Monthly Archives: May 2019

Books by the Author

#300: Versers Challenged

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #300, on the subject of Versers Challenged.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first four novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, For Better or Verse, and Spy Verses,  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 have posted the fifth, Garden of Versers,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  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 seventh mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 73 through 84.  Previous web log posts covering this book include:

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 73, Kondor 148

I pretty much gave the Derek-Princess relationship story its head, and this is where it was taking me.  I had decided before it started that the princess and her entourage were being trained in self-defense techniques, and that Derek would join the class.  I remembered his loneliness as I contemplated this chapter, and included that.  I have not decided whether one of the girls falls in love with him beyond the immediate flirtatious infatuation they all have, but I think it at least possible that he would leave this world with a young wife trained in martial arts.

Chapter 74, Hastings 156

The three paragraphs about reading Gavin’s mind and considering reading Doctor Conway’s mind were written a couple days in advance, and copied here.  The idea of reading the doctor’s mind was Kyler’s suggestion.  He also suggested that Derek would read the minds of the girls, and I’m contemplating that.

Chapter 75, Beam 19

According to the outline, this was supposed to be the beginning of a story in a new world; by this point I was thinking I would have to tighten up the Beam story to give it more chapters, so I could fit another world in this book, since I still had another story in this world.

It was Kyler’s idea that the creatures in this version of The Dancing Princess would be efriit, not demons, as a way of setting up a future connection for a world ahead.

I let Beam’s cynicism about marriage have full rein here.

The notion that not all demons are bad is probably mostly attributed in Beam’s thought to the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although it was also heavily influenced in my mind by the Mythadventures books by Robert Asprin.  Both of them treat demons as intelligent creatures from other dimensions who might be either good or bad.

Chapter 76, Brown 172

I originally wrote that Derek blushed because he had thought of marrying her (the second time he thought that in the chapter), but I had barely printed it when I thought that was wrong, that he blushed because he had thought of sleeping with her.  It also occurred to me that he must have been resisting the temptation to use his clairvoyance to follow her to her room and watch her get changed.  However, I never incorporated that in the story.

The relationship with Button Nose was one of the decisions I made about the story; I made several others concerning that relationship at the same time, and started working in those directions.  Thus the Brown stories started to pick up.

Chapter 77, Hastings 157

I was going to have the doctor end the session by saying something like it was a good place to hold, but as a sort of inside joke I let him say that it was a good place for a chapter break.  He, of course, meant in the story Lauren is telling.

Chapter 78, Beam 20

I knew there would be a short chapter for an interlude before the next adventure; I did not really expect it to be as short as it originally was.  On the other hand, I didn’t see Beam mediating between the girls and their father, and I didn’t see him hanging around for the fireworks, so it was a simple matter to remove him swiftly.

In editing I realized that we were depending on this part of the story to create the foundation for the future claim that Beam had a friendship with the effriit, but that hadn’t actually been included.  This was expanded with the extended conversation between them to provide that.

Chapter 79, Brown 173

At this point, with a little help from Kyler, I put together my list of girls:

Rathi, called Rath = Bronzy, for her lighter reddish hair, is the Princess

Vashti, called Vash = Button Nose, the girl Derek loves

Scheherazade, called Sch’hery = Pink Cheeks, the dominant one in the group

Haddasah, called Haddy = Chin Dimple

Keturah, called Ketty = Elf Ears

Sarai, called Sar = Lashes

Leah, called Ley = last one to get a distinguishing feature from which to derive a Derek Name, Green Eyes.

I spent at least a day, maybe two, outlining this in my mind, and then when I typed it I still forgot the part about calling Joe and had to go back and insert it.  I struggled with the names, and then had to get them all involved in ways that would fit the ongoing story.

Chapter 80, Kondor 149

I wanted Joe to witness the healing, partly because I wanted to avoid writing what Derek prayed and what he experienced, and partly because I’m still giving Joe trouble over questions about magic.

I also wanted to make the medical situation seem real.  Joe should have seen to the sucking chest wound first, but he didn’t know the man’s condition, and since I wanted to cover everyone else first (and certainly he knew that the condition of the “civilian” princesses was going to be of more concern at the palace than that of the professional soldiers defending them) I arranged it such that he got to that man last and attended to him immediately.

Rathi is the name of an online friend of the family from Oman.  She doesn’t like her name, but I hope she doesn’t mind me using it for the Princess.

Chapter 81, Beam 21

This was originally slated to be a Slade chapter, but I suddenly felt that the Arabian story was moving too quickly and I was going to run out of story before the other characters were ready, so I shifted to insert a Beam chapter and a Hastings chapter before continuing.

Kyler had wanted to bring in the magic dragon control ring, which is a fun bit of the whole, and I had already drafted chapters related to it for the future, so at this point despite being behind my schedule I needed to start working on the dragon encounter.  It will take several chapters, as the acquisition of something from a dragon seems a necessary part.

Chapter 82, Hastings 158

I was constantly uncertain about how much to tell, as I am certain a significant part of the audience has already read the previous books; but mostly I am trying to connect the parts where Doctor Conway is likely to react.

Chapter 83, Slade 149

Joe was my mystery investigator; Slade certainly knew it.  However, Slade was the person connected to the Caliph, so he would be the one called upon to solve it.  I also knew that Derek was the one with the best information, so the ball kind of bounced from the Caliph to Slade to Kondor to Derek, and then back again.

I had worked out the solution before running the kidnapping, simply because I think that’s the way to do it:  know how the thing is done, then present how it appears, then work through the clues that drop along the way to reveal how it was done.

Chapter 84, Beam 22

This was stalled a couple days while I tried to figure out how to accomplish what needed to be done in a way that would be interesting but wouldn’t consume too many chapters.  Fragments of it came over time, but I was actually surprised to get it all into the one short chapter.

This has been the seventh behind the writings look at Garden of Versers.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue publishing the novel and these behind the writings posts for it.

Music

#299: Praise for Dallas Holm

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #299, on the subject of Praise for Dallas Holm.

It must have been 1977; it can’t have been later than 1978.  Jeff Zurheide and I met with a young singer interested in forming a band, who was absolutely focused on doing music from Dallas Holm.  He did a passable job on Holm’s signature song, Rise Again released on the 1977 album Dallas Holm and Praise Live, which had become a major Christian hit.  We might have met with the guy twice.

Almost a decade and at least half a dozen albums later that was still the song people wanted to hear from Dallas Holm.  It came from the first certified gold Christian contemporary music album, was recorded by him and many other artists over the years, and the only negative thing that can be said about it is that it overshadowed the rest of his career.  Even I, who heard quite a few of those albums and aired many of those songs, can only remember one other, itself a powerful if slightly country song that is mostly forgotten, (He Died of) A Broken Heart, and I barely remember that one myself, and I recall even less well Jesus I’m an Open Book, in the same stylistic vein.

This happens to Christian artists quite frequently.  Despite his long career both with and after Love Song, Chuck Girard was mostly remembered for Sometimes Alleluia.  Still ahead in this series we’ll see other artists who are remembered for one song despite long careers with many hits–Don Francisco, Evie Tornquist Carlsen, Karen Lafferty, Kathy Troccoli, Randy Matthews, Scott Wesley Brown, David Meece, Wayne Watson, Dan Peek, and if I thought long enough I might remember more.  Listeners latch onto a song and that’s the one they want to hear, and so the stations play what the listeners request, and the new songs never have a chance against the old ones.  Rise Again so dominated Dallas Holm’s career that it is doubtful whether anyone other than diehard fans and music industry people could name another song of his that charted.

Still, to have produced one great song that is still remembered is a noteworthy accomplishment, and if you have not heard that song, you are the poorer for it.

*****

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.
  9. #248:  The Hawkins Family.
  10. #250:  Original Worship Leader Ted Sandquist.
  11. #252:  Petra Means Rock.
  12. #254:  Miscellaneous Early Christian Bands.
  13. #256:  Harry Thomas’ Creations Come Alive.
  14. #258:  British Invaders Malcolm and Alwyn.
  15. #260:  Lamb and Jews for Jesus.
  16. #262: First Lady Honeytree of Jesus Music.
  17. #264:  How About Danny Taylor.
  18. #266:  Minstrel Barry McGuire.
  19. #268:  Voice of the Second Chapter of Acts.
  20. #272:  To the Bride Live.
  21. #276:  Best Guitarist Phil Keaggy.
  22. #281:  Keith Green Launching.
  23. #283:  Keith Green Crashing.
  24. #286:  Blind Seer Ken Medema.
  25. #288:  Prophets Daniel Amos.
  26. #290:  James the Other Ward.
  27. #292:  Rising Resurrection Band.
  28. #294:  Servant’s Waters.
  29. #296:  Found Free Lost.
Law and Politics

#298: Taxing Corporations

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #298, on the subject of Taxing Corporations.

Periodically we will read that some particular major corporation paid no federal income tax, and many of us react in horror.  Here we are surrendering large chunks of our hard-earned wages while these companies who pull in millions of dollars get to keep it all.  Those corporations ought to be paying their share; they ought to be paying our share, with how much money they have.

But beneath this there is another problem, a question of whether corporations should be paying income tax at all, and when we look deeply at that problem we hit problems of double taxation and equitable treatment.

There are a lot of ways in which the law treats corporations as if they were people.  They can sue and be sued; they have to obey laws, and they can own property.  But they aren’t people, and the law has to recognize this as well.  A corporation is fundamentally a piece of property that is owned by a lot of people–the shareholders.  When the corporation makes money, that money quite literally belongs to those people, even though they don’t have it.  They can get it.  If they want, they can vote to dissolve the corporation, sell its assets, and divide the money among the shareholders.  If they can’t agree to that, any one of them can sell his share in the company and take his money that way.  Periodically most corporations decide to take some of their income and pay it to their shareholders as “dividends”, giving everyone who owns the company a portion of the income they made.

So when we say that the corporation made a billion dollars, we don’t really mean that there is this person called a corporation who earned that income.  We mean that the people, maybe hundreds of thousands of people, who own that corporation jointly made a billion dollars.  So if we tax the corporation, as a corporation, we’re really taxing all those individuals who own the corporation.  So maybe I own one share of this corporation, and my share is worth twenty dollars, and the government takes ten percent of the value of the corporation.  That means that the government took two dollars from me.  That’s fine–the government is allowed to tax my income.  But then, if I get money from the corporation–money that has already been taxed as corporate income–the government is going to tax that money again as my income.  But I already paid tax on that income, because whatever the corporation does with its money is something I and many other people did with that money.

It would be something like the government taking money out of your paycheck before your employer gives it to you, and then taxing you again when you cash the check to take money from your bank.  You would be livid if they taxed the same money twice.  Yet that is exactly what happens to shareholders when the government taxes a corporation and then taxes stockholder income from the corporation.  It is exactly as if you were taxed on your wages before they went into your bank account and again on the same money when you withdrew it from the bank.

Oh, but that’s all right, because only rich people own stock, right?

Wrong.

A great deal of stock is owned by banks, retirement accounts, pension plans, and other financial programs that are part of the finances of ordinary people.  If you have an interest-bearing bank account, or a company or government pension plan, or an investment account, or an insurance policy, it is almost certain that you, indirectly, own stock and are dependent on the income of probably quite a few corporations to make your money “grow”.  So that “corporate income” you want to tax is your own income, your pensions, your interest, your insurance.

Of course, corporations do pay income tax.  So why do some of them pay none?  We covered this quite a few years ago in our discussion of Taxation:  that they received billions in income doesn’t mean they turned a profit.  They probably payed billions in payroll, not to mention rent and mortgages, property taxes, utilities, and other expenses of production.  On top of this, they can probably deduct monies invested in advertising, in repairs to equipment and purchases of new equipment, in insurance premiums.  In some cases the costs involved in ensuring future income are deductible–research and development, new product testing, exploration for new resources.  At the end of the day it’s quite possible for a corporation to spend more than it made, just trying to make the money–and if your job cost you more than your paycheck delivered, you would expect your tax bill to be considerably lower.  We do let employees deduct from their taxable income expenses for specialized clothing, work-related transportation, job equipment, and other costs of earning the income.  We let corporations do the same thing.

So next time you hear that some corporation paid no income tax, don’t think they got away with something.  It might be because at the end of the year they spent more trying to make that money than they actually made.

Bible and Theology, Music, Reviews

#297: An Objective Look at The Extreme Tour Objective Session

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #297, on the subject of An Objective Look at The Extreme Tour Objective Session.

Late last year I received an invitation from someone representing something called The Extreme Tour inviting me to investigate mutually the possibility of participating in their program.  The big piece of the puzzle was something called The Objective Session, a long weekend of meetings in Nashville which they correctly say defies characterization as a convention or conference or retreat or just about any other label we might put on a large gathering of persons for a specific purpose.  The Greeks would probably have called it an ekklesia, which means a gathering of people called together by a common interest, but which we typically translate “church”–and there is a sense in which church is not a bad name for what this is, but it’s very unlike any church I’ve ever attended, and I’ve attended many in many different denominations.

The odd thing was that I could find very little online about either The Extreme Tour or The Objective Session.  Then many events conspired against any hope I might have had of attending–our car’s transmission died to a tune of almost as much as we were still paying for the car, I was hospitalized twice, money was getting tighter.  I wasn’t investigating the trip as diligently as I otherwise might have done because it was beginning to look impossible–but I was still praying about it.

Then with literally less than a week to go the last pieces were falling into place; it transitioned from a ridiculous impossibility to a very difficult possibility.  I posted to all the Christian musicians groups I knew to see if anyone could advise me on this, and got almost no response at all, and none that was informed.  On Tuesday morning I was literally weeping, for reasons I cannot really explain in this post beyond that it had looked as if an opportunity to do something with the music had been placed in front of me and I was going to have to decline it.  That’s a lesson for a different forum, but an hour later the last piece of the puzzle fell into place and the decision was made:  my son Adam and I were going to Nashville to attend The Objective Session.

It was then that we started getting advice from musicians, and it had three things in common.  The first was they were universally against our going.  The second was they knew no more and probably less than I did about the program.  One person asked if I had ever heard of a concert being presented by The Extreme Tour, which was a pretty useless question because I’m pretty sure that of all the concerts I attended and even promoted when I was at the radio station, I knew who presented or sponsored very few of them.  Another person seems to have a very odd view of divine guidance, suggesting that no believer would ever be uncomfortable doing anything that was what God was directing him to do.  The third commonality was that most of them had received invitations and ignored them.

The decision had already been made, so this advice had less impact than it might otherwise have had.  We went.  It was a twelve-hour drive, and over the course of Wednesday night through Monday morning we probably spent between two and three hundred dollars on food, gas, and tolls; lodging at a cheap hotel less than half an hour from the site even in morning traffic was less than two hundred dollars for three nights, although with how intense the event was it probably would have been better for us to have stayed in the area the nights before and after.  Parking at the venue was free for the event, but we made a point of arriving early and not moving the car until we were done, because it was very crowded.  Because we had been invited the meeting itself cost us nothing, and I don’t want to quote the price I heard for tickets for those not invited.

What I want to do in this post is provide information for those who have been invited and don’t know whether it would be worth going.  I’ll give you the short answer up front:  I don’t know what will happen from it, but for us it was worth going.

To fully understand The Objective Session you probably need to understand The Extreme Tour.  Ted Brunn, founder, has one of those testimonies on the order of he should have died and the doctors don’t know why he lived and were themselves using the word “miracle” (fell seven stories and landed on his head on rocks).  At some point he became extremely sensitive to the fact that there are a lot of lost people out there who don’t believe that anyone cares about them, and he began an organization that works with local non-profit groups to put on free shows in places no one wants to perform.  The shows include select artists and talented extreme sports athletes (e.g., skateboarding exhibitions), and the message to the people is that someone does care about them.  All of the performers, as well as all of the staff, are volunteers; the money that the organization collects really does go to the expenses of doing what they do, such as hiring sound equipment for venues.  For some situations they defray costs of performing artists, but this is not an organization designed to make you rich.  It is rather designed to enable you to contribute your talents alongside those of others to take the good news into places you probably could never go alone.

The Objective Session is from their perspective an opportunity for them to meet potential volunteer performers; to facilitate that, they also gather many music professionals from the Nashville area.  Although in spare moments throughout the weekend I tackled the program book, I never finished reading all the names and credentials, and I’m only going to name a few here.  I will also mention that there were said to be six hundred of us in attendance, and I met many of them and have CDs from a few.  Probably the last thing I did was give a couple CDs of my own music to a young artist who was probably the first person I met when I arrived; it seemed the right thing to do at the time, as he wanted to hear the rest of the song I had partly sung the day before, and I was in no condition to attempt to sing it.

I will tell you that from the moment we arrived things were happening.  Because of the fact that we drove eight hundred miles and twelve hours with one break for dinner and gasoline (don’t tell my hemotologist) arriving around noon central time and staying up to reach our hotel twenty minutes outside the city after midnight, so I was immunologically compromised, we left the event a bit early on Friday and Saturday nights.  There are no meal breaks; there are food trucks in the parking lot said to be some of the finest in the city (and the ones I patronized were very good) and they recommend you slip away and bring back food to eat during the meetings.

Let me say I have been to several retreats for Christian musicians over the decades.  This one was what all the others only dreamed of being.  Here are some of the highlights of my experience.

Many of the speakers were excellent.  I apologize that with that intense a schedule I can’t specifically pinpoint what we heard from Wes Yoder (one of the original business names in the CCM world), Tom Jackson (the go-to guy for staging a musical show), or any of the others; I do remember that Dr. Ken Steorts, founding guitarist of Skillet, delved into a Biblical understanding of the function of artists (he has a book on the subject).  I had private meetings with Ezra Boggs and Vince Wilcox for the specific purpose of gaining some career advice, and I attended a songwriting session led by early Petra member Rob Frazier, at which I was invited to sing a portion of my song Free.

There were some things for which there was a charge, or an extra charge, and I took advantage of one, submitting a few of my songs and some biographical information to be distributed to a list of Nashville professionals who wouldn’t take anything like that from a stranger but would take it from people they know at The Extreme Tour.  That was just under two hundred dollars, and I don’t expect to hear the outcome of that for at least a few days, probably a few weeks.  I did not get tapped for a recording contract or management representation.  However, I did not pay the extra to be one of perhaps a dozen performers who played two songs each for a panel of industry judges on Friday and Saturday evenings.  Adam said it sickened him to watch eight strangers critize the performances of these mostly wonderful artists, although I sometimes found myself agreeing with their criticisms as things I would have said.  He felt even worse when I told him that those artists had paid somewhere around five hundred dollars each for the privilege of being so criticized.  However, while we watched a young band called Zoe Imperial absolutely wowed the attendees (and most of us fancy ourselves professional caliber musicians) with a rock/hip-hop blend in a show choreographed and performed as well as anything I’ve seen since Servant, one of the judges, Lamont Compton a.k.a. Supreme, leapt up on stage to offer them a management deal with him, so it does happen.

Recording artist Jennifer Knight playing with kids at inner city picnic

What Ted Brunn hopes will be the real impact, though, is that on Saturday night we were broken into teams and sent to Broadway in Nashville to make music and get attention and talk to people about the hope that is in us.  Because it was so late and my condition was deteriorating I did not attend these, and Adam took me back to the hotel; I’m sorry he missed it, but I did that kind of thing at the Boston Common and the Topsfield Fair decades ago, so I’ve seen it.  On Sunday afternoon we put on a concert (I really just watched) supporting a local church barbecue (O.K., so I also ate a hotdog and some chips) in a field that was supposed to be a park but there were too many shootings there for people to feel safe outside in it ordinarily.  Most of us were to interact with the people, to let them know, once again, that someone cares about them.  I watched a recently signed Universal recording artist attendee dancing with young ghetto children, and a Christian rapper hold a children’s dancing contest on the portable stage someone had loaned the Tour at the last minute when transportation for the stage they were going to use failed.  This organization is really about taking the message to the hopeless, and it was worth every minute of it and the respiratory distress I was still fighting to overcome the night after.

It struck me that this might seem like a lot of effort for the opportunity to play a bunch of free concerts.  I can’t speak to participating on the tour because I haven’t yet done so and have no guarantee that I will be invited.  However, it seems to me that my experience is fairly typical, that most of us play most of our concerts for free, mostly in venues which reach only Christians.  That’s not a problem for me, because my ministry is to be a teacher, which is primarily a ministry to believers, and my music frequently reflects that; but Paul told Timothy to do the work of an evangelist, and there’s good reason to think that that instruction is for all of us, or at least all of us doing any kind of ministry at all, so the opportunity to do for free what you are already doing for free but in front of people who need to hear the message alongside others doing the same might be worth the time and effort.

So to all those who thought it was some kind of scam, I am persuaded otherwise; and to those who wondered whether it would be worth it, I am persuaded that it is.  Probably you won’t get a Nashville management deal or recording contract; those are few and far between.  Maybe you won’t be convinced to volunteer for free concerts in ghettos and such, but you will still benefit, I think probably enormously, from the experience.  Maybe you will get something from it that will move your music and ministry career forward in a significant way.  Maybe that’s not the point of what you’re doing, and maybe you’ll discover what it is God really wants from you.

Music

#296: Found Free Lost

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #296, on the subject of Found Free Lost.

I first encountered Found Free when they played at Gordon College, probably in 1975 or ‘6.  I was in the cafeteria (I have previously mentioned that Gordon did not have an auditorium, and the chapel was not large enough to hold the entire student body, so large gatherings were always in the cafeteria or the gym) in advance of the show, while they were setting up, and I approached their guitarist, Wayne Farley.  I approached him because he was playing what I still on some level consider the “Holy Grail” of instruments, an electric guitar that sounds like an acoustic when amplified.  I asked him what it was, and he gave me an unfamiliar brand name; I believe he said it was from Australia.  I failed to remember that information, partly because on my paltry budget everything was too expensive to consider.

My good friend Jeff Zurheide walked out of that concert, and I understand why, although it might be said that he lacked patience.  The band had a well-organized and well-performed show designed for college campuses generally which began with covers of secular oldies coupled with nostalgic reminiscences to draw in the audience, and then eventually shifted to delivering the gospel message with a few Christian covers and originals.  Jeff was not interested in hearing a secular music concert, and did not anticipate the shift; I stayed to see what they were going to do, although I don’t know why I expected something different.  They were talented.

A couple years later I was out of school and out of work, and I heard they were auditioning for a guitarist.  I arranged an audition.  I had lunch with David Michael Ed, keyboard player and vocalist, and then played for him and vocalist Keith Lancaster, but my fate was sealed at lunch when they learned that I was married–it had been their plan to find someone who could share an apartment in the city with Keith, and so keep expenses down.  They said that my playing and singing were certainly good enough (although I am not at all satisfied myself that I could have replaced Wayne Farley, whose departure from the band had occasioned this opening), but they couldn’t afford my wife.

I often wonder what might have been, but I doubt I could have saved them, as sad as that is.

They did give me a copy of their recently released Greentree Records album Closer Than Ever, saying that I apparently did not know what they sounded like at that point (which was correct, as they had changed significantly in the couple years since I’d heard them).  It was a well produced album with good but not great songs, and the vocal work was very impressive.  I remember many cuts from that disc, but not many of them have been preserved on the web.  Ed’s song I Won’t Turn Back was a gentle opener, but Stone Heart exemplifies the processed sound typical of the LP.  Lancaster’s Do You Want Him? is a gentle call, and Starlight Praise has been described by someone as “brassy gospel swing”.  Touched by Love closes the first side with a bouncy touch, and the B side opens with the title track, smooth and a bit schmaltzy.  Farley contributed the track Still Up Walkin’, a song that prefigures his complicated compositions which appear later elsewhere.  I always liked Lancaster’s Stained Glass Window, but I don’t remember the closing song If You Know by Ed.

I know a few facts that come next, but not the sequence in which they came.  David Ed and his wife Joy separated, and both left the band.  They never actually found a guitarist to replace Farley, but instead found a new bass guitarist and shifted their former bass guitarist to guitar.  I think Lancaster took over on keyboards, and they put together an impressive array of musicians that filled the stage.  I managed once again to catch them in concert, as they released another album–sort of.  They had apparently lost their contract with Greentree, and it was pretty obvious that Sparkal Records was a vanity label, that is, they had produced their own album and paid to have it pressed.  We had a copy at the radio station, and I had my own copy, and it was a superb album throughout, under the title Specially Purchased, Individually Wrapped.  However, it failed to find national marketing, and was the last gasp for the band.

Still, I remember some great songs from it, including Front Lines, I Need You Lord, Just Like a Child, Don’t We Need to Know, and of course the title song, Individually Wrapped, about being who God made each of us to be, instead of trying to copy what someone else is doing (in which they humorously copy several other artist styles in the midst of a group rap).  Not a one of those was found in online video, which is sad because I think it some of their best work.

On an only loosely related subject, I would later try out for a guitar and vocals spot in a band called Daybreak.  They lived together and worked out of a farmhouse somewhere in Pennsylvania, and became the go-to people for festival sound systems, but they never told me why they didn’t take me.  They were so insignificant that their discography isn’t published online that I could find (there’s another band of the same name around the same time), but the song I most liked from them was the a capella novelty title track from the one album I ever saw, You Can’t Stand Up Alone, and it appears that there must have been an earlier LP, from which the title track After the Rain is online.  I don’t know–I think I could have helped them, but I am impressed with their vocal work on other videos.  Probably I’ll never know what they didn’t like about me.

*****

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.
  9. #248:  The Hawkins Family.
  10. #250:  Original Worship Leader Ted Sandquist.
  11. #252:  Petra Means Rock.
  12. #254:  Miscellaneous Early Christian Bands.
  13. #256:  Harry Thomas’ Creations Come Alive.
  14. #258:  British Invaders Malcolm and Alwyn.
  15. #260:  Lamb and Jews for Jesus.
  16. #262: First Lady Honeytree of Jesus Music.
  17. #264:  How About Danny Taylor.
  18. #266:  Minstrel Barry McGuire.
  19. #268:  Voice of the Second Chapter of Acts.
  20. #272:  To the Bride Live.
  21. #276:  Best Guitarist Phil Keaggy.
  22. #281:  Keith Green Launching.
  23. #283:  Keith Green Crashing.
  24. #286:  Blind Seer Ken Medema.
  25. #288:  Prophets Daniel Amos.
  26. #290:  James the Other Ward.
  27. #292:  Rising Resurrection Band.
  28. #294:  Servant’s Waters.
Law and Politics

#295: Does China Pay Tariffs?

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #295, on the subject of Does China Pay Tariffs?

In trade disputes with China, President Trump has been raising tariffs.  Critics claim that such tariffs are not paid by China, but by the American Consumer, and they are right–sort of.

A tariff, of course, is a tax on imported goods.  According to sources, Trump has recently raised them from 10% to 25%.  A ten percent tariff means that if a computer comes into San Francisco harbor from China with a factory price of one thousand dollars, the shipper has to pay one hundred dollars to offload it onto the dock.  When the wholesaler comes to pick up the computer, the shipper will charge him the one thousand dollars for the computer, plus the one hundred dollars for the tax, plus whatever the price of shipping is said to be.  That means the wholesaler paid one thousand one hundred dollars plus shipping, and the retailer will have to pay that much plus the wholesaler markup, and the customer has to pay all of that plus the retailer’s markup.  So a computer that might cost a thousand dollars in China costs considerably more in the United States.

When we increase that tariff to twenty-five percent, the tax to offload the computer goes from one hundred dollars to two hundred fifty dollars.  This then gets passed through the same hands so that the retail shelf price of that same computer is now one hundred fifty dollars more than it was–and the person who wants to buy the computer pays that money.

So in that sense the critics are correct:  China does not pay the tariffs, Americans who buy Chinese-made computers pay the price.

That’s not how tariffs punish foreign nations.

Because American workers demand and receive (and in fairness need) higher wages than Chinese workers, and American businesses have to pay higher costs for environmental concerns and raw materials and even real estate, American products cost more to produce than Chinese products–and generally by enough that it is cheaper to buy products in China and ship them here than to make them here.  What tariffs do is raise the end user cost of foreign-made products so that they are more expensive to buy.  Yes, that means that a consumer can’t buy a computer as cheaply as before, because to get the same cheap Chinese-made computer he has to pay an extra one hundred fifty dollars–but that increase does not apply to computers made in America.  Therefore as the price of Chinese computers rises, American computer prices become more competitive, and more people decide that the American computer is a good choice, putting money in the pockets of American computer manufacturers and American workers.  The number of computers delivered from China declines, and China suffers from reduced sales of its manufactured goods.  This impacts the Chinese economy reducing manufacturing output, employment, and tax revenue.

Additionally, the tax money that is still collected on imported Chinese goods helps reduce the national debt at least a bit, which is good for our economy.  Further, a tariff against Chinese goods does not have any effect on computers made in Taiwan or Japan or Singapore or elsewhere in the world, so cheaper computers are still available–only the Chinese computer market is affected directly.  Demand on these other computers might increase retail prices some, but not nearly as much as the increased price from the tariff.

So it is true that tariffs increase consumer costs in America, but that doesn’t mean that China doesn’t pay.  They pay in their lost retail market, the fact that it now costs more for consumers to obtain their goods and so demand for them decreases.  And the benefits to America are found in increased sales of American-made goods (labor likes tariffs, in the main) and more tax money in the government coffers.

Does that mean that all tariffs are good?  Certainly not.  Import tariffs ultimately do increase consumer prices (just as export tariffs depress overseas sales).  Foreign countries usually retaliate with their own tariffs against American goods, which makes it harder to sell our products overseas.  There is a valid argument against tariffs.  But simply saying that China doesn’t pay them misunderstands exactly how they penalize China.

Music

#294: Servant’s Waters

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #294, on the subject of Servant’s Waters.

I have this story fairly reliably from the mouth of one of the band’s founding members.  They were one of the Christian rock bands of the day, going from church to church and religious rally to religious rally in their tour bus.  One day on their way to somewhere the bus broke down.  They limped it into the first parking lot they found, which happened to be a bar.  Using the phone there (remember land lines?) they informed people that they were stuck and determined that they could get someone out to repair the bus the next day, but were just going to have to stay where the were for the night.

The proprietor suggested that as long as they were stuck there anyway, he would pay them something to play in the bar that night.  They weren’t going anywhere, and a bit of money toward fixing the bus would certainly be welcome, so they accepted his offer and set up their equipment on his stage.  They opened their set with the one secular cover they knew–I’m afraid I don’t now remember whether it was Johnny Be Good or Sloop John B, but it was the only non-original song they knew.  Having finished it, they kind of stared at each other for a moment, and decided there was nothing for it but to push forward with their all-original Christian rock repertoire.

They were well received.  They continued on their tour the next day, but they had discovered something, and they began shifting what they were doing to take them more and more into secular venues, places where people actually needed to hear the message.

I didn’t know all of that, but I knew that Servant was one of the legends of the time, taking Christian rock music into secular venues.

Their album Shallow Water reached the radio station shortly after I did, and I would not have guessed it was their first; it is, at any rate, the earliest to appear on official discographies.  It is well constructed and well performed throughout, sounding more like the work of seasoned artists who know what they’re doing than a debut.  The opening title song set the tone for a ministry that challenged Christians to give up comfortable lives in favor of radical ministry.  Other songs on the same theme included the somewhat gentler Rich Man, and the powerful and memorable Cup of Water.  It closes with the upbeat Fly Away.  Throughout the mix of multiple vocals with powerful rock instrumentation gave them a distinctive and powerful sound.

I have fewer memories of Rockin’ Revival, which came out two years later, but Ad Man attacked the dangers of modern commercialism (“The ad man is the prophet of the century, making all his profit off of you and me”), and it closes with the fun and encouraging I’m Gonna Live.

They did it again with World of Sand, with songs like New Revolution, but the favorite song on this was the gimmicky tribute to Christian rock music, Jungle Music, whose insider references in the closing dialogue montage included people like Larry Norman, Resurrection Band, Daniel Amos, DeGarmo & Key, Barnabas, Petra, Fireworks, Sweet Comfort Band, and themselves.

When they released Caught in the Act of Loving Him, I had the opportunity to see them live.  They not only put on a dynamic musical performance, they put on a complete show.  The lights were synched with the music, including flash pots and lasers.  The male lead vocalist trained as a gymnast and was in constant motion including standing flips on stage.  They were engaging on every level.  Meanwhile the songs continued to challenge, including the memorable Now Is the Time and perhaps my favorite, the album opener Burning Bridges (“…give me light”).  Critics suggest that with this album Servant was transitioning from headbanger rock to new wave, which is more than I know.  I only know that they continued to be one of the best acts in Christian music, and one of the most challenging music ministries out there.

I never heard anything from them after that, but their discography shows only two more albums, the last in 1985.  There was also an album in the midst of this entitled Remix, and when I asked them about it in an interview they said please don’t buy it, as it was released by a record company that they had just left who decided to try to profit from their popularity by doing (often poor) remixed versions of a number of their songs and putting them on a new album just as World of Sand was hitting the market.

Apart from that one album, I never heard anything from Servant I wouldn’t recommend whole-heartedly.  It’s easy to forget just how good they were.

*****

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.
  9. #248:  The Hawkins Family.
  10. #250:  Original Worship Leader Ted Sandquist.
  11. #252:  Petra Means Rock.
  12. #254:  Miscellaneous Early Christian Bands.
  13. #256:  Harry Thomas’ Creations Come Alive.
  14. #258:  British Invaders Malcolm and Alwyn.
  15. #260:  Lamb and Jews for Jesus.
  16. #262: First Lady Honeytree of Jesus Music.
  17. #264:  How About Danny Taylor.
  18. #266:  Minstrel Barry McGuire.
  19. #268:  Voice of the Second Chapter of Acts.
  20. #272:  To the Bride Live.
  21. #276:  Best Guitarist Phil Keaggy.
  22. #281:  Keith Green Launching.
  23. #283:  Keith Green Crashing.
  24. #286:  Blind Seer Ken Medema.
  25. #288:  Prophets Daniel Amos.
  26. #290:  James the Other Ward.
  27. #292:  Rising Resurrection Band.
Books by the Author

#293: Versers Relate

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This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #293, on the subject of Versers Relate.

With permission of Valdron Inc I have previously completed publishing my first four novels, Verse Three, Chapter One:  The First Multiverser Novel, Old Verses New, For Better or Verse, and Spy Verses,  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 have posted the fifth, Garden of Versers,  I am again offering a set of “behind the writings” insights.  This “behind the writings” look may contain spoilers because it sometimes talks about my expectations for the futures of the characters and stories–although it sometimes raises ideas that were never pursued, as being written partially concurrently with the story it sometimes discusses where I thought it was headed.  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 sixth mark Joseph “young” web log post covering this book, covering chapters 61 through 72.  Previous web log posts covering this book include:

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 61, Kondor 146

I couldn’t really see a chapter describing Slade’s slow walk through a fight in which he was only an observer with a few occasional contributions to be all that interesting.  The only interesting part would be confronting the fire beast, and that wasn’t going to be a big deal in the pattern I’d anticipated; we’ve seen Shella bury opponents before.  It would be more interesting, I thought, to have the reactions of the others in the team to the description of that, and I needed to go to Kondor’s arrival anyway, so I wrote it this way.

Chapter 62, Hastings 153

Lauren’s earliest memories surrounding the crib are mine, pretty much verbatim.  I also had the experience of my friend, who in my case was Ricky (I never could spell his last name) who lived two doors down across the street going to a different kindergarten session, only he was morning and I was afternoon.  The neighborhood kids are roughly modeled on my elementary school neighborhood, Maria replacing Anne Profumo, who was two years younger than me but did have two older brothers who babysat and an older sister with a birth defect.  The kids across the street from her were sisters, and I do not remember their names and never was sure whether one was older than the other; I moved away from that neighborhood after elementary school.  Ricky’s older brother called him Dinky; I asked why once, but he didn’t want to talk about it.  The rest is a pastiche of things I remember doing as a child.

The Ob-Gyn is my wife’s story; we traveled quite a distance so she could see her doctor there, and my kids were all born in that hospital because that’s where they had their practice.

Chapter 63, Beam 16

It would make no sense to give the original outline notes for this chapter, as they assume that much has already happened that has not happened yet.

I wrote myself into a corner here, and had to get Kyler to help me out.  The problem is that I had just recently realized that when you have complicated plans your characters are going to use, either you don’t tell them in advance but just let them unfold in action, or you tell them and then have something go wrong.  The particular details of this plan needed to be told in advance, complete with backups, but then I wasn’t sure what could wrong—or how to fix it.  Kyler gave me information I had not known about his character Dawn, and I put together the details of why they failed to get through the gate from there.

I decided on a ritual spiel in Spanish, of which I speak very little but Kyler a bit more, and used Google Translate to get exactly what I wanted.  I also recognized that listening at a door with a cup works well if your mind can work out the words, but you can’t really clearly hear all the consonants, so Beam wouldn’t get what they needed.  Neither, then, would Bob, who is listening not to words but to thoughts.  That means once the gate closes, they don’t know how to open it.

Chapter 64, Brown 170

I was mostly concerned with wrapping up the scenario and getting back to the palace.  I knew I was going to have them teleport back, but recognized that they had left the wagon and two men several miles away and had to retrieve them.  Derek was the logical choice for correcting that.

Chapter 65, Kondor 147

I pondered for at least a day or two just what the Caliph would give them to express gratitude.  Finally I recalled that the gift offered by my example middle eastern rulers in the Book of Daniel was promotion to an important position.  The Caliph wasn’t going to make anyone third ruler of the nation or anything so grand, but he would give some kind of title to Slade, and the logical one was Royal Advisor.  That left me with the question of whether he would just ignore the contributions of the others, which I decided I didn’t want, so I decided that since Royal Advisor would probably include some kind of badge of office, a gold chain with a medallion was a good choice, and the others could receive similar gold chains without the medallions.

Chapter 66, Hastings 154

I pulled a lot of this from my own memories of my own neighborhood and elementary school years, but made a lot of changes as well.

I had wanted to cover several sessions in this chapter and push toward the moment she versed out, but I realized when I substituted a Mexican dinner for the Hawaiian luau I remembered from my own elementary school days that Mexico probably would not exist in a world where they had never heard of New Jersey, and that diverted me into her talk of geography and how different her “imagined” world was from the real one.  Thus I wound up filling the session, and the chapter, with a lot of useless world detail and a still confused psychiatrist and a theory of the multiverse.  Hopefully I’ll be able to pick up the pace next time.

Chapter 67, Beam 17

I was really pleased with this.  I went into it with no clue how Beam was going to get the cloak and shoes, and came up with the answer while he was asking his team for suggestions.  I knew that Dawn could kill them both, but didn’t want that.  The original story had the hero distracting the two with the idea that they should race to decide who would get it, and then vanishing with the cloak and shoes while they were running, but not only did I not want to take that idea, I knew it wouldn’t work for four.  I needed a way for him to outsmart the pair, but they weren’t that bright, so I did it.

I’m several chapters behind the outline, but happy with how it’s going; if necessary, I see that I can move Beam chapters tighter within the story frame.

Chapter 68, Brown 171

I had originally labeled this a Slade chapter, but forgot, and thought of a good idea for Derek before I started writing it, so I changed direction.

Chapter 69, Slade 147

I decided that I could move more quickly through Derek becoming part of the entourage of the princess if I put it in Slade’s perspective, and decided that Slade has started worrying about things that aren’t necessarily problems.

Chapter 70, Hastings 155

I didn’t see a way to get around Lauren explaining the whole verser thing to Doctor Conway, but I hadn’t really covered it perhaps for a couple of books, so I decided it wasn’t going to bore readers badly.  It was important to have that as part of his perception of her delusions.

I was at this point printing the first draft of each chapter and delivering it to Kyler.  When he read this one, he immediately suggested that Lauren would read the mind of the psychiatrist, to know what he is thinking about her.  We discussed it, and I thought yes, this is something she will do, but at the end of this chapter she is lost in her thoughts of family and won’t do it until some time in the next session, or whenever I get to the place where she arrives in Philadelphia and reads Gavin’s mind.  That would cause her to decide to read the doctor’s mind.

Chapter 71, Beam 18

I saw the transit with the boat as something of a comic moment, as Bron grabs one of the thwarts inside the boat and tells the boots to take him to the other side, only to have the boat lift partly from the water, holding him down and tilting such that he can’t see where he’s going.  I’m afraid much of it is lost in the telling, but the appearance of the boat might convey it at least to some readers.

In the original fairy tale, of course, the hero gets the girls away from the princes, gets them under his cloak so that they can see that their suitors are demons, and returns them safely home after escaping.  The world as published in Multiverser:  The Second Book of Worlds has that as a plausible outcome.  However, one of our objectives here was to create a relationship between Beam and the efriit, having decided that these were actually efriit and not demons, and it seemed reasonable to bring the story to a quick resolution by having them arrive too late to stop the weddings.

Chapter 72, Slade 148

I was going to make this a Kondor chapter, but I kept coming back to a conversation between Slade and the Caliph about Derek and the Princess, so it had to be a Slade chapter.

This has been the sixth behind the writings look at Garden of Versers.  If there is interest and continued support from readers we will endeavor to continue publishing the novel and these behind the writings posts for it.