shop was going to be finished that Thursday, and my son whose car it is and I would retrieve it and bring it home.  He and his wife were interested in playing at the convention, so they were going to drive me in and back; as it turned out she was feeling ill the day I had to go, but he still did the driving for me (again, thank you).  He dropped me at Bally’s, where I was billeted, and I told him to stay in Atlantic City until he heard from me in case something went wrong.

Something did go wrong, but first I stood on line for probably half an hour.  I was very irked when a young and not unattractive girl took advantage of the attentions of a young man to cut in line right in front of me, but stifled my passive-aggressive tendencies and waited until it was my turn.  Then they asked for my ID.  I had not driven myself to Atlantic City, and I did not have a current copy of my license on my person.  With all the hospital visits and doctor offices wanting my ID, it got separated from my wallet and I wasn’t carrying it.  I had two older licenses, but the hotel would not accept these despite the fact that they were photo IDs, because they had expired.  They were not unsympathetic, and attempted to call the person running housing for the convention, Connie Ngo, but Connie didn’t answer her phone.  I was stuck.  I couldn’t keep my driver in the city all night, but I couldn’t send him away without knowing I had a room.  I texted him to return to get me, and started toward the exit; but I remembered that I had Connie on Messenger (because I had wanted to confirm that there would be no problem with checking in on Thursday night), so I messaged her.  She responded to the message and called the desk clerk, and I was approved and given a room key.

We were four to a room, technically, but only one of my roommates had arrived, and one had had to cancel at the last minute, and the remaining one I did not see until Friday night.  My roommate introduced himself by first name only, and I admit that it takes me several tries to learn names, and I only saw him awake one other time when I was barely so myself.  He offered a variety of snacks he brought from home.  I stuck one of the two key cards they had given me in a pocket and tossed the folder containing the other on the dresser, and never saw it again, but I slept with the card in my pajama pocket and kept track of it all day (I have this freaky thing about losing keys).  I laid claim to one of the beds and slept until morning.

At this point I’ll say a few words about the hotel.  I was in the Sheraton last year.  The room at Bally’s was considerably nicer.  I think the room itself was larger, and it had a couch large enough for a bed in addition to the two beds (and the first roommate had brought his own cot) so we didn’t have to share.  The bathroom is larger, with a large shower stall.  I had some concern that there were no safety railings inside the shower (I’m getting old, and am not always completely steady on my feet), but that’s often the case.  The Sheraton, as I recall, had a shower/tub, but I’m a bit tall for most bathtubs and so prefer showers.  It was overall a nice room.  I do not know, however, whether that’s because all the Bally’s rooms are nicer than the Sheraton rooms.  I was in the Garden Tower, and it may be that those are better than the standard rooms.

One thing that bothers me, though, is that if you wanted WiFi you had to pay for it separately.  McDonalds and Walmart can manage to give their customers free WiFi.  I’m not sure why one of the biggest casino hotels in one of the major resort centers in the Western Hemisphere can’t manage such a trivial amenity–but indeed I was reminded that the same rule held at the Sheraton last year.  I’d have used it to watch Netflix on my Kindle, I expect, but I had had the foresight to download a couple things to the Kindle for that purpose in advance, and I could handle Messenger, which I also have on the Kindle, on my phone.

I awoke alone, and had not yet checked in with the convention staff, but I took time for prayer and study and got a shower and a respiratory treatment before packing the essentials and walking the several blocks to the Convention Center.  That is one advantage of staying at the Sheraton:  it is physically attached to the Convention Center, being right across the street and having an enclosed pedestrian bridge between the second floors of each.  That doesn’t mean it’s close–it’s a long walk inside the Sheraton just to get from the rooms to the bridge (there are banquet halls between the two), and I remember lugging my gear using a wheeled cooler as a handtruck and case between the buildings.  I knew that there were free buses between Bally’s and the convention, but that you had to have your convention ID to use them, so the first time I had to walk.  Had I been earlier the night before I could have checked in there, but I was slow packing everything (the suitcase having been ruined, it took a while to settle on a high-quality reusable grocery bag for my clothes) and thought getting into the hotel was more important.  I made the walk to the center and found my way to operations, which was in the same room as last year, and was soon properly badged.  I then found Kat, my boss as head of Tabletop Gaming.  She was telling one of the photographers to get some pictures of how overcrowded the board game room already was on Friday morning, to show that our department could make good use of more space.  I told her I was going to take the Jtney (the bus) back to Bally’s and return with my thirty pound box of books, dice, and game materials, then grab some brunch somewhere.

Time to address the food.  That was an issue last year.  It was considerably better this year.  Instead of providing scheduled meals they gave us eight vouchers, each good for up to fifteen dollars at any of the several food outlets in the Convention Center itself except the Beer Garden.  Breakfast was still a challenge, as reportedly only one of those outlets opened early, and it sold out of breakfast sandwiches quite quickly both days I was there.  I was late enough on Friday that they already had their lunch menu going, and I bought a personal pizza, a cup of coffee, and a single-serve Minute Maid Tropical Blend juice, which was fourteen dollars and change–but hey, they must pay exorbitant rent to have space inside the convention center.  When I got back to the table, though, I already had players waiting, and so I sipped my coffee while running a game for a couple hours, and then when they scattered to other convention attractions I ate a cold pizza with a bottle of juice, and can’t really speak to the quality of the pizza.  The next morning I was earlier; they had gluten free bagels, which I decided not to eat (and was told my someone that this was a good decision), but instead got two cinnamon danishes, a small Jimmy Dean bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, coffee and juice.

By Friday afternoon I had heard that there was a place to buy food inside the dealer room, so I decided to try that next.  They were a pirate-themed grill, and advertised steak sandwiches and burgers.  I asked for one of their ten dollar bacon sirloin cheeseburgers, and was told that they were out of bacon, so I went with the eight dollar version without bacon, added lettuce, onion, mayonnaise, and catsup, with a bottle of Minute Maid Orange juice and a cup of hot chocolate, self-served.  It was rumored that their fries were good, but at five dollars I could see I wouldn’t be able to buy a drink and stay within the voucher.  Anyway, the burger was large, tasty, and filling, and I went back the next day.  At that point I was preparing to leave the convention, my ride being almost there, and so I spent two vouchers to get two bacon cheeseburgers and one without bacon.  I gave one of the bacon burgers to the son who drove to get me (and he devoured it in the street before we drove away, but said it was really very good, but economical as he is he would not have paid ten dollars for it; I figure that’s a good price for deluxe burgers nowadays, and again they have an incredibly high rent on their space).  I brought the other two home and shared them with my wife, who is not a fan of bacon.  The grill bent over backwards to make it possible for me to transport these, which were usually served in open topped boxes, and should be commended for that.  I left my remaining coupons with Ahmetia, my co-host in the RPG room, figuring she could use them.  Because of the high prices, I often saw people using a fifteen dollar voucher plus a bit of pocket cash to pay for their meals, and while I avoided that I did so partly by not buying some things I might otherwise have eaten.  That’s not a complaint; I tend to overeat anyway, and didn’t really need the fries.

By now I have this entirely out of sequence, but that’s not really a problem.  I’ve left out the games, only hinting at them to this point.  Time to remedy that.

By the time I got to the table with my pizza late Friday morning, Navya and Cory were waiting, and I began the character creation process.  Ahmetia, who has several years of Multiverser play under her belt, is very good at selling people on playing at my table, and Kat reminded me that she played a session at Ubercon a decade ago and thinks it’s a really great game, so I get referrals.  As we were moving forward with their character papers, Johanna arrived and joined us.

You’ll remember I said that the printer mattered.  My On-the-Fly Character Creation system uses four printed sheets on which players record information.  The fourth sheet is the simplest, being there strictly for the world list and stage number.  The third is equipment and the second skills, and of course you can have multiple sheets of skills and equipment.  The first, though, is the most complicated, with name, aliases, attributes, averaged attributes, best relevant attributes, bias levels, weaknesses, and character description all mapped onto a single page–and when I opened my file, I had only the second and third pages printed.

It wasn’t a disaster.  After all, I know what goes on the first page, and I had a couple of yellow pads, so everyone wrote out the first page longhand.  There was a second problem, that I had only one pen, and my first two players had no writing implements; I discovered another, though, an old four-color pen, in the game materials box, and when the third player arrived she had her own.  Not long after that, Ahmetia delivered a handful of pencils and some scrap paper, which was a big help as the weekend continued.  We put together their character papers, started them on the Tropical Island, and got them all gathered together with Michael di Vars, who explained to them what was happening.

I had eight players over the weekend, seven of whom sat and listened to Michael explain that they had died and any time in the future that they die they’ll come back to life in another universe just like this time, and not one of them balked, called him crazy, or demanded proof of this insane explanation.  Ah, well, it’s fun when it happens, but I’m not going to spoil it.  I was working out where each of the original trio was going to go next when they died, but suddenly they all had to run before that occurred, the game ended, and I ate my cold pizza and ran to the loo.

I returned to find Corderro waiting.  We got him up and running on the Tropical Island, and he had a long conversation with di Vars and then asked if the senior verser would be willing to spar a bit in unarmed combat.  As it happens, di Vars is extremely good at many weapons across the technological spectrum, but never really took much interest in unarmed hand-to-hand.  Corderro was high level professional, third degree black belt in a martial arts style.  At hand-to-hand he was fifty percent faster than di Vars with a very slight edge on accuracy, with the result that he outfought the killing machine in two one-minute rounds.  He lasted long enough for the volcano to blow, took a nasty rock to the head, and was out of the world–but also decided to leave the game there.  That’s a bit of a shame, because I knew where I was going to send him.  (Hint:  he has a beard.)

I’ll interrupt this recounting of games to recount the night.  I was the first one back to the room, partly because after seven I figured there was no point in starting a new game, I got and ate the aforementioned cheeseburger, and called it a night.  I moved my box of books to the board game room, which gets locked overnight, and took my bag of personal effects to the Jitney to ride back to the hotel.  I wasn’t up long, taking time to find something innocuous on the television that would lull me to sleep (Transformers, which I’ve seen before), set early alarms, and went to bed.

An hour later I was awakened by banging on the door.  It took a moment to get organized and answer it, and I almost didn’t catch the departing offender, but it was the roommate I’d met accompanied by the roommate I hadn’t met, having gotten themselves locked out.  I let them in and went back to bed, only to have my cell phone ring while I was getting in.  My youngest son, who lives not far from Atlantic City at the moment, had apparently not realized that I was going to be at the convention this weekend, and having failed to get his mother on her phone decided to try mine.  We talked for several minutes, and apart from me suggesting that if he couldn’t reach his mother he should try his brother I don’t remember any of it.  I then settled down to sleep.

Someone silenced the television at some point, but I was asleep by then.  I noticed it in one of my brief periods of overnight awareness.  I think I awoke before my alarm; in any case, I was the first up, and I packed my things, left the room, went back because I realized I’d forgotten my bottle of Barq’s Root Beer and discovered that I’d also forgotten my box of tissues, and then went downstairs and checked out of the hotel.  It was not quite seven thirty, and the buses didn’t run until eight, so I got some prayer and study time on a park bench near the hotel parking garage entrance under the shelter of the building as it poured rain a few dozen feet away.  At eight I walked the short couple blocks to the bus stop, boarded a waiting Jitney, and was soon joined by a crowd of others headed to the convention.  I had promised Kat I would text her when I was up, which I did around seven-thirty but with the caveat that I wasn’t going to get there until the buses started, and she said she was already awake and working on getting the room unlocked.

I put my stuff in the RPG room, but the board game room was still locked; I asked someone working that room to bring my box to me when it became possible, and went to obtain the aforementioned breakfast.  Returning, I did a bit more study while nibbling on part of the breakfast, but then Steven arrived.  I still didn’t have my materials, but there were pencils and pieces of scrap paper on the table, so I set aside my breakfast and attended to starting his character sheet.  The books came, I got him started on the island, and Hannah and Tia arrived.  I had actually bumped into them twice in the halls, and Hannah must look like someone I know because I thought I recognized her, but apparently she’s not who I remembered.  Having met me and introduced themselves, they came to try the game, so I started setting up their papers.  Having finished their first page, I turned to their skills, still juggling Steven through his time on the island, and Austin arrived and joined the character creation process.  I was hitting my stride, though, and got that moving well.  Steven met di Vars, and got a feel for what was happening, but then said he had to leave just about the time I was launching Tia, then Hannah, then Austin.

Austin made a comment about having to leave soon, so I ignored the die roll and had him reach di Vars first.  He decided on cautious discretion, and remained behind the tree line watching.  Tia, second to arrive, decided that she needed help more than caution, and called out, receiving an invitation to join him.  By the time Hannah arrived, she could see Tia sitting by the campfire, and as they were friends before the verse they recognized each other.  Austin left the table, and di Vars explained things to Tia and Hannah, and then before we got much further they, too, said they had to leave.

I feel a bit foolish that I did not mention it to Navya, Cory, and Johanna, but perhaps they’ll find their way here somehow.  Corderro jogged my thinking, so I invited him, Steven, Austin, Hannah, and Tia to continue play on the M. J. Young Net Forum.  I know several of them wrote that down, but as I write this none of them have arrived.  That’s kind of a shame, because I know where I want to send several of them, but we’ll give them some time to find their way.

I’ve got one other aside.  Last year, within minutes of my arrival, I saw a girl in costume who would have made a good picture for my character papers for Lauren Hastings.  She looks a lot like most representations of Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft, so I often find pictures that work.  This year I saw someone, not quite as good but passable, again as I was headed for check-in.  Again I never saw her again.  It prompted my brain, though, to consider that I should look for people who might be suitable images for those character papers.  After all, Slade looks a lot like Thor, I’ve got a couple of American soldiers, someone might come as a sprite which would be good for Derek, Shella is a witch, and I’ve recently added a few characters including a dark-haired Arabian princess.  I saw no one the entire time who fit any of these images.  It was a bit disappointing in that regard, but then I’m not all that well versed in anime and recognized very few of the characters I did see.  Someone was Deadpool.  That’s about it.

When I got home, the household was hoping that since I had left the convention already I could run a game for them.  I somewhat wearily with apologies explained that the reason I was home was because I had to get some sleep and do the work driving that night, and then tackled what had to be done to be ready for that.

I must also thank Kate and Tris for holding down the kitchen in my absence.

Here’s hoping that I can do another convention next year, if not sooner.  I don’t know that I would say I have fun, but it is a high point in my time to be reminded that people like the game, even if it didn’t sell terribly well.

I think that about covers it all.  Thanks for reading, and thanks again to the convention for inviting me again.  Here’s hoping that I was not more trouble than I’m worth, and perhaps there will be another invitation next year.  It’s an interesting way to spend my birthday weekend.

Music

#248: The Hawkins Family

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #248, on the subject of The Hawkins Family.

Like Andraé Crouch and his sister Sandra, this family brought black gospel into contemporary Christian music–and they also put it on the charts on secular radio.

Within the black gospel world the name is Walter Hawkins and the Hawkins Family, or Walter Hawkins and the Family, Bishop Walter Hawkins noted for several albums, including the Love Alive series.  However, his older brother and pianist Edwin Hawkins separately formed The Edwin Hawkins Singers, and their recording of Oh Happy Day, a nineteenth-century spiritual, reached number four on the United States singles chart, number two in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, and number one in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.  (I’m sure we had one of his albums at the radio station, but I can’t figure out which one it was; we did not have a copy of the hit single.)  Edwin was involved in twice as many albums as his younger brother, although many of them as producer for someone else, or director of other musical ensembles.

The talent didn’t end there.  One of the memorable albums we had was the self-titled debut Tramaine, from Walter’s wife.  Its opening cut, Look At Me, was an upbeat jazz/scat influenced pleasure that felt right at home among contemporary Christian songs of the day and blended black gospel stylings into a bouncing rhythmic toe-tapper.

The leading black gospel artists of the day generally produced poor quality recordings, the muddied sounds of a choir and band recorded live in an empty hall with two microphones and too much ambiance.  The Hawkins family got beyond that, with technical quality in the recordings appropriate to the time, multiple-track recording and mixing.  You can hear the professionalism in the product–not just good singing and playing of good music, but good production values.  We were at times pressured to play certain leading black artists whose records were a bit of an embarrassment despite the quality of the music, but nothing by the Hawkins family was ever substandard.  Light Records did well with them, and we never hesitated to play what they presented.

*****

The series to this point has included:

  1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
  2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
  3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
  4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.
  5. #240:  Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.
  6. #242:  Disciple Andraé Crouch.
  7. #244: Missed The Archers.
  8. #246: The Secular Radio Hits.

Law and Politics

#247: The Homosexual Wedding Cake Case

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #247, on the subject of The Homosexual Wedding Cake Case.

The case, as decided by the United States Supreme Court, is MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD., ET AL. v. COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION ET AL., 584 U. S. ____ (2018), and it is one which I, at least, have eagerly anticipated.  It is the case in which the baker was convicted of violating the civil rights of a gay couple by refusing to design a wedding cake for them, on the grounds that it was an artistic expression which violated his rights of freedom of speech and religion.  It had been expected to help find the point at which religious objections to homosexuality would or would not stand against legal rights of homosexuals, although it does not seem to have done so.

The media has called this a “narrow” decision, and many have asked how it can be “narrow” if it is a 7-2 vote.  The narrowness is entirely in what was decided.  Virtually nothing concerning the balance between religious freedom and homosexual rights is solved by this case, which in its majority opinion decided only that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission seriously violated the protected religious freedom of the baker, Jack Phillips, and so its ruling could not stand.  It observed that in Colorado in the year these events occurred such a refusal was reasonably understood to be legal, although it might not be so now (because Colorado had not legitimized homosexual marriage at that time and has since done so).  However, the case is a slap in the face of progressivist atheists who want to force the opinions of religious conservatives out of the political and commercial arenas.

Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the court, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Breyer, Alito, Kagan, and Gorsuch–six votes for the majority opinion.  Justice Thomas filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, which gives seven votes for overturning the Colorado decision, and Justice Ginsberg dissented, joined by Justice Sotomayer–but the splintering went beyond that, as Justice Kagan wrote a concurring opinion in which Justice Breyer joined, and Justice Gorsuch wrote a concurring opinion in which Justice Alito joined, so we have five written opinions on the matter, and a very small sliver of agreement on the issues.

Justice Kennedy begins by clarifying that in all matters in which religious liberty is at issue, the State is required to be a neutral arbiter showing a respectful attitude for the expressed religious beliefs of the parties involved.  It is certainly possible that a businessman might be compelled to provide services to which he objects, provided that the law is religiously neutral and does not directly attack his beliefs.  The problem in the Masterpiece case is that far from neutrality there was evident animosity toward religion.  In the first hearing, one of the commissioners said that Phillips can believe “what he wants to believe” but cannot act on those beliefs “if he decides to do business in the state.”  The same commissioner restated that view moments later, according to the record, saying “[I]f a businessman wants to do business in the state and he’s got an issue with the—the law’s impacting his personal belief system, he needs to look at being able to compromise.”  At the next hearing, a different commissioner was recorded saying

I would also like to reiterate what we said in the hearing or the last meeting.  Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust, whether it be–I mean, we–we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination.  And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to–to use their religion to hurt others.

Kennedy noted that this twice disparages the baker’s religious beliefs, first by calling them “despicable”, and again by claiming they are mere rhetoric having no substance or sincerity.  None of the other commissioners present objected to these statements, and they were never repudiated in the record that included appeals courts in Colorado and an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Yet if we think this is just rhetoric, that somehow the expression of such hostility toward the baker’s religious views did not indicate judicial bias against him, Kennedy goes beyond this to observe that the same commission during the same period of time considered three other cases in which bakers who declined to make cakes for specific groups were cleared of any wrongdoing based on their claim that it would have compelled them to make statements they regarded offensive.  In all three cases, the bakers had been asked to make cakes expressing anti-homosexual views, and refused to do so.  The commission in those cases concluded that the bakers could not be compelled to express opinions they considered offensive.  In this case, however, the commission claimed that the opinion expressed on the cake would be attributed to the purchasers of the cake, not the baker, and so his speech was not protected.  Further, in the other cases the commission said that the fact that these bakers were willing to sell other products to the customers absolved them of the charge of refusing to do business with those customers, but in this case they said that Phillips’ willingness to sell birthday cakes, cupcakes, cookies, even shower cakes, was irrelevant given his refusal to make a wedding cake for them.  The lower court, it was noted, dealt with this in a footnote, to the effect that the cakes requested in the other cases would have required expressing offensive statements, but the one in this case did not–which, as Kennedy notes, is passing judgment on the religious values of the baker by declaring that what he finds offensive is not offensive.

Thus the case that Phillips’ won is in essence that his religious views were mistreated by the judicial process, which should have accorded them greater respect–particularly as the commission for the protection of civil rights in this case is also charged with protecting the civil rights of religious groups.  The point is made that this case says nothing about how such cases might be decided in the future, but that the religious views and liberties of individuals involved must be respected and treated impartially by the government.

So, what about all those other opinions?

Justice Kagan makes the point that the decision is limited specifically because it is based on the express bias of the adjudicators.  She asserts that the commission could have treated the religion issue respectfully and impartially and still reached the same result, and that the other cases can be distinguished on the basis that the bakers would not have made cakes with those messages for any customer, but Masterpiece would have made wedding cakes for heterosexual customers.

It is a slim distinction, which Gorsuch rejects in his concurring opinion.  He first notes that when religious rights are threatened by legal action, strict scrutiny applies–the government has a heavy burden to prove complete neutrality in regard to religion in the case.  He is satisfied that the majority opinion reaches that result.  As to the cake, Gorsuch agrees with the baker in distinguishing a heterosexual wedding cake from a homosexual wedding cake, against Kagan’s view that a wedding cake is a wedding cake, and the distinction is prejudicial against the customer.  Yet Kagan asserts that requiring a baker to make an anti-homosexual cake with messages the baker finds offensive is something that baker would not do for anyone, and thus distinct–but in this case, she is making a distinction where in the other case she is generalizing.  That is, the baker is being asked to make a cake with a message written on it, and if the message is not an expression of the baker’s beliefs he cannot discriminate based on the message.  If a baker can say he will make a cake with the message, “Congratulations on your fiftieth wedding anniversary and enjoy your cruise” but he won’t make a cake with the message “Homosexual perverts will not possess God’s kingdom”, he is discriminating based on his own beliefs, making one message cake for one customer but not making another message cake for another customer.

Before Gorsuch explores this he notes that the commission changed its legal standards between the two kinds of cases.  In both cases, the persons most likely to purchase the type of cake in question were members of a protected class.  In the case in which the commission agreed with the bakers that the message was offensive, they said that there had to be a showing of actual animus toward the class for the charge to stand; in the case in which they disagreed with the baker’s views, they said that such animus could be presumed by the recognition of the effect on the protected class.

Justice Thomas agrees with the court in its assessment of the religious prejudice, but he asserts that the baker’s freedom of speech is also impinged in this case.  He notes that the Colorado Court of Appeals agreed that Phillips’ work was expressive, crafting individual wedding cakes for customers, meeting with the couple and working to express them in the artistic project that is their cake.  He demonstrates that a wedding cake itself is a communication that a marriage is occurring.  Ultimately, he holds that freedom of speech must allow persons to refuse to create anything that expresses endorsement of a view with which they disagree, even if it is a culturally favored view.

Justice Ginsburg disagrees.  She says that notwithstanding Phillips’ claims, most observers would not recognize a wedding cake as expressing a message, and certainly not a message from the baker.  She says that the evidence of bias is insufficient and there is no significant hostility toward religion here.  She then makes the same argument made by Kagan, that a wedding cake is a wedding cake, which as has been shown is flawed.

In conclusion, the case does rule that religious opinion, including specifically Christian opinion that homosexual marriage is immoral, is protected and should be treated with respect.  It does not rule that Christian bakers can en masse refuse to make cakes for homosexual weddings, but that if they do so any legal action taken against them must be adjudicated impartially and with respect for the religious views of the bakers.  Depending on the circumstances, the baker might still be compelled to make such a cake or punished for refusing to do so.

The conflict continues.

Music

#246: The Secular Radio Hits

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #246, on the subject of The Secular Radio Hits.

I suppose we can call it one of the weird side effects of the Jesus Movement, that there were a few songs that made it on popular secular radio that people thought were Christian.  Most of them were not, but they are worth a quick look.

Lawrence Welk once described Brewer & Shipley‘s One Toke Over the Line as a “modern spiritual”; it is evident that he didn’t understand this song about having gone too far with a drug, written by a couple of folk singers when they were high, entirely as a joke which put them on the charts partly because even radio station program directors had no clue what it meant.  It is not a Christian song despite its references to “sweet Jesus” and “sweet Mary”.  (The Lawrence Welk show video is hysterical for its complete ignorance of the meaning of the song.)

Although many Christian artists have covered it as a song about Jesus, James Taylor’s You’ve Got a Friend is entirely about human friendship.  That’s not a bad thing; it’s even a Christian thing.  However, it is not a Christian song, but a song written (and originally recorded) by Carole King, in response to the line in Taylor’s Fire and Rain about not being able to find a friend.

Paul McCartney has said that The Beatles hit Let It Be probably would not have been half so successful if it had not been that coincidentally his own mother’s name was Mary.  The religious connection is read into it by the hearers; this was just advice that his mother had given him growing up.

Alan Parsons, whose The Alan Parsons Project song Eye in the Sky was their greatest hit, has complained that his lyricist Eric Woolfson writes terribly obscure lyrics.  This song is about dropping a lover, and reportedly heavily influenced by Woolfson’s obsession with the ceiling cameras in casinos.

One of the great rock classics which was never released as a single but makes great popular songs lists anyway, Led Zeppelin‘s Stairway to Heaven seems on its face to have something to do with, well, getting to heaven.  It probably does, but not in any Christian way, the composers being influenced by writings about supposed ancient Celtic magic.

You can be excused if you think Norman Greenbaum’s biggest hit Spirit In the Sky was a Christian song.  Unfortunately, Greenbaum is Jewish, from an Orthodox family.  He wanted the song to capture the imagery of the westerns on which he was raised, the notion of “dying with your boots on”, and he says he used Christian imagery because he had to use something and that made sense in the setting.

Kerry Livgren was asked whether Kansas‘ Dust in the Wind was a Christian song.  He says not really.  It was written during his search for meaning, which he documented in his book (co-authored by Kenneth Boa) Seeds of Change.  I read the book decades back, and remember only fragments, but Livgren became a Christian, and Kansas started doing songs with lyrics Christian enough that vocalist Steve Walsh was uncomfortable and left the band, to be replaced by John Elefante.  Eventually Livgren and Dave Hope left to form AD, and after the band dissolved Elefante reportedly had a career as a CCM soloist I never heard, and to serve as producer for several Christian rock bands I did.  I think Livgren also released a solo album, but I don’t remember it.

One other song will be mentioned here, because it made #3 on the pop charts in the U.S., #1 in Canada, and was a genuine Christian song.  Ocean (pictured) is usually identified as a Canadian Gospel band, and although Put Your Hand in the Hand was a cover it was their version of the song which was heard by most people.  Unfortunately, the business side of the business cheated the artists of a lot of money, and they gave up on the music world without producing another hit.

So in conclusion the Jesus movement did have some impact on putting Christian music on secular radio, but not really all that much.  Oh, there eventually was more, but we’ll get to that.

*****

The series to this point has included:

  1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
  2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
  3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
  4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.
  5. #240:  Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.
  6. #242:  Disciple Andraé Crouch.
  7. #244: Missed The Archers.

Bible and Theology

#245: Unspoken Prayer Requests

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #245, on the subject of Unspoken Prayer Requests.

In Matthew 18:19f, Jesus says (in the Updated New American Standard Bible), Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.

From this we quite rightly have prayer meetings, gatherings in which believers share their concerns, needs, troubles, and pray for each other, believing that God will answer.  This is good.

However, it often happens at such meetings, and in church services when prayer requests are elicited, that someone will make what they have come to call an “unspoken” request.  It comes down to “I want you to pray with me, but I don’t want to tell you why.”  I have some serious theological problems with that notion, which I will explain here–but I recognize the importance of being able to ask for prayer without sharing secrets, so I’ll address that as well.

To begin, when we agree together in asking, as that verse says, it inherently means that we are agreeing, that is, knowingly asking for the same thing.  It is difficult on its face to see how I can agree with you in prayer about something you’re not telling me.  Of course, you will say, God knows what it is that you are asking, and I can just agree with that.  Yet can I?  I think scripture says otherwise.  In I Corinthians 14:16, after discussing the notion of someone praying in tongues in the presence of someone who cannot interpret and therefore does not know what is being said, Paul writes Otherwise if you bless in the spirit only (that is, in tongues), how will the one who fills the place of the ungifted say the “Amen”…?  “Amen” means “I agree” or “so be it”; it is in essence saying “yes” to what has just been said.  Paul’s point here is that if the other person doesn’t know what you just prayed, he can’t agree with it.

If that applies to praying in tongues, where something actually has been said but I don’t know what it is, then certainly it must apply in “unspoken” prayer requests, where nothing has been said but I am asked to agree.  I can’t very well agree with a prayer without knowing what is prayed.  What am I praying?  “Lord, I agree in asking that nothing be done for this person”?

Further, in II Corinthians 1:11, Paul talks about people agreeing in prayer while apparently great distances apart from each other, saying you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.  That is a very significant statement, because it partly explains why God is more likely to answer a prayer where people have agreed than a petition from an individual.  God wants the credit.  When He does something on our behalf, He wants us to thank Him, and the more people thank Him the better He likes it.  It’s called “giving God the glory for what He has done”.

That means that any time you ask anyone else to pray for you, you take to yourself two obligations.  The second, the one obvious in this context, is that you are obliged to return to that person, or those persons, and tell them about God’s answer to their prayers so that they can give thanks.  If you’re not going to do that, there’s no reason for God to bother answering.  The other is inferred from it:  if you want people to be able to give thanks for the answer to their prayers, you have to tell them for what they are praying.  If I am praying some sort of “I agree with whatever it is he wants even though I don’t know what it is” prayer, then I’m not in a position to know whether that prayer has been answered.

Yet of course we should bring our burdens to each other and pray for each other and get prayer from each other.  Still, we are all going to have difficulties which we rightly prefer not to share publicly.  Sometimes we are going to have prayers that involve other people, and would require the sharing of secrets that are not ours to divulge.  Sometimes our prayers will involve matters that are delicate, which would become a root of gossip or disrupt our lives or the lives of others were they to be revealed.  Sometimes the need is embarrassing, and it would be better for all not to speak of it openly.  How, then, do we get prayer from others in these kinds of situations?

One option, of course, is to choose your prayer support more carefully.  The prayers of a close friend, a pastor or priest, someone you can trust to keep a secret, are as good as those of a crowd of strangers, and you can share your situation with these people in sufficient detail that they know what they are praying.

Another option is to consider what it is that you really need, and remove the lurid details from the request while still making the request:  “I am facing some difficult decisions and need wisdom.”  “I have to make some hard choices and need strength to do what I need to do.”  We can pray for you to have wisdom, strength, guidance, patience, endurance, joy, whatever it is that you actually need in the midst of whatever you’re not telling us.  You can return and tell us how it worked later, and again omit the details that aren’t relevant to our ability to give thanks for the answer.

If somehow you can’t do either of those things, then maybe you need to consider what it is that you’re asking, and whether it is something God wants for you.  Unspoken requests make sense when you’re asking for something good and right in the midst of something difficult and embarrassing, in which case you can skip the context and get to the request.  They make no sense when you’re asking us to agree in prayer with you for something we would immediately recognize is not something to ask of God.  That is probably not the case for most “unspoken” prayer requests–but how would we know?

So I will gladly pray for you (I’ve said as much previously, and given my conditions), but I want to know what I’m praying.

Music

#244: Missed The Archers

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #244, on the subject of Missed The Archers.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew there was a Christian band called The Archers.  I knew quite a bit, actually–that it was a sister and two brothers of that surname with a backup band behind them.  I had seen somewhere an album cover of three faces, one of them a smiling blonde girl.  I think I never heard them, but somehow I must have done so because I had a notion of what they sounded like, and now scrounging through videos of their songs I find that notion to have been if not strictly correct at least comporting with what I would have thought at the time.

That assessent was that they had a pop sound that did not really appeal to me nor to most of my peers.

That’s not a particularly fair assessment, in a sense.  In researching this I listened to more than a few of their old songs, and they did a broad range of pop sounds from Gary Puckett and the Union Gap to the early disco-era Bee Gees to a bit of funk.  Their music was technically well-performed, with tight vocals and solid instrumental support, and they had some excellent lyrics in the mix.  Even so, when I try to listen to them while driving my wife always wants to change the music to someone else.  While they were probably recognizable from their voices, it never felt like they had anything uniquely original about their sound–of many of the artists of the time, there was always something about the way they played the guitar or the piano, or the vocal arrangements and frills, or the musical stylings, that so characterized them that you could recognize them when they were providing backup on someone else’s album.  The Archers thus were arguably very good, but not very interesting, that I recall.  They were a Light Records act back in the 1970s, and apparently kept going for quite some time, because as we noted that’s what musicians do.

Since I can’t really say I know any of their songs despite having recognized some (many of which I thought or even knew I heard from other artists), I’m not linking any videos here.  However, they have a MySpace page entitled The Archers | Listen and Stream Free Music, Albums, New Releases, Photos, Video, which I have discovered but not explored, so if you are an Archers fan, they must have been out there not very long ago (since the MySpace rebuild, anyway) and you might be able to catch up on what they’ve been doing.

For my part, I’ve got a lot of artists ahead who interest me much more.

*****

The series to this point has included:

  1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
  2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
  3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
  4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.
  5. #240:  Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.
  6. #242:  Disciple Andraé Crouch.

Books by the Author

#243: Verser Redirects

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #243, on the subject of Verser Redirects.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have now completed publishing my first three novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, and For Better or Verse, in serialized form on the web (those links will take you to the table of contents for each book).  Along with each book there was also a series of web log posts looking at the writing process, the decisions and choices that delivered the final product; those posts are indexed with the chapters in the tables of contents pages.  Now as I am posting the fourth, Spy Verses,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about what I was planning to do later in the book–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued.  You might want to read the referenced chapters before reading this look at them.  Links below (the section headings) will take you to the specific individual chapters being discussed, and there are (or will soon be) links on those pages to bring you back hopefully to the same point here.

There is also a section of the site, Multiverser Novel Support Pages, in which I have begun to place materials related to the novels beginning with character papers for the major characters, giving them at different stages as they move through the books.

This is the fourth mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 64 through 84.  These were the previous mark Joseph “young” web log posts covering this book:

  1. #218:  Versers Resume (which provided this kind of insight into the first twenty-one chapters);
  2. #226:  Versers Adapt (covering chapters 22 through 42);
  3. #235:  Versers Infiltrate (covering chapters 43 through 63).

History of the series, including the reason it started, the origins of character names and details, and many of the ideas, are in those earlier posts, and won’t be repeated here.

Chapter 64, Brown 127

The scene so obviously lends itself to that stock moment Derek describes that I had to include the description–and then ignore it.  Bomb defusing is of course very nerve wracking no matter what happens, but the idea that it did not go the way it goes in the movies seemed to be worth including.

There is of course an irony in the comment that Derek’s life is not being written by some author.

The bathroom reference is because they’re almost never mentioned in games and you only see them in movies if something dramatic is going to happen there–a fight scene, a seduction, a confrontation.  It was a way of humanizing Derek, who has been running around chasing terrorists probably for a few hours, and now wants a bathroom.

Chapter 65, Kondor 112

I knew when I set up the “section five of the war code” segment that even though Bob would be expected to know what that meant, no one would be surprised to have Joe ask, and that was how I would get it communicated.

The race war does make it unlikely that there would be infiltrators; any spying would have to be done by people who obviously didn’t belong where they were.

Chapter 66, Brown 128

Derek’s report of his actions in the raid would have sounded like fantasy at first, as he talks about changing forms.  Of course, the fact that he is serious about it and others in the room take it seriously undoubtedly helps give it credibility.

By this time I had made the change (a few Brown chapters before) of resequencing the book to pull Derek’s story forward.  I now knew I wanted another spy adventure of some sort, something different, but spent a lot of time trying to figure out what.  In the meantime, I pulled his loneliness back to the forefront.

Chapter 67, Slade 111

The notion that a verser can claim to be anyone but cannot usually prove his identity in his present universe often appears in play, but I should note that I first saw it in a Peter Davison Doctor Who episode (Black Orchid) in which a murder had occurred and he was faced with the problem of explaining his identity to the local police.  I had to consider what Bob had that might suggest the truth of his claimed identity.  I remembered the ring, but for Bob it was simply the chest at this point.

Chapter 68, Kondor 113

My uncertainty about Derek’s next mission slowed his story, and for the first time in quite a while I let both Bob and Joe continue their stories before returning to him.

It is difficult to know exactly what Joe thinks of Bob’s story about releasing the djinni from the bottle.  He obviously thinks it a fanciful tale, but does not consider what that means in terms of the fact that Bob presents it as if it were true.  That is, did something happen that caused Bob to believe the story of the djinn lord being released from the bottle, or did Bob create the story and disseminate it pretending it to be true, for some other reason?  Of course, the existence of the antique bottle adds color to the story, and causes what the British would call “the punters” to accept the tale more readily.

The wind responds in support of its ally, as well as it is able in this lower-magic world.  Joe of course attributes this to happenstance.

Chapter 69, Brown 129

I was stalling a bit, but also trying to provide credibility for improved skills in some training time.  I was also stepping away from the Kondor/Slade story, in part because I was not certain where it was going and in part because I thought it had created some suspense to hold the reader for a moment.

I selected what I thought were probably the major languages in the world of modern espionage.  I specifically did not include some obvious ones as not really that significant in the kind of work he was doing.

Chapter 70, Slade 112

I was playing this by ear to a significant degree.  When the general asked Slade whether he objected to keeping the inquiry open, I thought immediately that if Slade objected it might close the inquiry, and I needed the story to continue; but then by the time I started writing this I realized that there was bound to be an appeals process, and a closed inquiry would probably mean taking it to another level.

Bob’s perspective on history makes the women’s suffrage movement “ancient history”.  He was never interested in the world before the present, so he doesn’t know much about it.

Chapter 71, Brown 130

I thought about what I could do next, and decided that I should send Derek on a foreign mission–let him use his passports and such.  I thought that an embassy or consulate would be the right choice, because it wouldn’t require him to be better at another language than he had any right to be.  I thought that investigating a security breach or leak was a reasonable choice, in part because I couldn’t remember any movies where that was the hook so I wouldn’t be tempted to follow someone else’s plot.

I chose Romania for a couple reasons.  One is it’s the only country I have ever visited for any length of time–three weeks back in 1972.  I picked up a few words most of which I have since completely forgotten (I can say “what does this cost” and “thank you”, I think, maybe “you’re welcome”).  There’s also the moment in The Thomas Crown Affair (the newer version) when the cop asks insurance investigator Banning if she speaks any Romanian, and she says, “Who would ever bother with Romanian?” and proceeds to talk to the criminal in Russian.  I actually wrote about that in a Game Ideas Unlimited piece about skills which I do not now remember beyond that reference.

Every fictional spy organization has a section that handles special equipment; I needed a name for mine, so I called it “Gear”.  That way I wasn’t stealing from anyone.

I got a kick out of the bit about the British secret service saying everyone else in the world drives on the wrong side of the road.

Chapter 72, Kondor 114

I kept thinking that Joe’s overriding story was going to be about his racial prejudice.  The problem is that every time I brought it forward at all, it began to resolve, and here it pretty much comes to its completion.  Thus I keep thinking that Joe needs a story, and I don’t have one for him–although his character development has been genuinely positive in so many ways.

Chapter 73, Brown 131

The Coke® and Pepsi® observation is one I made on my 1972 visit to Romania, where we also stopped at Prague and bought Coke® in the airport, but then found only Pepsi® during our three-week stay in Romania.  The rest I deduced at the time.

I decided that the best way for Derek to avoid talking about his cover background was to include in the cover that he was not interested in diplomatic service and didn’t want to be here.  That immediately suggested that he must have something else he wants to be doing instead, some different future for himself.  Rock star came to mind, and artist, but he had no skills in those areas; comic book creator suffered from a similar problem, and I did not think that author would be the kind of thing that fit the profile.  I was about to consult with family and fans on the subject when it occurred to me that the big deal today is video games, and Derek certainly can pass himself off as an aspiring computer game designer.

The idea that you get promoted to the place where you are no longer competent is one of the stated corollaries of the Peter Principle; I was not certain at the time that I wrote it, but I was certain that Derek wouldn’t know the origin of the idea.

Chapter 74, Slade 113

The notion that the secret weapons project was at a secret location provided a solution to the problem of Bob not telling the general where he was going; versers have to get good at explanations that explain why they don’t explain more.

Chapter 75, Kondor 115

I wasn’t sure what should happen in this story at this point, so I decided to get my characters to discuss it and see what they thought.

Joe’s prejudice against people who believe in God and magic is growing into a new problem, but I don’t see yet how to resolve it.

This was a strange point in the editorial process.  I had written Kondor stories through 118 and Slade stories also through 118, taken Joe into another world and brought Bob to a place where I was not at all certain what to do with him next, and had then shifted all the Brown stories forward and was filling in his events.  I knew that I had another significant Brown story to tell that was still forming in my mind (the Romanian leak) but didn’t know what was going to happen; I was still in the mode of rushing his story because it was the different world.  I was beginning to think that Bob was going to vanish from the book for a while, because after his upcoming confrontation with Mlambo (the last chapter I had already written) I had nothing.  I abruptly decided that it was time to skip a Brown chapter and bring a Kondor chapter forward, so that Derek would seem to be in stall mode for a bit.  It didn’t really help me with the writing time, because this chapter had already been written and simply had to be slotted into the space and properly numbered, and I would still have to write Derek’s next chapter next anyway, but I thought it would work better in the flow of the book.

Chapter 76, Brown 132

I was a bit stymied myself, and I remembered that one way I use to figure out what the character should do is to have the character try to figure out what he should do, so I put Derek into the mode of trying to identify what kind of person might be the leak.  I thought of four good possibilities, and left it at that, partly because at the time I was late for something else and had to type quickly.

Chapter 77, Slade 114

At this point I’m working through the options by having the characters discuss them.  I’m still not certain what I’m going to do.
It is worth mentioning that I had written this chapter probably several months before I had written the previous chapter in which Derek is doing much the same thing (considering the possibilities).  I’m not sure that I didn’t get the idea of doing it for Derek from the fact that I had noticed it upcoming here, but they were done quite some time apart, and this one first.

When Kondor said that if there were gods controlling their destinies, it would be time to verse out, I did not think it was going to happen any time soon.  It happens to be coincidental, but very telling that what Joe says the multiverse would be like if there were gods happens to happen, and he ignores the exact evidence that he suggested would support such a belief.

Chapter 78, Brown 133

I now had shifted the burden such that I needed to write a lot of Derek’s story in order to slot it between Bob and Joe.  As I struggled with how to proceed with Derek, I remembered thinking, and writing somewhere, that the way to write a mystery is to begin with the conclusion:  decide who did what, how and why, and then work to what clues would be left behind in that case, and then how the detective discovers them and assembles the crime from them.  Yet when I wrote the mystery of the vorgo section of Old Verses New I did not actually do it that way.  I think I started that way–I was going to have the former student be the criminal, who stole the vorgo because his wife had recently died and he hoped he could revive her–but my story managed to go rather directly to him and I thought then that it was too easy, so I changed my criminal as I was closing in on the solution.  (This also gave me the inspiration, eventually, for the game version in which there were six possible suspects and slightly different clue sets for each.)  So now as I faced what is a mystery for Derek, I was floundering in part because I didn’t know who should be the villain–indeed, I didn’t even at this point have a cast of characters for it.  So I was going to have to develop that to get to the solution.

I had begun with a British consulate, but when I started doing online research I discovered that there was a British embassy in Bucharest.  I sent them an e-mail asking for some idea of the staffing and housing there, and got a very nice reply saying that for security reasons they could not tell me any of that–but then, I had also browsed their web site and their Flickr site, so I got a fair amount of flavor from those.  After the fact, my wife said I should not have sent the note, because it was obvious they couldn’t answer my questions and likely that I got myself added to some sort of terrorist watch list for my efforts.

In the time immediately following the writing of the previous Brown chapter I was turning over the possibilities in my mind, and realized that there was a fifth possible motive for the leak.  Someone might do it strictly for the excitement.  I wondered if that was plausible, and also whether it was possible to catch such a person, and if so how.

Chapter 79, Slade 115

I decided that I would move Joe to another world now, and do it simply by having Shella notice that he was no longer there.  I’d cover how it happened retrospectively later, and not have to deal with it directly.

The thing about the wife knowing that the husband is awake before the husband does comes from my personal experience.

I was still undecided about what I would do with Bob and Shella.  On one hand, there wasn’t much I could do with them in this world; on the other hand, I didn’t have any good ideas for a next world for them and there probably were a few things they could do here, if I could think of them.

Chapter 80, Brown 134

It took me several days to get a chance to discuss the idea that the leak might be done by someone seeking excitement with someone else.  It wound up being Evan, my fourth son, who reminded me that in the digital world hackers frequently do it for the thrill, for the ability to prove to themselves and, anonymously, to others that they can.

I took that computer connection and sort of reversed it:  I had come to the idea that Derek got a thrill from hacking systems from that discussion, but I used that recognition on his part as a bridge to the idea that his spy might be doing it for the thrill.  Most of the discussion about how to run the computer part was there to set up that jump.

Chapter 81, Kondor 116

I decided to put Joe in a not-quite-modern military base somewhere, and set up some kind of investigation of something.  The general look is probably nineteen fifties or sixties, and his camouflage fits.

Colonel Roberts is white.  The Adjutant, Lieutenant Philip Vargas, is white; the Exec is black, Captain David Nye.

The trick with “how do you pronounce the name” doesn’t always work, but it often does.

I don’t know why I put together the name “David Nye”; I feel like I’ve heard it somewhere, but the only Nye I can place is the science guy, Bill.

He gives himself the rank of captain, because he needs a rank and preferably of a mid-level officer.  It needs to be high enough to be respected but not so high that it’s easy to trace.

The list of common names includes my own name and my wife’s maiden name along with some others I’ve encountered multiple times in my life.

When I started thinking about integrating Kondor into this world socially (at what was chapter 102) I thought of poker games, and then that he couldn’t play because he had no money in this world and no way to get it, and that reminded me that he was wearing a lot of jewelry.  So I added the end bit about stowing the jewelry somewhere.

Chapter 82, Slade 116

Having separated Slade from Kondor, it no longer made sense to go to Derek every other chapter, particularly as I was at this point writing Brown chapters to catch up and had a new story to tell for Joe.  So the press of Brown chapters slowed a bit.

The questions about how SEP invisibility works when people who are not present are watching remotely is always a tricky one, and gets raised at this point but not answered.

I decided they would get into the bunker without incident, but they of course could not know that until they did.

Chapter 83, Brown 135

About this point I pondered an idea of giving one of the staffers an androgynous name, such as Terry Farnsworth, and having the gender be different in the London listing than in the Bucharest one.  At first I was thinking that it was a replacement, the solution to the puzzle; but then, as hard as the puzzle had been, that would have made it too easy.  Then I thought it might be that it was the same person, probably Terry as a woman who at some point disguised herself as a man to advance her career.  Then I couldn’t decide whether she was listed as a woman in the original file but changed it to a man somewhere along the way and was pretending to be a man, or whether she had originally listed herself as a man years ago when it was harder for women to advance, but had since changed it in the local file when it was no longer necessary to pretend.  But there was another problem:  the facial recognition software would detect that Terry was Terry regardless of what gender was in the photo.  That would be exactly the kind of disguise the software would “see through”, and that meant that Derek would find it not by running facial recognition but by running more detailed data comparison–and if his image recognition program told him that all the images matched, he probably wouldn’t go deeper on the data.

I was still musing on this for several days, and then had the thought that someone might leak information for love.  I wondered whether Derek would think of that, but then I thought perhaps he would be smitten with someone at the embassy, and at that point I envisioned a daughter of the ambassador, perhaps about fifteen years old.  Then I thought that it might be plausible for her to be the leak, that the Romanians had a man perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three years old who looked young for his age, who had effectively wooed or seduced the ambassador’s daughter, and she brought information to him because she thought he loved her.  Derek might discover this because the boy would wind up an imagined rival, and he would have investigated.  That might work.

I decided to bring in the girl, but now I needed to give her a name, and that was problematic.  Whatever name I gave her either would connect too closely to the real British embassy in Romania or break the connection to reality.  I did some research, but could find no indication that the current ambassador, Paul Brummell, had any family–and in any case I did not want this to be quite so recent as his appearance in Romania in 2014.  I had a list of previous persons in that post, and considered Quinton Quayle, who served 2002 through 2006, which is a lot closer to the time I wanted, but also determined that he had two sons, no daughters–and since Quayle was the name of an American Vice President and Presidential candidate, I thought I should avoid that connection.  Martin Harris, the ambassador previous to Brummell (2010-2014), had a daughter named Tabitha; but despite the huge number of “Tabitha Harris” entries obtained from Google, it struck me as an unusual name which connected with the British Romanian embassy could get me in trouble.  So I decided to invent another Harris daughter, or perhaps replace one with the other, and since the only Tabitha I recall ever was the daughter on Bewitched, I named my girl Samantha Endora Harris, after the other female characters in that family.

Once I had the name Samantha, Sammie was a simple step.  Most Samanthas seem to go by Sam, but I remember the sister of one of my sons’ friends was called Sammie.

When I originally put the bug on Sammie it was “in” her purse, and audio was sufficient for my purposes; when I started on the second Romanian story I needed Derek to have collected GSPS positions and some images, so I decided that the bug here had those capabilities.  Video was obviously problematic, though, because for a camera to see out it would have to be visible.  I abruptly resolved this when I was moving it from “in” to “on” by deciding that as a fifteen year old girl she had a lot of bric-a-brac decorating her purse, so a small bug pinned to the outside could hide in the clutter.

Chapter 84, Kondor 117

I’m building the new world as I go; I had decided almost nothing about it at this point, but that it was a mid twentieth century sort of variant earth.

The name Porthos comes from The Three Musketeers; I decided that I could use someone equivalent historically to Lafayette, perhaps.

The flag is not yet clearly identified beyond that it has some number of white stars on a blue field and red and white stripes.  The country is probably “The United States of America” but calls itself “United”, not “America”, a small difference.

I added the part about stashing his jewelry when I did the backwrite to better integrate him in the world.

This has been the fourth behind the writings look at Spy Verses.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will continue to publish this novel and the behind the writings posts, and prepare the fifth novel to follow it.

Music

#242: Disciple Andraé Crouch

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #242, on the subject of Disciple Andraé Crouch.

In 1973 Andraé (often spelled André) Crouch released an album recorded live in Carnegie Hall the previous autumn.  I was in that audience for that performance, and remember the excitement of the performance that had a mostly young white audience on its feet.

Prior to that I had never heard of him; I wasn’t at Carnegie Hall to hear him.  He was one of six performers that night; he wasn’t even the only one recording an album.  I was there because I was a big fan of the fourth act, Rock Garden, and because I had long wanted to hear the third, The Maranatha Singers, and because this was, in its own way, a moment in history.  New Milford’s Maranatha Church of the Nazarene had sponsored the first major multi-artist Christian rock concert in the northeast, precursor to–well, that’s a bit of history in itself.

The church, home of the Maranatha Coffeehouse and Maranatha Band, decided to attempt to run a concert in Carnegie Hall, and so completely oversold the hall that they filled the large church across the street.  I don’t remember what they called these, but it was the first of, if I recall correctly, four such concerts over the next several months.  The second I know I attended, but of it cannot remember more than that it was originally intended to be in Madison Square Garden, but as that proved too ambitious it was moved to the smaller Felt Forum there.  I do not recall the third at all, but the fourth was held in three different cities and featured then-popular premillenial author and speaker Hal Lindsey (The Late Great Planet Earth).  I always perceived them as the precursor to what I think was the first east coast Woodstock-like Christian rock festival, Jesus ’73, held that summer.  I didn’t make it there, but my friend Jack Haberer took my cassette recorder, a stack of tapes and a batch of batteries, and brought back teachings from such people as Stuart Briscoe and Tom Skinner, which I listened to time and again for many years.  This was the beginning of that.

Of course, Crouch’s involvement was in a sense incidental to that.  Still, he was a major artist for decades, winning seven Grammies and six Dove Awards and several other recognitions.

What Andraé did was something like what The Imperials did from the Southern Gospel direction:  he brought the stylings of Black Gospel into Contemporary Christian Music.  The way the music would end and then abruptly restart to sing the chorus again, the soul counterpoint vocals, these were mostly new to the mostly young mostly white Christian audiences of the Jesus Movement.

It actually bothers me to say that, because I read a review of the concert a few days after I attended it, and the critic credited the excitement there to those things.  I want to say that Andraé had an unquestionable anointing in his music.  God clearly gave him a gift–and the story has been told about that gift.

The story is that Reverend Crouch’s church had no piano player, and were praying about what to do about their unaccompanied music.  Suddenly, unexpectedly, the Reverend called his grade-school boy to the front, and said, “Andraé, if God gave you the gift of music, would you use it for his glory?”  The eleven-year-old Andraé said yes, the church prayed, and two weeks later he began playing the piano in the church–and continued playing for decades.  It was rumored that eventually someone attempted to teach him to read music, and he couldn’t grasp it, although eventually he managed to get past the basics to work more broadly in the music industry.

I never owned an Andraé Crouch album; I’m not sure I heard one until Finally was delivered to the radio station.  However, I knew quite a few of his songs.  I taught the Luther College Agape Singers to sing Jesus Is the Answer, and still today I often find myself singing fragments of It Won’t Be Long–I love the part, Count the years as months, count the months as weeks, count the weeks as days, any day now we’ll be going home.  I remember singing Through It All (this video includes Andraé telling the story about receiving the gift of music) while paddling through rapids on rivers in the Adirondacks and on the Delaware.  Looking over his discography, I immediately recall The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power, I Don’t Know Why Jesus Loved Me, and My Tribute (To God Be The Glory).  Even people who weren’t fans knew some of his songs; some of those wound up in my aunt’s Southern Baptist hymnal, and Jimmy Swaggart (who preached against any possibility that God could use contemporary Christian music) recorded at least one that I recall.

His twin sister Sandra (behind him in the featured photo) sang with him in the early days and also had an illustrious career, with a Grammy of her own and several solo albums, but I never heard her outside of her work with The Disciples, the name of the band for most of his early career.  He was embraced as one of the Contemporary Christian artists of the time, and appeared on the later Keith Green tribute album First Love with quite a few other artists in our series.

His first album was released in 1968; he died in 2015.  Between those times, he contributed a great deal to Contemporary Christian music and to music generally, and to the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

*****

The series to this point has included:

  1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
  2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
  3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
  4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.
  5. #240:  Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.

Law and Politics

#241: Deportation of "Dangerous" Felons

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #241, on the subject of Deportation of “Dangerous” Felons.

The United States Supreme Court decided a case entited Sessions v. Dimaya (84 U. S. ____ (2018)) which has created a bit of a stir.  The basics of the case are that the defendant/respondent Dimaya (pictured) is a long-time legal resident alien twice convicted of burglary under California law, and Immigration and Naturalization Services decided to deport him under a law that permits the deportation of any non-citizen who commits an “aggravated felony”, as defined by 18 U. S. C. §16, which includes the wording “any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.”  The majority opinion, written by Justice Kagan, held that that provision was “void for vagueness”, relying on a previous case which considered similar language in another statute.

What has the legal news world buzzing is that Justice Gorsuch concurred with most of that opinion, and with the judgment, although he also wrote a separate concurring opinion explaining his position.  Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas both wrote dissenting opinions, and the court split five-four, Gorsuch viewed as the swing vote in a ruling that otherwise had the liberal members of the court in the majority.

There is much about the case that is interesting, and some that is at least confusing, as it raises many varied legal issues and viewpoints.

The argument of the majority seems to be that there is no way to tell whether burglary is an aggravated felony.  The majority says that the statute would require the court to consider not the elements of the crime itself, nor the specifics of the facts of the case, but the “ordinary case”, and then demonstrates how foolish it is to attempt to identify the “ordinary case” of a wide range of serious felonies.  For example, is the ordinary case of kidnapping an armed ruffian grabbing a victim off the street at gunpoint and forcing him into a van to hold for ransom, or a non-custodial parent quietly picking up a child from school?  It becomes impossible to tell, they maintain, whether any given crime, in the “ordinary case”, is necessarily likely to be violent.

Already I am confused.

When I was prepping for the bar exam a quarter century back, I had to learn a list of what was I think ten “dangerous felonies”.  I remember the list, which included both actual and attempted versions of each crime, as including murder (intentional homicide), robbery (theft by force or threat of force), assault (threat of force), arson, rape, and riot–six out of ten, not too bad, and was burglary one of the ones I missed?  A quick internet search finds a felony murder list (well described at that link) to include kidnapping, rape, arson, robbery, and, yes, burglary.  It sounds to me like the Common Law recognizes burglary as a potentially dangerous felony.

Of course, therein lies part of the rub.  Burglary has a Common Law definition, but also a myriad of statutory definitions.  The Court seemed to think that the California statute under which Dimaya was convicted was broad enough to cover dishonest door-to-door salesmen, and that the question of whether such crimes were typically violent was extraordinarily difficult.

What, though, is burglary?  It’s complicated, because it’s what we call a double-intent crime.

If you were working on, say, a rooftop billboard, and you fell and crashed through a skylight into someone’s apartment, you would not be guilty of anything save perhaps some negligence.  You never intended to enter the apartment, and assuming you don’t then form the intent to stay there or commit a crime while on the premises, it’s just unfortunate.

If a storm is coming and you break into an abandoned warehouse for shelter, you’re guilty of breaking and entering and trespass, but as long as that’s all you do you’re not guilty of burglary.

Burglary, legally, means unlawful entry with the intent to commit a felony.  It is that second intention that makes it a serious crime.  Usually the felony is theft, and in the Dimaya case that was the felony involved.  Burglary is considered a violent felony in part because many of the crimes with which it is associated (to commit murder, rape, arson, et cetera) are violent, and in part because it is considered a risk that someone unlawfully entering a residence might encounter the resident leading to a violent confrontation.

However, noting that in the present case the issue involves a conviction for burglary as defined by a statute with a very broad sweep, the majority decided that it would be impossible for a judge to determine reliably what the “ordinary case” would be, and how great the potential risk of violence would be, and then that the standard itself is an ill-defined threshold, and thus identifying whether a particular case meets that requirement is an entirely subjective matter.  That, they assert, creates a Fifth Amendment Due Process issue.  Due Process of Law includes that citizens be on notice of exactly what is and is not illegal, and not be subject to the caprice of police, prosecutors, juries, and judges to decide what is and is not a violation.  Dimaya could not have known that his actions would count as violent felonies rising to the level required by the deportation statute, and thus he was not afforded the protection of due process.  Gorsuch agreed.

Roberts disagreed.  He argued that the text was not vague, and that any judge ought to be able to determine the degree of risk of violence in the ordinary case of a specified crime.  It’s not clear that he overcame the examples offered by the majority.

Thomas also dissented, but at a much deeper level.  He first asserts that “vagueness” doctrine is not consistent with the original meaning of Due Process, but does not pursue that far enough to overcome Gorsuch’ explanation as to why it is.  Thomas then states that the “ordinary case” analysis was something the Court itself invented and read into the previous statute, and that since it makes this statute unconstitutional to so read it but it is not actually in the statute, it is the Court’s fault and the Court should read it otherwise.  He says that the wording of the statute requires a specific circumstance analysis, that is, whether the person was convicted of a crime which under the facts of the case had a high risk of violence.

This is interesting, because as we noted the California burglary statue covers a lot of non-violent crimes and a lot of potentially violent ones.  Arguably residential burglary with the intent to commit theft stands a fairly high risk of a violent encounter with a resident homeowner–but Dimaya specifically targeted vacant residences, significantly reducing the probability of violence, and there was no indication that violence was ever even close to being used.  Thus the facts in the Dimaya case suggest that his particular burglaries were never more potentially violent than simple trespass, unless you count violence to property.  You can only call them dangerous felonies if you base it on some notion of the “ordinary case” that asserts these are more violent on average than his were.  That’s the analysis Thomas would reject.  However, he then wants to uphold the deportation, saying that the statute was not vague because at the time courts were unanimous in the opinion that burglary was a violent felony (which does not take into account the fact that Dimaya’s were not, which was the analysis Thomas was saying we should use).  So it does not appear that Thomas manages to give solid support to the outcome he wants.

However, the genuinely interesting contribution in this case is that of Gorsuch.  After arguing that Due Process requires fair notice, and thus that laws must be clear in their intent, and so agreeing with the majority that this law is not, he delves into a much deeper issue.  He asserts that the Separation of Powers doctrine requires that crimes must be defined by the legislature, the body of persons elected by and accountable to the people most directly, and not by the judiciary.  The legislature is not allowed to ignore this responsibility by telling judges or juries to decide whether any particular action is a crime; it must give specific parameters for what does and does not constitute one.

What is most interesting about this position is that were it consistently applied, it would undermine nearly all of our administrative law, from the IRS to the EPA to the FCC, because it nearly always involves Congress effectively stating broad parameters of an objective and executive branch agencies writing the actual regulations to be enforced.  By Gorsuch’ view, this would be unconstitutional, as such regulations were not written by the legislature but by the executive.  Such delegation of authority is not authorized by the Constitution, and thus would not be enforceable.

There is a serious question concerning whether it would even be possible for a modern state to function entirely by legislation without administrative agencies empowered to create and enforce regulations.  On the other hand, Gorsuch has a strong point, and just because an existing system is efficient and effective doesn’t mean we should overlook the fact that it might be unconstitutional.  Gorsuch may be laying the groundwork for an assault on that system–and libertarians and conservatives who favor smaller government will probably applaud those efforts.  It will be an interesting battle as it unfolds in the years ahead.

Meanwhile, Dimaya gets to stay in the country, because it can’t be determined whether burglary under the California statute ordinarily involves a high risk of violence or not.

Music

#240: Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #240, on the subject of Should Have Been a Friend of Paul Clark.

One of the problems with writing a series of reminiscences like this is realizing how much of that time I have forgotten; another problem is recognizing how much of what was happening I missed.  Paul Clark falls into both of those categories.

This is the fifth entry in a series of reminiscences about what might be considered the early days of Christian contemporary and rock music; previous entries are listed and linked at the end of this article.  My credentials are presented in the first article of this series, the Larry Norman article.  Song title links are to YouTube videos; no representation is made as to whether they are legal copies.

Looking over his discography, I recognize that five albums of his were released during the time I was at the radio station, but I only recognize the album covers of three; the third of those, Minstrel’s Voyage, was a best-of that was released during a long stretch in which he was not recording, and I recognize tracks from that.  Although the cover of Drawn to the Light is immediately recognizable, the only thing I recognize looking at the track list is that there was this weird three-song piece late on the second side; none of the titles recall any music for me.

Clark, though, predates my involvement.  His debut album Songs from the Savior Volume 1 was recorded in 1971 or 72, depending on whom you ask, followed shortly thereafter by Volume 2 of the same.&nbsp I eventually had access to a copy of the collaborative effort Good to Be Home which is listed as by Paul Clark and Friends and doesn’t show on his regular discography.  I remember being impressed by the collection, which featured guitar work from Phil Keaggy, bass and drums from Love Song alumni Jay Truax and John Mehler, and keyboards from Bill Speer.  However, until I heard it again I didn’t recall a single track from the disk.  Listening to it, I recall much, and the title Which One Are You? (second on the disk) strikes me as the one which got the most airplay on our station, although the final track, Abide.  It also features a great deal of nostalgically characteristic Phil Keaggy guitar work.

However, I got to hear Clark live once.  I suspect it was a promotional tour for Drawn to the Light, but I do not recall interviewing him or even meeting him at the show.  However, I remember one part of that show quite clearly.  Clark was alone on stage with an acoustic guitar, and he paused to explain that he did not do requests.  He explained that at this point he had recorded so many albums that he couldn’t keep all the songs performance ready, and just focused on those he planned to play.  He then told of playing a concert with a full band, and as they finished the first song someone near the front yelled, “Hand to the Plow!” (a funky rock piece after the quiet introduction), which is probably Clark’s single most famous piece, or at least the one I’ve most heard mentioned in connection with him.  Clark ignored the voice and played his second song, only to have the fan shout the title again at the end.  When this happened again after the third song, Clark called the fan to the stage.  “What’s your name?” he asked.  “Bob,” came the reply.  “Well, everyone, Bob is now going to sing Hand to the Plow,” and giving him a mike he started the band on the song, and Bob successfully muddled through the piece (“Not too bad, actually.”)  He told that story to discourage us from making requests.

He is generally acknowledged to be one of the original Christian contemporary/rock musicians; I only wish I knew him better.

(In my research for this article I stumbled on a two hour concert, pirated audio from somewhere in the audience, of Paul Clark and Phil Keaggy.)

*****

The series to this point has included:

  1. #232:  Larry Norman, Visitor;
  2. #234:  Flip Sides of Ralph Carmichael;
  3. #236:  Reign of the Imperials;
  4. #238:  Love Song by Love Song.